THE SNP appeared yesterday to have been bumped by the Tories into changing its policy on the constitution of an independent Scotland for the first time in 20 years.
The party unveiled a proposal to create a second chamber which could delay or veto bills, an idea absent from SNP policy until now. In the past the government has attacked the plan for a single chamber as a recipe for chaotic government. The proposal would overturn the blueprint for an independent Scottish parliament published only two months ago.
However the plan split the SNP at its national assembly meeting in Stirling yesterday. Members voiced their concern that the party might be in danger of creating a Scottish House of Lords in what was described as a "vigorous" debate.
Under current SNP policy for an independent parliament, opposition parties could block all controverisal legislation with two-fifths of the votes in the chamber; the deadlock would only be broken by a nationwide referendum.
Senior SNP figures deny the proposed change is in direct response to Tory campaigns but are understood to be fearful of the electoral effects of the policy, with opponents focusing a future campaign on "government by referendum".
Sustained attacks by the Scottish Conservatives on Labour's devolution policy have concentrated on the "tartan tax". There has also been criticism of SNP proposals for a single chamber. This would be without the safeguard of a second body and would use referendums to decide on controversial legislation.
The SNP's Allan Macartney, MEP for Scotland North East, has written a document outlining the series of amendments to the party's constitutional policy. He proposes a part-time body to discuss controversial bills and have the power to delay them by six months. Money bills would be exempt. In a further departure, the new revising chamber would also include allocated seats for councillors, MEPs and members of the committee of the regions.
Macartney makes clear that the second chamber would be radically different from the current system within the United Kingdom: "Note that I have not talked about an upper house: we do not, I believe, want a House of Chiefs to replace the House of Lords."
He said of the SNP policy: "The party has had its constitutional policy for two decades but there have been some misgivings that two-fifths of the opposition could block everything. It could lead to a state of constant referendum which might not inspire confidence in a new legislature."
The document also includes plans to entrench the rights of local government as well as giving special status to Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.
It will be considered by a constitutional working group before being debated at an SNP special conference in April.
The SNP move follows a week of heated exchanges on the issue. Michael Heseltine, the deputy prime minister, provoked outrage among the opposition parties last week when he compared Scots support for constitutional reform with public opinion in the 1930s against rearmament.
BILL BRYDEN, the creator of the epic theatre productions The Big Picnic and The Ship, has lost control of the Shed venue in Glasgow where the dramas were staged. This leaves plans to stage a three-part millennium spectacular at the former Harland and Wolff shed in Govan in doubt.
A YOUNG man was in a serious but stable condition in Glasgow Royal Infirmary last night after he was repeatedly stabbed during an attack on Friday night. His father was also taken to hospital with a head injury. Gary McCoy, 27, and Henry, 46, are both from the Blackhill area of Glasgow, where the incident happened.
TWO PEOPLE died and two others were badly injured when a car and a van collided on the A75 Gretna-Stranraer road. The driver of the car died immediately. The passenger was taken to hospital, but died soon afterwards.
POLICE are treating as attempted murder an attack by three men on a man as he approached the Smiddy Inn in Cumbernauld. Alan Coleman, 26, from Kierhill Road, Cumbernauld, was in a serious but stable condition in hospital.
ALLIED DOMECQ, the drinks company, is to invest more than £10m in new pubs in Scotland. Its Alloa Pubs and Restaurants subsidiary will buy sites to expand its chain of Big Steak, Firkin and Scruffy Murphy's pubs.
A MAN was attacked by four men armed with a pick-axe handle and spray can while in the garden of his home. William Hamilton, 32, of Hurlford, near Kilmarnock, was taken to hospital for treatment.
MORE than 50 workers were moved to another part of the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria on Friday after an instrument showed a leak of radioactivity. But British Nuclear Fuels said last night there was no leak. An investigation is taking place.
THE BODY of Ronnie Weinstein, 32, was discovered in a house in Possil Park, Glasgow, on Friday night in what is believed to be a drug-related death.
Hamlet has inspired Peter Brook's latest theatrical quest in Paris
Peter Brook's new creation is both a piece of theatre and a piece of research into theatre. Clean, clear and probing, it is two hours of intellectual magic. Its title, Qui Est La (Who's There), is the opening line of Hamlet, and it is as if Brook had embarked on a production of Hamlet, paused at an early stage of rehearsals and asked himself: what sort of project is this? What are its basic elements? What makes it work?
The scene at Brook's Paris theatre, the Bouffes du Nord, is simple: a square white platform, a few plain wooden chairs. The actors wear casual present-day clothes, supplemented with the odd cloak or cap. The beginning of the play is signalled only by a subtle alteration of the lighting. Enter Barnardo, who looks at the audience and asks: "Qui est la?" Hamlet, and the exploration of Hamlet, has begun.
Every play is built around a secret. In every play, something is proved, explained or uncovered. In this sense the theatre is an art form that asks questions, and the work of the director and his actors consists in asking questions about the play. This should turn all but the most routine rehearsal into a self-examination. What am I attempting to do here? Is Hamlet meant to shock or mystify the audience? Am I telling a story? Communicating feelings? Am I giving a lecture on morality or am I directing a whodunit with bits of poetry stuck on? Most audiences are not aware that this kind of self-analysis has gone into a production. And yet, all your reactions to a performance imply an opinion, however vaguely formed, of what the director has been up to. Why is this scene so moving when its contents seem so banal? Why is this bit so boring when there is so much happening in it; did the director lose his grip?
Brook's subtitle is A Research into the Theatre. The performance is a public examination of his own intellectual and aesthetic points of reference, as if to say: these were my thoughts and problems when I was grappling with Hamlet. And yet the result is not a self-indulgent exercise. Qui Est La is also a user's guide to the theatre: an essay in what to expect from a play, how to understand it, how to assess your experience of it. This, and not overdressed actors trotting up and down the aisles, is true audience involvement.
You will have noticed the odd thing about the production's title: it has no punctuation. Brook has removed the question mark and this has the effect of destabilising the sentence for it is both a question and not a question. It suggests not only Who's There?, but also He Who Is There. It implies that if performing or watching a play is asking questions, it is also hoping for answers. In this sense, the performance you are about to see is a revelation of who and what is hidden in the text. It is deconstruction in action, an act of clarification, a diagnosis.
Technically, Qui Est La is a greatly shortened version of Hamlet interspersed with commentaries, spoken by the actors, from Stanislavsky, Gordon Craig, Meyerhold, Artaud, and Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1443), the great Japanese No dramatist. Zeami reminds Brook, for example, of the simple but profound truth that in the theatre everything is organic progression: the sequence overture-development-finale reflects the sequence birth-life-death. Craig reminds him that a play is not a literary feast but a piece of action during which life is created out of an empty space. Experiments, even absurd ones, are vital for actors, Craig believes, if only to prevent famous texts from sounding routine like people mumbling the Lord's Prayer. Meyerhold contributes the crucial notion that actors need to exercise because the body is a machine whose job is not to imitate but to create an image of something. You do not make yourself afraid in order to tremble convincingly on stage, you learn how to tremble and this will present the idea of fear. Stanislavsky agonises about the need to be truthful about life, and dreams of a production so natural that it does not seem to be a production.
As the actors speak these remarks, they reveal both the secret machinery of the theatre and the intellectual and aesthetic context of Brook's work. You realise that for Brook, more than for any other director today, intellectual and aesthetic are the same. Qui Est La is a confession, a demonstration, a homage to the theatre and a critique of it. Brook, whose artistic ancestors include not only the No dramatists, Craig and Meyerhold but also Jacques Copeau, Charles Dullin and Brecht, is searching for what is essential in the
theatre: its indispensable core. At its best, his work is the culmination of the movement begun at the end of the 19th century, just when the urge to imitate, to elaborate, to impress by sheer detail and stunning effects, reached its height. This new movement was hostile to detail and effect. It strove for simplicity. It announced that it was more important for the actor to understand his own personality in relation to his role than to submerge himself totally in the character he was playing. The great innovators were, paradoxically, backward looking. They wanted to recapture the purity and impersonal discipline of ancient theatres: Greek, Japanese, Elizabethan. The plays of these traditions, the innovators said, had a more profound and immediate impact on their audiences, both spiritual and physical, because the self-indulgence and the exhibitionism of artifice and stage effects did not come between them. The theatre was both fairground entertainment and secular religion.
But what precisely are the essentials and what are "effects"? Here lies the central problem of Qui Est La which is language. Jean-Claude Carriere's adaptation of the Shakespearian passages is clear and forceful, but it virtually lacks poetry. It is as if he and Brook had decided that poetry, too, was only an "effect", something that should be pared down severely if it were not to come between the audience and the pure dramatic experience. This seems to be an evasion. In the best drama, language and action are one. Shakespeare's poetry has precise dramatic functions: it is natural both to the characters and their personal dramas. It is the way Brook and Carriere handle the language of Hamlet that makes the Shakespearian element the weakest in Qui Est La. It has moments that can only really be savoured by the polyglot or the intellectually privileged. For example, the First Player, the Japanese Yoshi Oida, speaks the Hecuba speech in Japanese. The acting is so "pure" that you do not get an interpretation of Hamlet, but only an outline of its possibilities.
But then again, you could argue that this is precisely the point. Qui Est La is an experiment, its essence is to search rather than to find. It reveals that both to create theatre and to respond to it are work in progress, provisional and ongoing. Brook is saying: I will show you how I grapple with this play and this might show you where to look for its secrets. This is why the Shakespearian part of Qui Est La ends, not where Hamlet usually ends, but with the "Readiness is all" speech. Bakary Sangare, who plays Hamlet, suggests neither doom nor hope, only a stillness that is prepared for everything and expects nothing. This poised moral immobility is the essence of the situation: Brooke offers it for your contemplation and assessment. It is a moment of cool, cerebral magic.
The piece ends with two lines from Zeami:
Beginning-middle-end Death-birth-life
In other words the life of this event has ended, and its death has given you a new birth. This is the essence of the theatre, and this is why true tragedies have happy endings.John Peter
AFTER Harriet Harman comes Jean Aitchison. Nobody would have thought that yet another proponent of "personal decision" and "do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do" would arrive on the public stage so soon. If you doubt that one has, listen to her first Reith Lecture on Radio 4 on Tuesday.
Aitchison, only the third woman to give these illustrious annual talks since Bertrand Russell inaugurated them in 1948, is an Oxford professor. She has called her five programmes The Language Web. In the first one she sets out to dust away what she calls "the cobweb of old ideas" and "unfounded anxieties" surrounding spoken English.
Her assault on traditionalists begins by lampooning worried letters in The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers. It is followed by a jibe at Lord Tebbit for his prediction in 1985 that falling standards in English and in dress might eventually lead to falling standards in morals and an increasing disregard for the law. (Couldn't be further from the truth, could it?) To illustrate her various points there are clips of Janet Street-Porter, Lenny Henry, humpback whales, Welsh, Turkish and the famous Fleet's Lit Up broadcast given by an inebriated Tommy Woodruffe in 1935. This is a programme worth listening to merely for its Aladdin's Cave of sound effects.
Arguing that language has always been in flux, and that laments as to its decay go back centuries, Aitchison distinguishes between what she regards as genuine rules, such as where verbs come in sentences, and "artificially imposed" ones. She is happy with double negatives ("I don't know nothing"), glottal stops (the "bu--er" of estuary English, rather than "butter") and the erosion of consonants from the end of words ("stree" rather than "street"). She says the insistence on "different from", as opposed to "different to", stems from a misguided attempt to make English more like Latin. And so on and so forth, as Melvyn Bragg always says.
She also makes a quite extraordinary statement. "Partner is now the standard word for life companion," she proclaims. "At one time, numerous words competed ‘live-in lover', ‘mate' and, for heterosexuals, ‘posslq', an acronym for persons of opposite sex sharing living quarters. Then the word ‘partner' gradually pushed the other terms aside." Well, "partner" may be the preferred word in Aitchison's politically correct circles, and the way she refers to the male lexicographer with whom she resides, but in Middle England the usual word is "spouse", whose use dates back to 1200 for wives and husbands alike. As for "posslq", this is a word unknown to the Oxford Dictionary. Is it possible that she has simply invented it, to see if anyone is paying attention?
The interesting thing about her opinions is that she herself evidently pays no attention to them. Hers is a standard middle-class English voice, graced by perfect diction and pronunciation and placing due emphasis on consonants, vowels and grammar. Listening to her first lecture, and listening to and conversing with her at the launch party, in Dr Johnson's House, I have to report that double negatives and glottal stops do not intrude into her speech.
This might just be because she is well educated, particularly in Latin, the language she now brushes aside, and enjoyed the sort of schooling that most people want but cannot afford. She went to fee-paying Wimbledon High, then Cambridge, where she took a First in Classics. She taught Greek and linguistics at London University, before becoming the first occupant, in 1993, of the Rupert Murdoch Chair of Language and Communication at Oxford.
Does Aitchison think she would have attained her present eminence had she not known about, and obeyed, the accepted conventions of spoken English? Does she think young people rejected for jobs because, unlike her, they do not speak proper and have never been taught to speak proper, can just shrug their shoulders and say: "Never mind, Jean Aitchison says variety is the spice of linguistic life"? Did she not think that it might
have been better, given the present abysmal state in this country of spelling and grammar, to discuss how education can be improved rather than suggest that it doesn't matter because all usages are equally valid?
If Italy are added to the Five Nations, can a full Northern Hemisphere championship be far away? Nick Cain reports
THE END OF the old Five Nations order and the arrival of Italy in a revamped competition could come sooner than anyone thinks. Right up until last week, it seemed that Italy's application was forlorn, but the signal coming from the secretary of the Five Nations Committee, Bob Weighill, as the home unions and France ponder the merits of allowing Italy to join their ranks, is more positive. So, understandably, are the vibrations from Italy.
Following a written approach from the Italian federation which was discussed at last Tuesday's meeting of the Five Nations Committee, Weighill said: "We are going to formally see what the various unions think, and will meet again within the next month to consider the matter."
The fact that Weighill, who has a reputation for being one of the most circumspect administrators in the game, is even prepared to discuss the Italian bid, suggests that a Six Nations championship is not far away. He did not rule out the Italians participating in 1997-98.
"I have looked at ways they might come in," Weighill said. "We shall be looking very hard at it. But the Five Nations has been around a long time and has been very successful: we have to consider whether we should interfere with something so successful."
Sandro di Santo, the secretary of the Italian federation, said that should Italy be admitted they would play home matches in Rome. He also flatly contradicted the view, held by some, that Italians would not flock to the matches, and cited the crowd of 45,000 who watched Italy play South Africa at the Olympic Stadium in November as evidence of the growing popularity of the sport. "We would play at the Stadio Flaminio, an old football stadium with a 32,000 capacity in the centre of Rome, near the Olympic Stadium," di Santo said.
He was bullish about the boost to the Italian game that official Five Nations membership would bring. "It is crucial to us to play in such an important competition," he said. "Italy recently beat what was, in all but name, a full Scotland team (a 29-17 victory over Scotland A in Rieti), a fortnight before Scotland beat Ireland in Dublin.
"The Italian media understand the Five Nations but what, coming from a football culture, they do not understand is that why, when you beat Scotland, it is not Five Nations Scotland, the full team. Only in rugby is this possible."
But why stop with adding Italy to the five? Has the time come for a comprehenisve Northern Hemisphere event, with not one "elite" group of five countries, but a comprehensive, multi-divisioned set-up with promotion and relegation battles to add to the holy grails of Grand Slam, championship and Triple Crown?
As it stands, the Five Nations is in danger of becoming an Anglo-French monopoly something which Italy's inclusion, at least in the short term, is unlikely to affect. In the past decade, the championship has become a two-horse race between England and France, who have won three outright titles each. Scotland and Wales, also-rans of late, have won the championship just twice Scotland in 1990 and Wales in 1994, both countries sharing the title with France in 1986 and 1988 respectively.
The danger of a monopoly in any sport is not in the existence of the monopoly, but in whether it is challengeable; whether it is possible for others to aspire to beat the best. In short, is the monopoly also a meritocracy?
The problem with the Five Nations championship is that it is not part of a wider meritocracy. There has been no way in European rugby for aspiring nations not just Italy, but Romania to make further progress, because there is no pyramid structure for them to climb. This "it's our ball, and you're not playing" outlook is short-sighted, particularly as the game could miss the benefits of a major change in North America.
Despite having more than 100,000 players, the game in the United States has been hamstrung by a lack of development finance. This was because, as a non-Olympic sport, it was ineligible for government grants, and because, as a minority, non-professional sport, it had no commercial clout.
But, within a little more than 12 months, both those barriers have been removed. In November, 1994, rugby was re-admitted as an Olympic sport after 70 years in the wilderness, to be played as a demonstration sport in Sydney in 2000, and probably as a Sevens competition in the 2004 Games.
The fall-out from the game going professional has already led to the USA RFU being offered previously unheard of sums for TV rights some £6m by cable and terrestrial TV companies.
Rather than simply looking after their own backyard, then, the Five Nations should actively seek to promote the game in the Northern Hemisphere as a whole.
Doing this does not mean that a century of Five Nations tradition has to be flushed away. A blueprint for the future could, as the former England manager Geoff Cooke has already mooted, bring the best of both worlds.
In a Northern Hemisphere championship, the current Five Nations could comprise a first division, justified on the grounds that historically and currently they are the strongest sides. The second (Transatlantic) division would include Canada, who have made a significant impact on the past two World Cups, the United States, Italy, Romania and either Spain or Russia. Third and fourth divisions would cater for the current minnows of the European game such as Germany, Portugal, Holland, Belgium, and the plethora of eastern European nations.
It is time to move the Five Nations forward.
Stephen Jones argues new laws have not solved rugby's problems
THE FIRST frissons of panic always accompany any announcement of the deliberations of the International Rugby Board's laws committee. No matter that the performance of the IRFB in general has improved a little over the years, almost to the point where you might grudgingly admit that they are doing about a half of a good job, there is still the same heart-in-mouth feel when we are told the law changes.
It is not just the poor track record, not just that the consultation process between the lawmen and key areas of the game is still poor, ad hoc, and in places, non-existant. Still, too much of the law-making process is done by detached committees, detached in age and experience from the real world in which rugby is struggling along.
We heard last week that from next season, all the predator flankers who detached and killed the play in midfield are to remain bound to the scrum until the ball comes out; that they are to be stuck, fuming, while the backs actually attempt to play a little rugby. It sounds fine, it seems as if it will create more time and space and that the monstrous tyranny of the flanker might be relieved.
The lawmen declared roundly that the object behind the exercise was to free the field of forwards. Fine talk, fine idea. Except that in the maddening way of things they had apparently forgotten who had put those forwards there in the first place. Rugby is cluttered, rugby is played in straight lines, because the same lawmen passed the ruck-maul turnover law a few seasons ago. Ever since, lawmen, coaches and players have been trying to get around the law. Whatever the effect of the new law binding people to the scrum, it should never be forgotten that the maul turnover law is still the chief culprit, and that the game will never flow in all its beauty until that law is removed.
THAMES VALLEY TIGERS gained a surprisingly comfortable 90-72 win over Hemel Hempstead Royals to keep alive their hopes of reaching the Wembley play-offs.
DENIS PANKROTOV of Russia set a world short course record of 1min 52.34sec for the men's 200m butterfly at a World Cup meeting in Paris.
PAULA RADCLIFFE of Loughborough University maintained her unbeaten record this season by winning the British students cross-country title in Luton, finishing in 18min 30sec.
PETER GRAF, the father of player Steffi, will take psychiatric tests from prison to see if years of drug and alcohol abuse may allow him to plead diminished responsibilty on tax evasion charges.
"We expect the tests to show that tablets and alcohol had a large effect on Peter Graf and his decisions with tax matters," said Steffen Ufer, Graf's lawyer.
Peter Graf has been in investigative custody in Mannheim, Germany, since last August as part of the tax probe.
IT WAS third-time lucky for Zimbabwe, who picked up their first victory in the final game of the one-day series against New Zealand, winning by 21 runs in Napier. Their success was built around their spinner Charlie Lock, who took five wickets in 11 balls, a run that sent the home side sliding from 227 for five to 246 all out after Zimbabwe had made 267 for seven.
JOE BUGNER has attacked the British Boxing Board of Control for hindering his attempts to fight in this country.
The 45-year-old former British champion, now an Australian citizen, is hoping to fly into Britain to meet Scott Welch next month for the Commonwealth title, but Bugner has criticised the board for the demands they are making before he is given the all-clear.
The board have insisted on watching a video of Bugner's last fight and will seek medical assurances before sanctioning the title challenge. This has infuriated Bugner, who claimed it was "almost an insult" to have his fitness questioned.
The board secretary John Morris, who is opposed to Bugner fighting in Britain, said the board "would not be rushed" into making a decision.
MARK WILLIAMS became the first Welshman to capture a world ranking tournament in seven years, when he beat John Parrott 9-3 in the final of the Welsh Open at Newport.
Parrott was 5-2 down after the first session, having committed mistake after mistake in every department. He finally found his range by whitewashing Williams 75-0 in the sixth but could not complete the damage limitation exercise and Williams motored to victory after the break.
TWO WORLD CUP officials could face trial on charges of culpable homicide for the death of Austrian skier Ulrike Maier in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in January 1994.
Maier's family have accused the officials, Kurt Hoch and Jan Tischhauser, of gross negligence and an enquiry has established that safety measures at the course were insufficent.
Hoch was the director of the women's World Cup when Maier crashed into a timing post and Tischhauser was the race official at the time for the International Ski Federation.
THE FIRST race scheduled to take place at Garmisch-Partenkirchen since Maier's death, a men's World Cup downhill race, was postponed due to poor weather and will take place today.
WEATHER ALSO affected the two women's World Cup downhill races at Val d'Isiere. The first-leg went ahead without problems and Katja Seizinger seized the opportunity to take the lead in the overall standings with a brillant win in a time of 1min 41.70sec. She was then leading the second-leg before fog forced the race to be cancelled.
Al Oerter, who won four discus Olympic golds, is assured of immortality. By Ian Chadband
HE WAS there to introduce a few of the potential Olympic stars for Atlanta, yet there were more than a few blank looks when this imposing, round-shouldered MC shuffled on to stage, hands in his tweed jacket pockets, and felt he ought to introduce himself. "I'm an old discus thrower who, er, won some medals around the turn of the century," said Al Oerter.
Nice one. Oerter knew this was a bit like Pele saying he used to play a respectable game of footy as a lad, but the New Yorker with a claim on being the greatest Olympian of them all quite enjoyed the mischievous deceit. He could sense that a few of the young bloods attending Adidas's thoroughly 90s presentation in London last week were only vaguely acquainted with the legend, perhaps even unaware that the only track and field athlete ever to win four golds in successive Games between 1956 and 1968 was still around to tell the fantastic tale. "Oh, that's OK," he said with a grin, "I've thrown in two Memorial discus circles named after me in New York and Kansas. Memorial circle? I'm not sure they realised I was still alive either."
In his 60th year, looking impossibly hale and youthful, he is very much alive and chucking. "Well, it's okay being 60 as long as you don't act it," Oerter said. Sure enough, when not jetting around the US on the motivational speaking tours based on his Olympic experiences, he can be found preparing for next year's World Masters event for veterans in South Africa or "messing up" his nine-year-old grandson's budding career in the discus circle "I was never a great technician".
He can still lift like an ox, and, indignant at the lighter implements that 60-year-olds are asked to use, reckons he can hurl them a mile like "poker chips". "If everyone dies off before Atlanta, I'll be there for a fifth," he said. It was tempting to believe him.
He was chuffed when they introduced him to Lars Riedel, Germany's 6ft 7in, 18st triple world champion. Oerter wandered round this magnificent sculpture and said admiringly: "Boy, am I glad you weren't competing when I was around." Diplomatic words, but, extraordinarily, even back in 1980 when the 43-year-old Oerter had emerged from retirement, he was throwing further than Riedel. That's how good he was.
The pair chuckled as they admired each other's Olympian-proportioned noses, but comparisons ended there. The generation gap suddenly dawned on Oerter. "Lars trains five hours a day, 1,440 days days every four years. If I'd done that, you'd have found me in traction somewhere. I can't understand that intensity, that obsession."
This may sound a bit rich from someone who once boomed "These are the Olympics; you die for them!" and meant it, but Oerter was always a quite singular animal. In his heyday, he never put sport before family, never trained more than two hours a day, never asked for even an hour off from the company where he worked as a computer systems analyst, helping hone the technology which created the first lunar module to land on the moon. Apart from once every four years, athletics was just fun, his recreation, "a constant test of self rather than competition with others."
He never had a coach, a psychologist, physiologist "or any other kind of ologist, for that matter". If he could not say he did it his way without any help, then it was not worth doing at all. In between Olympics, he was relaxed and fallible, sometimes mediocre; once at the Games, he was focussed and invincible, always exceptional. His opponents could never fathom this amazing self-assuredness.
"You don't expect to beat Oerter; you just hope," said his most celebrated victim, the world record-breaking Jay Silvester who, like other more technically gifted opponents, simply despaired of how the strong man could four times lose the US trial only to subsequently win the big one, an Olympic record.
Oerter is not one of those dinosaurs who constantly harks back to "my day", yet trekking round the US at coaching clinics, still as outspoken a scourge of incompetent American athletics officialdom as he was in the 60s when he once walked off the team in protest at athletes being treated as boxcar citizens, he fears for a new, robotic breed of performer, suffocated by the sport, hamstrung by the fear of defeat and motivated more by money than love.
"Today, none of the throwers talk to each other; it's a life or death struggle. The things that always made you love athletics the friendships that live long after the Games seem to no longer be there with them. It's ‘all for me, and to hell with everyone else'. Frankly, I don't think that's a very human environment."
What chance today, he wondered, of that spirit of Rome 1960 when, with Oerter out of form and his title slipping away, the competition leader, Rink Babka, another American, advised him before the penultimate round that he was holding his left arm too low in the spin? Oerter thanked him, adjusted his technique, and proceeded to rob Babka of the gold.
Such generosity of spirit may be history but in the unsung Atlanta rank and file amateurs, he sees a group to keep the rampant Olympic monster in check. "The ones who pursue their dream just like the big-name full-timers, but with no compensation, a job to hold down and a family to raise. I identify with them precisely; they're the heroes."
To folk of a certain age in the US, there was no sporting hero to match Alfred Oerter. Businessmen at his motivational sessions want to hear all the stories again; about the strapping 6ft 4in, 20-year-old college kid who nearly fell off the rostrum in Melbourne in surprise at winning gold and then had the pressmen calling him "nuts" because he promised to win four more; about how he survived a near-fatal road crash before repeating the feat in Rome; about the days after number four in Mexico when presidential candidates wanted to hitch their star to his, but big Al wouldn't play ball. How could he refuse Nixon's overtures? "Easy. I just told him ‘No'," said Oerter.
Above all, there was that day in Tokyo 1964 when, defying medical advice, a chronic disc problem, ripped cartilages in his lower rib cage and "a freight train of pain in my mind, like being run through with a red-hot sword", he consumed a box of ammonia tablets, packed ice against his side to prevent internal haemorrhaging and went on to achieve the impossible. "It was not heroism. I had to compete or I would have been cheating myself," he said. As he doubled up in agony with his fifth round throw sailing out beyond the Olympic record marker line, he had to ask his opponents: "Did I win?"
Oerter retired in 1969 to watch his two girls growing up, but returned with the same laid-back attitude eight years later. Amazingly throwing further than ever in the heart of what he calls the "chemical era", he always refused to "play that game", but still finished fourth in the 1980 Olympic trials.
Not a single regret consumes him. He is as flattered that contemporaries still want to discuss his unique achievement as he is unconcerned by the fact that to a new generation, it could be meaningless pre-history. "I'm the first to do four, but I know I won't be the last but, hey, I still think I did it the right way.
"Four in a row is certainly not something I want chipped into my headstone, though. I'd rather it read ‘Here lies the oldest man in the cemetery'," he said with another chuckle. In the meantime, this marvellous Olympian with a lust for life would settle for the surreal prospect of simply being the oldest man in the Al Oerter Memorial discus circle.
Hostage: Listen, while you are holding the gun we have nothing to discuss.
Gunwoman: On the contrary, the moment I give up the gun all discussion will end.
This snatch of dialogue from the screenplay of Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden sums up, in a single soundbite, the debate on arms decommissioning that George Mitchell was called in to resolve.
Unionists and the British government are reluctant to enter into discussions while the threat of violence remains like a gun at their heads. Sinn Fein and the IRA fear that their voice will not be heard if they are unable to supplement their electoral mandate with a whiff of cordite and the threat of force. The problem is not that the IRA fears losing face. The problem is that it fears losing a concrete advantage and being outwitted if it prematurely surrenders a trump card. By this stage, both sides realise that the weapons are a bargaining chip.
The debate is about a real issue not an abstract theological principle and this should make it easier to resolve. However, as is so often the case in Northern Ireland, the struggle for advantage has resulted in people defining their positions in terms of opposition to someone else's outlook.
In Northern Ireland it is not always what is being said but who is saying it that counts. This was brought home to me at a conference in the Pat Finucane Centre in Derry last week, part of a weekend of events to commemorate the 24th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.
The consensus was that the peace process was on its last legs, thanks to John Major's performance in the House of Commons, but, at the same time, there was an air of optimism that the Mitchell report would somehow pull us all through. It would have been better, one woman told me, if only all the newspaper editors and all the bishops could have been shot before the ceasefire.
As far as the audience was concerned, elections were bad and the Mitchell principles good. Nobody seemed to consider the possibility that Major might, objectively, have been offering a softer option to republicans than Mitchell. What would have happened, for instance, if Major and Mitchell had swapped scripts? What if Mitchell had told the world that Sinn Fein should be admitted to discussions with the other parties as part of a three-stranded process involving the Irish government as soon as an election was held?
What if he had made it clear that the election must be held on a basis that was broadly acceptable to all parties?
In this scenario, Major would then have risen to his feet in the House of Commons and relegated the election to a mere aside in his speech, describing it as a possible confidence-building measure. He would have asserted, to backbench cheers, that there was no equivalence between IRA weapons and those of the security forces. He would have added that he had an accurate account of the IRA arsenal from the RUC and that he was demanding that all the guns should be smashed into little bits while all the explosives were safely blown up in the course of all-party talks.
However, Major would have explained, that before we ever got to the stage of talks, there were six points the IRA and Sinn Fein must adhere to.
The republican reaction would be predictable. Major would be accused of replacing one precondition with six and with walking away from the simplicity of Mitchell's approach in favour of a check list of demands, many of which were arrogant and unacceptable.
Few of the speakers in Derry, and few republicans who have spoken on the issue elsewhere, dwelt on the details of the Mitchell report. There was instead the general feeling that American involvement in the peace process was a good thing and that therefore Mitchell was good, too. It was the Brits who were the villains.
Over the next four weeks of intensive discussions, these issues will have to be addressed in detail, not just glossed over on the basis of gut feelings of sympathy and antipathy.
A first taste of the unpalatable choices to come was given to Sinn Fein at the forum for peace and reconciliation in Dublin where, after more than six months of discussion and trimming in an effort to find agreement, it emerged that Sinn Fein could not give its assent to the principle of Unionist consent. The hard issue which had been apparent from the outset could not be fudged.
A political opportunity was lost and a wedge was driven into the pan-nationalist consensus not by some outside force but by the limits of the Provisionals' own ideology. Dealing with the Mitchell principles may create similar problems. It is easy to applaud the international body's even-handedness but actually meeting its requirements to renounce support for violence, to abide by democratic decisions and to allow weapons to be destroyed will be a sterner test altogether.
Sinn Fein will need a new electoral mandate to do all that; just as surely as David Trimble will need a new mandate before he sits down with Gerry Adams.
On Thursday last, during a radio programme that I present from 10pm to midnight on the Dublin station, 98FM, a young man calling himself Brian phoned in from a drug detoxification unit at Chapelizod in Dublin.
He said he had been admitted to the unit that day after five months on a waiting list. There were 10 other people in the treatment centre. Nine of these had waited longer than Brian to be admitted. Two of his friends had already committed suicide while on waiting lists for similar addiction programmes.
During his call, Brian said he had not turned to crime to feed the heroin habit which cost him £60 a day. Instead, he had dragged himself and his family down into abject poverty in order to have enough money to buy his drugs. But he acknowledged that many of his friends could only afford heroin by resorting to robbery there was simply no other way. Some of these drug users were out on bail. Still, along with those who had not yet been caught, these addicts stole to support their habit. Even while awaiting prosecution, they continued to commit crime to get their fix.
Anyone who has paid the slightest bit of attention to the rise in crime over the past few years knows that a large number of crimes are directly related to drug addiction.
It goes almost without saying that drug addicts charged with offences are likely to commit crimes while on bail, for the obvious reason that their addiction does not abate on being charged with an offence. Anybody, therefore, who is serious about addressing the rise in the incidence of such crimes must seek to deal in the first instance with the problem of drug addiction.
And yet there has been not a word about the imperative of dealing with drug abuse in the recent almost hysterical public debate about crime and offences committed by people while on bail.
The only official figures that we have on crimes committed by persons on bail come from the annual report of the gardai. In 1994, this report showed the number of such crimes as 4,416, a relatively insignificant statistic in the context of the overall number of crimes committed, which was 101,036 in that year.
These figures represent an increase in the number of crimes committed by persons on bail in 1994 of about one third on the previous year. The 1994 figure was also more than double the corresponding statistic for 1986.
But there seems to me an obvious rejoinder to this outwardly alarming rise. Garda figures reveal a dramatic drop in the number of crimes committed by persons on bail in 1986 from the level of the previous year 2,121, as compared with 4,775 in 1985. This sharp drop coincided with the coming into operation of the Criminal Justice Act 1984, which provided for consecutive sentences for offences committed while on bail.
These figures began to rise again in the early 1990s, but this time the rise corresponded with the emasculation by the courts of the previously enforced consecutive sentences strategy.
There is another obvious factor influencing the number of crimes committed by persons on bail: the length of time between a person being charged and his or her trial. At present there is an average delay of more than 18 months. Quite clearly, if there were a substantial reduction in this time span two months should, realistically and economically, be sufficient in most cases for a defence to be prepared then there would be a substantial reduction in the number of crimes committed by persons on bail, if only because there would be fewer of them about.
Such a reduction would apply particularly to drug addicts. There is good reason to believe that addicts make up a significant number of those who commit crimes on bail. This can be deduced from the further information that is made available on the nature of the crime that has been committed.
For its report on bail, the Law Reform Commission undertook a special study of the incidence and nature of crime committed by people awaiting trial. This found that in 1993, for instance, of the total of 3,201 crimes committed by persons on bail, 60% were larcenies and robberies, the sort of crimes most typically committed by drug addicts.
Likewise, there is reason to believe that if the drug addiction problem were addressed, there would be a substantial drop in the number of such crimes.
On the other hand, the incidence of serious crime committed by those on bail is extremely low. In 1993, for example, there were just eight armed robberies, two rapes and five assaults. There were no murders or manslaughters attributed to those on bail. Clearly, this level of serious crime does not require crisis measures.
We simply do not need to take the drastic step of punishing people for crimes they might commit, rather than for crimes they have committed, which is what the proposed change to the bail laws would facilitate. There are those who might argue that in focusing on the issue of bail we are looking at the problem of crime from the wrong angle. Brian, and addicts like him, would probably agree.
Evil is capable of a fairly ubiquitous presence if only because it tends to appear in the guise of good. You never see it crossing your threshold announcing itself: "Hi, I'm evil."
Joseph Brodsky (1940-96)
Joseph Brodsky, the Russian poet, political dissident and Nobel prize winner who died last week at the age of 55, was an expert on evil. Especially the sort of insidious evil that evaporates the moral will of the intelligentsia: the temptation no longer to be lonely, to lead a lynch mob instead of showing it the double-barrelled shotgun.
Last week the Irish media mob worked itself into the worst frenzy of Anglophobia that I can remember since the H-blocks. For a while I pondered burning my passport outside the foreign affairs department. Calming down, I sought consolation in Brodsky's best book, Less Than One, and came across this warning about the corruption of consensus: "One of the surest signs of danger is the number of those who share your views."
But unlike Brodsky, most of the Irish media believe there is safety in numbers. Soon after John Major sat down last Thursday week in the House of Commons, the hacks huddled together in Dublin to spread the word according to John Hume. For the next 10 days, Geraldine Kennedy, Conor O'Clery, Richard Crowley, Maol Muire Tynan, Miriam O'Callaghan and even Eamon Dunphy foamed at the mouth.
What drove the foamers into a frenzy was the fact that they had a fragile case. Polls in The Sunday Tribune (which showed a majority in favour of decommissioning in the republic) and in the Belfast Telegraph (which showed a majority in the North in favour of elections) would at first sight seem to give politicians of goodwill a platform from which to address Sinn Fein in tough terms, and on top of which there was nothing malicious about Major's maladroit handling of the Mitchell report. Because John Bruton saw that from the start, we had no huffing and puffing from him, while those around him blustered furiously.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, there is absolutely no point in Irish journalists working up anti-British feeling. For one thing, Major takes very little notice of The Irish Times; for another, Tony Blair is not a regular listener to RTE; for a third, it is a vapid and empty venting of tribal tension into a vacuum. It is like beerily bursting from the parochial pub and berating and blaming the British Empire for the fact that you do not love the woman you married, cannot stand your boss and know you will have a sick head in the morning.
Not surprisingly, Sinn Fein mistook the sound and fury of the media mob for the calm voice of the majority of the people on the island. All the media managed to do was stiffen Sinn Fein, paint the Irish government into a corner and inflame public opinion to no point or purpose.
Luckily for all of us, Bruton kept his head, refused to make a meal out of Major's messing and showed once again that he is the only politician in Ireland with real class. That is the real gap between him and Dick Spring. At its core is courtesy and character. Bruton, like George Washington, has total control over his temper and thinks that politeness in politics is a sign of strength. But Spring, like Hume, seems to feel he can put his petulance on display whenever he feels disposed to do so.
In short, the tanaiste and his adviser Fergus Finlay are tired of trying to make sense of David Trimble and his sort and have signed up for the simpler SDLP-Sinn Fein script.
The tension of not being true to his better self tore through the thin skin of Spring's self-control on radio last Sunday, when he came over like a man advancing on a small fire carrying a can of petrol.
The tanaiste should get a transcript. Set out on the cold page he will see a picture of himself that is not pretty. The scene is totally tribal. Spring, the great white hunter, sits mesmerised in the tribal studio. Gerald Barry, the interviewer, advances on him like a witchdoctor chanting slogans, conjuring up a barbaric world where the Irish government, the SDLP and a small terrorist organisation are on one side facing up to a democratic British government and a Protestant community led by Trimble, a democratic politician, on the other. This was the moment of truth. Instead of telling Barry, Hume and Sinn Fein to get stuffed, our tanaiste, our minister for foreign affairs, simply tore off his clothes, ran around naked and in tribal terms went native. It was a sad scene.
As Brodsky said of those who sold out to consensus in the socialist tribal system: "We ended with a willpower in no way superior to a seaweed."
Top billing: Naomi Campbell and Helena Christensen arriving in Dublin for last night's Brown Thomas showcase of Irish fashion design. The supermodels shared the limelight with a glittering array of international celebrities at the Point.
IT WAS the obvious way to provide a fitting tribute to the man who put Ireland on the world football map. But, as the bosses of Irish football began to mull over how best to organise a testimonial match for Jack Charlton, tongues began to wag over the estimated £500,000 he would pocket from the occasion.
As a result, the FA of Ireland has been forced into an embarrassing U-turn, scrapping plans for the match in order to quell smouldering controversy over allegations that Charlton has become greedy.
Anxious to preserve the reputation of‘'Saint Jack" as the man whose team humbled England in Ireland's first appearance in the European championships in 1988, earned a historic place in the 1990 World Cup quarter-finals and beat mighty Italy in the 1994 World Cup finals, they will use a pre-planned match against Russia in Dublin on March 27 to bid a "dignified" farewell to the Englishman.
Rather than handing over the huge gate receipts from the match, the FAI will offer him about £100,000 from a £200-a-ticket gala dinner it will host afterwards.
The testimonial "would have been a disaster for the FAI", said one of its senior officers. "He isn't exactly in dire need of the cash."
Charlton, whose last campaign ended in relative ignominy when Ireland failed to qualify for this year's European championships in England, took a relatively modest salary of £100,000 a year for his part-time job. But he earned vast sums from frenetic promotional activity.
Countless endorsements among them television campaigns for Guinness, Opel, Shredded Wheat, Bank of Ireland and Irish Telecom and a punishing schedule of personal appearances at an average fee of £5,000 saw him rake in an estimated £5m during his 10-year reign. He also found it virtually impossible to spend a penny of it in Ireland; publicans and shopkeepers would frame his cheques rather than cash them.
Charlton's Irish business interests include a 10% shareholding in the Dublin branch of the Harry Ramsden fish and chip chain, which announced pre-tax profits last week of £1.15m. He is also part of a consortium that recently acquired the Baggot Inn, a prominent Dublin pub from which U2 and other rock bands launched their careers.
As it mulled over plans for the testimonial, the FAI was made aware of grumblings in its ranks and among footballers that the Englishman had already been more than amply rewarded.
It was pointed out that a number of distinguished footballers were joining a lengthening queue for testimonials, including Packie Bonner, goalkeeper in the legendary match against Italy, and Ray Houghton, who scored the goals that sunk the Italians and the English.
One still waiting is Charlton's predecessor, Eoin Hand, who now manages a pub in Johannesburg, South Africa. "I am happy for Jack because he has done well," Hand said. "However, I am due a testimonial, too. Things have not been great for me so I would dearly love to take the FAI up on it."
Friends of Charlton say he is concerned about possible public resentment over the testimonial plans. He did not want to be seen "taking" from ordinary supporters.
SINN FEIN is unable to accept the principle that it must abide by the outcome of all-party talks on the future of Northern Ireland, The Sunday Times has learnt. It has also been revealed that the Ulster Unionists in private discussions have urged a hardline approach to the IRA, rather than all-party talks.
The news that Sinn Fein cannot accept the so-called Mitchell principles and that the Unionists are privately advocating the military defeat of the IRA comes after Friday's attack on an off-duty RUC officer and is a further setback to hopes of a final settlement to the Northern Ireland problem.
The sustained attack on the officer's home is evidence of the fragility of the ceasefire. The shooting seems to have been the work of the tiny Irish National Liberation Army, which has never declared a ceasefire. Its spokesman said this weekend: "I cannot dispute that it was the INLA but I will not confirm it."
An unpublished report by the British and Irish governments, meanwhile, has found that, if the IRA was to decommission, it would retain the ability to re-arm. The gardai and the RUC have also estimated that the Provisionals have a vast arsenal, including surface-to-air missiles, flame throwers, heavy machineguns and rocket-propelled grenades.
The Sunday Times has also learnt that Labour was more supportive than the Tories of the elections proposed by the Ulster Unionists. Tony Blair's party was so enthusiastic that it suggested a basis for calling elections.
Disagreement between the London and Dublin governments over elections in Northern Ireland emerged privately in December. The British had reason to expect the Mitchell commission to support elections. Representations from the Dublin government, the SDLP and Sinn Fein persuaded the commission to make only a passing reference to the proposal, which originated with the Unionists, according to an authoritative source in Dublin.
According to a source with access to Sinn Fein, there was heated disagreement between US Senator George Mitchell, chairman of the commission, and Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader, during the intense discussions before the report was published last month. The disagreement seems to have been about the six Mitchell principles, the acceptance of which was proposed as a requirement for entry into all-party talks.
Sinn Fein is unable to accept the principle requiring it to "...agree to abide by the terms of any agreement reached in all-party negotiations and to resort to democratic and exclusively peaceful methods in trying to alter any aspect of that outcome with which they may disagree".
The party has merely offered to make a commitment to support fully any agreed settlement, with which, by definition, it would be in agreement. It will not promise to abjure a return to "the armed struggle" in the event of a settlement being reached with which it disagrees.
It is also opposed to the proposal of the Mitchell commission on decommissioning taking place during all-party negotiations on a settlement Sinn Fein's position is agreement to full decommissioning on the conclusion of an agreed settlement.
It has also emerged that David Trimble's Ulster Unionist party has stated privately that the attempt to draw Sinn Fein into the democratic process is fatally mistaken and that the only "democratic solution" to the problem posed by the IRA is to defeat it.
Thus, according to one observer who has been privy to the Ulster Unionist party's private views on this issue, the logjam over elections and decommissioning is "merely a means of frustrating the strategy of incorporating republicanism within the democratic mainstream".
The RUC and the gardai estimate that the IRA has a substantial arsenal to call on if the ceasefire ends. The security forces calculate that the remaining size of the IRA arsenal is: 588 AK47 assault rifles; 10 GPMG machine guns; 17 DSHK machineguns; nine SAM missiles; 11 RPG launchers; 46 RPG missiles; seven flame throwers; 18 pistols; 68 Webley revolvers; 35 rifles; 115 hand grenades; and 2.99 tonnes of Semtex explosive.
It has also emerged that the inter-governmental security committee found in a secret report that decommissioning could not guarantee peace and the IRA would retain the capacity to acquire arms again and to manufacture explosives. Security forces have acknowledged separately that even with decommissioning the IRA would retain the capacity to make lethal explosives from substances readily available, for instance ammonium nitrate-based agricultural fertiliser.
KILCUMMIN, four miles north of Killarney, is an unremarkable rural parish save in one terrible respect. Twelve days ago, the bludgeoned body of a local farmer was found painstakingly concealed in a disused well on the land he worked with his older brother and two nephews.
Patrick Daly, 69, had inherited the 105-acre farm from his parents, who had broken with the practice of primogeniture and not willed it to their eldest son Sean.
This happened in an area where the land is rough, but to the people it is more precious than life itself. The Macgillicuddys Reeks which tower above Killarney are littered with the abandoned homesteads of the famine dead, driven to work the mountains in their hunger for land.
The reasons for the elder Dalys' break with tradition have been widely speculated upon. Most locals say they took an irrational dislike to Sean's wife, Mary.
It meant that Patrick lived alone in the fine six-roomed pink stucco house across the road from his farm buildings while Sean, his wife and their four children lived in a weathered bungalow 400 yards away.
Sean and his sons James, 29, and Eugene, 21, worked for Patrick and relations between the four men were reported to be good. As the younger brothers matured they took over the management of the small dairy herd, the cattle and the sheep. The gross income from the farm would have been little more than £20,000 between the four men.
However, in recent years Patrick had been unhappy. He had three spells in the local psychiatric hospital, most recently last August when he was treated for depression. He felt he was under intense pressure and complained about obscene slogans that had been daubed on the walls of his outhouse.
In September he told friends he feared for his safety because his guard dog had been taken away and a replacement dog had disappeared.
Shortly before his death, Patrick resolved to lease out most of the farm for £5,000 a year and to allow his nephews to continue to work the remaining 50 acres. He told neighbours that he had written to his solicitor and to an auctioneer in Castleisland, setting out his plans.
Eugene Daly said this weekend that as his uncle's depression worsened he had reneged on agreements with family members. "Dad would get half the money, but in the last year Pat would say he'd keep it all. But dad didn't mind anyway and neither did I."
Eugene said he was the last person to see his uncle alive at the farmhouse at about 6pm on January 18. The family said they did not notice until lunchtime the next day that Patrick was missing.
James has said he then found that his uncle's bed had not been slept in and that, strangely, his uncle's new dog was tied to the kitchen range. Outside, a halogen lamp attached to the side of the house and hanging 12ft from the ground had been broken.
Gardai believe Patrick was killed on his farm in a frenzied attack, the severity of which has led them to believe that more than one person was involved. He died of massive head injuries and had several broken bones. His attackers beat him about the head a number of times with a blunt iron weapon. He was wounded in the throat with a second sharper weapon.
His body was thrown down the 20ft shaft of a dry well. All this could have been done in minutes, according to detectives.
But the methodical manner in which the killers sought to conceal his body would have taken much longer.
Black plastic sheets used for wrapping silage were thrown over the body and a long rod was then used to pack the sheets round the corpse.
At least a dozen heavy stones were thrown on top, followed by sand taken from a mound left at the roadside 100 yards away. It created the illusion of being the bottom of the well.
Thomas Kelliher, a friend and neighbour of Patrick's, reported his disappearance to police on Saturday. Shortly afterwards gardai received another call, this time from the family. An initial garda search of the land produced nothing, but on Tuesday they re-examined the well and saw blue twine protuding from the sand. They started digging.
Eugene Daly helped the gardai haul up his uncle's body. His wallet containing £180 was intact, ruling out robbery as a motive.
Eugene said this weekend that his family were shocked and appalled by their uncle's death. He added that his immediate family knew nothing of Patrick's plans to lease most of the farm.
"Well, there were letters ... about money and that's all. Just that he [Patrick Daly] should keep the money for himself ... But it wasn't anything major, anyway." he said.
"We got on well. There was the odd name, but it was nothing serious. It's totally weird that it should finish that way. We've no inclinations as to how that could have arisen, how the awful end could have come."
Gardai, who say they are keeping an open mind on the murder, are relying on local information to help them solve the case.
Locals say that the muder has changed their community. The level of garda activity in the area is unprecedented. Doors previously left on the latch are now under lock and key in a parish which fears a murderer is in its midst.
"We've never had the guards calling up this way before, it's an awful thing to have them here now," said Jack Finnegan, Daly's friend and neighbour.
BOTH the SDLP and the Irish government now accept that, subject to key assurances, an election represents the most likely path to all-party talks in Northern Ireland.
Even as Dick Spring, foreign minister, restated Dublin's case yesterday, reliable sources said the Irish governement knew some form of elections were inevitable. The sources said that Spring had spoken to David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist party, and that they would soon have a formal meeting.
Spring yesterday warned that Britain and Ireland are in danger of becoming trapped in a vicious circle of argument. He said it was up to the Unionists and the British government to demonstrate why elections would "do more good than harm at this juncture".
"The principle at issue is the link between an election and negotiations. We want to know whether elections are the door to negotiations, or a further hurdle to be jumped with more hurdles to follow," a senior Irish government source said. If election led directly to all party negotiations they would be acceptable, he said.
The Irish government also wants procedures for handling disagreements during talks, continued the source. He said: "One model we have looked at is that each party should have a veto on decisions, but only if it invokes a vital interest. All this would have to be agreed in advance, you cannot just take an election on trust."
The SDLP position on elections has softened from outright opposition. Last night Seamus Mallon, the party's deputy leader, said: "We have asked John Major to come back to us and clarify what he is talking about." They would then consider his proposition, he added.
It appears that most of the assurances Mallon is seeking have either been given already or will be forthcoming over the next couple of weeks.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, John Taylor, the deputy leader of the Ulster Unionist party, spelt out the Unionist position following an election.
Taylor stated categorically that his party would talk to Sinn Fein after an election provided that Sinn Fein had pledged itself, in its manifesto, to use exclusively peaceful methods. Decommissioning during talks and the other principles suggested in the Mitchell report would be addressed. He added that he favoured a 90-member assembly "because that is the only way that smaller parties like the Workers party, the PUP and the UDP could be included."
"We will enter into talks in the new elected body and the first priority will be to agree a method of phased decommissioning of firearms and explosives. Once we have a formula for decommissioning we can go into negotiations on other matters," Taylor said.
For an election and talks along the lines he suggests, Taylor said a bill to allow for an election to set out the ground rules for the talks would be needed, plus legislation which would "provide for an amnesty during decommissioning so that people bringing weapons to be disposed of could not be prosecuted". The legislation could be passed in time for an election in April or early May, he said. These points are common ground between the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP. Seamus Mallon said: "As far as the SDLP is concerned the Mitchell principles must be adhered to."
De John Alderdice, the leader of the Alliance party of Northern Ireland, believed that the refusal of Sinn Fein to agree with the principle of consent in the report of the New Ireland Forum had made an election inevitable. Alderdice, a member of the forum committee which drafted the report, said: "This failure to find agreement effectively means that the forum is over and has no further role."
There were also worries that Sinn Fein's failure to reach agreement with other nationalist parties was a poor omen for all-party talks.
Immediately after the Anglo-Irish conference resumes on Wednesday, Dick Spring will travel to America to brief President Bill Clinton.
IT WAS hailed as the gateway to Hollywood for aspiring actors and offered a red carpet to new film productions. But the dream of a vibrant Irish film industry based on generous tax breaks has turned sour amid allegations of fraud, greed, mismanagement and incompetence.
A damning report commissioned by the government has exposed serious shortcomings in the industry, which has received more than £50m from the exchequer in recent years.
The report warns that if immediate measures are not taken the film boom will end. It claims that investors are unconcerned about the future of the industry and most care more about pork bellies than films. It also found that tax breaks have far exceeded earnings since the boom began.
The report, by Indecon, an independent consultancy, also says the department of arts, culture and the gaeltacht, responsible for supervising film production, has little professional knowledge of the film industry and is not able to negotiate on an equal footing with heavily resourced companies.
The study prompted Michael Higgins, the arts minister, to introduce sweeping changes in last month's budget, but he has not been able to act on some key Indecon recommendations.
The consultants found that much of the government money went to British workers who have swarmed to Ireland to earn the £3,000-a-week wages paid to unionised technicians. Indecon wanted Higgins to relate tax breaks to the number of Irish people employed on each film, but the minister was constrained by European Community law. The report also recommends he recruit staff with knowledge of the industry, including a specialist to monitor potential fraud, and the establishment of a commission to market and develop Irish film.
It highlights a number of issues, including a lack of cost competitiveness; a limited pool of senior talent, and the absence of a film distribution sector. It also criticises trade unions for restrictive practices and attacks companies who raise funds without specific projects in mind.
"There are certain companies which, as yet, have failed to invest in specific projects and unless the money is spent by April 5, it will have to be paid back to investors. Few of the films that have been released have made money. The whole operation of the scheme has been mind-boggling," said a government source.
One industry source said the report has sent shockwaves through Higgins's department. On Friday night, industry figures were summoned to a closed meeting with senior officials.
The performance of domestic films at the Irish box office is also a source of concern. The Sunday Times has obtained figures showing the performance of the top five films in 1995. The only success was Circle of Friends, which grossed more than £1m, while the other four grossed just £108,000 between them.
The Irish film Board contributed £480,000 to the budget of Guiltrip, which grossed less than £80,000 despite a budget of £850,000; A Man of No Importance made £24,000 despite a budget of £2m, and Words Upon the Window Pane cost £1.3m to make, but grossed just £5,000.
TWO boys aged 12 and 14 face prosecution after they were found lying on the top of a train as it travelled at 50mph near Rock Ferry, Merseyside. The practice is known as "surfing".
AN ARMY firefighter was killed when the tender carrying him overturned answering a hoax call at the Curragh camp. Sergeant Jack Whelan, 43, a father of three, was trapped for more than three hours. He died in hospital on Friday night.
A MAN of 20 was held for questioning yesterday in connection with the rape of a woman in Dublin last month. The woman was raped at gunpoint at her home.
NORA OWEN, the minister for justice, has called for increased joint efforts north and south of the border to combat drug trafficking.
Speaking at a seminar in Bandon, Co Cork, Owen said it was essential to look beyond the divisions of Ireland to tackle the problem.
Ben Clarke, the England No8, says that despite difficulties of technique at Twickenham, the reformed team is coming close to producing a spectacular display
WHAT does it mean to beat Wales? I'll tell you what everything. I'm totally elated. It's hard in the hurly-burly of the action on the field and in the flashing lights of media attention after the match to take it all in, to savour it, and measure the moment.
That comes later, amid the private celebrations with your family, your friends and your teammates. It is then that you realise what you have done. You have played a part in beating Wales as proud a rugby nation as there is, and the only side in the Five Nations with a winning aggregate over England 48 victories to our 42 after yesterday's victory.
The same Wales that you remember watching on TV as a little kid in the Seventies thumping England with monotonous regularity.
Naturally, I was also as proud as punch to have taken over as acting captain when Will Carling was sidelined by injury in the second half, but that is a mere sideshow in contrast to the satisfaction we got as a team from winning a game of this importance. Because, in the end, winning is what it is all about.
This was no vintage performance. But it was also one of the most high- pressure games that I have known. The expectations on England to deliver are now huge and, consequently, so is the media spotlight that follows the team's every move. Fair enough, we are professionals and that comes with the territory. But it does not mean that we necessarily agree with the speculation which, before this match, was rampant.
Most of it seemed to focus on discontent within the England ranks. All I can tell you is that it was not something I was aware of a hell of a lot of pressure, yes, discontent, no. Instead there is a growing sense of team spirit and an awareness that we are all in it together, and that we must all pull together to get it right.
Irrespective of what is said in the media, we have our own focus. We go out to play to the best of our abilities, and to win the game. Out on the pitch we are the ones who have to live with the heat, to go out and play. Consequently we listen to those inside the squad and not those offering opinions from the distant touchlines.
I would call our game at Twickenham yesterday an enthusiastic performance, backed by a huge will to do well. Rest assured, there is no shortage of heart among the England players. And my feeling is that when you have that quality in abundance, the technical side will come. That collective determination was obvious when Will left the field. My role was to carry on where he left off, and make the right decisions at the right time.
Despite an unsettled start to the match, there was a very strong sense in the dressing-room afterwards that England are already coming close to brewing up a real storm on the pitch. This was a game in which we very nearly broke loose in the second half, and would have done so but for crucial ball which was either killed or didn't go to hand.
We succeeded in putting Wales under a great deal of pressure at the scrummage and in the loose, even though our lineout is still not up to scratch. Where we were clinical and precise in our scrummaging technique, we were still far too imprecise in our lineout drill. We need to find at least a couple of sure-fire options, and yesterday we didn't find that rhythm. In fact, Wales, like France, managed to step in and disrupt us.
Our scrummaging superiority reaped dividends, but unfortunately not as much as we would have liked, particularly as we had a try disallowed when Matt Dawson scored from a tap penalty after we had driven Wales over the line. It was a close call, the referee disallowing it because he said that he had made the mark for the penalty on the other side of the scrum.
Overall, we definitely had the lion's share of the penalty count and, without doubt, we should have capitalised on it more. Unfortunately, in the first half Paul Grayson didn't hit the target, but a sign of the strength of the team's spirit is that nobody got on his back. We all realise that this huge responsibility rests on one man's shoulders. I would hate to be a kicker, and I admire them for their cool.
To his credit, Paul, despite being booed by the crowd, toughed it out and, in the second half, landed a crucial long-range penalty to put us 15-5 ahead. I have no problems with the size of the penalty count in our favour, because Wales killed a lot of ball. Unfortunately there was no opportunity to remedy this. If rucking again becomes part of the British game, perhaps we would see greater continuity.
ENGLAND 21 WALES 15
WHERE were the improved England? We are still waiting. Another uncannily muted Twickenham, more than a few jeers and another England performance that failed to electrify. Once you struggled past the obvious fact that a win is a win, and that England deserved it, there was little else to elevate the spirit. England are still in a morass, lacking continuity, zip and confidence.
They even had to endure a hair-raising five minutes at the death as Wales, more inventive and fresher throughout in their backs, launched a series of attacks in search of the try that would have given them the match. The England players' body language spoke volumes about how they rated their performance. One threw his arms in the air. The others trudged off.
Perhaps there was a little more passion and application; Dallaglio and Rodber were influential, and one superbly sustained passage of play just after the half-hour led to a try from Underwood. It gave us England as England are supposed to be. But England meandered and fumbled. They left Catt to counter-attack alone, again, and the backs were disjointed.
It was not England's strengths that won them the victory, because there was no radical improvement in any area of their game. The lineout was again out-muscled and Regan could not find his jumpers with the throw. Grayson needs nobody to tell him that he had a miserable day at fly-half, with his kicking maddeninly off-beam. He missed five kicks in all.
England won by mounting the platform constructed for them by callow Wales errors, helped by the drubbing that Wales got from a bewildering referee. Mr McCartney punished them 22-7 in penalties, and stood around every corner to kill Welsh momentum, infuriating them with rulings at rucks and mauls.
And the immaturity. The match was won and lost in one horrendous error by Justin Thomas, the Wales full-back. They were well in touch at 5-7 after 48 minutes when Grayson lauched a drop attempt that missed by yards. When Thomas fielded the ball, he had time to phone his family. He procrastinated disastrously and his kick was charged down by Guscott, who ran on to the ball for the most fortunate of tries. Poor Thomas.
It was typical. You could not fault Wales for their ambition and speculation. They were always under pressure in the scrums, where Andrew Lewis struggled badly. Their courage and optimism stayed with them. But if fresh means reckless, then fresh means nothing.
Wales needed a lacing of pragmatism, one more gnarled scrummager, and somebody tempering the youthful cheek of fly-half Arwel Thomas, the highly promising Leigh Davies, and the splendid, meteoric Howley, the best player on the field. With the right balance, they could do the business this season.
Wales should do themselves a favour by not spending too much time congratulating themselves on what was, in parts, a fine performance. Instead, they should carry on with the momentum and grow out of their short trousers.
Wales took the lead after 11 minutes with a touch of swagger from their young fly-half. Wales were awarded a penalty on their right, 22 metres from the line. Thomas, coping well with the pressure but occasionally poor in execution, stepped up as if to kick for goal, then took a quick tap penalty.
At first, it seemed he had fooled his own team as well as England, because there was nobody on his right in support. But he kept calm, checked and moved to the left. Gwyn Jones came up inside and the move was taken on by Proctor and Leigh Davies. Taylor came thundering down the left wing, blasted his way through three England defenders and scored.
For much of the match, Wales's excellence in defence stopped England's back row around the fringes and killed their continuity.
When England finally woke, they put on one of the best sustained attacks they have managed for some time. Carling helped establish an England siege with a half-break, and England kept up the pressure in a series of recycled movements, with the ball set up by Regan, Rodber and Underwood. Wales infringed in sheer desperation to kill the play and England opted to put down a series of five-metre scrums.
To their credit, Wales refused to buckle, twisting and doing all they could to keep their line intact. England were awarded three penalties, opting to reset the scrum on each occasion. Dawson once sped over after a tap penalty but was recalled: this begged the question that had he taken the kick from the wrong place, it should have been a Wales scrum and, if he had not, then it should have been an England try.
However, England varied the play with Clarke's burst to the blind side. England switched the ball to the left and, although a long pass in midfield from Sleightholme went astray, Catt seized it and put Underwood over down the left wing. It was a try that owed an awful lot to England persistence. Grayson managed the conversion.
Sadly for Wales, they contrived to self-destruct in the third quarter and coughed up the Guscott try. Grayson finally found range with a penalty to put England clear at 15-5.
We had the strange and sad sight of both captains departing. Carling left with a knee injury that had been troubling him in the first half and Humphreys left with what appeared to be concussion. Of the two departures, you had to say that Humphreys's was the most dramatic he had to be dragged off by the medical staff.
Grayson made it 21-8 with another penalty on 68 minutes. But just when you would have thought that England's extra power would begin to tell, their performance relapsed, the crowd became restive and there was nobody in white who seemed able to up the tempo.
There was nothing undeserved about a final, courageous Wales try. Nigel Davies made a half-break, Andrew Lewis, Howley and Jenkins drove the ball on and Howley made an electrifying burst through the final tackle to the line.
It set up the harrowing final few minutes for England, and a searching inquest, even in victory.
ENGLAND
M Catt; J Sleightholme, W Carling (capt, P de Glanville 52min), J Guscott, R Underwood; P Grayson, M Dawson; G Rowntree, M Regan, J Leonard, M Johnson, M Bayfield, T Rodber, B Clarke, L Dallaglio.
WALES
J Thomas; I Evans, L Davies, N Davies, W Proctor; A Thomas, R Howley; A Lewis, J Humphreys (capt, G Jenkins 56min), J Davies, G Llewellyn, D Jones, E Lewis (S Williams 34-38min), H Taylor, G Jones (S Williams 38-40min).
Scorers: Taylor (T 11min) 0-5; Underwood (T) & Grayson (C 38min) 7-5; Guscott (T 48min) 12-5; Grayson (P 53min) 15-5; Thomas (P 59min) 15-8; Grayson (P 61min) 18-8; Grayson (P 68min) 21-8; Howley (T) & Thomas (C 76min) 21-15.
Weather: cold. Ground: good. Referee: K McCartney (Scotland).
MANCHESTER CITY 2 QPR 0
THREE Germans and a Georgian, a precocious teenager and the re-invigorated Nigel Clough gave City a substance and shape that was too much for a disorganised Rangers side which slipped to a sixth successive defeat.
With so much at stake the midfield was packed and there were nervous passes and challenges, just the circumstances in which referees of Mr Poll's calibre flourish. If ever proof were required of the need for professional referees it was here, the yellow card waved 11 times, twice at poor Dichio, the substitute, who came on in the 67th minute and was sent off in the 87th for, supposedly, a second bookable offence.
If the referee damaged the match as a spectacle, as he certainly did, the game was well won by City on merit after they survived an early scare when Immel, the goalkeeper, blocked Holloway's shot.
Phillips, starting his first game, hit Sommer's left-hand post before he had a hand in the first goal. The goalkeeper slapped, rather than punched, his cross, Clough took two paces to reach the ball, swivel and score with a low shot.
Frontzeck, at left-back, performed as expected of a man with 22 German caps, Rosler, his countryman, was bullish up front, while the lovely skills of Kinkladze should have brought him at least one goal. The real joy was the performance of Phillips, aged 19, from Exeter, who has pace, ball skills and the confidence to use them.
"I've known the lad since he was 14 and I'm pleased for him and for his mum and dad, who travelled up to watch the game," Alan Ball, the City manager, said. "He's been wishing his life away hoping for the strength he hasn't got, but instead he has a considerable talent."
Symons, the centre-back, made the game secure with his first goal of the season, a header that should have been stopped. Sommer thought a defender would clear it and the man on the line left it to the keeper for City to score two in a League match for only the second time this season.
"If you give goals away like that, you're in trouble", Ray Wilkins, the QPR manager, said. "We only played well for the first 20 minutes and, after that, City got on top."
The final ingredient was Clough, a little rusty but still capable of delivering the sweetest of passes as he demonstrated to the embarrassment of Yates and Challis, Rangers's inexperienced full-backs.
City's United Nations force looks capable of survival but for QPR, with only two wins away from home, time is running out.
Manchester City: Immel; Summerbee, Curle, Symons, Frontzeck; Phillips, Kinkladze, Lomas (Creaney 82min), Flitcroft; Rosler (Brightwell 82min), Clough.
Queens Park Rangers: Sommer; Yates, McDonald, Maddix, Challis; Allen (Dichio 67min), Barker, Holloway, Quashie (Brazier 73min); Hateley (Gallen 67min), Sinclair.
Referee: G Poll (Berkhamsted).
LIVERPOOL 0 TOTTENHAM 0
SOD'S LAW prevailed at Anfield when the eagerly awaited collision of the two most prolific striking partnerships in the Premier League ended goalless, sending Liverpool's surge up the table into reverse.
After winning well at Aston Villa in midweek to move up to second, they needed all three points to consolidate their position and maintain the pressure on the leaders, Newcastle. Instead, they found the best away team in the League in combative mood, denying Liverpool the time and space in which to assemble the passing game they favour, and coming away with a deserved draw.
Spurs, organised and competitive in all departments, created their share of chances, and would not have been unduly flattered had Armstrong succeeded with one of the various goal attempts which made him easily the most impressive of the four strikers on view, all vying for places in the England squad.
Terry Venables was in attendance, as was Jimmy Armfield, the adviser helping the FA to identify the next England coach. They will have gone away mulling over the strong claims of several Tottenham players, and of the manager whose tactical expertise has made them such an effective unit.
Although Spurs were particularly well-served yesterday by Mabbutt, whose excellence in central defence bordered on the heroic, and Calderwood, who was not far behind, this was essentially a team effort in which every individual played up to, or at least very near, his best. Francis has now taken Tottenham to Anfield, where they used to have such a dreadful record, on three occasions, drawing two and winning one. There was some sympathy for his view that they could have had a result to match that epic FA Cup triumph last season.
After a performance of the highest class and cohesion against Villa, Roy Evans, the Liverpool manager, would loved to have kept the same team, but was prevented from doing so by Ruddock's suspension, which let Wright back in.
Spurs, striving for the place in Europe which Francis insists is the extent of their potential, made a change of the more welcome sort, introducing Sinton, their new £1.5m signing (at that price they will probably nickname him "Peanuts") on the left side of midfield, where he was busily effective in a containing role.
Sinton's eager beavering typified the wholehearted approach of a team determined to chase and harry the opposition out of their customary measured stride. Not that Spurs were preoccupied with defence. Far from it. Breaking at pace at every opportunity, they took the game to Liverpool to a degree unprecedented at Anfield this season.
Wilson flashed an early shot over from left to right. Another chance was the product of that familiar corner routine, Fox delivering the ball low to the near post for Sheringham to threaten with a thumping drive.
For Liverpool, Fowler was unusually subdued throughout, and Collymore's sights were in need of adjustment, with two range-finders flying straight into Walker's midriff and a third ballooning harmlessly over the bar.
The difference between the new Collymore and the early-season marque is that he now offers compensation in his insistent, intelligent movement off the ball and the economy and perception of his distribution.
It was Spurs, however, who created the most promising opportunity of the first half Campbell's through-pass enabling Armstrong to take the ball past the advancing James, only for it to run just too far ahead.
At Villa on Wednesday, Liverpool were goalless at half-time, but cranked up the tempo in the second half to win in style. Again they needed to find another gear, but Tottenham were made of sterner stuff, and James was called on to bring off an outstanding save when Sinton's cross from the left was met with a firm nod of the persistent Armstrong's forehead, close in.
Liverpool responded with a mounting sense of urgency, Collymore holding off Mabbutt to spin near the penalty spot and fire in a shot too close for Walker's comfort. He was soon back, warming the goalkeeper's hands from 25 yards, but Austin was not far away from similar distance, and with Spurs slugging it out, toe-to-toe, it was anybody's game.
Scales, with a burst through the middle, might have secured those three precious points but for a bristling last-ditch tackle by Mabbutt. Liverpool, drawing on strength born of desperation, put in the stronger finish, but Armstrong threatened to deny them even one point with a marvellous solo effort. McAteer spurned last-minute glory by shooting wide.
Francis, justifiably proud of a "magnificent team performance", claimed Spurs had "outplayed and outworked Liverpool on their own pitch".
Liverpool are down to third again, so what of their title aspirations? "The pressure is more on us than Newcastle, because we feel we've got to win more or less every game now," Evans said. "But there are a lot of tough fixtures left for everybody."
LIVERPOOL
James; Scales, Wright, Babb; McAteer, Thomas, Barnes, Jones (Rush 84min); McManaman; Fowler, Collymore.
TOTTENHAM
Walker; Austin, Mabbutt, Calderwood, Edinburgh; Fox, Campbell (Nethercott 75min), Wilson , Sinton (Rosenthal 90min); Armstrong, Sheringham.
Booked: Sinton (41min); Jones (58min); Edinburgh (65min); McAteer (86min).
Weather: Grey. Ground: Soft. Referee: S Lodge (Barnsley).
WEST HAM 1 NOTTM FOR 0
DESPITE the red tape at Whitehall and the beginning-of-year blues, it all looked rosy enough for West Ham. Still without Dumitrescu and Bilic, whose work permits have been slow to arrive, their second win in four days came comfortably. Frank Clark, the Forest manager, said the game had been "too open" but he complained alone. It was what you'd expect from these two clubs.
Well before the start, the crowd cheered loudest for Dani, West Ham's young loan player from Lisbon, although his introduction was to be brief and at the death.
Anyway, West Ham began with sufficient invention without him, Hughes driving at goal before a Forest man had touched the ball. Williamson, alert and with an eye for goal, twice aimed well from long range, the first of them after a healthy sprint into space. He chased, wound a route past Lyttle and shot so well that Crossley could only pad it wide.
Forest looked brittle, both against the pivotal lay-offs of Dowie and West Ham's willingness to run at them through the inside-left and inside-right channels. Bishop dispossessed Bart-Williams to stir things up again before Slater established their lead, via an error by Cooper that allowed Williamson's through-ball to land inside the box. Slater finished coolly from 10 yards.
Forest have not won away for three months in the league and they never threatened to here. On falling behind, Roy's angled effort needed good smothering from Miklosko. Gemmill then lobbed wide and Woan followed up by stabbing a muffed attempt at the goalkeeper. But that was as close as they came, bar a Potts mistake that nearly gifted Campbell an early breakthrough. Silenzi and, later, Haaland nodded over Miklosko's crossbar, but otherwise West Ham presented themselves compact at the back and ever-keen to counter-attack quickly.
For Forest, Crossley had a fine afternoon, but those immediately in front of him looked insecure and those further forward insipid. It was a frustrating day for Roy and Woan, the key creators, and Pearce and Stone, both injured, were missed.
Their lead secured, West Ham sought to build, their bricks and mortar comprising some engaging one-touch football through midfield. Four times in the second half they might have added through spectacular volleys Cottee's angled attempts from right and left were kept out by Crossley, while Dicks whistled the ball narrowly over bar from some distance and Bishop prodded just wide.
Dani warmed up and the Bobby Moore Stand gave his name a vocal rehearsal. He came on seven minutes from time but will, apparently, take a little longer to fit in. Add Dani, though, to Dumitrescu and what West Ham put together yesterday, and their attacking possibilities look exotic. Better still, they may learn to gel without the frantic fear of the foot of the table.
West Ham United: Miklosko; Brown, Dicks, Potts, Rieper; Slater (Whitbread 89min), Bishop, Williamson, Hughes; Dowie, Cottee (Dani 83min).
Nottingham Forest: Crossley; Lyttle, Phillips, Cooper, Chettle; Bart-Williams, Gemmill (Haaland 69min), Woan; Roy; Silenzi, Campbell.
Referee: K Burge (Tonypandy).
SOUTHAMPTON 2 EVERTON 2
IN THE dying seconds, Southall, the Everton goalkeeper, somehow got both hands to a header from Shipperley to ensure that justice was served. Both sides received a standing ovation after a four-goal fiesta in the second half that bore no resemblance to the dreadful opening 45 minutes. And, while Southampton needed the victory that Shipperley went so close to securing, for either side to have left The Dell empty-handed would have been a travesty.
Joe Royle, the Everton manager, claimed a half share in the credit for the transformation. "Both managers had something to say at half-time," he said, but would not reveal his magic formula.
After Watson gave Southampton the lead a mere 11 seconds after the interval, Everton played with the conviction of a side that has been beaten only twice in their past 17 outings. Their line was led by Kanchelskis, whose flying raids down the Southampton left had been noticeably absent in the early exchanges.
Everton soared to entertaining heights. In the 52nd minute, Kanchelskis's angled shot was deflected past Beasant by defender Charlton and pushed over the line by Stuart, who will be credited with the goal, even though his contribution was little more than an assist.
Four minutes later, Kanchelskis was in space again to accept Horne's pass, immediately returned the ball to the provider and Everton went into the lead as the former Southampton midfielder scored his first goal since May 1994.
After the flurry of goals Everton could have sat back. Instead, the two sides traded punches like a pair of lightweight boxers. Only the resilience of the two goalkeepers prevented a huge scoreline.
Southampton's equaliser, 13 minutes from time, could easily have come out of the Le Tissier's 1995 goal scrapbook, but he is still waiting to break a famine that has now lasted three months. Instead, it was Magilton who produced a spectacular 20-yard half-volley with his left foot that gave even the gallant Southall no chance.
There were signs, however, that Le Tissier is stirring from his slumber. He hit the bar with a sleek sidefoot in the second minute, tested Southall with one 25-yard bending shot and found space to fire a header over the bar. "He looked as bright as I have seen him all season," said Dave Merrington, the Southampton manager. "He is beginning to enjoy it all again."
It seems Ferguson, Le Tissier's headline-grabbing opposite number in the Everton attack, cannot stay far from controversy.
He had a quiet game, unable to shake off the cool attention of his marker Monkou, but told Royle afterwards that an elbow in the face had left him suffering from blurred vision for 20 minutes.
Royle would not point a finger of blame, but when Ferguson starts complaining about violent conduct from opponents, the words kettle, pot and black spring to mind.
Southampton: Beasant; Dodd, Hall, Monkou, Charlton; Venison, Le Tissier, Magilton; Watson, Shipperley, Walters (Oakley 83min).
Everton: Southall; Jackson, Short, Watson, Hinchcliffe; Horne, Parkinson, Kanchelskis; Stuart, Ferguson, Limpar (Rideout 70min).
Referee: D Elleray (Middlesex).
WIMBLEDON 2 MANCHESTER UTD 4
UNTIL a late flurry of goals brought this game to life, it was dormant and only just about going Manchester United's way. Anybody but Wimbledon would have crumbled when they went 2-0 down, but even at 4-2, United could not be absolutely sure of taking the spoils.
Having said that, the final 20 minutes bore little resemblance to the preceding 70 in a game that saw Cantona make his return to Selhurst Park a little over a year after that infamous match against Crystal Palace.
Wimbledon were without Earle, Ekoku and Harford, all suspended. For about 12 minutes, it was difficult to see how much difference this made, though. United were pouring forward, but Wimbledon are at their best on their back foot and Perry, for one, repulsed Cole as if this was something he did each week.
Then Bruce went down in evident agony from an accidental collision with Holdsworth, and everything changed. Keane went into the back four to replace Bruce, Beckham slotted into midfield and, for no discernible reason, United's verve sagged, taking the match with it.
Butt hit the post with a header from one of the seven corners United notched to Wimbledon's none during the first half. But even after they scored, United attacked in somewhat brittle waves that got no more convincing as time passed. Cantona surged around, and some of his passes were on the point of taking Cole in on Sullivan's penalty area, but it never quite happened. Beckham linked play almost as avidly as Keane would have had he not had to take Bruce's place, but none of it gelled, and for long periods not even Cantona seemed to see a way through.
After 37 minutes, Keane almost burst through at the end of a break which he had begun. But it was not enough. As much as anything, what was stalling United was Wimbledon's calm marking. Perry cleared time and time again from Cantona and Cole; Reeves did equally well and one tackle by Talboys on Giggs was a classic of how to dispossess a player on the point of ripping a defence open.
A desultory one-way traffic took over. United came forward in fits and starts, with Beckham prompting passes into some form of cohesion, but Wimbledon cleared their lines before much danger had gathered, although the ball only went as far as the halfway line. Then the process repeated itself.
At one point, Irwin took a throw-in almost opposite the 18-yard line. But so good was Wimbledon's marking that he could not get the ball to Beckham or Cantona. Eventually, he half-heartedly managed to put Cantona in possession but, within seconds, the ball was being cleared towards the halfway line again. On and on it went, just like that.
But how long could Wimbledon hold out? The move that brought the first goal was far from being United's best. Beckham got the ball into Irwin who, this time, managed to cross it. Somehow, for once, the marking on Cole was none too good and he had a relatively easy chance to take.
The second goal was an own goal by Perry, largely caused by Keane barging into his back. A Beckham free kick seemed to have already crossed the line when it came out, and Perry, in clearing it, could only plant it in his own goal as Keane charged in.
In any event, the fat lady was not ready to sing. Gayle notched what seemed to be a consolation effort before Cantona scored the best goal of the day, snapping in a header from Beckham's cross. Good, precise stuff.
But then Keane and Schmeichel got involved in a defensive mix-up and Euell managed to squeeze his foot on to the ball, which sent it over Schmeichel's line.
Thereafter, Wimbledon rampaged, finishing the match with four men playing in their forward line. Euell, for one, almost scored again and Clarke did all but score. But then a penalty was given against Cunningham for hand-ball, which Cantona converted as majestically as ever. That left matters slightly too far out of even Wimbledon's grasp.
Wimbledon: Sullivan; Cunningham, Perry, Reeves, Kimble; Ardley (Goodman 78min), Talboys, Leonhardsen, Gayle; Holdsworth (Euell 74min), Clarke.
Manchester United: Schmeichel; Irwin, Bruce (Beckham 15min), G Neville; P Neville; Giggs, Keane, Butt, Sharpe; Cantona, Cole.
Referee: P Durkin (Portland).
NEWCASTLE 2 SHEFF WED 0
"CHAMPIONS, champions," boomed a Geordie voice set against suitably strident music and amplified by the St James' Park public address system.
With Kevin Keegan's side still nine points ahead of the rest in the Premier League, the Newcastle DJ obviously deemed it to be fairly safe to finally play this specially-commissioned record at yesterday's final whistle.
That might be tempting fate but Newcastle, once again, won without playing particularly well. Indeed, just as the superstitious among yesterday's Tyneside congregation became convinced that Newcastle's 13th home league fixture this season would prove their undoing, Ferdinand lightened the growing gloom with his 100th league goal. Newcastle's preservation of their 100 per cent home league record was subsequently underlined by Clark's final-minute finish but they were mighty grateful to be facing opponents as whimsical as Wednesday.
Accordingly Keegan, who tomorrow celebrates his fourth anniversary as Newcastle's manager, remains keen to introduce the Colombian striker Asprilla into a side suddenly seeming world weary. Medical tests and financial haggling will determine the outcome of that proposed transfer but at least the manager was able to bring back Gillespie.
Fit ahead of schedule following a thigh injury, Gillespie initially looked tentative, especially as he was out of position on the left. That role having been vacated by Ginola's suspension, the Frenchman's ban making room for Watson who proved responsible for much of Newcastle's menace on the right.
But, as the afternoon unravelled, Gillespie grew braver, increasingly running at defenders and attempting a selection of medium-range shots. By the second half he appeared to be back in his element which might have had something to do with a timely return to his natural right-wing habitat.
That dictated Watson taking versatility to the left but he remained impressive. An ersatz winger Watson may be, but his strapping presence intimidated full-backs, while a stream of intelligent passes and crosses vexed central defenders.
It was Gillespie's right-wing corner, however, which helped Newcastle take the lead. Delivered nine minutes into the second period, it was nudged on by Albert before being headed past Pressman by a spring-heeled Ferdinand.
The centre-forward's duel with Walker offered a diverting sub-plot. Watching Walker stay cool while making a series of impeccable tackles in the danger zone, the feeling grew that, were he in a more defence-minded team, his England career might not be quite over.
Although Srnicek did well to repel a Bright header, and Beresford might have been sent off for an unpunished foul on Wednesday's Watts the referee had a poor match which was punctuated by perverse, pedantic decisions Wednesday's game was up once they fell behind.
The deficit doubled when Beardsley, who had just seen a shot ricochet bagatelle-style off both posts, threaded through a measured pass for the onrushing Clark to curl around an advancing Pressman and despatch just inside the far post. And to think the midfielder is nicknamed the Jigsaw because he "falls to pieces in the penalty area".
Perhaps it is time that the St James' Park DJ dusts down the adaptation of "Local Hero" he used to play in honour of the Tyneside-born Clark.
Newcastle United: Srnicek; Barton, Albert, Howey, Beresford; Watson, Lee, Clark, Gillespie (Kitson 69min); Beardsley, Ferdinand.
Sheffield Wednesday: Pressman; Atherton, Watts, Walker, Nolan; Nicol; Waddle, Degryse, Whittingham; Bright, Hirst (Kovacevic 27min).
Referee: P Danson (Leicester).
BLACKBURN 3 BOLTON 1
BOLTON were beaten at the death by you-know-who. They had hung on until Alan Shearer did it again with two late goals that clinched yet another hat-trick and repaid Wanderers for the three points they took off Blackburn at the start of the season.
Blackburn launched a relentless stream of first-half attacks. They looked dangerous every time they sped forward in numbers and seemed to have almost too many options, despite losing the lively Ripley with a pulled hamstring as early as the sixth minute. Bolton dropped Blake, their recently signed forward, from the starting line-up and replaced him with a third central defender, Fairclough, who was given Shearer to shadow a dubious honour.
The striker almost put Blackburn ahead when Branagan, the Bolton goalkeeper, hesitated and allowed Shearer to latch on to a loose ball in the area. He rolled a shot towards an empty net from a tight angle, but it went narrowly wide. Shearer did not have to wait much longer for a taste of blood, arriving at the end of a sharp passing move involving Berg and the revitalised Gallacher. A routine finish. Bolton, though, with Curcic full of running, often looked threatening on the counter-attack. One sweeping move featuring the Serb ended with a shot out of nothing by Sneekes that was respectably close. The warning was clear. There was plenty of passion and a little niggle in the game and Newell was booked for pole-axing Stubbs. Yet overall there was little "After you, Claude" about the challenges. Bolton's equaliser was a bolt from the blue. Curcic was doing nothing in particular on the right wing when he unleashed a sudden, wicked cross into the box where Green rose unchallenged to plant a splendid header past Flowers. Bolton then boldly brought on striker Blake for McGinlay, with Sneekes dropping deeper, but the pendulum swung back towards Blackburn and Shearer went close when the influential Berg lasered in a cross only for the ball to strike the post from Shearer's header. At times Blackburn stroked the ball around with a fluency and arrogance that danced on the grave of their old long-ball reputation. As the second half wore on, Bolton were concerned with holding back the tide of Bohinen, Gallacher, Shearer and Co. One Shearer turn left Fairclough spectating from an undignified sitting position, but the resulting cross bisected two colleagues and trickled into oblivion. Soon after there was a Shearer free kick that bypassed the wall and brought a good save from Branagan. And the keeper was alert again when Gallacher tried his luck with a tremendous shot from nearly 40 yards. Bolton just could not break the siege. Next Gallacher pranced through the open spaces to set up Bohinen: 10 yards out, he had just the keeper to beat, but his shot clipped the outside of a post. Finally, Bolton managed a few breakaways and Flowers saved brilliantly from a Blake shot on the turn. It was a brief respite. Shearer scored his second from close range after Bolton failed to clear a corner, and in the last minute he headed home magnificently from Sherwood's cross, so justice was done in the end.
Blackburn Rovers: Flowers; Berg, Coleman, Hendry, Kenna; Ripley (McKinlay 6min), Gallacher, Bohinen, Sherwood; Shearer, Newell.
Bolton Wanderers: Branagan; Green, Bergsson, Stubbs, Fairclough (Lee 87min), Phillips; Curcic, McGinlay (Blake 36min), Sellars; Sneekes, Paatelainen.
Referee: P Alcock (Redhill).
ARSENAL 1 COVENTRY 1
FOR ONCE, Ian Wright let Arsenal down. Not only did he miss a penalty but also he squandered several other clear opportunities. Coventry, on the other hand, passed and moved so well in the first 20 minutes of this game that they could have scored a hatful.
Strachan was largely responsible for that. An arch shape-stretcher if ever there was, he switched the direction of his team's attacks from one side of the pitch to the other almost at will.
Once, as a Coventry attack approached him, Seaman must have switched the direction of his gaze four times.
Not only did his defenders have to cope with that but also with Whelan. By regularly moving on to one of Arsenal's full-backs he nearly always won the higher balls Strachan played in, because of his greater height.
He chased one seemingly lost cause that forced Arsenal to concede a corner and then made a nuisance of himself, moments later, to allow Shaw to head point-blank at the goal. But Seaman saved when it appeared the ball was destined to go past him.
Ron Atkinson, the Coventry manager, said: "That opening was probably our best spell in the game but, after David Seaman's saves in the first five minutes, you began to wonder if it was going to be our day."
In the meantime, Arsenal had one good chance and blew it. Wright raced on to a long ball over the top perfect service for him but his shot was kept out by the feet of Ogrizovic. The rest of the time the home side struggled to get past an offside trap, struggled to keep Strachan quiet and struggled to pass the ball to each other.
When Whelan drifted off his marker, Richardson, on the break, found him with a volleyed drive that travelled all of 30 yards. Whelan slotted in calmly.
Whereupon Helder moved to where his teammates had been telling him to get to for a good 20 minutes. His centre from the byline was bulleted in by Bergkamp's head.
If Arsenal improved after that it was because their diagonal passing was getting better and, where once Strachan had been getting on to the end of almost every scrap that popped out of his own penalty area, Arsenal's midfield were beating him to it.
Wright won a penalty at the end of a run that resembled Whelan's when he scored for Coventry. Hall was meant to have brought him down from behind. But the Arsenal captain's spot kick was too weak and Ogrizovic held it easily.
Long before the end Wright spurned another one-on-one with the keeper.
Bruce Rioch, the Arsenal manager, said: "He puts those away all day in training and he's normally such a good penalty-taker too."
Arsenal: Seaman; Dixon, Marshall, Linighan, Winterburn; Merson, Clarke, Jensen (Hughes 70min), Helder; Bergkamp; Wright.
Coventry City: Ogrizovic; Burrows, Busst, Shaw, Hall; Strachan (Ndlovu 79min), Richardson, Telfer, Salako; Dublin, Whelan.
Referee: S W Dunn (Bristol).
ASTON VILLA 3 LEEDS UTD 0
THEY SAY that a bad side often gets to Wembley. This year it could well be the turn of Leeds United.
In this meeting between the only two teams left in both domestic cups, Aston Villa passed sweetly and finished well, with the admirable Yorke shooting their first two goals and Wright collecting their third. Leeds, meanwhile, laboured.
To be fair, this was not the real Leeds. It might be stretching things to say that Howard Wilkinson's side are in crisis but they desperately need a change of fortune. Wilkinson had only 15 men to choose from, among them Brolin, his £4.5m Swede. But Brolin did not get as far as the bench. He was dropped.
Suspensions, injuries and the African Nations Cup cost the Leeds manager nine players, most notably Yeboah, Kelly, Jobson and Wetherall. These faces will start to filter back but not in a flood. Yeboah, especially needed, is injured, and may not make the FA Cup tie at Bolton on Tuesday. Leeds are down, the last thing they needed was to be kicked, but that is what they got when Villa scored their second goal after 23 minutes. Leeds were reduced to 10 men because Pemberton had just gone off with a gashed leg.
Villa attacked, Palmer tried to belt the ball clear from his penalty area, it hit Speed and fell neatly to Yorke. Yorke beat Beeney, sharp and low, from close in, and any hopes Leeds had of getting back into the match evaporated.
Their chances, anyway, must have been pretty slim. They fielded three rookies in Bowman, Couzens and Maybury, a 17-year-old trainee from Dublin, and a fourth, Tinkler, emerged after half-time. A strike-force of Deane and Wallace is going to frighten nobody, especially not the tightest defence in the Premier League.
Tinkler made a fair contribution in central midfield alongside Speed, who was one of the few Leeds men to emerge with credit. Villa, recovering from their midweek defeat by Liverpool, were far superior. They will not be worried should this match have been a dress rehearsal for the League Cup final next month.
Whereas Leeds followers can never be quite sure what to expect from their team, or who is going to be in it, Villa have the most settled line-up in the division. They did, however, make two changes, Staunton and Taylor coming in for Ehiogu and Johnson.
Staunton was a straight replacement for Ehiogu as Villa maintained their three-at-the-back formation. It serves them well, not least because Wright is having such a good season.
So is Yorke. Saunders's goals saved Villa from relegation last season and Yorke was forced to stay in his shadow. With Saunders sold and Milosevic, his expensive replacement, having a poor start in English football, Yorke had to produce. And that, with his pace and skill, he has done.
It took Villa only two minutes to test Beeney, who has one of football's less enviable jobs just now. Yorke fed Wright near a corner, Wright crossed high, and Beeney caught well.
Milosevic won a free kick on a linesman's say-so (shades of Bramall Lane last Sunday) and, while they were waiting for the ball to come across, Palmer gave Milosevic a knee up the backside. Milosevic certainly has the talent to infuriate. Later Worthington was cautioned for a horrid lunge at him, presumably because Milosevic was the player who tackled the unlucky Pemberton.
If Villa have a weakness, it is that their throbbing midfield play, here spearheaded by Townsend and Draper, does not result in enough goals. But once Yorke had hit the opener, a three-goal or even four-goal win always looked possible. The first goal came when Dorigo and Maybury, who had a fair enough 45-minute baptism, messed up a clearance near touch. Draper sent Charles away, his cross was spot on, and so was Yorke's glancing header, which directed the ball just inside the far post.
Leeds had the chance to equalise when Couzens's ball from right-back put in Wallace. He had a chance from about 12 yards at an angle. Nobody can have been surprised when Wallace hit it over.
After Yorke made it 2-0, he missed a chance on 35 minutes while cutting into the area. Villa seemed to think that two was enough and they coasted at the start of the second half. Dorigo and Deane went nearer than Wallace had done before another sharp exchange of passes led to Villa's third goal. Townsend and, again, Yorke were in the lead-up exchange, and Wright beat Beeney with a convincing strike.
It was left for the ball to refuse to drop for Wallace when he might have given Leeds a consolation, and for Wilkinson to field the inevitable questions about the deposed Brolin. He did so neatly.
Aston Villa: Bosnich; Southgate, McGrath, Staunton; Charles, Taylor, Draper, Townsend (Farrelly 85min), Wright; Yorke, Milosevic.
Leeds United: Beeney; Palmer, Pemberton (Worthington 22min), Bowman; Couzens, McAllister, Maybury (Tinkler 46min), Speed, Dorigo; Wallace, Deane.
Referee: R Hart (Darlington).
Dwight Yorke now has the run of Villa Park and of most opposing defences. Joe Lovejoy talks to the Tobago striker
THERE will be no more of those penalties not at Aston Villa, anyway. It is depressingly symptomatic of the malaise choking spontaneity out of English football that Dwight Yorke, having illuminated an attritional FA Cup tie with an outrageous piece of skill, should be warned not to do it again.
Yorke's cheeky-chappie match-winner against Sheffield United last week reinforced a long-held personal belief that the best place to direct a penalty is dead straight, in the certain knowledge that the goalkeeper will always dive one way or the other.
Brian Little, the Villa manager, has no problems with that. What he objected to was the risk entailed in a soft little dink, which would have caused acute embarrassment had Alan Kelly stood still and made a dolly catch. That goalkeepers never stand still when facing a penalty is not the issue here. The point is that the more we discourage individuality the centre-half venturing over the halfway line, the ball-player taking on the extra man the further we fall behind countries with no such inhibitions. It is a sad fact that only a foreigner, untrammelled by safety-first schooling, would have tried Yorke's exquisite chip.
Little's critical reaction (the lad scored, for heaven's sake) was a disappointment, coming from a studious young manager who has done so well with Villa in a short space of time, transforming last season's relegation fodder into a team challenging strongly on all fronts. Consistently competitive in the League, and through to the semi-finals and fifth round of the League and FA Cups respectively, they are playing good, intelligent football in progressive 3-4-1-2 mode.
On balance, the architect of this impressive revival deserves far more credit than stick. Party-piece penalties apart, Little has given Yorke his head, with rewarding results. Enjoying easily his best season in the six years since he arrived as a shivering trialist, he was hailed by Howard Kendall last week as "the most improved player in the Premier League".
That improvement, which has seen him score 14 goals so far this season, is largely down to Little's coaching and coaxing. Under his predecessor, Ron Atkinson, Yorke had never been sure of his place, and had been deeply disappointed by his omission from the winning League Cup final team in 1994: "Ron bought Dean Saunders and Dalian Atkinson, and I was only a youngster up against players who had come for big fees. I knew I was good enough to play, but there was a lot of politics involved."
Little, who took charge last season with no preconceived ideas, proved much more supportive. "He has given me confidence," Yorke said. "Towards the end of last season he said to me, ‘Go and make that position yours. I'm giving you that chance. It's entirely up to you'. He was being up front with me, and I like that. Under Brian, I know that if I don't play well, like against Liverpool on Wednesday, I won't automatically be dropped, whereas under Ron if I had a bad game, I was out."
Little said: "I didn't realise what a good player Dwight was until I came here better than Dean Saunders, who was keeping him out at the time. I felt he needed to be told he was the No1 man that there was a regular place for him."
The insecurity the manager was keen to eradicate stemmed from a harsh upbringing. Yorke's native Tobago may look idyllic in the holiday brochures, but the indigenous population are among the poorest in the Caribbean, and times were hard for one of nine children whose parents struggled to provide. Dad was a dustman, mum a hotel cleaner and young Dwight had to help out, selling crabs to tourist restaurants. It was a life far removed from the colour-supplement comfort of The Belfry, where we met on Thursday to mull over a change of environment as dramatic as any lottery winner's.
"We were poor. It was a struggle for my parents to put food on the table, and sometimes we had none. There was no guarantee of a meal, and sometimes I would go next door to get fed. I have seen people starving, and I know that side of life. Now I've seen a little bit of the other way, and I know which side of the street I'd rather live on."
Sport offered a way out of the poverty trap the traditional escape for generations of West Indians, from Learie Constantine to Yorke's "best buddy", Brian Lara.
The potential now being handsomely fulfilled was first spotted in Tobago playing a game peculiar to the island called "dog". The rules are vague, but the object is to keep the ball as long as possible, while being chased by a snapping pack.
By 16 he was excelling at cricket for Trinidad and Tobago (his brother Clinton is a professional who played in the Red Stripe tournament, and here in the Lancashire League) as well as football, and it was time to make a choice.
Any doubt dissolved when Villa, then managed by Graham Taylor, travelled for two friendlies in Trinidad and Tobago in 1989, and found themselves playing "dog" with "Yorkie".
Invited over to England for a five-week trial, the beach boy was dismayed to arrive knee-deep in snow, but did well enough to get a £100,000 transfer, which made him, pre-Lara, his country's most celebrated sporting ambassador.
In those early months, spent in digs with Tony Daley's mum, the stranger in a strange land whiled away many a lonely night dreaming of the carefree hours when he played as one of Trinidad's Three Musketeers. Yorke was the dazzling dasher in successive age groups, playing in front of Lara, who was nearly as prolific from the right side of mid-field as he was to become with the bat (Garth Crooks treasures film of a particularly spectacular Lara goal) and Shaka Hislop, now as well known as the other two back home as Newcastle's goalkeeper.
Coaching back home had been sketchy but enthusiastic, and left Yorke endlessly grateful to a mentor called Bertile St Clair: "Bertile ran a coaching clinic, and took me under his wing from the age of six. He taught me the basics, and as I got older he saw things in me I never knew were there.
"Without him, I'd be like the other boys back home, hanging out in the street and maybe dealing drugs or whatever. It was this guy who said to me, ‘Dwight, you have the talent, you can be a professional footballer and go far'."
Yorke believes that, like his impoverished childhood, the unorthodoxy of his football education has worked to his advantage: "I can be a bit unpredictable at times, by English standards, which is no bad thing. Back home, we used to watch English football on the TV, and Tottenham were my favourite team. Hoddle and Waddle, I used to love them. But when we played, we based our game more on the Brazilians.
"I wouldn't say I'm an out-and-out English type of player, and I've had to make adjustments. In my first couple of years here, people said I wanted too much time on the ball. That was because I was brought up that way, taking time to play, with that slow build-up. Now I'm finding it easier because I've had long enough to adjust to the faster tempo of the English game."
It is a process, Yorke says, that Villa's Serbian striker, Savo Milosevic, is going through: "He wants that fraction too long on the ball. Next season, with experience, he will be better."
A season can make all the difference witness Villa's unexpected upsurge. "I'm a little bit surprised how well it has gone myself," Yorke said. "In the summer, the manager had time to buy players, and get the set-up the way he wanted it, and it all came together really well. People look for complicated reasons, but I can see a simple one. The players he bought were all good, Southgate and Draper particularly, and if you look at the coaching staff, it is the perfect combination.
"The gaffer was a striker, and he can take the forwards. John Gregory was a mid-fielder, Allan Evans a defender and Paul Barron was a goalkeeper. In pre-season we worked in those groups, and when we put it all together it clicked from day one, when we beat Manchester United. I think we've surprised a lot of people, and will probably continue to do so."
But not with that penalty, of course.
SOUTH AFRICA 2 TUNISIA 0
NELSON MANDELA once again inspired a momentous triumph as South Africa beat Tunisia to add the Africa Cup of Nations to last year's Rugby World Cup.
Mandela, wearing the No9 shirt of the captain Neil Tovey, danced in front of 90,000 fans after presenting the trophy. Like their rugby brothers, South Africa's footballers won the cup at the first attempt, something few had believed possible.
The victory was secured by the Wolves striker, Mark Williams, who scored twice in two minutes just moments after coming off the bench to bolster an attack that had been battering at the Tunisian defence since the start of the second half.
His first was a simple close-range header. The second was a beauty. He raced through on the left to a pass played perfectly into his stride by midfielder Doctor Khumalo and stroked the ball into the far corner of the net. Was he frustrated sitting on the bench until so late in the game? "No, it's never too late to come on," Williams said.
The 16 minutes that remained saw the start of a flag-waving party that would last well into today, but for at least 45 minutes of this match the crowd jammed into the stands were wearing worried looks.
Off the pitch everything possible had been done to inspire victory. The president visited the team in their hotel the night before. For the first half, however, South Africa never really displayed the passion and flair that they showed in sweeping aside fancied Ghana in the semi-finals. And on a day when many confident South Africans had put the bubbly on ice before the kick-off, it seemed at first as if Tunisia had just the thing to put a stopper on the celebrations.
Mehdi Slimane, a 22-year-old striker shaped like a champagne cork, ran hard and fast at the South African full-backs and twice in the opening quarter-hour carved out openings that could have led to goals. In the second half, though, South Africa played with an intensity that forced every Tunisian to defend and choked off Slimane's supply. But as the time ticked away many people wondered where the goals would come from. Williams took just a few minutes to provide an answer.
South Africa: Arendse; Motaung, Tovey, Radebe, Fish; Tinkler, Buthelezi (Mkhalele 51min), Khumalo, Momoshoeu; Masinga (Williams 65min), Bartlett.
Tunisia: El Ouaer; Ben Rekhissa, Chouchane, Boukadida, Jaballah; Kodhbane (Hanini 45min), Sekhi, Beya, Bouazizi (Ben Hassen 77min); Slimane, Sellimi.
Referee: C Massembe (Uganda).
GILLINGHAM, the Third Division leaders, were reduced to nine men for the second time in a month, but still held on for a 0-0 draw at Cambridge. Ratcliffe got his marching orders for a foul after 14 minutes and Fortune-West received his after 65 minutes for violent conduct. Four weeks ago, they had two players sent off in the FA Cup defeat at Reading.
CHARLTON can move to within three points of Derby when they play Crystal Palace today after the First Division leaders were held 1-1 at Grimsby, who have not won in nine matches. Bonetti headed the home side ahead after 27 minutes, even though Derby had the best chances. Powell equalised four minutes into the second period.
Mick McCarthy is the only runner left in the race for the Ireland manager's job, so insiders say, but perhaps there may be a rethink after events at Roots Hall. Southend, managed by Ronnie Whelan, an outsider for the post, recorded their seventh win in 10 matches with a 2-0 success against McCarthy's Millwall, who have now won only once in 15 matches.
West Bromwich's collapse continues. Third-placed in October, Alan Buckley's side slipped to second from bottom just one goal separates them from basement club Watford after losing their 13th match in 14 when they went down 2-1 at Ipswich, unbeaten in 10. Mowbray's powerful header six minutes from time continued Ipswich's revival.
TERRESTRIAL television had a good week, winning the rights for this year's European championship and the Olympic Games, and will be hoping for even more positive news on Tuesday, when the House of Lords debates the Broadcasting Bill and, more particularly, the "listed" events. But football is set to go down an altogether uncharted road with pay-per-view TV.
At least two Premier League clubs are preparing to set up their own cable TV channels. A recent meeting was held between the chairman and vice-chairman of the two clubs to discuss localised pay-per-view television, and sources say that limited transmission could start this year. The channels would show a few hours of archive material and features each day, with extended transmission on match days.
Although the clubs cannot show live Premier League and domestic Cup matches, lucrative pre-season tournaments and games from next season's European competitions may be scheduled. One media source says that the big clubs could be "dipping their toes in the water" ahead of next year's renegotiation of Premier League TV rights.
Mike Lee, a Premier League spokesman, said that although they did not know of any discussions going on concerning pay-per-view, "we are aware that there are a lot of ideas around that could be the basis of discussions in the future". At the moment, TV rights are negotiated collectively by all the Premier League clubs.
Sky Sports, who have the rights to Premier League matches until the end of next season, have yet to make any announcement about pay-per-view. "Everyone is just speculating about what we are going to do as far as pay-per-view is concerned. Nothing has been decided yet," a spokeswoman for Sky said.
Despite this, two major cable companies, Telewest and Nynex, have revealed that they have "done a deal with Sky" for pay-per-view.
Edward Russell-Walling, the editor of Global Telecoms Business, said: "People have seen [Rupert] Murdoch lead the way and realise there is money to be made from cable. Sports coverage is gradually seeping away from the networks and being hijacked by people with big cheque books."
Denise Lewis, the head of corporate affairs at Bell Cable Media, said that pay-per-view should be up and running by the end of this year "if not before". She called it "good value TV" and added: "There is a huge demand for cable and it gives football clubs the option to put things on air."
Mixing Dutch technique with English attitude is the Chelsea credo, and Michael Duberry is its embodiment. Chris Lightbown reports.
MIDDLESBROUGH may breathe a little easier because Michael Duberry is suspended today.
Since he began playing for Chelsea's first team in November, Duberry has received rave notices for performances against, among others, Andy Cole, Les Ferdinand and Ian Wright. An extraordinary centre-half, has been the consensus, and Manchester United, with an eye cocked for Bruce and Pallister's eventual successors, are said to be particularly intrigued.
But Chelsea's opponents, today and thereafter, should look out. For Duberry is just the first particle on the tip of a Chelsea iceberg.
Forty-eight hours after he became manager, Glenn Hoddle made Graham Rix, an old friend, Chelsea's youth-team manager. Eddie Niedzwiecki, who had already coached most age groups, was confirmed as Chelsea's reserve-team manager. But unlike many backroom appointments, CVs and friendships with the manager were irrelevant. Hoddle wanted an idea implemented, an idea even more important than trophies, and Rix and Niedzwiecki were told to make it the centre of their work, regardless of any results or changes in personnel.
Put simply,the idea was 3-5-2. This formation was to be adopted at every level of the club, starting with Chelsea's schoolboy centres of excellence, and extending to the first team. Hoddle wanted to create a different sort of player, one who would feel comfortable on the ball, whatever part of the pitch he found himself in, and combining the technique of Ajax with the attitude of the English. It was the sort of player the public screams out for every time England fail to destroy their international opponents. But fulfilling the demand remained a tall order.
Remoulding the first team would take time, Hoddle told his backroom men. At the level where results meant everything, some established players would be incapable of change. But Rix and Niedzwiecki could start straightaway. If it worked, they could be providing Hoddle with his first trickle of hybrids about three years later. Hence Duberry.
"On my first day," Rix recalled, "I was asking a squad of boys I had not chosen or even seen to change everything they had learnt. I said there should be no more knocking the ball behind full-backs and chasing it, that they should give each other passing options rather than lash the ball upfield." A skilful midfielder was moved to the centre of defence and Duberry, who had played as a conventional centre-half in a flat back four, was shifted to the right side of a three-man defence.
"I said you'll enjoy this. I told them we'd have three defenders and a goalkeeper against the two strikers and the rest should clear off down the pitch while our goalkeeper threw it to his defenders. That left four men playing against two, in half a pitch. Playing like that, we were never going to lose the ball."
Thereafter, the message was pass, pass and pass. Niedzwiecki told his reserves that "if somebody gave you £100, you wouldn't give it away, would you? So why give the ball away?"
Gradually, the idea took hold. Duberry started passing into midfield. The nine-year-olds arriving in Chelsea's four centres of excellence started networking the ball while their contemporaries continued to lash it round the pitch. In the first team, Eddie Newton started not just holding on to the ball, but slipping into gaps left by others as they interchanged round the pitch. One of the immediate results was Chelsea's haul of a win and two draws from games against the top three sides, but the underlying phenomenon has been the start of an Ajax-on-Thames.
Critics of this approach always say that players who have been bred to pass lose so much of their passion in the networking that they end up trying to stroke the ball into the net. But Rix thinks: "The British guts and determination run so deep that no tactics can eliminate them. We can absorb continental techniques much easier than they can absorb our mentality. English clubs are the best place for combining the two."
But not any club, necessarily. Chelsea have a tradition of producing home-grown players, which gives them a form of institutionalised patience in these matters. Hoddle's presence means Rix can tell waverers that the idea comes from someone who has achieved it at the highest level, and while Niedzwiecki feels most players, however set in their ways, "like tactics which give them more time on the ball", not all chairmen would give such ideas the support that Ken Bates has.
Should Hoddle leave when his contract runs out at the end of the season unlikely, but not impossible his philosophy could leave with him. We shall see. Meanwhile, 3-5-2 has sometimes matured into 3-6-1, an extraordinary formation for an English side, but one which puts Chelsea on a par with Liverpool when it comes to sophisticated passing.
Some of Chelsea's play at QPR last Monday drew gasps of admiration from the watching Premier League coaches and Duberry continued to do what he has been doing since November: tackling like an Englishman while trying to pass like a Dutchman.
Can Chelsea keep it up? A 13-page document which all Chelsea coaches work from, puts it another way. The pattern of play, it says, should be persevered with under all circumstances and "the long-term development and education of the player is more important than winning a particular game". Can the rest get that far?
When Juninho left Brazil for Teesside, it looked like the capstone on the team that Bryan Robson built. But since then cracks have begun to appear in the foundations of the side. Louise Taylor reports
A HALF-PRICE sale is still on at Middlesbrough's club shop with "bargains galore" available at this shiny new emporium beneath Riverside Stadium's main stand. Three months ago, however, staff could probably have parted with much of their merchandise for quadruple the asking price.
Rewinding the memory to J-Day Saturday November 4, when Juninho made his debut against Leeds revives images of supporters queuing to enter the store, then waiting patiently at tills before departing clutching customised carriers filled with "Riverside Revolution" videos, Brazil shirts and Boro "Happy Hands".
A genuinely joyous afternoon ... but Bryan Robson's side have triumphed in only three Premier League fixtures, losing their last five, since Juninho's much-hyped £4.75m introduction. Small wonder that an attendant slowdown in club retail business prompted discounts set to extend well into this month.
Although Juninho has charmed Teesside refreshingly free of star mentality, he recently travelled standard class from King's Cross to Darlington after a day in London the Brazilian seems slightly less enchanted with his teammates' Anglo-Saxon skills. Whereas he willingly surrendered his train seat to a woman for a lengthy tract of that congested rail journey, on the field he appears more selfish, sometimes being reluctant to allow colleagues a fair share of possession.
Casting himself in the virtuoso role, Juninho frequently refuses to lay the ball off, preferring to take opponents on single-handed. Invariably the third, fourth or even fifth rival defender brings the characteristic zig-zag sprint to an abrupt end. In mitigation, when he does look to deliver a killing pass, fellow players often fail to make the requisite runs.
With hindsight the Brazilian increasingly appears a luxury purchase on the part of a manager whose squad still lacks several basic elements. Just as it is premature to hang ostentatious chandeliers in a house lacking an adequate bathroom or kitchen, so a player adept at subtly meshing one of the world's best midfields looks wasted at Middlesbrough.
Juninho might have been a far better acquisition had Robson already remedied existing flaws by acquiring a capable left-back and a free-scoring centre-forward in addition to decent central-midfield and central-defensive cover.
Bruce Rioch considered trying to sign Juninho for Arsenal but failed to follow up initial overtures after deciding he was probably too advanced a player to fit comfortably into his embryonic Highbury rebuilding programme. "I was interested in Juninho but decided he wasn't quite what I needed then," Rioch said.
Arsenal's manager had concluded his side were more in need of a cultured enforcer in the Paul Ince mould than a diminutive, lightweight if sublimely talented South American. Juninho will only appear a world-beater if he is surrounded by superior quality ball-winners. At Middlesbrough the raw-edged Pollock serves as his minder. But while he generally proves an able protector, the England Under-21 international's passing is not yet good enough for the pair to be authentic soulmates.
Ironically, Robson does boast a pair of pure passers in the 5ft 6in "Terrible Twins", Nick Barmby and Craig Hignett, but the physical demands of the Premier League dictate they cannot both play alongside the even tinier Juninho. Barmby, at £5.25m Middlesbrough's record signing, has been subdued since the newcomer's arrival. The pair's broad similarity has precipitated a series of on-field misunderstandings, prefacing much shoulder-shrugging and finger-pointing.
The mutual adjustment process will be imminently disrupted as Juninho probably sidelined by a knee injury at Chelsea today is poised to represent Brazil in a tournament running from February 18 to March 6. Robson clocked up some air miles of his own last week, visiting Parma and Milan, where he is believed to have cast covetous eyes towards Brazil's left-back, Roberto Carlos, but yesterday Robson said he still hoped to bring Branco, Roberto Carlos's international predecessor, to the Riverside. Branco recently bought out his club contract in Brazil, and would expect a salary of around £20,000 a week.
Rationed to spending around £12m a year, Robson has like a man electing to drink a bottle of vintage champagne rather than a crate of plonk opted to secure two Carlos-style talents a season as opposed to several merely above-average types.
According to this theory, Juninho will in time be surrounded by kindred spirits but maybe Robson should consider compromise. After all, he has proved no slouch in the coaching department.
A flat-back-four exponent as Boro won the First Division last season, he subsequently implemented a 5-2-2-1 system, which initially proved inspired, masking individual weaknesses and providing an ideal springboard for a counter-attacking style.
Excelling on the break, Middlesbrough were mentioned as championship outsiders but when a litany of injury struck, a side who rarely won by more than a single goal suddenly started conceding several soft ones.
Instead of pursuing Serie A superstars, perhaps Robson should place greater emphasis on his proven coaching ability and think about Steve Vickers. When Robson arrived Vickers, bought for £750,000 from Tranmere by Lennie Lawrence, looked ordinary. Today, improved beyond recognition, the centre-half is regarded as one of the swiftest, most streetwise around and his manager insists he will one day wear an England shirt.
Sometimes half-price items really do prove the best buys.
If Italy are added to the Five Nations, can a full Northern Hemisphere championship be far away? Nick Cain reports
THE END OF the old Five Nations order and the arrival of Italy in a revamped competition could come sooner than anyone thinks. Right up until last week, it seemed that Italy's application was forlorn, but the signal coming from the secretary of the Five Nations Committee, Bob Weighill, as the home unions and France ponder the merits of allowing Italy to join their ranks, is more positive. So, understandably, are the vibrations from Italy.
Following a written approach from the Italian federation which was discussed at last Tuesday's meeting of the Five Nations Committee, Weighill said: "We are going to formally see what the various unions think, and will meet again within the next month to consider the matter."
The fact that Weighill, who has a reputation for being one of the most circumspect administrators in the game, is even prepared to discuss the Italian bid, suggests that a Six Nations championship is not far away. He did not rule out the Italians participating in 1997-98.
"I have looked at ways they might come in," Weighill said. "We shall be looking very hard at it. But the Five Nations has been around a long time and has been very successful: we have to consider whether we should interfere with something so successful."
Sandro di Santo, the secretary of the Italian federation, said that should Italy be admitted they would play home matches in Rome. He also flatly contradicted the view, held by some, that Italians would not flock to the matches, and cited the crowd of 45,000 who watched Italy play South Africa at the Olympic Stadium in November as evidence of the growing popularity of the sport. "We would play at the Stadio Flaminio, an old football stadium with a 32,000 capacity in the centre of Rome, near the Olympic Stadium," di Santo said.
He was bullish about the boost to the Italian game that official Five Nations membership would bring. "It is crucial to us to play in such an important competition," he said. "Italy recently beat what was, in all but name, a full Scotland team (a 29-17 victory over Scotland A in Rieti), a fortnight before Scotland beat Ireland in Dublin.
"The Italian media understand the Five Nations but what, coming from a football culture, they do not understand is that why, when you beat Scotland, it is not Five Nations Scotland, the full team. Only in rugby is this possible."
But why stop with adding Italy to the five? Has the time come for a comprehenisve Northern Hemisphere event, with not one "elite" group of five countries, but a comprehensive, multi-divisioned set-up with promotion and relegation battles to add to the holy grails of Grand Slam, championship and Triple Crown?
As it stands, the Five Nations is in danger of becoming an Anglo-French monopoly something which Italy's inclusion, at least in the short term, is unlikely to affect. In the past decade, the championship has become a two-horse race between England and France, who have won three outright titles each. Scotland and Wales, also-rans of late, have won the championship just twice Scotland in 1990 and Wales in 1994, both countries sharing the title with France in 1986 and 1988 respectively.
The danger of a monopoly in any sport is not in the existence of the monopoly, but in whether it is challengeable; whether it is possible for others to aspire to beat the best. In short, is the monopoly also a meritocracy?
The problem with the Five Nations championship is that it is not part of a wider meritocracy. There has been no way in European rugby for aspiring nations not just Italy, but Romania to make further progress, because there is no pyramid structure for them to climb. This "it's our ball, and you're not playing" outlook is short-sighted, particularly as the game could miss the benefits of a major change in North America.
Despite having more than 100,000 players, the game in the United States has been hamstrung by a lack of development finance. This was because, as a non-Olympic sport, it was ineligible for government grants, and because, as a minority, non-professional sport, it had no commercial clout.
But, within a little more than 12 months, both those barriers have been removed. In November, 1994, rugby was re-admitted as an Olympic sport after 70 years in the wilderness, to be played as a demonstration sport in Sydney in 2000, and probably as a Sevens competition in the 2004 Games.
The fall-out from the game going professional has already led to the USA RFU being offered previously unheard of sums for TV rights some £6m by cable and terrestrial TV companies.
Rather than simply looking after their own backyard, then, the Five Nations should actively seek to promote the game in the Northern Hemisphere as a whole.
Doing this does not mean that a century of Five Nations tradition has to be flushed away. A blueprint for the future could, as the former England manager Geoff Cooke has already mooted, bring the best of both worlds.
In a Northern Hemisphere championship, the current Five Nations could comprise a first division, justified on the grounds that historically and currently they are the strongest sides. The second (Transatlantic) division would include Canada, who have made a significant impact on the past two World Cups, the United States, Italy, Romania and either Spain or Russia. Third and fourth divisions would cater for the current minnows of the European game such as Germany, Portugal, Holland, Belgium, and the plethora of eastern European nations.
It is time to move the Five Nations forward.
Rugby league stars want to play union in winter. But it won't be that easy, warns David Lawrenson
THESE are strange days in rugby league. Not only is the game bracing itself to be reborn as a summer sport with Super League in two months' time, but, more worryingly for some followers, overtures are being made to rugby union.
After a century of enmity and bitterness there is more and more evidence of not merely a breaking-down of the barriers but a real coming-together. Wigan will appear in the Middlesex Sevens and will play two challenge matches against Bath, one under union and one under league rules, and some players are to play rugby union in the winter.
To many league followers this is akin to supping with the devil. Having been reviled by rugby union for 100 years, they are appalled that their clubs should now be falling over themselves to accommodate former amateur brothers. But money is king these days, whatever the code. Sentiment doesn't come into it when you're trying to balance the books. Wigan and Leeds, the clubs who are forging links with neighbouring union clubs, realise they cannot afford to have grounds lying idle for seven months a year. They boast two of the best stadiums in the league, with hospitality suites, first-rate floodlighting and undersoil heating.
Rugby league in summer and rugby union in winter seems to make perfect sense, but when they talk of sharing players, the idea gets a little fanciful.
Since summer rugby league will halt lucrative short-term contracts in Australia for British players, it is natural for them to turn their attention to union in winter to earn a bit of extra cash. John Devereux, of Widnes, and John Bentley, of Halifax, plan to play union during the off-season, and Orrell and Leeds union clubs are licking their lips at the prospect of boosting their playing staffs from Wigan and Leeds RLFCs. But while it may make for great publicity, the reality may be entirely different.
Twelve months of battering takes its toll and numerous players have returned from Australia with injuries which have blighted their season here. Some have been prohibited from playing Down Under. The same concerns will be voiced over players playing 15-man rugby after a league season.
Apart from the high cost of insurance and wages, rugby union clubs will also have to ask themselves if they will get value for money. During the 1980s, many an Australian star lit up English rugby league, but many more did not and their expensive short-term contracts were bitterly resented.
And, of course, the rugby union season and the Super League season overlap. So when union's league and cup competitions are reaching their crucial stages, the league imports will be heading back to their clubs for pre-season training. One can just imagine the wrangles: Orrell reach the semis with a little help from Wigan's Tuigamala and Quinnell who are then summarily called back to Central Park to prepare for the Super League season.
There is no doubt that the prospects of big names helping northern union clubs take on the likes of Bath and Harlequins would be a attraction. And union and league clubs sharing facilities is logical, but how it will work in practice is anyone's guess.
The ending of the pettiness and squabbling between the two codes is long overdue, but it will need some clear-headed thinking before a union and a league club co-exist peacefully.
Now for that other England-Wales match. Stephen Jones talks to England's worthy captain, Gill Burns
THE SPORTS pitches at Range High School, Formby, on the Southport road out of Liverpool, were frosted white and frozen solid on Thursday. The boot studs of Gill Burns, physical education teacher, clattered as if she was walking on concrete. We were briefly worried, as the camera shutter clicked away, that she would turn as blue as her jersey.
Back in the warmth of the staffroom, circulation returned and she prepared for lessons. This afternoon, at Welford Road, Leicester, Burns leads England against Wales in the inaugural match of the new Home Nations rugby tournament. It is her first season as captain of her country, and her achievement is something of which the school can be immeasurably proud.
But perhaps not even her own pupils realise how proud they should be. The explosion in women's rugby, still gaining converts in masses by the month, is in its way the sporting story of the age. It is difficult to believe that any sport has ever grown so quickly, difficult not to be in awe at the dedication and sacrifice you encounter in players at all the levels, the thirst for learning and then refinement, and all in the face of severe financial deprivation and the other built-in obstacles of mainstream culture and perception.
And yet when you encounter Burns, it all suddenly seems less surprising. She took up rugby in 1987. "I met some hockey players at a tournament who were wearing rugby club sweaters. We talked about rugby and I went with them to Waterloo where they trained. In my first match I was crawling around on the floor and conceding penalties because I didn't know the laws. Afterwards, there was this incredible buzz. I had played many other sports, but I thought to myself, ‘I love this'."
Rugby was not to know then that it had recruited its own future champion, but the extraordinary athleticism of the new player must have been obvious immediately. Burns represented British Colleges at swimming, athletics, basketball and hockey, and still competes in athletics, ranging from shot put and hammer to sprints. She plays for Waterloo and England in the heavy-duty position of No8. "She is incredibly powerful off the back of the scrum," Emma Mitchell, the England scrum-half, said.
And yet, in the summer break, Burns reverts to the family "trade" of ballet: her mother teaches dance. "After the season is over I dance like mad to be ready for shows in June and July. My mother reckons the reason I can jump so well in the lineout is all the dancing lessons." Even among the ranks of international sportsmen and women, this range of physical capability is astounding.
So is the ferocious commitment of the leading players. Burns trains every day; all the England squad follow precise conditioning programmes, geared to bring them to a peak for today's match and for the forthcoming matches against Scotland and Ireland. And it is not even enough, in the self-help philosophy which has always sustained the women's game, for the international players to inspire merely by on-field example. Burns takes a shining proprietorial pride in the fortunes of the wider game, not least because it is to the developing roots they must return for their sport, week-in, week-out.
There is a quiet messianic quality about her, a strength which has grown since her elevation to captain. She succeeded Karen Almond, the fly-half and the most influential player the game has produced worldwide. Last week, eating up an army assault course before the TV cameras during a team-bonding trip to Arborfield Garrison, or expounding on a passion for her sport in her own staffroom, Burns came across as a perfect spokeswoman for women players everywhere.
"Everyone in the England squad is keen to develop the game all over the country. The self-help thing is huge. We all go to development days in our areas. We introduce people to the game so that they grow and develop and join the game."
She is wary of the sheer enthusiasm, the sheer number of new clubs, wary that a small number of enthusiasts with a vision of a new club could hold back another one nearby: "It's better to have one club with 24 players than two with 12."
The sacrifice, in time and money, is painful. Sponsorships are still in their infancy, avidly welcomed yet small: "It is always a struggle, always. For league matches we might meet at seven on Sunday morning, pile four or five people into each car and go to the other end of the country. My car is four years old and it's done 150,000 miles. I spend all my wages, I haven't saved a penny. It costs us all an awful lot to play the game. When we get together in the squad we always talk about the same thing: winning the lottery, and how we would use the money."
There was real excitement last season when the England v Wales match at Sale made a profit from gate receipts; even more recently when the team were told that their travel expenses would be met for the forthcoming international in France. Rare delight, which deserve to become familiar.
I wondered if everything was to be seen in the context of the health of the overall game. For example, England, the world champions, threaten to dominate the fledgling Home Nations championship. Would she regard an England defeat as the result that makes the championship? "Absolutely not. We will lose sometime, but I don't want to be the England captain when it happens. None of the team want to be playing when it happens." So, quite properly, the results of internationals are seen as the end-all.
And now the next leap, and a profound one. Anne O'Flynn, a versatile youngster playing for Waterloo, recently made the England A squad. The significance of her selection is that she is the first one to reach the higher echelons who began as a rugby player, rather than one who converted later. The advent of New Image rugby for both sexes, and a determined effort by the Rugby Football Union for Women to established youth rugby, means that career players should soon arrive in numbers.
O'Flynn learned the game at mini-rugby, has played without interruption since and now, in her late teens, has a range of skills which even some of the current national team, still essentially in their early years as players, would envy: "She is the first of a new breed of player. It will really help. One of the problems in women's rugby is that no one has the ability to kick long distances. It means that teams can concede penalties and not be punished. But there are young players around now who have grown up with rugby and who can kick much longer."
So the numbers continue to grow, the international scene burgeons. The third World Cup will take place in the Netherlands in 1998. There is even Sports Council funding, a grant of £45,000, to be devoted, typically, not to assisting players, or paying for full-time officials to help the swamped ranks of the game's officialdom, but to the development of the sport.
On Thursday, Burns tried to put the global picture into abeyance for once, to concentrate on the final build-up for Wales, on what she would say in the team meetings, musing on a strange Welsh selection in the back row. What were they up to?
Then off to put some more miles on the car. It is a long time since I was so impressed by someone in sport. It is not so much that she is a fine player and athlete, such a selfless ambassador for women's rugby, or, indeed, some kind of valiant amateur throwback to rugby as it once was. It is that Burns came across, in every respect, as a genuine, 24-carat English sporting heroine.
THE DAWN that broke in Dublin was not false after all. Scotland continued the process of rehabilitation that began in Ireland a fortnight ago with a hugely deserved and thunderously acclaimed win. The result will rattle the rest of the Five Nations, and those bookmakers who were giving such ludicrously long odds against Scotland before the tournament began.
Scotland did it in a grand manner, too. They came out of their blocks at lightning pace, rocking the French back on their heels and keeping them there for the best part of an hour. France revived in a fitful second half and scored two penalties in the last quarter, but it was appropriate that Scotland should end the afternoon deep in French territory, and that it fell to Dods, Scotland's goalkicker, to claim the last points of the match.
Dods had scored the rest of Scotland's points, including a remarkable pair of tries, one in each half. It would be wrong to say he kicked astutely, but in missing six of his nine shots at goal it has to be said that many of them were difficult and he shaved the posts more than once.
Statistics, however, offer precious little insight into a match where Scotland simply shredded France through the middle and buried them in the tackle. From the first minute, when Scotland launched an ambitious attack through Townsend, Hastings and Shepherd, France looked desperately shaky in the centre of the field.
And what of their much-lauded back row of Benazzi, Cabannes and Pelous? Set against the Scotland trio of Wainwright, Peters and Smith, the French looked lethargic. Wainwright was magnificent the length and breadth of the field and if Benazzi came to Murrayfield with the mantle of the best blind-side in the world, he had to pass it to Wainwright as he left.
Scotland were never so far in front that they could relax on their lead and, in truth, they never did. For the third time in a year a match was still poised in a nerve-fraying balance in the third quarter, but for once it did not swing dramatically in the final seconds. Scottish and French supporters have aged cruelly over the past 12 months, so that was a mercy for which they were surely grateful.
The try that came closest to breaking the back of France arrived 13 minutes into the second half. Scotland ran a penalty in France's 22 and Wainwright drove into a wall of French forwards. The ball came back to Townsend, who tried to dance through near the posts, and then to Redpath, the scrum-half, who had a magnificent match.
The options for Redpath, never an auxilliary flanker or a beguiling runner, looked few. Then he spotted Dods in an acre of space on the left. His immense pass flew past Hastings and Shepherd, and Dods juggled the ball for a second before crashing over in the left corner.
In truth, Redpath's tactical kicking never hurt France as it did Ireland, as a succession of stabbing efforts bounced wickedly back from the touchline. That Scotland were never punished for those speaks volumes for the recovery work they put in, for when Redpath's kicks went astray they were frequently gathered by Sadourny or Saint-Andre, who could normally write textbooks on the counter-attack.
Scotland's back three won their own particular battle. Shepherd will never be another Gavin Hastings but Scotland cares not one bit. His running was more redolent of Andy Irvine, while his secure placement under the high ball sent waves of relief through the crowd. Anxiety over full-backs being a Scottish trait, perhaps they should now worry about where the next Rowen Shepherd is coming from.
If Scotland's start bewildered the French, it was the next 10 minutes that left them truly addled. Before that time was up, Dods had scored his first try and all significant patterns had been set. The Scottish back row had charged powerfully downfield on at least three occasions, and the support they received from the half-backs had carved promising spaces. When France found scraps of possession, they were quickly buried in the tackle.
Scotland had promised to score through speed and force of numbers, but they needed neither for their first try. It came from a ruck near the French 22 when, as Townsend screamed for the ball, Redpath threaded a wicked kick to the left corner. Cabannes appeared to have it covered but he also appeared to have other things on his mind and simply never bothered to join the race with Dods. The Scottish wing started 10 yards behind the French flanker and finished, scoring a try, about the same distance in front.
By half-time Scotland were 11-8 in front. It was no reflection of their territorial advantage, but France unquestionably deserved their try in the 22nd minute when Benazzi tumbled over from short range after a sweep led by Sadourny and Saint-Andre.
It had taken a rare mistake by Scotland, failing to secure a restart, for France to gain that position. It was uncharacteristic, not only in the context of a tidy display, but also because most of the mistakes were made by Frenchmen. In fairness, Scotland pressurised the ball-carriers relentlessly, but even when France had secured possession they failed to use it with conviction.
Afterwards, Jim Telfer, the Scottish manager, was in astonishingly downbeat mood. "We should have taken more of our chances," was about the least critical of his remarks. However fair he was in technical analysis, Telfer's response went completely against the grain of the mood of the Scottish players as they celebrated after the game.
Scotland can now go forward with mounting and deserved confidence to Cardiff in a fortnight's time. Wainwright can march taller and more proudly than any on that journey, with Redpath and Townsend at his shoulder. There was, indeed, not a weakness in the side and if the supposedly iffy back three want to stick two huge fingers up to the world this morning, they will be perfectly within their rights.
Perhaps the more telling analysis was given by Jean-Claude Skrela, the French coach, when he spoke after the match. "Scotland are playing the sort of rugby we want to try to play," he said. "They played all the French rugby." It was a suitable summary of an immense performance on an afternoon when the dreaded words "Grand Slam" began to form on everyone else's lips.
SCOTLAND 19
R Shepherd; C Joiner, S Hastings, I Jardine,
M Dods; G Townsend, B Redpath; D Hilton,
K McKenzie, P Wright, S Campbell, G Weir,
R Wainwright (capt), E Peters, I Smith.
FRANCE 14
J-L Sadourny; E Ntamack, A Penaud,
T Castaignede, P Saint-Andre (capt); T Lacroix (S Glas 3-13min), P Carbonneau; M Perie, J-M Gonzalez, C Califano, O Merle, O Roumat, A Benazzi, F Pelous, L Cabannes.
Scorers: Dods (T 9min) 5-0; Castaignede (P 12min) 5-3; Dods (P 17min) 8-3; Dods (P 20min) 11-3; Benazzi (T 22min) 11-8; Dods (T 53min) 16-8; Lacroix (P 67min) 16-11; Lacroix (P 71min) 16-14; Dods (P 76min) 19-14.
Weather: fair. Ground: good. Referee: C Thomas (Wales).
TONY UNDERWOOD plays his first game since his World Cup mauling by Jonah Lomu when he makes his long-awaited debut for Newcastle against West Hartlepool today.
WALES have made a tactical switch for today's match against England in the women's Home Nations tournament at Welford Road, Leicester. Lisa Burgess, the most experienced Welsh forward, has been moved from No8 to open-side flanker, to mark Giselle Pragnelle, playing her first match at fly-half for England after switching from the centre. Kick-off is at 2.30pm.
RUGBY players may have turned professional, but an embarrassing incident at the London Hilton hotel on Park Lane, where England celebrated with a post-match dinner after yesterday's victory, proved that the RFU still need to learn some important lessons in the art of diplomacy. Anglo-Welsh relations were strained well before kick-off at Twickenham by the amateurish approach of RFU officials, who told the hotel management to instruct all guests not to ask the England team for autographs or approach them at any time.
After saving for the pleasure of paying £180 a night to spend the weekend at the five-star hotel, the leader of one group of 20 Wales supporters was understandably miffed when a woman from the Hilton phoned him before his arrival to pass on the RFU order. Taken aback by the pomposity, the supporter was tempted to ask the management to contact individually all the England party, team and officials, to ask them not to disturb the weekend of the Welsh (full-paying) guests.
The England team are thoroughly coached in fitness, skills and tactics. Perhaps Jack Rowell, their manager, should suggest a customer-care course for the back-room boys.
EUROPEAN officials have blown the whistle on the international board's 180-day qualification rule, declaring it illegal within the union. The board announced last week that players who moved from one country to another must serve a six-month residency qualification before they can play for their new clubs. But, in line with football's Bosman ruling over restraint of trade, the EU says the move is against the law.
One of the players affected by the 180-day rule is the Australian Michael Lynagh, who is unable to play for his new club, Saracens, until six months after he starts living in England in June. That situation clearly constitutes restraint of trade, says the EU.
REACTION to yesterday's match-winners was poles apart. France's captain, Philippe Saint-Andre, tipped Scotland for the Grand Slam, while Jack Rowell expressed dismay at England's performance.
"Scotland should win the Grand Slam the way they played against us," Saint-Andre said after his side's unexpected loss at Murrayfield. Scotland's skipper, Rob Wainwright, paid tribute to all his players after upsetting the odds against the Five Nations favourites. "I do not like to pick any one individual out," the flanker said. "If you go through the whole team then they all played like heroes."
Scotland are now the only team who can win the Grand Slam, and it may all hinge on their match against England at Murrayfield on March 2. "It's going to be really tough one for England," Rob Andrew, who was ultra-critical of England's performance against Wales, said. "The England players said they were happy with the win but they have got to start looking at themselves pretty closely, because that was a poor performance.
"At the breakdown we are not recycling the ball quickly enough and our lines of running are not particularly good. We went back to our kicking game today and our kicking out of hand was appalling."
Nick Farr-Jones, the former Australia scrum-half, was equally scathing: "Jeremy Guscott scored a fortunate try. They won by six points if it wasn't for that try it could have been a different conclusion. New Zealand would have put 30 or 40 points on that Welsh team."
Jack Rowell, the England manager, admitted: "Heads were down in the dressing room afterwards, they know they must do better. The team isn't clicking, as we would like. It is not a matter of training harder in the next month it is a matter of thinking smarter when we play in Scotland."
Rob Wainwright, the Scotland captain, salutes the stamina that broke the resistance of the French at Murrayfield. WE SEEM to have developed a knack for finishing games deep in our opponents' half after absorbing a bit of pressure. That's what happened in Dublin a fortnight ago and it happened again yesterday. Scientifically, I suppose it is not a huge sample, but I still think it is more than coincidence. It is not a deliberate tactic, but it is a tribute to the fitness of the whole side.
When we came on to the field the reception we were given by the crowd was tremendous. The noisy support was never more important than during that period in the middle of the second half when our heads began to go down a little. To hear the roar from the crowd at that point lifted us again and helped us to repulse the French attacks.
Significant moments? Uppermost in any list must have been the moment near the end when France had possession in a maul near our line and Kevin McKenzie dived in and ferreted out the ball. That allowed us to clear our lines and, personally, my own feeling of relief when he did that was immense. It was a huge act by a little man, but so typical of the effort that ran throughout the side.
Mike Dods will undoubtedly grab a few headlines for suddenly transforming himself into the unstoppable try-scoring machine of this Scotland side, but it would have been nice if just a few more of his kicks had gone over as well. We could have made it easier on ourselves in other respects. Twice we had the ball over the French line but were not able to touch it down.
We went into the game with immense respect for the quality of the opposition, but a great determination to win after being robbed of a victory by France in the dying seconds of our World Cup match.
I suppose I was a bit worried that we came racing out of the starting blocks at such a pace, because I doubted sometimes whether we would be able to keep up that kind of effort for a full 80 minutes. To my astonishment and joy the players just kept going all the way. The errors we made and fortunately there were not too many of those were entirely tactical; it was never a question of effort.
I think we had an advantage in fitness levels and I believe it told towards the end of the game. We began to sense that the French front five were tiring badly and it was a pleasant surprise, throughout the game, that their much-lauded back row did not impose themselves as everyone expected.
There was real joy throughout the side when we heard the final whistle. It is a fabulous feeling to know that we have won our second match in the Five Nations championship when everyone had been writing us off as favourites for the wooden spoon.
Tim Henman is young, slight and British, but he has the determination and guts to go all the way. By Richard Evans
WE ARE going to have to get used to this strange phenomenon of British tennis players winning matches. Even tournaments. Expectations should not run too high but there is no longer a need to fear the worst.
Greg Rusedski, a British passport-holder since birth despite the name and Canadian upbringing, is going to frighten a lot of people with a serve that is, once again, clocking in as the fastest in the world. He led Boris Becker by two sets to one in the Australian Open, has already won two titles on the ATP Tour and, with his ground game improving, should soon add more.
But the best news of all is that Rusedski will not be out there alone. There is no doubt Tim Henman is equipped to become the first home-grown British player since John Lloyd to crack the world's top 30. As he is currently standing at 85 on the ATP computer, the size of his task is obvious but that ranking will take a step in the right direction as a result of Henman's latest performance in Shanghai, where he reached the semi-final, the first time he had done so in an ATP Tour event, before losing in three closely contested sets to Andrei Olhovskiy, 4-6 6-4 6-4.
Shanghai, hosting the first ATP Tour event held in that city, did not enjoy a strong entry. In fact, after a couple of withdrawals, it ended up being so weak that Henman was No2 seed. But weak is a relative term when speaking of the men's tour. Henman, who was thirsting for this heaven-sent opportunity even before he left Melbourne, could have fallen flat on his face in the first round when he was drawn against Jean-Philippe Fleurian, the experienced Frenchman who beat Stefan Edberg at the Australian Open.
But Henman came through and moved on, secure now in the self-belief that he can beat almost anyone if he plays his best. In Sydney, he outsmarted Mark Philippoussis, the Australian giant who went on to destroy Pete Sampras in Melbourne and then scored his best Grand Slam win to date when he beat Petr Korda, the highly talented Czech coached by Tony Pickard. Although Henman failed to kick-on in either event, the manner in which these results were secured left expert observers in no doubt as to his potential
David Lloyd, the British Davis Cup captain and Henman's original benefactor, is confident his protege can consolidate a position in the top 50 pretty soon. "But then he might have to beef up a bit," said Lloyd, who set up the scheme at Reeds school that enabled boys such as Henman and Jamie Delgado to attend on a scholarship and put in three hours of tennis six days a week at a David Lloyd centre.
The figure that approaches, threading his way through the tables in the press restaurant at Flinders Park, is taller than one might expect a good 6ft 1in and still, at 21, a little coltish in appearance. The body gives the appearance of still growing into itself this body that twice almost destroyed his career.
He had been at Reeds less than a year when his racket arm gave out. Henman was suffering from a bone condition common enough among young farm lads who bale too much hay before their muscles are strong enough to take the strain. Had Lloyd not kept faith with him, that would have been it.
"He hardly hit a ball for a year," said Lloyd. "It was a tough time for a 12-year-old and he cried a lot. But that was natural. They were tears of fury and frustration more than anything, not the sort of crying you get from a whinger."
The problem eased but it left Henman with a bent arm. Happily a straight arm is not a prequisite for hitting a serve and Henman duly made the sort of progress that Lloyd had been expecting.
"Then I broke my ankle in three places and was out for over six months," said Henman. "I'm convinced it is stronger than ever and it doesn't bother me, but I panicked a bit after the operation when I had no movement at all. Thankfully, the surgeon did a great job."
Along with their son, Tim's parents had been keeping their fingers crossed. They had accepted Lloyd's advice and allowed Henman to curtail his formal education at 16 and pursue tennis as a full-time career, a move that many middle-class parents Henman's father is a solicitor have shied away from.
"I told them that, in my opinion, Tim would be able to hold his own as a professional and start making good money quite soon," said Lloyd. "To their credit, they accepted what so many parents don't understand; that you can always go back to higher education at 22 or 23 but that that is far too late to start a serious tennis career."
Generally Henman handles himself well. The default at Wimbledon last year, when he accidentally hit a ball boy while swatting the ball away in anger, was untypical and will soon be forgotten. In the meantime, we can look forward to an articulate young man giving British tennis a new image.
Lauren St John finds Sandy Lyle fighting the has-been tag on the long road back to self respect.
SANDY LYLE began his assault on the US Tour in his own inimitable way. Having checked in at the airport, he telephoned his wife to say goodbye, only to be informed that he wasn't, as he had mistakenly thought, entered in the Tucson tournament he was heading for. Another player might have been enraged or embarrassed, but Lyle was unruffled. He simply followed his luggage to America and, after a few games with friends, finished 10th in Phoenix and 21st at the Bob Hope Classic. His third event is at Pebble Beach, where he is holding his own so far .
Like several other former Masters champions, Lyle is looking to Ian Woosnam for inspiration. Once the pride of Europe, winning six green jackets in eight years at Augusta, the Big Six have gone into decline in the past few seasons. Until his victory at the Asian Classic last Sunday, Woosnam had not received a winner's cheque since 1994; Lyle had all but vanished into oblivion; Nick Faldo had endured a torturous 1995 interrupted by lurid tabloid reports of love nests and £7.5m divorce pay-outs; Seve Ballesteros's extended slump culminated in tears at the Ryder Cup and a five-month break from the game and Jose Maria Olazabal was forced to take six months off after specialists diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis in his feet. Only Bernhard Langer has continued unabated, stoically fighting a lone battle against age and injury.
"Ageing plays a part," Lyle said at Pebble Beach, contemplating the personal fortunes of of his contemporaries. "Some guys fade when they get older, some guys start changing their routines or playing in different countries. But Woosnam showed us that we're still capable of knocking on the door, and I'm probably not that far from winning, either."
It was America where Lyle's career hit the wall, and it is there that he will seek to revive it. Eleven months after he hit a near-miraculous seven-iron from a snowy white bunker to triumph on the emerald contours of Augusta, he cut his tee shot into the lake at the 1989 Nestle Invitational at Bay Hill, Orlando, and disqualified himself by walking to the car park without finishing his round. "It just went sour," Lyle said. "The whole thing just fell to pieces. I lost it there and then."
To a degree, Lyle suffered from many of the afflictions that affected the other five players. The burden of expectation that accompanies a Major victory married disastrously with loss of form or desire, and Lyle, like Ballesteros and Woosnam, was compelled to alter his tried and tested game and visit a score of gurus, coaches and psychologists, from David Leadbetter and Jimmy Ballard to Bob Torrance and Noel Blundell.
For two years, nothing worked. When he did start winning again taking the BMW International in Germany and beating Colin Montgomerie in a play-off for the Volvo Masters it was somehow surprising. Long after he had lost confidence, his supporters were confident that he would return; when even those most loyal gave up on him, he finally found the courage to start believing in himself.
Nine months ago, Lyle glimpsed light at the end of the tunnel. He had adopted a new, more disciplined practice regime, and he began to say things like: "I'm only 6,000 balls away from winning the Open," and "If I shoot two more 65s I can win the US PGA". When neither of those dreams became reality, he felt cheated.
"I've been banging my head against a brick wall for months and I've had enough," he complained, and withdrew from the German Open, the final Ryder Cup qualifying event. A week after the team was announced, he finished sixth in the European Masters, taking just 10 putts on his way to an inward 29 on the second day.
Meanwhile Lyle, observing the erratic progress of his old enemy Faldo, waited for Tim Finchem, the US Tour commissioner, to decide whether to reduce the minimum number of events foreign members had to play from 15 to 12. In the event, it stayed at 15, but the board persuaded Finchem to abolish the rule which required even those players with 10-year exemptions to return to the US qualifying school if they had ceased, during that decade, to be members of the tour. Lyle, who had earned his own exemption through his victory in the 1987 Players' championship, received the news in December and packed his bags a month later.
The mere idea of playing in America has had a beneficial effect on Lyle's game, and certainly his attitude is more positive than it has been since he was at his peak. Asked what he expected to gain from his foray across the Atlantic, he said: "Self-respect," with endearing frankness. "I know what I can do and I know I haven't done it, but it's not for lack of trying."
WHEN it comes to golf, Ian Woosnam does nothing in moderation. After years in rags, he achieved untold riches, winning the Masters and 40 other titles. His feats took him to the top of the world rankings, but he started this year languishing in 57th place. He had gone 16 months without a victory when, with no explanation or warning, he won the Asian Classic last Sunday and followed it with a record-equalling round of 65 in the third round of the Heineken Classic at The Vines.
Woosnam, who is sharing the lead with John Daly, the Open champion, last achieved back-to-back wins on the European Tour in 1990, when he picked up the Monte Carlo and Scottish Opens in successive weeks. He had eight birdies and only one bogey yesterday for an aggregate of 205, 11 under par. Jean van de Velde, of France, and Ireland's Paul McGinley were in third place on 206, with David Carter, of England, two strokes behind.
"I'm playing extremely solid golf," said Woosnam, who missed the cut two years ago in his only other appearance in this event. "I'm confident, but you can't be super-confident on this course because it is so tight."
On the subject of his triumph in Singapore, where he beat Andrew Coltart, of Scotland, in a playoff, Woosnam said: "It was a very important victory for me because it proved I could bounce back after such a bad year." His 1995 season was blighted by loss of confidence and a back injury so severe that he considered going under the surgeon's knife. A slight swing change has helped solve his problems.
For the third day running, Daly kept his driver and woods tucked safely in his bag. Despite the appeals of the gallery for him to grip it and rip it in the traditional manner, the "Wild Thing" stuck rigidly to his new year's resolution to apply sense and sensibility to all matters of diet, etiquette and golf, and used only cautious iron shots in his five under par round of 67.
Afterwards, he admitted that this strategy was something of a first and said he would attempt to continue it in today's final round. "I might even extend it past this tournament if it keeps on working," Daly said. "I have not even hit a practice shot with the driver all week and I plan to stick with the one-iron. It gives me a lot of confidence to see the ball on the fairway so much. I'm hitting my irons as crisply as I have done in a long, long time."
The former US PGA champion, a reformed alcoholic and chocoholic, confessed that he was impressed with his own self-control, a quality that was somewhat lacking when he missed the cut by nine strokes at The Vines on his last visit. "I am just grateful to the organisers for inviting me back here after my bad performance in 1995," he added.
Greg Norman, the pre-tournament favourite, fared less well on home ground. While in Perth, he has busied himself ordering yet another boat this time a 110ft motor yacht worth an estimated $6m and it seems to have affected his concentration. He scored an uninspired 75 for a total of 216, and is unlikely to be in contention for the £85,000 first prize.
Neither, for that matter, is his compatriot Wayne Smith. Runner-up in this event for the past two years, he was leading at The Vines on 10 under par until he fell behind with a third-round 75. Three dropped shots in the first four holes greatly reduced his chances.
Nick Faldo and Howard Clark moved to within two strokes of Jeff Maggert, of the United States, in the second round of the £1m National Pro-Am at Pebble Beach in California. Faldo, who is at last showing signs of form, and Clark, recovering from a back injury, both scored 69s for an aggregate of 138.
The other European challengers lost ground. Sandy Lyle followed an opening 70 with a 75, his worst score by three strokes this season, and Barry Lane fell away with a 79. Meanwhile, the Americans Davis Love III, Loren Roberts and Steve Jones moved into a share of second place on 137.
Assisted by the waterlogged, receptive course, Maggert made four birdies from the 14th for a 68, four under par. Later, he said patience had been his only virtue: "I was hitting the ball well all day, but getting frustrated on the front nine because I wasn't making any birdies." His Ben Hogan-like swing has given him numerous high finishes in majors, but so far only one PGA Tour victory. "I missed a two-footer on 13 and it gave me a wake-up call. I birdied the next four."
Love, runner-up to Ben Crenshaw at the Masters last season, used his huge drives and deft putting stroke to make eight birdies six in the last 10 holes en route to a score of 66.
He said that he had benefited from a three-week break, which gave him time to work on his game and become accustomed to his new clubs. "Even though conditions are soft and there's no wind, you still have to play with some patience around here," he said.
Heavy rainfall in the first two days meant that the lift-and-clean rule was in operation, and the mild weather contributed to the low scores. "My shoes were full of mud and water," Love said. "I must have had five or six drives in the fairway that just buried. It was casual water everywhere."
Mats Wilander and Karel Novacek claim they can prove they are innocent of alleged drugs offences. Maurice Chittenden and Richard Evans report
MATS WILANDER and Karel Novacek, the tennis players facing charges that they tested positive for cocaine at last year's French Open, plan to invoke the case of an American sprinter in their defence.
Harry "Butch" Reynolds, the 400m runner, was tested positive for an anabolic steroid by the same French laboratory six years ago after giving a sample in Monte Carlo. However, he sued the International Amateur Athletic Federation for damages, claiming that his urine sample had been mistakenly switched with one from an East German athlete. He briefly won £18.2m damages until the US Supreme Court ruled that the American courts had no jurisdiction over an international body in the affair.
Now lawyers acting for the tennis players plan to attack both the accuracy of the drugs test and the refusal of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) to provide them with access to the laboratory, the urine samples and documentation in the case.
Under ITF rules, a player provides, under direct observation, a specimen which is divided into A and B samples. These are then sealed in collection bottles and identified by a control number, not the player's name. The rules state: "No player will be deemed to have tested positive unless the A and B tests have been confirmed as positive by the laboratory as well as completion of the review and appeal cases." A sample can be disqualified if there are procedural issues that affect the case.
Samuel Abady, Wilander's New York lawyer, said: "The rules were not followed which must be followed. There are 100 things that are supposed to be done to preserve the validity, integrity and reliability of the samples. If they missed one, it might be the only argument I have to save a client. But, I am telling you, based on the information I have dug up, they didn't do 90 of them. That is gross deviation from the accepted operation.
"Butch Reynolds may not have got his money, but he won on the merits of his claim. His case proved the defects in the procedure. It was an unreliable sample that could not be tied to him."
Wilander and Novacek won a breathing space on Friday at the High Court in London. Mr Justice Rattee gave the ITF 14 days to produce their evidence and the players' legal team a further 14 days to reply.
The two men were tested at the French Open at Roland Garros in the first week of June, 1995. They were both playing singles and playing together as doubles partners.
Their samples, identified only by the code numbers, were sent to the national drug-testing laboratory at Chateny Malabry, south of Paris. The laboratory, run by the French ministry of sport, is responsible for all drug tests in France.
The players were not informed of the positive tests until they each received a letter on October 4. A positive test for cocaine subjects a player to a three-month ban on the first offence, but would also put at risk any sponsorship or endorsement deals. However, the results of the tests were kept confidential among only a handful of ITF officials until last weekend. The results were leaked both sides privately suggest the other was to blame after a planned appeal hearing at the Heathrow Sheraton hotel ended in acrimony and recrimination. The players' lawyers say the ITF cancelled the appeal at 11.55pm on the night before it was due to take place.
Abady has now further upset the French by claiming in a statement that the International Olympic Committee-accredited laboratory lost its certificate to carry out tests for a period after the Reynolds affair. Jean-Pierre LaFarge, head of the laboratory, said: "That is a complete lie. I cannot comment on the case of Wilander and Novacek. Yes, I did the test on Butch Reynolds. But I will deny that our laboratory has ever been suspended."
Dr Irving Glick, the ITF's medical review officer and former physician to the US Open, who holds the key to the identification numbers on the samples, said he had no reason to think the tennis players' tests were not conducted correctly. "We check with the laboratories to make sure that the process was correct in every detail," he said. "I believe it was done properly."
Deborah Jevans, the ITF"s medical administrator, said: The claims they appear to be making attack the whole philosophy of our drug testing programme and if that is the case will be vigorously defended by us.
Wilander, 32, who has won more than £5m in official prize-money, and Novacek, 30, have already taken lie-detector tests in New York. The trip to London with their own legal team, toxicologist and polygraphist set each of them back an estimated £35,000.
However, Jack Rabinowicz, solicitor for the players in London, said that one of the reasons the players were taking action against the ITF was "to protect other players of lesser fame than those who would not be able to withstand the pressure brought on them by the tennis authorities".
Wilander, champion three times at Roland Garros, was a member of the men's Association of Tennis Professionals' board of directors when it became the first sports-player association voluntarily to propose a self-imposed testing programme.
Initially, the testing was purely for social drugs because there were a couple of players at the time not Wilander or Novacek who were having a problem with such drugs and no one could conceive of a performance-enhancing drug that could improve a backhand.
All that changed when it became obvious that players could build up stamina during training periods if they took certain types of steroids, but since the drug-testing became uniform throughout tennis about four years ago, no one has faced charges of a positive test until the Wilander-Novacek case. The ITF carried out 1,000 tests last year, including 100 at Wimbledon. Boris Becker, who has accused fellow players of taking "coke, speed or marijuana", has revealed that he is tested about eight times a year.
Given the frequency of the tests, it is perhaps odd that Wilander and Novacek players should have allegedly tested positive for something as basic as cocaine abuse at the one tournament of the year when they knew they would be tested. Because of French government laws, a large selection of players are always tested at Roland Garros, whereas testing is random at other events.
Wilander said: "We each took a lengthy lie-detector test which confirmed we are telling the truth in denying we ever took cocaine."
However, such evidence would carry little weight in a British court. So great is the backlog in cases that the men's lawyers accept it is entirely possible that Wilander and Novacek will be serving writs in the High Court this summer instead of serving balls on the grass courts of Wimbledon.
Ian Chadband reports from Birmingham on the AAA indoor championships
THE DELIGHT of Sally Gunnell safely negotiating her return to the fold after more than a year of injury traumas turned to dismay as Britain's other Olympic champion, Linford Christie, limped away from the AAA indoor championships with a new problem.
The 60m final brought back memories of last year's world championship 100m final, which ended with Christie lying face down beyond the line with hamstring trouble. This time, he finished on his knees after pulling up sharply at about 45m, hopping into the air and hobbling home last with an injury to his left adductor. Christie was led away by his coach, Ron Roddan, to receive ice-pack treatment in the corridor of the National Indoor Arena.
He kept his own counsel about the extent of the injury, and although it did not appear serious, and his capacity for quick recovery is well-known, there may be some doubt about the rest of his indoor campaign in what he insists will be his final season.
Last week, the world champion, Donovan Bailey, pooh-poohed the idea that Christie had been injured at all in Gothenburg, but even the cynical Canadian could have had no doubt about this one.
Christie, a late entrant after flying back from Australia on Tuesday, said he felt a twinge while easing up the track banking at the end of his semi. After treatment, he looked ready to shoot away in the final when the injury occurred, allowing Mike Rosswess to win in 6.68sec.
But, just as in Australia, Christie looked awesome in his semi, making 6.59sec look like a cakewalk. However, approaching his 36th birthday, it is not surprising that he seems increasingly vulnerable to injury. He keeps everyone guessing about his Olympic intentions, but nobody would want to see injury determine the outcome for him.
What a happy contrast it was, then, that Gunnell, running her first races in Britain for 16 months, should return as if she had never been away. She wanted no more than to finish in one piece; her relieved smile told its own story. Facing the unknown with more than a hint of trepidation after surgery to her right Achilles tendon in August, she reached today's 400m final with encouraging ease. More crucially, she could report no ill effects afterwards.
Tackling a three-race programme this weekend was not the gentlest of re-introductions, but this was as much a mental as a physical exercise. She stretched out in commanding fashion in her opening heat, seemingly having more trouble with her leotard at the bell than worrying about the opposition as she strode home in 54.8sec. Two hours later, despite her foot having stiffened up just before her semi, she eased home in 54.21sec. Today, a more substantial test awaits against Melanie Neef, but so far so good.
It is difficult to upstage two Olympic champions, but Nick Buckfield did his best. After his national indoor pole vault record of 5.5m in the same arena last week, he improved it to 5.51m and then 5.61m. He is soaring towards world-class.
WHILE THE rest of the racing world wears bifocals, Richard Dunwoody appears to see it all unfolding around him with 20-20 vision. The champion jockey added a further trump to his Cheltenham Festival hand when he cruised home to win the Agfa Hurdle at Sandown Park on the quirky but supremely talented Atours.
Having secured rides in the Cheltenham Gold Cup on the red-hot favourite, One Man, and Sound Man, the favourite for the Queen Mother Champion Chase, Dunwoody has negotiated himself an enviable fall-back position in a Champion Hurdle that has an anything-could-happen look about it.
"Woody" will be aboard the Irish contender, Fortune And Fame, in the Champion if Dermot Weld can work his magic on those notoriously fragile legs, but in the event of Fortune And Fame not making it to Cheltenham he will ride Atours.
Following the withdrawal of Right Win and Killone Abbot because of the fast ground, Atours had a simple task, and he won cosily enough from Land Afar after Dunwoody gave him the kind of kid-glove assistance at which he has few peers. Ladbrokes cut Atours from 10-1 to 8-1, while Coral went 10-1 from 14-1, and while you would have to question whether the eight-year-old has the brilliance to win a Champion Hurdle in a vintage year, in this of all seasons you could not rule him out.
David Elsworth, who may also run Oh So Risky, Absalom's Lady and Muse in the Champion, has never concealed his belief that they all have Atours to beat in the big one. After stating that Atours could tackle the reigning champion, Alderbrook, and Right Win in the Kingwell Hurdle at Wincanton later this month, Elsworth felt constrained to clarify riding arrangements that have once again seen a stable jockey asked to step aside to make way for Dunwoody.
One cynic likened the present situation to Lester Piggott's almost callous "jocking off" of rivals in his heyday, but that is not the case with Dunwoody. As the Irishman's consummate artistry continues to illuminate the scene on a daily basis, owners and trainers are the ones courting him, not vice-versa. That will not make it any easier for Tony Dobbin, Gordon Richards's stable jockey, and Paul Holley, Elsworth's No1, who would surely do the job efficiently on One Man and Atours respectively, but in the final analysis loyalty is not regarded a race-winner.
"Richard will ride Atours if Fortune And Fame comes out," Elsworth said. "I just hope for Paul's sake that Oh So Risky runs well at Ascot on Wednesday, because otherwise it will be an embarrassing situation for me."
On an afternoon when the northern-trained Dato Star stamped himself as a live outsider for the Champion with a convincing debut win at Wetherby, Dunwoody earlier enjoyed an even easier success aboard High Baron in the Guildford Flames Chase. However, the smiles in the unsaddling enclosure were not so prevalent among punters.
High Baron finished 33 lengths behind Kibreet at Ascot last month, but yesterday he beat him into second place by eight lengths. The stewards held an inquiry into the winner's improved form and Ron Hodges, High Baron's trainer, told them that the horse had sulked at Ascot.
Dunwoody had to use all his patience and skill to get High Baron to take part yesterday, but the way he annihilated them in the end must have had many backers sulking themselves.
The meeting went ahead after an early-morning inspection, but it was a close decision and the fast ground caused not only a large number of withdrawals but a spate of horrible falls as well. Adrian Maguire, who made an early return from a knee injury that had been expected to keep him out for several weeks, took a crunching fall on his first ride back on Martin's Lamp, and then had his misery compounded when the much-fancied Percy Smollett was well beaten by Amtrak Express in the Agfa Chase under a strong ride from Mick Fitzgerald.
Jamie Osborne was stood down for the rest of the day after sustaining a shoulder injury in High Baron's race and missed the winning ride on Trainglot in the Tote Hurdle he was substitued by the irrepressible Dunwoody.
Osborne will decide this morning if he is fit enough to ride Master Oats in the Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup at Leopardstown, which itself must pass a 7.30am inspection.
But in terms of outrageous fortune, no one came close to Josh Gifford, whose Mr Felix was put down after an accident in the same event. Gifford had announced earlier that his outstanding mare, Brief Gale, a contender for the Cheltenham Gold Cup, is unlikely to race again because of a serious leg problem.
As if that were not enough he also had to withdraw Yorkshire Gale from the Agfa Chase when the gelding went lame, and watched Give Us A Call take a heavy (but happily not serious) fall in the novices' chase.
They say this game tames lions. It could poleaxe rhinos, too.
One Man is favourite for the Gold Cup, but he'll have to get pasttrainer Terry Casey's outsider to triumph. John Karter reports
WHILE the one-dimensional betting on the Cheltenham Gold Cup might suggest One Man is the biggest certainty ever to look through a bridle, in certain quarters at least they are inclined to treat any hint of premature surrender to the 5-4 favourite as verging on the certifiable.
The buzz of activity at Terry Casey's yard in the Surrey backwater of Beare Green is centred on painstaking preparation for the Gold Cup of the stable star, Rough Quest, based not merely on his own unquestioned merits but also on the reasonable premise that One Man, good though he may be, is just another racehorse.
Casey spoke of his unshakeable faith in the horse who brought him a hero's welcome when he travelled back to his native Ireland in April and saddled Rough Quest to bring off a hugely popular victory in the valuable Castlemartin Stud Chase at Punchestown. Coming a month after Rough Quest's storming success in the Ritz Club Trophy at Cheltenham, it was enough to convince Casey that the One Mans of this world were there for the taking.
"You had to be impressed with what One Man did in the King George at Sandown, but I certainly don't think he is unbeatable," Casey said. "I am not saying that my horse will definitely beat him, but One Man has yet to prove himself round Cheltenham, whereas Rough Quest not only won the Ritz Club but also ran very well there when he finished fourth in the Sun Alliance Chase.
"The Gold Cup has been the objective all season, and Rough Quest's shown that he comes to his best in the spring. We'll be going to Cheltenham with a high degree of optimism."
For those who feel inclined to hock the family silver and lump the lot on Rough Quest at 33-1, there is a rider to that statement and I do not mean the jockey, Mick Fitzgerald, who handles Rough Quest with the kind of kid-glove sensitivity that is essential for a horse with tactical and physiological problems.
Rough Quest's outstanding finishing kick needs to be harnessed until the last possible moment, as no less a man than Jamie Osborne ruefully discovered when he found himself in front far too soon in this season's Hennessy Gold Cup and was collared by Couldnt Be Better. More worrying to the trainer, though, is a debilitating muscle problem.
"Rough Quest is a lovely horse to train, although some people might call him a nightmare," Casey said. "He's been accused of dogging it in the past, but it was trouble with muscle enzymes that caused him to stop. When he was outrun by Unguided Missile at Ascot in December he couldn't get enough oxygen to the muscles in the closing stages. Now we know exactly what the problem is, we can monitor it and treat it."
Like Casey, who has had seven seconds to go with his three winners this season, Rough Quest has not found fortune smiling on him recently. "We took him to Leopardstown in January and he was cruising when he came down, through no fault of his own, at the fourth last when there was a lot of bunching," Casey explained.
"We will give him a confidence-booster in the Jim Ford Chase at Wincanton later this month. Bad luck can't go on for ever."
Casey might once have been the last man to utter such a positive statement. Twenty-one years ago, when he was head lad to Frank Gilman (trainer of the 1982 Grand National winner Grittar, who Casey rode to victory over hurdles), his wife of six months choked to death over Sunday lunch.
Having survived such a harrowing personal tragedy, Casey also had to negotiate a serious lowpoint in his training career. One of four brothers from Donegal, where his mother runs a leisure and golf complex, he had ridden 46 winners over jumps and also served as head man to that Irish National Hunt icon, Paddy Mullins, who trained the great Dawn Run.
Casey had proved himself in his own right with a successful training record in Ireland and England, where he saddled Over The Road to win the National Hunt Chase at the Cheltenham Festival and Glenrue to win the Topham Trophy at Aintree, but racing fortune is no respecter of talent and two disastrous seasons forced him to sell his yard in Lambourn.
"I handed in my licence in March 1994, and I thought about quitting," Casey said. "But it would be very difficult to walk away from the game when it's such a part of you. I enjoy the whole involvement so much; it's not really work."
Casey answered an advertisement to train for Andrew Wates, a successful businessman, racehorse owner and Jockey Club member, and moved to Wates's Henfold House stables at Beare Green 20 months ago, since when he has trained 12 winners in all. He is a salaried trainer, but not a private one, and besides six horses for the Wates family he trains 10 for other owners.
"I've never wanted to run a huge yard. I'm very happy training for such good people and the only pressure I get is from myself," the 50-year-old said. "For me it's a 24-hour job, seven days a week. I ride out two lots every day and do all the feeding myself. I am probably too much of a horse- lover to be really successful. I worry tremendously about their welfare."
As Cheltenham looms the worries will spiral, but so will the level of anticipation as he applies the final touches to Rough Quest's Gold Cup preparation. "I'll have sleepless nights all right," Casey said. "But Rough Quest is very well right now. He's the best horse I've trained and if all goes well with him I'm certain he'll run a big race in the Gold Cup."
Should great sports events be saved for the nation? Ian Hawkey on the debate over TV
A POLITICAL football rolls into parliament this week, promising to gather momentum over the next two months. Right-wingers or left, party lines are blurred on the government's position on televised sport, and the debate is drawing growing public attention and political unease.
The Broadcasting Bill reaches the House of Lords committee stage on Tuesday, when Lord Howell, Labour's last minister of sport, will table amendments designed to protect terrestrial television's hold on major sporting events. In the Commons, the government responded with alarm, wary that the financing of British sport is at risk, and wary that their own peers are listening hard to a sporting audience who want a ticket to the main event.
The bill already nominates eight "listed" events the FA Cup final, the Scottish Cup final, the football World Cup, home cricket Tests, the Wimbledon finals, the Olympics, the Derby and the Grand National special heritage status but does not prevent them following the likes of the Ryder Cup exclusively on to satellite screens once their existing contracts come up for renewal.
First among the Howell amendments is a proposal to tighten an item in the bill which only prohibits the listed events being shown on pay-per-view television. Howell, supported by peers of various political persuasions, has tabled a clause that would protect those events from subscription channels, such as BSkyB, as well as pay-per-view, a system in which viewers pay a separate levy for individual programmes.
Another amendment would ensure that events sold exclusively live to one broadcaster would be available to another, terrestrial, station as highlights, similar to the deal that divides Premier League football between Sky's live service and the BBC's Match of the Day, and the agreement reached between the two broadcasters for the cricket World Cup.
Other proposals to be tabled would bar executives or representatives of sports bodies from involvement with broadcasters negotiating exclusive live rights; and create an advisory committee for contracts and sport, to be set up by the secretary of state for National Heritage, Virginia Bottomley.
The conflict between guaranteed widespread access to major events and freedom within the media market is reported to have divided the cabinet, and Bottomley has announced urgent talks with broadcasters and rights brokers and released a discussion paper. "Before you deprive the sports rights holders of their opportunity to get full value for those rights you need to think through what the implications would be," she said. "There are conflicting and very strongly held views."
Bottomley's caution has been welcomed by those bodies who have benefited financially, in some cases spectacularly, from a competitive media marketplace. "It's not for government to start acting in a way that amounts to price-fixing," said Nigel Hook of the Central Council for Physical Recreation, who represent sports governing bodies. "It's drifting towards nationalisation of sport. Sports bodies are the best people to decide how to exploit their rights to promote the development of their sports."
The Test and County Cricket Board, among others, have been lobbying MPs ahead of the Lords debate, arguing for the status quo, and pointing out that the end of the BBC monopoly has increased revenue tenfold in under a decade, money earmarked for the development of the game.
By contrast, last Tuesday's announcement that the European Broadcasting Union which includes the BBC had won the European rights to the Olympic Games until 2008 was greeted by praise for the International Olympic Committee. "What is important to the Olympic movement is exposure to the largest audience," said the EBU's Richard Dunn. The IOC awarded the rights to the EBU despite a higher offer from a consortium including News Corporation, part owners of Sky and parent company of The Sunday Times.
Indeed, it has been a good week for the BBC, who unveiled their schedule for the European football championships and the results of a 1995 survey they commissioned on sport and the small screen. Ninety per cent of viewers, it said, wanted major live events kept on terrestrial television.
Two-thirds of Sky subscribers agreed, and the numbers of subscribers are growing. Another survey, commissioned by the ITV Association and, coincidentally, released last week, revealed that 55% of satellite subscribers bought their dishes because of sports coverage. Parliament has seized a raw nerve.
WHEN it was Wimbledon, it was Dan Maskell; when it was championship boxing, it was Harry Carpenter; when it was the Derby, it was Peter O'Sullevan. It was always the BBC. There may not have been much choice when watching the big sporting events on television, but there was a rich heritage and the comfort of continuity.
Today, with sports broadcasting in the throes of revolution, many of the big events that viewers took for granted have become unavailable to the big majority who do not subscribe to the satellite channels of BSkyB. Understandably, they feel deprived and aggrieved. Politicians, sensing that grievance, smell votes.
Much good has already come from the revolution that was made possible in part by the BBC's own complacency. BSkyB has brought its viewers Test matches from the West Indies and South Africa, and has covered them ball-by-ball. It has brought far wider coverage of football and golf. It has innovated technically and brought livelier and more informative presentation. It has dedicated two entire channels to sport.
By entering the field and creating a market, BSkyB has massively increased sport's income. Cricket, football, rugby and many other sports are better funded than ever before.
Those sports do not want legislation that protects the viewers' rights to watch certain traditional events but denies them the chance to negotiate the best deal by playing the market. If, for example, Test matches were limited to terrestrial television, the BBC would get them for next to nothing. Cricket, and cricket development, would lose out.
The primary responsibility for ensuring that the effect of the revolution is beneficial, to sports and to viewers, lies with sports governing bodies. It is for them to weigh up the short-term advantages of the big deal against the long-term importance of wide exposure. It is also for them to explore ways of achieving both. It is surely obvious that if the FA Cup final or the Grand National were to be unavailable to most of the country's viewers, their place in the national conciousness, and their value, would soon be diminished.
Sports governing bodies need to realise that TV is a good partner and benefactor, but a dangerous master. Some sports seem prepared to hand over control, even to allow broadcasters to have a say in players' contracts and transfers.
Others have realised and exercised their power. In America, a major broadcaster who screened advertisements during a tense tie-break between Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi, were informed by the organisers of the tournament that their contract would not be renewed.
If our own sports administrators fail in their duty, then protective legislation on behalf of viewers might be needed. But for the moment, the government would do better to ensure that the BBC is sufficiently funded to compete with BSkyB. For their part, the BBC should make the establishment of a dedicated sports channel, which will soon become feasible through digital technology, an urgent priority.
Dominic Cork's performances sometimes leave us, and him, gasping. Hugh McIlvanney talks to the England star as the team flies out for the World Cup.
UNTIL recently it made sense to say that competitiveness was as natural as breathing for Dominic Cork. But the tribute is questionable these days. Cork's breathing hasn't been too good lately.
His combative urges remain in robust health. In fact, they could be held responsible for the minor oxygenation problem, since the trouble is associated with the pronounced crookedness of his nose and that condition dates from his days as a skinny but fearless flanker in schoolboy rugby. The nose suffered three fractures the first and most sculpturally effective from a fist, the others from a boot and an elbow and, a decade on, the nasal passages of England's most exciting young cricketer are not admitting as much air as they should. He theorises that the three bouts of tonsillitis he endured on tour in South Africa may have been related to irritation caused by mouth-breathing.
When he flew out from Heathrow yesterday with the England World Cup party, Cork was sure to be cheerful enough about the surgical appointment that awaits him on the far side of the matches to be played in Pakistan and India. Almost as soon as he is back from the sub-continent, he will have an operation to straighten his nose and attend to the awkward tonsils. But first he means to put a few other noses out of joint.
World Cup opponents will not be tempted to exaggerate his respiratory difficulties. They will remember how often he took cricket's breath away last summer. His fast-medium swing bowling brought seven second-innings wickets in the victory over West Indies on his debut at Lord's, and 26 in the series, including a hat-trick at Old Trafford (a feat no Englishman had achieved in a Test since 1957), and with the bat he scored 197, averaging over 28.
Those figures alone made 1995 an unforgettable year for someone who had to wait until he was almost 24 to persuade many of the genuineness of the extreme promise he had shown much earlier, not least when he celebrated his 20th birthday by taking eight Essex wickets before lunch at Derbyshire's Racecourse Ground on
August 7, 1991. The linguistically sensitive will just have to brace themselves to bear the title of his forthcoming book: Anno Dominic.
His statistics inevitably deteriorated during England's frustrations in the South African Tests. He claimed 19 wickets but managed to bat past 20 only once. But he was still the key bowler and the England captain, Michael Atherton, cherishes Cork's inviolable competitive instinct. "If the other side's batsmen are on top and you are really up against it, in desperate need of a breakthrough, Dominic will be grabbing the ball out of your hand to get at them," Atherton told me. "I have known others with big names who were nowhere to be seen in such circumstances. You wouldn't think you could hide on a cricket field but some bowlers give it a good try. He is the absolute opposite, the kind of player I love to have alongside me."
To Cork, a lack of hunger for the fray is incomprehensible. "If you don't bowl you can't take wickets," he said last week. "I'm not a big-headed person but once I get on that pitch I don't care who is batting or bowling against me. I just try to relax and say, ‘I'm better than these'. It was that attitude I always admired in Ian Botham's play, that meant as much as his great talent in making him a hero of mine. Of course, I liked the fact that he was an allrounder, which is what I want to be, though I realise that I have a lot of work to do on my batting before I have any hope of being a real all-rounder. But, apart from his skills, it was Beefy's attitude that appealed to me, the way he made you feel he was in control."
When it was mentioned that Botham had paid tribute to him as the cutting edge of the England attack, a wicket-taker, a winner, Cork's response was boyishly effusive: "That's very touching, the sort of thing you dream about." But there is nothing dreamy about the effect of Botham's example on him: "The approach I have tried to adopt is to feel I am in control, to feel confident I can accomplish what I am setting out to do. It doesn't always happen that way. Things go wrong and sometimes you can't get the better of the opposition. But I always believe I can."
Obviously, all winners must embrace that simplistic creed and it involves a degree of individuality, or sheer egotism, that is frequently difficult to integrate with the team ethic. But it is one of Cork's most impressive characteristics that he seems to handle this dual requirement with total naturalness. There is certainly no false ring to his assertion that one of the most wonderful experiences cricket has given him was the Johannesburg Test and especially the four and a half hours of it he spent padded-up as a nervous and excruciatingly thrilled spectator while a monumental innings by Atherton, and an extraordinary supporting contribution from Jack Russell, steered England to a gloriously improbable draw.
"That would have to be the best game of cricket I have played in," he said. "Just being part of it is something I will treasure for ever. We were outplayed for three-quarters of the match and then as Athers built that unbelievable innings, and Jack came in to battle with him, you felt privileged to be in the same side. The intensity, the crowd, the way South Africa bowled, the aggression, the quality of our men's play, the superb temperaments displayed it was everything I had dreamed Test cricket would be.
"Seeing it on TV in the dressing-room or going out to watch from the balcony, but only moving between overs in case altering our positions would cause a change of luck, it was the experience of a lifetime. Everybody saw the effort the captain was putting in and knew the pressure he was under to stay out there for all those hours. As I sat with the pads on, people kept coming up and asking if I was all right. ‘I'm okay', I told them, ‘I'm not out there'. The tension was ferocious but it was a magical feeling, as if the whole team had concentrated itself into those two men in the middle.
"When it was over, we felt like we had won the series. After that, and the fighting performance in Port Elizabeth, it was sickening to lose the way we did in Cape Town. But it did not leave us thinking we were inferior. I am still convinced we were the better side."
Like Atherton, Cork is reluctant to make excuses for the debacle of the one-day internationals that gave the tour its dismal conclusion. However, again in common with the skipper, he thinks the contrast in preparations was relevant to England's weary surrender to appreciably fresher opponents: "If we hammer New Zealand in our first World Cup match, everything that happened in South Africa will go out the window. We have the United Arab Emirates and Holland in our group and unless we have a real shocker we'll get to the quarter-finals, which puts us two games away from the final and three away from winning the thing. With the players who are going out there, we know we can win it. The essential, obviously, is that we perform consistently to our best standards."
He has the advantage of familiarity with the conditions that will be encountered in the World Cup. He recalls that it was on an England A tour of India (he went on no fewer than four of those A-team expeditions while poised agonisingly on the edge of full England selection) that he made a private decision about his behaviour which he is sure has been crucial to his subsequent progress: "There is no doubt that I had too much to say for myself on the field earlier in my career and that was particularly true on my first two A tours. I was frustrated and trying to convince people I deserved to be picked at the highest level and I suppose the chat came out in my effort to be extra-competitive.
"The sub-continent makes for a very hard tour, mentally and physically, and I let it get to me. There was a match in Calcutta where I had two batsmen absolutely plumb lbw and wasn't given the decisions and I got a bit worked-up. Then afterwards we went to Chandigarh. Play finishes early over there and you usually find you spend a lot of time stuck in your room with your own thoughts. I went over in my mind what was happening to me and I said to myself, ‘If I am going to make it in this game I am going to have to channel my aggression properly and ride the setbacks'. It was a serious moment and it produced serious changes."
But had his sledging once been as bad as his accusers suggested? Had he been threatening to put himself in the category of the Chappell brothers? "No, never," he said, his attempt to look horrified yielding to a smile. "I'm a good Catholic boy. I couldn't go in for anything like that."
The conspicuous, some would say dramatic, maturing of Cork from occasionally irritating brashness to a more acceptable version of forcefulness plainly owes much to the supportive context of his upbringing and to the fact that his personality was suited to the implications of marriage at 22. He says the rich satisfactions of his life with Jane and their 16-month-old son, Gregory, have made coping with the increasing pressures of his career with Derbyshire and England much easier.
His two older brothers have a range of talents as games players and throughout his childhood (centred on the Staffordshire village of Betley) their doings sharpened his appetite for competition. The father, a retired financial consultant, was a cricketer good enough to enthral Dominic with tales of the North Staffs League, where he came up against giants such as Sobers, Hall, Ramadhin, Valentine and Tyson: "They did not have thigh pads in his days and dad told me of having his whole leg blackened by a ball from Wes Hall. Those stories fired my imagination."
They undoubtedly did so more than academic considerations ever could. But even the Christian Brothers who fretted over his failure to aspire to more than a single O-level in history gradually conceded that he would have an exceptional destiny in cricket. With a schedule of four matches on many weekends as a 14-year-old, his engagements for the school, the Betley club's first XI and their under-19s would often be augmented by a friendly there was little time for homework.
Even as a boy, though he bore scant resemblance to the 6ft 21/2in, 12st 10lb athlete he is now, he could swing the ball and was a precocious taker of wickets. His arms are abnormally long: "Before my mother had her cataracts treated, when her sight was still blurry, she used to recognise me on the field by the length of my arms. Curtly Ambrose would have put her in trouble."
He acknowledges that he must never let his drive to compete make him an "effort" bowler: "If I start imagining I am a real quickie, and try to bowl too fast, I don't bowl well. If I think about rhythm, think about swinging the ball, about having a nice gliding run-up and making sure my action is right as I hit the crease, the pace will come naturally."
And so, the World Cup may prove yet again, will the wickets.
Security nightmares, scheduling headaches; Graham Otway reports on an inauspicious build-up for cricket's world party
WITH only a week to go before the opening ceremony, chaos surrounds the arrangements for the World Cup. It is not known which teams are going to play, or where, or even at what time of day.
Australia and the West Indies are still considering whether to withdraw from their matches in Sri Lanka after Wednesday's suicide bombing in Colombo, while a shortage of lightbulbs is threatening plans to make seven of the 39 matches day-night affairs.
Tournament officials have left up to the Sri Lankan authorities the decision as to whether the four games in that country should be dropped. The final decision is expected tomorrow, but the likelihood is that they will go ahead, since redistributing the matches throughout India and Pakistan would present a logistical nightmare. The quality of the cricket would suffer, too, since it takes months to prepare wickets to an acceptable standard for international cricket.
On Friday, Ana Punchihewa, the president of the Sri Lankan Cricket Board, made a series of pleas by phone to try to head off a boycott of the biggest sporting event to be held in his country. He stressed to the Australians, West Indians and Kenyans Zimbabwe have said they will fulfil their Colombo fixture that the security of their players would be given the highest priority.
But after more than a decade of civil war between the Tamil Tigers and Sinhalese, during which atrocities in the capital have become a regular occurrence, no guarantee of safety can be cast in iron. Wednesday's attack took place barely a mile along the beachfront from the Taj Samudra hotel where both the Australians and West Indians are due to stay.
In 1992, the Sri Lankan naval commissioner was assassinated in front of the hotel and last October a terrorist blew himself up when challenged by guards while breaking into the army camp next door.
The Sri Lankans, however, remain hopeful. Neil Chanmugam, the manager of the team that played the country's first Test in England in 1984, said: "The bombing has created tension, but I do not think the terrorists would risk alienating world opinion by harming sportsmen taking part in the World Cup."
After speaking to Punchihewa, the Kenyans agreed to go ahead as planned. Their spokesman, Robbie Armstrong, said: "We tend to have a different view about terrorists in Africa and accept the assurances about our players' safety."
In Australia, however, where the issue will be discussed at a board meeting tomorrow and Tuesday, before the players have their say on Wednesday, the bombing may be the last straw. Last month the players persuaded the board to reschedule their programme to avoid four days of practice in Sri Lanka after Shane Warne and Craig McDermott received death threats during the acrimonious Test series between the two countries.
The playing conditions of the World Cup do not mention anything about the penalties for forfeiting a match, but Warne is said to be in favour of forfeiting, even if it entails the loss of two qualifying points. Steve Waugh, though, said: "Let's just all get on with it."
The West Indies have remained fairly mute on the subject, with Steve Camacho, the board secretary, saying he was monitoring events. Reports suggest they are likely to follow Australia's lead.
The security situation apart, the lightbulb shortage is giving organisers an additional headache. Existing facilities will handle the games between West Indies and Zimbabwe at Hyderabad on February 16 and the Calcutta semi-final on March 13. But, up to a week ago, there were "just holes in the ground" where the new floodlights should have been at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore, which stages Pakistan v Zealand on February 24 and the final on March 17.
Building is under way in Bombay, Madras, Gwalior, Bangalore and Chandigarh, but special lightbulbs have yet to arrive in India because of shipping delays. Even if they get there soon it could be at least a fortnight before they are ready for use.
The uncertainty has created scheduling nightmares for TV executives, just when they thought their problems were over. The threat of a worldwide blackout receded at the end of the week when the home governments agreed to issue licences for the games to be beamed to satellites for broadcast.
Characters are being snapped up to sell books, videos and merchandise, says Nicholas Fox
IN 1938, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster sold the rights for one of their cartoons to DC Comics for the princely sum of $130 plus $15 a week.
At the time the deal seemed a good one: Siegel and Schuster were poor and had struggled to sell their cartoon character for six years. DC Comics promised them big exposure and a regular income.
But Siegel and Shuster were soon to rue that deal. The character they sold for $130 was Superman and within years the cartoon strip had spawned
a multi-million dollar business spanning television series, films and merchandising.
Siegel and Shuster gained comparatively little from their superhero. After a struggle they managed to replace the deal with a $20,000-a-year pension from Warner Brothers, the owner of DC Comics, but despite their superhero's worldwide popularity, both died far from the lap of luxury.
Today a copy of Action Comics No1, in which Superman made his first appearance, is likely to go for £20,000 at auction, while the rights to Superman would fetch millions of dollars.
The difference in value between the 1930s deal and today's asking prices explains why media groups have been trying to buy characters or intellectual property rights.
The rights to Mickey Mouse, Batman, Rupert the Bear, Noddy and Manchester United are now part of a big business, presenting owners with opportunities to earn lots of money.
The American entertainment giants, Walt Disney and Time Warner, lead the world in exploiting rights. Disney uses characters from its films to generate merchandise, books, shows, and theme-park rides. This promotes video sales and creates new fans years after the films were made.
Time Warner has created a merchandising business on the back of its cartoon characters, selling videos, clothes and books through its branded shops.
In Britain the process is far less developed. In recent years media groups have started to appreciate the true value of characters and are now aggressively bidding for rights to exploit them in new fields.
This year Trocadero, the leisure group, has bought the rights to Enid Blyton for £13m, VCI, the media group, has bought the publishing rights to Manchester United for £6m, and Virgin is trying to buy Reed Consumer Books, the owner of the publishing rights to Thomas the Tank Engine and Winnie the Pooh.
Each of the buyers plans to exploit the new rights by generating untapped streams of revenue from new video tapes, books, magazines, clothing, and computer games.
Analysts remain cynical about whether these deals will pay off, citing the example of Pearson, which has so far failed to exploit its library of rights across its various entertainment businesses.
Lord Blakenham, Pearson's chairman, has often defended the group's wide range of interests by claiming his goal was to use intellectual properties such as the Financial Times, Penguin's backlist of titles and its library of television programmes across different media formats.
So far progress has been slow. Pearson has introduced a Beatrix Potter ride at Alton Towers and is working on a CD-Rom title. The Financial Times has a branded TV arm but other projects have yet to emerge.
One of the few companies to make a coherent attempt at exploiting rights is VCI. Run by Steve Ayres and chaired by Michael Grade, Channel4's chief executive, it has started to build up a collection of valuable video, publishing, music and now sporting rights.
Ayres cites his Manchester United deal as a perfect example of what he plans to do. Using his video company and VCI's publishing arm, Andre Deutsch, he will create a library of branded football products. If it is successful VCI hopes to win the rights to other clubs.
But Ayres' plans go further. He wants to convert Andre Deutsch's backlist to CD-Rom or video formats. He sees no reason why he cannot convert some of VCI's rights into board games and is also looking at developing film rights and even quiz shows through VCI's network.
Nick Leslau, the property developer, plans to use the Trocadero in a similiar way. He aims to relaunch Blyton's work and her brand name. He says: "Eight million Blyton books were sold last year despite the fact many libraries don't stock her because of her political incorrectness."
He is exploring ways of creating new merchanidising, licensing, publishing and video opportunities to capitalise on Blyton's name. "Some strange deals were done in the past which by today's standards would not be considered commercial," says Leslau.
Only 1% of firms believe the ombudsman can help in their disputes with banks. David Smith looks at why they lack confidence.
A CONCESSION to small businesses was announced three years ago by Norman Lamont, chancellor of the day. The banking ombudsman scheme, introduced by the banks in 1985 to adjudicate on customer disputes, was to be extended to cover small firms.
The announcement in 1993, in response to a Sunday Times campaign against the banks' harsh treatment of small businesses, allowed companies with sales of up to £1m to appeal to the ombudsman to adjudicate in disputes. Previously, businesses had said that their complaints, even to the bank chairman's office, fell on deaf ears.
Laurence Shurman, the ombudsman, is able to award small businesses compensation of up to £100,000 in cases where his staff judge a bank to have been guilty of breach of contract or maladministration.
The ombudsman scheme, funded by the banks, is free to those who pursue complaints. Initially it was for personal customers, the self-employed and unincorporated firms.
But three years after it was extended to small firms, some small-business groups say the scheme has been a damp squib for their members.
The ombudsman's latest annual report shows that business complaints have not increased as rapidly as expected. Last year they accounted for 15.9% of preliminary complaints and 18.3% of "mature" complaints (those dealt with last year but which came in earlier).
The low level of interest is, according to Shurman, probably explained by the fact that economic pressures on the small businesses have eased, coupled with the fact that the banks themselves have become better at dealing with small-business customers.
But a report last month by the Bank Action Group, based on a survey of small businesses in dispute with banks, found that only 1% believed the ombudsman could help their cases. Many feared that, if they went to the ombudsman, it would make their situation more difficult.
One high-street bank customer says: "I have not yet dared to approach the ombudsman because of threats from my bank manager."
Stephen Alambritis of the Federation of Small Businesses says: "Our impression is that
as soon as the business is informed that the sponsors of the ombudsman scheme are the banks themselves, they shy away and decide not to bother. The ombudsman is very nice, very polite and very thorough, but he is seen as being part of the banking fraternity."
Under the scheme, customers must first have reached "deadlock" with their banks exhausted the banks' internal procedures before the ombudsman will take up their cases. Alambritis says: "The deadlock letter is a horrendous exercise."
Another shortcoming, say small firms, is that many complaints about banks relate to "commercial" decisions, which are outside the ombudsman's remit.
Andre Levy, a businessman who is pursuing a lengthy legal claim against the London branch of the Dutch bank ABN Amro, says there is a regulatory gap that leaves firms such as his unprotected, and obliged to resort to the courts. Limited companies with sales of more than £1m are excluded from the scheme, as are the customers of many foreign banks operating in London.
"There must be a speedier and more just way of settling disputes," he says.
But Chris Eadie, the deputy banking ombudsman, defends the way the scheme operates. "I would be very wary of accepting anything from the Bank Action Group as fact," he says. "Of course the scheme is funded by the banks, but we are most definitely not in the pockets of the banks. We are professional people and we act independently."
The ombudsman, he says, would come down hard on any bank that used threats to prevent one of its customers from using its services.
He also denied that banks could use the excuse of commercial decisions to escape an adverse judgment. If, for example, a bank suddenly withdrew an agreed overdraft facility, that would come within the ombudsman's ambit as a possible breach of contract.
The question of whether the £1m limit should be increased to admit more small-business cases would be kept under review. "I don't think that, at present, we're excluding anybody who should be covered from the scheme," says Eadie.
"It is a pity we get this negative publicity from the Bank Action Group and others. We certainly don't think it is justified but, as a quasi-judicial body, it is not for us to go on the offensive in a slanging match."
Eadie is backed by Stan Mendham, founder of the Forum of Private Business. "Two words sum up the banking ombudsman scheme bloody marvellous," he says.
"We would like it to deal with bigger businesses, but that's another story. In our experience, every time the ombudsman gets hold of a problem, he gets it sorted. The problem is that people who do not know about the scheme are too ready to criticise it."
The Office of the Banking Ombudsman 0171-404 9944
Harry Drnec of Thornlodge is challenging giants such as Bass in the trendy market for alcoholic lemonades.
A MEWS HOUSE off Park Lane may seem an unlikely headquarters for one of Britain's fastest-growing drinks companies. The cramped office houses a handful of staff and the only clues to the company's activities are some bottles on the floor and desks.
From these unlikely surroundings, Thornlodge is taking on the might of Bass, one of Britain's top brewers, to dominate the new alcoholic "soft-drink" market.
But then Harry Drnec, Thornlodge's chief executive, is no ordinary British drinks boss. For a start, Drnec is American and a former United States Air Force pilot.
After serving in Vietnam, Drnec switched to drinks in the 1970s to work for Anheuser Busch. Since then, in a rollercoaster career ride, Drnec has headed Anheuser's European operations and established Budweiser in Britain. But he was fired in 1988.
The following year he borrowed £9m and founded his own drinks group, Maison Caurette. It helped give birth to the designer-beer market by introducing foreign brands such as Sol, Steinlager and Cobra in Britain, but last September Maison Caurette narrowly averted bankruptcy by merging with another company and Drnec left.
His latest venture is proving to be just as exciting and notorious. Drnec founded Thornlodge with a marketing group in September to launch a range of fruit-flavoured alcoholic pops so-called alcopops.
He saw the success Bass had with its launch last summer of its alcoholic lemonade, Hooper's Hooch, and was determined to capitalise on what he believed was the next drinks craze.
Hooch became the summer's hit drink. It was so popular that Bass could not keep up with demand and had to start canning the drink as it ran out of bottles. Bass was followed into the market by Australia's Two Dogs, distributed by Merrydown. The pair's success has spawned a plethora of new drinks ranging from alcoholic colas to fruit-flavoured ciders.
Branded a "summer fad" by most experts, alcopops turned out to be the drinks sensation of 1995 and continue to prosper even in winter.
Drnec saw the opportunity and, ignoring doubters, brought out his own version, Mrs Pucker's alcoholic lemonade, in September.
To differentiate his product from rivals, Drnec developed a clear sweet drink that tasted like the traditional RWhites lemonade. The main difference was Mrs Pucker's has 5% alcohol.
The drink has proved an instant hit. Its irreverent marketing and distinct taste proved popular with buyers, and Mrs Pucker's was soon snapped up by Tesco and many independent retailers.
Drnec says it may be difficult to establish the drink in pubs as he lacks a big brewer's distribution or its tied estate. Instead he has aimed it at supermarkets and off-licences and been quick to introduce a new range of flavours to stimulate interest.
Last October he brought out an orangeade and in November he introduced a strawberry flavour. Both are said to have gone down well, and Asda has recently agreed to take the whole range.
Bass is planning to launch orange and blackcurrant flavours this summer, but Drnec has another innovation up his sleeve. He is set to launch the first diet alcopop, under the Skinny Puckers brand name.
These drinks will have slightly less alcohol but will have half the calories of other alcopops. At the same time, Drnec wants to launch an alcoholic cola that "actually tastes like cola". He is also planning a diet version of this.
His next venture will be to start exporting Mrs Pucker's to America. He is negotiating a deal with a big American brewer and hopes to announce
a joint venture and distribution deal soon.
Drnec is dismissive of the cynics who say the drink is just a fad. He points to the continued strong sales and reckons the market for alcopops could top 250m cans and bottles, or about £300m. That would be about a third of the premium-beer market.
Drnec says: "There is no reason why alcoholic soft drinks cannot replace the wine-cooler market (a mixture of wine and fruit juice invented in 1981). At its peak in the 1980s, the wine-cooler market was worth £2billion."
He is also unconcerned by the controversy created by alcoholic soft drinks. Bass has been censured for its adverts, while many action groups have protested that the concoctions encourage under-age drinking.
Drnec does not believe this. He says his drinks are popular among adults who do not like the taste of alcohol.
"Most people disguise the taste of spirits with soft drinks," he says. "Drinking spirits because you like the taste is the same as reading Playboy for the articles," he says.
LONDON's Portobello Business Centre has launched a pilot scheme for a national initiative designed to provide small businesses with expert advice from consultants. The centrepiece is a guide to local consultants, issued by the centre and sponsored by Lloyds Bank. The centre claims the guide is "the first self-supporting training, advice and project management consultancy initiative designed specifically for the UK micro business community". For more details phone Alexandra Gajic on 0181-969 4562.
A MOVE to help small firms in south London exploit the full potential of information technology (IT) will be made on Wednesday when Solotec, the local training and enterprise council, holds an IT awareness seminar at Fairfield Halls, Croydon. Organised for Solotec by Kent Technology Transfer Centre, the seminar will highlight the impact IT can have on profitability. Practical advice from two experts will help entrepreneurs develop an IT strategy, including full use of the Internet and electronic data interchange. For more details phone Vicky Thistlewood on 01227 763414.
A CHAMBER of commerce has teamed up with a credit-management company in a novel move to tackle the bad-debt problem that bedevils small firms. Sheffield and Rotherham chamber of commerce has linked with Trade Indemnity Collections, part of the Trade Indemnity group, to launch a debt-collection service. Under the scheme, member firms will pay Trade Indemnity a discount to its normal commission, which is based on how much money it manages to recover.
Its shares have risen for five years but doubts are resurfacing about the copier giant's ability to keep up with its rivals. By Garth Alexander
XEROX, the company that came back from the brink of collapse in the 1980s to fight off Japanese competition and reclaim its position as the most profitable photocopier maker, is again at a crossroads.
After a disastrous foray into financial services costing more than $1billion, it is now trying to secure a place in the crowded digital-communications world.
Analysts are enthusiastic about its multi-functional copier-fax-printers and have made "strong buy" recommendations. The shares have almost quadrupled in the past five years, rising from $29 to a high of $144. But they plunged 11% a week ago when Xerox stunned the market with news of a 3% decline in American revenues and slowing sales of its top-line DocuTech machines. Now some observers are saying Xerox may have missed the boat.
Howard Anderson of Yankee Group, a Boston analyst, says: "They took 10 years wandering in the desert to find that their future did not lie in financial services. Now they are playing catch-up. It will be a real stretch for them to come back and establish themselves as a first-class company."
But Paul Allaire, 57, chief executive since 1990, remains convinced Xerox is on the right track to achieve double-digit growth for years to come through making complex machines that bridge the gap between paper and computers. The DocuTech machines launched in 1990 now have annual sales of more than $1billion although they cost as much as $350,000 (£232,000) each. Allaire says Xerox will quickly achieve sales of a $1billion for another line, the Document Center, launched four months ago. The company's 80%-owned British subsidiary, Rank Xerox, is strengthening its operations by appointing Bill Goode as managing director.
Last month Kohlberg Kravis Roberts paid $2.7billion for Xerox's five long-struggling insurance companies, ending the nightmare involvement in financial services. Xerox took a $1.5billion charge to cover the sale, and reported a $472m full-year loss (or $4.69 a share) on revenues of $18.9billion, compared with earnings of $794m ($6.73 a share) on revenues of $17.8billion in 1994.
Allaire says: "We thought we could find a more secure source of revenue by going into financial services. But it turned out that we didn't know how to manage them."
Last year's revenue was also badly affected by the defection of some top sales people following unpopular changes in the way commissions were paid. The company has been forced to return to the old commission system to retain staff, who require lengthy training in the complex operations of Xerox's high- tech machines.
Servicing provides the company with its main source of revenue, and the outsourcing of company documents, which is handled by a special Xerox division, is a rapidly growing business as more companies find it easier to let Xerox run its own machines. Revenue from document outsourcing rose from $800m in 1994 to $1.2billion last year.
In the past Xerox stumbled because it failed to spot developing trends. It ignored growth at the lower end of the copier market, where Sharp, Canon and other Japanese companies quickly seized customers. And it failed to keep up with Kodak's high-tech developments in the high-speed, expensive end of the market. By 1982 its market share had dropped to 13%, from 95% in 1970.
But Allaire says: "Since the middle 1980s we have been gaining market share in the copier market, and we have improved our profitability. Doing both at the same time is an achievement."
More important, Xerox is gaining market share fastest at the top of the market where margins are greatest, beating back its rivals, International Business Machines (IBM), Kodak and Canon.
Allaire insists Xerox is not about to repeat the fumbling of the 1970s when it invented brilliant ideas but failed to turn them into commercial products. Engineers at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center invented the first personal computer, the mouse, the icon menu, laser printer, and dozens of other revolutionary ideas, but other companies, such as Apple and Sun Microsystems, turned them into big businesses.
Allaire says: "That is not going to happen again. Now our engineers are much more closely involved in our product development. If they have an idea that has no immediate commercial application they can take it to a venture group, which we set up with outside investors. That group has picked up about a dozen inventions so far. Three or four of them are going to be big, and one is going to be an IPO [flotation] this year and could be a company worth hundreds of millions of dollars."
But in a predatory and fast-moving digital world, Xerox cannot afford to be complacent. Two years ago it unveiled revolutionary handwriting recognition software, Unistroke, but before it could get it to the market a rival software, which Xerox officials allege was based on their own, was being widely sold.
Death notices are being prepared for Bob Guccione's empire after the closure of two magazines and fears he may not meet a £2.8m debt payment, writes Garth Alexander.
POOR Bob Guccione. The porn king has been shouting himself hoarse for the past two weeks, denying that his empire is crumbling. But New York's journalists just will not listen. One after another they have claimed his publishing business is in trouble and may default on a $4.2m (£2.8m) debt payment due in June. Last week two Guccione magazines, Omni and Longevity, closed and the tabloids say that Penthouse, which lost money last year for the first time in 30 years, may also close.
"Penthouse crisis as Guccione fights for survival", was the New York Post's headline. The New York Observer blasted: "While Penthouse Slowly Goes Bust, Guccione Lives High on Its Hog".
Guccione has taken to bed, suffering from flu, says his spokesman. He is holed up in his Manhattan mansion, reportedly "the largest private residence in New York City", where he is surrounded by his art collection "one of the best in America", including works by Holbein, Picasso, Renoir, Degas and Van Gogh.
Nobody suggests he is bankrupt. Forbes magazine has estimated he is worth more than $300m. But two years ago, facing financing problems, he sold $85m of junk bonds secured on General Media International (GMI), the company that owns Penthouse and several other publications and businesses. Those bonds now trade at 30% less than their issue price, and Moody's recently downgraded them from B2 to Caa, almost the lowest rating a junk bond can have. Joel Lustig, a Moody's analyst, sees little hope for recovery: "The situation is precarious. There has been speculation in the market that he may have difficulty making the next interest payment on June 30. If Penthouse is a significant cash drain, he may have to close it."
Guccione, who at 64 still wears flamboyant clothes and gold chains, has dismissed such fears, claiming: "We have the money in the bank. We have never missed a payment."
He says Penthouse is returning to profit and adding circulation; the Audit Bureau of Circulation reports sales rose 1.6% last year to 1.1m (in 1985, sales were 3.2m). Advertising also rose $2m last year as the number of ad pages increased 10%. But Guccione admits GMI lost "eight or nine millions for the whole year", on revenues of about $110m.
GMI's problems, he maintains, stem from last year's 60% rise in paper costs and 34% rise in postal rates. This made it impossible to justify publication of the "marginally profitable" Omni, a science magazine with a circulation of 703,000, and Longevity, a health magazine with circulation of 358,400.
Guccione says he plans to cut costs and reduce staff to restore GMI to profit. It owns several sex and car magazines (Four Wheeler, Stock-Car Racing, Drag Illustrated), a Russian animation studio and various electronic publishing ventures. Penthouse's year-old site on the Internet has attracted more than $1m of advertising and gets 3m "hits" (visits) from readers every day. A pay-per-view scheme is to be introduced in the next six weeks. "I think that will make more money than a magazine can make on the news-stand," says Guccione.
Analysts are not so sure. Dennis McAlpine at Josephthal, Lyons and Ross, says: "It is difficult to collect money from the public because people don't want to give their credit-card numbers over the Internet. Playboy makes money from its Web site by linking it to hypertext advertisements, and then charging advertisers every time someone looks at their ad. That is a much better idea."
A Hollywood set designer and a special-effects engineer have been hired to improve the Internet sites. The would-be cyber-porn impresario says the new technology he is developing "will vastly enrich our electronic properties".
Jackie Markham, Guccione's spokeswoman, says innovative products such as the Internet services and CD-Rom games are providing rising revenues. One CD-Rom game is called Virtual Photo Shoot. Markham says: "You can imagine you are a photographer on a shoot with a model. You can ask her to bend over, take off her bra, or whatever. It is in full-motion video."
Last year GMI made half a dozen erotic films for video "great money-makers", says Markham. But Guccione's pet project, which he has been working on for 15 years, is another "spectacular" like his 1980 schlock classic, Caligula. Last month he announced he had signed Faye Dunaway to star in a film about Catherine the Great.
Guccione's taste for bloody entertainment caused a stir last November when he inaugurated the first pay-per-view television broadcast of a sadistic new sport called "extreme fighting", in which bare-fisted contestants bludgeon each other senseless. Attempts to stage a second event were frustrated by New York officials.
American reporters have asked questions about the way GMI's money is used, and have been particularly critical of the $2m salary paid to Guccione and his wife, a former dancer with the Folies-Bergeres; Guccione met her while he was a struggling young artist in London where he started Penthouse as a way to make some quick money.
Moody's Lustig says: "He may not be in real trouble, but sometimes news of disaster becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. It may make advertisers pull their ads."
Last week Guccione was offered an unexpected and unwelcome helping hand by his estranged son, Bob Jr, 38. The younger Guccione, who publishes the music magazine Spin, rang the New York Post to say he would buy Omni.
That offer was not what forced Guccione Snr to take to his bed, say insiders. But the porn king let it be known that he was just about ready to sell and return to painting. "I believe that was what I was intended for in this life all along," he told the Post.
SOMETIMES a course of action is so obvious, so commonsensical and so beneficial that it would be cruel not to pass it on. In the spirit of entente cordiale, I am pleased to do so. France should swallow her pride and devalue the franc.
French unemployment, it was announced last week, has climbed above 3m. Confidence has dropped in line with the economic slowdown. Growth has fallen from 4% in the first quarter of 1995 to 1% by the fourth, with no improvement in sight. This is the context in which to view measures announced last week to "relaunch" the economy a freeze on Fr20billion (£2.6billion) of public spending; a half-point cut, to 7%, in bank base rates, tax breaks to encourage consumer borrowing; and lower interest rates on national savings to discourage saving. The base-rate cut, it should be noted, was the product of talks with the banks. There is no precise link, unlike in Britain, between base rates and official rates. The package, announced by Jean Arthuis, the finance minister, was notable mainly for the fact it was co-ordinated with a similar, though more ambitious, move in Germany, of which more below. But, having been flagged a fortnight ago by Jacques Chirac, the president, it was not even successful as a piece of window dressing.
The truth is that France's economy is hogtied. A genuinely expansionary fiscal package cannot be contemplated when the budget deficit, 5.2% of gross domestic product (GDP) last year, and unlikely to fall sharply this, is well above the 3% Maastricht ceiling.
As for monetary policy, France is constrained in a way familiar to British readers from our 23-month experience of the exchange-rate mechanism (ERM). True, interest rates are lower than they were then (and the Bundesbank trimmed its "repo" rate on Thursday), but the combination of an overvalued franc and high real interest rates France has higher bank base rates than Britain, in spite of lower inflation is a formidable burden.
I do not think anyone can argue that Britain's post-ERM devaluation was anything but beneficial. Some of the fall in unemployment shown in the adjoining chart is explained by Britain's more flexible labour market. But without the growth triggered by the pound's fall, that flexibility would not have been tested. And French industry, which I suspect is more competitive than Britain's in 1992, would be well-placed to benefit from a lower franc.
Some say France's economy is unlike Britain's. Research by the Bank of France and the Basle-based Bank for International Settlements concludes that, with much borrowing in France either on fixed rates or on rates that rarely change, the economy's response to changes in short-term rates is muted. This is particularly true of personal borrowing, nearly 90% of which is unaffected by short-term interest-rate changes, mainly because of the dominance of fixed-rate mortgages.
But for companies the picture is different, with 70% of borrowing on variable interest rates, most of it linked to money-market rates. So companies would benefit from lower interest rates. In any case, if the French government believes interest rates are irrelevant, why did it trumpet a small cut as part of last week's package?
And there is no doubt at all that a big fall in the franc would be of enormous benefit to industry, generating the kind of export-led recovery that propelled British growth to nearly 4% in 1994.
But surely, I hear you say, a franc devaluation is the last thing the French government would wish, having invested so much in the franc fort policy in the past 10 years. September 1992 was a big enough blow for the British government, and we had been in the ERM for less than two years. With Europe theoretically entering the final stretch on the road to monetary union, and the irrevocable linking of the franc and D-mark, it would seem to be a question, for France, of just hanging on with the franc fort for a little while longer.
But this is wrong for a number of reasons. First, France could devalue without compromising its ability to meet the Maastricht exchange-rate condition. This condition is that a currency must have been within the ERM's normal fluctuation margins for two years before the decision on Emu participation is taken. But "normal" in this context means the 15% bands adopted in 1993, when the ERM was under pressure. The franc could fall 10% or even 12% against the D-mark and still meet the condition.
Second, devaluation may be the only way France can meet the other criteria. Gwyn Hacche, a James Capel economist, has done some simulations that show this. On unchanged policies the franc fort and no more fiscal tightening the economy grows 1% this year, 2% next, but is left with a 4.3% budget deficit in 1997.
Option two, retaining a strong franc but tightening fiscal policy by 2% of GDP, would allow France to scrape under the 3% budget deficit limit next year, but only at the expense of recession this year (GDP down 1%) and weak growth, 1.7%, next. This would be avoided if the franc fell (the simulations assume a 7% drop). Growth this year would be 1.6%, next year 2.9%, but the budget deficit next year, at 3.7% of GDP, would still miss the Maastricht target.
The trick would be for the French authorities to perform option four. Combine a drop in the franc with budget-deficit surgery equivalent to about 1% of GDP, always politically easier when the economy is growing. This was Britain's post-ERM strategy. In the case of France, even with a modest 7% franc fall, this would give growth next year of 2.5% and a budget deficit of 3%, bang in line with Maastricht.
A fall in the franc would be good for France and good for Europe. Everybody recognises there are two big problems for the economies at the heart of Europe. The first is that they are inflexible. The second is that their currencies are overvalued against the dollar and former ERM currencies such as sterling and the lira.
Tackling inflexibility will take time. The response from a lower exchange rate will be much quicker because he German authorities, faced with a falling franc, would have a choice either leave German industry high and dry against its newly competitive trading partner, or take action, through lower interest rates, to lower the D-mark. That way, Europe's core currencies would fall, averting recession just in time.
Will it happen? As well as charm and grace, an abiding French characteristic is pigheadedness. Advice, particularly from Britain, is likely to fall on stony ground. But if Paris and Bonn are genuine about wanting to keep Emu on track (a difficult task), this looks to be the only way of doing so. Bon voyage.
STAGFLATION, that dreaded combination of a stagnant, no-growth economy and inflation, is rearing its ugly head in America or so some analysts think. If they are right, the consequences will be felt not only by executives struggling to keep their share prices at current astronomic levels, but by politicians in both parties.
The evidence of a slowdown is mounting. Late last week the National Association of Purchasing Managers said its manufacturing sector activity index fell in January as companies struggled to work off excessive stocks. The bellwether auto industry is a case in point. Despite surprisingly good January sales, a 76-day supply of cars now sits on dealers' lots, well above the 60-day supply dealers prefer. As a consequence, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler plan to build almost 10% fewer cars and light trucks in the first quarter of this year than in 1995.
So the Federal Reserve last week cut short-term interest rates a quarter of a point. Most banks followed, cutting prime lending rates from 8.5% to 8.25%. The consensus of Fed watchers is that further cuts are in store, and sooner rather than later. For one thing, real interest rates remain high. For another, with the economy stuck at zero growth, the Fed would not want to be seen as having followed a monetary policy so restrictive that it tipped the nation into recession just before the president must decide whether to nominate its chairman, Alan Greenspan, for another term, and just as the presidential and congressional election campaigns are heating up.
That a recession would seriously dim Bill Clinton's now-bright re-election prospects goes without saying. The president has just assured the nation, in his State of the Union message, that the economy has never been in better shape. And he willingly took credit for the growth in jobs and the low inflation of recent years. Were things to turn sour he would be hard-pressed to escape a good share of the blame.
Less obvious is the fact that a downturn would probably put paid to the faltering drive by Bob Dole, the Senate Majority Leader, for the Republican presidential nomination. Dole finds himself in an unexpectedly serious race with Steve Forbes, the millionaire heir. Forbes is coming on strong in part because he is spending millions of dollars on campaign ads in the key primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire but only in part. More important is his message: replace the Byzantine system of tax codes with a simple, flat tax of 17% and the god of growth will be unleashed.
Forbes, a dyed-in-the-wool supply-sider, contends that if the disincentives to work, wealth accumulation, and entrepreneurship he says are contained in existing tax laws were eliminated, growth and rising real incomes would follow. His audiences are starting to believe the Forbes message and take a liking to the messenger, whose unspin-doctored style is an appealing contrast to his rivals' more professionally polished performances. Dole thinks he will recover lost ground when voters realise Forbes's proposal would wipe out their prized mortgage-interest deductions. But if there is a recession, voters are likely to find Forbes's pro-growth message even more attractive, and wonder why they should vote for Dole, a man who has spent his long political life collaborating in the development of the current tax system.
So Clinton and Dole are united in their hope that the Fed will continue to lower interest rates. Given the economy's current stall, they are likely to get their wish unless the second half of the stagflation dragon, inflation, begins to breath fire.
At the moment, that seems unlikely. Both wholesale and retail prices have been stable, except for energy prices, which spurted briefly during the winter storms of December and January. But dig beneath the price data and things become less clear.
John Lonski, a senior economist at Moody's Investor Services, says the recent jump in "help wanted" ads portends a further tightening of the labour market, and that the prices of several commodities, among them grains and metals, have risen sharply. This brings me, quite naturally, to that absorbing subject, the gold price.
Many economists are convinced a rising gold price is a forerunner of rising inflation. When the public expects its paper currency to decline in value, which is what happens in a period of inflation, there is a flight to gold, which is seen as having some intrinsic value. So the theory goes. And since the gold price has been rising of late, and some say is likely to increase from its current level of around $415 to $600-$700 soon, we had best go on an inflation watch. That means no more Fed interest-rate cuts and perhaps even some increases.
This, respond those who want the Fed to continue on its present course of lower rates, is nonsense. The gold price, says Stephen Peck, a money manager, "has nothing to do with inflation" and all to do with the fact that falling interest rates lower the opportunity cost of holding gold unlike with a savings account, you cannot earn interest on the gold bars stacked under your bed. Then, too, the newly affluent middle and upper classes in emerging countries doubt the soundness of their nations' paper currencies and see gold both as "a way of saving and of displaying wealth". So the increase in demand for the yellow metal accounts for its price run-up no fear of American inflation required.
For now, the Peck view is in the ascendancy, and the consensus is that the Fed can cut interest rates without triggering inflation, and should to stimulate a stalled economy. A few more negative economic reports, and it probably will.
The Mail on Sunday: Buy Merchant Retail Group, Manx & Overseas and Flare.
The Sunday Telegraph: Buy Scottish & Newcastle, Frederick Cooper.
SAMSUNG, the Korean industrial group, may rescue Fokker, the troubled Dutch aircraft maker, writes The Sunday Telegraph. A saviour for Fokker is expected to emerge on Tuesday.
BAT Industries, the tobacco and insurance group, is considering a bid for Imperial Tobacco when Hanson demerges, says The Sunday Telegraph. The paper says Hanson has made informal approaches to BAT.
THE media group Carlton Communications is in takeover talks with HTV, reports The Observer. Talks have begun, but a deal could not be consummated until after the broadcasting bill is passed. Meanwhile, The Mail on Sunday says Standard Life, the Scottish investment group, is heading a revolt against "fat cat" bonus schemes planned at Carlton, which would give Michael Green, the chairman, £500,000 on top of basic salary.
Companies will need to become much bigger if they want to be world-class competitors, writes Andrew Lorenz
‘If forecasts are true, many will either expand sharply, lose their independence, or fade out of the business in the next few years'IT WAS AN appropriate setting for one of the leading lights of British engineering to predict a new revolution. George Simpson, the Lucas Industries chief executive and former chairman of Rover, was addressing a Birmingham conference to mark the centenary of the car industry.
But the focus of the conference a fortnight ago was the future, not the past. Simpson's underlying message, aimed at the component makers, which include many of the country's foremost engineering groups, was that they face a transformation in the structure of their industry. That, Simpson said, was a big opportunity and a huge threat.
Within 15 years, Simpson predicted, there would be no more than about 20 front-rank component suppliers in the world. "There will be a major consolidation of players as companies seek strategically to align or merge to meet the challenges of the global vehicle industry," he forecast.
"The implication of this for the UK component industry is how do we gain the necessary scale to achieve this status? Although many of us have reasonable organic-growth records and prospects, this is not going to get us into the big league. Therefore we all face the challenge of achieving scale through effective strategic alliance or merger/takeover activity."
The extent of the upheaval foreseen by Simpson can be gauged from the fact that today there are about 10 first-tier motor-industry suppliers in Britain alone. British Steel, BTR, Lucas itself, GKN, Pilkington, TI and T&N are among the largest, with BBA, Laird, and Avon Rubber also significant. If Simpson is right, many of these will either expand sharply, lose their independence or fade out of the business in the next few years.
None of these companies is wholly focused on the motor industry, and many face similar pressures in other sectors. From defence through aerospace to white goods, equipment suppliers are coming under increasing pressure to get both bigger and better.
John Parker, chairman of Babcock International, which supplies a range of industries with process plant and mechanical handling equipment, says: "Companies will come together because of the sheer marketing and engineering costs involved in globalising their businesses." The motor industry is the most powerful engine for driving through change. So important is the world's largest manufacturing industry to the blue-chip British engineers that their response to the demands of their customers for lower prices and greater investment will determine the future shape and fate of their businesses.
Kumar Bhattacharyya, professor of manufacturing systems at Warwick University, says each supplier must create a virtuous circle in which successful expansion generates the economies of scale needed to become still more profitable or be dragged down by ever-diminishing returns into a spiral of decline.
Rationalisation alone is now insufficient to generate the cash necessary to be a winner, says Bhattacharyya: "These days, improving manufacturing efficiency is no longer enough. You need successful innovation. To do that, you have to carry out sufficient research and development, and for that, you need large enough returns which can only come from economies of scale."
Those stark economics leave most of the British, and mainland European, companies at a disadvantage to their larger American and Japanese rivals. The Americans, in particular, have a head start in the global race. Dick Snell, head of the motor components division of the American giant, Tenneco, said last week: "We see no signs of European players developing into global players of the size and resources we envisage as being needed."
Garel Rhys, professor and motor-industry expert at Cardiff Business School, says there are several concerns about the British companies "the inability of the UK supply infrastructure to offer a sufficient range of products, the low-technology bias of some of the UK output and the inability of many of the smaller first-tier and second-tier firms to give the necessary commitment to improvement and self-analysis".
One characteristic of a world-class company is that it introduces new products at twice the rate of others, says Rhys. The British components industry spends only 1.5% of turnover on R&D, compared with 3% in France and 6% in Germany. "The total expenditure is disturbingly thin," says Rhys.
But he is still hopeful that many of the British companis can make the global leap. Boosted by rising vehicle production in Britain, largely generated by the Japanese transplant factories of Nissan, Honda and Toyota, there is, according to Rhys, "a sufficient core of major UK firms capable of being first-tier suppliers" in the new global era. Some of the British such as GKN, TI and BTR are already there. Under Sir David Lees, its chairman, and Trevor Bonner, its automotive chief, GKN has concentrated on "depth, not width", streamlining its once-diverse range of vehicle products while increasing its domination of the free market in driveshafts for front-wheel and four-wheel drive vehicles. Sir Christopher Lewinton, TI's chairman, has slimmed down the group's motor-component portfolio while building a leading position in tubing for fuel and brake lines. BTR is a world leader in seals, Pilkington in automotive glass.
In the forthcoming industry consolidation, these groups will be among the predators. Among the other large British players, the positions of Lucas and T&N are more ambivalent.
Simpson's Lucas wants to develop an electronics capability that could make it Britain's leading vehicle systems integrator, but it has significant weaknesses including a lack of presence in America and a large but lagging brakes business. Sir Colin Hope, T&N's chairman, has built a truly international engine-products business, but at less than £1billion the group is small in terms of market value.
In his speech, Simpson implied that British manufacturers seeking global scale might do better to link with overseas groups than to unite among themselves. "The shape of alliances will tend to be driven by customer technology or product-access needs rather than just by scale itself or national consolidation considerations," he said. But it would be surprising if some of the leading British suppliers did not consider deploying their financial and industrial muscle to buy part
or mall of their smaller or weaker compatriots.
Adding uncertainty to the transition process is the fact that several managements are in flux, with new chief executives either recently installed at BTR and T&N or now being sought by GKN and potentially by Lucas, should Simpson move to the General Electric Company. The global challenge facing Britain's engineers can only be intensified by this human factor.
Panmure Gordon is the latest institution to be bought by the Germans, writes Kirstie Hamilton
THEY may be dressed in pinstriped suits with shiny, lace-up shoes, but scratch a City gent these days and you may find a German underneath.
Last week, West Merchant Bank, the investment banking arm of Westdeutsche Landesbank, took another step in the German advance on the City by paying £30m for Panmure Gordon, the stockbroker.
West Merchant Bank's move is not in the same league as Dresdner Bank's £1billion purchase of Kleinwort Benson last summer or Deutsche Bank's 1990 £1billion takeover of Morgan Grenfell, but it confirms the Germans are not finished buying up the City. There is more to come.
Commerzbank, which last year took control of Jupiter Asset Management, the fund manager, is still in expansion mode. Berliner Bank investigated the prospect of buying Gartmore, the fund manager, in conjunction with Nationsbank, but has temporarily retreated. And Deutsche Bank, the biggest of them all, is making its second assault, expanding its London-based investment bank at a cracking pace.
West Merchant Bank, run in London by the less than Germanic-sounding Patrick Macdougall, is well aware the German banks are seen by some as fools parted easily from their money.
When London's financial centre was first opened to foreigners during Big Bang in 1986, the Americans paid vast sums for brokers and banks, some of which turned out to be expensive mistakes. Now the Germans are being accused of the same folly. But Macdougall disagrees: "We are not trying to compete with Deutsche or Dresdner in London. Our approach has been lower key; using building blocks we can handle."
Compared with the big London houses, Panmure is a manageable bite. Its last reported profits were £3m before tax in 1994. Panmure may be West Merchant Bank's only targeted acquisition, but is not the end of the bank's ambitions in London. Macdougall says he expects to add a further 150 staff in the next two years, taking the total for all its investment banking business up to as many as 900.
Deutsche Morgan Grenfell (DMG) is also adding to its staff in London. For several years after acquiring Morgan Grenfell, the investment bank, Deutsche laid low, letting Morgan retain its identity. But last year Germany's largest bank said it intended to create DMG as a full-service investment bank based in London, putting Michael Dobson from Morgan in to run the whole enterprise.
In Frankfurt, the decision went down like a lead balloon and there have been defections among Deutsche executives. At the highest levels of German banking, industry and government, eyebrows were raised about the decision to "desert" Frankfurt, even though many of DMG's staff remain there.
An executive at a rival German bank based in Frankfurt says: "Here it is seen as a betrayal. We recognise London is the financial centre for Europe, but Deutsche Bank turned it into a blatant snub." Nor did the Germans take kindly to having decisions taken for them by British bankers whose pay cheques put their own salaries in the shade.
"Morgan Grenfell effectively took control of a bank much bigger than it was," says the rival banker. "If you are on a ship and there is a mutiny, you jump."
John Craven, Morgan Grenfell's chairman at the time of the takeover and still a key figure in the investment bank, concedes the decision to base DMG in London created disquiet in Frankfurt. But he says the initial problems are being smoothed out.
While some staff have defected in Frankfurt, the situation in London has been mostly in reverse. Last year DMG hired 150 people. A large number came from SG Warburg, which was being taken over by Swiss Bank Corporation. Only the loss of Guy Dawson and Justin Dowley, two highly regarded corporate financiers who moved to Merrill Lynch, and the departure of members of the Deutsche Bank derivatives team, marred the progress in London.
Dresdner Bank's Kleinwort Benson takeover appears to have progressed in statesmanlike fashion. Insiders report some areas of the two banks have been integrated Dresdner's German equity business now reports to Kleinwort but mostly the two have found their operations complementing rather than overlapping. At the time of the takeover Dresdner promised an approach similar to Deutsche Bank's relationship to Morgan Grenfell in its early years, with Kleinwort retaining autonomy wherever possible. Commerzbank remains one of the few large German banks not to have found a British base. Its attempts to buy Smith New Court, the broking firm, were disrupted when Merrill moved in with a tempting offer.
Now, Commerzbank, headed by Martin Kohlhaussen, is playing down the prospect of buying a business, and says it will concentrate on organic growth. German analysts say the bank is looking to hire about 150 staff in total in London, New York and Singapore and is switching all of its non-D-mark trading businesses to its London offices. In London, analysts are cynical about Commerzbank's chances of cracking the City without buying a local firm. But they admit there is one problem Commerzbank must grapple with first; the dearth of potential targets.
Cazenove, one of the few remaining independent stockbrokers, is unlikely to be receptive to a bid. Schroders, the only remaining big player, is expensive and reluctant to give up its independence. Some see Robert Fleming as a candidate, although with more than £1billion of capital it too is a big bite.
While the German ambitions remain unfulfilled, prices for merchant banks, brokers and fund management companies are destined to remain high. Whether the Germans really are repeating the mistakes of the Americans in the 1980s will only become clear when the takeover boom stops and a bear market looms.
This month's Brit Awards are likely to show our groups have had a renaissance and are leading the world again. Rufus Olins reports
WHEN Blur swept the Brit Awards last year the rock world's equivalent of the Oscars few outside the industry knew who they were. Today the group, regularly front-page news, is one of a handful leading a renaissance in the British music business.
According to Paul Burger, chairman of Sony Music (UK) and this month's Brit Awards, British acts are again leading the world. "There is a pendulum that swings creatively back and forth across the ocean and I am convinced the pendulum is now swinging back to Britain," he says.
Steve Redmond, editor of Music Week, says last year was the best for British music for more than a decade. "It was just a phenomenal outpouring of talent. The really big issue is how much it will sell overseas," he adds.
Statistics to be released this month by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) will show that British consumers spent a record amount on music last year. In the week before Christmas, sales jumped by 40% to 10m albums. Overall last year, sales are estimated to have reached £1.6billion, a rise of 15% over 1994.
But the growth in popularity of British music already extends beyond the UK. According to the BPI, sales generated by British artists are rising around the world, not just in America but also in Australia and on the Continent. Having fallen from 25% of the world market in 1989 to a low of 18% in 1994, British acts are moving back towards that level, says the BPI's Peter Scaping.
In tandem with the growth in sales, Burger has upgraded the Brit Awards, which on February 19 will be more hyped than ever. Every big music retailer will tomorrow be supplied with promotional material detailing the nominated acts beneath the slogan, "The Brits Are Coming".
BBC Radio1 listeners will vote for the best British single, and Carlton Television will run trailers and a preview leading up to the 90-minute television special, which will be screened at prime-time the day after the awards. It will run in 125 countries, which dwarfs even the Grammys, the main music awards in America.
To be nominated for a Brit award is not just a creative accolade, it is commercially significant. After Blur walked off with four awards last year, sales of their album jumped 125% the following week.
This year four bands dominate the nominations: Blur, Oasis, Pulp and Radiohead. These names may still not mean much to middle-aged, mainstream music listeners, but they mean a great deal to the famous companies that market and distribute their songs Thorn-EMI for Blur and Radiohead, Sony for Oasis, and PolyGram for Pulp.
This year's nominations confirm not just the arrival of a few new bands, but the domination of the four big music companies EMI, Sony, Polygram and Warner Music that account for 70% of all UK music sales and a higher proportion worldwide.
The health of the music market for the leading companies was demonstrated last November when Thorn EMI, fuelled by its EMI music subsidiary, announced a 44% increase in pre-tax profits to £188m. EMI, which will soon announce details of its demerger from Thorn, went on to pay $85m for a four-album deal with Janet Jackson.
The deal with Jackson, though extreme, highlights the value of internationally successful artists. The trick for the big companies with British acts is to turn them into successes on the world stage.
But there is a suspicion among some senior figures in the business that the British pop industry will never regain its glory of the 1960s when the Beatles and the Rolling Stones found a worldwide audience.
Success in Britain is no guarantee of success in America. BPI figures show album sales of British acts in America have slipped from a peak of 20% to less than 15%.
But Burger believes the new acts will help to turn that round. "The Britpop explosion is being viewed as the vanguard of what is pushing the industry forward," he says.
In the past few years the most popular music in America has been homegrown rock. But there are already signs that British bands are breaking through. Oasis is leading the way. It has a single in America's top 20 and a No5 album, which went platinum last week.
Burger, an American who came to Britain a few years ago, says: "British acts that typically work in America don't go overboard theatrically. The breakthrough of Oasis augurs very well for all the guitar-driven, melodic music coming out of the UK under the moniker Britpop."
Not only America counts commercially. Increasingly, music companies are focusing on other markets, which are not so expensive or difficult to crack. Retail sales in Europe, at £6billion, equal those in North America, according to BPI figures. In Germany retail sales last year hit £2billion.
In the past few years there has also been more acceptance for bands that come from Europe, Australia and Canada. But ultimately America dominates, not just in sales but also in prestige. Burger says: "America is not the be all and end all. But it is still the number-one market and can be the trendsetter."
RECENT bid talk in the restaurant sector seems to have passed over My Kinda Town, owner of Henry JBeans and Chicago Rib Shack. MKT has a dull rating. It runs 44 restaurants in 14 countries, but has suffered because of its exposure to the French market. Analysts expect MKT will report flat interim profits of £1.33m, but should make £3.4m for the full year. The shares at 131p are on a p/e of 13. Buy.
EXPECT good news from BSG, 641/2p, one of our shares of the year, whose board was strengthened last week by the appointment of Lionel Stammers, the former BTR executive. BSG's Rumbold aircraft-equipment business, already scoring a big hit with British Airways' new first-class and club-class cabins, has clinched contracts with two of America's premier airlines United and Southwest for first-class cabins and galleys respectively.
SHARES in Bloomsbury, the publisher, have been hit by City fears over the state of the publishing market. Rivals Hodder Headline and Cassell have both warned on profits, but analysts expect Bloomsbury will meet 1995 estimates of £1m and should make £1.3m this year. The group has had its best January sales with three books in the top 10 list. The shares at 82p are on a p/e of just 7.5. Looks cheap.
THE property group Pillar, headed by Raymond Mould, is looking good long-term value at 151p. It is exposed to three of the most promising areas in the sector: retail warehouse parks, shopping centres and West End offices. The recent funding deal for its large office development in London's Mayfair with the Swedish fund AP Fonden looks an attractive package.
TIPPED last December at 32p, Bardon shares have bounced to 39p and investors should sit tight. Directors at the quarry-to-aggregates group are on bid alert, worried they could be the next victim of sector consolidation. But even if a bid does not come, Bardon is in good health after being turned round by Peter Tom, chief executive.
SHARES in Scottish Television, which rose 27p on Friday to 530p, are expected to receive a further boost this week from two broker's reports. The notes, from Kleinwort Benson and SBC Warburg, are expected to suggest the core television business remains undervalued once a price has been put on the group's stakes in GMTV, ITN and Coutts Consulting.
UPBEAT presentations to City analysts, coupled with a flurry of broker buy notes, put some fizz back into Scottish & Newcastle shares.They closed at 656p, up 43p. James Capel believes they still offer good value. Unlike rivals Bass and Whitbread, S&N has good organic growth to flow from its three existing operations. The City has also been reassured by S&N's decision to delay its heavy Center Parcs development programme.
BRITAIN's top 10 performing companies as measured by Market Value Added (the difference between a company's market value and the capital raised from investors) will receive Sunday Times awards from Lord Fraser, trade and industry minister, at a seminar and lunch ceremony in London on February 15.
The top wealth creators include some of Britain's most respected companies, such as Shell, Glaxo, Unilever and Marks & Spencer. They headed a list of 200 companies published by The Sunday Times in December showing how much wealth each company had created for investors and how much Economic Value Added (EVA) had been generated.
EVA is after-tax operating profit less the cost of paying investors for the use of their capital. Research shows that EVA is the strongest driver of company share prices more powerful than stated profits, earnings per share, dividend growth and other traditional measures.
An increasing number of analysts and fund managers use EVA in selecting shares. They include staff at CS First Boston, the American investment bank. In a recent report it said: "We do not think earnings per share are a valuable measure to use for stock selection." It said EVA could be used to discover trends not yet reflected in earnings per share, and also to forecast share prices. "The analyst can use the EVA framework to determine where companies are creating value or destroying it," it said.
Another investment bank, PaineWebber, suggested investors buy shares in Olin Corporation, a cyclical chemicals, metals and ammunition company, after it adopted EVA. It wrote: "Consultants are now in the process of training all of Olin's key business managers on how to use EVA. Starting this year, management will have 80% or more of their bonus compensation tied to EVA goals. No economic profit through a cycle, no bonus."
PaineWebber said last August that if Olin lifted its trendline return on capital to its cost of capital, the shares would rise 34%. They have since risen nearly 40%.
At the seminar Joel Stern and Bennet Stewart of Stern Stewart, the New York consultancy that invented EVA, will show how companies use EVA and how EVA is used for share selection. This will be followed by a question-and-answer session chaired by John Jay, The Sunday Times City Editor.
The event is aimed mainly at analysts, fund managers and academics specialising in finance but private investors are also invited to participate, though places are limited.
It will take place at 9am at the Quayside Restaurant, St Katharine's Dock, London E1. The fee is £200 plus Vat, which includes lunch. Those who are interested in taking part should contact Woodside Communications by fax on 0171-433 1569.
A SHARP move in the share price at Border Television left James Graham, managing director, and Peter Brownlow, director, high and dry after both made chunky share disposals at 245p. The shares have since moved up to 290p, leaving the pair out of pocket, but despite this rise investors should take heed of the sales.
Shares in Border, the smallest of the ITV television companies, have outperformed the market by more than 25% over the past three months. The jump has been fuelled by takeover speculation after the government's relaxation of restrictions on media ownership.
Brownlow and Graham have some attractive options to exercise, but shareholders should consider taking profits as well. Melvyn Bragg, the broadcaster and author, is stepping down as Border's chairman at Easter, to be succeeded by Graham.
WILLIAMS HOLDINGS, the international manufacturing group, has put its three specialist electronics businesses up for sale and is said to be talking to venture-capital groups about a deal. The electronics companies supply microswitches, motors and timers to automotive, consumer-goods and office- equipment makers with factories in Britain, Germany and Switzerland. They made about £6m profit last year.
The sale would complete Williams's transformation under Roger Carr, right, chief executive. From being a diversified conglomerate in 1991, it is now focused on three businesses building products, fire protection and security products. Williams sold its engineering operations to a management buyout team in 1993 and retained a stake in the business, which was floated last year. Williams will use the proceeds to make bolt-on acquisitions. The shares, at 347p, look good value.
WANT to overawe the opposition and boost your ego? Get a new headquarters such as 50 Pall Mall, which is being redeveloped by Arcona and AMP. It boasts an atrium containing probably the biggest mirror in London. Among those who have shown an interest is Carlton Communications, the media empire headed by Michael Green. But whether the mirror is big enough is unclear: it is only nine stories high.
THE pleasures of a massage enjoyed by business chiefs, at least in their company accounts, are about to be exposed again. Terry Smith, the analyst, is preparing a new version of Accounting For Growth, his book about how companies massage their figures. "I'll be looking at new techniques and new companies," he says.
He is also writing Corporate Pathology, dissecting company deaths to produce indicators of which companies may go bust in future. It should be fun.
When some bosses, whose companies came under Smith's spotlight, read Accounting for Growth, their blood boiled. Smith ended up being fired by his then employer, UBS, which sued him for breach of copyright.
Smith, in turn, sued for breach of contract. He subpoenaed Robert Montague, former chairman of Tiphook, Lord Sheppard, chairman of Grand Metropolitan, and Sir Colin Marshall, then a director of GrandMet, as witnesses.
Matters were settled out of court but not before Smith's solicitor had offered travel expenses of £20 each to the three potential witnesses. Apparently Montague took the money (but he later went bust); Sheppard refused it (after all, he earned £1m last year); and Marshall took the money but jokingly asked if he had to declare it for tax purposes.
FOR a man who has made £170m from greeting cards, Andrew Brownsword is oddly reluctant to say hello to the world. He rarely agrees to be interviewed or photographed.
Even when he sold his business to Hallmark Cards, a $2billion, private American company, no details of the deal emerged. But documents now show it paid a handsome price, and last month it handed Brownsword a further instalment of nearly £5m.
The Andrew Brownsword Collection, begun at his kitchen table 20 years ago, turned over nearly £31m in 1994 and made a profit of £21m. Brownsword was paid £526,000 peanuts compared with the £3.6m salary he received in the late 1980s.
But don't rush to send him a card of commiseration. Brownsword owned nearly all the shares in the company, and in January 1994 they were sold to Hallmark.
It paid about £165m not all at once, but in handy stages. In January 1994 it coughed up £16.7m in cash and £108.5m in loan notes. And if that was running low, last month Brownsword received a further £4.7m in cash. The rest depends on performance, which presumably is why Brownsword still bothers to run the company.
EVEN before he annoys people with his proposed Sunday business newspaper, Tom Rubython is facing the wrath of neighbours who would like to boot him out of his home.
"It's like an episode of Minder," wails a neighbour in Marylebone, London. Rubython, she says, arrived at his new flat in a "battered white transit van", and appeared on occasion wearing a "shiny suit". Naturally her suspicions were aroused.
But lack of glamour is no bar to him occupying an elegant flat in a smart area of town. Instead, the residents' association is complaining to the council about the noise and disruption of his activities, alleging he is conducting business from a flat meant for residential use.
Rubython, alas, was too tied up getting on with his business to comment.
THE fat pirate Robert Maxwell once tried to blackmail Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, a book published last week discloses.
Maxwell, The Final Verdict is a gripping account of the tycoon's excesses, his empire's disintegration and the trial of his sons.
The author, Tom Bower, has woven a tale of extraordinary detail, including how Maxwell once pressed Lloyd Webber to suppress Bower's earlier book on Maxwell, published by a company owned by the musician.
Cap'n Bob threatened to print embarrassing pictures of Lloyd Webber in the Daily Mirror unless the book was stopped. To his credit, Lloyd Webber stood firm. Others slid into his ample embrace more easily. Among them was Lord Walker, the former Tory cabinet minister who was recruited as chairman of Maxwell Communication Corporation; after only 12 weeks he walked away with a pay-off worth £500,000.
Lord Donoughue, a potential minister in a Labour government, was also well-paid as vice-chairman of a company central to Maxwell's financial dealings.
Top lawyers and journalists who worked for Maxwell, such as Charles Wilson, now editing The Independent, and Peter Jay, now at the BBC, and City figures, such as Sir Michael Richardson of NMRothschild, and Eric Sheinberg of Goldman Sachs, also come under Bower's scrutiny.
The book also has a lighter side in the chronicling of Maxwell's absurdities. The tycoon once, for example, had his best suit flown from London to New York by Concorde simply because he wanted to hobnob with bigwigs at a dinner for the American president.
But Maxwell's son Kevin is not amused and has written to the attorney-general about the book. My advice is to buy a copy quickly.
Maxwell, the Final Verdict, by Harper Collins, at £16.99
ONE of the City's landmark buildings, the home of Lloyd's of London, the troubled insurance market, is to be bought by Despa, the German property fund, writes John Waples. The Council of Lloyd's, the market's governing body, is due to meet on Wednesday to ratify the £180m deal. The sale of the controversial glass-and-steel sheathed building forms a central role in efforts by Lloyd's to push through its £5.9 billion rescue package.
Lloyd's will lease back the building, at a rent which will give Despa a return on its investment of more than 6%. Despa, advised by Richard Ellis, the property consultant, has made it known it wants to conclude the deal swiftly. It has weighed up the potential downside if Lloyd's collapses, but the top price it is prepared to pay suggests it is confident the market's survival is ensured. For Lloyd's, a quick sale is a trade off between speed and the money it needs.
The Germans have become some of the biggest overseas investors in central London in the past six years. They have also been the most successful. Unlike the Swedish and Japanese firms that piled into the market in the 1980s when property values were sky high, the Germans have been able to cherry-pick some of the capital's most sought-after buildings at bargain-basement prices. The Germans are also financing some of London's biggest property developments. This week should bring news that a German fund is putting up money for the redevelopment of British Petroleum's Britannic Tower.
Despa already owns the head office of John Lewis, the retailer, and Deloitte & Touche, the accountant.
HANSON may pay a £600m special dividend to its 230,000 investors as part of its plan to break itself up into four quoted companies.
Last week Lord Hanson, the chairman, refused to comment on the likely balance sheets of the demerged groups, which are focused on building materials and equipment, coal and electricity, chemicals and tobacco.
But analysts believe Hanson will sweeten the break-up and his retirement next year at 75 with a special payout to shareholders, many of whom have held the shares for decades. Last year the group paid a 12p-a-share dividend costing £622m and it is possible such a payment could be doubled for its last trading year.
Such a dividend would increase the debt shouldered by the four companies, placing their managements under greater pressure to perform. Before his death, Lord White, Hanson's partner, would preach the virtues of gearing to enhance investor returns. Hanson's executives have also been impressed by the performance of US Industries, the group created out of 34 smaller American subsidiaries and demerged on Wall Street last year. Since this debut, the shares, distributed free to investors, have soared from $13 to $18.
The bulk of the quoted debt securities will remain with Hanson group, slimmed down to building materials and equipment but also holding its National Grid stake. Lord Hanson will chair it until his retirement next year, with Andrew Dougal, the finance director, becoming chief executive.
Once Hanson retires, Chris Collins, now vice-chairman, is likely to become chairman. It is not clear yet whether Hanson's son, Robert, will remain with the group or use his skills honed at NMRothschild, the investment bank, and at Hanson, to build his own business.
Last week Hanson responded to suggestions that his son was being groomed for the chair by saying: "We hope we will keep Robert Hanson after the demerger but it is not being done with any intention that he should be the next chairman."
With conglomerates deeply out of fashion in the City, Hanson is bowing to the inevitable and breaking into four independently quoted companies. John Jay reports on Lord Hanson's swansong
Every January the top executives at the Hanson industrial conglomerate head west for a quarterly budget meeting presided over by their chairman, Lord Hanson. For years they alternated between Hanson's Palm Springs home and the Los Angeles residence of his partner, Lord White. But this year the meeting was different. One key person was missing: White's death last August had brought to an end one of the most enduring partnerships and deprived the company of its great dealmaker, a restless and original strategist.
Second, the executives had gathered for three days away from the bustle of everyday business to debate Operation Break. It was a deceptively simple codename, but with huge importance for a business that began its City life in the mid-1960s as the tiny Wiles Group but which today has a £10billion market value.
Last week the content of Operation Break was revealed to Hanson's 230,000 shareholders as the most radical shake-up in a big British company for decades. Instead of one group, Hanson will become four independently quoted companies. They will focus respectively on building-materials and equipment, coal and electricity, chemicals and tobacco. The building materials and equipment company will retain the Hanson name but the break-up is effectively the final chapter in a remarkable tale of corporate enterprise.
While so many business builders have clung too long to the reins of power and found themselves shunted into retirement through investor putsch or hostile bid, Hanson has decided to be master of his own endgame, producing a break-up that makes sense and will serve investors' long-term interests. Sitting last week amid the memorabilia of his office, the photos of family and friends, including a number of White, and trophies of takeover battles of yesteryear, he told The Sunday Times: "People might think I would want to preserve Hanson as a monument. But I have never been a monument man. In fact I have always been a little embarrassed at having my name on the door. I have never looked at the company as an ego trip."
Such an attitude is unusual among entrepreneurs, who often fail because they get too emotionally involved in their corporate creations. At Hanson things are different, as White once showed when asked what he would do if Hanson faced a bid. His response was that he would "send the limousine over" to collect the purchaser.
AT THE HEART of the Hanson story is a management method that Hanson hopes will live on in the four new companies even if they are structured to reflect current corporate orthodoxy about focus. "I have always made sure," Hanson said, "that the highest standards are kept up in every way Hanson is about hard work and taking opportunities."
From their earliest days as directors of Wiles, a satellite of Jim Slater's Slater Walker, Hanson and White instilled a rigorous style of financially driven management that for decades worked wonders for investors. They may have jazzed up early annual reports with shots of mini-skirted models (at the time they owned advertising and publishing-services businesses) but the message was serious.
This is the 46-year-old Hanson writing to shareholders in Wiles's 1968 annual report: "Our method ... lies in using the most up-to-date systems of management structure and control. Strict financial supervision is instituted ... to ensure prompt implementation of sound business methods, but individual management is given maximum opportunity to act on its own. Once the top executives of our companies have been appointed ... they are given freedom to run their own organisations.
"In order to encourage corporate growth and increased profits, management must be left and motivated to get on with that job. This leaves the parent board a number of vital functions. To plan favourable financing arrangements and a sound management framework. To be concerned with profit motivation at all levels. To plan strategy and represent your interests in the widest sense."
Such a philosophy spawned imitators, particularly in the 1980s, when Thatcherite reforms liberated managers after years of stultifying socialism. Where Hanson and Sir Owen Green's BTR led, companies such as Tomkins, TT Group, Wassall and Williams Holdings, three of which were led by former Hanson men, followed.
But the Hanson story of acquisition, profit enhancement through decentralisation, incentive and financial control, and disposal could not continue for ever. In the mid-1980s it executed its two greatest takeovers, the purchases of SCM and Imperial. At SCM, White quickly sold enough assets to give the company a £1billion business for free and at Imperial it ended up with a company worth more than £2billion for £200m. But investors twigged that such deals were virtually incapable of being repeated and the shares, having outperformed by nearly 3,000%, then began a long period of underperformance.
Hanson had become so big that only the biggest deals could make a difference and those were becoming harder to find. White continued to display his dealing skills, alighting on Kidde, an undermanaged American combine, in 1987. Consolidated Gold Fields, bought in 1989, was less of a coup, but it did allow Hanson to gain Peabody Coal, a ConsGold associate, and Cavenham Forest Industries, which was bought in an asset swap with Sir James Goldsmith. More recently White showed in 1993 he was still a master of timing when Hanson bought Quantum Chemical just before the cycle turned. But the great deal, the transaction that would fulfil White's dream of turning Hanson into Britain's biggest company, eluded the duo. From the mid-1980s, boards that might have been Hanson targets woke up and launched their own shareholder-value programmes, selling the peripheral subsidiaries that Hanson might have sold, and focusing on core businesses that might command higher ratings. The list of combines that focused on "core" activities was long BAT Industries, Grand Metropolitan, Pearson, Reed International, Thorn EMI to name a few. And those chief executives who failed to perform soon found themselves under investor pressure. The big investors realised they could just as easily change a management through a coup as through takeover.
After Imperial, White bid the government for its British Petroleum stake, but was turned down. Then in 1990, Hanson bought 2.8% of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), intending to negotiate a friendly merger. Once again it would have created a giant business. Under the plan, much of old Hanson would have been sold, providing ICI with huge financial firepower to expand its world-class business interests. But White's dream was not to be realised. ICI rejected the approach, launched an effective publicity campaign against Hanson, exposing weaknesses such as its ill-considered investments in horseflesh, and eventually broke itself into two businesses to release value.
IF HANSON could not get bigger to enhance shareholder value then it might have to shrink. That lesson has gradually dawned on head-office staff in recent years. In Hanson's words, last week's announcement is "a natural evolution". The executives, such as Derek Bonham, the chief executive, Hanson's son Robert, Chris Collins (the husband of Hanson's niece, but originally brought in by White), and David Clarke, White's American protege, began by moving to simplify the business.
Last year, in one of its biggest disposals, Hanson parcelled up 34 smaller American subsidiaries and gave them to shareholders in paper in an American company called US Industries (USI). Initially analysts scoffed, but USI has been a success. The shares began trading at $13 but have since soared to $18, putting in a performance in stark contrast to the shares of its former parent, which peaked back in 1994 at 288p and hit a low last year of 1803/4p. They are now at 197p.
The team had one last throw of the expansion dice when Hanson bid £2.5billion for Eastern Group, the regional electricity company. The deal made sense: the price was low relative to later bids, Eastern's managers were well regarded with a coherent expansion programme in generation, and the purchase enhanced earnings. But the City yawned.
For Bonham, who had been groomed as Hanson's successor, the prospect was bleak. However much he stressed opportunities for profitable capital spending and bolt-on deals within the four core divisions, he faced years of potential underperformance with Hanson tarred with an unfashionable conglomerate tag. The energy that was the company's hallmark would ebb away. Something had to be done or such was the verdict of executives such as Robert Hanson and Collins and non-executives such as Clarke, who left to run USI but remained a non-executive director. Meanwhile investor research by ABN Amro Hoare Govett, Hanson's broker, showed investors were unhappy and wanted action.
White had toyed with a US-UK split but Hanson did not like it. "I would not go along with it," he said. "The UK company would be a rump that did not match up to the US one. I said to Gordon ‘Look at the two flags in our logo. We are a US-UK company and I am not going to do that'."
Instead Robert Hanson and Collins, stung into action by barbed comments from investors, began to think about the radical four-way split to create smaller, more nimble businesses responding to the City's fashionable call for focus. At the start they feared Hanson and Bonham might balk at having their edifice broken up. But they were wrong and the company's bankers at NMRothschild were soon working on a break-up analysis.
After the top team signed off on the idea at Palm Springs, the non-executives were brought into the loop two weeks ago and a public announcement was prepared. Some suggested Hanson should unveil the plan at last Wednesday's annual meeting, but he eventually decided to go public last Tuesday, in retrospect a sensible move given the disruption at the annual meeting by militant socialists. Last Thursday, still smarting from the annual meeting confrontation, Hanson said: "We believe this move is the best way forward for the managers of the subsidiaries.
"They will be able to start again at the head of far smaller companies. Starting from a lower base, they should all be able to achieve much greater growth than they would have been able to do within Hanson. They can grow into new areas within their own fields and can finance things themselves."
The City has given the demerger the thumbs-down. The shares soared when the break-up was announced, but then fell on fears of higher tax charges, higher head-office costs and dividend cuts.
But those who have watched the Hanson story over many years are convinced he is making the right move. Once the new companies are independent, their profit-hungry managers, they say, will seize growth opportunities. As focused, listed companies they will be able to attract the top talent and those that fail will soon find themselves on the receiving end of bids.
Hanson, now 74, may have to remain a little longer at the helm of the rump company than he had planned to see through the demerger, and once in retirement he is unlikely to halt the suggestions that flow so regularly today from his laptop computer and modem.
His message will be what it has always been: "Anything can be achieved if you want to do it. But you must want to do it. Plenty of people say why can't this or that happen. The answer is that if you want something enough it will happen." Last week Hanson was asked whether the break-up was like the loss of a child. His response was upbeat: "Yes, my child is Hanson plc. But my grandchildren are the five companies [the four new groups plus USI] that we have created and I shall enjoy watching them all grow."
MOHAMED AL-FAYED, the Harrods chairman, plans to set up a corporate-governance foundation to make companies more accountable to investors. He will write this week to many of Britain's leading fund managers asking them to join his initiative.
After a meeting last month, Al-Fayed has already enlisted the support of Derek Fowler, chairman of the Railways Pension Trustee Company (RailPen), one of Britain's largest pension funds. Fowler is helping to provide enthusiasts keen to improve underperforming companies.
Britain's 25 leading fund managers will be asked to support his scheme. Al-Fayed said: "I want to form a very strong front to protect shareholders against people who appear to be interested only in Rolls-Royces and share options. Public-company boards get away with murder."
Michael Lawrence, former chief executive of the Stock Exchange, has been targeted by Al-Fayed as a possible chief executive of the new body. Al-Fayed said: "I intend to approach Michael Lawrence, who was ousted from the Stock Exchange for trying to protect investors. I myself have suffered, losing millions of pounds in a company I thought was badly run but I could not do anything to improve the management."
It was vital, Al-Fayed said, to protect investors whose needs were frequently overlooked or ignored. He wants to improve standards in company boardrooms and to explore the responsibilities of auditors.
He said: "I want to establish an independent regulatory body without political influence to improve standards in the management of public companies on behalf of the millions of working-class people whose pension funds are invested in British industry."
Auditors will be scrutinised closely by the new body. Al-Fayed said: "I particularly want to look at the role of audit firms in protecting investors. They seem to be interested only in their fees."
Al-Fayed is impressed by RailPen's plans to implement a code of practice among the investment institutions that handle its £10billion funds. These include questioning chief executives and chairmen more closely about company strategy.
On December 20, Al-Fayed wrote to Fowler: "The regulatory bodies are packed with mainly mediocre personalites who produce mediocre results. No wonder companies do not take them seriously."
He is confident that many of Britain's senior investment players will respond to his call.
STERLING is set to strengthen, benefiting from turmoil over the prospects for European monetary union (Emu) and fears of recession in America. Analysts say the pound, which broke a trend by gaining against the dollar and D-mark late last week, is supported by Britain's economic situation.
Kenneth Clarke, chancellor, will meet Eddie George, Bank of England governor, on Wednesday to review base rates, just three weeks after Clarke cut them
a quarter-point to 6.25%.
No change is expected at the meeting and analysts believe the scope for further rate cuts is limited. A survey by Idea, the financial-research consultancy, shows rates are expected to hit a low-point of 6% this year.
Strong growth in the money supply, with M4 growing by more than 10% a year, and hopes of a consumer spending pick-up have eased the pressure for rate cuts.
But in Europe, further interest-rate cuts are expected. On Thursday the Bundesbank set a fixed-rate "repo" of 3.3%, a move expected to pave the way for a a discount rate cut this month. Forecasters believe the rate could drop to as low as 2% from its present 3%. France, which cut its official intervention rate by a quarter-point last week, will also look for further rate cuts.
Fresh signs of slowdown in America will also boost the pound. Figures last week suggested America was skirting close to a recession, with implications for this year's presidential election. The National Association of Purchasing Managers' January survey showed a fall in its activity index to 44.2 from 46 in December. Levels below 45 are normally associated with recession.
Other American data have been weak, with consumer price inflation subdued. After last week's quarter-point Federal Reserve rate cut, further falls are expected. The London Business School, in its forecast published this weekend, says the pound's average value, measured by the sterling index, will rise by 4% this year because UK interest rates do not have much further to fall.
Mike Gallagher, Idea's research head, says sterling will rise in the next few weeks against the D-mark from DM2.25 to DM2.30.
BRITISH TELECOM is taking the unprecedented step this weekend of writing to its 2.5m investors explaining why it opposes plans by Oftel, the industry's watchdog for a big increase in its regulatory powers. The letter from Sir Iain Vallance, BT chairman, follows a stream of complaints from small investors and institutions about plans by Don Cruickshank, Oftel's director-general, to gain broad powers to ban anything he defines as anti-competitive behaviour and to limit BT to single-figure rates of return.
Since the Cruickshank announcement BT has received more than 700 letters or calls from investors worried about the impact of tightening regulation. At 3621/2p, the shares are 11.6% below their value when the government sold its last tranche in the "BT3" offer and only 3.6% above the "BT2" level. They have underperformed the market and now yield 6.2%, one of the highest yields in the FT-SE 100 index.
Vallance and Sir Peter Bonfield, his new chief executive, have been trying to negotiate a compromise with Oftel, moving away from the confrontation of recent years. If no compromise is reached, BT will appeal to the Monopolies Commission to adjudicate in a reference lasting many months. In his letter, Vallance says: "Where our view differs from Oftel's is on how much special support should be given to our competitors and for how long; on how clear the rules of the competitive game should be; and on the need for an appeal mechanism ... In effect, the regulator wants to act as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner."
Vallance would be happy for Oftel to have "cease and desist" powers. He writes: "We have suggested an alternative proposal, based on what we believe to be the government's own model. This would give Oftel powers to order the suspension of practices it regards as anti-competitive, on a temporary basis, while a thorough process of evaluation takes place."
On Friday, in response to Oftel's view that BT makes too much money, the company called for the virtual end of price regulation by 2002. In his letter, Vallance says BT is entitled to "a sufficient return on the capital provided by shareholders". He says this is needed to encourage BT and rivals to continue to invest in providing Britain with world-class services. "A fair balance needs to be struck here between the interests of customers and shareholders," he writes.
A BT spokesman said yesterday: "This is not an attack on Oftel; we share many of the same goals. The only argument is over how to achieve those goals. The letter lays out what the industry as a whole requires from regulation. It is important that our 2.5m shareholders understand the implications of the Oftel proposals."
AIRBUS INDUSTRIE is heading for a shake-up that would enable it to build a rival to the Boeing 747 and could ultimately transform it into a public company.
A debate about restructuring the European civil aircraft combine and starting work on the jumbo rival will be triggered shortly, Airbus insiders said last week. The twin catalysts for change will be the abandonment of talks with Boeing about building a 600-800-seat superjumbo, and the recommendations of a committee on measures to revive Airbus's waning competitiveness.
The committee members, dubbed the "four wise men", are finalising their report. But Airbus executives reckon radical changes will be needed to close the lead opened up by Boeing. "To get further operating efficiencies, we have to create a company with greater control of the asset base," said one Airbus executive. "That will mean injecting the partners' engineering or product development operations or other activities into the group."
Airbus's existing form as a "group of economic interest (GIE)" makes it essentially a marketing organisation. The group's assets are owned by its four partners, who are Aerospatiale of France, Daimler-Benz of Germany, British Aerospace (BAe) and Casa of Spain. Boeing has slashed costs to below Airbus levels and poured cash into its 777 long-range twin-jet, which is winning against Airbus's A330 and A340 aircraft. With the collapse of the Airbus talks, Boeing is expected to start work on a new double-deck 747 to carry 500-550 passengers.
To combat that move, which would reinforce Boeing's monopoly in the 747 market, Airbus is likely to jettison its plan to develop a superjumbo, codenamed 3XX, at a cost of at least $8billion (£5.3billion).
Instead, Airbus strategists say the 3XX should be designed to challenge the existing 747. That would turn it into a 400-500-seat aircraft positioned above the A330/A340, cut the cost to perhaps $6billion and largely neutralise Boeing's edge. "The vital thing is to leave as narrow a gap as possible, and preferably no gap, in our product range," said the executive.
Airbus will seek up to two industrial partners for the 3XX project, and request launch aid from its member governments. But capitalising the group with an asset injection is seen as vital to the 3XX. "By reforming Airbus you would create something with intrinsic value that could then raise finance from the capital markets to help support the development programme," he said.
The partners might even seek to bring in new investors, either from industry or the markets.
An attempt five years ago by Daimler and BAe to turn Airbus into a public company, was resisted by Airbus itself and blocked by Aerospatiale.
But the pressure for change is becoming irresistible with Airbus losing out to Boeing. BAe, led by Dick Evans, its chief executive, and Daimler are pushing for reform. The stumbling-block is the state-owned Aerospatiale, which unlike BAe and Daimler is predominantly a civil-aircraft business that could lose most of its assets if Airbus went public.
Clients are finding out where their fees go as accountants flirt with limited liability. Report by Richard Woods and John Waples
THE atrium at No8 Salisbury Square, a glitzy office block off Fleet Street, boasts six giant urns as decoration. The grandeur speaks money, which is fitting for the headquarters of one of Britain's Big Six chartered accountants, KPMG.
But few knew just how big accountants' earnings were until now. Abandoning the secrecy afforded by partnership, KPMG last week published its finances, including the £740,000 earned last year by its senior partner, Colin Sharman.
The sudden glasnost arose from moves by KPMG to defend partners from the increasing risk of bankruptcy caused by litigation; but ironically, it could put pressure on profits as clients for the first time find out where their fees go and seek better value.
The KPMG figures show gross income of £588m, resulting in a pre-tax "proprietorship profit" of £17.9m, down from £24.7m in 1994. It is a people business, reflected in the £88m cost of 565 partners and the £261m spent on other staff.
Sharman's earnings are broken down into several elements, including £438,000 a year as basic pay. A further 18 partners earned more than £250,000, and 346 earned between £100,000 and £250,000. Those figures do not include each partner's profit share. For Sharman, the total comes to £740,000 not bad even if he, as self-employed, has to provide for his own pension.
The transparency was received as bold and welcome, but has a flip side. Last week, some top finance directors balked at KPMG's figures. One said: "It will lead some companies to question their audit fees to a greater extent. We have already cut the audit bill."
KPMG's figures came as a surprise to some rivals. One Big Six senior partner says he earns almost half Sharman's whack; others prefer to keep their income confidential, perhaps because they earn more.
Sharman defends his rewards and believes he is "unlikely" to be the sector's highest-paid partner. He says: "I don't see why there should be any odium to anybody who has spent 30 years of his life helping to build up a business and gets a share of the profit."
Elsewhere the comfort of accountants grows precarious. Last year the former partners of Binder Hamlyn lost the first round in a £105m legal battle that could leave them £34m out of pocket after professional indemnity cover of £71m. They are appealing against the judgment. If they lose, their business, incomes and homes are on the line: as partners they have unlimited liability.
The industry, according to one senior partner, is facing three problems: "litigation, litigation and litigation". Hundreds of claims for billions of pounds are landing on accountants, who are being held liable for corporate collapses. Among them are a $3billion claim against Price Waterhouse (PW) over Bank of Credit and Commerce International, and another claim against Coopers & Lybrand over Robert Maxwell. The litigation has spread like a disease from America, where many accountants have sought refuge in limited liability under recent laws in Delaware. In an attempt at similar protection, KPMG has turned its audit operations into a limited liability company. In future it will publish standard accounts last week's figures were a foretaste.
Other partnerships are studying their options: Ernst & Young and PW are investigating becoming limited liability partnerships (LLPs) under Jersey law. Ernst & Young wants to be in a position to change its status swiftly if it so chooses and when the law allows.
Coopers & Lybrand has a working party looking at incorporation, LLPs and other options; but it is in no rush to make changes. Only Deloitte & Touche is firmly in favour of traditional partnership as the best way to maintain standards.
Later this year Ernst & Young will also publish results, a move to pre-empt litigants. "The idea that auditors have deep pockets is not borne out by KPMG's figures," says one auditor.
Graham Ward, a PW partner who chairs the Institute of Chartered Accountants' professional liability working party, says: "The risk-reward ratio in audits is no longer realistic. The habit is to pursue the auditor for the totality, irrespective that they only had a small part in what went wrong. It is unjust that we should pick up the whole of the tab if we are only partially responsible."
While moving to protect their backs, accountants have also lobbied for new laws on joint and several liability. "Nobody is saying we should not be accountable," says Coopers, "but only for what is fair." The Department of Trade and Industry is writing a paper, and the Law Commission will soon suggest changes. It is likely to recommend partial liability. But reform will not afford retrospective protection to partners' six-figure lifestyles. Existing litigation could still savage them. There is only one slight consolation: now lawyers who many suspect earn more than accountants are starting to be sued too, as Clifford Chance found last week when it received a writ from banks suing over the collapse of Olympia & York.
CLERICAL MEDICAL, the mutual life insurer, has put itself up for sale.
It has appointed Schroders, the investment bank, to issue an information memorandum for buyers. With £13billion of funds under management, Clerical falls just outside Britain's top 10 life insurers. But its sale could still fetch £1billion.
It tried to merge with NPI, formerly known as National Provident, three years ago, but the plans were abandoned. More recently it is thought to have held talks with GE Capital, the American financial-services group that has said it wants to buy a medium-sized life company.
Potential buyers have been contacted by Schroders, and an auction is under way. Clerical could not be contacted for a comment.
Last month Clerical reacted angrily to news that Standard & Poor's, the ratings agency, had downgraded its credit rating from AA- to A+, and threatened to withdraw from the rating service. The rate cut will have come at a difficult time, as Clerical attempts to convince purchasers of its strength and viability.
S&P took a "pessimistic view of the UK life industry generally", a view supported by analysts. They believe some life companies, particularly mutuals who sell through independent financial advisers, are losing money on some sales. Late last year Clerical's operations general manager, Mike Richardson, left as a result of a management shake-up.
NatWest is seen as a possible buyer. Clerical has 7.5% of NatWest Life, the bank's life-insurance subsidiary and it runs parts of the NatWest Life operations. But NatWest entered the market at a difficult time, and its operations have not grown as quickly or as successfully as expected.
Other potential buyers include Fortis, the Dutch insurer, Sun Alliance, General Accident and other banks and building societies.
Other mutual insurers are also considering selling themselves or going public. Norwich Union has announced plans to give up mutuality and float, and Scottish Amicable is weighing up its options. Friends Provident, advised by Merrill Lynch, has made it clear it would consider a bid.
LABOUR has responded to an appeal from the Bingo Association of Great Britain (BAGB) and tabled an amendment to the finance bill to cut duty on bingo from 10% to 8.75%.
The bingo industry wants the duty lowered to match the reductions given to the betting and pools companies in the last budget and claims unless it gets some help from the government many clubs and jobs could be under threat.
The campaign by BAGB has been triggered by the damaging impact of the national lottery. A recent Harris study for BAGB showed that in the year before the lottery, bingo profits were up 17% while last year profits plummeted by 35%. The study compared last-quarter profits in 1994 with those in 1995 and estimated the industry lost about £24m profit.
Last year 35 clubs closed and almost 1,500 jobs were lost. Attendances are said to be down 10% and the recently introduced national game, offering a £250,000 top prize, has been postponed because it cannot generate sufficient interest.
BAGB claims bingo players spend twice as much on lottery tickets as the national average, but bingo clubs are unable to advertise games or prizes.
Leading bingo club operators, such as Bass, Rank Organisation, First Leisure and Vardon have been lobbying the government for the past three years to relax the rules on bingo. They want to be allowed to advertise prizes and be able to offer higher prizes. Clubs are also restricted from admitting players who have not registered 24 hours beforehand.
In November Bass announced a shake-up of its Gala bingo arm and warned that unless action was taken soon, many of the country's smaller clubs would go out of business.
SIR JAMES GOLDSMITH is investing in a penny-share company coming to the stock market tomorrow with a value of only £5m. He has injected about £100,000 into Formal Group, where Damien Aspinall, son of Goldsmith's friend, the zookeeper John Aspinall, is a shareholder. The company, including the Pronuptia and Youngs bridal-wear businesses, has bought Langside, a dresswear company, and issued a £1.9m placing of shares. The chief executive is Charles Brine, who once headed Langside, and Simon Raynaud, head of Select Industries, the vehicle-components company, is the chairman.
THE fund manager Phoenix is to invest £3.7m in SilverPlatter International, an electronic reference-information company that intends to list on the stock market within three to five years. Martin Smith, Phoenix chairman, will join the board of SilverPlatter, which over the past 11 years has developed proprietary software for the Internet and intends to build a wordwide reference library.
ALBERT REYNOLDS, the former Irish premier, is to join the board of Jefferson Smurfit, the Irish paper and packaging group. Smurfit is also promoting Ray Curran, its chief financial officer, to the board as finance director.
GPT, the telecoms-equipment group owned by General Electric Company (GEC) and Siemens, is facing a £441m High Court legal action. Worldwide Corporation, a Sussex company, is suing GPT and its Middle East arm, claiming breach of an agency and countertrade agreement between the companies in 1992.
THE government is pressing ahead with controversial plans to privatise a number of Whitehall agencies, including Her Majesty's Stationery Office, despite opposition from MPs and civil servants, writes Nicholas Fox.
Michael Heseltine, deputy prime minister, is keen to sell 10 Cabinet Office agencies to cut public spending. His plans have met with a barrage of criticisms, with the HMSO sale questioned by Betty Boothroyd, the speaker.
But Heseltine remains confident of achieving the sales. Notices advertising the sales of HMSO, Chessington Computer Centre and Recruitment and Assessment Services (RAS), the Whitehall headhunter, are expected soon. They are likely to be completed in the summer.
The government has appointed Coopers & Lybrand to handle HMSO, while KPMG's corporate-finance department will sell Chessington and RAS.
HMSO, which provides printing and publishing services, stationery and office equipment to parliament, government departments and public-sector customers, has sales of about £400m. It also produces Hansard, the daily official record of parliamentary proceedings, and is responsible for confidential parliamentary printing.
MPs have expressed concern about HMSO being sold because of the sensitivity of its work. But the government has said it will not sell simply to the highest bidder. Buyers will have to pass strict quality criteria. A number of printing and publishing companies have expressed interest in bidding.
Chessington, which controls the payment of MPs' and civil servants' salaries, has sales of £14m and is likely to attract computer groups such as IBM, Misys and EDF, and facilities management groups such as Serco and Capita.
THE American electricity group, General Public Utilities (GPU), is thought to be considering a near-£2billion bid for Midlands Electricity, write Kirstie Hamilton and Andrew Lorenz.
Yorkshire Electricity is also in GPU's sights, but investment bankers believe Midlands is the most likely target for the American company. A GPU bid would have to overcome the 21% stake in Midlands held by PowerGen, the English generator whose own £1.95billion bid lapsed when it was referred to the Monopolies Commission last year. Since then, Midlands has announced a 100p-a-share special dividend, and is now valued at £1.48billion.
But PowerGen would be hamstrung by a GPU bid for Midlands. Takeover rules prevent a company whose bid is subject to a Monopolies Commission inquiry from buying any shares in
its target, so GPU would have a clear run at Midlands should it succeed in winning board agreement to a bid. With the outcome of the Monopolies Commission inquiry in doubt, Midlands is thought ready to agree a rival bid should the premium be sufficiently generous.
Unless the commission and the government block the vertical integration that would be created by a PowerGen takeover of a regional electricity company (Rec), PowerGen would then consider whether to approach another Rec.
It is known to have held talks with East Midlands Electricity before bidding for Midlands.
GPU has also shown interest in Yorkshire Electricity, one of the few Recs not to have received a takeover offer. Last week Yorkshire's share price shot ahead in expectation of an offer. It soared 74p to 752p, a rise of more than 10%. This values the company at £1.15billion. Rumours last week that a Japanese bank was putting together a syndicate to fund a bid for Yorkshire only fuelled the market's hopes of a bid. But Yorkshire maintains it has had no approach.
PLANET HOLLYWOOD, the celebrity-backed movie-restaurant group, is planning to go public in New York in a flotation that could value it at more than $1billion (about £660m).
The float will create another fortune for its tough-guy shareholders, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis, who are each expected to have shares worth about $15m.
But the lion's share of the riches will be made by the founder, Robert Earl, who ran the Hard Rock Cafe chain, and his partner, Keith Barish, a film producer who backed 91/2 Weeks and The Fugitive.
Planet Hollywood has appointed two American investment banks, Bear Stearns and Montgomery Securities, as advisers and is planning to float this spring.
Brokers in New York had thought the four-year-old group might be worth between $400m and $600m at flotation. But the swift rise in profits and its fast expansion programme mean advisers have settled on a price tag of more than $1billion, which will value Planet Hollywood shares on a historic price-earnings ratio of about 25.
Planet Hollywood has 29 restaurants around the world and is building another 12. The group reckons there is room for about 80 sites and is looking for further expansion in Europe and Asia.
Although the company does not disclose figures, restaurant experts believe its Orlando, Florida, site is the world's biggest-grossing restaurant with annual sales of about $50m. Its London restaurant at the Trocadero has sales of about £20m.
Two years ago, Planet Hollywood was said to have made $11m but last year's profits have jumped to more than $50m and another big rise is expected this year.
Much of its success has been built on merchandising profits. Analysts believe the company makes half its sales from branded merchandise such as caps, T-shirts and jackets.
Last September Planet Hollywood raised $60m in a private placing. The company said it was planning to use the money to accelerate its expansion plans and provide capital for new concepts.
Earl has just opened his first "Official All Star Cafe" in Times Square, New York. The restaurant, a 650-seat homage to professional sport, is decorated with sports memorabilia such as Andre Agassi's old pony tail. Earl has enlisted the support of a celebrity sporting team to match his beefy Hollywood trio.
Tennis stars Agassi and Monica Seles, Wayne Gretzky the ice-hockey great, Joe Montana the American football star, baseball's Ken Griffey Jr and the basketball favourite Shaquille O'Neal are his partners in the venture.
Earl reckons All Star will make about 30% of its sales from merchandising and expects this to rise. He plans to roll out a number of All Stars across the US.
He is also planning a joint venture with Marvel Entertainment to create a chain of restaurants based on Marvel cartoon characters.
MALCOLM EDWARDS, the embattled boss of Coal Investments (CI), the mining group, has made a desperate appeal to National Power to save it from collapse. Edwards is believed to have asked the generator, its biggest customer, to inject £5m. The move comes as UBS, one of CI's three banks, is resisting pressure to provide extra loans.
A National Power spokesman said yesterday: "CI has approached us and we are listening to what they have to say." But time is running out for Edwards and his financial advisers, Guinness Mahon and James Capel. The scale of the rescue is putting off white knights and CI's banks have not ruled out receivership.
Helping CI could be a shrewd move for National Power. It would provide a bargaining position when it renews supply contracts with RJB Mining, Britain's top coal miner. But analysts believe the generator is unlikely to come to the rescue despite the friendship between Edwards and John Baker, NP's chairman.
Receivership would be a cruel blow for Edwards and the 1,800 miners and contractors on his payroll. He had grand ambitions to be one of the successful bidders in British Coal's privatisation but he was left empty-handed in the sale. For Edwards it is now a matter of pride to keep his group alive and close associates are still confident he can pull it off.
From a launch price three years ago of 10p, CI's shares rose to 143p, ahead of privatisation, even though it made no profits. CI was set up after Edwards bought a number of redundant pits from British Coal, but these have proved costly to turn round.
Even though CI is Britain's second-biggest coal producer, it is dwarfed by RJB, which acquired the bulk of the English coal assets on privatisation.
CI's problems reached crisis point in December when it was refused planning consent for a potentially lucrative coalface in Staffordshire. The refusal torpedoed its forecasts. Increasing dissatisfaction with CI's financial performance led to a share-price collapse to 25p before they were suspended.
CI is believed to have drawn down nearly £26m of its £30m loan facility provided by Banque Indosuez, NatWest and UBS. It needs at least £8m of working capital to tide it over. The banks will not release the cash unless investors back a £20m rescue rights issue and a new chief executive is recruited.
Edwards's task has been made more difficult by UBS's stance. CI could still raise more than £10m through the sale of its 33% stake in Mining Scotland.
READERS who turn to page 5 will find Databank, a new service. The Sunday Times is not a paper of record its sister paper, The Times, does that job well. Instead the aim is to offer readers an easily digestible summary of key financial and economic data, both domestic and foreign. Instead of the FT-SE 100 index shares, we publish 200 top shares that between them account for most of the market, as measured by value. Readers can also follow the progress of overseas markets, big currencies, commodities, bonds and interest rates and gain a snapshot of the British economy.
LAST SUNDAY I reported the thoughts of Brian Marber, the chartist, on gold with the price at $404.50. He said if gold hit $409 it would break out of the past two years' dull trading range. His prediction has come right in style.
On Thursday the price rose $5.05 to $410.55 and on Friday hedge-fund-driven buying sent it soaring to a six-year peak of $416.25 before easing to close at $414.50. Where does gold go from here? On Christmas Eve, Paul Ham, The Sunday Times's personal finance editor, predicted a surge from $387 and today, on page 1 of the Money section, Ham reports a forecast by Mercury Asset Management, manager of Britain's top gold fund, that $500 is possible. Gold bull markets have a habit of peaking in February, cautions Marber. But he reckons the next resistance point is at $445 and his bullishness is shared by Frank Veneroso, an American analyst who says the event of last week was the move by American Barrick, the Canadian gold-mining giant, to cut the size of its price-hedging programme in expectation of price rises. Veneroso's prediction is: "In the long run gold is moving up." In the old days inflation and political crises were the spurs. This time growing demand among consumers in increasingly wealthy Far East countries is providing the kicker.
Cautious investors will stick with gold funds but braver souls will try shares. Last week Jim Slater told me of his interest in Bendigo, an Australian mining minnow where Sir James Goldsmith and Kerry Packer had bought in and installed Peter Phillips of Newmont to build it up. After about two years of poor performance the shares have perked up on exploration results. Bendigo has cash in the bank and a team of good geologists. Slater reckons it could motor.
MY GRAPH charts Abbey National, the first building society to demutualise and float. Customers who were both depositors and borrowers gained 200 shares for free.
From being worth £282 at their low they are now worth £1,218 and they yield 4% after six years of rising dividends. In recent months millions of other savers and borrowers have been offered the chance to sample similar gains as other building societies have chosen to get the Abbey banking habit. Last month, Woolwich, once a mutual stalwart, joined in, and last week Alliance & Leicester did the same thing. If Nationwide follows, four-fifths of mortgages will be with banks and the building-society movement as we know it will be finished. All that will be left will be a couple of big hardliners and a tail of local societies, surviving through offering a higher-priced but niche product to borrowers they know well.
Financial antiquarians want to preserve mutuality against the tide of modern finance. Led by Bradford & Bingley, they want to give borrowers and savers better deals by cutting margins and abandoning capital-hungry expansion into broader financial services. But a minimalist approach can lead to extinction. As Lord Weinstock says: "A niche can become a tomb." Britain's mortgage sector is mature, with home ownership close to its peak, and the whole drift of savings is away from deposit savings towards pensions, life insurance and health and sickness cover. That is why Pete White of Alliance & Leicester is turning his business, which already owns Girobank and derives two-fifths of its profit from non-traditional sources, into a bank. He sees he needs the capital and management discipline associated with a quote as he strives to build a broader business. If he fails Alliance eventually will be gobbled up. If he succeeds his members can look forward to Abbey-style returns.
Meanwhile those savers and borrowers who might be tempted by loyalty offers from societies that would remain mutual should get out their calculators. Here are the rough-and-ready sums from one mathematician. He took a borrower with a £40,000 mortgage and calculated the present-day value of future savings should that borrower stick with a society offering him a 0.25% saving on his mortgage. He reckoned the borrower would have to stick with his mortgage for 16 years to recover the benefit of not taking £1,000 of demutualised shares today. Not surprisingly, opinion pollsters find that ordinary building-society members want cash or shares today, not discounts tomorrow.
ARE conglomerates finished? News that Hanson, the grand-daddy of them all, is breaking itself up into four companies suggests a secular shift in corporate structure. For years Britain's top companies have been shifting away from being geographically specific and product-diversified to being product- specific and geographically diversified. Markets are globalising, a quickening trend since the collapse of communism. As European and Far Eastern communist states become consumer economies, vast markets open up for products and services.
At the same time their fast-growing companies are much greater competitive threats to sleepy old-world groups. The world is thus pregnant with opportunity but also more threatening than a decade ago. Business people have to make tougher choices about what they spend money on and where. Thus generalists are out and specialists are in.
For years there has been room in the corporate jungle for animals such as Hanson, ready to pounce on weaker companies. But times change and so has Lord Hanson. His late partner, Lord White, told me years ago the 1980s offered a one-off opportunity he was determined to seize through exploiting the difference between the share value of groups such as SCM and Imperial and the underlying value of their parts, enabling Hanson to gain huge cash-generative businesses for free. But that game died and Hanson is now splitting into four to seize 21st-century opportunities. Some may be nostalgic for the past. But Hanson's young executives are hungry for the challenge of using their own shares and balance sheets to grow. So far the City has not welcomed the break-up there is no hidden jewel lurking in Hanson such as a Zeneca or a Vodafone. But, longer term, value will be created. The independent companies should attract the best talent in their industries and, if they fail to perform, hungry predators will pounce with bids.
THREE brothers led the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace yesterday for the first time in history. Colonel Sebastian Roberts, 42, and brothers Cassian, 34, and Fabian, 23, are officers in the Irish Guards.
A TURKISH court has asked Sarah Cook, the Essex schoolgirl who earlier this month "married" an 18-year-old Turkish waiter she met on holiday, to undergo tests on her bones to establish her age. Lawyers for her husband claim Cook's birth certificate is incorrect and that he is not guilty of statutory rape.
MORE than 50 workers were moved to another part of the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria on Friday after an instrument showed a leak of radioactivity. But British Nuclear Fuels said last night there was no leak. An investigation is taking place to see what caused the scare.
EDUCATION leaders in Humberside have called for the removal of Mike Cooper, a governor at two schools in Hull, because of his extreme right-wing views. Cooper, who stood as a National Democrat in the Hemsworth by-election in West Yorkshire last week, said last night: "I am not going to resign as I have done nothing wrong. I keep my politics separate from my role as a school governor."
A DOG which magistrates at Oxford ruled last week was not dangerous was suspected last night of attacking Craig Butler, 7. Craig was treated in hospital after being bitten on the ear outside the home of the dog, named Winston, in Mather Road, Barton, Oxfordshire. Police are investigating.
AN INQUIRY has started after an 11-year-old girl suffering from stomach pains and vomiting died after being sent home from the North Middlesex teaching hospital in Edmonton, north London.
The child, who has not been named, was seen by a doctor in the casualty department early on Thursday and then sent home. She was taken back to the hospital by ambulance several hours later.
A ROGUE Chinese spy satellite has careered out of control and will crash to Earth within the next few weeks from an orbit that takes it over the British Isles.
The one-ton satellite, which passes over Britain and Ireland four or five times a day, will turn into a fireball and hurtle to Earth some time in the first two weeks of March, according to the scientists tracking it. They will be unable to predict where it will strike until a few days beforehand.
"It would cause devastation if it landed in a built-up area," said Professor Alan Johnstone of the Mullard Space Science Laboratories at University College London. "They do not know where it is going to land and they cannot do anything to regain control. It could come down anywhere and its orbit takes it over some of the Earth's most populated areas."
Unlike most satellites, FSW1 is designed to withstand the 1,200C of heat generated around its hull by re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere at 18,000mph. It could still be travelling at well over a 1,000mph when it hits the surface.
The Chinese launched FSW1 in October 1993. It was due to spend just a few days photographing Earth from space, after which it should have jettisoned a module containing its cameras and other equipment and returned to Earth with the films.
Western space scientists believe the satellite's controllers activated its rockets at the wrong moment, sending the re-entry module into an unstable elliptical orbit. It now swings around the Earth every 100 minutes, dipping into the upper atmosphere at its closest approach at 100 miles above the Earth, then spinning 2,000 miles into outer space before starting its return journey.
Dr Richard Crowther, a senior scientist at the Defence Research Agency, an arm of the Ministry of Defence at Farnborough, Hampshire, said the rogue satellite was being kept under close surveillance. "It spends much more time over areas of high latitude, which includes the UK, northern Europe and north America, so that is probably where it will land," he said.
Andrew Wilson, the editor of Jane's Space Directory, has followed the fate of FSW1 ever since the Chinese lost control of it. "The chances are it will fall in the ocean, simply because it covers 70% of the Earth's surface, but we have to be cautious. Its orbit also takes it over a huge part of the world's population."
Some western space scientists have spent months trying to work out whether FSW1 will survive the impact. They believe that obtaining the films it contains would be an intelligence coup, showing what the Chinese were spying on and how much they were able to see. The chances, however, could be slim; FSW1 is a primitive craft by modern standards, so primitive that, according to Jane's, its heat shield is made from oak planks.
"It may survive the trip through the atmosphere, but the impact with the surface will almost certainly reduce it to fragments," said one scientist.
Nick Johnson, a specialist in space debris and obsolete satellites who works as a consultant with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), said it would leave a crater up to 30ft wide and 20ft deep. "The chances of it hitting a built-up area are, however, very low," he said.
Most of the tracking has been done by the United States Space Command (UNSC) in Colorado Springs, which follows nearly 9,000 orbiting man-made objects through 11 radar stations around the world. Its main aim is to prevent their re-entry being mistaken for ballistic missile warheads, thus triggering a nuclear alert, but it also provides foreign governments with an early warning service. Its scientists hope to be able to give several days' warning of where FSW1 will crash-land.
Lieutenant-Colonel Jim House, UNSC's chief of space operations, said the satellite's orbit was already deteriorating daily. "Last Monday it came within 99 miles of Earth, but by Friday that had decreased to 96 miles. It is suffering increasing drag from the upper atmosphere, which will pull it down even faster."
Several orbiting objects have plunged to Earth. In 1978 there were worldwide protests when the Soviets' nuclear-powered Cosmos 954 satellite came down over northern Canada, blazing a trail of radioactive debris across the tundra.
In 1979 20 tons of the American Skylab station smashed into the Australian outback. Large chunks of the Russian Salyut 7 space station also crashed into South American forests, starting several fires. One piece was reported to have fallen into the back garden of a house where an Argentine woman was doing her ironing.
So far, however, there are no known human victims of space debris and the only confirmed casualty was a cow in Cuba that was killed outright by a falling rocket motor in the mid-1960s.
Crowther said: "There's not much reason for anyone in Britain to worry. We think that people stand slightly more chance of winning the national lottery than of being hit by this satellite."
THE dispute between Britain and Germany over the future shape of Europe broke into the open yesterday, when Malcolm Rifkind used language reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher to condemn Helmut Kohl, the German chancellor.
Kohl angered Tory Eurosceptics with a speech he made late on Friday night, warning that the European Community's integration programme could not be held up by British doubts. "The slowest boat must not determine the speed of the fleet," Kohl said.
Rifkind, the foreign secretary, replied yesterday, suggesting the EC could break up unless Germany took on board British scepticism. "The convoy ceases to exist if you do not accommodate all the ships within the convoy, so you have to find a balance," he said. "You have to find a structure which all the countries concerned are comfortable with.
"There are differences between Germany and Britain. I don't want to pretend we see eye to eye on these matters because they [the Germans] wish to advocate a greater degree of integration than we believe the people of Europe will be comfortable with."
Rifkind's stand was welcomed by Tory Eurosceptics, who compared his remarks with the uncompromising way in which Thatcher confronted European questions when she was prime minister. "I welcome what Rifkind has said; we've heard nothing like it since the [Thatcher] days of no, no, no!" said one.
In his speech, delivered at Louvain University in Belgium, Kohl made his first concession to the Eurosceptics, admitting that Europe was undergoing a "period of uncertainty" over plans to create a single currency. But he used the rest of the speech, and a similar address yesterday, to warn that Europe risked war unless it integrated further.
"It is a question of war and peace," he said, before calling for the EC to develop a common defence structure. At present each member state retains full control of its forces.
John Redwood, the defeated Tory leadership challenger, rejected Kohl's proposal. "I think the German chancellor is wrong to say that we must have close defence integration under the European Community institutions," he said on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
Hugh Dykes, Tory MP for Harrow East and a leader of the pro-EC European Movement, agreed with much of what Kohl said. "The sceptics, with their usual melodrama, are surely getting it wrong," he said, shortly before Rifkind spoke out. "The chancellor was putting forward strong anti-war points. The reason the Community was set up in the first place was to put an end to repeated wars in Europe."
Jean-Luc Dehaene, prime minister of Belgium, said in a television interview yesterday that it was not possible to diverge from the Maastricht treaty timetable for EC integration. "It's very dangerous to give the impression you can deviate from it because at the end of the day that means modifying the treaty, renegotiating, more referendums," he said.
The Conservative party's truce on Europe will be tested further this week when Michael Howard, the home secretary, signals his support for right-wing demands to dilute the powers of the EC.
Howard associates himself with a manifesto for EC reform to be published by the Eurosceptic European Research Group tomorrow. It proposes allowing national parliaments to take over many of the functions of the European parliament; removing the right of the European commission to initiate European laws; an extension of national rights of veto over EC measures; and a cut in the power of the European court of justice.
In the foreword, Howard welcomes the proposals as "a valuable contribution to the fund of ideas from which the new Europe will develop".
The home secretary's intervention anticipates a policy document to be published by Redwood on Wednesday, restating the case against a European single currency or closer institutional ties between EC states.
Washington's chattering classes are going to extraordinary lengths to crack one of the city's most tantalising secrets: to find out who wrote Primary Colors. This is the novel signed "Anonymous" which offers an insider's account of the goings-on in the Clinton entourage in the 1992 presidential election campaign.
Stephanie Mansfield, a writer, is hosting a "book party for Anonymous" and has invited a long list of suspects in the hope of teasing out a confession. A bookstore is hosting a publication party for Anonymous, and Larry King, the chat show host, invited a panel of suspects on to his show so they could publicly deny authorship. To his chagrin, they all did.
Washington has been known as a virtual war zone for years on account of its appalling crime rate. But now officials in the American capital say the situation is getting out of hand. Essentially, the city is bankrupt and the police can barely afford petrol for their patrol cars or ammunition for their guns.
Some officers have resorted to buying their own typewriter ribbons computers are few and far between so they can prepare reports. Things have become so desperate that police recently held a sale of home-made cakes and pies to try to raise money to buy basic equipment.
Inevitably, the criminal fraternity is enjoying unprecedented freedom with the number of arrests lower than ever. At the same time, complaints against the police and investigations of corruption in the force are soaring.
As the presidential election approaches, Washington is abuzz with speculation over whether Bill Clinton will prove as much the target of women claiming to have had affairs with him as he was in the 1992 campaign for the White House.
Since taking power, reports of his alleged philandering, notably an affair which he denies with Gennifer Flowers, have diminished. But as the election campaign gathers pace, the rumour mill is again churning out stories that have Republicans gleefully anticipating still more "bimbo eruptions" their euphemism for incidents such as the emergence of Flowers, who ended up posing naked in Penthouse.
In the 1992 campaign, Flowers's claim of a lengthy affair with Clinton was followed by waitress Paula Jones alleging that Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, demanded sexual favours which Jones refused. Clinton has denied any relationship with Jones, even though police who had been guarding him supported the allegation, testifying that he had a prodigious appetite for extramarital romance.
Now tongues are wagging again with two stories doing the rounds. One concerns a make-up artist from a popular television chat show who the president if the stories are to be believed asked for a date. The second comes from senior members of the secret service who have told the intelligence community that they have provided cover for the president while he engages in secret liaisons. The question is, with whom?
Republicans, in particular, are keen to discover the answer. One name to have emerged is Markie Post, a star of the television comedy Hearts Afire, who met the first couple in the 1992 campaign and was later drafted on to the White House staff. Post has the blonde good looks that attract the president, but as she has met and advised Hillary several times she appears an unlikely candidate.
The Clinton entourage puts tales from the secret service down to their efforts to do down the president. This was also the explanation given for a story that emerged several years ago that Hillary threw a lamp at Bill during a memorable row in the White House.
If another Flowers surfaces soon to claim a relationship with Clinton, she could prove pivotal to the election campaign. It could be the Republicans' last and only hope.
It may be the same Clinton running again for the White House. But where is the team that helped get him elected last time round? Having ditched many of the ideas he held close to his heart, he has also dropped nearly all the key advisers who crafted his strategy four years ago.
Gone are the Four Horsemen Jim Carville, the "Redneck Rasputin" who coined the phrase "It's the economy, stupid"; Paul Begala, a brilliant political strategist; Stan Greenberg, who refined the art of polling to a new level; and Mandy Grunwald, who helped communicate Clinton's message to the people. All have been purged.
Instead, Clinton has tried to gather around him a more centrist team capable of drawing in moderate Republicans while not alienating his Democrat base.
His move to the centre has disgusted Carville and the others, particularly as it has been crafted by Dick Morris, Clinton's new closest adviser, who has spent much of his political career managing campaigns for Republicans.
Harold Ickes, the remaining liberal loyalist in the White House, who is supposed to be in charge of the campaign, hates Morris and is said to be doing everything he possibly can to undermine him. Clinton believes that his message for the next few months should be aimed at suburban voters less interested in change than in protecting social values.
That is why he has highlighted the perils of violence on television and spoken in favour of school uniforms.
It is all a far cry from the kind of revolution the Four Horsemen dreamt of in 1992.
Spare a thought for Jacques Chirac, who received a less than magisterial welcome on an official visit to Washington last week. Things started to go awry before he arrived.
The first French president to visit Washington for 12 years, he had expected full honours. But when he was told Congress was reluctant to allow him to address a joint session a privilege accorded other leaders of America's most prominent allies he threatened to cancel. Then some congressmen decided to boycott the speech in protest at French nuclear testing in the south Pacific.
Faced with the embarrassing prospect of a half-empty chamber, Gingrich arranged for congressional pages to fill up the auditorium.
IT TOOK a few days for ABC, Australia's public broadcaster, to do the right thing. Last Tuesday it finally confirmed that, yes, it would be dropping plans to provide national coverage of Sydney's famous gay and lesbian Mardi Gras on March 2 in favour of a traditional election-night special.
The decision is shaping up as a ratings disaster. However important the election issues how to reposition Australia as it enters the next millennium, whether or not the country should become a republic the nation's 11.5m voters are already showing signs of fatigue as they face a sixth ballot in 13 years.
The polls show the ruling Labor party, led by Paul Keating, the prime minister, trailing the Liberal-National coalition by as many as eight percentage points. But more significant are indications of what was described by one commentator as "seriously pro-active apathy".
The number of "don't knows", who can still decide the outcome next month, stands at a record high; fewer than two in three of the 18- and 19-year-olds, who have become entitled to and obliged to vote, have bothered to register.
The blame for that must be put on the leaders of the two main parties. A cartoon in The Sydney Morning Herald captured the mood last week. It showed a perplexed voter weighing up the alternatives under the caption: "It looks like a choice between someone who promises everything, but doesn't keep his promises ... and someone who promises nothing, and keeps his."
The campaign began promisingly for those who relish the rough and tumble of Australian politics: Keating announced that he did not believe in rudeness, had never engaged in personal abuse and could "be charming when I wish to be". This from a man who provided such additions to the parliamentary lexicon as "sleazebags", "scumbags" and "foul-mouthed grubs", and is still referred to by some as "the lizard of Oz".
No sooner had a nation's laughter died down than the first television advertisements appeared in a media blitz expected to cost a record A$35m (£17m). Labor wanted to bury the widespread perception that Keating is arrogant, uncaring and, because of his proclaimed liking for Mahler symphonies, French empire clocks and Weimar architecture, somewhat remote from his inner-Sydney, working-class roots. The message was he may not be likable but he is a leader.
Significantly, a poll in The Australian found that more than three-quarters of voters agree that Keating is decisive and strong. Although he has been accused of responding weakly to French nuclear testing in the Pacific, Keating, 52, also scores high marks for statesmanship and his ability to handle the economy.
However, that may not be enough to save him on March 2, when he will be seeking to repeat his last-gasp win "the sweetest victory of all" he called it of 1993. Then he confounded critics and pollsters by winning after apparently trailing throughout the campaign.
However, winning "the unwinnable election" a second time may be less easy. Not only is the gap between Labor and the opposition greater, but analysts say all the indicators of vitality in Keating's campaign are "flatlining". Uncharacteristically, they say, Keating is looking like a loser and, what is worse, he is behaving like one.
Keating's minders are praying for a terrible blunder by John Howard, the leader of the Liberal-National coalition. As the Labor television advertisement despairingly concludes: "It can't be Johnny Howard. Imagine him."
The problem is that Howard, whose political resilience is best summed up by his own description of himself as "Lazarus with a triple bypass", is proving a frustrating opponent.
After only a few days of skirmishing, Keating, the man who has claimed that he does not engage in personal abuse, was comparing Howard to the defiant but defeated Black Knight in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He suggested that, despite having everything chopped off by his Labor opponent, Howard was still there vainly yelling "come back and fight".
In fact, Howard, 57, has displayed a marked disinclination to fight or even to show the electorate, let alone his opponent, his policy weapons. He has become a master of the press conference that offers an opportunity to take photographs but not to ask questions, unless about unrelated subjects such as Australia's chances in the forthcoming World Cup cricket tournament.
It could be because he remembers how John Hewson, his predecessor, lost "the unlosable election" by providing the electorate with an enormous amount of detail about his plans to tax them. Howard has not so far burdened Australians with too much policy.
Yet although many may have misgivings about voting for a recycled, almost deliberately uncharismatic leader, millions appear to believe that "It's time". This was the slogan advocating a change that swept the Labor party under Gough Whitlam into power in 1972 after almost 25 years of conservative government.
Clearly, it is also time for recycling campaign slogans. Senator Cheryl Kernot, of the Democrats, the "third force" in Australian politics after Labor and the Liberal-National coalition, has adopted a slogan first used by the party's founder in 1980: "Keep the bastards honest".
Not all Australians would approve of the language. But as the campaign intensifies with the risk of incredible promises being made, most would applaud the sentiment.
SOME call her "Maigret in a miniskirt". But with even the lamp on her desk made from an old Mauser pistol, Martine Monteil is as tough as they come. Tomorrow the blonde detective, who favours high heels, Chanel earrings and bouffant hair, will take up her post as commissaire of the Criminal Brigade, the French equivalent of the CID.
The appointment of a woman to such a prominent post is seen as a public relations coup for the government, whose commitment to equal rights was questioned after the cabinet dropped eight female members in last autumn's reshuffle.
Brimming with pride as he announced Monteil's appointment last week, Jean-Louis Debre, the interior minister, could not resist giving her a peck on the cheek. There have been no cries of tokenism: Monteil, 46, is renowned for being a good detective, quite an accomplishment in the testosterone-charged world of the French police. Only 4% of its officers are women.
Monteil's office at 36 Quai des Orfevres is famous for having been occupied in fiction by Jules Maigret, the detective invented by Georges Simenon. Monteil says that when she first became a commissaire as head of the serious crime squad visitors would often mistake her for the secretary and politely inquire where they could find her boss.
Monteil's first big break came while she was working as a young detective in Paris. A man suspected of raping and strangling three women was brought in for questioning but refused to talk. When his interrogators left for lunch, Monteil slipped into the interview room and oozed charm.
"I just chatted to him softly, but insistently. Eventually he began to look me in the eye," said Monteil. "I tried to find his sensitivities. I showed him a photograph of his child and he cried. Suddenly he began to confess in a cold, mechanical way as if he didn't realise the gravity of his situation. He told me about his compulsion to strangle women, looking me in the eye the whole time."
A photograph of the young policewoman in a dress graced the front pages of the French tabloids the next day. She has rarely been out of the press since.
For the next seven years Monteil worked as one of three women detectives in the drug squad. Often working undercover, Monteil penetrated the seedy world of the Parisian drug scene, building a team of informers and spending nights on surveillance operations. She rose to second in command.
Her male colleagues were a little suspicious at first. "I don't think they were misogynists, they were just a little worried that as a woman I wouldn't have the physical force necessary to apprehend a suspect," said Monteil. The mother of a 15-year-old daughter, Monteil says she has never tried to be one of the lads.
Monteil bears an uncanny resemblance to Detective Cagney in the American television police drama Cagney and Lacey. And, like Cagney, Monteil is the daughter of a policeman.
It is a testament to her qualities that accolades following her appointment have come from all quarters. One newspaper even solicited the views of France's most famous brothel keeper. Madame Claude ran a network of call girls who serviced French high society for years until she was arrested by Monteil in 1992.
Her arrest clearly left no hard feelings. Claude had just one comment to make about Monteil's appointment. "Bravo!" she said.
THEY can hardly wait. Canada's impoverished fishing community is gleefully preparing for the opportunity to slaughter thousands of seals in the biggest government-sanctioned hunt in the country's history.
Up to 250,000 harp seals are to meet their death next month on the ice floes off Newfoundland, shot in the head as they bask in the spring sunshine or clubbed by baseball-bat wielding Canadians anxious to profit.
Brian Tobin, Canada's former fisheries minister, has helped engineer the slaughter of the seals amid claims that he is using the animals' deaths to bring life to his political ambitions. He stepped down from the fisheries post last month after changing Canada's policy on seals: under the new rules, any Canadian citizen not just fishermen is allowed to go on a seal hunt and the quota for the annual harvest has been increased.
This won Tobin friends in Newfoundland, where he hopes to take up the post of premier later this month. Local fishermen, restricted by a moratorium on cod fishing, are delighted at the opportunity to make money from seals, each of which is worth £16. But the prospect of a free-for-all on the ice has appalled animal rights campaigners. They argue that seals are being killed to fuel a growing market in the Far East particularly China for organs, including seal penises, used in traditional medicines.
Environmentalists thought they had long ago won the battle to prevent massive seal hunts, mounting demonstrations during the 1970s and forcing restrictions. They used heart-wrenching photographs of baby seals being clubbed to death to portray the hunt as barbaric. Restrictions were subsequently imposed, notably the outlawing of hunting seal cubs for their fluffy white pelts. The battle is set to erupt again with this hunt.
"I opposed the seal hunts then and I will oppose them now," said Paul Watson, a spokesman for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. "The Canadian government will be subsidising ice-breakers and allowing large ships into the seal grounds this year.
The people of Newfoundland, used to eking out a living in harsh conditions, dismiss such talk as emotive claptrap. After they were banned from catching cod under a moratorium imposed four years ago, the fishermen believe the seals must die to help their communities survive, arguing that seals are a commodity to be harvested like any other crop. Fishermen killed 60,000 of the creatures last year. The seal population is estimated at 4m.
"The notion that there is a seal penis trade is, quite frankly, incorrect," insisted Tobin, despite reports of up to £100 being offered for each organ. "We have not harvested more than 57,000 seals on average over the past few years. There is room for expansion."
The prospective Newfoundland governor, dubbed "Tobin the Terrible" by opponents, has a history of doing what he believes is right. He was hailed as a hero by countrymen last year after ordering the seizure of a Spanish trawler suspected of using undersize nets off the Canadian coast; in Cornwall, citizens flew Canadian flags to mark their respect for a politician prepared to forgo diplomatic niceties to protect the beleaguered industry.
The fishermen hate the way they are being depicted as ruthless killers. "It hurts," said Antoine Poirier, the president of the Magdalen sealers' association. "We live on the land and from the land. It's a very harsh environment. Some people want the fish and the seals to be better protected than we are."
The fishermen are already preparing for the hunt. They will moor their boats and lie in wait along the two main feeding routes used by seals: the gulf around the Magdalen Islands, and the Atlantic pack ice off Newfoundland's east coast. Then, as thousands of seals bask on ice floes, the killing will begin.
David Hearns and his crew have already had some practice for the hunt, sailing out of St John's harbour in search of seals. They found one young harp seal 20 miles out, snoozing on an ice floe. Three shots broke the silence. A member of the crew jumped on to the ice and finished the animal off with his hakapic, a Norwegian hammer. The crew then smeared their faces with the blood. "It's to dim the reflection of the snow," said one.
The crew ate the seal's flippers, fried with onions, before finding another target on the ice. But the seal was only wounded and left a trail of bubbling red blood in the water. Entrepreneurs are expecting to reap rich rewards. Gyslain Cyr, a former fisherman, has set up a company to sell the seal oil, supposedly good for preventing heart attacks, to the Far East. "The best way to destroy a man is to pay him to do nothing," he said. "Unemployment benefit is a rather negative thing for society. I like working much better."
The Chinese are also cashing in. An organisation known as the Shanghai Fishery in Newfoundland is producing "seal oil capsules" as food supplements for Asian markets. "The fish were going and the seals are an abundant natural resource around here," said Cosmas Ho, one of the firm's directors. "It is business."
FEUDING between Germans and Czechs reached a bitter climax when Gerd Albrecht bundled his music scores together last week and stormed out of the orchestra pit of the Czech Philharmonic in Prague.
The flamboyant German conductor resigned amid claims that he had been the target of a racist smear campaign. But his choice of words to condemn the tactics of his critics left Czechs reeling at his insensitivity.
"Goebbels, Hitler's bad boy, he had one sentence," Albrecht told his critics. "Tell lies as often as possible and if you tell these lies a hundred times a week, a hundred times a day, people will believe them."
Albrecht believes lies were circulated about him being racist. In the end, he says, he was the target of racism himself. He believes his position as head of the Philharmonic was made impossible and he was forced to resign because he was a German.
Albrecht became furious after Czech television edited a speech he gave in Germany that mentioned local drinking preferences and made him appear to condemn Czechs as drunkards.
He was also accused by the Czech press of pocketing fees despite the fact that under his helmsmanship the Philharmonic made record profits and gained new respect abroad winning him the support of most of the orchestra.
The problem at the heart of this vitriolic battle, however, is the rapid souring of relations between the two central European neighbours now at their worst since the collapse of communism in 1989.
Antipathy reached a new high three weeks ago when foreign ministers from both countries failed to finalise a statement including issues relating to the still disputed Sudetenland annexed by Hitler and made into a puppet fascist Slovak state.
When 3m Germans were expelled from the region following the end of the second world war, the Sudetenland became a focus for bitter rivalry between the two nations over reparations for Nazi atrocities and restoration of seized land and properties.
For the Germans, the Sudentenland has become a hot domestic issue, with electoral support for the Sudeten Germans wishing to claim back property from their Czech neighbours, which is a key issue in the southern state of Bavaria.
Last week Helmut Kohl, the German chancellor, angered opposition MPs by failing to attend a debate in parliament on Czech-German relations.
ITALIAN art lovers are turning their hate on the government. A blaze that last week gutted La Fenice, Venice's elegant opera house, has sparked a row about the inability of the nation to care for its culture.
"The fire was an Italian tragedy that once again gave the impression abroad of comic inefficiency," says Riccardo Muti, the conductor and a stern critic of the indifference of the Italian authorities. Bureaucracy, corruption and lack of funding have left thousands of museums, monuments and churches in ruins.
Franco Zeffirelli, the film and opera director, warned that La Fenice could be lost for ever if the Petruzelli, an opera house in Bari that burnt down several years ago and has not been rebuilt, is anything to go by. He also pointed to the "absurd and shameful" decay of the Palermo opera house. It was closed in 1974 for minor refurbishment. In the intervening years it has been ruined. But it is not only Italy's temples of song that are being neglected. The ancient site of Pompeii, one of southern Italy's most popular tourist attractions, is covered in graffiti and stray dogs roam the weed- infested grounds.
The Italian government allots only a tiny fraction of its budget to culture. In Rome, the threat to the Colosseum from traffic vibration and pollution was stemmed only by a private sponsor. The Galleria Borghese, whose upper floors have been closed for years for restoration, resembles a building site, its elegant facade marred by corrugated iron boundaries, building materials and a crane.
The Corte dei Conti, which monitors state spending, estimates that between 1970 and 1994 there were 25,856 thefts of artworks. The chance of recovering them is minimal as there is no national register of historic treasures.
"I started a catalogue of the Province of Rome in the 1940s," said Frederic Zeri, an art historian. "It's never been printed and by now most of the objects have been stolen."
NEITHER the loud Russian pop music in the chilly hotel restaurant, nor the lack of telephone lines to England nor even the -15C blizzard raging outside seemed to dampen the spirits of a delegation of British businessmen visiting the bleak city of Togliatti, home of Russia's Lada car.
"We're very positive about our dealings here," said Terry Clarkson, managing director of Birmingham-based Motor Vehicle Imports, as he pondered the fate of the Avtovaz Lada factory, from which he plans to commission several thousand cars this year.
Yet Lada, once the symbol of everything that was wrong with the former Soviet Union and butt of jokes about a nuclear superpower's inability to build a car that worked, is becoming emblematic of all that is wrong with the new Russia; it does not bode well for the country that Vladimir Kadannikov, former director of Lada, is now running the Russian economy.
President Boris Yeltsin's appointment of Kadannikov as first deputy prime minister is seen partly as a move to steal the thunder of newly resurgent communists in the run-up to June's presidential election. The car supremo was chosen to replace Anatoly Chubais, the radical reformer and darling of the West who has perhaps done more than any other Russian official to drag the economy into the modern world.
As the world waited last week to see what the former car maker would do, Clarkson gave him his vote of confidence. "A man who gets things done," was his assessment. "It's a considerable achievement in this economic climate that he's managed to keep the factory working at all."
Down on the huge factory floor, where every minute Avtovaz's 100,000 workers turn out three of the box-shaped cars known from Vilnius to Vladivostok, the mood was not so complimentary. The only reason the factory keeps working is because its employees are toiling for free. The grime-encrusted men and women wearily tuning engines on a conveyor belt about a mile long have not been paid since November.
"It's a nightmare," said Oleg, a young engineer with a wife and baby to support, as he puffed a cigarette during a break. "I don't know what we eat, really. Cabbages, potatoes. We borrow off each other, ask our parents to help out, but basically nobody's got any money any more."
Another workman in soiled overalls pulled away from a gloomy game of chess to snap: "You know why Kadannikov has left? Because there was nothing left for him to steal any more. We produce and produce, and don't get paid. So where does all the money go? That's what I'd like to
know."
During Kadannikov's 26 years at Avtovaz, in which he rose from the factory floor to the directorship, he was fond of saying that "what's good for Avtovaz is good for Russia". Russians may be hoping he has changed his tune.
"Kadannikov's factory is in a pathetic state, even taking the objective economic problems of the Russian market into account," scoffed the Sevodnya newspaper. "You can see what happened to Avtovaz," warned Andrei Illarionov, a leading economic analyst, after Kadannikov's appointment. "That tells you what's going to happen to Russia."
In Tolyatti, a purpose-built one-company town 600 miles southeast of Moscow, what happens to Avtovaz affects each of the 410,000 residents. Built by the Italian Fiat company in the late 1960s, polluted, windswept Tolyatti is Ladaland and little else.
Analysts say that Avtovaz should chop 15% of its workforce. But the prospect of 15,000 unemployed workers with nowhere to turn has been too much for the management to contemplate. As the rows of unsold, snow-covered Ladas outside the factory grew longer last week, everybody was suffering.
"Hope dies last," smiled Alla, a secretary in Avtovaz's sparkling new Yugoslav-built office block, a 25-storey purple beam amid the drab grey factory buildings. "But it's getting difficult. Everyone's eaten all their winter preserves already."
In the Soviet era, consumers often had to wait years before they could buy a Lada, known in Russia as the Zhiguli. These days, there is no wait save those caused by distribution problems. But few Russians have the £5,000 it now costs to acquire a Lada, and many drivers prefer to invest in western European cars, which they believe offer greater reliability than Ladas.
Despite criticism of Kadannikov on the shop floor, he does have some supporters in Tolyatti who, like Clarkson, describe him as a tough, hard-working, determined boss.
"Of course, we are all happy that Vladimir Vassilievich has gone to Moscow," said his former aide, Viktor Klintsev. "Now we have a man who understands the problems of Russian industry."
His fiercest critics describe Kadannikov less as an old-style communist boss than a new-style robber baron. A 1993 survey listed Kadannikov, who claims his share in Avtovaz is 0.16%, as the 11th-richest person in Russia.
Kadannikov was accused of siphoning off profits from Avtovaz into Logovaz, a politically powerful distribution company set up three years ago to market Ladas in the Moscow region, which has registered large profits at the same time that Avtovaz has sunk into the red.
"Everything he touches in the process of his management activity becomes dynamically enriched, with the exception of his own enterprises," wrote Sergei Leontyev, a newspaper commentator.
Kadannikov's recent denial of allegations that the Avtovaz assembly line was controlled by the Russian mafia was hardly ringing the reports were "somewhat exaggerated", he said. "Tolyatti in this sense is not exceptional," he added.
There is little relief, meanwhile, for the workers of Tolyatti. They continued to troop in for their shifts last week at the same time as 500,000 unpaid Russian coal miners were striking in protest.
"When the bus company went on strike we walked to work, and we never take a holiday," said one foreman. "We were scared that if we didn't show up, we'd lose any chance of ever getting our money. There doesn't seem much point in striking. If it goes on like this much more, I don't know what else we'll do."
"GOOD Mo-o-o-orning Bosnia!" The drawn-out wake-up call booming over the airwaves similar to one used to disturb GIs' slumbers in Vietnam has American soldiers rubbing their eyes at 5am each day. Welcome to Tuzla Main, as they call America's military headquarters in Bosnia.
What used to be a rat-infested army barracks outside the northeastern town of Tuzla has been transformed in recent weeks into an impressive compound of heated, wooden-floored tents raised above the fields of mud. It is home to about 13,000 American troops, who make up a third of the Nato-led implementation force (Ifor) charged with maintaining the Bosnia peace accord.
Unlike the British and French contingents of Ifor, which had previously braved the minefields of Bosnia, American troops had never set foot in the country before the peace deal was signed last year. They are adapting to conditions with characteristic panache.
From the base, helicopters dubbed Hot Rod and Pale Horse rumble off to the hot spots; American armoured vehicles barrel down muddy tracks renamed Route Arizona and Route Ostrich. The troops return with whoops of self-congratulation. Optimism and a sense of purpose ooze from every soldier.
"I have been to Europe before," said Lieutenant Jim McPherson. "I was on holiday in Greece once. I can tell you that while we're here, there's going to be no fighting. And I feel good about that."
Nearby, a sergeant in a low-slung Humvee with "Bad Boyz" scrawled on the windscreen shouted out: "Piece of cake."
Known as Dubrave airfield before the arrival of the Americans, the base harbours an impressive array of military hardware, including $60m Apache and Cobra night-attack helicopters with computer-guided missiles. President Bill Clinton hopes the weapons will not be used in anger.
The long-term prospects for peace in Bosnia, however, remain uncertain. An embarrassing CIA report, leaked in Washington last week, predicted fighting would resume the minute the American-led Ifor troops left. American officials concede the military "quick fix" will not work without a concerted effort to solve underlying political problems, such as cracks in the Muslim-Croat federation which forms half of the new Bosnia.
"It's easy to lay off in winter," said a British officer, referring to the reluctance of all sides to fight in freezing conditions. "That happens every year. But people won't forgive easily. Not after you've lined whole families up in empty swimming pools and shot them."
So long as American troops are there, Washington's main preoccupation influenced by disasters in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia will be to get its boys home in one piece. The mandate is for one year in the least dangerous corner of the war-ravaged country. Clinton's prospects of re-election this year could depend on a successful operation.
The risks to American troops, consequently, are being minimised. Soldiers are for the most part confined to barracks, allowed to venture out only in convoys of four or more Humvees. Alcohol is forbidden, casual contact with locals is discouraged.
When Americans venture out, it is mainly in back-up operations to support units pushing the warring sides behind a three-mile separation zone. After calls for "support", swarms of Apache helicopters scramble to the trouble spot in minutes, frightening the living daylights out of erring Serbs or Muslims.
The American troops are still a novelty in Bosnia. Small boys wave and beg for chewing gum while men break into broad grins, relieved to be out of the trenches. Shopkeepers have set up "Welcome Ifor" signs to encourage the soldiers to stop and buy.
The honeymoon could soon end. The volatile mood was evident in Tuzla last week among Muslim women searching for thousands of missing men and boys believed to have been massacred by Bosnian Serbs after the siege of Srebrenica. Offices of the International Red Cross, which had been helping the women, were attacked and destroyed. "That could be us, we have to be real careful," said one American soldier.
The radio helps to distract troops from such worries, keeping up a stream of pep talk, instructions and messages from wives and girlfriends back home; last week the Superbowl football game was beamed into Tuzla Main.
Offering yet further encouragement, the camp chaplain has erected a massive sign that nobody can miss: "Blessed are the peacemakers."
WARREN CHRISTOPHER, the American secretary of state, voiced optimism yesterday about efforts to implement the Bosnia peace accord as the deadline passed for an official end to the siege of Sarajevo.
However, progress on peace was marred by a row over Serbian police in the suburbs of Sarajevo and the wounding of two British soldiers in a sniping incident.
At midnight last night, Serbian-held land around the city was formally handed over to the Bosnian government under the Dayton peace agreement signed late last year, to end four years of war in former Yugoslavia.
The Serbs were supposed to give up five suburbs around the capital, allowing thousands of Muslims and Croats "ethnically cleansed" from these areas to return home. However, Serbian police remained in place and the Bosnian government complained.
It was one of the most sensitive parts of the agreement and has been the cause of angry protests by Serbian residents who claim they would rather leave their homes than live with Muslims, as they did before the war.
About a third of the 50,000 Serbs affected, half of whom are already refugees from elsewhere in Bosnia, have packed up their furniture ready to move. Most are going to towns in eastern Bosnia, which have been "cleansed" of Muslims.
Also changing hands last night was territory in the west of the country, around the town of Mrkonjic Grad, which the federation is ceding to the Serbs, and a corridor from Sarajevo to the government enclave of Goradze.
Christopher was on a mission to press rival leaders in former Yugoslavia to honour the terms of the accord. He said: "In an overall sense, I am very pleased with what I hear about compliance with the Dayton accord."
The Nato implementation force has been able to operate with little hindrance. However, two British soldiers were slightly wounded by sniper fire last night when three bullets hit their Land Rover. Major-General Mike Willcocks, chief of staff for Nato's Allied Rapid Reaction Corps said: "There is no evidence that any of the parties is going to renege on this agreement."
Another test will come in 45 days when the Bosnian army will be allowed to enter the Serbian-held areas handed to government control. An international police taskforce, supposed to field 1,700 members, has been set up to guarantee law and order in certain areas. To date the force has deployed only 300 personnel.
In the areas being handed to Bosnian control last night, Serbian police will remain in place for 45 days.
Under the Dayton agreement the Serbian suburbs now come under federation law, but it is unclear whether the Serbian police there answer to the Sarajevo government or the Serbian "capital" in Pale, 10 miles away.
But Milorad Katic, the mayor of Grbavica, the only Serbian-held area in the centre of Sarajevo city, was unequivocal. "Serbian police and Serbian authorities will stay here for another 45 days, during which time Pale continues to be the higher authority."
A MASSIVE airlift of food was under way yesterday to try to prevent a humanitarian disaster in Kabul, the Afghan capital, whose besieged people are being starved by Islamic fundamentalist rebels.
The first of 50 flights organised by the International Committee of the Red Cross touched down in Bagrame, 30 miles northeast of Kabul, yesterday to try to ease the suffering of the 1m Afghans trapped in the city.
The cargo plane loaded with butter, beans and flour is part of a planned airlift of 1,000 tonnes of food and medicines to be carried out over the next 17 days. Food supplies in the city ran out last week as the so-called Taliban rebels laying siege to the once cosmopolitan capital try to starve out the population, cutting off all access by road.
The aerial lifeline is being masterminded by Mick Greenwood, a veteran of similar operations in Somalia and Ethiopia. "With the infrastructure of the city shattered and 80% of the buildings in ruins, the people are desperate," he said. "Wheat flour is impossible to find, bakeries have closed and bread costs have tripled in two weeks."
As the aid arrived, Red Cross workers were faced with harrowing scenes. Children in rags were foraging for food and fuel in parts of the city strewn with anti-personnel mines and unexploded shells. The results were apparent in crowded hospital wards, where victims lie limbless or blinded. Conditions in hospitals are appalling: there is no electricity and little medicine to ease the suffering.
Even Annie Sewell, the celebrated British Red Cross nurse and veteran of the horrors of places such as Somalia, is on the verge of despair. "My staff told me of a man who last week was selling his two sons for about £15 each," she said yesterday. "He could no longer afford to feed them and would apparently sell them to anyone able to give them food."
At the Indira Gandhi hospital, the wards were filled with the noise of children screaming. Four-year-old Zaitona lay moaning as her mother tried to force milk into her stomach through a nose tube. Freezing winds blew across the ward; the windows have all been smashed by shelling.
Zaitona weighs just 6kg, when 12kg would be normal. Dr Moor Arzoie, a paediatric specialist, believes she may have infectious tuberculosis, although it is impossible to tell for sure since there are no facilities to make an accurate diagnosis. The girl is not expected to survive.
In another ward, 10 babies were crammed into a small, filthy room with plastic sheets covering the shattered windows. Eight incubators, which could save some of the babies, lay broken and useless with no spare parts or trained technicians to repair them.
"Every day we lose a baby from a combination of low birth weight and hypothermia," said the doctor. "We can only heat one room now and after today I don't know if we will get anymore gasoline for even this room.
"It is hard to locate the tiny babies hidden under thick blankets until you follow the drips down to their bony arms."
At orthopaedic workshops, malnourished amputees are returning with artificial limbs that no longer fit; disease is rampant; death is everywhere.
Sewell, 41, originally from London, has worked in Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Ethiopia and other war zones. Now she is treating thousands of civilians injured by some of the 10m landmines estimated to have been scattered in the country.
"You try not to think about the injuries by keeping busy," she said. "But sometimes you lift the blankets to inspect a child's injuries and you find only half a person there. We just do what we can."
The "anti-personnel" devices are discovered each month by more than 3,000 unwary men, women and children who suffer appalling injuries, including the loss of limbs and eyes. More than 40,000 people in Kabul are waiting for artificial limbs to be fitted; many others in rural areas have no access to treatment.
Evidence of the scale of the problem is inescapable: people no longer see anything unusual in amputees. Khair Mohammed, 12, trod on a mine outside Sanchorack village in Balkh province. He regained consciousness days later and found he had lost a leg.
The cost of war is particularly high for the children. Impoverished and poorly clothed, some are even competing to find mines, which they take to village markets where rebel soldiers barter for them. Many children die or are maimed in explosions as they dig the devices up, but this does not deter others. They are paid the equivalent of 5p for each mine.
Random rocket and mortar fire is also a daily hazard for residents struggling to survive a bitter 17th winter without peace. The American-backed mujaheddin rebels who forced the Russians to withdraw after a decade of occupation in 1989 and brought down the puppet government of President Mujadidi Najibullah in 1992, disintegrated along ethnic lines shortly afterwards, plunging the country once more into war. The siege of Kabul is now led by zealous religious students intent on imposing harsh Islamic law.
The Red Cross estimates that since the Soviet withdrawal 100,000 people have been killed and 50,000 maimed by landmines. The fighting has created more than 5m refugees; many homes have been reduced to rubble.
Afghan rugs, once sought after by visitors to Kabul, are in vogue among locals for a different reason: people are burning the symbols of their nation for fuel as temperatures plummet.
Fuel supplies have run out and more people will die unless they can heat what is left of their homes as temperatures dip at night to -30C. Hunting for wood is a deadly gamble on account of the landmines and threat of attack by Taliban guerrillas.
For centuries, armies have battled for control of the country because of its importance as a trade route between West and East. Once a key outpost of the British empire, Kabul was described by a British officer involved in its capture in 1841 as "delightful, well-built and handsome". It is unlikely to ever be described that way again.
The Taliban forces, once themselves besieged in Kabul, emerged 18 months ago, led by religious students who swept through southern Afghanistan claiming the cities of Kandahar and Herat before being halted on the outskirts of Kabul.
Taliban rebels on the front lines near Maidan Shahr, 24 miles southwest of Kabul, denied they were destroying the country they wanted one day to run.
"We want to avoid civilian casualties and had told the people to leave," said Shah Mohammed, an 18-year-old soldier. "We are going to rebuild Afghanistan, not destroy it."
The words appear to mean nothing. Taliban jets bombed Kabul on Thursday, killing 12 and injuring 20 civilians. Despite several offensives, the Taliban have been unable to conquer the snow-capped mountains that form a natural defensive wall around the city.
Afghanistan has played its part in bringing world peace, helping to bleed the Soviet economy during 10 years of war, but the country's plight has now been forgotten the last United Nations official fled two months ago.
The people are angry that a mortar explosion in a Sarajevo market ignited international outrage and started the process towards peace, while regular atrocities in Kabul provoke little reaction.
Shelling is often heaviest around prayer times, when both sides know men will be grouped together. For a city of 1m, it is eerily quiet at night, with only the dim glow of kerosene lamps and the barking of wild dogs betraying signs of life. A strict 9pm curfew has reduced night life to huddling around a radio in the dark.
But there are distractions from the daily struggle to survive: thousands of flimsy kites are engaged in dog fights in the skies above Kabul between air strikes.
The last few feet of twine are frayed by the flyer as he attempts to slice through his opponent's twine, an event which prompts squeals of delight from the children. That is, until a plane roars overhead or a rocket comes screaming from the sky.
Sunday Times readers wishing to help the British Red Cross in Afghanistan can make credit card donations by telephoning 0171-201 5010. Cheques can be sent to: British Red Cross Afghanistan Appeal, Freepost, London SW1X 7BR.
Critics of Sir Richard Scott have already fired the first shots in the battle that will follow his report into the government's handling of the events surrounding the arms-to-Iraq affair. Today, we publish part of a draft of that report, due to be presented to parliament next week, which gives a foretaste of the real issues before the country. However loudly Whitehall Man protests, the report's findings will not easily be dismissed as little more than an overlong, overdue essay by a misguided outsider who cannot possibly understand their secretive world.
That argument will not wash. Not since the 1948 Lynskey Tribunal into allegations that ministers of the crown had been bribed has the lid been lifted so publicly on Whitehall's inner workings. The fact that Sir Richard has stuck to his task for more than three years, examining the conduct and motives of a cast list of the good and the great who rule over us in minute detail, detracts not a whit from the force of his conclusions.
His inquiry was prompted by scandal the circumstances surrounding the collapse of the Crown prosecution of three Matrix Churchill directors accused of trying to export banned militarily-useful equipment to Iraq. However high the political stakes and however damaging the consequences for those criticised, there must be no scandal in the way Sir Richard's findings are acted upon.
The manner of its pre-publication circulation already gives cause for concern. John Major is expected tp receive it in the next few days, a full week before the opposition or parliament has sight of it. This allows the government to prepare its case, massage opinion as best it may, and exploit its advantage over opposition parties at Westminster and those MPs on its own backbenches who await the report with anxiety.
Scott's open inquisition, which so offended Lord Howe, the former foreign secretary and author of the original guidelines on arms exports to Iraq, is thus about to be replaced by Downing Street's covert consideration on how best to handle the report with the least damage to those most at risk. If today's premature insight into the way Sir Richard was thinking as he approached his final draft helps bust the Whitehall network's pigeon-hole plans, the public interest will be well served.
William Waldegrave, currently Treasury chief secretary, formerly the Foreign Office minister who approved the sale of machine tools to Iraq, has long been the chief prospective casualty from the Scott fall-out. Today's leak confirms that position, although we have yet to see the report's judgement on the role of Sir Nicholas Lyell, the attorney general, in advising ministers to sign "gagging order" certificates relating to official papers relevant to the Matrix Churchill trial.
The cabinet will doubtless rally to Mr Waldegrave but personal loyalty and political self-interest cannot prevail if parliament concludes he misled it about government policy towards Iraq, setting in train a cover-up that might have led three innocent businessmen to prison.
The following is an edited extract of chapter 4 of Lord Justice Scott's draft report on the arms-to-Iraq affair.
Government statements on defence sales policy after the ceasefire.
(i) Letters from the FCO in 1989.
Over the period, February 1989 to July 1989, a number of letters, signed mainly by Mr Waldegrave but a few by Lord Howe, were sent to MPs. A form of response to be incorporated in the letters sent to the MPs in question was settled in the Foreign Office. The response included [the words] "British arms supplies to both Iran and Iraq continue to be governed by the strict application of guidelines".
Letters to MPs incorporating these sentences and signed by Mr Waldegrave numbered some seven in March 1989, five in April, twenty-three in May, one in June and two in July. Lord Howe signed two similar letters in May and two in July. In one of the April letters and in each of the May, June and July letters, the formula was preceded by the statement that: "The government have not changed their policy on defence sales to Iraq or Iran." In one letter there was a reference to "our firm and even-handed position over arms sales to Iran and Iraq".
The reference in each of these letters to the criterion that governed the supply of non-lethal defence equipment to Iraq was not accurate. Since the end of February 1989 the criterion for Iraq had been the new formulation, namely, that there would be no supply of equipment which would be of direct and significant assistance to Iraq in the conduct of offensive operations in breach of the ceasefire. The inaccuracy must have been known to Mr Waldegrave, who had been one of the midwives at the birth of this new formulation. Lord Howe, on the other hand, had not been informed of the junior minister's agreement on the new formulation.
The statement in the letters that "the government have not changed their policy on defence sales to Iraq or Iran" was untrue. After the ceasefire Lord Howe had advocated, and all ministers, including the prime minister, had accepted, that a more liberal policy, designed to enable British exporters to take advantage of the glittering opportunities for defence-related sales to Iraq that it was believed would be available, should be adopted.
It had been left to the junior ministers to try and formulate a new policy which would then be brought to senior ministers and the prime minister for approval. Agreement by the junior ministers on a new, more liberal, policy had been agreed in principle in December 1988 and was being implemented on a trial basis by February 1989. The new policy was reversed for Iran following the Rushdie affair but was confirmed for Iraq, at the latest, at the 24 April 1989 ministers' meeting.
Mr Waldegrave knew, first hand, the facts that rendered the "no change in policy" statement untrue. Whether when he signed these letters he realised that the statement was untrue is not a matter I can decide in his evidence to the inquiry, Mr Waldegrave strenuously and consistently asserted his belief, in the face of a volume of, to my mind, incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, that policy had indeed, remained unchanged. I did not receive the impression of any insincerity on his part in giving me the evidence he did but, none the less, I have no hesitation in rejecting his explanations. It is clear, in my opinion, that policy did not remain unchanged.
The proposition that the government's position over "arms sales to Iran and Iraq" was "even-handed" had been untrue ever since the decision taken as a consequence of the Rushdie affair to "return to a more strict approach to Iran".
In his letter of 28 March 1989 to Mr Clarke, Mr Waldegrave had proposed that "we should now revert to the stricter implementation of the guidelines as applied to Iran" and said that he saw no reason to change the newly agreed "flexible approach for applications to export defence-related equipment to Iraq".
In my opinion, these answers [from Lord Howe] preclude [him] from maintaining his resistance to the proposition that there had been a change in policy. I do not suppose when he signed the letters in question in May and July 1989 he directed his mind to whether or not the "no change in policy" statement was justifiable but, in my opinion, he ought to have done so and, if he had done so, he could not honestly have signed the letters.
[Waldegrave's] letter dated 10 August 1989 written to Tom Sackville MP said this: "Since the beginning of the conflict between Iran and Iraq, the government has pursued a policy of impartiality."
Mr Waldegrave, in his written evidence to the inquiry, contended that the passage I have cited was an accurate statement of government policy at the time. It was not.
Mr Waldegrave knew of [the] new formulation. He contended, in his oral evidence to the inquiry, that because this new formulation had never been approved by senior ministers or the prime minister, it had not become government policy but represented, merely, an interpretation, relaxed and flexible, of the original guidelines, necessary in order to take account of the circumstances prevailing after the ceasefire. I regard this explanation as sophistry.
In addition, the natural implication from the reference in the letter to the "policy of impartiality" would be that the policy had continued up to the date of the letter and was continuing. This, for the reasons I have already given, was untrue. Taken overall, the terms of Mr Waldegrave's letter to Mr Sackville and his other letters in like terms were apt to mislead the readers as to the nature of the policy on export sales to Iraq currently being pursued by the government. Mr Waldegrave was unquestionably in a position to know that that was so.
The statement that "the government have pursued a policy of impartiality" between Iraq and Iran is to be found also in letters dated 14 August 1989, 21 August 1989, 4 September 1989 and 5 September 1989, the first from Lynda Chalker (a Foreign Office minister), the second from Mrs Thatcher, the prime minister, and the other two from Mr Major, as foreign secretary.
I have already dealt with the extent to which Mrs Thatcher was in a position to have identified the inaccuracies. She had received and read the Ministry of Defence paper dated 20 July 1989 on the Hawk project ... and so can be said to have been placed on notice that a more liberal approach to defence sales to Iraq was being adopted than had previously been the case.
But the paper had been concentrating on Hawk and I do not think Mrs Thatcher can be blamed if, when signing the letter of 21 August 1989, she did not recall the implications of the reference to the guidelines in the MoD's 20 July Hawk paper.
Mr Major had become foreign secretary on 26 June 1989 and might have been expected that, by September, he would have become aware that government policy on the export licensing of non-lethal defence equipment to Iraq was that a more liberal criterion should be applied to Iraq than to Iran, and that the more liberal criterion for Iraq was significantly different from the original 1985 (or 1984) criterion. In his evidence to the inquiry, Mr Major said that he believed throughout that the original guidelines had remained in use and that he had been "advised by those carrying out the policy at operational level that we were impartial". However, on 25 July 1989 he received his first brief as foreign secretary. This briefing did, as it seems to me, put Mr Major on notice that Iraq was receiving more favourable treatment than Iran so far as export licensing of defence equipment was concerned, a state of affairs that, in my opinion, is not consistent with a continuing stance of impartiality.
The briefing was, however, directed to the Hawk project and, as with Mrs Thatcher, I do not find it very surprising that Mr Major did not advert to all the implications of the briefing on other issues. I do not doubt Mr Major's evidence that he signed the letters believing the statements they contained to be accurate, but I do not accept that they were in fact accurate.
Responsibility for the inaccuracies in the letters written by Mr Major and Mrs Thatcher, in my opinion, lies with Mr (Rob) Young, the senior FO official who saw and approved them in draft. He should have ensured that Mr Major and Mrs Thatcher were adequately briefed.
An exclusive leak from the draft Scott report reveals damning evidence. Can John Major escape without losing a scalp?
John Major is in what he calls "election mode" and he loves it. For once he has enjoyed a huge slice of political luck: the decision by Harriet Harman, the shadow health secretary, to send her son to a top grammar school has transformed the landscape at Westminster.
Labour is on the defensive and wonders whether the Tony Blair bubble has finally burst. Talk of plots to ditch Major has disappeared; suddenly, the 1922 committee has decided he cannot be challenged as party leader before the general election. The tail has stopped wagging the Tory dog and Blair is temporarily muzzled.
However, on Wednesday or Thursday this week, a booby trap that has menaced Major for three years will finally explode: the prime minister will receive a 2,300-page report from Sir Richard Scott, the senior judge he called in to investigate the arms-to-Iraq affair, the murky period when the government secretly relaxed guidelines on exports that helped Saddam Hussein rebuild his war machine.
The two men most likely to be criticised by Scott in his final report are William Waldegrave, the Treasury chief secretary who, with others, secretly eased the guidelines while he was a Foreign Office minister; and Sir Nicholas Lyell, the attorney-general, who failed to stop the trial of three Matrix Churchill executives accused of illegally exporting arms to Iraq.
Cabinet sources say there is now a "steely determination" to avoid delivering a head on a platter to Labour. But if a leaked draft of part of the Scott report obtained by The Sunday Times (see facing page) is anything like the final version, Major will be hard-pressed to deflect a devastating bombshell.
The damning 11-page draft claims Waldegrave was in a position to know at "first hand" that he and other ministers had made untrue statements to parliament and the public. It also savages Lord Howe, the former foreign secretary, and implicitly criticises Major over the way they and other ministers allegedly failed to communicate the full truth to MPs about Britain's help to Saddam in the years running up to the Gulf war.
The draft, part of the inquiry's early findings, is especially critical of Geoffrey Howe's failure to "direct his mind" to the suggestion that statements in letters he had signed as foreign secretary were untrue. Labour claims this may be why Howe so vehemently attacked Scott in a recent magazine article, advising ministers to ignore his report.
Moreover, the extract shows that Scott finds both Major, while he was foreign secretary in 1989, and Margaret Thatcher, when she was prime minister, were "put on notice" of the secret change of policy before they signed inaccurate letters stating it had not altered.
DURING his inquiry Scott was painstakingly fair: he took verbal evidence, written submissions and produced a draft report which was sent to all those who might be criticised so that their comments could be taken into consideration in his final conclusions. After previous leaks, which have amounted to just a few select phrases, Scott has emphasised that his findings were only "provisional" and that some sections of his final report could differ. However, ministers said last week they believe the leaks may have deterred Scott from making many significant changes to his final draft.
In the past, Waldegrave has said he is confident he will persuade the inquiry the views in Scott's draft report were "wrong and unfair" and should not appear in the final report. His friends believe two key points conceded by Scott will enable him to survive: first, that he would not have changed the export guidelines if he had believed they would be used for military purposes; second, that there was no increase in arms exports following their relaxation.
More recently, however, Waldegrave has confided he does not believe Scott will water down much of the criticism in his draft report. As one minister put it: "He [Scott] is someone who forms a view and then is reluctant to budge from it. His whole record shows that."
We will not know Scott's final verdict on Waldegrave and Lyell until his report is published on February 15, but one thing is already clear: Major will try to tough it out.
Ministers know that the opposition and the media will probably demand the resignation of Lyell or Waldegrave or both. But what will decide their fate will be the reaction from Tory MPs. Most ministers who failed to cling to office in a crisis Edwina Currie over salmonella in eggs, David Mellor over his private life or Michael Mates because of his links with Asil Nadir were ultimately deserted by their own backbenchers. Indeed, it appears that Major will demand the loyalty Blair eventually won from his reluctant MPs over the Harman affair, which he turned into a matter of confidence in his leadership.
"How we react to Scott will be a big test of whether the Conservative party is united and whether it is serious," one cabinet minister said. "We have got to hold our nerve."
There is another reason why Major will be reluctant to see a minister forced out of office: during the Harman affair, Blair taunted Major over the resignation of Tory ministers he had originally backed and said he himself would not "buckle" under the pressure to sack Harman.
"We are going to batten down the hatches," said one Downing Street source. "We are going into Scott with some political momentum."
There is no sign that the prime minister has lost confidence in Waldegrave, who has sent Major every exchange between him and Scott. A clear signal that Major wanted to keep him came last July when Waldegrave was moved from the post of agriculture minister, a relative backwater, to his important Treasury job in charge of public spending. Major values his contribution to cabinet discussions. When he is working on a speech, Major sometimes telephones Waldegrave for inspiration: as a former fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, Waldegrave provides the intellectual input that used to be supplied by Chris Patten, the former cabinet minister who is now governor of Hong Kong.
Major, Lyell and Waldegrave have another close connection: they are political blood-brothers, having entered the Commons in 1979 and joined the Blue Chip group of new Tory MPs who were regarded as the high-flyers of their generation. All three rose to fulfil that promise and maintain their bond. And all three became enmeshed in the same tangled arms affair.
WHEN Thatcher appointed Waldegrave a foreign minister in 1988, many predicted a glittering career for the Tory patrician. The move from environment minister, where he had helped devise the poll tax, was seen as a chance to prove his cabinet potential.
In his new ministerial red box were copious official briefings, among them intelligence assessments and policy guidance on the main item of British concern: the Iran-Iraq war, one of the most futile conflicts of the modern age.
Like other western governments, Britain had announced controls on the export of military equipment to both of the warring countries. Howe, then foreign secretary and Waldegrave's boss, had told the Commons in 1985 that Britain was "strictly impartial in the conflict and had refused to allow the supply of lethal equipment to either side".
Within weeks of Waldegrave's appointment, however, a ceasefire had been declared and Foreign Office officials began considering the tremendous potential that a peaceful Iraq offered for British trade. In Whitehall, Waldegrave's mandarins were soon calling Iraq the "Big Prize".
Among the reports in Waldegrave's red box were intelligence summaries of how Saddam was extending his military procurement network to include companies in Britain. The previous year, MI6 had learnt that Iraq was turning to British manufacturers to supplement its usual German and Swiss suppliers of machine tools for the production of shells and missiles.
The security services were particularly concerned, Waldegrave soon learnt, about the activities of a machine tools company in Coventry called Matrix Churchill. According to MI6, the Iraqi-owned firm was supplying computer-controlled lathes to two Iraqi weapons factories. This had been discovered after the DTI had granted licence certificates for a multi-million-pound export order to Iraq in 1987.
Matrix was one of several British manufacturing firms which had been pressing ministers throughout 1988 to allow them to export to Iraq and Iran. There were thousands of jobs at stake including some in marginal constituencies. On instructions from Thatcher and senior ministers, Waldegrave, Alan Clark, the trade minister, and Lord Trefgarne, the defence procurement minister, were told to draw up new relaxed guidelines.
Clark and, to a lesser extent, Trefgarne, wanted to abolish the guidelines altogether, arguing that they represented an unnecessary hindrance. Waldegrave was at first reluctant to promote change but by the end of 1988 the trio had agreed on a new, more liberal interpretation. They had agreed, too, to keep this policy switch hidden because they were concerned about the public presentation of the policy at a time when Saddam was committing atrocities against the Kurds.
Early in the new year, Waldegrave began to receive a stream of letters from MPs seeking clarification of the government's policy on trade to Iraq. In a series of replies, drafted by Foreign Office officials, over the following months, Waldegrave maintained that British policy on arms supplies to Iraq and Iran continued to be governed by the "strict application" of the original 1985 guidelines. In a letter to David Curry, the conservative MP for Skipton and Ripon, he claimed the policy was "even-handed" to both countries.
Even as he signed the replies, Waldegrave's office was beginning to be sent disturbing reports that Matrix Churchill was helping Saddam upgrade his Scud missiles. One report dated August 1989 referred to Project 1728, an Iraqi plan to bring cities in Israel and Saudi Arabia into the range of Scuds. Matrix provided machines to upgrade the rocket motors and extend their range. It was clear that even though Iraq had halted its war with Iran, it had embarked on its most ambitious arms buying programme ever.
It was against this background that Waldegrave, Clark and Trefgarne met to consider a further application by Matrix Churchill to export more shell-making equipment to Iraq. Waldegrave had been warned by Stephen Lillie, a senior official in the Middle East department, that there were dangers attached to the deal: the machine tools would allow Iraq to build artillery rockets and the lathes could be used to produce components for a nuclear bomb.
A reluctant Waldegrave caved in to pressure from Trefgarne and Clark. The Whitehall line was that the benefits of intelligence provided on Saddam's arms network by two Matrix executives Paul Henderson and Mark Gutteridge outweighed fears that the exports would help rearm Iraq.
At a meeting at the House of Lords on November 1, Waldegrave said he would approve the exports on condition that Trefgarne (now at the trade department) answered any awkward questions in parliament. In addition, Clark, at the MoD, would continue his department's surveillance of the Iraqi arms-buying network in Britain. Nothing more would have come of these secret meetings but for two events the following summer. In June 1990, Customs and Excise investigators, acting on a tip-off, raided the Matrix Churchill factory in Coventry and later arrested Henderson, the firm's managing director and two other executives. In August, Saddam invaded Kuwait.
The following year, Customs, oblivious of the secret machinations in Whitehall, charged the three Matrix executives. By November 1992 the three were standing in the dock at the Old Bailey. Ministers were hopeful that details of their secret discussions, contained in hundreds of pages of classified Whitehall documents, would never become known.
Some had signed public interest immunity certificates so-called gagging orders declaring that the release of the documents to the defendants would jeopardise national security.
However, the trial judge, Mr Justice Smedley, did not agree and in a sensational move ordered certain categories of documents to be disclosed to the defence team. The documents showed that ministers, including Waldegrave, had known about Matrix exports to Saddam's weapons factories. The £3m trial collapsed and Major agreed to set up an inquiry under Scott to examine the affair.
Giving evidence to the inquiry, Waldegrave fumbled through his testimony. Despite the weight of documentation against him, he insisted it was not misleading to tell parliament and the public that the original 1985 guidelines had not changed. But he was forced to admit that he had made an error in allowing Britain to export military equipment to Iraq: "Hindsight shows that the Iraqis deceived us about the end use to which some of the exports were to be put."
He told the inquiry he might have made different decisions if his officials had passed crucial information to him. In particular, some intelligence had not reached him. "It [intelligence information] had gone into the state machinery and did not come out in the right place. I think that if I had more of that, some of the decisions may have come out differently."
Waldegrave was the first minister to admit to the inquiry that he had been wrong to approve the export licences.
His testimony appeared sincere, but that did not satisfy Scott. In reviewing the case papers and the evidence of Waldegrave and others, the judge appeared to have made up his mind. In the leaked draft of his report, Scott describes the minister's explanation that the guidelines on trade had not changed because the prime minister had not given his approval as "sophistry".
THE campaign to discredit Scott has been led by Howe, who criticised the inquiry's procedures when he gave evidence to it. Writing in The Spectator a week ago, Howe accused Scott of being engaged in "a marathon contest with reality". Clark is equally dismissive, suggesting that the final report will be as relevant as "an old bag of chips".
Ministers deny any government attempt to undermine Scott. Indeed, some believe Howe's intervention may be counterproductive, making the judge even less likely to tone down his draft report.
Sources close to the inquiry dismissed speculation in Labour circles that the draft report had been toned down to avoid libelling any of those criticised. They say the issue does not arise because the report will be published under the rarely used Parliamentary Papers Act to give Scott legal immunity.
Although the judge's officials will provide a guide to help journalists through the report, there will be no executive summary. Labour leaders fear the government will hold all the aces in how the report is covered by the media.
There will be no advance copies and the report will be released at 3.30pm just as Ian Lang, president of the board of trade, begins a Commons statement. There is no provision for Blair to see an advance copy so Labour can prepare its response although he has asked for one and is still in negotiations over the issue.
Ministers will have had a week to prepare their defences; a Cabinet Office team is in place to ensure a co-ordinated response across the government departments concerned. Tory whips will be briefed on how to keep their back-bench troops in check, while MPs will be primed to take to the airwaves to defend Waldegrave and Lyell.
The government will later allow a Commons debate and vote on Scott. It is possible that Labour will make it a vote of confidence although Blair would do that only if he felt he had a reasonable chance of winning.
One problem for Major is that the Ulster Unionists cannot be relied upon; David Trimble, their leader, has severely criticised the government's actions in the Matrix Churchill case. So it would take only three Tory MPs to vote with the opposition parties for the government to be defeated.
One senior Tory party source said: "People may be brave about trying to rally round, but at the end of the day it is so easy to lose control of events in front of a rough House of Commons. Then you have to go."
Privately, ministers admit that there is a danger to the prime minister personally. As with Lord Nolan's inquiry into standards in public life, a lot of Tory MPs wonder why the Scott inquiry was set up in the first place. It might no longer threaten Major's leadership, but it could certainly stop his fightback dead in its tracks.
Scott's methods were fair, says Geoffrey Robertson QC. For some, an early attack on Lord Justice Scott provides the best line of defence against the conclusions of his report into the arms-to-Iraq affair. So unfairly were ministers and civil servants treated by this naive judge, Lord Howe argued in The Spectator magazine, that Scott "is not a tribunal upon whose judgment the reputation of anyone should be allowed to depend".
This is an exercise in damage limitation. It is a diversion that reaches a conclusion which is the opposite of the truth. Never in legal history has an inquiry been so excruciatingly fair to the powerful people and institutions whose behaviour it has examined. Scott's procedures have actually protected ministers and their officials from the ordeal of hostile examination that, under Howe's notion of "fairness", they would certainly have undergone.
It must not be forgotten that the Scott inquiry was established by John Major as a result of the collapse of the Matrix Churchill prosecution. In that trial, Customs and Excise had accused Paul Henderson, managing director of the Coventry firm, and two other company executives, of doing what government ministers had encouraged them to do and what civil servants knew they were doing.
Customs officials, like MPs and the public, may well have been ignorant of the government's true policy on arms-related trade with Iraq, for this policy had been kept from and then misrepresented in parliament. But in a further effort to keep that policy secret, long after the Gulf war, no fewer than four government ministers, advised by the attorney-general, signed gagging orders. These claimed that the skies would fall in if Henderson's lawyers were allowed to see the internal Whitehall documents from which they might divine the truth that would clear him.
Those documents, some of which were initially withheld on the bogus argument that lives would be put at risk by their release, showed that Henderson had been a brave MI6 agent, and revealed a course of conduct within the government that was manifestly at variance with its public statements.
Scott's task was to examine both the politics of arms to Iraq and the conduct of the prosecution. The opposition urged Major to establish a public inquiry under a 1921 statute, in which all interested parties would be legally represented and all material would be examined in public. This is a procedure useful for examining public order or accident disasters, where most evidence comes from eyewitnesses. It was the government's decision to avoid that procedure.
Howe complains now that Scott's judgment cannot be trusted because ministers and officials were not represented at public expense by a "legal team" (QC captain, front-row barristers, solicitors and para-legals) who would lead them by the hand through their evidence, cross-examine anyone who might tell a different story, and explain why internal Whitehall documents did not mean what they said. (This is an important distinction. I spent many days at the trial putting the terms of Whitehall memorandums to civil servants. Question: "That is what this sentence means, isn't it?" Answer: "Not necessarily. That is what it says.")
Howe is right that cross-examination is a valuable test for truth, and Scott deprived himself (and the public) of its benefits by excluding barristers. What Howe cannot comprehend is that this decision was not unfair to witnesses but over-fair to them: not only were they protected from hostile public grilling, but they were also afforded an alternative that allowed them to explain their actions as benignly as humanly possible.
On Henderson's behalf, I sought permission from Scott to cross-examine the ministers who had signed PII certificates (the so-called gagging orders) and the people responsible for trimming the evidence for his trial. Other defendants from the various "arms-to-Iraq" prosecutions had legal teams, one said to be headed by George Carman, waiting in the wings. There were other interested parties to assist in the cross-examination of ministers alleged to have misled parliament and counsel for all the MPs said to have been misled or at least one "legal team" each for Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
Had Scott adopted Howe's preferred course, witnesses would have been subjected to hostile and public interrogation from half a dozen sources, no doubt accusing them variously of dishonesty, incompetence, stupidity, sophistry, arrogance and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
Instead and very much to the government's relief Scott bent over backwards to protect them. They were invited to reply to written questions in as full and as legally polished detail as they wished. Only then were they asked to take the stand, not for hostile cross-examination by antagonistic parties for a week, but for a day or so of politely perceptive questions seeking clarification of their written answers.
They were then given ample opportunity to reconsider their testimony: to dot their "i"s and cross their "t"s as they saw fit. Later, they were even sent drafts of those sections of the report in which their conduct was assessed and given the opportunity to take issue with any part of that description, down to the last adjective. At least £1m of public money was paid to provide them with lawyers skilled in the drafting of these written responses.
The criticism that can be levelled at Scott is not that it was unfair to witnesses, but that it was too fair. They avoided the cut and thrust of cross-examination and were permitted every opportunity to rationalise their behaviour and to dovetail their evidence with other witnesses. But that course had this virtue; every word of justification that it is possible for them to utter has now been adduced, both orally and repeatedly in writing. Howe's argument deserves to be turned on its head: if a witness escapes censure from Scott, that may not necessarily prove that he or she acted properly. But if a government minister's reputation is damaged by Scott's judgment, there can be no reasonable doubt that it deserves to suffer.
Geoffrey Robertson QC represented Paul Henderson at the Matrix Churchill trial. He is the author of Freedom, the Individual and the Law
Last week I read that Lady Colin Campbell, as this Jamaican lass styles herself, was the first to reveal that all was not well with the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Her 1992 book revealed everything about Diana's bulimia, anorexia and obsession with weight-lifting. Or so she claims. I have never read any of the royal books, hers or Morton's. But I beg to differ from what I read in a tabloid paper last Tuesday. Lady C was not the first. Alas, it was I.
It was July 1991 and I was in Washington DC, appearing on the Larry King show on CNN. I was on my prison book tour and it was my last stop (I had almost been lynched in San Francisco when I insisted that cancer and heart disease should have more funding than Aids because they killed more people in one year than Aids had in 15). Having discussed British jails, Aids and other assorted subjects, King then started pumping me about the royal family.
"Everything is hunky-dory," I told him, "except that Charles and Diana are through it's only a matter of time." Actually, I said it for effect. I knew all about Diana's midnight trips and her efforts to lose her bodyguards, but not that the marriage had irretrievably broken down. It just goes to show that guessing is still the only game where the royals are concerned.
I would rather not dwell on it, but if anyone doubts that Labour is softer on criminals than the Tories, they should take their own poll inside a prison. I spent three months in the pokey 12 years ago for possession of a small amount of cocaine. It was my first and thankfully last brush with the law and I wrote a book, Nothing to Declare, about my experience.
Needless to say, everyone in jail claims they are innocent. It was, therefore, quite a surprise to the wardens when I not only admitted my guilt but also expressed the terrible shame I felt for bringing my family's name into disrepute. Whether it was because of my contrition, or my sporting background, I was assigned to the gym as orderly the cushiest job in the nick.
I also became what is known as a prison lawyer. Word spreads quickly inside, and anyone who reads without moving their lips and even those who do, as long as they read is immediately inundated with requests for lawyerly advice.
My favourite request was that from Warren, a large black man who was inside for robbery. His idea for obtaining immediate parole was unique. He claimed he had six common-law wives and that as he was the only person they could reach orgasm with they the wives were being deprived of their civil rights while he was incarcerated.
When I told him the scheme would never work, he started to turn violent. But when I pointed out that most English judges were in the closet and would add to his sentence if such an appeal reached them, he gave me a big smile and befriended me for the duration. The closest we came to a fight after that was when Clive Ponting spilled the beans about Margaret Thatcher.
If Thatcher was disliked among the Gilmour-Jenkins claret crowd, you should have heard what my fellow inmates thought of her. A new Hitler trying to impose tyranny was among the mildest.
Which brings me to the latest pre-election skirmish over crime between the government's Tarzan and new Labour. I would say I was the only man in Pentonville who would have voted Tory. Overwhelmingly, my fellow inmates were for Labour, the Beast of Bolsover probably being their best-known politician with the exception of the lady they loved to loathe.
Mind you, politics is not an issue in jail. Law and order is. Criminals do not believe in it. They believe it stands for oppression of the poor by the rich.
If anyone truly believes that new Labour under nice Tony Blair will be tougher on crime and its causes than the Tories have been and I admit they have failed miserably I will concede that a nice, white-haired, red-coated jolly gentleman came down the chimney last Christmas Eve and delivered presents to my children.
Both old and new Labour have made it clear during debates on crime that custodial sentences do not work. This is a fact. What they say now is pure electioneering. When Michael Howard rightly proposed increasing sentences for serious crimes, new Labour's silence was deafening.
Dealing in hard drugs, especially to the young, should carry a mandatory life sentence. Violent muggings should bring at least 10 years served.
Drug prevention schemes, as Labour proposes, are as effective as Liberian ceasefires. What baffles me is why people still believe what politicians say. Does anyone really believe that when Labour comes to power, Jack Straw will be tough on criminals?
Nobody foresaw the explosion of illegitimacy, crime, drugs and the sheer savagery we have learnt to live with. The two main parties argue over which of them is more optimistic about the future, as if that were the qualification for choosing the one more suited to govern.
Instead, the parties should be arguing over how to dismantle the state that brought us to where we are today: the welfare state. The stern virtues of self-discipline and fiscal prudence have become catchwords signalling fascist tendencies. Consumption and gratification are fashionable, as are government spending and services.
What I find extremely depressing is that what I heard in Pentonville 12 years ago I often hear today outside. State control is back as an answer to our problems. Capitalism, which has done more for the poor than any communist state ever did, is again a dirty word. Mr Blair may mean well, and I am sure he does, but he has not got a hope of turning the place around with his stakeholder idea as it is just a buzz word. Capitalism has already practised it throughout the century.
Take a tip from me, Tony. Get busted and go inside for a couple of months or fly to Singapore, take a chair and learn a lesson from a certain Mr Lee.
I find it ironic that the Forte empire was taken over by television people in cahoots with fund managers, just as the giant Anglo-American Hanson group announced that it was to break itself into four pieces. Having already declared an interest, here I go again: I'm appalled at what happened to Forte. Granada's profits will now go dramatically south, and the shareholders will suffer.
I shall not be weeping for them. Mercury Asset Management made the hostile takeover possible, and it should one day be held responsible. Fund managers, however, never are. They take their booty and go to live in the Bahamas. One thing is for sure; small funds are not only easier to control, but are far more profitable. MAM is far too big, and big nowadays is not necessarily good. Time will tell, but it's still a hell of a shame.
My old friend Lord Hanson, on the other hand, has never let his ego get the better of him. The great buyer and seller of companies in the 1970s and 1980s has now seen the writing on the wall and changed course. This is the way it should be; Hanson shareholders and their future come first not the ego. The stock market may have shown its displeasure after the news, but as they say in Brooklyn: "What do they know from nothin'?"
I've known James Hanson close on 40 years. We met, of course, on the Riviera. While I was in Pentonville, I received two letters from him. The House of Lords seal on the back of the envelope was immediately bartered for extra food an onion.
James had come to the aid of the poor little Greek boy once before. During the late 1950s I regularly dined with friends in the Bonne Auberge, a famous Antibes restaurant. James ditto.
The Hanson cigars were deposited with Mme Boduin, the proprietor, at the start of the season. Needless to say, my Greek friends and I helped ourselves to Hanson's Cubans rather liberally. We only found out that he knew when he invited us to dinner and offered us cigars at the end, saying: "I believe these are your favourites."
James was briefly engaged to Audrey Hepburn, while his partner Gordie White was seen with the divine Ava Gardner. While I wasted my time playing tennis and chasing the fairer sex, they built up a rather large conglomerate. And stayed nice guys. Who ever said nice guys finish last? The demerger is a good idea. ITT and AT&T have gone along similar lines. As will Granada when Monsieur Robinson gets off his high horse.
There are many things I like about living in England, and one of them is the lack of pachyderms guarding cabinet ministers during private social engagements. Last week I went to Baroness Rawlings's birthday party, and the place was crawling with Michael Howard, Michael Portillo, Peter Lilley, Sir Angus Ogilvy, Lord Hesketh and so on. Nobody asked to see my invitation, and I felt right at home as Patricia Rawlings and I are almost childhood friends from Gstaad.
In the Land of the Freebie and Home of the Depraved, there would have been at least 40 American sumo lookalikes trying to intimidate people. I imagine that is why there is so much violence over there. The pachyderms incite it by looking the way they do. Chez la baroness last week, the only person that scared me was "Brute" Anderson, the 20-stone Tory hatchet man.
When someone in a civilised country, such as France or Switzerland, illegally bugs another person's telephone call, and then tries to profit from the bugging, the bugger pun intended goes to jail. In Greece, it's called blackmail, although both ex-prime minister Andreas Papandreou and the recently departed Francois Mitterrand got away with bugging friend and foe alike. I hope the individual who bugged Prince Philip has the book thrown at him.
The busybodies will scream bloody murder the moment a privacy law is passed, but I am in favour of one.
What kind of society are we becoming when anyone can listen in on someone else, aided and abetted by those who cry "censorship" the way they used to cry wolf? What I found very funny was once again the royal experts speculating as to the identity of the lady the Duke of Edinburgh was talking with.
It took them a long time to come up with the right answer Lady Romsey.
The reason for the royal experts once again getting it wrong is easy to guess. They were looking for dirt while exchanging information with each other.
Lady Romsey is closer than family to Prince Philip, certainly closer than Di or Fergie. Still, it is an absolute disgrace, and the government should do something about it now. Tomorrow. But I won't hold my breath.
The Church of England will face a crisis this week, claims The Sunday Telegraph. About 300 senior Anglicans worldwide, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu of Cape Town and a number of bishops, will give their support to a campaign to ordain homosexuals as priests.
The man behind a protest that sparked rioting in Brixton is paid £500 a day by the Home Office for giving lectures to the police on race relations, The Mail on Sunday reports.
Lee Jasper, head of the National Black Caucus, a militant group, led a demonstration outside Brixton police station last December which caused more than £1m damage and injuring three police officers.
Michael Howard, the home secretary, has ordered an inquiry.
Labour is attempting to save bingo from national lottery fever, says the News of the World. Dawn Primarolo, Labour's treasury spokesman, is asking the government to cut bingo gaming duty from 10% to 8.75% in the next finance bill, following a sharp decline in bingo hall attendances in the past six months.
THOUSANDS of people may have been infected by a new and potentially fatal virus. Hepatitis G, first identified in America last year, has spread rapidly and is known to have contaminated Britain's hospital blood supplies.
It has been confirmed in Britain in up to 70 people, including a baby who was infected in the womb. Preliminary studies suggest that up to 30,000 blood donors may be carrying it.
Two patients, a man and a woman, have already become infected through transfusions. Both survived liver transplants at St Mary's hospital in Paddington, west London, only to develop long-term liver inflammation.
It is the third virus to threaten the integrity of blood supplies in recent years. During the 1980s thousands of people who received transfusions became infected with HIV and hepatitis C.
Research in America suggests that hepatitis G may cause serious liver disease, including cirrhosis, which can be fatal. It is similar in its genetic make-up to hepatitis C, which leads to cirrhosis in 10% of patients. The most dangerous form of the disease, hepatitis B, kills more than 20% of infected people. Doctors will not know how dangerous the new virus is for several years.
There is no simple procedure for finding hepatitis G. Research scientists have developed a test that is too cumbersome for screening the 2.5m blood donations made each year in Britain. Preliminary studies have shown, however, that in samples of about 150 people in Britain and 800 blood donors in America, more than 1% were infected with hepatitis G. A higher level of infection was discovered among haemophiliacs, intravenous drug users and liver patients, although it is not yet known how the virus is transmitted.
Professor Howard Thomas, a liver specialist at St Mary's Imperial College school of medicine, said 40% of people infected had a liver abnormality. "I don't know what will happen. Over time, minor problems can become severe," he said.
Thomas has briefed the national blood transfusion service, which has set up its own investigation.
British researchers are collaborating with Genelabs Technologies, the Californian biotechnology company that discovered the virus, to develop a simple blood test, but it is unlikely to be ready for many months.
Dr Jungsuh Kim, a Genelabs scientist, met British experts last week. "It is clear that a significant minority of blood donors is infected," she said. "But we don't know yet what kind of disease this virus causes. We need to be concerned, but there is no need for panic."
JON MACINTOSH'S three-month holiday among the tropical forests and beaches of southeast Asia should have been the ideal escape from his stressful life as a corporate financier in the City.
Instead, he says, he was caught in a ferry that capsized in shark-infested waters, claiming 13 lives; pursued relentlessly by a tattooed Australian woman he had helped rescue; survived a flash flood which forced his Jeep off a road; found a body in his hotel; and was beaten up by police.
"The whole thing became too unreal to be frightening," said Macintosh, 27, who is now studying in Paris. "I kept thinking this is something you read about happening to someone else."
His adventure began last October, when he left his job with Schroders, the investment bank, to backpack. His first stop was Hoi An in Vietnam. On his way to Saigon he hitched a ride as monsoon rains struck. "First the water levels in the paddy fields rose and then the road began flooding. Before long the Jeep began to float," he said.
"We couldn't get the doors open so we had to swim out of the windows. It took us three hours to wade to the nearest town." After being told at three hotels that there were no rooms for foreigners, he met an innkeeper who took pity on him.
In the morning, however, he awoke to screaming and found that half the building had collapsed from flooding and high winds: "The ground floor was knee-deep in water and there was a body floating around."
Macintosh's shin, injured when he had fallen down a sewer, was now turning septic. "Although I'd planned to spend longer in Vietnam, frankly, I'd had enough. What I needed was some relaxing island life," he said.
He caught a ferry to Ko Samui, off Thailand, his mind filled with thoughts of soaking up some tropical sun. But it was not to be. The weather worsened and, halfway through the 20-mile crossing, the monsoon tracked him down again. "When an almighty wave smashed through the ferry sending the hull high into the air, I knew I was in trouble again," he said.
The boat began to sink. "It was all very picturesque really," he said. "The bow pointed up to the sky and then sank gracefully, rather like a ballet dancer."
When the crew dived overboard, Macintosh managed to grab a lifebelt before hitting the shark-infested waters. Though reluctant to be labelled a hero, he passed the belt to an elderly woman. Sadly, she died, along with 12 other passengers.
"A lot of the people in the water were panicking and, in an effort to calm down a young Australian woman, I swam over and tried to cheer her up. I told her it's not exactly Baywatch."
With the ship's radio ruined, the alarm was raised by a German businessman using his mobile telephone to call his office in Bonn, which contacted the rescue services in Ko Samui.
Exhausted though still stoic, Macintosh and the Australian woman found a hotel room. "We shared, totally platonically," he said. "She had four earrings, several tattoos and, frankly, was not someone you would want seen on your arm.
"She said a fortune-teller had recently told her a man called Jon would save her life and she should never let me out of her sight. Sadly, she took it literally, following me around Thailand brandishing tarot cards."
The next night, relaxing in his hotel bar, Macintosh happily took up the challenge of a game of pool from the hotel manager. "I'm usually a pretty appalling player," he said, "but I'd had a few drinks and the balls were falling into the pockets. He suggested we play for 200 baht, about £5. When I won he said I had cheated and demanded I pay up.
"By now I was feeling quite bloody-minded and in no mood to pacify or pay him. So when he suggested he call the police I said yes immediately. It was not a wise move. They appeared in jeans and T-shirts emblazoned with Robocop. They were clearly his mates."
Macintosh said he was carted off to jail in handcuffs, where the 200 baht became 2,000. When he refused to pay, the police began beating him with sticks on his legs. "When my shoes began filling with blood, I decided it was time to give in," he said. "I gave them every penny I had, which was nearly 2,000 baht."
The next day he headed for Malaysia. And, astonishingly, a drama-free end to his holiday. "Now it sounds like a nightmare but at the time it was really quite exciting," he said.
IN MANY ways, he was the Hollywood musical. In the years when the letters MGM seemed to stand for Makers of Great Musicals, the name Gene Kelly said it all.
He virtually created the genre. The wide-screen Technicolor extravaganzas of the late 1940s and 1950s had his name stamped all over them. It is hardly coincidental that the two films constantly claimed to be the best musicals of all time, On the Town and Singin' in the Rain, were Kelly films.
The image of him dancing in the puddles of a Los Angeles street before handing his umbrella to a bemused policeman is forever locked away in the pantheon of Hollywood.
The routine although there was nothing routine about it and the title number from Singin' in the Rain have become so well known that they have come to symbolise the golden era of Hollywood musical itself.
Yes, Fred Astaire got in first, but there was a world of difference between those black and white Fred and Ginger films and the kind of thing Kelly did a generation later. There was also a world of difference between the two male dancers.
In recent years it has become fashionable to link the names, particularly since they appeared together in the That's Entertainment films. But doing so does neither of them any credit. They were both remarkable in the way that a delicate Dover sole and a 3in steak can be remarkable, but you wouldn't want to have them on the same plate. Kelly, of course, was always the steak.
Only once did they dance together, in the Babbitt and the Bromide number from Ziegfeld Follies of 1946. But it is fair to say neither of them looked particularly comfortable. "Put me in tails," Kelly told me once on a Hollywood set after his dancing days were over, "and I look like a truck driver going to meet the mayor."
But this was the man who drove his truck through most people's ideas of what a musical, and particularly a dancing musical, should be. He registered so much energy it was the people in the audience who were wiping the sweat from their brows. To the despair of both the studio and the insurance companies, he would never allow a stuntman to do his routines. How could he? There was a trademark look to a Kelly dance that nobody certainly not a man who spent his time jumping out of burning buildings could emulate.
He moved his shoulders as much as his legs. He was an athlete and perhaps his greatest contribution to dance was that he made it an art that could be as masculine as baseball.
And yet, as with Astaire, it is unfair to think of him simply in terms of his dancing. Distinctive and pleasant, his songs from Singin' in the Rain, such as the title number and Our Love is Here to Stay, became standards in their own right. So did I Got Rhythm from An American in Paris, and his earlier duet with Judy Garland in For Me and My Gal.
The son of a gramophone record executive in Pittsburgh who wanted his son to become a lawyer, Gene and his brother, Fred, opened a dance school and then went to New York.
Fred had a modicum of success on stage. Gene scooped it up by the barrel load. In 1940, at the age of 28, he reached what he might justifiably have thought was the pinnacle the lead in the Rodgers and Hart Broadway musical, Pal Joey.
It was a part of his life that would never be repeated. There were to be no more Broadway shows because he was snapped up by MGM.
His first film was For Me and My Gal in 1942, which was an immediate hit. Two years later he made Cover Girl with Rita Hayworth. It set the pattern for Kelly roles that would rarely change. "I like to dance," he used to say, "like sailors, fighters, steel workers. I belonged to the sweatshirt generation."
Like most successful people, Kelly had his share of lucky breaks. The luckiest he had was to be part of the Arthur Freed unit at MGM. Freed, a former songwriter, headed the music department at the studio. He knew Kelly was a unique talent and fostered him, which meant he could plan his own songs, do his own choreography and frequently his own directing (often in collaboration with Stanley Donen).
That fact didn't always endear him to his fellow players. He could be tough and sometimes selfish, in a way that was at total variance with his screen image.
To those whose talents he appreciated, he was a legendary host. Every Saturday night he held open house at his Beverly Hills home on Rodeo Drive.
It was so much a routine that Kelly did not bother to keep his front door locked which prompted Andre Previn and Donen to come in and, without anyone noticing, remove a couple of priceless paintings from his walls. It was not an experiment he wanted repeated.
When he stopped making musicals, he took a few straight roles in films such as Marjorie Morningstar and Inherit the Wind.
He then became a successful director with A Guide for the Married Man, followed by Hello Dolly!. In 1970 he produced and directed James Stewart and Henry Fonda in The Cheyenne Social Club.
But ill-health and advancing years forced Kelly to shut up shop. It was sad to note that when he was in the audience at the 1994 World Cup Three Tenors show in Los Angeles, he had to be helped to his feet to acknowledge acclaim from stars of another generation.
In a reflective mood, Kelly would say that kids who had never seen a musical were now watching them on television and couldn't understand why no more were being made.
There was, of course, one valid reason: nobody could dream up another Singin' in the Rain and even if they could, there was nobody called Gene Kelly to make it.
Michael Freedland is the author of biographies of Sean Connery, Fred Astaire, Kenneth Williams, Gregory Peck and Andre Previn
LONG spells behind the wheel can make men infertile, medical researchers believe. Sales representatives and taxi and lorry drivers who clock up high mileages make up a disproportionate percentage of husbands who have difficulty fathering a child, according to fertility specialists.
Doctors in Paris who studied more than 1,000 parents in their late twenties and early thirties concluded that drivers' testicles were kept unnaturally warm, reducing their sperm count. The partners of men who spent long periods seated with their legs together took 10% longer than average to conceive.
Peter Bromwich, medical director of Midland Fertility Services in Walsall, West Midlands, supports the French research. As many as 1 in 20 of his 500 male patients drove taxis or lorries, he said.
"Men who do more than 25,000 miles a year might be at risk because they are not mobile and their testicles are crushed up against their bodies," he said. "We had one patient who was an engineer, but when we inquired further we found he was doing 60,000 miles a year on motorways."
The problem does not apply to men in sedentary office jobs because it is easier for them to change position and their legs are not pressed together.
Many experiments have shown that overheating of testicles damages or kills sperm. The organs are suspended in most male mammals to keep them cooler than body temperature.
Specialists say the latest research supports earlier work which indicated that bus drivers were less fertile than conductors.
Some men have gone to extraordinary lengths to counter the threat of overheated testicles. Steve Killick, professor of reproductive medicine at Hull University, said patients had even used special underpants with a plastic pouch crammed with ice to increase their fertility. "It was terrible," he said. "They got all sorts of nasty rashes as the ice melted."
Volvo, which manufactures cars with heated seats, supports a theory that falling sperm counts have more to do with tight underpants than driving. The company has received no complaints from childless customers. "The seat is not constantly warming your bottom," it said. "It switches off once it gets warm."
Giles Brindley, a neurophysiologist who has studied the damaging effect of overheating on male fertility, has experimented with "scrotal slit" underpants, appropriately modified to allow the testicles to hang outside. He found they had the desired effect of keeping them cooler, though photographs show they are not the sort of garment anybody would want to be wearing when taken into a casualty ward after an accident.
Last week 20 professional drivers, questioned about their fertility, were coy about their underwear but boasted 40 children between them.
"I've got four children, and my wife made me have a vasectomy because she didn't want any more," said Mario Douglas, a London taxi driver. "It doesn't sound like these doctors know what they are talking about."
Brian Horvath, a taxi driver with two children, was blunt about the claims: "It's a load of cobblers."
THEY are the family you would never want next door. The mother has been evicted, the father died of an overdose in prison and two children have convictions for theft. Last year, their 11-year-old daughter stole £2,500 from a bank.
In Dundee, the family are renowned for dissolute behaviour and terrorising residents. But the local council believes it has the answer to such "neighbours from hell": pamper them.
Labour-controlled Dundee hopes to transform disruptive neighbours into model citizens. It could provide a new twist in the debate which has divided academics over whether behaviour is determined by "nature or nurture".
The council has drawn up a list of families evicted for anti-social behaviour and will soon select four to move into refurbished apartments on St Mary's estate in a residential suburb.
The scheme has already incensed local people. Many are owner-occupiers worried about the effect on property values and crime rates. Lynne Vaughan, leader of a residents' campaign, said: "Someone has dreamt this up in an ivory tower. If you put bad tenants with good tenants, the bad do not turn good. This will destroy a great community."
Robert Blackley, a retired welder who has lived in St Mary's for 30 years, said the community had been ignored despite protests. "I bought my house and I don't want them near me. They will attract the wrong sort of people."
The families chosen to live in the block which is being refurbished after the previous tenants were moved will receive round-the-clock care from a team of up to 14 social workers based on the ground floor.
The newcomers may have to obey a 10.30pm curfew and parents will be forbidden to go out after their children have gone to bed. They will have to sign a contract promising good behaviour. Plans for a security fence have been scrapped, but doors will be locked and watched by a warden.
There will be a communal play area for the children. Social workers will give lessons in cooking breakfast and choosing children's clothes. A central heating system has been installed, and double glazing is being fitted. The scheme is expected to cost £1m.
The Scottish Office will pay three-quarters of the bill, with the balance met by Dundee district and Tayside regional councils.
The development has been seen by social work directors from several English councils considering similar schemes. Supporters hope the scheme will solve the problem of rehabilitating families with a history of violence.
"They will have a more stable life and hopefully see the benefits of living where they do not face rejection," said councillor Kate Maclean, leader of Dundee council. Maclean said the project might enable children to avoid following in their parents' anti-social footsteps.
Peter Bates, director of social work at Tayside regional council, said the centre could provide a fresh start for families who have been evicted from local authority homes and who suffer a lack of "social skills".
He added: "It's trying to emphasise to them the importance of co-operative social behaviour; that if you live next door to someone, there are certain rules of conduct."
A senior council official put it more strongly. "They are like offenders: you have to show them that there is a better way of life and get them to change."
Suzie Scott, who lectures in urban studies at Glasgow University, said: "Neighbour problems have been building up in Britain and it is getting worse. This is an experiment, but long-term there isn't an easy answer to these problems."
Local authorities throughout the country are grappling with a rising tide of complaints about disruptive tenants. A housing bill before the Commons will give police more powers to arrest anti-social tenants accused of harassment.
THE grand old man of British architecture, Sir William Whitfield, 75, has been handed the thorniest design challenge of modern London: creating a new Paternoster Square next to St Paul's Cathedral.
He has been chosen by Mitsubishi, the Japanese conglomerate which owns the site, to solve a problem that the Prince of Wales described as a struggle between the human and inhuman forces of architecture.
Nicknamed El Mellifluoso for his knack of pouring oil on troubled waters when he was a royal fine art commissioner, Whitfield is renowned for his diplomatic as well as architectural skills. He will need them.
For 10 years royalty, the cream of British architects and City developers have quarrelled over the site, pitting aesthetics against mammon.
At first sight Whitfield, bespectacled with greying ginger hair, nearly always dressed in black and somewhat hard of hearing, is an architect to soothe the prince's sensitivities. Long ago an advocate of concrete brutalism, he now favours functional designs in more traditional styles. He is a former "surveyor of the fabric" of St Paul's and recently completed the New Cathedral Library in Hereford to house the Mappa Mundi, the famous medieval map of the world.
He says he will pay particular attention to the "relationship between the proposed development and St Paul's, its setting and the quality of space around the cathedral".
Perhaps significantly, he was the subject of an adulatory feature in last month's issue of Perspectives, the prince's architectural magazine. His ideas will be relayed to the prince, who in 1987 appealed to the City over Paternoster, "to sacrifice some profit, if need be, for generosity of vision, for elegance and for dignity".
Unfortunately the site has remained a wasteland of unloved offices. The prince's dream of turning the site into a neo-classical village is buried.
Mitsubishi has sunk about £200m into the site, which is now worth only a quarter of that; last year it scrapped plans by John Simpson that were described by the Corporation of London as "overinfluenced by royalty". The ideas of other architects involved in the saga, such as traditionalist Terry Farrell, are also in abeyance.
Advisers to Mitsubishi have an interest in financial returns as much as architectural merit. The company will be looking for a design that wins planning approval and also attracts corporate clients.
Additional reporting: Richard Woods
MARK AICHROTH heard the news with relief as he cuddled his daughter before leaving for work last week. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) had bowed to pressure and announced an inquiry into whether birth defects among children born to Gulf war veterans could be linked with their exposure to chemicals and toxins, writes Liz Lightfoot.
Aichroth, now the vice-president of a private hospital chain, is among 50 veterans who have come forward in the past few days to report birth defects in their children, bringing the total to about 120. His story is particularly harrowing because not only was Sophie, 4, born with serious brain abnormalities, but his next baby died in the womb with similar defects.
At first Aichroth and his wife Camilla, who live in Geneva, made no link between his service as a captain in the war and the family tragedies. But now, like many other families, they want to know whether the defects could have been caused by chemicals to which he was exposed.
"We have been devastated by what happened," he said. "Sophie is staggeringly beautiful, yet she does not walk, cannot sit properly and requires constant care. I had the injections and took nerve agent tablets. I am not bitter or angry, just relieved that there is to be an inquiry. My hope is it will be scientific, independent and thorough."
The Aichroths have a son, Sacha, who was born before the war with no problems, and last year, four years after it ended, they had another healthy baby, Scarlett.
The MoD investigation is likely to take two years. The Royal British Legion wants the veterans to join the larger American studies, one of which is already examining 30,000 troops, only half of whom went to the Gulf.
PADDY ASHDOWN, the Liberal Democrat leader, is bracing himself for a smear campaign this week by opponents who have mounted a vendetta of hatred against the MP and his family.
Ashdown has been warned of plans to use the protection of court proceedings to make sensational allegations linking him to a former massage parlour in his Yeovil constituency. Sources close to the Liberal Democrat leader said yesterday he was "fully prepared" to counter the false claims.
A former officer in the Special Boat Squadron, Ashdown has shrugged off a series of threats which culminated in the destruction of his car by suspected arsonists outside his home in the early hours of Friday. The Ashdowns were asleep but a neighbour alerted police and the fire brigade.
Three men from Yeovil, aged between 18 and 23, who were questioned about the attack, were freed on police bail yesterday. "They have been released while we carry out further inquiries and forensic tests," said Inspector Allen Rushton, a police spokesman.
Detectives believe local criminals were responsible for the incident, which follows Ashdown's launching of a campaign last year to crack down on racially motivated attacks in his constituency.
Sources close to the police and Crown Prosecution Service said this weekend they were aware of the latest plans to smear Ashdown. "We know what they are trying to do," said one source.
This weekend, in a separate development, Peter Stoodley, the former owner of the massage parlour who was jailed for six months for living off immoral earnings, was trying to sell a story to a national newspaper based on unfounded and salacious allegations linking Ashdown to a former woman employee of the parlour. "It will all come out," he said.
Stoodley's parlour, City Girl Massage and Relaxation, was above a boutique six doors from Yeovil's Liberal club. It was closed down in 1994 after Stoodley was jailed.
Yesterday a leading member of the Partnership Against Racial Harassment (PARH), a group set up in Yeovil by Ashdown last year, attributed false rumours about the MP to his stand on racism.
"Paddy has been the driving force behind the campaign to stop harassment. This has infuriated his detractors, who seem to have been forced to resort to smear tactics. The rumours are 100% lies," he said.
The man, who asked not to be identified, said there had been an increase in racial tension in the area. Asian restaurant owners in the town are prepared for further disturbances and a hotline has been set up to alert members of PARH in the event of attacks.
Ashdown, who has reluctantly allowed security to be stepped up around his home, spent the night with his wife Jane at their cottage in Norton sub Hamdon. Yesterday he was in cheerful spirits at a constituency surgery in Chard.
Special Branch was alerted after Ashdown had been subjected to at least three threatening incidents since November. He received menacing letters, had a brick thrown through his car window and fought off a man who allegedly held a flick knife to his throat.
Police took the threat against Ashdown so seriously that surveillance equipment was installed in his garden. This was later removed.
Ashdown last night blamed Tory ministers for stirring racial tension and demanded national racial awareness squads to combat prejudice. In an interview for the Sunday Mirror, Ashdown singled out new immigration laws and controversial "foreigner-bashing" speeches by cabinet ministers as examples of an "intolerant culture" in which racism flourishes.
Additional reporting: Olga Craig and Rajeev Syal
THE Olympic doves of peace are needed a little earlier than expected. A dispute over a £3,500 "Faberge" commemorative egg being sold to celebrate this summer's games in Atlanta, Georgia, threatens to break the sporting accord, writes Maurice Chittenden.
The egg or rather 500 of them, the most expensive souvenirs ever produced for the event are made by Theo Faberge, who was plain Theo Woodall, a toolmaker from west London, until he discovered at the age of 47 that he was the grandson of Carl Faberge, the jeweller to the Russian imperial court who made the fabulous, diamond-encrusted Easter eggs which now sell for up to £3.5m.
The new egg has upset Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch detergent and deodorant giant, which owns the Faberge brand name, and Victor Mayer, a German firm which sells 18-carat Faberge baubles and eggs under licence.
The dispute does not end there. Other members of the Faberge family regard both Theo and Victor Mayer as cuckoos in the nest. Frances Faberge, 41, great-granddaughter of Carl, said: "We do not approve. The art of Faberge died in Russia during the revolution."
The organising committee for the Olympics innocently approved the design of the Theo Faberge egg on the recommendation of an American jewellery chain. The crystal egg, mounted on a stand of gilded silver, opens to reveal a replica of the gold medal awarded to athletes at the Athens games in 1896. All 500 copies are being made by 20 craftsmen in England.
Theo, 73, spent 18 months designing it. Born in Chelsea in 1922, he was raised by an uncle and aunt. It was not until 1969 that he discovered his identity and began his new line of work.
The art and antiques world was quick to belittle the new eggs. Kenneth Snowman, 76, chairman of Wartski, the London jewellers, whose father brought back the first jewelled eggs from Russia, said: "It's all wrong. These people are tomb robbers. Faberge died in 1920. Let him lie in his grave." Theo, who lives in Sussex, denied that anyone would think his work was that of Carl Faberge. He said yesterday: "I am very honoured my work has been chosen by the Olympic committee to commemorate the games, but I am sorry it has caused a fuss. My only aim is to do something worthy of the name of Faberge."
THE human oil slick is back. JR Ewing, thought to have committed suicide after losing the family business empire to his arch rival, Cliff Barnes, has been revived for a feature-length episode of Dallas, the most popular soap opera of the 1980s.
The two-hour Dallas Reunion, about to be filmed in America, will star leading members of the original cast, including Larry Hagman as the loathsome Texan oil tycoon JR, Linda Gray as Sue Ellen, his twitchy alcoholic ex-wife, and Patrick Duffy as Bobby, his angelic brother.
Hints of a typically outlandish storyline leaked last week. Despite his apparent death in the "final" episode in 1991, JR is resurrected and embarks on a fresh attempt to wrest back Ewing Oil.
After two wives and countless mistresses, he finds love again and Bobby also starts a new romance. Insiders say leading roles have been given to a new generation of Ewings intended to appeal to younger viewers.
A member of the production team said: "There's a major death and a major rebirth. We don't know how popular it's going to be. How does America relate to JR in the 1990s?"
The build-up to the month-long shoot is reminiscent of a Dallas plot.
Mystery surrounds the failure of Barbara Bel Geddes, 73, to appear as the ever-smiling Ewing matriarch Miss Ellie. The plot has her taking a trip to India instead.
Amid tense talks with the programme-makers, Ken Kercheval, who played Barnes, raised hopes that he would join the cast, only to dash them by pulling out.
Hagman, 65, who appeared in 355 episodes, almost did not make it when he needed a liver transplant and reportedly nearly died. He has made a startling recovery, however, and is determined to recreate the character viewers loved to hate.
Dallas was Britain's best-loved television programme in its heyday, attracting 27m viewers in 1980 for the episode in which JR was shot.
A spokesman for the BBC said there had been no negotiations to buy the new film, but the corporation did not rule out screening it.
HEALTH-CONSCIOUS parents who feed their newborn babies low-fat and sugar- reduced diets were warned yesterday they may do them permanent damage.
"Let them eat chips," said Charlotte Wright, a consultant paediatrician doing research with doctors, health visitors and nutritionists in Newcastle. "Parents must understand that babies are meant to be a bit pudgy."
One in 20 babies is denied food needed for proper growth, according to Wright and her colleagues, who collated data on the weight of every baby born in the city over the past five years. They found that failure to gain weight was often linked to fashionable eating habits.
"It is a myth that babies are getting too fat and that this is bad for them. There is strong evidence that good health protects against future disease and is important in developing IQ," said Wright.
Eileen Birks, a health visitor co-ordinating the programme, said the children of health-conscious, middle-class parents were particularly affected. "It is hard for doctors and teachers to accept that goats' cheese and skimmed milk are not healthy alternatives for a baby," she said.
The Newcastle findings are supported by Jackie Stordy, a senior lecturer in nutrition at Surrey University, who studied the diets of 1,000 babies. She found many parents tried to give them the equivalent of healthy foods for adults.
"This happens across the board, irrespective of class," she said. "It is a totally inappropriate diet for infants."
A separate study which reviewed the government's National Food Survey, an annual report on the diets of 7,000 households across all regions and classes, found that the average calorie consumption of babies has declined by 20% since the early 1970s.
Calcium and iron consumption has declined by about a third, while vitamin intake has dropped similarly. The only exception is vitamin C, which has increased because fruit juices are popular.
Doctors warn that the trend could have harmful long-term consequences.
BRITISH RAIL, which is being broken up under privatisation, could yet end up running large parts of the rail network.
The government is in secret talks with senior BR executives over allowing the publicly owned operator to bid for newly created train franchises. It has previously been excluded from bidding.
The move has emerged on the day that the first privatised trains for 50 years begin running on two newly franchised routes.
A third route was suspended last night because of a fraud investigation.
If agreement is reached, it will be a dramatic reversal of government policy. Critics of privatisation say the discussions have been forced on ministers because they have failed to attract sufficient private-sector interest for the franchises.
The government may also be forced to deal with BR in order to offload remaining franchises before the next general election. The nationalised body could then run parts of the system alongside private companies.
The new mood is revealed in a leaked letter from Roger Salmon, the man in charge of awarding licences to run train services, to John Welsby, the head of BR. Written last month, the letter discusses the new ground rules by which BR could be allowed to bid for franchises.
After outlining the reasons for his previous opposition to the idea, Salmon stated: "There are also serious practical and financial difficulties to be overcome if BR are to bid, and my purpose in writing is to explore these."
He also asked Welsby to "give some thought to a possible bidding framework which deals with these issues", while emphasising that his comments did not constitute a commitment.
Clare Short, Labour's transport spokesman, claimed this weekend that the letter showed a total reversal of policy, demonstrating "the level of panic in the Conservative party".
"It also strongly suggests that they have been unable to work up sufficient private-sector interest in the remaining lines," she added.
If BR is allowed to bid for some of the remaining 16 regional train services yet to be put up for sale, experts believe the nationalised company will be the favourite to win because of its unrivalled expertise.
Of the first three franchises to be awarded, two went to management buyouts led by former BR executives.
Sir Bob Reid, a former chairman of BR, said yesterday that the privatised companies might not be able to match BR's standards. "It really is going to be pretty hard for the privatised railway to get back to the sort of performance you were seeing at the end of 1994," he said.
The dawning of the new age of privatised trains took place this morning after BR handed over control to the first two privatised regions Great Western and South West Trains at 2am. Shortly afterwards, ministers, officials and train-spotters were due to gather to mark the occasion.
It was expected that Labour's transport team would arrive at Eastleigh, Hampshire, in time to wave off a connecting bus service to Southampton at 2.52am. The bus trip, made necessary by weekend engineering work, would be the first complete private rail journey, according to Labour.
However, for most of the media and a handful of Department of Transport officials, the first private train was to be the 5.10am from Twickenham to Waterloo, which, like the Southampton service, is operated by South West Trains. The company, owned by the Stagecoach bus firm, will not unveil its new livery until tomorrow.
The government, represented by John Watts, minister for railways and roads, was due to greet the Great Western service from Cardiff to London Paddington in Reading at 7.40am. This service, setting off by bus from Fishguard in Wales at 1.50am, has an equally strong claim to being the first franchised train.
The confusion is unlikely to abate after the ceremonial handover of franchises by Sir George Young, the transport secretary, at London's Waterloo station tomorrow.
For the rail passenger, privatisation has yet to yield the benefits promised.
THE conical police helmet, worn by British bobbies since Victorian times, is to disappear from the streets. Officers will in future go on patrol in peaked caps and the traditional helmets will be worn only on ceremonial occasions.
Officers canvassed in a nationwide study undertaken to design the ideal police uniform said the helmet was uncomfortable, impractical and too conspicuous. This month, Greater Manchester police will become the first force in England and Wales to switch to the new flat cap. The force is also introducing American-style blousons to replace traditional police tunics and overcoats.
Other forces are expected to dispense with the helmet later this year after publication of a report by a working party of officers from all ranks. The working party, which has interviewed officers from seven forces, says they complained that villains can "see them coming from half a mile away" and that they have difficulty giving chase because the helmet "falls off as soon as we start running".
The old-style helmet is also disliked for being a target for hooligans to knock off, for being too big to wear in a patrol car, and for being unbearably hot in summer weather.
However, those who do not have to wear it see its disappearance as a big change in the national culture, akin to the virtual disappearance of the red telephone box. It is as much a staple of the tourist industry as the London taxi and Big Ben.
Bill Hughes, assistant chief constable of West Yorkshire police and chairman of the uniform working party, said: "The bobby's helmet was based on a Prussian army design, which is a bit strange. It may look good on ceremonial parades but practically it's not much use."
Inspector Robin Penn, of Surrey police, who represents the Police Federation in the group, said the helmet's future was in jeopardy with the introduction next year of legislation requiring police to comply with new health and safety laws; the traditional helmet fails British safety standards.
"The helmet is the most traditional part of the image of the British police officer, but it is uncomfortable and is not so good on protection," he said.
Traditionalists, however, praised the helmet. Phil Cronin, a Metropolitan police constable based in east London, said: "The helmet is an integral part of the great tradition of British policing and I take great pride in wearing it." Cronin believes there are safety advantages to wearing the traditional headgear. "Because of the way the helmet is shaped it deflects blows when you are under attack," he said.
The conical helmet was introduced in 1863 to replace the "Peeler" top hats worn by Britain's first police officers. Now the helmets are set to go the way of the Victorian police cape, which was finally withdrawn from service by the Metropolitan police last month, to be replaced by a high-visibility jacket. Scottish forces abandoned the helmet in the 1950s in favour of a flat cap.
The old-style uniform has also failed to keep pace with the demands of modern policing. Officers have complained of being "trussed up like a sack of potatoes" wearing new multi-purpose belts on which are strapped new quick handcuffs, long-handled batons, paperwork pouches, first-aid kits and torches. Bobbies have struggled to reach beneath their coats and have resorted to lifting them above their waists.
Chief officers are concerned that police uniforms are becoming indistinguishable from those worn by members of the rapidly expanding security industry and the working party has been asked to secure copyright for the new badge designs which are to be registered with the College of Arms.
THE BBC wants to launch its own subscription channels on satellite and cable television to supplement its income from the licence fee.
Likely services include a youth station, an arts channel and a general entertainment station, all of which would be put together mainly from the BBC's archives. A 24-hour news and current affairs network would be provided free.
The channels would be available to at least 15m viewers from next year, according to a leaked feasibility plan drafted by the BBC's finance department.
The plan is the first sign of a counterattack against BSkyB, which has scooped Hollywood film premieres and leading sports events, including Ryder Cup golf and Test match cricket, from the corporation. It is also expected to grab coverage of Five Nations championship rugby.
Sir Christopher Bland, the incoming BBC chairman, has fuelled speculation that the corporation could retaliate with a sports subscription channel.
However, this weekend BBC executives said the satellite channels would not generate enough money to claw back exclusive coverage of sports such as live Premier League soccer.
David Docherty, the BBC head of television planning and strategy, said the corporation was concentrating on making better use of archive material. "There is no way on earth that we could launch a subscription channel big enough to challenge for sports or film rights. We don't have the cash or the encryption system."
Viewers may, however, be asked to pay to watch footage of less important matches at the Wimbledon tennis championships, which the BBC controls until 1999, or for minority events at the Olympics for which it has coverage until 2008.
Some BBC insiders fear the expansion plans are ill-timed. A leaked report on strategy for the next 10 years argues that the money earmarked for a 24-hour news channel might be better spent on an extra 30 hours per year of drama.
There may also be a glut of new networks. Channel Five, Britain's last conventional network, is to come on air early next year; Granada is to launch eight satellite channels, including a soap channel featuring Coronation Street, and BSkyB is on the brink of launching dozens of networks harnessing digital technology.
The BBC is committed to a costly investment in digital television which will further deplete its resources. It has announced plans for wide-screen versions of BBC1 and BBC2 and the 24-hour news channel. Other possibilities include a network featuring parliament, special events and sports, or a BBC "Gold" repeats channel. The networks will be free to licence fee payers who buy decoders.
Financial difficulties have already forced the BBC to scale down the cultural aims of its international television broadcasts. It has dropped plans to compete with CNN across America and is concentrating instead on money-spinning ventures.
Richard Emery, managing director of BBC Worldwide, the corporation's commercial arm, is launching an educational and factual channel and plans other special interest networks based on the archives. "There is a lot of humbug around about spreading the BBC brand in ways which will lose money," he said.
Support for the new channels came from Gerald Kaufman, Labour MP and chairman of the National Heritage select committee. "The days of the BBC as a licence recipient are coming to an end. It has got to expand into the commercial world because people turning to other channels will be less willing to pay the licence," he said.
THE KGB men knew it was good to talk. Sitting in their offices behind the fortress walls of the Lubianka in the centre of Moscow or in their new high-technology headquarters at Yasenovo on the outskirts of the city, they could freely chat away with instructions, requests, gossip even, to every important Soviet government department and to their own agents all over the world. Their lines of communication were safe and secure.
Or so they thought. In fact, the top-secret messages of the Soviet Union at a time when the world was waiting on crucial nuclear arms negotiations and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a perpetual sore were being systematically bugged.
Deep in a tunnel one of the many secret ducts that criss-cross the Moscow area every word, every telex, every fax, was being monitored by teams of listeners from America's Central Intelligence Agency.
Details are only now emerging about this breathtaking cold war espionage operation, which was equivalent to the Russians being able to listen to every telephone call between MI6, the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and all of Britain's government ministers.
The existence of the so-called "sewer rats" has been acknowledged by the CIA, though it has refused to spell out what they did for fear of compromising intelligence operations.
What little detail there is comes, ironically, from former KGB officers. "This was the CIA's greatest coup," says Oleg Kalugin, who was the general in charge of KGB counterintelligence at the end of the 1980s. "The bugs were placed to get the maximum intelligence. They heard every conversation. Everything."
One western intelligence source said: "It was a brilliant operation. A great deal of information was gathered and it continued for a long time."
The operation is thought to have begun in 1979 after the CIA discovered that construction of a top-secret communications centre was under way at Troitsk, 25 miles southwest of Moscow. The Americans could barely contain their excitement at the promise of unimaginable intelligence riches if the network could be penetrated: all the KGB's secret telephone and cable traffic.
Troitsk was not only the link to KGB headquarters, it was also a centre for nuclear and laser research. Nearby, too, were the dachas of senior government officials.
The KGB believes that the CIA managed to insert one of its spies into the construction crew who was able to identify the key cables and plant the first bugs.
From then on it was down to clever spycraft to keep the operation going. In teams of two, CIA agents would drive out of the gates of the American embassy and onto the streets of Moscow, trying hard not to look suspicious. They knew the KGB would be tailing them, alternating cars to try not to be spotted as part of the nervous daily cat-and-mouse routine between "diplomats" from the two countries.
After passing through the drab streets and heading south across the swirling waters of the River Moskva, the American car would swing round a bend and speed out of sight to give the passenger time to roll out and hide in bushes. Then the driver threw a switch and a dummy sprang up into the front seat to fool KGB followers into believing that the diplomats were still enjoying their drive in the country.
The CIA man stayed concealed in the bushes until he was sure the ruse had worked. Then he walked through the woods and disappeared down a manhole. Another "sewer rat" had gone underground.
In the dark, he busied himself installing micro-cassette recorders and sophisticated listening devices directly onto the communication cables. Then he padded back through the tunnels and informed his handlers that America could carry on eavesdropping every word between the men running the Kremlin and their agents around the world.
The operation ran perfectly for years until it was betrayed by Edward Lee Howard, a CIA officer who defected to Moscow in 1985. Howard had been destined for the CIA's Moscow station and before his defection had been fully briefed on most of the covert operations then being run by the CIA in the Soviet Union, including the bugging at Troitsk.
After Howard's intelligence reached the KGB, it staked out the manhole to try to trap the next CIA officer coming to service the bugs. For weeks, the KGB men remained hidden in the woods under strict radio silence but the CIA suspected Howard had compromised the operation and never turned up.
The Americans were not quite so lucky with an operation that was discovered by the KGB in 1989, yet another undercover spying venture that has just come to light. The Russians received a tip-off that the CIA had inserted spy equipment inside one of 100,000 rail containers crisscrossing Russia. The KGB launched a massive operation to inspect every crate and its suspicions were aroused by one lying in a siding in Irkutsk.
The container had been shipped from Japan to Russia's eastern seaboard and then joined the trans-Siberian express to travel via Moscow to Leningrad for its final destination of Hamburg. According to the manifest, the container held Japanese porcelain and earthenware vases. But the KGB was suspicious of what looked like ventilation holes drilled in the side of the container.
When the seals were broken, the KGB opened box after box of Japanese vases. But at the back of the container, it discovered a false wall, which concealed a dazzling array of cameras, communications interception equipment, batteries and special sensors to analyse the air.
The container had been designed by the CIA as a mobile nuclear detection system that could "smell" sites producing a range of raw materials for nuclear weapons, see factories used in the production of nuclear weapons and even detect trains being used to ship nuclear weapons and material around the country.
Cameras in the container could photograph everything within several miles of the train. Special tracking devices would match the pictures with an exact location pinpointed by satellite. At the same time, bugs could pluck conversations out of the ether and other systems could tell the CIA just what factories were making what kind of contribution to Russia's nuclear programme.
After the discovery of the container, the Russians quietly approached the Japanese company that had agreed to allow its container to be used as a front for the CIA. The company offered the KGB $500,000 (£333,000) to keep quiet about the deal, which it did. By now American-Russian relations were beginning to thaw and the KGB had no intention of publicising just how the CIA had been operating on its territory.
Similar reserve has prevented any discussion of a CIA operation to bug computers bought at the end of the 1980s by the Russian government. Although the 100 IBM and Siemens mainframe computers were officially destined for civilian use, the CIA had learnt that in fact they were going to be used by the defence ministry and the KGB.
When they arrived in Moscow, suspicious officials from the Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information took the computers apart. In eight of them, they discovered 30 different bugging devices. Some were designed to pluck every piece of data out of the computer's memory and transmit it to the listening CIA.
Other bugs that had been planted deep inside the computer's memory would come to life only if activated by the CIA in the event of conflict. Then they would corrupt all the computer data and destroy every computer linked into the mainframe.
SINN FEIN, the political wing of the IRA, has indicated it will not accept the outcome of all-party talks on the future of Northern Ireland if it disagrees with their conclusion.
It has privately told other parties to the peace process that it cannot endorse the principle laid down by the Mitchell commission that all participants in the talks should abide by the result. Sinn Fein has warned it may not be able to prevent a return to violence if the republican movement is left dissatisfied.
The warning is a serious blow to the prospect of a resolution to Northern Ireland's problems. It coincides with indications that the Ulster Unionists have privately urged a hard-line approach to the IRA rather than all-party talks.
Amid growing tension yesterday following the spraying of a policeman's home with 57 bullets and the murder of Gino Gallagher, the Irish National Liberation Army commander, the chief constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) warned of a possible bombing campaign in mainland Britain if the ceasefire collapsed.
Sir Hugh Annesley said terrorists calculated that one bomb on the mainland was worth 10 in Northern Ireland in propaganda terms. "If there was a renewed campaign, it would be across Northern Ireland and unquestionably in Britain," said Annesley. He added there was no sign at present the IRA planned a return to violence.
Yesterday the IRA denied responsibility for shooting at the RUC officer's home near Moy, Co Tyrone, in which one of its favoured weapons, an AK-47 assault rifle, is thought to have been used.
A senior source within the tiny Irish National Liberation Army said: "I cannot dispute that it was the INLA, but I will not confirm it."
The Sunday Times has also learnt that an unpublished report by the British and Irish governments concluded that if the IRA were to decommission its arsenal, it could still rearm.
The gardai and RUC have estimated the scale of the Provisionals' weaponry to include 588 AK-47 assault rifles, 10 GPMG machineguns, nine Sam 7B missiles, 11 RPG7 launchers and 2.99 tonnes of Semtex explosive.
Dick Spring, the Irish foreign minister, said yesterday that Britain and Ireland were in danger of becoming trapped in a vicious circle of argument on negotiations or elections in the peace process. He told an audience which included senior Ulster Unionist politicians: "We can't do without dialogue."
DAVID ASHBY, the Conservative MP, will tell his constituency association today whether he intends to fight the next election following his unsuccessful libel action against The Sunday Times, writes Andrew Alderson.
Many local Tories expect him to stand down amid fears he would be an electoral liability in a marginal seat. Ashby has spent six weeks considering his future since the 20-day High Court hearing ended, leaving him with costs of about £500,000 and his reputation in ruins.
He had pursued an action against The Sunday Times over a story which effectively labelled him a homosexual, a liar and a hypocrite. Ashby, 55, a barrister and businessman, is due to meet Clifford McKee, chairman of the North-West Leicestershire Conservative Association, and Lord Crawshaw, the association's president, this morning.
There is a widespread feeling among Tories that Ashby, an MP since 1983, would be a liability if he stood at the next election. With a majority of only 979, he may opt for a return to the bar. The MP declined to comment yesterday.
Ashby's friends and family believe it would be a mistake for him to stand. Many expect him to step down and allow his association time to find a new candidate. Ashby has ruled out a by-election by resigning his seat. If, however, Ashby wished to stand, officers would call a general meeting of the association to decide.
The MP's legal action arose from an article two years ago, written during the controversy generated by John Major's back-to-basics morality campaign. It reported that Ashby had left his wife because of his relationship with another man. Although The Sunday Times did not identify him, other newspapers named him as a doctor. The doctor later gave evidence for the MP at the hearing.
Ashby's wife, Silvana, under subpoena from The Sunday Times, told the High Court about their marriage difficulties before he moved out to live next to his male friend. With members of the family giving evidence against each other, the action became one of the most acrimonious, bizarre and widely publicised libel hearings of the decade.
THE ROW between Michael Howard and Britain's senior judiciary over proposals for a tougher sentencing policy erupted again yesterday as Lord Hailsham, the former chancellor, joined the attack on the home secretary's plans for minimum sentences for habitual criminals.
Hailsham, the former chairman of the Conservative party, issued a warning to Howard to keep out of matters which should not concern him. "One shouldn't, if one is home secretary, seek to impose one's views either on colleagues or on the legislature," he said.
The attack on Howard was especially damaging as it coincided with an attempt by the home secretary to fight back with a defence of his plans to introduce mandatory minimum sentences for rapists, drug dealers and burglars with previous convictions.
In a speech to judges, probation officers and crown prosecutors, Howard dismissed claims made last week by Lord Justice Rose, a senior judge, that his plans to give life sentences to rapists convicted of a second offence would lead to the murder of more victims. Howard said the argument that rapists would have an incentive to kill was illogical.
At a private meeting of the Criminal Justice Consultative Council yesterday, Howard outlined his vision of "honesty in sentencing" where prisoners serve the full term imposed by the courts.
"Automatic early release should go," he said. "I want the offender standing in the dock to know the full weight of the sentence. I do not want him saying to himself: ‘I know he said three years, but it only means 18 months'."
Howard seized the chance to criticise Rose, who is chairman of the consultative council which meets regularly to discuss problems in the justice system. He said he found it "difficult to follow" the judge's suggestion that rapists would commit murder if they knew they were going to be jailed for life anyway.
"Taken to its logical conclusion, this line of argument suggests that there should not be a life sentence available, even on a discretionary basis, for murder," he said.
The sting was taken out of Howard's counter-attack when Hailsham issued his warning to the home secretary to back off. In an interview to be shown this morning on GMTV, Hailsham said: "This business about mandatory sentences must be held in very grave suspicion."
Hailsham's attack on the home secretary was the latest in a line of damaging criticisms of the proposed reforms. Lord Taylor of Gosforth, the lord chief justice, issued a statement last October saying that long sentences would not deter criminals and that mandatory minimum sentences were inconsistent with the interests of justice.
Lord Donaldson of Lymington, the former master of the rolls, accused the home secretary of trying to usurp the role of judges in an "unprecedented" campaign to seize sentencing powers.
The judges' fears were reiterated to the home secretary in what Howard described as a "very vigorous" exchange at yesterday's meeting.
Later, on a visit to Northamptonshire police headquarters, Howard said that judges at the meeting had attempted to change his views on sentencing but he had not been swayed.
"I have not heard any arguments which have persuaded me that my original proposals are wrong," he said. "Some of the judges have views which are different from mine but these decisions are for those who are accountable to parliament and the public."
Howard's words are unlikely to satisfy his critics, who believe that the sentencing plans will lead to a rise of up to 30,000 in the prison population.
Paul Cavadino, chairman of the Penal Affairs Consortium, a group campaigning to reform the treatment of offenders, said: "Mr Howard has announced a set of measures which will sacrifice both justice and public safety to a desire to appear tough at all costs."
Additional reporting: Sebastian Hamilton
THE future of William Waldegrave, the Treasury chief secretary, was in fresh doubt last night after the leak of a detailed draft of the arms-to-Iraq inquiry report, which claims he was in a position to know "first hand" that he had made "untrue" public statements.
Eleven key pages of Lord Justice Scott's draft report, obtained by The Sunday Times, reveal that Waldegrave is found to have signed at least 27 letters to MPs and members of the public containing allegedly inaccurate statements about government policy on Iraq.
In one particularly damning section, Scott says the former foreign minister six times signed untrue, misleading or inaccurate statements. He also suggests three times that the minister should have been in a position to know the statements were wrong.
The draft takes Lord Howe vigorously to task for failing to "direct his mind" to the suggestion that letters he signed as foreign secretary were untrue. Further, it implicitly criticises John Major and Lady Thatcher.
The leaked report is the most comprehensive account of the affair to be made public. It was drawn up last year after Scott had spent 21/2 years analysing evidence of allegations that ministers had covered up the facts on how Britain secretly helped Saddam Hussein to build up his arms industry in the years before the 1990 Gulf war.
Waldegrave saw the draft and disputed some aspects of it; but friends of the minister doubt Scott will tone down his criticism in the final 2,300-page report, which will be published next week. If substantial changes are made, MPs are likely to want to know why.
The leaked draft reveals for the first time the full extent of Scott's withering attack on Waldegrave, the minister who, along with Sir Nicholas Lyell, the attorney-general, is likely to face pressure to resign over the affair.
In a devastating critique of the alleged Whitehall cover-up, the judge also accuses Waldegrave of giving inaccurate written evidence to his inquiry. Scott's draft further says he agrees with Waldegrave's own Iraq desk officer that the minister's account of the affair was "untrue".
Last night friends of the embattled minister insisted he would survive in his cabinet post. They were confident Scott would not prove there was a conspiracy to mislead MPs and said Waldegrave had never intended to deceive parliament.
Ministers and Whitehall officials await the report with trepidation, but cabinet sources say the prime minister is determined to stick by the criticised ministers and to avoid any resignations. "We are going to tough it out," said one senior source.
Government whips have already begun to play the "unity card" in an attempt to stifle potential dissent from Tory backbenchers. "How we react to Scott will be a big test of whether the Conservative party is united and whether it is serious," one cabinet minister said. "We have got to hold our nerve."
With a government majority of only four, however, and no likelihood of support from the Ulster Unionists on this issue, Major is facing a test many at Westminster see as potentially terminal if he sticks by Waldegrave to the bitter end.
Major himself is implicitly criticised in the draft report over the way he and other ministers allegedly failed to communicate the whole truth to MPs. Scott finds that Major, while foreign secretary in 1989, and Margaret Thatcher, when prime minister, were "put on notice" of the secret liberalisation of policy on arms sales to Saddam. But both later signed letters to MPs inaccurately stating there had been no changes.
Scott says Major was briefed on July 25, 1989, by Stephen Lamport, a Foreign Office official, about the secret change and the fact that it had not been announced when he became foreign secretary.
However, Scott notes that Major, in oral testimony to the inquiry in 1994, "said he believed throughout that the original guidelines had remained in use and that he had been ‘advised by those carrying out the policy at operational level that we were impartial'." While Scott says Thatcher cannot be blamed, he does not say no blame can be attached to Major.
His criticism of Howe is considerably more direct. Although he says Howe was not made aware of the details of the change of arms policy towards Iraq, he says his own evidence to the inquiry "precludes [him] from maintaining his resistance to the proposition that there had been a change in policy".
Concerning letters Howe sent to MPs denying that there had been a change of policy, Scott states: "I do not suppose that when he signed the letters he directed his mind to whether or not the ‘no change in policy' statement was justifiable, but, in my opinion, he ought to have done so and, if he had done so, he could not honestly have signed the letters." In a recent article in The Spectator, Howe vehemently attacked Scott and effectively advised ministers to ignore his report.
At the time Scott wrote the draft last April, he had considered tens of thousands of pages of evidence and testimony from more than 200 witnesses. His preliminary report makes clear that after scrutinising this evidence, he and his team had already made their minds up that the government had secretly relaxed its curbs on arms sales to Iraq.
His key preliminary finding was that ministers had relaxed the controls without telling parliament or the public.
Scott had been told that, despite the new guidelines, Customs and Excise was prosecuting British businessmen allegedly involved in the arms trade even though some were working as spies for MI6, risking their lives by giving intelligence chiefs details of Saddam's arms buying network.
The leaked draft says Mark Higson, Waldegrave's expert on Iraqi affairs between 1989 and early 1990, who drafted the allegedly misleading letters to MPs for Waldegrave to sign, was right to state that the minister's statements were "untrue".
It reveals that Waldegrave wrote privately to an MP protesting that Higson's evidence was "unfounded" and "not correct" and shows how the judge decided against Waldegrave. "In my opinion, the criticism [by Higson] was well founded and justified," his draft concludes.
Scott's provisional decision to side with Waldegrave's subordinate against the minister's own account will be seen by observers as highly damaging to the Treasury chief secretary.
The damning criticism of Waldegrave in the extract goes much deeper than a partial leak to the BBC last June which revealed that Scott had accused Waldegrave of "sophistry" and stated that some of his letters "were apt to mislead". His strong criticism of Howe is also unprecedented.
Scott is at his most devastating when he addresses the critical question of 27 letters sent out by Waldegrave between March and July 1989, which stated that guidelines prevented "the supply of lethal equipment which would significantly enhance the capacity of either [Iraq or Iran] to resume hostilities".
However, Scott concludes that these guidelines had been secretly modified at a December 1988 meeting between Waldegrave, Alan Clark, then a defence minister, and Lord Trefgarne, a trade minister.
The new guideline allowed the government to send "non-offensive" equipment to Iraq and Iran. But after the February 1989 fatwa (death sentence) on Salman Rushdie, the author, Iran was subjected to the original, stricter controls.
Scott notes that in one letter Waldegrave signed in April, 1989, and in 26 sent in May, June and July, he wrote to MPs: "The government has not changed its policy on defence sales to Iraq or Iran."
In one letter to David Curry, Tory MP for Skipton and Ripon and now an environment minister, Waldegrave spoke of the government's "firm and even-handed position over arms sales to Iran and Iraq".
Scott states: "The reference in each of these letters to the criterion that governed the supply of non-lethal defence equipment to Iraq was not accurate."
His draft continues: "Since the end of February 1989, the criterion for Iraq had been the new formulation, namely, that there would be no supply of equipment which would be of direct and significant assistance to Iraq in the conduct of offensive operations in breach of the ceasefire.
"The inaccuracy must have been known to Mr Waldegrave, who had been one of the midwives at the birth of this new formulation."
In another charge against Waldegrave, Scott states: "The statement that ‘the government have not changed their policy on defence sales to Iraq and Iran' was untrue."
Scott reveals that "all ministers, including the prime minister [Thatcher] had accepted that a more liberal policy, designed to enable British exporters to take advantage of the glittering opportunities for defence-related sales to Iraq, should be adopted".
Ministers decided to keep the policy secret. They feared disclosure that Britain was trading military equipment with a brutal dictator might alienate public opinion.
Scott states that the new pro-Iraq policy was agreed by Waldegrave, Clark and Trefgarne "in principle in December 1988 and was being implemented on a trial bassis by February 1989. The new policy was reversed for Iran following the Rushdie affair but was confirmed for Iraq, at the latest, at the April 24, 1989, ministers' meeting".
The draft continues: "Mr Waldegrave knew, first hand, the facts that rendered the ‘no change in policy' statement untrue. Whether when he signed these letters he realised that the statement was untrue is not a matter I can decide."
The evidence that the policy had changed was, Scott says, "incontrovertible". This was despite Waldegrave's repeated belief, expressed in his oral evidence to the inquiry, to the contrary. The judge said he had not received the impression that Waldegrave had been insincere. "None the less, I have no hestitation in rejecting his explanations. It is clear, in my opinion, that policy did not remain unchanged."
In elaborating his critique of Waldegrave, Scott continues: "The proposition that the government's position over arms sales to Iran and Iraq was ‘even-handed' had been untrue ever since the decision, taken as a consequence of the Rushdie affair, to return to a more strict approach to Iran."
Scott also alleges that Waldegrave gave inaccurate evidence to his inquiry in a confidential written statement of September 8, 1993, about a letter he had sent to a Tory MP in August 1989 regarding the government's Hawk project.
In his written evidence, Waldegrave told Lord Justice Scott that the letter was an accurate statement of government policy. "It was not," the draft report says bluntly.
Old boy: Is it possible to go back, to be a "Brandon Lee", the grown-up who famously fooled a Scottish school? Our man - married, father of two - spent a fortnight under cover to find out. Would his classmates spot him as an imposter? Answers on the front of News Review
A SMALL village school in Berkshire is the best-performing primary in national reading tests for seven-year-olds, according to a Sunday Times survey of results in England and Wales.
The survey found that more than 80% of the children at St Nicholas Church of England primary school in Hurst achieved top grades, better than double the national average.
Marion Morgan, the headmistress of the 100-pupil school, said it was proof that "small is beautiful".
The Sunday Times analysis of English and mathematics test results for seven- and 11-year-olds, covering more than 3,000 of the 19,000 primary schools, is the first nationwide league table of this type.
The information used has, until now, been restricted because of the government's refusal to publish league tables of results before the tests are "fully bedded in". Primaries are legally obliged to include the information in prospectuses but some are not doing this.
The Sunday Times study reveals alarming variations in standards with children at top primary schools 10 times more likely to gain the highest grades than those at the worst even though pupils may come from similar social backgrounds.
At some inner-city and urban schools more than 60% of seven-year-olds are getting top grades, compared with as few as 6% at others even though they serve similar areas. For 11-year-olds, more than a third of the children at top-performing schools are achieving top grades in English, five times the national average.
Chris Woodhead, chief inspector of schools, said the variations in standards between schools were unacceptable: "You cannot simply take refuge in sociological explanations. The key issue is how we can identify and understand the real excellence that is in the system in order to show other schools that it can be done and how it can be done."
Tomorrow Woodhead will publish a list of more than 70 primary schools judged excellent by inspectors. His annual report, which will also include 40 outstanding secondary, nursery and special schools, will warn that up to 30% of lessons in primary schools are unsatisfactory.
Standards are higher in secondary schools, where league tables of examination results have been in place for four years. The Sunday Times was the first national newspaper to publish tables of state secondary schools in 1991.
THE government's rail privatisation plans were thrown into disarray last night when one of the first three franchises was suspended just hours before it was due to start running services because of a fraud inquiry.
Sir George Young, the transport secretary, made the announcement following allegations that a senior official at London, Tilbury and Southend Rail had cheated another rail operator.
LTS Rail was due to run its first private services on the so-called "misery" line to Essex early this morning. Instead one of its directors has resigned and BR has launched an investigation.
Young said last night: "The franchising director has today informed me that in view of the apparent ticketing irregularities at LTS Rail he does not now expect to transfer the company from BR to the private sector until after the conclusion of the investigations currently being undertaken by the rail regulator and the British Railways Board."
Opraf, the Office of Passenger Rail Franchising, said last night "a serious breach of the ticket revenue settlement arrangements" had recently occurred. It added that Roger Salmon, the franchising director, and the franchisee had decided that transfer of the franchise should only occur after they had reviewed the results of the investigation.
Labour immediately launched an attack on the government's privatisation plans. Brian Wilson, the shadow transport secretary, called for the police to be involved and said the affair was typical of what could be expected from a privatised rail system.
The alleged fraud is understood to involve tickets from London's Fenchurch Street station being reissued at Upminster, Essex, thereby depriving London Underground of its portion of the fare a figure estimated at about £30,000 a month.
Wilson said: "Not even the Tories could hand over a rail franchise to a company which is now under the cloud of these allegations. This goes to the heart of rail privatisation. In a fragmented railway, every company will have a vested interest in maximising its own revenue by fair means or foul without regard to the passengers.
"I want a police investigation into the whole affair, since it appears that the taxpayer, in the form of London Underground, is the victim."
The first LTS service had been due to leave Shoeburyness at 5.35am today. LTS last night refused to comment. BR said it would run a full complement of trains on the line today. The government was left to wave the flag early this morning at two other services being operated by Stagecoach Holdings and Great Western Holdings.
THE FBI is investigating claims that British and German neo-Nazis helped to plan the Oklahoma City bombing in which 168 people died.
Lawyers for Timothy McVeigh, one of two men charged with last April's attack, also allege they have uncovered leads suggesting an international conspiracy.
They believe the atrocity may have been intended to avenge the state execution of Richard Snell, an American neo-Nazi, and that key components for the bomb may have been obtained in Britain. A London firm of solicitors, Kingsley Napley, has been employed by McVeigh's defence to make inquiries in this country.
There was speculation after the arrest of McVeigh, 27, and Terry Nichols, 40, that the bombing was a revenge attack against the American government for the Waco siege two years earlier which claimed 90 lives. A militia organisation in Michigan was reported to be behind the bombing.
Defence investigators believe they have now established that McVeigh was associated with members of the European and American far right, including Britons.
They are also investigating claims that the bombing was more likely in retaliation for the execution of Snell, who was put to death in Arkansas on the day of the bombing for the murder of a black trooper and a Jewish businessman.
Sources close to the defence team have revealed that Stephen Jones, McVeigh's attorney, visited London three weeks ago to investigate British far-right activists and key American neo-Nazis believed to have been associated with McVeigh. Jones is known to have discussed the construction of the bomb with security experts during his visit. "We believe that extremist rightwingers in Europe and America conspired to bomb the building," said a source close to the defence.
It has now emerged that the federal office building had been of interest as a possible target to the far right for years. Court documents from a 1988 trial in Arkansas disclose that Snell once planned to bomb it. The sources said it had also emerged that one leading American neo-Nazi visited Britain three months before the bombing, and is believed to have made contact with extremists here.
The defence is understood to have evidence that McVeigh and his associates made a 40-minute call to the man's office just hours before the bomb in Oklahoma City was detonated. The man cannot be identified for legal reasons.
It would be in the interests of McVeigh's defence to portray him as a fall guy who was part of a wider conspiracy. Any evidence to substantiate this could make the difference between life imprisonment or the death penalty.
However, a senior FBI source confirmed last week that the bureau is also pursuing a possible neo-Nazi link between the Oklahoma City bombers and British and German extremists.
Last month federal investigators contacted Dennis Mahon, another American rightwinger. Mahon confirmed to The Sunday Times that the FBI had contacted him about his links with European neo-Nazis, but denied he was involved in the bombing.
THE winner of last week's Where Was I? competition was David Penberthy of Bridgwater, Somerset, who receives a week for two in a Moswin apartment on the Mosel river, Germany, with Moswin Tours. The runners-up were Ms B Butcher of Didcot, Oxon and JMOwen of Chippenham, Wiltshire. They, and the overall winner, receive the Cadogan guidebook to Germany plus another title of their choice from the Cadogan range. Moswin Tours operates a wide variety of fly -drive, self-drive and special interest trips to Germany, including river cruises.
For a brochure, call 0116-271 4982.
This week's prize is two weeks in Africa, one spent on the Kenyan coast, the other climbing Kilimanjaro, with Inspirations. For full details, turn to page 16.
Palm Springs is a desert oasis without couscous or camels. Its geography, at the western end of California's flat, palm-filled Coachella valley, encased by the bare, biscuit-coloured San Jacinto mountains, is thrilling, the sunshine brilliant, the sky crispy blue and the warm winter air as dry as old bones.
The Agua Caliente ("Hot Water") indians made it home 1,000 years ago, convinced that the area's natural springs had miraculous healing powers. They have certainly had miraculous income-earning powers. Today, Chief Richard Milanovich and his 100-strong tribe is the richest in America, owning half of the city, alternate mile-square morsels in its chequerboard grid, the new casino, the site of the convention centre and several hotels, including the Spa.
Long favoured by Hollywood stars as a desert playground, the town took a big nosedive at the turn of the decade when many of its traditional, well-heeled customers began to favour the country clubbish "down valley" resorts of Rancho Mirage and Palm Desert. But it is now making a comeback, no longer as a movie colony but as a winter treat for real people.
WHERE TO STAY: in the middle, within walking distance of the restaurants and shops (though don't get too carried away), along and just off Palm Canyon Drive. Avoid the north end of town, which is run down and has an excess of trailer parks. Many of the budget hotels are to the west of the centre so what you save on rates you will spend on a car. Down valley is a gaggle of developments as far as Indio, date capital of the world; apart from the temptation of one or two swishy resort hotels, such as the Marriott, with its own lagoon and a boat dock inside its eight-storey foyer, and the Ritz-Carlton, the rest are best ignored.
WHERE TO SLEEP: the Korakia (001 619-864 6419) would make Palm Springs worth a trip in its own right. The exotic Tangier-style villa, built by a Scottish painter, has been turned into a romantic, 12-room oasis by the Canadian architect Doug Smith. It is the best of several small inns in the heart of Palm Springs, each renovated from the bones of historic properties. They include: Ingleside (325 0046), an official National Historic Landmark, with 30 fancy, frilly rooms, some with real fires, as well as a popular restaurant, Melvyn's (325 2323), whose owner Mel Haber thrives on having his photo taken with his star clientele, Cher, John Travolta, Bob Hope, Gerald Ford, Joan Collins among them; Villa Royale (327 2314), built in the late 1930s, has rooms themed on a particular European country or region, some with hot tubs on private patios; the 40-roomed Spanish mission-style Orchid Tree (325 2791) is a cluster of pink cottages with patios, an abundance of flowers and original artworks; the Estrella (320 4117) has 74 rooms, including several bungalows.
Las Brisas (325 4372), a pretty, southwestern-style hotel bursting with bougainvillea, has a delightful pool, and is a good budget choice; rooms start at $59 (£40). The town also has several gay hotels ("boys' camp was never like this" says one), naturist resorts such as the Desert Hangout (320 5984), and, most famously, the Betty Ford detox clinic.
Turn up on spec and a vital stop is the Visitor Centre on the way in from LA. Every morning it is fed with a stream of faxes from hotels offering the best deal of the day; at the beginning of December there were doubles from $29.
WHAT TO DO: a perfect day in Palm Springs goes something like this: get up early, go walking along one of the many desert trails, stop for a picnic in an oasis of palm trees fed by natural springs, back to your hotel in the early afternoon for a swim, then tea, a read, a cocktail, then out to a little restaurant for dinner, back for a nightcap by an outside fireplace under the starry sky, silhouetted by fronds of palms and backdropped by a wall of mountain.
Top of the specific attractions is the aerial tramway, which carries 80 people a time up from the baking heat of the valley to the thin cold air of 8,516ft, from desert to alpine climate in just 14 minutes, the fastest rise in America. The busiest day of the tramway year is, in fact, Christmas Day, when local desert rats go in search of quality snow time. In winter there is a cross-country ski trail (equipment for hire); at other times, you can follow 36 miles of trails on foot or by mule. Summer or winter, the views of Nevada and Arizona one way, Mexico the other are incredible.
The real reason for being in Palm Springs is not the place itself, but the desert around it. The Indian Canyons, on the National Register of Historic Places, are best explored with Desert Adventures, a spine-jolting Jeep safari through spectacular terrain. Guides also point out foods and medicinal plants, a Neal's Yard au naturel, and are a mine of legends and facts, such as: more people die in the desert from drowning (from flash floods after a rare storm) than thirst. The company also offers a tour of the San Andreas fault line, defined by chasms wide enough for vehicles.
Joshua Tree, which a year ago changed its status from national monument to become America's newest national park, is a 45-minute drive away from Palm Springs. The half a million-acre wilderness (60 miles long, 30 across) is named after a distinctive giant yucca, whose hairy arms and bristling green fists achieved global fame on the cover of the eponymous U2 album. The map picks out Skull Rock, Lost Horse Mine, Johnny Lang Grave, Rattlesnake Canyon and Hidden Valley, where rustlers used to hide cattle behind hundreds of rocks, eroded by the wind into a land of a thousand bums.
Two tame doorstep versions of the great outdoors are the Living Desert, home to several desert animals, and the Moorteon Botanic Gardens, which
first opened in the 1920s and has more cactuses than you imagined existed, including a joshua tree.
Palm Springs is a golfers' heaven, looking from the air like a patchwork of green stamps. There are 80 courses in the valley, seven of them within the city boundaries, and most are open to visitors. Tennis is most famously played at the old Racket Club, where Marilyn Monroe was "discovered" and black-and-white prints of Hollywood celebs are on display clutching their Maxplys. Courts, daylit or floodlit, cost $10 an hour. Other sporty pursuits include horse riding, hot-air ballooning and parachuting. In lieu of beaches, there is a 21-acre, 13-slide Oasis waterpark with two 70ft freefall slides, a wave pool, a white-water river inner-tube ride, and "an award-winning lifeguard staff", which is most reassuring.
Two museums: the Village Green, a collection of old houses moved from their original locations into the middle of town, one a general store circa 1930, another devoted to the Agua Caliente indians; and the Desert Museum which, despite the name, has more to do with art and artefact than with the desert, although the dioramas are convincing enough to give you a thirst. Only open 10am-4pm; even the museum goes to bed early in Palm Springs.
Frank Sinatra recently sold his Palm Springs pad, marking the end of an era. Kirk Douglas and Cheetah the 63-year-old chimp are the only super constellations still in situ, while Bob Hope lives in a hilltop fortress nearby. You can still pick up a free map and walk, bike or drive around the inner village of Las Palmas, where many old headliners retreated to avoid the public scrutiny of Hollywood. Among the spreads are Liberace's (giant candelabra), George Hamilton's (signature in the concrete kerbside), Elvis's (unsightly) and Marilyn Monroe's (pretty, but present owners hate voyeurs, so linger not).
Prize for the most bizarre sight goes to the windmills, an entire forest of 4,500, arm-flapping, energy-creating white giants on Interstate 10.
WHERE TO SHOP: although still listed at the top of the visitor activities, the stores in the adobish downtown hacienda are dreary; the Desert Fashion Plaza, built to compete with the new malls "down valley", is particularly lacklustre. You need a car to access two of the classic extremes of the American shopping experience. Twenty minutes to the east of town is Palm Desert, with not only the most "upscale" of malls, but the valley's most chichi stores (along El Paseo Drive). Twenty minutes in the opposite direction, along Interstate 10 to LA, is Desert Hills, a heaven of more than 100 factory outlets, with as much as 70% off list prices of (mostly) clothes and other top-brand items.
WHERE TO EAT: a good restaurant in Palm Springs is as much defined by its style as its cooking. For good French food try Palmie, whose owner used to cook for Giscard d'Estaing, or Le Vallauris, Otani for Japanese, Blue Coyote Grill for Mexican. The Bit of Country is a homely spot for breakfast; $2.99 gets you an egg, two pancakes and two strips of bacon served below a repro of an oil painting of rural England, which one imagines is just what desert folk must crave. And don't miss Verns home cooking, family restaurant, most famous for its "Buzzards Breath Chili".
NIGHTLIFE: when the mayor (no longer Sonny Bono, who is now the local congressman) asked retired circus performer and impresario Riff Markowitz to find a use for the decrepid Plaza Theatre, his immediate reply was: "What theatre?" "The one downtown," said the politican. "What downtown?" asked Markowitz.
Since his takeover, the art deco Plaza has been the single most important contributor to the reversal of the city's fortunes. Markowitz's Ziegfeld-style "Follies" is a variety of song, burlesque, lots of legs and sequined costumes, but with a difference. The age of the cast ranges between 50 and 79, the performers being well-creased but amazingly agile. Despite the ad on the back of the programme for EricAid, "a vacuum treatment for impotence", it is not a geriatric freak show but a slick, professional extravaganza.
The other big evening out is the Thursday VillageFest, when Palm Canyon Drive is closed to traffic and lined with craftsfolk, musicians and farmers, a clever idea by the town to commit visitors to a longer weekend.
Go to Cecil's for dancing, the Casino for gambling, a 10-screen Metropolitan cinema, the Annenberg Theatre part of the museum complex for opera, ballet, jazz and Noel Coward, all on the forthcoming bill, and to see where "the stars come out at night" Mel Haber's "Touche" nightspot.
GETTING THERE: Palm Springs is a two-hour plus drive or a 30-minute flight east from Los Angeles; a train service, taking an hour, will open in the near future. I flew to LA as a guest of Virgin Atlantic (01293-747747), whose current fares start at £398 (21 day advance purchase). Other airlines with nonstop flights from the UK include American Airlines (0181-572 5555), British Airways (0345-222111), United (0181-990 9900) and Air New Zealand (0181-741 2299). Tour operators with packages featuring Palm Springs include: American Airlines Holidays (0181-577 9966), BA Holidays (01293-617000), Funway (0181-466 0222), Major Travel (0171-482 4840), Premier (01223-516677), Unijet (01444-459191) and Virgin (01293-617181).
GETTING AROUND: one pleasure at Palm Springs is being able to walk about town, day or night, without having to look over your shoulder. Unless you stick with organised excursions you will need a car which will cost from about $30 a day to get into the desert. Or a Fat Boy from Magic Carpet Rides, hirers of Harley-Davidsons. Taxis are extremely expensive.
WHEN TO GO: Palm Springs gets the same amount of rain in a year as London gets in its driest month (2-3in), and winters are warm with temperatures in the mid-70s. In summer the price of lower costs is body meltdown; you spend your days leaping from one air-conditioned sanctuary to the next (yet more than half the number of people who walk into the Visitor Information office in August, the very worst month for heat and humidity, are British).
Jean Yeats worked as a teacher before joining Travel-Care, a charity based at Gatwick that acts as a last resort for passengers in distress. Travel-Care has three part-time staff and 12 volunteers, who take care of about 2,000 problems a year.
Missed flights are a huge problem so many people don't realise that if you miss a charter flight, you don't fly. I wish travel agents would emphasise that to people. It's rarely families who miss the plane perhaps they're better organised because they've got children to think about. If you miss a charter flight you might get on the next one if the airline has a seat. They might reissue a ticket for £25 or £30 and sometimes people ask us for help in paying. We wouldn't hand over the whole fee, except in exceptional circumstances, but sometimes they're just £5 short and need a top-up. The money is a loan about 60% of people will repay it and some give a small donation on top.
Many people don't realise they can transfer money from their bank accounts. We often ring building societies and are told it can't be done, but we'll talk to the manager and discover that it can.
People who miss flights often end up sleeping in the airport, so we keep blankets, pillows and toiletries here. It's not as bad as it sounds. It's safe and anybody can use the showers if they have a towel.
Theft is a big problem in the airport, usually by organised gangs. People will put down a bag to look at a book and, within seconds, it's gone and the thief is on the train to London with not a hope of being traced. It's fairly common for cleaners to find discarded wallets in bins.
Last summer, we had a young man who had been sleeping on the beach in Greece and had had everything stolen. He lived in the north and arrived here with nothing but a pair of flip-flops and shorts. We kitted him out in clothes and contacted his relatives.
We keep a small stock of clothes, mostly things we've brought in ourselves but occasionally people ditch some if their luggage is overweight.
Shoes can be a bit of a problem, though. One chap went to sleep in the terminal and his trainers were stolen. Another woke up with only one shoe I suppose some joker had taken the other.
I've come across three or four cases of people being abandoned in the airport. We had one retired couple who were going to emigrate to Florida. The husband was English and the wife American and they arrived in a taxi with all their luggage. Halfway down the walkway he said to her: "Oh no, I've left a bag in the taxi. Wait for me in the terminal." He never appeared; after an hour she panicked and was referred to us. We made extensive phone calls and finally managed to contact him. He said he'd left her, he wasn't going with her, that was it.
We have quite a few young men turning up looking for girls they've met on holiday. I had a Frenchman earlier this year who wanted to contact a girl he had met in Brittany. He had come in on a one-way ticket with no money, and he had her name and knew she lived in Surrey that was it. We tried to help, going through phone books and so forth it's our job to be sympathetic and not to judge. In the end, I sent that one off to the French consulate.
We develop a nose for chancers, but we've all had occasions when we've been done. Somebody will come in with a sob story and later he might be found by the police playing a machine in the amusement arcade. That's infuriating.
Some people are plain arrogant and will walk in demanding money. They might say: "We were robbed. We need our train fare to Edinburgh now!" We try to explain that's not how we do things, and they storm out. You want to say: "Hey, I didn't get you in this problem, I'm just doing my best to help you..."
Jean Yeats talked to Mark Hodson.
Identify where our writer went, and win an African holiday from Inspirations.
There cannot be many Serbian churches in this country. Or perhaps I just never noticed them before, but the sign clearly says Serbian Orthodox Church of St Nicholas. I pause, intrigued as to how a Serbian church became part of such a quaint village, but I have an appointment elsewhere, first with lunch at the George & Dragon and then with a gothic edifice that, from a distance, may look like a church but is actually an entrance to a much darker world.
Oddly enough, I first heard of this place, or rather its most famous inhabitant and his rum line in parties, in an episode of The Avengers, when Diana Rigg was in the sidekicking role. I vaguely recall Mrs Peel being served as the (living) entree during some devilish feast supposedly run by the descendants of the original revellers of this parish. The real descendant can be heard (on tape) welcoming you to his crepuscular domain where, it is rumoured, ministers of state and nobility indulged in outrageous behaviour in the company of masked women (no change there, then). Even on a bright sunny day and with electric lights, it is a dank, gloomy space. It isn't hard to imagine why word spread that anyone who chose to spend nights in the bowels of the earth must be up to no good.
I headed up the hill to the brighter realms of a striking Italianate church, where dark deeds are rumoured to have taken place beneath (and sometimes inside) a distinctive golden ball, which remains today, anchored to the building by chains, as if it might fly away.
There was a time when the public could get inside the ball, and these days its magnificent views over the surrounding countryside are still available to those who climb the 113 steps of the tower. But visitors should spend some time in the elaborate nave, supposedly based on the Temple of the Sun at Palmyra, near Damascus.
It is entirely possible, of course, that the local baronet was a victim of the precursor of tabloid sensationalism. There are no real eyewitness accounts of the most extreme activities he was purported to have indulged in, which may have been no more sinister than the mock-religious ceremonies used to elect various officials of the club.
What is a matter of record is that this is the man who helped in the revision of the Book of Common Prayer and did much for the infrastructure of the local community by surfacing local roads. What the village could do with now is a similar personage with enough clout in the land to get the A road that so sorely blights it moved from the centre of the high street. That would be worth the price of a few dodgy parties.
THE QUESTIONS:
1 Who was the party-animal baronet?
2 What was the name of the local abbey where they held the bulk of the parties?
THE PRIZES:
This week's first prize from Inspirations is a 14-night holiday to Africa, for those who like a challenge. Half the holiday will be spent relaxing on the coast in the five-star Nyali Beach hotel (half-board), while the other seven nights involve climbing the highest mountain in Africa Kilimanjaro. Reaching the 19,000ft, snow-capped peak will be a real trek, so a fair level of fitness is required, but the route will take you through rainforest, moorland, desert and the most breathtaking scenery. Flying from London-Gatwick, the 14-night holiday is for two people, and should be taken between May and October 1996 (subject to availability). Inspirations recommends that potential climbers phone 01293-822828 for a free fact sheet on how to prepare for the
climb. For a copy of the Inspirations Kenya brochure describing the trip
call 01293-822244.
The winner and two runners-up will also receive their choice of two of the latest Cadogan guidebooks.
Entries, on a postcard please, to WHERE WAS I? The Sunday Times, PO Box 6884, London E2 8SS, by first post next Thursday. Normal Times Newspapers rules apply. The winners will be the first selected at random from all the correct entries received by the closing date.
Last week's results: the author was in Avebury, the beer was Wadworth's 6X. See page 3 for winners
EDWINA CURRIE reveals a 20-year love affair with the French.
Edwina Currie, 49, has been Conservative MP for South Derbyshire since 1983 and was a government minister from 1986 to 1988. A bestselling novelist, her new book, A Woman's Place, is published by Hodder & Stoughton. She is married to Ray, a chartered accountant, and has two daughters, Debbie, 21, and Susie, 19.
My first holiday abroad was at the age of 18, while I was waiting to go to university. I stayed in New York with Aunt Miriam, on my father's side, in Brooklyn. To be 18 and in New York was marvellous. I liked their can-do approach to life, and it helped focus my mind on who I was and what I wanted to do. I liked the metropolitan life, the theatres, the feeling of being at the heart of things. I got a temporary job working for Shell and used to sit with my lunch outside the Rockefeller Center, just watching people going past. One of the reasons I didn't stay was that there was no NHS and no free education. I had a scholarship to Oxford on a full grant, whereas in America I'd have had to work to support myself through college.
Before I returned to England I went on a shopping spree and spent $1,000 on a set of five suitcases, records and clothes. I loaded the suitcases onto the boat, but by that time I had spent all my money, so during the five-day voyage I couldn't even buy a Coca-Cola.
My liking for France started more than 20 years ago. We didn't have a honeymoon when we married, in 1972, because my husband, Ray, was too busy. The following spring we went to Paris for a belated honeymoon, and stayed in a little hotel called the Senat on the Left Bank near the Luxembourg Gardens. We walked by the Seine holding hands, and got to know the restaurants around the boulevards St Michel and St Germain. It was fun to go there in the evenings feeling like a couple of students.
When I left the government in December 1988, Ray said: "Let's go to Paris again at Easter." The spring of 1989 was the 200th anniversary of the beginning of the French revolution, and the celebrations were already under way, with one poster punning: "Allons, enfants, a la partie."
When the children were young, we had a run of summer holidays at Robin Hood's Bay in Yorkshire. Ray was born near Leeds and lived there during the war years, so he has a fairly strong streak of Yorkshire culture. Some friends of ours had a cottage at Boggle Hole, which we would rent for three weeks. We would go on short walks down to the bay and look for crabs and sea anemones in the rock pools. Sometimes we went into Whitby for fish and chips, and to look at the coal-black jet jewellery that comes from the shore around there. One of the attractions of Yorkshire was the Tetley pubs, which made families welcome, rather than exiling them to back rooms, and we would have pub lunches of sausages and mash. But I was becoming too well known in Britain, and people would come up to us in pubs or cafes to have a talk. It got under my family's skin after a bit.
Once our two daughters were more grown-up and learning French at school, we became more adventurous. We went south from Paris to the Loire, where the climate is not too hot, the countryside is pretty and the people are pleasant much nicer than Normandy. In 1990 we were staying in Loches, south of Tours. It was a very hot summer and I found myself looking in estate agents' windows. It had cost us £2,000 to rent a place, but you could buy one for peanuts and, though I suspect Ray thought I was a little mad, we ended up with a dilapidated farmer's cottage with stable and barn attached, about 20km from Saumur. It had electricity and a television aerial, but no mains water, toilet or bathroom. Our first task was to put in a septic tank and loo, and much of our time since has been spent bringing the place up to scratch. You can finish work on a Thursday evening, catch the overnight ferry from Portsmouth and be in the house by noon the next day. I take my word processor to get some work done on my next novel. I have now finished the synopsis for novel No3, which is being published in 1997.
My best holidays combine relaxing and sightseeing. I like doing touristy things, such as going round chateaux, and I'm first in the queue for Disneyland. If I'm in a strange city, a good way of getting a first impression is to go on the tourist bus. I did a day trip to China in 1990. I was in Hong Kong as a guest of the government, and had a spare day. So I paid my HK$60 and put "Housewife" on the form declaring myself a British politician might have caused problems. It was a fascinating day. I saw the city of Canton, a local wedding, and so many children that it seemed the one-child policy wasn't being followed very closely.
I travel well in small doses.
I always make sure I have a book with me, to keep me absorbed through all the delays. Recent holiday reading was Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess, and I may yet read War and Peace.
I never want to cut myself off completely on holiday. We have a phone and fax in France. Ray gets the papers every day, including Sporting Life, and we always get the Sunday papers. But we're just as likely to pick up the French papers, too. I like the French women's magazines, which are full of articles such as "Why do men love bitches?", recipes and decorating ideas, and, of course, French Hello! and Paris Match. But if I can't get BBC Radio 4 I start to feel I'm losing contact with the real world.
Most Brits, when asked why they like being in France, start talking about the climate and the food. One of my French friends asked me: "Is that the only reason you British come here because we can cook?" But, with me, it is the people, particularly on the Left Bank of Paris and in the Saumur region, two areas that had strong Resistance movements. You will find plaques to those shot by the Nazis in 1944 on the Left Bank, and I made a point of being there when they celebrated the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Paris in August 1994. They re-enacted a scene in which the Nazis rounded up "troublemakers" to be executed, and an old man next to me was in tears because he remembered it. Just as I like being on the Left Bank, one of the reasons I like being in the area north of the Loire, is because its people have great dignity and strength.
Edwina Currie talked to Clare Colvin.
FRASER HARRISON returns to Copenhagen, a haven for pedestrians with its cobbles, cafes and canals.
When I was last in Copenhagen, in 1969, it was the sex capital of Europe and the entire city seemed to have turned itself into a red-light district. I found myself in Nyhavn, a cobbled street not far from the royal residence that encloses a canal-shaped harbour and was famous as the haunt of sailors and tattooists. Gritting your teeth in a picturesque cellar, you could have lewd images drilled into your skin while diverting your mind from the pain by remembering that even if liberalism had gone mad in Denmark, it still possessed the most civilised welfare state in the world. In those days Copenhagen seemed determined to cure the traveller of any lingering notion that it resembled the film set where Danny Kaye had impersonated Hans Christian Andersen. As it happened, the real Andersen had lived at various times in not one, but three of the houses lining Nyhavn.
Nowadays, the pornographers have gone from Nyhavn in fact, from the city centre altogether and of the old debauchery only the tattooists remain. However, if the posters outside Tato Svend were to be believed, they have changed their portfolios from nudes to dragons, tigers and cloying images of native Americans. Otherwise, the street has been left to seekers of different pleasures, for its sunny side is occupied by bars and cafes looking out on sailing ships moored along the canal wharf. Indeed, Copenhagen is a city of cafes, and a flash of sunlight is enough to fill its pavements with people eating and drinking at the plastic tables stacked in readiness outside even the smallest establishment. This is easier to achieve than in London, not because the Danish climate is any more helpful than ours, but because the Danes have had the sense to turn whole areas of their capital into so-called "walking streets".
Copenhagen is an elegant, compact, water-bound city, whose old buildings rise to six and seven storeys, their gables tapering in steps and ornate curves. The Danes, less austere than their Scandinavian neighbours, are in the happy habit of painting their house and office fronts in bright colours, the most typical being a beautiful mustard-ochre. I walked along Amaliegade, a majestic street full of sly passages opening into a network of courtyards, and stood at the entrance of the royal square, which is composed of four identical, but separate rococo palaces that between them make up the queen's residence. The centre of the square, actually a cobbled octagon, is the site of a vast equestrian statue of Frederik V dressed as a Roman emperor. It is revered as a great work of art and is believed to have cost as much as the surrounding buildings, though his majesty's dignity is not enhanced by the ravages of verdigris and guano.
Copenhagen is a city of statues. They preside over the streets and positively infest the parks. Many of them take the form of undraped young women, whom it would be a kindness, both humane and artistic, to send home for a warm bath. But there are also some striking works. For my money, the finest of all stands near the entrance of the Churchill Park and represents the Viking goddess Gefion, who changed her four sons into oxen in order to carve off a chunk of Sweden. An Amazonian figure in a chariot, she urges on her bovine boys with a whip as they plunge and stumble through cascades of water. Below them lies a terraced fountain with jets of water spouting from the mouths of giants.
The city's most famous statue is, of course, the Little Mermaid, who reclines on her lonely boulder at the far end of the park, wistfully staring out to sea. Already the victim of one of Andersen's most sadistic stories the price of exchanging her tail for human legs is to feel that she is walking on knives she has also been dismembered and decapitated, though is currently intact. Tourists arrive by the bus-load to photograph her chaste nudity, and Americans are dismayed when they discover she is a mere mermaid, not a mighty landmark like their own Statue of Liberty.
Copenhagen is rich in museums it even has one devoted to the telephone but none is more moving than the Liberty Museum, which tells the story of the Danish resistance during the Nazi occupation. The very ordinariness of some exhibits made them almost impossible to look at; for example, the wooden farm stakes used by the Gestapo for executions. Most poignant was a tiny bouquet of roses made from chewed rye bread given by a Polish prisoner to a Dane in the women's camp at Ravensbruck. The Danes' record in relation to their Jewish community was honourable in that they managed to spirit all but 481 people out of a population of 7,000 across the water to Sweden. It seems that the story is apocryphal that claims the king threatened to wear the yellow star himself if the Nazis insisted on Danish Jews wearing it. Even so, the myth has its own truth.
Perhaps the maddest museum in the city is the one devoted to the neoclassical sculptor, Bertel Thorvaldsen, whose name is probably not revered outside Denmark. The museum, itself an extraordinary neo-ancient fantasy, enjoys pride of place on Christiansborg, the island occupied by the parliament building. It was designed by a disciple during the great man's lifetime to house not only his works but also his tomb, and he now lies buried in its central courtyard. Within the temple, Thorvaldsen's massive marble statues, most of them representing gods and goddesses carved to the smoothness of soap, loom whitely in the shadowy passages like classical snowmen.
The Danes are famous for their genius with design and rightly so, I thought, after spending a dazzled hour in the light and glass departments of the Illums store. This genius was on display in shop after shop along the Stroget, the innocuous-looking but actually unpronounceable name for the pedestrian streets. The ability to render everyday and often despised objects both stylish and witty seemed to be all of a piece with Danish behaviour: the only tramp I saw was a ragged dandy, and the drunk who accosted me outside Tivoli did so in three languages, including grammatically faultless English.
A walk past the Borsen, or stock exchange, a 17th-century building with a whimsical copper spire made of four dragons' tails twisted together in a green cornet, takes you to the drawbridge that connects the city with one of its oldest parts, Christianshavn, on the island of Amager. Once a shipbuilding and docks area, it is now somewhat gentrified and boasts some beautifully renovated houses along its canal. Visible from almost every street corner is the gold and blue steeple of the Vor Frelsers Kirke, a church that has a helter-skelter staircase built round the outside of its tower. Beyond this landmark lies another of the city's institutions, which if less ancient than most is still, in its way, very Danish. The district of Christiania occupies a site that for many centuries was used as a barracks, but once the military moved out was colonised by the young and homeless. In 1971 it was declared a "free city" and was intended to be an autonomous enclave whose residents would pay no taxes and operate their own system of policing. It continues to exist, its ideals battered but more or less intact.
Immediately inside its open gateway is a small circle of stalls selling pipes of every shape and design, some as big as flutes. Slabs of marijuana the size of chocolate bars were also on sale. Though an unmistakable sweet smell hung in the air it created a false first impression. As I wandered around Christiana's makeshift streets, I found myself attached to the tail end of a school party in the charge of an earnest teacher who escorted us from a pottery to a workshop and then into a huge warehouse stocking every kind of building material, all second-hand. Out of such architectural flotsam the inhabitants had built themselves a junk city, but these self-appointed outlaws had retained enough of their Danish character to ensure that their shanties were flamboyantly designed and gaily coloured. The humblest shack sported some little flourish, an antebellum veranda, a mock spire or a room made of a boat's hull, while the larger ones were virtual compendiums of building history.
In search of a very different kind of architecture, I went to the botanical garden. For those who love such things, and I am a passionate devotee, Copenhagen possesses one of Europe's great palm houses. Constructed in the 19th century of cast iron and glass, it consists of a three-tiered dome and a pair of wings, each with its own little pavilion at the end, and looks like an enormous crystal marquee. Inside, it is divided into sections that allow you to move through whole geographies in a couple of steps until you reach the central chamber beneath the dome. This forms a kind of jungle in a bottle, a huge, sweating jar full of fleshy leaves and slender palm trunks. A spiral staircase, not for the faint-hearted, coils upwards like a plant itself to a gallery running around the rim of the dome's middle tier, where the canopy of fronds looks dense enough to walk on. Dominating the jungle floor was a plant, aptly named Medinilla magnifica from the Philippines, whose huge, drooping, many-headed pink flowers resembled chandeliers. Even the goldfish, swimming in a little pond at the foot of the staircase, looked like fancy blooms. On my way out I was amused to see a typically Danish touch: a metal refuse basket designed in the shape of a giant chrysalis.
Finally there is Tivoli, Copenhagen's pleasure garden and its most celebrated attraction. It should be awful; it should be vulgar, debased and commercialised, a place no self-respecting Dane would go near, but it isn't. It is delightful and full of Danes. Opened in 1843, it was devised partly in imitation of London's Vauxhall Gardens as an amusement park, but has evolved into a peculiarly Danish combination of entertainment and promenading. Tivoli is best seen at night when the place is prettily lit with a multitude of fairy lights, paper lanterns and coloured bulbs. Close to the entrance is a pantomime theatre, which, typically, is designed in the style of a chinese temple with a proscenium curtain shaped like a peacock's tail, and stages traditional commedia dell'arte mime plays. These shows are watched with some solemnity by their outdoor audiences. Not far away, in the bandstand, I found a 16-piece jazz combo dressed in powder-blue blazers playing hot versions of Glenn Miller tunes. The trees round the bandstand were loaded with tiny white lights making a kind of electric blossom, while the tulips in their beds were laid out like mosaics. The tide of the crowd was pulling towards a lake where you could hire a motor boat or eat on board a galleon decked with Danish flags. I walked the other way, towards a Chinese restaurant housed in a red and gold pagoda that specialised in Smorrebrod.
The Danes are addicted to fairground rides. An impatient queue waited to have its teeth shaken out by the Grasshopper, a fiendish machine that revolved at great speed while its little cabins spun equally fast in the opposite direction. A man took off his jacket to ring a bell with a mallet and succeeded at the sixth attempt. Two small boys stood in a stall shooting air rifles at bare-breasted mermaids. The next-door stall offered the chance to throw wooden balls at a chef and his wife. I bought a pair of earrings for my daughter from a silversmith who worked in his booth oblivious to the shrieks coming from the Flying Carpet, another ride into hell. The scent of aniseed filled the air as a sweet-maker boiled his sticky pans. With undiminished enthusiasm, the two boys were now firing cannon balls at a sinking ship. Beside the dodgems, a man manufactured Churchillian cigars with a little rolling machine. In the open-air theatre a woman with a long bolt of red hair attracted a large crowd by lying on her back and juggling beach balls with her feet. She was followed by five gauchos who wore scarlet boots and black hats and whooped loudly as they hammered their drums, but the crowd drifted away. I could have been tattooed, caricatured or photographed in a cowboy costume; instead, I chose to listen to more jazz, this time played by an effervescent quartet.
The night was almost at an end. What could be more pleasurable, I thought, than to sit in the night air, drinking hot chocolate and aquavit in front of a cafe shaped like a maharajah's palace, listening to the strains of Come Home Bill Bailey played yearningly by a Danish saxophonist? And where else, but in Copenhagen?
TRAVEL BRIEF
Getting there: SAS (0171-734 4020) flies to Copenhagen five times daily. Fares from £170, seven days advanced booking. British Airways (0345-222111) flies from Heathrow three times a day, from Gatwick once a day. Most of the short-break operators feature the city, including: AT Mays (0141-951 8411), BA Holidays (01293-611611), Cresta (0161 927 7000), Crystal (0181-390 9900), Inscape Fine Art Tours (01993-891726), Kirker (0171-231 3333), SAS Holiday World (0141-951 8988), Scantours (0171-839 2927), Time Off (0171-235 8070), and Travelscene (0181-427 4445).
Further information: Danish Tourist Board, 55 Sloane St, London SW1 X9SY (0171-259 5959)
Roll up for a flora and fauna spectacular, says RICHARD GIRLING.
Some of the great pleasures of travel depend on good fortune and timing. We are not talking about man-made happenings such as festivals, which can be pinned down with a call to the local tourist office, but the more capricious wonders of nature, be they animals or plants. Here, then, is a guide to what is likely to show up over the next three months.
FEBRUARY
Few good words are spoken of it, this outwardly bleakest of the months, and almost none of them are poetic. Thomas Tusser in his 16th-century epic, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, manages a couplet... February, fill the dyke With what thou dost like ...but that's about the sum of it. With mist and snow, artists and photographers manage to give a romantic gloss to the winter months that precede it. By the time February arrives, however, their creative spark is all but dead, or in suspended animation like a hibernating bat.
February invariably comes out brown all over; ploughed fields, naked trees, hedges like coils of rusting wire in a seasonal no man's land.
The dyke is filled with cold water, despondency and misapprehension.
Few seasons of the year more starkly emphasise the gulf in understanding between modern man and the natural cycles of the world that support him. Nature, not being something you can plug into the mains or rehydrate from a packet, has become so remote from daily life that it rubs shoulders with molecular biology in the rarefied province of serious science. Most of us, the ordinary folk of Hawthorn Close and Holly Crescent, have less understanding of things that naturally grow and multiply, and less awareness of seasonal change than any crop-hoeing peasant in any civilisation that has ever existed.
It is as hard to believe that we have been enriched by this as it is to argue that we should be content with it. The lure of the outdoors remains, as ever, irresistible, and we could do worse than heed our instinctive attraction to it. To build a new appreciation of the countryside, how it works and what it can offer, there is no better time to start than now. In defiance of its barren image, it is February that lays down the first fresh, vital colours of the year.
It begins, as things in the country so often do, with an ancient and near -forgotten festival. The second day of February is Candlemas, the feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, a day traditionally marked in two ways: by the blessing of candles in churches and by the sudden blooming of flowers. The flowers may occasionally miss the appointed date, but not by much, and they occur in such dense profusion that, as one writer puts it, "you could believe the stuffing had fallen out of the clouds".
It doesn't happen everywhere but where it does the journey to see it is worth it. The flower in question, the harbinger of harbingers, is Galanthus nivalis, the snowdrop a plant dedicated to deceit. It looks absurdly delicate, doomed to perish with much of the very worst weather still to come. It is, however, as tough as a mountain goat and ideally equipped to do its job. The flower on its stalk is so flexible as to be effectively gale-proof, its leaf-tips are hard enough to push through frozen ground, and the downturned head makes a tightly protective umbrella for the pollen.
So perfectly adapted is it to withstand the bite of winter that you might suppose it to have been here since the Ice Age. This might be true in other parts of Europe, particularly in alpine regions, but not, apparently, in Britain. "No trace has been found in glacial deposits," says Richard Mabey in The Flowering of Britain. "In most of the parks and copses in which (it) is found, it is quite patently a garden escapee."
Mabey and others have speculated that snowdrops may have been introduced by monks, who planted them in monastery gardens specifically so that they could pick the virginal flowers for Candlemas. He gives as a possible example Grey Friars priory at Dunwich in Suffolk, where the plants, now growing wild, press right up against the ruined walls.
One of the most spectacular displays is also associated with monastic ruins in East Anglia, in the grounds and woods of Walsingham Abbey in Norfolk, where during a short season each year a few of the flowers are harvested by a dwindling band of increasingly elderly pickers for daily dispatch to New Covent Garden.
It is not only the plant world that is busying itself with new life. One of the most prolific, popular and charismatic egg-layers in the entire European fauna has already been busy in ponds and ditches for a month or more. "The copulation of frogs," wrote the Hampshire clergyman and naturalist Gilbert White in 1768, "is notorious to everyone." After days perhaps even weeks swimming in the locked embrace of their male partners, female frogs are laying the jellified strands that every year give new life to old jam jars.
All is not well, however. Mr Froggie may a'courting go, and he'll go on well into spring, but he is not having his usual luck on the breeding front. Despite their great fecundity (a female can release as many as 3,000 eggs in a single mass of spawn), frog populations are declining and the boffins have been called in. Among the suspects being examined are polluted water, insects with poisonous doses of pesticides in their bodies, acid rain, increased radiation from the thinning of the ozone layer, and the loss of habitat.
Birds are still having a thin time of it. It is the best possible time of year for visits to marsh and estuary for wintering geese and other wildfowl, otherwise there is probably no better place to see birds than in your own bit of contained countryside, the garden. Outside my window in Norfolk at the moment, combing the garden in utter silence, are blackbirds, pigeons, bluetits and starlings, plus a regular cock pheasant, a robin and, making its debut appearance amid the pecked-out cups of last year's fallen apples, a fieldfare. Friends in the West Country report overwintering blackcaps and a siskin.
Feeding a variety of birds in the garden is the easiest and most immediately rewarding way to do your bit for nature. A small bird may have to eat as much as a third of its own body weight every day. In his masterwork, A Natural History of British Birds, Eric Simms reports that a bluetit may spend as much as 90% of the daylight hours simply searching for things to eat. Watch any bird at this time of year, and see.
As Gilbert White himself showed, a bird does not have to be a rarity to be worth watching. It cannot be disputed that a winter journey into the savage peaks of Snowdonia or the Highlands, where beaks and claws come no redder, is one of the greatest adventures that mainland Britain can offer. But, even if you are stuck with ploughed fields, there is still no dearth of things to watch Vanellus vanellus, the common lapwing, for example. It would have to yield to the raven, but few other birds carry a heavier load of sombre myth and legend, or a longer list of local names. Francesca Greenoak, in All the Birds of the Air , notes 28, from horneywink in Cornwall to tee whippo in Orkney and tieves' nacket in Shetland. The last two, like the more common "peewit", are onomatopoeic, from the double note of the cry. In Bedfordshire it's the lipwingle, in Exmoor the lymptwigg, in Worcestershire the old maid.
My own favourite colloquial name for a bird, which Greenoak notes, is for the short-legged, splay-footed Tachybaptus ruficollis, the dabchick or little grebe. With cruel accuracy, it is known as arsefoot.
Greenoak traces "lapwing" itself to the Old English Hleapewince, which precisely catches the character of the bird's flickering mode of flight. It means: "Leap with a waver in it." When a flock is on the move, it abruptly changes colour at every turn, showing first the greeny-black upper wing surfaces, then the flashing white underparts. It is much like watching a shoal of fish.
Greenoak's book drips with bird lore like no other. If you feel like hunting something this winter, a copy of All the Birds of the Air now out of print would be as rewarding a quarry as anything I can think of.
For those with a weakness for sentimentality, high season is nigh. Lambing is already well under way and will go on until mid-April. Many farms have open days with cuddles and bottle-feeding included in the ticket price always a hit with children, no matter how loudly they may declare their streetwise contempt.
MARCH
In the years that followed his death in 1973, this newspaper ran an annual environmental essay competition in memory of the writer and broadcaster Kenneth Allsop. He combined the eye of a child missing nothing, questioning everything with the diagnostic skills of an intellectually gifted adult. Like no other writer of his time, and like few others before or since, he had the knack of converting observation into text with the clarity of film. From the observation, typically, would come a question, and from the question would be born a hypothesis.
Here he is, in 1970 or 1971, observing two hares in a field near his home in Dorset: "They hadn't noticed my lurching arrival (his legs were not his own). They were being just as hare-brained as hares are supposed to be in March, mad as a...well, typical. In the bright light their fur was a silky henna the winter grey sexily burnished up and they were prancing around each other on their hind legs, breaking away into jinking chase, then squaring up again.
"Like boxing kangaroos, they were making apparent jabs with their forepaws but never, as far as I could see, connecting. Then I spotted, lower on the plough, another hare, complacently squatted, doubtless the female over whom the two bucks were battling.
"By the time the leverets are born the corn will be high enough for concealment and the temperature above the survival notch. How do the adult hares know that it will work out so neatly?"
How indeed? What is it that triggers animals to behave as they do? What makes the mating sap rise in foxes and frogs in January? How, Allsop wondered, do bluetits know that, by laying their eggs at precisely the right moment, their chicks will emerge at exactly the right time for the caterpillar season? Shifts in daylight hours, rising temperatures, increasing food supplies all are important, but neither alone nor in combination do they seem to hold the complete answer. "There must," he said, "be some stimuli too delicately subtle for our clumsy sensory outfits to detect."
Whatever it is that makes them do it, the hares are on their hind legs again right now. Their numbers have declined because of changes in agricultural practice and loss of habitat, but they still offer as good an excuse as any to get out into the countryside and see what's moving. A great deal already is.
There are some farewells to be said. It is in March that migrant geese, ducks and waders start to head home for Russia, Iceland, Greenland and Scandinavia. They will be glad enough to go. For much of January, many of the pink-footed (heading now for Iceland) and brent geese (Russia) in north Norfolk spent their days forlornly flying in circles, invisibly honking in the fog, unable to find their way either to roost or to feed. Whatever the instinct is that guides them, it is obviously not one that works with their eyes shut.
It is early still, but the traffic in March is not all one-way. Heading north from Africa come the first of the summer migrants sand martins, wheatears, sandwich terns, chiffchaffs. One or two butterflies, too, are already on the move. Brimstones frequently fly on warm winter days. March itself brings the small white, the small tortoisehell, the speckled wood and the green hairstreak. In terms of aerial movement, though, you ain't seen nothing yet...
APRIL
This is it. The Big One. A month of surging sap, buds and birds, in which nature stirs the pot like a demented cook. The first week is all tension and waiting, all eyes to the sky as if we still feared the drone of Messerschmitts.
It is on about the 10th of the month that the first one comes in all the way from southern Africa, the supreme aviator of the natural world and the true herald of spring: Hirundo rustica, the swallow. Even if we were miraculously given the power of unlimited flight, no human could do what a swallow does. Not only does it find its way unaided across the Sahara desert (some come from as far south as the Cape), but if it survives the journey it will often pinpoint the very same nesting site it used last year. That "if" however, is a big one; the chances of a mating pair both surviving the round-trip are no better than one in five, though individual birds have been known to live to the old age of 15 years.
Other species on their way north this month include one that will elude all but the luckiest of us (the osprey), another whose welcome will be in no way muted by its ubiquity (the house martin), and one whose cross-country route from Bordeaux requires it to run a gauntlet of trigger-happy Frenchmen with dinner on their minds (the turtledove). Smaller songbirds are not immune to the threat of buckshot, but the likes of blackcap, yellow wagtail, sedge and reed warblers are generally held to be too small to eat. All are due here in April and will add their might to the swelling chorus.
For all its musicality, however, nobody will write to The Times about the first sedge warbler. For sheer fruitcakery, there is little to beat our obsession with the cuckoo. It ought to be a symbol for all that is antisocial, dishonest and vile. Instead, we cup our ears with the expectancy of sailors' wives, refuse to leave our vests off until we've heard one, and imbue it with shamanistic powers over fortune and harvest. If summer pudding could fly, it would have the voice of a cuckoo.
According to the timetable of tradition, it is due in France about March 21, Sussex and Cheshire on April 15, Worcestershire on April 20 and Yorkshire on April 21, a whole week later than Norway.
Butterflies on the wing this month include the swallowtail, cabbage white, painted lady and grizzled skipper. Star of the floral firmament is the wild daffodil. Wordsworth may have had his most famous flirtation with them at Gowbarrow, on the shore of Ullswater in the Lake District, but any romantic poet these days would do better to direct his attention to the North York Moors. It is here, in Farndale, that the "lenten lilies", as they are known in Yorkshire, offer one of the grandest sights of spring. They grow for mile after mile along the loamy banks of the river Dove, making a sight that, if it doesn't tempt you to a sonnet, will at least cost you a roll or two of film.
FEBRUARY
Snowdrops: many of the parks and gardens of the National Trust contain snowdrops, and some offer seasonal guided walks. Properties with snowdrops include, in England: Dyrham Park, near Chippenham in Avon (01225-891364); Cliveden, at Taplow, near Maidenhead in Buckinghamshire (01628-605069); Anglesey Abbey, at Lode, Cambridgeshire (01223-811200); Killerton, at Broad Clyst, Devon (01392-881345); Kingston Lacy, at Wimborne Minster, Dorset (01202-883402); The Weir, at Swainshill, near Hereford (01684-850051); Dudmaston, at Quatt, near Bridgnorth (01746-780866); Dunster Castle, Dunster, near Minehead, Somerset (01643-821314); Polesden Lacey, near Dorking, Surrey (01372-458203/452048); Lacock Abbey, Lacock, near Chippenham, Wilts (01249-730227); Stourhead, Stourton, Warminster (01747-841152); Fountains Abbey/ Studley Royal, near Ripon (01765-609999). In Wales: Chirk Castle, at Chirk, Clwyd (01691-777701). In Northern Island: Castle Ward, at Strangford, Co Down (01396-881204); Mount Stewart, Greyabbey, Co Down (012477-88387/ 88487); and Rowallane Garden, Saintfield, Ballynahinch, Co Down (01238-510721).
Birds: prime sites for geese, duck and other waterfowl include, in England: Slapton Ley and Dawlish Warren in south Devon; Abbotsbury Swannery, Dorset; Chichester harbour and Selsey Bill in Sussex; Staines reservoir, Greater London; the Suffolk coast (Minsmere, Alde Estuary, Walberswick, Stour estuary); Wicken Fen, the Ouse Washes and Grafham Water in Cambridgeshire; the Norfolk Broads; the north Norfolk coast; Pensthorpe Waterfowl Park, near Fakenham, Norfolk; Rutland Water, near Oakham; the Wildfowl Trust at Slimbridge, Gloucestershire; Ellesmere, Shropshire; Blithfield reservoir, Staffordshire; Hornsea Mere and Spurn Head, Yorkshire; Morecambe Bay; Holy Island; Washington Waterfowl Park, Tyne & Wear.
In Wales: the Dovey estuary, Gwynedd. In Scotland: the Firth of Forth, Loch Leven, Loch of Strathbeg, Beauly Firth and Islay. And in Northern Ireland: Lough Neagh.
MARCH
Hares: since 1900, the number of hares in the British countryside has fallen by 80% from 4m to 5m down to little more than 800,000. The best places to see them now are on the arable fields of East Anglia, particularly in Norfolk.
Woodland wildlife: the Forestry Commission offers opportunities to see wildlife on estates, such as the vast Thetford Forest in Norfolk, that contain waymarked routes (with hides from which to watch the wildlife). Events this month include: on March 16, at Moors Valley Country Park, near Wareham in Dorset, "A Slow March in March" a guided walk around the refurbished Sika Trail; price £6.50, including pub lunch (01425-477880).
On March 24, at Bedgebury Pinetum, near Goudhurst in Kent, an afternoon guided walk looking for signs of spring; price £1.80 adults, £1 children (01580-211044). On March 31, at Dalby Forest, near Pickering in North York Moors, on "Rep Trek III" a ranger will point out wildlife habitats; price £2 adults, £1.50 children (01751-472771).
Lambs: at Kingston Lacy, near Wimborne in Dorset, on March 30 and 31, the National Trust offers a "Babes in the Park" day with trailer rides to see spring lambs and calves; price £1.50 adults, children 50p (01202 -882493).
APRIL
Migrating birds: you can see incoming migrations at many places along the south and east coasts. The best bets include Portland Bill, Chichester harbour, Dungeness, the Suffolk and north Norfolk coasts, Gibraltar Point in Lincolnshire, Spurn Head in Yorkshire and Loch Garten in Strathspey (for ospreys).
Dawn and evening choruses: many nature reserves and forestry es-
tates conduct guided dawn-chorus walks at this time of year. Look for details locally. Booking is essential. On April 28 at the Forestry Commission's Abbots Wood, near Polegate in East Sussex, there is a "Spring Songsters" evening chorus walk at 5pm; price £1.50 (01323-870911).
Spring flowers: on Sunday, April 21, the National Trust has a three-mile bluebell walk at the Vyne, Sherborne St John, Basingstoke. Starts 11am from the Vyne car park; donations welcome. On the same day there is a two-hour bluebell and daffodil walk at Hatchlands Park, East Clandon, Guildford. Starts 10am from the National Trust car park; price £1 adults, 50p children, members free.
Hollywood's "kilt" movies, such as Rob Roy and Braveheart, boosted visitor numbers to Scotland by 16% last year. The film Loch Ness, starring Ted Danson, which is on general release this week, is expected to have an even more significant impact especially if William Hill repeats its 1990 offer of a £250,000 reward to anyone who can provide conclusive evidence that the Loch Ness monster exists.
Safari Consultants (01787-228494) has just linked up with South Africa based Wilderness Wheels to launch safari trips that are suitable for wheelchair users. Camps and itineraries have been adapted to cater for people with physical disabilities, and the company uses four-wheel drive Landcruise vehicles fitted with hydraulic wheelchair lifts and large viewing windows. Prices on safari are from £120pp per day, excluding flights.
If you are near Lyon, consider a trip to Pierre Gagnaire's restaurant, 40 miles southwest of the city. Gagnaire is one of France's most respected chefs but his Michelin three-star restaurant faces bankruptcy.
Its future will be decided by the local commercial court, and it is likely to suggest that Gagnaire lower his prices the fixed-price dinner menu is from Fr650 (£87.25) to attract more custom.
Climbing Mount Everest has become easier on the bank balance, as Nepal has relaxed rules governing climbing permits. Three years ago the government raised permit fees to $50,000 (£33,780) and restricted groups to five people to limit the environmental impact. The policy was too successful only one New Zealand company continued to operate, charging $65,000pp.
Now groups of up to 10 are allowed. Himalayan Kingdoms (0117-9237163), which abandoned the Nepal approach in 1993, will offer it again from spring 1997 for $39,000. Starting from the Chinese side is cheaper ($23,000), but you are more likely to succeed from Nepal.
Lonely Planet claims it has been receiving more than 50 calls a day from parents worried about their children's travel plans following the death of British backpacker Jo Masheder. In response, it is sending callers a free copy of its World Trouble Spots (0181-742 3161), which is included in its regular newsletters, and offers updates on the most risky destinations worldwide.
The French may have called off nuclear testing in the South Pacific but the islanders there still have to deal with the fallout. They estimate that the experiments in Mururoa and Fangatau atolls in French Polynesia have already cost them more than $60m (£40.5m) in tourism revenue.
The local tourism council claims the testing has wrecked the region's image as a clean and safe holiday destination.
One effect of America's budgetary problems is that a 10% tax on domestic air travel has lapsed and Congress has, so far, not announced plans to re-impose it. Sadly, the tax does not apply to transatlantic airline tickets, but if you are planning to fly within the US, you might consider postponing purchase until you arrive in America and so benefit from the cheaper tickets.
CityZap (0800-968504) launches nonstop coach services linking London to Paris and Amsterdam on March 1. It promises the journey will take only seven hours, two hours faster than National Express, but its tickets cost £55, £11 more than its rival.
Destinations 96 (0171-373 3908) will be held at Olympia from February 15 to 18. Tickets cost £4 before February 12, £6 on the door.
Icelandair (0171-388 5599) is giving anyone who flies business class to the US before May 31 two free tickets to France, Belgium or Holland.
British tour operators are continuing programmes to Sri Lanka despite a devastating bomb in the capital, Colombo, last week that killed more than 80 people.
Cox & Kings took a group to the country yesterday, saying it believed the destination was still safe. Operators are not obliged to offer refunds to travellers wishing to cancel because the Foreign Office has not advised against travel. However, some companies have had to switch hotels because several, including the Hotel Ceylon Inter-Continental and the Galladari, were damaged in the explosion. For further information, contact the Foreign Office advice unit on 0171-270 4129.
FEW recreational holidays require the transporting of quite so much gear as skiing: there are the bulky clothes, the boots and, for intermediates and above, the skis and bindings. Given that a two-metre pair of skis with bindings, together with a pair of ski boots can weigh up to 15kg, it is surprising any skier travelling with equipment ever manages to have total baggage weighing less than the typical economy or charter flight limit of 20kg, but fortunately most check-in staff are benign.
Also the majority of tour operators now classify skis separately from luggage and charge about £12 to carry them on charter flights. Scheduled airlines vary in their attitude to skis. Swissair, for example, carries them free of charge with the baggage allowance, while Air UK charges extra for the carriage of skis.
When I first saw the lurid polyethylene KIS (keep-it-safe) Skitube (£49.95) a few years ago, I remember thinking it the ugliest piece of ski luggage I had seen. However, its design has become a little more sophisticated over the years, and a recent inspection of a pair of brand-new skis, wrecked while in transit to America in a conventional ski bag, has convinced me of its usefulness. Each tube contains just one pair of skis, which must be packed together carefully, binding facing binding, with the ski brakes deactivated by rubber bands.
It is crush-proof, lockable and waterproof and can even be padlocked onto the roof-bars of a car, thus serving as a makeshift roof-box.
Snow & Rock's double ski bag with wheels (£50) which, at a squeeze, will carry three pairs of skis, is a brilliant innovation, given the inevitable shortage of trolleys when charter flights arrive. This bag, which is well padded with foam and has three external compression straps to keep everything in place, simply trundles along behind you.
Finally, a simple single ski bag by Volkl costs £34.95. Most ski manufacturers make ski bags and there is not much difference in price or quality. The difference lies in colours, and it makes sense to buy the most unusually coloured bag you can find. This will make it easier to spot when it is wheeled into the baggage reclaim hall, stacked onto a trolley along with 50 other ski bags, 20 of which will typically be identical Salomon bags. If you do have a common variety of ski bag, make sure to identify it with a marker pen, with stickers, with ribbon indeed, with anything to make it distinctive.
In my experience, hard-shell luggage is not especially suitable for the skiing traveller. Soft luggage with separate packets and compartments is much more versatile and able to accommodate the many bits and pieces the skier requires. The Salomon Equipe Voyageur bag (£49.95) seems to me the ideal piece of ski luggage and there are many similar models by different manufacturers. It has a large central compartment for clothing and two other compartments at either end, each of which will take one ski boot, one apres-ski boot and various other miscellaneous items. Snow & Rock's Weekend bag (£49.95) misnamed since it will easily carry enough kit for a week or longer is of the same basic design, but is equipped with wheels.
I am not much of a believer in boot bags I find boots are much better consolidated into a single piece of luggage such as those above. Boot-shaped bags typically cost £20 to £25 and hold little more than the boots themselves. However, Snow & Rock's square-shaped Deluxe Boot Bag (£22.95) has more space and two side pockets, plus a sensible side-opening panel.
Backpacks are handy pieces of luggage in that they can be used not only for travelling, but also while skiing, especially off-piste when shovels, avalanche probes and other accessories need to be carried. The ultimate skiing backpacks are made by Ortovox, the avalanche transceiver manufacturer. The Stratus rucksack (£99.95) has a volume of 32 litres and has all the appropriate attachments for ski tourers, including ice-axe fixtures and straps for attaching the skis vertically on the sides while climbing on foot. It also has lots of clever little pockets, including two in the waistband. The Cumulus (£125 to order) is a similar model that incorporates clever zips, which unfasten and allow the pack's capacity of 40 litres to increase by 20%.
As a professional ski traveller, by far the best pieces of ski luggage I have come across have been made by Patagonia. They are astonishingly well made and experience has proven to me that it easily justifies its high prices. Alas it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain most items of Patagonia luggage in the UK, and I usually purchase it in the United States, where it is cheaper. However, it is also possible to order from either Patagonia Dublin (00 353-16719506), Patagonia Chamonix (00 33-50 55 93 01) or Ski 47, London (0171-731 5415). The items I especially recommend are all made in black 1,000-denier nylon ballistics cloth, with lockable zippers, and have a rubberised Tarmac fabric on the bottom, which means they can be put down in snow or slush without any problem. The medium and large bags are along the lines of the Salomon Equipe Voyageur bags, with boot pockets on either side, but are infinitely more robust. The double boot bag is a high-capacity bag with a compartment for ski and snow boots in the bottom. Another attraction is Patagonia's revolutionary "human curve" shoulder-strap, which actually clings to your shoulder, rather than sliding off it.
Snow & Rock items and all others shown can be obtained through its mail order service (01932-569569) or from branches.
All non-Snow & Rock items are also available from good ski shops
Package deals (back row, from left): Volkl single ski bag, £34.95; Snow & Rock double ski bag, without wheels, £39.95; KIS Skitube, £49.95.
Front row, from left: Snow & Rock boot bag, £22.95; Salomon Equipe Voyageur bag, £49.95; Ortovox Stratus rucksack, £99.95 Photograph by Graham Trott.
In the half-millennium since America discovered Columbus, the effects of the white man's coming, seeing and conquering have been astonishingly varied, if regularly lethal. The Puritans who landed on Plymouth Rock created a society that believed both in liberty, of a kind, and in a more or less English-speaking God.
They never intended to live in lordly idleness, still less to reproduce the system that had driven them into exile. Further south, however, the Spanish conquistadors could conceive of no higher ambition than to create a second Spain. They imposed upon middle and South America both the absolute monarchy that warranted their vanity and the Roman Catholicism that supplied a papal fiat to indoctrinate the naturales, or natives, and to destroy their gods, depopulate their cities and desecrate their temples. Good old civilisation, bad new world!
The Pilgrim Fathers encountered, and soon clashed with, the North American "Indians", but they happened on no culture of a complexity, or beauty, to compare with that upon which Hernan Cortes gazed with, as Keats put it, a wild surmise and also as Keats did not put it with uncontrolled greed. Mexico was to yield billions of pesos of silver and an immense quantity of gold, often exquisitely worked before it was melted down and shipped home. The wealth of the new world soon led to ruinous inflation in the old. As the price of bread doubled and redoubled, ordinary Spaniards starved while their overseas cousins grew fabulously rich: one Creole nouveau richissime was said to have ridden to his wedding along a road plated with silver.
No visit to Mexico can make much sense without some knowledge of the country's vanished and vandalised civilisations. Not that all Spanish intentions were ignoble: like the English, the French, the Dutch and the Portuguese, they were constantly on the prowl for treasure, but missionary purpose could be as sincere as it was ruthless. Fra Diego de Landa both recorded the misfortunes and celebrated the qualities of the Indians; he also presided over an infamous auto-da-fe, in 1562, when 5,000 "idols" and invaluable manuscripts were righteously burnt (nor did recidivist heretics escape the flames or the whipping post). If, as a result of the paucity of surviving examples, ancient Mayan script remains largely indecipherable, Mexican inventiveness, both in delicate clay and in monumental stone, shames Eurocentric complacency.
One of the first expeditions from Cuba, where the Spanish were established at the beginning of the 16th century, was led by Juan de Grijalva, the governor's nephew, who was publicly enjoined to "trade and leave in peace the people amongst whom he went". Since his destination was the "island" of Yucatan (it is, in fact, a peninsula), where some natives had obligingly promised there were gold mines (in fact there were not), it is improbable that Grijalva and his attendant hidalgos had any private intention to be more peaceful than would serve their pillaging purpose; they certainly took some artillery with them, and eventually used it, in "self-defence", when they found their bargain-hunting to be unwelcome.
On May 3, 1518, Grijalva's four ships reached Cozumel, an island 15 miles from the Yucatan
mainland. Since it was the feast day of Santa Cruz, Grijalva so christened the island, but the name has not stuck. The old Mayan name, Ah-Cuzamil-Peten (Swallow Island), has been slimmed but remains current. A great deal of swallowing still takes place in San Miguel's plethora of loud bars. In the past couple of decades, the island has become yet another Caribbean duty-free bazaar and package-toured centre. In the days of the Mayan supremacy it was sacred to the goddess Ix-Chel, mistress of the rainbow, the patroness of medicine (especially of childbirth) as well as a goddess of weaving and procreation. Women were ferried across from Tulum (whose ruins can more easily be reached from the upstart Florida-like mainland resort of Cancun), in order to seek favours from the goddess. Ix-Chel is said to have taken the form of a hollow idol of burnt clay from whom the priestess solicited oracular answers to pilgrims' questions. Today's island oracles give information only about scuba diving, jungle drives and off-shore trips laced with enough tequila to enable you to see through the bottom of the boat.
We air-taxied to Cozumel with frankly idle intentions; our energy was to be reserved for the mainland sites. The nicely secluded Inter-Continental Hotel had recently been battered by a severe hurricane, but the only evidence was the ruined tennis courts: since the surrounding netting had been ripped out by the storm, there was no chance of repairing one's forehand. For a fat week of buffet breakfasts (great, great waffles, I'm afraid), we slumped in the shade on exclusive white sand, which was probably imported, since my 1960s guidebook maintains that the island has no beaches, though plenty of rocks, fish, and booze. The slip-off-a-rock snorkelling required neither skill nor courage: the fish, of whatever designer stripe, were so amiable that they swam with you back to the shallows and would probably have stayed to tea.
I have a friend who promises that in 1950, when he visited Cozumel, he was known as "el turista"; 45 years later, the gringos are shipped in on huge multi-decked Love Boats, with such welcome-aboard names as Ecstasy and Tropical Romance (we didn't actually see Multiple Orgasm, but it is probably on the stocks). These outlandish floating hotels cruise down from Miami and their Middle-American passengers waddle ashore in XL exercise gear, avid for overpriced loot that Juan de Grijalva would not have touched with a Toledo-steel bargepole. Grijalva offered the natives Castilian shirts (and Estremaduran wine, which laid them on their backs) in return for gold; the modern Mayas many of them immigrants from the mainland peddle T-shirts by the 10% or 20% off stack in return for the white man and woman's treasure.
Today's Cozumel gently ("Take a look, amigo") endorses a long piratical history: one of its nicer restaurants is named after Harry Morgan who, like the hero of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, contrived an improbable transition from public enemy to knighted eminence as the governor of Jamaica. Taxis are the only underpriced and promptly available commodity, although there is nowhere much to go, except along jungle trails to remote beaches. The town of San Miguel is lively and charmless; it has its Hard Rock Cafe and an excellent Italian restaurant, Ronaldi's, which has a cool patio and reliable fish as well as good pizza. The most tasteful, decidedly uncheap souvenirs are at Los Cinco Soles; genuine cut-price clothing is better picked up at Cancun airport, if you touch down between flights.
We flew to Merida and then drove the 60 miles across the featureless, scrubby plateau to Chichen-Itza. Our driver took the new, fast and empty highway; locals prefer the old toll-free road that we drove in the pot-holed 1960s, in an asthmatic Chevrolet that lost its nerve at the slightest incline. The great Mayan site was remote and unfenced in those casual days; it has been much more thoroughly explored, and restored, since. We stayed for three nights at the once elegant, now overpopulated and overgrown Mayaland Hotel in order to visit and revisit the adjacent ruins. (If you go there, ask for one of the semidetached "villas" in the grounds, though since you must share a thatched roof you must hope for neighbours who don't watch cops and robbers television all night.)
Wise visitors get to the site as the gates open, at eight in the morning, especially in the summer, when the soon steep sun explains why the rain god Chac was central to local theology (by contrast, to the north, in Tabasco, which is swampy and often flooded, it was the sun god, Itzamna, who was solicited with sacrificial victims, along with Ah Puch, divinity of death, who always received prompt service). You walk to the ruins along an avenue of pines, reminiscent of Epidaurus in the Peloponnese, and emerge onto a huge, level grassy plaza. In the centre stands the so-called Castillo, a pyramid 100ft high, with four flights of precipitous stone steps leading to the temple at the top, which conceals the snarling throne of the Red Jaguar. The way up the long stairway is a lot less alarming than the plunge down. Intrepid locals descend at a showy run, their centres of gravity held well to the rear, like deep-powder skiers; trepid gringos bend double to avail themselves of the 30-metre chain that provides the only handhold.
The Castillo's combination of the serene and the intimidating is typically Toltec-Mayan (the blood-thirsty Toltecs supplanted the Mayan lords and their civilisations coalesced). It was built in the 11th century AD and sports two gigantic plumed serpent heads at the bottom of the north stairway. If you squat down and squint up towards the temple, the building itself acquires a serpentine menace, with hooded eyes and a dark mouth.
DHLawrence's The Plumed Serpent seems a lot less loopy when read on the spot than it did in the temperate Cambridge of Dr Leavis (to whom it was something of an alien embarrassment), but I doubt whether Lorenzo's proposed revival of Quetzalcoatl would give the Mexicans a worthier god to venerate or a higher purpose to live by, even though the Christian God has had an uneven welcome and does not entirely chime with the Mexican style. Jesus, Mary and the Holy Spirit have taken root more firmly than God the Father, to Whom perfunctory veneration is paid.
Whatever the murderous or cruel habits of the Inquisition, which was soon imported into new Spain, the local pantheon was as bloodthirsty as it was indigenous: at the wet, red altars of Tenochtitlan, the priests' obsidian knives were known to rip out the hearts of 20,000 prisoners of war at a time in order to satisfy their guzzling gods. The limestone crust of Yucatan is pierced with many deep natural cisterns, known as cenotes, into which to the convenient edification of modern archeologists the locals pitched all kinds of offerings, including live human sacrifices. The mysterious grandeur of their buildings and sculpture may incline us to excuse the Mayans' pitiless religion, but the former was almost certainly a function of the latter.
The Mayan sense of order sponsored and was based on an extraordinary capacity for sustained astronomic calculation. The bun-shaped Chichen-Itza observatory, which the Spanish called the caracol, or snail, on account of the spiral staircase in its dark centre, helped them to accumulate statistical data about the planet Venus over a period of almost four centuries. Despite a lack of telescopes, they then calculated the Venus year with astonishing accuracy. As for the solar year, they were accurate in its timing to within two ten-thousandths of a day, or 17.28 seconds in a year.
They employed the zero in their mathematics from a very early date and, thanks to the vigesimal numerical system (it did not go into double digits until it reached twice 10), they could handle cumbrous sums and calculate large spans of time. However, their intellectual development was jaggedly limited: they thought the earth was flat (and square) and, while employing the wheel in astronomy, they never used it for transport, despite building magnificent, straight, paved roads. They had no horses and cut both wood and stone without the aid of iron axes or saws. Gold and silver were the only metals they worked. Devotion to their gods led them to build huge platforms of earth (one of them 1m cubic metres) on which to site their innumerable pyramidical temples, but it also limited their time for breaking new ground.
Even the famous ball-court of Chichen-Itza doubled as a stadium and as a place of sacrifice. If one team could impel the heavy rubber ball by blows from the forearm, the knees and, above all, the hips (but never the feet) up and through one of the two stone hoops set high on the walls, at the half-way line, then the captain of the losing team of seven players was decapitated. The frequency of this ritual relegation can be judged from the Tzompanetli, or skull-rack, with its four-deep frieze of severed heads. The Mexican ball-game did not, we are assured, always have a bloody ending, but an air of menace still spices the grandiose serenity of the stadium (the courts at other sites Uxmal, for instance, and Monte Alban, in the state of Oaxaca have more modest dimensions and more sporting ambience).
Apart from bargaining with the many vendors of neat replicas of Mayan deities, there is nothing to do at Chichen-Itza but wander, in baffled amazement, from the Temple of the Warriors, with its attendant regiments of pillars, to the "forum" and then to the Temazcalli, or steam bath, and to explore the ever expanding surroundings of a city that once housed 30,000 people. The similarity to a sort of Egyptianised Pompeii provokes speculation about the cruel congruity of human ambitions and designs. As with ancient Greece, we relish the beauty and are spared the blood. In Mexico, too, we walk among the blanched and weathered ghosts of what was once brilliantly colourful: each point of the compass held its characteristic colour white (N), yellow (S), black (W) and red (E) with which to badge the images of the long-nosed god and his associates with polychrome significance.
Sadly, owing to the aggressive piety of Fra Diego, only a few cryptic "codices" which might enable us to understand their literature survive in distant museums, where they await decoding by some new Michael Ventris (the inspired "amateur" who deciphered the Minoan Greeks' Linear-B script). Meanwhile, the "Indians" tantalise us with their adjacent remoteness: their genius can be seen; their voices cannot be heard.
TRAVEL BRIEF
Getting there: British Airways (0345-222111) flies direct to Mexico City and then on to Cozumel with Mexicana (0171-284 2550), prices from £631 including taxes until April 6. BA's best routing to Cancun would be via Miami. Mexicana flies to Mexico only from the United States. Other airlines flying to Cozumel from London include American (0345-789789) via Miami and Cancun; Continental (01293-776464) via Houston; and Delta (0800-414767) via Atlanta. Or you can go with Iberia (0171-830 0011) via Madrid; Air France (0181-742 6600) via Paris; or KLM (0181-750 9000) via Amsterdam. There are also several charter services that fly to Cancun, ask your travel agent for details.
Tour operators: (to the Yucatan peninsula) Bales Tours (01306-885991), Explore Worldwide (01252-319448), Journey Latin America (0181-747 8315), Kuoni Travel (01306-742222), Mexican Tours (Cathy Matos; 0181-440 7830), Steamond Latin American Travel (0171-286 4449), Sunset Travel (0171-498 9922) and Trips Worldwide (01179-872626).
Recommended vaccinations: yellow fever, hepatitis A, typhoid, tetanus and polio. If you are only visiting the main coastal resorts, there is no need for malaria prophylaxis; you should consider malaria pills if you are going to rural areas. Mexico City has some of the world's worst pollution, which can upset asthma sufferers.
Further information: Mexican government tourist office on 0171-734 1058.
Leaseholders are being deterred from buying the freehold on their property by the complex legislation.
THE Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 extended the number of houses which can be enfranchised (the freehold purchased by individual leaseholders) and opened the way for flat owners to do the same thing.
However, the act is perceived to be so complicated, especially with regard to the qualification rules for flat owners, that the floodgates which many landlords feared would open never did. Instead, only a trickle of applications to obtain freeholds has been evident.
The value of short leases which could be enfranchised was also expected to rise, which they did for a while, but this has now tailed off. Properties where the freeholder will only sell to a company in order to prevent it being enfranchised are also suffering. Anthony Lassman, of Lassmans (0171-499 3434), said: "This sort of property is not keeping pace with London house inflation and is proving very difficult to sell."
It is also expensive to fight the big landlords. Under the act, those seeking to buy the freehold must pay a minimum of 50% of the difference between the leasehold and freehold values the so-called marriage value. However, some large landlords are fighting for a bigger percentage and one case currently with the Valuation Tribunal is holding up all the other applications. "This test case against a big London estate, for the freehold of a property in Eaton Mews South, will set the precedent," said Kevin Ryan, of the Egerton agency.
"Grosvenor Estates have signalled that if it does not go their way they will appeal to the Lands Tribunal, which will take another year. Everyone is waiting to see what will happen and we are in a state of abeyance. If a 50/50 marriage value is eventually agreed, then the floodgates will be opened because leaseholders will be able to buy a property for half what it is worth."
Egerton (0171-493 0676) is selling two properties which could be enfranchised if the purchaser fulfils the necesssary criteria under the act. A four-bedroom house in Charles Street, W1, is on the market for £825,000 and a six-bedroom house with self-contained flat in Chester Square, SW1, is on the market for £4.5m. The price also includes a three-bedroom mews house.
"For leaseholders in blocks of flats, the logistical nightmare of getting all the other tenants together to agree on a way forward, coupled with the reality of running the building themselves, has proven sufficient deterrent as well," said Nicholas Pearce, of Beaney Pearce.
Some landlords are encouraging individual tenants to extend their leases rather than to try to enfranchise en bloc. "By giving tenants the right to extend their leases by 90 years, the act is extending leasehold ownership rather than ending it, because to buy the freehold collectively is so difficult," said Brian D'Arcy Clark, of Chesterfield.
Leaseholders of enfranchiseable houses are finding it easier to sell if they first serve notice to buy on the freeholder and have it accepted. Lassmans recently sold a house in Chesterfield Hill, W1, where contracts specified that the existing leaseholder served notice for the freehold and transferred it to the new buyer. Lassmans also has a four-bedroom house with a 92-year lease in Farm Street, W1, on the market for £1.95m where a notice to enfranchise has been accepted. "Given the long lease, the freehold will be relatively inexpensive to acquire," said Lassman.
It seems inevitable that eventually the right to enfranchise will be simplified and to this end the Labour party has put forward proposals on leasehold reform. It would like to see commonhold ownership gradually replace the leasehold system; to remove or simplify the eligibility rules for the right to enfranchise; and to abolish marriage value for valuations purposes, although it is asking for feedback on this.
"It has stolen the government's clothes," said James Wilson, of Property Vision. "It has put forward proposals which most people think are sensible. It is also looking at making it easier for leaseholders to take over management of a badly run building. This will galvanise the government in a big way."
Hamptons has recently been advising the owners on buying the freehold of 30 flats in a block which it managed in Wimbledon. The original landlord wanted to sell and offered it to the residents, who declined to take over. Last summer he sold the block to another company.
"We did know about this," said Margaret Dickson, who is the manager of Hamptons block management (0171-493 8222). "But then this company immediately sold it on to a speculative freeholder, which we knew nothing at all about, who proposed to manage the apartments by remote control from the south coast.
"We advised the residents' association to take advice from solicitors and they have served notice to purchase the freehold at the same price as the freeholder bought it. It's going through at the moment and they are quite hopeful."
PROPERTIES along the beautiful River Beaulieu in Hampshire can command up to a 50% premium. Although the river dries out at low tide upstream, most of the 20 houses along its banks have private jetties.
Only two or three come up for sale every year and one which has just gone on the market has everything going for it, including far-reaching views across the Solent to the Isle of Wight, and its own slipway and jetty, where you need permission to moor a boat from the Exbury estate.
The house, which has been considerably modernised and extended during the past 10 years, has six bedrooms and a conservatory. There are also 17 acres of gardens and woodland. The price is £850,000 through Paul Jackson (01590-674 411).
The same agency is selling Curtle Mead, a large country house on the other side of the river with a private jetty and within walking distance of the village of Beaulieu. The seven-bedroom house, with separate staff cottage, is on the market for £1.5m.
Jackson also has two cheaper properties: a four-bedroom house in the New Forest, near Beaulieu, with floodlit gardens for £325,000; and a Grade II listed four-bedroom house just off the village high street for £275,000.
Today: Lord Shawcross QC, 94; Most Rev Derek Worlock, 76; Norman Wisdom, 81; Russell Hoban, 71; Steve Knight, 41; Dan Quayle, 49.
MANDY FRANCIS'S piece on chess raises some interesting points (Style, last week). As the wife of the grandmaster, James Plaskett, I have certainly witnessed the extreme tiredness brought on by hours at the board. However, this is no proof that chess is a sport. I experience something remarkably similar after finishing a difficult poem or writing several thousand words of prose. Neither is a grandmaster's need for exercise proof, either. Many writers also find that their minds are sharpened by it.
However, I do see a need to define chess in order to attract sponsorship or lottery money. Why not call it Art? After four years at a top art school arguing the old chestnut "What is art?" I concluded that almost any object or performance could meet the modern qualifications. If a cow in formaldehyde is art then why not chess? Alternatively, a new category of mental sports should be invented with its own Olympics. My husband could be on the chess team while I represent Britain at sonnet or limerick writing.
Fiona Pitt-Kethley
Hastings, East Sussex
VEIL LIFTED: Your news has intrigued and fascinated local archeologists and historians alike in this part of Co Dublin. The amount of secrecy regarding the nature of the Drumanagh site over the last three decades has been remarkable and we were delighted to see some definite information released regarding the antiquity of this area.
The details of field surveys on Drumanagh (during the early 1960s and some later ones) have never been published. There seems to be substantial evidence regarding the origins of this enigmatic fort. Perhaps the findings should be made available now that the veil of mystery has been lifted.
Eugene Coyle
Skerries, Co Dublin
YOUR REPORT on the discovery of a Roman fort in Ireland is certainly important news and so is the fact that this has been kept secret for more than a decade (News, January 21). For more than 30 years I have studied the early history of Ireland and it cannot be explained without reference to the Romans.
My book on the subject is almost ready for publication. Nobody was really interested in this fascinating story until you let the cat out of the bag.
James Glendinning
Kelso, Roxburghshire
The Serbs' barbaric treatment of the Bosnian Muslims has slashed a vicious gash through Western civilisation's late 20th century (News Review, last week). We were participants in this by our virtual disarming of the Muslims and by the illusory creation of so-called safe havens, such as Srebrenica, which turned out to be death-traps.
Although Nato has other immediate priorities, the main perpetrators of genocide and other war crimes will have to be eventually brought to trial. Without such justice, there will be no forgiveness of the Serbs as there eventually was for the Germans.
Peter Teisen, Redditch, Worcestershire.
Your article on Servasure Systems Limited reported (wrongly) that the company was in receivership (News, last week). In fact the company is in administration and continues to trade, while it restructures its finances. With the support of its staff and its existing users, the future outlook is good.
M Halley, Joint Administrator, Servasure Systems Limited, Leicester.
Dare my wife and I hope for Lloyd Webber instead of A A Gill in Style? Could A A G be promoted to another section?
E Castleton, Witney, Oxfordshire.
The hypocrisy in the Sarah Cook case has been staggering (News Review, last week). This is a country where abortions on 11-year-olds are not unknown, where some in their early teenage years are sexually promiscuous and take drugs and where the old are at best marginalised and at worst subjected to dreadful physical violence. Should Sarah have the good fortune to stay in Turkey, far from being the drudge of Lesley White's conditioned imagination, she will be happy and secure in an extended family. Dr Michael Kramer-Mannion, Stockport, Cheshire.
THEODORE DALRYMPLE, whose column is always a joy, bemoans the aversion to education in this country (News Review, last week). He is right. I recently talked on the subject of euthanasia to a GCSE group at a local school. The words holocaust, death camps and final solution were met with blank stares (and this in the wake of marking VE and VJ Day).
Imagine my heavy heart when subsequently talking to a group of new student nurses and asking the question "Who was the architect of the NHS?". Deafening silence, then two names were whispered Neil Kinnock and Ted Heath.
The Reverend Edward Lewis
Manor Hospital, Walsall
AS A parent of several children who went to grammar schools, I read your front page article revealing that Labour will not scrap grammars with great interest. As an organisation, we are glad that Tony Blair recognises the advantages of retaining 161 grammar schools with their proven excellence of achievement. Indeed, since he is for accelerated learning, I hope he would consider, where parental pressure dictates, opening more such schools. Parents (including shadow cabinet members) should continue to exercise their right for their children to sit exams into a selective system.
As a country, we need highly-developed skills to take us into the next century. Children have a thirst for learning and need goals. Let us encourage them. I support those who have said in the past few weeks "let's raise standards".
Of course, all schools need more funding, particularly primary schools. Politicians, whichever party they belong to have to remember that the needs of all children, from the least able to the most gifted, must be met.
Margaret Dewar
Chairman, National Grammar Schools' Association
Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire
YOUR REPORT on "quickie degrees" (News, January 21) raises many important issues. A move away from the conventional, three-year degree is to be welcomed.
Whatever traditionalists may argue, the old system is time wasting and inefficient. This consideration was uppermost in the minds of the founders of the University of Buckingham, which has successfully operated a two-year degree in every way comparable to the normal three-year programme for the past 20 years. Long vacations of three months or more only made sense before improvements in public health removed the threat of epidemics in the hot summer months.
It is another question whether the period of study can or should be reduced by a further 11 months. Those who consider the introduction of such a system might do well to take note of our experience. In particular, they should be aware that the essential prerequisite of success is more individual attention and a more generous staff-student ratio. Accelerated degrees may be a good idea but it is naive to think that they can work on the cheap.
Dr John Clarke
Dean of Humanities
University of Buckingham
KENNETH BRANAGH has learnt to shrug off the endless and undeserved media attacks on him but your report (Tarantino joins wacky world of Will, News, last week) is more than usually inaccurate.
Branagh has not been criticised for the erotic scenes in Othello because he did not direct the film, but was directed in it by the hugely talented Oliver Parker. He plays Iago, who can be blamed for the tragedy in the tale but hardly for its sexual content.
Nor can you accuse him of writing pseudo-Shakespearean dialogue for Yorick in his new film of Hamlet. He is filming the full Shakespearean text with not a word added or deleted. The world's most famous skull remains resolutely mute although we will see Ken Dodd as Yorick in a very brief visual flashback.
Finally, Frankenstein was not a flop, having turned a healthy profit for its financiers. In Britain alone, a mere 4% of the world market, the film's revenue was £6m, putting it in the top 20 box office successes for 1994.
David Barron
Producer, Othello & Hamlet
Fishmonger Films Ltd
Shepperton, Middlesex
EMU: Andrew Neil attacks tight monetary policies of European countries and the bloated welfare states they can no longer afford (News Review, last week). But in Italy and France the monetary discipline of EMU is invoked to attack the bloated welfare state. Such an attempt to come to grips with economic reality should be encouraged. It can only benefit us in the medium-term if our trading partners have soundly-based economies.
Peter Larkin
Haslemere, Surrey
MARKETS: An enterprise economy is synonymous with job insecurity and thus the feel-bad factor. It is impossible to have a competitive economy led by market forces and provide job security for all throughout their working lives.
In an enterprise society there will always be only a small percentage of secure jobs (feel-good) and a large percentage of insecure jobs (feel-bad).
Elizabeth Banner
Harrogate, North Yorkshire
DAVID SMITH (News Review, January 21) defined housing, tax and job insecurity a the three great feel-bad factors for the Tories. I would single out job insecurity as the prime factor which exemplifies Britain's economic malaise.
As long as unemployed British building workers seek and find work in Germany's troubled economy, Britain can hardly boast to be the enterprise centre of Europe. It will be different once British building workers return in droves to well-paid jobs and German workers queue to come here to find prosperous jobs.
Gerd Junginger
Havant, Hampshire
US LINKUP: I am writing on behalf of the Royal British Legion, Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen's Families Association, the Ex-Service Mental Welfare Society and the Army Benevolent Fund to congratulate you on your articles highlighting the plight of Gulf war veterans and their families. We are sure this has assisted our campaign to encourage the MoD to react positively to the defence select committee's recommendation that it investigate in depth the plight of these families.
Although, like the MoD, the ex-Service charities remain open-minded as to whether there is an underlying "syndrome", the approximately 700 personnel who are unwell certainly believe that, although their complaints are varied, there is an underlying cause resulting from something done to them, or for them, either before or while they were serving in the Gulf.
The MoD's undertaking to invest in deeper research in the areas of toxicology, immunology, tropical diseases and birth defects is to be welcomed, but in the field of epidemiology, because our numbers are so small and because of the length of time such studies take, we consider the veterans will be better served by the MoD combining with the US in their major study now underway. That having been said, we are pleased with the impetus that the defence select committee's report has given to this issue. and the MoD's reaction.
It is vital that those who served the Crown but who are now unwell be assured that the state will look after their health needs and those of their families. Servicemen and women who are deployed in future conflicts, where the use of chemical and biological weapons is a real threat, must have the confidence that precautions taken on their behalf are safe and have been fully tested.
Colonel Terry English Welfare Controller The Royal British Legion.
AS a captain in the King's Own Scottish Borderers deployed during the ground war in Iraq and Kuwait, and then as a stay-behind group in Saudi Arabia assisting with the withdrawal of the British Division, I welcome a full scientific inquiry into the effects of the war on children born to veterans.
I returned from the war in June 1991 to find my wife, Camilla, had, happily, conceived during a flying visit. But seven months after the birth of our daughter, Sophie, we were told our child had severe brain abnormality. The worst day of our lives. We were advised that the best cure was to try and have another child. Six months into the pregnancy, in January 1994, Camilla visited her gynaecologist and was told the baby had horrific brain abnormality. The scenes that followed were beyond description as our baby died.
Sophie is now four years old, staggeringly beautiful, speaking a little and pointing, yet she does not walk, cannot sit properly and requires constant care and attention. Her hips are now not in their sockets and she will have to go in for painful surgery to correct them.
What happened to Sophie? We still do not know. Scientists have said we should not have taken the nerve agent tablets for so long and that the biological vaccinations should not have been given all at once and so quickly between boosters.
I do not worry for myself as we are financially secure and we have access to the best health care in the world. Camilla is a nurse able to demand the best for Sophie. My father is a top orthopaedic surgeon. I worry for those not as fortunate as ourselves who have to fight for every bit of treatment. Among the worst-off are disabled army children who find themselves, due to regular postings within the UK or outside, at the back of the queues with local health authorities as they arrive to a new posting. For this reason I formed a charity (The Sophie Aichroth Charitable Trust) to help the children in my old regiment although I have retired from the army.
Charity work has helped me to deal with the sadness of Sophie's condition.
Mark Aichroth
Geneva, Switzerland
FRESH from another successful round in Westminster's fisticuffs, John Major may allow himself a little satisfaction this weekend by reviewing the problems faced by his fellow heads of government across the Channel. In France, Jacques Chirac contends with the greatest collapse of popularity in the history of the Fifth Republic. In Germany, Helmut Kohl's ambitions of constructing a federal Europe have never looked dimmer.
In Italy, the political mess recalls old times as the country heads towards its 55th government since the war locating a prime minister designate, 71 year-old Antonio Maccanico, to host the forthcoming Turin European Community summit can be counted an achievement. Spain's Felipe Gonzalez also struggles to survive. Truly, these are dog days for those entrusted with power in Europe.
The electoral outlook is not that bright for Mr Major either, his critics will say, and they are right. Yet he has two towering advantages denied his continental colleagues. First, Britain's key economic indicators point, if modestly, in the right direction. Second, Britain has no obligation to join France and Germany in taking an irreversible step towards a single currency, the unimaginatively named euro, under the control of a European central bank in 1999. Unlike Italy and Spain, engaged in a futile scramble to be among the first rank of countries qualifying for European monetary union (Emu), Britain is in the unusual position of being able to relax. Mr Major's hands are free. If Britain's slowly reviving economy saves his electoral bacon, his own skill at avoiding binding Emu commitments will have paved the way to victory.
His foresight is regarded elsewhere with new respect. Wilhelm Hankel, a former head of the State Bank of Hesse, wrote recently in the German press that countries which remain outside the monetary union "will congratulate themselves" on retaining their own monetary, interest-rate and exchange-rate policies while those inside are yoked to what he calls "European currency fantasy". For fantasy it surely is.
When the Maastricht conditions for monetary union were agreed in 1991 as a kind of economic fitness check for participants, the understanding was that the "core" economies of Germany, France and the Benelux countries would have no difficulty in passing muster. Newer, less reliable members such as Spain, Portugal and Greece would probably miss the first cut, but no matter if they could join some time later.
When it comes to meeting the conditions, however, even Europe's core is rotten. France has a budget deficit of more than 5% of gross domestic product (GDP) and, with the economy skirting close to recession, the modest surgery of Alain Juppe, its prime minister, on his country's overblown welfare state will not be enough to bring it within the Maastricht limit of 3% next year. Even Germany, with a deficit of 3.5% of GDP this year, will struggle to qualify, as will Belgium. Britain, by comparison, has trodden a virtuous as well as a more politically astute path by pursuing policies aimed at achieving lower levels of public debt, smaller budget deficits and reduced inflation the conditions for Emu entry without knocking at Emu's door. The time-honoured European solution to the core's difficulties, suggested by Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president, is that if the conditions do not fit, fudge them. But this route is unpassable; it has been closed off by Germany.
Last year, before the extent of Germany's budgetary problems became known, Theo Waigel, the finance minister, called for a toughening of the budgetary conditions for Emu participation. His proposal was not adopted but a Giscard-type fudge would meet the strongest opposition in Germany. On Friday Hans Tietmeyer, president of the Bundesbank and the nation's guardian of sound money, insisted that any country wishing to sign up to the euro will have to meet all the conditions as specified strictly applied.
At long last, Britain's Foreign Office is starting to talk sense on Europe. Malcolm Rifkind, the foreign secretary, says Emu faces "a growing credibility problem". Even Douglas Hurd, his predecessor, voices the alarm of Euro-enthusiasts by urging a postponement of the scheduled starting date for the euro. "Someone has to face reality," he says. He suggests the Germans take the initiative in proposing postponement because they are best placed to do so without being humiliated. Thus we come full circle.
It was French fear of a rebirth of German nationalism that spurred Francois Mitterrand, the late president, to make the single currency deal with Chancellor Kohl in 1989. Now, German fear of being saddled with an unloved and unnecessary single currency should guide wise heads. The price of Emu failure for Mr Kohl would be severe. At 65, he is in a hurry. He wants to be remembered for more than Germany's reunification. Fearful of Germany exerting overweening power in Europe when he goes, he is intent on making his country the cornerstone of a federal union.
Mr Kohl should recognise that little will be achieved in shaping an acceptable Europe until the Emu door is finally closed. That requires a new act of faith, almost as great as that which inspired the EC's founders when they formed the original Common Market 40 years ago. The fears shared by Mr Mitterrand and Mr Kohl need to be set at rest. Germany must be accepted for what it has become: a democratic, peaceful, prosperous, law-abiding state willing to accept its European responsibilities, ever mindful of the time when it did not. If Germany cannot be relied upon to act responsibly in the Europe of nation-states, its good behaviour will hardly be guaranteed by camouflaging its power in a renamed D-mark zone called Emu.
Europe's leaders have a heaven-sent opportunity to shape a new destiny for this strife-riven continent based on co-operation and partnership in a true community of nations. More than ever, it is clear that moving towards a European superstate via a single currency would kill that dream stone dead. The challenge now is how to fashion an enlarged Europe in which national interests are not stifled by an economic straitjacket that cannot be loosened without catastrophe.
The writing is on the wall for Emu. Jacques Santer, president of the European commission, warned last week that rising unemployment "is shaking the foundations" of European society. Placing further strain on them is surely monumental nonsense. Slowly, the truth of that is dawning, even among the Euro-enthusiasts.
A shy, bespectacled, slightly crumpled figure with a dull demeanour and a preppy grin has become the frontrunner in the latest opinion poll in the New Hampshire primary election for the Republican presidential nomination. Steve Forbes has gone from no-hoper to serious contender entirely on the strength of a single idea: his plan for a flat-rate income tax.
Mr Forbes is still a long shot to be his party's candidate but his flat-rate tax has dominated debate in the Republican race, forcing his rivals to cook up flat-rate schemes of their own. It is a sign of the intellectual rigor mortis afflicting Britain's governing party that no similar ferment about tax or anything else is currently gripping the Tories. New ideas that might make a radical agenda are ignored in favour of bluster and froth to save skins.
The Tories are in no mood for ideas. They prefer to hope that the saga of Harriet the Hypocrite was the long-awaited turning point in their fortunes (though there was precious little sign of it in Thursday's Hemsworth by-election with the Tory candidate unable to muster even 10% of the vote). Buoyed up by the delicious sight of Ms Harman sending her son to precisely the sort of selective school Labour has spent the past three decades trying to destroy, the Tories suddenly discovered hypocrisy to be the hallmark of all Labour policies.
The dogs of war were unleashed to expose the gap between what new Labour proclaims and what old Labour does in local authorities it controls up and down the land. These are rich seams for the Tories to mine, though Michael Heseltine almost buried the whole strategy by yapping nonsensically about Labour being the "villain's friend".
There is a new spring in the Tory step the party's grandees have even ruled out another leadership challenge this side of the general election, despite supposed subversive murmurings in high places only two weeks ago and Tory strategists eagerly await their party's poll ratings at last to climb back over 30%, which would mean its re-election was not entirely a lost cause.
A Tory revival of sorts could well be on the cards, especially if new life can be breathed into a flagging economic recovery. As the rest of Europe crucifies itself on the cross of monetary union and a single currency, Britain's prospects look better in comparison with the other main European economies for the first time since the early 1950s.
Unemployment has climbed over 3m in France and over 4m in Germany, while in Britain it is sliding down to 2m, which should help the British to feel better about themselves if the Tories can get the message and its implications across.
The bitter, febrile electioneering which has suddenly erupted at Westminster, however, obscures the fact that on the issues which should matter most at the next election and which will determine our chances of survival and success in the Pacific Century that beckons tax, education and welfare it would be hard to slip a playing card between the two front benches. The hostilities point up the differences but on the essentials John Major's post-Thatcher Tories and Tony Blair's Labour Lite are singing from the same songsheet.
Take tax. The Tories' claim to be tax-cutters is a sham. All that 17 years of right-of-centre rule have achieved is an end to the absurdly high marginal rates that penalised enterprise and made us a nation of tax dodgers. Poor people still pay far too much tax on their meagre incomes and the 40% top rate, which should be confined to very high earners, bites far too deeply into the incomes of middle Britain.
The Tories have no plans to do anything about this, only to shave another penny or so off the standard rate, and Labour is bereft of ideas, too. Gordon Brown has talked vaguely about a new starting income-tax rate of 10% but there are no concrete proposals to do so. The more likely prospect under Labour is a higher rate for even those who are only moderately affluent. Sensible radicals in both parties should be looking across the Atlantic.
Mr Forbes is winning votes by promising to scrap America's 7m-word tax code, including all the loopholes and exemptions so beloved by homeowners, corporations and other special interests. He proposes to replace it with a system so simple that tax returns could be made on a postcard. A typical family of four would pay no tax at all on annual incomes below $36,000 (£24,000); thereafter each extra dollar would be taxed at a flat rate of 17%, no matter how much you earned. But there would be no deductions of any kind.
It is precisely the sort of radical tax reform western economies must embrace if they are to compete with Asia's emerging tigers. Mr Forbes also proposes to abolish tax on interest, dividends and capital gains to encourage the boom in savings needed to finance a massive investment to equip America for the new century. Yes, the rich would pay less tax as a result. But why should the poor care when they will be paying no income tax at all and the explosion of enterprise and investment creates faster growth and millions of new jobs?
Any tax reform which abolishes the poverty trap for the poor and creates new incentives for the enterprising deserves serious consideration on both sides of the Atlantic. But not a dicky bird on the matter has come from either Labour or the Tories, despite their new interest in the challenge from the Pacific rim. There is the same depressing silence from them when it comes to education.
Labour is stuck in the Dark Ages, determined to snuff out what selectivity remains in the state school system. The Tories are content to defend the rights of the remaining 160-odd grammar schools, condemning the vast majority of children to a failed comprehensive experiment. Sensible folk will wonder why, after almost two decades of Tory rule, excellence in the state sector is still available to only a small minority (which includes Labour frontbenchers).
There is nothing wrong with selection provided it is on a meritocratic basis and there is a wide variety of schools to choose from. That choice was not nearly wide enough in the days of the 11-plus, but even that restrictive system sent more working-class students to British universities than any other country in the world.
The challenge now is to devise a whole range of first-class, selective schools, including a new breed of top-flight technical schools for the non-academic.
The coming election should be about the best policies to equip Britain to prosper in the information society which will come of age early in the new century. Our political parties seem determined to fight it on the policies of the past.
Book publishers are threatening to boycott this year's Booker Prize. They are peeved that the number of titles they can enter has been cut, which means they will have to be more selective about entries. The rules were changed after past judges complained they had too much to read.
Kate Kellaway, the Observer critic, and Peter Kemp, the Sunday Times fiction editor, were among the judges. They each ploughed through 141 entries some of so-so quality for which they received a paltry £3,000. Sounds like a running row for the Garrick.
Does 2+2=5 at the Home Office? Last week, Doris Karloff, aka Ann Widdicombe, the Home Office minister, told the Commons: "No asylum application has been refused and no grant of refugee status has been revoked on foreign relations or economic grounds." Yet her boss, Michael Howard, says British jobs come before the rights of political refugees.
"We are perfectly entitled to choose the way which doesn't damage our interests," he states. Perhaps the Home Office uses chaos theory mathematics rather than simple addition.
Let nobody say Hugh Dykes lacks patriotism. The left-wing Tory MP, who is one of the most prominent pro-Europeans in his party, displayed a blatant streak of nationalism, if not xenophobia, during a debate last Friday at a college in his Harrow East constituency.
Pitted against John Wilkinson, the Eurosceptic Conservative MP, Dykes commended his opponent for his civilised and restrained opposition to Brussels. "Unlike some of my other Eurosceptic colleagues," said Dykes, "he is not supported by dubious foreigners."
The arch-federalist then welcomed a referendum on Europe a demand of sceptics before stating: "The Union Jack in my office is bigger than my European flag."
Wilkinson, however, passed over the chance to compare sizes with Dykes, remaining silent on the proportions of his Union Jack.
The infamous fact-checkers at the New Yorker magazine must have been asleep when they read the many thousands of words in Sidney Blumenthal's article on Tony Blair in this week's edition of Tina Brown's cerebral magazine.
First, John Prescott is called a Scotsman, which no doubt the Yorkshireman would find most offensive. Worse still, Blumenthal claims: "Only three prime ministers in this century have served longer than John Major: HH Asquith, Harold Macmillan and Margaret Thatcher." Oh really? What about Winston Churchill, Harold Wilson, Stanley Baldwin, Ramsay MacDonald, Clement Attlee and David Lloyd George?
Controversy continues about the dash to an important Commons vote by Michael Colvin, the senior Tory MP, in an ambulance that apparently broke traffic regulations. The Metropolitan police passed papers on the affair to the Crown Prosecution Service on Friday, less than a week before Colvin is due to face a constituency selection contest.
Justin Lavender, the British tenor, was chuffed when he got the role of Don Ottavio in Mozart's Don Giovanni after an audition in Italy. His delight soured when he read Wednesday's newspapers; the production was to have reopened the renovated Fenice opera house in Venice, now burnt down.
Labour supporters will be pleased to learn that George Foulkes, an opposition spokesman on overseas development, is taking his portfolio extremely seriously. The latest register of MPs' interests shows that the member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley travelled overseas on business three times between April and September last year.
Strangely enough, however, the countries he visited are not the destinations that would normally spring to mind when thinking about overseas development. Rather than fact-finding in Bangladesh or Mozambique, Foulkes instead jetted off to Japan, Taiwan and the Cayman Islands, usually courtesy of foreign governments.
The MP's busy schedule came on top of a nine-month period when he visited Canada, the Netherlands, South Africa, Denmark and Venezuela. As treasurer of Parliamentarians for Global Action, he also regularly attends the group's meetings in New York. Perhaps a better title would be shadow minister overseas.
The 57m overseas Chinese those living outside the country, hereafter called OCs have become several times richer than us 58m Britons. Since so many of the oldest and richest started as coolies, often under British colonial rule, how did they? What changes do we need in British policy to emulate them?
The recommendations in this article are wholly mine, but I pinch most of the recorded facts from two books just published in America. They are written by two of my friends who have been very successful prophets. The books are Megatrends Asia, by John Naisbitt, and Asia Rising, by Jim Rohwer.
The OCs are spread through 60 countries, but Naisbitt calculates 53m now hover round China, ready to dynamise it. They mass in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Only 3% of Thais, Indonesians and Filipinos are ethnic Chinese, but they own 70% of those countries' businesses. Perish the thought that the Chinese are genetically brighter than previously hovering British sahibs, and note that today's OCs have had some luck.
One big advantage is that they have no single country, and thus no ruling politicians. They operate from whichever low-tax area suits their talents best. The richest work mostly within the Asean free trade area, but it has no horror like a Euro commission. If an Asia commission told them to have a single currency, or compensate terrorists for shock while being arrested, or pay for Neil Kinnock's subsidies to a Spanish airline with Spanish trade-union practices, there would be no Asean. The OCs' biggest boon is that they do business in Asia's nascent dragon lair, which stretches from India to Japan, from just below the former Soviet Disunion to Indonesia.
That area has 3 billion of the world's nearly 6 billion folk, half aged under 25. They are growing richer faster than any large group in human history, the luckiest at the 7%-12% annual growth rate that doubles real GDP in 6-10 years. But why is the area thus soaring? What are the lessons for British policy? My main conclusion is that Asia teaches us how urgently we need to privatise our education, by vouchers or other means.
As 10-year-old Koreans or Taiwanese surpass British 13-year-olds at maths, the Paddy Ashdowns (who want to increase income tax to "invest in schools") should note that the Asian dragons spend less on state education than the 4%-plus of GDP spent by more socialist places like black Africa and Britain. The dynamic in Asia is parents paying private tuition fees from ordinary workers' incomes, to get their kids as high as they can into the 40-pupil classes of competing meritocrat schools and into whichever has the best record for leading to high-salary jobs. Out of those, the children obviate the need for welfare states by supporting mummy when she's granny.
Some 70% of Tokyo parents pay tutors to edge their children into the best nursery schools. Naisbitt cites a villager in China who has paid $21,350 up front to send her six-year-old son through a private school in Canton. Although $21K is 25 years of her average worker's wage, she drew on the "six-pocket syndrome". Thanks to birth control, a bright young Chinese can have six income-earning adults two parents and two sets of grandparents buying him every educational opportunity in the hope that he will solve all their futures by becoming one of China's 1m millionaires.
Since English is the language of the Internet, there is vast scope for telecomputed teaching of many subjects on it. It is tragic that Lady Thatcher faltered from her intention to finance our state education via vouchers. That would at last have brought consumer freedom to British education. Some voucher-financed schools would allow parents to choose against submitting their children to the habits of the National Union of Teachers. And bright new grammar schools could have big exports in telecomputing microbiology lessons to India.
India's state universities yearly produce more engineers than America's. Since some lack quality, the OCs think this a mistake. They prefer Japan's tiny state sector of free university education, with strict meritocratic entry that now embraces more of the poor than Oxbridge.
Taiwan and other OCs have sent an incredible 8m people since 1960 as graduate students to America and other countries, and gained in accelerated reverse flow because American taxpayers pay for some of this. "In Hong Kong and Singapore we have high-salary, low-tax economies," one returned OC told Naisbitt. "In America you have low salaries, high tax." That probably sums up their miracle.
Of all the games politicians play, few are pursued more ferociously than Hunt the Hypocrite. John Major's back-to-basics campaign was wrecked by stories of shenanigans by Conservative MPs. Within the past fortnight, Labour has been rattled by the row over Harriet Harman's choice of school for her second son. Now some Tories think they have spotted another do-as-I-say-not -as-I-do scandal.
On the face of it, the issue looks remote from the everyday interests of ordinary voters. It concerns a decision by the European commission last week to allow the Spanish government to bail out its national airline, Iberia. Britain is considering a legal challenge in the European Court, on the grounds that the move breaks the commission's own rules.
These allow national governments to help struggling companies on a "one-time, last-time" basis. If businesses cannot stand on their own financial feet after one dollop of aid, they should be left to go bust. On that principle, so the argument runs, Iberia should now receive nothing. The EC allowed Spain to give the airline £600m four years ago. Too bad that it is still losing money; it should have done more, earlier, to cut costs, and should now pay the ultimate price for its failure. Instead, the commission is allowing the Spanish government to inject a further £440m. Unfair, says British Airways; outrageous, shouts the Tory right; illegal, claim ministers.
Now let us get real. Creating a genuine single market throughout Europe was always going to be difficult. Hiccups and delays were inevitable. Our own record is scarcely unblemished remember the covert aid the government gave to British Aerospace to take over Rover against EC rules, and the 32m Ecu (about £25m) fine imposed on British Steel for "anti-competition activities". And anybody who thinks BA is a paragon of free-market virtue should talk to Richard Branson about the problems faced by Virgin.
The brutal truth is that the commission was never going to let Iberia, or any national airline, go bust. Imagine the consequences had the EC driven the Spanish carrier into liquidation, or a forced takeover by, say, BA. Few acts would have been more certain to provoke a nationalist backlash. And not just in Spain. Air France is not out of its financial woods, despite an EC-approved £2.6 billion rescue operation by the French government two years ago. Alitalia may need more subsidies before its planes are commercially self-supporting.
Iberia, in other words, is part of a larger nexus in which national pride collides with the principles of fair trade and economic union. In an ideal Europe, such collisions would not occur; or if they did, the Continent's political institutions would be strong enough, and command sufficiently wide popular legitimacy, to allow Iberia, Air France or Alitalia to go out of business without tearing the EC apart. Until that day comes, the brutality with which the commission is able to enforce its own rules will have severe limits.
The British government knows this; indeed, in most other contexts it leads the hands-off-national-rights brigade. It also knows that the European Court is unlikely to overturn the commission's decision (which, I wager, is why we had off-the-record briefings that Britain might take the case to court, rather than a public, on-the-record commitment to start proceedings).
So why the fuss? There are some straightforward tactical reasons. The two most obvious are to embarrass Neil Kinnock, the EC's transport commissioner, and to add to public dislike of Brussels hypocrisy.
Both make sense as long as you ignore some inconvenient truths. For example, it is hard to depict Kinnock as an old-Labour ideologue, bankrolling an inefficient state enterprise in a way no Conservative would ever countenance. His decision attracted unanimous support from all 20 commissioners and enjoys the specific backing of former Conservative cabinet minister, Sir Leon Brittan.
Nor is it the case that Kinnock let Iberia walk all over him. Given the political impossibility of allowing a big national airline to go under, he succeeded in extracting some significant concessions. He forced Iberia to sell loss-making subsidiaries, to cut pay rates by an average of 8.5% and to reduce staffing levels by 15%. Even then, Kinnock allowed Spain to give Iberia only 60% of the money the airline wanted.
Nobody in their right mind believes that the story will end here, or that Iberia will transform itself into instant, efficient profitability. It needs time just as BA and most other British state industries needed time in the 1980s to prepare for the cold winds of full market competition.
This brings us to the heart of Britain's discomfort over Kinnock's actions. His crime is not that he has failed to reconcile economic rigour with political realities, but that he may have succeeded. True, "one-time, last-time" looks like a more elastic principle this weekend than free market purists would like. But in the long run Kinnock may well have advanced the cause of an integrated Europe. A bust-up between Madrid and Brussels would have set back that cause and given Britain's ministers much pleasure. Kinnock has denied them their fun.
Advertising has been in a bind about selling to women: it must not patronise or offend us, feed us lies or tired old cliches. The arrival of lager-slurping, groin-groping "ladettes" is therefore God's gift to copywriters, the cue for huge generalisations about the "modern woman's" appetite for sex with everything and a blatant reversal of the old dolly-bird-on-the-car-bonnet approach.
The ads concocted by three leading agencies in an exercise for the Daily Star last week to attract more women to football (the FA's new drive) say much about an industry in crisis, and it's not football. While the real ads going out on behalf of the FA (above, left) at least take into account women's acquired expertise in the last male bastion, the attempts to improve on them by rival agencies add insult to misunderstanding, reflecting the flat cap chauvinism that lurks beneath the game's recently modernised image precisely the thing its custodians are trying to throw off.
Leo Burnett came up with "a hat-trick of hunky heroes", showing moody pics of David Ginola ("If David Can't Get Inside You He'll Go Down") and Eric Cantona ("Could You Take Eric's Hard, Sliding Tackle From Behind?"), all assuming females at football matches are enjoying orgasmic frenzies with every goal. (Verdict: patronising tosh.) Saatchi & Saatchi gave us a come-hither stare from Dani Behr in a mini-dress (above, right)
and a comment on her love life. "And Ferdinand scores." (Verdict: wrong target, boys.) And from Banks, Hoggins, O'Shea came a naked male bottom captioned: "Football, a game of two halves." (Verdict: call in the Advertising Standards Authority.)
The point they all miss is that women's growing passion for the game is not like men's for Baywatch an abject endurance of bad performances for a glimpse of a babe in shorts. They are really interested; they travel the country for away games; they understand offside; and it is more likely to be Peter Beardsley on star form than Giggsy without his shirt that sets their pulses racing on Saturday afternoons.
The first stage of any decent fantasy about winning the lottery is telling the boss that he or she can stick the job and leaving the office in a limo to collect a cheque from Cilla. And yet a Mori survey last week told us that, though part-time work might be preferable for more than half the women polled, no more than two in 10 would give up their job for a life of leisure.
This is despite the fact that women overall earn less than men, suffer increasing problems returning to work after having children, and have learnt that parity with men sometimes cuts up rough: long hours, buck-passing, the no-special-favours clause of any Equal Opportunities programme. Given all this, it seems we like our jobs.
Last week I met a number of archetypal working women, the trail blazers and role models the rest regard with a mixture of awe and envy that is meant to spur us to success. An Oxford University professor of genetics, pioneer in the treatment of muscular dystrophy, talked about being "in love with science". The MD of a media conglomerate confided that she took off mere weeks as maternity leave, not for fear of losing her job, but her intellectual edge.
They all, in their enthusiasm, quashed the currently fashionable theory that the working world has let women down and is in danger of losing them as they flee, kicking off their power heels and executive responsibilities, into the kinder arena of domestic life: motherhood, pottering and "spending more time with the family".
The theory, which has spun dozens of articles, runs like this: work eats away at relaxation, relationships and healthy ovulation; its triumphs leave us unfulfilled. What was known in the 1980s as an expense-account lifestyle (smart restaurants, designer uniform, blow-dries written off as "miscellaneous items") is a sham: by the time you have paid for the stress-relieving therapies, there's nothing left bar a mortgage.
The idea of superwoman collapsing in a nervous heap, crawling back to the marital home to be indisposed for the foreseeable future, was much aired when the dynamic editor of She (the magazine for women who "juggle their lives") left her post for health reasons.
It was an appealing "debacle" for women who had tried and failed to "juggle", for men whose testosterone level drops at the sight of a powerful female, and for children who can be as selfish as women can be torn who resent their working mothers. The opters-out are deemed to be suffering from the "Is That It?" syndrome, the jaded conclusion of formerly thrusting woman. Do we really believe it?
For women running a job and family, there are moments of pure fatigue, and those who hate their work dream of moneyed leisure, of writing the great English novel, or becoming an altruistic volunteer for a favourite cause. But, put to the test, would they go?
A famous grade-two civil servant, with huge devotion to public service and two kids, said her fulfilment from work was so great such fun she would keep going. "Besides, what would I do since my children are at school have coffee mornings for charity? I'd go mad." The female chief constable of a northern constabulary had never bought a lottery ticket. "I've worked hard for this, why would I give it up? It's hard at times, but I love it."
But what about the ordinary women, secretaries and bank clerks, teachers and shop assistants: surely they would pack it all in for a pink Jacuzzi, matching satin sofas and no more hard slog? Apparently not. The decision last week of the members of Camden council's homeless persons' unit to go back to work after their lottery win of £304,724 each they talked of clearing bills, taking a holiday and moving house ("to be closer to work," said one ) had us all comparing our own commitment to work.
Of course, that windfall would not finance a lifetime of idle extravagance, but the point is that the Camden women could have downed tools at least temporarily, out of relief, celebration or yah-boo-sucks but they didn't. It was deemed a PR coup for a council afflicted with absenteeism, but really it was a tribute to what the women get out of work: not much money (each win was worth 17 years of salary), but identity, achievement, friends, a laugh, a better day than one spent shopping and cooking, or even directing the housekeeper to do them.
Of course, the army of low-paid women cleaners who go to work in the dark would be grateful for the minimum wage, never mind a win with Camelot. For them a life-changing sum might be exactly that: feet up for ever, and why not? But for most women, though we work for the dual-income demands of modern life, a career is a choice we would exercise anyway, one we were educated and trained for.
Sure, its victories can be Pyrrhic if all other concerns are sacrificed to them. Work for women was always going to be more complicated than the gung-ho demands of 1960s feminism, 1970s legislation or 1980s yuppie advertising made out, but generally, in one form or another, we chose to do it.
Given a fortune, would men be quite so loyal to their firms and professions? I think not. For them work has never been a choice, nor carried the cachet of ground-breaking social progress. It has simply been an unbendable rule, a duty and shackle from which many secretly long to be freed. Is the most eagerly undertaken male domestic duty the purchase of the weekly lottery ticket?
What exactly is a femme fatale? We have no word for her in our language. If you look in a good French dictionary such as the new Oxford Hachette, you'll find it translates her into English rather hopelessly as femme fatale, which gets us nowhere. The OED, it is true, has a manful shot: a dangerously attractive woman. But there's surely far more to her than that. Take, for example, one of the great femmes fatales of our time, who died last week. Her name was Barbara Skelton.
She was the daughter of a regular army officer and a Gaiety Girl. She met the defector Donald Maclean and through him got a job as a cipher clerk at the British embassy in Cairo, where she cast a spell on the Egyptian playboy King Farouk. She always remained on affectionate terms, despite his bizarre habit of whipping her with his dressing-gown cord.
She married Cyril Connolly, for many years the senior literary critic of this newspaper, divorced him to marry the publisher George Weidenfeld, divorced George to go back to Cyril, but instead took as her third husband Derek Jackson, an Oxford professor of spectroscopy who won the DFC in the war, rode twice in the Grand National and had six wives. That marriage did not last either. With this raw material, it is hardly surprising that she was to write two of the most riveting, hilarious and scabrous books of memoirs ever penned.
So what was her secret? She was, according to Weidenfeld, extremely funny, sceptical, hypercritical, unpredictable, quiet and aloof, though given to volcanic eruptions. He was smitten by her honey-coloured complexion, reddish blonde hair and slightly slit eyes.
Cyril, on the other hand, thought her eyes greenish and feline, like a lioness. He dedicated his book, Previous Convictions, "To BS." It was seven years since they had divorced.
Now that's a femme fatale for you.
The news last week that many young men and women in the RAF have never heard of the Battle of Britain, let alone those who fought in it, is not surprising. You have to be of a certain age to remember those sun-drenched midsummer days when the English skies were filled with shoals of silver planes and the distant rattle of machineguns, and no taxi driver would take payment from RAF crews going out for a beer or two.
Less glamorous, but just as vital, was the work of Bomber Command, and perhaps the least celebrated of that heroic band were its air gunners known, in the laconic lingo of war, as the arse-end charlies. Here are just a few facts sent me by Jack Hesmondhalgh, chairman of the Hereford branch of the Air Gunners' Association (AGA).
Upwards of 100,000 young men, all volunteers, flew with Bomber Command in the second world war. More than half were killed. By 1944, the average age of all its aircrew was 23. Some were flying on ops before their 20th birthday. Some were killed before their 19th. In some squadrons, weeks or even months passed without a single crew surviving to complete its tour of 30 ops. And, though Jack doesn't mention it, no RAF bomber crew ever declined to fly.
Now the AGA is planning a permanent air gunners' memorial full of the memorabilia and artefacts they've collected over the years in the Air Museum at Elvington, York. They will, of course, be fundraising themselves; but if, like me, you want to chip in, just send your cheque to the AGA Memorial Fund at 26 Brookside, Tupsley, Hereford HR1 2RW. Let's make sure, in a forgetful world, that the arse-end charlies are not forgotten.
Tips for dealing with that plague of telephone salesmen: one reader always agrees to be interviewed for the so-called survey that leads to the sales talk, but adds that his fee will be £60 an hour. Or take a tip from the eight-year-old son of another reader, who, when a kitchen salesman calls, tells him they have a kitchen already. Both remedies guaranteed.
Never mind the curse of Muzak, declares one reader, what about the torture of chat shows? His neighbour, in every other way a good egg, introduced his wife to three radio stations which push out remorselessly the dreaded Clare Rayner, the ineffable Anna Raeburn, and an unnamed American lady. Throughout their ineluctable gabble, he says, the following words recur continually choose any three: relationship, pregnancy, breast implant, therapy, surgery, reflexology, astrology and reincarnation. Enough. Bring back the femmes fatales!
Their demands for more pay expose a creeping professionalisation of MPs that will leave democracy the poorer.
‘He will work on to the end," wrote Anthony Trollope about the typical 19th-century MP in the first of his Palliser novels, "either in this House or in the other, labouring wearily ... Invisible are his wages, yet in some coin are they paid."
Those days ended in 1912 when, as a means of allowing working- and lower-middle-class people a chance to enter parliament, MPs were paid £400. At the time, Lloyd George, chancellor of the exchequer, made it clear that this was to be "a minimum allowance ... to enable them to come here". Worth about £20,000 today, it was intended merely to top up the basic income of an MP, the bulk of which would always be earned elsewhere.
The current campaign for MPs to have their salaries doubled is an assault on the amateur tradition in British politics. With an eye to differentials that would leave Cedric Brown gawping, MPs now hope to be completely re-rated, placing themselves alongside business leaders and senior professionals in the pay and expenses scales. There is a deeper debate going on than whether Mr Jerry Hayes should be paid £70,000 for his statesmanship; it is whether we want our politics, like our rugby, to go professional.
Over the years since their last significant re-rating in October 1964, when they doubled their pay, MPs have, largely unasked, turned themselves into professionals. By consenting to become through their correspondence and in their surgeries almost an adjunct to the social services, they have significantly increased their workload over and above that required by the constitution. By taking on duties which ought to be performed by local councillors, MPs largely for their own electoral reasons have deliberately "professionalised" themselves. But unlike others who take on extra charity work, they expect to be paid for it.
The portentous argument made by the proponents of re-rating Sir David Steel, Sir Terence Higgins, Alf Morris and Margaret Ewing that the calibre of parliamentary entrants has declined since their day and will shortly collapse unless pay is increased, is simply not borne out by the facts. It is the full-time nature of the job, rather than low emoluments, that puts many fine people off. Even so, there will be some first-class newcomers among the next election's intake, just as there are many clapped-out timeservers in the out-take. Every parliamentary generation bemoans the quality of its successors it is Westminster's equivalent of complaining that policemen look younger.
It is impossible not to admire the sheer gall of MPs in demanding a doubling of pay at precisely the period when they are held at the lowest level of public esteem this century. They cannot appreciate the deep sense of disgust which headlines such as "MPs united in campaign for huge pay rise" (The Times) or "MPs press to double their pay" (The Daily Telegraph) arouse in the rest of us.
It is time for politicians to clean up morally, not financially. In a recent poll, 87% of electors thought "most MPs will tell lies if they feel the truth will hurt them politically"; 77% believed "most MPs care more about special interests than they do about people like you"; only 26% considered MPs "to have a high personal moral code".
The most consistent advocate for higher pay, George Walden, Tory MP for Buckingham, believes that "historical and international comparisons" bear out his case and anyone disagreeing is "bone-headed". American representatives who get £92,750, French deputies who receive £54,900 and German Bundestag members who take home £49,250 seem to prove his point. But each of those countries has fewer MPs. American representatives have more than half a million constituents each. Our MPs get paid more per constituent than those of any other leading western country. The House of Commons is larger than the Spanish and Greek parliaments combined. If it were halved, perhaps a pay increase for the remaining members would be justifiable.
Neither do historical comparisons bear out the Walden thesis. It is true that senior ministers received vast salaries in comparison with ordinary working people in the 19th and early 20th centuries Wellington was on today's equivalent of £743,000 in 1831 but so did the rest of the aristocracy and leisured classes, from which almost all ministers came. A 19th-century aristocrat would jog along on an income sometimes 1,000 times that of a working man. In the context of their own time, which is the only comparison worth making, politicians were not made rich by becoming ministers.
The argument made by a re-rating campaign leader that Lord Nolan should investigate pay because "ultimately standards in public life depend on the people who participate in it" amounts to a gentlemanly form of public blackmail. The sotto voce subtext is: "If you don't pay us enough, you can't blame us if we top it up unethically."
This disgraceful argument assumes, wrongly, that there are not plenty of honourable, honest Britons who would be perfectly willing to serve in the Commons were it not for the full-time professionalism required by parliamentary life, but which is not wanted by the public.
If MPs win higher pay, pressure to produce more legislation will increase. More and more laws will enter the statute book, put there by MPs knowing less and less about the real world in which these laws are applied. The glory of a system which pays them little is that it forces them to find jobs and appreciate what life is like for other people. To merit private-sector scales of pay, MPs would have to forgo most of their current perquisites. Knighthoods and peerages for public service would no longer need to be lavished on them. The massively subsidised restaurants and bars at Westminster would have to be made to pay. A retirement age would need to be introduced. Most drastic of all, the system of safe incumbencies, where an MP has a competition-free job for life, would have to be dismantled. One wonders whether MPs have really considered all the consequences of living with private-sector competition. As MPs cede further powers to Brussels, their pay would have to be cut in line with their reduced responsibilities.
When Leo Amery entered parliament in 1911, the back benches on both sides were full of "frock-coated, top-hatted men of substance", whose lives did not revolve around Westminster. These solid, public-spirited gentlemen, full of common sense and outside interests, provided the Commons with a ballast which is lacking today, and which further professionalisation would wipe out completely. They brought to British democracy a gravitas and independent judgment, and were often great experts in their particular fields, entering parliament after a lifetime of success in other endeavours. How many statesmen of their calibre can one identify in today's Lower House?
Neither is it the case that Labour MPs, traditionally hailing from the manual trades, need high pay to (in Lloyd George's phrase) "enable them to come here". Hardly any Labour MPs today are genuinely horny-handed; more than half come from the professions.
Most dangerously, the re-rating of politicians' pay would accelerate the drift towards an exclusively political class, dependent entirely on its wages from the state, which would eventually extinguish the very independence of MPs on which our democracy ultimately rests. If an MP's total income comes from the taxpayer, it would amount to the nationalisation of politics itself. When Sir Thomas Dugdale resigned over the Crichel Down affair in 1954, he was conforming to a tradition of conduct which the public still has a right to expect, but which, under this creeping professionalisation, it rarely sees.
"Emoluments have been introduced, increased and elaborated," wrote Enoch Powell recently. "This has changed the concept of an MP's status. If or when the House of Commons ceases to be an assembly of gentlemen, it will be hard to rescue." When MPs enter politics for the money, rather than the honour, that day will be brought nearer.
THREE FACES OF PARLIAMENTARY PROFIT AND LOSS
Mr Worthy MP
Mr Worthy says: "Being an MP should be a full-time job. The salary is adequate 75% more than the average wage and you shouldn't go into it to make money. A desire for public service should be your motive. There is no shortage of capable people who want the job.
"I regard myself as a social worker for my constituents. They send us there and we should never forget that. I have no outside earnings; I don't think the Commons should be a hiring fair. And I'm not interested in foreign freebies; I don't see how they would help my constituents.
"I don't employ my wife as my secretary. I think it's wrong to milk the system that way. My wife is my unpaid back-up. I employ a secretary and two part-time researchers. I top up their salaries from my own pocket because our office allowances are inadequate. But I need their support; I get hundreds of letters a week from constituents.
"I didn't sign last week's Commons motion calling for an independent review of MPs' salaries. I don't see why we should get an inflation-busting pay rise. A lot of older MPs want an increase to boost their parliamentary pension, as an MP who serves for 25 years retires on about £18,000 a year. Perhaps the scheme should be more generous.
"I travel to the Commons on Monday. I work on the train. If the House is sitting on Friday, I will stay if there is an important backbench bill. I don't believe in working a three-day week like some MPs. I hold a surgery in the constituency every Saturday morning. Sometimes I will travel back mid-week for a party meeting and then return to the Commons. All the travelling is tiring, but it's part of the job."
Mr Greedy MP
Mr Greedy says: "The salary of an MP is a pittance. I could be earning three times as much if I had stayed in the private sector instead of devoting my life to public service. I have three directorships and two consultancies. I see nothing wrong with that. Being an MP should not be a full-time job; it certainly doesn't pay a full-time salary. My links with the private sector keep me in touch with the real world; they make me a better MP.
"We only just scrape through. My wife acts as my Commons secretary; we need the money. My car has a three-litre engine so at least we get 72p a mile when we travel to and from the constituency. We normally travel to London on Monday and head back on Thursday. Sometimes we get away early, so it's a three-day Commons week.
"I never give an interview to the broadcasters without charging at least £50. If they want my expert opinion, they can pay for it. I have set up my own company for my outside earnings from speaking engagements, broadcasting and so on my wife is a director and my constituency home is the registered office, which cuts my tax bill.
"The new rules since the Nolan inquiry are a nuisance. I will probably get my consultancy contracts rewritten and divided into two parts. Then I can declare a small sum, perhaps £1,000, for providing political advice, while I would not have to declare £20,000 for general advice. There will always be loopholes. You can't blame us for exploiting them.
"I am not one of life's rebels. If you keep the whips sweet, you get the foreign trips and the select committee places you want. I think travel broadens the mind."
Mr Fat Cat MEP
Mr Fat Cat says: "The salary is not good, so you need to claim the allowances to make ends meet. The lifestyle may sound glamorous but it's a hard slog. Full sessions of the parliament are held in Strasbourg one week each month, while the committees meet in Brussels and the secretariat is based in Luxembourg. A lot of time is wasted travelling. Many of us book flights on Apex fares and pocket the difference, but sometimes you can't book in advance. The main difference with Westminster is that we don't have to provide travel receipts.
"If you don't mind clocking up the air miles, it's possible to catch an early flight from London, sign in at parliament at 9am, claim the £190 daily allowance and then catch the next flight home. But only a few MEPs really milk the system like that; most of us have better things to do and it's a serious job. Remember, we serve huge constituencies with seven or eight Commons seats.
"The perks may look good on paper but all the travelling is a bind. Sometimes you wake up in a hotel and wonder where the hell you are. The £190-a-day allowance for meals and accommodation sounds a lot, but hotels are not cheap. It's very handy, though, when you're on an official trip abroad and the food and hotels are provided anyway.
"The social life is good better than at Westminster. There is a huge lobbying industry. The companies have moved into Europe in a big way and are always throwing receptions and parties. They are lavish.
"I've got a couple of directorships and consultancies. I don't see why we should disclose our outside earnings. I voted against it."
Michael Prescott on two men with a shared agenda.
They are children of the post-war baby boom, born five years apart, educated at Scottish public schools and Oxbridge. Each aspires in his own way to rule the nation. And that's only where the similarities begin...
The Prince of Wales and Anthony Charles Lynton Blair share more than a common background. They have enjoyed privilege, but refused to be seduced by it.
From adolescence, the future king and the potential prime minister seem to have shared a compulsion to grapple with the big questions. Each launched on an odyssey of spiritual discovery. For Charles, there were to be earnest discussions with his uncle, the late Lord Mountbatten, and with the philosopher and author Laurens van der Post. For Blair, the quest was to end at the door of John MacMurray, the Scottish moral philosopher whose work foreshadowed communitarianism.
The evidence of this journey down similar pathways is increasingly plain to see. Whether the subject at hand is business or education, the environment or television violence, Charles and Blair are apt to see the world through similar spectacles then use similar language to express their views.
Thus we have Charles writing on January 25, in an article about the millennium: "We must appreciate the strengths that come from flourishing well-established communities ... the need to rebuild the spirit of the local community is of supreme importance."
Blair agrees. Only last week, he declared that "it is only by working together in a community of people that the individual's interests can be advanced. I believe the loss of a sense of community, of being bound to more than a narrow definition of self interest, prevents us realising our full potential".
On December 12 last year, Charles praised business people involved in his Business Leaders' Forum (BLF) for promoting "partnership" between firms and communities: "We have learnt that partnerships between the business, public and community sectors are vital ... The greatest challenge for business is to encourage their managers to play an active part in the communities where they are based."
While Charles urges business to seek partnership with (among others) the public sector, Blair promises an open door once he's in charge of that sector. "The modern world requires a partnership between business and government to achieve limited but key objectives," he told Nottingham chamber of commerce two weeks ago.
The symmetry does not end there. Blair's supposed "big idea" that government and industry should frame policies designed to benefit the greatest number of "stakeholders" has a royal bloodline. As long ago as 1990, at the launch of the BLF, Charles was picking up the language of US business philanthropists: "The expectations of the other stakeholders in business are changing rapidly. These are the customers, the employees, suppliers and local communities affected by the operation of a business."
Charles mentioned stakeholders five times in the speech, and has returned to the theme many times. On January 8, Blair picked up the ball and ran with it. Addressing a business audience in Singapore, he urged "a vision of the company as a community or partnership in which each employee has a stake, and where a company's responsibilities are more clearly delineated".
Last Monday, the overlap between the positions taken by the two men was demonstrated once more. Speaking in Southwark cathedral, Blair urged community involvement in the design of housing projects: "Tenants should be involved at every stage of design, building and maintenance." Charles has campaigned for architecture on a human scale, and for community involvement in buildings, for more than a decade.
Blair also used his Southwark speech to announce plans for government-sponsored neighbourhood homework centres; the Prince's Trust started a chain of them six years ago, and now funds over 100.
Charles and Blair are reputed to get on well. "He invited Blair to one of his dinners at St James's about eight years ago, and has stayed closely in touch ever since," said a source who knows the Labour leader and has worked for the prince.
One Tory MP who is a fan of neither man is not surprised by their unison: "They share the same dreadful pulpit manner and the impulse to preach. Charles is the man who set a trend by forbidding people to smoke between courses at dinner. People will increasingly realise that Blair is also something of an authoritarian."
But as they sing from the same hymn sheet, does Charles secretly dream of a Blair government implementing his sort of policies?
Why are MPs concerned about their pay?
Comparability.
Come again?
Their pay is supposed to rise in line with a particular civil service pay grade. That grade is disappearing because of restructuring, so MPs will have nobody to compare their pay with. They also think it is undignified for MPs to be paid less than many of the Commons staff, including the head of catering, the Speaker's secretary and Hansard sub-editors. Not to mention their foreign counterparts. A British MP's basic salary of £34,085 compares with £92,750 in America, £54,900 in France and £49,250 in Germany. But the perks are good.
Why do the rest of us get excited about pay?
Comparability. Nurses did not do so badly last year. Their average pay went up by 3.2%, in line with inflation. But compared with NHS trust chief executives, they did lamentably. The best-paid NHS chiefs earned an average of £101,000 and enjoyed a rise of nearly 30% (the average nurse's pay is £15,000).
So who earns what these days?
What with individual pay negotiations, temporary contracts, part-time work and moonlighting, there are few jobs in which there is a truly representative salary. But the average weekly pay for a man working full time is about £375 a week (£19,500 a year), and for women £271 a week (£14,100 a year). As for specifics, a High Court judge earns an average of £98,000; army brigadier £50,000; police superintendent £38,000-£46,000; police sergeant £22,000-£25,600; middle-ranking bank employee £20,000-£25,000; teacher £20,000; train driver £18,000; firefighter £16,500; prison officer £15,600; council social worker £13,500; hairdresser £7,500 and waitress £7,200 (both plus tips). Variations are huge.
What is Tony Blair's pay problem?
Comparability. Others will be looking to a Labour government to boost their pay. Although the pay-review bodies are expected to recommend increases of about 4% for nurses, junior doctors,
teachers and dentists, public-sector workers will feel hard-done-by after three years of Treasury squeezes. This happened when Labour was last in power. Anxious to secure peace during the 1978-79 winter of discontent, the Callaghan government set up a comparability commission on public-sector pay. The Tories agreed to honour its recommendations. The result was a 20% rise in average earnings in 1980 and a battle to bring inflation and public borrowing under control. Blair is pledged to avoid that experience. Whether he can do so is another matter.
A £150 radio scanner can lay bare the night-time secrets of a city's loose talk.
When you are talking on your mobile phone, you could become a performer in an unwitting pantomime for a hidden labyrinth of eavesdroppers. It happened to the Prince of Wales, the Princess of Wales and now the Duke of Edinburgh. It may happen to you.
It might be fascinating to hear the forbidden and to penetrate the unknown world of strangers, but listening to other people's calls is as wicked as watching them through binoculars: anonymous electronic stalking.
It is 23 minutes past midnight. The dial on the scanner suddenly stops like a wheel in a casino. Who have I won tonight? Whose world am I penetrating?
Man, Scouse accent, excited: "Tell me. Is he asleep or ain't he?"
Woman, whispering, Scandinavian or German accent: "Is it you?"
He: "Course‘tis. It's me."
She: "I can't tonight. Not tonight. No. No way. No chance. Good night."
He: "He's asleep isn't he? What room are you in? The lounge? The kitchen?"
She: "Lounge."
He: "He is asleep, right?"
She: "Ya. Ya. Come then, if you must. Kids are long down. But don't knock."
He: "You want me to come, don't y'?"
She: "Yes, yes. I'll put the kettle on. I got your fave chocolate in. Your favourita."
He: "Great. Brandy. Check he's asleep."
She: "I don't care if he is or not. Come now."
He: "Right."
What pathos there is in such an exchange of secret infidelity. Next, the dial might stop for this masterpiece of inarticulacy between two men:
1: "Hey!"
2: "'Ello!"
1: "Well ... (sighs)"
2: Ditto.
1: "Yeah, well ..."
2: "I dunno ..."
1: "Yeah ..."
2: "Umm, well, yeah."
1: "Dunno. Night."
2: "Night, mate."
"Oh, sir, you can look right into the secret box of the human heart with one of these," says an assistant at an electronics shop in London's Tottenham Court Road, where scanners cost £150-250.
"Ordinary people are buying these. Some weirdos, too. But when a ruffian in rags asks if he can listen to the police, then you know it is drug dealing."
During the day there are housewives gossiping, Sloaney girls talking about cocaine at lunch, salesmen ordering shoes and computers. But night brings a vaudeville of banality and perversion.
1.07: workaholic yuppies, conversation veering from the commonplace to the confessional.
Woman, upper-class accent: "I've looked through the applicants again and again and none of them really are what we require."
He, probably a lawyer: "What a bore! So we have to go over every CV again tomorrow after the meeting. What about that Emma girl?"
She: "No way, don't trust her."
He: "You're right. She's a hustler."
She: "She slept with O'Leary."
He: "I don't believe that. But I know about Charles. Anyone else? Just because she gets around, doesn't mean she's untrustworthy at work ... does it?"
Pause.
She: "Have you slept with her?"
He: "Moi? I'm a happily married man. All right ... yes."
2.05am: two homosexuals, one a fastidious cruel American professional, the other obviously a Brummie rent boy.
American: "I'm just deciding if I should be a naughty boy and invite you over. But I know I shouldn't. Do you like pain."?
Brummie: "Pain. p-a-i-n. Luverly word, aint it, used right."
American: "Do I know you? Were you in Ibiza this year with a black transsexual drag queen?"
In the age of the scanner, every citizen can be a secret policeman in his own secret force. Protect us from the average secret policeman on the Clapham omnibus.
American discontent has hit new peaks, but they have never had it so good.
This time four years ago, George Bush put his finger on it. Venturing gingerly into primary land, he judged memorably that it was "weird out there". Middle America loomed in front of the discomforted Yalie as a cacophony of resentments: fearful of recession, angry about its elites, envious of its betters. If anything, things have only got worse. The hostility that dispensed of Bush subsequently dispatched the 1992 Congress; it is now turning gleefully on Newt Gingrich. What the economist Robert Samuelson has described in his new, much discussed book, The Good Life and its Discontents, as the "age of entitlement" has spawned what can only be described as a politics of congenital dyspepsia.
Last week the Washington Post and Harvard University unveiled a survey of American attitudes that showed how deep this sentiment runs: 75% of Americans believe the government cannot be trusted to do the right thing almost all the time; 40% believe the economy is getting worse; 54% are not confident that their children will be better off than they are. In this climate, no political incumbent is safe.
At the same time, as Samuelson gamely points out, things in the United States are hardly dire. Unemployment is half the European average; inflation is, on some economists' reckonings, around zero; growth has continued steadily for the past five years and shows few signs of petering out altogether. The country is at peace, having won the hard conflict of the past half-century. American culture and technology continue to dominate world markets, and the rate of violent crime has been collapsing in big cities. Last year, most investors made more than 30% in the stock market; the budget deficit, already lower than almost any other western country's, looks set to be cut to zero in the next seven years. Taxes are also relatively low: the government eats up about 34% of GNP, compared with more than 40% in Britain and well over 50% in western Europe.
Samuelson also provides some revealing statistics on how well Americans have done since the last war. Per capita income in real 1987 dollars has gone from $6,367 in 1945 to $14,696 in 1994, the last figure available. The poverty rate has fallen from 40% to 14%; the college graduation rate has risen from 5% of all adults to 22%; life expectancy has increased by 10 years. Things have never been so good. So why is it that Americans appear on the verge of a constant political breakdown, angry and disgruntled and periodically enraged?
The obvious explanation is that the most spectacular gains in living standards came in the first three decades after the war. Since the mid-1970s, the growth in living standards has slowed considerably; and as Tocqueville pointed out, it is the dashing of rising expectations not continued failure that fuels revolutions. The post-1975 growth has also come at a higher and higher cost. In the immediate post-war period, when there was little overseas competition for American labour, Americans experienced a golden age of risk-free trade and expansion. As other countries have begun to compete and the world labour market has expanded, Americans have had to work harder. The days when an unskilled worker could earn an upper-middle-class income, with pensions and health benefits, in a car plant in Detroit, ended in 1976. Although the price of food and clothing has tumbled, real middle-class goods, such as further education and good healthcare, have become far more expensive.
So it isn't that American life has got worse; it's that it has got better more slowly. That would have been enough to increase the pressure on the system. But what has brought it to breaking point has been a decay of the political structure that allows democracy to relieve the social and psychological stress.
The most appropriate term to describe this decay would be the rise of political alienation. The two parties have lost members in droves: a record number of voters now describe themselves as independents. The institutions that used to link people to the political process urban party machines, trade unions, small business groups, traditional churches have experienced a rapid decline. Increasingly, suburbanised voters interact with their leaders purely through television and in a country as vast as this one, that means a profound sense of democratic isolation.
Tangible political power is increasingly wielded through small interest groups in Washington, or through corporate political action committees, or through lobbyists. The professional business class also has fewer and fewer ties with ordinary people. As a result, Americans feel cut off from the levers of power too poor to buy powerful influence, too distant to have a personal impact, too disorganised to create a sense of connection with the centre.
No wonder, perhaps, that they express their political impotence primarily by throwing incumbents out of office; or by endorsing a philosophy that is sceptical of all forms of political activity.
Even the people's last connective link to power the media is becoming more unpopular. Since Watergate, political journalists have increasingly been seen as more powerful than the people they cover opining when they once reported, giving speeches when they once transcribed them, taking upon themselves the task of selecting the country's leaders. Their hubris has not gone unpunished, as voters move in greater numbers to direct channels of information from talk radio to the Internet to bypass their despised intermediaries.
The result is an electorate in an elaborate and prolonged temper tantrum. Americans have always been a rebellious people, as the British first found out two centuries ago. And they conceive of their politics almost religiously. If the American polity fails to live up to its high aspirations, if the rhetoric dips below a near-messianic optimism, if the elites disappear beyond the horizon of attainability, then restlessness can turn into revolt. This, after all, is a culture that relentlessly portrays constant material and spiritual gain as the criterion not simply of success, but of happiness. If the system seems to fail that, the system has to go. Bush failed to understand that in 1992, which is why he crashed to defeat.
Bob Dole, in his reply to Bill Clinton's sunny State of the Union address, showed he was equally out of touch. "What we have to do," he intoned, "is face the fact that we cannot give in to all of our own desires." But that is exactly what Americans refuse and have always refused to face. Part of the country's myth about itself is that limits are for other countries, that complexity is a dirty word, that acquiescence to reality far from a sign of maturity is actually a form of defeat.
Steve Forbes gets it. A large measure of his popularity has come from the simple and revolutionary idea of a flat, one-postcard, income tax. He articulates it with a childlike optimism, which Americans recognise as their own. They see the tax as a simple route to faster growth; and a mechanism to unseat the vested interests and political elites they distrust. They are largely wrong on both counts, but that is beside the point.
What matters is that Forbes is claiming, however preposterously, that life can truly get better, faster and more easily, than ever before. It gets to the core of America's fundamental aspiration. Ronald Reagan built two political landslides on it. It still exists at the end of the century, in the gleam in a billionaire's eye.
Scientists have started to take their lead from sci-fi writers in their quest to find alien life forms.
Mars has exercised an irrational hold over the human mind ever since HG Wells penned his novel The War of the Worlds in 1898. The Martians, his book begins, "regarded this earth with envious eyes". The Red Planet has spawned mass panic, little green men and fantasies of lost civilisations. Last week the contagion spread to scientists, who unveiled a plan straight from the pages of science fiction.
Their objective is one of the mythical canals of Mars, which were first revealed by Percival Lowell, a rich young American astronomer, in 1896. Mistranslating the canali (channels) spotted by an Italian astronomer, Lowell conjectured a cool world whose inhabitants fished in the irrigation network. Two years later an inspired Wells created the martial race that still lurks in the subconscious of 20th-century man.
The symbolic potency of Mars has proved irresistible to scientists. No matter that comprehensive mapping has disproved the canal theory. No matter that the Viking probe which landed on Mars in 1976 did not detect a single organic molecule.
So powerful is the planet's lure that the boffins have come up with a scenario far removed from their normally sober deliberations. "This is like science fiction," said Brian Aldiss, the doyen of British sci-fi writers. John Clute, editor of The Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction, agreed. "It is a completely fictional hypothesis," he said.
The slender proposition, revealed at a scientific conference last week, rests on the discovery of primitive bacteria that live in volcanic hot springs and around thermal vents in the oceans on Earth. What if similar micro-organisms, capable of withstanding hostile extremes, once existed on Mars?
On this assumption, a Mars Pathfinder probe will touch down in July 1997 and release a robot to search for hot springs and ancient bacteria. Piquantly, the landing zone will be a vast area of channels, once scoured by water. In one small step we are back to Lowell's fabled canals.
As a bankable package the idea is elegant, not least because the discovery of life on a neighbouring planet would have enormous evolutionary and religious implications. It might mean that intelligent life developed on more propitious worlds.
The project has created a buzz of interest which will ensure generous funding. "They may have good reason to think that something might be discovered, but I think it has more to do with internal politics in the United States," Clute observed.
More significant is the way that science fiction is being harnessed.
The panic unleashed by Orson Welles's radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds in 1938 instilled a stultifying caution among governments, apt to dismiss speculation about life elsewhere as "pure science fiction".
But sci-fi was more invasive than anyone thought. "Many Nasa scientists have admitted that the space programme was inspired by their childhood reading of science fiction," said Clute, who credits Robert Heinlein's writing in the 1940s as the most influential. "He shaped the minds of the people who made the future."
Science fiction's latest triumph is alien abduction. The reported encounters of thousands of Americans, replicating early sci-fi tales, suggests a great yearning to contact extra-terrestrials. We do not want to be alone. As a consequence, little green men have become almost respectable.
All this plays into the hands of the space lobby. Consider the second, even more fantastic theory voiced in support of the Mars mission last week a possible "cross-contamination" with Mars. According to Professor Paul Davies of Adelaide University, microscopic organisms cocooned in meteorites might have created life on Mars and Earth during a fierce bombardment more than 3 billion years ago. Here was a double-whammy: not only life on Mars, but Earth-life on Mars. The fly in the ointment is that no micro-organism has ever been recovered from the 500 tons of Martian meteorites that litter Earth.
Curiously, a similar idea was mooted in the 1980s by Sir Fred Hoyle, the eminent physicist and science-fiction writer. But Hoyle, author of The Black Cloud, fell out of favour because his notion also depended on the existence of a dying alien race which seeded the universe with the microscopic "building blocks of life".
What was regarded as "pure science fiction" 10 years ago has gained a respectful hearing.
The media have also abetted the feeling of unreality. "White worms on Red Planet may prove we are not alone", blared a front-page headline in Tuesday's Independent. Because white worms have been found grazing around Earth's hot springs, they must exist on Mars, it reasoned. No chance. "We have been hosing down the white worms story all week," Davies said dourly.
HG Wells may have started the race to Mars but, unlike today's scientists, he did not believe the Red Planet harboured life. The War of the Worlds was a moralistic tale. "He was sending a message to the British that they were not, necessarily, going to continue to rule the world without difficulty. Within a decade and a half there was World War I," Clute said.
If man ever sets foot on Mars (the earliest date would be 2020), it is to be hoped that events do not follow PSchuyler's 1944 story of The Cave, in which Martian life forms kill an Earthman who violates the truce they must all observe in order to survive the long Martian night. But what a headline: "Murder on Mars".
Coming away from prime minister's question time on Thursday, a Labour MP asked me to identify the person responsible for John Major's recent successes at the dispatch box. The thought that it might be Major himself did not cross his mind. Whoever it was, he mulled, he was doing a very good job because the political scene had been transformed in the past two weeks to the government's advantage.
Tony Blair's speech a few hours later conjuring up "the nightmare" of a fifth Tory term in power made the Labour MP's point. Only last month Blair wrote the government off in terms I thought he would live to regret. "The Conservatives are finished as a serious political force," he told Sky News. "They have no idea what to do with government." How time flies.
Blair's outburst about the dangers of extended Tory rule recalled Neil Kinnock's apocalyptic warnings about the danger of re-electing Margaret Thatcher in 1983. I can see his television performance now, his eyes burning into his audience, his face contorted by anger, as he spelt out the consequences of a Labour defeat. "I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill, I warn you not to grow old." Next day, Thatcher was re-elected with an absolute majority of 144 seats; four years later she scored her hat trick.
At least Kinnock waited until the eve-of-poll before he allowed his desperation to show. He had the excuse that Labour had no hope of winning when he made his doleful prophecies about what life would be like under the Tories. Blair's vision of another Tory victory seems all too similar to Kinnock's. Is there any evidence that Major plans to force people to pay to see the doctor, or push their children into classes of 100, or turn law and order over to private security firms or make workers sackable at a moment's notice without explanation? Blair risks seeming unduly alarmist months before the election campaign has even begun.
Tory Central Office rubbed its hands when it read Blair's text. This, it said to itself, is proof at last that Blair is beginning to crack and Major's counterattack is working. Downing Street's line is that Blair cannot stand the heat and is becoming hysterical. Blair's response that Major leads a party of guttersnipes is not calculated to lower the temperature.
Compared with Churchill's wild 1945 prediction that a Labour government would lead to Gestapo-rule and Aneurin Bevan's Celtic comment that the Tory party was "lower than vermin", this is relatively tame stuff. But there is plenty of ammunition around; it is only a question of time before it is fired.
Both sides will play the innocent. Major regards Blair's accusation that he is playing at gutter politics with astonished contempt. He literally stopped in his tracks on his way to speak to the Conservative Political Centre last Monday when an aide told him. Brian Mawhinney's accusation on Friday that Labour is guilty of some of the dirtiest politics he could remember confirms the baring of teeth on both sides. We need hardly watch this space. We have a good idea of what is coming.
Expletives apart, the pro-Labour tide in the polls has been due for correction for some months, as Blair knows. Some cabinet ministers doubt privately whether the Harriet Harman affair will do much to improve Tory fortunes on its own but they take heart from Major's new aggressiveness and Blair's agitated response.
Tory strategists say Blair has become a legitimate political target and they need no longer feel restrained by his popularity in attacking him. Personalised politics, however, are notoriously hazardous. The polls show that people generally think well of both Blair and Major personally. Shattering benign impressions of public figures is a risky business, unless the characters involved take a leaf from the royals and co-operate in their own destruction.
Top Tories are unlikely to be squeamish. "We're seeing a new side of Tony Blair," they say. "If he can't stand the heat now, what would he be like in power?" Major's clout showed on Thursday in the 1922 committee's decision to prevent a further leadership challenge before the general election. What No10 wants in the current climate, No10 gets. If the fightback involves accusing Labour of being the "villain's friend" in the scramble for votes on law and order, so be it. We are in for a rough period. Anyone who cannot stand the sight of blood should avert their gaze.
There is only one problem about staying with John Aspinall in his Georgian manor house, Howletts in Kent: you never know who or what the other house guests will be. The late Simon Fraser of Lovat was once taking a bath, singing a Highland ditty as he did so. Then the singing turned into a yell.
Three years earlier, a tiger cub had lost its mother. From then on Zemo was hand-reared by John and Sally Aspinall; he was also given the run of the house, which he had retained even when fully grown. Zemo quickly discovered that baths make a very good tiger loo. So when Aspers as all his friends call him arrived on the scene, he found his guest in a towel, helpless with laughter, as his bathwater was supplemented by an enormous tiger defecation.
Aspinall, 70 this year, has long been famous for his passion for creatures of the jungle. This weekend he will be getting back on the close terms he and his keepers used to enjoy with the tigers at his Howletts zoo park. After winning his appeal last week against a Canterbury city council ban on keepers entering the tigers' enclosures (Aspinall himself imposed a voluntary ban after a keeper was mauled to death by a 500lb Siberian tiger in November 1994), he announced that he intended to go back into the enclosures with his head keeper of carnivores.
Aspinall's entire life has been a defiance of convention, from the moment of his conception in India. He was the product of an illicit coupling under a tamarisk tree after a ball. His official father ended his career as a major-general; his biological one as a colonel in the Indian army medical corps. There is something of the imperial officer in Aspinall's bearing, just as there is a great deal of Kipling's Kim in his personality.
The young Aspinall was sent to Rugby, where he was idle and rebellious; not quite Harry Flashman, but certainly not Tom Brown. He was asked to leave. He joined the Royal Marines and enjoyed himself there, but failed to be commissioned; he was too idle and rebellious. He then moved to Oxford, but was quickly sent down for being idle and rebellious.
Aspinall fetched up in London, to live on his wits. At this time he met another youngster living in the same manner: Jimmy Goldsmith, whose Eton career had recently come to a premature end after he won an enormous sum at the Windsor races. Aspinall and Goldsmith have much in common. Their friendship was instant and enduring. It has been one of the strongest influences in Aspinall's life.
Most forms of gambling were illegal in the 1950s; there were no casinos in London. So a black market flourished, and Aspinall was its leading figure. Until the crisis at Lloyd's, he probably bore more responsibility than anyone else for the redistribution of upper-class riches. After casino gambling was legalised, he made an even bigger fortune. The funds went to finance his own mode of life and to subsidise his love of animals.
As soon as he made his first pile, Aspinall acquired a flat in Belgravia with the use of a small garden. In it, he built an enclosure to house his first animal purchases: a tiger, two Himalayan bear cubs and a capuchin monkey. In 1957 he bought Howletts and began expanding his collection. In 1973 he opened another zoo at Port Lympne. Aspinall is now host to more than 90 species, many of them endangered, and he has an outstanding record as a breeder and conservationist.
The world of zoos is mostly inhabited by sandals and brown-rice characters. Their first response to his eruption in their midst was predictable. Who was this dilettante,who seemed to think that he could treat dangerous animals as pets? But those days are long gone. Aspinall has earned himself an international reputation through his success over many decades in encouraging animals to breed. As a result, his zoos are now a vital resource bank for threatened species and he is always delighted to return animals to the wild. His efforts could mean the difference, in some cases, between survival and extinction.
Anyone who visits his zoos will quickly understand the reasons for his success. He gives his animals space, freedom and dignity plus the best of feedstuffs. There are many worse postings in the animal kingdom than to be one of John Aspinall's honoured guests.
His keepers participate to the full in the Aspinall ethos. Like him, they love animals; like him, they are prepared to take risks to express their affection. Over the years, however, there have been four fatalities.
Given his record as a conservationist, Aspinall ought to be a hero of our time; after all, what cause is more fashionable? But he will always elude that sort of heroism. His approach is far too radical to be assimilated in the conventional pieties of the environmentalist movement.
John Aspinall is no misanthrope; he loves sinful man, but he hates the sins mankind has committed. He believes that our urban mode of life is as dangerous to other species as it is destructive of all that is best in mankind. He believes that the human population should be much smaller and its way of life much simpler, in a symbiosis with other species as much spiritual as physical. He is a joyous, pantheistic pagan: a true Nietzschean revolutionary.
Apart from his role as zookeeper, Aspinall has had one brush with notoriety. He was a friend of "Lucky" Lucan, the peer who vanished after the murder of his nanny. At the time there was speculation that Aspinall might have been involved in helping Lucan to escape.
He demonstrates the same absolute loyalty in his dealings with Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the Zulu leader. Aspinall has learnt some Zulu and loves addressing huge crowds in South Africa. He tells them to be true to themselves and to their traditions; to follow their chiefs and to harken to the spirits of their mighty ancestors. Zulus must be free, proud and independent, he tells them, not part of some homogenised, sub-Marxist, ANC-ruled South Africa. If the country could still be ruled by the assegai, the descendants of Shaka would have nothing to fear. But the automatic rifle is a great leveller. The Zulus now need not only bravery on the battlefield, but cunning in the council chamber. Even some of those who admire Buthelezi, sympathise with the Zulus and revere Aspinall, are fearful about the consequences of inciting his Zulu friends towards intransigence.
Aspinall can still swash his buckle as vigorously as most lads a quarter of his age. He has an open, laughing, piratical visage; all he would need is a wooden leg and a parrot on his shoulder to make an excellent Long John Silver. But he has had health problems; he would hate to become frail or invalid.
This weekend, as well as his return to the tigers, he will pay his usual call on Djouma. The 470lb silver-backed gorilla is surely one of the most magnificent animals that has ever lived. Djouma and Aspinall will have a chat, probably followed by some playful wrestling.
But though Djouma is a friend, he is still a gorilla weighing three times as much as Aspinall, with several times the strength. Suppose the wrestling gets out of hand; suppose Djouma decides to sit on Aspinall, even if only in play? The consequences could be fatal.
Suppose away. While Aspinall has the strength to do so, he will go on living as he always has on his own terms. If this means that one day his life will end in an animal enclosure, then as Aspinall would say so be it.
As I gaze at my desk, I see an antibiotic clock, an antihypertensive pen and an antidepressant paperweight, small gifts from pharmaceutical companies which hope that, as I search my vacant brain for a drug to prescribe for patients, my eyes will alight upon the name of their product. It is surprising, all things considered, how well this system of therapeutic selection works.
The firms have various methods of encouraging us doctors to prescribe their newest and most expensive drugs. For example, there is the pharmaceutical company lunch. Nobody who has not experienced National Health sandwiches day after day can appreciate the culinary relief which these lunches provide. As a quid pro quo, of course, we listen to propaganda, or evidence, in favour of the latest drug, prepared by the company.
There is a doctor in our hospital whose medical speciality, in so far as he has one, appears to be such lunches. Nobody has ever seen him other than at one, and we are not even absolutely certain that he is a doctor at all; but he has been so faithful in his attendance that we feel it would be wrong to stop him now.
The way to a doctor's prescription pad is through his stomach, but there are other methods, too. For instance, there is the free educational weekend trip to Siena or Budapest, to hear about the newest drug. Some doctors feel it is wrong to accept, while others will accept only on condition that they are taken to somewhere they have always wanted to go.
Last week, I weakened and accepted an offer to fly to one of the great European cities to hear all about a new drug that will revolutionise the lives of millions (I'm talking about the shareholders, of course). I decided to take my wife, whose fare I had to pay, a decision regarded as quixotic by the other participants, who couldn't see the point of a free weekend if it ended up costing money.
At the airport, I checked in rather sheepishly with my free ticket, surrounded by a lot of doctors, including one known for his attendance at such foreign gatherings. A man of few words and grubby appearance, he had already done Prague, Vienna, Paris (several times), Barcelona and Florence, but was still hoping for the Big One Rio or Kuala Lumpur.
We were met at the other end by a coach. We were given badges with our names on, and a roll call was taken. Then we were taken to a hotel of fantastic luxury: all marble and flunkeys. What balm to the soul of people strugglng for 20 years to pay off suburban mortgages! You could tell the regulars: getting off the coach, they looked neither to the left nor to the right, and did not go to reception, but walked straight up to the drug company registration desk to collect their room keys. They knew the form.
My wife and I had friends in the city, and we went out to dinner with them. Alas, I drank rather more than usual and woke too late for the first lecture and more seriously for breakfast. I called room service and a trolley appeared with feline swiftness. The waiter gave me the bill to sign: surely four rolls, two pats of butter and a pot of coffee couldn't cost £42? Believing, however, that a man should always take the consequences of his own actions, I signed the bill.
I went down to the lectures, which were taking place in the ballroom. Chairing the meeting was a professor who seems always able to persuade himself that the latest drug is the best. He is thus a very well-travelled man. By the fifth indecipherable slide, projected onto a screen 50 yards away, I was asleep again.
At lunch, a doctor of my acquaintance described his technique. You had to make sure, he said, that the company representatives saw you at a meeting, otherwise they wouldn't invite you to Lisbon or Istanbul. Your presence could be established quickly, by a question asked after the first lecture. Thereafter, it was perfectly safe to do your shopping and sightseeing, returning only for meals.
It was soon time to catch the bus back to the airport. I went to pay my bill those items for which the drug company said it would not be responsible. I noticed that the £42 breakfast did not appear on it, and drew the hotel's attention to this omission.
"Courtesy of the company," said the cashier.
I can hardly remember the name of the drug which it is hoped will eventually pay for my breakfast.
The door is slammed at the back of the hall behind us. Without thinking, I rise to my feet with the rest of the school. It is 15 years since I last waited for that door to bang, yet I still have the same involuntary response. I am sitting in Monday morning assembly at Wolverhampton grammar school, my school from 1974 to 1981. I am surrounded by the lower sixth. I am one of them. I am back.
The headmaster starts talking about "wisdom", but I cannot concentrate on his words, on the present. My mind wanders. Beside him is Mr Lambourne, the deputy headmaster, just as he was a decade and a half ago. Behind them is the war memorial. Above that the stained-glass window commemorating the arms of the founder: Sir Stephen Jenyns, 1512.
The headmaster finishes his address, reads out some football results and ponders whether the school does enough to reward good work. A portrait of Patrick Hutton, the headmaster in my day, hangs behind his right shoulder. What would he have made of this?
I collect my books and head off for my first lesson. I feel very nervous, chokingly apprehensive, yet I dimly recall this sensation, too: it's wanting to fit in; it is being a new boy, and it's not a sensation that, as a married 33-year-old with two young sons, I ever expected to experience again.
Why am I here? I am on an exercise in time travel, prompted by the revelation last year that a 32-year-old man in Glasgow called Brian Mackinnon had been successfully passing himself off as a 17-year-old sixth-former, under the alias of Brandon Lee, in order to retake his A-levels. At the time, some commentators wistfully recalled their own schooldays and, drunk with nostalgia for the careless days of irresponsible youth, speculated how enjoyable it would be to relive them.
Is it feasible to go back? Were A-levels really easier now than in olden times? What do teenagers really think about sex, drugs and violence? And would it really be pleasurable to revert to being 17 again? It is to answer these questions that I have put on a black suit and pullover again. Bernard Trafford, head of my old school, had the confidence to let me, a journalist, loose in his school. Now it was up to me to blend in.
There were some ground rules. First, the staff would know. Second, I would not lie to the pupils. I might be evasive over the truth; I might be economical with the facts; but I would not be directly deceptive. There would be no cover story. My status would be left vague a refugee from another A-level course? A probationer? A sad case?
Eyes closed and head down, I am in theology. It's me and 11 of them. I feel scrutinised and want to disappear. Mr Barlow walks in and I look up to see Will, 16, brandishing yesterday's Sunday Times. Rumbled so soon? To my relief, he just wants to bring the front-page story to the master's attention "Teach our children right from wrong, schools told". The strictures of the government's chief curriculum adviser that schools are failing to teach a moral code, only provoke laughter in the class. They regard this as philosophically naive. Mr Barlow, an ebullient Catholic ex-priest, takes a lead from the cutting and asks us to describe situations that raise questions of right and wrong. We move from cheating in exams ("you're only cheating yourself") to "having an affair if you are happily married". At the end of 40 minutes we are bandying about "descriptive" and "normative" ethics.
Will again produces his cutting when the Rev Dr Whale arrives for a second period of theology. Nearly all of the A-level courses are taught by two teachers. The walls of this, the main theology teaching room, are covered with newspaper and magazine articles dealing with such matters as Richard Dawkins's dismissal of God and anguished pieces on abortion and embryo experiments.
Dr Whale, an Anglican New Zealander with four degrees and a dubious taste in ties, asks Will what his parents think about moral education. Will says his mother derives her ethics from the Bible, his father from society, and obviously believes their thinking is not as rigorous as it ought to be. Dr Whale warns him that learning how to "do" moral philosophy is not the same thing as being taught morality.
Spinoza and egoism, Kant and deontology through to RM Hare's prescriptivism, I am bewildered and unprepared when Will confronts me after the lesson. "What are you doing?" I look blank. "Apart from theology?"
"Oh, I see. English, politics, history." I reel off my A-level subjects of old. Theology is new to me as a serious academic subject. In my day we had one period a week of RE, of which, I now realise, I remember absolutely nothing.
As I look around the common room in the newly opened sixth-form centre, I fret that I know neither names nor faces. It feels like embarking on an enormous 19th-century novel, crowded with names and characters that will take chapters to emerge fully. At least, I thought, I know the layout of the action, but as the day goes on I am not sure about that either.
Trailing over to assembly this morning, I was listening to a boy telling Mr Tyler, our form tutor, that he wanted to qualify as a football referee as I caught myself about to commit a faux pas in walking on the paved path. The rest of the sixth form splashed through the mud. When had I started caring about muddy shoes? I don't remember that rite of passage into adulthood. Mr Tyler, a relatively new teacher, suddenly pointed: "Oh, look, there's an old bell up there." Hanging forgotten above us was the school bell that a prefect used to toll to denote the changing lessons. Electric bells, centrally timed, are in every building now.
Yet the bell, and perhaps even the four new buildings (out of the nine that make up the school), are as nothing to an old boy compared to the presence of girls. Fifteen years ago, we, an all-male intake, were obsessed with them, often talking of little else between ourselves yet rarely actually encountering any. What difference have they made?
After lunch I register with my tutorial group, a mix of 12 upper and lower sixth-formers under Mr Tyler, an actor turned English teacher who cannot be that much older than I am. Jemma raises what the theology set would recognise as a moral dilemma. "Sir, what would you do if you were supposed to be playing in two concerts on the same night?" She is playing her clarinet in a school concert but also has the opportunity of performing with a professional ensemble on the same night. Mr Tyler makes it clear that her first commitment should be to the school, but Jemma is reluctant to miss the professional opportunity. She agrees to talk it over with the music master and leaves with her friend, Ruth.
I am amazed; the discussion strikes me as so mature and considered. Then Ruth hops down the stairs in front of me singing with a lolly in her mouth.
I feel easier. I wander about and nobody challenges me, or even stares. They are remarkably incurious and accepting. Still, I feel a pang as, in English, Mr Benfield takes us through the opening of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock: a newspaperman menaced then murdered by a 17-year-old boy. Worrying stuff, compounded by Mr Tyler kicking off his lesson on Equus, the play by Peter Shaffer, by asking how we know what people are. "If a guy walks on stage appropriately dressed and says, ‘I'm a psychiatrist,' you believe him. You've no reason not to."
True, but I long to tell him that if you're an imposter you need to get the actions right as well and I uncross my legs for the fifth time that day. Whereas girls of this age demurely fold their legs, boys never do. They plant their feet wide apart and slouch forward, or thrust their legs out and slouch back. I lean forward letting my hair, which I have grown, drape my lined eyes.
MY last lesson of the day is politics with Mr Saxon. There are eight of us, all boys. The volume is louder, conversation shouted across the room. "I had four whiskies last night," one boasts. Three others are arguing about the exact figures involved in some football transfer fee. When Mr Saxon arrives, we discuss why Britain remained outside the European Community in 1957 and I get my first homework, to read an academic essay then write an answer to the question "Why had Britain missed the European ferry by 1963?"
I shoulder through the mass around the lockers to get my coat. Walking through the school two months ago with the headmaster when this exercise was first mooted these crowds parted and held doors open. Now I am slammed against a wall.
What are these kids doing in my school? That's what I had thought this morning. Already I don't mind so much. I hoist my bag on to my shoulder and, as 15 years before, set off on the two-mile walk back to my mum's. The next day I feel in exile, a correspondent in a foreign country, the past; two masters who used to teach me emerge from the chemistry labs and for a moment it could be 1981 again. I drift along bewildered; I don't have a character yet, no social force. I'm not being cold-shouldered, but I'm not exactly being welcomed with open arms either. We used to treat new boys in the same way: ignore them. But I am beginning to recognise some faces and names now: Adam, Ian and Jemma from my English set. Adam had brought up the film Seven, a horrific thriller with intellectual pretensions connected with the seven deadly sins. He wanted to compare its religious subtext with that of Brighton Rock. He did not get very far, being shouted down by those who did not want him to give the plot of Seven away and others who wanted to know how he got in to an 18 certificate film.
For lunch, I eat a hot dog in the common room. To strike up a conversation would seem too pushy, just not done. Other sixth-formers sit alone reading through their notes or staring off into space. Two groups cluster around the pool tables. A blurred thumping of techno-dance bounces off the walls. Am I ostracised as a suspicious character? Is their behaviour unnaturally restrained? As if in answer, a scuffle breaks out between two boys, two hard shoves and an aggressive glaring standoff, a minor eruption in the status quo of the pack.
In history, I click straight back into the groove: Disraeli's second administration, 1874-80. We are despatched to read up on its legislation. The boys charge off. The only girl in the set, Maia, asks me what else I am studying.
The last lesson of the day "English, room 2", according to my timetable. This was my fifth-form room. Now the blackboard is on the opposite wall and the iron-framed sloping desks with their fold-down benches that we occupied in lines have given way to a horseshoe of tables. This was where we became so hysterical at the sentence, "He mounted the horse," in an American novel that the teacher accused us of being "obsessed with sex to the point of abnormality". And here I am with a mixed group just a few months older then we were then, all maturely discussing Equus, a play about repression that even uses the word "f".
At Wednesday's tutorial group where we meet to discuss any problems Mr Tyler introduces me again for those who missed me on Monday. "This is David, who's with us for a while."
"What are you doing?" Will asks.
"Trying it out, seeing what it's like," I say. He looks puzzled. "I'm finding theology tough," I add. He is more comfortable with that and tells me topics start off quite easily, but suddenly become very hard if you haven't mastered the early stages. The spotlight moves off me as everyone starts chattering about lessons.
Halfway through double theology, Mr Barlow decides to ask each of us in turn to describe a situation in which we feel we made a moral decision. He gives us the option of saying "pass". There's so much I could choose from: getting married? The religious upbringing of my children? Scraping an illegally parked car and driving off?
Mr Barlow starts clockwise around the table. Will says he could name loads of instances and on each occasion it was "intuitionism". Mr Barlow flaps a hand in my direction.
"Ah, Will, you'd better explain that for the new boy."
"It's all right, sir. We did it last lesson with Dr Whale."
Tim refers to having his cat put down to save it from further pain. Robert claims generally that he says to himself, "What would my parents think of me if I did that?"
"So what you think is moral comes from your parents?" Mr Barlow says. "But what if your parents were fascists? Racists? Would it be right to do what they said then?" Robert shakes his head. "So what other criteria do you use?"
"It's not just that, is it, sir? Public opinion, bits of the Bible, loads of things."
Oliver describes being in WH Smith and having the opportunity to nick the latest Terry Pratchett. Mr Barlow encourages a confession. "Ah, yes. Big overcoat pocket. Temptation. It's easily done."
"No, I didn't take it."
"Because you would have been caught," Mr Barlow tells him.
"No, I just thought it was wrong to take it from the shop."
I am wondering whether to say "pass", but that might seem suspicious. I remember something from my diary written when I really was in the sixth form.
"I was at a party and people were taking drugs, but I didn't take any. I don't think it was a moral decision though because I was scared."
"Scared of what?" says Mr Barlow, teasing it out of me. "The consequences of being caught?"
"No, of what the drugs might do to me." Hands go up. Jemma suggests my decision was based on self-interest. Adam wants to know what drugs were being taken as some are more dangerous than others. I tell them it was "speed".
"That can really f up your life," Jemma announces. The rest agree with her, though one or two appear to think that marijuana may not be all bad.
She has come to this conclusion without, as far as I can tell, having any direct experience of drugs. It took seeing one of my classmates sprinting maniacally up and down a suburban street shouting gibberish to realise the harm they can do. Today they all seem more informed, perhaps as a result of the bombardment they get from the anti-drugs campaigns. This is strange. It's a common belief in the media world that schools are rife with drug abuse. I may be looking in the wrong places, but I see no sign of it here.
WEDNESDAY afternoons are given over to games. School matches take place and those not involved can play football, rugby, hockey, netball, badminton, table tennis, snooker or exercise on the multi-gym. Or they can opt out completely and do "community service".
I am down for football, despite rugby having been my game. I pull on my kit, stamp into boots I haven't worn for 10 years and run out on to the sports field.
A distressingly cold east wind drives needles of drizzle into my bare legs. Forty-four of us line up. I had forgotten this misery. Is there any other level of sport where you have to stand around, kneecaps leaping with cold, hands tucked under your armpits, waiting? I look around and with alarm realise I am surrounded by mainly fifth-formers, the older boys having gone off with the 1st and 2nd XIs and XVs. I sidle over to a group of Indian boys who are as tall and, more importantly, as hairy as me.
Four boys pick teams, choosing their friends and the bigger boys. I am passed over and stuck with the dwindling band of ever smaller boys on the touchline. Some of them are only 15 and look even younger. Next to a 17- or 18-year-old I look quite plausible; next to a scrawny, pink-faced 15-year-old, I wonder...
"The leggy bastard, pick the leggy bastard." A captain is being urged to choose me.
"Who is it anyway?" one says.
"Brandon Lee," says another.
"Yeah, it's fing Brandon Lee." They all take it up. "Hey, Brandon!" Losing patience with it all, the master divides us, the remaining dross, between the teams, and I am shoved over to the name-calling Asian boys. I wonder whether the game is up.
"What're you doing, Brandon?" one asks. But they don't really want an answer, they are just making fun of me. I run away and talk to Adam.
"I saw Seven last night," I say and we agree that it is pretty good, though I say I worked out the ending. He asks me if I have seen Natural Born Killers, Oliver Stone's controversial celebration of a couple on a killing spree.
"It's amazing," he says. "You come out of it thinking murder's a good thing." I nod, congratulating myself that here is the evidence of the corrupting influence of Hollywood, until he adds, "It wears off after a few minutes though."
The game gets under way. I am hacked and shouldered off the ball. My team keep on shouting "Brandon" derisively, interspersed with "wker" and "sad". I am losing face in a big way, until, having more patience than the rest of them, I find myself in space on the right wing and receive a pass. I head off towards the other end. Flukily, I beat two players, lay the ball off to my left and receive a return pass. I let fly and the ball disappears into the top of the net.
I haven't felt this elated since the birth of my second son. Grinning hugely, I jog back up the pitch.
"Acknowledge the pass, man," shouts the centre half.
"Acknowledge the finishing," I say coolly.
Two minutes later, I score again. Now they call me Dave and when one reverts to "Brandon", another shouts him down: "Leave him alone. He's all right." We win 8-3.
We trail back to the changing-room, pretty chuffed with ourselves. Of the 44 playing football, only four have showers (only one of us has any soap and it's not me). I remember this. School has ended, we can go, who wants to hang around getting clean. But feeling a thick layer of mud drying on your legs and rubbing against the inside of your trousers, flaking off over your shoes as you walk along, is a peculiar sensation. I am not repeating it.
On the way home I reflect. Being with fifth-formers was reassuring somehow. This is school as I remember it. The sixth form seem so staid and sensible, adult and civilised if you prefer, compared to the way we were then. Rioting in the common room was frequent. To the accompaniment of Sham 69 or Stiff Little Fingers, we would smash up the chairs, break the snooker cues and hurl one another about. My diary reminds me that on May 2, 1980, some of us locked ourselves in and were subjected to a barrage of bangers through the window.
"Treat the pupils in a civilised manner, and they'll behave in a civilised manner," say some of today's staff. They could be right. The new sixth-form common room is more like a university student bar.
Mr Saxon comes into history rubbing his hands. The class know he is from Stockport and sidetrack him from Disraeli with an analysis of the shortcomings of his side, who lost to Everton last night, until he says: "When were Wolverhampton Wanderers founded? Anyone?"
"1877, it says on my ruler, sir."
"Bang, slap in the middle of the period we are talking about. Could there be any connection? Did Disraeli's reforms create the environment for football to develop?" The Factory Act of 1874, which gave workers Saturday afternoons off for the first time, suddenly seems quite interesting. There's a buzz even as we plough through the dry facts, the "sad information you need to pass exams", as Mr Saxon calls it.
There is a buzz in theology, too. Everyone wants to interrupt, to argue. "I'll take questions for clarification, or explanation, but not statements of opinion at the moment," says Mr Barlow. "There's a lot of information to get across."
"Chill out, sir," says Alastair, writing furiously and not looking up. At the end of the lesson he turns to me. "So what do you write then?"
"How do you mean?"
"You are a writer, aren't you? So what do you write?" What has prompted this? The fifth form? I don't have to answer as Dr Whale comes in for the second lesson.
At lunch, my mind wondering what Alastair suspects, I get put in my place by another sixth-former over the queue rules. Between 12.45 and 12.55, we can push ahead of junior years, after that we have to wait. Fair enough.
The choice has expanded beyond stew and mash, sponge pudding and custard, to include scampi, vegetarian omelettes, turkey burgers, tuna salad, yoghurts, coconut tarts ... I choose stew and mash, sponge and custard, and join Anthony from my English set and some others.
"Hey, hey," a fifth-form footballer of yesterday shouts at me as I head off for a class. "All right, mate?" I feel encouraged.
In the last two periods of the day, we have the sixth-form lecture. A university don is coming to talk about relations between Britain and the rest of Europe. Everyone studying history, politics, languages and economics is obliged to go, the rest can work in the library. A surprising number of others opt to attend. I recall how when these lectures were first set up by the headmaster 17 years ago we resented them fiercely. We mill about aimlessly before it starts. I lean on a radiator talking to Maia. What she is telling me is typical school talk, but libellous for me to repeat. After a while, she halts mid-sentence and puts a hand to her mouth. "Someone said you're a writer." I shrug. "You might tell the teachers." At which point Mr Lewis appears, jabbing a finger at me.
"I've been looking for you," he says accusingly. Instantly I feel guilty. Mr Lewis told me off a few times two decades ago and it has left its mark.
"Should I go to your office after the lecture?"
"No, no, just wanted to check you're okay, settling in." He walks off. Maia resumes her story.
"What are these lectures like?" I ask Tim.
"Quite good. We had one on animal experimentation that was really good." A vivisectionist came to justify his work and, according to Tim, the sixth form, initially against him, were persuaded of his case.
Today's lecture, however, is not good. He does not know at what level to pitch it and ends up talking down to us. We are bored. I stare at the floor and the peculiar pattern focuses and collapses the years.
We are subdued afterwards. I walk home. Some of them may have decided I must be some sort of writer, but that does not seem to affect their behaviour around me, perhaps because they don't think I am that much older than they are. "Early twenties, I'd say," I heard behind me yesterday. The important factor appears to be that I am obviously not a teacher. I just need to keep on doing exactly what they do, including the homework.
I am constantly amazed by how much some of them cram into their lives. Michael, the one who is training to be a football referee, was telling me the other day about the bingo and karaoke session he and another boy ran at an old people's home in community service. Now, over lunch, he lets on about two school shows, versions of The Generation Game and Play Your Cards Right, that he organised and compered. He has since made several professional appearances.
"Bloody hell," I manage through an astonished mouth of fish pie. "What were the shows for anyway?"
"To raise money for the school charities." Apparently he approached Bruce Forsyth to try to persuade him to make an appearance and for some tips. Brucie arranged for Michael to borrow the two sets of the outsize playing cards from the programme, which, Michael says with awe, "cost £8,000 a set".
Michael is also chairman of the student fundraising committee which is meeting that lunchtime. I tag along, despite him being gloomy about it. Two headstrong third-formers will be presenting their money-making scheme and he will have to keep order.
There are 11 of us, eight lower sixth-formers, a fifth-former and the two third years. In their squeaking, unbroken voices the two 13-year-olds outline their plans. I fling my feet on to the table in front of me, looking cool, hiding my amazement. They are organising a lottery. The draw, to be performed in a special assembly, will include a teacher playing Mystic Meg. The prizes are being donated by local businesses to whom they have written and include Wolves tickets, shirt and signed football, whisky tumblers from a department store, a television set and £60 from a school governor that they will use to buy some CDs. They are still "negotiating" with a travel firm over a holiday for two.
The third years have identified a charity based in Kenya as deserving of the money raised, although they think the charity needs to "buck themselves up a bit, and we've told them that".
They return to the prizes again unable to contain their excitement. I gaze around the room, room 41, my sixth-form history room. It is now used by the fourth form and signs of that "difficult age" are apparent. The drawing pins on the noticeboard have been arranged to read "WILLY, POO, SEX". I smirk.
The third years are now handing round copies of a proposal for a charity awareness week, "to raise the profile of charity in the school". Michael intervenes, takes out a diary, and starts pinning them down to dates. The meeting ends and as Michael and I return to the sixth-form centre, he shakes his head. "Those third years are a pair." I tell him I thought he handled them brilliantly. "He wants to run it," he says of one of the upstarts. He has the wary air of a weary Roman emperor faced by an unruly senate. "And he will run it, but not yet. He's too young."
I feel retrospectively ashamed. I took part in nothing like this. We raised money, but largely through events organised by the staff.
THIS is the end of my first week and a time for reflection. The school feels a more civilised place, less strange than I was expecting, more like life on the outside. A bigger change, and not immediately obvious, has been in the social make-up. For most of my time there it was a state grammar school; now it is private, the pupils come from a wide area of the West Midlands, rather than almost solely from Wolverhampton, and they are noticeably wealthier. No gawky boys in trousers flapping high above ankles, or leather-patched jackets. Certainly nobody subsisting on a packed lunch of dripping sandwiches and slices of black pudding.
The school's social pretensions seem embodied in the office of the caretaker. The first term after we went private, the headmaster announced in assembly that from now on the caretaker would be known as the "head porter". The school erupted into boos, jeers and laughter. I was proud of the school at that moment and told this story to the present headmaster, who coughed circumspectly. "Er, the head porter is now known as estate manager."
Well, he has a bigger establishment to cope with, almost twice as many buildings and more pupils, too. There were 65 in my lower sixth, 111 now; 45 teachers as opposed to 66; just over 600 boys in the school as a whole, compared to 737 boys and girls now. The increase is largely accounted for by the sixth form, from 142 to 212, reflecting how few pupils now leave at 16 as almost a third of my year did. If we stayed on it was usually because we intended to go to university. What do this lot want?
Monday morning, the weather is freezing and we huddle by the radiators discussing the weekend. Michael ran the line for a football match and collected for the blind. Tim had his first driving lesson. Jemma went swimming and running. Adam stayed in on Friday night and Sunday, but had a drink on Saturday.
The talk turns to the theology homework and I realise I have done mine the wrong way round. I have finished the essay for Dr Whale "Does the word ‘good' (in a moral sense) have any objective meaning?" that is not due in until Friday, but not the questions on the passage from A New Introduction to Moral Theology, nor the essay, "Every sane human being has a conscience. Therefore everyone has moral standards of some sort. Discuss." For Mr Barlow. All the others have done it.
"Er, I haven't quite finished it," I have to confess to him.
"On my desk by 9am tomorrow." The others look pityingly.
"If you are a writer," says Will in the common room at break, "why are you taking all the s from Barlow about homework?" I shrug.
Over lunch, Mr Johnson, who managed to make enough of chemistry stick in my head for an O-level 17 years ago, behaves as if I've never left. "Millsy! I saw your grandad on Friday night at a concert." I see Michael look puzzled. Mr Johnson asks after my mum, and my brothers, until he is waylaid by a fourth-former to sort out a swimming team.
"Are you an old boy then?" Michael asks.
"What makes you say that?" I say, somewhat desperately.
"Well, why choose to come here otherwise, I suppose."
So I confess to being an old boy, but leave the dates undefined.
I nip out to the nearest newsagent's to buy a pop music magazine to give me something to do in the common room. I would prefer to read a newspaper, but nobody else does.
I read my magazine sucking a lolly, and everyone ignores me. Then again, I am not the only one reading alone and unlike the first week I don't feel uncomfortable. A couple are kissing (which always stops if a teacher appears), several boys shove each other around. There is a disturbance by the entrance and a pane of glass gets broken.
It is the kissing couple who amaze me. Nobody else takes any notice. Similarly, before a politics lesson, I look out of the window to see the girls playing netball outside; the boys do not register them at all. Our level of sexual tension was such that if the only woman on the ground staff was out mowing the football pitches we would press against the windows watching her. If any boy was even seen with a girl outside school we would tease him about it for weeks. All that has gone.
The politics set is looking through a magazine of the paranormal and discussing the Loch Ness monster. One boy has prepared a presentation on what he thinks the key political events of the moment are and when Mr Saxon arrives, kicks off with Harriet Harman's decision to send her son to a selective grammar school. He gives us the key quotes from Brian Mawhinney and Clare Short. Hands shoot up.
"Yes, John?" says Mr Saxon.
"Blatant hypocrisy, sir," says John.
It is obvious that most of the class are Conservative, so Mr Saxon starts to make a case for Harman.
"I'll do it, I'll do it." Ravinder, the lone voice of Labour, waves his arm around and then launches into having to do the best for her children and the Tories having run down inner-city schools. He has to compete against hoots and laughter. James wades in with inner-city comprehensives failing because talented middle-class kids are taken away from them.
Mr Saxon calms us down occasionally with a few facts as cavalier arguments get out of hand. I try tomake a point about hypocritical Tories, but get shouted down. Their political views make the boys sharp in debate.
Afterwards I dash over to the theology room to hand my homework in to Mr Barlow. As I come back down the stairs I overhear a group of fifth-formers: "Him. He's a great footballer."
The next day I get my first academic evaluation: Dr Whale hands my essay back. I haven't been in a situation like this since I left Cambridge (2:1 in English, 1985). I ask him how adequate my piece was as an A-level essay. The fault he identifies is a lack of facts and "name-dropping". I should have marshalled and named the arguments for and against the proposition, then evaluated them to reach my own conclusion, instead of merely arguing for my own view, however coherent that might be. Mr Saxon makes similar comments on my politics homework.
I go to see Mr Saxon in his office about the A-level history syllabus and it is essentially the same as 15 years ago: two written exams on British and European history, plus a special project. The emphasis of the questions, however, has changed. Where I would have been asked to "give an outline of", or "account for", candidates now will be asked to "explain". They need to express their own view, but woe betide them if they fail to demonstrate that they also know all the facts, the "sad information".
I am not entirely convinced that my A-levels were all about regurgitating facts and, as the lessons seem much the same as they were 15 years ago, perhaps I am not romanticising. We were told that "give an account" meant write down all the facts and you might get a B, produce an argument with them and you'll get an A.
We start analysing the Sermon on the Mount. Ian talks about the shift in morality here from exterior actions to thought and intention. I feel comfortable enough to make a point rather than simply ask a question and start to compare it with classical Greek ideas about being "stained" with guilt. It is an error of judgment and I clam up halfway through as some look bewildered. Dr Whale covers my tracks and puts us back on course.
Now that the novelty of my situation is wearing off, I feel restricted. Absurd, I know, but it is frustrating. I have done so much more reading than they have had time for, their lifetime again in fact. The level of conversation is beginning to wear me down, too. I spend the entire lunch period talking about football. I thought I was as interested in football as the next man; obviously not as much as the next boy.
I feel accepted about the place now, a part of it. I am getting all the usual greetings. I have people to sit with at lunch and nothing feels awkward or stilted. Yet now the desirability of that daydream of recapturing youth starts to seem questionable. I am twisting the progression of my life out of shape, denying the existence of half of it. And it's oddly frustrating not being 33.
David Mills is editor of The Culture section of The Sunday Times.
Back to grammar schools? IT is 30 years since Labour took up the banner of comprehensive education and declared war on the grammar schools. Yet they remain at the centre of fierce debate.
Was their destruction a necessary stage in the progression towards equality of opportunity or a wanton act of vandalism against the one part of the education system with a claim to excellence?
Should all youngsters have the same teaching or is time for some form of segregated schooling to be reintroduced?
If you were at a grammar or secondary modern, was it socially divisive? How much do you recall with pleasure; and how much with regret? What did you gain from your education? Could it have been made better or worse by changes to the system?
Whether you were educated at public or grammar school, comprehensive or secondary modern, single-sex or coeducational, we would like to hear from you. Please write. A selection of letters will appear in follow-up articles in The Sunday Times.
Write to Barry Turner, Grammar Schools Debate, The Sunday Times, 1 Pennington Street, London E1 9XW
MANAGEMENT scientists have long searched for the elusive elixir that turns some people into outstanding achievers, while lesser mortals wallow in mediocrity.
Recruitment consultants are in pursuit of the elixir in trying to predict the success of candidates. But if they think this can best be discovered through skilled interviewing and testing, perhaps they should think again, for talent may be influenced by altogether different criteria. RA Ochse in her book Before the Gates of Excellence comprehensively surveyed more than 50 years of research relating to high achievers and creative people. These were some of her findings: High achievers tended to be the first born or only children.
They often suffered isolation or loneliness in childhood. She quotes Winston Churchill (an eldest son) on the subject: "Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong". A disproportionate number of high achievers lost a parent in childhood in one study, it was three times greater than the population as a whole.
They come from predominantly middle-class homes (Richard Branson), with more than likely one or both parents from the professions. There was no link between talent and family wealth money can't buy brains.
If all that depressed you and you are below average height, reach for a bottle because your height could also influence earnings potential and career success. The University of Pittsburgh found those who were 6'2" or taller got starting salaries 12% higher than smaller rivals. One survey suggests that about 90% of chief executives are of above-average height, while another found senior civil servants tend to be taller than junior counterparts. Perhaps most concerning was a study showing recruitment consultants selected the taller of two evenly matched candidates 72% of the time.
Of course, we all know talent has many dimensions but let us hope these sort of studies are not cause for ill-founded bias in appointments.
Cambridge University Press.
DERMOT DESMOND, the Irish financier who bought London City airport last year, has acquired a heavy hitter in the shape of Ray MacSharry, the former European Commissioner for agriculture, as chairman of the airport. Former Irish finance minister MacSharry is on the board of Jefferson Smurfit, Bank of Ireland, Green Property and Ryanair.
London City airport now serves 12 destinations and traffic is growing.
Bill Smith has become deputy chairman of BZW Asset Management. He was deputy chief executive of BZW's equities division.
Sir Patrick Sheehy, former BAT chairman, is to become chairman of Perpetual's New Income and Growth Investment Trust.
The Crest settlement system will bring big changes in personnel needs. But many bosses are not ready.
MANY human-resource specialists in leading financial institutions are in the dark about an important development that will demand fundamental changes in staffing and training. A briefing last week on the personnel implications of Crest, the new electronic settlement system for UK and Irish equities, showed that a lot of the information came as a total revelation to many top human-resource people in the audience, according to Brian Ludlow, one of the speakers.
Their ignorance must give cause for concern. Crest trials are about to start, and the transfer of shares from Talisman, the existing system, will begin in July. In April 1997, Crest will take over all settlements.
Says Ludlow: "It involves a lot of computer-systems design work to a tight timescale, leaving little room for mistakes and no allowance for anyone who is not ready in time."
The move to Crest will affect everyone in the securities industry, particularly brokers, custodians, registrars and fund managers. The system will involve different ways of working and, for many, learning new skills. Ludlow, senior manager with Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group, says the human-resource issues are short-term staffing problems during the changeover; a move to fewer, but better-qualified settlements staff; significant demands upon management; an increasing trend towards "outsourcing"; and a reduction in the number of retail brokers, in-house registrars and custody operations.
When Crest is operational, shareholders will still be entitled to paper certificates, and private clients of smaller, retail brokers will probably want them. Some brokers are delegating settlements; others may find the overheads of keeping a paper and an electronic register too expensive, and move out of the business.
Custodians, such as the banks, will need people to look after electronic records rather than to match certificates to stock transfers.
Many of the smaller fund managers who have always looked after their own certificates are now delegating custody. Registrars will have to operate to new, tight deadlines, recording transfers within two hours of trading, so there will be a far greater emphasis on management and control systems. Ludlow did a survey of the securities industry last August, when plans should have been well under way. He found that about 30% of the market had not thought about the human-resource implications. He says: "Such planning as they were doing was very piecemeal. The five essential elements business strategy, client relationships, information technology, human resourcing and procedures and control are all intertwined and yet people are thinking of them as separate exercises."
He adds: "The survey also revealed that 75% of retail brokers are dependent on external software houses for their systems: that's a potential risk factor, because if the systems are not delivered in time, they will have massive problems."
Mike Jones, technical-services director at the broker Capel Cure Myers, participated in setting up Crest, so it is no surprise that his firm planned properly from the beginning.
Over the past year, a team of 15 information-technology experts have designed and built Capel's system to run Crest at a cost of £1m. It is now being programmed and tested.
Says Jones: "We've trained our account managers to understand Crest, and settlement staff to operate the new system; and obviously our technical people have had their own learning curve in order to be able to design and programme the system. We've also been holding seminars, internally and around the country, for clients, especially solicitors and accountants." He adds: "We have been taking on temporary staff, and expect to take on more over the transition period, because we will be dealing with approximately 1,000 transfers of shares a day come the end of July."
Ludlow says that during the changeover "staff will have to run with two systems, if not three: Talisman with certificates, Crest without certificates and if you are a retail broker Crest with certificates. And the goalposts will move every two weeks, as more stocks go over. "Staffing during this migration period is an important human-resources issue and it will require planning. The settlement and operations people are thinking about these issues, but whether they have conveyed their thoughts to their human-resources people is another matter," says Ludlow.
Stephen Burke, managing director of the London firm Roc Recruitment, which organised the Crest briefing, says: "My impression is that the last people the City has thought of are the personnel people."
Burke says human-resources people should be deciding which staff to train, how many contract staff they will need and whether salaries will go up.
Paul Symons, of CresCo, which will run Crest, warns against the notion that it may suffer a similar fate to Taurus, the first planned electronic settlement system, which, after many delays, was abandoned. "Each human-resources department should be planning for Crest on the basis of certainty that we will go live on July 15, and that Talisman will not be operational after April 1997," he says.
Information on training is available from CresCo on 0171-459 3035, and the Securities Institute on 0171-626 3052.
LIKE the rest of the population, I was saddened to see that Britain's schoolchildren cannot read or write. It seems teenagers are leaving school these days well versed in the dangers of ecstasy, but with no real idea how to spell it.
Worryingly, these people are driving around in cars, peering at road signs and wondering why they always end up in Colchester when they were trying to get to Weston-super-Mare.
Presumably they cannot understand any of the information being provided by their dashboards either. "Why," they will wail as they splutter to a halt on the hard shoulder, "have I run out of petrol?" And how do they know whether they are doing 40mph or 90mph?
What concerns me most, though, is that these people are just as likely to be stopped in the street and counselled for their opinions as clever people like Stephen Fry or Jonathan Miller. And that is why I am always deeply suspicious of market research. I mean, if it were so good at predicting things, we would have a Welsh prime minister.
Nevertheless, I have been completely absorbed this past week by the Lex Report on Motoring, a huge tome that has been compiled by one of Britain's foremost car retail and leasing operations.
It says here that six out of ten people support the road protesters' cause, which is an extraordinary finding when you learn that 72% of drivers say traffic congestion is a "major" problem. So what we have here is a majority of people wanting fewer jams, and a majority of people saying there should be no new roads. Hmm.
How about this one? Sixty-one per cent of the British public say that cars are only a "little" more environmentally friendly than they were 10 years ago, and 9% the real dimwits say cars have become more damaging to the environment in the past decade.
Unbelievable. Ford has just announced that a new Fiesta produces the same amount of toxic gases as 20 Fiestas did a few years ago which, in my book, means there has been a 20-fold improvement.
And who had heard of recycling centres in 1986? Car firms are making huge efforts to shape up, but obviously the message is not getting across.
Ah, I see now why that should be so. The report says that only 19% of people trust car advertisements and that friends and acquaintances are considered a great deal more knowledgeable than journalists. I may as well give up now because Top Gear gets a special mention. Only 34% of private buyers trust us. Right: now it is personal.
So I shall switch my attention to the huge section on so-called road rage. This is the bit that has been picked up by radio and television but, again, I find myself wondering ...
In 1995, 1.8m people were forced to pull over or off the road, 800,000 were physically threatened, 500,000 had their cars deliberately rammed, 250,000 were attacked and another 250,000 had their cars damaged. Add the figures up and you will find 3.6m cases of people being abused, threatened or hit on roads last year ... which is not enough.
You see, I have a great deal of sympathy with people who become angry and frustrated while in their car, because losing your temper is part of the human psyche, as natural as smiling or having sex.
Wetties ask why we do not lose our rag quite so readily while walking down the pavement, but that is a stupid question. If someone inadvertently brushes past you in a shop doorway, it's no big deal.
If, however, by not paying attention, their car brushes against yours, you will be without wheels for a week or so, there will be a fight with the insurance company and you will almost certainly end up poorer as a result.
And that's if you are lucky. If you are on foot, even the biggest Mickey Skinner-type impact will not cause much damage, but on the road it is different. You could wind up dead or paralysed, and that is certainly a good enough reason to get out of your car and smash the other guy's teeth in.
A few years ago I was desperately late for a wedding and, while overtaking a Volvo, found another car coming the other way. I dived back to my side of the road and very nearly caused a huge shunt. At the next set of lights, a huge Irish person heaved himself out of the Volvo and spent a couple of minutes trying to throttle me. That was road rage.
But it was my fault. I deserved it. I nearly killed the poor bloke and I consider myself rather fortunate to have escaped from the encounter with mild bruising. I deserved more. Frankly, if more people behaved as responsibly as that large Irishman, the standard of driving would improve.
When I see that there have been 3.6m examples of road rage in the last year, I say to myself that there must have been 3.6m examples of bad, inattentive or selfish driving.
Germany, home of the cold and calculating autobahn eater, has come up with four liberated sports cars. Paul Horrell looks them over.
STAND BACK. Here come the Germans, wearing big fat smiles on their faces. Each of the upmarket Bundesbrands is poised to release an open-top sports car, and the accent is firmly on the simple thrills of driving, rather than the po-faced technical sophistication of their saloons. There will be no navigation computers, automatic parking aids or electric seats here. And in consequence, we are promised that the prices will not be too wilting. The fun starts this autumn.
First to the party is BMW with the Z3 roadster the one James Bond drove. This is the cheapest of the German quartet; when the first cars come to Britain in September (about 2,500 orders have already been taken) the ticket should read less than £20,000. It is also the most straightforward of the group, with a 1.9-litre engine driving the rear wheels. The body is a shark-like array of curves in traditional roadster style, and it is strictly a two-seater, with a simple non-electric folding hood.
The Z3 is built in BMW's new American factory, and first tests on US roads turned up a car without the anaesthetic refinement of a high-tech BMW saloon. Instead, you get the raw sensations of motion. It is huge fun on twisty back-roads, if a little short on rip-snorting engine power some hot hatchbacks are quicker.
The Mercedes SLK will be shown in its completed version in April, and British dealers will have it at the tail-end of the year. The SLK is pricier and more sophisticated than the BMW £28,000-£31,000 is likely, But it is still a lot more of a lightweight sportster than Merc's own SL series of grand tourers, which continue in production. The SLK's party piece is definitely its roof. This is a full hard-top coupe, but the push of a button sees the roof gymnastically fold itself away into a compartment beneath the boot lid.
The SLK's second technical highlight is the optional supercharger for its 2.3-litre engine, which pushes power up to 193bhp. The SLK is another front-engined, rear-wheel-drive car in the traditional roadster idiom.
Meanwhile, the Porsche Boxster will echo race-car practice in having a mid-mounted engine. This is the same pure-bred thinking that led to the MGF, but on a more powerful, more expensive stratum: £30,000-plus. Of all this quartet, there is little doubt it will be the most exhilarating to drive, and the one that will generate most newsprint, since it is Porsche's first all-new car since the 924 of 18 years ago. The Boxster was pre-figured by a delicious little concept car a couple of years back, and the real thing will have very similar lines, though it will be longer in the nose, the better to absorb crash impact.
The name Boxster derives from Speedster an old badge for the most spartan and uncompromising of Porsches and boxer, a common name for its horizontally opposed engine layout. It will be an all-new six-cylinder engine, of 2.5-litres and about 200bhp at first, with a 3.0-litre following later.
Audi first showed the ultra-cool TT as a one-off to gauge public reaction to its shape, a tastily radical combination of modern details with Bauhaus-era proportions. It went down well enough for the firm to announce that the TT will be manufactured from 1998 onwards. TT coupe and TTs roadster will both cost £20,000-plus.
The TT uses a 1.8-litre turbocharged engine with five valves per cylinder, the fine power unit from the A4 saloon. For the TTs convertible, Audi upped the ante by using a prototype version of the same engine with 210bhp instead of 150bhp, making it a seriously quick car, especially as weight is kept down by using aluminium for the doors, bonnet, boot and front wings. There is four-wheel drive to keep all this power shipshape in slippery conditions.
Inside, it has a stylish dashboard with glinting accents of brushed aluminium. The TT has a pair of tiny rear seats, but that space is taken up by the folded roof in the TTs. Both cars are much smaller than the Audi Coupe (now out of production) and Cabriolet.
Car makers, using a variety of novel approaches, are making advances on the battery-vehicle front. Is the revolution nigh.
THE electric car is coming or is it? The messages from the car manufacturers, the traffic management specialists and the guardians of our environment are confusing.
In Coventry, a Peugeot 106 Electrique made silent progress down the aisle of Coventry Cathedral, representing the next century at a service celebrating the first 100 years of the motor industry.
In America, the mighty General Motors announced it would put its first modern electric vehicles on sale this autumn, just as California succumbed to pressure from car makers and postponed its 1998 law requiring 2% of new vehicles to be electrically powered.
Last week in Paris, Renault engineers extolled the virtues of hybrid power combining electric and petrol or diesel engine and displayed Next, a prototype for a practical five-seater that is cleaner, quieter and more economical than any of today's family cars.
Further up the road, we are promised electric and hybrid versions of the tiny Smart car from Swatch and Mercedes-Benz, and Mercedes's own baby A-class. And, a decade after the C5 debacle, Sir Clive Sinclair is looking for somewhere to build his new electric urban vehicle.
These developments have been prompted by California's call for a move towards "zero emissions" vehicles to improve the air quality in areas like Los Angeles that have photochemical smog, and plans for closing the centres of some European cities to noisy, polluting cars.
The launch of General Motors's EV1 in warm and smog-prone areas of California and Arizona is a political move to show that it is, in company with other American manufacturers, still working on the development of a viable electric vehicle. EV1 is the most advanced pure electric car to date: purpose-built in aluminium, it is capable of 0-60mph in nine seconds. But at £23,000 a time, with only a 70-mile range between battery charges, GM does not expect to sell many.
Last November, after a two-year experiment in the town of La Rochelle, Peugeot offered its electric 106 for sale in France at the same price as a petrol version but batteries are not included, as they have to be leased separately. Some 250 have been sold so far. Renault also has an electric Clio in France, and Paris is providing encouragement with free parking for electrics and kerbside charging points.
Opponents of electric vehicles point out that they are inefficient and simply transfer the pollution from car exhausts to the power station. A wholesale shift to electric vehicles would require a greater output from power stations, but the real problem remains batteries.
Intensive research in a US government-inspired project has so far failed to produce an affordable lightweight battery that can store more than a tiny fraction of the energy contained in a gallon of petrol. All the electric vehicles currently available use banks of tried-and-trusted lead-acid batteries, much the same as those used in today's cars to drive starter motors and ancillaries.
A battery breakthrough may come, but in the meantime the answer could be hybrid. Most of the motor industry's more thoughtful concept cars, intended to demonstrate future technology, include a combustion engine in conjunction with electric drive. The petrol, diesel or gas turbine engine can be arranged to charge the batteries to extend the electric range, or drive the car directly, or both.
The Renault Next has a 750cc petrol engine driving the front and electric motors driving the rear wheels. In America, Chrysler proposes Intrepid ESX as a four-door saloon for the millennium with a 1.8 litre diesel engine at the back providing the current for electric motors concealed within the rear wheels. Ford's wild-looking Synergy 2010 looks even further ahead and anticipates using a flywheel to store energy rather than a battery.
Your car for early in the next century might be electric, but will be suitable only for short journeys. The all-purpose vehicle could have a hybrid power unit. That will not be cheap as the hybrid has, in effect, two engines and everything that goes with them. Chrysler's engineering chief Francois Castaing points to the dilemma when he says that the hybrid is nearly ready for production, but "the cost is further away than the technology".
Cars are safer but are they using less fuel?
In 1987 cars were doing 37.5mpg, but by 1993 they were averaging 36.4mph. Still, six new models the Audi A6 2.5 140bhp TDi, Citroen AX 1.4DD, Honda Civic 1.5i VTEC-E, Vauxhall Astra 1.6i E-Drive, Toyota Carina E 1.6i and VW Golf Ecomatic 1.9 D show that makers have not totally forgotten about fuel economy.
Have they cooked the consumption figures?
Funny you should ask that. From January 1 this year, new cars must have their fuel consumption claims tested under the latest EC rules: urban (cold start, town conditions), extra urban (warm start, out of town) and combined (urban followed by extra urban). The results are an average 10% lower than the old figures.
How does the Audi A6 diesel do it?
By spraying fuel directly into each cylinder and using a six-speed gearbox for long-legged cruising. Under the old tests, the A6 returns 64.2mpg at 56mph and a touring average (half urban consumption and a quarter 56mph/75mph) of 46.5mpg.
... the Citroen AX diesel?
Tap a body panel and you will hear how. It is not the most solidly constructed car but its light weight, tiny 1.4-litre diesel engine, clever low-rolling-resistance Michelin MXN tyres and high final drive ratio mean it achieves 85.6mpg at 56mph and a touring average of 67.7mpg.
...Honda Civic VTEC-E?
During gentle driving a control system partially closes an inlet valve feeding air to each cylinder. This forces the remaining air through the other, fully open valve at higher speed and with greater turbulence, ideal conditions for burning a weak (more air than fuel) mixture. The result is 58.6mpg at 56mph and a touring average of 45.7mpg.
... Toyota Carina 1.6E?
The weak-mixture trick again, though achieved with a "swirl control valve" in each cylinder. The Carina E returns 66.6mpg at 56mph and a touring average of 45.3mpg.
... Vauxhall Astra 1.6 E-Drive?
GM falls back on clever engine management and a high 10:1 compression ratio. The result is 60.1mpg at 56mph and an average touring consumption of 43.2mpg.
... VW Golf Ecomatic?
Not for the coronarily challenged. The 1.9 litre diesel engine switches off if you lift your foot from the accelerator pedal or idle in stationary traffic. Press the pedal again and it (should) fire up. During an urban journey the engine cuts out for 60% of the time, giving a return on the urban cycle of 61.4mpg. The touring figure is 55mpg.
And if I cannot afford them?
Change the way you drive. The AA says that during the first six miles a car started from cold uses up to 54% more fuel. Avoid queues: every five minutes in a jam uses a mile's worth of fuel. Drive smoothly: a "racing start" burns 60% more fuel. Get into top gear: labouring in lower gears uses 50% more fuel. Have your car serviced on the dot and push the choke in quickly: full choke uses twice as much fuel.
THE Windows 95 version of Britain's leading home desktop publishing (DTP) package has been temporarily withdrawn from sale after Microsoft threatened the publisher with legal action for using an image of blue skies on the packaging.
Serif, which has about 60% of the Windows DTP market with PagePlus, says it cannot afford to fight the action from the software giant. The new version of PagePlus was developed by Serif using Microsoft's Windows 95 developers program. The company said it was supplied with Windows logos and the blue-sky image. But Microsoft alleged that Serif copied its packaging. A repackaged PagePlus should be on sale in three weeks.
SCIENTISTS are a step nearer to understanding the enigma of superconductivity the state when electricity flows freely through a material without meeting any resistance. Researchers at IBM and the State University of New York have discovered a new form of behaviour in electrons known as "d-wave pairing". This is when electrons join up and spin, permitting an electric current to pass through a material without meeting any resistance.
The discovery should help the development of products that do not provide resistance to electricity at room temperature, and so require virtually no power to operate.
http://www.worldserver.pipex.com/affectionet/
IF YOU tend to forget St Valentine's day, log on to this site and take your pick from lingerie, holiday, wine, flowers, perfume and confectionery gifts. Each site is set up by retailers such as Sainsbury and Interflora and most allow orders to be sent online. Another advantage is that one gets a picture of gift options so the right present can be clicked on and dispatched.
http://www.thecase.com/
AMATEUR SLEUTHS get their chance to pit their wits against each other and come up with solutions to each week's murder mystery. Click on to the site and you are presented with details of the case and three police and forensic reports that act as clues. Once you have looked at the evidence, it is time to e-mail the answers to the host, who dishes out T-shirts to 10 winners.
VISA and Mastercard have pooled research into secure online transactions and are to launch Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) software in March. Each decided a global standard would be best. SET will need credit-card holders and online shops to be vetted by Visa or Mastercard.
The software will ensure both sides of a transaction are who they claim to be. SET will feature in browser upgrades from Netscape and Microsoft, both of which helped to develop the standard, alongside IBM.
http://www.bafta.org/
HERE's a chance to vote for your favourite films and TV shows. This site by Bafta is rather dull but it allows you to browse comprehensive lists of candidates before typing in your favourite film, television show and animal and clicking the Vote Now button. You could win one of 10 pairs of tickets to attend the awards event on April 21.
APPLE has abandoned talks with Sun Microsystems on an agreed takeover and is expected to announce the resignation of its chief executive Michael Spindler this weekend. The ailing PC pioneer is reported to be bringing in Gilbert Amelio of National Semiconductor in an attempt to bring it back into profit.
The Sun deal failed because the two sides disagreed over price. Apple is expected to abandon hopes of a sale or merger and concentrate on recovery through its own resources. The company recently reported a $69m(£46m) loss and warned of more bad figures to come because of falling margins and poor sales.
ZENECA, the British biochemicals company, last week won approval from America's Food and Drug Administration for a new drug that helps combat breast cancer in post-menopausal women. Arimidex was tested on 750 patients in FDA trials and showed that, by lowering oestrogen levels, it slowed the growth of tumours. The drug will now be used to aid conventional therapies.
PROFILE. Electronic Arts has spent $10m to create a computer game CD-Rom with real movie actors. Sean Hargrave spoke to the man behind the venture.
DAVID GARDNER was just 21 when he was asked to head the European office of Electronic Arts, now one of the world's most successful computer-games companies.
Nine years on, he is now preparing to launch the world's most expensive CD-Rom game, Wing Commander IV, which cost $10m to produce more than the budget of the film Four Weddings and A Funeral. The game marks the coming together of Hollywood and the computer-games industry that Trip Hawkins, the founder of Electronic Arts, had predicted when he formed the American company in 1982.
Electronic Arts' release of Wing Commander IV, in two weeks, marks the first time a games company has shot a feature film with real Hollywood stages, 500 extras and famous lead actors, such as Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker in Star Wars) and Malcolm McDowell (of Clockwork Orange and Caligula fame).
Filming has also recently been completed at Pinewood Studios for a similar, $5m science-fiction game, The Darkening, which Electronic Arts is due to release in the summer.
If anybody had suggested five years ago that such huge budgets would be ploughed into the games market, they would have been considered mad, but Gardner is quick to point out that computer gaming reinvents itself every two or three years as technology changes the hardware and raises consumer expectations.
Gardner says: "The problem people were having with getting an insight into the industry a few years ago was that they were just looking at Nintendo and Sega, which were having real difficulties.
"Now that they have 32-bit consoles, that's all changed, as it will again when 64-bit processing becomes the top standard. This industry is all about constant evolution."
The latest technological breakthrough in games has been the CD-Rom, which now accounts for a little over half of all business at Electronics Arts and its rivals. Gardner believes this growth will continue and lead computer games on to the Internet.
"I have a vision that eventually we will have parts of an Electronic Arts web site dedicated to different games," he says. "These will be a little like clicking into a TV channel, such as Eurosport. You will have games with hundreds of players that are going on continuously, giving people the option to join in.
Additional software is due to be added to existing titles so they can be played across the World Wide Web by the end of the summer. Well-known Electronic Arts sports titles, such as Fifa‘96, Britain's top seller, will be the first to be upgraded.
Games launched after the summer that would benefit from more than one player will be playable on the Internet.
Gardner is convinced that the PC boom, which has enabled Electronic Arts to spend Hollywood budgets on its latest releases, will not be superseded by the cheap Net terminals due for launch this year.
"I think they will be information gatherers which people will use as a kind of Teletext," he says. "I'm sure they will still have a port for a CD-Rom drive to be added because the Internet is far too slow to download and play a game."
The future for consoles over the next 18 months to two years will be dominated by the 32-bit Sony PlayStation, Gardner believes, because sales have been so high. By the Christmas of 1997, however, he sees the whole industry re-evolving as most manufacturers launch 64-bit processors.
One such platform could be the M2 upgrade to the current 3DO players developed by Hawkins. He left Electronic Arts some time ago, so he was no longer associated with the company he founded, making it more appealing for other developers to write 3DO games.
It was Hawkins who came across Gardner in 1982 and told the 16-year-old schoolboy: "I want to hire you".
The software visionary who believed Hollywood and Silicon Valley would one day merge, had just left Apple to form Electronic Arts. He was greatly impressed with Gardner's depth of knowledge, gleaned from programming computers from the age of 12 on an Apple II bought from paper-round money.
Gardner joined the company in 1983 at the age of 17, the 15th employee of a firm that now employs 1,500.
After four years he was sent to Britain, at the age of 21, to build a European company that was last week announced, by Gallup, to be Britain's top selling computer-games firm of 1995 a year in which Electronic Arts made worldwide profits of $500m.
The other significant development for Electronic Arts has been a deal signed last year with the military publisher Jane's to create flight-simulation games that accurately represent the experience of flying specific warplanes and helicopters. The first title, Apache Helicopter is due out this summer, and scores more games are expected over the five years covered by the agreement between the two companies.
SOUNDING OFF. Business is doomed if executives continue to believe PCs can turn their lazy thoughts into crisp communication.
A BUSINESSMAN I know got an internal memo recently that began with the words: "I am starting to get worried about our defecate."
This sort of stuff tends to give one pause first thing in the morning, so it took him a while to work it all out. What the writer really meant to say was: "I am starting to get worried about our deficit." But something intervened, and it was that killer combination of Spellchecker from Hell and executive sloth.
Before keyboards replaced typewriters, business letter writing was simple. You called in a secretary; she let's be real here, it always was a she took down your gems of wisdom in shorthand. Then, after some mysterious clacking down the hall, a pristine piece of paper arrived on your desk, with all the right margins, perfect punctuation and not so much as a smear of Tippex on a single character.
Now secretaries are a luxury and typists extinct. Personal computers have taken their place.
PCs are extremely stupid machines, their stupidity only outstripped by that of people who think PCs are clever. If amoebas ever start to use PCs, the first thing they will do is start spell-checking. It is an ameobic kind of thing. You create some words you know are spelled correctly. Then you match every word in a document against that list, flag any you do not recognise and suggest the dumbo at the keyboard use the closest equivalent.
What amoebas do not understand, and humans really should, is context. If you think about it from the contextual angle, when someone writes "defecit" in an internal memo it is probable they mean "deficit" not "defecate". But up pops the spellchecker, which believes it has found something wrong and has an idea on how to correct it ... you're pushed for time, and the OK button is flashing. Oh well...
Spell-checkers are half-witted. Type the word "Internet" in Word6 and it will ask if you really mean "interment", which probably says a lot about why Microsoft lost its corporate way last year when the rest of the world noticed something called the World Wide Web.
So-called grammar checkers, on the other hand, are devoid of wit altogether. Word's will pick you up for using the passive voice and "gender-specific" phrases such as "barman" then throw in six separate "readability" statistics judging your work at the end. Shame it does not know that the plural of the word "aircraft" is not "aircrafts".
Modern software makes that dread promise that it will "help you communicate more effectively". This is mindless drivel aimed at Middle American dorks who have just worked their way through the Bluffer's Guide to Corporate BusinessSpeak.
Most people communicate ineffectively not through any lack of software on their PCs but because they either have nothing worthwhile to say or, if they do, are devoid of the skills to express it.
If that is the case, nothing you can find inside an office PC will help. You are just going to have to sit down, in a classroom or with a book, and learn.
Now isn't that good news?
SOME of the inventions from the innovation centre at the University of Southampton are nearly ready for commercial production, but others need more development.
E-larm
THIS screeching device, developed in association with Professor Chris Rice, is embedded in a computer chip and is designed to make it impossible for thieves to carry away car radios or valuable computers.
If an E-larmed device is tampered with, not only is the noise emanating from the small alarm frighteningly loud, but it will continue indefinitely in 10-20 second bursts at random intervals. Any time the thief tries to use the radio or computer the alarm sounds.
Since the E-larm is embedded in a chip it can be used as part of a PC's circuit board. Plans are afoot to extend the alarm system into software so that future computer operating systems could incorporate a physically alarmed "software safe" for valuable files and documents. The E-larm could also sound if it detected illegal copying of software.
Johnson and Rice hope to make E-larm into an industry standard and are negotiating with several companies to license the technology.
Blazerays
THIS is a novel board gaming system developed in partnership with Dr Robert Eason, senior lecturer in optoelectronics, which passes infrared and fibre-optic transmitted light around squares on a board.
Using electronic devices called Kleva Counters and a computer chip that generates random numbers, the result is a games platform that, with customised overlays, could be used for conventional boardgames, such as Cluedo, but making each square on the board change properties at random. So, if you landed on "Go To Jail" on one round, next time the same square could be "Go".
Johnson has devised and patented a series of games using the random versatility of the system and is on the verge of securing licences with several toy manufacturers.
The Howse Blind
THIS was developed with Dr Philip Howse, a biologist at Southampton who has devoted more than 10 years of research into trying to trap insects without using traditional insecticides. The system employs carbon-dioxide and other chemicals to attract insects to a window blind coated with a powder that disables their ability to cling to any surface. The result is that hapless flies, mosquitoes and wasps are trapped as they fall onto a sticky tray beneath, which conceals the bodies from view.
The Willridge
THIS machine, developed with help from Dr Ian Williamson, measures residual lung capacity to determine signs of illness, without using x-rays, and establishes the level of fitness in any individual. It could be used in gyms.
Heyetech
STILL in the concept phase, this device will display video images to partially blind people through a headset.
For more details phone 01481 726034 or fax 01481 726029.
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT. An inventor has struck a deal to make commercial products out of research at Southampton.
AN ECCENTRIC and successful inventor is transforming the way one of Britain's universities turns academic research into profitable businesses.
Willie Johnson, the British inventor who, in 1994, sold a revolutionary clear-screen technology called Microsharp to the American company Nashua for several million dollars, is now pumping tens of thousands of pounds into research at the University of Southampton, one of England's leading research institutions.
Johnson's previous inventions include Micropacer, a computer in a training shoe for athletes which measures time, distance and calories burnt; the Holoclock, a portable hologram viewer combined with a clock; and the Gogglevox, a headset TV. But since his successful sale of Microsharp, Johnson has until now been keeping a low profile, though he has carried on inventing. From his hilltop house overlooking St Peter Port in Guernsey, he had been wrestling with a dilemma. How could he best use his time to put something back into society? Now, after the publicity following the rags-to-riches story of his 10-year battle to get Microsharp accepted (the story was carried in The Sunday Times on July 31, 1994), Johnson has surfaced with a new mission.
It is simple to contribute, in his own small way, to breaking down the barriers of mistrust and prejudice that still exist between much of British industry and academia. The goal, believes Johnson, is to get brilliant academics to bring great products to market.
But how? Johnson may be charming and eccentric but he has no academic qualifications whatsoever. Any approach to the lofty powers in the British university establishment with some of his more bizarre ideas for marketing products would, he believes, be greeted with doubt or outright disbelief.
But after months of soul-searching and grappling with countless possibilities and ideas, fate sailed his way.
"It all began when I was peering through my telescope at the boats sailing towards the Guernsey coast," he recalls. "In the distance I saw a large blue yacht flying the Royal Yacht Squadron ensign. I was convinced I knew that boat and I rushed down to the harbour, waving madly to catch the attention of those on board."
Luckily, on the boat was Lady Cooksey, an old friend of Johnson's, who noticed his quayside antics. She is a highly respected fundraiser as well as a patron of innovation.
Only one year earlier, Cooksey had begun fundraising for the University of Southampton. She was negotiating £275,000 worth of sponsorship with the Gatsby Charitable Trust (established by David Sainsbury) to set up a new company called Southampton Innovations to capitalise on the university's research.
Cooksey had read, with great interest, The Sunday Times article that had appeared the month before describing Johnson's struggle to get Microsharp accepted. Seeing him again set her mind ticking.
"Here was someone who had always been a self-confessed misfit, but by his own self-taught efforts and inventive flair had nevertheless enjoyed considerable success," she says. "Suddenly I could envisage a possible and unusual way forward. I wondered if the eccentric world of the inventor could mix with the serious world of academia."
Within two months, following their chance meeting on the boat, Cooksey decided to put her ideas to the test. She persuaded Johnson to come over to Southampton and help her set up an experimental innovation centre on the campus. Its aim would be to inject shockwaves of fresh air into the conventional academic world in which so much university-driven innovation carries on.
Cooksey summarises the attitudes she found at the university when the Johnson project started last May. "Academics are, in general, motivated by peer review and getting their research published in esoteric journals," she says. "Compared with their contemporaries in industry, they are not well paid so, if they do invent something that is a saleable proposition, they are not inclined to take risks and cannot afford the patenting and prototype process which can cost between £30,000 and £50,000."
The final component was to find an academic patron to give credence to the vision. With Cooksey's help, Johnson was ushered in to meet the new vice-chancellor, Howard Newby, who took the helm at Southampton in October 1994, and Professor Chris Rice, dean of the faculty of engineering and applied science.
"I decided when I met Willie to give him and Lady Cooksey my full support," says Newby. "In a sense Willie is my ‘change agent'. I have made it clear to all the academics here that this is a top priority project."
After meeting Johnson for the first time in Southampton, Newby flew to Guernsey and, over one of Johnson's particularly fine bottles of claret, a 1970 Chateau Haut Brion, a deal was struck.
Johnson, through his company Durand, would be free to identify new technologies from academic research within the university that he believed could be made into commercial successes.
In return, Johnson would fund the patenting and development costs of those projects. In the event of hitting a commercial jackpot, Johnson would get his investment back in full, while any additional proceeds would be split with the university.
So far, in only six months, Johnson has created eight potential projects and has invested nearly £150,000. Two ideas E-larm, an anti-theft computer chip alarm, and Blazerays, a fibre-optic children's games system are now the subject of negotiations with leading manufacturers.
Johnson believes they will lead to multi-million pound deals and new consumer products that could reach the shops by the end of next year.
"Over the past six months I have met and worked with a number of top scientists from the university," says Johnson. "Sometimes I lob them ideas of my own and they go away and research them. Other times it is their ideas that may have lain dormant for many years, and I can suggest a new twist or a different approach that may make them more marketable. The result is a hive of innovation which we hope will soon be self-financing."
But how does an academic community such as that at Southampton university take to a character like Johnson, who, without a qualification to his name, sweeps into their laboratories, chequebook open, telling them how to turn their prize research projects into marketable products?
Dr Robert Eason, senior lecturer in optoelectronics, explains: "Certainly I was sceptical when I first met Willie. Many of us in the university have seen mad inventors before, some totally batty, some half batty. But The Sunday Times article showed me he had a track record and the deal with Nashua was impressive."
Why, then, wasn't an invention like Microsharp the product of university research?
Eason says: "To do this it often takes total belief in a product and the ability to pursue it single-mindedly for 10 years. That just does not happen in a university environment."
Eason also believes current incentives for researchers and academics to realise their ideas into products are inadequate.
"What I am judged on and what counts towards my career is almost totally to do with the number of academic papers I get published. It is nothing to do with patenting or making products from research," he says. For the enlightened like Eason, who see a myopia in British academic culture, the combination of Johnson and Cooksey is working wonders.
Blazerays, which Eason has developed with Johnson, is an interactive children's games system that uses infrared and fibre-optic light to create an almost limitless platform for games that are never the same twice over (see story below). Some of the world's biggest toy makers hope to turn it into the next cult.
Other innovations include the fly-trap based on a window blind that disables an insect's ability to adhere to its surface, catching it in a trap as it falls. Another embryo invention comprises a breathing machine that measures a person's fitness simply by them blowing into a tube. Johnson is also putting together a team to develop a headset to help the visually impaired to see better.
To complement the Johnson initiative, vice-chancellor Newby has in the past month formally sanctioned the new innovations company, Southampton Innovations, to help the university capitalise on its many ingenious projects.
And, given his enthusiasm, energy and financial support for the process of innovation at one of Britain's top universities, maybe we will soon see the unlikely figure of Johnson sitting alongside the academic greats at their high table.
EXHIBITIONS. RAZORS that last for ever and a childproof fan with cloth blades are the headline exhibits at the Royal College of Art centenary celebrations, which begin on Wednesday.
The everlasting razor has been designed by a former student of the academy, horrified by the environmental impact of the three billion blades the world's shavers throw away every year.
Ross Lovegrove has used a blade made from zirconia ceramic which, he estimates, should last 15 times longer than steel because of its ability to keep a sharp edge.
His team is also working on a cheap diamond-tipped sharpening tool to be packaged with the razor, so it could be made to last a lifetime.
Lovegrove has no price estimate for a sharpener, but he reckons the ceramic razor should cost no more than £2, as the plastic handle can be recycled.
Another former student, Paul Priestman, has designed a fan that needs no grill because its fabric blades cannot hurt prying fingers. His multi-coloured fan cuts down on injuries and also saves electricity the light fabric uses little power. It can also blow as much air as a conventional fan, but over a larger area.
The exhibition will feature more than 600 designs. More details from 0171-584 5020
RESEARCH. EVERYDAY ITEMS around the home will soon be thinking for themselves, according to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Intelligent tables and computer shoes were the highlights of MIT's Things that Think project, shown in Boston last week.
The project aims to give intelligence to everyday objects such as furniture and clothing. Many of the ideas came from research into the body's magnetic forces and how they can be used to track our movements and even transfer data.
By using their body's magnetic forces, researchers were able to transfer data between computers mounted on their shoes simply by shaking hands.
Neil Gershenfield, director of the physics and media group at MIT, said that, at present, technology such as laptops, pagers and portable phones is "intrusive". "We want to migrate the computers into our environment, and even our clothing," he said.
One of the more unusual projects is the shoe computer. Gershenfield explained: "This will allow us to receive the news through our carpet or a doorknob in the morning. It will then be sent to our glasses for reading."
The power for the shoe computer is created by body movement, and MIT is working with Nike, the training-shoe maker, to make the technology practical (at present the unit is so large it has to be strapped to the outside of your shoe).
MIT has also found ways of incorporating software into clothes. Gershenfield envisages shirts that will act as electronic door keys, telling buildings who you are and where you are going. Communication with your wearable computer will be done through gestures.
MIT also showed a "thinking table" that can accept instructions by tracking the user's hands in three dimensions. This would be particularly useful for navigating around 3D environments, which could be done simply by pointing in the direction you want to fly.
This system has also been used to control musical instruments, with cello and violin players controlling several sound sources from gestures made by their hands and bodies. The American magicians Penn and Teller have already used the MIT technology to create musical instruments controlled by gestures, although MIT had problems convincing audiences the technology was real.
Future plans for the thinking table include 3D imaging, so the table can see what is happening around it, and react accordingly. For instance, if the table senses your coffee cup is cold, it will tell the coffee maker to make more for you.
MIT believes that within 10 years the computer will be almost invisible to the user, with passwords, keyboards and complicated interfaces a thing of the past.
Although many of their ideas seem bizarre, more than 100 multinational companies have poured millions of dollars into the Things that Think project, suggesting that maybe one day we will all communicate simply by touch.
SOFTWARE. SAGE, the British accountancy software firm, is to make its first forays into online commerce this week with the launch of three joint ventures. It will link up with: Midland Bank, for on-line banking; Dun & Bradstreet for credit checking; and Active Business Services for BACS payments.
The new services mean that Sage's existing 814,000 users (194,000 in Britain) will be able to combine their accounting, payroll, invoicing and tax affairs with online information and transactions.
Graham Wylie, managing director of Newcastle-based Sage, says the new services will be targeted at existing business customers rather than the general public.
"We decided about 18 months ago not to take on the home-banking market, leaving that instead to the high-street banks and software companies such as Microsoft and Intuit. We believe there is more for us in the small to medium size businesses that use Sage software but need an integrated online solution for their future needs," he says.
Sage's share price has more than trebled in the past two years, rising from 101p in January 1994 to 340p last week. This enormous surge is due largely to successful acquisitions, says Wylie, that have allowed the company to corner the French market and also make inroads into America.
The three online products will soon to be placed in a new division, Sage OnLine.
For the time being there will be no use of the Internet for online distribution. "That may come," says Wylie, "but for the moment it simply doesn't command the confidence of the financial institutions."
The new online services will use a national network of dial-up numbers to provide a secure platform for transactions with customers.
For more details contact http://www.sagesoft.co.uk
or e-mail: info@sagesoft.co.uk
Mark Hamill, who featured as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, takes a leading role in a new $10m blockbuster CD-Rom game Wing Commander IV, reputedly the most expensive CD-Rom ever made.
It will be launched by Electronic Arts in two weeks.
TRANSPORT. An international effort is creating a service that will help road users every minute of the day, anywhere in Europe.
LIVE traffic news will be beamed to all motorists across a new digital radio channel within two years. The system will be tested early next year in a trial funded by the Department of Transport.
Conventional traffic bulletins are broadcast only during breaks in a radio station's programmes. The new service, RDS-TMC (Radio Data System Traffic Methods Channel), will give motorists up-to-the-second traffic information 24 hours a day, anywhere in Europe.
With RDS-TMC, broadcasters transmit traffic incidents as internationally agreed numerical codes on a dedicated frequency as soon as they hear of them. For example, number 202 is the code for a serious accident, 463 is for a blocked road, 1303 for dense fog and 1805 for faulty traffic lights.
These numbers are then matched against a geographic location, with its own code, and transmitted across the country in a digital format so it will not interfere with existing analogue programmes.
The information will be picked up in cars by special RDS-TMC radios, decoded automatically and presented to drivers moments later. Depending on the unit, it could be presented in an audio format, using a synthesised voice, or in text form, using a small screen on the radio's fascia.
Following extensive RDS-TMC trials on the Continent, the Department of Transport says the large-scale demonstration of the technology in Britain will begin in about 12 months time.
The trial will take place on the road network linking Birmingham, Nottingham and London, which includes some of the most heavily used roads in the country. It is also an area that has an increasing amount of "real-time" traffic information systems such as cameras and movement sensors to inform broadcasters of congestion and accidents as soon as they occur.
The current plan is that up to 1,000 vehicles will participate in the demonstration with most belonging to hire companies and other large car fleets. However, the Department of Transport says it will also be looking to involve private motorists who travel a lot and clock up high mileage.
The total cost of the project will be about £2m, with the funding being split between the Department of Transport, European Commission, various industrial partners and the project participants, including the AA and BBC. Both organisations have long histories of providing traffic information to motorists and are confident RDS-TMC will ensure a significantly better service.
Chris Chambers, the BBC's RDS-TMC project manager, says the technology is already at an advanced stage and offers the motorist many advantages.
"It will provide quicker and more accurate traffic information than anything currently available," he says, adding that in the future it could also provide up-to-date information on weather, parking and public transport.
Among the other big organisations that will be involved are the main suppliers of the new radios, such as Philips and Bosch. Car manufacturers are also expected to participate. Ford, for instance, has been taking part in RDS-TMC development work for several years.
Dr Grant Klein, a road transport technology specialist who is one of the British developers of RDS-TMC, says it is vital that both the traffic information providers and the broadcasters work closely together for the system to be effective.
"Potentially, the technology offers a new, low-cost traffic information service that can benefit motorists across Europe," he says.
Significantly, the new radios can be linked to the new route-guidance systems expected to be launched in the summer. This means that in the future, drivers will not only be guided to their intended destination automatically but will also receive constant traffic updates during their journey.
Another feature of RDS-TMC is that the traffic information can be decoded into any language. This means that British motorists driving in France, for example, will receive news in English of delays on the Paris ring road as soon as the French broadcasters have transmitted the information.
A notable drawback is that motorists will need to buy the special RDS-TMC units and these will be more expensive than existing car radios. Bosch says its RDS-TMC radios are likely to cost about £450.
There is also likely to be a charge for the new service. One option would be a smartcard to activate the radio, although no price for the card has yet been agreed.
With the ever-increasing pace of change in the field of electronics, the banks are testing a wide range of gadgets and gizmos.
IMAGINE a world where there is no cash, but everybody buys their shopping with electronically "cash-charged" smartcards.
Imagine never having to visit a bank, but being able to see and speak to your manager from your armchair via the television set. Then visualise bank branches the size of telephone boxes, consisting of a phone, TV screen and a smartcard reader.
It might sound like the stuff of science fiction but all these services are feasible now. The only thing holding them up is doubt about consumer demand banks are still unsure how much we value face-to-face contact in our financial dealings and how readily we will take to the new technology.
"We are sociable animals," says Steve Delous, a technology executive at NatWest, "I think we still demand human contact before we make important financial decisions."
None the less, these schemes and many more like them are here today in one form or another, and by the turn of the century, the banks predict that public antipathy will have waned and these high-technology services will be taken as much for granted as credit and debit cards are today.
The technological revolution is accelerating by the month. Next week, for example, Lloyds Bank will launch a computer-banking scheme to work in conjunction with the Psion hand-held electronic diaries. Almost 1m Psion diaries have been sold, and any user who is also a Lloyds customer will have access to the scheme.
Customers will be able to use their Psion to write electronic cheques, which can be downloaded through a modem to any account in the country. Users will also be able to call up statements, check balances, pay bills and transfer money between accounts. "We think individuals and small businesses will find this invaluable," says a Lloyds spokesman. "With the Psion's portability, it means you can conduct your banking affairs from wherever you are in the country."
But perhaps the most audacious project now under way is Mondex, developed by NatWest and Midland as an electronic alternative to cash. It sounds bizarre but it makes perfect sense: a credit-card-sized smartcard that can be charged with pounds and pence "units", allowing transactions to be made face to face or through specially adapted telephones from anywhere in the world. It will give a new dimension to home banking, allowing deposits and withdrawals to be made from the comfort of your armchair by inserting the card in your specially adapted phone.
Mondex began its dress rehearsal in Swindon last year. More than 9,000 residents now have the hardware to make electronic cash transactions, and applications for cards are increasing as new facilities are added to the Mondex scheme.
Last week, for example, Swindon's buses were kitted up with the hardware to accept the cards, leading to another boom in applications. The town's car parks were also recently adapted. In addition, BT an important player in the development of the scheme has adapted thousands of phone boxes to take the cards, allowing users to send and receive cash down the phone line, to and from the bank or other cardholders.
"Our feedback so far has been extremely encouraging and although it is still early days, a national launch in 1997 is not out of the question," says a Mondex spokesman.
Users are given a card and electronic wallet, both of which have the capacity to store the cash units, allowing users to take money from someone else's card by inserting it in their own wallet and keying in the amount to be taken.
But Mondex is not the only player in this market. It is now being challenged by Visa, which began testing its "Visacash" card in Australia and America. It does not use an electronic wallet like Mondex, but instead operates more like a phonecard, with cards of certain values purchased, then thrown away when they have been emptied.
Users will also be able to buy a rechargable version that can be topped up at cashpoint machines but, unlike Mondex, they will not be able to transfer money from card to card, making it less like cash than a disposable debit card.
Visa claims that the scheme can work alongside Mondex, as retailers will need only one piece of hardware to accept either card, leaving consumers to take their pick between the two. Visacash will begin a pilot scheme in Britain next year.
But these cashcard schemes are just the tip of the technological iceberg. The size and shape of the local bank branch is also set to change dramatically, and although the banks deny they are planning to abolish manned branches altogether, the fully automated bank is here, and here to stay.
Already, NatWest, Co-op and Lloyds have installed staffless kiosk-type branches at various locations around the country, in office blocks, university campuses and shops. They enable information about products to be accessed through "touch-screen" technology, and contain a video-link allowing face-to-face conversations with their telebanking staff.
Lloyds has installed two "Lloydspoints" so far, at universities in Sussex and Derby.
"We are just gauging reaction at the moment we chose students because we thought they would be most receptive and if they are popular we will expand them around the country" says a Lloyds spokesman.
The next great innovation, however, does not even require customers to leave home. The world's first television banking scheme was launched by NatWest towards the end of last year, in a pilot scheme involving 250 households in Cambridge.
BT is also involved in the development of home banking, and is collaborating with NatWest in a separate trial involving 2,500 homes in Ipswich and Colchester.
It does not yet enable customers to speak to NatWest staff from their living room. That, NatWest says, is perfectly possible but not yet cost-effective to install. Instead it allows customers to view their account details, pay bills, and transfer money between accounts. It also allows general insurance and foreign currency to be purchased from home, with the currency arriving by secure post the next day.
Delous of NatWest says: "This trial is to find out how people cope. If they do not like it, then it may end there, but if they react well, then it could expand to a whole range of other services, including investments and pensions.
"We are also looking at video links through the television where you can see and speak to a bank employee from your living room, though how we can do that and still make some money has not yet been worked out. The future of all these developments depends on how badly people want them and how much they are prepared to pay."
The growth in the number of personal computers has not gone unnoticed by the banks either. Although not new Bank of Scotland launched its Hobs home-banking service for PC users 11 years ago the other big banks are all working on similar schemes.
CHASE de Vere offers a new remortgage package that gives a discount of 2.5 points on the standard variable mortgage rate until February 1998. No legal or valuation fees have to be paid, but there is a redemption penalty of three months' interest for the first five years. Call: 0171-930 7242.
ADVENT launches the public offer of its new Venture Capital Trust (VCT) on February 19. VCTs offer tax breaks to investors who are prepared to risk investing mainly in unquoted companies. The Minimum Advent VCT subscription is £3,000. Call: 0171-734 8334.
PETPLAN, which specialises in animal-health insurance, has relaunched its Pony Plan policy. Coverage includes veterinary fees, accidents and theft. There are three levels of premium for ponies valued at up to £500, £501-£1,000 and £1,001-£1,500. Call: 0800 212248.
THE fund manager Henderson Touche Remnant is waiving the first year's management charge on its Witan Pep for people who invest the full £6,000 before March 27. The charges are normally £30. Call: 0345 881144.
ROYAL INSURANCE has cut the cost of its mortgage-protection plan for new borrowers to £4.75 per £100 benefit, covering payments in case of accident, sickness or involuntary unemployment. Insurance-premium tax of 2.5% is added. Call: 0151-239 3000.
THE Royal Bank of Scotland has launched an insurance scheme to continue mortgage payments in case of accident, sickness or unemployment. The Mortgage Loanguard offers a range of schemes. The most comprehensive covers council-tax and insurance payments for a monthly premium equivalent to 5.95% of your full monthly bill. Call: 0141-226 5000.
THE new Capital Builder Pep from Clerical Medical Unit Trust Managers invests in a fund concentrating on fixed-interest securities at home and in continental Europe, with all income being reinvested. The Pep will invest in Clerical Medical's Extra Income Trust, a corporate-bond fund. A minimum of £3,000 is required. Call: 0800 373909.
NATIONWIDE has launched its Fixed Rate Tessa 2 bond, available to savers with a maturing Tessa. It offers 6.75% for the five-year term for a minimum investment of £3,000. Customers investing a matured Nationwide Tessa will receive a 1% bonus at the end of the term. Early withdrawal incurs a penalty of up to 18 months' interest. Call: 0800 400417.
Dental treatment on the NHS is becoming increasingly hard to find. Adam Jones reports on the growing range of alternatives.
MORE than a third of the population has difficulty finding a local dentist who will carry out treatment on the NHS, according to the British Dental Association (BDA).
This statistic should galvanise patients into fighting for the restoration of state dental care, says the BDA.
But should this be the patient's only option? After all, charges for serious treatment on the NHS, although substantially cheaper than private work, can still amount to hundreds of pounds.
Instead of embarking on a letter-writing campaign, people may want to consider financial packages that make private dental care more manageable.
The Consumers' Association says dental plans can help to spread the cost of serious treatment into a number of manageable sums instead of one large payment.
But like insurance policies providing narrow or specialised cover such as television-set insurance there is a possibility that the costs you might incur are just not worth the trouble of taking out a specific plan.
The Consumers' Association warns that, overall, a dental plan could cost you more than simply paying bills as they arise. Some general health-insurance policies already include dental cover.
Nevertheless, the BDA reports that the market for specific dental cover has grown substantially, with patients and dentists increasingly finding them more acceptable.
Private payment schemes could be useful as an alternative, or a complementary service to NHS treatment, covering more expensive treatment.
A BDA spokeswoman says: "It is up to the patient and the dentist to discuss together what is the most cost-effective scheme to join. It very much depends on the state of your teeth."
There are three main financial schemes covering dental care. The most prevalent is called a capitation scheme. The patient registers with a dentist, who is in turn registered with the scheme. The dentist is paid a monthly lump sum, regardless of the treatment received by the patient.
The idea is that no incentive exists for costly procedures to be provided unnecessarily, encouraging the dentist to concentrate on prevention rather than just repair.
Denplan, Norwich Union, Bupa and the Medical Insurance Agency, which operates Clinident, are among the companies running capitation schemes, with charges varying from £5-£30 a month. The cost of joining a plan will depend on the state of your teeth: the worse your teeth, the more likely you are to need treatment, and the more you will pay for cover.
The extent of the cover required will determine the premium payable. Cosmetic dental work, of the kind undergone by the author Martin Amis, is likely to be a big extra or could be excluded altogether.
The cost of schemes can also be determined by where you live and the rate levied by the chosen dentist. Because charges vary so much according to the circumstances of the applicant, it makes sense simply to get quotes from a number of companies and compare them for value.
The second kind of scheme is a straightforward insurance policy, where a company will repay the cost of treatment after you submit a claim.
The third is a corporate dental scheme, where patients settles the bill themselves and claim back from a plan normally funded by their company.
In the long term, the growth of private plans could add to the difficulties of registering with a dentist, even on a private basis. The BDA spokeswoman says: "Very occasionally, it may be the case that a dentist works exclusively for Denplan, for example. Then the practice may take you on only if you are on the scheme."
Leigh Harrison, of Hill Samuel UK Emerging Companies fund, thinks the sector may be entering a growth phase.
IT IS very hard to be positive about smaller companies when most investors seem solely interested in blue-chip stocks that have risen steadily over the past six to 12 months. Britain is smitten by takeover activity valued at nearly £70billion, and focused almost exclusively on big corporates and large banking and financial stocks.
It is in this light that I asked Leigh Harrison to make his predictions for the coming year. His fund is the best-performing smaller-companies fund over the past five to seven years. His message is: do not break faith with smaller companies, despite the short-term evidence that they are not performing.
Harrison seems unconcerned that smaller companies have been generally overlooked by the market. It is precisely at times like these, when minnows are neglected, that it is possible to find cheaply valued businesses.
There are certain developments that may stimulate demand for lower capitalised stocks: interest rates falling, for example, and one-off gains from maturing Tessas and building-society conversions. These, combined with the government's need to stimulate the economy before a general election, should boost consumer activity in 1996-97. Improvements could be felt in the housing and motor markets as well as in the high street, he says, creating a better domestic economy, which is positive for small firms. Harrison's fund has achieved 260% growth in five years, nearly 90% better than the best-performing UK growth unit trust and almost twice as good as the best-performing UK growth and income trust. His impulse in the short term has been to run with the herd and also take some guesses but always educated ones. "You have to remember that a lot of share-price movement is caused by fear and greed and when greed's in the ascendant, then you have to run with that," he says.
Harrison tips three shares which he believes will outperform in future. His field is the service and consumer sectors, the shares most commonly associated with renewed economic growth and consumer spending.
He recommends Motorworld, a retailer of motorists' supplies. The business is well established yet lowly valued, trading on a multiple of 11.8 times forecast earnings. Harrison says the low valuation is a function of market neglect due to fears about high-street trading. However, he says there is potential for expanding organically through new outlets and increase penetration by increased sales of own-label products. The shares have underperformed after the acquisition of Charlie Browns and a poor trading statement in September. Final results are due shortly and are expected to show a small decline in earnings before growth resumes in 1996. As consumer uncertainty subsides, the shares are likely to be re-rated.
His second tip is Goode Durrant, a north-of-England company that primarily hires out vans and light commercial vehicles to big and small companies alike. Goode Durrant has made a conscious effort not to become a brand name, but to set up local hiring operations in each area. Harrison contends that, increasingly, firms are hiring vehicles not buying them, a trend much in evidence in America.
Again the company is valued at less than 12 times earnings, due mainly to market neglect for rental firms. "It's a cheap business that has continued to grow despite scepticism about any company involved in rentals," he says. The low valuation is also due to the company's patchy record. Goode Durrant had unsuccessful ventures in the 1980s in other areas, such as housebuilding and construction. Recent strategy has concentrated on selling off property-related businesses to focus on core activities.
Harrison's last tip is MMT Computing, a small computer-systems consultancy and facilities-management house with a number of successful long-term relationships with large companies such as Marks & Spencer.
It has grown steadily in the past five years, unlike other technology stocks, which have shown spectacular, if probably unsustainable growth, he says. Demand for its services is strong, it is trading on a p/e of 13.9 times and is growing at 15%-20% a year.
A SURVEY shows more single elderly people will be forced to sell their houses to fund a move into a nursing home because of inadequate state retirement provision.
The survey also shows that more than 90% of people believe they do not need to take out insurance against the cost of any long-term residential care when they get old.
Mintel, who conducted the survey, says this highlights a failure to understand the scale of the problem faced by Britain's ageing population and by the welfare state expected to support it.
Charles Adriaenssens, Mintel financial analyst, says: "It's a nightmare for anyone over 50. Their state benefits aren't going to increase and they are going to have make a provision very quickly.
"By 2030, we estimate that almost one million people over 65 will be in residential homes more than double the 412,000 in 1991. Yet there are only 22,000 long-term care (LTC) insurance policies in force."
To encourage individual provision, Mintel is calling for tax exemption for contributions to long-term-care policies.
WEXAS INTERNATIONAL, the club for independent and business travellers, has issued its own free Visa card.
The Wexas Elite card charges no annual fee, saving customers about £12 a year. It offers a variable interest rate, currently 18.9% a year, a cheque book and up to £250,000 travel/accident insurance. It also includes purchase protection of up to £1,000, free card protection and free extra cards for a spouse or partner.
The card is backed by MBNA Bank and is available to over-18s subject to status. Simon Beeching, Wexas managing director, said: "The waiving of an annual fee is worth about £12 a year to the customer; the free card protection is worth about £8 annually."
Wexas membership gives access to discounted scheduled air travel, car hire and hotel bookings, as well as commission-free issuing of traveller's cheques and foreign currency by mail order.
Wexas: 0171-589 3315
WITH less than two weeks to go to Valentine's day, the air is humming with Cupid's arrows. But arrows will be flying in the auction rooms, too, as collectors try to shoot down Valentine bargains.
Lots of love missives await auction in the shape of lacy, old-fashioned cards. They could mean a buyer's market in the salerooms during the run-up to February 14. There are several reasons for this.
Sales of new Valentine cards are holding firm and those now familiar twosomes of Piglet & King Kong, Hot Pants & Hairy Bear, and their ilk, will continue to fill the Valentine pages of the newspapers with messages that would have baffled or shocked grandmama.
But in the collectors' market, passion for old cards has been waning. After a steady rise in values of old Valentines during the early and mid-1980s, cold economic draughts began to slow prices.
The dip in values set off a chain reaction as trade and private enthusiasts, who had enjoyed good pickings in the kiss-and-sell days of the 1970s, experienced the collector's "25-year itch". It was time to have a considered clear-out: after all, in investment terms, a quarter of a century is a long time to hang on to the goods.
One who sold up, presumably at a fair profit, was a retired advertising copywriter who had amassed 500 cards dating from the 1790s to the 1950s more or less the full historic spread of interest for dedicated collectors. At a Phillips sale in London two years ago, he also threw in a large quantity of other love tokens, from tiny tinselled hearts to a decorated glass rolling-pin that a sailor would traditionally leave with his beloved.
"I am disposing of it all to make a bit of space. The cards alone fill 11 large albums," the collector said. "I shall miss the collection and so will my wife, who used to receive a beautiful Valentine from me every year." The origins of St Valentine's day are veiled by the fog of history. The special day for lovers, on February 14, embraces pagan rites of spring and, among others, a character named Valentine who was an obscure Roman bishop martyred on February 14 in the year 270.
So true collectors are used to a bit of guesswork, uncertainty and speculation in the market.
Their chance to bid for some fine old Valentines comes at Bonhams auction house in London tomorrow and at Christie's South Kensington later this week.
The Bonhams haul contains more than 100 lots of intricate paper lace, pop-ups, hand-painted items, coloured prints and Victorian heart-shaped boxes. A devotional card from the 19th century carries a £250 estimate on the strength of its watercolour portrait of a saint and the quality of its paper lace. A French card from the 1890s forms an ingenious "double cobweb" of pierced paper which lifts to reveal two love scenes estimate £150.
For an estimated £50-£80 there is Froggy Goes A-Courtin', depicting a frog on bended knee in front of a stylishly dressed female frog, while a cupid rides a frog in the sky towards the lovers. My faithful Dove, with zealous care,/ Now speed thy airy way,/ And round thy neck my letter bear/ That does my heart portray ...
Valentine gushes of this type exist in abundance. But there is also a refreshing alternative insulting Valentines that were sent by Victorians to those of the opposite sex as jokes or out of malice.
A typical "black Valentine" would display the cut-out figure of a two-faced man and a vitriolic verse: You're double faced as all can see,/ And such as you I'd scorn to be./ In both your smile or frown‘tis clear,/ Danger is always lurking near./ The girl will lead a dreadful life,/ Who's fool enough to be your wife.
Often hand-drawn and crafted, the black Valentine is a popular theme with collectors, not least because it is often a skilfully designed and executed work, an original and one-off piece of art. To these attributes can be added the rarity factor: the recipient would be reluctant to save such a vitriolic card. It usually adds up to a collectors' piece worth more than £100.
A gimmick called "the official Valentine" became popular from the 1840s onwards; it was so-called because it took the form of bank notes, summonses, passports and other official documents.
Notes were issued on "The Bank of True Love" in the "State of Matrimony", and these notes became so convincing that the Bank of England eventually ordered the "currency" to be recalled and destroyed.
Or you could send your sweetheart a summons to be served on February 14, drawn up by the solicitors, "Valentine, Love and Wedlock". One such writ is in the Christie's South Kensington auction on Wednesday and is expected to go for £120.
The sale includes all the principal types of Valentines, culled from private collections, and estimates rise to £300. Careful inspection of multiple lots, however, shows that the estimated unit price in some cases comes down to an accessible £4 to £10.
The Stock Exchange is supporting flotations that will make life harder for small investors.
SMALL INVESTORS have been dealt a severe blow by the London Stock Exchange decision to abolish prematurely rules forcing companies to keep at least 25% of their new share issues aside for retail investors.
The Exchange argues that companies should be able to market their shares any way they like and it is more economical for them to issue shares via a placing, a method normally reserved for institutions. It avoids the hassle and cost of administering investments from ordinary investors.
But letting the big pension funds and insurance companies freeze poor Sid out of the action is hardly compatible with the government's ideological commitment to a wider share-owning democracy.
All is not yet lost. Small investors can still be direct players. If a stockbroker serving private individuals has a sufficiently large client base, there is nothing to stop him using his muscle to act like an institution and buy into new issues on a grand scale on their behalf. Enter ShareLink, a Birmingham stockbroking firm with more than 600,000 clients. It has introduced a new service enabling small investors to duck under the wire and participate in flotations marketed through a placing.
Encouraged by ShareLink's success, the Romford firm City Deal Services, with an estimated 130,000 clients, will tomorrow launch a similar service. Both ShareLink and City Deal are execution-only firms, but even a traditional advisory broker and portfolio manager such as Brewin Dolphin is keenly sniffing the wind through its execution-only arm, Stocktrade, in Edinburgh. ShareLink's New Issue Placing Service Snips gives its private-investor clients advance information on forthcoming new issues by newsletter, telephone and fax. Membership of Snips is nominally free but members must subscribe £30 a year to ShareLink's New Issues Bulletin and pay commission when applying for issues.
Charges are 1% on the first £2,500; 0.75% on the next £2,500 and 0.1% on additional amounts in excess of £5,000. There is a minimum £10 charge. ShareLink may not get its hands on all the juiciest fruit, such as the mobile-phone company Orange, expected to float 25% of its £2billion equity this year. But when an issue is oversubscribed and members do not receive a full allocation, the commission charge is adjusted.
ShareLink is careful to advise Snips punters their allocations are intended to be long-term holdings. "Investors who exhibit a tendency to ‘stag' on a regular basis will be prevented from participating in future issues," the blurb warns sternly.
Stagging (making a quick profit by selling a popular new issue as soon as dealings begin) is looked at askance by the institutions, which feel they have had to pick up the tab in the past. ShareLink is clearly anxious to reassure them that its virtuous clientele is overwhelmingly looking for long-term capital growth rather than a quick fix.
Complaints of stagging from Stock Exchange members was an important reason given by the exchange for its decision to change the rules on January 1. But ShareLink's chief executive, David Jones, will have none of it. "We are merely stopping the big boys mopping up the best new issues on offer and leaving only left-over scraps for small private investors." His competitor Stephen Pinner, managing director of City Deal (acquired by the Cater Allen group on January 1), agrees, but sees no reason to lecture his clients on the ethics of stagging. "It's entirely up to an individual client how and when he disposes of his stock."
Like Snips, City Deal's new private-investor service, Newtrade, will send out a bulletin of forthcoming market issues, but for an even more bargain-basement price of £10 a year. The flat-rate dealing charge of £10, regardless of the size of an application, looks even more price-competitive than ShareLink's.
Brewin Dolphin's marketing director, Charlotte Black, explains: "With execution-only, one's clients ring up and place an order like ordering a leg of lamb from the butcher." She is, however, as angry as anyone that the Stock Exchange "has given all the wrong signals to private investors" by making life easier for the institutions.
Next month, the Weinberg Committee will deliver its recommendations on the steps needed to promote wider share ownership. Most brokers think the Stock Exchange should have awaited its findings before acting. Geoffrey Turner, chief executive of the Association of Private Client Investment Management, is scathing: "The exchange has acted with complete discourtesy, effectively saying that it's going ahead with its changes come hell or high water, whatever Weinberg might say."
Michael Read of Greig Middleton Financial Services is one of many who still hope that Weinberg "will have sufficient punch to get the Stock Exchange's yellow book changed". Read is lobbying for a system based on the share-shop "a tested and tried model that has proved its worth both here and in the US".
Meanwhile, the government, embarrassed by the row, has assigned Angela Knight, the economic secretary to the Treasury, to produce fresh proposals to safeguard small investors' rights.
NEWPORT Capital Limited, the British arm of the San Francisco-based Newport Group, has launched an offshore umbrella fund offering global opportunities to British investors.
The Liberty Newport World Wide Fund provides investors with straightforward access to the international market. It currently offers three subsidiary funds: The Newport Tiger fund, which will invest in Asian markets; the Newport Pacific Fund, which invests in Pacific Basin countries as well as Japan, New Zealand and Australia; and the Global Opportunity Fund, for investors looking for long-term capital growth worldwide.
"There is a strong case for investing in the Asia Pacific region," says Garnet Harrison, managing director of Newport Capital. "While many of the emerging markets carry too high a risk, our investment philosphy is to buy, over the long term, quality growth companies in the world's fastest economies." The fund will invest only in countries with growth in excess of 5%.
After an initial minimum investment of $1,000 (about £660), investors can switch between the sub-funds for free. The annual charge is 1.75%, with an initial fee of 6%.
Details from Newport Capital on 0171-336 6096
After writing 200 letters asking for a job in television, Rob Curling said hello to viewers and goodbye to most of his money worries.
FOR two-and-a-half minutes on February 4, 1987, Rob Curling faced the most daunting challenge of his life. He sat in front of the television cameras in the BBC's London Plus studio and broadcast the lunchtime news bulletin live to the nation.
"It was what I'd wanted to do for years but sitting there waiting to go on air made a couple of minutes seem like hours," he says. Curling passed his first broadcast with flying colours and quickly became a familiar face in the southeast where he was newsreader and sports correspondent for London Plus and later for Newsroom South East until last spring. And he learnt the pay of a freelance presenter may be unpredictable but is a lot better than the nine-to-five job he also held down at the BBC's film library.
"I was presenting the news on my days off from the film library, doing the breakfast slots, before I became a freelance presenter," he says. "When I was only working at the film library I was permanently and seriously overdrawn. I never had a decent car, and had to put money aside and save as much as possible.
"In fact there were many times when I couldn't go to the bank because I knew I had overstepped my limit."
Although he has left the relative financial security of a year-long contract in Newsroom South East to pursue other avenues, Curling, 35, has just finished filming the seventh series of the quiz show Turnabout, which he hosts.
He says: "Turnabout is a financial safety blanket, but there is always the fear that it won't be recommissioned because it is an independent production."
Curling was undecided about his career although he was always attracted by the lure of television. "I used to play the drums with Jonathan Cohen (of Play Away fame) and my ambition then was to play the drums on Play Away."
But someone suggested he might be good at presenting and he decided to set his sights on children's television. In the next two years he wrote about 200 letters until his persistence paid off and he was asked to do a live broadcast for the rather grown-up news programme.
Considering the nonchalant way in which Curling came to the BBC, you would expect his attitude to money to be equally blase. But he admits to being extremely cautious, to the point of boring, about cash.
"Money does worry me, although it seems dreadful to admit to being careful," he says. "I have an accountant and a broker and I'm sure I'm the most unadventurous person they deal with. I daren't invest in stocks and shares, I would rather just know my money is in a building society and getting interest."
Curling has also taken care to provide for the future through a pension plan into which he "trickles bits of money" each month.
Despite his insistence that he is financially rather dull, he seems to spend rather large amounts of money on the more interesting things in life: clothes, wine, restaurants and antique furniture.
"I do spend far too much on clothes. A lot of the time I think there is nothing more boring than buying them and then I have moods where I go out and buy lots. And they all tend to be the rather more expensive labels such as Mulberry and Ralph Lauren," he says. "Yes, I do overspend on them, but they are very important."
It is the same with visiting restaurants: "My accountant ticked me off for eating out too often, but it is part of my necessary spending."
His home is crammed to overflowing with antique furniture which he enjoys collecting. And, during rummages round antique shops, he has also managed to find several trumpets. "I play the trumpet and like buying old ones tuned to different keys," he says. At about £600 per instrument, it is both a noisy and fairly expensive collectible.
There seems little hope of Curling ever making his fortune out of investing his cash. He says he is terribly well-behaved with money although his broker often tries to persuade him otherwise.
"He comes to visit and puts lots of formats and suggestions on the table. I look at them, say I'll get back to him and then ignore it. I am surprised he doesn't get rid of me.
"I just want the minimum amount of interest that I can get in the most boring way. I think being careful and making sure the money is there for the taxman and to pay my Vat bills is important."
Curling holds out one hope though, that he will be a national lottery winner. "I was a bit of a slow starter," he says, "but I do it every week now even though I have only won £10 so far. It means you turn on your television for five minutes on Saturday night with a great deal of excitement and then turn it off with a great deal of disappointment."
A new series of Turnabout starts on BBC1 on February 5 at 12.05.
BRITAIN'S largest investment-trust manager, Fleming, is to launch a worldwide income fund investing in high-yielding securities. The fully Pepable Fleming Worldwide Income Investment Trust will offer a 9.5% tax-free income.
Investors with a minimum of £3,000 to invest, will be able to choose from ordinary income shares, expected to cost about 60p, with a 9.5% annual income; lower-risk capital-growth shares, which will probably cost 40p, with an estimated income of 8.1%; and £1 units, which will probably have an initial income of about 5.7%.
"There are a lot of people who require high income from their investments," says Daniel Godfrey, Fleming's marketing director, "but at present you can achieve this only by UK investments of one form or another. "But people are now looking at the British stock market at a time when it is performing well, realising there could be a general election very soon and that the market could come off its high in the next year or so. It makes sense for people with money who want to diversify to invest outside Britain."
The trust, available from February 14 until March 13, is the first of its kind to offer Britons the chance to invest in overseas income shares fully Pepable due to 50% British and European investment. Between 20% and 30% will be invested in high-yielding bonds of emerging-markets debt.
A mini prospectus can be reserved on 0500 500161
TWO poorly performing investment trusts took action last week to try to ease mounting pressure from dissatisfied shareholders.
Kleinwort European Privatisation Trust announced a change in the way fees were paid. The company will now pay itself on a performance-related basis; last year that would have meant a fee of £1.9m instead of the £3.5m it received. Kleinwort also appointed a new independent director, John Evans, formerly in charge of Courtaulds' pension fund. Anthony Parker, the fund manager, dismissed calls by a few disgruntled shareholders to close the trust, which was launched two years ago to cash in on contintental privatisation issues. Mercury European Privatisation Trust began buying back shares last week to try to reduce an excess supply. Because there was a glut of shares on the market, sellers could not realise the full net value they paid. The Kleinwort trust is suffering from a similar problem.
The Mercury trust bought up £20m of shares last week, and could buy a total of £86m. The shares will then be cancelled with the aim of decreasing the discount at which they are currently being sold.
The Kleinwort trust is looking closely at the buy-back option, with a view to introducing something similar if it is successful, says Parker.
Mercury believes that will not be evident until several months have passed.
LAWRENCE WARD, a freelance instrumentation-design engineer, learnt the value of income-replacement insurance when, in the summer of 1994, he developed heart trouble and had to have a pacemaker fitted. His cardiologist advised him to give up work, a decision made much easier by the fact that he was insured for just such an event with the insurance company Lincoln National.
"I worked in the oil industry, which has its share of deadlines and other pressures," says Ward, 60, of Hornchurch, Essex. "Along with the commuting and all the other hassles, it would have been too much. I am just grateful that I took out the policy because it has meant that I don't have to worry about relying on state benefits, which are miserly."
Ward bought the policy in 1974 when he became self-employed. He twice made use of the feature that allows the benefits payable to be doubled without any requirement for further medical evidence: "This pushed the premiums up, but I obviously have no regrets. It was the best investment I ever made."
Although reasonably fit, Ward will have to remain on medication for the rest of his life. The proceeds of his policy will be paid until his retirement at 65.
Lincoln National is on 01895 200200
Insurance to replace earnings if you are off work a long time is more important than medical cover, says Kevin Pratt.
MORE THAN 1m people in Britain have been off work through sickness or disability for more than six months. A further 600,000 have been off for more than three years. Most of them face severe financial difficulties because they mistakenly thought the state would replace their income.
If you find yourself unable to earn a living because of medical incapacity, you will soon learn that state benefits are far from generous. As the table shows, a family of four has to get by on a little over £100 per week if the breadwinner is off work for more than six months.
Insurance companies offer income-replacement policies to help make up the shortfall between state benefits and earnings. These contracts became much better value after the budget last November, when the chancellor announced that the benefits they pay will no longer be subject to tax.
This change takes effect in April and means that it will cost less in premium to buy the same amount of benefit as before, since no tax will be deducted. Or, put another way, the same amount of premium can be used to secure a higher benefit level.
Insurers estimate that an individual is 12 times more likely to be off work for more than six months than he or she is to die before retirement. While we all recognise the need for life insurance, however, most of us fail to insure our incomes.
The cost of income-replacement cover (also called permanent-health insurance) is determined by a number of factors, such as your occupation, age, sex, state of health and whether you smoke.
The amount of required benefit, and whether that benefit is linked to the retail prices index, plays a large part in the calculation.
Insurers have usually calculated the maximum level of benefit at 75% of pre-incapacity earnings, less any entitlement to state benefit. The idea was to make sure people were not made better off by staying at home than they would be by returning to work. The change in the tax rules, under which insurers no longer have to deduct tax before paying the benefit, reduces maximum benefit levels to 50% of earnings.
The other big factor affecting cost is the "deferred period" the time you have to wait after a claim before benefit is paid. The longer the deferred period, the cheaper the cover.
The most common waiting time is 26 weeks, since during this period most people will be entitled to statutory sick pay (SSP) and will have savings they can dip into to tide them over. Those unable to get SSP sometimes plump for a 13-week deferred period, while anyone whose employer pays sick pay beyond the statutory requirements might consider a 52-week period. Most insurers will also offer deferred periods of 4, 8 and 104 weeks.
Insurers stress that those interested in income-replacement cover should think about more than price. Nick Lomas of UNUM, which sells the Income Protection Plan through insurance brokers, says: "Some policies pay out when you are unable to carry out your own job. Others require you to be unfit for any job. Clearly, the first option is preferable but it is more expensive."
Buyers should also find out about proportionate benefits, he says. "Some policies will pay a certain amount if you are able to work in a less-demanding job for less money. It is also possible to receive proportionate benefits if you build up your earnings gradually following your incapacity by returning to work in stages. Again, these benefits will add to the cost of the policy."
As far as state benefits are concerned, entitlement from April will be assessed on the tougher "any job" criteria. Decisions about entitlement are made by government-appointed inspectors rather than the individual's own GP. State benefits are also taxable.
John Ravenscroft, of the income-replacement insurer Zurich Life, argues that people should consider this sort of cover before medical insurance, which pays for private healthcare: "People need to think about what they can afford and what they actually need. If they are ill or injured, the NHS will look after them well. But who will look after their income? State benefits are clearly inadequate. Income replacement should be the first health-related insurance policy people buy, not medical cover."
Rosalind Pearson, of Swiss Life, says the changes to the taxation of benefits is good news but that more should be done to educate people about the need for cover: "Policies are greater value for money. The changes announced in the budget should make this type of benefit more widely available and more affordable. We estimate that only 15% of the working population has cover, which means 13m people are relying on the state to provide. But the state is becoming more reluctant to deliver that benefit."
For a list of insurance brokers in your area, contact BIIBA: 0171-623 9043
State benefits payable from April 1996
Entitlements of single person
Weeks 0-28
Statutory sick pay (SSP) £54.55
Short-term incapacity benefit (lower rate)£46.15
Weeks 29-52
Short-term incapacity benefit (higher rate)£54.55
Week 53 onwards
Long-term incapacity benefit...£61.15
Short-term incapacity benefit is paid at lower rate to self-employed, unemployed, non-employed and those who cannot get SSP from employer. Claimants must be incapable of work for four or more days in a row (the period of incapacity for work).
Entitlements of married man with two dependent children for weeks 29-52
Individual claimant £54.55
Adult dependant £28.55
First dependent child £9.90
Second dependent child £11.15
Total £104.15
Additional payments for dependants are not paid if the earnings of the spouse or partner exceed certain limits. For further information call Freeline Social Security: 0800 666555
Sample costs of income replacement cover
Monthly premiums payable by a 35-year-old male non-smoker in a sedentary occupation for an annual benefit of £15,000 linked to the retail prices index. Benefits payable until age 60
Deferred/waiting period 13 weeks 26 weeks 52 weeks
Pounds Pounds Pounds
Swiss Life 29.47 22.04 19.44
UNUM 29.67 23.76 18.51
Zurich Life 13.39 9.02 8.31
Cover provided differs in each case. Consult your insurance broker for full details.
CHARGES for setting up a single-premium personal pension range from zero to as much as £200, a survey published this month by the specialist magazine Planned Savings shows.
Single-premium personal pensions (SPPPs) are designed for the self-employed or those without a company pension and allow money to be invested without regular contributions.
Providers of these policies levy up to four different types of charge: an initial setting up charge; a bid/offer spread (the difference between the price paid for investment units by the investor and the price received when they are sold back to the company); an annual management charge; and a policy fee.
While many companies have no setting-up charge, others levy a flat fee or take a percentage of the premium. The charge at Guardian is £150 while Scottish Mutual operates a sliding scale up to £183.
The standard bid/offer spread is 5%, although a number of firms buy and sell units at the same price. One company, Gartmore, has a spread of 6%. Annual management charges vary from 0.5% to 1.25%.
Many companies do not levy a separate policy fee. Of those that do, the difference is dramatic. For example, Canada Life has a monthly policy fee of 55p while Winterthur Life charges £100 per annum.
Julia Dodds, editor of Planned Savings, says: "SPPPs are a good product because they offer flexibility and adapt to people's changing circumstances, such as career changes or breaks. They also allow people to mop up unused tax relief by investing a large sum, such as a redundancy benefit, in one go. But there are enormous differences in the amounts companies charge so it is important to shop around."
Dodds adds that the level of charges is not the only thing that matters. "Potential investment performance should also be considered. If a company is able to deliver the best results, it does not necessarily matter that it has high charges. Equally, low charges do not always mean that the policyholder will end up with a bigger pension."
An independent financial adviser will be able to help. For a list of three advisers in your area call 0117 971-1177.
THE Bristol investment manager Hargreaves Lansdown has launched a flexible personal equity plan (Pep) that allows investors to put several unit or investment trusts into a single Pep.
Aimed primarily at those who cannot make up their minds between the new wave of investment trusts about to be launched by Perpetual, M&G and Schroders, it enables investors to plough the £6,000 annual Pep allowance into one fund and then switch, free of charge, at a later date.
Alternatively, you can put, say, £2,000 into three different trusts and still benefit from the tax efficiency of the Pep.
For more information phone 0800 850661.
By exercising the right to switch providers, you could boost your annuity income by as much as 25%.
THOUSANDS of people could add as much as 25% to their retirement income by shopping around for their pension-fund annuities.
A Sunday Times survey of leading annuity providers has revealed differences in payments of more than 23% between the best and worst products on the market last year.
The annuity market is one of the most daunting for consumers, with interest rates fluctuating daily. It is a decision-making minefield.
For instance, a man aged 60, with a non-escalating annuity could be £749 a year better off if he had chosen a £100,000 Equitable Life annuity, as opposed to a Sun Life product last February. Similar gains are repeated in other areas of the market. A 60-year-old woman, with an index-linked annuity would have gained £1,040 by choosing a Sun Life annuity rather than one from Abbey Life.
The pension rules state that at retirement, part of a pension fund can be taken as a lump sum, while the rest must be used to buy an annuity, which provides an annual income from a mixture of investment income and capital growth.
There are two main types of annuity: fixed and escalating, which between them account for more than 90% of the market.
An escalating annuity increases every year either in line with the retail prices index, or by a set percentage. However, the initial income is low. A fixed annuity simply pays a set income every year, which inevitably decreases in value in real terms because of inflation.
Peter Quinton, the managing director of the Annuity Bureau, an organisation that attempts to find the best annuity rates for its clients, says: "A set annuity is best for disciplined savers, who can put some of the income aside and put it into investments for the future. An escalating annuity is good for the undisciplined saver because buying power remains the same every year."
There are other types of annuity, such as with-profits and unit-linked. Both of these variants involve the funds being invested directly in the stock market, which means they can rise and fall in value. Quinton advises that these products should only be taken by those who are fully aware of the risks.
Last year, new rules governing pensions allowed people to defer choosing their annuity until they are 75, drawing income in the meantime from their pension fund, which remains invested in equities. This can be risky and is more suited to people who have a fund of more than £150,000 or are not totally reliant on a pension as their sole source of income.
However, only about 50% of people retiring exercise their right to the "open-market option" moving their pension fund from their existing provider and investing it with another life office.
Once you have chosen one of more than 30 different life offices to provide your annuity, the decision is irreversible.
There are two companies, the Annuity Bureau and Annuity Direct, which aim to find the best deals for each person's circumstances. The Annuity Bureau asks people to complete a checklist containing details of spouses' pensions, frequency of payments, and other income.
William Burrows, director of Annuity Direct, says: "Finding the best rate is important, but it's the tip of the iceberg. Finding the best time and the best conditions for an annuity can be equally important."
The Annuity Bureau charges an initial fee of £50 plus Vat, which is refunded, after commission is paid, if a new life office is chosen and the pension is for £30,000 or more.
Annuity Direct charges £37.50 for its open-market option pack, which includes sessions with a qualified adviser. Its gold service costs £75, which includes regular newsletters and rate tables.
Another factor that should be considered is penalties. Some companies such as Century Life and Commercial Union continue to levy charges on people who switch to another provider. These can be considerable. For instance, some Century Life policies charge defectors 5% of the value of their fund.
One man who benefited from the advice of the Annuity Bureau is Gavin Fletcher, 63, who was a bursar at a private school before he retired. He decided to buy his annuity with Sun Alliance of Canada, which offered him an interest rate 4.3 percentage points higher than his previous provider, Hill Samuel.
"I'm getting at least £300 more a year than I would have got if my financial adviser had not advised me of the open-market option," says Fletcher. "I would advise people to check the market carefully before making any decisions."
Sunday Times readers can get a free copy of the You and Your Annuity Guide from the Annuity Bureau by phoning 0171-620 4090
Annuity Direct, phone 0171-588 9393
DIRECT LINE, best known for its telephone insurance service, has launched its first phone savings account.
The instant-access account offers a novel facility whereby families or friends with individual accounts can maximise the interest they earn by "pooling" their balances.
Money does not have to be transferred physically or joint access facilities set up. The balance of each individual account is simply added together to calculate the interest. Each account then earns interest at the rate applying to this total balance.
A spokeswoman said: "It's not like having a joint mortgage where you have both got responsibility you can't get the other into debt."
Sadly, there is no way cheeky account holders could use the pooling scheme to obtain interest when they are overdrawn by taking a "piggy-back" on someone else's healthy account. "There's no overdraft facility," said the spokeswoman.
Since there is no cheque or card facility, and since all withdrawals must get clearance from Direct Line, there is no way an account-holder could get an unauthorised overdraft accidentally-on-purpose either.
The account pays interest of 2% gross on balances up to £999, and 4.6% on sums from £1,000 to £4,999, gradually increasing to 6% on £25,000 to £49,999.
Account holders can also divide their account into sub-accounts holding money for a particular purpose, such as holidays or a new car. The company said: "To a lot of people that's very appealing. They can ask how much they have got in their holiday account and so on." Call London 0181-667 1121 or Glasgow 0141-221 1121
Homeowners could save £200 a year by cutting out wastage. Adam Jones offers some tips and reports on a scheme that helps pay for work.
THEY were brought up with the gospel of green consumerism ringing in their ears. At school, they learnt about the damage CFCs were doing to the ozone layer. At home, they collected newspapers for recycling so the forests could be saved. But when it comes to practical methods of saving energy in the home, the young adults of the 1990s are not a patch on their grandparents.
A survey by the Energy Saving Trust has found that the generation that lived through the austerity of post-war rationing is much more likely to take measures to save energy.
Financial savings, and not environmental worries, were found to motivate most of the people who take steps to cut domestic consumption.
The Energy Saving Trust, a private, non-profit making company set up by the government and energy suppliers, says that up to £200 a year can be saved by British householders who become energy-efficient. However, other energy advisers believe the savings can be much bigger (see chart). This week, it launches Energy Advice Week, running from February 8 to 14, with the aim of spreading this good news.
The over-65s came out well in the trust's survey but were motivated by thrift rather than environmental concerns. The survey found that more than 80% of the over-65s say they take responsibility for household energy consumption. Almost 40% of 16- to 24-year-olds, on the other hand, passed it off as somebody else's problem.
The simple energy-conserving measures used widely by the over-65s include closing the curtains at night to ensure that less heat escapes, filling the kettle with just enough water for the round of tea, and waiting for food to cool before putting it in the fridge.
Paul Simpson, of the Oxfordshire Local Energy Advice Centre, says: "Older people have to be careful with their money. They don't really have a choice, especially if they are on a pension."
The measures recommended by the Energy Saving Trust range from lagging pipes and lofts, to the replacement of old and inefficient electrical appliances.
It says 69% of homes have no wall insulation, throwing away up to £90 a year in wasted heat; 68% have inadequate draughtproofing (potential saving of £20), and more than 40% have inadequate central-heating controls (potential saving of £65). One unexpected source of waste is the television, video recorder and stereo. The trust claims that keeping these on standby, rather than turning them off completely, can mean up to 80% of the electricity needed to run them properly is still being drawn.
Small measures at home can be a big help to the environment by, for example, reducing emissions of carbon-dioxide, one of the gases blamed for global warming. Domestic household emissions could be cut by 35m tonnes a year more than twice the cut Britain must aim for as part of its commitment to reduce global warming. To encourage energy-efficient homes, a grant worth £315 is available to those on means-tested benefits under the government's Home Energy Efficiency Scheme (Hees). People aged 60 and over who are not claiming benefit can get a grant of £78.
The money is not given cash-in-hand but to contractors who do the work for you. The Hees grant can cover, in full or in part, the "topping-up" of loft insulation, if it is less than two inches in depth, draughtproofing, the installation of one or more energy-saving lightbulbs and a new insulating jacket for an immersion tank.
You may have a long wait for the work to be done, however. Simpson says in Oxfordshire there is a waiting-list right through to the summer.Contact the Energy Saving Trust free on 0800 512012 for more details of grants and energy-saving measures. Your call will be transferred to a local advice centre, which can make independent assessments of your needs over the phone, or send out information as requested.
Amanda Davidson offers advice on how to find the person who will have your best financial interests at heart in the long term.
FINDING the right adviser is the best investment you can make. This is the person who will look after your finances in the long term, ensure you are kept up to date with any changes and make recommendations with your best interests at heart.
Investors often do not take enough time to make the best choice. There are plenty of advisers to choose from and it is crucial to shop around.
Obtaining introductions is easy enough. Ask members of your family or friends to refer you to someone they have dealt with in the past. Alternatively, if you phone the Independent Financial Advisers Promotions hotline on 0117 971 1177 you could ask for details of three independent financial advisers in your area.
Most advisers will make an appointment and not charge you. Here you will be asked a lot of questions about your financial situation so that recommendations can be made. This is also an ideal opportunity to ask questions about the adviser and the firm to assess whether you feel comfortable with them.
I suggest that you go along with a list of questions and ensure that they are answered to your satisfaction (see panel below right).
The most important question you need to ask is whether the adviser is "tied" or independent. In fact, find out on the telephone rather than wait until the meeting.
If an adviser is tied, then he or she will be able to advise you only on one company's products. Steer clear. Only an independent financial adviser can shop around at a wide range of financial-services companies on your behalf and get you the best deals.
Certainly you should check on the qualifications of an adviser. The Financial Planning Certificate is the basic requirement, but experience is essential. Ask how long someone has been advising and for details of previous employment.
Also check that the adviser is competent in the area in which you specifically want advice. There is no point in going to an investment company if you want to arrange life assurance. Ideally, you are seeking a company that has a broad coverage of basic financial planning but which can also refer you to specialists should the need arise.
Make the adviser explain the type of ongoing support you will receive. If he or she seems interested only in what can be achieved for you initially, then look elsewhere. If an adviser is prepared to look after you in the long term, he will become more accountable for the advice he has given you.
The size of the firm is another important factor. If it is too large, it may be a faceless bureaucracy that is unable to cope with the individual touches that make all the difference.
On the other hand, if a firm is too small, you will probably be relying on one person's expertise. What happens if someone is away on holiday when you need information? Alternatively, he may fall ill or die. You need to be assured that there is adequate back-up.
It is probably sensible to choose someone of similar age to yourself and not someone who will be retiring when you most need help.
Another sensible step is to ask the adviser for details of a couple of existing clients with whom you can chat to see what they think of the service they have received. Do not be afraid to ask for two recommendations of people who you can talk to about the service and quality of advice.
Some clients prefer to work on a fee basis and some on a commission basis. If you have set views, you need to find an adviser who will accommodate these. All commissions are disclosed so you will know how much an adviser is earning. However, if you prefer to work on a fee basis, you should find an adviser who can oblige.
Above all, you must find someone who is easy to talk to. It is crucial that you discuss all your investments and insurance needs in detail and it is no good dealing with someone you find intimidating or brash.
If an adviser cannot communicate with you effectively, then, for all his expertise, he is not right for you. View the arrangement as a partnership. If you do not look forward to seeing your financial adviser, choose another one quickly.
Seeing an adviser should be enjoyable he or she will be intimately involved with you, your family, your hopes and aspirations.
The list of questions on the left will help you choose the right adviser. Make sure they are answered to your satisfaction and do not proceed if you have any doubts.
Amanda Davidson is a partner at Holden Meehan, the independent financial adviser. Phone 0171-404 6442
Questions to ask your adviser.
Can I have two recommendations?
How long has the company been in business?
How long has the adviser been advising?
Is it independent?
Are the staff qualified?
Does the company have any areas of specialisation?
How many clients has it got?
What if the adviser is ill or away? Is there any back-up?
Will the adviser work on a fee or a commission basis?
How is the individual adviser remunerated?
How big is the firm?
Are there any other offices?
What services can I expect?
How does the adviser keep up to date?
With returns from equities at record highs, Diana Wright finds contrary evidence about the likelihood of a slump.
ARE we building up for a big stock-market crash at the end of the century?
Michael Hughes, managing director of BZW Global Economics and Strategy, does not think so but the latest edition of his Equity Gilt Study, published last week, contains at least some evidence to point that way.
The study reveals UK equities are now more highly priced, in real terms, than at any time since 1919, the first year for which such statistics are available. Adjusting the figures fully for inflation, a £100 investment made at the beginning of 1919 would have been worth £729 by the end of 1995, thus beating the previous peak of £707 achieved in December 1993.
And the peak before that was in 1968, when, in terms adjusted for inflation, shares had reached a value of £610.
To put it another way, anyone who put their money into the stock market at the end of 1968 had to wait 25 years before they saw the real value of those shares climb back above what they paid for them.
What it is impossible to tell except with hindsight is whether the 1995 figure is merely another notch on the long-term rise in equity capital values since 1919, as shown in the graph, or a new peak, which, like its 1968 predecessor, will subsequently take a quarter of a century to regain.
Hughes refuses to take the pessimistic line. The year of 1995 was, he says, a rewarding year for equities, but not madly or foolishly so. Indeed, its end result a total real return of 19.5% for investors not subject to tax only places it in the second quartile of all annual returns for equities since 1919.
Gilts managed 15.5% on the same basis, relatively speaking a much better return, and cash produced 3.6%, a record in itself, as cash has now achieved a real return, after inflation, for 16 consecutive years, thus breaking its inter-war record for positive returns during the period 1921 to 1934.
So 1995 was a good year for the stock market, although, as Hughes admits, UK shares now look to be at the very least fully valued, BZW does not believe the market has collectively taken leave of its senses in a way that often presages a major fall.
What is more, Hughes has some ingenious arguments why the market might continue its apparently gravity-defying march upwards. He suggests the significant changes in demographics that are happening in this country now can sustain the stock market's current valuation levels longer than would otherwise have been expected.
His somewhat involved argument runs as follows:
The assumption is that overall, we are becoming a nation of savers, rather than borrowers. This stems from the sharp rise we will see, over the next 10 to 20 years, of people aged 45 plus, all busy accumulating savings for old age.
And as we pour money into shares and other financial assets, the return, that is the yield, on those assets should automatically fall, a simple consequence of the relative balance of supply and demand.
Falling returns may sound like bad news, but in fact, if it turned out to be true, it would be good news for shareholders or sharebuyers today. The return on a share, the dividend yield, falls as its price rises.
If greater savings mean the normal level for yields drops, then the "normal" price of the shares themselves can be higher. Hence, it is possible to argue that today's share prices are not as over-valued as some might fear. Here, the stock-market bears would step in and point out that the deviation between current share prices and their long-term time trend, shown in the graph, is one of the biggest ever recorded.
But why would the bears hit on the end of the century for a forthcoming crash? That is based on another nugget of information in the study which reveals that years in the middle of a decade have never produced bad stock-market results, whereas those ending in a zero are often terrible. So who is right? Investors who choose to be completely out of equities have, going by by past statistics, got a lot of explaining to do. If there is one message that comes across from the study, it is that equities have reigned supreme throughout the century, and the rewards have been more than worth the risk. But perhaps the most comforting aspect of the statistics is not this record of long-term outperformance by equities, but the comparison between equities and their competitors even over the worst of times.
Suppose an investor did, in fact, put all his money into the stock market at the end of 1968. Assuming he reinvested the income net of the basic rate of income tax, he would, by the end of 1995, have enjoyed an average real return on his money of 4.2% a year, a rate which would have knocked the spots off anything else.
Gilts could manage only 2.5% a year with gross income reinvested, and as for building societies, the less said the better: assuming all the net interest was reinvested, they would still have provided our investor with a relentless decline in the real value of his money, at an average rate of -2.2% a year.
Guide shows real returns since 1918
THE 41st edition of the BZW Equity Gilt Study provides a mass of statistical information for investors interested in measuring the real, that is, after inflation, returns of different asset classes.
The study, which has collated information over the period December 1918 to December 1995, looks exclusively at British investments (UK equities, government securities, Treasury bills and building societies). It shows:
£100 invested in equities in December 1918 with all income reinvested gross would have been worth £617,057 at the end of December 1995 in nominal terms, or £32,612 after allowing for inflation.
£100 invested in gilts on the same basis would have been worth £8,279 nominal or £438 real, while the same in cash deposits would have made £5,748, £304 real.
From 1918 to 1995, the annual real rate of return for equities averaged 7.8%, assuming gross income was reinvested. For gilts, it was 1.9% and for cash, 0.79%.
If income net of the highest rate of personal tax during the period was reinvested, the average real rate of return for equities comes down to 3.8%.
From 1945 to 1995, the average real return, again assuming gross income was reinvested, was 6.65% a year for equities, 0.11% for gilts and 0.79% for cash.
Over the past 10 years, real returns from equities averaged 10% pa where income was reinvested gross, and 7.9% where it was invested net of the highest tax rate.
About two-thirds of the total return from equities over the long term emerges from reinvested income.
From 1918 to 1995, investing in equities has been nearly twice as risky as gilts and five times as risky as cash, but investors have been more than rewarded for the extra risk.
Supporters of European monetary union argue it would bring low interest rates, more jobs and a range of other benefits but at what price?
"IF EUROPE abolishes sterling, who will pay my pension," fretted a distinguished old English gent recently. He had a nightmare vision of Brussels appropriating his pension by abolishing the pound.
His concern typifies the depth of ignorance in Britain about the plan to introduce a single currency in Europe.
But we may never have to know: the curtains seem to be coming down on any idea of a single currency. The project is condemned in Britain as
unworkable, and seen elsewhere in Europe as increasingly unlikely. The main reason is economic: a single currency would mean we effectively relinquish control of monetary policy to a German-dominated European central bank. There would be no escape if that bank decided to pursue a policy against British interests.
It would also entail a painful "convergence" period, during which all the European Community countries would have to slash public spending to bring government debt, budget deficits, inflation and interest rates into line.
But Brussels is not persuaded of the project's flaws. The European commission has just launched a huge campaign to explain the single currency to ordinary people. The campaign, which will not embrace Britain, seeks to help people understand the "euro", the single European currency which Brussels hopes to introduce by 1999.
Such a campaign might fill a void in Britain: two out of three British people say they do not know enough about the single currency to vote sensibly in a referendum, according to a Gallup poll published last month. Almost half of Britons 46% said they had heard many more arguments against it than in favour.
So relentless are the attacks on the single currency that the average Briton barely has time to ask: what can a single currency do for me?
So let's for a moment give the commission the benefit of the doubt, and imagine that its cherished project goes ahead: what would it mean for the average Briton? Will it make him or her any richer? The simple answer is "yes".
A single currency would make every Briton better off, say experts in both camps.
CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON is UK adviser to the Paris-based Association for the Monetary Union of Europe. He says: "We would have lower inflation, lower interest rates, more inward investment, higher economic growth and higher living standards."
Engel Carro, a London spokesman for the commission, says: "It will make prices transparent: you will be able to see clearly whether you are getting a good deal anywhere in Europe."
Even the Eurosceptics are forced to admit that "the man in the street" would save money with a single currency. Sir Alan Walters, no less Margaret Thatcher's former economic adviser and arch enemy of the euro conceded last week that the "alleged benefits" of a single currency might be worth pursuing by fixing the pound to the euro.
"What we could do is to fix sterling to the euro, and then we'll have all the alleged advantages of the single currency without having thrown away the key (that protects British control over its currency)," he said.
So much for a floating pound manipulated by a government-controlled Bank of England. In Walters's scenario, the Bank of England would be rendered powerless.
So how could a switch to a single currency benefit you? There are several clear and not-quite-so-clear advantages: The removal of currency exchange fees
The most obvious benefit is that you will not have to pay to change your pounds. The classic cautionary tale sees a Briton leaving London with £1,000 and travelling through every European country, paying commission on currency exchange at every border, to return home with less than half his or her money and a pocketful of useless coins.
Cheaper imported goods and services
We would not have to pay transaction costs for goods and services traded between companies in Europe. Johnson says: "Not just people, but goods and services go travelling." Elderly, or home-bound consumers would benefit. Emma Bonino, the European commissioner for consumer affairs, cites her 77-year-old grandmother, who would pay less for British or German products exported to her home town in Italy.
Transparent prices
You would know the exact price of European goods without the complication of fluctuating exchange rates. The cost of holidays would be simple to evaluate. Buying property on the Continent would be much easier because the currency risk would be removed many people who used sterling mortgages to buy French or Spanish holiday homes were hit hard when the local currency moved against the pound. And the value of warranties, service agreements and other guarantees would be simpler.
Lower interest rates and inflation, leading to cheaper mortgages and lower prices for consumers
This is a much-disputed area, but most experts agree that a single currency would rein in Britain's historically high, fluctuating interest rates.
The argument goes that a European central bank, run along the lines of the Bundesbank, would control monetary policy more effectively than the Bank of England, whose record is not impressive, partly because it is not independent of the government and decisions may be taken for political reasons rather than the needs of the economy. The Bundesbank, on the other hand, is independent of the German government and can act more rationally to control inflation.
Johnson says: "By joining the European monetary union we would be allying ourselves to a credible central bank based on the Bundesbank."
His view is supported by The Kingsdown Enquiry, undertaken by Lord Kingsdown, former Bank of England governor, last year to examine whether Britain should join the single European currency. His report was resoundingly in favour, and concluded that a single currency would mean lower British interest rates and inflation.
Germany has had far lower inflation than Britain for the past 30 years (see chart, left). And because of this, interest rates in Germany have historically been lower and less volatile than in Britain. Money-market interest rates are 3.5% in Germany and 6.25% in Britain.
Lower interest rates would be good news for mortgage holders who would have far lower monthly repayments. But savers, too, would benefit: their real returns would be maintained by low inflation. "The value of their savings would not be eroded with time," says Johnson.
More job opportunities through inward investment in Britain
Already a couple of Japanese companies have suggested they would not invest in Britain if the government refused to join a single currency. Foreign companies would look elsewhere in Europe, so jobs would be lost to Germany and France. Graham Bishop, adviser on European financial affairs at Salomon Brothers, the investment bank, believes we would see "the export of jobs on a grand scale".
Patrick Foley, chief economist at Lloyds Bank, says the long-term benefits of a single currency far outweigh the drawbacks. Lower interest rates would mean faster growth and greater inward investment, he says. "Prices of goods would come down." He would shed few tears over the loss of sovereignty over the pound: "The cynic would say sovereignty over monetary policy would be a good thing for the British government to lose." Bishop is more blunt: "We have been exercising our sovereignty to make a cock-up of things."IT IS deeply unfashionable to argue in favour of a single currency. That is because most arguments against it raise the fear of a loss of British sovereignty, with British interest rates being controlled by the Bundesbank. And indeed, the sceptics' arguments are certainly taking hold. Their resistance is not based merely on fear of the unknown, of a great leap into something that is irreversible: solid economic arguments about the impossibility of meeting the convergence criteria pose the biggest threat to the single currency.
On one issue, the British should be able to set their minds at ease: it is almost certain that the Queen's head would appear on euro coins. One side is to be devoted to a "national emblem or hero", and no doubt the Queen would be Britain's choice. And come 2000, if the troubled project works, you can expect to carry Italian, German and French heroes and heroines in your pocket as well.
D B writes: I keep seeing advertisements offering Britain's new £5 coin for just £5 post free. Where's the catch?
You are the catch: The coin is, in effect, a "loss leader". What the companies promoting the coins will have acquired is your name and address.
You will be sent your £5 coin when they become generally available in mid-March. But that is not all you will get. Any company using this kind of marketing ploy is trying to identify prospective customers. So expect regular mailshots trying to sell you other coins which will make a profit for the company.
But remember that subsequent sales will have to cover the cost of the company's original promotion, so make sure you are not paying over the odds.
Two firms involved in these promotions The Westminster Collection and MDM The Crown Collections urge you to "reserve" your coins now. But (and not a lot of people know this) you could go direct to the Royal Mint now and get a new £5 coin straight away. It will cost you £8.95, but for the extra cost, you will be sent a coin whose condition is "brilliant uncirculated"; in other words it will not have been what is called in the trade "bag marked" on its way out to the banks. You can pay by credit card if you phone 01443 223366.
Of course, once they are issued, anyone can just pick up a £5 coin from their bank. But, whatever the condition, don't expect your coin to be a lucrative investment there will be too many of them about.
HILL SAMUEL Asset Management is launching an emerging-companies investment trust which it hopes will consolidate its reputation as Britain's leading specialist in smaller companies.
The investment trust its first will only invest in companies with a market capitalisation of less than £100m, and aimed primarily for those worth less than £50m. The trust will be managed by Leigh Harrison, who also manages Hill Samuel's top-performing emerging-companies unit trust.
On January 1 the unit trust was ranked first in its sector, having grown by 260% in the past five years.
Robert Page, of Hill Samuel said: "The relationship between smaller companies and GDP growth is well established. With economic growth forecast to pick up later this year we think the short- to mid-term prospects for this sector are good." The investment trust will be capped at £35m for the launch any more and Hill Samuel says investing in the most desirable companies becomes problematic. The trust's initial life is 10 years, but shareholders can extend it. Launch charges have been set at 1% and the annual management fee will be 1%. The minimum investment is £1,000. The offer opens on February 28 and closes on March 20.
Hill Samuel: 0800 336600
M&G has launched the Equity Investment Trust to catch the financial sales boom in the run-up to the end of the tax year in April.
The trust is being offered with an M&G personal equity plan (Pep) wrapping until February 29. After this, investors seeking the tax efficiency of a Pep will have to open a plan through their financial adviser.
M&G's Pep will accept up to £12,000 per individual, representing the £6,000 annual allowance for 1995-96 and 1996-97. Investors can pay in as much as they choose, with money transferred to a Pep as allowances become available.
As a split-capital trust, the Equity trust offers three types of share. Income shares will provide an estimated 4.4% per annum, while capital shares will aim for capital growth. Zero-dividend preference shares will yield a proposed 8.1% at the end of the trust's 15-year life.
Investors can buy individual classes of share or take up M&G's packaged units, which contain all three. The trust will invest in companies that pay high dividends, and in under-valued shares with recovery potential. There is no initial charge but the annual management fee, at 1.5%, is on the high side.
M&G: 0990 600670
C P writes: We are retired and often pop across to the Continent in the car. I recently asked Commercial Union how much it would cost to have an annual "green card", so I didn't have to pay out £15 every time we go.
But I was quoted £153, which is totally out of proportion to the time I will actually be away. For countries in the European Community a "green card" is no longer a legal requirement, because all motor policies now automatically give third-party cover throughout the EC. What you're paying for is an extension to your comprehensive cover. Many insurers, like Commercial Union, extend the cover for a month in any one year free of charge (your recent £15 simply covered the other month of two months' cover). But few are keen to extend cover for a whole year.
Call your local Commercial Union branch and ask to speak to the motor-insurance underwriter; say you expect to be abroad for no more than three months in any year. On this basis, you should have to pay only about £30 (that's two months' cover at £15 plus your month's free cover). But you will still have to let the company know each time you go abroad. This way, you will have the necessary endorsement to ensure comprehensive cover and a "green card" to wave at any awkward gendarme.In my column two weeks ago a reader referred to his dealing with a company called Euroglaze which went into liquidation. I have been asked to make it clear that this company, Top Class Windows Systems Ltd, trading as Euroglaze, has nothing to do with Euroglaze (North West) Ltd.
Roger Anderson will answer questions in this column on any aspect of personal finance. Write to Questions of Cash, The Sunday Times, 1 Pennington Street, London E1 9XW. We regret no personal replies can be given and point out that it will not be possible to deal with every request. Advice is offered without legal responsibility.
R S writes: Three years ago I took out a policy with Allied Dunbar, which I thought would pay out a lump sum in the event of "critical illness". Two major operations later, I have become a permanent invalid. Yet I haven't received a penny from Allied Dunbar.
You have a rare disease which has resulted in your changing from a fit, active farmer to, as you put it, "a housebound wreck" unable to do any physical work. This was just the sort of eventuality you thought you had insured against paying out about £80 a month for £100,000 cover for you and your wife. But the catch is that although there is an electronic implant in your abdomen, and a permanent hole in the top of your bowel into which a rubber tube has to be inserted three times a day, this is not a "critical illness" in your policy's use of the words.
Allied Dunbar boasts its Lifestyle Plus policy "protects you against the financial impact of critical illness", but the illnesses that trigger an automatic lump-sum payment are only those specified in the product literature, such as heart attack and kidney failure. You will find similar limitations in any other critical-illness policy.
You insist this was not explained to you when you took out the policy, though the details would have been included in the literature that should have been given to you at the time. But do not give up hope. Your policy will pay out in the event of "permanent total disability" and after my intervention the company will be sending you a claim form for this benefit.
In order to qualify you must be disabled in such a way as to render you "unable to carry out any gainful employment" and Allied Dunbar will ask your consultant whether he thinks you will ever be able to work again. The company, however, will want to satisfy itself that you are unable to do any meaningful work, not just pig farming. But from what you have told me, your strengths lie in farming. I don't think it would be appropriate to expect you miraculously to turn your hand to "gainful" occupation in another field, especially with your physical problems.
D W writes: My wife is a vegetarian and when we booked a summer cruise in the Baltic I was assured by the tour operator, CTC Cruise Lines, that she would be looked after. But, far from being properly catered for, she had only four acceptable meals during the whole fortnight.CTC Cruise Lines was not satisfied with the overall catering arrangements on the Azerbaydzhan, the vessel it charted for your cruise.
And it will not be chartering the ship again until things improve. But I think your complaint has really brought home to the company that vegetarians are not people to be trifled with.
Apart from your wife's culinary problems, you enjoyed the cruise. But, and let's not mince words, mealtimes were a disaster. Meat dishes were regularly served to your wife, much to her distress. Often she ended up with just lukewarm vegetables (even cheese proving hard to get). And when she was given something appropriate to eat, it was regularly served out of phase with the other diners at your table, with you all well into your desserts. And your wife was not alone; you say there were seven other vegetarians on the cruise although one reverted to eating fish because she was so hungry.
After some hassle, you have eventually managed to squeeze £200 compensation out of the company, and I recommend you accept this. But I hope your complaint will now have achieved something more because, following my intervention, CTC Cruise Lines' Ukrainian managing director, Valeriy Markov, immediately contacted the Black Sea Shipping Company (his parent company in Odessa) to emphasise the need to cater properly for the needs of vegetarians.
Perhaps it should take a leaf out of P&O's book and get in touch with the Vegetarian Society. Apparently, its school of cookery has been approached by P&O to ensure its cuisine includes more Cordon Bleu vegetarian dishes or I should I say Cordon Vert?
FOLLOWING our article on the subject last week, readers may have searched in vain for the freestanding additional voluntary contribution (FSAVC) schemes run by Morgan Grenfell, Schroder, Fidelity, Gartmore and Perpetual, whose managed funds topped the performance tables for this type of pension scheme.
In fact, all four companies' funds are offered under FSAVC schemes run by Skandia Life or its sub
sidiary, Professional Life, both of which offer planholders a choice of funds run by "big name" investment managers. Their slots at the top of the tables are owed in part to the managers' expertise, but also reflect the relatively low charges on these plans, which do not pay commission and are, therefore, mostly sold by fee-charging advisers.
I REMEMBER the words distinctly: "You couldn't be investing at a better time." That time was November 1994, the investment was a (modest) lump sum and its destination an emerging-markets unit trust.
The sales director's reasoning was soundly based, as unit prices on these funds had been falling. I was buying more cheaply than had been possible for many months. And what happened? Prices continued falling apace and by last summer the modest investment was about 20% more modest than at its inception.
But by last week, celebrations were in order: my investment in emerging markets had heaved itself into profitability, even including the cost of the trust's 5%-plus initial charge.
All in all, then, it is just as well as I did not sell out last summer, for which I claim no prescience, merely the benign combination of being a lazy sorry, make that "long-term" saver, who is wedded to the theory that it must be sensible for UK investors to have some exposure to the small countries of the Pacific rim, Latin America and elsewhere, where populations and economies are growing at double or treble the rates here in the West.
Of course, good theories do not always fill pockets. Victorian capitalism, although it made fortunes for many, is littered with examples of shareholders who lost, by backing railway or canal companies in Britain or abroad that went wrong.
I am still a believer in the emerging-markets story, but there are some essential qualities investors need if it is to be a sensible move for them: time, a tolerance of risk, an ability to build up your exposure gradually through regular savings, and a large-enough portfolio overall for your emerging-market exposure to constitute no more than about 5% of the total.
Long term, the rewards will be evident in hard cash. Meanwhile, a more unexpected one is that there appears to be good evidence that a holding in emerging markets actually decreases the overall degree of risk that is, the volatility inherent in an overall portfolio. The big markets of the world may move together, but these firecrackers of the financial world are different. It may sound implausible that one can increase returns while decreasing risk but it seems more likely to be true than not.
NEGATIVE equity continues to rise, nudging repossessions back towards the record levels of the early 1990s.
The increase is at odds with a more optimistic mood in the housing market this year, due to lower interest rates and the general drop in the cost of buying houses.
Although repossessions have some way to go before they reach the 1991 figure of 75,540, the trend looks set to increase again after a couple of years of steady reduction.
The Council of Mortgage Lenders, the sector's trade association, last week issued figures showing a total of 49,410 repossessions for 1995.
The figures followed a Nationwide building society report which said up to 1.7m households are in negative equity, with 1m on the brink of repossession.
Rob Thomas, a housing analyst at UBS, said: "There are a lot of people still in 12 months' arrears and the number of repossessions is likely to go up in excess of 50,000 this year."
Although the country's largest lenders have played down the long-term implications of the latest figures, they, too, are concerned about the situation.
"We estimate there are 1.6m households with negative equity," said Martin Ellis, a housing economist at Woolwich building society.
"What we are now seeing is a slightly different regional composition, where negative equity has fallen in southern areas and is spreading northwards."
Ellis warned that even if the number of home owners with negative equity dropped in the next 12 months falling interest rates and tax cuts mean there could be a fairly sharp drop there would still be a large number of home owners unable to move because of low or inadequate equity.
Sue Anderson at the Council of Mortgage Lenders cautioned that low-equity figures were notoriously difficult to estimate. But she added that the negative effect of October state benefit changes might not yet be apparent. "The unemployed now have to wait nine months before making housing claims. It may be that the effects of that will take some time to filter through," she said.
A RARE chance to buy the Crown Jewels the complete set comes up this week thanks to a collector who does not wish to remain anonymous.
OK, they're not the real Crown Jewels, the seller is not someone from the House of Windsor, and this is not the government's latest sell-off wheeze. The Great Stromboli, veteran stage and TV showman, sword-swallower and fire-eater, is selling his replica set The Crown Jewels Experience to raise some useful cash from an asset that is not seeing enough use.
Stromboli otherwise known as Danny Lynch, a stage and TV showman from Bolton, Lancashire reckons the 40-piece set is almost as good as the real thing in the Tower of London.
With his wife, Sylvia (also his stage partner) Stromboli has taken the jewels on tour many times. The display features an exact replica of Queen Mary's crown, plus nine other crowns, the mace, sword of state, sceptre, and all the jewels, including the Koh-i-noor diamond. When a diamond-exhibition organiser approached the Tower of London to try to hire its replica Crown Jewels, the Tower referred him to Stromboli who obliged.
He says: "Sylvia and I are cutting down on touring so the jewels spend much of the time in a vault.
"They were specially made for me by a craftsman. Only an expert could tell them from the real thing and they are one of only a handful of such sets in the world.
"It's a shame to lock them away; we would like them to continue to be available for viewing."
He hopes an enterprising town might buy them for display as a tourist attraction, or someone else in show business might take them on. The asking price is £95,000.
Potential purchasers of the Crown Jewels can contact Stromboli on 01204-5 72792
BRITAIN'S banks and building societies are secretly offering preferential interest rates to borrowers who try to remortgage with a rival lender.
The practice, which has been criticised as "subversive and short-sighted" by MPs and consumer groups, is a desperate attempt by lenders to retain their customer base in a cut-throat housing market, and means that only those borrowers determined to remortgage are offered the best rates.
The news is bound to infuriate the millions of unsuspecting homeowners who are paying standard variable rates and are routinely told there are no better deals available.
The Sunday Times has uncovered several cases where borrowers were made "under the table" offers at the 11th hour after their initial requests were rejected.
Michael Bone, a chief inspector in the Metropolitan Police, is one. He had been a borrower with Bradford & Bingley for six years when he was alerted to an attractive remortgage deal through the London broker Chase de Vere. "I went back to the B&B with details of the offer and asked if they could match or beat it. The answer was a categoric no," he said.
Bone then proceeded with the Chase de Vere deal a 2% discount for two years, plus £1,000 cashback. But when the B&B received the request for a reference from Chase de Vere, it contacted Bone with an even better deal.
"B&B offered me a bigger discount and said it would even reimburse me the £200 I had spent on remortgaging fees," he said.
Bone asked why he had not been offered the deal when he first enquired. "They told me that if they offered these deals to everyone who asked for them, they would have to let virtually all their customers pay cheap rates, and that would cost them a fortune."
The B&B admitted yesterday that it did target borrowers in the process of leaving, arguing that such tactics are widespread and a fact of life in today's tough mortgage market.
"We are not doing this because we want to," said John Wriglesworth, the society's general manager. "We only started this scheme because we were losing business to other societies that were doing exactly the same thing. We are reluctantly following suit."
Wriglesworth defended the practice of denying there are better offers available when people enquire about remortgaging.
He said: "It is a highly selective process, based on a person's history with the society and his or her repayment record. We will not offer these deals to everyone."
However, the offers are not always welcome. Another borrower, who wishes to remain anonymous, was contacted by the B&B when he was in the process of switching his mortgage to Skipton building society.
He received a letter from B&B's customer-liaison unit which said: "We have received a lender's reference (sic) from Skipton advising that you are considering moving your mortgage away from B&B. The society may be able to offer an incentive to you so that you no longer need to transfer to the Skipton and which may be to your financial benefit."
The borrower said he refused to entertain any further offers out of principle, as he had already made enquiries about remortgaging with the society and was furious that he had been told there were no better deals available. He went ahead and switched to Skipton.
Alistair Darling, Labour's consumer-affairs spokesman, said the practice was unfair and called on lenders to be more open.
He said: "I have spoken to a number of lenders and they all admit this is going on, but it is terribly unfair when two borrowers are treated so differently. It is not right that they should have to leave before being wooed back."
The Consumers' Association also called for more honesty, branding the practice "disgraceful".
A spokesman said: "It is pure short-termism they should be looking after their existing borrowers instead of waiting for a problem to arise before acting."
Simon Tyler, a spokesman for Chase de Vere, said the practice was widespread. "In this competitive market you will nearly always be able to better your current arrangement. If you make the decision to remortgage and your lender comes up with a better deal, all well and good. If you do not try, you will never know."
THE gold price is expected to soar to $500 an ounce, the highest level since December 1987, predicts Mercury Asset Management (MAM), manager of the UK's biggest gold fund.
Mercury's forecast follows a Sunday Times report last December that gold was set to recover to "well over $400 an ounce" as demand outstripped supply for the first time in years. On Friday it closed at $414.50.
Gold-mining shares are rising rapidly in value. But investors should be wary as gold shares are among the riskiest on the market.
Several reasons explain the runaway gold price: demand is rising steadily while production remains stagnant demand for gold now exceeds newly mined supply by about 700 tonnes; the Japanese are buying gold bullion on a massive scale; and Asian jewellers are seeing record demand for gold rings and necklaces.
But a less-obvious cause is the decision by mining companies to reverse their strategy of forward-selling gold on the futures market. Barrick, the world's largest gold-mining company, announced last week that it would unwind its forward position. That means it would have to buy back gold that it had already sold to Asian buyers at a premium.
Graham Birch, a director of MAM, said: "That is a sea change. Other mining companies will do the same and the effect will be to boost demand for gold."
He added: "It is now reasonable to expect the gold price to rise to $500." This would mean a surge in mining profits, because earnings are linked so closely to the gold price.
The extreme volatility of the gold market can be seen in South Africa, the world's biggest producer, where last week the Johannesburg All-Gold index rose 9.27% in a single day.
THE government is to crack down on life-insurance schemes used by City firms to avoid paying millions of pounds in National Insurance contributions (NICs) on employee bonuses.
The Department of Social Security (DSS) told The Sunday Times yesterday that it will pursue employers for unpaid NI contributions. It means that blue-chip City firms, the biggest users of the tax dodge, face multi-million-pound bills as a result.
Merchant banks and investment managers have traditionally paid bonuses to top staff in kind rather than in cash. This has enabled them to avoid the employers' NIC of 10.2%. The most popular early methods were to pay bonuses in gold bars, fine wine, coffee beans or other commodities that could readily be turned into cash. As the use of such items was gradually outlawed, a ploy emerged whereby employees set up offshore life-insurance policies to which their firms could contribute without incurring an NIC liability. BZW is reported to be paying a multi-million-pound bonus package to staff in the form of life policies. Merrill Lynch, SBC Warburg and Goldman Sachs are among many City firms understood to use the scheme to avoid NICs.
The idea is that the policies can be cashed in, with employees pocketing sums, which in many cases run into six figures. For every £100,000 of bonus paid in this way, the employer would avoid £10,200 in NICs.
The Contributions Agency of the DSS has told The Sunday Times, however, that the life-insurance ruse no longer works: "NICs are due on the sums paid to the insurance company. The payments are made for the employee's benefit and are earnings from employment."
The spokesman added: "The DSS will challenge employers and enforce payment. We don't condone employers who attempt to avoid their proper responsibility to the National Insurance Fund through devious practices."
The DSS said that it has been charging interest on late contributions since 1994. It also pointed out that it has already taken action against many of the employers using this avoidance technique. "Employers using the scheme will face bills for unpaid NICs and in some cases bills for large amounts of interest," it said.
Companies keen to dodge NICs have also given employees antiques and works of art. However, the DSS spokesman added: "As avoidance schemes emerge, we have a policy of stamping on them. It would be unfair to stamp down on benefit fraud and not pursue contribution avoidance."
The Labour party has said it will continue to press for further tightening of loopholes. It said it would seek amendments to the finance bill in a bid to stop employers avoiding National Insurance payments.
EXTRACTING A LAUGH ... comedian WC Fields shows the funny side of dentistry. But a new survey reveals the increasing difficulty of getting NHS dental treatment.
More people are forced to go private as the state pulls out. The growing range of alternatives is explained on page 12.
Don't let yourself be fenced in, says DAN PEARSON, take design to the outer limits.
IN a country as small and as crowded as ours, personal space has become sacred. We are still very much territorial animals arguments, even legal battles, over disputed inches on boundaries go on for years, often ending in blows. Enclosures that were originally erected around properties to keep out the elements and nature are now, for most, built for different reasons: to reduce noise, to hide ugly views and protect against prying eyes, while simultaneously acting as a backdrop to the garden.
A boundary acts as a division between you and the outside world, screening out the undesirables, or it can be part of the landscape. It can also be a sculpture in itself: a personal favourite is a wavy wall in Hampshire that snakes around a garden, distracting the eye. The American architect Luis Barragan erects concrete walls as backdrops and screens, drenching them in colour to provide atmosphere.
Despite being such important parts of our outdoor living spaces, boundaries are often poorly managed, with mundane larchlap fencing and dark forests of the dreaded leylandii.
When considering your boundary, whether it is a renovation job or the erection of something new, the first task is to assess the plot. You can create mood, good and bad, with a wall or fence: a rustic wall could easily look out of place in an urban setting and it is possible to ruin rural scenery with soulless larchlap or concrete.
To gauge how high your proposed boundary should be, string up a rope or wire and hang cloth from it. Check building regulations, as in some areas there are standard height restrictions. You may require different heights in certain locations, and this will dictate the materials chosen, or you may simply wish to keep out livestock or define the limits of your property.
Walls are the ultimate boundary, but they are costly to build and maintain, and, consequently, are a disappearing part of our landscape. They can make magnificent features: think of the dry-stone walls that straddle the Yorkshire Dales, or the zigzag patterned walls, typical of Cornwall, that look like tweed and are known as the Cornish hedge. I have even seen a wall of standing stones around a field in the mountains of northern Spain. In fact, many walls actually become the landscape. I have a mud wall in one of my gardens that we have left freestanding as a focus in itself, and I always find it difficult to send climbers up a good lichen-covered wall with its acid green and silvery tapestry.
In cities, you have to make do with brick, finished stone and concrete, but even these walls can be made into something special. Think of the romantic associations conjured up by a walled garden.
Although many walls are erected to lessen wind damage, their solid faces can deflect the wind, causing it to rush and eddy and, ultimately, cause more damage. To counteract this, in very windy locations they can be perforated. One of my clients, who lives on the coast, surrounded her vegetable garden with a brick honeycomb wall where each brick was staggered, allowing the wind to pass through. The effect was similar to a lace curtain you could look through, but the eye chose not to.
Fences provide a cheaper alternative. Unlike walls, they are easy to construct and because they can be made from so many materials, are immensely flexible. A solid wooden fence has exactly the same problems with wind, only fences are much quicker to break free in a gale. I remember all those larchlap panels thrown around like straws after the great storm in 1987.
A perforated fence is, in fact, much more effective. To prevent peeping toms, yet allow the wind to pass through, verticals or horizontals can be spaced on either side of their cross support, allowing air flow and giving the structure a feeling of lightness. In Holland I saw a fence of individual chestnut posts driven into the ground 5cm apart. The sun shining behind it cast stripes across the paving, another added dimension, giving that part of the garden a particular elegance.
Once again, choice is all-important. Hazel hurdle panels look great in the country, adding a rustic quality to a garden, while finished wood gives a more modern or urban feel. It can be painted or stained to help fit it into its setting.
I once used rolls of bundled heather, which we wired to a framework of verticals and horizontals. Coming in 3mx1m rolls, the heather makes the most wonderful backdrop. You can get rolls of willow and birch twigs as well. So far, my heather fencing has lasted for four years without any signs of distress. I keep my fingers crossed.
Railings are perhaps the most discreet yet opulent of boundary devices. I once saw marvellous billowing railings erected by the side of a road. They caused optical illusions, with each curved rail creating a mirage as it moved against the next when you drove past. But the whole thing had to be dismantled as it distracted drivers and caused accidents, proving yet again how boundaries can be a contentious issue.
Heather, birch, hazel and willow rolls can be obtained from Thatching Advisory Services, Faircross Offices, Stratfield Saye, Reading, Berks RG7 2BT (01256-880828).
A recent survey criticised a plague of "pensioner parents" who had their children too late in life to understand youth culture. SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE, 30, whose father is 70, disagrees. He believes older parents are better...
At school sports days, I always thanked God that my father was not one of those foolish young dads, almost bursting with spick and span keenness and competitive bravado, who would try to beat the children at the races and then collapse exhausted at the end. I was far happier that mine was a dignified older father who watched proudly without needing to make an imbecile of himself and embarrass me.
My father was 40 when he sired me and I never wanted a "regular guy father" to play rugby with. It is one of the silliest precepts of politically correct fatherhood that a father who cannot race his son is a bad father. This attitude is a tiresome hangover of the 1960s youth-worshipping cult.
Younger fathers do not make better parents. On the contrary, younger parents are often incompetent, with neither experience nor wisdom. Older parents are wiser, more tolerant, patient better company for their children. However much a father jogs with his children, they will still be horrified by him during their adolescence.
I was what you might call an "afterthought", the fourth of four brothers. The others were 10 years older. But I never doubted that I, the "Benjamin" of an older father, had the best of both worlds because my brothers were like young fathers while my father ruled like a dignified philosopher-king with an otherworldly charm.
My father is an old-fashioned family doctor, one of the last of the breed. His surgery used to be in the basement of our house and I was always fascinated by dad's medical stories. Sent to practise obstetrics at the Rotunda, Dublin, he was called into a backstreet tenement to deliver his first baby on old newspapers. Dad was taken aback to find the mother in a double bed surrounded by her six children. Every time she had a pain, she would swipe them down like ninepins after which six heads would pop back up again so as not to miss a moment of the action. When my father had nervously delivered the baby, the hearty mother said: "Let's celebrate, doc, with some Liffey water" and drew a bottle of Guinness from under the pillow. I so wanted to be a doctor that my father would undergo anything to encourage me. At eight, he was stoical enough to allow me to give him a tetanus injection to show me how it was done. He ground his teeth as I repeatedly stabbed him with the needle.
Wherever we drove, my father loved to sing us songs, usually music hall such as: "It's the rich that gets the pleasure; it's the poor that gets the blame; it's always been the same old story, ain't it all a bleeding shame." No young father would know such gems anymore!
My father has a limp one leg does not bend so he was not in any case likely to play rugby with us. Whatever his age, he always runs everywhere: when a taxi narrowly missed hitting him the other day, the cabbie shouted: "So that's how you got y'wooden leg, guv?" When I criticise his daredevil road-crossing style, he often says: "Do as I say, not as I do!"
We have always shared an enjoyment of the same books. Now he is 70, we still spend hours of the night discussing history together. My father is an absent-minded professor of learned and lovable eccentricity who has always been oblivious to the conventional workings of daily life. He lives for two things: his patients and his family. He is living proof of the little-known fact that older parents are far more tolerant about sex than sanctimonious younger parents.
My mother always tried to stem the flood of girlfriends my brothers brought into the house, saying: "We're not having the harem to stay." But dad never seemed to notice.
Once when my oldest brother was in bed with a girlfriend, my father walked in, holding some books and mumbling to himself as usual, and sat down in a chair: "Your school report was rather good. I'm going to give you a fiver because you did so well at maths." Then he got up and went out, without apparently noticing the blonde. As soon as he was gone, she said: "Who the hell was that man?" "Just my father," said my bemused brother. We never could solve the mystery of whether he knew when to turn a blind eye or whether his mind was far away in the complexities of some exotic medical case.
When I was about five, some local hooligans in the country kidnapped me. My eldest brother just managed to escape home on his bike to find my father sitting in a silk dressing gown and pyjamas, as usual, reading a newspaper that he had managed to coat in marmalade. He leapt up and jumped into his car, driving like the wind. He charged the yahoos with his vehicle, then emerged, a terrifying sight, bellowing, with his dressing gown blowing in the wind. The youths fled, shrieking like banshees.
When my brother started a fire by mistake, the fireman said: "You'd better give him a thrashing." But my father said: "I think he's had his punishment for the day. Nothing matters much and very little matters at all." The only time he ever spanked me was when, on the way back from a James Bond film, I jumped out of the moving car thinking anyone could be 007.
When I was 16, my father and I took medical supplies to Soviet dissidents. On the train from Leningrad to Moscow, I became "engaged" to a tweedy English girl who had just been given a Russian wedding ring by her parents, also on the trip. Drunk and wild, I foolishly managed to drop the ring off the train. Her father, a snobbish martinet, discovered the loss and demanded the truth:
"I got engaged to a boy called Sebag I met on the train and he dropped the ring off it," admitted the girl. The martinet told her that she must make me pay £100 on the spot. But I had no money.
I was too ashamed to tell my father. So the martinet began a guerrilla campaign to tell my confused father, pursuing him around the sights of Russia, presuming that he knew about the ring. In Red Square, he said: "Dr Sebag, a gentleman pays his debts." Outside the Winter Palace, he approached and said obliquely: "I was at the school with a Sebag; he was honourable!" Dad said: "The man must be mad!" "Barmy!" I agreed, tormented but feign-
ing ignorance.
Finally the man marched up, heels-a-clicking, and held out his hand: "Your son owes me £100. I trust that you will pay!"
Most fathers would have blamed me or accused me or doubted me. There is nothing lovelier than my mellow old father. Appreciating both my embarrassment and the martinet's buffoonery, he simply wrote out a cheque on the spot, gently telling us: "I'd have paid double for the entertainment you two have given me."
IT IS an astrological axiom that an individual is born under the influence of a particular star sign not because they already possess the characteristics for which the sign is known, but because the development of those traits is a lifelong challenge. Elle Macpherson, who recently parted from Tim Jefferies, was born under the sign of ego and individuality, Aries; therefore her challenge is to think and act independently to be sovereign ruler of her life. This suggests one reason that Macpherson has been such a success in her line of work, modelling, which necessitates a balance between openness and self-interest.
In Macpherson's case, however, defining such boundaries in personal situations is less easy. In fact, with the planet of love, Venus, opposite the intuitive, but ultimately illusionary, Neptune, she can convince herself that what she wants to believe is true. This, plus the Moon in Libra, the sign of relationship itself, indicates that she would endure a great deal before she would confront issues directly.
But the time has come to face and discuss difficult facts, for the most practical planet of them all, Saturn, is now confronting Mars, the planet that rules Aries, in Macpherson's chart. While nobody can ever know what goes on behind closed doors in relationships, whatever the exact circumstances of her split with Jefferies, the dividends will be a deeper understanding of herself and how she conducts relationships.
I don't think that Elle Macpherson and Tim Jefferies could ever have really wanted to tear each other's heart out. In fact, I don't think they like each other much at all, not in a passionate way.
They liked what they did, which was basically to spend three years on and off together on holiday exotica-label-lifestyle-playboy-model holidays. St Tropez, they met there; the Caribbean, they perfected their tans; the bottom of a mountain in Africa, they slept in a bag, roughing it is fun if you have money; Switzerland skiing, the final trough. For that is apparently where it ended, a few weeks ago, as painlessly as it began, or that's how Jefferies would have it. He'd have everything painless and seamless. He once said he wanted to lead his life in the funniest and least objectionable way possible. He considers himself a great aesthete, and loves all forms of beauty clothing, cars, art, girls.
And although one would imagine there would be a great complicity between him and Macpherson, all shining hair and skin the colour of warm sand, I think there is more to her than that. There was a time when she could never look anyone in the eye because she is awkward, shy. And while they both had parents who divorced and left them while they were young, and admit that this had a debilitating effect, they savoured their scars very differently.
Jefferies spent a long time sulking that he was only given £500,000 on his 21st birthday from his grandfather, the founder of Green Shield Stamps, Richard Tompkins although, for many years, much was incorrectly made of the fact that he had inherited the full £50m. Actually, it went to his stepmother. A messy, emotionally tangled early marriage to Koo Stark left him brittle. He buried his feelings almost completely in sunning and skiing.
Women are often more in touch with their emotions, even Australian women. Macpherson knew she had to put on a show of being a trouper, but really she is a clever and sensitive being. A relationship that wasn't going anywhere except on yet another plane, further emphasising their different stratospheres or emotional existences, was bound to frustrate her.
The ending, all the same, was neat. I am always suspicious when people say so effortlessly: "We'll remain friends." So swift a transition makes me think that they were never anything more than friends who had sex. "Taking a break from each other," said Jefferies. But taking breaks is all they have done for three years. He makes it sound like another holiday.
Tim Jefferies, now 33, is very much a person terrified of emotional peaks or troughs. You know what I always say about men who like to ski: you can't trust them because they are sublimating their emotional adrenaline. Jefferies is terrified of even a smidgen of what he calls "negative thoughts". If it is not fun, it is not happening. If he is to be inched from his plane, by feeling too much or too little, if imbalance seems to cause stress, then there he is, up over another mountain.
Someone who knows them both says that their being 3,000 miles apart from one another just got too much; or, to put it another way, it was just not enough. This whole relationship is about not enough. It's ridiculous to suggest that living in different continents and going on holiday together every few weeks is a pressure. After all, what's a Concorde between lovers who can afford to get on it like a taxi?
Being in separate continents and only seeing each other in luxurious circumstances is what kept the relationship going, not what tore it apart. Things like claustrophobia, no money, domestic hell, those are the pressures.
Living in separate continents could heighten the romantic drama of meeting. It's tidy, it compartmentalises feelings. You are there when you want to be and 3,000 miles away when you don't. The attention you do give each other seems precious, even if it's only preciously convenient. Compartmentalisation is a luxury process. Fear of dependency is a stranger to the luxury of convenience. But that is not to say that they did not enjoy meeting sometimes. Of course, when you have got room service you don't need commitment. While you are always going somewhere you don't need to be committed.
They could get on with their quite separate and focused careers. Macpherson's calendar company, for instance, turned over £4m last year and she has a very successful Australian lingerie line as well as fitness workout videos and a nascent acting career. Jefferies runs Hamiltons Gallery in Mayfair, London.
It was all so easy and glossy, not thoughtful. It didn't hurt enough to keep it going. Macpherson once said that she would have liked Jefferies less if he needed her more. They didn't need each other because they were not for each other.
Jefferies was the antithesis of Macpherson's marriage. She married when she was very young, it didn't last, to a French photographer, Gilles Bensimon, 20 years her senior. Very much a missing chink in her life is the father she never had. Bensimon and Elle were so close, often they would never talk to another person for a fortnight. He introduced her to art, literature, philosophy and plucked her from her riding and swimming and blue-skies life in Australia, and put her in Paris.
She loves to be married, she wanted to have children, never used contraception. They were together six years, and why did they break up? She answers different culture, different religion, different aspirations. She and Jefferies have often described themselves as having the same aspirations. They want to be successful and happy. While you don't get happiness without pain or success without failure, they seemed to think they could cushion each other in the unreality of this relationship.
I don't think they ever really knew each other. Macpherson, who will be 32 in March, is complex. At home with nudity, she has never come to terms with her own sexuality. One minute she looks strapping and the next straggly, those great big square shoulders with big neck and tiny head. It's all at odds.
She had a strict religious background. Her mother had her when she was 17. The grandmother was the authority figure. She grew up feeling gawky, the strangest shape in the class. How odd that she should be stuck with the hormonal attentions of every pubescent boy and nicknamed The Body.
Names are important, and if you are dubbed The Body, it might be debilitating. You might stop imagining that you have a brain, a heart, a soul. Confusing for her, but temptingly simplistic for those who want to go out with her.
He says she is not drawn to good-looking people, she is suspicious of them because it often means they have not developed other skills. Yet Jefferies says he likes beauty. What they had in common was superficial stuff, so they could be comfortable with each other. They never yearned for each other, not in the same way, and certainly not enough to be on the same plane at the same time always going in the same direction.
Freshly cut flowers can transform the dullest day with the memory of an old-fashioned cottage garden or bring a splash of tropical brilliance to the colourless British winter.We have chosen 12 different vases, to suit everything from a single red rose to an armful of lilies.
1. Tiny cast glass bottle, perfect for a single flower, 99p, from The Pier, 200 Tottenham Court Road, London W1 and branches; 0171-637 7001
2. Three-piece gilded vase by Maryse Boxer, £175, from Chez Joseph, 26 Sloane Street, London SW1; 0171-245 9493
3. Glass vase with rounded bottom, £49, from Purves & Purves, 80-81 and 83 Tottenham Court Road, London W1; 0171-580 8223
4. Red etched glass vase by Jane Glibbery, £80, from Space Form. Call 0181-874 5440 for mail-order details
5. Tortoise-shell glass vase, £128, from William Yeoward, 336 King's Road, London SW3; 0171-351 5454
6. Pale blue ripple vase, £16.95, from Nick and Gaby Ward. Call 01981-540348 for mail-order details. Also available in cream, brown, green and pink the Neapolitan ice cream colours
7. Silver-plated vase, £65, from the Conran Shop, 81 Fulham Road, London SW3; 0171-589 7401
8. Cream urn, a reproduction inspired by 1930s trophy vases, £38, fom Jane Packer, 56 James St, London W1; 0171-935 2673.
9. Hand-thrown earthenware vase, £17.50, from Habitat. Call 0645-334433 for details of branches
10. Single-stem frosted glass vase, £9.95, from Liberty, Regent Street, London W1; 0171-734 1234
11. Hand-made mosaic vase, £80, from Green & Pleasant, 129 Church Road, London SW13; 0181-741 1539
12. Blown glass reversible vase designed by Tom Dixon, £60, from Space, 28 All Saints Road, London W11; 0171-229 6533
Duggie Fields's flat provides the perfect context for his postmodern paintings: an unself-conscious mix of classic mid-century furniture and 1950s ephemera, with the odd light-hearted reference to the art world a palette-topped table, for example, or the Pollockesque lino floor.
Fun 1950s ephemera is back in vogue and looks great mixed up with classic modern furniture. In curvy shapes and wild colours, the cheapest pieces often work best. This skinny magazine rack, right, costs just £8 from Flying Duck Enterprises, 320-322 Creek Road, Greenwich, London SE10 (0181-858 1964). Design Goes Pop, 34-36 Oldham Street, Manchester (0161-237 9688) also has design classics from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
With its sculptural, streamlined shapes, mid-century furniture is still the epitome of modern design. Original pieces by eminent 1950s designers such as Arne Jacobsen, Isamu Noguchi and Charles Eames can command high prices. However, much of this furniture is still in production (or being reissued as a result of renewed demand), and a new piece should set you back considerably less than a vintage version. Fields's classic wire Diamond chairs (unearthed from a skip in the 1970s) are by Harry Bertoia and have been produced continuously since 1950. The upholstered version, above, costs from £436 (£264 without upholstery). Bertoia furniture can be ordered from Coexistence, 288 Upper Street, London N1 (0171-354 8817), and Atrium, Centrepoint, 22-24 St Giles High Street, London WC2 (0171-379 7288). For details of stockists, call Knoll International (0171-236 6655). For original pieces, try Tom Tom, 42 New Compton Street, London WC2 (0171-240 7909); Andrew Weaving at Alfies Antique Market, 13-25 Church Street, London NW8 (0171-723 0449); Twentieth Century Design also sells at Alfies Antique Market, Camden Market, and by mail order (0171-923 1494).
As an ingenious alternative to net curtains or blinds, Fields bought ribbon curtains from a jumble sale, twisted each strand into a barley-sugar shape and tacked it down. These days, ribbon curtains are quite hard to find; try old-fashioned homeware stores or any shop specialising in kitsch classics. This one, left, which measures 61/2in by 3ft, costs £2.99 from Robills Discount Store, 429-431 Brixton Road, London SW9 (0171-326 1268).
If you want to go the whole way with the look, don't forget the china. Look out for market stalls or shops specialising in 1950s pieces such as graphic black and white plates or pastel jugs with elongated spouts. This Zambesi gravy boat, spoon and dish, above, was created in the 1950s by the British designer Jessie Tait. It costs £45 from Flying Duck Enterprises, as above.
Fields's apartment is full of references to his favourite artists. His sitting room wall paintings contain mini Mondrians. Bring a bit of art into your own house with Mondrian coffee mugs (about £5 each) or a Mondrian loo seat (about £170), below, from a range of arty accessories by Hague House, which is launching similar products based on the work of Picasso and Salvador Dali later in the year. For details of stockists, call 0171-251 4988.
REBECCA TANQUERAY visits the home of the artist Duggie Fields, whose own giant canvases hang above 1950s furniture classics. The result is a vivid landscape where painting and reality merge into one.
Art is something most of us think about after we have done the decorating, but for Duggie Fields it was the starting point. Painting is his passion, and his own giant canvases cover his small Earl's Court flat like wallpaper. But there is no danger of these works fading into the background; decapitated cartoon-like figures and raw naked torsos jump at you from surreal landscapes immediately you walk through the door. Fields's work a fusion of surrealism, pop and conceptual art is hard to categorise. That overused adjective "postmodern" is, perhaps, the only label that fits. Fields himself also defies definition. His appearance has led people to suggest that he is a 1950s throwback; and the look of his flat seems to back this up. There are black wire chairs by the mid-century designer Harry Bertoia, spindly-legged lamps, and that favourite 1950s motif the paint palette everywhere. But Fields won't be pinned down that easily.
Arguably, too, it was the 1960s that was the more formative decade for him. Fields moved into the flat in 1968 with Syd Barrett the driving force behind early Pink Floyd and Fields's painting springs from the same creative hotbed that produced their psychedelic art-school rock. "I still get people visiting the Barrett shrine," he says.
That the flat seems caught in a 1950s time warp is more the result of chance than any desire to create a particular look. When Fields moved in, his priority was to furnish the flat on as low a budget as possible, with anything that wouldn't detract from his paintings. Finding fashionable furnishings was not an issue. "I started collecting art deco stuff long before it was collectable," says Fields, "and then moved on to 1950s furniture because it was cheaper."
It wasn't just cheap; people were throwing it away. The black wire chairs in the sitting room were picked up in a skip ("I only found out later that they were by Bertoia"); the chairs by Arne Jacobsen were chucked out by the magazine company Conde Nast during an office refit. The other bits of furniture were junk-shop finds, hand-me-downs from friends or things that Fields traded for one of his paintings.
That Fields has an eye for a good piece isn't to be doubted. "Though I wasn't really interested in furnishing the flat, I was quite fussy about what I chose," he says. "Colour and shape mattered most. I wanted things that the eye was unfamiliar with." Following his clear and aesthetic criteria, he made a jumble of junk look individual and distinctive and, because it is all more or less of a period, it hangs together perfectly.
There is another a reason for this. As Fields's intention was never to create a pure look, he felt free to customise his furniture, to "make it my own". Nothing was too sacred to be painted. The coffee table in the sitting room was given bold flashes of white on black (a pattern repeated on other objects around the room); the sides of the wooden chairs were painted with artificial wood-graining (to match one of the walls).
Field loves to blur the distinctions between appearance and reality. He painted the walls of the sitting room to look like one of his works, but left out the figures. "The idea was that anyone sitting inside the room would be sitting inside one of my paintings," he says.
Going one step further, Fields inserted mirrored panels into the back of the sitting-room door to take the painting and the room into yet another dimension.
Art of all kinds is what informs Fields's style most. Everywhere you go in the flat, you come across references to painting both his own and other people's. The black lino floor in the sitting room is splattered with paint, after Jackson Pollock; his own works incorporate elements of pieces by Mondrian, Alexander Calder and Miro. "Everything I buy reminds me of something I've seen in a painting," says Fields. The most obvious arty reference is his vast collection of paint-palette objects among them a table, a lamp and a mini palette that adds a characteristic 3D element to one of his paintings. Fields even incorporates a tiny palette into his signature. The love of layering references, of superimposing one idea on another, has led Fields to explore other media. He is now working on computer-generated collages and videos for CD-Rom, and has just produced his first record. While these personal artistic projects are continually developing, little in Fields's flat has changed in 30 years. But times certainly have. The 1950s look is now all the rage, and pieces of furniture by designers such as Bertoia are greatly sought after. Fields is merely bemused he recently threw out half the contents of his flat to provide more space for his paintings.
It is Chinese New Year on February 19, hence the choice of crackers. I apologise for not being more adventurous prawn crackers being the Chinese equivalent of pork scratchings in my opinion, but not all supermarkets stock pak-choi, wood fungus or dim sum.
So, prawn crackers. Greasy little things, and not that prawny, either. This doesn't make them inauthentic: they are just as greasy and unprawny in Chinatown's best emporia. What gives them that characteristically airy texture is tapioca flour. (Nice to know that this most hopeless of grains is good for something other than making pretend frogspawn.) Irritatingly bearing in mind my increasingly prodigious girth supermarkets' own brands, despite a marked lack of flavour, are still incredibly moreish.
That is why I had to finish my packet of Marks & Spencer prawn crackers, even though the contents weren't very nice. (The spirit of Coronation Street's Mavis Riley is upon me "Ooh, they weren't very nice" incisive and succinct as ever.) These were the greasiest. I could only barely taste prawn, and then only because I forced myself, out of kindness, like Mavis would.
Safeway prawn crackers are made in Indonesia. They were very crispy on the outside and yet strangely fluffy inside. The prawn flavour was so delicate as to be indiscernible (those orientals so subtle). But I quite liked them anyway, and they were almost greaseless.
Sainsbury prawn crackers were thick and appositely pink. They were crispy, too, though slightly on the greasy side, and they tasted by far the prawiest proper prawn, not disgusting prawn cocktail "flavour". I ate loads.
Oriental food specialists Amoy make DIY prawn crackers unappetising-looking little grey discs that you fry in hot oil. "Great fun to cook!", it says on the packet. So, hey! why not get your friends round and make some together? I followed the instructions to the letter (the little discs puff up and whiten pleasingly) but, sadly, had to spit out the results, which tasted of off fish and wet cardboard and oil. Poor Amoy. Poor me. They make a nice chilli sauce, though.
Sainsbury Prawn Crackers (54p, 50g)***
Marks & Spencer Prawn Crackers (65p, 50g)**
Safeway Prawn Crackers (85p, 60g)**
Amoy Prawn Crackers (78p, 100g) No stars
I imagine that 90% of restaurateurs would, if asked, say that location was the single most important element when starting a restaurant. But, in my random and exhaustive questioning of punters, location comes fairly low down the list of things people look for. The customers' top answer is atmosphere. Customers don't, in my experience, generally say: "Let's go to Polenta-U-Like because it's got a really smart postal address." They don't say: "You really must try Gob-Stuffers because they have a dear little car park just round the corner."
Restaurateurs, on the other hand, seem to think that atmosphere is something the customers ought to bring with them. A head waiter once told me that the punters in his restaurant were a big disappointment: "Their standard of conversation is very poor, they don't seem to know how to enjoy themselves." I pointed out that maybe it was because the room had all the welcome of a headmaster's study and his staff had the charm of Serbian gravediggers and the intrusive and hideous pianist apparently could only play It's a Quarter to Three, There's No One in the Place Except You and Me. He shrugged my suggestions aside as mere amateur speculation. "No, no. We're situated on a corner of the most expensive street in Mayfair." The actual food on both lists comes somewhere after value for money whatever that is cleanliness and service, which punters interpret as speed and restaurateurs as dexterity.
I've recently had an amazing dinner in a place that had more atmosphere than Disney World on Snow White's birthday. As a location it's one of the most unlikely on the planet. To get there you have to be taken by a guide carrying a rifle. It's set in hundreds of miles of wilderness and the nearest fast-food takeaway is patronised exclusively by vultures. Londolozi is a game park in the Eastern Transvaal. Well, it was in the Transvaal when we arrived, but it was Mpumalanga when we left. South Africa is in the process of renaming things. As a gesture of goodwill, we might consider giving them back all those Mandela crescents, avenues and community centres that spent the apartheid years seeking political asylum here.
And it might go a little way to make up for recently dumping Mark Thatcher, Charles Spencer and John Aspinall on them.
Garry with the rifle and Patterson, our tracker with the sixth sense and the torch, led the Blonde and me to a rough boma (stockaded camp) on the veld. Inside the fence a large fire crackles and trestle tables are lit by paraffin lamps. Above us, that remarkable African sky you've heard so much about, a scythe moon and the Southern Cross glaring down at the dancing sparks from the logs. The smell of bush mixes with wood smoke and grilling meat.
Outside, things snort, shuffle and growl. To anyone who has read a page of King Solomon's Mines, it's all utterly, hugely, hypnotically romantic.
"This is a traditional Shangaan camp site; the Shangaan are the indigenous tribe here," says Garry helpfully, and there beside the fire is the traditional Shangaan drinks table with five sorts of gin. The traditional Shangaan welcome is offered by Katherine, our hostess, who used to be food and beverage manager at the equally traditional but somewhat less romantic Lygon Arms in Broadway, Gloucestershire.
There are a dozen of us dining. It's an odd collection of people no, it's a bizarre collection, like those Wells Fargo stop-offs in cowboy films where everyone on the stagecoach has been thrown together by circumstance. You spend the first 10 minutes guessing who's not going to make it to the second reel. The American couple with the Diet Cokes are definitely about to buy the farm. She's so mellowed out on her why-worry-who-needs-orgasm pills she's still trying to work out why this restaurant doesn't have a roof. Her husband has a beard and a cap that says "Gleneagles", he's ripe for an arrow between the shoulder blades.
The chef walks into the circle of firelight and, in traditional style, intones the oral menu. She's so large that if she stood still for too long they'd rename her and hold elections. We start with green mealie soup and marog pesto. To you and me that's cream of sweetcorn warming and thick and a bit like savoury porridge. The marog is a type of wild spinach, and interestingly reminiscent of buffalo cud. Next, there is warthog with fig sauce. The north London couple opposite have a whispered argument about whether or not warthog is kosher. Purely gastronomically, to confuse warthog with pork is an insult to pigs. It's a dense grey meat with no fat and a thin gamey taste. I'm glad I've tried it and I'm glad we don't have them here. Warthogs are sociable creatures; they trot about in single files of decreasing size like muddy Russian dolls. Lions are very partial to them, but then, if you've ever watched a lion eat, you'll know they're not one of nature's epicureans.
An awful lot of being on a game park is watching things eat. Everyone's chewing someone else and it does make you realise that being at the top of the food chain has the priceless advantage of not having continually to look over your shoulder worrying that you're about to be the object of a snack attack. The American woman's annual consumption of Prozac and Valium wouldn't begin to take the edge off the anxiety of being an impala for a night.
Pudding is a traditional whisky and almond gateau with apricot ice cream and chocolate sauce, sweet and stodgy, perfectly made and perfectly incongruous. The man next to me is a bright red expat, whose wife has got on the outside of a quart of the Shangaans' traditional Beefeater gin. He is complaining bitterly about the old country and the new country: "I used to get The Spectator sent out, but it's too bloody left-wing now." He's off like a warthog harrumphing about the unions, the National Health Service, the EC.
All around us nature lurks and stalks either diner or dinner, and I think how spectacularly lucky I feel to be well fed and safe and sitting in front of the fire in this remarkable place. I also think, as the blimp drones on, that even if nothing out there wants to eat you, you can still end up consumed by bitterness, envy, anger and spleen a camp fire tends to make me a touch philosophical. Wherever you go, the weirdest animals you ever see come from the Home Counties.
Garry the guide has found a scorpion; he palms it lovingly. Is it dangerous? "No, not really. Your leg might balloon up to three times its natural size, the pain would be bearable after a couple of days and you'd walk again in a week." You wouldn't like to just slip it into this bloke's pocket, would you? Garry's shocked, it might hurt the scorpion. As we left, the eyes of a pack of hyenas shone in the headlights it was just like being Richard Gere leaving Daphne's.
Tesco Dry Vinho Verde, £3.25
I Grilli di Villa Thalia, £2.95
I can think of nothing less wintry than vinho verde, but it is so refreshing to drink a proper dry version with none of its sharpness and lightness masked by sugar that I can't resist it. It goes with light but spicy food, oily fish, sun-dried tomatoes, lumpfish roe and salami. I Grilli, a Sicilian red wine, is altogether more warming, but by no means heavy and has lovely deep, spicy fruit. It is on offer (reduced from £3.65) at Somerfield until February 17.
Take two drinks: one strong, dark, sweet, unfashionable and in long-term decline; the other strong, dark, sweet and rapidly growing in popularity, especially at the top end of the market. The first is sherry, one of the most undervalued drinks on the market; the second is port, which has survived the recession and is now enjoying cachet, sales and rising prices. Both are fortified wines (fortified with extra alcohol during the production process) and, as such, have seen their duty reduced by 12p a bottle this year.
Sherry has the additional bonus this year of having its name fully protected by law for the first time.
The terms "British sherry" and "Cyprus sherry" no longer exist (except on the odd bottle gathering dust in a cupboard). They can now only grace themselves with the somewhat charmless description "fortified wine", which means they will no longer benefit from any promotion or advertising for sherry. But nobody not even a sherry shipper in his wildest dreams thinks that sherry is about to take off and become the next big thing in the drinks trade.
The industry is not even looking for an increase. It will be pleased, simply, if the rate of decline slows down, as it has done in the last couple of years (the estimated fall for 1995 is just under 3%), offering a faint glimmer of encouragement.
So, what is wrong with sherry? Or rather, what is perceived to be wrong with sherry? The answer is image. That, at least, is what is always said, complete with all the cliches about vicars and elderly maiden aunts throwing caution to the wind and having a glass of sweet sherry.
But surely the problem can't just be image. Nor can it just be a question of quality, although it is undeniable that the start of sherry's decline 16 years ago coincided with a glut of dire, cheap sherry on the market. But nasty, cheap port has done the rounds, too, and currently the overall quality of sherry is very good. Finos and manzanillas (the pale dry sherries) are fresher tasting and aged better than ever, and there are growing numbers of the older and rarer sherries (old amontillados, olorosos, palo cortados and one-off almacenista sherries, some of which are sweetened, but many of which are left dry).
This brings me neatly to one of the critical points. How many people know that sherry, even in the snappiest fino, has been carefully matured for several years in oak barrels (in cellars in and around the southern Spanish town of Jerez hence the name sherry)? How many people know that some of the amontillados and olorosos at about £8 a bottle are decades old and may date back, in part, to the last century? But then why should anyone know? The sherry producers have been remarkably diffident about revealing these fascinating facts about quality on their labels.
The port shippers know no such modesty. They have been putting age statements (10 years old and so on), vintages (actual years, such as 1980) and even bottling dates on growing numbers of categories. Sherry is rarely from a single vintage (the whole point of sherry is the gradual, year by year blending known as the solera system), but there is no reason why the average shouldn't be indicated (as with tawny port). In fact, there is every reason why it should but is anyone listening in Jerez?
Sherry's other problem is more tricky. It is a question of contemporary taste. For palates brought up on the easy-going, ripe fruit flavours of Australian chardonnay and its kin, bone-dry sherry can come as a bit of a shock, no matter whether it is the tangy, yeasty dryness of a fino or manzanilla, or the powerful nutty dryness of an unsweetened oloroso. There are, in fact, some very good sweetened sherries, but it is still well worth getting past the shock stage with dry sherries. Not only are fino and manzanilla aperitifs in the true sense (ie appetite-whetting), they are the best drinks to accompany olives, salted nuts and biscuits. They can also be drunk with smoked salmon and kippers, should you want a change from a champagne breakfast.
As brands are concerned, Tio Pepe is admirably consistent (£7, widely stocked) and Valdespino's Inocente El Fino is superb, as are other Valdespino sherries, £7.95 from Adnams of Southwold (01502-727220); £6.75 from The Wine Society (01438-741177), which has several Valdespino lines. Hidalgo's La Gitana is one of the best manzanillas (£5.45 from Waitrose; £5.99 from Majestic; £2.99 half bottle from Oddbins) and other fine Hidalgo sherries are stocked by Tanners of Shrewsbury (01743-232400), Lay & Wheeler of Colchester (01206-764446) and Adnams; Barbadillo is the other manzanilla specialist to look for. Gonzales Byass' Amontillado del Duque and Apostoles Oloroso both of them old, dry and fabulous are in Adnams and Oddbins Fine Wine shops (£20-£21). Supermarkets' top own-label ranges in half-bottles at £3-£3.50 are also worth trying.
THE first potatoes to be planted in Britain were probably sweet potatoes. In other words, not real potatoes at all but Ipomoea batatas, a relation of morning glory and the garden pest convolvulus. The crop failed miserably the climate here is not conducive to a tuber that hails from tropical America. Potatoes, real potatoes, from the chillier heights of the Andes eventually fared far better once we got used to the idea of them, but that is another story.
To this day, sweet potatoes have to be imported and they remain something of a familiar, yet
unknown, quantity on the shelves of greengrocers and supermarkets. There are two main varieties: the orange-fleshed type and the white-fleshed. I happen to prefer the former, which has a smoother, waxier texture and a soft, chestnut flavour. White-fleshed sweet potatoes are much mealier (more like a mature King Edward) and are suitably sweet, though less interesting in flavour. To tell the difference, discreetly scrape away a little of the thin purplish-pink skin to reveal a glimpse of the flesh. All of the recipes in this article have been tested with orange-fleshed sweet potatoes.
Despite their lack of true kinship, sweet potatoes can be treated in much the same way as ordinary potatoes they can be baked, fried, mashed, chipped and sauteed. Straight boiling, however, is not such a hot idea once the potato has been peeled and cut into chunks. An awful lot of flavour and sweetness seeps away into the water and what is left can be as dull as ditchwater. If you need to boil, do it before peeling if possible (except for soup).
I love roast sweet potatoes. Split open, steaming hot and slathered with butter or Greek yoghurt, they liven up a simple supper of grilled sausages, chicken or chops or, perhaps best of all, gammon or warm ham with which they have a particular affinity (a million times better than a tired bit of pineapple and a maraschino cherry, though the principle is much the same).
In countries where sweet potatoes are common fare, they are used with the same abandon with which we use real potatoes, added to soups and stews and even served up as puddings. In Mexico, candied sweet potato is sold from street stalls, while in the southern states of America where, to add to the confusion, they are often known as yams sweet potato pie is made along much the same lines as pumpkin pie. Personally, I have yet to try one that seems worth the time and effort, but I suppose that if you are overrun with something you use it up in whatever ways you can. American candied yams, by the way, are not the same as Mexican candied sweet potato. They are more like our glazed vegetables, sweetened with sugar and spices, but still served as an accompaniment to the main course, particularly at Thanksgiving.
Sweet potato and broccoli soup
Broccoli and sweet potato are an unusual but well-matched pair. Though the colour given by orange-fleshed potatoes is jazzier, white ones will work almost as well in this recipe.
(Serves 6)
1 medium onion, chopped
45g butter
350g broccoli, trimmed and sliced
3 whole cloves garlic, peeled
675g sweet potato, peeled and cubed
2 sprigs marjoram or 1/2 tsp dried marjoram
salt and pepper
buttermilk
chopped chives or parsley
Pastry croutons (optional)
small amount of leftover puff or shortcrust pastry
beaten egg
poppy, caraway or sesame seeds; or finely grated gruyere; or rock salt
Sweat the onion in the butter, covered, over a low heat, for 5 minutes. Add the broccoli, and the garlic, stir and sweat for another 5 minutes. Add sweet potato, marjoram, a generous litre of water, salt and pepper, and bring to the boil. Simmer gently for 20-30 minutes until the vegetables are tender. Liquidise and sieve, or pass through the fine blade of a Mouli-legumes. Add extra water, if needed, taste, and adjust seasonings.
To make the croutons, roll out the pastry thinly. Cut into small diamonds and arrange on a baking tray. Rest for 15 minutes, then brush with beaten egg. Scatter seeds, gruyere, or rock salt lightly over the top. Bake for 5-10 minutes at 230C/450F/Gas Mark 8 until golden brown.
When you are nearly ready to serve, reheat the soup and quickly crisp up the croutons in the oven. Ladle the soup into bowls, and add a spoonful of buttermilk, and a scattering of chopped chives or parsley. Serve croutons in a separate bowl.
Lamb and mint meatballs with sauteed sweet potatoes
A lip-smacking, finger-licking-good dish and, with the bright colour of orange-fleshed potato, it looks as lovely as it tastes.
(Serves 4)
1 large sweet potato
olive oil
1 large red onion, cut into eight
wedges
1 red chilli, deseeded and shredded juice of 1/2 lime
a small handful of coriander
leaves
lime wedges to serve
Meatballs
450g minced lamb
1 onion, grated
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tbsp chopped mint
finely grated zest of 1 lime
1 tsp crushed coriander seeds
dash of lime juice
salt and pepper
Peel the sweet potato and cut into 1.5cm cubes. Make the lamb meatballs by mixing all the ingredients together and kneading thoroughly with your hands. Then break off walnut-sized pieces, and roll into balls. Heat a little oil in a wide, heavy frying pan and brown the meatballs all over. Lift out and drain on kitchen paper.
Pour out all the fat, and raise the heat under the frying pan. Let it heat through for a couple of minutes, then add the red onion wedges. Cook over a high heat, turning them once or twice, until they are browned on the cut sides. Take out and put with the lamb. Add a little more oil to the pan and saute the potatoes for a few minutes until they begin to brown. Now return the lamb and onions to the pan, along with the chilli, lime juice, 300ml of water, salt and pepper. Stir carefully and simmer, half covered, for 10-15 minutes, until most of the water has evaporated. Taste and adjust seasonings, scatter over the coriander and serve.
Sweet potato fritters
Lime, sweet potato and chilli are a magic combination, which I make no excuses for repeating, though in a very different guise. The intensely sweet and rich flavour of the fritters would overwhelm less vibrant ingredients. Together they make a great first course.
(Serves 6-8)
3 sweet potatoes
80g flour
salt and pepper
1 tsp ground coriander
2 eggs, lightly beaten
oil for deep frying
4 spring onions, finely chopped
1-2 red chillies, deseeded and finely shredded or chopped
1 lime, cut into wedges
Boil the potatoes in salted water until barely tender. Drain and leave until cool. Do not peel. Slice into discs about 1/2cm thick. Season the flour generously with salt, pepper and the ground coriander, and spread out on a plate. Put the eggs into a shallow bowl, and beat.
Heat oil to 350F/180C. One by one, dip the sweet potato slices into the beaten egg, shaking off excess, and then into the flour, coating evenly, again shaking off excess. Fry in small batches until golden brown about 5 minutes on each side. Drain briefly on kitchen paper. Serve hot, with spring onions, chillies and a squeeze of lime juice.
Sweet potato and apple scallop
This recipe, from the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, first published in 1896, is an excellent, simple way of using up leftover cooked sweet potatoes, adding a hint of tartness with apple, but enhancing the sweetness with sugar. Serve as a rich side dish with turkey or pork.
(Serves 4)
2 medium sweet potatoes, boiled or baked in their skins until
just firm
3-4 medium tart eating apples (such as Granny Smith)
125g light muscovado sugar
60g butter
salt
Peel and slice the potatoes thinly. Core and slice the apples. Put half the potatoes in a large buttered baking dish. Cover with half the apples, sprinkle with half the sugar, dot with half the butter and sprinkle with salt. Repeat, then cover and bake at 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4 for 30 minutes. Uncover, and continue baking for another 30 minutes, or until the apples are soft.
They're sweet. Almost too sweet to be taken seriously, but they are meant for Valentine's Day, after all the day when even the stolid and sensible become soppy. So, for your Valentine's Day gratin, daube or even good old fish pie, go to a Sainsbury's Cookshop to buy Le Creuset's cast-iron heart-shaped dish, right; £24.95 for a 2l gratin dish and £39.95 for the casserole dish is not cheap, but they last a lot longer than a romantic dinner for two.
If you've had enough of tasteless, watery ham, then try Richard Woodall's Cumbria Mature Royal Ham. Pickled in beer, treacle, sugar, vinegar and salt for one month, then matured for a year, this is ham with flavour. Air-dried ham and Cumberland hams are also available. Details: 01229-717237.
Remember the days when a tomato was just that? Before it became sun-dried, pureed and amalgamated with incongruous flavourings in a can? Well, here is yet another product: Valfrutta Salsina (76p for 560g, from Tesco), left, is 100% natural, produced using specially selected fresh tomatoes, which are crushed and bottled, uncooked. The chunky sauce has a clean, fresh, interesting taste, useful as a base for pasta sauce or on its own. Also available with garlic, peppers and herbs.
Instead of surfing, why not fish on the Internet? For smoked salmon, no less. Strathaird smoked salmon (mildly smoked and fine textured) can be accessed on http://www.highlandtrail.co.uk/ highlandtrail/fish2.html. Or, for those less technologically advanced, buy your Tartan Quality Mark (guarantee of highest quality) Scottish smoked salmon from Marks & Spencer (£3.99 for 175g) or Selfridges (£8 for 230g).
Marks & Spencer's new Homes catalogue is just out, including its largest ever selection of kitchenware. The handsome range of new utensils includes this colander on ball feet (£20), below, as well as a range of British-made professional knives. The catalogue costs £2 and can be picked up in your nearest branch, or call 01925-858500.
Diabetics and those allergic to dairy products, fear not: D&D Chocolates produces special chocolates for Valentine's Day and throughout the year. Some of the fillings are overly sweet and some chocolate has a powdery texture, but with the dairy-free chocolate brazils or the chocolate pralines, you are on safe ground. Mail-order details: 0171-722 2866.
Is the bird's nest in Chinese bird's nest soup really made with regurgitated spittle? Why does bitter melon taste of quinine? What do you wrap in your wontons? All these and any other Chinese conundrum are answered in Ken Hom's Asian Ingredients (Airlift Books £9.99). Published this week, the book is full of information about Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai ingredients, with 28 new recipes.
Male model SIMON BROOKE, below, says his colleagues are fed up with footballers.
It's not much fun being a male model these days. There have always been drawbacks you're regarded as a himbo, your masculinity is questioned and your female counterparts earn far more than you do. Now, to add insult to injury, a whole bunch of Giovanni-come-latelies, non-professional models, are nudging you off the catwalks and the pages of the glossies.
Over the past few years, footballers, actors and pop stars have been recruited as models. Some designers are even dragging ordinary blokes off the street (you know the sort weak chin, bad skin, receding hairline). Almost everybody, it seems, is in demand for the menswear shows apart from professional models.
"Ten years ago, you'd never catch an actor, let alone a footballer, being a male model," says Dylan Jones, group editor of The Face and Arena. "Now they're flattered to be asked."
This development is sending tears down the sculpted cheeks of the professionals. "It's been tougher than ever this year to get booked for the shows," wails one veteran. "I'm a Liverpool fan, but I was pretty cheesed off to see David James doing the Armani show this season."
"From a purely visual point of view," Giorgio Armani says of his latest signing, "David James is interesting, arresting and of the moment." The Liverpoool goalkeeper will also appear in ads for Armani jeans and Emporio Armani underwear. In Paris, Newcastle United's winger, David Ginola, was modelling Cerruti, and, to the alarm of those sitting in the front row, Manchester United's karate-kicking Eric Cantona appeared on the Paco Rabanne catwalk.
Footballers aren't the only sportsmen moving the model goalposts. High and Mighty, the shop for big and tall men, features one of the Gladiators in its advertising, while rugby players Will Carling and Rob Andrew and the actor Toby Stephens are modelling leisure and sportswear for Marks & Spencer.
Actors and musicians are particularly fashionable: Nino Cerruti used the rap band MN8 and the actor Richard E Grant this year. Cerruti also dressed the Ferrari team for this year's Grand Prix proof positive that fashion is for real men.
Romeo Gigli currently uses the Brazilian guitarist Caetano Veloso, the composer Philip Taffe and the actor Julian Sands, while Prada has once again turned to actors Tim Roth and John Malkovich, who has likened his runway appearances to a pure and subtle form of acting.
While Gianni Versace uses professional models for his shows, his advertising has featured Elton John and Prince (or, rather, TAFKAP), and this year another rock star, Jon Bon Jovi, will feature in pictures shot by Bruce Weber in Argentina.
Comme des Garcons has employed The Who's Pete Townshend, as well as the actors David Thewlis and Alan Rickman, and models at this year's catwalk show included a horse trainer, a boxer, a furniture designer and a macrobiotic dietician.
"It's because normal guys wear their clothes," explains a fashion PR. "People often think, ‘That looks fantastic on a model', but if it looks good on ordinary guys they know it'll look good on them."
Another reason why professional models are being shunted into the second division is undoubtedly because of the PR spin-off that celebrity generates. "A movie star or a footballer may charge more than a professional model, but it's worth it in column inches," says one fashion PR. "You can reach beyond the fashion press and get coverage everywhere with a big or unusual name in your show."
For many models, commercial work advertising products and services rather than clothes has proved lucrative, though less glamorous. But even here they are finding themselves out of fashion. One model explains: "You go for castings for commercials and they tell you they want a really good-looking guy to play a boyfriend. You don't get it, and then you see the commercial on television and they've got a cute girl, but a complete dork opposite her."
Lucy Banister of the advertisement researchers Davies Riley-Smith Maclay can explain this: "Our research shows that male consumers have got fed up with being presented with ideal faces and bodies that they can never live up to." The prejudice, she says, runs deep. "People can deal with women being attractive much more easily than they can with men. Men are expected to be characterful." Some "uncharacterful" male models are turning militant and plans for a campaign for real models are under way. "We've had enough," says one. "Actors and footballers don't need either the money or the publicity. They should do their job and we'll do ours." Carried unanimously, brother.
With all those schmaltzy soundtracks, comfy cords and voluptuous velvets, the Paris menswear collections were definitely more relaxed this year, says ASHLEY HEATH.
What do catwalk fashion designers know about what real men want? They certainly know how to flog a colourful commercial trend when they see one or, indeed, when they hear one, too. The Burt Bacharach revival is taking over Paris.
Millennial Man as a colourful cross between Dr Kildare and Randall from Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)? How they're trying. Last weekend, the Parisian catwalk community pulled every trick in the Bacharach book, collectively dusting down every schmaltzy film tune ever written. They showed corduroy in every shape imaginable, sent out velvet suits in hues that would make a second-hand wallpaper salesman blush, and tried to keep Paris sashaying for five long days to Wonderwall as reinvented by the Mike Flowers Pops. But, as the song says, backbeat, the word was on the street: Gucci's designer Tom Ford had already sent out his models in Milan sporting flares.
If there is only one thing you need to know about the state of the high fashion world in 1996, then it is this: what Tom Ford does, goes. Gucci's menswear presentation for next winter was a tight tailoring spectacle tending towards the fiercely voluminous from the waist downwards. Saturday Night Fever fashion but with a polished Milano modernism. Against such standards, Paris was a city more of sheep than shepherds.
There is no question, though, that it is the established Paris players such as Sonia Rykiel and Paul Smith who will end up selling the corduroy and velvet by the bucketload. The Rykiel Homme St-Germain-Man-chilling-on-the -Riviera is a look whose time has come, so full commercial marks for plugging it mercilessly. It was left to the more adventurous (read "poor") designers to negotiate the flare thing, however.
John Rocha pulled it off nicely, adding combat-trouser-style pockets to drag the looser look into the 1990s. Jean Paul Gaultier, meanwhile, entertained with an incredible display of Lionel Blairs in a show that was a timely send-up of the current couture world. Gaultier also led the field in this season's happening colour which, you'll be thrilled to learn, is brown.
Walter Van Beirendonck's Wild and Lethal Trash label (also known as W<) was expected to pull a few surprises in Paris. In a fantasy-themed marquee on the city's outskirts, he spent a few hundred thousand pounds of his German
backer's money (the jeans giant Mustang) by showing snowboard-style clothing to the frustrated and frozen fashion pack. Both the full orchestra and the Andy Pandy-styling employed put all the other easy-listening pretenders in their place, however.
It was great. Expect W< to be more ubiquitous than Naf Naf by the year 2000.
The British designer Joe Casely-Hayford, putting on his first men's catwalk show in Paris, must have found himself in a dilemma. He had designed an easy-listening-inspired collection well over a year ago (it was largely ignored by the glossy mag gurus at the time), although knowing that you're smarter than the rest doesn't help pay the rent. Casely-Hayford therefore kept the acidic velvet suits, the modernist corduroy and his semi-safari tailoring and presented a neo-Soho Boho to the sound of Marvin Gaye's Trouble Man reworked in a ghostly drum and bass echo chamber. Let's hope Paris was listening.
The two best menswear collections to be shown, however, came from the Japanese in the shape of Rei Kawakubo at Comme des Garcons and Naoki Takizawa at Issey Miyake, both of whom would probably believe you if you told them that Burt Bacharach was someone who played on the wing for Blackburn Rovers.
Comme des Garcons is still selling the most perfect of three-button suits to the least perfect of advertising executives, so it was great to see Kawakubo reveal a relaxed collection largely of shirts, knitwear and coats. A finely honed scruffiness as modelled in the show by Pete Townshend was achieved by playing with the proportions so that everything looked well worn and fitted. If you've got a couple of grand to spare and you're looking for a car coat a little on the figure-hugging side, then look here before you go to The Gap.
Brilliant coats also dominated the Issey Miyake show, where Takizawa showed the corduroy crew that textile technology has moved on somewhat since 1974. Utilising "stretch monofilament warps" and "industrial triaxial-nylon", he showed the future of the smart city coat. Anyone who doubts that anything other than price prohibits this sort of design from revolutionising British male dressing should take a look at the hordes of young men wearing clothes by Stone Island and Left Hand at football clubs and the Epping Forest Country Club. Takizawa could become to the urban working wardrobe what Left Hand already is to the city boy's weekend wear.
It all goes to show that just because a catwalk collection is "easy listening", it won't automatically be easy on the eye.
Ashley Heath is associate editor of The Face and editor of Arena Plus.
Smooth operator: Paul Smith's glowing velvet, main picture, should be a winner. Above, from left, Joe Casely-Hayford's neo-Soho Boho; John Rocha's new take on combat gear; Pete Townshend looking the worse for wear at Comme des Garcons. Photographs by Chris Moore.
When a dog's bark is better than its bite, by SUSAN CLARK.
The idea of a poodle or a chihuahua as a guard dog is not as preposterous as it sounds; especially if you want to stay on the right side of the law. Under the Dangerous Dogs Act, the owner of a dog who bites an intruder can be prosecuted by the police, and anyone owning one of the four breeds prohibited under the act will face a fine of £5,000 and/or six months' imprisonment, unless the animal was registered with the Index of Exempted Dogs at the end of 1991.
Prohibited breeds are pit bull terrier, Japanese tosa, fila braziliera and dogo argentino, and owners who have registered these breeds are required by law to neuter them, microchip them, insure them and muzzle them in public.
If you have a dog which, although not on the banned list, has been bred for a savage temperament, then the police must decide whether to prosecute you if your dog attacks an intruder.
Security firms and the like may persist with threatening notices warning that guard dogs patrol the grounds but, according to the Kennel Club, the guard dog has had its day and what responsible owners now seek is a watchdog.
Spokesman Brian Leonard, who favours chihuahuas and whose own home has never been burgled, says: "The idea of keeping a big dog on your property to act as a deterrent to intruders is outdated, especially because you now risk prosecution if your dog attacks someone.
"It makes more sense to choose a breed with a bark that sounds like a bigger dog, but which is easier to feed and look after, and will fit into the lifestyle of the modern family."
This is where the smaller, territorial breeds with their big voices come into their own, because they are vociferous, wary of unusual noises and defensive of their home territory.
The presence of a dog will hardly deter the professional burglar who can, with advance planning, easily dispose of an animal on the property. But the opportunist, who spots an open window, may think twice about breaking in if a dog is barking loudly.
The guiding principle in selecting a dog to be a pet and to protect your home is, says Leonard, to choose a breed whose natural instinct is protection but not aggression.
Labradors, for example, whose eager-to-please temperaments make them such good family pets, are not the best dogs because they have a tendency to be friendly to everyone.
Intelligent dogs build up a perception of regular happenings in the home, so anything out of the ordinary such as the arrival of an intruder will cause them to bark and defend their territory. Dog behaviourists believe, for example, the reason so many postmen get bitten is that, each day, it appears to the dog that this stranger is trying to break into your home, because you never signal this is a friendly caller by greeting him or her.
But will any type of breed offer your home protection? Last October, Barclays Bank cancelled plans to offer dog owners a discount on their house insurance. The bank had assumed the presence of a dog would deter thieves but found, in a survey of 1,000 adults whose homes had been burgled during the past five years, that 12% of homes with dogs have been burgled and 14% of homes without dogs. Most people (26%) had mongrel dogs, 11% had a collie and 11% had labradors. Just 6% of those surveyed had a yorkshire terrier and only 5% had jack russells, both of which are recommended burglar deterrents.
An increasing number of women are taking to ‘dangerous' outdoor pursuits, says MANDY FRANCIS.
What most women used to crave after a tough week at work or five days spent minding the kids was an aromatherapy massage, if they were lucky, or, more likely, a simple lie-in. Over the past 12 months, however, there has been a massive increase in the number of women taking up such traditionally male "dangerous" outdoor activities as kayaking, abseiling and off-road mountain biking. These women hooked on the adrenaline buzz they get from hanging off a cliff face or shooting rapids are consequently being nurtured as an important source of income for the outdoor pursuits business.
Julia Lewis, 29, is typical of the new breed. A sales executive for a pharmaceutical company in London, with two small children, she went on a rock climbing and kayaking weekend in Derbyshire for the first time last summer with five girlfriends, all of whom have young families. "When I told my work colleagues and my family what I was planning to do, they were surprised," she says. "I don't think anyone saw me as the active type, including myself. Most of them asked why I wasn't going off to a health farm or to a hotel for the weekend instead. And, to be honest, I don't think I would have gone if my friend hadn't organised it. Although I hadn't done anything truly outdoorsy since I left university, I really enjoyed it."
Many of the companies that organise outdoor activity breaks cite the confidence boost gained from conquering dangerous sports as the main reason that women enjoy adventure weekends. Lewis agrees: "I'm terrified of heights, so overcoming that fear to climb a rock face gave me a real buzz. We developed a camaraderie within the group. With something like this, your life really is in someone else's hands and you become close quickly. Activity breaks really boost your self-esteem. You can forget all about work for a change." The group now plans to learn how to surf in Cornwall later this year.
Women on Wheels in Penshurst, Kent, is a purpose-built off-road mountain biking centre with an entirely female staff. They receive Sports Council funding to assist their work in promoting the sport to women. "Many women who come to us are already interested in cycling but want to learn off-road techniques such as hill climbing, route planning and maintenance without the pressure of male competitiveness" says Karen Hambly, the course organiser. "They get fed up of being left behind when they are out riding in a mixed group. We're not man-haters it's just that women tend to flourish in a more relaxed, female environment. One of the most popular elements of our course is bike mechanics. When given the chance, women love being able to do something that is traditionally perceived as a ‘a man's job'."
John Blair, the owner of the Rapid'n'Waves activity centre in Great Wakering, Essex, has also seen the number of women customers increase. He believes they approach adventure sports in a different way to men. "Women are naturally more cautious, and so tend to prefer sports that they have a degree of control over, such as rock climbing," he says. "They're often better at climbing than men anyway, because they are more agile, and tend to think their route through more carefully. Men, on the whole, like to throw themselves into danger. We can have quite a problem controlling some all-male groups."
White-water rafting, where you are at the mercy of the current, is apparently less popular. "Men dive into rubber dinghies whooping and screaming, while the girls listen carefully to the instructions and then ask what they can expect to find round the corner," he says.
Blair, like many centre owners, is also keen to employ female instructors for all groups. "Male instructors tend to focus on technical aspects of the sport," he explains, "whereas women are generally better at looking after the groups, supporting stragglers and making sure everyone enjoys themselves."
Charlotte Lewis, an instructor at Twr-y-Felin in St David's, Dyfed, agrees. "Women instructors are very much in demand, particularly for children's groups," she says. "Unfortunately, there are just not enough of us to go around. A lot of women start the training and then get side-tracked when they have families. Hopefully, things will start to change as more women become interested in outdoor pursuits."
Weekend Escape (01672-511373) organises outdoor pursuit breaks for women in the southwest of England; Women on Wheels, 01892-870136; Rapid'n'Waves, 01702 218803; Twr-y-Felin 01437-720391; Walkwoman organises all-women rambling breaks, call 01274-594857 for details.
Scientists in America and Britain are divided over the question of how many hours we should spend asleep, says ELEANOR BAILEY.
Few people would claim to sleep too much, but how many of us actually know the optimum number of hours we should spend asleep each night? And which is more important, the number of hours slept or the quality of the sleep itself?
Most surveys show that the average adult sleeps 71/2 hours a night, but an American research team in Ohio has claimed that this could be too little, and suggests that an extra hour or two would make you feel more alert during the day.
British sleep experts, however, in an article published alongside the American research in the journal Sleep, argue that the benefit is minimal and would not compensate for the extra hours lost asleep. If we are tired, it is more useful to have a 10-minute catnap in the afternoon.
The dispute certainly highlights how few hard facts scientists know about sleep. But just how much sleep do we need? "The acid test," says Professor James Horne of Loughborough University, co-author of the British article in Sleep, "is whether we feel sleepy throughout much of the day. It's as simple as that. The Americans said that, since most people, given the opportunity, do fall back asleep for a couple of extra hours, then we obviously need more. We, on the other hand, believe that the fact that we can sleep more is rather like having a pudding after a main course. We don't need it, it's just rather tempting."
A catnap is useful in the afternoon, as this is the time that the body's natural rhythms dip. Sleeping for longer than 20 minutes, however, puts you in danger of moving into deep sleep. This is much harder to wake from, as the body anticipates a longer rest.
British researchers believe that there is a critical four-hour core period of sleep that we need for normal functioning. An hour or two after that helps. If we have seven hours' sleep and still feel dreadful, it is probably because of the quality of our sleep rather than the quantity. "There is a natural distribution of good and poor sleepers, in the same way that there is a variation in height," says Dr Ken Hume of Manchester Metropolitan University and the honorary secretary of the British Sleep Society. Tests have shown that it is possible for teenagers to reduce their nightly sleep to six hours before there are any signs of fatigue.
Sleep quality is severely affected by alcohol. If the room is too hot or too bright, your sleeping partner too restless or there are many noisy interruptions, then your sleep will be less refreshing because the crucial four-stage, 90-minute cycle, containing deep and light sleep, is interrupted. "People who remember dreams in the morning," says Horne, "are probably having very disturbed sleep at night."
There is little that can be done to ensure a night's sleep that is truly refreshing, except to suit yourself. Do what seems right, and if you end up overtired, adjust the goalposts. There are no golden rules. However, the body is happiest sleeping in a conditioned way in other words, in the way you were brought up to sleep. Mediterranean people stick with a siesta, while Inuit respond to daylight, sleeping for up 10 hours in winter and six in summer.
The amount of sleep we need decreases with age, in proportion to the body's energy needs. Newborn babies need up to 20 hours a day. A five-year-old requires about 11 hours. A 10-year-old needs 9-10 hours before it starts getting tetchy, the average adult 7-8. This need declines in old age, until in your eighties when 5 hours a night is the norm thus Lady Thatcher's enviable 4 hours a night, put in the context of a 70-year-old, seems less remarkable.
Hormonal changes also affect sleep. Growing adolescents can sleep all morning partly because they have nothing more pressing to do and menopausal women often experience sleeping problems. Overstressed adults may feel they need more sleep, but what they may really need is more relaxation, because their lifestyle is exhausting. There is an important distinction between tiredness and sleepiness: sleepiness indicates that the brain has released sleep-inducing hormones such as melatonin, whereas tiredness could be the result of other factors, such as depression.
So, what are the long-term effects of too little or too much sleep? A study of the relationship between amount of sleep and long-term mortality risk, published in 1979 by Professor Daniel Kripke of the University of California in San Diego, suggested that people who slept fewer than 6 hours a night or more than 10 had a significantly increased risk of death in a five-year follow-up period. Contributory factors were not discounted, but it indicated that sticking to the average 8 hours was the healthy option. Constantly changing sleep patterns were also shown to be a health risk. Dr Chris Alford, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of the West of England, says: "Shift working abuses the system, and severe shift workers are at greater risk of cracking up physically and mentally in middle age."
In the short term, even one night of interrupted sleep can affect your mental state. "You wake up feeling tired and jaded, but after a couple of hours up and running you will feel a bit better, because of your body's rhythm. It will dip again in the afternoon and pick up again in the early evening. If you then go to bed at your normal time, you will probably sleep longer than usual and feel fine the next day," explains Hume.
If you miss a night's sleep, you need to catch up about a third of the lost hours for full recovery. As sleep deprivation continues, then the symptoms worsen and functioning deteriorates. "You may start to experience minor hallucinations, depression, bad temper and irrational feelings. You may even appear to be drunk," says Hume.
Conversely, according to Horne, the effect of oversleep is to leave you sluggish. "People who take excess sleep, even a long unscheduled sleep in the afternoon, often feel miserable afterwards and the effect can last several hours and be self-perpetuating on a longer term basis." Research is still in its infancy. "Sleep is one of the last great frontiers," says Hume, "but researchers are gradually making sense of its structure, rhythm and purpose." Last year, scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, identified a chemical in the spinal fluid, named cis 9 10-octadecenoamide, which they believe induces sleep. They hope to be able to synthesise it to market as a cure for insomnia.
Dave Gilmour vs Nick Mason
PINK FLOYD resemble one of those Day-Glo-coloured amoeba shapes in their 1960s psychedelic light shows: first one blob splits off to dance on its own; then another breaks away, wobbling furiously. Now a rift has appeared in the remaining super-blob.
The tension concerns an official biography of Floyd, originally announced by Virgin Publishing as being written by drummer Nick Mason and tied to the band's 30th anniversary this autumn. These plans have now altered, after discussions between Mason and his colleagues, guitarist Dave Gilmour and keyboardist Rick Wright.
It was reported last week that Mason had "gone ahead without telling anyone", and Gilmour had exerted pressure on the publisher to reconsider. He argued, it was said, that Mason had never been at the creative hub of Floyd, and that a definitive history should not just be one man's perspective.
A source close to Gilmour will confirm only that "it's going ahead, but they've all agreed, the editor, Dave and Nick, that it would be better with as many of the band as possible writing it". As to whether Mason had been "leant on", this insider declined to comment although it seems the only possible inference from the rethink.
In setting out to persuade the two Floyd old boys to take up their pens, Gilmour and Mason cannot be very hopeful. Syd Barrett, the song-writer on the early albums, was replaced by Gilmour in 1968 because LSD had made him incapable of performing. He now lives as a recluse in Cambridge.
More acrimonious was the departure of Roger Waters, mastermind of the 1970s "concept" period. Regarded by the others as a control freak, Waters quit in 1983 and threatened to sue promoters of performances by his ex-chums. He called their first album without him "a despicable forgery", and said he thought of Gilmour when singing his song "Pigs".
Gilmour, in turn, called him "extremely arrogant", and Mason replied, "Roger back in Pink Floyd" when asked to name his worst nightmare. Two huge inflatable pigs that were used in Floyd gigs became known as "Syd" and "Roger". The respective parties have remained estranged ever since.
In that context, one can only hope that the apparent contretemps between Gilmour and Mason has been resolved. It would be distressing to see any reversion to the 1980s squabbles of the Feuding Floyds, when (in Mason's words), "if my kids behaved like that, I'd be very, very cross with them".
ITV's Baywatch is being trounced in the ratings by 25-year-old repeats
of BBC1's Dad's Army, it was revealed last week. This is no surprise.
Who really wants to watch dozens of bosomy blondes bursting from their bikinis in the California sunshine when there are a lot of old men parading in a church hall on the other side?
DAD'S ARMY
Typical episode of Baywatch: a teenager from the wrong side of the tracks is being looked after by Mitch (David Hasselhoff). "Don't swim near the old pier," warns Mitch. Within minutes, the teenager is flailing about near the old pier, with a busty beach bunny and a muscle-packed accomplice in hot pursuit. As the lifeguards revive the boy on the beach, they realise the true meaning of life, how foolish they have been to argue, the depth of their love and the full extent of their suntans. This attracts 6.4m viewers
Typical episode of Dad's Army: Private Pike and Corporal Jones are on patrol when Pike gets his head stuck in some railings. "Don't panic, boy, don't panic," says Jones. The platoon arrives, Private Godfrey bringing a flask of tea. "We'll never get him out," says Fraser. "He's doomed." The platoon decides to dismantle the entire fence and take it back to the church hall. At the church hall, Pike discovers it was only his scarf that was stuck. "You stupid boy," says Mainwaring. This attracts 9.4m viewers
The highlights of Baywatch: suntans, flesh, the opportunity to see important mouth-to-mouth resuscitation techniques demonstrated on prime-time television
The highlights of Dad's Army: in one episode, a captured German officer is taking names for the little black book he will refer to when the Germans win the war. "You, vat iss your name?" he shouts at the soppy-looking boy. Mainwaring snaps immediately: "Don't tell him, Pike"
Why Captain Mainwaring won the ratings war: unlike Baywatch, there is no chance of a guest appearance by Richard Branson in Dad's Army
How Baywatch can compete: more extensive use of catchphrases. "My God, there's a teenage boy from the wrong side of the tracks and he's swimming too close to the old pier! He's doomed! DOOMED! Don't panic! Don't panic"
The future? Carnage in Walmington-on-Sea as Quentin Tarantino directs a Dad's Army revival. "Mr Mainwaring, Mr Mainwaring." "What is it, Pike?" "I've shot Mr Godfrey in the head and there's blood all over your car. I'm ever so sorry..." "You @$$! stupid boy." Dustin Hoffman faces his greatest method-acting challenge when Tarantino recruits him to play one of Private Godfrey's sister Dolly's upside-down cakes.
Michael Winner's amusing article on the inedibility of airline breakfasts reminds me of an early morning British Midland flight I took to Nice a couple of years ago.
Breakfast was copious but predictably unpleasant. I could only pick at my tasteless sausage and cardboard omelette but I was curious to see the reaction of the couple across the aisle, the Michelin-starred Nico Ladenis and his wife, when faced with this offering.
Would he demand to see the captain? Would he rant at the stewardess? Would they display their legendary petulance or just sulk until they could get a proper breakfast on the Cote d'Azur?
No, they scoffed the lot with sombre dedication and for an extraordinary moment, when he called the steward over, I thought they were going to ask for seconds!
Geoffrey Cullinan
Wisborough Green, W Sussex
What a charming manner Mr Winner has towards ordinary mortals! With regard to his comments last week concerning the food on Concorde's London/Barbados/London flight, he suggests that the peasants who travel subsonic should be satisfied with rubbish.
As mere mortals, we travelled last week from Barbados. Indeed, the food was rubbish! How delighted we are to learn that we saved £8,260.
However, in all other respects, BA treated us like royalty.
Mr and Mrs Garry Horne
Radlett, Herts
JONATHAN MARGOLIS on the cinema jingle that has become a hit.
One of the most reliable methods for writers to make a fool of themselves in print is to try to spell a tune. "Bum bum ti bum booo bah," we prattle, when trying to describe some well- known theme without the benefit of being able to hum it. If I hit you with this one, however go on, just one more try, please you might just get it: "Pa-paa pa-paa pa-paa pa-paa pa-pa-pa, Pa-paa pa-paa pa-paa pa-paaaa pa," it starts. Got it?
Of course you got it. It's the Pearl & Dean advertising jingle. Staff at Pearl & Dean, the London company that sells cinema advertising, have been used to people trying to "do" the theme tune since it first appeared in 1968.
"Pa-paa pa-paa pa-paa pa-paa pa-pa-pa," go receptionists when Pearl & Dean executives check in at hotels. "Pa-paa pa-paa pa-paa pa-paa pa-pa-pa," go pump attendants when Pearl & Dean men get out the company credit card in petrol stations. "Pa-paa pa-paa pa-paa pa-paa pa-pa-pa," go friends when Pearl & Deaners mention at dinner parties whom they work for. The Pearl & Dean MD, Peter Howard-Williams, says even his bank manager does it.
Pa-paa pa-paa pa-paa pa-paa pa-pa-pa is, Pearl & Dean believe, an almost unique thing a logo known for its sound rather than its image. But until recently, even Pearl & Dean, used as they are to public familiarity with their theme tune (a Welsh cinema manager once arranged to have it played at his own cremation, as his coffin slid behind the curtains), failed to realise just how popular and appealing it is.
For the Pearl & Dean theme, re-recorded by the Wolverhampton pop group Goldbug, and funkily welded to a cover version of Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love (you know the one, der der der der DUNG da dung da dung) is currently riding high in the singles charts.
The revival of the tune, which is actually called Asteroids, comes, coincidentally, at a time when the company is enjoying a business boom. Having all but disappeared a couple of years ago, so successful is Pearl & Dean now that it has converted an £800,000 annual loss into a profit in just three years. And so trendy is Pearl & Dean suddenly that, as of last week, it even has a World Wide Web site on the Internet, replete with big-screen information and hyperlinks to other areas of cinematic interest.
In addition, the company is soon to launch a new visual logo, designed by the team responsible for the Channel 4 emblem; they are canny enough, however, to be holding on to the Pearl & Dean tune.
The story of how Asteroids came to be a huge hit 28 years after it was written begins about three years ago when a Manchester radio DJ, Steve Penk, was seized with a desire to feature it on his breakfast show.
Penk tracked down a recording, and played it. A lot. Fans in Manchester recorded it off the air. Remixed versions began to be played in clubs all over the northwest and in Scotland, and later crept into clubs in London.
Asteroids had become, like, MEGA, but its composer, Pete Moore, who wrote it in a day at his house in Acton in 1968, still had no idea that anything was happening. He was picking up about £300 a year from Asteroids being played several thousand times a week in cinemas, which wasn't bad, and he was happy.
Then, one day in 1994, Richard Walmsley, one of the six members of Goldbug, happened to go to the cinema to see Terminator 2. This was at the nadir of Pearl & Dean's fortunes, when they had been almost squeezed out of business by the might of their rival, Rank Screen Advertising.
"We went to see the film," Walmsley recalls, "and realised we were all actually looking forward to the Pearl & Dean music. But it didn't happen. It was just not there. And that got us thinking. Asteroids is," says Walmsley mysteriously, "music that speaks to your darkest regions."
Walmsley located Moore, now aged 70, who had gone on to great things in music post-Asteroids, such as arranging and conducting for Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Jack Jones and Peggy Lee. Moore was delighted to allow his piece to be used, but was hardly expecting to be almost top of the pops.
Goldbug's irony-heavy Whole Lotta Love, complete with the original 1968 recording of a four-trombone, four-trumpet big band and four singers performing Asteroids, was released on January 15. It was almost instantly picked as the Breakfast Show Biggie by Chris Evans on Radio 1. Goldbug can't believe their good fortune, although Moore views the prospect of serious royalties with admirable musicianly cool. "I'm in the Promised Land as far as money is concerned," grins Moore. "Truly, nobody could be more surprised than me by what has happened."
Even without its fantastically famous theme tune, Pearl & Dean is a surprisingly interesting company. It was founded in 1953 by brothers Ernie and Charles Pearl and their cousin Bob Dean. The Pearls were cinema commercials buffs, with a collection dating back to 1900. As a result the firm, in London's Soho, still has an archive of early advertisements.
"The very early ones," says Pearl & Dean executive Peter Seabrook-Harris, "such as Get Out, the Building Is on Fire, have no sound effects at all, and we have also got things such as Raymond Glendenning, the BBC reporter, punning terribly about players of distinction and then getting out a packet of Players."
Pearl & Dean's much-loved local ads "For luxury dining with that oriental touch, the Taj Mahal restaurant, High Street" are not quite what they were. "We don't do those as such any more," says Seabrook-Harris, "because what used to happen was that they would shoot one commercial and then hawk it round the country, so the inside of the Indian restaurant that you saw was the same if you were in Land's End or John o'Groats.
They were syndicated because no local restaurant could afford to shoot a 35mm commercial. What we actually do now is tailor-make for each client. Things have moved on a bit."
But, thanks to Pearl & Dean, not too far.
Pa-paa pa-paa pa-paa pa-paa pa-pa-pa, Pa-paa pa-paa pa-paa pa -paaaa...pow!!!
MATT SEATON describes his nightmare day as a guest beardie.
First, a confession: I used to have a real beard. At the age of 18 and in a terrible rush to look mature, I grew one before going to university. Never a very convincing effort, it straggled on for three months before I shaved it off an act that earned me a round of applause in the student bar. My friends never allowed me to forget it. Undaunted, I've also flirted with the idea of a goatee more recently, but I even failed at that. The problem is that my beard is actually quite red and, let's face it, that's a bit of a no-no. Until last week, I'd all but resigned myself to a long-term acquaintance with a razor.
Imagine my delight, then, when I was offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to wear the beard of my dreams: a real Grizzly-Adams-cum -Cornish-fisherman number. No designer stubble for me, thank you; I opted for the full monty. And the make-up artists at Greasepaint, west London, didn't let me down. I went in a smooth Jacob and came out a hairy Esau.
The point of the exercise was to test public reaction to facial hair. Would people treat me differently with my chin covered in growth? If I had any lingering fears about falling victim to beardist behaviour, I dismissed them by visualising positive facial hair images: stud-like guys with mucho macho whiskers Kris Kristofferson, Barry White, Gianfranco Ferre, George Michael and ... er ... David Bellamy. Perhaps this was going to be a little tougher than I thought. The first port of call was The Avenue, a frantically fashionable new restaurant in St James's, central London. As my companions and I made our way to a table, I scanned the half-acre dining hall for fellow beardies. I saw one gentleman with a neatly trimmed number and, catching his eye, shot him a wink of fellow fuzzy-chops solidarity. In an instant his regard turned from astonishment to disdain, as he turned hurriedly back to his conversation. Obviously envious of my superior growth, I thought.
I had more important things to worry about, anyway. The (obviously beardist) waiter tried to catch me out by recommending the soup, but I spotted the ruse and ordered the pasta instead. It was only when I tried to fork it past my face that I realised why he smirked anyway. I felt like Kevin Bacon in Apollo 13 trying to perform some delicate lunar docking procedure.
Meanwhile, the waiter was conferring with the maitre d', who looked as if he couldn't work out whether I was so fabulously famous, rich and powerful that I could simply afford to flout normal social conventions about facial hair, or whether I was actually just a tramp who'd found £100 in Pall Mall. By the time we'd paid and left, I needed to recuperate with a drink in a more beard-friendly environment.
The Golden Lion, a nearby pub boasting traditional ales, seemed a good prospect. Myself counted, three out of seven of the pub's patrons sported chin-shag. I was obviously among friends, a feeling only slightly shaken when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, one of my compadre beardies shaking his head as I caught a tashful of froth off the top of my pint.
Oh well, time to go shopping. Just because I have a beard doesn't mean I don't appreciate nice clothes. I set off for the flashy Versace boutique in Old Bond Street. Ignoring the doorman's supercilious look, I made my way nonchalantly down to the menswear department. The assistants were busy attending to a man buying a suit and seemingly dissolved in giggles as I moved by. Unperturbed, but with my upper lip stiff with bristles, I started browsing for a waistcoat a very beardy item of menswear.
With some relief I noticed that the assistant coming my way had at least a week's growth himself. "Do you think this one suits me?" I asked.
"With a different shirt, perhaps, sir," came the diplomatic reply.
"I meant my beard, actually."
"Well, sir, that's a matter for sir and sir's barber."
I felt very small. Gingerly literally, if you count my beard I put the waistcoat back and slunk out of the shop.
Seeking more positive reinforcement, I decided to check out some of the bars in Soho. First stop was the Living Room in Bateman Street, a mellow, Seattle-style coffee bar. I found a fellow beardie almost immediately. His was huge almost shagpile. It turned out he was American. "When I arrived here," he confided, "friends warned me that people think you're a sex offender if you have a beard."
I nodded sympathetically, but felt more worried than ever what if my neighbours saw me later? Would they call the social services and have my children taken into care? Help! I thought I'd better come clean about my falsie.
"You're kidding!" exclaimed my hirsute friend. "Sure, I saw some white stuff around your chin, but I didn't say anything because I just thought you'd been drinking milk and had spilt some."
Excuse me, but do I look like the sort of guy who drinks milk, let alone dribbles it into his beard? I thanked my friend for his comments and crossed the road to try out a trendier pre-club bar. It was time to find out how my beard would go down with the opposite sex. I'd only taken one step off the pavement towards the bar entrance, though, when the doors swung open.
"Sorry mate, private party."
Oh. And as I turned away, a couple of fashion victims were admitted without so much as a by-your-leave. This was the unacceptable face of beardism so how would I fare at a nightclub?
In front of me in the queue for the fashionable Pleased night, at the Velvet Underground in Charing Cross Road I don't give up that easily were a couple of friendly-looking girls. "Ugh, you look like one of those things what are they called that are half-man, half-goat."
Thanks. Now I was convinced I wouldn't get into this place, either, especially as my whiskers were looking a little the worse for wear. "Do you have a door policy on beards?" I asked the bouncer, as I neared the entrance.
"Yeah, mate. Put it in your pocket and put it back on when you leave."
Labour MPs have been told that beards cost votes. Why, asks ROLAND WHITE, is facial hair given such a tuft time?
Five years ago beards took a drubbing from which they were hard-pressed to recover. In an act that must have sent a shiver through the world of hairy men, The New Joy of Sex was published using a clean-shaven man as one of the models. The hairy hippie who had, since 1971, been educating readers of The Joy of Sex about an unlikely variety of erotic activities, was gone. The message was clear: although women were once prepared to beat a path to the bedroom doors of men who were strangers to the Gillette Super Silver, this was no longer the case.
Not only does the modern sexpot have a smooth chin, but last week facial hair suffered what must surely be the death blow. It was revealed that media consultants are advising Labour party candidates against presenting themselves to the voters with beards. "Beards cost votes," they were warned, "especially on television." I'm sorry, Mr Marx, your Das Kapital is indeed a cracking read, but for the signings and the chat shows the bushy beard will have to go.
It demonstrates how much the party of George Bernard Shaw and Sidney Webb beardies and proud of it has changed. And the change will not be welcome news for Robin Cook, David Blunkett and Frank Dobson, the five o'clock shadow cabinet. How Blunkett will cling on to his 22,681 majority with that straggly beard, God only knows.
What exactly have the smooth-faced majority got against beards? Why do we not trust beardies? What are we afraid of?
"I think it is partly the power of advertising," says Leslie Dunkling, the clean-shaven co-author of The Guinness Book of Beards and Moustaches. "It is to do with selling shaving products and selling after-shave as an aphrodisiac. In the late 19th century attitudes were very different people argued that shaving was an emasculating process and it was women's fault."
Until the 17th century, no self-respecting man was without a beard. Certainly the great men of the land such as Drake, Raleigh and Shakespeare known, although not to his face, as the Beard of Avon were all neatly barbered. In the 1600s, beards became less popular, partly because Cromwell thought they were an icon of the bourgeois cavalier classes, and later because of the rise in popularity of the powdered wig. The foppish and wealthy also liked to give the impression as in Roman times that they had nothing better to do than spend their mornings lounging in the barber's chair. As officers returned bushy-chinned from the Crimean war, beards became more popular, but the smooth face was established for good when King Camp Gillette invented the safety razor in 1895. "At the end of the last century," says Dunkling, "Oscar Wilde and his cronies were making fun of the Victorian gentry. The older generation I suppose we would refer to them today as old fogies were bearded, while Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley were clean shaven." University undergraduates of the day played a game called Beaver. On spotting a beard, players would shout "beaver" and be awarded points. Red beards scored particularly highly, and a red beard riding a bicycle meant automatic victory.
"If a man these days wears a beard, he does it to make some kind of statement," says Dunkling. "He might do it to attract attention to a face he feels is uninteresting, or he could want to make a public statement that he is not a conformist, a businessman. He wants to express his individuality."
Despite the enthusiasm of peace-loving hippies for the beard, Desmond Morris insists that facial hair is a sign of aggression. In his 1985 book, Bodywatching, he explains: "As a visual signal denoting a dominant adult male, the beard helps to exaggerate the aggressive human posture of the jutting jaw. When we are angry, we project the chin forward. With beards added to this projecting display, they become even more juttingly hostile.
"There are some who privately feel it is more macho to be hairier."
Like testosterone-crazed Rolf Harris, for example? Entertainers are particularly fond of beards, which can become a trademark. Noel Edmonds, Jeremy Beadle, David Bellamy and Dave Lee Travis have all used hairy faces to great career advantage. It is also difficult to see a clean-shaven Brian Blessed making quite the same impact as an actor. But the most successful exponents of beard as career move must be ZZ Top, the American rock band. Guitarists Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill began growing beards in 1979, and they didn't bother to stop. About a foot and a half of hair now dangles from their chins, making ZZ Top instantly recognisable. There is only one clean-shaven member of the band the drummer, Frank Beard.
It was the Russian revolution that probably gave the beard its image as an accessory for the liberal, the academic, the armchair anarchist. The Russian revolution and I think many historians have overlooked this important point was all about beards. Little has so far been written about how the small pointy beards of Lenin and Trotsky triumphed over the wild, lavish, self -indulgent growth of Rasputin and the bourgeois full set of Tsar Nicholas. Every self-respecting revolutionary has a beard: Garibaldi, Castro, Engels, Che Guevara, Ayatollah Khomeini, Simon Bolivar.
Not all revolutionaries, of course. The Chinese authorities insist that beards are a health hazard. In 1994 a news agency quoted research that beards overheat the head and increase the risk of baldness.
The real risk of a beard is that it tends to linger. Billy Connolly shaved his beard off in 1989, but it is still difficult to imagine him without it, and the same is true of Jimmy Hill, who has been clean shaven for the past 13 years. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine a bearded John Selwyn Gummer, although he sported one during his time on the backbenches.
There has been a brief attempt to bring back the beard over the past few years. Brian Harvey of East 17 wears one, Brad Pitt had a go, as did Keanu Reeves and Bruce Willis. Bob Geldof had a goatee, although he favours so much designer stubble that it was often difficult to tell.
He might simply have forgotten to shave.
I have sad news for them all. Although The Guinness Book of Beards and Moustaches lists the main reasons for growing beards as sex appeal, looking more mature, distinguished and sophisticated, a Gallup poll in 1993 showed that 86% of the women questioned said that beards were "a turn-off". Sorry, Robin. Sorry, Frank. Sorry, David.
Look on the bright side. They might not be sexy, but bearded men can be very handy about the house. In a 1911 edition of the Ski Club of Great Britain's magazine, one member offered an invaluable tip for sharpening skis. He made sure that he was never far from a bearded dwarf. After a day on the slopes, the short retainer could simply be held in the hand and his hard beard moved up and down across the base of the ski. It's not much of a job, I agree, but it's probably more rewarding than life as a Labour MP.
Hillary is accused of nagging Bill so what, says RHODA KOENIG, she is part of a noble tradition.
Women who are sensitive to criticism must be shuddering at the most recent attack on Hillary Clinton. Forget the fact that the First Lady has faced a grand jury over the Whitewater financial scandal. What really hurts is the charge that she is a nag. The president's aides are said to have complained that she shouts at poor old Bill, demanding to know how he could be "so damn stupid". Bodyguards claim that she once got so overheated she threw something at him one says a lamp, the other a Bible (strange how much the two look alike). And in a new, anonymous novel, Primary Colors currently the talk of all Washington a bad-tempered Hillary soundalike calls her president husband a "faceless, thoughtless, disorganised, undisciplined s".
Although women can take far worse insults in their stride, being labelled a horse (nag) or small rodent (shrew) can reduce some of the toughest ones to tears. But consider this: since a man is hardly likely to marry a scold, something must happen after marriage to turn his wife into one. Any ideas who might be to blame here? Good, lots of hands up on the girls' side. Funny, no volunteers from the boys.
Even if one were not an intelligent, expert and successful professional woman, it would be very trying to be married to President Bill. Knowing that he is, theoretically, in charge of the country and that he gets so much wrong must wear down the teeth of his accomplished spouse, who, to get him his job, had to change her name, take up simpering and Alice bands, and face down a national television audience on the subject of his adultery telling them, admirably, to grow up and "if you don't like him, don't vote for him". A nag she may be, but this is a role for which she should be championed, not pilloried.
Hillary is the most recent in a long line of wives whose critics are disinclined to examine their provocation. From the 5th century BC, the name of Xanthippe, the wife of Socrates, has come to us as a synonym for "shrew". In the saloon bars of the day, other philosophers had no doubt that he took the hemlock to get away from her. Some, however, might see Mrs Socrates not as domineering but desperate. While her husband was lounging around the gymnasia discovering the inductive method, who was earning the dinner money? At the end of his life, Socrates couldn't afford shoes, which suggests that Xanthippe was hardly the Imelda Marcos of ancient Greece.
Literary scolds may also be victims of their authors' secret agendas. Dickens's novels are populated with kindly, vague men married to termagants the Boffins in Our Mutual Friend, the Gargerys in Great Expectations. Was Catherine Dickens, one wonders, ever upset at this portrayal? She was the wife who bore Dickens 10 children while he fell in love with her sister and, later, with an actress for whom he left her. Or look at the father of stage misogyny, Strindberg, famous for plays in which the wife not only makes the husband's life hell, but literally drives him crazy. Yet, after Strindberg ended a tempestuous marriage to the aptly named Siri Wrangel, he found that his second wife couldn't stand him either.
With parents and children, the nagger and nagged can belong to either sex. Do your homework, watch your language, clean your plate and wipe your nose can be standing orders from mother or father to girls and boys. In the workplace, nagging is likewise gender-free. But among adults in the home, it is nearly always she rather than he who must be obeyed. At least, that's the idea. More often, however, he is slinking down to the pub or turning his newspaper into a cloak of invisibility.
The nagger must not be confused with the whinger. The latter, who feels utterly helpless and hopeless, whose every exhalation is a sigh, complains after the event. Told by her proud husband that he has washed the kitchen floor while she is in hospital, Mrs Beevers in Alan Bennett's Afternoon Off asks, tensely: "Which bucket did you use?" When she hears the answer, she shuts her eyes in pain. "I shall have it all to do again." The whinger's only claim to superiority is that nothing and nobody are good enough for her, and she seizes it with a death grip.
Naggers, on the other hand, are always all steamed up. They are worried that something terrible will happen if their husbands don't do something, or don't do it right. And they probably have reason to be worried. Like the whinger, he who is nagged is the one in the control seat. The rest of us pity him, but he remains calm, tuning out his nervous wife and keeping her in suspense. If he does forget something important, well, everyone knows what a vague chap he is; clearly it's the fault of that efficient wife of his, for not reminding him. There's no need for him to be responsible and accountable if someone else will do that. It's a bit like the Jewish joke about the woman pushing her grown son in a wheelchair: "Of course he can walk, but why should he?"
In a sense, nags are increasingly old-fashioned figures, belonging to a period when a woman depended on a man for her bread and butter and self -esteem. Her nagging was a constant wail of frustration at having hitched herself to the wrong one. But these days, a woman, who can earn her own living and meet the world on her own terms, need not stay frustrated. The advice columns lately counsel self-sufficiency as the way to maintain peace in the home. For instance, they say, if you've begged your husband a hundred times to put up the bookshelves, and you're still tripping over collected works, get a ladder and a drill and do it yourself.
This may, however, strike some women as unfair, since the husband not only stops being nagged but gets out of doing the job. But there is another solution, as many wives have found: get another man in to do the job, one who's good with his hands and likes what he's doing. As any nagging wife will testify, she'll be really easy to get along with after that.
Hollywood has become preoccupied with white couples adopting black babies. If Tom, Nicole and Michelle do it, does that mean everyone else should follow suit, asks LIZ JONES.
The cynics call the phenomenon the United Colors of Beverly Hills. I'll have one in each colour, please. Don't wrap it, I'll wear it for the photo shoot.
The very first pictures of the rainbow family of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were revealed to the world a few days ago. They were in Australia for Nicole's sister's wedding and took the opportunity to show off their newly adopted son, one-year-old Connor, who joins three-year-old Isabella, who was also adopted. Connor is very cute, and also very black.
"Tom and Nicole are totally against racism," a friend said. "They saw this as an opportunity to air their views. They wanted to give an underprivileged kid the best start. Both children are gorgeous and the colour of their skin is not an issue."
That Connor Cruise will get the best that Baby Gap has to offer goes without saying. He certainly looks happy and well loved. His parents employ a nanny and a nurse, and plan to take plenty of time off between movies to spend with him. He will have a privileged, sheltered upbringing. Perhaps that is why only movie stars have little trouble with transracial adoption. In the real world, little Connor's problems would only just be beginning.
Maybe he will be sent over to Michelle Pfeiffer's house to play with Claudia Rose, now nearly three years old, the mixed-race little girl adopted by the actress as a baby. Pfeiffer has since given birth to a son, John, who is now 18 months. "I believe in staying in touch with your heritage," said Pfeiffer. "It's sad that racism appears to be on the increase. I wasn't deprived, but I didn't grow up in the smart end of Hollywood, either."
Mia Farrow's adopted and fostered children include Keili-Shea and Isaiah, two African-Americans. She told Hello! magazine, as she introduced the latest addition to her family, Gabriel: "He's from India and he can't walk. He's just lit from within. I've only had him for a few weeks."
Perhaps either Pfeiffer or Farrow should have played Jessica Lange's role as the Waspish mother in the movie Losing Isaiah released in Britain in June who fights to keep her adopted black son, rather than return him to his birth mother (who's a reformed crack addict, natch. Oh, and she's illiterate). Berry's lawyer is played by Samuel L Jackson, who, without giving the plot away to those who haven't read the original book, Seth Margolis's The Other Mother, is no Johnnie Cochran.
These privileged Hollywood children are the exceptions, but they are also evidence of a trend in America that hasn't seen the light of day since the civil rights era of the late 1960s, where integration, not separatism, was seen as the only answer to the country's racial powder keg.
Interracial adoption was effectively banned in 1972, when the National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW) described transracial adoption as "cultural genocide". A new law, which came into effect at the end of last year, will make families such as Cruise and Kidman's far more commonplace everywhere. The Multiethnic Placement Act prohibits child welfare agencies from denying or delaying placement of children on the basis of race, colour or the national origin of the adoptive parents. Those agencies who refuse interracial adoptions will be held in violation of the civil rights act.
The reason for this dramatic turnaround is that there just aren't enough white children to go round, and far too many black children who need a loving home. In America, 40% of children in care are black, although they make up only 12.6% of the population as a whole. The factors for these figures are depressingly familiar: poverty, drug abuse, Aids, broken families. Not so predictable are the reasons more black families aren't able to take these children in.
"I'm sick and tired of the perception that blacks can't take care of blacks," said Toni Oliver of the NABSW. "If social workers did their jobs better, more black parents would be recruited." The rules for qualifying as an adoptive parent you must live in a safe neighbourhood, have both parents at home, be affluent enough to afford the high adoption fees preclude lots of potentially loving, supportive black families who don't have movie-star incomes.
Leora Neal of the NABSW says she has no problems finding black families who are willing to adopt, but who are turned down. "Children who are adopted by a family of a different race grieve over the loss of their culture. Kids have a human need to know the connection to their heritage. Transracial adoption should be a last resort."
In New York State, the numbers of unwanted black children are even higher. Up to 65% of legally adoptable children are black; since only 14% of New Yorkers are black, there really aren't enough African-American families to go round. "We would rather have a child in a family that can meet his or her needs than have no family at all," said Cheryl Gramlich of the Child Services Division.
But a family of movie stars? "Certainly, multicoloured families are more acceptable in middle America if you see Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman doing it," says Belinda, a 32-year-old black San Franciscan who was brought up by white parents. "But can they prepare you for life as an African-American?"
Marc, 27, grew up with his white adoptive parents in a racially mixed household. On a bus trip home one day, he found himself staring down the barrel of a police gun. They were looking for a black man carrying drugs. "I love my parents, but they never prepared me for something like that."
The most fashionable nationality among adoptive parents in New York is currently Chinese: hundreds of adoptions of Chinese babies mostly girls are approved each month. Are these type of adoptions "cultural genocide"? A recent study of Chinese girls who were adopted in the 1960s revealed that today 90% said they are not confused about their identity, and almost half had gone on to study at college.
Adoption and fostering in Britain are heavily weighted in favour of placing black and mixed-race children in homes of a similar cultural background. Unlike America, there are no new laws that bar discrimination against adoptive parents but there also aren't the huge numbers of unwanted children of colour. Lorraine Pascale, 22, the first black British model to grace the cover of American Elle, was given up for adoption as a baby by her Caribbean parents. She spent her first five years in a foster home, until she was adopted by a white English couple.
"People worry that black children adopted into white families don't have a culture, but you can learn," she told Pride magazine. "My white mother taught me a lot about my culture, cooked Caribbean food." Pascale now lives in a New York loft with her husband, a Polish count.
Will baby Connor enjoy such a charmed life? America far more than Britain is still divided along racial lines. Cruise and Kidman, despite their fame, will still face the same questions as other, ordinary parents who have adopted a child of a different colour: Who are my real parents? Which college should I go to? Will I be stopped by the LAPD on my way back to Bel Air?
Hollywood celebrities who are desperate to be seen as politically correct aren't usually famed for their diversions over the race barrier. "Tom and Nicole are brave," said one Hollywood reporter. "They are big enough stars to be able to ignore the disapproval of a very scared industry that wants to offend nobody in case it hits where it hurts in the box office. Good luck to them."
The Spencers and the Thatchers are just the latest couples to discover the appeal of South Africa. SUE REID offers a guide to the life of luxury that is attracting the rich and famous to Constantia, Cape Town's most exclusive suburb.
Earl Spencer, the Princess of Wales's brother, has just made it his winter home; Mark Thatcher settled in before Christmas. A few minutes along the coast, high society gambler and zoo keeper John Aspinall and his wife, Lady Sarah Courage, have enjoyed its charm for years, while film star Michael Douglas holidays there with his old friend, South African millionaire Sol Kerzner. Madonna has her eye on a plot of land and Elton John loves the Italian cuisine at the best restaurant around. Welcome to the latest playground of the royal, the well-connected and the plain rich Constantia Valley on Africa's Cape.
Until now it has been the best-kept secret of the southern hemisphere, a delightful oasis combining the sophistication of Beverly Hills with the scenery of the Rockies. But that was until the Thatchers and then the Spencers came to see, and stayed. Suddenly Constantia is on the map of social eventers, a place sandwiched spectacularly between Table Mountain and lush vineyards, a place of forests and horse paddocks where the sun always shines and the house prices are on the march.
"Countess Spencer popped in here only last week," says Tim Curtis, a designer at Constantia Interiors in the suburb's exclusive shopping village. "It was only for a moment or two, but she was looking at children's fabrics made by Designers Guild. She seemed happy enough, and I'm sure she will feel at home in Constantia. The people here have money, but they need privacy. They won't make the Spencers feel unwelcome."
Spencer has brought his wife, Victoria, four children (and two au pairs) to an estate called Silverhurst at the very heart of Constantia where he is renting a £350,000 residence. Nearby are the Thatchers, with Michael, 6, Amanda Margaret, 2, and one nanny, all waiting for the finishing touches to be made to their multi-bedroomed, four-bathroom house. Here the swimming pools glisten outside vast villas where the average size of a garden is two acres, servants obediently go about their duties, and the only sound you can hear from the public road outside is of Mercedes wheels on gravel drives and the swish of automatic security gates.
Nobody knows if the two families have actually met yet, although they have been spotted at all the same eateries. "Countess Spencer was lunching here just three weeks ago," recalls Lianna Kelly Maartens, who helps runs the Constantia Uitsig (it means view), a fabulous manor-house hotel with an 80-seat restaurant sheltering just behind Table Mountain. "She was with a bunch of Etonian mothers, whose sons were on a cricket tour playing against the boys from the townships. It was a fairly uproarious meal; they stayed a long time, and there was a lot of winetasting. She seemed to love it all.
"Mark Thatcher has visited, too. Once he came with his wife and father, Denis, and the second time he and Diane dined alone as a couple. Unfortunately, when the Thatchers asked for a table the other day we couldn't even fit them in. You see, in December and January we are fully booked for a month in advance. That's when everyone wants to be in Constantia; the English, the Germans, the Americans have all started to winter here. We have entertained Elton John, Chris de Burgh, Desmond Tutu (who lives nearby), Bo Derek and even Francois Mitterrand last year."
Peter Gilder owns a jewellery boutique in the shopping village and believes Constantia is a paradise unrivalled in the world. "I think the number of foreign number plates we are seeing on the roads here means that people have discovered what we have to offer. Tim Rice comes out once a year. Simon Le Bon has looked at a property, and even Michael Jackson is rumoured to be buying an estate down the valley. It goes on and on. But it is an easy place to settle. The people are exceptionally friendly and, of course, the climate and unbelievable beauty make you want to return."
This morning Constantia residents will eat their Sunday brunch in a perfect Mediterranean-style temperature of just under 80 degrees. If they choose to go swimming, the beach is just a few minutes' drive away; if they opt for a bit of sport then the exclusive tennis club (with membership an extraordinarily low £50 a year) is an easy ride from their homes. For an even more chic venue there is the Health and Racquet Club, with squash courts, private trainers on hand, and cocktail bar staff ready to serve you a reviving bloody mary. Then they can look forward to lunch, served in shade at their poolside by black maids who earn just £200 a month, even in President Mandela's new democratic South Africa.
Last Sunday it was at the trendy Mariner's Wharf in nearby Hout Bay where Spencer went to dine with his wife and children. "Yes, they were here," says Pam Dorman, owner of the fish restaurant that everyone who is anyone visits during a stay in the Cape. "We are seven minutes away from Silverhurst by car, so I was not surprised to find they had been here. We've had Michael Douglas before now, Rod Stewart, too, and Sting." Even the so-called gourmet Helmut Kohl has tucked in at Mariner's Wharf, so well that a special chair had to be produced to support the German chancellor's portly form. But Dorman won't comment on that. "We try to be very low profile, so that our guests, however important, can relax. We don't run off to telephone all the newspapers when they turn up."
If anonymity is what you crave, then in Constantia you can get it. "People here don't know what the hell Princess Di's brother looks like," laughed one local last week. "The chance of him getting photographed naked on the beach is very slim indeed. There are no local paparazzi, no zoom lenses. For the most part, the press here are fast asleep." Another added: "Of course, they will mix with the same kind of people as themselves, people who want to keep the outside world at bay, too. Their secrets will remain secret in what is a very wealthy and closed community."
So will the privacy and perfection of Constantia mend the buckled marriage of the Spencers? They certainly seem set to stay. The couple are said to have rented a second house in Hout Bay to cater for their somewhat semi-detached living arrangements, although others claim that the earl is just staying with friends (both rumours have echoes of England where the couple lived apart until recently he with the children in the family's Northamptonshire mansion, Althorp, and she in a cottage in the grounds). They have even enrolled their eldest daughter, Kitty, at a posh private school, Herschel. "We want to start afresh and find peace and tranquillity," the countess has told friends over there.
Spencer, who has holidayed on this coast in the past, knows that is exactly what Constantia can offer. He has already been advised to join Kelvin Grove Country Club, Cape Town's answer to the Hurlingham, where chaps in white flannels laze away pleasant afternoons playing tennis and tossing bowls across virgin lawns. Here the byword is discretion, the membership list a very private matter. But he has already got out and about, too. When Luciano Pavarotti sang at Stellenbosch, a town 30 miles away, Spencer was listening from one of the finer seats. And the 31-year-old earl has promised to organise a benefit for Allan Lamb, the South African cricketer and godfather of one of his children, during his stay there.
Thatcher, who was first packed off to the Cape by his mother as a 19-year-old Harrovian to get rid of his spots in the sun, has been persuaded by his wife to try life in Constantia for a period of six months. He spied his £375,000 property on the Internet, then flew over and snapped it up last autumn.
When he arrived in November, a special dinner party was thrown for him by top-of-the-market estate agent, Pam Golding, where he was introduced to 22 guests hand-picked to make him welcome. He was also at the Kerzner New Year's Eve party, an event with the theme Atlantis that's the name of Kerzner's house in the Bahamas and lots of shiny decorations made out of seashells. Michael Douglas was there and loads of other glittering Constantians, the men in summer blazers with ties, the women in gowns created by the Cape's top designers, Dicky Longhurst and Errol Arendz.
Yet the Thatchers have kept their house in Dallas, so a swift return to Texas can be executed if Diane gets homesick. "The truth is Mark Thatcher is far from being the toast of the town. The real high-society types are a bit wary of his wheeler-dealing. That doesn't make him the favourite guest at dinners," said one social mover and shaker.
"But there are tax advantages to living in South Africa," reports Elan Rabinowitz, a financial expert with accountants Fisher Hoffman Sithole, in Cape Town an international business centre. Namely, if the bulk of your income, private or otherwise, is earned overseas you are not taxed on it. "It means that there are great offshore possibilities," explains Rabinowitz. Possibilities that Thatcher might, perhaps, have noticed.
Constantia is superb value, too. "After all, there are nearly six South African rand to the British pound at the moment. That makes it very cheap to live here. The domestic help costs next to nothing, the bubbly is a bargain, a dinner for two with fine wine is only £40 and you can get a mansion for anything from £250,000 to £800,000. That top price tag would buy you the works: 10 acres, paddocks, stabling, even a bit of your own forest," said one insider last week. Then he added, with a guffaw: "And, of course, we all know there is nothing the rich, particularly the aristocratic rich, like better than a good bargain."
The Constantia clique
1 Privacy was the main attraction for Earl and Countess Spencer, who are renting a villa, far left
2 Recent arrivals Mark and Diane Thatcher won't fail to have noticed the Cape's benevolent tax regime
3 Upper-crust zoo-keeper John Aspinall was one of the original Cape crusaders
4 South African sun king Sol Kerzner, millionaire Sun City supremo, is a long-time Constantia resident
5 Ms Ciccone is one of the many music millionaires house-hunting in the area
6 Cher is another pop property prospector attracted by the Cape's privacy
7 Michael Jackson is searching for a suitably modest pied-a-terre
8 Evita-writer Tim Rice comes to Cape Town annually. He may well bump into Madonna at his favourite fish restaurant
9 Erstwhile bead-wearer Bo Derek is another regular visitor
10 Elton John frequently takes a South African break from all those exhausting holidays in the South of France
11 The paddocks, stabling and endless acres at knockdown prices will have caught the Duke of Edinburgh's eye during his official visit to South Africa with the Queen last March
12 The number of rich newcomers needing furniture may similarly attract David and Serena Linley, now just visitors
13 Another Cape-visiting musician, wandering Irish minstrel Chris de Burgh, appreciates the peace of the peninsula
14 It's not a fatal attraction yet, but holiday visitor Michael Douglas adores the seafood and Kerzner's parties
15 From Chelsea to Constantia. Simon and Yasmin Le Bon are house-hunting
16 The ebullient Archbishop Desmond Tutu enjoys the social side of the new nation he helped to found
17 Acres of forest are for sale in the new South Africa. Maybe that's why Sting has been visiting
18 Luciano Pavarotti was one of the first to serenade the new South Africa set.
Additional reporting by Sudarsan Raghavan.
Lords White and Hanson were a formidable pair. Will their dashing heirs be able to follow suit? RACHEL COOKE reports.
One thing they don't teach you at Harvard Business School: it can be awfully tough when your daddy is one of the most famous money-making brains in the land. Put your son or daughter in the boardroom, Mr Businessman, and just listen to the cries of nepotism. Worse still, you may even have to watch your share price fall.
Robert Hanson, Lord Hanson's son and, some believe, heir to his corporate throne, must know this only too well. In 1992, when his multimillionaire father promoted him to the board of his company, its shares fell 3p on a day the market rallied. Last week, Hanson Jr was again thrust into the spotlight as his father announced a proposal to split the £11 billion conglomerate bearing his name into four companies. Robert will be a key player in the demerger, and this is his big chance to prove himself at Hanson plc, the sole company assets £2.4 billion to retain the family name.
As if all this weren't pressure enough, 35-year-old Robert must also contend with the fact that, in his younger days, his father was a noted playboy who dated some of the world's most beautiful women. In 1951 Hanson Sr even became engaged to Audrey Hepburn (they split up shortly after she made Roman Holiday). Robert has had some pretty glamorous girlfriends in his time, but not the likes of a Hepburn.
Robert Hanson is not the only one about to discover if he did not know it already that living in the shadow of a legend is almost bound to provoke the critics to shriek: "You're not half the man your father was, are you?" Lucas White, the son of Lord Hanson's best friend and maverick business partner, is faced with the same problem. When Lord White died last year, Lucas inherited the bulk of a fortune estimated to be worth between £70m and £100m. His father's friends are waiting for 21-year-old Lucas to show his mettle.
In their day, James Hanson and Gordon White were the Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra of the business community. Aside from his liaison with Hepburn, Hanson also stepped out with Jean Simmons and the Hollywood starlets Terry Moore and Beth Rogan. White, meanwhile, danced with Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner, escorted Grace Kelly at Cannes and, just three years before his death, married a Californian model nearly four decades his junior. To the uninitiated, it must have seemed almost incidental that they were creating a multimillion-pound empire in the process.
How can anyone hope to follow such an act? More challenging still, since both Lucas White and Robert Hanson are already hugely wealthy, they lack the prime money-making motivation of their fathers, both of whom began their respective careers in relatively humble Yorkshire-based family firms.
White Jr says he intends to spend the next year playing polo, after which he thinks he might do a finance course. "It would be difficult for me to do the same thing (as his father)," he said, "I don't think I could follow in his steps as a businessman."
Robert Hanson has, however, had a stab at establishing his own reputation. He began hitting newspaper headlines while at Oxford, where he was an energetic member of the notorious Assassins dining society. After one dinner that got out of hand he and 18 other club members "trashed" a restaurant after drinking 57 bottles of expensive wine he was arrested and appeared before Thames magistrates. Although he was subsequently cleared, the episode, he said later, taught him the power of the press.
Not that this wariness (induced, perhaps, by the knowledge that in the play-it-safe 1990s, playboys and business do not often mix) has necessarily kept Robert Hanson out of the media spotlight. His girlfriends have included Sir Ralph Halpern's PR daughter, Jenny (he bears a strong resemblance to her father), and, more recently, Normandy Keith, daughter of the former chief of Commonwealth Oil. Naomi Campbell and Tania Bryer are among his wide circle of women friends.
Hanson Jr is known for partying and high living at his 30th birthday party a huge ice effigy of himself is said to have taken pride of place although this is something he prefers to play down. He has a £3m house in Gloucestershire, where he hosts weekend parties, and a flat in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, though one of his favourite haunts is reputed to be the Ministry of Sound nightclub in a rather less salubrious part of southeast London.
"He plays extremely hard," says one acquaintance. "All the cliches that are written about him are true," says another. "He likes to party, and he enjoys pretty girls. He ain't no oil painting, but he has bags of joie de vivre." Others describe him as faceless and lacking in charisma.
Robert's climb up the Hanson ladder began in 1990 when he joined the group from the merchant bank NM Rothschild. A colleague in the City says: "He has a lot of nervous energy, and I doubt he is a long sleeper. He is very, very aware of the spotlight on him; but while he is fairly serious about his work, he also likes a laugh."
Like Lord Hanson (who is, at 74, known to enjoy a daily hour-long bike ride), Robert is extremely fit he used to have his own polo team and fastidious about his appearance. His father is reputed to employ a trichologist to patrol the corridors of Hanson, checking for dandruff on the shoulders of employees. His parents are known to be fairly formal; Robert, on the other hand, appears to dislike formality. "He doesn't stand on ceremony," says one who has seen him at formal functions, "and starts to look cheesed off when the speech-making begins."
Lord Hanson has dismissed the idea that his company is a dynasty; any further progress Robert might make within it, we are told, will be purely on the grounds of merit. Still, it cannot exactly be a hindrance that his father is chairman.
Unlike Robert Hanson, Lucas White did not exert himself academically at the various public schools he attended, and chose not to stay on for A levels. Most of his energy since then has been thrown into his polo playing; he, too, has his own team, the Indios at Cowdray Park. As for girls, so far he has not been linked with anyone special.
Many say that White is spoilt by his father's wealth; others insist that he is surprisingly modest. "I am quite sure he is beautifully brought up," says one acquaintance. "His mother, Virginia (Lord White's second wife, the former model and actress Virginia North), is gorgeous, and he has always enjoyed a closer relationship with her than the one he had with his father."
Shortly before Lord White's death, Lucas promised him at the behest of John Aspinall, the zoo-keeper and casino millionaire that he would carry on with what his father had achieved. Quite how he will manage this remains to be seen. It would be perfectly easy for him, after all, to merely sit back and watch his inheritance grow.
As for Robert Hanson, the next months will be crucial. "His father was basically a playboy until his marriage when he was 36," says one City watcher. "Robert may not have the same motivation, but he is certainly driven creatively, rather like a composer or an artist. When his father retires, he may well be eclipsed by his lingering reputation. On the other hand, he may shine more brightly than ever before."
Keep an eye on those share prices.
To Covent Garden to see The Royal Ballet performing in The Sleeping Beauty. In due reverence to the occasion, I had planned to change at my office into something cocktailish, but when the time came to leave, I was running so late that changing would have meant missing curtain-up.
During the interval, I surmised that most of the scruffy audience hadn't even dressed for lunch, let alone the Royal Opera House. But there was one glorious exception a lord of rock'n'roll and his catwalk queen, Simon and Yasmin Le Bon.
Yasmin, splendiferous in a bare, black slip, was accompanied by her husband, resplendent in one of the most well-cut dinner jackets I have ever seen. They were with two of their daughters, Amber and Saffron, both looking perfectly wonderful in the most outrageous pink confections.
The fact that I know that the two children were kitted out courtesy of Valentino from a Children with Aids charity benefit last autumn, in which they posed for Tatler and gave their catwalk services gratis, did nothing to diminish the allure of this golden family.
Shame on me for not making the time to dress up, and full marks to les Le Bons for finding a worthy outing for the children's stunning attire.
Last week, as I sat in a Paris hotel room, my 10-year-old daughter telephoned. "Anything awesome in the minibar?" she asked. Not: "How are you?" or even "How's the weather?" It's obviously DNA-related. I have a weakness, sorry, a passion for minibars. When she rang I happened to be wolfing down the cashews, idly costing them out as 30 nuts for £9.50, and thinking how it was still early days in the development of this oft-maligned service.
Recent years have seen the range of minibar contents expand to include disposable cameras, suntan creams and the like, but just think what other untold joy these temples of delight and convenience could contain.
First, and hideously simply, how about tights? If having a minibar means I don't have to bother to bring a packed lunch and bottles of Evian with me, why must I schlep so many other basics when there could be a selection on tap to charge, charge, charge. In addition to various pairs of stockings, my dream hotel mini-bar would contain several white cotton T-shirts, all with different necklines, of course; a couple of cashmere polo necks in neutral tones; a black velvet evening bag and a choice of great hats because, although one never travels with hat boxes, somehow, when I'm abroad, I suddenly want to wear a hat.
And, while we're on the subject, how about adding a selection of Chanel faux jewels, Hermes bags in assorted glorious colours and a dozen drop-dead Calvin Klein sheaths you know, the indispensable wear-anywhere-anytime variety of dress.
Only the consentingly compulsive need consume and if, like a shopaholic friend of mine, you fear the financial consequences of your immodest actions, you can always get room service to clear the mini-bar before you check in. Or, of course, just pack for every eventuality like any sensible person would. But even they don't tote their own cashews. On second thoughts, at 31p each, perhaps they do.
I am confidently assured by the taste police that all-white gardens are no longer the thing but I was rather fond of ours. We've got a very nice garden for centralish London and, in fact, we chose the house because of it ("100ft and walled" were the magical in fact, irresistible words on the estate agent's particulars that made us move to Clapham). Our two small urban children were the main beneficiaries of this move, so it seems churlish, especially to them, that I've taken two years to buy them a climbing frame.
It's just that I couldn't find a halfway bearable one nobody, it seems, makes a toy that even remotely tones in. Oh, I'm sure if I wanted a custom-built frame Dave Linley could knock me up a tasteful little number, but I eventually went to John Lewis.
Now our discreetly hued garden has real colour to contend with. The slide is blue; the swing is orange; the fireman's pole is red; the scrambling net is a purple; and the trampoline red, turquoise and yellow.
So I guess there's really nothing for it Vita Sackville-West, eat your heart out bring on the red-hot pokers.
Jane Procter is the editor of Tatler magazine
I recently became a statistic. My beloved navy-blue Jeep Cherokee was stolen. (Yes, it is entirely in keeping that I choose to drive a four-litre American four-wheel drive in London. And no, I don't use spray-on mud, but was I smug when it snowed recently.) M350 BLR, I miss you.
The police were charming. So understanding. Really, don't laugh, they truly were kind. They even wrote offering stress counselling standard practice, I believe to help me come to terms with the loss. The letter was, in four -litre American-speak, consigned to the trash. What a mistake.
Our caring insurance company (no new car for eight weeks in case, somewhere in deepest Russia, the hot destination for hot motors, a conscience stirs and my car is returned) sent a loss adjuster to grill me. The hour-long inquisition just stopped short of asking if I had arranged to have the car stolen. I should never have admitted in this column to knowing Lord Brocket. I should never have thrown the counselling letter away. Now I really do need a nice cup of tea and a sympathetic ear.
Quitting smoking is easy. I do it all the time. Laser therapy once worked for about four months. On another occasion, the normally successful stop-smoking guru Allen Carr actually persuaded me to smoke more. I arrived for the session having given up a fortnight previously. A couple of hours of group therapy with eight furiously puffing strangers fumigating my cream jersey with nicotine (all, apparently, part of the process) was enough to make me stop the car on the way home, buy a packet of cigarettes and then smoke myself silly all the way up the A3.
My most recent successful attempt to give up smoking was in America, where the evil weed is now less acceptable than mugging. Giving up there was easy peasy. During the 10 days of my visit, the only three people I saw smoking were shivering in the street and looked like tramps. Smoking seemed ... not stupid, merely irrelevant. If nothing else, the American experience has disproved my belief that alcohol is my trigger and that when I reach for a glass of wine I have to reach for a cigarette, too. Everyone there seems perfectly capable of drinking without lighting up, and I now know that if I lived in America I'd never smoke again.
Back home and I'm smoking for Britain. We had eight friends to supper last week. They were all above averagely bright, witty and all committed smokers. Anyone who has any brains these days knows all about the dangers of cigarettes. Two of my guests had Oxbridge exhibitions. Outrageously clever. You wouldn't have thought so if you had to empty the ashtrays.
Let prohibition commence.
What to see and where to go this week.
ADVENTURES IN MOTION PICTURES: SWAN LAKE, Grand Theatre, Leeds, Tues-Sat.
Following the success of its premiere season in London, AMP's ingenious reworking of ballet's "greatest story ever told" now opens a nine-town tour.
Matthew Bourne's witty, spirited and dramatic staging features an all-male corps of swans and a number of other surprises along the way. Lez Brotherston's designs are stunning. Adam Cooper, guest star from the Royal Ballet, dances the role of the Swan at the matinee and evening performances on Saturday in Leeds.
EVER since The Blackboard Jungle (1955), there have been movies about progressive teachers confronting difficult pupils. But the similarity of a few recent scripts suggests that some cribbing may have been going on. Step forward the following films... Dead Poets Society (1989), Renaissance Man (1994) and Dangerous Minds.
1. In all three, a maverick teacher's inspired methods bring out the best in a previously uninterested class. Much use is made of uplifting poetry: in Dangerous Minds, Michelle Pfeiffer starts with Bob Dylan lyrics and thus cleverly weans her charges on to Dylan Thomas.
2. The teacher knows he or she is getting somewhere when an especially withdrawn or unruly pupil finally sees the light and joins the class's eager quest for knowledge. In Dead Poets Society, for example, an acutely shy boy reveals a flair for poetry.
3. The unconventional approach of these teachers earns them the distrust of their doctrinaire superiors and of their pupils' conservative parents. In Renaissance Man, maverick teacher Danny De Vito's superiors are particularly strict he works for the US Army, teaching ESN trainees.
4. In Renaissance Man and Dangerous Minds, the teacher discovers one pupil who has exceptional ability and who deserves a chance to further their education elsewhere. The authorities, however, will have none of it. In Dead Poets Society, one boy's desire to become an actor is similarly quashed by his conservative parents.
5. Such setbacks oblige the teachers to doubt the worth of their efforts. But they invariably receive a touching vote of confidence from their pupils.
So what do these scholastic films actually teach? Well, the message of Dead Poets Society is clear: express yourself, be original, cast off staid formulas and conventions. Renaissance Man and Dangerous Minds copy this doctrine slavishly, thus completely disobeying it. Perhaps they misheard Dead Poets Society's central precept, carpe diem, as carpe ideam "nick the idea".
What to see and where to go ths week
FRANK BLACK, The Junction, Cambridge, tonight; Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton, Mon; Anson Rooms, Bristol, Wed; Pyramids Centre, Portsmouth, Thu; Astoria, London, Fri
Black was formerly with the Pixies, the Boston band widely credited with rescuing alternative guitar rock at the end of the 1980s. His fitfully brilliant new album, Cult of Ray, augurs well for the tour.
PICK OF THE WEEK
MOLOKO
Hop & Grape, Manchester, tonight
The first date of a tour running through to the end of March should see the Sheffield duo Moloko drawing on the sense of earthy unbalance that made their adventurous maiden album so entertaining. Roisin Murphy sings like a cross between Nina Simone, the Catwoman and one of Freud's more intractable cases, though Moloko's real achievement is to gel their eclectic range of influences into a cohesive, fiercely modern whole. They've already worried the charts and won many admirers with the single Fun for Me. Can they do it live? It's time to find out.
BLACK GRAPE
The Forum, Livingstone, tonight; Newport Centre, Tue; Civic Hall, Wolverhampton, Wed; Brixton Academy, London, Fri, Sat
After an acrimonious split with the Happy Mondays, pop's most star-crossed nihilist, Shaun Ryder, re-emerged last year with a brash, brilliant new group and debut album. Probably the most thrilling live outfit in the country.
SIMPLY RED
London Arena, tonight, Mon
Mick Hucknall and company continue their ritual stroll through Britain's grand venues. The reviews have been mixed, but Simply Red are, usually, worth the benefit of the doubt.
What to see and where to go this week.
ROYAL BALLET
Royal Opera House, Wed, Fri
When Kenneth MacMillan's psycho-sexual ballet The Invitation was new in 1960, the rape scene shocked many. This piece is now revived after 18 years, in a quadruple bill that includes the premieres of Matthew Hart's and Ashley Page's latest ballets, plus Ashton's popular Rhapsody.
RAMBERT DANCE COMPANY
Theatre Royal, Brighton,
Wed-Sat
A triple bill including Christopher Bruce's powerful Swansong, Mark Baldwin's witty Banter Banter, to Stravinsky, and the premiere of Kol Simcha (the Voice of Celebration), dancer Didy Veldman's first work for the company.
ARK DANCE COMPANY
Tameside Hippodrome, Ashton-under-Lyne, Tue-Wed
In this double bill by Ark's award-winning director, Kim Brandstrup, Kenneth Tharp dances the title role in Othello. The second piece, Saints and Shadows, is inspired by All Souls' Day in Mexico.CANDOCO DANCE
COMPANY
Queen Elizabeth Hall, Fri, Sat
Three of Candoco's eight artists are wheelchair users, of whom David Toole a man with no legs, but performing prodigiously on his hands is a dancer like no other. The specially created repertory includes a new piece on the theme of Cupid and Psyche.
What to see and where to go this week.
THE LONDON PHILHARMONIC
RFH, Wed
The LPO's Berlioz series under Roger Norrington continues with a programme including the overtures Le carnaval romain and Les Francs-Juges, the orchestral songs of Les nuits d'ete (mezzo soloist Ann Murray), and the Royal Hunt and Storm from The Trojans.
GLASGOW FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN MUSIC AND ARTS
Glasgow and Edinburgh,
Wed, Thu, Fri
The opening concert in Glasgow's Festival of American Music and Arts features the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Andrew Litton at the Royal Concert Hall (repeated on Thursday at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh). The programme includes works by Copland, Ives, Barber and Gershwin. On Thursday at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, the Royal National Scottish Orchestra under Marin Alsop plays symphonic dances and other works by Leonard Bernstein. On Friday the Paragon Ensemble conducted by David Davies perform works by Michael Torke, Steve Reich and George Crumb at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama.
BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
RFH, Thu
Gianluigi Gelmetti conducts Webern's early Passacaglia, Dvorak's late violin concerto (Uto Ughi) and Prokofiev's superb Fifth Symphony. All seats at £10.
SINFONIA 21
St John's, Smith Square, London SW1, Thu
Martyn Brabbins conducts the premieres of Jonathan Harvey's Hidden City and the intriguing Sketch No 2, "EBB", by Britten. Also featured are Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto (Piers Lane) and Ravel's Mother Goose ballet.
PICK OF THE WEEK
RESERVOIR
Conway Hall, Red Lion
Square, London WC1, Fri
This adventurous ensemble, in partnership with the electronic outfit FURT and members of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, offers a wide-ranging programme of 20th-century music by Kaija Saariaho (Lichtbogen), Vinko Globokar (Eisenberg), Graham Fitkin (Stark) and Karlheinz Stockhausen. The latter is represented by two examples from Aus den sieben Tagen (From the seven Days), his 1968 collection of 15 purely verbal texts for improvisation or what he called "intuitive music". The work seemed outrageous at the time and, come to think of it, still does!
YGGDRASIL QUARTET OF ABERDEEN
Mitchell Hall, Marischal
College, University of
Aberdeen, Thu
The go-ahead young quartet plays Beethoven (Op127), Wilhelm Stenhammar (second quartet) and a newly commissioned quartet from Martin Dalby, who talks about his piece beforehand.
BBC PHILHARMONIC
Free Trade Hall, Manchester, Fri
Judith Bingham's Beyond Redemption receives its world premiere in this programme conducted by Yan Pascal Tortelier, which also includes Sibelius's First Symphony and Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto (Howard Shelley).
BRUNEL ENSEMBLE
St George's, Brandon Hill,
Bristol, Sat
Christopher Austin conducts a programme of Bernstein and Copland, Anthony Payne's Spring's Shining Wake, and a violin concerto (Christopher George) especially commissioned from Will Todd, whose previous work for the ensemble includes the opera Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
What to see and where to go this week.
JENNY ECLAIR, Playhouse, Oxford, tonight; Playhouse, Newcastle, Wed; Arts Centre, Kings Lynn, Thu; Memorial Hall, Northwich, Fri; Odeon, Leicester, Sat.
The 1995 Perrier award-winner's foul-mouthed superbitch persona is the perfect postfeminist heroine, with her daily mantra "self-obsession is a strength not a weakness" 6in stilettos and peroxide hair. Girls take note, and boys be frightened we're not all that sweet, really.
PICK OF THE WEEK
THE UMBILICAL BROTHERS
Arts Theatre, Great Newport
Street, WC2, from Thu until Mar 16
The rubber-bodied Australian duo who give mime a modern twist return with a noisy new show. They offer a living cartoon world, where bodies go into freeze-frame, splat into scenery and defy gravity at all turns. Inventive, unrelenting fun.
DONNA McPHAIL
Warwick Arts Centre,
Coventry, Mon; Oakengates Theatre, Telford, Wed; Epsom
Theatre, Epsom, Thu; Sheffield City Hall, Fri; Assembly Rooms, Derby, Sat
McPhail is an accomplished and stylish comic, and special guest is Bill Bailey, who was wonderfully hilarious at last year's Edinburgh Festival.
What to see and where to go this week.
THE MIDSUMMER MARRIAGE
Royal Opera, Covent Garden, Thu
Both Graham Vick's staging and Bernard Haitink's conducting of Sir Michael Tippett's first opera got a mixed press at the opening just over a fortnight ago, but Haitink is famously nervous on first nights of works he has never conducted before. By this, the fourth performance, things should be getting into top gear musically and the cast, all new to their roles and led by John Tomlinson's unanimously praised King Fisher, should have settled into their parts. Tippett's score remains one of the glories of post-war British opera, so the show is not to be missed for the wonderful music.
THE MAGIC FLUTE
English National Opera, London Coliseum, Thu
Alexander Sander conducts what is by all reports a vintage revival of Nicholas Hytner's production, beautifully balanced between high seriousness and popular comedy. Janice Watson's Pamina and Ian Bostridge's Tamino have been singled out for their outstanding musical qualities and lovely voices in the heroic romantic leads. Peter Snipp is the new Papageno, John Connell the benign, avuncular Sarastro.
PICK OF THE WEEK
TRISTAN AND ISOLDE
English National Opera, London Coliseum, Sat
Wagner's ecstatic vision of physical and metaphysical love has been out of the repertoires of both London opera houses for more than a decade, so the capital's Wagnerians will be grateful that this new production by David Alden ends the extended drought. Not all of them maybe, for Alden creator of the never-to-be-forgotten ENO "chain-saw massacre" Mazeppa in the early 1980s is bound to take a polemical view of the piece. It is conducted by former ENO music director Mark Elder, and the company is fielding what looks like a strong cast, on paper at least: Elizabeth Connell, pictured, sings her first Isolde on stage in this country and her Tristan is the American Heldentenor George Gray, making his British debut. The young company principal mezzo, Susan Parry, gets her first big chance to shine as Brangane. (See page 18.)
SAMSON ET DALILA
Royal Opera, Mon, Sat
The hugely promising Greek mezzo Markella Hatziano and Domingo protege Jose Cura sing the combatant lovers in Saint-Saens's epic biblical opera. Elijah Moshinsky's staging remains one of the landmark productions of the Royal Opera's pre-Isaacs regime. The stylish Frenchman Jacques Delacote conducts.
LA TRAVIATA
Scottish Opera, Glasgow, Wed
The accent is on youth in the casting of this revival of Nuria Espert's acclaimed production. Company principal Clare Rutter takes on the challenge of Verdi's most complex heroine early in her career but to great critical praise, and her Alfredo is the talented young British tenor Paul Charles Clarke, who sang the same role splendidly for Welsh National Opera last season. Richard Armstrong, one of our finest Verdians, conducts.
What to see and where to go this week.
EMIL NOLDE, Whitechapel Gallery, until Feb 25
More than 60 oils, 30 watercolours and prints, by turns dramatic, mystical and lyrical, make this the first ever comprehensive British exhibition of the work of one of the greatest German expressionists.
LISA MILROY: TRAVEL PAINTINGS
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham,
until Mar 23
An impressive painter whose most familiar work consists of symmetrically arranged compositions of illusionistically depicted objects such as shoes and plates, Milroy here exhibits landscapes and interiors recently observed and recorded during trips to Kyoto, Rome, London and Colorado. Obviously inspired by photographs and with something of their glossily bland surfaces, the paintings are both anonymous and intimate, as though, like private snapshots, suggesting significance that outsiders cannot share.
PICK OF THE WEEK
DIAGHILEV: CREATOR OF THE BALLETS RUSSES
Barbican, until Apr 14
The shrewdest impresario of modern times and pre-revolutionary Russia's most valuable cultural export, Sergei Diaghilev, brought East and West together, exposing Russian artists to European modernism and Europe to the genius of Russian painters, composers and performers. Diaghilev is chiefly celebrated for revivifying the art of ballet, but this important show (which draws heavily on previously inaccessible Russian collections) demonstrates that there was more to him than the Ballets Russes. In pre-revolutionary St Petersburg he organised revolutionary art exhibitions, edited the influential journal Mir Iskousstva (World of Art) and promoted such painters as Bakst, Benois, Serov and Vrubel. Most of the space here is inevitably devoted to Diaghilev's first years in Paris, to the glittering and controversial period before the first world war when operas such as Boris Godunov and ballets such as L'Apres-midi d'un faune, Daphnis and Chloe and The Firebird astonished, delighted and outraged audiences in equal measure. In places, the assertively theatrical design of the exhibition is so cluttered as to be distracting, but the sets, costumes and posters, especially those by Bakst, are strong enough to hold their own. They give a clear sense of the impact made by the Ballets Russes and of the man who, singularly equipped to recognise and encourage genius in others, left a permanent mark on modern art. This impressive exhibition will inform and appeal to anyone interested in ballet, opera, painting and applied art.
WILLIAM NICHOLSON: PAINTER
Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, until Feb 25
Forty-three landscapes and still lifes by an outstanding and unfairly neglected painter whose reputation continues to be overshadowed by that of his son, Ben. Portraits were his bread, butter and jam, but he found more pleasure in the informal and small-scale work on which this beguiling exhibition concentrates. More calculated than they look, the still lifes are deliciously juicy, and the landscapes cunningly organised. A treat.
WILLIAM MORRIS REVISITED: QUESTIONING THE LEGACY
Whitworth Art Gallery,
Manchester, until Apr 7
The Victorian theorist, designer, entrepreneur and Utopian socialist died in 1896, and this ambitious show, one of several centenary tributes planned for this year, consists not only of work by him and the arts and crafts movement he inspired, but also of such modern craftsmen and women as Bernard Leach and Janice Tchalenko.
What to see and where to go this week.
AN IDEAL HUSBAND, Haymarket
Oscar Wilde's great moral comedy-drama of corruption, idealism and maturity gets a magisterial production from Peter Hall. Martin Shaw, wily and watchful, leads for the goodies. Anna Carteret is the baddy, a cross between a vulture and a smug fantailed dove. Observe Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray, two glittering octogenarians bestriding the stage with high-precision performances of wit and elegance.
ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD
Lyttelton, Thu-Sat, Sat mat
Simon Russell Beale and Adrian Scarborough play the two sly but baffled courtiers
in Hamlet's Elsinore. Tom Stoppard's philosophical farce, ingenious, hilarious and melancholy, has lost none of its sheen. Warmly recommended.
COMPANY
Donmar
Sam Mendes's crack cast glitters in Sondheim's bitterly funny musical about the hazards, highs and lows of love and commitment in Manhattan.
PICK OF THE WEEK
RICHARD II
Cottesloe, Wed-Sat, Sat mat
Fiona Shaw wears the trousers as the capricious, immature, doomed monarch in Deborah Warner's superbly argued production. You will not agree with every single detail of this reading, but you will be thrilled and riveted by its sheer intelligence.
BLOOD BROTHERS
Phoenix
Willy Russell wrote the book, lyrics and music for this powerful north-country melodrama, one of the best British musicals.
MISS SAIGON
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
The spectacular Boublil-Schonberg musical, now in its seventh year, is about the Vietnam war, in a rousing production by Nicholas Hytner that never once trivialises its subject.
AN INSPECTOR CALLS
Garrick
Stephen Daldry's production of Priestley's classic warhorse has been one of the National's greatest successes. Nicholas Woodeson and Susan Engel star in a final West End run.
What to see and where to go this week.
BABE 92 mins, U
Directed by Chris Noonan, Babe is a simple story of a hero going it alone against a rigid social hierarchy and winning the day. The twist in the tale is that he has a twist in his tail: Babe is a talking pig. Seamless special effects allow the animal stars to speak like humans, but the great thing is that they don't want to be human. A treat for children and adults alike.
SEVEN
127 mins, 18
David Fincher's nihilistic serial-killer thriller starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman has the ingenious beauty of a medieval torture instrument. It will leave many who watch it possessed of the urge to unwatch it as soon as possible, but Seven gets better the more you think about it.
PICK OF THE WEEK
HEAT
170 mins, 15
Michael Mann has worked for more than a decade to position the crime thriller as the epic genre of choice for American directors. With his mammoth urban western, Heat, he has finally succeeded, although its three-hour running time is justified less by its portentous script than by its superb cast: Robert De Niro, above, as a master thief committing a series of stylish heists all over LA, Val Kilmer as one of the gang, and Al Pacino as the cop on their trail. Not the best crime movie ever but certainly the best-looking.
LEAVING LAS VEGAS
110 mins, 18
Mike Figgis's bleak and beautiful film his best by far charts the last days of an alcoholic, Ben (Nicolas Cage), who goes to Las Vegas to drink himself to death. His performance is like no other screen drunk you have seen before; the film leaves most alcoholism movies propping up the bar repeating the same old cliches.
THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT
113 mins, 12
Rob Reiner's comedy has as much grip on political reality as a pair of fervently crossed fingers. Michael Douglas plays Andy Shepherd, a dream Democrat, tough on crime, soft on the environment and a die-hard romantic. Yeah, right. The movie comes alive thanks to Annette Bening's superb performance.
STEPHEN PETTITTintroduces this week's CD offer with a discussion of the four main instrument families in the woodwind section.
Four groups of instruments essentially make up the woodwind family flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons and each of these groups contains a number of different instruments. For instance, the clarinet exists as the clarinet in E flat, in C, in A and (nowadays the commonest) in B flat; to this range can be added bass clarinet and contrabass clarinet, as well as derivatives such as the basset horn and, more distantly, the saxophone. The oboe's family includes the cor anglais and oboe d'amore, while the flutes range from the shrill piccolo down through alto flute to the bass flute. Each of these instruments has its own, sometimes complex, evolutionary history. Our disc this week begins by highlighting the main members of the woodwind family in solo works or concertos so that listeners will be readily able to identify their sounds in these and other contexts.
The flute
The flute, the most commonly recognisable wind instrument both in sight and sound, is also perhaps the simplest in concept just a hollow tube with a hole for blowing across situated near one end, with smaller holes puncturing its body which are stopped in various combinations to allow the instrument to sound at particular pitches. The sophisticated controlling mechanism used today to open and shut these tuning holes was first devised by the Munich craftsman Theobald Boehm in 1847. Prior to that, flutes had fewer keys and a simpler but less reliable mechanism. Nowadays they are made of metal silver- or nickel-plated, or even solid silver or gold but until the 1940s wooden flutes were prevalent. Our examples begin with the beguiling Syrinx for solo flute, composed by Debussy in 1913. This music inhabits the same classical-mystic world as Debussy's orchestral work Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune, exploiting the subtle colours, velvety in the lower register, of the instrument. Vivaldi's G major Flute Concerto is altogether a more brilliant work, one of 16 that composer is known to have written for the instrument, while the famous Dance of the Reed Flutes from Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker, first performed in 1892, is but one example of that composer's astonishing ability to write music of colourful character; not just for the flutes but for the entire orchestra.
The oboe
The oboe was the first member of the orchestral woodwind family, used as a complement to strings in ensemble music some 300 years ago. In 18th-century scores it is still often the only wind instrument mentioned apart from the bassoon. The oboe's modern keying system has evolved over the past century and a half. Now it is of considerable complexity and delicacy. The instrument has a slightly conical bore and produces its lovely, concentrated singing tone by means of a double reed, two slivers of cane tightly bound together at one end and inserted into the top of the instrument. The player grips it firmly between the lips, so that the small amount of breath forced at great pressure into the tiny gap causes vibration of air inside the instrument. The intense beauty of its sound is illustrated by the mellifluous Adagio movement from an Oboe Concerto in D minor by the 18th-century Italian composer Albinoni. Richard Strauss's Oboe Concerto, though written in 1948, is not too far removed from the spirit of our Albinoni example. It has a warm, autumnal feeling, while Strauss relishes the oboe's ability to sing an extended, seamless line.
The clarinet
The clarinet was a relatively late arrival on the orchestral scene. It only became a reasonably permanent member of the orchestra with Beet-
hoven, though it had been devised in Germany at the beginning of the 18th century, taking as its model the old chalumeau. Its open, sometimes breathy sound, achieved by vibrating a single reed against the tapered mouthpiece of the cylindrically bored instrument, is uniquely sensual in its lower (or chalumeau) register but aggressively bright at the top of the range. The clarinet has a remarkable ability to blend with other instruments. It is also at least as athletic and graceful as the oboe, as we hear in the impassioned opening movement of Brahms's Clarinet Sonata in F minor (1894), and more readily able than the oboe to produce notes that are either shatteringly loud or so quiet as to be hardly there at all, as the first, slow movement of the Clarinet Concerto written for the jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman by the American composer Aaron Copland in 1947-48, demonstrates.
The bassoon
Like its relative the oboe, the bassoon and its antecedents have a long history. The earliest preserved examples of what we would recognise as a bassoon date from about 1700, since which time its key-system and construction has been refined. It shares with the oboe a cylindrical bore curved to make the instrument more practical to hold and the double-reed that sets the air inside into vibrating motion. Though it was often used as a basso continuo instrument, baroque composers also wrote much solo music for it. The French composer Rameau particularly favoured it in a solo context, while the ever-prolific Vivaldi left us nearly 40 concertos. The finale from the F major Concerto on our disc displays its character and its versatility to the full. Inevitably it was Beethoven who set in train the bassoon's permanent emancipation in an orchestral context. He wrote important solo passages for it in his Fourth and Ninth symphonies, for instance. And a famous later example of an orchestral solo is the opening of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, which exploits the eerie, wailing quality at the very top of the bassoon's range.
The wind ensemble
Wind instruments are renowned for their ability to make sounds that carry, an ability recognised since medieval times. In many places, the town wind band is still a vital part of amateur music-making outdoors, and the ceremonial military band flourishes everywhere that there are armies. From the middle of the 18th century until the 1830s the European aristocracy commonly employed an ensemble of musicians called the Harmonie. These ranged in size from just a pair of instruments to as many as 13. The music, often of the lighter variety, was correspondingly called Harmoniemusik. The titles of these pieces, such as Divertimento or Serenade, attest to their purely functional and decorative ambitions. They often consisted of sequences of formal dances. But when Mozart got his teeth into the form something special happened. While he, too, could compose light music, his canon includes three so-called Serenades which are of far more than mere passing interest, as the sublime Andante movement (in E flat major) from Mozart's C minor Wind Serenade, K 388, composed in Vienna in 1782 or 1783, proves. Note both the exploitation of colour contrasts and the homogeneity of the whole choir he uses pairs of clarinets, oboes, bassoons and horns, which ensures a rich, mellow quality of timbre.
About the same time that he composed the C minor Serenade, Mozart wrote another masterpiece, the Serenade in B flat, K361, for 13 instruments (12 wind plus a double bass). A century or so later, in 1878, we find the Czech composer Dvorak scoring for an ensemble of a dozen including both double bass and cello in his lovely Wind Serenade in D minor, Op 44. That work also includes a part for contrabassoon, so its colours are yet more mellow and rich than Mozart's. This first movement, however, takes on the character of a rather militaristic dance, a brisk, characterful march, though its second section, making much use of solo oboe in its lighter, more varied scoring, provides a lovely contrast. By the 1930s, when the French composer Poulenc's brilliant Sextet was written (it actually occupied the composer over a period of seven years, from 1932), the wind ensemble this one consists of piano as well as flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn was well established as an instrument of the recital hall. In the Divertissement movement of Poulenc's Sextet, punchy accents help to exaggerate further the character of each instrument. The movement starts suavely, but suddenly transforms itself into something altogether sharper, before returning for the greater part of the movement to its earlier flavour. The flute's presence adds sheen and brilliance, while the piano contributes some piquant harmony and adds a certain subtle percussiveness.
The orchestra
Woodwind usually has an important role to play in much baroque and most classical and post-classical orchestral music. The trend since Beethoven has been for the section to expand both in size and content, so that nowadays, set an imaginative precedent by such figures as Debussy and Stravinsky, many composers habitually write for instruments that not so long ago were considered rarities in the orchestra. They also experiment with new and exciting combinations.
The example we have chosen to illustrate 20th-century orchestral woodwind writing at its best comes from Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, a late work composed in 1943 and revised in 1945, the year that Bartok died. The second movement of this work is called Play of Doubles, because in its outer sections the main wind instruments appear in matched pairs first bassoons, then oboes, clarinets, flutes and, in fact, trumpets. The instruments of each pair play the same music at the same time but at different pitches; the bassoons move along in sixths, or five steps in pitch apart, the oboes in thirds (four steps), the clarinets in harsh sevenths (six steps), the flutes in angular fourths (three steps), and the trumpets in jarring seconds (just one step). Each little section is a tribute to the character of its particular principal instrument, a celebration of the simultaneous diversity and unity that, dare one say, might serve as a useful paradigm for how humanity ought to be.
He made an ideal Edwardian schoolboy, but Rupert Graves will not be typecast, says SIMON FANSHAWE.
Even if he hasn't, Rupert Graves always looks as if he's got his shirt-tail hanging out. He seems to have about his person the kind of chaos you find in your younger brother's room. You just expect him to have ink on his fingers or a dirty hankie drooping out of his pocket. But he doesn't. He is vague, though. Recently he threw the Indian takeaway man a loop by telling him that he lived at No 142, when actually for two and a half years he and his girlfriend have lived at 158. He is rather more ungainly than you'd think, with a perfectly shaped upper physique attached to slightly flat feet and a consequently shambolic way of running. And he is shaved, but in an unshaven sort of way.
However, he scrubs up pretty well. He'd clearly had his hair brushed properly by Merchant Ivory when he played Helena Bonham Carter's bumptious young brother, Freddie, in his first film, A Room with a View. And his tender portrayal of the duty and loyalty of George III's equerry, Greville, in the film of Alan Bennett's play, was not just deeply touching but also positively clean-cut.
He is a sprite, ill-defined and impish and funny. He is also, according to the director of one of his next films, Different for Girls, "absolutely precise in front of the camera". It's this combination of bagginess and dexterity, of chaos and precision, that makes him an irresistible actor to watch when director and script capture his spirit, and a slightly distracting one when they don't. It is what has led his career thus far along the route of interest and experimentation, rather than ambition and Hollywood. To some extent it is what has led him to his current reinvention of the Jean-Louis Barrault role as the "great mime" Baptiste, in Simon Callow's adaptation of Les Enfants du Paradis for the RSC (see review, page 16). And it is certainly the palpable ambiguity about him, combined with an innocence born of wonder about the world, that draws people towards his performances and has made his choice of work idiosyncratic. Although, as he says: "It's not necessarily choice. You do what you're offered." Yes. But you're also offered what you do.
To start with, what he did was floppy-haired Edwardian youths. Or so everybody thought after three EM Forster films in a row. But most people conveniently failed to notice that in the middle one he played not "the gentleman" but Scudder, a junior version of DHLawrence's Mellors the gamekeeper, and he seduced, not Lady Chatterley, but James Wilby's Maurice. Graves was then, and is now, much more the sexually open West Country boy than he ever was the strait-laced public-school Henry. "I used to be invited to Hooray parties in Fulham because of being called Rupert and being in a couple of Merchant Ivory films, and people would be bitterly disappointed because they'd ask me where I went to school, expecting Marlborough or Eton, and I'd say ‘Wyvern Comprehensive'."
He was born and brought up in Weston-super-Mare, southwest of Bristol, and his accent is mid-M4, with a strong Somerset burr underlining the London in his voice. Was he a solitary child? "I wasn't basically happy..." he says tentatively. "I was difficult. I had three or four good friends, but I don't think I was terribly popular. I was sort of thin and ill ... glandular
fever and colds and things ... and I was quite frightened. I think that I knew that when I was older, I'd feel happier. I was bored as a child and quite sad."
He also had some characteristically left-field and charming ambitions. "When I was very young I wanted to be a nun. I was about five and I didn't just say it. I really wanted to be a nun." Julie Andrews? "No, the nuns at school." Did he ever want to be an actor? "I remember as a kid doing very strange movements to the Wombles and Abba records and eventually making sort of mime stories out of them." Well, that's a start.
He is a bit of a lad and was a bit of a rebel at school. "But not in a James Dean sort of way." Pause for thought. "More in an Arthur Askey sort of way." At this point he did write off to an agent he saw in The Stage. He got one. Then in 1983 he got an audition and he was given the part. He was the title role in The Killing of Mr Toad, at the King's Head pub theatre in north London. The following year he was in Dennis Potter's Sufficient Carbohydrate, which transferred to the West End, and by the end of 1985 he was co-starring as Antony Sher's boyfriend in Torch Song Trilogy and had shot his first film.
Since then he has not made the predictable career choices of the conventionally pretty Hugh Grant school of one-trick acting. Instead, he's pursued a variegated career of sweet punk rebellion. Deliberately turning away from the Edwardian, he played a crazed chocoholic in Philip Ridley's play The Pitchfork Disney, at the Bush theatre; he was riveting as the transvestite David Martin in a TV drama about the Stephen Waldorf shootings, deftly turned the cuckolded son in Damage into a tragic character, sparked with sexiness as one of the two men in Coward's menage a trois, Design for Living, in the West End, and will soon be seen with Julie Walters, as his landlady and his lover behind the sexual net curtains of the 1950s, in the film Intimate Relations.
Much of what he has chosen to do has been about exploring sexuality. "I've been very aware ever since I was a child how futile it was to start categorising. I know that sexually I am a lot more drawn to women than I am to men. But I do find it hard to define myself, because as soon as you state one thing, you deny everything else." This is not about bisexuality as much as it is about the question of identity in a wider sense. As Baptiste in Les Enfants, he was drawn to the relationship between romantic love and sexuality. "The separation between love and sex is a very interesting place to be, isn't it?" Yes it is. And he's an interesting person to explore it, because, as so many people who have worked with him say, he really does take risks. They're not always successful ones, but that's the way with messy people. They do messy things and consequently life with them is full of serendipity. "Some people know exactly who they are and what they want to do. I don't have that. I feel wider ... not deeper or cleverer or anything, just wider..." Which is why he is unlikely to go the Hollywood route and end up face down on Sunset Boulevard, and more likely to continue doing sometimes odd but usually intriguing things for as long as his bank manager and agent will allow.
As we invite entries for the 1996 Singer & Friedlander/Sunday Times Watercolour Competition, three painters who have distinguished themselves in the medium tell FRANK WHITFORD what drew them to it.
Two of the judges of the Singer & Friedlander/Sunday Times watercolour competition, now in its ninth successful year, are themselves distinguished watercolour painters, and both John Ward and Michael Frith regret the relatively low esteem in which the medium continues to be held. In spite of outstanding past achievements, especially of English artists, and the popularity of the competition and the exhibition that follows it, the art of watercolour is still widely regarded as an unexciting if pleasant backwater inhabited by reactionary dilettantes.
"Too many people," says Frith, "persist in thinking that watercolour is the preserve of amateurs. The traditional, caricatured picture remains all those Victorian maiden aunts with time on their hands lugging their stools and easels through the landscape or painting flowers in their gardens at home. And it also has the reputation of being essentially a medium for sketching. That, together with its supposed impermanence, means, alas, that watercolour is seriously underrated."
Peter Blake, currently artist in residence at the National Gallery and one of the most celebrated painters in Britain, agrees. He wishes that more artists would try their hand at watercolour, but suspects that "most of those with ambition avoid it because of its amateur and specialist associations".
"It's a bit like wood engraving or a better example calligraphy," Blake says. "Specialisation can too easily encourage a narrow view in which craft becomes more important than art. It seems to attract people who feel safe only with one particular medium or technique, never risk anything else and therefore work somewhat automatically. In those rare modern cases where a really important artist has used watercolour exclusively, it usually turns out that there were special reasons for the choice. Edward Burra, for example, relied entirely on the medium because an allergy prevented him from painting in oils they brought his skin out in a rash."
Although chiefly admired for his technically brilliant oils, Blake regularly turns to watercolour "for the sheer joy of working in a less laborious and time-consuming medium that can produce wonderfully subtle and unexpected effects. It enables me to do different things. When you're laying down washes on wet paper you'll be constantly surprised by what emerges".
Paul Hogarth, a distinguished watercolourist whose paintings of towns and landscapes combine a sense of place with shrewd observation and irrepressible energy, also values the freedom that the medium uniquely permits. "Discovering watercolour was for me a liberating experience. It enables me to paint and draw at the same time, and since I began to paint in watercolour I've never looked back." Surprisingly, Hogarth first used the medium relatively late, when he was in his forties and already famous for his documentary drawings and prints, many of them reproduced in magazines and books on both sides of the Atlantic, of foreign and usually exotic parts.
Those drawings were in black and white, but then Hogarth "came across coloured markers", which, universally available now, were only sold in America at the time. "From there I progressed to watercolour, and I can precisely date the moment it happened. It was in 1967 and I was in the Soviet Union drawing the people, the buildings and the landscape. Since I'm essentially a graphic artist who loves colour, I suddenly realised that only watercolour would allow me to combine drawing with painting. Initially, I made what were more like coloured drawings than paintings, although I've changed a lot since then. My work has become more painterly as I've grown increasingly aware of the medium's potential. It can be constantly renewed, repeatedly pushed to its limits and then beyond them. I think the most purely painterly things I've ever done were made on a recent trip to Croatia.
"I break all the rules. I never stretch the paper, for example, but work on very heavy, American-made paper, both sides of which can be used equally well. I frequently let pools of paint evaporate on the paper, too, so as to introduce interesting effects and achieve the appearance of spontaneity by means of controlled accidents. Although most of my paintings look as though they were done on the spot, some of them were worked up in the studio from sketches and photographs which I always take myself and use more and more as an aid to memory."
The conventionally minded have always been disdainful of the use of photographs for reference, but the best watercolourists, like the best artists in general, are scornful of conventions and rules which they have to ignore if they are to discover what the medium is capable of. Like Hogarth, Frith frequently works for reproduction, but when he paints not to order but for himself he has the liberty to experiment with technique, subject matter and especially with scale. Sometimes he makes tiny paintings no larger than a thumbprint. Sometimes he produces huge landscapes and seascapes on sheets of paper 5ft wide, using enormous quantities of paint applied with a floor mop as well as large brushes so as to achieve remarkably extensive washes, each of which can take more than a day to dry.
"I do them for enjoyment, but I don't always enjoy doing them because of the difficulties they create. I wish I could do more of them because they help me test the limits of a medium with a potential that most painters never bother to tap. It's a pity that I can rarely sell any of the really large paintings, although the National Portrait Gallery does have a portrait of mine just the face of Robert Maxwell that's 5ft high."
That painting is intimidatingly lifelike and uses the freshness and fluidity of watercolour, somehow maintained over a large area, to convey a sense of a complex, mercurial personality. It also demonstrates that the medium is entirely, if unexpectedly, suited to informal portraiture. Although no fewer than two of the winning paintings in last year's Singer & Friedlander/Sunday Times competition were portraits, few watercolourists bother with the subject at all. But Frith repeatedly shows that the immediacy and vitality of watercolour, difficult to achieve in any other medium, can crucially contribute to the making of a memorable likeness.
"Many watercolour painters avoid not only portraits but figures in general," he observes, "probably because they think they have no place among the more traditional subjects, above all, landscape and still life. But I like painting them. In fact, I've recently completed a commissioned picture of the trading floor of the London Futures Exchange that's positively jumping with people in action."
Frith sees spontaneity as an essential attribute of every successful watercolour, but he knows how difficult it is to achieve. "You've got to be brave, and practice alone provides the necessary confidence. It reminds me of playing the piano. Practising scales repeatedly helps you hit the right notes in the concert performance, and hitting the right notes sweetly and straight off is as important in painting as music."
Hogarth agrees about the importance of confidence. "Unlike oils, a watercolour can't be corrected. It's a difficult and unforgiving medium, much harder than oils. It's unpredictable as well, and since some of its most attractive effects are the results of accidents that can be induced but never entirely planned, things can easily go wrong. You're always treading the narrow line between triumph and disaster. I sometimes have to abandon a painting unfinished and start again. I've just been working on a series of pictures for the National Trust and had to paint each one three times before it finally came off. On the other hand, some pictures succeed immediately."
Hogarth uses unconventional techniques to create spontaneous effects. So does Blake, who often works back into wet washes with a dry brush so as to blend the colour and produce interestingly textured sediments. He proceeds more slowly and deliberately than either Hogarth or Frith, and stresses the importance of patience, discipline and planning.
"Watercolour's a bit like wood engraving, which I also do from time to time. In both you've got to have a fairly accurate mage of the finished painting in your mind from the start, and since the brightest highlights are provided by the white of the paper, you've got to constantly hold back, resisting the temptation to fill them in. In fact, watercolour's a little like chess. You must always have a strategy, think several moves ahead and be aware of the later consequences of every move or mark you make. With oils, on the other hand, you can correct, change your mind as you go along."
Materials are of crucial importance to Blake as they are to Hogarth and Frith. The right paper, chosen for its weight, surface texture and consistency is vital. (Frith tends to use heavy 300g paper, which does not require stretching.) Equally necessary are brushes of the highest quality which, like the paper and the paint, are alarmingly expensive. But, as Frith points out, "a large sable brush, which can cost more than £100, seems economical when, properly looked after, it lasts for years".
The other material essential to watercolour water itself is virtually free, however, and this is just as well, given the need for a constantly fresh supply. "This may sound obvious," says Blake, "but it's worth pointing out, nevertheless. The water must always be clean, repeatedly changed while painting. Otherwise the colours lose their clarity, brilliance and strength."
Blake, Frith and Hogarth demonstrate what watercolour is capable of by testing the traditional limits of the medium. Their work also shows that watercolour painting continues to flourish in a country whose artists seem to have a natural affinity with its unique properties. But prejudice remains. Watercolour continues to be seen in too many quarters as a poor relation to oils, as a sketching medium, as the province of amateurs. The Singer & Friedlander/Sunday Times competition is about changing widespread but damaging attitudes.
How to enter
THE Singer & Friedlander/Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 1996 offers a total of £25,000 in prizes to artists painting in watercolour, with a top prize of £15,000. The competition is open to all artists born or resident in the UK, painting in any water-based medium. The judges have allocated two prizes specifically to students. Entrants may submit two paintings each; there is an entry fee of £7 per painting (free to students). The judging panel will be chaired by Evelyn Joll of the gallery Thos Agnew and includes the art critic Frank Whitford and the artist John Ward RA.
Handing-in centres have been arranged throughout the UK in May: Birmingham, Sat 11; Bristol, Fri 10; Cardiff, Wed 15; Edinburgh, Mon 13; London, Fri 17, Sat 18 & Sun 19; Manchester, Sat 11; Newcastle, Thu 9; Norwich, Tue 14; Pontefract, Fri 17.
Following a show at the Mall Galleries in September, an exhibition of entries will tour to Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester and, for the first time, Leeds.
For an entry form, send an A4 SAE to The Singer & Friedlander/Sunday Times Watercolour Competition, PO Box 1390, London SW81QZ. Information: 01372-462190.
PAUL DRIVER argues that Michael Finnissy is a composer left too long in the cold.
On a Radio 3 survey of British music, Michael Finnissy used an unprintable word to express his feelings about how this country treats its composers, and suggested that we just don't deserve good ones. It is true that our appreciation and practical support of creative musicians has never been reliably generous or reliable in any way. It was not easy, for example, for Sir Michael Tippett to come through decades of British patronising to anything like his present eminence, and he has hardly emerged a rich man. Younger, not especially well-known composers have never had it so hard. Commissions, from the Arts Councils or elsewhere, are becoming more elusive; teaching work is being undermined by short-term contracts and bureacracy; the dole is getting stricter. Composers can expect to stack supermarket shelves or wash dishes; they cannot much expect to compose.
Finnissy has supported himself as a pianist and jobbing university teacher, and has been able, as far as I know, to keep out of the supermarkets. He has composed with fabulous fluency and prolificacy; but it was significant that during an interview at the ICA last weekend he left a long pause after referring ruefully to his activity as a teacher. "No," he eventually grinned, "I'm not going to back down on that. Teaching gets in the way of writing pieces." This was shocking! A composer, and a politically sentient one, who would not pay lip service to the panoply of educational structures that our society puts in the place of composition! A composer who expects to be allowed to spend his life composing! That is scarcely British.
Typically British, though and this is, I suppose, the good news is the way that Finnissy at 50 is being discreetly led in from the cold. For a start, the interview was part of a Radio 3 all-Finnissy concert, broadcast in the Hear and Now programme on Friday. That sort of BBC attention has been a long time coming, though the radio stations of European countries have served him well. As a composer noted for the post-Schoenbergian, post-Boulezian complexity of his scores, he has always had a far higher standing on the Continent than here. Other British institutions, such as the London Sinfonietta, are keeping their distance for the time being; but after the current year of birthday tributes, it should be evident to the most conservative observers that Finnissy really is a very good, very versatile, distinctly enjoyable composer.
Meanwhile, as he suggested himself, his rehabilitation is mainly to do with the fact that some exceptionally talented young interpreters, eager to be stretched, have found that they like playing his music. A generation of players and composers has arisen that simply isn't sniffy about him. The instrumental works (three derived from motets by Obrecht) in the second half of the ICA programme were given by one of the brightest younger ensembles, the Cambridge New Music Players. The selection of piano pieces in the first half was played by Nicholas Hodges, who, like his peers James Clapperton and Ian Pace, dispatches Finnissy's most calligraphically outrageous passages as though they were Grade 8 sight-reading.
Pace must be the most dedicated Finnissian of them all. Over the year, he is undertaking the entire vast corpus of the piano music in six recitals at Conway Hall. The first of these had the theme of "Finnissy the Romantic", and reflected the composer's fondness for the Lisztian and Busoniesque art of transcription. Taking material frequently, though not necessarily, from the Romantic repertoire, Finnissy embroiders, questions and re-forms it in myriad subtle ways, sometimes retaining a recognisable outline, more often anatomising the original in shatteringly constructivistic terms.
Pace whetted our appetite for this kind of musical pleasure with some decorative miniatures, or "musical valentines" My Love Is Like a Red Red Rose (1990), How Dear to Me (1991) and What the Meadow Flowers Tell Me (1993) the second, with its heart-stoppingly dissonant plunges in the left hand, a re-creation of an Irish air, the third a "cut-up" of a movement from Mahler's Third Symphony. Before these, we were reminded of the hard modernist early Finnissy, with items such as Snowdrift (1972) also chosen by Hodges whose reiterative use of the interval of the minor sixth nevertheless ensured that the discourse easily made sense. But the point of the programme was the first complete performance of the massive set of Verdi Transcriptions, 15 pieces and three inset "fragments" assembled between 1972 and 1995.
The work fits into pianistic traditions both of brazen showmanship (Alkan and Sorabji, besides Liszt and Busoni, spring to mind) and tough-minded introspection (Chopin's and Debussy's studies, Stockhausen's Klavierstucke I-XI). Finnissy arguably goes further in the direction of transcendental difficulty than anyone, except possibly himself in the piano cycles English Country Tunes (1977) and Folklore I-IV (1994); and the listener's excitement during a performance as convincing as this one is proportionately convulsive. In the fifth piece, based on a septet from Ernani, the convulsion is, at the same time, particularly poignant, since Verdi's melody and harmony can be clearly heard throbbing at the heart of a virtuoso display that seems to cauterise as it devours the keyboard. The last and longest piece, paraphrasing Elisabetta's grave aria, Tu che la vanita , from Act 5 of Don Carlo, is built around a series of patient but tragic descents, and its final pages have a showiness and terrifying bleakness whose conjunction seems to me unique. It may indeed be true: Finnissy is better than we deserve.
From Weill's marriage in a cold climate to theperfection that was the Teatro la Fenice.
The German-Jewish composer Kurt Weill, the world-famous collaborator with Brecht on The Threepenny Opera, fled Nazi Germany for America and, turning his back on his cultural roots, became a modestly successful composer of Broadway shows. Reviled in the 1920s and 1930s by German fascists, he became a virtual non-person in post-war Communist East Germany.
The German Weill's reputation remains fairly solid, but his American alter ego, creator of a string of "popular" shows with some of Broadway's greatest names Maxwell Anderson, Ira Gershwin, Elmer Rice and Alan Jay Lerner have fallen from favour. Street Scene (1947) has enjoyed a renaissance, with recent productions in Glasgow, London and Berlin and a commercial recording of a "critical" edition. Now Opera North has placed its hopes in Love Life (1948), a "vaudeville" with book and lyrics by Lerner, the European premiere of which it gave in Leeds last weekend.
The action begins, promisingly, in the present (well, 1948), with a magician who reappears throughout the show in different guises inviting volunteers, Sam and Susan Cooper, to participate in his levitation and cut-the-lady-in -half tricks. Sam and Susan try to remember when their marriage was happy and they go back in time to 1790. From that moment we intermittently revisit their love life over a 150-year period: in 1857 Sam is working for the railroad; in 1920 he is "hustling for business" on an ocean liner; by 1948 they and their children, none of whom grow older, quarrel over radio programmes, and the couple divorce. During a grand finale "minstrel show", the master of ceremonies introduces a series of turns by con men and fortune tellers who proffer marital advice, but Sam and Susan decide to work things out for themselves.
Some Weillists have hailed this flimsy piece as a thrilling discovery, the missing link between old-fashioned Broadway "story-line" shows such as Showboat and the "concept" musicals of Stephen Sondheim. But you only have to go to Sam Mendes's brilliant Donmar Warehouse production of Company in the same week as Opera North's Love Life as I, probably unwisely, did to experience a concept that flies and another that flops. Weill's own instrumentation is beautifully crafted, the work of a real musician, and there are a couple of nice songs, but the memorable melody quotient barely exceeds that of your average Lloyd Webber score.
What killed Love Life stone dead, however, was Caroline Gawn's ponderous staging and the sub-Nigel Lowery cartoon cutout sets of Charles Edwards, which took an eternity to change there are 17 scenes. Three hours in the theatre is a long time for a couple of nice songs and an illusionist's tricks. Under Wyn Davies's direction the musical numbers, at least, went with a swing, but opera singers are usually the kiss of death in musicals.
Margaret Preece as Susan is an exception and makes a fair stab at the Broadway style. Histrionically, she and Alan Oke (Sam) were upstaged by Geoffrey Dolton in the multiple role of the magician: he's a walking one-man show.
The autobiographical undercurrents of Love Life do offer glimpses into the enigmatic persona of the composer: Weill and his wife, Lotte Lenya, divorced and remarried. Richard Strauss turned a wobbly moment in his own fascinating marriage into a comic opera, Intermezzo. His symbolist opera, Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow) also reveals his attitude to marriage, particularly his moving portraits of the loving cloth-dyer, Barak, and his termagant, sexually unresponsive wife. Strauss and his librettist Hofmannsthal tell us far more than Weill and Lerner about the joys and sorrows of love. The Netherlands Opera production directed by Harry Kupfer with a set by Wilfried Werz a stylised pyramid-cum-merry-go-round construction looks visually dated: very East German, very 1980s. The scenic effects, however, are stunning: the Emperor's red falcon is an aerial dancer who hovers magically over the action, and the Empress's discovery of the Emperor turned to stone by a cubist sculptor was the climax of a very exciting evening.
The NO's chief conductor, Hartmut Haenchen, is a somewhat frigid Straussian, but he gets playing of quite astonishing transparency and delicacy from the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra. The cast is a top-notch team: Thomas Moser's lyrical Emperor and Jane Henschel's thrilling Nurse have no peers in these parts today; Ellen Shade manages the tricky, high-lying role of the Empress with great generosity of voice and John Brocheler is a vocally suave and moving Barak.
The star performance, though, was that of Gabriele Schnaut, in her debut as the Dyer's Wife. For raw power and physical commitment, she probably has no rival in the part today. Further performances on Feb 6, 10, 14, 18, 21, 25.
Anyone who has attended a performance in the Teatro la Fenice a rococo symphony of russets, blues, creams and golds will have been moved by the tragic loss of Italy's most tradition-rich opera house as a result of Monday's fire: the Venetian theatre where Rossini premiered his Tancredi and Semiramide; Verdi his Ernani, Attila, Rigoletto, La traviata and Simon Boccanegra. Last year's Fenice production of Bellini's I puritani with a mainly Italian cast came as close to perfection as I suspect is possible today. At least the instant response of the Italian government with public funds, and many other offers of help and money, give confidence that the phoenix will arise again before too long. If Covent Garden burned down, it would probably have to rely on the lottery.
Can ENO's new Tristan revive the glory days of the company's 1970s productions, asks Hugh Canning.
Time was not so long ago when the operas and music-dramas of Richard Wagner took pride of place in the repertoires of Britain's opera houses. During the boom years of the 1960s for the arts, that is when government subsidies, and Georg Solti's exacting standards as musical director, projected Covent Garden into the top international league, Ring cycles were almost an annual event. The entire "Bayreuth" canon was regarded as absolutely central to the work of a leading house: apart from the four evenings of the Ring tetralogy (first performances between 1869 and 1876, the year of the first complete cycle at Bayreuth), Der fliegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman, 1843), Tannhauser (1845), Lohengrin (1850), Tristan und Isolde (1865), Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg (1868) and Parsifal (1882) were bread-and-butter pieces, as "central" as Bizet's Carmen, Verdi's La traviata or Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro.
As the value of the Arts Council's subsidies has declined, so have the epic Wagner works become "festival pieces": the Royal Opera has not performed Tristan since 1982, Tannhauser since 1987, Parsifal and Lohengrin since 1988; and when Richard Jones's controversial new staging of the Ring gets its first complete performances this autumn, a gap of five years will separate it from the last performances of the previous production.
If anything, the English National Opera's Wagnerian record of recent events is even more depressing. When Mark Elder raises his baton to launch the prelude to Tristan and Isolde on Saturday, it will be the first note of Wagner the Coliseum audience has heard since the end of 1993, when the former ENO music director conducted Tim Albery's dreary and poorly cast production of Lohengrin. The ENO's so-called Power House regime, 1985-1993, mustered only one new Wagner production, Joachim Herz's dismally old-fashioned Parsifal of 1986, and revivals of Pountney's rivetingly theatrical Flying Dutchman and Elijah Moshinsky's squeaky-clean Mastersingers of Nuremberg.
During the 1970s, by contrast, ENO or Sadler's Wells Opera at the London Coliseum as it was initially known offered London's Wagnerians a challenging alternative to Covent Garden's "international" Wagner. In a very real sense it was because of Wagner and specifically the Sadler's Wells centenary production of The Mastersingers of Nuremberg at Sadler's Wells Theatre in 1968 that the company made its historic move to the Coliseum, London's largest theatre, and laid the foundations for the company that regularly eclipsed Covent Garden as a centre of operatic innovation in the 1970s and 1980s.
SWO/ENO's Mastersingers and Ring productions sung in Andrew Porter's famously lucid English conducted by Reginald Goodall, achieved almost cult status: the ENO Ring under Goodall was recorded "live" by EMI, even though it was sung in Porter's English translation, and Goodall's broad magisterial conducting was praised throughout the world. Although officially a salaried member of the Royal Opera's staff, he became the ENO's Wagnerian godfather, responsible for nurturing and coaching singers in a lyrical vocal style that had long since disappeared from international Wagner performances. With Rita Hunter's almost bel canto Brunnhilde, Alberto Remedios's liquidly poetic Siegfried and Norman Bailey's noble Wotan, ENO's Wagner was hailed as the antithesis of the prevalent declamatory, non-legato ranting lampooned as "Bayreuth Bark".
Part of the company's Wagnerian success derived from the fact that it was then alas, it is no longer a real company, an ensemble of artists who worked regularly together and who supplied such vocal depth that many roles could be double-cast. That changed during the 18-year period of Goodall's association with the company: on the first night of his last new Wagner production at the Coliseum, the Herz Parsifal in 1986, the young American singer Goodall had coached in the title role fell ill and Siegfried Jerusalem, rehearsing at Covent Garden, was called in to rescue the performance, singing in the original German. It was evident by then that the Power House brigade had dismantled the kind of ensemble that had made ENO's Wagnerian reputation, even though it was possible to bring back former company members such as Anne Evans and Gwynne Howell, by 1986 Goodall's favoured Wagner singers.
It would be wrong to prejudge Saturday's Tristan, but it is an
indication of the problems besetting a cash-strapped company such as ENO in the 1990s, that the casting has a "thrown-together" look about it. The Isolde, Elizabeth Connell, a glorious Sieglinde in the last revival of the ENO Ring in 1979, returns to the company after a very long absence and a patchy international career in recent years; the Tristan, the American George Gray, remains an unknown quantity. Choice of singers for such arduous roles is inevitably restricted for a company performing in English, but ENO's failure to nurture a new generation of Wagner singers to compare with Goodall's "children" has serious implications for the future of Wagner singing in this country. It is no coincidence that two of Goodall's last proteges, Anne Evans and John Tomlinson, are now more likely to be found singing Wagner in Berlin, Bayreuth, San Francisco or Covent Garden than at the Coliseum.
At least Gwynne Howell, King Mark in David Alden's new production of Tristan, supplies a link with the ENO'S golden Goodall years: he sang the role in the last-but-one production not a theatrical triumph of Wagner's music drama in 1981. He also sang the role in performances Goodall conducted and on the Decca recording he made with Welsh National Opera in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Jonathan Summers, hitherto ENO's preferred Verdi baritone, tackles his first Wagner role with the company, Tristan's lieutenant, Kurwenal; and Isolde's handmaiden, Brangane, administratrix of the fateful love potion, is sung by the young company principal, and Wagnerian novice, Susan Parry.
The teaming up of Elder and Alden, on the other hand, may herald a genuinely new-wave style of musical and dramatic presentation that has perforce eluded Wagner at the London Coliseum. In its day, the Byam Shaw-Blatchley Ring was regarded as progressive, at least in as far as its visual presentation was concerned. Ralph Koltai's "space-age" designs, metallic tubes and spheres arranged quasi-realistically to suggest the natural world and cosmic dimension of Wagner's stage pictures, were initially controversial, but I recall them with affection: as a student witnessing my first production of the Ring, I was enthralled by Koltai's futuristic but paradoxically timeless stage pictures.
At bottom, the famous ENO Ring was a "conservative" production, faithful to the narrative and spirit of the work. It was soon superseded by the revelatory Gotz Friedrich staging at Covent Garden, an intelligent, analytical, polemical and highly political conception of the great epic. Much loathed at the time, the production by the East German (emigre) Friedrich was condemned as Marxist Karl, that is, rather than Brothers, which is what Wagner gets courtesy of Jones and Lowery at Covent Garden nowadays. Whether ENO will ever be in a position again to mount Wagner's Ring remains debatable; heroic singers grow ever scarcer, design budgets get skimpier, the company has, at present, no music director.
A new Ring for ENO's post-millennium period must be a priority. After Saturday, it may well emerge that an Elder-Alden Ring is the shape of Wagnerian things to come at the Coliseum. The provocative Alden must be aching to get his sharp, deconstructionist teeth into the tetralogy. Elder's Ring has been repeatedly frustrated throughout his still-young career. His Wagner may be of a quite different tradition from that of Goodall, but in his mid-forties he has more Wagnerian experience under his belt than any of his contemporaries.
TWO TRAINS RUNNING, Tricycle, Kilburn
August Wilson's dramatic chronicle of black America reaches 1969, with a gentle comedy set in a run-down Pittsburgh diner, where change is felt more through the neighbourhood's imminent redevelopment than the black power rallies down the street. Wilson's entertaining, if old-fashioned, way of assembling a cast of characters and letting them talk shows two generations of black American men trapped within a culture of myth and superstition where the numbers racket an illegal national lottery offers dreams of escape, and who are then foreclosed by white economic power.
Resistance comes in the form of folk memory, and the mulish insistence of the diner's owner (George Harris) on fair compensation for the demolition of his property. The sinister undertaker (Stefan Kalipha) has made his own compact with capitalism. The younger generation (Ray Shell, Tony Armatrading) cling to their absurd male pride, while Armatrading's courtship of the waitress Jenny Jules brings a genuine moment of sweetness and possibility. With this production by Paulette Randall, the Tricycle has once again served Wilson well. RH
SLAUGHTER CITY
The Pit
The RSC's investment in new American writing continues with Naomi Wallace's ambitious attempt to link poetic diction with prosaic industrial politics. The setting is a blood-plastered American slaughterhouse where the ambiguously gendered Cod (Olwen Fouere) is the eternal Exploited Worker who, in some earlier life, has made a Faustian bargain with Robert Langdon Lloyd, the eternal Exploitative Capitalist.
In their present incarnations they encounter a more than averagely oddball group of employees notably Lisa Gaye Dixon as a worker fighting for union rights, and Rudolph Walker as a fellow black worker promoted to the humiliations of middle management, administered by the weird boss (Linal Haft). Ron Daniels's skilful production smooths out the episodic structure of the plot, and the cast give everything they have got, yet, apart from some lesbian inflections, it is difficult to feel that this novel theatrical language is actually saying anything new. RH
THE FIELDS OF AMBROSIA
Aldwych
This preposterous musical marks several milestones. Set in the American South in 1918, it's the first to have two people executed in the electric chair on stage. The hero, I should explain, is the handsome state executioner (Joel Higgins, who also wrote the mind-boggling book and lyrics). He falls in love with his next victim, the German-born Gretchen, who had once slept with the Archduke Franz Ferdinand ("before he was shot"). Their love is soon consummated, in a watchtower; and the show becomes the first musical to have an on-stage orgasm, with a triumphant cry from Gretchen in, I think, Aflat. However, the key is immaterial. In the prison yard, convicts are tortured brutally and at length: another exciting first for a musical. Martin Silvestri's score is bouncy but unmemorable. Three excellent voices (Marc Joseph, Malcolm Piquant, and Christine Andreas as Gretchen) are wasted on wonky material. So is the price of your ticket. JP
JOHN PETER is dismayed by Simon Callow's lumbering adaptation that remains obstinately earthbound.
What on earth is going on at the Royal Shakespeare Company? How could it put on this lumbering 4 1/4-hour fancy-dress party? Is there nobody on the Barbican premises who can read a script?
According to the programme, Simon Callow's play is based on Jacques Prevert's scenario for Marcel Carne's famous film, Les Enfants du Paradis (1943), and, with all the minor alterations Callow has had to make to recreate it for the theatre, it remains obstinately and invincibly a film script: part of an artistic package in which the visual element is as important, if not more, than the text. When you turn a play into a film you open it up; turning a film into a play robs it of its visual freedom, which is its essence, and the script, left to its own devices, becomes its own prisoner. Some years ago the great German director Peter Stein conceived the insane idea of staging Wagner's Ring without the music. God or common sense intervened; but Callow's Les Enfants is rather like a great opera staged without the music, which gives the libretto its psychological resonances and its subtle emotional dynamics. And, as if he had not enough problems, Callow lets his actors speak at a heavy, sluggish pace so that the dialogue, which had clearly been written with visual effects in mind, positively cries out for its lost context, the film.
Prevert's script is actually rather ponderous and dated; what makes Carne's film a masterpiece is its miraculous fluidity and its bruising, dream-like sincerity. Callow's production is encumbered by a hideous set: Robin Don has constructed a vast skeletal cube out of timber beams, open on one side, and endowed with corkscrew stairs and ladders; painted canvases are rolled down its sides to indicate changes of scene. The whole thing rests on an immense square platform that revolves lumberingly both during and between scenes, and creaks embarrassingly like Yepikhodov's boots in The Cherry Orchard. Meanwhile, bits of furniture are moved on and off it in panicky haste. Instead of Carne's breathtaking fluidity, you get a jerky movement that feels simply like a badly directed play. In some of the crucial scenes, depending on where you sit, you cannot see some of the key actors because the struts get in the way. In this famous theatre, with its allegedly perfect sightlines, I strongly advise against end seats.
Stylistically, Callow has missed a golden opportunity. The Theatre de Funambules (here pronounced Foo-Nam-Bool), which is at the heart of the action, was a real mime theatre in early 19th-century Paris; the great French heroic actor Frederick Lemaitre did really start in such a theatre in 1815, playing the Lion in a pantomime called Pyrame et Thisbe; the young mime Baptiste, played in the film by Jean-Louis Barrault, was based on a famous mime, Jean-Gaspar Deburau, and possibly also his son Jean-Charles.
What Callow never really tackles, as Carne does in the film, are the ironic contrasts and similarities between real life and Romantic acting style, except briefly in the scene where Lemaitre (James Purefoy) plays his thunderous and statuesque Othello; and Rupert Graves, though he takes a very creditable crack at mime, must be feeling cruelly exposed by any comparison with Barrault. No crowd scenes on stage could compete with film; but Callow's mingy crowd scenes, with a few extras drifting listlessly this way and that and standing woodenly where they were told to, are like organised sleepwalking.
When Carne's film was released in 1945 it must have been a moving and potent reassertion of the Frenchness of France after five years of occupation and betrayal; but the idea that the characters in Callow's production might be French is laughable. The French body language made up of elegance and cold sentiment, brutishness, hauteur and grace, is missing; the actors even have difficulty pronouncing the word monsieur. "Nincompoops' acting," someone remarks sagely. "You know the sort of thing, it doesn't take a genius." It would have been wise to cut that line.
Finally, what is lacking are Prevert's and Carne's subtle psychological and sexual ambiguities. At their centre is Arletty's sinister, thrilling Garance, a destructive, sphinx-like, asexual femme fatale with the alluring but unerotic smile of Mona Lisa. She destroys three men; the one who gets away, Lemaitre, is, in private life, only a shallow womaniser. Helen McCrory plays her as a vulnerable young gazelle: you worry that perhaps she shouldn't be wandering around Paris on her own. Instead of the obsessed, androgynous beauty of the young Barrault, Graves simply plays Baptiste as an inept and slightly effeminate young man. Lacenaire the murderer, also based on a real-life figure, is played by Joseph Fiennes as an oily, posturing pseudo-dandy, about as menacing as a louche younger son in a bad Restoration comedy. The whole production feels like a labour of love; but it is often the case with labours of love that when you actually do them your objectivity and judgment are overcome by your passion. For the RSC this has been a piece of utter madness. The production looks a bit tacky but it is probably quite expensive.
To stage a ludicrous small-scale adaptation such as Lord of the Flies last summer in Stratford may seem merely erratic; but then to stage another, large-scale and even more inept one looks remarkably like carelessness.
Giant Sand produces an ever-shifting landscapeof music. STEWART LEE on the little-known band who taught Bill and Ted to play.
In 1989 some Hollywood producers rang up Howe Gelb, founder and leader of the Arizona band Giant Sand, and told him he had to come to an empty theme park north of LA immediately to teach Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter guitar parts for the movie Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. It was a fantastic opportunity, they told him, that he couldn't afford to miss. "Yeah," remembers Howe, "but my kid Indiosa had a fever that night, and it was so much fun to say ‘no'." This might go some way to explain why you've never heard of Giant Sand, and, conversely, why the woman at the check-in desk of the hotel Congress, 311 East Congress, Tucson, speaks of Gelb with the kind of pride one would normally reserve for a local area of outstanding beauty.
Formed in 1981, Giant Sand were minor players in a sudden wave of great American guitar bands, of which only REM became a household name. At the same time, Gelb was also releasing quirky and then suicidally unfashionable country and western records under the absurd pseudonym of Blacky Ranchette. In the late 1980s Howe put Blacky out to grass, married his two alter egos together, and signed up John Convertino, the apparently telepathic drummer who lived downstairs, to give Giant Sand a sound that is entirely its own electric-acoustic, semi-improvised, multi-rhythmical country rock.
At best, the Giant Sand sound is eclectic to the point of being thoroughly uncategorisable. Former members of Howe's band have included pop-punk Evan Dando of the Lemonheads, country singer Lucinda Williams, who has written hits for Mary Chapin Carpenter and Emmylou Harris, and an ageing crooner called Pappy Allen. "I moved to a little town called Rimrock, just a smattering of houses in the desert," recalls Howe. "Pappy was the first person I met there. He was 74 years old and we ended up taking him off round the world."
The 1994 album, Glum, includes a bewitching cameo from Howe's daughter, Indiosa, called The Bird Song. It's a whole new music Infant Free Jazz. "I kept dogging her to sing. She was five at the time. I used to play guitar to her to get her to sleep. One night she sang seven songs into a tiny recorder, ‘the bat song', ‘the monkey song', ‘the tree song', while I tried to keep up with her. Consequently you've got an album with a five-year-old and a 74-year-old, both putting us to shame."
Live, Giant Sand have the same unpredictability. Their 1993 tour, with a massive eight-piece line-up, was an unbelievably classic rock show, while a three-piece gig in London in 1994, in which they attempted to duplicate their largely improvised Purge & Slouch album, saw them get so lost they had to leave the stage to regroup. At their worst, Giant Sand are like some punky teenage daughter who is a secret violin prodigy, but whenever curious relatives come round she sulks in her room and refuses to perform. So is Gelb working to a plan?
"Hmmm. I met Peter Buck from REM in Seattle last year. He asked me what my ambition was, and I realised I didn't understand the word.
I understand words like desire, hunches, instincts, but not ‘ambition'. It sounded like a good word. I realised if I didn't use any ambition, then I was just going to stay bent on that whole self-destructive thing. It was in my nature to do that. But things are changing. Last year I fell in love with this girl, but I denied it, and chased her away. I was 39. You don't think you'll fall in love then, just like you aren't going to get a tattoo on your face at 40. But it made me realise I was doing myself in. I thought about all the people who value the band and how half the time I was disregarding them, just driving us off into a ditch."
It appears that Gelb has a safety valve after all. He even took the Keanu Reeves job in the end, after they arranged the transport: "Keanu was a great intuitive bass player, like a young Jack Bruce, but Alex Winter just tried to duplicate my stuff note for note. Hey, I can't even play my stuff note for note."
Barbecue, Giant Sand's new album, culled from live radio sessions, features dainty, folksy melodies, slouching psychedelic country blues and swathes of strange steel-guitar-led lounge music, all stretched to breaking point. Though an accurate document of the stripped-down live Giant Sand at their most inventive, it probably isn't a great place for new listeners to pick up the plot. So which is Howe's best record? "Probably Glum, from 1994. It amazes me how well it fits in with all the crap I was going through with this girl, even though it was recorded before it happened. Do you think we can have memories of the future?" I don't know, I answer. Either way it isn't something we can deal with in 800 words. "It's as if I could scent the fire, smell the smoke of wood that will be burning in the future."
Barbecue is released on Normal records; Giant Sand are at the Mean Fiddler, Harlesden, London, on Thursday.
A handful of hits in the American charts doesn't exactly constitute a new British invasion, says ANDREW SMITH we've heard it all before.
When the Beatles touched down in America 32 years ago, marking the onset of the first "British invasion", they were stepping off the plane into a vacuum of sorts. The "golden years" of the 1950s, all the optimism of the Kennedy accession, seemed to be dissolving into uncertainty. The nation was still mourning JFK's assassination. There was racial strife and war looming.
Worse still, rock'n'roll had entered a period of stasis. Having been co-opted into the mainstream, it was drifting; Elvis hadn't yet turned into a semi-sentient cheeseburger and there was Phil Spector and the shrill early Beach Boys, but not much else. The Beatles, Stones, Yardbirds, Animals and the Who brought with them a wit and brash confidence not to mention a few decent tunes that must have seemed utterly exotic and exciting. They were something to feel good about. Later came the Faces, Elton John, Cat Stevens and, further down the line still, Led Zeppelin.
The former music editor of Rolling Stone magazine, David Fricke, is of the opinion that this early wave of successful exports has haunted British rock and pop ever since, upsetting "every sensible measure of transatlantic rock'n'roll cultural exchange". He may be right. It has become a matter of routine that every year, at about this time, someone informs us that the "new British invasion" has begun. Last year there was a buzz surrounding Elastica, the mercurial PJ Harvey and Blur; but the frontrunners were Bush (whom nobody here had ever heard of), Portishead, the Stone Roses and Oasis pretty much in that order. Six months later we were informed that this polite putsch had failed, though we could always try again next year if we were of a mind to. So here we are, with headlines panting "Beatles lead new US wave of Britmania" and Charles Stuart Smith of the British Phonographic Institute explaining to Sunday newspaper readers that "there is now a new mood in the United States. Something vague, ephemeral and indefinable is happening, which means they are now open to a new kind of music as offered by British bands".
What is this "new kind of music"? Not necessarily what you'd expect. Oasis's What's the Story (Morning Glory) album is reportedly shifting 200,000 units a week. It has moved up to No 5 in the Billboard chart, one place behind Bush's Sixteen Stone, which has so far sold 4m copies. The Beatles Anthology set is drifting back down the chart, after generating $21m in its first week of release, breaking the record previously held by Michael Jackson. All three groups are also to be found in the singles charts, along with Take That, the songwriterly droners Del Amitri, and Everything But the Girl with a sleek American dance mix of their lovely Missing, courtesy of the DJ Todd Terry. And that's your British invasion. Don't mobilise the minutemen just yet.
A closer look at the experience of Bush is instructive here. Named after Shepherd's Bush, the area of London where their singer Gavin Rossdale used to live (he has since moved up-market), they couldn't get gigs and couldn't get signed at home. Getting arrested would probably have involved their manager in protracted negotiations. Until just over a year ago, they were all working sporadically at day jobs Rossdale was a house painter in order to scrape together enough money for rehearsals. By this time, though, the seeds of their success had already been sown. A man named Rob Kahane, who had just set up a record label in LA, received a tip from the producer of Gary Crowley's GLR radio show. It was about a band whose demo of a song called Honky Manchild had been eliciting an unusually enthusiastic response from listeners. That band was Bush.
Kahane went to see them at a dingy studio in Harlesden, north London. They were playing Honky Manchild, later retitled Everything Zen, when he walked in. He signed them cheaply. Everything Zen was picked up by the LA radio station KROC, and interest in it fanned outward from there. With almost no marketing or promotions budget, armed only with a willingness to tour incessantly, Bush had a sizeable hit on their hands, at a time when they'd still never been reviewed by a British music paper. The LA Times called Rossdale "the latest in a long line of deliberately dark and brooding frontmen that stretches all the way back to Jim Morrison". Others have likened him to Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, though he is none too keen on this comparison. "Beyond cosmetics, I can't see it. We have the same hairstyle," he says.
The truth is, though, that Bush do sound a lot like Pearl Jam. They have the same sweeping, epic quality that has always eased a rock band's passage through the scattered markets of the Midwest. The point is not that they sound American, but that, like Oasis, they work on an emotional and sonic scale that makes sense to a majority of American rock fans. Last year the big news stories were the Oklahoma City bombing and the OJ trial.
The literate, stylised social observations and ruminations on pub culture that have made Blur, Pulp, Supergrass et al so popular here mean nothing there. The groups that have done well are the ones who work with broad, unspecific, emotionally charged strokes. Immediately prior to Bush and Oasis, Radiohead and the Cranberries were the ones who appealed.
The rock writer Greil Marcus has identified something he calls the "folk virus", which periodically invades pop. In folk, he maintains, if a singer says, "I really mean it, man," you believe them. In pop, the opposite is true. When John Lydon spat, "I really mean it, man," in God Save the Queen, you immediately understood that he definitely didn't. Right now, most Americans want their rock stars to really mean it.
Our Britpop boys and girls don't sound as though they do, and it is interesting that Oasis's more earnest, but generally inferior, second album should have given them their breakthrough in America, rather than the extraordinary sequence of sneering, snarling, gleefully nihilistic singles with which they opened their account. The last British wave was in the mid-1980s and was spearheaded by U2 and Simple Minds. The message is clear: don't get too smart on us.
Does this mean Britpop has failed? On its own terms, no. Blur's Damon Albarn declared just before Christmas that, as an idea, it is no longer valid. This is true, but Britpop as a term was invented for a specific purpose to act as a bulwark against the waves of dour American grunge acts who swept all before them during the first half of this decade, providing yet another excellent reason (Nirvana excepted) for young Britons to bury themselves in club culture.
In the wake of Kurt Cobain's suicide, grunge would have tailed off anyway, but Britpop acted as a focus for the indigenous groups who leapt excitedly out of the woodwork as soon as the coast was clear. The Blur vs Oasis marketing set-piece undeniably heightened interest in the best crop of new bands to have emerged in years. Spunky newcomers such as Supergrass, Elastica, Echobelly, Ash, Marion, Cast, Northern Uproar, the Bluetones, 60ft Dolls, Black Grape even completely unrelated innovators such as Tricky, Goldie and Portishead have benefited from it.
In the end, though, the term Britpop always carried with it an element of pathos. Even during one of the most exciting pop years most fans could remember, we were defining ourselves in terms of America. In more confident times, the relationship was characterised in terms of dialogue rather than rivalry. Nobody ever asks the obvious question: with so much to enthuse about here, why should we care what anyone is listening to over there?
PAUL DONOVAN on the man who is trying to make Panorama essential viewing once again.
Exactly a year ago, Steve Hewlett became editor of BBC's stately flagship Panorama, launched in 1953 and the most venerable current affairs programme on British television. His orders were to tweak the tiller, make waves and set sail in search of larger audiences, but not by letting in bilge. Has he succeeded? Or does the extraordinary coup in securing the Princess of Wales interview, which was watched by 22.8m people in Britain alone and for which one foreign broadcaster paid £650,000, mean the programme will never again have the same mission to explain, only a mission to entertain? Might Panorama be going down the pan?
No considered answer to that can yet be made. But Hewlett, an affable man of 37, does admit it is a delicate balancing act. Like any serious news programme, Panorama is necessarily guided by the news agenda, yet when in October it tackled one of the world's most important topics Bosnia, with Lord Owen it attracted only 2.5m viewers, the smallest audience of the year. Hewlett, like most editors, wants scoops: these are what get talked about and make his reputation, and build what he considers a vital sense of excitement about Monday nights on BBC1. The December programme in which Richard Branson accused GTech of trying to bribe him, for example, got 7.7m viewers and sparked an intense debate about the national lottery. Hewlett's first big scoop, last October, was "Child B", about the 11-year-old girl with leukaemia whose plight in being refused treatment by Cambridge Health Authority focused attention on health care rationing. There were no amazing revelations in the most recent programme, a two-part report by Stephen Bradshaw on the decay of the welfare state; but, significantly, the emphasis was once again on people, rather than abstract analysis, as a way of explaining national issues. "Analysis is the bane of the thinking classes," Hewlett says, not wholly facetiously. This is not a man who has much in common with his predecessor, Glenwyn Benson, who famously said in 1992 that it would not matter if only five people watched her edition on John Major, because it was the right programme to do.
Hewlett started out as a teacher, having graduated in biology and the philosophy of science from Manchester University. He moved to become a researcher on Panorama and Nationwide, and thence a producer of spiky documentaries on BBC and Channel 4 such as Diverse Reports, Brass Tacks and Taking Liberties. (He keenly mentions one programme he made for Channel4 that savagely attacked the BBC's coverage of the Falklands war.) Then he made editions of Inside Story, two series of Children's Hospital and The Skipper (about Cornish fishermen) and edited BBC2's season about 25 years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It was that zest for popular documentary-making that won him the post whose former occupants include Jeremy Isaacs, Paul Fox and Roger Bolton. That, and his pitch, which was unashamedly a popular one. "I argued that here was a programme which had many strengths. Its level of thoroughness was greater than any other current affairs programme on television. There was also an emerging trend to ask politically incorrect questions, about single mothers, for example. It had started to address topics of real concern to the audience."
However, it did not, he felt, have the ability to tell stories. "It had a tendency to say that if all the information was there, the programme had done its job. But the information is only two-thirds of what is needed. The critical factor is making it watchable. To a certain extent, television is entertainment. People expect television to engage them. Programmes are organic entities, with a beginning, middle and end. They are like a piece of music, with an overture and climax. They are not a space into which you just throw a lot of facts. I remember once seeing a Panorama that included secret filming of some nurses, one of whom threw a toddler in a walker across a room. It was absolutely horrifying. But that was 25 minutes into the programme. I would have put it in the pre-title sequence. As a viewer, I often felt shortchanged."
He is determined to make the programme compulsory viewing. "I want to get to the point where people say on a Monday, ‘It's Panorama tonight I wonder what it's about this week?' If we succeed, it will raise the audience for all topics, even the less interesting ones. For example, our edition on race in America, the week after the Princess of Wales, attracted 3.8m viewers, about 1m more than we might have expected. Water shortages, the week after that, got 5.6m, more than some BBC dramas."
In the 1960s, presented by Richard Dimbleby and, later, Robin Day, Panorama had audiences of up to 10m. But as competition grew, its audience slumped, down to an average of 4m in 1993. It grew to 4.2m in 1994 as it set out to be more accessible, and then to 4.7m last year. The documents on Hewlett's desk also show that the proportion of young viewers, and viewers from the CD social groups, has grown, and also that there have been big increases in particular parts of Britain. In the west of England, for example, Panorama attracts 12.4% of the available audience compared with 6.7% two years ago. So he seems to have done everything expected of him.
It would be hypocritical to criticise Hewlett for going "downmarket', for trying to give Panorama more buzz, for setting out to make every edition a clear piece of storytelling. There is no point in having a flagship if nobody comes on board, and, after all, this piece is only being written because his efforts and achievements have been noticed. However, the danger of the current approach is that Panorama will now concentrate on populist topics, so that its mandate will shift from telling people what they should know to telling them only what they want to know. If this unique vessel turns into a mere ratings-chaser, it may sink.
Lee Evans has a plan to star in films and conquer America so this year there's time for only a few stand-up shows in Britain. The comedian gets serious with IAN WATSON.
Lee Evans has two main worries in life. The first is a fear of letting people down, a nagging anxiety that manifests itself as soon as the 31-year-old comedian breezes into the Soho offices of his own film production company. He's an hour late for a string of interviews about his decision to spend the majority of 1996 concentrating on acting and cracking America, and by way of explanation, the man most commonly described as "the modern-day Norman Wisdom" launches into a frenzied 10-minute monologue involving the Blackwall tunnel, fish and chips and Des O'Connor's wife. As soon as he's got a laugh, he relaxes, pleased to have paid penance for his sin.
Evans's second worry has an effect on his career as a whole. He's scared of failure. This is a feeling shared by many performers, of course, but it can be argued that this insecurity has created both his twitchy comic persona and his current game plan. Ask Evans why his forthcoming West End run will be his only British live appearance of the year and he'll say he's convinced he's nearing the end of his shelf life as a stand-up. Fear of unpopularity has forced him to turn to film and America; in short, to take the kind of risks that have already seen him flirting with disaster on more than one occasion.
"I had a mental breakdown after I won the Perrier Award in 1993," he says, in between sips of sugary coffee. "I developed alopecia and my body failed to operate. I didn't want to let all my friends on the circuit down. I had loads of commitments to play at clubs that were suddenly packed, and so I was doing five gigs a night and trying to please everyone. In the end, I couldn't handle it and I was shaking really badly and feeling totally uptight. My wife just cut the phone line and left it like that for months."
In a bid to bring him back on an even keel, Evans was prescribed what he calls "downers". He immediately gained some stability, but then discovered he was completely unable to produce the physical and verbal hyperactivity required for his act. "It was terrible," he laughs. "I'd come on and be really deadpan and people would go, ‘I thought he moved about a bit'." The pills were quickly swapped for a course of vitamins, which he says compensates for his poor diet (he cheerfully admits to me he hasn't eaten for two days), and an appointment was made with a therapist.
"He traced my breakdown back to my upbringing," Evans explains. "My father was, and still is, a touring comic and musician, which meant I went to six different schools. And that made me a bit shy and inward. I was always the new boy in class, so I had to find different ways of making friends. I soon discovered that if I made strange faces and messed around, that got me what I wanted, which was to be accepted." This approbation had a price, however, and one that would play a great part in creating Lee Evans the comedian. "I was always the clown and I never really wanted that. It was the same when I worked on a building site. I was the fool of the site."
The desire to operate on equal terms with his peers stayed with Evans as he drifted towards comedy. He knew he enjoyed performing from his days in front of the class and as a drummer in a band, but he didn't want to remain the butt of everyone's jokes. So he created an act that would cast him in a far more sophisticated light. "I had a vision of being suave. Like Bob Monkhouse. I thought that might make me survive, but I ended up doing terrible one-liners in working men's clubs. I was actually booked back once for being so bad, just so the punters could have a go at me."
At the time, Evans regarded events such as an irate audience rolling his car down a hill in Wales and being knocked out by a hurled fire extinguisher in Brighton as simply part of the adventure, but they also had some formative value. "Once you're dying on stage, you can't really stand there and be cool any more, so you start twitching and moving around," he explains. "And that was getting laughs, which is when I found my true self. I don't think comedians are born. You have to find a way of surviving in this strange world and that tends to be with an exaggeration of your real personality."
With his act now a fully formed amalgam of perfectly timed slapstick and well-observed stand-up, Evans moved on to the Comedy Store and found a world where his virtuosity and humility provided welcome relief from the stern browbeating of the political comics. Here, his naturally foolish demeanour had a purpose beyond cheap laughs, and spurred on by the thought that "sometimes you need someone to be the clown, the fool, to take away all the pain and stress the audience has suffered during the day", he wholeheartedly embraced the role of the nation's ever-suffering fall guy.
This is what makes Lee Evans unique in British comedy. While other modern comics operate from an authoritative standpoint, offering wry truths for the crowd to laugh along with, Evans is the perpetual village idiot, a comforting reminder that there's always someone more incompetent than you. His first Channel 4 television series, The World of Lee Evans, was riddled with pathetic characters and catastrophic incidents; and Evans's singularity was made even more apparent by the show's insistence on eschewing the standard sketch and stand-up format in favour of an ambitious set of 15-minute dramas.
"I just wanted to do something different," he says. "We've now been asked to do a television special, and they wanted ‘An Audience with...' and that scared me because if it's on television, then you should write something that can only be done on TV and never reproduced live. So it's in two separate halves and I've got remote control pianos, microphones that come out of the floor, and we're going to put well known people in odd situations. Have Jerry Lee Lewis, who's famous for standing on pianos and setting fire to them, and get him to be very calm and classical. So I end up playing the piano and getting it wrong."
The notion of professionally playing the fool is one Evans will keep in mind during the first of 1996's main undertakings: establishing himself in America. He has already spent four years sporadically performing to New York and Los Angeles audiences and has found it extremely easy to make an impression. "The big mistake British comics make is to try to be American," he says. "If an American put on an English accent, we'd think of Dick Van Dyke, and it works the same the other way round. The best thing I can do is fall around the stage, and they go, ‘He's eccentric, he's mad."'
He goes down well in the United States for much the same reason he stands out in this country. "I'm quite naive, and that's a relief for the Americans," Evans says. "When I was in New York, I was told not to go down 45th Street and that made me curious, so I forced my guide to take me there. We walked past this gang of blokes and the guide couldn't believe we weren't mugged and he told everyone at the hotel about it. They thought I was crazy."
Evans is currently developing a comedy series for NBC, but contractual obligations forbid him from discussing both this and his second chief concern of 1996, acting. Thanks to the success of the film Funny Bones, which last week won an Evening Standard award and which proved Evans to be a master of vaudevillian tragedy, he's due to star in Luc Besson's new science-fiction feature alongside Bruce Willis and Gary Oldman. He's also signed a three-movie deal with Miramax for his company, Little Mo Films, but all he will say on the matter is that he's keen to explore new territory after receiving countless offers to play clumsy butlers.
The one thing Evans happily confirms is that he's not planning to abandon Britain for a Hollywood career. The insecurity that shaped his comic persona also keeps him from feeling comfortable in America; and driven by the conviction that changing fashions will soon force him to make stand-up comedy a sideline, he's preparing to tackle challenges far beyond the scope of most workaday comedians. "I love the cinema because I can get my humour across much better in a film," he concludes. "It's like the difference between a sculpture and a painting. You can walk round a sculpture and feel it, but a painting is just there. There's so much more I'm looking forward to doing."
Lee Evans, Lyric, Shaftesbury Avenue, Feb 5-Mar 16.
Lard into lipstick, chewed chocolate into delicacies why the return of weird religious imagery, asks WALDEMAR JANUSZCZAK. Are artists on both sides of the Atlantic entering a new Middle Ages?
Did you know that the universities of Oxford and Cambridge are still in official dispute over the spelling of the name Mary Magdalene? Cambridge believes there should be an "e" at the end, and Oxford does not. The two Oxbridge colleges dedicated to the Bible's most penitent prostitute continue to bear the rival spellings.
I remembered this absurd medieval dispute set in the interface between religion and semantics as I made my way around the latest gathering of new art from various New Yorkers at the Saatchi Gallery. There is no more modern set of spaces in London than the fabulously cool suite of white Saatchi galleries; yet the stuff you find in them has become increasingly obfuscatory, dark and unknowable. Come back the Middle Ages. We appear to be missing you. Certainly, this group of young artists from America underlines how keenly we urban humans continue to yearn for the cosmic mystery of old.
Janine Antoni is a Catholic, and it certainly shows. Brought up in Trinidad, her childhood head was filled with tales of biblical miracles. Half-remembered, fully felt, these memories of a sensuous Catholic childhood have resulted, rather notoriously, in an attempt to turn a large block of lard into lipstick. Only an imagination that was nourished on daily displays of bread turning into bodies, or water into wine, or prostitutes into saints, would or could have arrived at the sculptural installation called Gnaw. The piece involves not only the big block of lard, but also another of chocolate that the artist has gnawed with her teeth, like a very hungry hermit. All the resulting mouthfuls of malleable masticated material are then turned into something else, as we shall see.
The lard piece is by no means Antoni's only attempt at home-made transubstantiation or, indeed, her most Catholic work of art. In a performance piece noted but not displayed at the Saatchi, Antoni wipes the gallery floor with her hair dipped in dye, in the manner of Mary Magdalene anointing Christ's feet with oil. The Catholic origins of this performance, the air of feminine penitence it strives to evoke, are unmissable. Seeing a New York artist down on her knees washing the floor with her own hair is about as close to a biblical spectacle as today's Manhattan art scene is going to get. One artist in the Saatchi show has built an artificial crystal: when you shine a light on it, the reflections on the wall spell out, rather magically, a touch alchemically, the word SPECIAL. Another constructs home-made bombs. A third takes all his clothes off and photographs himself living alone in the American wilderness in the manner pioneered by St Jerome. Most of the art in the show is the product of some mysterious personal ritual rather than of any straightforward attempt at manufacture. This is certainly true of Gnaw.
I really admire this piece, but it is difficult to describe effectively, and charmless photographs of two large lumps, chewed at the edges, misrepresent its effect entirely. The primitive blocks are actually part of a much larger installation that also involves a fashionable-looking shop window of the kind you find in the foyers of exclusive hotels, a dinky arrangement of perfectly mirrored shelves filled with heart-shaped chocolates and neat rows of berry -red lipstick, carefully positioned to tempt you. Although you would never guess it from their pristine appearance, both the heart-shaped chocolates and the expensive-looking lipsticks are made out of chewed chocolate and lard.
Here then is a work dedicated to establishing a deliberate contrast. The shelves with lipstick and chocolate on them are spotless, expensive-looking, desirable in the modern shopping way. The blocks of chocolate and lard are lumpen, raw, primitive, neanderthal. The teeth marks on them are the result of a total collapse of decorum. The woman who gnawed these is remembering her origins as a beast, and then comparing them with the modern woman's mouth, the careful application of lipstick, the delicate chewing of soft centres.
Paula Rego recently made an extraordinary series of paintings called Dog-Woman, also bought for the Saatchi Gallery, which had a similar ambition to evoke and contrast the two sides of the feminine: the beast and the beauty, the old Mary Magdalene and the new.
Another of Antoni's transformations, captured in a pleasing triptych of photographs, involves turning her mother into her father, and vice versa. In the label describing the work, in the place where the materials used by the artist are usually straightforwardly listed, it says, "Mother, father, make-up".
The ease with which Antoni slips from sculpture to performance to photography in a lively display of media-zapping is something she shares with the other exhibitors. Nobody in New York, it seems, is just a sculptor any more, or just a painter. Sean Landers spends most of his time at this exhibition writing his thoughts on the wall in novel-length displays of stream-of-consciousness the thoughts of Chairman Sean which some obviously find charming but which strike me as scarily stupid. Here is an example, with its original spelling: "I've always held on to the notion that a pention for the insipid and banal is actually quite profound..." What a shame that this idiot savant, having dropped the savant bit from his title, has not developed a penchant for dictionaries.
Like Landers, Gregory Green's work depends on first establishing and then proclaiming his identity as a nerd. But whereas Landers is essentially the harmlessly flaky type of philosopher-nerd, Green is altogether creepier, the serial-killer nerd, or more specifically the kind who manufactures bombs.
Green's art consists of realistic-looking re-creations of rooms occupied by this mad bomber: the table on which he manufactured his bombs, the bed on which he lay chewing crisps, the suitcase packed with clocks and wires and detonators, the sink he piled his washing-up in. Like those perfect re -creations of 1920s miners' living rooms you find in museums of industry, or Hitler's bunker, rebuilt exactly, at the Imperial War Museum, these are spaces in which fact and fantasy have become indistinguishable.
There is a lot of this sort of art around at the moment. Green is working in an American tradition that began 30 years ago with the pop artists, with Ed Kienholz's brilliant re-creations of bars in the Bowery. The pleasure in such installations comes in wandering through them noticing the low-life details: seeing what the unseen terrorist is reading, examining what he is eating, noticing the clipped toenails next to his bed. The artist is giving you a virtual life to imagine and judge.
According to the hype that surrounds Green's work, these bombs lying on the table, stacked on the floor, could actually work if they were primed. We are supposed to be dealing with a reality that is usually hidden from view, the urban killer's secret lair, a satanic den in which death has holed up, waiting to strike. We are supposed to feel unease. There is even a Heath Robinson contraption on display, a see-through sphere encased in wires, which is supposed to be a working nuclear bomb, without its plutonium.
Alas, the ridiculous nuclear device looks more like the machine that delivers our lottery numbers every Saturday. It refuses to grow properly sinister. Green has merely been watching too many films about holed-up serial killers, and his evident admiration for bad Gene Hackman movies is far more worrying than his nuclear bombs.
For 500 years, the Ship of Fools has proved a popular vessel among artists searching for metaphors to represent their dissatisfaction with the antics of the rest of us. Indeed, since Sebastian Brant wrote his satirical poem describing the journey of a shipload of fools sailing to a fools' paradise in 1494, it has become a useful all-purpose metaphor for the modern world. The last time I saw it being used relentlessly was in Moscow in the early 1980s, when all sorts of dissident artists were queueing up to employ it to represent the communist dream. Now, to celebrate the metaphor's half-millennial anniversary, I see the British sculptor Bill Woodrow is using it to describe and decry capitalist Britain. I wish he had been more inventive and less obvious.
Woodrow has always been a political artist of sorts, although this was not clear when he emerged early in the 1980s with his clever sculptural conversions: washing machines into beavers, umbrellas into crows. Today, it is easier to recognise a lament on the passing of the natural world even in these early works. In a big show occupying the Tate's finest sculptural galleries, Woodrow has come completely out of the closet as an allegorist.
The Ship of Fools, the House of Cards, the Pawnbroker's Shop the modern world is described as all of these things in a suite of ambitious bronzes that are so busy trying to say something weighty that they rarely get off the ground as sculptures. What we have here is the modern version of those 19th century monuments in which naked athletes wrestled with pythons in an attempt to represent the struggles of modern man: allegory that clunks. There is something very perverse about sculptures that cost as much as these do, and which are cast in such expensive bronze highlighted with gold leaf, having a go at the modern world's obsession with money. There are plenty of artists booking luxury cruises alongside the bankers and yuppies on the Ship of Fools, believe me.
Young Americans is at the Saatchi Gallery until March 3; Fool's Gold at the Tate Gallery until April 28.
Years ago, in one of the Paris flea markets, I bought a copy of an early (circa 1910, as I recall) theoretical study of the newish art of film. As its author (whose name I've forgotten) quaintly put it in a lengthy preamble, the aim of the book was "finally" to nail down the difference between the cinema and the theatre, evidently a hotly debated issue at the time.
After 200 pages of inevitably very dated but still quite arduous analysis, he eventually arrived at the conclusion that the fundamental difference between the two forms was that a film was projected on a screen whereas a play was performed on a stage.
It's easy now to smile at the sort of theorising that arrives at so tautological a scoop. And, yes, mulling over that conclusion was like turning the last page of a whodunit only to have it revealed that the murderer is the person one suspected from the start. Yet if most people were asked today to explain the difference between silent films and talkies, they would probably reply that the former were, well, silent and the latter were, well, not and feel that they had pretty much summed things up.
That that, however, is not the sole or even, arguably, the primary difference between the two I understood when I recently watched a new film titled Lumiere and Co. It was made to commemorate the cinema's centenary by Sarah Moon, an English-born but Paris-based film-maker, who had the delightful brainwave of inviting each of 40 prominent contemporary directors, including Wenders, Rivette, Boorman, Green away, Angelopoulos and Spike Lee, to shoot a miniature 50-second film with the same crude hand-cranked box camera that the Lumiere brothers used a century ago.
As you might expect, the 40 filmlets are of extremely variable quality, though that hardly matters when they are so brief. For the record, the finest are those by Rivette (an exuberant New Wavish squib), by the Belgian Van Dormael (a love scene involving a young boy and girl, both of them afflicted with Downs syndrome) and by the Iranian Kiarostami (who contrives to create a cruel little psychodrama out of nothing more than an egg sizzling in a frying pan, a snatch of recorded opera and the voice of Isabelle Huppert on an answerphone). And the worst are well, never mind, it would be unfair to judge any artist on work produced with such a narrow margin for error.
The point is that even if, like Kiarostami, several of the directors bend the rules by having recourse to soundtrack effects that obviously weren't available to the Lumieres, the films are all, somehow, silent films. Because hand-cranking a camera generates a very distinctive style of movement, one that we tend to associate exclusively with the cinema's prehistory, and because the use of such primitive technology has the effect of transforming every present-day setting, be it the Paris of Rivette, the Berlin of Wenders or the Dublin of Boorman, into its equivalent of 100 years ago, each of the films feels as though it must have been shot at the end of the last century.
Consider, as the most vivid example of what I'm talking about, the opening segment by Patrice Leconte, an affectionate parody of one of the first Lumiere films, L'Arrivee d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (Arrival of a Train). In Leconte's film the arriving train is a sleek Eurostar express and it whizzes through the station without stopping. Yet so eerily evocative are the textures of the grainy black-and-white film stock that for a moment or two one is almost persuaded one is watching the 1895 original.
A silent film is therefore identifiable as a silent film not because of how it sounds (or rather, doesn't) but because of how it looks. Unfortunately, most casual references to the silent cinema still tend to focus solely on the absence of sound, as though that were the last, not the first, word on the subject. Audiences of the period, after all, never thought of these films as "silent" (just as nobody living in the 12th century ever thought of himself as belonging "to the Middle Ages"). Nor were the films in question ever literally silent anyway, since there was always a piano or orchestral accompaniment.
The trouble is that many of the current myths surrounding the silent cinema derive from just that misplaced emphasis. The myth, for example, that the careers of numerous performers were destroyed by the advent of sound, which would allegedly expose their voices as unsuitably squeaky and high-pitched. The most often cited case is that of John Gilbert, a silent superstar whose career was, indeed, at an end by the mid-1930s. Gilbert, though, had a perfectly satisfactory speaking voice (it can be heard in Queen Christina, in which he starred with Garbo); it was, rather, his face which rendered him unemployable in the talkies. His was a classic silent actor's face, handsome enough in a matinee idol fashion, but too symmetrical for modern tastes and ever so slightly effeminate. And the same applied to Richard Barthelmess, Marion Davies, Lillian Gish, even Buster Keaton in the age of Gary Cooper, Jean Harlow, James Cagney and Barbara Stanwyck, their basic problem was that they looked, not sounded, wrong.
More than any other, the silent cinema is the victim of what might be described as an "ageist" approach to the medium (ageist, because nobody would regard it as odd to read an "old" novel or listen to an "old" string quartet). The Lumieres most of all: if their amazing little films are watched at all nowadays, it is as documents, not as the works of art they undoubtedly were. And if you find the latter claim implausible, the National Film Theatre is screening a programme of their work on February 21, the centenary of the very first public cinema performance in Britain.
So forget the absence of sound theirs were great films, and no great film should be called "silent" if it still has something to say to us.
More than three decades after his death, Stanley Spenceris starting to outlive his provincial reputation. Antony Sher is playing him at the National and a retrospective show is planned in Washington. But will his genius travel, asks CLIVE DAVIS.
When the lights went up on the first night of Pam Gems's play Stanley at the National Theatre last week, they illuminated another phase in the public rehabilitation of Stanley Spencer, the weaver of visions from Cookham. But if there has never been any lack of interest in the sensational aspects of his private life Anton Lesser and Ben Kingsley have both starrred in television dramatisations in recent years the same has hardly been true of his artistic reputation.
By the time of his death in 1959, his union of the sacred and the profane was viewed with a mixture of condescension and aversion by many of the taste-makers in the art establishment. Guided by his own quasi-mystical instincts, he existed in his own world beyond convention. As the art historian Eric Newton wrote in The Sunday Times almost half a century ago: "He is neither the connoisseur's pet nor the Academician's darling."
In a period when modernism and abstraction still appeared to offer boundless possibilities, Spencer's images of Christ walking the streets of Cookham, which had established his reputation in the 1920s, seemed, to his detractors, hopelessly provincial and anachronistic. It was not until the gargantuan 1980 retrospective at the Royal Academy something of an act of penitence on the part of that august body that a wider reassessment gathered pace.
A decade later Nicholas Serota's widely publicised rehang at the Tate brought Spencer back to centre-stage at Millbank, and in 1991 the painter's centenary was celebrated at the Barbican in the ambitious Apotheosis of Love exhibition. The publicity aroused by the publication of Kenneth Pople's tirelessly researched biography helped sustain Spencer's very own resurrection.
In the art market, dealers led by Bernard Jacobson have repositioned him as a prime investment. One of the idiosyncratically posed Crucifixions, painted towards the end of the artist's life, fetched a record £1.3m in 1990. Only last November, another, more obscure Crucifixion dating from the 1930s was sold at Christie's for just over £463,000, almost double its estimated value and the third biggest price, say the auctioneers, ever paid for a Spencer. The days when, as Pam Gems puts it, "you had to admit to liking Spencer furtively" are long gone.
Now, with Antony Sher re-creating Spencer's tortured relationship with his two wives, Hilda Carline and Patricia Preece, the next question to be asked is: can the international audience be won over to this seemingly most English of painters?
Both Jacobson and Graham Southern, of Christie's Modern British department, make the point that discriminating American collectors are very much in the market for his work. Nevertheless, his reputation still lags far behind those of, say, Lucian Freud or Francis Bacon. Mention his name to the average, well -educated, art-loving New Yorker, and you will be greeted with the blank stare that is normally reserved for a description of the rules of cricket. Undaunted, the British Council is now making preparations for a full-blooded assault on the new world, in the form of a large retrospective that will open in Washington next year before moving on to Chicago and San Francisco.
"We're pretty confident that his work will travel," says the exhibition's co-curator, Richard Francis, formerly of the Tate and now based at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art. "In my office here I've had a Spencer hanging Hilda and I at Pond Street and people who've seen it have assumed it was just a picture that's typical of English eccentricity.
"But when I explained the religious connotations, for instance in the lilies that Spencer is holding out towards Hilda, they began to see it differently. The religious and sexual imagery in the paintings will have quite an appeal, I think. Especially the religious element. Perhaps because we're approaching the millennium, there's an eagerness to look at that again."
Hilton Kramer, one of America's most influential critics and a scourge of postmodernist trendiness in all its forms, confesses to mixed feelings about the forthcoming tour. When he reviewed the 1980 RA show for The New York Times, he was forced to revise some of his previous misgivings about Spencer's art. Yet doubts remain. "I don't think you'll find anyone in New York under the age of 50 who's heard of him," he jokes. "He's quite an interesting artist, but I don't think it's the kind of work that transfers because it's so rooted in regional life. It's a pity that, when he is known here, it's for the sex pictures, which make up only a small proportion of his work."
Even Keith Bell, the Canadian-based editor of the monumental Spencer catalogue raisonne, published in 1992, foresees problems. "I don't know what people will think. The works from the 1930s, before he got tied up with Patricia Preece, can be seen as part of the mainstream realist school. I think the landscapes will be fine, and there are parallels between the Glasgow shipyard series and the Federal Art Project in the US with artists such as Diego Rivera.
"But many of the others are tied into a fantasy that isn't going anywhere. His kind of world view is outside of traditional classical learning or even theology. Also, Americans are particularly interested in painterly things, the quality of the brushstrokes. That wasn't always a priority with Spencer."
For all his reservations about Spencer's alleged parochialism, Kramer believes that the new generation of representational American artists, who know nothing of the little man from Berkshire, may find his work a revelation. A similar point is made by Duncan Robinson, director of the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge and author of the illustrated study, Stanley Spencer. A former director of the Yale Centre for British Art, Robinson can look back on the success of a pioneering Spencer exhibition in New Haven in 1980.
"One reason for his rehabilitation has been the general return to figure painting and a strident reassertion of life drawing," Robinson observes. "In the midst of all that, Spencer can be seen as an Old Testament prophet. The idea that he was some isolated eccentric is also misleading. He didn't travel much, but he was an avid reader of the art press. One theme that interested me was trying to explore the connection between him and what was going on in German painting in the 1920s and 1930s, with Neue Sachlichkeit or the distortions you see in Otto Dix."
Back in Cookham, about 10,000 visitors a year continue to visit the gallery a former Methodist chapel dedicated to Spencer. The village has grown sleeker, and the flow of weekend traffic along the High Street would surely have alarmed Spencer, were he here today to push his easel along in his battered old pram. Choose the wrong afternoon to go for a stroll across his beloved moor, as I did with my young son one bright day last summer, and you can even find yourself on the wrong end of a head butt from a lager lout.
But most of the time it is still possible to immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the old, familiar Cookham that Spencer knew so well as Pam Gems discovered when she took the cast of Stanley there on a day trip. "When I looked in the visitor's book in the gallery," she recalls, "there was an entry that said: ‘Lovely. Me and you know each better now.' One of the things I've always loved about him is his modesty and the modesty of his people. I always admired his work, even when I was very young that wasn't especially fashionable in the 1940s. His Christian iconography was very uncomfortable after the war and the Holocaust.
"Another reason he fell out of favour, I think, is that after six years
of war, people were hungry for colour. We wanted pastels on the walls. We wanted wine and peaches and bright shades. Then Jackson Pol-
lock came along. I love Abstract Expressionism, but when you look at those Spencer nudes in the Tate, the paint is coming off the canvas at you it's as if they were painted yesterday."
Withnail & I? Not me,says COSMO LANDESMAN.
No other British cult movie has, over the years, gained so many new converts and kept its critical reputation so intact as Withnail & I. To faithful fans, Withnail is the Citizen Kane of cult movies; a work of comic genius and a must-see masterpiece. To mark its 10th anniversary, it is back in the cinema along with the video, T-shirts, posters, badges and Bloomsbury's book of the film. Add to all this the enormous media attention Withnail has attracted, and it's clear that if this were a movie made in Hollywood, the word "hype" would be on everyone's lips.
But nobody must say a bad word about this little British gem; it's become the movie equivalent of the Queen Mum, a sacred cow we're all meant to admire and never attack.
Set at the tail end of the 1960s, Withnail & I is the story of two
lovable lowlife losers, Withnail (Richard E Grant) and Marwood (Paul McGann), aspiring actors down on their luck and permanently out to lunch. Theirs is a life of poverty, pubs and paranoia. They flee to the country for a weekend away from reality and end up facing new nightmares, from a raging bull in heat to Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths), a randy homosexual with the hots for Marwood.
Or you could say that Withnail & I is the story of two pathetic, puerile drunks who are more self-indulgent freeloaders than the free spirits the film seeks to celebrate; posh boys with problems, the kind who look down on ordinary people and who expect everyone mummy, daddy, the state or dear Uncle Monty to pay for their pleasures.
Withnail & I is one of those end-of-the-1960s movies, like The Big Chill, but one that never looks back in anger or with any insight. It offers instead a large fix of nostalgia for the good old days when guys who couldn't get it together to change their underwear thought they could change the world. In fact, it's really a luvvie version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas only here we get Fear and Loathing in Camden Town. Like HunterSThompson's book, the film is a celebration of excess and life lived on the edge. Both stories see hedonism as something heroic, and getting wrecked on drugs and drink as a form of freedom. Hunter S and his sidekicks, Withnail and Marwood they are rebels with only one cause: themselves.
But hold on a sec, Withnail & I is just a comedy. So even if it doesn't provide much food for thought, is it as funny as its fans claim? Much of the "comedy" here is based on the idea that there is something inherently funny about four-letter words, living in a skip, looking like a tramp and getting legless all the time. It's a type of comedy that appeals to blokes the kind who love to bore everybody to death by banging on about the size of their hangovers. For Withnail and Marwood, pleasure is just so much foreplay to pain. They are Disneyland degenerates not casualties of the 1960s drug culture, but cute comic critters caught up in the slapstick of the permanently stoned.
I would have thought only burnt-out baby-boomers would bust a gut at the spectacle of these two good-time goofballs. But no. A new 1990s generation of students and slackers thinks it's funny, too. A young critic on a national newspaper recently provided a selection of his generation's favourite gems: such "immortal phrases" as "Camberwell carrot", "Shut the gate", and "I'm not from London, you know". (Parents be warned: if your teenage offspring think any of the above lines are really funny, they have been smoking too much marijuana. And teenagers, if mom and dad say Withnail is the funniest film they've ever seen, call the police and have them busted.)
Withnail & I is not such a bad film; it has the odd funny moment. McGann and Grant are good, and Griffiths, as Uncle Monty, is excellent. But the high reputation it has enjoyed over the years doesn't match up to what we actually see on the screen. So what is the secret of its success? A large part of it is Richard E Grant's performance. Am I the only person in this country who can't see what's so great about Grant? Isn't he really the bohemian Branagh an energetic egotist who hides his egotism behind engaging acts of self-deprecation?
I can see why the film must have been so appealing back in 1986. After so many years of Thatcherism and yuppies, the time was ripe to get all nostalgic about the 1960s. Withnail and Marwood were grunge heroes before grunge; slackers before slacking became groovy. But why the film has managed to keep its appeal is a mystery even for its maker, Bruce Robinson, who told Premiere magazine recently: "I frankly find it strange that there is so much interest in the film." And so do I.
LES MISERABLES, 174 mins, 12
Claude Lelouch's tricksy telling of Victor Hugo's social melodrama relocates the characters to France during the Occupation, where Jean-Paul Belmondo attempts to save a Jewish family from the Holocaust. The film's jerking stop-start rhythms make the whole experience rather like listening to someone read out their answer to an essay question: "Les Miserables is a classic that speaks to our century as much as to Hugo's. Discuss." The analogy, far from bringing any insights into the Holocaust, actually takes one away, flattening its historical singularity into a glib slice of homespun wisdom about the constancy of human misery. The film only really makes sense as a love letter to its star whose leathery heroism perks up the D-Day battle sequence no end.
Finally, 30 years after Pierrot le fou, somebody has had the good sense to stick Belmondo on a beach with some dynamite and watch the sparks fly. TS
FATHER OF THE BRIDE PART II
107 mins, PG
Having had his wealth severely hammered by his daughter's wedding, George Banks (Steve Martin) is disconcerted to find that grandfatherhood is the next ordeal about to settle on him. His hormonal over-reaction to this signifier of age results in his wife (Diane Keaton) becoming pregnant as well, so double blessings are on their way, with mother and daughter engaged in the same antenatal procedures. The cast of the 1991 film (a modern version of the 1950 Spencer Tracy comedy) is reassembled: Kimberly Williams and George Newbern as the young couple, and Martin Short as the extravagantly camp wedding consultant who designs a sumptuous nursery suite and undergoes a sympathetic pregnancy. Charles Shyer, who directed and co-wrote with Nancy Meyers, succeeds in the rare feat of making a sequel an improvement on its predecessor, with better pacing heightening the farcical elements. Let us hope, however, that following this and Nine Months there will be deliverance from more childbirth comedies. GP
ANGEL BABY
100 mins, 15
Two attractive but mentally damaged people meet in a Melbourne psychotherapy group and, against advice, decide to live together. Harry (John Lynch), a computer programmer, thinks that the power of his love will heal Kate (Jacqueline McKenzie) more effectively than hospitals, medication and psychiatrists, and is blind to the extent of her illness. She runs her life according to "messages" that are passed on to her via the Wheel of Fortune game show on television, and is soon persuading him to base their big decisions, such as where they will live, on the conjunction of astral numbers. When she becomes pregnant their future is bleak. Michael Rymer, who makes his feature film debut as director with this first of the six new works in the Tooheys Australian Film Season at the Barbican (and, subsequently, in Manchester, Newcastle, Wolverhampton and Sheffield), also wrote the screenplay. It is a sad story of doomed love, but the performances are exceptional. GP
KATIA ISMAILOVA
88 mins, 18
Ingeborga Dapkounaite, who was so vivacious as the young wife in Nikita Mikhalkov's Burnt by the Sun, is as Katia emotionally subdued to the point of drabness. She is the daughter-in-law of Irina, a Moscow novelist (Alice Freindlikh), and her job is to type out the older woman's manuscripts on an ancient Russian typewriter. At the dacha, Sergei, the handsome handyman (Vladimir Machkov), takes a fancy to her, but their bitter employer discovers them in bed together, a crisis that brings on a fatal heart attack, not helped by Katia's deliberate delay in locating the remedial pills. Katia's husband (Alexandre Feklistov) then discovers the liaison, but the lovers casually kill him and bury the body in the woods. In the subsequent weeks, Sergei drifts off to new interests, and Katia becomes increasingly withdrawn. Valeri Todorovski's film is a modern adaptation of elements from Nikolay Leskov's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk on which Shostakovich based his opera, and in spite of dubious modern artefacts such as the typewriter and Irina's elderly Volga car, the story seems rooted in the 19th century, rather than coming across as a Russian variation of The Postman Always Rings Twice. GP
Spike Lee was bound to divide the critics with Clockers, his tale of drug-dealing and murder in Brooklyn. Sure enough, one half of TOM SHONE says it's his best film yet.
Is there a film-maker alive whose virtues and vices are as tightly wadded together as they are in Spike Lee? His new film, Clockers (18), adapted from the novel by Richard Price, is his best in what is now a decade of film-making, and it still hangs heavy with all the bad habits he has picked up along the way. It starts with a series of real-life photographs of murder victims seen so close up you can almost peer right through the bullet holes and the blistering, bolshie film that follows confirms Lee's position as the cinema's great surgeon-general, alternately taking the pulse of America and probing its open wounds. But it is still, in many ways, a bad film so full of holes you can see right through it. After years of making films that divide cinema audiences right down the middle, Lee would seem to have got it down to a much finer art, dividing audiences on an individual basis: all of me bought the ticket for Clockers, but only half of me bought the film.
It starts with a single dead body, belonging to a local scumbag shot down in Brooklyn's housing projects no more than a news clipping, really. Lee himself, making one of his cameos, is to be seen in the crowd of onlookers that gather around the corpse, as if curious to see what sort of plot will sprout up around it. The seeds for a thriller, perhaps? First on the crime scene is homicide detective Rocco Klein, a man whose long career on the streets has left his cynicism so sharpened and his soul so shrivelled that there is only one thing for it: he's played by Harvey Keitel.
Keitel's talent is so consistently reliable that, in a perverse way, he's in danger of getting a little boring. With appearances in no fewer than five movies this spring, he's going to need at least one faulty performance to liven up the texture a little, but Clockers isn't the movie to provide it. Keitel turns in yet another performance of smooth burnished brilliance. We've seen detectives poring over corpses with comic flippancy before it's almost the house acting style of television shows such as NYPD Blue but Keitel takes the irony and pushes it one notch further: Rocco actually interrogates the corpse, joking with it as if it were just one more suspect with defences to defeat and a spirit to crush. The living get even less respect. Rocco soon has a murder suspect a black guy called Rodney (Delroy Lindo) and a confession, but Rodney is a hard-working family man. He just doesn't fit the bill of murderer. Someone who does fit it is Rodney's younger brother Strike (Mekhi Phifer), one of the "clockers" of the title a round-the-clock crack dealer. A real suspect, in other words, one worthy of the crime, and so Rocco spends the rest of the movie trying to pin it on him.
The movie may kick off with a corpse and a cop, but Clockers isn't a thriller. Lee is less interested in the reason for Rocco's investigation a wise move, since there isn't one than in the world to which it gives him access. And so he sloughs off the thriller elements in Price's plot and pushes his movie into orbit around the small circle of benches where Strike and his friends hang out, selling drugs: a little amphitheatre of need and neglect. Strike doesn't take crack himself he has too much self-respect for that, if not quite enough not to sell it to others but it is enough; that tiny sliver is enough to wedge open the doors to the audience's sympathy and allow Phifer's easy-going performance to slink in and make itself at home. And you do feel affection for this unlikely hero, what with his loping walk, punctuated at every stop with a slurp of chocolate milk. Strike lives off the stuff, and it has him literally coughing his guts up, doubling him right over, as if fate had already landed its first blow.
That those blows will follow goes without question. Fate is the biggest unbilled player in a Spike Lee movie besides Lee himself, of course and the two seem made for each other: they're both airily cruel didacts. Lee's films are like a cross between an Emile Zola novel and a snuff movie: you watch and wait for characters to lock into the tracks of their unjust fates. It can be a claustrophobic trick, blinkered and rigged, and Clockers bears down on Strike with such momentous force it's clear from the first scene that he will become ensnared in Rocco's web that his life doesn't feel ill-fated, just scripted that way.
Strike's taste for chocolate milk is a great symbol of a society poisoned by its own sweet cravings but it's a great symbol precisely because it didn't start life as one. It feels like it started life as an incidental detail, and then sort of snagged a few resonances as it went along. Lee, however, can't leave things there, preferring effects that shout out their intentions from the word go. As usual, his characters flip from hanging out with one another to haranguing one other for the benefit of the audience, without passing anything in between that might pass for normal human relations. "You're gonna pay for that s, boy," someone warns Strike, in a good impression of a public information voiceover. "Leave that s alone, it'll kill you," says another, a few scenes later, in case we didn't get the message. "I knew I shoulda left that s alone," says another, to show that at least he did. If Spike Lee isn't going to get the way black Americans speak to one another right, then who on earth is? He's really got to leave that didacticism s alone. It's killing his work.
That it doesn't succeed in killing Clockers is largely down to its strength as pseudo-documentary. One would hesitate to accuse Lee of mellowing, but what with his use of Stevie Wonder on the soundtrack of Clockers and a joke to round off the final reel, Lee's anger has at least made its peace with a little irony, forging a style, tensile, limber, elegaic, that is perfect for negotiating the strange, tiled universe of the projects. The first 20 minutes of the film before everyone turns into walking anti-drug billboards have a terrific, dizzying energy. The dialogue of the first scene flies so thick with slang, it's almost like watching a Ben Jonson play for the very first time but you soon learn your way around this world, to discern gradations within its degradations. Lee's loose, handheld camerawork, meanwhile, attempts to keep pace with the clockers' quicksilver rhythms, scrambling for focus, mixing different film stocks, as if the film were picking an argument with itself over how best to get a moral fix on this world.
This couldn't be better news. Audiences could do with a little of the argumentative heat being taken off them. Lee's movies have for too long succumbed to the lazy habit of mistaking racial polemic for proper drama, shouting over the heads of its characters to get through to its audience. So far only sex has proved a subject big enough to bring Lee's mind off the boil in She's Gotta Have It, his first, best film but he has now, with drugs, found another such subject: They've Gotta Have Them. It was brave and honest of Lee to make a film about crack. The closest the black community has to a self-inflicted wound, it has forced Lee into an argument with himself, and he has made of that argument his best film in years, even if its casuistical character construction is infuriating. Clockers carefully avoids a black-and -white presentation of its issues, artfully smudging the moral tone of every character into various shades of grey but it's a lawyer's trick, not an artist's. What about full-colour characters? For those, you still have to go back to She's Gotta Have It. The irony? It's in black and white, of course.
Clockers opens on Friday.
Hollywood has discovered that bigger does not always mean better and a low-budget independent film can be a lot more profitable. The big studios have even resorted to fighting in the hunt for the next Tarantino, reports RUPERT WIDDICOMBE.
Within 24 hours of its screening at last week's Sundance film festival, a modest Australian film about a pianist's descent into madness caused an ugly public row. Harvey Weinstein, co-founder of the leading "indie" distributor Miramax, went for lunch believing he held the American rights to Scott Hicks's Shine, one of the hottest properties at what has become the world's leading showcase for independent talent. At the restaurant, he discovered one of the film's financiers signing Shine to Fine Line Features for a cool $2.5m. There followed what Hollywood entertainment weekly Variety called a "verbal altercation", after which Weinstein was ejected amid cheers from onlookers.
Although the squabble was hastily patched up, it was indicative of the frenzied atmosphere at this year's festival, during which a record amount of money changed hands. Two days after the Shine fight, a similar row blew up over another "buzz" film Lee David Zlotoff's Care of the Spitfire Grill, which won the audience prize. About a female ex-con trying to rebuild her life in rural Maine, like Shine it deals with the kind of subject matter that usually struggles to attract attention. At Sundance, with the major studios' new "specialty" divisions competing with the established independent companies for the pick of the crop, money talked and etiquette went out of the window. Trimark Pictures thought they had Zlotoff's film until Castle Rock trumped them with an eye-popping $10m deal. The disgruntled losers were soon on the phone to one of Hollywood's highest-paid lawyers and paper started flying.
Such stories are commonplace in Los Angeles; in the rarified atmosphere of Sundance they are a sign of change. The small festival adopted by Robert Redford in 1985 is small no longer. This year 10,000 studio executives, agents, distributors, film-makers and journalists descended on the little mountain resort of Park City, Utah. Why? Because there's gold in them there hills.
Hollywood's interest in the economic potential of low-budget or "independent" films has been growing steadily since the late 1980s and, in particular, since Steven Soderbergh's landmark hit, sex, lies and videotape. Made for a modest $1.2m, it was picked up at Sundance in 1989 and went on to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes, as well as best actor for its star, James Spader. The awards were important, but it was the numbers that really counted the film made $50m worldwide, and did well out of both television and video. Since sex, lies and videotape, a steady stream of low-budget films has followed a similar trajectory. Discoveries at the 1992 Sundance were Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (budget $1.5m; worldwide gross $20m) and Neil Jordan's The Crying Game ($5m; $68m in the US and UK). More recently there have been a string of independent pearls, among them Mike Newell's Four Weddings and a Funeral ($4m; $200m+ worldwide), PJ Hogan's Muriel's Wedding ($3m; $57.7m), Danny Boyle's Shallow Grave ($2.5m; $20.5m), Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects ($6m; $51m), Ed Burns's The Brothers McMullen ($200,000; $13.4m and counting), and now Mike Figgis's Leaving Las Vegas ($4.2m; $8m and counting).
When compared to the megabucks made by a film such as Die Hard with a Vengeance (budget $83m; gross $350m), the takings of most of these smaller films appear inconsequential. But in sheer profitability the ratio of production cost to takings the successful independent film wins hands down. In fact, according to a profitability table for 1995 published recently in Variety, half of the top 20 films fell into the independent/low budget category. Top of the list by a long way was The Brothers McMullen, the Grand Prize winner at last year's Sundance, which grossed 67 times its production cost and that is before television and video revenues even start to kick in. Numbers like these have made Hollywood take small films seriously.
In recent years, all the major studios have spawned their own "specialty" divisions. Sony, which owns Columbia and Tristar, has Sony Pictures Classics; Twentieth Century Fox launched Fox Searchlight, with The Brothers McMullen as its first film. The once strictly independent Miramax is now a subsidiary of Disney, and Gramercy is owned by Polygram; New Line/Turner Entertainment has spun off Fine Line, and Turner Broadcasting has Castle Rock. These companies were either formed or acquired to muscle in on the action enjoyed by independent companies such as October Films, First Look Features and Trimark Pictures.
The economics are unassailable if a low-budget film makes a name for itself and a reasonable return at the box office, then it can really cash in with TV and video. Grosses will never top those for a Die Hard, but you can make 10 $10m films for the price of an expensive flop such as the Geena Davis pirate extravaganza, Cutthroat Island. The risk is still there, but the stakes are lower.
The growing attention and money lavished on the independent sector has started to make itself felt most noticeably at Sundance this year, where Redford annually reiterates his definition of the term independent as "those able to execute their own visions", regardless of affiliations or budget. Such has been the festival's success that it has been necessary to take measures to prevent the studios using it as a launchpad for their "difficult" films. But the touch of money has made its presence felt in more insidious ways and an entire panel discussion was devoted to the vexing question of why independent film-makers seem to be taking fewer creative risks than in the 1960s and 1970s. There was talk of "artsploitation" and "art-house lite", as critics identified attempts to play on the new cachet of low-budget and independent film-making for commercial gain what Colin Brown of Screen International calls "small-budget genre films with a twist". He cites films such as Bound, a formula tale of a couple of small-timers taking on the mob, with the twist being that the couple are lesbians.
But independent films have been heading for safer territory in recent years, anyway, their eyes increasingly focusing on mainstream appeal. A triumph of economy and quality, The Brothers McMullen is, in essence, an innocuous romantic comedy. For all the critical praise for its "clever" plot and pace, The Usual Suspects did not stray far from the usual elements of its genre. For his part, Sundance's programming director, Geoffrey Gilmore, has noted a creeping commercialisation. "We found fewer genre films that were interesting this year. There were a lot of Tarantino wannabes," he told Variety.
It is not surprising that the spectacular success of directors such as Tarantino should influence the films and ambitions of struggling low-budget film-makers. "Perhaps the new generation of independent directors is just more aware of commercial reality," says Trea Hoving of Miramax. At Sundance she noticed that films were less "edgy and in your face" and generally more accessible.
All this studio interest is not making it any easier for the shoestring film-maker, however. "It is tougher and tougher to find sources of funding for anything that's not ‘commercial'," says Hoving. It is an experience spelled out in Living in Oblivion, director Tom DiCillo's satirical take on the pain, joy and ego-wrestling of low-budget film-making. It is funny and heartfelt. After scoring with the offbeat Johnny Suede, DiCillo had his original second project rejected five times before he started on Living in Oblivion. In the end, funds were so short that he shot the first third of the film as a short and used it to raise money to make the rest. Ironically, the film has gone on to do good business.
Another celebrated case, Ed Burns, was forced by lack of time and money to shoot The Brothers McMullen (of which he was writer, director, producer and star) on weekends over nearly two years. But the Really Low Budget phenomenon of the past two years was Kevin Smith's black and white Clerks, made at night in a real convenience store for just $25,000. While these are genuine tales of triumph in adversity, the Really Low Budget tag has become a key marketing point. "In the old days, people used to exaggerate budgets," says Brown, "now it is the other way around."
A low-budget film that succeeds is a passport to Hollywood for its director. He or she has proved they can deliver a high-quality product with limited resources and have the power of persuasion to get actors and technicians to work for peanuts and well-wishers to lend money and equipment. Such a person is potentially a great asset, which explains why accountant -ruled Hollywood is prepared to pay over the odds for the first films of unknowns.
Built in are "first look" deals on the director's second film because this is where the real money is often to be made. Tarantino is the now classic example. Reservoir Dogs earned more critical attention than it did money, but Pulp Fiction hit the jackpot $177m on a budget of $9m. Tarantino's protege, Robert Rodriguez, seems set to follow this lead. His El Mariachi (originally aimed at the Mexican/Hispanic video market) was made in two weeks for just $7,000. When the film was first picked up by Columbia, it cost more than the entire budget just to splice in the corporate logo. The studio then spent several hundred thousands of dollars to re-edit it on 35mm film. His second film, Desperado, which opens in the UK next Friday, is a remake-cum-sequel to El Mariachi. Starring Antonio Banderas, it cost about $8m to make and has made $58m in America alone. From Dusk Till Dawn, his third film, was the biggest opener in America two weeks ago, taking more than $13m in seven days.
Success of this order is extremely rare, but it helps to explain the kind of deals showered on barely proven talents at the beginning of
their careers. Burns is going to follow McMullen with She's the One, a $6m film starring Cameron Diaz from The Mask. And since Sundance last year, the Shallow Grave team of director Danny Boyle and producer Andrew Macdonald have been snapped up to film part four of the Aliens series, with Sigourney Weaver and, perhaps, Winona Ryder, in which DNA and cloning allow Ripley to rise from the dead. Boyle is reported to have signed for $850,000.
The "break out" potential of smaller films, as well as better parts, helps explain why so many name actors are prepared to slash their fees and work with new directors. The career of Harvey Keitel has been transformed by Reservoir Dogs, The Piano and Pulp Fiction. The last also did wonders for John Travolta's flagging prospects, as well as seriously enhancing Bruce Willis's acting credibility. At Sundance this year, many familiar names stood out among the unknowns on the cast lists, among them Kiefer Sutherland, Brooke Shields, Tilda Swinton, Laura Dern, Burt Reynolds, Faye Dunaway, Samuel L Jackson and even REM's Michael Stipe, making his screen debut.
The current interest in independent films is part of a general broadening of attack in Hollywood. The multiplex revolution means a wider range of tastes can be catered to at the same time. "The studios are trying to make their own specialty films with the hope of crossing over into the mainstream audience," says Trea Hoving. Hence, the spate of so-called women's films, such as the hugely popular Waiting to Exhale and the boom in period films almost a glut of adaptations of Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and Henry James. Targeted at "nice" audiences, these kinds of films are an increasingly important part of the Hollywood mix.
Of course, you can still bomb with a bargain-budget film. Films such as Reservoir Dogs, Clerks or The Brothers McMullen were only noticed because they were intensively and carefully marketed. "With Father of the Bride Part II you just have to say ‘Steve Martin's back again in...'," says Daniel Battsek of the distributor Buena Vista International, "but with a film such as Shine it is much more tricky."
Ultimately, the size of a film's budget and whether it is independent or studio fare matter not. "The audience don't really care," says Battsek. "They either decide they want to see a film or they don't." And if people do flock to see a film made for a handful of dollars, you can be sure that both the director and distributor are smiling.
Imelda has squillions of shoes, a wide repertoire of songs but no irony. ROLAND WHITE is gripped.
For the wife of a deposed dictator who is also famous as the owner of the world's largest collection of shoes, it was the obvious question. And Ruby Wax was not afraid to ask it. "What do you define as a truism?" she wanted to know of Imelda Marcos, the first subject of Ruby Wax Meets... (Sunday, BBC1). "I mean, do you believe in reality?" Imelda looked slightly confused, but not as confused as the rest of us. What about the shoes, Ruby?
Imelda was happy to confirm her strong belief in reality. "Of course," she said, "but at the same time we believe in reality we don't look at what is right or what is good but from the point of view of a balancing act." If you say so, Meldy. Now, what about these shoes? As it turned out, Mrs Marcos was unable to show us the shoes. "Mrs Aquino got it all," she complained. Apparently, when Cory Aquino swept to power in the Philippines, she also took custody of Mrs Marcos's footwear collection. "Mrs Aquino got all your shoes?" Ruby was temporarily struck dumb, in itself no mean feat. "Is she your size?" Mrs Marcos now wears espadrilles.
This was a wide-ranging interview. One moment Imelda was telling Ruby about Chairman Mao, quoting his assertion that "power comes from the barrel of a gun", while the next the former first lady was singing You Bring Me Sunshine accompanied on the piano while Ruby lifted up Imelda's hemline in search of flashy footwear.
Imelda is not only a political wife, she is a woman of many cultural accomplishments. She gave a fine rendition of "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy" and read from her latest book. "Believe in your dreams," it advises. "They are as dear as your heart." Not only are dreams as dear as our hearts, but, according to Meldy, we can swaddle our dreams in glorious brilliance. "Did you write that?" asked Ruby. She did. Somebody who can claim, as Imelda does, that Ferdinand Marcos was a great democrat, a freedom fighter, a libertarian and a humanist is capable of anything. And although Meldy pads about the house in her espadrilles, Ruby discovered a spare supply of shoes in the attic.
Poor Imelda. Utterly free of irony, she was no match for Ruby Wax. What made the first lady (rtd) warble in front of the piano? Did she really think that British television viewers would be genuinely interested in her singing? Or that Ruby would fail to mention the Marcos's missing $5billion? Ruby knew better: that we would all be having a good laugh at Meldy's expense.
Nobody seems to be having much of a laugh in A Mug's Game (Sunday, BBC1), a promising drama about a Scottish fishing village. Life here is grim, but the set design is spectacular. The west coast of Scotland must have been created with television drama in mind. Just wait for the mist to fall, point the camera across the loch and let it roll, perhaps sweeping across the harbour a couple of times.
There is a lot of this technique in A Mug's Game, and it makes a welcome change from the relentless gutting of fish. The sights and sounds of fish being disembowelled accompanies much of the action. Every drama series has a place where the principal characters can meet to help the plot along. Where Coronation Street has its pub, and EastEnders has its pub, and Emmerdale Farm has, er, its pub, A Mug's Game has the fish-gutting shed. "I think he fancies you," says randy Denise to downtrodden Kathy as the new boss, Mr McCaffrey, stares down from his office. Swish! In goes the knife. Spleurch! Another lump of bloody fish guts hits the floor. "I'm doing woodwork at night school," says Denise. "It's great. I was the only lumpy T-shirt in the class." Swish! Spleurch!
It is clear that Kathy has failed to swaddle her dreams in glorious brilliance. Instead, her marriage is on the rocks because her husband blames himself for the failure of the family fish business. Her mother is a nag, her daughter is a diabetic, her son is an amateur inventor in search of Scotland's first self-buttering toaster, her brother is a small businessman doomed to expensive failure. So instead of pursuing her talent for music, Kathy works in the gutting shed at the fish farm.
It looks as if Kathy will soon be swooning in the arms of Mr McCaffrey, the bad-tempered but god-fearing fish-gutter-in-chief, a widower sent by head office to turn around the fortunes of the ailing company. Under the rules of drama she must soon, as a neglected wife, be swept off her feet Swish! Spleurch! by the dynamic stranger. This is not a particularly original plot. Perhaps we can hope for more from McCaffrey's feckless nephew, Con, an amateur terrorist from Belfast who has taken up shoplifting and seducing the local girls.
Is there a new law that insists that every current television programme must contain a reference to sex or sexual activity? There is no escape. It's obviously rampant on Open University why else can it only broadcast during the wee small hours? but you would think that a programme on the history of yachting would be free from vice and impurity. Pah! Not on Channel 4, it wouldn't. Classic Ships (Monday) began last week with a history of the first Britannia, ordered as a racing yacht by Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales in 1893. Its revolutionary design, exploiting changes in the rules of yacht racing, made sure Britannia outclassed any rivals. It won 24 prizes during its first season, but was later withdrawn from Cowes after Edward had a row with the German Kaiser, who had been teasing the prince about his mistresses. Sex slur sinks royal yacht race shocker, as The Morning Post no doubt reported fully at the time.
Classic Ships was an unexpectedly dry account of this exciting and glamorous sport, mainly because it was written in the style of a corporate video. "In the early 1930s," narrated John Peel, "the Victorian cruising ship Marigold had a brief but glorious swan song." We see the Victorian cruising ship Marigold, newly restored, cutting its way elegantly through the water. "The Hon Mrs Bardie Frankland, now 92, remembers her." Cut to Greg Powlesland, who restored Marigold, chatting easily on deck with the Hon Mrs Bardie Frankland, now 92. Apparently she was always very balanced amidships: Marigold, you understand, not Mrs Frankland, who remembered the golden days, some of which Mrs Frankland had spent balancing amidships with David Niven. "We had a brief fling," she recalled.
Britannia survived the death of Edward VII, but Edward VIII was not a keen sailor, preferring to play golf on deck. He withdrew the boat from racing, and had it blown up. If Edward could not sail Britannia, nobody else was going to have the opportunity.
There was more Channel 4 sex or at least advice about its perils in Seasiders (Thursday), a new series that follows the fortunes of 130 young Havenmates, entertainers at the Haven chain of holiday centres. Imelda Marcos, with her warm personality, love of bright clothes and original singing voice ("One more time everybody mares eat oats and does eat oats"), would make a fine Havenmate. She would certainly have made a better fist of La Bamba than the poor chap, a DJ, who sang it during an audition for Nigel Hudston, who is in charge of Haven entertainments. Perhaps they were conscious of the cameras, but Hudston and his colleague had a kind word to say about everybody they saw, despite sitting through eight days of singing that seemed to have been honed on the pub karaoke circuit. "He was a very bubbly personality," said Hudston's colleague after La Bamba. "But no talent whatsoever."
More successful were the young magician Andrew Woods and the singer Debi Mills, who dressed as a cleaning lady while she sang a comic version of Queen's I Want To Break Free. "I liked her mop," said Hudston. "What?" said his colleague, "the mop prop?" What a couple of pros. Tired from auditioning, they still had time to polish up a few gags for the coming season. What if the mop prop flops? Should she drop the mop prop? Or merely crop the mop top to prevent excessive top flop?
Debi and Andrew top of the crop were both selected, and were next filmed at training camp, where they were warned about the sexual temptations of Haven holiday centres (four pregnancies last season) and introduced to the Haven mascot, a singing tiger called Rory. It is easy to see how Havenmates give way to sexual temptation. A man who has not only learnt the words to the Haven-holidays theme song but has also danced in a tiger suit for an adoring crowd must be difficult to resist. Last week saw the height of America's sporting year, Superbowl XXX (Sunday, Channel 4). Potential Havenmates ought to have been glued to the coverage, because America, it is always said, does this sort of thing the total entertainment package so well.
They do it by making a enormous fuss about even the most trifling aspect of the game: Yes, I think we are ready now, yes, I can see the captains moving into the centre with the, yes, and if we can, yes, and we are actually now ready for YES! We CAN go over now LIVE to THE! TOSS!
THE! TOSS! came shortly after the national anthem, which seemed to have been arranged by Richard Clayderman at his most senti-mental. Four jet fighters flew overhead as the anthem came to its resounding close. The game itself, won by the Dallas Cowboys, was constantly interrupted by helpful graphics the average weight of the Dallas front line and advertising breaks. But there were moments to make a British sports fan feel at home. As the players, looking like Securicor vans in a motorway pile-up, slammed into each other, a commentator noted: "And you know Rod Woodson is the first NFL player to have critical knee surgery and play in the same season." Come back John Motson, all is forgiven.
Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem.
In a post-apocalyptic America, where nobody seems to remember what actually brought about the apocalypse, a drifter, appropriately named Chaos, takes to the road with a strange fur-covered girl called Melinda. As a fully fledged, dispossessed hero he is, of course, searching for his true identity and his past. His journey takes him through various pockets of "civilisations", all working to their own rules, thus allowing Lethem's brilliantly satirical imagination full rein. Best of all are the McDonaldonians who, unable to think for themselves, are in thrall to the Ronald McDonald ethos and are condemned to serve Big Macs to nobody in particular for the rest of their lives (NEL £5.99). IC
Aspects of Aristocracy
by David Cannadine
The only time Winston Churchill, scion of the great Marlborough family, travelled on public transport he rode round and round the Circle Line and had to be helped off by a friend. This, implies Cannadine, was both symptom and result of an aristocracy in decline. Churchill is just one of the eccentric aristos on display in Cannadine's immensely entertaining essays, which stretch from the "terramania" of the land-owning classes in the 1780s to an account of "two of Britain's most famous upper-class gardeners", Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West. Reading them is often like watching a Grand Guignol, delighted and horrified by the shameless excesses of the gentry. (Penguin £7.99). IC
A Fez of the Heart
by Jeremy Seal
The Greeks may have invented it, but Muhammad II declared it the national hat of the Ottomans. Tommy Cooper may have died in one, but these days a Turk wouldn't be seen dead in one. The fez-obsessed writer of this intelligent, funny and informative travelogue treks along the Black Sea and into Cappadocia to the east, then back to the Mediterranean, gleaning fez-lore from hospitable Turks along the way. Not so much a book about hats as a skilled and entertaining portrait of modern Turkey (Picador 6.99). I L-G
The Penguin Collection
A self-congratulatory collection of the "finest in modern fiction", with short stories from a dozen writers. For the most part, Penguin can afford to be smug. High points include a tale by William Boyd (right) of oneupmanship with a rich American student; Shena Mackay's Death by Art Deco, about the disenchanting results of a short-story competition; a curious Nabokov; Donna Tartt on childhood and white trash; a characteristically low-key William Trevor story about an affair that never happened; a masterful John Updike (Scenes from the Fifties); and a fantastical tale from Will Self, in which a house in northwest London turns out to be built above a seam of crack cocaine (Penguin £6.99). PhB
Wildcatting by Shann Nix
Some novels seem to demand to be accompanied by a soundtrack. In this case, it would be the music from The Big Country. The novel is a dynastic saga, set in Texas oil country, about Hiram Jameson and his clan, his gambles, his victories and the damage families can do to each other. Wildcatters gamble everything they and their relations own to buy tracts of land on which they hope to find oil. Hiram tells a good story; the novel, narrated by Hiram's granddaughter, is well written and exciting (Arrow £5.99). SB
Skin Flicks
by Philip Caveney
Freelance photographer Danny Weston stumbles across more than he bargains for while scouting around for subjects for an exhibition on urban decay. Underneath a railway arch in Manchester, he discovers the flayed body of a man strung up by the ankles. Freelancers have to make a living, of course, and Danny reaches for his camera before phoning the police, a decision he later comes to regret. Caveney builds on the startling visual image of the skinned man with great skill, exploring the symbolic possibilities of skin through the agencies of a tattoo artist, an exhibition of photographs of wrinkled pensioners and a pornography industry that deals with only the surfaces of the human body (Headline £5.99). IC
Casino by Nicholas Pileggi
In the 1970s, Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal had it all: in charge of the largest casino operation in Nevada, he was married to a former showgirl and lived in a million-dollar home. But then he and his best pal, Anthony "Tony the Ant" Spilotro, came under investigation as the Mob's men in an inexorable sequence of events which led to Spilotro's murder in 1986. Pileggi has pieced the story together through countless interviews with Lefty and others to create a fascinating insight into the gaudy glamour of Las Vegas, a city where "beating the casino by hook or crook has been raised to an art form" (Corgi £5.99). IC
Alt Culture: An A-Z of the 90s Underground Culture
by Steven Daly and Nathaniel Wice
A fascinating compendium of recent cultural developments: body-piercing, the Internet, goatee beards, the female condom, the Charles Manson revival, and so on. The collection is heavily American, though, and much of it is hardly "underground" (Ikea? Madonna? Dry beer?). Most of it, in fact, concerns high-profile products of one kind or another, whether it is training shoes, drugs or heavily marketed rock stars, along with slightly weirder things such as Diseased Pariah News, the American magazine for people with Aids. The whole thing makes compulsive grazing, especially for anyone over 30, and it's probably the first reference book to include World Wide Web addresses for its entries (Guardian/Fourth Estate £12.99). PhB
A Dishonoured Society
by John Follain
The word "mafia" has come to mean organised groups of criminals. In this useful history, Follain traces the origins of the mafia to the island of Sicily and the cities of Palermo and Corleone. He punctures the romantic myth that the mafia started as Robin Hood-style groups of men protecting the poor. He shows that the mafia began in the 19th century as armed bands protecting the interests of the absentee landlords who owned most of Sicily. He also demonstrates how the mafia has forged links with Italy's ruling Christian Democrat party since the war, and how the state has fought to destroy the criminal organisation despite the terror campaign that assassinated anti-mafia judges, such as Giovanni Falcone. In Italy alone, the mafia has an annual turnover of £35 billion. Follain warns that the organisation is spreading across Europe and suggests preventive action (Warner Books £8.99). SB
The Desert Rose
by Larry McMurtry
Even after years dancing topless in Vegas, and disappointments from the men in her life, Harmony has always been optimistic. That is until she is fired, just as Pepper, her teenage daughter, is hired as the lead dancer at the Stardust. On top of this, Pepper becomes engaged and refuses to confide in her mother any more. Harmony wonders, wistfully, where she went wrong. The naive charm of this heart-wrenching Nevada tale of mother-daughter relationship draws you in gently. (Phoenix 5.99). I L-G
The Miracle Shed
by Philip McCann
A collection of luxuriantly written short stories about disturbingly barren existences. Various characters sniff Tippex, inhale fuel, and fail to pull off a cheap robbery, but they are never less than fully human. The stories are enriched by McCann's flair for standing language weirdly on its edge. His narrators love words: after telling us "the slum was wearing the blue-black punched out by lamps", one of them feels that the word for the blue-black slum is "pearliness", only to wonder if it might perhaps be "opalescence" instead, or maybe "oleaginous" (Faber £5.99). PhB
Empty Cradles by Margaret Humphreys
When The Leaving of Liverpool, the account of the children who were shipped off to Australia during the post-war years, was shown on television in 1993, it provoked outrage. Empty Cradles is the story of those children who were taken from institutions and sent off to populate the commonwealth. Although they were referred to as orphans, many of them had parents, unable for a variety of reasons to care for them, whose consent was not sought. Whether anybody believed they were giving these deprived children the chance of a better life is highly questionable. Even if they did, their behaviour was extraordinarily insensitive and duplicitous. Humphreys is a social worker, who stumbled on the story through her interest in the long-term effects of adoption. Her enquiries soon turned into a crusade, revealing facts which were astonishing not only for their awfulness, but for the secrecy that had surrounded them for so long a cover-up abetted (unwittingly) by the now grown-up children involved, whose lack of personal history robbed them of the self-esteem necessary to confront officialdom and demand answers. Humphreys has done such sterling work that any criticism seems churlish, but it must be said that she is not averse to self-congratulation; this might have been a better book had some of the repetitive dialogue had been edited out. Nevertheless, it is a riveting tale, and testimony to her conviction and energy in uncovering a story that needed to be told (Corgi £6.99). PB
TALKING BOOKS
My Gorgeous Life written and read by Dame Edna Everage.
"I was a beautiful baby, you'll not be surprised to hear," the "world's most famous megastar" informs us. Edna's path to superstardom begins at no 36 Humoresque Street, in the Melbourne suburb of Moonee Ponds. Apart from the complications of inheriting mauve hair and a father who harboured a secret desire for "ladies' undies", the teen years of Australia's greatest export were not as eventful as one might hope. Dame Edna's wander down memory lane is an anecdotal account of "one woman's journey from the kitchen sink to the corridors of power", taking in her first encounter with Sir "Norm" Everage, Madge Allsop, her bridesmaid and frequent divine intervention in the guise of Dame Nature, who steps in and swings her towards the dizzying heights of fame. Undoubtedly, it is Dame Edna's Antipodean vocals that make this tape. Were it not for her ability to convey a story, it would not be nearly so amusing. Surely, sainthood can't be far away? As she humbly speculates: "I've had a flattering tip-off from my little Polish pal in Rome." (Reed Audio £7.99, 3 hrs, abridged) CD.
The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan, Flamingo £15.99 pp321.
In the fictional niche Amy Tan has carved for herself, she sets latter-day Chinese Americans reminiscing about their mothers and grandmothers. Her bi-local, bi-temporal narratives explore the Chinese past and the Californian present, and the weird disjunction experienced by those who have migrated from one to the other. The Hundred Secret Senses returns to the same dual subject-matter but, this time, past and present are more tightly linked than in her two previous books.
Kwan, who is not the heroine, but who shoulders her way bossily and charmingly into the position of central character, is an immigrant, half-sister to the fully assimilated, semi-white Olivia, whose exuberantly much-married mother describes herself as, "American mixed grill, a bit of everything white, fatty and fried".
But Kwan is also a "ghost-talker", who can converse with the dead, and a revenant herself, who clearly remembers everything about her previous life on earth, as servant to some English missionaries during the Boxer Rebellion. So the self-same character, inhabiting different bodies, but in both instances young and active and self-reliant to the point of eccentricity, appears in the historical and the contemporary strands of the story.
The result is a better-integrated novel than Tan's previous ones and amply makes up in humour and psychological observation for what it lacks, by comparison with its predecessors, in the way of exotic scene-painting and romantic adventures.
"Why does Kwan have so many stories about switching places with dead people?" wonders Olivia. She's irritable because she herself is a substitute for her husband Simon's first and greatest love, who was killed in a skiing accident and who has (metaphorically) haunted their marriage so destructively that it is on the point of breaking apart.
Olivia and Simon are very earnest, very Californian. They would be dull, going on tiresome, were it not for the way their sensible, liberal, laboriously enlightened views on everything under the sun are so comprehensively undercut and enjoyably mocked by Kwan, who is completely batty, doesn't understand modern American society at all, and yet is always, exasperatingly right. "She's like an orphan cat, kneading on my heart," says Olivia, all guilt and irritability. She has the same sort of effect on the reader, starting off as a rather broad and clumsy joke, but emerging by the middle of the novel as a splendidly
vital comic character, whose courage and common-or-garden goodness put the more dignified, socially sophisticated characters to shame.
It is her match-mending machinations which take her, Olivia and Simon off to China, back to the village where she grew up abandoned by the father she shares with Olivia, and where, in a previous incarnation, she shared the missionaries' grisly fate. Unusually for Tan's fiction, we are shown modern China through the eyes of American visitors. Olivia and Simon take photographs in quaint street markets, worry about picking up parasites by eating from street-vendors' stalls and are appalled by the sight of caged owls for sale as food. But Kwan is always present to counter the predictability of their responses, whether by haggling robustly while exchanging gossip with the vendor (an old family friend, as it turns out) or by introducing into their banally rationalist world-view her own vision of the Yin world of the spirits.
The landscape of the last third of the book is both picturesque and fantastic. Olivia and Simon, exploring the mountainous hinterland beyond Kwan's village near Guilin, find themselves in a valley that Tan successfully persuades us is a natural wonder, a place of bizarre rock formations and labyrinthine caves leading to underground lakes glowing with phosphorescence, and a magically transformative place, an ante-chamber of the underworld.
Kwan's talk of ghostly possession and remembered other lives is never allowed full credence. The eerie voices issuing from the walls of Olivia's San Francisco apartment are being broadcast by a deranged radio-nut downstairs. And when Olivia, ready to surrender at last, concedes that yes, maybe she does also remember something of the earlier life in which Kwan claims they have previously known each other, it turns out that her "memory" doesn't fit Kwan's story.
But Kwan's sensibility call it superstitious and crazy, or call it colourfully imaginative and indicative of a proper respect for the past pervades every part of this highly enjoyable novel.
Stormy Weather by Carl Hiaasen, Macmillan £9.99 pp371.
Eerie yellow cloud hangs ominously low over southern Florida. Churning across the Caribbean, a hurricane howls towards the coast. As swirling radar images of the approaching turbulence fill television screens, and weathermen predict the storm of the century, senior citizens clutching cats and poodles are evacuated from their condominiums. Tourists in their thousands stream north out of the cyclone-menaced zone.
It's traffic moving in the opposite direction, though, that Stormy Weather boisterously closes in on: scavengers and hustlers hellbent on loot, con-men and career felons swarming into the swathe of Florida turned upside down by the raging wind. What Carl Hiaasen's ferociously hilarious new book lets rip with gale-force gusto is the commotion in the wake of the hurricane.
His novel's setting is as strikingly outlandish as most of its happenings. After drastic rearrangement by the cyclone, southern Florida looks like a landscape by Salvador Dali. Trees float in swimming pools. Cars resemble crumpled foil. A bicycle is wrapped like a bizarre bracelet around a coconut palm.
Further enhancing the surreal effect is the smashing apart of a farm housing exotic livestock, and the widespread dispersal of its erstwhile inhabitants. A reticulated python, 14ft long, turns up in a restaurant's salad bar. Marauding monkeys terrorise the suburbs. A gold chain dangles like spaghetti from the mouth of a lion that has munched a young tough.
The predators and reptiles whose behaviour Hiaasen is keenest to observe, though, are human. Max, a creepy advertising executive honeymooning near Disney World, for instance, is thrilled to hear of the hurricane and rushes down, voracious for catastrophe, to snap up rubble and grief on his video Handycam. Savage retribution ensues. Abducted by a swamp-dweller, Max finds himself dragged through the Everglades, stripped to his underwear and fitted with an electrified dog collar. Other would-be batteners on misfortune a mugger, a crooked builder, a hard-baked little cookie working an insurance scam, a looter and a sociopathic manslaughterer on the make are likewise joltingly yanked from their rapacious purposes.
Hiaasen's other career as an investigative journalist celebrated for his Miami Herald exposes of local scandals means that he is no stranger to the shady side of the Sunshine State. In this novel, as in its predecessors, he uncovers fraud, bribery, malpractice and corruption with the same breezy thoroughgoingness with which the hurricane whisks away roofs.
What gives his fiction its distinctive atmosphere of feral farce is its prevailing intimation that Florida's social climate has a lot in common with its geographical one. It isn't only in the mangrove swamps, Hiaasen sardonically indicates, that the fanged and toxic prowl. Compared with the human fauna on the hunt in his books, the alligators rustling through the sawgrass under the poisontrees seem positively cuddly.
This novel sees the reappearance from Hiaasen's earlier book, Double Whammy, of a figure who functions not only as a carrier-out of the author's concerns, but as a close-to-the-edge caricature of them. Hiaasen's novels have always been jungles of rough justice where malefactors are liable to incur a mauling. Taking this technique to the extreme, Skink a once-idealistic politician half-unhinged by losing his fight against the pollution, overdevelopment and rampant greed ravaging Florida makes punitive forays, from his retreat in the Everglades, as a vigilante on behalf of the environment and social decency.
Nemesis in grubby camouflage gear, Skink likes to ensure that biters get bit. With a kind of demented Darwinism, he punishes perpetrators of brutishness by pitching them into situations where they face struggle for survival on an animal level. While Hiaasen shows civilised qualms about some of Skink's excesses, he has an obvious gut sympathy for these guerrilla skirmishes in the cause of conservation and ecological respect.
But assault and battery isn't the only weapon in Hiaasen's fictional crusade against the despoliation of Florida. Scathing, scabrous wit gives his books cutting edge. Barbed one-liners stab his points home. Even when detailing sleaze or fakery, his prose retains a deadly ironic exactness: seeking rich male pickings in chic bars, one of his gold-diggers "assiduously loitered"; a television set emits a fundamentalist preacher's "whiny beseechment".
Warmly disposed to the natural, generous and open, Hiaasen seldom lets his appreciation of the humane soften into sentimentality. Though he has a weakness for feisty young females, the bustier-clad hookers in Stormy Weather don't have hearts of gold but implants of silicon that, on close contact, feel like little sacks of nickels.
Unorthodox physical attributes a detachable glass eye, a grotesquely skewed jaw keep jutting out in this book. Freakishness of all sorts engrosses Hiaasen: physical oddity, bent behaviour, malformed motives, phonetically garbled speech ("He bissy eng de grotch," a Hispanic wife growls of her husband who is in the garage). Even his plots dizzily skidding through twists and turns are master feats of zig-zaggings away from the expected.
Stormy Weather, aficionados will be glad to hear, is Hiaasen's funniest and fiercest novel yet. It's an unmissable opportunity to experience a Force 10 satiric talent at full blast.
Peter Kemp is the fiction editor of The Sunday Times.
If James Hawes's A White Merc with Fins (Cape £12.99) becomes a film the trailer will look irresistible very now, very London, very hip. Take the scenario: a cunningly planned raid on an exclusive bank patronised by the likes of Michael Winner. Take the cast: Suzy the Black Widow sports an attractively flat stomach and drives a car "like she is breathing through the carbs".
Fred, a muscle-headed, golden-hearted old cockney once employed by the Krays, is still very handy in a dark cellar. Brady, a Quentin Tarantino obsessive, likes nothing better than to ride around the Circle Line with his mates, all dressed up as Reservoir Dogs. And then there is the getaway car: "the original A-one pimpmobile", a white Merc turbo with big wheels and fins.
If there's one element that should not carry over from page to silver screen, it is the narrator, who is the main irritation of Hawes's novel. Our slacker hero has spent his twenties without achieving anything much. But he has picked up some annoying habits: a been-there-done-that patter, a tendency to capitalise everything on Life's Great Menu, and a fondness for buzzwords.
One of Thatcher's children, he loafed through college in the mid-1980s in the confident expectation of ascendancy to "middle-class heaven". Then the recession moved in, and suddenly there were openings only in naff and undesirable occupations such as accountancy or teaching. Now he's 28, the temping threatens to become permanent and a receding hairline is an unwelcome intimation of mortality. Thus the moment his latest job opens the doors to an extraordinary private bank, he sets about formulating his plan. Or rather, The Plan. The workings of this tongue-in-cheek scheme to rob "one of the secret troughs of London" are spun out with enjoyable ingenuity. We learn why there is a lot of funny money around in the film world, how to impersonate the nephew of an Italian count, and the best way to get through a business meeting with members of the IRA (take a couple of Prozac).
Yet the momentum of all this comic inventiveness is lost in chatty digressions. What is the reader to make of the observation that, "Time (as they say) is a one-way trip and we all die on board", or the startling perception that Londoners can be divided into "the ones that will never be able to get mortgages, the ones who live and die by the mortgage rate, and the ones who don't need mortgages"?
Indeed, despite Hawes's shrewd attempt to create an ultracool spokesman for a British Generation X, his satirical targets such as Milton Keynes and liberal-minded Guardian readers start to seem positively quaint.
This novel offers a smooth enough ride, so long as you realise you'll be motoring in a Mini, and not a Merc. And there is a significant difference. After all, to borrow one of the best lines in the book, when you look for the crumple zone in a Mini, you find it's between the headlights and the back bumper.
Children of Darkness and Light by Nicholas Mosley, Secker £15.99 pp242.
Harry, the journalist-narrator of Nicholas Mosley's new novel, is so sceptical that he doubts the evidence of his own eyes. Sent to cover sightings of the Virgin Mary at Medjugorje, he experiences a vision himself. But the story he files is a wonderless tract on ecclesiastical squabbles. Even after interviewing deformed Chernobyl victims he cannot decide whether Russia has underplayed the disaster to protect its reactors or exaggerated to extort more foreign aid. For him there are no true stories, only subtexts and unanswerable questions.
The book opens as Harry embarks on the perfect assignment. A group of children, also claiming to have seen the Virgin Mary, has vanished into the very area of Cumbria where another reactor may have spilled. Harry arrives and find himself in a dreamscape of silver beaches and scarlet suns where the children are as radiant and elusive as angels and everyone seems to know him. Even his narrative voice, hitherto dry and acerbic, is environmentally affected. As the sea issues up a miraculous draught of fishes, so his mind teems with new ideas: "We might be figures in a shadow-play on a screen? Or might we be the originals behind the screen? And I what was I the person from the audience who finds himself behind the screen in the world of things-as-they-are?"
Since Harry hates leaving his seat in the stalls, he is in for a tremendous ordeal. In no time, the children have him earmarked as chauffeur and general courier for the radioactive cells in which they have discovered signs of regeneration. He even helps out with the miraculous draught of fishes if that is what it is. How can he know? Pathologically suspicious of things-as-they-are, Harry is forced back on metaphor to explain his experience. Thus he undergoes a mystical marriage, rescues a holy man from crucifixion and spies a vision of Hell in a shed. As for his article, you could say it's been lost in the wilderness.
Like Hopeful Monsters, Mosley's Whitbread-winning novel, this book is a testing adventure for the mind. It appears to be proceeding in one intellectual direction (towards particle physics, say) and then it reaches a crossroads with the Bosnian war on one side and visionary theology on the other. There is no map, but you do have an attractively sarcastic companion. In London, the bibulous hacks at Harry's local gather "like apes round tree-stumps; chattering, nudging, scratching". In Bosnia, politicians crowned with helmets "walk down the streets while cameramen back in front of them, courtiers obsequiously bowing out of an audience chamber".
In Cumbria, Harry attempts to ridicule the children's scientific discoveries as influenced by the conditions of the experiment. This is, of course, his own conundrum. Believing that the observer in some way forms the images that he sees, Harry cannot be certain that he saw a vision at Medjugorje. "Scientists only get what they look for," he says. "So how can you see what you can't see?" The answer, as the children demonstrate, is faith.
Children of Darkness and Light demands a little faith from the reader. It is riddled with questions in every sense (the prose is peppered with question marks, and interrogation is the only form of dialogue). Intensely stimulating in its ideas, it sometimes seems to pursue long lines of inquiry for no obvious moral purpose. But this is Mosley's dramatic gift: to keep you guessing like Harry himself. The very image you dismissed as a mirage in the opening pages turns out to be the novel's true and brilliant revelation.
London Lovers by Barbara Hardy Peter, Owen £15.50 pp207.
Conspicuously autobiographical novels can make one feel queasily voyeuristic; fictional characters who are actual people wearing only the lightest of disguises can be embarrassing company. In London Lovers, Barbara Hardy intensifies this feeling of unease by giving walk-on parts to real-life academics George Steiner, Randolph Quirk, Eric Hobsbawm who mingle with the barely fictionalised ones.
The book's heroine is Florence Jones, whose life is as close as a hug to Hardy's own. Both were born and brought up in Swansea, teach English at London university and write brilliant books on Victorian novelists. So far, so true to life. So, from the moment Florence begins a love-affair with an American man of letters, Mick Solomon, one has no doubt that her creator followed the same path. Indeed, Hardy leaves the key to this roman a clef so brazenly in the lock that anyone who reads literary biographies will be able to identify the real Mick in a trice.
It would have been more graceful, and certainly more ethical, for Hardy to have novelised her own life-story rather more than she has, instead of writing a highly sophisticated form of kiss and tell. This important cavil aside, London Lovers is a glorious book, since there are few more fascinating subjects than passionate adultery indulged in by witty, glamorous people. Florence compares her affair with Mick to the one between Glenda Jackson and George Segal in the film A Touch of Class, and she's right. She and Mick have a perfect relationship, kept on course by humour and wisdom as well as mutual passion.
When they meet, Florence, a fortyish divorcee and the mother of two daughters, has decided that, "most people of all sexes, whatever they say, want one of three things: one-night stands, a new marriage or the romantic adultery on which legal marriage thrives". Mick certainly wants the last of these, and Florence, an independent woman, who appreciates "the bliss of solitude", happily settles for a life of secrets until Mick's death 15 years later.
They inhabit a sexualised world with "a shared determination to advance the science of pleasure". Even so, Florence is snagged by the petty, competitive jealousy that all mistresses feel towards wives. She cooks show-off meals, knowing Mick's wife, Ellen, dislikes cooking; she sews on his buttons because Ellen, a semi-invalid, can't. But because Mick is "the perfect secret sharer", she survives on his part-time attentions.
Had London Lovers not strayed very far from Florence and Mick's adulterous bed, it might have become cloying and steamy, but Hardy laces her love story with memories and observations of Florence's girlhood, and her failed marriage to a local solicitor. This is the second novel within a year (the first was Bernice Rubens's Yesterday in the Back Lane) that depicts Swansea as a city mired in a cosy sexual repression that spawns clever, knowing girls. I hope there will be more.
Hardy is skilled at retrieving random memories and then weaving them into patterns that help to define Florence's life: the minutely and affectionately described weddings, parties, dances and stays in hospital give Florence a history that is rich in incident and sour-sweet reflection, so that she becomes a person in her own right, not just someone waiting for her lover to call. What gives London Lovers its special appeal is that, although it's about adultery, it's not about entrapment. It stays bright-eyed and hopeful until the end, a testament to a joyously enduring love.
Incurable romantic HUGO VICKERS is passionate about Le Grand Meaulnes.
We were set a number of books to read in French at Eton in the summer of 1968; needless to say, I failed to read any of them. One was Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes (Penguin £5.99). There came a dreadful Friday when our French beak announced that there would be a test on Le Grand Meaulnes the following morning. Panic set in; I knew I had no hope of reading the book in French by that time.
I might just manage it in English, however, and at the next free moment I took to my heels and ran up to W H Smith in Windsor. To my enormous relief there was one copy on the shelves. I read that book at every free moment between then and the dreaded test. I walked along the road reading it, I took it to the swimming-pool, I read it in the evening and I continued by torchlight under the sheets.
Despite this off-putting introduction to Alain-Fournier, I was transfixed. I passed the test, and have re-read the book several times for pleasure in the ensuing years. I still have my saviour edition, to which I have since added a superb copy in a limited edition that I found in Paris.
What is Le Grand Meaulnes's magic? The book is hauntingly romantic. It is a classic adolescent novel, with perpetual appeal to those who refuse to grow up and who are tantalised lifelong by the enthusiasms and the insecurity of adolescence.
The novel begins in a humdrum way in the schoolroom, but presently the author conducts the reader on a romantic journey to a secret domain where a fete is in progress, and where the narrator's friend, Augustin Meaulnes, first sees Yvonne de Galais. From then on, both boys are in love with her, and so is the reader. Alain-Fournier once wrote: "I'm not interested in just having a mistress, I want love. Love in the sense of vertigo. Love as a sacrifice and the last word on everything. The thing alongside which nothing else exists. Love as the grand departure after setting ablaze the four corners of the land."
Le Grand Meaulnes is Alain-Fournier's tribute to this vision of love. There is much that is unobtainable and much which, once obtained, cannot be coped with. The image that haunts me more than any other in the book comes not at the fete, but towards the end of the story, after the death of the heroine, when the narrator carries her downstairs and some strands of golden hair are drawn into his mouth: "Dead hair that has the taste of earth. This taste of earth and of death, and this weight on my heart, is all that is left to me of the great adventure, and of you, Yvonne de Galais, so ardently sought, so deeply loved..."
There were two real-life Yvonnes. Alain-Fournier saw the first Yvonne dismounting from a train with a friend near the Luxembourg Gardens in October 1903. He followed her, then made a quick circle so that he approached them, swept off his hat and bowed. For the next 18 months he took her to concerts and theatres.
The second Yvonne remained more mysterious. In 1905, Alain-Fournier was coming out of the Grand Palais and saw a tall blonde girl talking to an old lady. The old lady was laughing. The young woman noticed Alain-Fournier's watchful eyes and rewarded him with a lingering gaze. That most romantic and eloquent of "stalkers" followed her to her home. Then, on a number of occasions, he waited on the "street where she lived". Eventually, they spoke, but she told him she was soon leaving Paris. "A quoi bon?" she said. Alain-Fournier remained obsessed for eight years, was aghast to hear that she had married, and thereafter kept himself informed of her life through a detective agency.
Shortly before the publication of his masterpiece, he met her. There were eight meetings at Rochefort. She was now living happily with her husband at Brest, but told him: "If you'd come three years ago, anything might have been possible. I was unhappy and often thought of you. I would have written to you if I'd been able. I wasn't getting on at all well with my husband..."
Le Grand Meaulnes is a never-failing litmus test for anyone entering a romantic liaison. If your partner fails to love the book, have nothing more to do with them. If they like it, marry them. I did.
Mrs Vladimir Nabokov writing on behalf of her husband to Weidenfeld & Nicolson, February 8, 1966
The Gift, jacket design: This is one of the things on which my husband makes his own decisions. In the present case he asks me to say the following: "The design for the jacket seems to me tasteless in the extreme. The only symbol a broken butterfly is of is a broken butterfly...The girl does not look like Zina Mertz at all. The entire conception is artistically preposterous, wrong and crude, and I cannot understand why they are not using the subtle and intelligent sketch I sent them, with the keys on the floor of the hall."
PS. My husband reminds me that I forgot to say the quotations for the back cover are OK with the exception of the line on Doctor Zhivago, a book which he considers wholly without literary merit.
JOHN SUTHERLAND is left wanting more Ford Madox Ford.
Max Saunders faced daunting problems as he embarked on the first volume of his biography, Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life (OUP £35). Top of the list is the "Ford Madox who?" factor. There is a high degree of name recognition; most literate readers would place Ford as an important novelist they must get round to reading. But just how and when did "Ford Hermann Hueffer" become Ford Madox Ford, and what was his relationship to the Pre-Raphaelite painter, Ford Madox Brown? (The answer to the first is: he changed his name in 1919 for the same reason that Battenbergs and Saxe-Gothas changed theirs to Mountbatten and Windsor; the answer to the second is, the painter was his maternal grandfather).
Ford, it is fair to say, occupies a more significant position in literary history than in literature. He is active everywhere in the evolution of what we now call modernism; collaborating with Joseph Conrad, conferring with Henry James, correcting Ezra Pound's verse. In 1908, Ford founded that great nursery of literary talent, the English Review. DH Lawrence was one of his discoveries. Ford, a grateful Lawrence declared, was "the first man I ever met who had a real and true feeling for literature". He was, to boot, "the kindest man on earth" ... if disconcertingly like a large blobby lemon in appearance.
Ford wrote books of his own, some 80 or so in the course of his lifetime. None enjoyed much success in their own day and all with the arguable exception of The Good Soldier have been neglected by posterity. He has, however, always been a novelist's novelist. Graham Greene (who rated The Good Soldier as "perhaps one of the finest novels of our century") used his good offices at Bodley Head to have a selection of Ford's fiction reprinted in the early 1960s. It was a generous act by an avowed disciple and it put Ford back on the library shelf.
Saunders faced another difficulty. Ford was the subject of one of the most praised literary biographies of recent years, Alan Judd's Ford Madox Ford (1990). Like Greene, Judd was primarily a novelist. He had not intended to write a biography, but was impelled to investigate Ford's life after being captivated by The Good Soldier. Reviewers agreed in finding Judd's narrative both beautifully written and eminently readable qualities sadly lacking in many modern academic biographies.
Saunders is a serving academic at London University; his professional mission is to produce not readable works but scholarship. Saunders's Ford Madox Ford studiously avoids reference to Judd's biography other than to note its "novelistic" tone and over-reliance on "secondary sources". Saunders has returned laboriously to primary sources, and has found significant new material. He has produced a massive tome, some 400,000 words, which covers only the first half of Ford's life (a fact which, reprehensibly, is not made clear on the dust-jacket). Of the book's 632 solidly printed pages, no fewer than 140 are given over to annotation. The resulting portrait is so fine-grained and cross-hatched that it is not always easy to see the general outlines of Ford's life.
The outlines of that life (which Saunders does not materially alter) are fascinating. Ford was born into an unusually artistic family. His expatriate German father was the music critic on The Times. Through his mother, he was connected with the most advanced coterie in British art (Ford's later advocacy of literary "impressionism" can be connected with these sources). Until he joined the army in 1915, Ford never had what the British middle-classes would call a job of work. He eloped with the under-aged Elsie Martindale, whose father brought a court action against him. While married to Elsie he probably had an adulterous affair with her sister, Mary. After a dozen years, two daughters and several nervous breakdowns, Ford transferred his affections to Violet Hunt, a literary groupie whose ambition seems to have been to sleep with every male novelist of the period. Hunt was pretty, brilliant, and infected with incurable syphilis. Ford publicly declared her to his wife, and may indeed have gone through some form of marriage with her (here, as elsewhere, there is a haziness in the record that even Saunders's industry cannot dispel). Elsie quite properly protested that she was still Mrs Hueffer, took her husband to court for libel, and had him imprisoned for non-payment of support.
More nervous breakdowns. In 1915 Ford published The Good Soldier, a tragi-comic study of wrecked marriage a subject on which Ford was now ruefully expert. Having been ousted from the English Review (his many talents did not include business efficiency), Ford threw in his lot with the Vorticists and Imagists. Come the first world war and, over-age and chronically unfit, he joined up and was posted as an infantry officer to the Front in 1916. At this tantalising point, Saunders's narrative breaks off.
One is grateful for Saunders's scrupulously thorough, well-written and conscientious biography. Scholarship is always a good thing, although not everyone is willing to pay £35 a shot for a half-measure of it. When volume two is completed, Saunders will have provided the authoritative account of Ford's life. But, ideally, new converts should begin, as Judd did, by reading The Good Soldier. A critical edition of the novel, with exhaustive apparatus, was published as a bargain-price paperback by the American publisher Norton in 1995. Intended for the college market, it can be recommended to the general reader. Judd's biography will remain for our generation the most accessible biography, with Saunders's monumental account available in the library for students and the regrettably small band of Ford enthusiasts. Let us hope that these two admirable and admirably different biographies swell their numbers.
Hannah Pakula wrote a very good book on Queen Marie of Romania, an eccentric, faintly absurd figure given to leaving notes around her various castles proclaiming, "Queen Marie of Romania is the most beautiful woman in the world." Pakula has now written an even better biography about a woman who was neither eccentric nor absurd Empress Frederick, "Vicky", the eldest and most intelligent of Victoria and Albert's nine children.
An Uncommon Woman is subtitled The Empress Frederick, Daughter of Queen Victoria, Wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, Mother of Kaiser Wilhelm (Weidenfeld £20). Vicky's life was a tragic one. Her story unfolds with an increasing sense of doom against the background of the rise of militarist Prussia, the unification of Germany orchestrated by Bismarck, and the accession of her estranged, megalomaniac son, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was to precipitate the slide into European war.
She was born on November 21, 1840, a disappointment to her parents who had hoped for a boy. Victoria was not a doting mother: "An ugly baby is a very nasty object & the prettiest is frightful when undressed," she wrote, referring to childbearing as "the shadow side of marriage". Her obsessive love for her husband left little room for anyone else. Both parents, however, were determined to raise perfect children, Albert's possessiveness and desire for control manifesting itself in a stream of memos, often rewritten, regulating nursery arrangements.
Fortunately, Vicky was precociously intelligent and had inherited her mother's wilfulness, temper and stubbornness, characteristics which the queen did not appreciate when manifested in her daughter. Victoria's concept of motherhood was as a stern preceptor. Albert, a "devoted father", warned his wife that "the root of the trouble lies in the mistaken notion that the function of a mother is to be always correcting, scolding, ordering them about and organising their activities. It is not possible to be on friendly terms with people you have just been scolding". None the less, Vicky adored her mother and even more so her father, elevated by his doting wife into the infallible household god.
Vicky was his favourite child, resembling him in intelligence, although inheriting her mother's small dumpy looks. Her qualities were of mind and character; at 16, the American ambassador described her as "most charming...all life and spirit, full of frolic and fun, with an excellent head and a heart as big as a mountain". When she became engaged to the heir apparent to the Prussian throne, Prince Frederick of Hohenzollern (always known as "Fritz", the nephew of King Frederick IV and the son of the future Kaiser Wilhelm I), Albert impressed upon her that her mission was to promote the unity of Germany under Prussia in conjunction with "progress in constitutional institutions". While the first objective was compatible with membership of the militaristic Hohenzollern family (described by Pakula as a "tribe of warriors"), the second most definitely was not.
Progressive England was regarded with intense suspicion by the reactionary courts of Europe, particularly at Berlin. "The Hohenzollern capital," warned Vicky's German aunt, Feodora, was "a hotbed of envy, jealousy, intrigue and malicious knavery", where relationships within the ruling family were quarrelsome and bitter in the extreme. From the start, Vicky was an object of suspicion simply because of her nationality. Moreover, her active intelligence and interest in the arts and politics did not fit in with a culture that regarded Kinder and Kuche (children and kitchen) as the only sphere for a woman. Vicky was, however, secure in the love of her husband, a blond Prussian giant, nine years her senior, who in character and beliefs resembled the liberal, humane Prince Albert far more closely that he did his own ferociously reactionary and militaristic family. In that sense, Fritz was a misfit at the Prussian court and his wife even more so.
Vicky, however, might have won through but for one implacable enemy, possibly the most ruthless and machiavellian statesman Europe had produced, Count Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck-Schonhausen. Bismarck was built on a gigantic scale and possessed a gargantuan appetite. His principle objectives were to make Prussia predominant in Germany and to crush all liberal opposition. Vicky, now Crown Princess, since her father-in-law's accession as Wilhelm I, was a chief target; he embarked on a relentless dirty tricks campaign to denigrate her and her husband and to control Wilhelm I. Vicky had no chance against this titan, whose successes mounted as he founded the German empire on the bodies of the Austrians and the French.
Having won over the kaiser, Bismarck concentrated on separating Vicky's eldest son, the future Wilhelm II, from his parents and inculcating in him the policies of "blood and iron" and anti-semitism that were to have such disastrous consequences for Europe. "Press, Jews & mosquitoes," the kaiser was to write some years before the advent of Hitler, "are a nuisance that humanity must get rid of in some way or another. I believe the best would be gas?"
Wilhelm represented the strongest of arguments against a belief in heredity. He was mentally unstable, vain and given to overestimating vastly his capabilities and was, even in the opinion of Herbert von Bismarck, "as cold as a block of ice. Convinced from the start that people only exist to be used, after which they may be cast aside". Among the victims of this coldness were his parents; he clashed repeatedly with his mother (for whom he seems at one time to have cherished a semi-incestuous passion). His treatment of them, particularly during Fritz's long and agonising death from cancer, was nothing short of inhuman.
Tactless and naive despite her clear-sighted political intelligence, Vicky was easy prey for Bismarck. The chancellor infiltrated his spies into her household, alienated her three eldest children from her and spread the cruel rumour that she was having an affair and could not wait for her husband to die. Nor did fate spare her. Her eldest son was born with a useless arm, the result of incompetent treatment during a protracted labour. Her beloved Fritz, a dying, lame-duck emperor when he succeeded his nonagenarian father in 1888, had no time to achieve the reforms they had hoped for Germany (he lived only three months longer). Ten years later, Vicky's doctors diagnosed advanced breast cancer, metastasised into cancer of the spine, which took two agonising years to kill her.
This is a heart-rending story, beautifully told by Pakula, who writes with elegance, and interweaves the political and personal themes with great skill. She stresses (and perhaps exaggerates) the astonishing extent to which the personal relationships between the European ruling families affected the course of events. She has deployed archives and memoirs to construct a book that is both fascinating and instructive.
Hot news from Hodder of a thrilling development. Two Newcastle barristers have co-written a thriller, The Right to Silence, contributing one name each to the single pseudonym, Rankin Davis. Unable, therefore, to run two author photos, Hodder got their arty types to merge the shy pair's faces to create an image of a markedly handsome chap. Clearly, the implications of this innovation are stunning.
Future collaborations, including male-female partnerships, could provide opportunities for photogenic, fictional figures combining the best features of, for instance, Andrew Davies's mouth and jaw with Jane Austen's hair and bonnet. Where a writer is "difficult to promote", ie plain or nerdy in appearance, he or she might be persuaded to enter into a nominal collaboration with a model whose actual role would be confined to blending into the dust -jacket photograph. These are early, exciting days, of course, but how publicity tours would be conducted has not yet been sorted out. Holograms, I suspect.
Philip Kerr never lies. Francis Wheen disdains cat food. Francis Spufford stubbornly refuses to manifest Satanic tendencies. Disappointingly, anthologists do not, on the whole, come to resemble their anthologies. But James Loader, the editor of Cold Comfort, a collection of stories about dying, has come closer than most. A month ahead of publication, by what he calls "a macabre coincidence", he suffered a stroke that left him physically incapacitated, and unable to remember his own name. Now recovered, and happy to describe the "low farce" of temporary disability, Loader convincingly rebuffs the suggestion that the stress of finalising a two-year project might have induced the stroke. "No, no," he says with dignity. "As a matter of fact I'd just got off the back of a pantomime horse".
Hot tips for the British Book Awards. We can exclusively reveal the shortlist for the Butler and Tanner Book of the Year for the volume which brought the most punters into shops. Hats off to Gitta Sereny's Albert Speer, Nicholas Evans's The Horse Whisperer, Andy MacNab's Immediate Action, David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World and Delia Smith's Winter Collection.
Talk about new levels of literary cheek. Stephen Moss, the recently appointed literary editor of The Guardian, is unrepentant after a review of Sarah Bradford's life of the Queen appeared before his reviewer had seen the complete book. The piece contrasted Her Majesty with Elizabeth I, he protests feebly, and the reviewer, "felt he could do that from reading 20,000 words of extracts". Pshaw. As for the outraged letter he received from Reed, Moss will only say that it was "incendiary".
The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society edited by Norval Morris and David J Rothman. OUP £25 pp489.
‘One is absolutely sickened," wrote Oscar Wilde, "not by the crimes the wicked have committed, but by the punishments the good have inflicted," a dictum reinforced for us today by the furore over the women in Holloway prison, shackled while in labour. Little space is devoted to crimes in The Oxford History of the Prison, but a great deal to punitive measures. Sickening they were, and it is a relief that here they are filtered for the squeamish through the scholarly and often dry-as-dust idiom of American academe.
Most of the 13 contributors to the book, including its editors, are American academics. Still, they devote at least as much attention to British and European prison systems as they do to their own. If there is anything more to be known of prisio and geola (the Latin terms as origins are dutifully presented) it would be hard to imagine what that might be. A pity, though, that oversight has led to Rome's Hadrianeum being called "San" Angelo and Marat's assassin Charlotte "de" Corday.
The chronicle begins with prisons as they were before the time of formal custody, and ranges through types of incarceration in early modern Europe. Torture was an accepted fact-finding method, branding and mutilation were commonplace. The author remarks coolly that in Europe "no judicial sentence ever ordered a person's feet to be cut off". By the middle of the 18th century, there arose an increasing aversion to physical suffering and hence a diminution in punitive assault. Public executions began to lose their appeal, workhouses were established and the prison system revolved around forced labour. At least it was useful labour, such as spinning, weaving and "rasping", the pulverising of wood to make dye.
In the aftermath of the American revolution, England became a hotbed of crime, transportation was restored and the first fleet sailed for Australia. Eyes opened to the plight of prisoners began to see them as victims of disease, hunger and greed, and the next few years were those of the great reformers, Josiah Dornford and John Howard. Before the end of that century, Blackburn, the architect, designed 19 new prisons, ambitious to "use space and stone to shape human nature". But 80 years later, an illustration from Henry Mayhew and John Biny's The Criminal Prisons of London shows convicts wearing masks while exercising, to ensure total isolation.
Those sentenced to hard labour daily ascended 8,640ft on the treadwheel, the equivalent of climbing Ben Nevis more than twice, without even the consolation of knowing that their efforts were useful. "It is ironic," writes Sean McConville, the author of a fine essay on Victorian prisons, "that today gymnasiums can command large fees from devotees of physical fitness for allowing them to use modern versions of the wheel." Equally valueless was the shoving back and forth of a handle called the crank. "If I had the means," he writes, quoting the 1863 governor of Stafford jail, "of giving every man ... the full amount of discipline I am empowered to do by Act of Parliament, for two years, no man alive could bear it: it would kill the strongest man in England." In America, convicts were subjected to the iron gag, an instrument like a horse's bit, tightly fastened and strapped to the wrists which were crossed over the victim's back. Cells in one state prison in the late 18th century, Edgardo Rotman tells us, were 7ft long and 3 1/2ft wide.
On reform of the American prison system, Rotman writes sombrely of "an endemic tendency to inflict cruel punishment in prison environments," but, in spite of gross overcrowding and what he calls the failure of reform, improvement has taken place, especially in areas of sanitation, recreation and in the emergence of prisoners' legal status. The introduction of law and the courts into prisons contrasts with 100 years before, when a murderer's appeal was rejected because he was a "slave of the state" suffering "civil death".
Relegation to a French penal colony was known as "the bloodless guillotine" because of the high mortality among transportees. Exile, too, was the punishment in Russia where, rather surprisingly, it was believed that corporal punishment offended personal dignity.
Scandinavia seems to have Europe's most lenient prisons. In the United States prison system today, Aids is rife and tuberculosis a problem, "an impending and grave plague", writes Norval Morris in his thoughtful piece on contemporary prison life. "Money and morality point, as they sometimes do, in opposite directions."
British women, having "more sedentary habits" were better adapted than men to solitary confinement; in France the opposite prevailed it was thought a female prison population would be unable to cope with the effects of isolation. The expectation today is that women in prison must be mentally inadequate more psychotropic drugs are administered to them than to male prisoners. Not surprising, perhaps, that women "appear to have a harder time than men in coming to terms with imprisonment".
This book is lavishly illustrated with engravings and photographs, but the most interesting of its pictorial content are the productions of California State Prison inmates in our present decade, some of them stunningly beautiful, all moving or disquieting. A compelling chapter on the literature to come out of confinement mentions, among others, Dickens, Stendhal and Kafka and, inescapably, the work of Genet and his love-hate affair with incarceration.
In the chapter on political prisoners, there is something chilling about Hitler's death camps meriting fewer than two pages, a subject on which it has been justly said we should either be reverent at length, or shut up. But it would be hard to find an alternative in so huge a work. Here, in these sad accounts, shame and failure are piled upon one another, there is very little to be proud of or even complacent about. Juvenile reform schools no longer even pretend they have "a heroic child-saving mission to fulfil".
The paradox prevails: the less effective prisons are in reducing crime, the more clamorous is the demand for imprisonment.
Repossessing Ernestine The Search for a Lost Soul by Marsha Hunt. HarperCollins £15.99 pp302.
In this vivid and poignant book, Marsha Hunt completes her transformation from former lover of Mick Jagger and mother of his illegitimate daughter, Karis, rock singer and Bond Girl to accomplished author. Repossessing Ernestine is a family memoir and more, chronicling not just the spine-chilling tale of one woman's experience, but the inhuman treatment of the mentally ill in the days before Freud and Jung penetrated the ignorance around depression and neurosis, and the bitter legacy of slavery, generations after abolition.
It is the story of Hunt's search for her lost grandmother. From childhood, she believed that Ernestine, the wife of a southern preacher and mother of three sons, was dead. As a young woman, she had been committed to a mental asylum, a forgotten skeleton in the family closet. Only four years ago did Hunt discover that she was alive and living in a shabby nursing home in a poor black suburb of Memphis, aged 93.
To the Hunt children, Ernestine was spoken of rarely, and in hushed tones, as incurably insane, violent and unable to speak. Yet when Hunt met her, in 1991, she was struck only by her vulnerability, smallness and her slow walk, the dull shuffle of a long-term prisoner. Having been assured that she could recognise nobody, Hunt saw her pick up a photograph of her son (Hunt's father) as a baby, and whisper his name.
Ernestine had once been a clever and attractive young woman, who graduated from school with flying colours and married her former teacher, a respected figure in the Deep South. Hunt was haunted by a comment of her cousin: "Maybe she was never crazy. They used to lock women up just to stop them talking. Keep‘em quiet and shut‘em up."
Hunt surmises that, after having three sons in as many years, her grandmother had a severe bout of post-natal depression and, instead of being treated, was locked up. She discovered that shortly after Ernestine was committed her grandfather acquired a new lady friend, removing his motivation to visit, or care for, his "poor, dear, sick wife". Ernestine's boys were sent away to be raised by an aunt in Boston. Ernestine was as good as dead.
Hunt's determination to improve her grandmother's life locked her into a war against her relatives, who were embarrassed by her interfering and unwilling to see her grandfather's reputation tarnished. In 1994, Hunt went so far as to bring Ernestine to live with her in England. Yet after a few months, broke and unable to care for the old lady alone, she was forced to concede that her grandmother would have to return to America. This was to prove the turning point. Fuelled by guilt, or finally appreciative of Hunt's efforts, her uncle conceded that Ernestine should be moved to a nursing home near the family in Boston. Recently, Ernestine celebrated her 98th birthday. The love of a devoted granddaughter could not restore the wasted years of her life, but she may have found some peace of mind at last.
Ancestral Passions by Virginia Morell, Simon & Schuster £20 pp624.
This is the first full biography of the pre-eminent family of anthropology: Louis, Mary and Richard Leakey, whose fossil discoveries have shaped our understanding of human origins. Piecing together the fragments, Virginia Morell has constructed an intricate model of this rare species. It is compelling, inspiring and ultimately frightening.
Here was a family on a roller-coaster of dreams, one moment elated by a stupendous find, the next devastated by rejection, then buoyed up by "Leakeys' luck" once more. Their objective was to reverse the gravitational field determined by dry academics in London; their laboratory was the hard African floor, shared with hostile predators, not all of which were animals. Morell skilfully reveals how the bonds between them degenerated into loathing.
Mary, once so "utterly content" with Louis after finding a Proconsul skull that she decided to conceive a child on the spot, was to become caustic and remote, sickened by her husband's philandering. Their son Richard, who was to amass more hominid specimens in four summers at Lake Turkana than they had discovered in 36 years at Olduvai gorge, did much to spite his ailing and paranoid father.
But the figure of Louis bestrides the saga like an alpha male. The brilliant son of a missionary, brought up as a Kikuyu initiate, he quickly gained a reputation as a pigheaded maverick, who exaggerated the importance of his early finds. Ancestral Passions shows the magnitude of his task. In the 1920s, it was believed that humans originated in Europe and Asia. Attention was focused on China, where the first Peking Man skull had been discovered. Louis was determined to prove them wrong, armed with a fanatical belief that Africa was the cradle of mankind, as Darwin had predicted.
More intriguing was his understanding of the human condition. As Morell quotes from one of Louis's acquaintances: "He understood that for his sons to fight their way from underneath his shadow required a certain toughness ... he seems to have raised them as animals on the African uplands are raised to be aggressive, to be tough, to keep him on the defensive and ultimately to bring down the old lion himself..."
Yet after Louis's death in 1972, Richard was locked into a familiar pattern of fate, escalating from his row with Donald Johanson, discoverer of the 3m-year-old skeleton of Lucy, to losing his legs in a plane crash. The ultimate irony was receiving a kidney from his despised brother, and realising he could no longer hate him.
Drawing on private papers, letters and interviews, Morell teases out the family's contradictions. Louis helped to sow the seeds of Kenyan nationalism, but secretly spied on the Mau Mau. Mary, a stickler for quiet and order at excavations, seemed oblivious to the chaos in which she and Louis lived. Richard's efforts to devolve responsibility to Kenyans made him a key power broker. Morell has left no stone unturned to tell a story with the impact of an epic thriller.
The Sixth Extinction by Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin, Weidenfeld £18.99 pp271.
There have been five occasions in the history of life on earth when some catastrophe has wiped out more than half the species alive. There have also been 10 or so lesser extinctions, in which more than half survived. The most famous extinction, however, is one of the "Big Five" the event, some 65m years ago, which ended the era of the dinosaurs, opening the way for the rise of the mammals and, ultimately, the evolution of mankind.
The causes of such extinctions have been debated for as long as the fossil record has been studied. But over the past decade, a consensus has emerged a significant contribution to these disasters has been made by impacts from space, the collision with the earth of lumps of rock tens of kilometres across, triggering tidal waves and great forest fires, shrouding the planet under a veil of dust, chilling the globe and cutting off the sunlight on which plants depend for photosynthesis.
This realisation has helped to stimulate a reassessment of the way evolution has been at work on earth. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is superb at explaining how species evolve and adapt to particular conditions. But it is harder to see how Darwinian evolution alone can cause species to become extinct. Catastrophic impacts from space provide the mechanism for the extinctions and, after each extinction, Darwinian evolution provides the explanation for how the survivors evolve and adapt to cope. It happened 440m years ago, 365m years ago, 225m years ago, 210m years ago and 65m years ago. Each time, successful, well-adapted species were wiped from the face of the earth in droves, and a new phase of evolution began.
But this means that there is a large element of chance in how the living world came to be the way it is, and, in particular, how we came to be here at all. A century or so ago, and even well into the 20th century, it was possible to argue that evolution provided, in some sense, a steady progression from the most simple single-celled organisms to the glories of humankind. Now we see that it is good luck, as well as good genes, that decides which species leave descendants.
This realisation has had such an impact that it has spawned a clutch of books putting the role of chance and massive extinctions in evolution in perspective. The latest comes from Richard Leakey, best known for his investigations of the origin of humankind, and his long-time collaborator Roger Lewin, a science writer. Leakey is concerned not just about our own origins, but about our impact on the world. The rate at which human activities are leading to the extinction of other forms of life on earth is now so great that within 100 years we will have achieved (if that is the right word) as much as the five great extinctions of the past, wiping out more than half the species of 200 years ago.
This matters because there is good evidence that biodiversity is important to maintaining earth's ecosystem. Without enough diversity, ecosystems may collapse, triggering an even greater extinction. There are practical reasons for maintaining as many species as possible we may be able to use them. The hoary example (no less true for being hoary) is the American pharmaceutical industry, until recently spending $4 billion a year on developing synthetic drugs, and very little on searching for natural products that could be used in medicine, while taking in $8 billion a year from the sale of drugs derived directly from natural plant products. In the words of Hugh Iltis, of the University of Wisconsin: "It should be for them, the sponsors of reckless destruction, to prove to the world that a plant or animal species, or an exotic ecosystem, is not useful and not ecologically significant before being permitted by society to destroy it."
To put things in perspective, the "natural" rate of extinctions, the background against which evolution occurs during periods of environmental calm, is about one species every four years. At the lower end of the range of current estimates, it is likely that human activities will destroy 30,000 species each year as we move into the 21st century. That is 120,000 times greater than the background level of extinctions, the greatest catastrophe for life on earth since the meteorite which killed off the dinosaurs.
Leakey and Lewin adopt a sober tone, setting out the facts with authority, but soft-pedalling on the drama. Slow to build to their conclusion, they sometimes leave this reader, at least, urging them to get on with it. This may be a result of familiarity, for the story has been told more entertainingly by several authors recently. Perhaps we are reaching the stage of overkill in books on overkill; but if you are not yet familiar with the story, the Leakey and Lewin variation on the theme, clear and comprehensive, would be a good place to start.
In a 1912 newspaper interview, Carl Jung said to America: "You are about to discover yourself. You have discovered everything else." Jung's condescension was typical of Europe's turn-of-the-century view of the United States. America, most Europeans thought, was infantile and backward, "a land of savages masquerading as a civilisation". And the civilised trappings were in any case sub-European, second-hand.
According to Ann Douglas's Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (Picador £20), the first world war put paid to this line of thinking. The war left Europe bankrupt, but it did wonders for the American economy. And America's new economic ascendancy empowered a new cultural self-confidence. "Culture follows money," said FScott Fitzgerald, one of the chief exemplars of his country's new cocksureness. "We are the most powerful nation," he crowed in the 1920s. "Who could tell us any more what was fashionable and what was fun?"
By America, Fitzgerald nearly always meant New York. In the 1920s, New York was the only place to be, with its breathtaking new skyscrapers, its jazz, its radio stations, book publishers, advertising agencies, mass-circulation magazines. All the new songs, the new jokes, the new dance fads, the new styles of clothing, the new gimmicks were Made in Manhattan. Even despair was more glamorous if it issued from New York. Where European modernist writers were glumly elegiac, harking back to more purposeful past epochs, their American counterparts had nothing they wanted to look back on. They saw themselves as history's exultant escapees. In the 1920s, at long last, the American artist could, if he so wished, feel futile. He could even, with a bitter laugh, go off and live in Paris.
This sense of American culture not quite knowing what to do with its astonishing new potency provides Douglas with a starting point for her grippingly intelligent study of New York in the Jazz Age, a study which itself seems excitedly directionless at times. Douglas seems to know all there is to know about Manhattan in the 1920s, and her portrayal ranges far beyond the smart-set territory so admiringly charted by Fitzgerald. All the old Algonquin regulars are given the once-over, and there are side-glances in the direction of expatriates such as Ernest Hemingway and TSEliot: insufficiently lingering side-glances, I should say; after all, if New York was so wonderful, why did so many American writers of the day not want to live there? Douglas's real mission, though, is to penetrate what she would call the "city's psyche" at a key stage of its development, and in this she brilliantly succeeds. From now on, it should be impossible for cultural historians to write up "New York in the 1920s" from the back files of The New Yorker and a sheaf of Broadway playbills.
Douglas has several lively chapters on the so-called Harlem Renaissance, and hitherto obscure figures such as Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes and W E B Du Bois get as much attention as, say Scott and Zelda. She is impressive, too, on the new America's deeply ambivalent response to Freud. (Freud's nephew, she reveals, was one of the founders of America's advertising industry, and Freud himself once invented what he hoped would be a winning slogan: "Why stay alive when we can bury you for 10 dollars?"). Also, she gives a massively informative account of the origins of Manhattanised mass-culture a mass-culture which, she says, would soon achieve world-domination on a scale undreamed of by old-style European imperialists.
For Douglas, these various elements of the Jazz Age scene are no less important than the brittle sayings of Dorothy Parker and her co-wits at the Algonquin; one of the achievements of Douglas's book is to fit all the city's peculiar bits and pieces into a plausible mosaic. The pieces, she insists, do fit. Lines between high culture and low culture, art and commerce, were not so firmly drawn as they are now, and she recounts much lively interchange between the street and the elite.
There was interchange also between black culture and white culture of a kind which, nowadays, we might find difficult to fathom. In the 1920s, Al Jolson was a star of stars, and white Americans invented the sun tan. The richest woman in Harlem was a hair-straightener. The white modernists, says Douglas, were with Freud's encouragement anxious to explore their "primitive" true selves.
The negro modernists were keen to win status in the white cultural establishment: as far as they were concerned, if it was prestigious to be primitive, so be it for were they not, in truth, more "American" than most of their white New York neighbours? Even as white America was escaping European dominance, so by a corollary impulse black American embarked on its own enterprise of newly confident self-definition.
All of this Douglas teases out with skilful use of anecdotes, thumbnail biographies, statistics and a fair amount of personal conjecture. She is a compulsive welder of "significant" connections and zealous revealer of subconscious motivations. Not for nothing is Freud the dominant presence in her book. For Douglas, there is nothing vague about a zeitgeist: it is a deconstructable reality. As she sees it, whole cultures can have nervous breakdowns, phases of mania, phases of depression.
For America, Depression would come soon enough. The 1920s, though, were gloriously manic, adrenalised by the vision of new freedoms. In Douglas's account, America's freedom from European influence was accompanied indeed made possible by other, deeper freedoms. In particular, she speaks of the 1920s as the decade in which American culture became "masculinised" it finally escaped the psychic tyranny that had been imposed on it throughout the 19th century by strong women and old-time religion. Pre-war, American creativity had been in thrall to the Religious Woman, the ball-breaking Titaness white, middle-class, god-fearing, optimistic and repressive, the kind of woman who invented Christian Science, campaigned for Prohibition, wrote bestselling sentimental novels and, for example, dressed the young Hemingway in skirts and then upbraided him for writing dirty books (Hemingway's "grace under pressure", it has been said, owed everything to early "pressure under Grace" Grace was his mother's name).
For Douglas, the 1920s was a "matricidal" epoch. The "terrible honesty" the facing of hard, modern facts which, she says, typifies the new post-war American was really an effort to be free of mother, free of the pieties and falsehoods that mother insisted on maintaining. For these young matricides, one of the most exhilarating functions of the new supercharged New York was to outrage the spirit of New England.
Although Douglas does her best to keep this striking notion at the centre of her book, she is forever veering off into colourful specifics; in spite of her own speculative disposition, she has written a book that is likely to be valued more for the richness of its concrete details than for the theories these are intended to embody. And the appendix (a 90-page "bibliographical essay") is in itself an item of some value, even though several of the books it lists are now superseded by Douglas's own splendid labours.
HARVEY PORLOCK enjoys the fuss made about Kate Atkinson's Whitbread award.
Last week, Kate Atkinson came down to London from Edinburgh, collected the Whitbread Book of the Year prize for her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, and discovered quite a lot about life in the literary fast lane. Columnists squawked angrily about her opinions, journalists reinvented her as a bedazzled hick from the sticks, critics fretted over whether she deserved to win a prize ahead of the eminent Lord Jenkins or the sainted Salman. As a crash course in the barbed parochialism of the media scene, it could hardly have been bettered.
Atkinson's less than positive views on men and family life particularly annoyed commentators of the back-to-basics school. The award was "simply confirmation why the chattering classes deserve to be held in contempt", wrote Andrew Neil in his Daily Mail column. On the basis of a brief extract read out at the Whitbread dinner, Neil pronounced the novel "dull and uninspiring". In fact, he added, employing the most devastating insult in the metropolitan sophisticate's armoury, "even the children's book on the shortlist was more interesting". Echoing back across Why-oh-Why canyon came a response from another columnist, Minette Marrin of The Sunday Telegraph. "It is said that Atkinson's gender helped her win the Whitbread," wrote Marrin (sensibly avoiding to mention that a mere two of the last 10 Whitbread Books of the Year have been by women). Personally, Marrin was going to "bring up my son to defy the monstrous regiment of unreasonable women".
Down among the journalists, Atkinson was no longer a crazed feminist but the ever-so-'umble former chambermaid bemused by the ways of the big city. "Sitting in the hotel bar, pale, rather pimply, her hair unwashed, she looked like any tired London tourist," wrote the Daily Mail's Jane Kelly. Wearily, Atkinson pointed out to Decca Aitkenhead of The Independent on Sunday that "the press have made an astonishing fuss over the chambermaid business", but she might have saved her breath: the headline read, "A new chapter begins in the maid's story."
In The Daily Telegraph, Julian Critchley, one of the judges, explained why, in his view, Atkinson had won the Whitbread. "The corps of Lady Novelists plumped for Kate Atkinson on the grounds that we novelists must stick together," he revealed. The book was "simply not in the same league as Salman Rushdie's novel and Roy Jenkins's biography," argued The Sunday Telegraph's Jessica Mann.
Yet, elsewhere, the novel had many admirers. The Mail on Sunday's Elizabeth Buchan praised the narrator's "achingly alive voice...unique and, yet, universal". In The Times, Mary Loudon welcomed "a quirky, imaginative account of family life, with a deftness of touch that belies the passion and the pessimism lurking beneath the surface of the prose". It was "a lovely, big-boned book beautifully written and easy to read," concluded Megan Tressider in The Guardian. "Why the dissent? Probably for the simple reason it was written by a woman ... some gentlemen clearly prefer their women writers to be like Anita Brookner."
Meanwhile, another opinionated woman has been receiving the full de haut en bas treatment from critics. Reviewing Edwina Currie's A Woman's Place for The Guardian, Simon Hoggart speculated indecorously on the author's private life. Currie was
"a healthy woman, and I would guess she has spent more of her life having sex than going through red boxes. That would account for her greater assurance in that field". She was "good for a laugh, old Dirty Currie," conceded The Observer's Charlotte O'Sullivan, but A Woman's Place was "self-righteous, moribund mess". On the other hand, Express newspapers were dutifully enthusiastic "a rattling good read," wrote Clare Bristow on Sunday; "a sizzling, page-turning read," agreed Peter Grosvenor on Friday.
In The Daily Telegraph, Lynn Barber was having the most ghastly time she was actually obliged to meet Edwina Currie. First, the MP was over-familiar ("Edwina Currie seems to think we're old friends; God knows why"), then made the mistake of saying that she had enjoyed meeting great writers such as Ned Sherrin ("Gosh", sneered Barber). In her iciest Lady Bracknell tones, Barber concluded that Currie "is not very sophisticated ... she still behaves like a pushy provincial hair saloniste queening it over her fellow-passengers on a Saga cruise to Tenerife".
Meanwhile, across town, that other pushy provincial Kate Atkinson was catching the train back home. "I don't think anyone really wanted me in London," she commented rather sadly to The Independent on Sunday. Honestly, the ingratitude of some people.
YOUR Diary (January 28) cites intimidating letters sent to reviewers to drum up interest in a forthcoming book. This is not a new idea. In Dorothy L Sayers's An Arrow O'er the House, an author uses similar tactics to interest a publisher in a manuscript which he is planning to send. This story was published as part of the volume In the Teeth of the Evidence in 1939.
Judith Prendergast
London SW2
JOHN CORNWELL appears to lack a historical perspective. In his review of Colin Tudge's The Day before Yesterday (January 28), he suggests that it is a "myth" that our species could voluntarily "abandon the politics of exploitation and adopt the Christ-like politics of reverence". Yet it is a historical fact that by the end of the 4th century AD, most educated people in the Roman empire had done exactly that.
Cornwell seems oblivious of the power of religion and philosophy to change people's minds, for better or worse. The adoption of Christianity was a change for the worse, as succeeding centuries showed (see Gibbon's Decline and Fall for the proof). However, there is no doubt that a philosophy of greed and exploitation is not generic to human nature. If we want to construct and adopt a better philosophy, which gives the human race a decent future, then we can choose to do so.
A J Sinclair
Edinburgh
AS an archeologist who has participated in several digs in Israel, I was taken aback by the review of Keith Whitelam's book (January 21). William Dalrymple seems to have found an opportunity to air his prejudices against Israeli history in general and its archeologists in particular.
There was a movement from 100 to 30 years ago to try and use archeology to "prove" the Bible, but that was more based on work by German, British and American scholars such as Sellin, Garstand and Albright than their Israel counterparts. In recent times, Israeli archeologists have moved to a more radical programme of field-based investigation that challenges the capture of Jericho by Joshua and even suggests that the Children of Israel never came out of Egypt but lived side by side with the Canaanites and only overcame them as the tribes moved from their nomadic ways to a sedentary form of settlement.
Far from sidelining Palestinian history, Israel has established
university chairs in Islamic art and history, a museum of Islamic art in Jerusalem and numerous facilities for the Study of Arabic Culture and Literature. Dalrymple seems to be unaware of all this, as he is ignorant of the fact that "the distinguished archeologist Shulamit Giva" whom he quotes is female and not male!
Dalrymple equates the ancestors of the Palestinians with the Canaanites but this is pure conjecture if not fantasy. Nevertheless, if we go along with it, the problem seems to be that the Canaanites did not write their history in any form that has come down to us. A pity for them that they cannot match the imperishable prose of the Hebrew Bible.
Stephen Rosenberg
London W1
Is There a God? by Richard Swinburne, OUP £7.99 pp144
It is a virtue of clear writing that you can see what is wrong with a book as well as what is right. Richard Swinburne is clear. You can see where he is coming from. You can also see where he is going to, and there is something almost endearing in the way he lovingly stakes out his own banana skin and rings it about with converging arrows boldly labelled, "Step here".
It is surprising that a writer as clear as Swinburne has risen to the top of his profession (he is Oxford's Nolloth professor of the philosophy of the Christian religion). Theology is a field in which obscurantism is the normal path to success, and a favourite trick is to insist that religion has its own "dimension(s)", completely separate from those of science; science and religion are about different kinds of truth and you cannot use the criteria of one to judge the other; religion answers those questions which are outside the territory of science.
Swinburne will have none of these flabby evasions. His opening chapter expounds what he is going to mean by the God whose existence he plans to demonstrate, and it is very much not a vague synonym for The Ground of All Is-ness or Caring in the Community, but a spirited, supernatural intelligence whose existence, if demonstrated, would actually make a difference to something. Swinburne returns to an earlier, braver and more intellectually honest some might say foolhardy theology.
Swinburne is ambitious. He will not shrink into those few remaining backwaters that scientific explanation has so far failed to reach. He offers a theistic explanation for the very aspects of the world where science claims to have succeeded, and he insists that his explanation is better. Better, moreover, by a criterion likely to appeal to a scientist: simplicity. He shows that his heart is in the right place by convincingly demonstrating why we should always prefer the simplest hypothesis that fits the facts. But then comes the great banana-skin experience. By an amazing exploit of doublethink, Swinburne manages to convince himself that theistic explanations are simple explanations.
Science explains complex things in terms of the interactions of simpler things, ultimately the interactions of fundamental particles. I (and, I dare say, you) think it a beautifully simple idea that all things are made of different combinations of fundamental particles which, although exceedingly numerous, are drawn from a small, finite set. If we are sceptical, it is likely to be because we think the idea too simple. But, for Swinburne, it is not simple at all, quite the reverse.
His reasoning is very odd indeed. Given that the number of particles of any one type, say electrons, is large, Swinburne thinks it too much of a coincidence for so many to have the same properties. One electron, he could stomach. But billions and billions of electrons, all with the same properties, this is what really excites his incredulity. For him it would be simpler, more natural, less demanding of explanation, if all electrons were different from each other. Worse, no one electron should naturally retain its properties for more than an instant at a time, but would be expected to change capriciously, haphazardly and fleetingly from moment to moment. That is Swinburne's view of the simple, native state of affairs. Anything more uniform (what you or I would call more simple) requires a special explanation: "It is only because electrons and bits of copper and all other material objects have the same powers in the 20th century as they did in the 19th century that things are as they are now."
Enter God. God comes to the rescue by deliberately and continuously sustaining the properties of all those billions of electrons and bits of copper, neutralising their otherwise ingrained inclination to wild and erratic fluctuation. That is why, when you've seen one electron, you've seen them all, that is why bits of copper all behave like bits of copper, and that is why each electron and each bit of copper stays the same as itself from microsecond to microsecond. It is because God is constantly hanging on to each and every particle, curbing its reckless excesses and whipping it into line with its colleagues to keep them all the same.
Oh, and in case you wondered how the hypothesis that God is simultaneously keeping a billion fingers on a billion electrons can be a simple hypothesis, the reason is this: God is only a single substance. What brilliant economy of explanatory causes compared with all those billions of independent electrons all just happening to be the same: "Theism claims that every other object which exists is caused to exist and kept in existence by just one substance, God. And it claims that every property which every substance has is due to God causing or permitting it to exist. It is a hallmark of a simple explanation to postulate few causes. There could in this respect be no simpler explanation than one which postulated only one cause. Theism is simpler than polytheism. And theism postulates for its one cause, a person (with) infinite power (God can do anything logically possible), infinite knowledge (God knows everything logically possible to know), and infinite freedom)..."
Swinburne generously concedes that God cannot accomplish feats that are logically impossible, and one feels grateful for this forbearance. That said, there is no limit to the explanatory purposes to which God's infinite power is put. Is science having a little difficulty explaining X? No problem. Don't give X another glance. God's infinite power is effortlessly wheeled in to explain X (along with everything else), and it is always a supremely simple explanation because, after all, there is only one God. What could be simpler than that?
Well, actually, almost everything. A God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe is not going to be simple. His existence is, therefore, going to need a modicum of explaining in its own right (it is often considered bad taste to bring that up, but Swinburne does rather ask for it by pinning hopes on the virtues of simplicity).
Worse (from the point of view of simplicity), other corners of God's giant consciousness are simultaneously preoccupied with the doings and emotions and prayers of every single human being. He even, according to Swinburne, has to decide continuously not to intervene miraculously to save us when we get cancer. That would never do, for, "If God answered most prayers for a relative to recover from cancer, then cancer would no longer be a problem for humans to solve." And then where would we be?
If this is theology, perhaps Professor Swinburne's colleagues are wise to be less lucid.
SHETLAND's burgeoning colony of otters such as the one above playing on the shore is in danger of becoming too friendly. Dozens are being knocked down on the islands' roads as they lose their fear of people. Signs saying "Caution Otters Crossing" have been erected at danger spots, including the approach roads to Europe's biggest oil terminal at Sullom Voe.
But they have failed to slow the death toll among otters, whose numbers have gradually risen on Shetland to more than 1,000, against a total United Kingdom population of 7,390. Terry Holmes, an otter expert who lives on Yell, said the bodies of up to 25 were reported by the roadside each year after being hit by cars and trucks. However, Jim Conroy, of the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, said the Shetland Islands' population was "probably the healthiest in Western Europe".
FOR the past two years the Furness Homeless Support Group has been operating a full-time service offering food and advice to 35 daily visitors in an old draughty portable building.
However, a house known as the Agnes McDowell Project has now been specially converted to provide emergency accommodation and drop-in centre facilities for the homeless of Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria.
The town is still suffering from the social fallout of 10,000 people being made redundant over the last two years. The number of homeless people and those requiring short-term emergency accommodation has increased.
Until the Agnes McDowell Project was conceived there were no hostels in Barrow and very little prospect of finding shelter for clients as wide-ranging as teenage single mothers to middle-aged men and women suffering temporary hardship. Jim Vince, 72, who runs a car dealership and property company, is a member of the Furness homeless group who has regularly helped with the Christmas shelter project.
Anxious for the group to secure proper premises that were not overcrowded he approached a local pensioner, William McDowell, who owned a ramshackle house standing empty in Barrow. Mr McDowell initially agreed to rent the three-storey property to the group and then offered it for sale for a nominal amount on condition it was named after his mother, Agnes McDowell.
A sale price of £15,000 was agreed with Mr McDowell, who then said the group could borrow the money from him to purchase the property and repay him at £2,000 per year. The rebuilding and renovation work was carried out by Mr Vince's property company on a no-profit basis, with much of the building material provided at discount. The top two storeys of the property have been renovated, partially paid for by £17,000 of charitable funding. The ground floor will become the day support centre with a fully fitted kitchen, dining room and offices for counselling and advice.
Food is provided by local branches of Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Asda and other local food stores. The large stores became involved after members of staff began working as volunteers with the homeless in the town.
Anne Diss, who works for Community Action Furness, chairs the group. "This project would not have been possible without the commercial sector of Barrow," she said. "The willingness to help has been brilliant and we have only had to pay for materials and basic labour."
Mr Vince became involved in the project because of his close ties with the town: "I came here to the town in 1943 and have done well out of the place and felt I had to put something back into it," he said.
"We don't have the homeless sleeping on the streets of Barrow in cardboard boxes but there is still a problem with people trying to sleep on someone else's floor or in bed-and-breakfasts. More jobs are threatened at Vickers and prospects for employment locally do not look good. We need this centre more than ever."
The Agnes McDowell Project is one of the winners of the 1995 Community Enterprise Awards, organised by Business in the Community and sponsored by The Times and Touche Ross.
In spite of the weather, cock greenfinches are beginning to quarrel with each other over the females in the flock, and pairs will soon be forming. Some cock birds are also making their long, slurping spring call. Song-thrushes fell silent during the coldest weather, but some are now singing again; the first chaffinches are also singing. Collared doves are making their triple coo on roofs and television aerials.
But the countryside is still thronged with winter visitors from the sub-Arctic. Waxwings have now spread over the whole of the British Isles, and have been observed in the centre of Dublin. Redwings are very common at present, and are feeding on the last remaining hawthorn berries: they are like song-thrushes, but when they fly they show a red flash under their wings. Hazel catkins, or "lambs' tails" are swinging loose, but are still green: they will slowly turn yellow as the pollen develops in them. The pollen will be blown onto the female flowers, which are tiny red stars, just beginning to form on the same trees as the catkins.
Leaves are opening on the corky, grey elder twigs: it is a tree that thrives where people live and work, since it grows best on disturbed earth.
BIRTHS: Mme de Sevigne, writer, Paris, 1629; John Lingard, Roman Catholic historian, Winchester, 1771; Sir Robert Peel, Prime Minister 1834-35 and 1841-46, Bury, Lancashire, 1788; Dwight Moody, evangelist, East Northfield, Massachusetts, 1837; John Boyd Dunlop, pioneer of the pneumatic tyre, Dreghorn, Strathclyde, 1840; Karl Huysmans, novelist, Paris, 1848; Sir Arthur Keith, anthropologist, Aberdeen, 1866; "Patsy" Hendren, England and Middlesex cricketer, Chiswick, 1889; Adlai Stevenson, American statesman, Los Angeles, 1900.
DEATHS: Joost van den Vondel, poet and dramatist, Amsterdam, 1679; Philipp Jakob Spener, theologian, founder of pietism, Berlin, 1705; Thomas Carlyle, writer and historian, London, 1881; A.B. (Banjo) Paterson, Australian folk poet and author of Waltzing Matilda, 1941; George Arliss, actor, London, 1946; H.M. Tomlinson, novelist and essayist, London, 1958; Marianne Moore, poet, New York, 1972; Emeric Pressburger, film producer, Suffolk, 1988.
Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville was first performed in Rome, 1816.
The Prince of Wales was declared Prince Regent, 1817.
The RAF College at Cranwell, Lincolnshire, was founded, 1920.
Laker Airways collapsed with debts of £270 million, 1982.
CAPTAIN: J M De Halpert to MoD London in rank of Cdre, 14.6.96; J A Rimington to Shape, 23.5.96.
COMMANDER: I D Arthur to Vanguard (Port) as CO, 14.5.96; N M C Chambers to MoD London, 26.4.96; B R Eastley to FAAIT Yeovilton, 19.4.96; P M Hambling to RNH Haslar, 26.3.96; T J Hutchinson to Neptune, 26.4.96; R M Little to MoD London, 1.3.96.
LOCAL LIEUTENANT COLONEL: K L De Val to MoD London, 19.7.96; M G Wimpenny to CTCRM, 7.6.96.
Retirements
COMMODORE:N R Hodgson, 22.1.96; J G F Cooke, 27.4.96.
CAPTAIN: L Redstone, 19.4.96.
COMMANDER: T H Boycott, 1.2.96; I J MacDonald, 6.4.96; N W Sweny, 23.4.96.
SURGEON COMMANDER: M Sach, 20.4.96.
The Army
BRIGADIER: T Cross to MoD, 5.2.96; S G Middleton to MoD, 5.2.96.
COLONEL: J C Campbell to MoD, 5.2.96; R N Coleman to PM S&S, 5.2.96.<nip> LIEUTENANT COLONEL: P M Davies, RE, to Be CO 33 Rngr Regt (EOD), 5.2.96; A W H H Macleod, RE, to RE MRO, 5.2.96; R A H Self, RA, to MoD, 5.2.96; M G A Barratt, RGBW, to MoD, 5.2.96; D M Lampshire, RLC, to MoD, 5.2.96. J A Terrington, R Signals, to MoD, 5.2.96.
Royal Air Force
GROUP CAPTAIN: N J Buckley to HQPTC, 5.2.96.
Retirements
GROUP CAPTAIN: D A Baron, 3.2.96; C S Thomas, 10.2.96.
WING COMMANDER: A P Wetherall, 9.2.96.
Mr Jack Aspinwall, MP, 63; Mr Robert Atkins, MP, 50; Sir Norman Blacklock, urologist, 68; Mr Jasper Clutterbuck, executive chairman, Morland and Company, 61; Major-General Sir Simon Cooper, Master of Her Majesty's Household, 60; Mr Ian Findlay, former chairman, Lloyd's, 78; Lord Gibson, 80; Mr Clifford Haigh, journalist, 90; Mrs Molly Hattersley, educationist, 65;
Miss Susan Hill, novelist and playwright, 54; Professor Sir Alan Hodgkin, OM, former Master, Trinity College, Cambridge, 82; the Hon Douglas Hogg, QC, MP, 51; General Sir Geoffrey Howlett, 66; Mr M.E.P. Jones, director, National Museums of Scotland, 45; Mr Dennis Kennedy, chairman, Honeywell, 61; Mr David Martin, MP, 51; Lord Justice Morritt, 58; Mr Frank Muir, writer and broadcaster, 76; Professor A.M. Neville, former Principal and Vice-Chancellor, Dundee University, 73; Miss Charlotte Rampling, actress, 50; Canon Colin Semper, former Provost of Coventry, 58; Sir Michael Simpson-Orlebar, diplomat, 64; Sir Rodney Sweetnam, president, Royal College of Surgeons, 69; Lord Williams of Mostyn, QC, 55; Sir Leslie Young, former chairman, British Waterways Board, 71.
The Earl of Warwick
A memorial service for the Earl of Warwick will be held at St Mary's, Warwick, on Monday, February 19, at 12.15pm. Travel arrangements: a train departs Marylebone at 9.45am and arrives at Warwick at 11.36am. A coach will be waiting at Warwick station to take people to the church and return them after the service.
LLOYD'S OF LONDON'S City headquarters has been bought by Despa, a German property fund, which has beaten off bids from three rivals.
The price for the ten-year-old building is in the region of £180 million, £20 million below its initial building cost.
The Lime Street property has been for sale unofficially since last May, when plans were approved to sell it. Officially it has been on the market since December.
Prudential is believed to have been one of the firms interested in bidding for it, but Despa made an offer on January 31.
A spokesman for Lloyd's said yesterday that contracts had been exchanged and the sale would go ahead either today or tomorrow after all 18 members of the Council of Members had been contacted and had given their approval.
The money raised will go towards the insurance market's proposed £2.8 billion settlement for loss-making ames. Lloyd's will lease back the building for 25 years, paying about £30 per sq ft.
The purchase confirms the growing dominance of the Germans in the UK property market. Despa already owns a number of buildings in the centre of London, including Hill House in Little New Street and 171 Victoria Street, which is let to John Lewis, the retailer.
Regulations affecting German open-ended property funds changed in the early 1990s and for the first time they were allowed to invest outside the country.
Lloyd's said that it had secured "a good deal" on the property, but still has to pay for maintenance and repairs on the controversial glass and steel building, which has been found to have design problems.
Despa is expected to make a 6 per cent return on its investment.
Buckingham Palace
February 3: The Prince Edward this afternoon attended the Rugby Union Match between England and Wales at Twickenham, Middlesex.
BUCKINGHAM PALACE
February 3: The Princess Royal this morning departed the Falkland Islands for Ascension Island.
Her Royal Highness this evening arrived at Ascension Island, was received by the Administrator (Mr Roger Huxley) and attended a Reception at the Exiles Club.
The Princess Royal later departed Ascension Island for Royal Air Force Brize Norton.
SANDRINGHAM
NORFOLK
February 4: Divine Service was held in West Newton Parish Church this morning.
The Reverend Canon George Hall preached the Sermon.
Mr Frederick Waite was received by The Queen when Her Majesty invested him with the Insignia of the Royal Victorian Order.
BUCKINGHAM PALACE
February 4: The Prince Edward, Patron, Scottish Badminton Union, this afternoon attended the finals of the Scottish National Championships at the Meadowbank Sports Centre, Edinburgh, and was received by Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of the City of Edinburgh (Mr Norman Irons, the Rt Hon the Lord Provost).
BUCKINGHAM PALACE
February 4: The Princess Royal this morning arrived at Royal Air Force Brize Norton from Ascension Island following the conclusion of Her Royal Highness's visit to the Falkland Islands.
Lieutenant Colonel Peter Gibbs and Air Commodore the Hon Timothy Elworthy were in attendance.
Daiwa Bank ended operations in the US on Friday when it returned its federal and state banking licenses under a deal made with the US Government after huge trading losses. Fifteen of its 17 offices were transferred to Sumitomo Bank.
Stadium Group, the engineering company, says it intends to float in the next three months to raise £10 million, giving it a market capitalisation of £30 million.
Hanson said yesterday that a special dividend was one of several options during the demerger process. Speculation is that a 12p sweetener may be added to the package.
Sears is expected to reveal tomorrow that it has sold its Saxone and Curtess shoe shop chains to Stephen Hinchliffe, the Sheffield businessman behind Facia.
The 111-strong Saxone chain and the 124 Curtess stores were put up for sale by Sears early last month as the group moved to reduce the number of its shoe chains.
In the Tory leadership election that brought Mrs Thatcher to power, she won 146 votes against Mr Whitelaw's 79 on the second ballot. Mr Heath never again sat on the front bench.
Mr Heath steps down after 11-vote defeat by Mrs Thatcher.
The contest for the Conservative Party leadership now lies between Mrs Thatcher and Mr William Whitelaw, the Conservative Party chairman. After Mr Heath had withdrawn last night under the blow of a defeat by Mrs Thatcher on the first ballot, Mr Whitelaw came under strong pressure from a group of backbenchers to declare his candidature for the second ballot ...
Like many other Conservatives, Mr Whitelaw is conscious of the personal tragedy that has overwhelmed Mr Heath. It would be a callous politician who failed to recognize it. Mr Heath continues nominally as Opposition leader until the new leader has emerged on the second or third ballot, but in fact he has asked Mr Robert Carr, the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, to undertake his duties in the House. He is retreating into the background, badly hurt but not finished.
There is no doubt that Mr Whitelaw or Mrs Thatcher, if elected leader, would immediately call him on to the front bench to play a full part in the revival of the Conservative Party and the Opposition in the Commons ... Mrs Thatcher, surrounded by her backbench promoters last night, refused to assume the final victory that would make her the first woman party leader and the first potential woman Prime Minister in British history. She simply said that she would fight the second ballot and then the third ballot. She showed how steely she can be and noted the importance of her first ballot lead, but she added that the fight had not yet ended.
Mrs Thatcher, like Conservative backbenchers, knows that among her votes may be some that were tactically cast to ensure a second ballot, rather than to ensure her emergence as the new leader. Mr Fraser's 16 votes probably had an anti-feminine motivation and therefore cannot be counted on. Nor can the 11 blank papers or abstentionist votes.
For there is little doubt that yesterday the Conservative rank and file was voting out Mr Heath rather than picking its new leader ...
Mr Heath has to summon up all his remarkable sources of courage. He will face the scorn of the House as best he can and it would be a meagre spirit that did not feel for him ... Mrs Thatcher, in her first public appearance as a potential party leader last night, showed her mettle and her quality. An hour after the result of the count had been declared, she appeared in committee room 14 to face the television cameras, the radio microphones, the photographers, and journalists ...
Characteristically, she set out to dominate the company. She called for the cameras to be stilled. At first, an over-excited group of journalists ignored her request. She made clear that she would not be disobeyed; and when she realized that the microphones were still working she thrust them right and left, away from her, with both hands.
It was a remarkable and commanding debut and in an important sense illustrated what kind of party leader she would be ...
Halsall, right, his brother Alan, second right, joint managing directors of David Halsall, with John Walker, left, and Tony Hyams of BZW Private Equity Investment, which has arranged a £5.25 million capital injection to aid expansion at the toy distributor. The firm, which serves Woolworths, Toys ‘R' Us and Asda, among others, has a turnover of £31 million
TESCO'S plan to recycle hundreds of thousands of tonnes of cardboard and plastic each year gather momentum on Friday when the second of nine planned recycling units opens.
The nine recycling service units, run by Christian Salvesen, will create 700 jobs and give Tesco annual savings of at least £12 million. On Friday Sir John Stanley, MP for Tonbridge & Malling, and Dame Peggy Fenner MP, chair of the all-party Retail Industry Group, will officially open the 77,000 sq ft unit at Snodland, Kent. Cardboard is crushed into 650 kg bales and sold to a recycler, while shrinkwrap plastic is packed into 100 kg bales for recycling into dustbin bags and supermarket carrier bags.
INSTITUTIONAL shareholders are putting pressure on British Gas for a further boardroom shake-up that could result in the departure of Cedric Brown, the embattled chief executive.
Three non-executive directors, including Sir Stanley Kalms, chairman of Dixons, and Lord Walker, who was the government minister responsible for the privatisation of British Gas, are also under threat. British Gas executives are believed to be disappointed with the contribution the non-executives have made to the business, particularly Lord Walker's reluctance to consider the disposal of some assets.
However, yesterday British Gas described the reports of internal strife as "speculative".
The shares have performed poorly over the past year as the company has lurched from one disaster to another. It also suffered a setback when the Government ruled out a consumer levy to enable the company to bail out of its take-or-pay gas contracts.
At the centre of the boardroom friction is the uneasy relationship between Richard Giordano, the chairman whose three-year contract expires at the end of the year, and Mr Brown. It is understood that some shareholders have raised the spectre of blocking an extension to Mr Giordano's contract unless further reforms are made.
The recent boardroom shake-ups have been widely interpreted as bearing the stamp of Mr Giordano, leaving Mr Brown increasingly isolated as the only major remaining member of the British Gas old guard.
Roy Gardner, a contender for the chief executive's position, last month moved from financial director to take responsibility for renegotiating the take-or-pay contracts and for managing competition in the household market. Philip Hampton was recruited from British Steel to become financial director, while John Wybrew was lured from Shell to take control of strategy planning and communications. Three other executive directors Russell Herbert, Norman Blacker and Howard Dalton were forced off the board last autumn.
Brodrick Haldane, society photographer, died in hospital in Edinburgh on February 3 aged 83. He was born on July 12, 1912.
SIR Cecil Beaton, looking back shortly before his death at the great photographer whose pictures had chronicled prewar London society, observed: "Of course, it was Brodrick Haldane who began what we now call photo-journalism. He was taking pictures at private parties long before me. He was really the founder of modern society photography."
Unlike Beaton, however, and also the Earls of Snowdon and Lichfield, of whom he was an early mentor, Haldane never used artificial and studio lighting, preferring always to capture his subjects in natural light. His camera, invariably a Rolleiflex, recorded great beauties like Marlene Dietrich and Margaret Duchess of Argyll with the same fidelity as a group of Stirling housewives, photographed like a flock of black crows against the fading light, or an Italian urchin gazing out to sea on the waterfront in Naples.
Brodrick Vernon Chinnery Haldane was born in Edinburgh into one of Scotland's great landed families. He was the youngest of the four children of James Brodrick Chinnery Haldane, 26th Laird of Gleneagles, and his wife, Katharine Napier. His cousins included the Liberal Lord Chancellor, Viscount Haldane of Cloan, the scientists John Scott Haldane and J.B.S.Haldane, and the novelist Naomi Mitchison.
His boyhood was divided between Gleneagles, his family's 7,000-acre ancestral estate in Perthshire's Ochil Hills, and Alltshellach, the Haldane mansion at Nether Lochaber, in Inverness-shire. While at Lancing College, he began contributing items to London gossip columns and in 1930, at a fete at Glamis Castle, he took his first professional photographs of the Countess of Strathmore, mother of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother using a Box Brownie. One indignant laird, who declined to pose for him that day, said to his father: "I trust this is merely a passing phase."
The Haldanes were aghast when he also became an actor, appearing with Sir Philip Ben Greet's company in Everyman at the Westminster Theatre, in several other West End productions, and also in films, including Murder at Monte Carlo with the young Errol Flynn; Get Your Man, with Rex Harrison; Happy, with Dorothy Hyson; and Two Hearts in Waltz Time, with Valerie Hobson.
His first great photographic coup was persuading the reclusive George Bernard Shaw to pose for him. Nervous and fumbling, as Haldane invariably was while working, he won the sympathy of Shaw, who rose from his chair and took a light reading for him. Somerset Maugham, Charlie Chaplin, Noel Coward and Compton Mackenzie all became close friends, and visits to the South of France produced unusual pictures of Marlene Dietrich bathing, and a warm friendship with the future American President, JohnF.Kennedy, and his family.
The Queen Mother, a great admirer of Haldane's work, once rebuked her detective for impeding his view of her at a public function. "Mr Haldane is a friend of mine," said Her Majesty firmly. "Now, Brodrick, where would you like me to stand?" The Duchess of Windsor was equally obliging, patiently holding Haldane's flashbulbs at one party, while the late Aga Khan forgave him when those same flashbulbs exploded, showering him with fine glass.
In 1941, while serving with the Royal Artillery at Chatham where he read Vogue between bomb attacks and made a rockery around the gun emplacements his father died and was succeeded as 27th Laird of Gleneagles by Brodrick's elder brother, Alex, a hero of Dunkirk. Thereafter, for almost 50 years, he was styled Younger of Gleneagles, until 1990, when his brother appointed his cousin, Martin Haldane who, unlike Brodrick, was married with children as his heir. It was Martin who succeeded as 28th Laird of Gleneagles in 1994 on the death of Alex.
A handsome man, somewhat vain about his appearance, Haldane stood on his head for five minutes every morning to assist his hair growth, and underwent a facelift at 60 to remove lines from around his mouth.
His brother did not entirely approve, when, in 1976, he opened his ornate Georgian flat in Edinburgh to the public. There, he dispensed tea and gave a personal guided tour of such Haldane heirlooms as the wheelchair used by his novelist ancestor, Sir Walter Scott.
In 1992, at the age of 79, he made an unexpected return to acting, appearing as the Judge's Clerk in the Scottish television drama series, The Advocates.
By then, he had been long recognised as one of the most celebrated photographers in the world. Karsh of Ottawa called him "the greatest living British photographer" and both Lord Snowdon and Lord Lichfield publicly acknowledged their debt to his early help and influence.
Though suffering from cancer, Haldane travelled to Romania in April last yeary, and was received at Cotroceni Palace in Bucharest by President Ion Iliescu, of whom he took his last important photographs. The visit displeased ex-King Michael of Romania, whose grandmother, Queen Marie, had known Haldane in his youth.
He was a great gossip; there was little of social consequence that was not first discussed in his drawing room before it became public. Never a snob, he ignored all social distinctions. His two maids and his former window cleaner were among his closest friends. His charm and savoir faire disguised a strong character. Attempts to persuade him to abandon Margaret Duchess of Argyll, after the scandal of the late duke's divorce action against her, were resolutely rebuffed, and she remained a welcome guest in his home until her death.
During the last weeks of his life, he completed his autobiography with the help of the Scottish writer Roddy Martine. In his final interview, published last month, Haldane told Lynn Barber: "I don't care what you say about me, as long as you make it amusing."
He never married and is survived by his cousin Martin, the 28th Laird of Gleneagles.
Major-General Reynell Taylor, CB, Chief of Staff, HQ British Army of the Rhine, 1980-84, died from heart failure on January 22 aged 67. He was born on April 5, 1928.
REYNELL TAYLOR was the fifth generation of military officers in his family, three of whom became generals. His first military forebear, a 10th Hussar, was on Wellington's staff at Waterloo, and he is reputed to have almost caused the loss of the battle. He was sent to guide the Prussians in their attack on Napoleon's flank, but he lost his way, causing the near fatal delay to Blucher's intervention. Another forebear, Colonel William Morris, led the 17 th Lancers at Balaclava.
Walter Reynell Taylor, the son of Colonel Richard Reynell Taylor of The King's Own Scottish Borderers, was educated at Wellington College, where he showed himself to be an extrovert, an able leader with a good brain, and a first-class athlete. He was head of school, head of house, captain of rugby and the Victor Ludorum in athletics. After attending one of the earliest postwar courses at Sandhurst, he was commissioned in the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards, which he joined at Sabratha in Tripolitania in 1948.
The promise which he had shown at Wellington as a leader and games player was confirmed as a junior regimental officer with the addition of being a first-class horseman and polo player. He had a natural talent for leading his troopers, who enjoyed being under his command, and he became one of the founder members of the Royal Armoured Corps' Junior Leaders Regiment at Bovington.
He started his staff career in 1957 as a student at the Staff College, Camberley, to which, after a two-year exchange appointment in Canada, he was brought back as a Staff College instructor. As the GSO2 (Coord) he did much of the planning for the reintroduction of battlefield tours.
Promoted lieutenant-colonel in 1967, he went out to Singapore as a member of the Defence Planning Staff. The confrontation with Indonesia had just ended, and he was faced instead with the depressing business of planning the Wilson Government's withdrawal from the Far East. Luckily his tour was cut short by his being given command of his regiment in Germany in 1969; he returned to the Staff College as a full colonel two years later.
He was now moving up into the policymaking reaches of the Army. He had proved himself a man of high principles who worked tirelessly and optimistically, making many friends from all walks of life. Promoted brigadier in 1972, he had a successful command of the 12th Mechanised Brigade at Osnabruck where his abilities and relaxed approach were reflected in a colleague's remark, "Everyone thoroughly enjoyed being in his brigade; he made it fun."
He spent 1975 at the Royal College of Defence Studies in Belgrave Square from which he entered the Ministry of Defence for the first time in the key appointent of Brigadier General Staff, Military Operations. It was a depressing period to serve in Whitehall: defence was suffering swingeing financial cuts in the last days of the Callaghan Labour Government before Margaret Thatcher began to restore some of the damage.
He escaped from Whitehall on promotion to major-general in 1978 when he was appointed Commander British Troops, Cyprus, and administrator of the Sovereign Base Areas. This was a job he enjoyed and which came naturally to him. His outstanding negotiating skills, enthusiasm and determination helped to re-establish Anglo-Cypriot relations that had been so soured by the Turkish invasion of the island, which many Greek Cypriots accused Britain of failing to pre-empt. He was universally liked, and before he left in 1980 he acted as British Military Representative on the combined US/UK task force for the support of the Western nations in Beirut. He was appointed CB in 1981 for his services in Cyprus.
His last appointment in the Army was as Chief of Staff in HQ British Army of the Rhine. He retired in 1984 and went back to Cyprus where he had made many friends and contacts involved in Middle Eastern affairs. There he became Director of the Middle East Management Training Centre in Nicosia.
On his return to England in 1987, he bought a farm in Somerset. He took up a consultancy in the concrete industry, and latterly became marketing director of EST, the concrete plant specialists. He investigated and won approval from the Ministry of Defence for a joint venture scheme for the manufacture of the firm's range of concrete batching plants and for the transfer of technology to Saudi Arabia under the al-Yamamah economic offset programme. He spent a considerable time in the Gulf states promoting the project, and was well respected for his knowledge and diplomacy. He was still involved with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states at the time of his sudden death.
He married Doreen Myrtle Dodge in 1954. They had a son, who joined his father's regiment, and a daughter. His second wife, whom he married in 1982, was Rosemary Gardner (nee Breed). They had one son. Both his families survive him.
THE European single market will probably collapse early next decade if there is any delay or deviation from the Maastricht plan to create a European monetary union by January 1999, according to Jacques Santer, President of the European Commission, speaking at the weekend.
The blunt warning issued by Mr Santer, and political leaders from Germany and Belgium, reinforced the statement by Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor, on Friday that European integration had become a "question of war and peace".
In what appeared to be a concerted campaign to suppress doubts about the Maastricht process, before they got out of hand, Mr Santer joined Jean-Luc Dehaene, the Belgian Prime Minister, and Wolfgang Schauble, chairman of Germany's ruling Christian Democrats, in saying that the creation of the single market was "not an irreversible process".
Speaking to an audience of senior businessmen at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the three leaders used almost identical language to convey their stark message.
"The single market is not irreversible and those who believe that it is are mistaken," said Herr Schauble. "Europe is first and foremost a political programme, not an economic programme. If we abandon what has been agreed at Maastricht, we cannot hold onto what has already been achieved." He added that any thought of delaying Maastricht was dangerous and counterproductive. Achieving monetary union "is not a matter of time, it is a matter of will", he said.
Mr Dehaene's threat of protectionist barriers within Europe were even more explicit. "My conviction is that without monetary union, the single market will not hold," he said. "Those who think the internal market is irreversible have illusions.
"At the moment, we accept some of the consequences of competitive devaluations because we have the perspective of monetary union in 1999. But if we have no perspective of monetary union, countries which suffer from competitive devaluations will take measures that are completely contrary to the internal market to protect themselves."
Mr Santer said that he fully agreed with the other two leaders' comments and added an explicit warning about the consequences of delaying EMU beyond 1999. "Any delay might mean that monetary union is never achieved," he said. "That would be a giant step backwards on the road to political union. I don't know whether the internal market would survive such a blow."
Even Sir Leon Brittan, the European Commission Vice-President, who is generally considered to be most committed to maintaining free trade, said that "nothing in this world is irreversible" and added that "monetary events could put pressure on the single market".
However, in contrast to the other leaders, who said that the failure of EMU would lead to the re-erection of protectionist barriers, Sir Leon insisted that such pressures would only reinforce "determination to defend the single market".
Underlining the growing rift between the unqualified supporters of a single market and the European leaders who want to use it as a bargaining chip to achieve monetary union, Sir Leon said: "The commitment to a single market is separate from the commitment to the single currency. The Commission's policy and the treaties are clear. Those countries which do not participate in monetary union are fully entitled to the benefit of the single market.‘'
Gene Kelly, dancer, choreographer and film actor, died in Los Angeles on February 2 aged 83. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on August 23, 1912.
THE career of Gene Kelly, which spanned four decades, was a classic American success story, with virtually no setbacks. Almost at once he established himself as a dancer without rival on screen apart from the perennial Fred Astaire, and his later work extended itself to choreography and film direction with equal success. Two, at least, of the films he starred in, choreographed and directed, On The Town (1949) and Singin' in the Rain (1952), are among the unquestioned classics of the cinema.
Yet, in spite of these triumphs it often seemed that Kelly was not a natural dancer in the way Astaire was. There was always an awareness of the pains he was taking, the sheer hard work of brain and body which went into his performances. But this sense of physicality, of constant struggle, was an important and perhaps the most personal element of his style. It was all of a piece with the extrovert, insistently masculine quality of his dancing. It is not coincidental that one of his later television specials was called Dancing: A Man's Game. It was possible to find Kelly's screen personality antipathetic, but not to deny him the major credit for some of the American cinema's finest films and some of its most exciting musical moments.
Gene Curran Kelly was born of Irish parents. Sent by his mother to dance school from the age of seven, he graduated early from being taught to teaching himself, and by his early twenties was running two dance schools. In 1938 he decided to try his luck on Broadway, and soon got a part as a speciality dancer in the Cole Porter musical Leave It to Me. From that he went on to ever bigger roles in various musical shows, and worked as dance director on several.
He first made a big impression in 1939 playing the role of Harry the Hoofer in the first production of Saroyan's The Time of Your Life, and the following year became unmistakably a star when he played the title role in the Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey, in which he was required to sing, dance and act as the unscrupulous gigolo and would-be owner of a nightclub. It was his enormous success in this show which got him noticed by Hollywood, though curiously enough he was never called upon in Hollywood to play anything so tough and cynical. There his screen persona was to develop into something more wholesome, athletic and unmistakably all-American.
He went out to Hollywood under contract to DavidO.Selznick, but Selznick had no suitable role for him, and his first film was a loan-out to MGM. It was a musical, For Me and My Gal (1942), and in it he had a starring role, opposite Judy Garland. The teaming (repeated on subsequent occasions) was a success, the film was a success, and MGM liked their new star so much they bought up his contract. The connection was to be a long and happy one, since Kelly stayed at the same studio for the next 15 years and made 27 films for it during that time, including nearly all of his classics.
Though through the years Gene Kelly did from time to time play non-singing, non-dancing roles in straight dramas, he and everybody else felt that his special talents lay in the musical area. He began as a dancer, but already on stage he had had experience as a director and choreographer, and before long he began to fulfil these functions in the cinema too.
He began to choreograph his own numbers with Thousands Cheer (1943), the most memorable part of which was a dance in which he used a mop as his partner. In Cover Girl, made the next year on loan to Columbia, he starred opposite Rita Hayworth and had the opportunity to develop more fully his qualities as a performer and choreographer. The film contains one of his first anthology-pieces, the "alter ego" dance in which he dances with himself in double-exposure.
Experimentation of this kind with the actual materials of the medium was to remain a continuing preoccupation with Kelly. The form to which he was to return most frequently first appears in Anchors Aweigh (1945), which features a sequence in which he dances in a cartoon framework, matching his actions with those of animated characters. He was to return to this not, finally, very satisfactory procedure in Invitation to the Dance (1952-56) and his later television version of Jack and the Beanstalk.
Other films of these years which remain memorable include Ziegfeld Follies (1946), in which for the first time he danced with Fred Astaire; The Pirate (1948), a musical by Cole Porter in which he was happily reunited with Judy Garland, and Living in a Big Way (1947), a curious comedy-drama by Gregory La Cava into which were interpolated a couple of excellent numbers devised by Kelly and his regular collaborator Stanley Donen.
These two evidently wanted even more overall control over the films they worked on, and in Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949) they were given it when they originated the story and collaborated on the direction, under the practised eye of Busby Berkeley. This breezy musical of life in a baseball team, with Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin as the three male principals, was obviously a sort of sketch for the following year's On The Town, in which Kelly and Donen for the first time received full directorial credit; it was perhaps the most innovatory single film in the history of the musical.
What was really original about On the Town was its complete freedom of form, with song, dance and dramatic action merging almost imperceptibly into one another, each used according to the best interests of the moment. Its refreshing use of actual locations let fresh air into the studio conventions usual at that time for the musical. If anything, the formula was improved upon in the next Kelly-Donen collaboration, Singin' in the Rain, a loving recreation of Hollywood in a period of transition with the coming of sound, which permitted Kelly himself to give one of his most charming performances and create one of his most magical moments in his solo version of the title number.
A third Kelly-Donen collaboration, It's Always Fair Weather, followed, less successfully, in 1955, but meanwhile Kelly had branched out on his own to make Invitation to the Dance (1956), a feature film consisting entirely of dance episodes. This was his most cherished and personal concept but unfortunately for the most part it showed up rather cruelly the limitations of his range as a choreographer. This had been much better served in An American in Paris (1951), one of the most popular among his films, in which he worked as star and choreographer with Vincente Minnelli as director. It climaxed in the famous ballet sequence which remains one of the screen's most ambitious attempts to come to terms directly with the dance.
After the end of his contract with MGM in Les Girls (1957) Kelly turned increasingly to straight acting, in films like Inherit the Wind (1960), in which he played a cynical journalist based on H.L.Mencken, and to directing films in which he himself did not appear, most spectacularly Hello Dolly! in 1969. He also returned to the theatre, staging among other shows the Rodgers and Hammerstein Flower Drum Song and the spectacular, ill-fated Clownaround.
In 1974 he returned to his old home, MGM, as co-narrator of That's Entertainment, a compilation of great numbers from old MGM musicals. There was a sequel, directed by Kelly, That's Entertainment Part Two in 1976, introduced by him and Fred Astaire. Kelly also participated in a third dose of the same medicine, That's Entertainment III (1994), directed by Bud Friedgen and Michael J. Sheridan. Cyd Charisse, Lena Horne, Debbie Reynolds and Mickey Rooney were among the stars of Hollywood's past featured on that occasion, but not Fred Astaire, who had died in 1987.
Gene Kelly was three times married. His first marriage, in 1940, to the actress Betsy Blair ended in divorce in 1957. His second wife, a dance assistant, Jeanne Coyne, died in 1973. After her death Kelly raised their children. In 1990 he married the writer Patricia Ward and is survived by her and by the daughter of his first marriage and the son and daughter of his second.
STANDARD LIFE, one of the country's leading investors, wants a complete overhaul of executive bonuses to ensure that senior managers are rewarded for "outstanding performance not mediocrity".
Guy Jubb, the insurer's corporate governance director, said that the directors of FT-SE 100 companies should set an example for the rest of the industry. "We are committed to share ownership by executives but the scheme should motivate them to achieve outstanding results, not reward them for mediocrity," he said.
Two FT-SE 100 quoted companies singled out by Standard Life are Carlton Communications, the media group in which the insurer has a 3 per cent stake, and BT. Standard Life has given a warning it will vote against Carlton's plans for paying senior managers hundreds of thousands of pounds in bonuses. Selling its stake was "always an option", Mr Jubb added.
Michael Green, Carlton executive chairman, is understood to be in line for a £500,000 bonus on top of his basic salary of £450,000. Carlton executives could get a bonus in shares of up to 100 per cent of their basic salaries if its share price and dividends produce a total return within the top 25 of FT-SE companies over three years. Standard Life feels performance targets are too easy for the managers to achieve.
Norwich Union, which has a 3.5 per cent stake in Carlton Communications, has also expressed "concern" over the media group's bonus plan.
From the President of the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association
Sir, The news of large pay increases received by NHS trust chief executives (report, February 1) should be no surprise, but creates an understandable irritation to other healthcare workers who have not been so fortunate.
The need to operate 450 or so local health services in competition with each other has inevitably created the need for experienced and expensive executives to manage the system. Any reduction in the expertise or numbers of the "men in grey suits" will cause NHS reforms to fail.
We predict that NHS trusts will soon appreciate the advantages of merging with adjacent trusts to create large providers of healthcare for sections of the country. Significant economies in management costs could then be made to the advantage of patient care.
Perhaps these healthcare conglomerates will once again be called "Regional Health Authorities" and become the start of a National Health Service, with a uniform provision for all. Then, staff could be paid on a national scale, with efficient and simple national negotiations.
Yours sincerely,
ROBIN LOVEDAY, President,
Hospital Consultants and
Specialists Association,
Number One, Kingsclere Road,
Overton, Basingstoke, Hampshire.
February 1.
From Mr P. J. M. Stoney
Sir, The requirement that every trust hospital should show a 6 per cent rate of return on capital appears to be driving the entire NHS hospital system.
In order to achieve this rate, trust boards have to adjust their service delivery levels, wards have to be closed, staffing levels adjusted downwards, equipment replacements postponed, surgical procedures delayed, late payment to suppliers authorised. Reduce the 6 per cent rate and healthcare service levels can be raised; increase it, and provision declines.
The trouble with this way of doing things is that patients are subjected to sudden changes in standards of service because of supply-side constraints.
The Department of Health and its Treasury paymasters need to consider what rate of return on capital would deliver healthcare outcomes superior to those currently attained.
Yours faithfully,
P. J. M. STONEY (Chairman,
Finance Committee, Broadgreen
Hospital NHS Trust, 1991-95),
Liverpool Macroeconomic
Research Limited,
University of Liverpool,
PO Box 147, Liverpool L69 3BX.
January 29.
From Professor Sir Roy Calne, FRS
Sir, All over Britain as your report today makes only too clear hospitals are under pressure. In addition to the critical shortage of casualty doctors highlighted by your report, patients with cancer and dangerous vascular conditions are having their operations cancelled because of the shortage of intensive-care beds; some of those operated on are being transferred many miles to intensive-care beds in distant hospitals; and increased stress on the nurses who staff critical-care units is leading to premature resignations.
There can be no medical justification for these failures, and there is an urgent need for a review of the system which has created them in particular of the distribution of intensive-care beds between hospitals, the criteria for the admission of patients, and the stressful alternation between periods of excessive and too-little work which stems largely from the "ring-fencing" of critical-care units.
Hospital administration is criticised for wasting money on the salaries of unnecessary bureaucrats and squandering time and professional expertise on useless committees. However, even if management were pared down to a minimum, a decent health service that can provide dignified care for the community will require more money and revised priorities.
This must be a dreadful thought for politicians with an election looming; but it would be preferable to acknowledge with honesty that the present state of affairs is unsatisfactory and, in some instances, a disgrace. How can I face my patients and tell them that the essential major operations for which they have been prepared both mentally and physically are cancelled yet again?
Yours sincerely,
ROY CALNE,
University of Cambridge
Clinical School,
Department of Surgery,
Addenbrooke's Hospital,
Hills Road, Cambridge.
February 2.
From Mr Alistair Eastwood
Sir, I heartily agree with Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's lament regarding the pop music of today.
I too am over forty.
Yours sincerely,
ALISTAIR EASTWOOD,
Bristol Pasta Factory,
37 Gloucester Road,
Bishopston, Bristol.
January 29.
From Mr B. Wood
Sir, To my mind popular music in this country is particularly healthy and creative at present.
With the integration of global styles and influences (one would cite Bjork to the Bhundu Boys), the whole firmament is a multicultural melting pot and all the better for it. At the same time there is the Englishness of, say, Jarvis Cocker rubbing shoulders with perennials such as Ray Davies or Tilbrook and Difford, whose songs are more quintessentially English than the American-influenced Lennon and McCartney.
Yours sincerely,
BRIAN WOOD,
37 De Lacy House,
Preston New Road,
Blackburn, Lancashire.
January 31.
From Mr David Barnes
Sir, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber may well lament the standard of popular music today (report, January 29), particularly with regard to musical theatre, but if he really is seeking out new talent, why not fling down the gauntlet to artists of all ages rather than only those younger than he is?
Perhaps Sir Andrew could also perform a really useful task by setting up a service to match up lyricists with composers, and vice versa. Without access to each other, the aspirations of both are doomed, for, as one talented but composer-less lyric writer of my acquaintance laments: "Without music, my lyrics are just poetry and who wants to pay to hear poetry?"
Whilst there is no questioning that Sir Andrew's own precocious talents have blossomed in the intervening years since Joseph, perhaps the reason that there is, in his own words, "so little going on" can partly be attributed to his own success. Such a lucrative monopoly of the West End musical stage from Joseph, Cats and Starlight Express to Sunset Boulevard leaves little room for new works or talent to find either a home or entrepreneurial backing.
Yours faithfully,
DAVID BARNES,
Managing Director,
Modern Media & Music,
10 Bourlet Close, W1.
January 29.
From Mr Charles Wallis-Newport
Sir, According to my reckoning, your description of Bristol nestling "between the Quantocks and the Mendips" (Weekend, January 27) places our great seaport of the West some 25 miles to the south of the River Avon and in the general vicinity of that jewel of the Somerset Riviera, Burnham-on-Sea.
Yours, somewhat disoriented,
CHARLES WALLIS-NEWPORT,
41 Burnham Drive, Bleadon Hill,
Weston-super-Mare, Avon.
From the Chairman of The Wildlife Trusts
Sir, Councillor Simon Melville, in his letter of January 25, states that none of the five national environmental organisations which were co-signatories to Dr Simon Lyster's letter of January 19 appeared at the Newbury bypass public inquiry in 1988.
In fact, The Wildlife Trusts were represented by BBONT (Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Naturalists Trust) and the Hampshire Wildlife Trust, who jointly presented substantial and detailed written evidence on our behalf.
At the inquiry the Nature Conservancy and The Wildlife Trusts recommended that, in the event of the highly undesirable route now under construction being chosen, the road should be carried on stilts where it will cross the superb Kennet and Lambourn valleys a view that has been strongly endorsed by the National Rivers Authority.
That option has been rejected. Embankments are now to be constructed across the river corridors, which will be severely detrimental to many plants and animals. Otters, which are now making a welcome return to this region, will be particularly vulnerable to the heavy traffic as they explore the road embankments and seek routes along the riversides.
Yours faithfully,
ROBIN CRANE, Chairman,
The Wildlife Trusts,
The Green, Witham Park,
Waterside South, Lincoln.
Sunday nights will not be the same again or not, at least, for a long time. Most of you, I know, will be mourning the passing of the hugely popular A Touch of Frost (ITV), which ended last night. But not me: Jack Frost, I am afraid to say, has always left me cold.
This indifference has three points of origin; a fact which, I realise, will be of similar indifference to the 17 million people who have watched in the last five weekends. But in the interests of stimulating debate and in the vague hope that I may not be entirely alone, I shall share them with you.
First, there is David Jason's oh-so-familiar performance as Frost, a policeman who has somehow inherited all the mannerisms of Del Trotter, but unfortunately none of the charm. Then there is Frost himself, an old-fashioned copper who believes in old-fashioned coppering results first, evidence later and if someone can be bullied into a confession... well, so much the better.
The third objection is more of an irritation. It irritates me that the success of the series will once again vindicate ITV's low-risk, high-return approach to popular drama stick the right star in just about anything and we'll watch it. Which is why we'll be watching Nick Berry, Robbie Coltrane and Jason until the Larkin cows come home. Now there's something to look forward to.
But having shared that, let us return to last night, which saw the series sign off with a story that not only contained some unplanned but unfortunate echoes from real life (pretty female students, stalkers, long-distance drivers among the suspects) but also bore a passing resemblance to a story from the last series of Cracker. But fair's fair as far as I can recall Fitz's crazed campus killer didn't have a thing about mermaids. I'm sure I would have remembered.
Frost's killer, however, did, which led to some memorable dialogue as the net closed: "If your son is a fruit-cake, Mrs Jarvis, I need to know about it."
But for all the shortcomings of a disjointed story (not to mention the strange disappearance of an entire subplot), I wouldn't have missed Jonathan Hyde for anything. Hyde is such a supremely sinister actor that he is nearly always cast as a red herring. But as Dr Keith Michaelson, the denim-shirted Lothario of the psychology department, he reached new heights.
Not only had he sexually harassed the victim just before she was pushed down the stairs, but his long-suffering wife attempted suicide the next day. Then, just when things could not look any blacker, Frost broke into his office and discovered Michaelson was the author of...VIOLENT DEATH, a huge volume with a title in helpful, easy-to-read block capitals. Did he do it? Don't be silly.
Last night also saw the last Pie in the Sky (BBC1), the passing of which really is reason for mourning. It took me a series or so to get used to Richard Griffiths's brilliantly understated performance as DI Henry Crabbe, the reluctant policeman and part-time restaurateur, but now I am addicted.
Of course, the series bears absolutely no resemblance to real life, which is part of its Sunday night charm. Fresh from his triumph of nabbing the garden gnome gang last weekend, Crabbe spent last night hot on the trail of two Russian car thieves, which if nothing else provided an excuse for some good subtitle jokes.
Bearing, as it does, no relation to real life, this improbably rotund policeman spends his life surrounded by improbably attractive women at home by his wife Margaret (Maggie Steed) and the ever faithful Nicola (Samantha Janus) and at work by DS Cambridge (Bella Enahoro), whose wardrobe could never be described as "plain-clothes". All three give lovely performances, with Steed injecting the required steel to lift the restaurant end of things.
At the police end those duties fall to Malcolm Sinclair, who plays assistant chief constable Freddy Fisher. Sinclair provides the perfect foil for Griffiths, with a performance that teeters on the edge of parody, but never actually crosses it. His task was made easier last night by the arrival of Phyllis Logan who, as the ambitious but accident-prone Detective Superintendent Chalmers, cleverly consigned Lady Jane and Lovejoy to history. She was almost unrecognisable which, unless you are David Jason, is generally a good thing.
But undoubtedly the pick of the weekend's detectives was Wexford in The Ruth Rendell Mysteries: Simisola (ITV, Friday). Not having read Rendell's original, I don't know whether it is she or Alan Plater, its adapter, who should take the credit for a quite beautifully crafted script. It may wear its social conscience rather too openly on its sleeve for some, but the moment when Wexford (George Baker), the great white liberal of the Kingsmarkham constabulary, fell into the "all black people look the same" trap was exquisitely constructed. This being Rendell, it was the "all black corpses look the same" trap, but the point was well made.
The latest Wexford is also technically outstanding, with precisely framed photography, meticulous sound (offices echo in that depressing way they do) and music that is used sparingly but creatively.
With the story two-thirds done, two questions remain. Who or what is Simisola and why is one of the main suspects probably the prettiest jobcentre claims clerk you'll find this side of Pie in the Sky? But perhaps her looks are integral to the plot.
Lynne Truss is on holiday
From Mr Geoffrey Goldsmith
Sir, Repeating "I'm a night watchman" to get to sleep (article, January 30) works like a dream, but there is a problem.
I find I awake every hour presumably to make sure that all's right with the world.
Yours faithfully,
GEOFFREY GOLDSMITH,
64 Guildford Park Avenue,
Guildford, Surrey.
February 1.
From the Reverend R. J. Hills
Sir, When training for the sacred ministry I learnt to pray every night for the people I met during the day.
In retirement when I can't sleep ("How to get some sleep without counting sheep", Body and Mind, January 30) I visit former parishes in imagination and walk down streets remembering all I can and soon drop off.
One need not be a priest to think of old friends. People are more interesting than sheep.
Yours truly,
JONATHAN HILLS,
19 Church Way, Oxford.
January 30.
From Wing Commander R. Dauncey
Sir, I can confirm your interesting article about the arousal from sleep by different types of noise ("A jumbo disturbs us less than a baby's cry", Mind and Matter, January 28).
In 1949 my parents lived in Brunswick, Germany, under the turning point for the RAF aircraft flying into Berlin along the central corridor during the airlift.
On arrival for the summer holidays, I remember spending the first hour fascinatedly watching the aeroplanes (all noisy, mostly 4-engined piston/propeller-driven) coming in at about 3,000ft one every three minutes. From then on I did not notice them, day or night, except when there was a change, say, in engine note or if there was a gap of a few minutes longer between aircraft.
A few residents in the area did become obsessed by the noise and evidently heard every one. They were the ones who couldn't sleep.
Yours faithfully,
RICHARD DAUNCEY,
Lermoos, 34 Main Road, Naphill,
High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.
February 1.
From Mr Nick Hardwick and Mr John Whitaker
Sir, February 5 will mark a lamentable change in Britain's honourable history of tolerance. From that day welfare support will be withdrawn from many asylum-seekers newly arrived in the United Kingdom.
Oxfam and the Refugee Council have direct knowledge of the violence and persecution which daily drive thousands of people to leave their countries of origin and seek safety abroad. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported last November that the number of people fleeing from war has risen to 27 million, a rise of 10 million in the last 10 years.
In January the High Commissioner expressed grave concern at the UK Government's decision to withdraw welfare benefits, saying that this could place the UK in violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international treaty obligations.
We believe that these benefit changes, and other measures being proposed under the new Asylum and Immigration Bill, will increase the distress and suffering of thousands of the most vulnerable people in Britain.
Rather than run the risk of being forced to alter the legislation if it is challenged in the courts, the Government should reform its procedures for dealing with asylum claims, of its own volition and out of a basic sense of humanity.
Yours etc,
NICK HARDWICK
(Director, Refugee Council),
JOHN WHITAKER
(Deputy Director, Oxfam),
Oxfam,
274 Banbury Road, Oxford.
February 2.
Nerves are tingling in the high street. On Friday, Hanson announced that it would close six out of every ten of its Powerhouse electrical shops, shedding 2,300 jobs, mostly of the old-fashioned full-time variety. The old electricity board showrooms are following the late Rumbelows as retailing concentrates in fewer hands and shifts out of town. Yet life is hardly a bed of roses for gainers, such as Dixons and Kingfisher's Comet, any more than for the all-conquering superstores.
Ten days ago, Sainsbury warned its shareholders of its first fall in profit in 20 years as a public company. So big are Sainsbury and Tesco that they are there to be shot at. To retain their more affluent customers, they must continuously innovate and improve service. To keep the price-conscious, they must discount basic ranges. Costs are under pressure.
Not long ago, however, the sort of consumers who expect tax relief for nannies were complaining bitterly at the ever higher net profit margins the big groups were making. Critics blamed them for environmental ills and demanded protection for the high streets whose business they were taking. Price controls, to be enforced by Ofshop's director-general of food distribution, did not reach the political agenda. But regulation was in the air. It has led to new rules on new out-of-town development to protect high streets. In reality, the retail trade is one of the great success stories of competition. A new Hobart Paper, inspired when Mr Growser was in full cry, explains why an unregulated market worked so well for most consumers, if not for shop workers' families, society or the countryside.
Mighty as the big four grocers became, strongly though their well- nurtured brand names buoy their profits, competitors could always challenge them. When big groups took the yuppie era too seriously, discounters at home and from abroad seized their chance, just as the early Tesco brought the market stall to the high street 40 years ago.
High streets could fight back, too, if shops join with local councils to mimic the management of £6 billion groups. In the long run, they will succeed only if they bring consumers back by choice. That means welcoming cars, making shopping more fun and more secure and slashing rents.
In retailing, better service and lower prices have gone hand in hand with greater concentration, high margins and super-normal profits. Groups such as Marks & Spencer, in clothing, and Sainsbury, in food, can charge relatively low prices but still make "monopoly" profits because they improve cost efficiency continuously and use their market power to capture much of the extra efficiency they force on to manufacturers. Food retailing is now highly concentrated. About half of all sales are made by four groups. But that is because shoppers prefer what they offer. Super-normal profits depend on continuous innovation and heavy investment.
The drawbacks of oligopoly pale beside the benefits of the market forces that created it. Imagine what would have happened if critics had succeeded in casting supermarkets as semi-utilities. If Ofshop controlled prices, it would have stifled competition and innovation, returning paradoxically to the stagnant days of retail price maintenance. If it controlled profit margins, or return on capital, it would have stifled investment. If it zoned location, it would have preserved the old miseries of a wet winter Saturday on the high street.
Sadly, you do not need to imagine this nightmare. You can see it happening today in the battle over regulation of telecommunications. BT achieved its monopoly by state fiat, not consumer choice. But after a dozen years of intense regulation in the private sector, aimed at creating a fully competitive market, it is fair to assume that BT's dominance now owes something to its own competitive efforts . Entry is so open that virtually any American phone company worth its salt is in the UK wired market, and there is plenty of competition in wireless telephony.
To Oftel, however, BT's dominance will always be an affront. It is deemed harmful in itself (per se as American theorists have it), evidence that Oftel must redouble its efforts to regulate. Oftel has stopped BT entering the entertainment market, making it uneconomic to invest in a national information superhighway. Now Oftel wants BT to give plenty of advance notice of any new services, so that competitors can respond straight away. It is hard to imagine a more numbing deterrent to innovation by BT or a freer licence for its rivals to be complacent.
Oftel also assumes that BT's super-normal returns are malign monopoly profits, not the natural product of a growing market and its own lively response to competitive pressure. It therefore plans to slash BT profits by imposing even bigger annual price cuts. In the last regulatory round, Oftel assumed BT would have to cut costs to the best international levels to maintain returns. That damaged Mercury, then the main competitor, so badly that it has retrenched and lost hope of ever rivalling BT. If Oftel now slashes returns that can be made at low costs, it will dish newer competitors too. They will no longer find it worth investing heavily. Regulation will again entrench BT's dominance, but slash its ability to invest.
Stephen Littlechild, the much- criticised power regulator, recognised that competition only flourishes if profits are worth chasing. There is still time to stop this Oftel nonsense before the regulatory spectre of a cheerless, profitless old high street descends on the naturally vibrant telecoms industry.
Trouble in Store, by Terry Burke and J.R.Shackleton, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs.
From Mr Jack Arkinstall
Sir, Most drivers I know, and they include ambulance and volunteer ambulance car drivers as well as many private car drivers, wear glasses.
I am fortunate that I do not have to wear glasses, but I am war-disabled and have to drive an electric wheelchair through narrow streets in this town with lorries thundering past me.
Never has the thought occurred to me that a driver's glasses might fall off (letters, January 28, 31). But it has occurred to me that the disgraceful state of the roads could and does lead to accidents.
Yours sincerely,
JACK ARKINSTALL,
99 Beach Road,
Selsey,
Chichester, West Sussex.
February 1.
Given so little latitude to raise prices without losing sales to competitors, Britain's supermarket groups are left with little option but to scrutinise every aspect of their cost bases to try to lift profits and margins.
About 18 months ago, in the search for cost savings, retailers started to focus on the seemingly simple process of moving products from the manufacturer to the retailer's distribution depots and then to the customer. They ruthlessly attacked the system of transporting products from depots to stores, injecting greater efficiency and reaping substantial cost savings.
According to Tesco, the same number of vehicle trips now deliver three times the volume of produce to their stores daily, and fuel consumption is down by almost a fifth. But the process of shifting goods from the manufacturer to the depots was left alone.
The reason was simple. The first stage of goods movement, called "primary distribution", fell to the individual suppliers to organise. But attention has now begun to switch to primary distribution, with Tesco leading the way.
At first glance, primary distribution could be considered as interesting as watching bread defrost, but the implications of its management are far-reaching and often provoke outbursts of invective from the public.
A common feature of Britain's motorways is the seemingly endless stream of swaying lorries. Country lanes and villages are plagued by thundering trailers racing along in their quest to drop off that day's supplies of kippers and lettuces to supermarket groups' distribution depots scattered around the country.
The situation is made markedly worse by the knowledge that many lorries are trundling around either empty or only half full.
David Smith, Tesco's head of primary distribution, says: "Each of our depots has an average of 200 lorries arriving each day, about 15 per cent of which are probably half empty when they set out from the supplier. Overall, about 30 per cent of all mileage travelled in this country is thought to be travelled empty."
The inefficiencies in the system are mainly the fault of the system itself. The short lifespan of many items means that supermarkets demand fresh stock on a daily basis and manufacturers are almost constantly on the move in a never-ending delivery cycle. The result is that manufacturers supplying a limited line on a national basis often embark on their journeys with surplus space and then make the return journey emptyhanded.
In principle, the burden of the transport bill rests with the supplier, but, in reality, these costs are added to the price charged to the retailer for the products. It is this that has spurred Tesco into action.
The supermarket group is overhauling the outmoded system, in a move that is expected to save millions of pounds as well as to produce the welcome by-product of markedly cutting the number of lorries on Britain's roads, as well as pollution.
Typically, every day, about 2,500 lorries head for Tesco's 22 distribution depots, which are as far apart as Livingston outside Edinburgh and Chepstow in Gwent. Arriving in predetermined half-hour slots the lorries offload at one depot and then dash to the next and then the next.
Mr Smith says that this poses problems for small companies, such as the supplier of St Peter's fish, a tropical fish, who is based in Derbyshire: "They have to deliver to all our depots, but it's not viable because of the cost involved."
Even for those that supply only Tesco's eight composite depots, which enable chilled, fresh and frozen products to be delivered through a system of multi-temperature warehousing and vehicles, the distances travelled are significant. For example, under this system, a farmer might have to travel a total of 2,500 miles every day of the week to supply Tesco and its other retailers with potatoes.
That is no longer the case. Tesco is sitting down with its thousands of suppliers, organising them into groups, which then contract out the distribution of their products to haulage companies.
On the face of it, the idea seems so simple and the benefits immediately tangible. In theory, fewer lorries are needed, so transportation costs fall and there is more latitude for suppliers to cut the prices they charge to Tesco.
Although the benefits are apparent, the logistics of developing the system are fiendishly complex. One major factor for a supplier to consider is how it affects its non-Tesco business. If only the Tesco business is sub-contracted out, the supplier would have even less cargo to transport in its half-empty vans to other retailers. This could push prices up, rather than down. As a result, the haulier will also transport non-Tesco business.
Another complication is that foodstuffs must be kept at strictly controlled temperatures. There are a variety of temperature regimes: frozen; zero for foods such as fresh meat and fish; plus three degrees for produce such as apples; plus ten for other produce, including exotic fruits; plus 15 for bananas, bread and other items; and ambient for goods such as baked beans, health and beauty products and clothing.
Tesco has been trying out the system in Cornwall, Yorkshire and East Anglia. The trials were all conducted for zero-temperature goods because this was considered the most difficult to manage. "This is a very sensitive area. We are dealing with factory finished products and the temperature range at which they can be moved and held is very narrow," says Mr Smith.
In the case of Yorkshire, Tesco has 13 suppliers and although they are not small businesses the volumes they supply to Tesco are relatively small and often result in surplus lorry space.
This has all changed. Under the new system, Reed-Boardall, an independent haulage company, collects the goods from the 13 suppliers, assembles orders in a consolidating warehouse, and then delivers them in full lorries to Tesco depots. Tesco calculates that as a result of using lorries to their full capacity, the number needed to carry the goods could be cut by as much as 25 per cent.
Currently, about 10 per cent of Tesco's total volume is managed through the new system, but, by the end of the year, the figure could rise to 50 per cent as more suppliers are grouped together.
Mr Smith believes that, if rival retailers undertake similar exercises, the savings to the industry will be significant. "It could reduce the industry's distribution costs by tens of millions of pounds and it would be great if it has the added by-product of halving the number of empty runs from the present level of 30 per cent, as well as reduce lorry numbers by 25 per cent," he says.
It is still early days, but overhauling primary distribution undeniably offers retailers an extremely desirable means for boosting profits and margins in what is one of the most competitive sectors of British industry.
From the Editor of Dance Europe
Sir, How ironic that Virginia Bottomley should have chosen to present us with a logo featuring dancers in order to sell London (report, Travel News, February 1).
Unless she does something now to help talented young dancers to get the training they need funding for dance students by means of discretionary grants is now virtually non-existent there will scarcely be any dance in London in five years' time.
Perhaps her design team should start work on something more apt featuring businessmen in suits?
Yours sincerely,
EMMA MANNING,
Editor,
Dance Europe,
PO Box 326, London N5 2JL.
January 30.
ROSS GOW, Old Etonian and a former director of CT Bowring, is the winner of the City Diary's Christmas ditty competition. A bottle of champagne is on its way to him for Ode to Equitas, which begins:
Our former leader, once a monk,
Has seen the light and done a bunk.
For greener pastures, bigger wedge,
Left Names hanging from a ledge.
A rudderless ship, without direction, Broken Names flog their Art collection.
Once glamorous Mater swathed in mink,
Now Pater's pawned his last cuff-link.
WANT to jump on gold's bandwagon but unsure about the language gold boffins use? Help is at hand. The London Bullion Market Association has issued a booklet explaining all. You, too, can then speak of "bull put spread", "exotic options", a "naked option", and a "Gofo".
MICHAEL ANDREW, whose 20 years in the City included positions with Merrill Lynch and Salomon Brothers before he "retired" last year, is returning to City life. During his nine-month sabbatical, Andrew took a refresher course at RADA and shot two films, one for television called Big Sister and the other The Therapist. However, it was for his market talents that he has been headhunted by Furlong Associates to join the US investment bank Furman Selz in London as senior managing director and manager of the London office. Staff can be assured he does not intend to introduce play-readings at the office.
EXECUTIVE headhunters Whitehead Mann suggest it could be some time before white smoke appears from the Stock Exchange signalling that a new chief executive has been elected. I am assured that the post is not the preserve of a male, nor does the incumbent have to be British. It was on January 4 that Michael Lawrence was suddenly dismissed from his post, since when the Exchange chairman, John Kemp-Welch, has been holding additional reins. However, since Lawrence was the second chief executive to go within two-and-a-half years, the Exchange will want to ensure that the third "man" is likely to stay a bit longer.
From Mr Jonathan Kreeger
Sir, On the subject of theatre seating; for reasons beyond my control, I have no view whatever.
Yours faithfully,
JONATHAN KREEGER
(5ft 1in),
Swithland Cottage,
Old Boars Hill, Oxford.
February 2.
From Mrs Clare Powell
Sir, I was surprised to see the "Glyndebourne method" of theatre seating recommended by your correspondent, Mr J. A. C. Martin (letter, January 31).
It seems extraordinary, in a newly designed theatre, that tickets marked "limited vision" should have to be sold for the seats at the sides.
Yours faithfully,
CLARE POWELL,
Brook House, White Hart Lane,
Woodstreet Village,
Nr Guildford, Surrey.
From Dr Gary Butler
Sir, As a specialist in growth disorders, I feel that I must correct some misconceptions in your letters (January 27, 31) relating to restricted views in theatres.
I have studied growth in normal children for many years, and the data I collected now forms part of the new 1995 British Growth Standards. Whereas the full height of the current generation is increased (average male 176.5cm [5ft 9 1/2in]; average female 163.5cm [5ft 4 1/2in]), sitting (spinal) height is not, the changes being totally accounted for by greater growth in the legs.
This is thought to reflect better social circumstances and nutrition, and has been most notable in Japan. Taller people have proportionally longer legs and vice versa, hence height differences between people are less obvious in the sitting position.
Obstructed views in the theatre are not so much a feature of variation in the physical size of the audience, but reflect the layout of the seating. Theatre designers would well be aware of population changes, however, and ensure sufficient leg-room for the present and future generations.
Yours faithfully,
G. E. BUTLER (Consultant
Paediatric Endocrinologist),
Yorkshire Growth Centre,
The General Infirmary at Leeds,
Clarendon Wing, Belmont Grove,
Leeds, West Yorkshire.
February 1.
From Mr M. G. Power
Sir, Mr Michael Heseltine, the Deputy Prime Minister, told civil servants in a recent lecture at the Civil Service College (report, January 24) that they must be prepared to do more to explain government policies.
It is the duty of ministers to explain policies. Explanations invite questions; questions invite argument. Many government policies are controversial, some bitterly opposed by the Opposition in Parliament. Follow Mr Heseltine's words to their logical conclusion and we shall see on TV a permanent secretary crossing swords with Miss Clare Short on the privatisation of British Rail.
He would probably do that very well, perhaps even more persuasively than ministers. But it would brand him as a political animal in the eyes of the public. Moreover, to be seen as the public protagonist of a policy which is anathema to one party might make it difficult to serve the new government after a general election.
In the 1930s Sir Warren Fisher and Sir Edward Bridges wrote minutes about the role of the civil servant. These declared that it was the job of ministers to explain government policy; a civil servant has no power of his own, everything he says or does is in the name of a minister.
I think it was Bridges who went further by emphasising that to preserve the political impartiality of the Civil Service, civil servants should be anonymous. Anonymity is a virtue for civil servants, not a weakness.
Some might argue that the words of distinguished civil servants 60 years ago are out of date. They are only out of date if the Government is deliberately aiming to politicise the Civil Service, or if, in their weakness, they need to employ officials to do their job for them.
Yours sincerely,
M. G. POWER
(Under Secretary, Civil Service
Department, 1977-79),
Wancom Way,
Puttenham Heath Road,
Compton, Guildford, Surrey.
January 29.
Michael Heseltine has become the spin-bowler of the Tory party. He trundles up to the wicket, his arms flapping, looking like one of the battered old professionals who played for Northants or Glamorgan in the years before the war. Unfortunately his googly is so obvious that a tailend batsman would be able to spot it wearing dark glasses in a thunderstorm.
Yesterday he was trying to persuade David Frost that "three weeks of pounding" had knocked Tony Blair of his perch. The Tories are making themselves ridiculous by running a knocking personal campaign so long before a general election, and only ten days before the Scott report is published. They would do much better to stick to issues of policy, on which their case is stronger.
Tony Blair may have rather more to fear from his friends than his enemies. The latest issue of The New Yorker has a long and favourable profile of Tony Blair by Sidney Blumenthal. He is a perceptive journalist, makes a number of good points, and quotes a remark I had forgotten from Tony Blair's speech to last October's Labour Party conference. Even then, Blair was able to mock the various and incompatible attempts the Tories had made to pin a label on him. "It has been hard, I know. Hard for me sometimes. Last year Bambi, this year Stalin. From Disneyland to dictorship in six short months."
Yet Blumenthal casts Blair in a role which is, I think, equally misconceived. As an American commentator, he naturally relates British politics to his American experience, and specifically he treats Tony Blair as though he were the British Bill Clinton. If that were true, it would be a disaster. Tony Blair promises to change Britain. The changes he has made in the Labour Party are only a preliminary to that. Whatever view one takes of President Clinton, he is not a radical in that sense. If new Labour turns out to be the same as the Clinton White House, Tony Blair will have failed in his own terms. Indeed Sidney Blumenthal sees this. Blair in power would not be checked and balanced; with a certain majority, he could propose and dispose. The experiment that Clinton proposed at the beginning of his Administration, but which was frustrated, might therefore be tested first in Blair's Britain.
The Clinton experiment has indeed been a failure. But the Blair experiment is not at all the same, and Blair himself is not Clinton. This is a sensitive issue for those of us who can remember the 1960s, because we have already been conned once by Labour. Harold Wilson made rather similar claims to Tony Blair's, but he did not deliver, or seriously try to deliver, what he promised in Opposition. If new Labour turned out to be a return to the Harold Wilson style of social democracy, it would be a disaster. Equally, Bill Clinton has not kept his promises of 1992: it is a polite euphemism to say that his "experiment" has been "frustrated". So the question is whether Tony Blair is another politician like Clinton or Wilson, or whether, for better or worse, he is a radical who means seriously what he says about changing the country.
In 1962, a few months before his death, I had my last lunch with Hugh Gaitskell, the Labour leader whom I have most admired and trusted. He had been defeated in his attempt to abolish Clause Four, an issue on which Tony Blair was to succeed more than 30 years later. He was confident, however, that he would win the next election, whenever it might come. He talked about the difficulty of changing the Labour Party; he had loyal support from some of the younger men, including Roy Jenkins and Tony Crosland, but could not rely on any of his senior colleagues, particularly Harold Wilson or George Brown. "If I could rely on even one of them, the whole situation would be different."
Tony Blair is much better placed than that: in particular, Gordon Brown is a rock compared to George Brown. But Blair leaves the same impression as I remember from Hugh Gaitskell. I saw Tony Blair recently after I returned from Hong Kong; we met to discuss the Far East, which he had also recently visited. I found the same sense of urgency that Hugh Gaitskell had, and the same sense that the values of the Labour Party must not be overborne by out-of-date ways of achieving them. Both men believed that political values are permanent and their values are very similar but that methods have to be changed, and may have to be changed completely.
There are obvious ways in which Tony Blair does not resemble Hugh Gaitskell. Hugh had the mind of a first class academic, and loved to teach. In the mid 1950s, when I was a lonely young lobby correspondent for the Financial Times somewhat out of my depth, and he was Shadow Chancellor, I remember him giving me impromptu tutorials on the machinery of the Finance Bill, which must have kept the readers of the FT unusually well informed. Tony Blair makes his arguments more like a barrister who wants to persuade the jury. But the two men are certainly the most alike of Labour leaders, perhaps best defined as radical social democrats.
Partly because they happened to look alike, Hugh Gaitskell used to be compared to the Younger Pitt some of Gillray's cartoons of Pitt could have been taken for Hugh. This, rather than Disraeli's One Nation, is the temperamental tradition in politics to which Tony Blair belongs. Disraeli was much more the phrase-maker and poseur. Pitt and Blair have the same element of youth, though not to the same degree. There is the same attachment to ideas of policy, and to the people who share those ideas. In 1785, Daniel Pulteney wrote about William Pitt, "His living and conversing with a very small circle, and acting only on abstract general principles, will, I foresee, involve him at some time or other in difficulties."
Both Hugh and Tony, like Pitt, had or have a small group of friends focused around common ideas; so did another radical politician, Margaret Thatcher. All four of them have the capacity to involve themselves in difficulties.
Pitt was radical; one cannot read his great speech of December 3, 1798, in which he first introduced income tax, without seeing how radical his mind was. He also had the sense that political strength is built by overcoming rather than evading obstacles, which is part of the radical politician's creed of Margaret Thatcher's even more than of Tony Blair's. Blair still has too many enemies in his own party, just as Margaret Thatcher always had in hers.
During a debate in October 1796, William Pitt suddenly flared up as Hugh Gaitskell used to, at something Charles James Fox had said: "Of the virtues to be acquired in the school of adversity, the Right Honourable Gentleman only mentioned those of moderation and forbearance: There are other virtues of no less importance which are to be acquired under a reverse of fortune: they are the virtues of adversity endured and adversity resisted; of adversity encountered and adversity surmounted." I think Tony Blair will suffer adversity probably more than he can yet perceive. I do not think he will particularly seek to avoid it. I am sure he will endure and resist it; whether he will be able to overcome it, only time and events will tell.
The everyday features of our lives change before our very eyes, before we notice.
Where have hitchhikers gone? I have always offered lifts but, driving an empty car onto the M1 the other day, I reflected on how seldom now one sees those hopefuls with cardboard notices saying "Leeds". Ever since I hitched as a young man, this has struck me as a sensible way for the enterprising and the skint to travel: a fuel-efficient and "green" mode of transport.
So why is hitch-hiking dying out? I have no reason to believe it has become more dangerous, though we do make an increasing fuss about danger. Are the poor so much richer than they were? Or does a culture in parts of which it is almost the vogue to beg for money now regard it as demeaning to beg a ride? This is just one of many once-familiar features of our lives whose quiet exit is hardly noticed until, one day, you wake up and wonder where they've gone. Unobtrusively, they have made their excuses and left.
Sometimes a death goes almost unremarked. An individual who has been long retired and sunk from public view passes away, perhaps in August when we are abroad. Then, years later, we say "I wonder where so-and-so is these days?"
"Oh, she's been dead years; didn't you know?"
And so it is, not just with people, but with things: with words (who is a spinster any more?); with habits, practices, gadgets with ideas, even. Where, for instance, are the dark, starry skies of our youth? Retreating, as every new column of orange sodium street lighting marches across Britain.
And where did pyjamas go? I wore some last week, for the first time in years, and thought what a good idea they were. Like clockwork alarm clocks, gold top milk, NHS dentists, top-loading washing machines, men in hats and children cycling to school, they slip, one by one, from our lives.
Sometimes the reasons are obvious. We do not have to ask why it's ages since
we saw greaseproof toilet paper, a Tardis police telephone box, or blotting-paper; why, taking a record from my collection of LPs, I forget how to play them; or why you hardly see children playing in the street any more. But the reasons for some of the disappearances are more mysterious. A decade or more ago (as I recall) all the traffic-lights in London used to have flambeaux flaming beacons, in cast iron proudly mounted on top. As a child I used to believe that these represented lions' tails, but lions' tails or torches, they were a noble and stylish ornament to the street furniture of our metropolis. Some ghastly local government person must have decreed that these fripperies were unnecessary or and this argument is nowadays believed to be final "dangerous". One by one they slipped from our lives, and from the urban view. A small but real sadness.
Now I may be mistaken, but I suspect that Belisha beacon (or "zebra") pedestrian crossings are to be the next victims. More and more of those stupid, ugly and incredibly costly "pelican" crossings are appearing. As a pedestrian I bypass them or ignore the little red men, except at peak traffic times. As a motorist I have never stopped at the red light except when there actually are pedestrians near or waiting. The creeping epidemic of pelican crossings cannot but encourage motorists to rank traffic-lights into "real" ones and pelican ones, deciding for ourselves which road instructions to obey. This (as some police voices warn) actually undermines road safety.
And while we're on the road, when did you last see one of those little arms flip out from the side of a car to indicate that it is going to turn right or left?
I remember my father telling me, when the new flashing indicators were just coming in, that these would never catch on, as the arm-indicators were much more noticeable. This, we now realise, was because we were looking for them.
Dad also thought stereo record-players would be a nine-day wonder, because the aim of every great conductor was to produce a unified sound. Where are mono music centres now? Like black-and-white TV sets, telegrams and postal orders, they have made their excuses and left. Telex, I think, will be the next to go.
Two-tone cars, the top half painted a different shade from the lower, have gone too. Why? I rather liked them. Also gone are bench front seats and steering-column gear-changes, yet I can remember when gear-sticks on the floor were thought old-fashioned. And why are babies' prams disappearing? They are, you know, along with tartan pull-along shopping trollies. The reason's by no means clear.
More perplexing still is the extinction of Avrils. In the 1950s almost everybody was called Avril. Now I know only one. Have the others all died?
The recollection of so many old friends, plucked from us, induces melancholy. And several other friends are putting on their coats as I write: telephones you dial rather than stab; typewriters; cheques . . . doomed, all doomed.
So what will be next to go? Newspapers? The Internet edition of The Times is now available on http://www. the-times.co.uk
If the speaks on the telephone to a woman late at night as the Duke of Edinburgh does it is likely to be to his sister, Pat Dessoy. The 65-year-old widow, who brought her children up on her own, has admitted to a series of late-night chats with her little brother, in which she advised him to end the Tory crusade against single mothers. Her rare public pronouncements are a pleasing contrast to Terry Major-Ball's enthusiastic but interminable chunterings.
BUNTY LEWIS, the stalwart chairman of the Queen Charlotte's Birthday Ball committee, which raises money for the hospital, is hanging up her dancing shoes.
Bunty who has shepherded dozens of debs, including the superbly named Minky Sloane, down the grand staircase at the Grosvenor House in their long white frocks has been an imposing figure on the social scene for seven years, since she resurrected the ball. But ill-health has forced her to take a less demanding role.
"I am going to be joint president with Lady Robson but the Countess of St Andrews will be chairman," she says. "I am there to help, to be her blotting-paper." Lady St Andrews, the former Sylvana Tomaselli, was a tutor at Cambridge, and after dealing with unruly undergraduates during the 1980s, will have no trouble keeping the frisky debs in line.
AFTER the opening last week of The Fields of Ambrosia, a show which finds fun in people being fried in electric chairs, I have news of another musical of breath taking tastelessness bound for the London stage. A French company is negotiating with producers to bring D-Day: The Musical into the West End.
One scene takes the form of a duet "which is a mixture of words and cries of grief and pain". Another episode, in which soldiers witness a glutton stuffing his face, concludes with them "vomiting in unison at the end of the scene". But the jolliest scene occurs before the troops even land in Normandy. "This scene will be treated with humour even if its theme is one of awful suffering from seasickness," runs the cheerful summary, arguing bewilderingly that "this unexpected use of humour surprises the spectator and will thus serve to amplify the horror of the situation". Ah, the Gallic joie de mourir!
MAYA FLICK is currently contesting her divorce settlement from the Mercedes Benz heir Friedrich Christian "Mick" Flick through the British courts, and claims she can't manage on £9 million. But according to her brother, Maya is really a woman of simple tastes, even though the judge balked at a request for £4,000 a year to look after her labrador.
In an interview in the forthcoming edition of Harpers & Queen, Count Alexander Schonburg says loyally of his sister: "Her favourite car is a 2CV, while her husband drives a Ferrari. The divorce settlement gives her under a million pounds to furnish two houses in England plus a holiday chalet in Klosters. Mick would spend that on a Louis XVI chest of drawers. Even his ashtrays are antiques."
Prince Edward, who attended the England v Wales five nations' championship match at Twickenham on Saturday without his inamorata Sophie Rhys-Jones, officially opened the new ERIC room. The England Rugby Internationals Club, open only to those who have played for England, is said to have a "nightclubby" atmosphere, which may be why the Prince stayed longer there than expected and had to be prised away for the official lunch.
AFTER the royal flamingos were last week massacred by a rogue fox, who padded over the frozen lake in the grounds of Buckingham Palace and ravaged the fluorescent flock, golfers have been suffering from similar vulpine antics.
Near the 18th hole at the Roehampton golf course, right in front of the clubhouse, a fox appeared and started to spectate. But then as the former City of London Sheriff, Jonathan Charkham, tried to tee off in a competition on Saturday, the fox picked up his ball and carried it over to a bunker and dropped it in. The crowd roared with laughter and Charkham reclaimed his ball, but the animal decided to stay and watch.
The fox's gaze proved distracting. "Unfortunately Charkham played the shot straight into the same bunker," says a sympathetic observer.
AS William Waldegrave, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, fights for his political future over his involvement in the arms-to-Iraq affair, his trusty special adviser,
David Rutley, who has been an indispensable support to him over his Scott-induced tribulations, is involved in a political struggle of his own.
He has joined the race for selection for a Conservative seat before the general election, but finds himself competing with another Treasury colleague, the similarly named David Ruffley. The two Davids telephone callers to the Treasury are advised to enunciate clearly are each hoping to be selected as the prospective Conservative candidate for Buckingham.
Ruffley who is slightly larger than Rutley and likes to play golf lost out to Norman Lamont recently in Harrogate, and is special adviser to the Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke.
David Rutley a sinewy type who likes rock-climbing followed Waldegrave to the Treasury as special adviser, having been with him in beleagured days at the Cabinet Office and Ministry of Agriculture.
Neither will be drawn on the phonetic confusions of their names. Ruffley only says tactfully, "I am higher up the alphabet than Mr Rutley".
Pull out Supplement text not available.
Peter Riddell assesses the make-up of the Tory party after the election.
Ideology is a much overrated influence within the Tory party. Desire for office and re-election, the pressure of events, generational changes and long-term social and economic trends all matter as much, and often more. Most Tory MPs are not very ideological, or even factional. Consequently, the party is likely to change much less after the next election, win or lose, than is commonly assumed with the important, and possibly critical, exception of the rising tide of Euro-scepticism.
Even at the height of Margaret Thatcher's powers, in 1989, Professor Philip Norton, a leading taxonomist of MPs' views, reckoned that no more than one in five Tory MPs was a committed Thatcherite. The same could be said now of the hard-core Euro-sceptics. The 1992 intake of Tory MPs has never behaved with the ideological zealotry and cohesion of Washington's freshman class of House Republicans elected in November 1994, who have now even challenged the authority of Newt Gingrich, their Robespierre.
Much of the current discussion about One Nation Toryism therefore misses the point. In the current issue of Prospect magazine, Ian Gilmour offers a typically elegant lament for the failure of the Tory Left and its complicity in "the right-wingery" of the Major Government, arguing that the Left was beguiled by John Major's humane rhetoric. The Gilmour approach has in turn infuriated the more fervent Portillistas and Redwoodites, who accuse the Government of having shifted to the left at the last reshuffle.
Both the Left and Right of the party, to use terms the committed minority understand, confuse style for substance. They underrate the extent to which a new domestic policy consensus has developed since 1979. Indeed, the isolation under Margaret Thatcher of the old patrician "wets", such as Gilmour, in the early 1980s owed as much as to the rejection of Keynesian demand management by the younger generation of Tories as to her shrewd tactics. The new Toryism embraces a belief in deregulation, privatisation, quasi-market disciplines in public services and slimming of the State through a series of incremental changes. Many of these aims, particularly the last, have been hard to achieve. But they are common to much of the party, from, say, Peter Lilley to Stephen Dorrell. This was strikingly recognised in the "Asian tigers" lecture last October by Chris Patten, once the rising hope of the Tory paternalists, who now advocates reducing the scope of the State.
Kenneth Clarke is often held up as the last great defender of a One Nation approach. And so he is, in the sense that he rejects the calls of some free-market think-tanks for a shift to an American-style insurance system. His acknowledgement of the limits of any medium-term reduction in the share of public spending has received much attention. But as a minister he initiated many of the most controversial changes in health and education, and has presided over very tight squeezes on public spending.
Mr Major, far from rejecting the domestic programme of the Thatcher era, has maintained and implemented it as is shown by a valuable study, Contemporary British Conservatism (just published by Macmillan). Steve Ludlam and Martin Smith, the joint editors from Sheffield University, argue that the Major administration has been most faithful in those areas where Thatcherism was incomplete, such as Civil Service reform and trickier privatisations such as rail and coal.
This approach appears to be shared by most new Tory candidates in winnable seats ("appears" because many have no very clear-cut views). At most, there seems to have been a modest shift to the loyalist Right in the selections. Several rightwingers have taken new seats, and well-known leftwingers have been replaced by committed rightwingers (such as Sir Julian Critchley by Gerald Howarth at Aldershot). But in other cases, it is more of a shift of generation and style, while several Centre-Left candidates have been chosen, in some cases to succeed right-wingers.
Some able candidates on the free-market Right have not yet been selected, notably Michael Fallon, the former Education Minister, and John Bercow, an energetic special adviser. They have been on shortlists, chosen by a small group of committed activists, but the final decision lies with the wider party membership, which is generally less ideological. Hence, the broader mix of Right and Left candidates, who have been chosen as much for their personalities and career records as for their views.
Moreover, even if the Tories lose the election, changes will be limited by what financial managers call a flight to quality, that is a shift by sitting MPs to safer seats. This has been exemplified by Cabinet ministers in constituencies being split by the boundary changes opting for the safer portion. They include Brian Mawhinney, Stephen Dorrell and Peter Lilley; while Sir George Young, James Arbuthnot and Eric Forth are among a dozen MPs moving to entirely different and safer seats.
The Identikit new candidate, like the average MP, supports cuts in public spending and taxes, without putting forward the radical Right's plans for cutting back state provision of health and education. He, and in a few cases she, favours more police and tougher sentencing, without necessarily backing the return of capital punishment. He is strongly loyalist, but is also generally Euro-sceptic. Indeed the biggest shift at the election will be the replacement of strong pro-Europeans in their sixties by sceptics in their late thirties and forties. Some pro-Europeans have been picked, including former and current MEPs, but they are exceptions.
Almost whatever the result, the election will see a further reduction in the pro-European forces. In the battle for the future leadership and direction of the party, however, the Tories' deep divisions about Europe are likely to matter far more than their broad consensus on domestic policy. It always comes back to Europe.
Long-term unemployment should be tackled by a new temporary work scheme, which would create 500,000 jobs at an annual cost of £1.7 billion, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research think-tank today. The IPPR says that the scheme would be cost-effective and would make the long-term unemployed "stakeholders in society".
THE Government appears ready to introduce a new monthly measure of unemployment after an internal Whitehall report urging ministers to publish a new total of the number of people out of work. Currently, it publishes the number out of work and claiming benefit.
Dr Tim Holt, director of the Central Statistical Office, is expected to disclose details of the internal CSO report when he appears before MPs next week to give evidence on jobless data. Dr Holt, the Government's chief statistician, commissioned the report when he took over at the CSO last year after a long and bitter public argument about the validity of the Government's unemployment figures, which Labour claimed were "fiddled".
The report is understood to recommend publishing, in tandem with the monthly claimant count, the montly total of people out of work drawn from the Government's Labour Force Survey. Currently, the LFS a survey of a rolling sample of 60,000 households publishes unemployment figures based on the internationally acceptable International Labour Office standard every three months.
Dr Holt is strongly in favour of a monthly LFS on unemployment, which he believes would remove the unemployment figures still further from political argument, after the shift of responsibility for the data to the CSO after the Government's abolition of the Department of Employment last year.
Ministers calculate that moving to a monthly LFS could add £10 million to its costs at a time of tight public spending restraints. They are also concerned that the public may be confused if two counts of unemployment are published every month.
More and more Britons are entrusting their minds and bodies to the practitioners of alternative medicine. According to recent estimates, one in three people has undergone acupuncture or hypnotism, made use of aromatherapy or herbal medicine, visited chiropractors or osteopaths. Four out of every five who do so are convinced they have received lasting benefit. Indeed, the use of alternative medicine is rising in Britain faster than in any other European country.
The kind of treatment offered has long been available on the Continent as an adjunct to orthodox medicine; yet for more than 40 years it has been shunned by the medical establishment in Britain. The very word "alternative" has suggested something beyond the pale of scientifically-based medicine. The profession has stigmatised all such practices as untested and unproven, akin to faith healing and verging on quackery. The fact that the therapies offered have for years proved remarkably effective with a large number of people has been dismissed as irrelevant: opponents argue that any treatment which patients believe is doing them good will improve their response to conventional medicine.
The banning of alternative medicine from the lexicon of general practice was made absolute by the setting up of the National Health Service. The committees charged with financing the NHS needed to know what medicine could be deemed mainstream, and therefore eligible for funding, and what was fringe and best left to the private sector. Britain, unlike France or Germany, had little tradition of "taking the waters" and such treatments indeed almost all prophylactic cures have been seen as a socially reprehensible pampering of the rich.
With the demise of the NHS monolith, attitudes are changing. Doctors who can control their own budgets are more open to innovation and to the traditions of other countries. Eastern medicine used only to excite scepticism: acupuncture was associated with nail beds and holy men, herbal medicine with folklore, while yoga was regarded as offering little that relaxation and regular exercise could not also supply. All now command respect.
Perhaps the most intriguing recourse to alternative medicine is the growing, but still largely inexplicable, role of hypnotism. Some GPs now achieve extraordinary success using this powerful and unpredictable instrument, and the Society of Medical and Dental Hypnosis runs courses and conferences to compare clinical experience. They worry about the unmonitored use of hypnosis by mesmerists making extravagant claims; the ethical implications are challenging. Indeed all doctors would like to bring the treatment proposed by unregistered practitioners of alternative medicine within the remit of supervised health care. While they were identified with quackery, that was impossible. Now that doctors, patients and medical insurers are looking at this huge field more seriously, it is both possible and necessary.
In the frosty early morning, the first scheduled private trains to run on Britain's mainline network for more than 48 years pulled into Paddington and Waterloo yesterday. Their curious passengers were duly feted by the new railway directors and a triumphant Transport Secretary. Sir George Young's relief is palpable: despite soaring costs, publicised bureaucratic absurdities and the stubborn suspicion of the travelling public, the most complex privatisation ever attempted in Britain has, at last, paid off.
For the first time since 1947, regular passenger services are now being provided by private companies ready to inject their capital, innovative skills and entrepreneurial energy into a neglected, run-down but vital sector of the nation's transport network.
Yesterday's sunny mood, however, suffered a political eclipse. Less than a day before the third private company was to join the debut of Great Western and South West Trains, the Government ordered a halt to the transfer of the London, Tilbury and Southend line to private management. Suspected fraud involving the reissuing of tickets at a station shared with London Underground, thus cheating the rival company of about £30,000 a month, has severely embarrassed the Government. It could not have given opponents of privatisation a more tellingly symbolic example of the seemingly endless mishaps that have dogged this complex operation. Even Conservative MPs, champions of free enterprise, concede that transfer of the LTS line is, at present, unconscionable.
Already the incident has highlighted the dangers inherent in breaking up a network into competing units. So fierce will be the competition for the elusive passenger that the new companies may be tempted to do down their competitors by methods more reminiscent of the pirate practices of America's railway barons than the business mores expected of today. Firmness by the Rail Regulator and intrusive enforcement of the conditions of the new leases by the franchise director will be essential.
The system, however, must now be allowed to operate. However misconceived the basic proposal to split British Rail into as many as 25 companies may have been, the legal reorganisation is now largely in place. It is, as Labour also evidently believes, too late to put BR together again. Even the flotation of Railtrack, which Labour has vaguely promised to take under public control, if not actually into public ownership, now looks assured. The privatisation of the 11,000-mile network may slip from May to June; but at a knockdown price, it will be in private hands by the General Election, and may already have received its first injection of much-needed private investment. Three more operating companies will by then be running trains, so that almost half of all rail passengers will be able to judge the difference.
The yardstick by which privatisation must be measured is still that it brings more money and wider expertise to revive the nation's railways. Sensibly, the Government has now overcome some of its prejudice against BR, so that a new generation of managers with radical ideas may be allowed to compete for the remaining franchises. Ideology never made the trains run on time; from today the test will be whether the trains to the West and the South-West are better run, more comfortable and fuller than before.
For a German Chancellor even to hint, in Belgium of all countries, that where German jackboots twice marched this century they could march again unless Europe follows Germany's federal route-map is worse than infelicitous: it is contrary to Germany's own interests. Helmut Kohl has never been a man for the subtle nuance; his is an all-or-nothing federal vision of Europe and he has never made any bones about it.
In substance, his "nationalism is war" speech at the University of Louvain last week added little to his well-known view that Europe faces a straight choice between "continued integration" and catastrophe. But the more Herr Kohl insists on doing things his way, the more attention he draws to an awkward fact. Among the European Union's major players, Germany alone believes wholeheartedly in its federal destiny.
Herr Kohl's motives are nothing but honourable. He is convinced that unless German power is constrained within a federal EU, fear and resentment of German power will reignite nationalism among its neighbours, particularly France, and make war on the Continent possible at some point in the future. He also believes that among German politicians, he alone has the determination and the persuasive power to bring about "irreversible" European integration.
It does not follow that a "European Germany" can be secured only on German terms. If Herr Kohl believes that fear will force the rest of Europe into line, he is in serious error. There is nothing either illegitimate or dangerous about the British view, reiterated yesterday by Michael Portillo, that nation states and nationalism are not the same thing and that the way ahead is to look for "ways in which nations can collaborate together more and more".
Nobody disputes that, from its origin, the driving political imperative behind the EU has been to make war between its members unthinkable. Nobody, as Mr Portillo said, "wants to go back to the sort of terrible nationalism that was unleashed in the 1930s". Herr Kohl would do better to celebrate that historic success than to utter apocalyptic warnings which give scant credit to the solid democracy that Germany has become. He will win no arguments that way, or by ignoring the increasingly fluid, creative debate about the role of the modern nation state in a stable, prosperous Europe.
Herr Kohl's antennae, so sensitive when it comes to dealing with the strategically vital matter of the West's relationship with Russia, have been blunted by his anxiety about monetary union. It is now evident that if Europe is not to plunge into recession, the Maastricht rules on deficits will have to be relaxed if the 1999 timetable is to be met. The treaty in fact permits this; but any such decision would greatly intensify the resistance of Germans to giving up the mark. Herr Kohl has always seen EMU as a means to a political end. He is convinced that the pooling of monetary sovereignty would create the basis for the federal Europe of his dreams which is why he suspects Britain of sabotaging the project.
Irritation should not blind him to a far more present danger than warlike nationalism. Unless two conditions are met, EMU will fray the bonds of faith that underpin all democracies. There must be a genuine economic convergence, or the management of a single currency will produce nothing but dispute; and the peoples of Europe must themselves be convinced of EMU's positive benefits. Since neither of these conditions now obtains, true German leadership would consist in a courageous admission of the facts. By dismissing all doubt, Herr Kohl is at risk of sounding less than respectful of the democratic processes he set out to champion at Louvain last week. He is also at risk of creating what he fears: a divided Europe.
Before the last election, devaluation was inevitable, whoever won. Then, sterling's ERM parity was unsustainable. This time, a key issue is whether inflation is on the agenda, whoever wins.
Underlying worries about the inflation outlook have reappeared. Evidence of this came last week in a Reuters survey of 35 organisations, showing an expected year-end ten-year gilt of 7.73 per cent. By contrast, I expect yields to fall to 6.5 per cent by then. Even though the UK can enjoy modest growth, inflation should remain low. If it did not, Britain would be bucking the global trend of low inflation.
There are three market inflation fears. Firstly, there is concern that inflation pressures may already be in the pipeline. Similar concerns surfaced a few years ago when commodity prices rose. But then, strong global disinflationary pressures, which contributed to sluggish domestic demand, meant retailers and producers had to keep prices down. These same competitive pressures are still with us. But now the concern is accelerating monetary growth. M4 is rising at an annual rate of 10.1 per cent. The fear is that if this remains strong, it will eventually be spent, triggering inflation. Although M4 needs to be monitored, it is premature to conclude this.
Nearly half £22.9 billion of the £55.8 billion rise in M4 last year was by "other financial institutions". Their holding of money is dictated mainly by rates of return, and so this amount is unlikely to be used for higher spending on goods and services.
Half £28.1 billion of last year's rise in M4 was in individuals' deposits. This compares with annual consumer spending in the economy of about £430 billion. Many factors explain this increase in deposits. Some households may have increased their precautionary savings in case of redundancy; others may need higher deposits to get a mortgage. There has also been a boost from building society mergers, although that money is as likely to be saved as spent.
As interest rates fall, one would expect some, but not all, of this extra liquidity to be spent. Along with rising incomes it should ensure a modest rise in consumer spending. But that is unlikely to be inflationary, given the competitive pressures and spare resources in the economy.
The second concern is that the Government, desperate to be re-elected, will cut interest rates to such a low level that it leaves the economy vulnerable to an inflation shock although one would have expected a more expansionary Budget last November if there were a dash for growth.
In my view, recent rate cuts have been necessary and further easing is inevitable, as the economy still faces potential downside risks.
The third risk is if Labour wins, what is to stop them inflating? Although Tony Blair's Mais lecture last summer made low inflation his policy goal, the market will need to be convinced. For instance, could Labour prevent a surge in catch-up pay awards from the public sector, which could soon spill over into a deterioration in inflation expectations elsewhere?
The UK's poor inflation track record means that these risks need to be monitored. But, in my view, we remain in a disinflationary international environment. Thus, the near-term risks for the global economy are on the downside, with the US and continental Europe slowing sharply. For the UK to experience the inflation some people in the gilt market are fearing requires such a boom in domestic demand that it is unlikely.
Bond markets in the US and on the Continent are benefiting from sluggish growth, low inflation and tight fiscal policies. This points to interest rates acting as the shock absorber, with US rates likely to fall from 5.25 per cent to 4.75 per cent, and the German discount rate set to hit an historic low of 2 per cent this year. As sterling has already fallen so far, it should remain relatively stable in this environment, allowing base rates to fall to 5.5 per cent in response to low UK inflation.
PPP, the private healthcare insurance group, will today confirm plans to turn itself into a £500 million limited company owned by a trust company with the twin aims of supporting the business and a new healthcare charity trust.
The firm currently has provident status, which means that it has no technical owner. Under its current structure, PPP is a company without shares, limited by guarantee. It has a board of 11 directors who sit on a board of 25 appointed governing members whose liability is limited to one guinea (£1.05) each.
PPP confirmed yesterday that one of the main reasons for seeking to change the structure was to explore different distribution channels to widen the availability of its services. It is believed to be keen to establish some sort of presence in the high street, probably by linking up with a bank or a building society.
A PPP spokesman said the new structure would give it the flexibility to investigate other methods of distribution. He said: "Distribution covers a whole range of issues, whether it is looking at more traditional routes for the distribution of insurance-based products or finding new ways of taking healthcare to people, which is our preferred route." It could encompass "anything from distribution using the Internet, high street branches or home shopping", he added.
The change in structure will allow the firm, for the first time, to attract equity from external sources. This means that when opportunities occur, PPP will be able to issue new shares to either a single investor or a group of investors.
John Reizenstein, the SBC Warburg director who acted as financial adviser, said: "In making this change, the aim is to give greater transparency and also to issue shares." At the same time, he said, the firm intended to continue with its existing business objectives and to have a charitable ethos.
PPP has suffered as competition in the healthcare insurance market has intensified. New competitors, such as Norwich Union, Guardian Royal Exchange, Standard Life and Legal & General, have grabbed a 20 per cent market share, with NU taking 10 per cent in just five years.
PPP said that a flotation was "not currently under consideration", although its new structure will make it a possibility. The change in structure requires approval from the Department of Trade and Industry, but the company expects it to be completed by May. Letters have been sent out to customers to notify them of the change and give them the opportunity to express any concerns in writing to the Department of Trade and Industry.
Under the planned changes, a PPP Healthcare Foundation Limited, a charitable foundation, will be created. It will have the same board and appointed members as the old PPP.
Alongside the charitable foundation, PPP will set up PPP healthcare medical trust, a medical charity. The foundation will initially own 100 per cent of PPP healthcare group. Each of its businesses will operate as 100 per cent-owned subsidiaries.
MANCHESTER may have lost its bid to stage the 2000 Olympics, but British companies are hoping to grab a slice of the Games action.
Colin Moynihan, former Minister for Sport, who has been appointed chairman of the Sydney Olympics UK Business Task Force, arrives in Sydney on Wednesday in a campaign to persuade Australian companies to enter into joint ventures with British companies on Olympic projects. The task force has been set up by the Department of Trade and Industry.
Although Sydney's Olympics organising committee is committed to awarding major contracts to Australian companies, the task force believes there is scope for British companies to provide expertise in areas that Australian companies may lack. In total about A$2.3 billion (£1.4 billion) will be spent on staging the Games and several big contracts have yet to be awarded.
The task force aims to focus on developing partnerships in areas such as infrastructure, design and security, where it believes British companies have relevant skills to offer.
REDLAND, the building materials company, will tell the stock market today that the sale of its brick division is an "option", but that it has made no firm commitment about its future at this stage.
Speculation has grown that Redland is seeking to offload its brick division to raise capital to expand its core roof-tile business in the Far East. However, Redland insists that the sale is just one conclusion from its recently completed strategy review and that it is has not entered talks with potential buyers.
Last month, Redland gave warning that its overall profits would fall this year. The brick division performed especially badly, with a 14 per cent drop in volumes.
FREEPAGES GROUP, a private company that operates as a freephone classified information provider, is to seek a listing on the Alternative Investment Market for smaller and growing companies.
The company is coming to the market via a reverse takeover of Blagg, the building supplies company. It is expected to have a market capitalisation of about £44 million when AIM dealings get under way on February 27.
Under the agreement, Blagg is acquiring Freepages for £30 million, to be satisfied through the issue of 250 million new Blagg ordinary shares. On completion, Blagg will delist from the main market and switch to the AIM. A parallel placing and open offer of new shares at 12p each, underwritten by Singer & Friedlander, will raise £10 million.
The funds will be used to cut borrowings and provide working capital. At the same time, Blagg's builders merchants business, trading as G. Blagg, is to be sold for £100,000.
Nigel Robertson, the founder of Freepages and a principal shareholder since the business was incorporated, becomes chief executive. The non-executive chairman will be Ronald Zimet, president of Investment Management & Finance, an asset management organisation based in Geneva.
Financial results for 1994 and 1995, a development period for the business, showed losses of £961,000 and £1.9 million respectively. There is no profit forecast for the current year.
While the arrival of Freepages was welcome news for the AIM, which has attracted 126 companies since its inception in June 1995, there was a setback when Satellite Communications Systems gave warning that losses for the year to December 31 would be higher than expected. This was attributed to delays in the installation of its satellite receiving equipment.
Revenues for 1996 will also be lower than indicated in the flotation prospectus. The shares fell 8p, to 98p, against a placing price of 125p in September 1995.
Midland Bank is launching the first bilingual Welsh-English credit card today. Welsh card customers will receive two cards for a combined account, both featuring the Welsh language with an English translation below. The Welsh card carries no fee for the first year and is subject to an annual £12 charge thereafter. More than half the people in Wales are said to want wider use of their language.
Robert Fleming, the international investment bank, is to launch an investment fund specifically tailored for Islamic investors. Oasis fund shares are listed in Luxembourg.
The fund, which will have a minimum $50,000 investment, will have a Sharia supervisory board to ensure that the diversified portfolio of international equities will conform with Islamic law. For example, the fund will exclude companies in the gambling or alcoholic drinks sectors.
A pay settlement analysis published today by Industrial Relations Services (IRS) says that any threat of a surge in wage deals is receding.
IRS, the independent wage analyst, surveyed January pay settlements and suggests that "far from soaring, pay deals are unlikely to rise decisively above the 3.5 per cent mark over coming months".
With most analysts forecasting only modest economic growth and falling headline inflation, leading to some of the key upward pressures on pay subsiding, IRS says, "it would be wise not to completely rule out a marginal downturn in settlements".
It concludes: "Fears of an inflationary surge in settlements, most strongly expressed by Eddie George, Governor of the Bank of England, in a recent radio Interview, will in our view prove somewhat exaggerated."
LORD BORRIE, the former Director-General of Fair Trading, calls today for the scrapping of the current system of utility regulation in favour of a single regulatory commission.
His support for a single regulatory body follows similar calls from Sir Bryan Carsberg, his successor at the Office of Fair Trading, and from the all-party Commons Trade and Industry Select Committee.
While Labour is pledged to bring in a single regulatory body, government ministers insist it would be inappropriate and maintain that the current system, including the separate maintainance of the OFT and the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, should be sustained.
Writing to the Commission on the Regulation of Privatised Utilities, an inquiry set up by the Hansard Society and European Policy Forum pressure groups, Lord Borrie says that regulation of the utilities would be strengthened if a new regulatory commission was created with industry-specific component divisions.
Lord Borrie, a former head of Labour's Social Justice Commission, says: "Several objectives of the regulators are common. Let them gain strength by being brought together."
Some industry regulators have attracted sharp criticism for their actions, but Lord Borrie says that, under a single regulatory body, there would be a "check on individual excess or waywardness".
The former OFT head also supports the idea that more mergers of regulated utilities ought to be subject to mandatory reference to the MMC especially those crossing different industries.
Martin Waller on why the cold snap left customers hot under the collar.
For a few days after Christmas, while most of the country was leafing through Delia for yet another use for cold turkey, a select band of householders had more pressing priorities. These priorities were raising the ambient temperature in their living rooms to above freezing and the public dismemberment of David Wells and his team.
For that brief period, Mr Wells was probably the most unpopular man in the UK the managing director of British Gas's newly demerged service business. Fat cat utility bosses are at their least loved when their utility is not even delivering the goods as Yorkshire Water has found out and the service side was failing its customers in their thousands.
In October, British Gas increased the price of its three-star service contract to more than £100 in some areas. That contract is designed to offer peace of mind by guaranteeing same-day service and repair if the fault is reported by 7.30 in the evening. Within a month of the price rise, as this newspaper was the first to note, customers whose heating or hot water failed were discovering that the guarantee could not be relied upon.
The sudden cold snap meant gas engineers were too busy in some parts of the country even to guarantee arrival on any given day. Customers who had thought they were insured were waiting for days in sub-zero temperatures, with no quarter granted to the sick, the old or those with young children.
It got worse. The long freeze over Christmas and the New Year again caught out British Gas, particularly in Scotland, where the weather was appalling, and in the South East region that had borne the brunt of the earlier problems. Worse still, the tabloids were onto the problem.
"The vast majority of people who have contacted us over Christmas would have got a same-day call," Mr Wells insists. The statistics show that in December 86 per cent of calls were responded to on the same day, although this is a long way below the 95 per cent achieved in the same month of 1994.
But the statistics mask huge regional variations and the fact that most of the trouble came at the end of the month. In the worst-affected area, west London, the December average fell to little better than two thirds. The response rate during the worst weather is unlikely to have topped 50 per cent, and on some days it could have been much lower.
Mr Wells insists that the causes of this misery were two-fold. There was significantly worse weather than anyone had seen for five years, and his service operation is in the middle of an unprecedented reorganisation programme. The old regional structure of 90-odd administrative sectors is coming down to seven areas. The workforce is falling from 25,500 in 1994 to a projected 10,000 in 1999, although some of the losses will be redeployed in Transco, British Gas's transportation business. The number of premises British Gas Service operates from will fall from 422 to just 11.
The service business was hived off in March 1994 as British Gas prepared for full competition in the domestic supply market, a trial of which is now just months away. "It was quite clear that at least the gas supply part had to have a clean profit and loss account to compete against new competitors," says Mr Wells. "That meant the service activities had to stand on their own two feet as well."
The process of separation was imperfect, he admits. "We knew that it was going to be a struggle. We knew we would have a problem in keeping the eye wholly on the ball. We have fallen short in some respects but it hasn't been from want of trying." As part of the reorganisation, Service has pulled out of some unprofitable areas, such as domestic cooker repairs and tendered work for local authorities, and put in a raft of new computer systems. These market withdrawals account for the bulk of the engineers lost, says Mr Wells. "For our core activities, we don't have any fewer engineers than we did two years ago," he says.
Other innovations are a gizmo developed with Panasonic a CD-Rom field terminal carried by engineers that diagnoses faults on heating systems and can be used by the engineer to order any part needed and a new store in Leicester that will carry 97 to 98 per cent of all parts now used in domestic systems. The aim is that if the engineer does not carry the necessary part, as he should do in 65 per cent of visits, these will be supplied by the next day.
The problem is that all these systems are not yet in place, but are being rolled out piecemeal over the next year. By next winter the whole lot should be operational, but this will not help customers who suffer in any further cold snaps this winter. "People here are focused on getting through the rest of the winter in one piece," Mr Wells admits.
The worry is that the well-publicised disasters will mean customers will not take out further service contracts as they come up for annual renewal. British Gas Service has about three million such customers, four fifths of the market, but there are plenty of hungry competitors, some of whom are already touting for business.
Bob Frazer, head of operations, is equally candid about the disasters of this winter and the danger that the chaos will continue. Conditions in Scotland, he says, were "almost unprecedented. Whenever we get that sort of weather we're going to have trouble".
In the South East, he admits, his regional offices were not giving priority where they should, to contract customers and the sick or elderly, or those with young children. "Our managers out there were changing the priorities. They were under pressure from customers.
"If people were shouting loud enough, on-demand customers (those who had not taken out service contracts) were getting priority over contract customers. I think it was because of the pressure our people were getting over the telephones."
The offending contracts, which came in a bewildering variety of forms because of the earlier regional structure, are being redrafted as a single document. The final wording is not yet settled, but it is likely to emphasise that same-day service cannot be relied on in all cases, where conditions are exceptionally bad or demand is especially heavy.
"We're not looking to find a form of words that will let us off the hook with our customers. We're looking to provide same-day service for anyone who calls before 7.30 in the evening," says Mr Frazer.
The central question is whether next winter, with all the improvements in place, will be better than this one for British Gas Service customers. "It's got to be," both men say in unison. Mr Wells adds: "We will go down the tubes as a business if it isn't."
IAN LANG, President of the Board of Trade, will today sign an agreement with China on future co-operation in the car industry in the hope of creating opportunities for joint ventures and local manufacturing for British car and component companies in the growing Chinese market.
China is expected to become the world's largest car market by 2005. The value of new business for components is likely to be £6 billion, and £24 billion for service parts, the Department of Trade and Industry said. China's policy of building up a domestic manufacturing base means few opportunities for exporting British-built cars.
Car production in China rose by an estimated 15 per cent to 227,900 units from January to September 30 last year. China has a policy of encouraging any foreign carmakers setting up local production to also build up an associated components sector.
According to the memorandum of understanding that Mr Lang and He Guangyuan, China's Minister of Machine Industry, will sign today, a working group will be set up. It will include representatives from both of their ministries, from the China Association of Automotive Manufacturers and from Britain's Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.
The group hopes to promote the exchange of information and personnel in all areas of the industry and will recommend candidates for co-operative projects.
TODAY
Interims: Elbief, Henderson Administration Group, Mid Wynd Investment Trust, US Smaller Companies Investment Trust, Waste Management International.
Finals: Fleming Claverhouse.
Economic statistics: UK housing starts and completions (December), UK M0 narrow money supply.
TOMORROW
Interims: BSkyB, Howard Holdings.
Finals: French Property Trust, Gardiner Group, Pepsico, Yeoman Investment Trust.
Economic statistics: UK industrial production (December).
WEDNESDAY
Interims: BAA (Q3), Betacom, Excalibur Group.
Finals: Amicable Smaller Enterprise, Continental Assets Trust, Continental Foods, Goodyear, Murray European Investment Trust, SKF.
Economic statistics: UK monthly monetary meeting, UK cyclical indicators (January), US trade deficit (November), Confederation of British Industry regional trends survey.
THURSDAY
Interims: Amstrad, British Telecom (Q3), Wyefield Group, Westminster Healthcare.
Finals: Colgate-Palmolive, Edinburgh Java Trust, Ericsson, Gartmore Emerging Pacific, P&P.
Economic statistics: none scheduled.
FRIDAY
Interims: Compel Group.
Finals: Heavitree Brewery, Nightfreight.
Economic statistics: CBI distributive trades survey (January).
As London awaits ‘the art event of the year', leading artists tell Isabel Carlisle about the enduring influence of a giant.
The Cezanne exhibition which opens on Thursday at the Tate Gallery is not only set to be the art event of the year, but a reminder of what comprehensive surveys like this are for. The show will give every visitor enormous, exhilarating pleasure; but beyond that, like a well-written biography, it should encourage us to rethink our ideas about this great artist.
Cezanne is a key figure for art of this century: he was enormously influential for the art of Matisse and Picasso; he pointed the way towards Cubism; and, beyond that, to abstract art. His genius lay in achieving his declared aim of taking the art of the Impressionists and making something solid, monumental, out of it. He did this by introducing the weight of sculpture and the forms of architecture into his paintings while still painting with pure colour. He combined the grandeur and harmony of classicism with a vibrancy and exuberance that he found in Baroque art, and in sculpture in particular. He anchored his paintings with solid, natural shapes such as Mont Sainte-Victoire, cliffs or pine trees, and then covered the canvas with brushstrokes that seem to float, and fragmented the forms into planes and colours. He was an artist of paradoxes who struggled to find resolutions in his landscapes, still lifes, portraits and wholly invented groups of naked bathers. Cezanne's vision was so original that artists still mine his paintings if not for ideas then for the courage to dare to be different.
GILLIAN AYRES
CEZANNE's strong, obsessive way of seeing caused him to render nature into simplified pictorial parts and make realistic elements into more unified geometric shapes. These shapes became more like each other, and then clearly relied on their relationship. Cezanne rendered value differences, depth-illusion and surface complexity on his own passionate terms. His paintings developed so that they became their own spaces, a world of their own experience.
In 20th-century painting, the shapes came up to the surface as two-dimensional and more abstract forms, and also went easily into three-dimensional sculpture. But the implications taken from Cezanne's vision, a whole century of forms and experience let loose from Cezanne, are one thing; his own wonderful paintings are another.
ANTHONY CARO
CEZANNE is a touchstone for artists. He is so firm and rock-like. His concern is not with turning out successful pictures but with working through his problems. In his life and work this is what every serious artist is trying to do.
I have always looked a lot at Cezanne. It used to be the organisation and the clarity of the still lifes that drew me now, although I still delight in the still lifes and am moved by the intensity in the portraits, nevertheless I have become intrigued by the "Bathers". They are difficult pictures to come to terms with. Often they are only small, but I wish I could get results that have such power. In Cezanne's work, I don't see what one is always told his work is about the sphere, the cube, and the cone I see weight and I see horizontal and vertical. After the breath of air that the Impressionists gave to painting, Cezanne brought weight, substance and pressure back into his art. And that I think is the mood of artists' needs today, so for us it is an appropriate moment to have the show.
PETER DOIG
THE first Cezannes I saw were in my father's art books: poor, pale reproductions which were not very impressive to a young artist. At this point there had been so many other breakthroughs that his achievements felt like art history. The period of Cezanne and Post-Impressionism seemed to be like that of Abstract Expressionism a real breakthrough period with plenty of open territory in which people could carve out individual inquiries. You could be an Impressionist or a Pointillist there was a lot of stylish scope.
When you read older artists talking about Cezanne they have much stronger feelings about him. Where I was at art school, at St Martin's in the early 1980s, we had the tyranny of post-American Abstract Expressionism via British post-Abstract Expressionism. We were reacting against that.
I really started looking at Cezanne when I started making my paintings of buildings and architecture seen through nature. I didn't want any dominance given to nature or architecture or sky or ground within the painting; everything was given the same level of treatment. So when I made my paintings of buildings seen through trees I thought they would be more successful if they were painted with the same lack of hierarchy as in Cezanne: instead of painting the facade of a building and then shrouding it in trees I would pick the architecture through the foliage, so that the picture would push itself up to your eye. I thought that was a much more real way of looking at things, because that is the way the eye looks: you are constantly looking through things, seeing the foreground and the background at the same time.
HOWARD HODGKIN
IN ENGLAND, certainly for someone of my generation, Cezanne's reputation has suffered greatly because of the use he has been put to by art teachers; the way he has been treated as a moral stick to beat people with. When I was a schoolboy you couldn't seriously consider becoming an art student or a painter unless you worked from nature. Cezanne was held up as the great exemplar of someone who looked, and nature did something to him and art came out. Cezanne was not the apostle of sitting on a stool in front of a tree, a still life or a naked model and looking very carefully and using a plumb line and if you did that with sufficient application art would ensue. He was an artist first. The lucidity in front of nature that he shows is because the drawing itself is more important than the perceived subject.
His pictures are flat. In a Cezanne an orange is an orange. It is not observed as being lit from one direction. He invented a pictorial language in which edges of objects suggest a flat plane parallel to the picture surface which then rounds off at the edges.
Cezanne is resolutely frontal in his approach; his pictures are as formal as Byzantine icons. His language of painting was extremely formal in the sense that it was based on the grammar of forms. He created a language of marks which was entirely his own and enabled him to say all kinds of things.
The motif to him was a constant encouragement, reminder and friend. His language, which he acquired slowly, is self-sufficient, and comes before whatever it is trying to express. The kinds of marks he made, the grammar and syntax of Cezanne, are as paramount as in Vermeer. I think his endless fascination for people comes from the interruption or the distortion of this language by his attitude to the subject, or how the subject worked on him.
Cezanne is a great classical artist who succeeded in doing what he wanted to do. In classical art the tension between the language and what is being said or expressed is in an endlessly delicate balance.
KEN KIFF
OTHERS will make the same point, about Cezanne being an example of integrity; of bringing together serene architecture and passion; of the massive presence of objects and space, yet with the fragility of these films of paint against a sort of nothingness. So that Braque, in painting his yellow wallpaper and figures on a black ground is being not only Cubist, but still close to Cezanne.
If you were to ask me, as a painter, in 1996, "is Cezanne still of importance to you?", the answer is yes. For many reasons. Partly, perhaps, because of the enormous amount that can be focused into the dab of paint.
R.B. KITAJ
FOR many people, Shakespeare is the heart of their canon. Cezanne is at the heart of mine. Nothing in art since his last three "Bather" paintings seems more daring to me. Daring Matisse told how Cezanne's "Bathers" gave him courage to dare all his life. Picasso was still building upon Cezanne's dare in 1973. It has taken me 60 years to half solve Cezanne's secret.
I think that what he did was so strange, so hated by Philistines, so unprecedented, that real artists would, in his wake, do anything they dreamt of within a sensibility, temperament, intellect, of course. That is the ultimate lesson of his "sensations" they arise now from the mind, heart and hand with an utter freedom that did not, could not, exist before Cezanne.
As for me, he helps me to dare to follow my most awkward, foolish passions and obsessions, to wave my own red flags in the dull faces of late-century Salon hacks and killers. He gives me courage to invent my subjects as well as my forms.
Above all, his "little sensations" correspond to what I call my "temptations" and I believe in following what tempts me, even though it gets me into trouble as it did Cezanne when he illustrated his own impulses and secrets. When he died, a critic wrote: "Ape-Eye is dead."
EUAN UGLOW
CEZANNE is the pivotal figure for art of this century Matisse and Picasso took him as their god. From him they got the idea that an artist could do whatever he liked. But it was impossible for anyone to copy him.
Cezanne's painting was so much to do with passion. I went to the Barnes Collection and saw those portraits of his wife and found that he must have been incredibly in love. I have never seen such affectionate portraits. He was not just a crusty old man.
Cezanne's responsibility to what he was looking at, and the sensations he was getting, widened his vocabulary all the time. If you look at Cubist pictures, certainly Picasso's best paintings, you see that although very beautiful the vocabulary is very limited. Cezanne was a sculptural painter but very conscious of the surface of the canvas, and, in various ways, keeps bringing you back to the surface. Colour is one of the things that keeps the picture on the surface.
His pictures go right across the canvas, like a typewriter: he is scanning the surface the whole time. In the late landscapes there is a passion and rhythm that you feel is like a runner running a mile impossible to stop because there is such a terrific flow through the painting. The marks are done with an electric passion. The same powerful current goes all the way through the painting. Now I look at Cezanne for pure pleasure he makes you want to work.
RICHARD WENTWORTH
THERE is no other word for the things that I am interested in, other than "things". That has translated itself into sculpture. I find incredible substance in Cezanne's trees, mountains and large ladies. I first saw La Femme a la Cafetiere over 20 years ago and I remember thinking that the way the spoon was in the cup, the cup was in the saucer and the saucer was on the table was completely incredible. I see him as a sculptor's painter.
The First World War democratised doubt and the 20th century has been full of it. I see it as Cezanne's good fortune to have worked before this event. The fact that a picture by Cezanne is simultaneously so obviously unsure and yet resolved is a kind of ironic encouragement, I suppose. Doubt is the position from which artists have to work, and a century later there are no canons out there to reach for.
Cezanne is at the Tate Gallery, Millbank, London SW1, from Thursday until April 28, sponsored by by Ernst & Young. For advance booking, which is advised, telephone 0171-420 0000.
Clowns before there annual service at the Holy Trinity Church, Dalston, East London, where Joseph Grimaldi is commemorated.
Sunday Telegraph: Buy Frederick Cooper, Limit, Hiscox Select, CLM. Sell Standard Chartered. The Mail On Sunday: Buy Merchant Retail Group, Manx and Overseas. Hold WPP, Aegis. Independent On Sunday: Buy Games Workshop. Sell Sainsbury, Perpetual, Cassidy Brothers, Airtours. The Sunday Times: Buy Williams Holdings, Bloomsbury, MKT. Hold Bardon. Sell Border TV. Observer: Sell Tomkins, BP, Shell.
ATTENTION will focus this week on Britain's industrial output figures for December, due to be published tomorrow. Evidence so far, including last week's Purchasing Managers' Index, suggests that production remains flat and economists are predicting nothing more than a 0.3 per cent rise in manufacturing output, which would give a year-on-year rise of 0.9 per cent.
Total industrial production is forecast to rise 0.4 to 0.6 per cent, boosted slightly by North Sea oil and gas output, which would mean an annual rise of about 1.5 to 1.7 per cent.
Retail sales, by contrast, have been more positive of late and January M0 money supply figures, due today, and the CBI's trades survey for January, out on Friday, will indicate whether the improved trend has continued. Forecasts for M0 were in the range of minus 0.6 to plus 1.0 per cent, according to MMS International, equal to a year-on-year rise of 5.5 to 7.2 per cent.
Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor, and Eddie George, the Bank Governor, meet on Wednesday for their regular monthly meeting, but after producing a surprise base rate cut last time, no change is expected for a while, probably until rates start falling in Europe.
In France, the CGT trade union federation is calling for further protests this week. A Bank of France council meeting planned for Thursday is unlikely to result in any French rate cuts.
Figures from Germany this week include December manufacturing orders, while US data will include the November trade balance for goods and services, today, and December consumer credit, on Wednesday.
SCOTTISH LIFE will tomorrow follow in the footsteps of its fellow life offices in Edinburgh by creating an offshore joint venture aimed at expatriates. Its partner in the venture will be Kleinwort Benson, the investment bank. It is understood the operation will be headed by John Allison of Ivory & Sime, who helped launch TrustLink, I&S's first venture into retail investment.
The venture, based in Dublin, will be known as Scottish Life International. Mr Allison will be marketing director and is expected to be joined by Rick May and Mike Richardson, two former senior Clerical Medical & General managers.
Mr Allison left Ivory & Sime last week after two years as managing director of TrustLink to be replaced by Richard Ramsey, I&S marketing director. Scottish Life refused to confirm the launch of the offshore venture and would only say it was "looking at all possibilities".
BSkyB: When analysts converge on the group tomorrow to discuss its half-year figures, the main topic of conversation is likely to revolve around the Office of Fair Trading investigation into its competitive position in the television subscription market.
As far as brokers are concerned, the outcome of the inquiry is crucial in establishing the long-term prospects of BSkyB, which is 40 per cent owned by News International, owner of The Times. NatWest Securities, the broker, maintains that the group's claim to have bilateral political support has been damaged by Labour Party concern relating to the exclusive screening rights of major sports events and control of encryption technology. It says that BSkyB's current rating makes it vulnerable to any unfavourable regulatory decision.
Even so, tomorrow's figures should make impressive reading. The group has already indicated that its second-quarter performance will be a virtual repeat of the first quarter, which saw pre-tax profits double to £51 million. Brokers are looking for the first six months to show profits surging from £63.3 million to about £106 million.
Meanwhile, the group will concentrate on its joint programming venture with Granada and its entry into pay-per-view television with Frank Bruno's fight against Mike Tyson next month.
BRITISH TELECOM: Third-quarter figures on Thursday mark Sir Peter Bonfield's debut as chairman. While the group's performance will be under close scrutiny, much of the emphasis will be placed on what Sir Peter has to say about regulatory matters overhanging the group and the future direction of the company.
Estimates for pre-tax profits range from £741 million to £800 million, compared with £660 million last time. However, the improvement will stem as much from a drop in redundancy charges as any increase in profits at the operating level, which may even show a small decline.
The installation of business lines is likely to have remained buoyant but the number of domestic connections will probably have continued to decline.
The real focus of attention will be on the regulatory situation. BT remains at odds with Oftel, the industry regulator, and there is no sign of the problems between the two sides being resolved.
Oftel is expected to make known its final licence modifications by May, with BT allowed until the end of July for consultation before either accepting them or referring the whole matter to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.
BAA: In spite of increased competition from the likes of Eurostar and the Channel link, the number of passengers passing through the group's departure lounges and duty free shops shows encouraging growth.
This augurs well for third-quarter figures to be announced on Wednesday, which should reveal pre-tax profits 11 per cent higher at £361 million and a healthy growth in earnings per share of 2.8p to 26.3p.
After a sluggish start to the current financial year, traffic growth picked up towards the end of 1995, with the group boasting a better than expected rise of almost 6 per cent. This was in spite of increased competition and a dull charter market.
NatWest Securities, the broker, is looking for an increase of 4.3 per cent, to £364 million, in revenues from airport charges, partly reflecting the rebalancing of peak and off-peak charges.
The inquiry into a fifth terminal at Heathrow continues to rumble on and is unlikely to be concluded until next year at the earliest. But the five-yearly review of operations, which sees the Civil Aviation Authority setting airport charges, should be finished at the end of October.
WASTE MANAGEMENT INTERNATIONAL: Full-year figures on Friday are unlikely to make pleasant reading, but hopes are high that they will prove to be a turning point in the group's fortunes. Brokers are bracing themselves for a drop in pre-tax profits of about £20 million to £145 million.
The group gave a clear indication of the extent of the damages back in December, when it said that provisions accompanying the figures were likely to reach £123 million. This arguably took some of the steam out of the situation as far as the market was concerned.
Much of the problem stems from its Hazwaste division, which bore the brunt of last year's writedowns. France has been a particularly annoying thorn in the group's side, struggling to come to terms with overcapacity.
The WMI management is now taking steps to reduce costs and cap overheads at £150 million a year. A total of 300 senior and middle managers will lose their jobs.
DALGETY: Brokers will be looking for evidence of how the intergration of its Quaker Foods European pet food operation is bedding down when the company unveils half-year figures on Monday.
Quaker Foods was acquired last year for £442 million and is expected to have performed well, with the Felix label grabbing market share from Dalgety's own home-based pet food operation.
That aside, the group continues to struggle in its main home market, where trading conditions remain difficult. Pre-tax profits for the first six months are expected to fall short of last year's £60.9 million, with City estimates pitched at between £47 million and £55 million.
The following candidates were successful in the 1995 Professional 3 examinations of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and
Accountancy
J Abbott, Nottinghamshire CC; A C Adams, Greenwich LBC; A M Alexander, Gordon DC; D S Alexander, Motherwell DC; S A Alexander, Renfrew DC; M J Allen, District Audit - South & Western; F D Allison, Cork CC; J Amahwe, Kirklees MBC; C M Andrew, District Audit - Northern; J E Andrews, NHS Executive - Northern; K T Andrews, Lambeth Southwark & Lewisham Health Commission; J C Appelbee, Weston Park Hospital NHS Trust; E L Arnold, Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Trust; H L Arthur, District Audit - London & SE; D J Ashley, Wyre Forest DC.
R J B Baird, Gwent CC; A Baldwin, Durham CC; A P Baldwin, Hereford & Worcester CC; G V Ball, Milton Keynes Community NHS Trust; S A Banister, NHS Executive - South & West; A J Banks, KPMG - Edinburgh; D W Banks, Hairmyres & Stonehouse Hospitals NHS Trust; S J Barker, Ryedale Housing Association Ltd; A J Barraclough, NHS Executive - Northern & Yorkshire - Harrogate; R A Barrett, Greenwich LBC; S L Barrett, Coopers & Lybrand - Maidstone; P A Bateman, Kidsons Impey - London; M Beasley, Nuneaton & Bedworth BC; W M Bebbington, Cheshire CC; J C Belford, Grampian RC; E M Bell, Central RC; K E Bentley, NHS Executive - South & West; P J Berkhold, District Audit - Northern; M C Berrington, NHS Executive - Northern & Yorkshire - Newcastle; D J Berry, Tayside RC; C Biddlecombe, KPMG - London Puddle Dock; J Bilcliff, District Audit - Northern; C L Bird, Glan Hafren NHS Trust; J M Birley, Salford MDC (City); H S A Black, Monklands DC; T C Blackman, District Audit - London & SE; S J Bladen, Harlow DC; S E Blaze, NHS Executive - North West; S M Bleckly, Cheshire CC; R J Blundell, NHS Executive - Northern & Yorkshire - Newcastle; H J Boddice, Wolverhampton MBC; A Boddison, Forest of Dean DC; T Bolton, King's Lynn & West Norfolk BC; N S Booth, Leicester City Council; M A Bowden, Buckinghamshire CC; A J T Boyd, Coopers & Lybrand - Norwich; C L Boylan, Leeds City Council; K Boyle, Strathclyde RC; J Bradley, Manchester City Council; P D Brereton, District Audit - South & Western; S M Bridge, Aintree Hospitals NHS Trust; J Broad, Northamptonshire CC; J H Brodie, NHS Executive - Anglia & Oxford - Milton Keynes; A C B L Brodrick, NHS Executive - Northern & Yorkshire - Newcastle; J R Brookes, Coventry City Council; D J Broome, Wiltshire CC; A W Brown, Kent CC; D T Brown, Coventry City Council; G Brown, Cardiff DC (City); T Brown, NHS Executive - South & West; L M J C Bubb, NHS Executive - North Thames; S A Buck, New Possibilities NHS Trust; J A Burchill, East Cheshire NHS Trust; C D Burke, Sandwell MBC; J R Burr, Merthyr & Cynon Health Unit; D F E Burrows, Warrington BC; M Butterworth, Knowsley MBC.
C Caddy, West Sussex CC; G N Cadle, Three Rivers DC; L J Callaway; S R Carman, NHS Executive - Northern & Yorkshire - Harrogate; J Carr, Bolton MBC; C Carroll, Derwentside DC; J Carter, NHS Executive - North Thames; P Carter, East Devon DC; M P Carton, Teeside Tertiary College; P M Cassidy, Northern Health & Social Services Board; T Casson, North Tyneside Council; A T Catt, Kingston & District Community NHS Trust; B G Chalk, St. James's & Seacroft University Hospitals NHS Trust; C F Chapman, Cleveland CC; S J Charlesworth, Dorset CC; D Chauhan, Westminster City Council; D A Chefneux, Stockport MBC; D M Chesnutt, National Savings - Glasgow; S J Chin, Camden LBC; B A Q Chowdhury, Wrexham Maelor BC; A D Clarke, Lancaster City Council; B J Clarke, Wirral MBC; C J M Clarke, Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Health Commissioning Agency; A E Clay, Poole BC; J R Clough, NHS Executive - Northern & Yorkshire - Newcastle; A Colledge, South Devon Healthcare NHS Trust; A Cook, District Audit - Northern; I D Coop, Manchester City Council; K L Cooper, Hambleton DC; S M Coulon, Kent CC; E B Couperwhite, Inverclyde DC; K A Cousins, NHS Executive - North Thames; A Craig, Lothian RC; C A Crosby, Coventry City Council; G J Crossey, Ards BC; B Crotty, King's Healthcare NHS Trust; S E Curl, Pembrokeshire NHS Trust.
M H Dadlani, Redbridge LBC; J Dagnall, North London Training and Enterprise Council; C M Daniells, Whittington Hospital NHS Trust; A C Danston, Greenwich LBC; S P I Davey, East Devon DC; D E C Davies, District Audit - London & SE; M J Davies, North Essex Health Authority; P J Davies, Preston BC; D W Dawkes, South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive; C Dawson, Manchester City Council; D Dean, Greenwich LBC; S A Delahay, Rutland DC; G J Devlin, District Audit - Wales & The Marches; J Devlin, Central Services Agency; S M Dixon, The Medway NHS Trust; P R Doak, Strathclyde RC; S E Doble, Cardiff DC (City); G M Dominey, District Audit - Northern; P A Dowkes, Durham CC; P D Downey, Staffordshire CC; A M Duff, Lothian RC; J D Duncan, Western Isles Islands Council; J Duncan, NHS Executive - Northern & Yorkshire - Newcastle; R W Duncan, Framgord Ltd; J N Dunne, National Blood Service; N Dyer, NHS Executive - South & West; J P Dyson, Oxfordshire CC.
K M Elliott, North Yorkshire CC; N Ellis, NHS Executive - West Midlands; R N Ellis, Haringey LBC; R J Emmott, NHS Executive - Northern & Yorkshire - Newcastle; E O M Errington, KPMG - Birmingham; W J Erwin, Northern Health & Social Services Board; J A Evans, Clwyd Health Authority; L J Evans, University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust; J Everall, Tameside MBC.
G S Fairley, Angus DC; M J Farrow, KPMG - Reading; J Fenwick, Gateshead MBC; M L Fetigan, District Audit - London & SE; G Fielding, North Yorkshire CC; T J Flanagan, District Audit - Midl & S Yorks; B E Fleming, North Derbyshire Community Health Care Services NHS Trust; J F Fogarty, St. Helens MBC; T F Ford, Coventry City Council; P C Foster, Solihull Healthcare NHS Trust; T Fothergill, Barnet LBC; M W Furniss, South Yorkshire Police.
L J Gamlen, Doncaster MBC; D J Garden, Highland Health Board; P Garrett, Dumfries & Galloway RC; M Garvey, Office of the Comptroller & Auditor General - Dublin; P J Gay, KPMG - Birmingham; A J Gendall, Plymouth City Council; H R Gibbs, Buckinghamshire CC; L M Gibson, Highland Communities NHS Trust; J S Gill, Dyfed Health Authority; D A Gladwin, Midlothian DC; J S Glasgow, Gateshead College; L A Gold, Nottinghamshire CC; S Gordon-Roberts, South Glamorgan CC; C E Gorman, Helm Corporation Ltd; L Gouldthorp, Manchester City Council; P S Gray, Gwent Community Health NHS Trust; C B Greene, Galway CC; T S Greenwood, Uttlesford DC; A W D Greer, Hillingdon LBC; R S Grewal, Ealing LBC; A Grey, Havering LBC; J B Grieve, Tayside RC; A P Griffiths, Gwynedd Community Health Trust; H Guttridge, Northumberland CC; A Gyambibi, Pathfinder Mental Health Services NHS Trust.
B S Haines, NHS Executive - North Thames; J A Hampson, Airedale NHS Trust; J Handa, NHS Executive - Northern & Yorkshire - Newcastle; C Hanley, Strathclyde RC; A Harland, St. Helens & Knowsley Hospitals Trust; S J Harman, Avon CC; J E Harrison, NHS Executive - North West; K V H Harrison, Northwick Park & St Mark's NHS Trust; M J Harrison, Birmingham Heartlands Hospital NHS Trust; R C Harrison, Addenbrooke's NHS Trust; A J Hartley, Derbyshire CC; M H Hassall, NHS Executive -Northern & Yorkshire - Harrogate; J R Hawkins, Tower Hamlets LBC; R Hayden, Blaenau Gwent BC; R J Hetherington, Suffolk CC; J A Hewitt, Sedgefield DC; K F Higgins, Dublin Corporation; M R Hill, Lincoln DC (City); J L Hillier, Kennet DC; P Ho, District Audit - Wales & The Marches; A Hodge, Cambridgeshire CC; P Hoey, Department of Finance & Personnel; D R G Hogg, Yorkhill NHS Trust; P G Holland, Doncaster MBC; J A C Holliday, Coopers & Lybrand - London, Embankment Place; S L Howard, District Audit - Wales & The Marches; S M Howard, Durham City Council; C M Howell, Cheviot & Wansbeck NHS Trust; K V Howes, Derbyshire CC; J C Hughes, Knowsley MBC; S A Hughes, Barnet LBC; N J Humphreys, Coventry City Council; R L Hurst, NHS Executive - North West; A D Hutchings, District Audit - London & SE.<nip> T J Jackson, NHS Executive - North West; D Jefferson, Lancashire CC; A K Jeffs, Hertfordshire CC; G Johal, Nottingham City Council; M D Johnson, Binder Hamlyn - London; C D Jones, Bridgend & District NHS Trust; H Jones, Powys CC; S M Jones, St. Edmundsbury BC; D M Jung, Tower Hamlets LBC; G R Juzwin, Post Office - Royal Mail London Royal Mail House.
L A Kay, Greater Manchester Police; H L Keelan, Bury MBC; F Kelbrick, Price Waterhouse & Co - London; A Kelly, Accounts Commission - Headquarters; L W Kelly, Wirral MBC; E M Knowles, Kingston & District Community NHS Trust.<nip> D Lambert, Luton BC; N Lane, North Warwickshire BC; A P Langridge, Sutton LBC; D Langton, Kirklees MBC; P Large, UCL Hospitals NHS Trust; S Larter, East Lindsey DC; S L Lavers, University of Strathclyde; R Lawes, Wiltshire CC; N T Lawlor; H Lea, Clwydian Community Care NHS Trust; S J Leahy, United Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust; A C Lee, Wakefield Domestic Support Consortium; C D Lee, Merthyr Tydfil BC; S A Leedham, KPMG - Manchester; R L Lewin, Bexley LBC; I D Livsey, NHS Executive - Anglia & Oxford - Oxford; M Lovell, Cheshire CC; I R Lowdon, Blyth Valley BC; M E Lynch, Mid Glamorgan CC; A Lyons, NHS Executive - North Thames; G S Lyons, Northavon DC.
J E MacDonald, Glasgow City Council; L C MacKichan, Oxfordshire CC; J MacLeod, Lincoln District Healthcare NHS Trust; M E MacLoughlin, NHS Executive - North West; R S Mack, Birmingham City Council; Z Mahmood, NHS Executive - North West; R T Manktelow, National Audit Office - London; S J Mann, Great Grimsby BC; S Margiotta, Glenfield Hospital NHS Trust; S R Marshall, Price Waterhouse & Co - London; C W Mason, Derbyshire Dales DC; D Mather, Sefton MBC; D May, Sunderland MDC (City); J D S Mayhew, Dudley MBC; D H McCallum, Ayrshire & Arran Health Board; J D McCarthy, Sutton LBC; S A McCartney, Scottish Health Service Centre; E E McColl, Scottish Health Service Centre; L M McCrone, Clydesdale DC; P McDermott, Manchester City Council; S H McDermott, Strathclyde RC; J McDonagh, Price Waterhouse & Co - Glasgow; J McDonald, Scottish Power plc - Glasgow; C McFarland, North Eastern Education & Library Board; P McGuckin, NHS Executive - Northern & Yorkshire - Newcastle; U M McGuinness, Northern Ireland Civil Service; E M McKay, Dundee Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust; C M McKillop, Northern Health & Social Services Board; A A McKirgan, Stockport Healthcare NHS Trust; C McLaughlin, Scottish Health Service Centre; S J McManus, Kilmarnock & Loudoun DC; P J McMenamin, Falkirk DC; B W McNaught, NHS Executive - North West; J McNellis, James Watt College; A P Meeks, Northamptonshire Health Authority; B Mehmet, Haringey LBC; S W Melbourne, Stoke-on-Trent DC. (City); E T Mellor, Trafford MBC; R P Mellor, Luton & Dunstable Hospital NHS Trust; C E Mercer, District Audit - London & SE; R J Middleton, Bromley Health; R N Miller, Staffordshire CC; P Mills, Gillingham BC; B E Minns, North Norfolk DC; A J Mitchell, Lambeth Southwark & Lewisham Health Commission; N M Mitchell, Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust; V A Mitchell, King's Lynn & West Norfolk BC; G Moir, Papworth Hospital Trust; L Moorhouse District Audit - London & SE; R Morgan, Weston Area NHS Health Trust; B C Morris, District Audit - Wales & The Marches; H L Morris, Oxfordshire CC; R S Muir, Lothian RC; H M Mulhern-Wilson, Bedford Hospital NHS Trust; P C Murphy, Glasgow City Council; L M Murray, Wandsworth LBC; K L Murray, District Audit - Northern; B G Murtagh, Llandough Hospital & Community NHS Trust; N R Murton, Corporation of London.
J Nair, Southwark LBC; A M Ness, Knowsley MBC; C A Newbold, Chesterfield & North Derbyshire Royal Hospital NHS Trust; T M Niedrum, Somerset CC; T J Nutt, St. Albans & Hemel Hempstead NHS Trust.<nip> C M O'Brien, Gedling BC; V O'Connor, Cork Corporation; Z A Oppal, Leeds City Council; K J Ord, NHS Executive - Northern & Yorkshire - Newcastle; A M Oritsejafor, Tower Hamlets LBC; L Orton, Staffordshire CC; A Orzieri, Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames; H C Oxtoby, Staffordshire CC.
J B Paddon, United Bristol Healthcare NHS Trust; C Paterson, Grampian Healthcare NHS Trust; A Paterson, Strathkelvin DC; A W J Paulson, Nottingham City Council; J Peebles, Clackmannan DC; E Peers, District Audit - South & Western; P A Pender, Tendring DC; I T Persechino, KPMG - Manchester; J K Phillips, East Somerset NHS Trust; I L Phillips, West Sussex CC; J P Phillips, Royal Shrewsbury Hospital NHS Trust; S Pickering, South Yorkshire Police; A Pigott, Sheffield Health; A Pipes, District Audit - Midl & S Yorks; N J Pollard, Three Rivers DC; N G Porteus, Hull City Council; T J Povall, Wyre Forest DC; T Pover, Ernst & Young - Manchester; L Power, Dublin Corporation; S Preece, Shropshire CC; C M S Price, Birmingham City Council; D J Proctor, Shropshire CC; V K Puri, KPMG - Reading.
V A Quayle, Crewe & Nantwich BC; L D Quinn, Macclesfield BC; K Quinn, Dublin Corporation.
J M Rafnson, NHS Executive - North West; J A Randall, Barking & Dagenham LBC; T M Reay, NHS Executive - Northern & Yorkshire - Harrogate; J W L Rees, Pembrokeshire NHS Trust; M D A Rees, Kent CC; A M Reeves, Hillingdon LBC; S K Rehan, KPMG - Manchester; A C Reid, Ceredigion DC; S Reid, East Lothian DC; D M A Reynolds, Three Rivers DC; S D Reynolds, Tonbridge & Malling BC; S J Richardson, Wycombe DC; A Risdon, District Audit - Midl & S Yorks; I D Roberts, NHS Executive - Northern & Yorkshire - Harrogate; M Roberts, Shropshire CC; T M Roberts, Humberside CC; D D Robertson, Lothian RC; V J Roche, Liverpool City Council; K M Rodgers, District Audit - Midl & S Yorks; I H Rogers, Llandough Hospital & Community NHS Trust; T L Rolls, South Glamorgan CC; J Ross, Staffordshire CC; B A Ross, NHS Executive - Northern & Yorkshire - Newcastle; D L Rothwell, Coopers & Lybrand - Manchester; M S Rowe, East Sussex Family Health Services Authority; I N Rowswell, Wiltshire CC; S M Rumble, District Audit - London & SE; A Russell, Forth Valley Health Board; A S Russell, Scottish Health Service Centre.
N J Sadler, Newcastle-under-Lyme BC; M I Salter, St. George's Healthcare NHS Trust; J Savage, Monaghan CC; J A Scullion, Wolverhampton MBC; J P H Sear, Oldham MBC; A A Sefa-Bonsu, Croydon LBC; T A Seton, Lancaster City Council; B G Shahin, District Audit - London & SE; M D Sharman, Oxfordshire Health Authority; J W Sheffield, University of Paisley; A Sheldon, Merton LBC; J J Shiel, Middlesbrough BC; S A Shires, Shrewsbury & Atcham BC; D J Shirtcliffe, Derbyshire CC; F C Shrigley, South Thames Regional Health Authority - Sussex; S J Skinner, Gloucestershire Royal NHS Trust; C J Smith, Scottish Health Service Centre; E Smith, West Lothian DC; M Smith, Durham City Council; J A Snelson, Worcester City Council; E H Snowden-Davies, Mid Glamorgan CC; H M Soutar, Moray Health Services NHS Trust; L J Spencer, Oxford Radcliffe Hospital; K M Spratt, Mount Vernon & Watford Hospital NHS Trust; D Sprigg, District Audit - Midl & S Yorks; A G Spry, West Yorkshire Fire & Civil Defence Authority; A Steenson, Down Lisburn Health & Social Services Trust; L A Stephen, District Audit - Midl & S Yorks; H L Stevens, Coopers & Lybrand - Norwich; G H Stevenson, District Audit - Northern; L M Stickney, South Thames Regional Health Authority - Sussex; P Stock, Northamptonshire Police; L Stone, Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea; P P J Stothard; A A Stubbings, Touche Ross & Company - Newcastle; R D Stubbs, Hampshire CC; B R Sutcliffe, District Audit - London & SE; A J Swarbrick, Accounts Commission - Headquarters; B Sweeney, Preston BC; N S Swift, Knowsley MBC; B L Symonds, Eastbourne & County Healthcare NHS Trust.
M J Tallontire, NHS Executive - Northern & Yorkshire - Harrogate; C Tasker, Perth & Kinross Healthcare NHS Trust; J A Taylor, Lambeth Southwark & Lewisham Health Commission; S J Taylor, West Glamorgan Health Authority; M A Taylor, District Audit - London & SE; J Tennent, Rochdale MBC; J Thompson, Sefton MBC; D C Thomson, District Audit - Northern; J J Thorpe, District Audit - South & Western; K L Timbers, KPMG - Birmingham; N B J Timmins, District Audit - South & Western; A K Timmis, District Audit - Midl & S Yorks; A Todd, Oldham NHS Trust; R L Tosh, Angus DC; C J Trainor, Rochdale MBC; S J Truelove, United Bristol Healthcare NHS Trust; S A Turner, District Audit - Midl & S Yorks; D Tuson, District Audit - London & SE; D C Tyrrell, KPMG - Manchester; P H L Tysoe, Wellingborough BC.
B A Uku, Hackney LBC; C J Umfreville, Westminster City Council.
J Wagstaffe, Shropshire CC; V K Walsh, Strathclyde RC; S J Ward, Barnsley MBC; N D Ward, Birmingham City Council; A R Ward, Dudley MBC; R E F Warren, District Audit - Midl & S Yorks; K Waters, Portsmouth City Council; J A Watkins, Birmingham City Council; J L Webb, NHS Executive - Northern & Yorkshire - Harrogate; P J Webster, Norwich DC (City); P M Weir, North Tyneside Council; D Weir, Accounts Commission - Headquarters; W J Welsh, Devon CC; P Welton, Price Waterhouse & Co - Birmingham; R K Wheeler, NHS Executive - South & West; C E Whillock, Solihull MBC; P Whip, Strathclyde RC; J R White, District Audit - Midl & S Yorks; G Whitefield, Motherwell DC; D Whiteman, Stoke-on-Trent DC (City); R A Whiteman, Camden LBC; J M Whiting, Kirklees MBC; S J Whyte, Grampian RC; J M Wigglesworth, Grampian Health Board; M S Wilcox, Liverpool City Council; L J Wilkes, University of Wolverhampton; K Williams, Mid Glamorgan Health Authority; V M Williams, Meirionnydd DC; K J Wilson, Gwent CC; P Wingate, Central Sheffield University Hospitals NHS Trust; G N Wisby, East Northamptonshire DC; I Withers, Lewisham LBC; J Q R Wood, Salford Royal Hospitals NHS Trust; S L Woods, Avon CC; R J Woolley, Price Waterhouse & Co - Birmingham; S D Wootton, Walsall MBC; D Worrell, Redbridge LBC; H L Wright, Salford MDC (City).
B Yeung, Surrey CC; S T-S Yeung, Surrey CC; D L Yorath, Newham LBC; L Young, United Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust; J A Young, Newcastle-upon-Tyne City Council; T E Yule, National Savings - Glasgow.
Court of Appeal. Corbett v Newey and Others
Before Lord Justice Butler-Sloss, Lord Justice Waite and Mr Justice Morritt
[Judgment January 26]
Given the requirement that every will had to be made with immediate testamentary intent, a testator could not by words or conduct outside the terms of the will impose some direction or condition upon his execution of the document which would postpone or qualify its operation.
The Court of Appeal so held in allowing an appeal by the plaintiff, William H. J. Corbett, against a decision of Mr Eben Hamilton, QC, who, sitting as a deputy judge of the Chancery Division, had upheld a will made in September 1989 by the testatrix, Nancie Armorel Tresawna (The Times May 12, 1994; [1994] Ch 388).
The defendants were John W. Newey and David P. Bennett, the executors, and James Arthur, Jonathan Arthur, both minors appearing by their father Nicholas Arthur, Elsie Brew, Mrs M. E. Corbett, Rosemary May Somerville and Sarah Arthur, who were beneficiaries under the will.
Mr Quintin Iwi for the plaintiff; Mr Francis Barlow for Mr Newey; Mr Patrick Powell for Sarah Arthur and her sons James and Jonathan; the other parties did not appear and were not represented.
LORD JUSTICE WAITE said that in an earlier will the testatrix had bequeathed two farms to her nephew and niece respectively and divided the bulk of the residue between them.
She later decided to make inter vivos gifts of the land to her nephew and niece and to change her will, both to take into account the effect of those proposed gifts, and to change the destination of residue which she had by then decided to bequeath to her great-nephews James and Jonathan.
The preparation of the deeds of gift for the farms proceeded more slowly than the drafting of the new will. It became clear that to complete both gifts and the will together would not be feasible.
The testatrix made arrangements to execute the will in September 1989 and it was duly signed and attested but the space in the text for the date to be inserted was left blank. She asked her solicitor to date the will when the gifts of the farms had been legally completed, which he duly did.
The hearing had proceeded on the agreed basis that the testatrix had mistakenly believed that the dating of her will was essential to its operation and that her instructions as to its subsequent dating were given under that misapprehension.
The evidence clearly showed that the last thing the testatrix intended at the moment of execution of the will was to bring into being a document which would operate with unconditional effect. She had no animus to execute an unconditional will.
Animus testandi meant an intention to make a "revocable ambulatory disposition of the maker's property which is to take effect on death": see In re Berger, dec'd ([1990] Ch 118, 129G) per Lord Justice Mustill.
A will, in other words, subjected the assets of the testator from the moment of its execution to a series of dispositions which, unless revoked, would operate at his death.
Since it operated from the moment of execution, it necessarily followed that to possess the necessary animus testandi the testator had to intend that that dispositive, although revocable and ambulatory, regime would be called into play immediately and not postponed to, or made dependent upon, some future event or condition.
That was why, surprising though the distinction might at first sight be to a layman, it was possible to have a will which was on its face conditional and yet impossible to have a will which though unconditional on its face purported, through some direction imposed externally by the testator at the time of its execution, to be made conditional in its operation.
There was thus no possibility on the evidence of attributing to the testatrix, at the moment of execution of the will, an intention that it should from that moment take dispositive effect.
The most she could have intended, in view of the instructions given to her solicitor as to the future placing of a date on her will, was to bring into effect a document which, depending on whether and when it was dated, would or might at some future date acquire a dispositive operation.
The only conclusion open on the evidence was that at the moment of execution the testatrix, because of the misapprehension under which she was acting, lacked the animus to make any valid will, in the sense of a will intended to be immediately dispositive, at all.
Even if the testatrix had had an immediate animus testandi to make a conditional will it was not an animus to which she ever succeeded in giving effect for the will she executed was unconditional.
It would be against the weight of authority and contrary to the express terms of the Wills Act 1837 to allow extrinsic evidence as to her intentions to be used to write into her will, for probate purposes, a condition which she had neither stated in writing nor signed.
Lord Justice Morritt delivered a concurring judgment and Lord Justice Butler-Sloss agreed.
Solicitors: Sharpe Pritchard for Nalder & Son, Truro; Bevan Ashford, Tiverton; Osborne Clarke, Bristol.
Court of Appeal. Marath and Another v MacGillivray
A notice from landlord to tenant was valid under section 8 of the Housing Act 1988 if it clearly alleged that three months' rent was overdue and made clear how much or how the tenant could ascertain how much was allegedly owing. It was not necessary for the notice to contain a schedule of the arrears.
The Court of Appeal (Lord Justice Russell, Lord Justice McCowan and Sir Iain Glidewell) so held on February 2 dismissing an appeal by Malcolm MacGillivray, the tenant, against an order of Judge Phelan in West London County Court made on March 9, 1995 granting possession of a flat at 8 Burnaby Street, West Brompton to the landlords, Dr Aubyn Marath and Christine Marath, and ordering payment of £5008.70 in rent arrears and interest.
SIR IAIN GLIDEWELL referred to Torridge District Council v Jones ((1985) 18 HLR 107) in which Lord Justice Oliver had said that such a notice "must be nothing short of a specification". In his Lordship's view, Lord Justice Oliver could not have intended to say that the section could only be complied with by a notice setting out in terms the amount of rent due.
Queen's Bench Division. Regina v Secretary of State for Social Security, Ex parte Taylor
Regina v Same, Ex parte Chapman
Before Mr Justice Keene
[Judgment January 31]
The secretary of state could still exercise his power to recover money by making deductions from prescribed benefits when the intended recipient of those benefits had become bankrupt.
Mr Justice Keene so stated in a reserved judgment in the Queen's Bench Division when dismissing applications for judicial review by (i) Elizabeth Taylor of a decision dated February 9, 1995 to recover from her a social fund loan by making deductions from her weekly income support and (ii) Basil Chapman of the action of the secretary of state in deducting a weekly sum, representing overpaid income support, from his state retirement pension as from March 13, 1995.
Mr Nicholas Blake, QC and Miss Bethan Harris for Ms Taylor; Mr Jan Luba for Mr Chapman; Mr Peter Crampin, QC and Mr Richard McManus for the secretary of state.
MR JUSTICE KEENE said that there was no doubt as to the existence in normal circumstances of the power to make such deductions in the absence of bankruptcy.
The applicants contended that section 285 of the Insolvency Act 1986 prevented the secretary of state from making deductions from their benefits. They contended that the statutory right of deduction was a remedy "against the property or person of the bankrupt in respect of that debt" within the meaning of section 285(3) of the 1986 Act.
Mr Blake argued that the statutory right of deduction was merely one kind of remedy available to recover a debt which was provable in the bankruptcy and in consequence that statutory right could not be relied upon after a bankruptcy order.
Mr Crampin argued that the Social Security Act 1992 along with its companion statute the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 formed a specific and exclusive code which took precedence over the more general provisions of section 285(3) of the 1986 Act. Thus section 285(3) did not apply at all to the secretary of state's powers to recover moneys lent or overpaid. Alternatively, as a matter of interpretation of section 285(3) the right to deduct did not fall within the terms of that provision.
His Lordship found it impossible to characterise either the 1986 Act or the 1992 Act as being more specific than the other. Both were of general application, the one dealing with insolvency and bankruptcy generally and the other making provision for the administration of social security and related matters, irrespective of whether the recipients of state benefits were bankrupt or not. Both statutes seemed to be of very broad application.
That was to be contrasted with the situation in the case of R v Director of Serious Fraud Office, Ex parte Smith ([1993] AC 1) on which Mr Crampin relied. That was clearly a case where Parliament had enacted a special provision to deal with one particular crime, namely serious fraud, where the general statutory provisions relating to crime must have been intended not to apply.
Moreover, it was clear from other provisions of the 1992 Act, for example sections 89(1) and 187, that the legislature did not intend that Act to be seen generally as excluding the bankruptcy legislation.
His Lordship concluded that the 1992 Act did not take precedence and that nothing precluded consideration of the effect of section 285(3) of the 1986 Act in situations like the present.
As to the interpretation of the terms of section 285(3), the arguments focused on the words "any remedy against the property ... of the bankrupt" in section 285(3)(a), since it was any such remedy which was barred after the making of a bankruptcy order.
Mr Crampin submitted that the deduction of benefit did not fall within that phrase. The formula for the right of reduction found in sections 71(8) and 78(2) of the 1992 Act was a not uncommon statutory provision for enabling a person who had made an overpayment in some specific case to deduct the overpayment from liabilities which he had to the person overpaid.
Relying on Bradley-Hole v Cusen ([1953] 1 QB 300), he submitted that where the secretary of state exercised his right of deduction he was to be treated as between himself and the claimant as having paid benefit in advance.
Mr Blake sought to distinguish that case on the basis that the debt that had arisen in the present situation related to the payment of something different from the benefits from which the deductions were being made.
[In the Taylor case the debt arose from a social fund loan, but the deductions were being made from income support. In the Chapman case the debt arose from overpaid income support, whereas the deductions were being made from retirement pension.]
His Lordship found it difficult to see any true distinction arising on that basis. The whole point of the statutory provisions in the 1992 Act allowing for such deductions to be made was that a wide range of state benefits were treated in a similar fashion. Prima facie, therefore, the approach adopted in the Bradley-Hole case would seem to be applicable.
The Court of Appeal in Bradley-Hole, which concerned overpayment of rent by a tenant in rent-controlled premises, seemed to have been saying that the tenant making the deductions was, in effect, not exercising a remedy against the property of the landlord. He was simply refraining from making a payment and could then use the pre-existing debt to him as a defence against any action brought by the landlord or his trustees in bankruptcy. As Mr Crampin submitted, there was nothing in the 1986 Act which deprived a party of a defence to claims by the bankrupt.
Moreover, it seemed that the usual rights of a pledgee over the property of the bankrupt could have been enforced despite the provisions of section 285(3). Parliament included a specific provision in section 285(5) which suggested that the word "remedy" in section 285(3) was to be more narrowly construed.
Even if that were not the case, his Lordship took the view that the secretary of state was not seeking to go against the property of the bankrupt. The applicants' arguments depended on it being assumed that they were entitled to the full amount of income support or retirement pension. The claimant's entitlement under the 1992 Act was on the facts only to the net amount. Were such a person not bankrupt, he could only claim the net amount and would have no entitlement to more than that.
The secretary of state's approach to the interpretation of section 285 was correct.
Solicitors: Mr Simon Cliff, Bristol; Gudgeons Prentice, Diss; Solicitor, Department of Social Security.
Queen's Bench Division. Rushmoor Borough Council v Richards
Before Mr Justice Tuckey
[Judgment January 30]
In an appeal against a local authority's decision under paragraph 16 of Schedule 1 to the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982, justices were entitled to take account of evidence of events which had happened between the date of the original hearing and the appeal.
Mr Justice Tuckey so held in the Queen's Bench Division when allowing an appeal by Rushmoor Borough Council by way of case stated against the decision of Aldershot Justices on January 28, 1994 to allow an appeal by Michael Richards against the council's refusal to extend the licensing hours of his nightclub.
His Lordship refused a related application by the justices to quash an order nisi of Mr Justice Buxton on July 3, 1995 for costs against the justices for refusing to state a case.
Mr Graham Stoker for the applicant; Mr Kerry Barker for the justices.
MR JUSTICE TUCKEY said that at the appeal the council had wanted to adduce evidence of events which had occurred outside the nightclub between the council's decision and the appeal. The effect of that evidence was that the club had been badly run.
Relying on Westminster City Council v Zestfair ((1989) 153 JP 613) the justices ruled that they were not entitled to hear the later evidence as the appeal was a rehearing. Accordingly the appeal was to be conducted on the same evidence as was heard originally.
His Lordship said that the court in the Westminster case had not considered the point that was before the justices in the present case.
Looking at the legislation in isolation there was nothing to indicate that an appeal under paragraph 17 of Schedule 1 to the 1982 Act was anything other than an appeal by rehearing and de novo. The court was therefore entitled to consider all the relevant evidence including that arising between the original decision appealed against and the appeal.
His Lordship was supported in that view by Sagnata Investments Ltd v Norwich Corporation ([1971] 2 QB 614) and Kavanagh v Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall ([1974] QB 624).
Solicitors: Sharpe Pritchard for Mr Stephen Taylor, Farnborough; Mr Jonathan Black, Aldershot.
Court of Appeal. Reid v Chief Constable of Merseyside
Before Lord Justice Beldam, Lord Justice Waite and Lord Justice Morritt
[Judgment January 29]
In a case where the plaintiff was black, a reference by the judge to two police officers as "the niggers in the woodpile", followed by an immediate apology, could not be said to show bias on her part. Nor was there, in the circumstances, a real danger of bias on the part of any member of the jury, in the sense that he or she might unfairly regard with favour or disfavour the case of the plaintiff.
The Court of Appeal so stated in dismissing an appeal by Mr Valentine James Reid against the dismissal of his claim against the Chief Constable of Merseyside for damages for malicious prosecution, heard before Judge Inge Bernstein and a jury at Liverpool County Court on April 7, 1994.
Mr Peter Herbert for the appellant; Mr Eric Shannon for the chief constable.
LORD JUSTICE BELDAM said that he accepted that in our multi-racial society no tribunal should use that figure of speech. Its use could plainly give offence and lead to the suggestion that its use was indicative of the attitude of the person using it.
Where, as in the present instance, the use was plainly impersonal, and could not possibly refer to the plaintiff, and where the judge herself had recognised that she might have caused offence, her accompanying words of apology were clearly intended to remove any such suggestion and his Lordship could not think that anyone would have regarded the judge as being actually biased against the plaintiff's case.
A fair reading of the summing-up showed the judge to be holding the scales evenly between the two sides. He would therefore reject the suggestion that the judge was biased.
But what of the position of the jury? Mr Herbert submitted that there was a real danger of bias and that the objective observer sitting in court might well think from the use of that expression the jury would be likely to favour the defendant's case unfairly at the expense of the plaintiff's. In his Lordship's view the test the court should apply was that laid down by Lord Goff of Chieveley in R v Gough ([1993] AC 646, 670).
Reference had also been made to article 6(1) of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1953) (Cmd 8969) which provided that in the determination of his civil rights and obligations or of any criminal charge against him, everyone was entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal.
Cases before the European Court of Human Rights had also been referred to in support of the appeal but they effectively propounded no different test from that proposed by Lord Goff and his Lordship therefore asked himself whether, in the circumstances of the case, there was a real danger of bias on the part of any member of the jury from having heard the judge's words in the course of her summing up. He found there was no such danger.
Lord Justice Waite delivered a concurring judgment and Lord Justice Morritt agreed with both judgments.
Solicitors: Jackson & Canter, Liverpool; Weightman Rutherfords, Liverpool.
Court of Appeal. Effort Shipping Co Ltd v Linden Management SA and Another (The Giannis NK)
Before Lord Justice Hirst, Lord Justice Morritt and Lord Justice Ward
[Judgment January 30]
The liability under Article IV, rule 6 of the Hague-Visby Rules of a shipper of dangerous goods for all damages and expenses directly or indirectly arising out of or resulting from their shipment, was not qualified by rule 3 of the same article which provided that he was not be responsible for loss or damage resulting from any cause without his act, fault or neglect.
Section 1 of the Bills of Lading Act 1855 did not operate to divest a shipper who had endorsed the bill of lading to his purchasers of all liabilities in respect of the goods shipped. It would require very clear words indeed to divest the owner of his rights against the shipper with whom he was in a contractual relationship and leave him with his sole remedy against a complete stranger who happened to be consignee of the goods or the endorsee of the bill of lading.
The Court of Appeal so held dismissing an appeal by the second defendants, Sonacos of Dakar, against a decision of Mr Justice Longmore (The Times May 5, 1994; [1994] 2 Lloyd's Rep 171) allowing in the agreed sum of $477,848.38 the claim of the plaintiffs, Effort Shipping Co Ltd, owners of the Giannis NK, for damages against the second defendants, shippers of a cargo of groundnuts under a bill of lading signed on November 18, 1990, in respect of (i) delay to the vessel caused by infestation of the cargo with khapra beetle and (ii) bunker and other expenses incurred during that delay.
Section 1 of the 1855 Act provides: "Every consignee of goods named in a bill of lading and every endorsee of a bill of lading to whom the property in the goods therein mentioned shall pass upon or by reason of such consignment or endorsement shall have transferred to and vested in him all rights of suit and but subject to the same liabilities in respect of such goods as if the contract contained in the bill of lading had been made with himself."
Article IV, rule 3 of the Hague-Visby Rules, scheduled to the Carriage of Goods at Sea Act 1971, provides: "The shipper shall not be responsible for loss or damage sustained by the carrier or the ship arising or resulting from any cause without the act, fault or neglect of the shipper, his agents or his servants."
Article IV, rule 6 provides: "Goods of an inflammable, explosive or dangerous nature to the shipment whereof the carrier, master or agent of the carrier, has not consented, with knowledge of their nature and character, may at any time before discharge be landed at any place or destroyed or rendered innocuous by the carrier without compensation, and the shipper of such goods shall be liable for all damages and expenses directly or indirectly arising out of or resulting from such shipment."
Mr Edmund Broadbent for the second defendants; Mr Alistair Schaff for the plaintiffs; the first defendants did not appear and were not represented.
LORD JUSTICE HIRST said the case concerned a shipment of groundnuts and wheat from Senegal to the Dominican Republic. The nuts were infested with khapra beetle (trogoderma granarium everts) which the judge had decided was a dangerous cargo.
After discharging some of the cargo the vessel had received a notice from the US Department of Agriculture ordering it to return the cargoes to their country of origin or dump them at sea. The cargo had been dumped and the vessel had required extensive fumigation to eliminate the beetles.
The issues were:
1 Whether as the judge had concluded the infested groundnuts fell within the ambit of Article IV, rule 6;
2 Whether the owner was entitled to rely on the undertaking implied at common law that shipper would not ship goods of such a dangerous character that they were liable to cause physical damage to the vessel or its cargo without giving notice to the owner of the character of the goods, and if the owner was so entitled whether the obligation on the shipper was a strict obligation or one which only applied when the shipper knew or ought to have known there was a risk of such damage;
3 Whether the shipper was divested of liability by section 1 of the Bills of Lading Act 1855.
His Lordship held on the facts that the cargo did fall within rule 6.
The judge had treated rule 6 as creating an absolute liability but Mr Broadbent had contended in his reply, by leave of the court, that, under rule 6, liability was qualified by rule 3. He had relied on three US authorities in which it was held that the shipper was exonerated from liability under the US equivalent of rule 3 in the US Carriage of Goods by Sea Act 1936.
He had invited the court not to follow the relevant English authorities: The Fiona ([1993] 1 Lloyd's Rep 257) and The Athanasia Comninos ([1990] 1 Lloyd's Rep 277).
It seemed to his Lordship, rejecting Mr Broadbent's submission, that the very clear words of rule 6 were not capable of bearing a qualified construction.
Turning to section 1 of the 1855 Act, in his Lordship's judgment, it would require very clear words indeed to divest the owner of his rights against the shipper, with whom he was in contractual relationship and leave him with his sole remedy against a complete stranger who happened to be the consignee of the goods or the endorsee of the bill of lading, of whose whereabouts and financial stability he knew nothing, and who might be a man or enterprise of straw. That conclusion was not in conflict with the relevant authorities.
His Lordship also considered himself bound by Bamfield v Goole and Sheffield Transport Co ([1910] 2 KB 94) and Great Northern Railway Co v LEP Transport ([1922] 1 KB 742) to hold that the shipper's liability at common law for the carriage of dangerous goods was strict.
Lord Justice Morritt and Lord Justice Ward agreed.
Solicitors: Richard Butler; Bentleys Stokes & Lowless.
Strategic win
After his unsuccessful exertions in the world championship in New York, Viswanathan Anand, the Indian grandmaster, wisely decided to take a three-month rest before re-entering tournament fray. The downside was that Anand became somewhat rusty after this period of inaction, but, on the plus side, he was able to furnish himself with a fresh arsenal of ideas, including a switch from his habitual king pawn opening to the queen's pawn.
Anand's second prize in the Wijk aan Zee tournament, behind only Ivanchuk, marked a reasonable comeback. Anand's tally of wins included this victory against Michael Adams, the British grandmaster, in which Anand switched to his new style of opening.
White: Viswanathan Anand
Black: Michael Adams
Wijk aan Zee, January 1996
Queen's Indian Defence
1 d4 Nf6
2 Nf3 e6
3 c4 b6
4 g3 Bb7
5 Bg2 Be7
6 0-0 0-0
7 Re1 d5
8 cxd5 exd5
9 Nc3 Na6
10 Bf4 c5
11 Rc1 Ne4
12 dxc5 Naxc5
13 Nd4 Bf6
14 Bh3 Ng5
15 Bxg5 Bxg5
16 e3 Bf6
17 Re2 g6
18 b4 Ne4
19 Nxe4 dxe4
20 Rd2 Qe7
21 b5 Bxd4
22 Rxd4 Bc8
23 Bd7 Bxd7
24 Rxd7 Qa3
25 Rc2 Qa4
26 Rd5 Rae8
27 h4 h5
28 Kg2 Re6
29 Qe2 Qa3
30 Rc7 Re7
31 Rc6 Rfe8
32 Qc4 Kh7
33 Rd2 Rb7
34 Rdd6 Qb2
35 a4 Re5
36 Rd5 Rxd5
37 Qxd5 Re7
38 Qd6 Re6
39 Qd8 Qe5
40 Rc7 Kg7
41 Rxa7 Rd6
42 Qe7 Qd5
43 Ra8 Rd7
44 Qf8+ Kf6
45 Re8 Black resigns
Diagram of final position
Raymond Keene writes on chess Monday to Friday in Sport and in the Weekend section on Saturday.
Jennai Cox walked Dartmoor with 60 women competing for places in the first all-female relay across the Arctic
It was six hours since I had last had any feeling in my feet, freezing rain had gone through several layers of clothes and my fourth pair of gloves was drenched. My body shook as the early stage of hypothermia set in; even my bones felt cold. All 60 women on the dark and windswept moor were told that there were still another five kilometres to go.
The reward for surviving this 40-kilometre SAS-style yomp across Dartmoor was one of 16 places in the first all-female relay to the North Pole. Pen Hadow, the organiser of the expedition, must have prayed hard for the weather. It was just right to test the resilience of those confident of withstanding temperatures of minus 40; the rain poured, the wind thrashed and the fog thickened during each minute of the 12-hour yomp.
Among us was Caroline Hamilton, 32, the film financier whose dream of walking in the Arctic sparked the desire in 60 others. Having climbed in the Himalayas, the Dolomites and the Andes, the North Pole previously reached by only two women is the next challenge. She approached the Polar Travel Company, specialists in Arctic expeditions, but she had only £1,500 and three weeks' leave in which to do the journey. The company suggested a relay and organised this trial. They would have to pay a similar amount or find a sponsor.
Walking on breaking sea ice, the possibility of a polar bear attack and persistent and extremely cold temperatures are promised for the lucky 16 who qualify for the 55-day 1,000-kilometre Arctic relay planned for March 1997.
The women, aged from 17 to 60, were woken at 5.30am to prepare for the hike after a night on hay bales in a barn. Mr Hadow, a director of the Polar Travel Company, told us to line rucksacks with binbags and hiking boots with clingfilm. Two hours later, in darkness and rain, the trek across the treacherous tors and bogs of Dartmoor began.
Most of us were dressed in waterproofs and hardy boots, but few had attempted a 40-kilometre hike across uneven, marshy, muddy ground in driving rain and relentless wind. Hardly anyone would return to the base at Wydemeet, Hexworthy, in Devon, that night without having wrung out socks and gloves at least twice.
The first leg of the expedition up Ryder's Hill, the highest point on southern Dartmoor, was jolly and rain-free. One asthma sufferer dropped out after the first mile, but the rest of us climbed and warmed up happily, policewoman talking to potter and model to mental health worker, the wind carrying our laughter downhill. For many, there is no better way to spend annual leave. The moor's steep ground, knee-deep puddles and river crossings fazed no one. Some of us, at first, felt little challenged. The North Pole would be a cinch.
Coming down Ryder's Hill and heading southwest for Shipley Bridge, the rain began. The odd complaint about blisters and old injuries was heard and, here and there, smiles began to droop. Before much longer, and only halfway through the journey, most feet were swimming in freezing, water-filled boots and chat was gradually replaced by near-silence. By lunchtime, the rain had hardened and a dense fog meant a view of less than 30 metres.
Still looking fresh and bright-eyed, Hadow gathered us round. "From now on, the expedition really gets much harder," he said. "You will get increasingly tired, the weather might close in and the ground gets more uneven. If anyone wants to drop out, say so this is your last chance."
With clothes wet through to the skin and with hands too cold to open the rucksack for food, the temptation was almost too much. All but a couple of the women one with breathing difficulties, another with sore feet decided to march on; but the high spirits of the first few kilometres never returned.
The ground became steadily soggier and we no longer bothered to avoid puddles. By 5 o'clock, and heading northwest for Nun's Cross, two-thirds of the journey was over. Keeping to the front of the group helped to sustain the illusion of getting back to base quicker, but, having to pause every 200 metres for headcounts also gave the cold a better chance to take hold.
I got through the last few hours only by shining my torch on the feet of the person ahead and hoping that my vision of hauling out survival kits (a plastic sleeping bag and a whistle) for a night on the moors would not be realised. The biting wind would have made many wonder if they could tolerate temperatures up to 50C lower for seven days.
Between 8 and 9pm, about 55 exhausted but undefeated women returned to base, some suffering the early stages of hypothermia, others with twisted ankles and a few, myself included, the beginnings of frost-nip. Dartmoor had been unforgiving, but, to the surprise of the organisers, the women were unyielding most said that they would do it again if selection for the team depended upon it.
The weekend was intended as a self-selection exercise. The next stage is three days of Special Forces training in June. Of the 40 women expected to turn up, eight pairs will make their 125-kilometre contribution to the journey from Ward Hunt Island in northern Canada to the North Pole.
I am not sure whether Dartmoor or Special Forces training will make me ready for the cruel conditions in the Arctic; but, for that sense of achievement after completing the most arduous walk of my life, I would not turn down the chance of conquering the North Pole.
The Polar Travel Company: 01364 631470; Caroline Hamilton: 0956 318332.
Blood Libel
Norwich Playhouse
Invited to write a play about a local child, murdered in 1144 and for centuries venerated as a martyr, Arnold Wesker decided that three routes were open to him. He could accept the 12th-century monk's version of the legend, which "proved" that the 12-year-old William had been ritually slaughtered by Jews. You will not gasp in amazement on learning that Wesker did not proceed along this course.
The second possibility was to ignore much of what was written by Thomas of Monmouth, the credulous monk, and "invent an entirely new scenario". If I had been asked which Wesker was most likely to choose I would have plumped for this one. The resulting play might well have been interesting but would have been ordinary could even have turned out to merit the terrible adjective, worthy.
The third choice was "to select from Thomas's record and comment on its veracity", and in writing his play with this purpose, Wesker has created a work that becomes progressively more enthralling as the action moves from the first attempts to present the child as a Christian martyr to a conflict between the emotional advocacy of Thomas (Jonathan Bond) and the doubts cogently expressed by Prior Elias (Stephen Webber).
The stage end of the Playhouse auditorium is walled with old brick, and by taking the acting area right out to the walls, Paul Andrews's design encloses the actors within a credibly medieval box. A curtain of chains hangs across the stage, used to chilling effect when little William is abducted by a stranger, raped and killed. I should think we can safely assume this to be the explanation of the murder, and Wesker introduces this scene three times: at the start, and then to remind us of the base reality when Thomas is encouraging citizens to elaborate upon what Pooh-Bah would have dismissed as a bald and unconvincing narrative.
The earlier scenes of Irina Brown's production, which include a peculiarly festive lying-in and birth, are a puzzle until the shape of the play emerges. Bond's Thomas is at first the eccentric outsider, not yet the voice of unreason due to usher in the first of the medieval Jewish massacres.
No gainsaying voice appears until Webber's Prior uncannily like Cardinal Hume begins querying the evidence. Derek Smith's oily priest points out the value of a martyr's body and the struggle is on to bring in the money.
Wesker sees Thomas as deluded by a need to enrich his faith with miracles, and Bond is good at the glitter-eyed, sweaty excitement of listening to the words he wants to hear. For the Prior, "Faith without wisdom is superstition", but his counsel runs against the spirit of the age.
Hardly any mention is made of the social and economic troubles of the time. These are people for whom the trauma of the Norman conquest was a living memory, and religious fervour must have proved a comforting release. For Wesker, the invention of the blood libel is the work of a few enthusiasts, and this leaves something unsaid. But as an historical thriller cum courtroom trial his play is engrossing. A pity Brother Cadfael was too busy over at Shrewsbury to come and solve the crime.
The Long and the Short and the Tall
Albery
THIS production's arrival in a West End theatre is something of a contemporary fairy-tale, with Counterpoint Theatre Co in the role of Cinderella, though a far more enterprising body than she ever was, writes Jeremy Kingston. Nobody could accuse any of them of sitting by the kitchen fire and sighing. On the other hand, there is no disputing who plays the part of fairy godmother: none other than the beaming Bill Kenwright. On the opening night I did not actually see Disney-like sparks twinkling above his enviably thick thatch of grey hair. True man of the theatre that he is, he must have known this would constitute a fire risk unless the safety curtain was down.
A fortnight ago I was due to go down to SW2 to see this play performed at the Brixton Shaw, a converted church where Counterpoint is resident company. It is a decent space, but unmistakably a fringe venue. Early that morning the company's press agent rang round the critics to say that the opening night had been postponed: Kenwright was taking the production into the West End, without waiting to see audience or critical reaction; not even bothering to see if our thumbs pointed up or down. Maybe he had seen a preview; or the praise showered on the company's last two shows had impressed him; maybe he just loves Willis Hall's play.
Whatever it was that persuaded him, his confidence in Counterpoint has been completely justified by what the company here achieve. Paul Jerricho's cast vividly portray the range of tensions that splutter among the doomed British soldiers up-jungle in Malaya as the Japanese Army sweeps down to Singapore. The carefully different origins of the squaddies, a Jock, a Geordie, a Taff, a Londoner, is an acceptable contrivance in this sort of war play: serious, unheroic, indeed anti-heroic, a play that presents their experience as the general lot of men in war.
They have the grubby, exhausted look of combatants; men, moreover, who have struggled and sweated in each other's company. They argue, complain, joke and, in poignant foreboding, sing the song I once heard called The Rifleman's Lament. In this heart-catching moment Kevin Dignam's Bamforth, excellent as the sardonic private, loses his laughing snarl and stares coldly, steadily out at their vanishing future. All the actors deserve to be named but I must limit myself to mentioning Mark Arden's urgent Sergeant and Burt Kwouk as the Japanese prisoner, courteous and silent, with whom the men discover the common humanity that, alas, will not protect them.
Mitchell bursts away from a scrum to set up another attack at Leicester yesterday as the England women's rugby team beat a young Wales side 56-3 before a crowd of 1,200. England, the world champions, were making their first appearance in the inaugural home nations' championship and celebrated with eight tries, one of them a 60-metre interception by Julie Twigg, the Liverpool St Helens centre.
Amanda Bennett stemmed the tide temporarily with a dropped goal, before England came again to complete an overwhelming victory. With Scotland having beaten Ireland, England's game at Boroughmuir on March 3 may prove decisive in the championship. Before that, England meet France in Toulouse on February 17.
Photograph: Hugh Routledge
SMETANA'S MA VLAST,
reviewed by Jan Smaczny
Composed between 1874 and 1879, this cycle of six symphonic poems celebrates the history, mythology and countryside of Bohemia. Shortly after beginning Ma vlast, Smetana became rapidly and completely deaf a disastrous blow for any musician, particularly one who earned the major part of his living from conducting.
Ma vlast undoubtedly gained depth from the identification of personal suffering with the triumphs and vicissitudes of the composer's nation. Little wonder that Czech conductors aspire to direct the work, and it is no surprise that a majority of available versions are by Czechs, mostly with the Czech Philharmonic.
Among them, Vaclav Talich (Supraphon 11 1896-2, mid price) and Vaclav Smetacek (Supraphon 11 1981-2, mid price) maintain a firm grip on the narrative in the first part, Vysehrad, which depicts the glory and decline of the Czech nation. Some performers, including James Levine with the Vienna Philharmonic and Antal Dorati with the Concertgebouw, tend to overemphasise the bombastic elements; others, among them Eliahu Inbal, with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, are too sentimental in the nature pictures, Vltava and From Bohemia's Woods and Fields.
Walter Weller with the Israel Philharmonic (Decca 433 635-2, budget) finds an infectious lilt in the dance episodes and takes an unfussy approach to the serious music. But ultimately the Czechs have an advantage with orchestras that have this music in their blood; also, their best conductors interpret with an eye to Smetana's innate operatic sense.
As a result, the most striking performance comes from Raphael Kubelik (who also has two recordings with non-Czech orchestras available) and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra from the 1990 Prague Spring Festival. This first festival after the Velvet Revolution marked Kubelik's return to his native land after many years of exile, and the electric atmosphere and superb playing make this a uniquely valuable document.
In this performance (Supraphon 11 1208-2, £13.95), the CPO played as it had rarely done for 40 years. There is a certain amount of audience noise, but the dignity, strength and sheer exultation of this remarkable recording provide a breathtakingly vivid image of the Czech nation celebrating itself at the dawn of a new era and that, when all is said and done, is what Ma vlast is all about.
Recommended recordings can be ordered from The Times CD Mail, 29 Pall Mall Deposit, Barlby Road, London W10 6BL (freephone 0500 418419; e-mail: bid@mail.bogo.co.uk)
Next Saturday on Radio 3 (9am): Verdi's Don Carlos
Maria Joao Pires
Wigmore Hall
A STRING of Chopin nocturnes formed the second half of Maria Joao Pires's recital at the Wigmore Hall; we heard about half his output in this genre at a single sitting, with no intervening applause to break the spell she wove with consummate mastery. The capacity audience sat still and quiet as Chopin's poetry-for-piano filled the hall.
Pires's finely wrought interpretation brought out a strong narrative vein in the music, making every note count in an overall account that was quite simply the most compelling I have heard. There is nothing fey or finicky about her playing; her approach is direct, even bold at times. This was particularly telling in the ardour she brought to those contrasting central sections. Indeed, one of the great strengths of Pires's performance was her ability to startle, to make music that is as familiar and comfortable as a warm glove sound fresh, even strange.
Clarity of articulation was the key to Pires's stunning performance of Mozart's Sonata in B flat major K333. Her attention to phrasing was total (the syncopations in the development section of the first movement, for example, were brilliantly pointed), but the result was unfussy and the broader interpretative canvas was only enhanced by such details.
Here, as throughout the programme, which also included Schumann's Three Romances Op28 in an account full of rhapsodic energy, Pires was a master of contrast as, for instance, in the contained elegance of Mozart's last-movement Rondo theme juxtaposed with the thunder of its mock-cadenza, or the sudden passion that erupted in a minor key episode in the otherwise mellow Andante Cantabile. This ability to change, in an instant, both tone quality and character reflects Pires's absolute technical control and lends her performances greatness.
Today's fixture at Newton Abbot is subject to a 6.45am inspection because of frost, while Fontwell, also scheduled for today, was called off yesterday. Carlisle's meeting tomorrow depends on an inspection this afternoon.
MASTER OATS and Monsieur Le Cure, the British-trained declarations for yesterday's Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup at Leopardstown, are to stay in Ireland after the postponement of the race because of frost. The pair will lodge at the track until the re-run on Sunday.
The meeting at Leopardstown was cancelled yesterday morning after the frost failed to thaw. Ireland's most prestigious steeplechase was also delayed by a week two years ago, when Jodami gained the second of his three consecutive victories. But the gelding, trained by Peter Beaumont, is coughing and will not retake his chance.
Kim Bailey, the trainer of Master Oats, said: "Master Oats might as well stay over there but won't be able to do anything." John Edwards, Monsieur Le Cure's trainer, was unconcerned and reported his gelding was in good shape.
Whipping Boy
LA2, W1
ONCE just another Dublin four-piece, whose first album revealed little more than a love of distorted guitars, Whipping Boy have developed a style of their own, and in Ferghal McKee they have a charismatic front man with a potentially great voice.
The turning point came with last year's Heartworm album, with its songs of romantic desolation and near despair but with the kind of tunes that cannot help but draw people in. A good example is Twinkle, the first single from the album, which featured a fine performance from McKee, who became part cabaret star, part unhinged psycho as he allowed the song's big tune to mask the tainted love in its lyrics.
The most obvious comparison is with Shane MacGowan. He certainly sounds a lot like him, particularly on the new single, When We Were Young, which he sang with a can of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. There is also an aggressive side to McKee, as he showed during Tripped, when he stood at the edge of the stage and sneered the words "It's easy just to be like anyone".
Occasionally, he retreated inwards, becoming even more manic. At one point, he pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head, almost completely covering his face, and swayed backwards and forwards like the kind of lunatic you try to avoid making eye contact with on the Tube.
Whipping Boy have enormous pop potential, as they showed in the closing We Don't Need Nobody Else, which McKee mockingly described as "a Bryan Adams song" but which is actually a vivid account of domestic violence wrapped in a bold, catchy tune.
McKee has been known to strip off all his clothes and perform naked. Thankfully, on this occasion, he remained fully clothed; when Whipping Boy are as good as this, they do not need the extra gimmick.
A SATELLITE that went missing a year ago has turned up again in the bush of northern Ghana. German and Japanese scientists who thought it had plunged to destruction in the Pacific are delighted.
The $42 million (£28 million) Express satellite was launched on a Japanese rocket in January 1995. It went into the wrong orbit, lost contact and crashed, to the chagrin of the scientists.
Cut to the northern Ghanian bush, where local people later found a re-entry capsule with a parachute attached. The parachute was Russian-made and contained Cyrillic lettering, so the authorities in Ghana feared it might be radioactive. They stuffed it in a cupboard at a nearby airport.
Then a German diplomat read an article about the mystery capsule and put two and two together. A team from the German space agency has confirmed the satellite is theirs. Now all that remains is for them to get it back.
BEES navigate better in the mountains, American biologists have discovered, suggesting that they use the horizon and any striking landmarks on it to find their way back to the hive.
Dr Edward Southwick of the State University of New York and Dr Stephen Buchmann of the US Agriculture Department's Bee Research Centre in Tucson, Arizona, took bees from their hives, marked them with tiny stuck-on metal tags, and released them at a range of distances away.
They report in The American Naturalist that in the flat area of Arizona and New York State, the bees returned successfully to the hive from distances of up to 5.6km, but on a site in the Arizona mountains they returned from as far as 9.2km. Twice as many made the journey successfully in the mountains.
The conclusion? Bees can spot prominent landmarks and set a course home, until they catch a scent of the hive.
RACING'S much-vaunted "customer-friendly" fixture list is a financial disaster, which is preventing the sport from earning almost £4 million a year in extra revenue, according to a detailed report published yesterday.
The emphasis placed by the British Horseracing Board (BHB) on scheduling meetings when the race-going customer finds it easier to attend particularly evenings has had a devastating impact on off-course betting turnover, and thereby hit levy proceeds which underpin racing's finances.
The report, produced by Ladbrokes, accuses the BHB of ignoring "the overwhelming evidence that the so-called ‘customer-friendly' fixture list is depressing turnover to an extent that it is costing racing substantially more in levy than is being gained at the turnstiles."
At the heart of Ladbrokes's cogently argued case is the damage being done by switching meetings from weekday afternoons when there are plenty of punters in betting shops to evenings and Sundays, when the premises are virtually deserted. To make matters worse, the introduction of summer jump meetings, at the expense of fixtures during the winter, has also proved unpopular.
Ladbrokes has produced telling financial statistics, culled from the Racecourse Association and BHB, to prove that increased turnstile revenue pales into insignificance compared to the loss of levy income.
"Changes to the midweek fixture programme which has increased by nearly 100 per cent the number of afternoons with only two fixtures 122 days in 1995 compared to 64 in 1993 has resulted in a loss of some £1.5 million in levy yield in 1995," the report states.
"The loss of 102 third fixtures on weekday afternoons [in 1996] will result in an estimated levy shortfall of over £3 million."
Ladbrokes has also produced detailed proposals for changing the fixture list in 1997, which it claims would increase levy yield by £3,720,000 a year and help to reverse the 30 per cent decline in bookmaking profits.
In an attempt to maximise racing's revenue through off-course betting turnover, Ladbrokes recommends that the Levy Board should support three race meetings every weekday afternoon and four on Saturdays and Bank Holidays; 96 evening meetings compared to 190 this year; and the same number of Sunday meetings 30.
Summer jump racing has not proved successful for racing's finances and the two-year trial should not be repeated in 1997, the report says. "Taking fixtures from the core afternoon period in the traditional National Hunt season and transferring them into an overcrowded summer racing season costs £15,000 per fixture in levy yield. The small increase in attendance does not offset this loss of levy."
"Flat racing is the first choice for the betting shop customer and turnover peaks in the autumn months, when significant numbers of runners are available. There is considerable opportunity to add more fixtures in September, October and November, extending the Flat season to the third week of November," the report added.
All-weather racing is proving increasingly popular with High Street punters generating turnover 50 per cent higher than summer jump races and should be extended to produce Flat racing throughout the year, with extra all-weather tracks being developed.
Although Sunday racing has not proved a success for off-course bookmakers, Ladbrokes acknowledges the meetings delivered 60 per cent of the growth in "customer-friendly" fixture attendances last year "and appear cash-positive to racing."
However, it suggests the 30 Sunday fixtures should be timetabled in three blocks March-April, August-September and October-November to boost punter awareness.
PADDY ASHDOWN and his family are bracing themselves for further trouble after being warned by police that they are facing a vendetta by a few of his constituents in Yeovil.
The police are worried about malicious allegations linking the Liberal Democrat leader to a massage parlour. Mr Ashdown is known to be bewildered by recent attacks on him, including the petrol-bombing of his car last week.
The accusations concerning a massage parlour six doors away from the Liberal Democrat headquarters in Yeovil could be made under the legal protection of court proceedings on Thursday before magistrates in the town.
Mr Ashdown is said to deny all allegations emphatically and to be prepared to counter the false claims. He and his wife, Jane, spent the weekend at their home in Norton sub Hamdon. The police have taken the threats so seriously that surveillance equipment was installed in the garden. This was later removed.
In the past couple of months, a window of Mr Ashdown's car has been smashed with a stone, he has had threatening letters and was held at knifepoint during a late-night investigation of alleged race attacks on local restaurants. The attacks on his car are thought to have been carried out by local criminals angry at his campaign launched last year to crack down on racially motivated attacks in his constituency.
Two years ago City Girl, a massage parlour, was closed by the Liberal Democrat-led council over planning irregularities. Peter Stoodley, the former owner of the parlour, was later jailed for six months for living off immoral earnings. He is now trying to sell a story to a national newspaper based on unfounded allegations linking Mr Ashdown to a former woman employee of City Girl.
The campaign against Mr Ashdown has drawn attention to the darker side of the apparently tranquil market town. A small gang of petty criminals is blamed for the increasing violence in Yeovil town centre, with rising vandalism, arson and racist attacks. Anyone daring to stand up to them becomes a target.
The Somerset town is to install closed-circuit television cameras this month to try to tackle the problem. Tony Fife, a Liberal Democrat councillor and former Mayor of Yeovil, said: "The trouble is orchestrated by a gang of petty criminals. Unfortunately, they are giving the town a bad name nationally."
Mr Fife is also a shopkeeper who has suffered at the hands of thugs. "While I was mayor, I had my shop windows put through 12 times, simply because I represented authority. At night, part of the town centre is intimidating you sense an atmosphere of violence.
"But we have to get this into perspective. I am very proud of Yeovil, and its problems are no worse than any other town of a similar size."
Yeovil, with a population of 45,000, is surrounded by attractive villages but the town centre is an incongruous mix of old buildings and ugly precincts built in the 1950s and 1960s.
The trouble is focused on a street known as "Takeaway Alley", a pedestrianised route leading from Yeovil's three nightclubs to a cluster of kebab restaurants and takeaways at the bottom end of town. The massage parlour was in the same street.
Mr Ashdown's stand against racism he founded the Partnership against Racial Harassment after attacks took place at several of the restaurants in Takeaway Alley is also thought to have made him a target. A local newspaper which supported his campaign was firebombed.
Yesterday, at 2.15am, two youths stood urinating in a shop doorway, seemingly oblivious of passers-by. Two police officers stood watch at the other end of the precinct, where a drunken youth was goading them by pushing a beefburger towards their faces. Threatened with arrest, he walked off, then lashed out with his foot at a taxi. The driver did not want action taken but some of his colleagues carry small coshes to protect themselves.
THE BIRTH of a new language has lent strong support to the belief that speech is inborn: a function of brain structure and not simply of acquisition by learning. The theory was first put forward in the 1950s by the American scholar Noam Chomsky, who argued that the astonishing ability of young children to learn to speak argues that language must be innate.
Linguists often despair at the loss of languages, which are disappearing at an alarming rate. But over the past 15 years they have had the opportunity to see one born, in a story reminiscent of William Golding's Lord of the Flies. The language is ISN, or Idioma de Signos Nicaraguense, a sign language spontaneously generated by a group of congenitally deaf children in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua.
Before the Sandinista Government came to power in 1979, there was no provision for the education of deaf children in Nicaragua. Full of good intentions, the new Government set up a school and brought children to it from all over the country. But they provided only hearing teachers, who knew no sign language.
This left the children to their own devices, rather like those in Golding's novel. They quickly developed a pidgin sign language, and successive arrivals at the school honed and polished it to produce what Dr Judy Kegl of Rutgers University calls a truly rich language.
In one leap, the children had gone from a pidgin to what linguists call a creole. Pidgins are choppy strings of words, with no grammar and no special order. A creole has structure, grammar and consistency.
While all those who use pidgin do it differently, the creole signers are much more fluent and expressive. They can watch a surrealist cartoon, says the linguist Stephen Pinker, and describe its plot to another child. They can use it in jokes, poems, narratives and life histories, he says "a language has been born before our eyes".
The children appear to be a classic example of what Chomsky called "poverty of stimulus" being no block on the development of language. "These kids have been exposed to an insufficient model of language," Dr Ann Senghas of the University of Rochester Sign Language Research School told Scientific American, "and yet they have created something highly developed."
The natural experiment in Managua has confirmed something else. Only those children who start before the age of five really become fluent. For those who joined the school later, it is like an adult struggling to learn a foreign language very hard work which seldom leads to complete fluency.
Professor Jean Aitchison will this year's Reith Lectures give. Does anything seem "wrong" with that sentence? Not according to the professor. She does not like it, of course just as she would not like "Rosemary an octopus ate" or "Philip his dentures down the drain has dropped" but she refuses, adamantly, to describe it as "wrong".
"I would call such a sentence ill-formed," she tells me. "I prefer not to speak of right or wrong English ... much better to see things as well-formed or ill-formed. Wrong is a word with too many unhelpful shades."
I venture another question. Could The Times have a headline that said "Harriet Harman ain't resigning"? The professor again says that there would be nothing "wrong" with that. "That is a perfectly clear headline, admirably clear. And since the function of a headline is to catch the attention in an intelligible way, I would have no objection to that."
Hmm ... but what would readers of The Times think? Would they not aghast be? "Most probably, because that would not be an appropriate headline for the newspaper."
She lingers on the word "appropriate", just as she had done earlier with "ill-formed": these words are, for her, essential tools of analysis. "One has to speak appropriate language ... one addresses a baby quite differently from the way in which one addresses a bus conductor." Equally, one does not address the Queen as one would one's mother unless the Queen is one's mother.
Professor Aitchison, brimming with this sort of good sense, is the Rupert Murdoch Professor of Language and Communication at Oxford. A linguist or linguistician she has chosen what she calls "The Language Web" as the subject for the Reith Lectures on the BBC.
Renowned for making abstruse things simple, she welcomes the opportunity to explain her research to a wider audience. "The image of a web conveys the complexity of language, the way that it is biologically programmed in humans." But as the title of her first lecture on air tomorrow reveals, she believes that we are also caught in "a web of worries" about language.
"People fuss about things that are trivial ... things like split infinitives. I must confess to greatly enjoying split infinitives." She has a blast, in between sips of sancerre, against such self-appointed 18 th-century "grammarians" as Robert Lowth, Bishop of London.
"They had fixed and eccentric opinions about language, and quite pompous obsessions, such as deploring the use of prepositions at the end of sentences." Professor Aitchison, in turn, deplores these constraints that have been thrust upon us; and Lowth's Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762) she has described memorably in print as "pernicious" and full of "pseudo-rules".
Many of these rules were born of the excessive admiration for Latin and of the elegance of its precepts which prevailed at Lowth's time. Professor Aitchison read Greek and Latin at Girton College, Cambridge, before studying linguistics at Radcliffe College in America. Linguistics was then a subject "on the ascendant" and she was afraid that if she stayed in Cambridge she would have to spend all her time in the library "deciding whether the Greeks of old dropped their aitches".
Flatteringly for hacks she asserts that the ancient Greeks loved language in much the same way that journalists today love language. "Greek texts and modern newspapers manipulate language in the same inventive way."
Ancient Greek, the professor is in no doubt, is "much clearer than Latin". Why, I asked, in the manner of one not schooled in the classics. "It's straightforward, really. They used many more verbs than the Romans did, and fewer abstract nouns ... just as modern newspapers do."
An example of the Latin method? "England's recovery was helped by Botham's strong batting." And the Greek? "Botham batted strongly and England recovered." I saw her point: a punchy, verby sentence which no Sports Desk in the land would turn its nose up at. Very journalistic ... very ancient Greek!
Her reference to Botham was a nice coincidence, for in the course of a few telephone calls to other dons at Oxford, one who wished not to be named described Professor Aitchison as "the Ian Botham of linguistics". He may have been referring to her popular touch or he may have intended to be unkind. But the professor's methods are certainly colourful. Her inaugural lecture at Oxford, delivered at the venerable Examination Schools, made generous use of visual aids many of them cartoons by Giles, some of Charlie Brown, others of Dennis the Menace.
If linguistics has a reputation for impenetrability, that is not her fault. Noam Chomsky in many respects her inspiration, and with whose idea of the biological endowment of language she is so connected is often dense of text and chewy of phrase. Not so our Reith lecturer. Her books are peppered with gleeful sentences such as: "In a world where humans grow old, tadpoles change into frogs, and milk turns into cheese, it would be strange if language alone remained unaltered."
How many readers would expect the second chapter of a book called Language Change: Progress or Decay?, published by the Cambridge University Press, to begin with sentences such as these: "A Faroese recipe in a cookbook explains how to catch a puffin before you roast it. Like a cook, a linguist studying language change must first gather together the basic ingredients."
And the chapters of her quite difficult Words in the Mind have such headings as "Welcome to Dictionopolis!", or "Interpreting Ice-Cream Cones" or my favourite "What is a Bongaloo, Daddy?"
What is a bongaloo indeed? Tune in tomorrow ... and maybe you will find out.
THE REITH LECTURES
THE lectures, named after the BBC's founder and first Director-General, Lord Reith, began in 1948 with lecturers paid 1,000 guineas to finance research beneficiaries have included Bertrand Russell, J.K. Galbraith and Robert Oppenheimer. By 1972, however, the fee was thought too low to finance research and it was feared that that year's lectures would be the last. The gloom was misplaced, but controversy has never been far away.
There was a scandal in 1962 when a Professor Carstairs said that charity was more important than chastity, and in 1969 the American scientist Dr Frank Fraser Darling was mocked for saying deforestation and fuel emissions might melt the polar ice caps.
There was panic in 1977 when Lord Boyle pulled out at the last minute, and the following year the Bishop of Southwark gave warning that Dr Edward Norman's lectures could lead to an era of Nazism. In 1991 the lectures came under attack because 43 of the 44 previous lecturers had been men, but in 1992 the BBC failed to find a lecturer at all.
This year's five lectures will be broadcast on Tuesdays, starting tomorrow at 8.30pm on Radio 4. The Times will summarise them each Wednesday.
Correction: Headline: Deforestation and fuel emissions;Correction Issue Date: Tu esday February 13, 1996 Page: 5 It was Sir Frank Fraser Darling, the Briti sh scientist, who drew attention in 1969 to the possibility of deforest ation and fuel emissions melting the polar ice caps (article, February 5).
So, what do you do?" I asked one of New York's society ladies as we talked leaving the Valentino fashion show. "Do?" she hedged nervously. I elucidated: "You know, a little work for charity here and there?"
"Ahh, charity... Yes, I'm at a fundraising ball or dinner a couple of times a week." She leant forward to confide: "Well, where else would you wear all these dresses?"
It takes an American to get to the nub of the Paris haute couture shows: displays of excess barely excused by artistry or charity. Our lady of Park Avenue, Manhattan, was one of the 200 or so real people who actually still buy haute couture at £5,000 or £10,000 a shot, as opposed to the thousands who merely go to gawp for the media.
On the rounds of the shows, it proved extraordinarily easy to spot shoppers versus gawpers. The "200" still feel it is acceptable to wear orange and emerald green after puberty, and believe that a woman should signal her husband's wealth by weight of jewellery. Our lady of Park Avenue was wrapped in black lycra and leopard skin, with earrings like hubcaps, and diamond rings immobilising her fingers. Her friend, also a society lady, had been inserted into a curvaceous white suit, suggesting haute couture may be worth the money.
The ladies felt that Galliano at Givenchy had been "unwearable, apart from maybe two things" unlike the fashion press but that Valentino understood a woman's body. "I normally buy a cocktail suit or dress and some evening gowns," said Park Avenue. Asked precisely how much that would set her back, she merely laughed: "We come for the fun." The unemployed have to fill the days somehow.
The Manhattan ladies were perched on gold chairs in the "moneybags" section of the audience while the "fashion celeb" section was led by American Vogue's Anna Wintour. The "moneybags" row included Princess Firyal of Jordan, Joan Collins, a couple of vicomtesses and baronnes, a Saxe-Coburg or two and an African woman in a toga. All were salivating over, as the programme put it, "the glorious certainty of wearing a unique and unrepeatable piece". Since all the clothes, in greens and beiges like dead skin, reminded me of doilys and antimacassars, I asked the Americans for their advice. "Don't waste money on a summer suit get that at ready-to-wear. Go for beaded eveningwear that will get noticed. Summer's difficult everyone is so casual nowadays, and there are only so many weddings." They were keen on a silk evening dress with an enormous bustle. "Of course, you'd get him [Valentino] to take that down. That's only for the show." At these prices, the designer takes the client's advice.
Despite reports of haute couture's death, these Americans felt all was healthy. "But, darling, we miss the Eighties, don't we?" they lamented, heading for lunch.
At the Christian Lacroix show I met a velvet-covered Frenchwoman with an orange crocodile handbag who actually said "Ohh low, low," a smokier version of "Ooh la, la", when the designer's more stunning creations were paraded. She lacked the heady American vulgarity: "I come, then I think a while, then I go to see Christian."
Of course, the fact is that the haute couture shows are intended not for the shoppers but for the world media, so the YSL, Dior or Valentino brand name gets a free airing on television. In fact, Chanel held its media show after a secret viewing for personal shoppers. Either this is because the personal shoppers like discretion, or because Chanel, and other designers, are slightly embarrassed by their clientele. The newest clients are not French aristocrats, but rich wives from Russia, Arab countries and even China, desperate to buy nobility through dress. Given the prices, the couturier cannot afford to be choosy.
This year Francois Lesage, the master embroiderer, completed his most complicated dress ever for Chanel a beaded gown which took a record 1,280 hours of work. "The last customer to keep us that busy was the former Empress Bokassa for her coronation robes," he said. A couturier must be discreet. If a customer's husband, such as Emperor Bokassa, indulges in cannabalism one would certainly not mention it during Madame's fitting.
Recently, in a darkened lecture theatre, I watched on a flickering screen a slow-motion video of a brain actually thinking.
For the first time, neuroscientists have access to a technique for observing the living brain which can show the millisecond by millisecond modulation of the nerves as they flash their messages to and fro between brain regions.
The technique is called magnetoencephalography (MEG), and it works by assembling an image from the tiny magnetic fields generated by the co-ordinated discharge of thousands of nerves. Magnetic fields, according to standard physics, always accompany electrical activity. The sister technique of MEG is therefore electroencephalography (EEG), which detects the electrical nerve discharge itself.
EEG has been around since the 1920s, and has been used as a diagnostic tool to reveal the focus of epileptic discharges, for monitoring the level of consciousness, and as a research tool. But the picture obtained from EEG is a crude, blurry image averaged from the whole brain thickness. Interpreting nerve activity from an EEG is like trying to guess the breed of a fish using only ripples on the surface of a distant pond. By contrast, MEG can probe beneath the surface to yield a highly detailed three-dimensional view.
While the skull has considerable electrical resistance, magnetic fields pass easily through it. But the magnetic fields involved are incredibly small starting a car engine a mile away would be enough to swamp the signal. Therefore modern MEG needed the development of incredibly sensitive detectors (called "Squid" magnetometers), sophisticated shielding, and computer programs to eliminate background "noise" and amplify the neurally-generated field.
Three-dimensional images of the living human brain have been familiar since the invention of computerised axial tomography (CAT) scans a couple of decades ago. More recently magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been able to provide an even sharper focus. But both of these methods produce static pictures. Another technique called positron emission tomography (PET) can demonstrate changes in blood flow every half minute or so, at about half a centimetre level of detail. But only MEG can provide the millisecond and millimetre power of resolution needed to detect the neural activations directly and in real time.
There are some limitations. Only certain parts of the brain can be seen, and the depths of the cerebral cortex are still out of range.
As Francis Crick has argued, future progress in neuropsychology requires entirely new methods for visualising human neuroanatomy. But until then, MEG reveals tantalising glimpses of the mind at work.
Dr Charlton is a lecturer in epidemiology and public health at Newcastle University.
RUSH CREEK is one of five powerful streams that tumble down the eastern side of California's High Sierras into the ancient Mono Lake basin. As you watch the water race though a shallow canyon to the lake, it is strange and exhilarating to consider that for most of the past 50 years it never got this far. Instead it was piped 350 miles south, to be flushed down the drains of Los Angeles.
The creek's rebirth is a victory for the underdog in a long battle to save North America's oldest lake from its thirstiest metropolis. It also marks the start of a 20-year experiment to see whether a fragile and hauntingly beautiful ecosystem that was all but destroyed by man can be restored by him as well.
If the experiment works, history may thank not only the environmentalists who have made Mono Lake their cause celebre activists trying to save the Aral Sea in the former Soviet Union have turned to them for advice but also an unglamorous technological innovation known as the ultra low-flow toilet.
What remains of Mono Lake lies at an altitude of more than 6,000 feet, between the sierras and the Nevada state line. It is lonely except for a tiny ancient mining village on its western shore, and quiet except for the wind. With no natural outlet its level was regulated for some 750,000 years by evaporation alone.
Before Los Angeles diverted its tributaries, Mono Lake was rich in salt and other minerals. These supported huge populations of brine shrimp and flies, which made the lake a favourite staging post for up to a million migrating water fowl each year.
Mark Twain paused here, gathering material for Roughing It in 1872. He found that Mono Lake water left his shirt "as clean as though it had been through the ablest of washerwoman's hands".
The lake's strangest feature is its "tufa towers" (tufa is derived from the Latin tufus, meaning porous). These limestone-like stalagmites made of calcium from the fresh water that combined with carbonates and sulphites form over freshwater springs in the lake bed. "It's mysterious," says Geoff McQuilkin, a Mono Lake activist. "They seem to form in rings round the spring, which is then channelled up through the developing column. The best way to think of them is as petrified springs."
Since 1940, when California's state assembly granted Los Angeles the rights to Mono Lake's entire water run-off, the water level has dropped by 41 feet and its volume has fallen by nearly half. Its water, which tastes like the juice from a tin of clams, is now too saline to support more than a token population of brine shrimp, thanks to continued evaporation without freshwater replenishment. Numbers of migrating birds have fallen to about a hundredth of their level in Mark Twain's time. The tufa towers, calibrating the lake's gradual disappearance, have become symbols of the fight to save it.
That fight has been peaceful compared with California's earlier water wars. In the 1920s and 30s, when the 300-mile-long Los Angeles Aqueduct was being built to carry water south from the Owens Valley (which leads to Mono Lake), local ranchers blew it up 14 times.
Trainloads of heavily armed detectives would set out from Los Angeles to tame these frontiersmen, but no such force has been marshalled against today's Mono Lake Committee. This shoestring group of conservationists, a David to the Goliath of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, began a 15-year campaign in 1979 to stop the diversion of Mono Lake's water.
Their first breakthrough came six years ago. Droughts in 1989 and 1990 forced new water conservation efforts in Los Angeles, including the installation of thousands of subsidised ultra low-flow lavatories which do the work of an old seven-gallon flush with a mere 1.4 gallons.
Other innovations were tried, such as low-flow shower heads and sprinkler systems modified to re-use washing-machine water. The result has been a 25 per cent drop in usage that appeared to make the diversion of 27,625 million gallons of water a year from Mono Lake unnecessary.
Los Angeles has shown an uncharacteristic talent for frugality, and conservationists seized on it as proof that the lake could be saved, without shifting the environmental burden elsewhere. "The city is using the same amount of water now as it was 20 years ago despite growing by a million," says Martha Davis, the director of the Mono Lake Committee.
Ayear ago, in a decision that won it a rare standing ovation, the city's water board agreed to stop almost all diversions until the lake had risen by 18 feet. Rush Creek and its four neighbours will take 20 years to do the job and the lake will still be 25 feet lower than in 1940, but environmentalists say it will "look full". (Thanks to record snows last winter it has already risen 18 inches.)
Others grumble that saving Mono Lake has simply forced Los Angeles to buy more water from the San Francisco area $38 million-worth of it a year, according to one water specialist. Meanwhile, it is far from certain that the wetlands round the lake where migrating birds once nested will recover. Nor do scientists know what will happen to dry tufa towers as they are surrounded again by water; they may dissolve. Bill Hasencamp of the Department of Water and Power says: "We'll know in 20 years if it was worth it."
DEVON trainers, Victor Dartnall and Pauline Geering, saddled trebles at the North Cornwall meeting at Wadebridge on Saturday.
Ashley Farrant, son of the Chepstow clerk of the course, Rodger, was in the saddle for Geering's three winners. A pupil-assistant trainer to Martin Pipe, Farrant was tasting success for the first time since breaking a leg last season.
He won on Myhamet in the opening members' race, Walkers Point in the confined and Rushalong in a division of the maiden. Only the John Porter-trained Wholestone, who made the journey from Lambourn, prevented a four-timer when he held off Far Run in the other division.
Proof that success can come cheaply, Walkers Point, bought at Malvern 18 months ago, cost just 800 guineas and has won four times for the yard since. His confined victory from Oneovertheight cost Neil Harris a riding treble.
While Geering's winning run stretched throughout the afternoon, Dartnall's involved three consecutive races. The need to qualify Wolf Winter for the Cheltenham Foxhunters' Chase meant he lined up for the open and duly scored.
Neil Harris, 27, rode the winner and also won on Phar Too Touchy in the restricted, victories that sandwiched a win for Butler John under Jo Cumings in the ladies' open.
Noel Wilson made a successful return, after breaking a leg, on Frozen Stiff to victory at the West Percy & Milvain meeting at Alnwick yesterday.
SATURDAY'S RESULTS: NORTH CORNWALL (Wadebridge): Hunt: 1, Myhamet (A Farrant, 1-2 fav); Mens' Open: 1, Wolf Winter (N Harris, 5-4); Ladies' Open: 1, Butler John (Miss J Cummings, 7-2); Restricted: Phar Too Touchy (N Harris, 4-1); Confined: Walkers Point (A Farrant 7-4); Intermediate: Just Bert (P Scholfield 7-4); Maiden (Div I): Wholestone (A Greig 6-5 fav); Maiden (Div II): Rushalong (A Farrant, 8-1).
YESTERDAY: WEST PERCY & MILVAIN (Alnwick): Hunt: Washakie (J Walton, 6-4 fav); Restricted: Farriers Favourite (A Parker, 4-1); Ladies' Open: Thistle Monarch (Miss R Clark, 8-1); Open: Royal Stream (A Parker, 6-4 fav); Confined: Hedley Mill (A Parker, 5-4 fav); Maiden (Div I): Weejumpawud (C Storey, 4-1); Maiden (Div II): Frozen Stiff (N Wilson, 14-1); Maiden (Div III): Admission (Miss C Metcalfe, 25-1).
Bodywork is all about harnessing the power of touch. It encompasses therapies such as chiropractic, osteopathy, Rolfing (deep massage), massage, aromatherapy, reflexology and shiatsu. The benefits are becoming more widely recognised by the medical profession a west London hospital is researching the use of massage in the rehabilitation of stroke victims.
Dr Mario Impallomeni, consultant geriatrician at the Hammersmith Hospital, treated 12 stroke patients with "marma" massage last year, and was so encouraged that he is hoping to start a large-scale study within the next few months.
Marma massage is a feature of Ayurvedic medicine, which believes there are 107 vital points, or marmas, in the body. Flesh, veins, arteries, tendons, bones and joints meet up at these points. As with acupuncture, the points are thought to correspond to particular organs or functions.
The claimed effects of the therapy, which is offered by the Hale Clinic, in London, are nothing short of miraculous. "One bedridden patient could walk by the end of her treatment," says Theresa Hale.
Another hands-on therapy is manual lymph drainage (MLD). "Manipulating the lymph glands has a detoxifying effect," says Jane Martens, of the Hale Clinic.
The appeal of alternative treatments is not restricted to an eccentric elite. "We are seeing more people than ever, partly because the medical profession is beginning to recognise alternative therapies," she says. She adds that people are beginning to recognise the importance of coping with stress, and will now go for a massage without necessarily being prompted by an ailment.
Cranial osteopathy ranks highly among new treatments and is blossoming into a therapy in its own right. Osteopathy focuses on the role of bones, muscles, tendons, tissues, nerves and the spinal column, in the overall maintenance of the body.
It is used mainly on infants who have had traumatic births. Ms Martens says: "It is amazing how many parents bring their children here, and it's almost as if the kids have come here straight from the womb."
Bodywork does not have to be a reaction to illness. It can be part of a healthy lifestyle, and variations are offered at many health clubs. Champneys, in Tring, Hertfordshire, recently expanded its range of touch-based treatments by introducing an aromatherapy massage for pregnant women.
Like many other establishments, Champneys has adopted an appropriate vocabulary. As well as offering massages for the "mind, body and soul", it has introduced massages which it calls "tranquillity" and "vital energy".
HAVING your feet massaged is many people's idea of heaven, but it is also an increasingly popular form of therapy.
The ancient art of reflexology is based on the premise that the body's main organs and glands are represented on the soles of the feet, which are thus a map of what is going on above. By applying pressure to specific parts of the feet, they believe they can help the body to eliminate its own problems.
Massaging specific points works to stimulate blood circulation and the lymphatic system, increasing energy and eliminating toxins.
Enthusiasts say they are more energised and relaxed after treatment. One-hour sessions cost around £20.
Kathryn Knight
The British Complementary Medicine Association 01242 226770.
Day One of a two-part investigation into complementary medicine. No one can doubt that alternative medicine works. A third of the population is estimated to have tried its remedies or visited its practitioners, and four out of five pronounce themselves satisfied with the treatment they have received.
Consumption of alternative remedies is rising faster in Britain than in any other European country. Private medical insurers are extending cover to include the main therapies and the NHS is spending at least £1 million a year on complementary practitioners. Nearly half of GPs are estimated to have referred patients for alternative treatments, and the first full-time NHS aromatherapist was recently appointed in Sheffield.
Why, then, is alternative medicine still treated with scepticism? Every profession has its share of venal practitioners. Orthodox medicine is in this respect no different from alternative medicine. But a broader, more damaging charge is laid at the door of alternative practitioners: that their enterprise is a fraud. Not medicine but magic.
The charge has made little impression on the public. Sales of herbal and homoeopathic remedies and aromatherapy oils are up by a quarter since 1992 to more than £60 million, according to the market analysts, Mintel. We are still a long way behind our continental neighbours, however. Consumption is less than half that in Germany and a third of that in France, Belgium and The Netherlands.
Private medical insurers have responded to the rising demand. Bupa includes cover for acupuncture, chiropractic, homoeopathy and osteopathy in all its policies, provided referral is through a consultant. Norwich Union Healthcare includes similar cover but only in its top-of-the-range Premiercare policy. The Scandinavian insurer, Ohra, allows subscribers up to 12 treatments a year at £25 a time for the same four therapies, plus medical herbalism, without a doctor's referral.
Growing demand shows that what matters to patients is results, not logic magic is acceptable to patients if it accomplishes what is promised.
The appeal of alternative medicine is linked to the amount of time available to patients, the use of touch, the magical qualities surrounding the practitioner, and conviction in the method of healing.
Interest has been fostered by a marked softening of the previously hostile attitude shown by the medical profession. The British Medical Association, which had dismissed alternative medicine in a report in 1986 as a "passing fashion" with no scientific basis, executed a U-turn in 1994 when it admitted large numbers of GPs had made use of it.
The increase in chronic illness, for which orthodox medicine has promised much but delivered little, has given the movement an added boost.
As a measure of alternative medicine's new respectability, the government-sponsored Health Education Authority has published an A-Z guide to 60 therapies. Some, such as yoga with more than 5,000 teachers and 500,000 adherents in Britain, are well known therapeutic aids while others, such as iridology (diagnosis from examination of the iris of the eye) are controversial.
The guide ranks treatments, using a a hotel-style star system. This has drawn criticism from Professor Edzard Ernst, of Exeter University, who claims it gives readers a false impression of their scientific standing.
The star system is based on whether scientific research on the therapy is non-existent (one star) or has been published in the best journals (four star). But this, Professor Ernst says, does not tell us what the research showed.
"There are two very good papers on iridology published in top journals and they both say it is totally meaningless as a diagnostic procedure. Yet in the rating system iridology gets three stars."
As Britain's first Professor of Complementary Medicine, he is involved in scientific assessment. He believes that unless researchers adhere to scientific principles and publish well organised studies, they will remain on the periphery of medicine.
Most adherents of complementary medicine are not prepared to wait for scientific proof, however. They argue that there is a distinction between a therapy that cures, and one that works by improving response to disease.
A cure involves a measurable change in a disease process and this can be objectively confirmed. But a treatment may work, so the patient feels better, for all sorts of reasons: because someone gave them time, listened to their problems and responded to their concerns.
Illness is what doctors have forgotten about.
THE elder statesman among holistic medicines is Ayurveda or Ayurvedism, the ancient Indian "science of life". First described in 1500BC in a body of literature known as the Vedas, it is becoming so popular that that the General Medical Council recently agreed to recognise medical schools incorporating Vedic principles, provided their students also attain conventional qualifications.
Rather than alleviating or curing illness, the Ayurvedic blend of meditation, yoga, astrology, herbal medicine and dietary advice is a philosophy of life which aims to prevent it. According to its teachings, originally in Sanskrit, each of us is composed of five elements fire, water, earth, air and ether.
"There are three forces through which these elements manifest themselves, called vata, pitta and kapha," says Dr Shiv Kumar, from the Ayurvedic Company of Great Britain, which has one of the largest databases on Ayurveda in the world. "Most people will be a blend of two."
Ayurveda says that to keep well, we must try to maintain and optimise our natural balance of elements. It preaches that life should be governed by regularity.
There are about 100 qualified Ayurvedic practitioners in Britain, and each will go through an exhaustive diagnosis process with his or her patient, including a questionnaire. The pulse can be taken in as many as 12 positions, and reflexes will be tested. Detailed questions about the urine, stool, the tongue and eyes are also usual.
PANCHAKARMA, meaning "five treatments", is the name given to the format of Ayurvedic treatment, a mix of stretching, meditation, massage and herbal preparations.
Another important aspect will be a food regime, tailored to each individual. As a rule, irregular meals are discouraged. Wholesome meals should be eaten calmly, followed by a short period of contemplation. And those seeking spiritual harmony should avoid certain metropolitan restaurants a bad-tempered cook can infuse the affair with discord.
Particularly recommended are energy-giving foods, known as sattvic, such as fresh fruit and vegetables (except root vegetables), whole milk, wheat-based products, rice and olive oil. Foods which sap energy, called tamasic, should be avoided. These include alcohol, coffee, potatoes, red meat, pickled or cured foods and cheeses.
The Ayurvedic Company of Great Britain can be contacted on 0171-370 2255.
Ashley Farrant was at his best on Saturday, riding a point-to-point treble at the North Cornwall meeting with the finesse that typifies many amateurs now taking part in the sport.
He later paid tribute to the trainer and horses, but then took the trouble to praise the Jockey Club's chief medical adviser, Dr Michael Turner, which in point-to-pointing circles is akin to unfurling a banner at Selhurst Park proclaiming "Cantona lives".
Then again, Farrant knows a thing or two about a good kicking, and he has had more conversations with Dr Turner than even Declan Murphy.
Farrant broke his leg last season and Saturday's victories were his first since that injury, yet it was a fall the year before at Haldon which has left a bigger impact. Having hit the turf on that occasion, he was struck in the face by a hoof and blacked out. His bottom lip is scarred, teeth are missing, but he was spared the sensation of drowning in blood, a medical team being on hand to ensure an air channel was kept open.
The cuts were stitched and being young he is now 24 and keen, he turned up at Ottery the following week expecting to ride, but was turned down by the doctor and missed the rest of the season.
"At the time, I called Dr Turner every name under the sun," Farrant recalled. "I felt fit enough but he refused to give me permission to ride."
Knowing about his battle with medical authority, it was unexpected to hear the rider admit: "Dr Turner was absolutely right. He made sure I didn't come back until it was safe. I thought I was okay at the time but, looking back, I was shot to bits."
Farrant continued: "Weeks later, people who know me were saying, ‘you're quiet Ash'. I wasn't all there, I was so slow. Not being allowed to ride was the best thing that happened to me."
Such eulogies are rarely given to Dr Turner Declan Murphy cursed him and other riders are doing so now. He is accused of wielding too much medical red tape, much of it expensive.
His critics ask: "Why wrap in cotton wool a sport which has thrilled riders for 150 years? The sport will always be dangerous and riders know the risk." Ashley Farrant did not, nor do inexperienced riders who can take part without any proof of competence, which chills the doctor by a degree or two.
Point-to-pointing's Liaison Committee (PPLC), the sport's most powerful body, has pushed through a number of safety improvements but injury statistics still make gloomy reading. At its meeting later this month, safety will be on the agenda, but Dr Turner has not been invited, which is a public relations mistake if nothing else.
In the meantime, he urges all point-to-point riders to buy the latest safety helmet, a product which became compulsory under Rules on Thursday. It offers more protection and the doctor wanted point-to-pointing to force riders to use it from the same date.
The PPLC refused, stalling such a ruling until next season. There is a lot of racing to come on their head be that decision.
Report highlights how industry is losing almost £4m a year. RACING'S much-vaunted "customer-friendly" fixture list is a financial disaster, which is preventing the sport from earning almost £4 million a year in extra revenue, according to a detailed report published yesterday.
The emphasis placed by the British Horseracing Board (BHB) on scheduling meetings when the race-going customer finds it easier to attend particularly evenings has had a devastating impact on off-course betting turnover, and thereby hit levy proceeds which underpin racing's finances.
The report, produced by Ladbrokes, accuses the BHB of ignoring "the overwhelming evidence that the so-called ‘customer-friendly' fixture list is depressing turnover to an extent that it is costing racing substantially more in levy than is being gained at the turnstiles."
At the heart of Ladbrokes's cogently argued case is the damage being done by switching meetings from weekday afternoons when there are plenty of punters in betting shops to evenings and Sundays, when the premises are virtually deserted. To make matters worse, the introduction of summer jump meetings, at the expense of fixtures during the winter, has also proved unpopular.
Ladbrokes has produced telling financial statistics, culled from the Racecourse Association and BHB, to prove that increased turnstile revenue pales into insignificance compared to the loss of levy income.
"Changes to the midweek fixture programme which has increased by nearly 100 per cent the number of afternoons with only two fixtures 122 days in 1995 compared to 64 in 1993 has resulted in a loss of some £1.5 million in levy yield in 1995," the report states.
"The loss of 102 third fixtures on weekday afternoons [in 1996] will result in an estimated levy shortfall of over £3 million."
Ladbrokes has also produced detailed proposals for changing the fixture list in 1997, which it claims would increase levy yield by £3,720,000 a year and help to reverse the 30 per cent decline in bookmaking profits.
In an attempt to maximise racing's revenue through off-course betting turnover, Ladbrokes recommends that the Levy Board should support three race meetings every weekday afternoon and four on Saturdays and Bank Holidays; 96 evening meetings compared to 190 this year; and the same number of Sunday meetings 30.
Summer jump racing has not proved successful for racing's finances and the two-year trial should not be repeated in 1997, the report says. "Taking fixtures from the core afternoon period in the traditional National Hunt season and transferring them into an overcrowded summer racing season costs £15,000 per fixture in levy yield. The small increase in attendance does not offset this loss of levy."
"Flat racing is the first choice for the betting shop customer and turnover peaks in the autumn months, when significant numbers of runners are available. There is considerable opportunity to add more fixtures in September, October and November, extending the Flat season to the third week of November," the report added.
All-weather racing is proving increasingly popular with High Street punters generating turnover 50 per cent higher than summer jump races and should be extended to produce Flat racing throughout the year, with extra all-weather tracks being developed.
Although Sunday racing has not proved a success for off-course bookmakers, Ladbrokes acknowledges the meetings delivered 60 per cent of the growth in "customer-friendly" fixture attendances last year "and appear cash-positive to racing."
However, it suggests the 30 Sunday fixtures should be timetabled in three blocks March-April, August-September and October-November to boost punter awareness.
WHEN Chay Blyth announced the BT Global Challenge two years ago, he had 6,000 applicants for 165 places on the 1996 fleet, each of which cost the successful entrant £18,750. The Times reserved two berths one for a man and one for a woman and offered bursaries towards their costs and the chance to write about their experiences in the paper.
Readers were asked to submit an essay on why they wanted to take part in a tough yacht race against the prevailing winds and currents. Anyone aged between 21 and 60 was eligible. From 2,687 entrants, 12 were selected for a training weekend to decide who should fill the berths. James Capstick, a 37-year-old Surrey police officer, and Lucy Duncan, a 35-year-old Nottingham midwife, were chosen.
The race starts from Southampton in September, when the fleet of 67-foot yachts under the guidance of professional skippers, sets sail for Rio de Janiero at the start of a 30,000-mile adventure, which will take the crews round Cape Horn and across the dangerous Southern Ocean. The finish is at Southampton in June 1997.
SURVIVAL as a round-the-world amateur yachtsman will require me to face up to and acknowledge the dangers of what I am about to do, even the naivety of my original decision, but then forget all that and get on with it. My defence for participating in the BT Global Challenge Race which starts in September fluctuates between the flippant it seemed like a good idea at the time and the profound: it is exactly what I have waited for all my life, or at least since becoming a "thirtysomething".
I used this argument to justify the serious business of abandoning my family for nine months, re-mortgaging the house, selling the car and attracting unwanted attention from the bank manager. I have come to terms with my persistent guilt about all this, thanks mainly to my long-suffering wife, Tracey, who actually understands me a rare and sometimes dangerous thing that, a woman who understands a man. Our two boys Stephen, ten, and Christopher, seven will be in good hands.
For me, the recent crew announcements at the Boat Show in London changed what had been an abstract idea into an imminent reality. Having enjoyed an impromptu get-together on the Guinness stand and a bit of "bonding" at the BT Global Challenge crew reception, I was feeling quite mellow and at peace with my fellow yachtsmen.
As the announcement of crews neared, I found myself looking at my fellow would-be circumnavigators, not with admiration and humility, but fear and trepidation. I have enjoyed sailing with many of them during training over the past two years, but there are one or two who, after five days bashing round the Channel, fill me with nothing less than murderous intent. I am sure this feeling says more about me than it does them, but there it is. I'm only human.
At last, the moment of truth arrived as Chay Blyth and the overhead projection told us our teams and that I was to crew on Ocean Rover. I have only sailed with one or two of my new crew before and while enjoying a small glass of wine and a chicken leg at a local hotel courtesy of Ocean Rover, we had an opportunity for a chat.
I am sure we were all sizing one another up, making instant and probably false judgments about each other's strength and weaknesses. I had a weather eye open, searching the horizon for the "brains" who will navigate us around the world, obviously avoiding the Doldrums and the rough bits, or repair the engine with nothing more than an old washing-up bottle, some sticky-back plastic and the tongue out of a deck shoe.
The easiest to spot are the potential foredeck gorillas they tend to have a glassy, faraway look in their eyes and are often accompanied by "helpers" in a long, white coat. Necessary sailing skills can be taught; Challenge Business (the organisers of the race) have proved that beyond doubt, but it is something else to change a personality and, on our trip, you cannot run or hide. You pray you will not let yourself, or more importantly, anyone else down.
The sponsor, the Rover Group, is totally committed to the project and that is going to be very important. With the amount of support and backing the boat will have, winning should be the easy part! Undoubtedly the most important person on board has to be the skipper. Ocean Rover's Paul Bennett is very competitive and if anyone can get us first over the winning line next year, he can. However, my wife did question my unflappable confidence in him when late that night, after the crew announcements, she turned out to pick Paul and myself up from a railway station somewhere in darkest Surrey, as a result of a navigational error between Earls Court and Waterloo station!
What next? Sitting here, attempting to write my first piece for The Times, I am suddenly reminded of a past feeling of trepidation. As a young police constable sitting in a Crown Court waiting room to give evidence for the first time, I remember being wound up by the old sweats who had done it all before. It would send a shiver down my spine as they solemnly explained how "your every word will be put under the microscope and examined, son".
Sailing the sun and ocean has its attractions.
Brian Clarke says anglers are right to be apprehensive about the actions of water companies
Anglers have watched with dismay as the list of abstraction applications has lengthened this winter. Among the most highly-publicised have been those by Yorkshire Water to take more from the rivers Wharfe and Ure; and by North West Water to take more from Windermere and Ullswater, thus lowering the levels of these lakes by several feet.
Wherever significant abstraction takes place and it is now very common the public debate is not about the need of people to have reliable water supplies: all sensible persons recognise this need. The debate is about the responsibility of the supplier in capturing and transporting it effectively and the need for the consumer not to be profligate. Either way, the niceties of argument matter little where the real crunch comes. Mostly out of sight and away from media focus, the effect on wildlife when water is drawn down, is the same.
Naturalists and conservationists everywhere are concerned about the threats posed by additional abstraction. No group, though, is more concerned than the anglers. Anglers are concerned not just with the fish which provide their sport but with the health of the whole acquatic environment. Their legal arm, the Anglers' Conservation Association, has pursued hundreds of offending organisations through the courts and carried many a fight to the High Court, to make the point. Those who fish, perhaps above all, know that when a river sickens or dies, it is a terrible thing.
The pattern, if abstraction anywhere is overdone, is broadly the same. It is seen at its most graphic on rivers, especially the bright, clean rivers in which fish such as trout can live; and it becomes most apparent in the context of the natural cycle which all rivers have.
Rivers depend for their flows on rain. Most rain falls in winter, least in summer and rivers rise and fall as a result. All life in rivers is governed by the seasonal fluctuations and has evolved to cope with them. It is for this reason that abstraction even in winter, when rivers are not at their lowest, can be damaging.
Trout have evolved so that they spawn in winter, when an adequate supply of water is naturally available. They spawn by digging scoops in the stream-bed gravel, deposit their eggs in the scoops and then cover them over with more gravel.
The spawning places are where the flow is normally of such a pace that the water keeps the eggs free of silt and washed with oxygen. These spawning places tend to be in feeder streams, or in the shallower parts of the main river, or in places where springs well up strongly through a river bed.
If the water level is drawn down after the eggs have been laid usually in January the spawning beds can become silted through lack of flow. If the level is drawn down sufficiently, spawning beds can be left high and dry. The first loss of fish life occurs.
The hatching of the young trout in February or March is timed to coincide with the emergence of the specialised, tiny acquatic insects which small trout eat. These insects, likewise, have evolved to live in places not usually dried out in winter and so the populations of these insects, and the food available for the youngest and most vulnerable fish, is reduced. More deaths.
In summer, the beds of healthy streams are a mass of insect life. These insects provide the food of all fish, large and small. Caddis flies are typical. Tiny caddis larvae build small stone cases around themselves, for protection. When they are ready to pupate before hatching, these larvae attach their cases to larger stones and seal up the end in much the same way as a caterpillar shuts itself in a chrysalis before emerging as a butterfly. Pupating caddis flies, attached as they are to stones, are immobile. As the river shrinks to unnatural levels because of abstraction, countless caddis cases can be exposed to the drying summer sun. It is the same with the nymphs of insects which live on the surface of stones in fast water. As flows drop beyond the rate which these insects can tolerate, so these populations also are reduced or lost. So are the nymphs and larvae of other insects that live in some weeds. As flows fall beyond the point which these weeds need to thrive, so the weeds die and the habitat of dependent creatures is lost. The deadly downward spiral steepens.
Less water not only equals less food, but less space. All trout need food and cover and, like the wild animals on the bank above, they will fight to get what they need. The fry that have survived the perils of the spawning beds begin to compete among themselves for space and the weakest are driven away to places in which they cannot support themselves. Still more loss.
The larger fish congregate in the deepest pools and again competition occurs because the reduced currents in such places cannot feed all the fish now packed in them. Again, the smaller and weaker of the larger fish are driven away to places that will not sustain them and further mortalities occur. The small fry which find their way near their larger, hungry cousins find themselves on the menu. The big fish left gathered in the pools become easier prey for herons and cormorants and poachers.
And so it continues and steadily gets worse. The arguments rage over who or what is to blame. The casual camera points at the surface, but cannot see through it.
And yet anglers see it in close-up and understand. It is no wonder they are filled with apprehension, no wonder they watch and fight and sue as they do. It is a terrible thing when a river sickens or dies.
Brian Clarke's fishing column appears on the first Monday of each month.
THE Cafe Atara, one of Jerusalem's great literary and social landmarks, which has survived for nearly six decades despite shelling and terrorist bombings, is finally to close. It has become the victim of the owner's decision to sell out to Pizza Hut, the latest American company to open a franchise in the Holy City.
The Atara, in the heart of Jewish west Jerusalem, reflected the European influence on life in the territory. Moshe Dayan, the war hero, was one of many top politicians who were regulars there. Amos Oz, the novelist, featured the cafe in one of his bestsellers and countless romances blossomed amid the aroma of finely brewed coffee under its Art Deco roof.
The news of its closure has upset many veteran customers already concerned by what President Weizman has called the Americanisation of Israel. Pizza Hut will join a non-kosher McDonald's, Blockbuster Videos, Tower Records and Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream which have all recently opened in the centre of Jerusalem within a few hundred yards of each other.
The Atara was founded in 1938 by Heinz Greenspan, a refugee from Nazi Germany. The cafe immediately attracted a lively and mixed clientele, including British officers, Palestinian businessmen, socialites and members of rival Jewish militias.
Uri Greenspan, the founder's grandson, said he could not resist an offer from Pizza Hut to sell his tenant's rights for a reported £330,000, and added that the cafe had never closed, even when Jerusalem was shelled in the 1948 War of Independence and the 1967 Six Day War.
THE United Nations, due to run out of money in April, is planning unprecedented job cuts at its New York headquarters. A confidential memorandum obtained by The Times says it will trim 1,150 people from its 14,000 staff by the end of this year.
The secretariat cutbacks have been forced on the UN by America, which lobbied successfully for a reduction in the organisation's budget to placate the Republican-controlled Congress. Members owe the UN about $3.3 billion in unpaid dues, almost half of which is owed by America.
The memorandum, which records a meeting of the advisory panel on management and finance, says 210 professional staff and 480 clerical workers must go. The cuts "may affect some areas to such an extent that the activities cannot be sustained".
Boutros Boutros Ghali, the UN Secretary-General, is expected to announce cost-savings at the General Assembly's budgetary committee tomorrow. It is rumoured that he may shut the headquarters for a month.
WARREN CHRISTOPHER, the US Secretary of State, today launches his seventeenth and most testing diplomatic mission between Israel and Syria in an attempt to boost peace talks before elections in both Israel and the United States this year.
Mr Christopher arrived in Jerusalem to find Israel already embroiled in pre-election fever. However, Shimon Peres, the Prime Minister, has yet to make a formal announcement that the date of the poll is being brought forward from October 29 to either late May or early June.
After a meeting with Mr Peres yesterday, Raanan Cohen, the head of the ruling Labour Party's Knesset faction, lambasted the Likud opposition for criticising the reported decision to bring forward the poll and forecast that voting would take place on May 14, 21 or 28.
Likud, which is lagging badly in the opinion polls as a result of a backlash after the assassination in November of Yitzhak Rabin by a right-wing Jewish fanatic, took large advertisements in yesterday's Israeli papers under the new slogan "Giving Up the Golan is National Suicide". The peace talks with Syria are likely to play a key role in what is expected to be a heated and divisive campaign.
American officials are resigned to an early Israeli election, although privately aides close to Mr Christopher admit that it will slow down, if not completely halt, the peace talks that have been taking place in Maryland.
Mr Peres, who claims that civil servants and not elected politicians are doing the talking, has vowed to keep the negotiations going, even if an early poll is announced.
Yesterday Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the Housing Minister, said Labour needed an early mandate from the people to make fateful decisions in talks with both Syria and the Palestinians.
The minister, whose background will be vital in helping Labour win votes among the oriental Jewish community that has tended to favour Likud in recent years, claimed that early elections were a good idea to reduce the possibility of months of attacks by Palestinian or Islamic terrorists, which could turn the electorate against the peace process.
The latest opinion poll published in Israel gave Mr Peres 46 per cent of the vote in his campaign to be re-elected as Prime Minister, compared with only 30 per cent for Binyamin Netanyahu, the Likud leader. Mr Peres has pledged that, if a peace deal with Syria were reached after the election, any decision to hand back the Golan Heights, conquered from Syria in 1967, would be subject to a national referendum.
Mr Christopher, who has invested much time and effort in his bid to tie up an Israeli-Syrian peace deal prior to the American presidential election in November, is expected to try to use the likelihood of an imminent poll in Israel as a tool to persuade Syria to speed up the present rather sedate pace of talks.
Israel has also asked him to try to arrange a summit between Mr Peres and President Assad, but that is considered unlikely at this stage.
REPUBLICANS in Louisiana cast the first votes tomorrow in the shortest, and potentially most shambolic, race yet for an American presidential nomination.
A record 33 of the 50 states will be holding primaries and caucuses over the next 48 hectic days because many, including California, have advanced their contests to try to increase their influence.
This truncation seemed of little consequence when Robert Dole, the veteran Senate majority leader, was overwhelming favourite for the Republican nomination, but could matter immensely now that his campaign is faltering.
Steve Forbes, the multimillionaire publisher, has exposed the shallowness of Mr Dole's support, but the political novice is scarcely a credible nominee himself. Were his balloon to burst as many analysts predict the Texas senator, Phil Gramm, former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander, the conservative commentator Pat Buchanan, or even Indiana's Senator Richard Lugar could emerge from the obscurity in which they have languished so long.
In no state after Iowa and New Hampshire will Republican voters have the chance seriously to evaluate those alternatives to Mr Dole. The crush of contests will prevent real campaigning or meaningful debate. Candidates will be forced to sell themselves through 30-second commercials and airport soundbites.
The compressed timetable favours Mr Dole as easily the best-known and best-financed candidate. But it means by late March the Republicans will be saddled with either a nominee who demonstrably fails to excite the troops or one hardly tested.
Either way he will be nearly broke, but ineligible for federal funds until his status is confirmed at a convention postponed until August because of July's Atlanta Olympics. By contrast, President Clinton, who faces no challenge for the Democratic nomination, will have a huge war chest to spend.
The irony is that the impact of the Iowa and New Hampshire contests will be greater than ever, while the states which have advanced their contests have diminished their influence. Louisiana is a prime example. Only Mr Gramm, Mr Buchanan and Alan Keyes, a black radio chatshow host, are contesting tomorrow's caucuses. The other six candidates feared offending Iowa voters furious that Louisiana is challenging that state's right to hold the nation's first caucuses.
The Louisiana caucuses have thus been devalued, but are nonetheless an important subplot. All three contestants are hardline conservatives. Whoever wins will portray himself as the true conservative standard-bearer going into next Tuesday's Iowa caucuses while the credibility of the losers will be badly damaged.
The stakes are especially high for Mr Gramm. From neighbouring Texas, he has worked Louisiana hard and has the backing of the state's Republican hierarchy which has rigged the rules to help him. To lose Louisiana would be a disaster, but he is being pressed hard by Mr Buchanan, the man who savaged President Bush in 1992's Republican primaries.
Mr Buchanan is claiming the populist mantle of Huey Long, Louisiana's legendary Governor of the 1930s, presenting himself as the champion of ordinary working men against corporations moving jobs abroad. He won last week's straw poll of 10,000 Republicans in Alaska and is edging upwards in New Hampshire polls.
He argues: "If we can come out of Louisiana with a dramatic showing, I think it is all over for Phil Gramm."
ONE reaction to the extremely cold weather gripping much of America is to assume that similar temperatures are coming our way. This seems to be based on the analysis that prevailing westerly winds will carry weather across the Atlantic within a week or so.
Taken at face value, this is a fallacy. The surges of Arctic air that bring cold weather to the eastern half of America are played out long before they cross the Atlantic. But there is a more subtle explanation for the possible connection between weather on either side of the Atlantic. In winter, the westerly circulation of the jet stream, the strong winds in the upper atmosphere in the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere, can get stuck in a meandering pattern.
Because this circulation steers the course of the surface weather systems, it leads to Arctic air being funnelled southwards in some places, while in intermediate regions this is balanced by warm subtropical air moving northwards.
Cold weather in eastern America is often linked to a circulation pattern centred on the Rocky Mountains, with warm air moving up the West Coast while to the east cold air sweeps down from Canada. Downstream, the next wave in the meandering pattern can sometimes produce an area of high pressure close to Britain, which brings cold easterly winds.
In winters like those of 1940, 1963 and 1979, this pattern can be maintained for weeks. Long-term statistics suggest that there is little justification for assuming that the cold pattern will hold sway, and we are just as likely to have mild weather as to share in the discomfort of our American cousins.
ARCTIC cold swept across North America at the weekend, threatening to freeze the ears off cattle in Canada and endangering the citrus crop as far south as Florida.
Record low temperatures were measured from the Rocky Mountains in the West to the Atlantic coast and well into the Deep South. The tiny Minnesota town of Tower, which has a population of 500, broke a 97-year-old state record to become the coldest place in the United States at
-60C (-76F). In Chicago, where 600 people died in a heatwave last summer, the authorities put their new "extreme weather plan" into operation to protect residents.
In Washington, which is still recovering from last month's huge blizzard, Marion Barry, the Mayor, appealed for federal assistance to clear eight inches of snow.
New record lows were posted for Utah, where Salt Lake City fell to -24C (-12F) and Alabama, where Huntsville posted a low of -14C (7F).
The temperature in normally steamy New Orleans plummeted to -5C (22F) while lows of -3C (26F) were expected overnight in citrus-growing areas of central Florida.
At least 42 deaths were attributed to the icy weather. In some cases these were caused by fires started by people trying to keep warm.
Tens of thousands of homes as far south as Louisiana and Mississippi found themselves without electricity as ice brought down power lines, and garages were flooded with calls from motorists stranded on snow-bound roads.
The cold also brought its merrier moments, however. In International Falls, Minnesota, which calls itself the nation's ice box, one resident made a video of boiling water being thrown into the air and freezing before it hit the ground.
Two other residents of Minnesota braved a wind-chill factor of -40C (-40F) to get married in an outdoor ceremony at the annual winter carnival in the city of St Paul. Sherry Neary and Ken Wahlgren removed their gloves just long enough to exchange rings, and then slid down 200ft snow slides. "She melted the icicles off his moustache when she was kissing him," a carnival spokeswoman said.
The carnival cancelled appearances by all school bands because of the fear that youngsters playing brass instruments would get them frozen to their lips.
Despite the freezing temperatures, political campaigning continued in Iowa as Republican presidential contenders vied for votes in forthcoming state caucuses.
"This is a good place to meet," Steve Forbes, the millionaire publisher and presidential hopeful, told a group of voters gathered at a coffee shop. "You can get some hot coffee to warm your hands, and now you can get some hot air to warm the rest of you."
Wayne Sharp, a dairy farmer near Valentine, Nebraska, was coping with the severe cold in a house with only a wood-burning stove for heating. "It isn't a lot of fun," he said. "We shut off about four rooms and kind of live in the living room and the kitchen." And while his family was cold, he said his cows were irritable, with frost-bitten teats.
In Wisconsin, sponsors of the annual Badger State winter games in Wausau cancelled skiing and other outdoor events. About 5,500 amateurs were registered for the competition.
Along the Virginia coast, a cargo ship buffeted by high winds ran aground near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.
Freezing rain put a slippery glaze of ice on roads, trees and power lines across the lower Atlantic Coast states as far south as Georgia.
In North Carolina, a US Air jet that had landed at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport slid off a taxiway into grass. None of the crew and 21 passengers aboard the Boeing 737 was injured. The plane, which had arrived from Pittsburgh, was not damaged, according to airport officials.
RUNCORN must be heartily sick of the sight of Barry Hayles of Stevenage Borough. He scored three times against them in November when Stevenage won 8-0 at Canal Street and precipitated the departure of John Carroll from the Runcorn managership. On Saturday, he crashed in another hat-trick as Stevenage won the return match at Broadhall Way 4-1.
The victory lifted Stevenage to within a point of Macclesfield Town at the top of the Vauxhall Conference with two matches in hand, and makes Hayles an even hotter property. Signed from Willesden Hawkeye, the Spartan League club, 18 months ago, Hayles has now scored 15 league goals in his attacking midfield role.
With Macclesfield's match against Northwich Victoria postponed, further heartening news for Stevenage came from Kingfield, where Woking were held to a 1-1 draw by Bromsgrove Rovers. Despite losing ground at the head of the table, Woking could draw consolation from preserving an unbeaten home record that started in December 1994 even though they were without five regulars through injury and suspension.
A crowd of 2,481 were drawn for the opening of the new stand that has brought Woking's stadium the A grading it needs to make it acceptable for the Endsleigh Insurance League. The shadow over Stevenage's success is that they are not yet in a position to press ahead and take their ground up to standard and would so be unable to win promotion if they went on to win the title.
Paul Fairclough, the manager, said: "It's frustrating but you can judge our response by the fact that when we were told of the decision, our next fixture was that game at Runcorn. Whatever competition you play in, whatever level you play at, you go flat out to win. That's human nature."
Lee Hughes scored the day's second hat-trick as Kidderminster Harriers beat Dagenham and Redbridge 5-1. Telford United's 2-1 win at Slough left Dagenham isolated at the foot of the table.
Canvey Island, of the Icis League, reached the quarter-finals of the FA Carlsberg Vase by coming from behind to beat Thamesmead 2-1 with an 89 th-minute goal by Gary Britnell in a fifth-round match played at Slade Green's ground, the Small Glen, yesterday.
Thamesmead, a Winstonlead Kent League club that does not pay its players, had already knocked out Arlesey Town, the holders, and shocked Canvey by taking the lead through Dean Burns in the first half. Andy Jones brought Canvey level after Dermot Gallagher, the Premiership referee, had awarded a penalty for a foul on the striker in the 77th minute.
Undefeated ‘one-punch wonder' from Liverpool has look of a champion
BOXING may have found a new Colin Jones. Since the Welshman, who twice came close to lifting the world championship, retired some ten years ago, the sport has been waiting for a puncher from the lower divisions who can take out an opponent with one blow. Shea Neary, a little-known light-welterweight from Liverpool, could be just such a man. Unbeaten in 16 outings, he has demolished 15 of his opponents in quick time.
The last man to feel the power of his fists was Terry Southerland, of Cincinnati, who was knocked out in the second round of their bout at Everton Park Sports Centre on Saturday. The American, who has boxed against some top opponents, had been on the floor only once in his 22-bout career. He had lost two bouts and one of those defeats was at the hands of Kelsie Banks, the Olympic champion.
"He [Neary] is very strong," Southerland said. "No one has hit me so hard. I boxed well at the outset but got careless and he was able to capitalise on where I messed up. That's a good fighter. He stacks up well against the fighters I have met."
There is little doubt that the "Shamrock Express" is on course to lift the British and European titles. His manager, John Hyland, believes there is not a light-welterweight in Britain to stop him.
Charlie Atkinson, the boxing adviser to Central Television, said: "They keep running away from him. You have seen something special tonight. When he wants to take a man out, he takes them out. He'll make a hole in those London guys."
Atkinson was right. Just before the end of the first round, Neary, who had been outboxed, suffered a cut by his eye. Tony Green, the referee, told him: "I'm going to stop you at the end of this round." Neary replied: "I'll stop it first."
True to his word, he trapped Southerland against the ropes and unleashed a right. It landed on the American's chin and deposited him flat on his back. Gary Newbon, head of sport at Central Television, was delighted. As ITV was looking for new talent, he had decided to check out the one-punch wonder.
Newbon said: "Neary is a really exciting fighter, like a white Nigel Benn. We picked Southerland. Promoters have always discussed opponents with me, but this time I told Hyland, ‘if you are prepared to let us find the opponent, we'll put him on'. We knew Southerland was good. But it might have gone on longer if Neary hadn't been cut."
Having turned professional at 23 after leaving the Army and without much amateur experience, Neary is still a little raw. But he has a Tyson-like search-and-destroy determination and if he can adopt the Tyson head movements, he could become a good world-title prospect.
Atkinson believes, however, that it is his rawness that makes him exciting to watch and, no doubt, if he carries on knocking them over he will get high viewer ratings.
Britain's latest heavyweight hope, Matthew Ellis looks destined to have as colourful and exciting a career as Billy Walker, some 30 years ago but he could prove more successful. On the undercard, he knocked out Laurent Rouze, of France, in one round. Rouze was not much of an opponent, but this was only the first professional appearance of the Amateur Boxing Association heavyweight champion. Nonetheless, it was possible to see that the 15st 10lb six-footer from Blackpool is, unlike so many other British heavyweights, light on his feet and has quick hands. Most important, he is able to put combinations together.
He floored Rouze with a four-punch sequence. As Reg Gutteridge, the commentator, said about the French milkman: "Milkmen get up early, but this one's not going to make this round."
Washington: The Administration has threatened tough sanctions against China unless it starts to honour a year-old trade deal ending Chinese piracy of American videos, music and computer software.
Mickey Kantor, the American Trade Representative, has threatened 100 per cent tariffs on more than $1 billion (£667 million) of Chinese imports unless Peking closes more than 30 factories producing huge quantities of pirated products, The New York Times disclosed yesterday.
Some Administration officials fear Washington's hard line will damage its efforts to defuse rising tensions between China and Taiwan.
Rob Hughes watches South Africa add another trophy to burgeoning collection
Mark Williams, a player struggling to make any impression with Wolverhampton Wanderers, shared Saturday in Soweto with Nelson Mandela, whose mark in history is indelible. Williams, purchased by Graham Taylor as a £300,000 Wolves reserve, came off the substitutes' bench to score twice in two minutes so that South Africa could break the obduracy of Tunisia and add the African Nations Cup to the rugby and cricket triumphs in the new South Africa's list of sporting achievements. Those, President Mandela believes, symbolise more than anything else the quest for unity after apartheid.
The South Africans were not the most talented footballers on their continent; but they beat the best teams by a series of advantages by the huge, predominantly black support, by 1,763 metres of altitude, by obliging refereeing (though not in the final which was well refereed by the Ugandan, Charles Massembe). Above all, they had an advantage named desire.
"It's just from feelings," Williams, 29, had said before the kick-off, "the feeling inside us players for South Africa."
Feelings indeed. It appeared instinct that thrust Williams forward to head the first goal powerfully, moments after he had taken the field. In the stands, surrounded at last by many hundreds of white faces in the crowd that once again at Soccer City well exceeded the official capacity of 80,000, President Mandela was like a child lifted from his seat. Indeed Winnie Mandela for once under the same roof as her estranged husband was also in a celebratory dance, though there was no coming together as a pair, and not likely to be a reconciliation given the connotation that youth football and Winnie Mandela have in the nation.
Barely had either of them sat down than Doctor Khumalo, whose free kick created the first goal, found the wavelength for a second time of Williams. Once again the nerve, the aim and the accuracy of the substitute breached the hitherto blanket defence of the Tunisians.
The temperature was rising towards 30C, the team that has now rechristened itself from Bafana Bafana (The Boys) to Mandela's Rainbow Warriors, was on a high, and fate had rounded South Africa's circle, victory with the oval ball of the Afrikaners, had come to mean the same thing to the once divided populace.
Possibly the most naive question of the day had come from a broadcaster who asked whether Mandela could spare the time from politics to attend the final. These games are politics.
As Mandela stepped down to the field, flanked by F.W. de Klerk and by the Zulu King, Goodwill Zwelithini, there were reverberations of the message that sport is unity in a nation which once divided sport on colour lines. Neil Tovey, the white captain whose replica shirt was worn by the black President, offered the trophy to Mandela.
Mandela kissed it briefly, touched it, and then like the grandfather he is urged Tovey and "The Boys" to take their place in the sunshine of South African celebration. They had to dance their way through the security cordon, the reality that the country still faces a difficult transition, but as their high spirits lapped the stadium, one knew that we could never separate sport from politics, nor regard playing games as a frivolous activity.
Mark Williams, of South Africa, celebrates after scoring the second goal against Tunisia in the African Nations Cup final in Johannesburg
Aston Villa 3 Leeds United 0. TOMAS BROLIN cut a lonely, disillusioned figure, loading the skips on to the team coach at Villa Park. That Leeds United had slumped to a comprehensive FA Carling Premiership defeat was irrelevant; it was the fact that he had not played, despite nine of his team-mates being unavailable, that had necessitated the embarrassed imitation of a humble apprentice.
Howard Wilkinson, the Leeds manager, forced his £4.5 million Swede into temporary exile. After only two months in England Brolin had been consigned to the role of baggage carrier.
"I was left out, it's very disappointing," he said. "It's the manager's decision, he wanted the team to play a certain way. Perhaps he doesn't think I'm good enough. I need time to fit in but I can't if I'm not playing."
Ominously, Brolin, 24, then contemplated the wider implications, in the comforting knowledge that he or his streetwise agent had insisted on a get-out clause in the deal that had taken him from Parma to Elland Road. "At the end of the season, I have to decide whether I'm staying or not," he said. "I cannot see into the future. The decision has to be made in May but there is enough time between now and then to consider things."
There, in a hideous nutshell, is the dilemma facing English clubs and their managers. They pay the earth for imported talent, in transfer fees and wages, and agree to almost anything in the contract, as long as the pampered, player is content and the baying supporters placated. Yet at the hint of a disagreement, when team selection contradicts all the well-intentioned guarantees, the superstar pleads disenchantment.
Wilkinson maintained a defiant, prickly stance. "I had nine players out and it was a question of seeing who was available and where I could play them," he said. "I thought the team would do better without Tomas. He was concerned at the amount of defending he would have to do and he said he might not be too good at it. I made the decision and he accepted it."
As insults go, Brolin received the ultimate. His place was effectively taken by Alan Maybury, 17, a first-year trainee from Dublin making his debut. That he was taken off at half-time, and replaced by Tinkler, 21, only added to Brolin's displeasure. He could not even make the substitutes' bench.
Would he have made a difference? Probably not. Yorke, of Aston Villa, possesses all the ingredients of a modern-day striker. He treks wide when needed, defends when possible and displays a keen eye for a goal, as demonstrated in the twelfth and 22nd minutes.
Villa's recovery from the 2-0 midweek defeat against Liverpool confirmed by Wright's goal in the second half was thus swift. However, Brolin's omission, and subsequent reaction, was more significant. Has not the Premiership's obession with continental players, and its bowing and scraping to their excessive demands, reached overload? Klinsmann yesterday, Brolin today, Asprilla tomorrow? Beware strangers bearing gifts.
ASTON VILLA (3-5-2): M Bosnich G Southgate, P McGrath, S Staunton G Charles, I Taylor, M Draper, A Townsend (sub: G Farrelly, 86min), A Wright S Milosevic, D Yorke.
LEEDS UNITED (3-5-2): M Beeney C Palmer, J Pemberton (sub: N Worthington, 22), R Bowman A Couzens, G McAllister, A Maybury (sub: M Tinkler, 45), G Speed, A Dorigo B Deane, R Wallace.
Referee: R Hart.
THE Chinese authorities yesterday issued regulations governing access to the Internet. The rules take effect immediately and require all computer companies that provide access to the Internet to be officially approved. They also prohibit the distribution and reception of "seditious and pornographic" material.
Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, said anyone violating the regulations would be seriously dealt with. Diplomats said the Chinese move reflected a growing concern among many countries about the lack of direct legal regulation over the material which is readily available on the Internet in increasing quantities.
Under rules issued by Xinhua, all computer information networks must use channels provided by the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications (MPT) to hook up to networks abroad. All interactive networks will be subject to management by the MPT, the Ministry of Electronics Industry, the State Education Commission and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the regulations stipulate.
An Afghan boy, left, ferries home a bag of charcoal delivered to Kabul by the first flight of a Red Cross airlift. A child peers out from between the skirts of veiled women, right, waiting for food at the city's airport. Twenty tonnes of emergency supplies were brought into the besieged and starving city on Saturday, but the International Committee of the Red Cross was forced to delay its operation by customs officials in Pakistan. Relief agency sources said the Red Cross did not have an export licence.
Andrei Mermillon, relief co-ordinator with the Red Cross, said: "The distribution today is for Kabul's war wounded, resulting from mines, rockets or bullets, and we will be supplying 945 families, about 5,000 to 6,000 people."
Pakistani Customs said yesterday that they would allow the Red Cross to resume its airlift today.
Kabul has been virtually cut off for nearly three weeks, with only occasional supplies reaching the city. Taleban fighters, entrenched in the hills, have kept up a siege since October, vowing to replace President Rabbani with a militant Islamic order.
Yesterday rebels fired artillery at Kabul, wounding two people. Seven artillery rounds hit a residential area of the city, witnesses said.
CHINESE rescue workers continued last night searching for survivors in the rubble of the remote town of Lijiang after one of the region's worst earthquakes in years, measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale. The town, near the Tibetan border, was devastated and at least 240 people were killed and nearly 4,000 injured.
About 2,000 soldiers and police, supported by squads of doctors and nurses, were scouring the remains of mud-brick homes which collapsed when the earthquake struck Lijiang and surrounding villages in southwest Yunnan province, a provincial official said in Kunming, 1,300 miles from Peking.
Some people drowned in flash floods, officials said, and on one Lijiang farm 29 people were killed. About 10 per cent of the old-style houses in Lijiang were destroyed and water and electricity were cut.
The toll could rise as rescue workers reach more isolated hamlets, the spokesman said. He described the earthquake as "terrifying".
The tremor shook the rugged, mountainous district for about six seconds at 7.14pm local time on Saturday when most people were at home. Residents fled into the street. Fearing aftershocks, they camped outdoors overnight, despite near-freezing temperatures.
Foreign tourists visiting the remote and scenic district that is the home of China's Naxi ethnic minority were evacuated from hotels in Lijiang and moved into tents, spending the night around fires in the main city square.
More than 150 aftershocks have been recorded, including 18 measuring more than 4.0 on the Richter scale. About 16 of the 24 towns in the region also suffered considerable damage, officials said.
The nearby town of Zhongdian, capital of the Diqing Tibetan autonomous region, was cut off from the outside world, the Xinhua agency said, adding that Yunnan's provincial government had sent officials to the area.
Seismologists last month forecast several earthquakes measuring from 6.0 to 7.0 in the region, Xinhua said. Since 1930, three earthquakes measuring more than 6.0 on the Richter scale have hit Lijiang and Zhongdian, the agency said. Southwest Yunnan is prone to earthquakes and was struck several times last year.
CHRIS PATTEN, the Governor of Hong Kong, yesterday urged the Peking-appointed Preparatory Committee, which will formulate the government taking over next year, to enter into discussions with the Legislative Council.
In a radio address, Mr Patten said that everyone involved had a shared interest for "Hong Kong to make it through to 1998 and beyond in the best possible shape despite the pessimists and the critics". His suggestion is unlikely to find favour in Peking.
The committee was inaugurated ten days ago in Peking with a speech by President Jiang Zemin. Its 150 members, more than 90 of whom come from Hong Kong, were appointed by Peking and the body is chaired by Qian Qichen, the Foreign Minister. Fourteen members concurrently sit on the Legislative Council, the 60-member democratically elected parliament.
The Preparatory Committee's main job is to recommend a 400-member "election committee", which will recommend a chief executive to succeed Mr Patten.
THE new head of the Brigade Criminelle, the criminal investigation unit of the Paris police, strikes fear into the most hardened criminal, swears like a trooper and wears large dangling ear-rings.
Martine Monteil, 46, will today become the first female Commissaire of the elite unit often referred to simply as La Crime, an appointment that has sent a jolt through this hitherto male-dominated preserve. Mme Monteil's offices, on the top floor of 36, Quai des Orfevres, were occupied most memorably by Commissaire Jules Maigret, the great fictional detective created by Georges Simenon. Long before her appointment, France's highest-ranking policewoman was known as "Madame Maigret".
The daughter, grand-daughter and wife of policemen, Mme Monteil looks like a society hostess but is widely regarded as one of the toughest officers on the force. Her desk lamp, made from her father's pistol, is the unequivocal statement of a woman who shoots from the hip.
In 1979, two years before the birth of her daughter, Mme Monteil became the first woman to be appointed as police commissioner. She often recalls how visitors would walk into her office and say "Excuse me Madame, I would like to talk to the commissioner." She said: "The good old boys who had been there twenty years weren't going to take it at the start. I decided to hold on to my femininity, to use it without abusing it, to get on with my job while seeking advice from the veterans."
She worked, often undercover, in the Paris anti-drug squad and some of her greatest successes came as head of the anti-prostitution division. In 1992 she dismantled the high-society prostitution ring run by Fernande Grudet, known as Madame Claude. The former madam was apparently left with great respect for the woman who arrested her and has been quoted as applauding her promotion.
With 110 men under her command, Mme Monteil will now be in charge of the city's most high-profile cases.
BRITAIN came under fresh criticism yesterday for slowing down the drive towards a single currency and for trying to deter its European partners from monetary union.
British ministers reacted strongly to demands by Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor, that "the slowest boat must not determine the speed of the fleet", and disputes intensified over the likely starting date of the single currency as Britain warned Germany that Euro-scepticism had to be acknowledged in the campaign for monetary union.
Michael Portillo, the Defence Secretary, fought back against greater European integration by defending the importance of the "nation state" and dismissing claims that Britain was the "slowest boat" referred to by Herr Kohl.
However, pressure increased on Britain to stop its high-profile campaign to win the support of fellow European partners in opposing monetary union. Hans van den Broek, a European Commissioner for External Affairs, criticised the tactics used by British ministers since John Major secured an opt-out during the Maastricht treaty negotiations. "It is your free choice, but do not use that margin of manoeuvre, which you have, to sink the whole project or wish the whole project to sink."
Senior European politicians have voiced concern at the increasingly forceful campaign waged by British ministers to delay a single currency. Karl Lamers, Herr Kohl's senior foreign policy adviser, was reported yesterday to have described Britain's stance over the single currency as irresponsible.
Mr Portillo, who has led Conservative opposition to a single currency, said: "I believe the nation state still plays a very important part ... But nation states and nationalism are not the same thing. And what we're looking for is the way in which nations can collaborate together more and more," he told Sky TV.
He accepted Herr Kohl's comment that, through closer co-operation, countries were less likely to go to war, but claimed that the German leader was referring to the period surrounding the Second World War rather than today. "Of course, everybody would agree that nobody wants to go back to the sort of terrible nationalism that was unleashed in the 1930s and 1940s," he said.
Earlier, Malcolm Rifkind, the Foreign Secretary, defending the Government's resistance to a significant expansion of European Union powers, said the EU would cease to exist unless all its members could be accommodated. His remarks were praised by Tory Euro-sceptics, who said it was a welcome echo of Baroness Thatcher's "no nonsense" tone.
Cabinet ministers' doubts over Europe will be underlined today when Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, backs a fiercely Euro-sceptic paper by the Tory think-tank, the Centre for Policy Studies. In a foreword, Mr Howard praises British governments for championing British interests and says "isolation is sometimes necessary".
JOAN COLLINS, the actress, will appear in a stormy real-life drama due to start unfolding today before a New York jury.
The star of the hit television series Dynasty is locked in a legal battle with Random House, the publisher, in a failed $4 million (£2.6 million) book deal. Random House claims Miss Collins broke her contract with its British and American publishers by turning in unusable manuscripts for two novels for which she had been paid an advance of $1.3 million. Miss Collins, 62, responds that she put her acting career on hold to write A Ruling Passion and Hell Hath No Fury and insists the books are of publishable quality.
Random House is seeking the return of its advance, while the star is suing the publisher for the rest of the $4 million. Miss Collins's two-book deal was negotiated by the late Hollywood super-agent, Irving "Swifty" Lazar, with Joni Evans, when she was an editor at Random House, which is now headed by Harold Evans, no relation, a former Editor of The Times and The Sunday Times.
The British actress, who played Alexis Carrington in Dynasty, already has three bestsellers to her name Prime Time, Past Imperfect, An Autobiography and Too Damn Famous. Her sister Jackie is the queen of potboiler romances, such as Hollywood Wives.
Miss Collins believes she fell victim to in-house politics at Random House, as it tried to shut down the unprofitable Turtle Bay imprint created for books edited by Ms Evans.
Ironically, Miss Collins's latest screen role is as an actor's agent in Kenneth Branagh's new film, In the Bleak Midwinter.
Charlton Athletic 0 Crystal Palace 0. THE Valley is alive with expectation. Charlton Athletic lie second in the Endsleigh Insurance League first division and Alan Curbishley, their manager, has signed an extended contract as have Rufus, Stuart, Newton and Robinson, some of his highly-prized starlets. The solitary spectre at the southeast London club is the prospect of playing in the FA Carling Premiership next season.
While it would prove a glamorous and exciting experience and nobody could deny them the right if they maintain their present position it is unlikely that it would be too rewarding. Charlton are not yet ready to compete with the big boys on a regular basis, for all their blossoming talent, and a scruffy stalemate against Crystal Palace yesterday only re-emphasised the yawning gap between Endsleigh and Premiership pastures.
Promising approach play proliferated, from both sides, but much of it came to nought, with the final touch glaringly absent. Pitcher cleared off the line from a goal-bound shot by Bowyer in the first half and Dyer drove weakly at Salmon in the 85th minute, when it appeared easier to slot the ball past him, and thus the game remained goalless.
Charlton were also denied what appeared to be the most undeniable of penalty awards in the final minute, when Dyer removed the legs from under Mortimer only astonishingly to get away with it. Everybody bar Rodger Gifford, the referee, and his linesmen agreed that Dyer should have been penalised. "It was a penalty," Curbishley said. "I've seen the replay and they got it wrong. That's the way it goes."
Though Ray Lewington, Palace's first-team coach, shared the same opinion, he was more concerned with the apparent interference of Ron Noades, his chairman, in team selection policy at Selhurst Park. "I want us to pass the ball and play football," Lewington said. "Ron feels we're playing the wrong system but I've refused to change it." Brave man.
Palace did try to play football and Charlton did, too. In flurries, it was pleasing to watch, but it was still light years away from the Premiership.
CHARLTON ATHLETIC (4-4-2): M Salmon J Humphrey, S Brown, S Balmer, J Stuart S Newton, L Bowyer, P Mortimer, J Robinson C Leaburn, K Grant (sub: D Whyte, 76 min).
CRYSTAL PALACE (3-4-3): N Martyn G Davies, A Roberts, D Gordon M Edworthy, D Pitcher, R Houghton, S Rodger D Freedman, G Taylor, L McKenzie (sub: B Dyer, 75).
Referee: R Gifford.
In a competition with so limited a membership as the Bell's Scottish League premier division, failure is always near at hand. Since it features only ten clubs, there is no gentle stretch of mid-table pastureland in which teams can calmly live out their days in safety and obscurity.
Heart of Midlothian, for instance, fought relegation a year ago and, early this season, seemed set for a re-match. Recent form has, however, brought six victories in seven games and sped them into third place. The superiority of the Old Firm is entrenched, but the standards of the remainder of the division only cover a narrow span.
In consequence, small improvements in a side can have dramatic consequences. Equally, it is always a short journey to the relegation zone. Last season Falkirk entertained thoughts of qualifying for Europe. Now, they are seized by a dread of tumbling out of the premier division.
The upheavals and reversals of fortune exist by design, since the premier division was created, in 1974, expressly to create a greater number of significant matches. The haunted demeanour of virtually every manager testifies to the relevance of the games.
The tumult, though, can be repellent as well as engrossing. John Lambie, the Falkirk manager, has alleged that a supporter tried to drive him off the road as he made his way home after the shaming defeat by Stenhousemuir in the Scottish Cup on Tuesday. The driver in question then identified himself and claimed that he had "only" been trying to gesture and yell at Lambie.
The manager has become accustomed to abuse of late, even though it is usually delivered while he is stationary on the bench at Brockville. Falkirk are second bottom of the premier division, but lowly league positions and even relegation are hardly novelties. Much more grave are the accusations he faces over a deterioration of style.
Lambie replaced Jim Jefferies, now with Hearts, last summer in an appointment viewed with misgivings even at the time. Partick Thistle had been sustained in the premier division for three years under Lambie, but there was little affection for the manner in which his teams played.
At Brockville he has also been blamed for coarsening the team he inherited from Jefferies. Rumbustiousness, however, will, for the moment, be tolerated if it leads Falkirk to safety. After the embarrassment against Stenhousemuir, the squad held discussions that may have cleared the air only after first turning it blue. Despite falling behind to Kilmarnock on Saturday, Falkirk eventually won 4-2.
In addition, Lambie had the satisfaction of seeing both the players he signed on Wednesday, Tony Finnigan and Dominic Iorfa, score on their debuts. If there was respite for him, though, torment elsewhere continued as before. Hibernian, after a 2-1 defeat at Celtic Park, have now recorded just one victory in the past ten matches. Alex Miller's team, who had broken out of prolonged defending to take the lead, have cause to grumble about the outcome.
When Pierre van Hooijdonk scored the equaliser, Jim Leighton, the Hibernian goalkeeper, was off the field receiving treatment. An outfield player, Darren Jackson, deputising for him, fumbled the ball to allow Celtic to score. The game, however, persistently flirted with the bizarre.
When Leighton tried to return, Sandy Roy, the referee, stopped him because his cut was still bleeding, but Jackson had already taken off his goalkeeper's jersey and come to the halfway line. The official then restarted the game with nobody between the posts, but as Celtic prepared to score, a linesman stopped play.
Paul McStay, who later scored the winner, reported that the linesman had raised his flag because the goalkeeper was not in place. "That's a new rule to me," he said wryly. If Scottish foootball is a grave business, it still manages to be ludicrous on occasion.
Newcastle United 2 Sheffield Wednesday 0. THIRTEEN is lucky for some. With Sheffield Wednesday providing supine opposition on Saturday, Newcastle United were able to avoid the consequences of a halting performance, goals from Les Ferdinand and Lee Clark ensuring that the FA Carling Premiership leaders' 100 per cent home record now stretches to 13 matches.
But until the goals, an untidy affair was in danger of going down as the game of the thrice-taken throw-in. A bad pitch and Paul Danson, the referee, offered as much hindrance to the leaders' progress as Wednesday. "We had to cope with an awful referee today, both sides did," David Pleat, the Wednesday manager, said.
Of the referee more later; but Pleat knew that Danson's performance, disturbing as it was, made no difference to the final result. "I think we made them work for it, it wasn't one of their champagne days in terms of football," Pleat claimed, and with Nicol sitting in front of the back four, there was a tangled green thicket set up for Newcastle to penetrate. But as an attacking force Wednesday were dire in 90 minutes Srnicek had to make one serious save, from Bright.
Wednesday's better performers were all in the back six. Above all there was Des Walker. The sight of him moving smoothly into overdrive to get out of trouble with a burst of speed brought memories flooding back of the days when the chant "you'll never beat Des Walker" resounded round the football grounds of England.
It is sometimes said that one of the England team's problems is that there are no good central defenders. While Walker continues to play so well in such a poor side, that is nonsense. "He's an insurance policy," Kevin Keegan, the Newcastle manager, said. "With that pace of his, he's the perfect cover. Nobody else would have got back to Les Ferdinand that time."
But if Walker made the saving tackle of the match as Ferdinand bore down on goal, and Wednesday's packed defence ensured there were bodies in the way of several shots, for much of the time Newcastle's problems were self-inflicted.
And then there was Danson, who held centre stage from the moment early on when the ball went out just inside the Newcastle half. Barton edged forward and edged forward, finally taking the throw five yards into Wednesday's half. Foul throw for taking it from the wrong place.
Nolan picked the ball up, studiously refused to look at the referee, now gesticulating furiously at the right place, and threw it in from the same spot. Foul throw and high farce. But if Danson was being pedantic, he was not wrong, as they say in those parts.
His later actions were less comprehensible. Atherton just beat Gillespie in one tackle by a fraction. Atherton got his foot in first and nicked the ball away, as Gillespie, who was going at full tilt in pursuit, arrived and caught Atherton. No malice involved indeed at the pace, it was unavoidable. But Danson got out the yellow card.
If that suggested that he is a referee who knows the rules, but does not know the game, it paled beside a later decision as Watts, on a foray forward, went past Beresford and was sent crashing by an embarrassingly clumsy tackle. Knowing Danson's reputation, everyone looked at one another nervously. A yellow card seemed the least Beresford could expect. Danson gave a goal kick.
NEWCASTLE UNITED (4-4-1-1) : P Srnicek W Barton, S Howey, P Albert, J Beresford S Watson, R Lee, L Clark, K Gillespie (sub: P Kitson, 69min) P Beardsley L Ferdinand.
SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY (4-1-3-2): K Pressman P Atherton, J Watts, D Walker, I Nolan S Nicol C Waddle, M Degryse, G Whittingham M Bright, D Hirst (sub: D Kovacevic, 27).
Referee: P Danson.
HUNDREDS of thousands of striking Russian miners returned to work at the weekend after Kremlin assurances that back wages would be paid and new subsidies spent on the coal industry.
After a well-organised walkout brought about 75per cent of Russian coal production to a halt, most of the more than half a million striking miners returned to their pits on Saturday. "Everything that I promised at the meeting with the leadership of the trade union is being carried out," said Viktor Chernomyrdin, the Russian Prime Minister, at the weekend.
The union said that the Government had agreed to make good £85 million in back pay, and provide £1.5 billion in industry funding this year. Vitali Budko, the union's leader, said that the Kremlin had until March 1 to start meeting its commitment or the miners would strike again.
A simultaneous strike by Ukraine's miners over unpaid wages continued. Stoppages and disruptions were reported yesterday at about 40per cent of its mines.
Although the Russian deal has bought the Kremlin a breathing space, and avoided a potentially bruising encounter with the country's most powerful union, the agreement may have set a dangerous precedent politically and economically. The Government's surrender after only 48 hours provided further evidence that, as part of his re-election campaign before the June polls, President Yeltsin plans to lavish subsidies and pay rises on industry.
The miners, whose strike five years ago against the Soviet authorities helped to bring the President to power, have set a precedent other disgruntled workers may copy in the politically charged atmosphere ahead of the June 16 election.
The spring spending spree may help to shore up the Russian leader's sagging popularity, but also risks destabilising the economy by pushing up inflation, undermining the rouble and threatening a key £6 billion International Monetary Fund loan. IMF and Russian negotiators failed to agree the loan last week and Yevgeni Yassin, the Economy Minister, said yesterday that he was concerned about what conditions the IMF might set.
Despite the hitch, the deal is expected to be sealed later this month during the planned Moscow visit by Michel Camdessus, the IMF managing director, who helped to clinch last year's generous loan.
Whatever doubts may be growing about Mr Yeltsin's commitment to reforming Russia's economy, nobody in the West wants to cut him off from financial help as he prepares his election campaign against a strong Communist challenge.
Cardiff City 3 Doncaster Rovers 2 ANYONE wanting to know why such a distinguished footballer as Phil Neal should put his reputation on the line running such a rundown club as Cardiff City received the answer not long into his first match as their manager.
Colin Cramb, the Doncaster Rovers striker, was trying to keep a high ball in play near the halfway line when he found himself being challenged for possession by a tracksuited figure who had leapt from the dugout with designs of his own.
"I was going to show them how it is done," an embarrassed Neal explained, reminding us of his glory days as a Liverpool full back when he won eight league championship winners' medals, eight more in European cup competitions and 50 England caps.
"I thought I would bring the ball down dead and get a rapturous round of applause but their player beat me to it. Instead I got a ticking off from the referee who said: ‘You are not in the Premier League now. Sit down."'
It would have been hard for him not to realise where he was, however. Ninian Park was an eerie place on Saturday with just 2,313 people in a stadium that once held more than 60,000 for an England v Wales match.
Not that Neal noticed. He was just delighted to be back in the game 11 months after he was required to leave Coventry City when they were in a healthier Premiership position than they are now.
He does not underestimate the size of his task in raising a one-time Welsh giant, which was not so much sleeping as comatose, but at least he has made a start with a victory which lifted Cardiff three places up the Endsleigh Insurance League third division.
It had taken him only a week to transmit some of his passion for football to the players, none of them showing it more than Carl Dale, who scored a brilliant hat-trick with finishing which was worthy of a higher division. "He is like Ian Rush at this level," Neal said of the diminutive Dale, 29, who has scored 24 goals this season.
Neal was not so impressed with a defence that had nobody like Alan Hansen, however, to prevent them from conceding two sloppy goals from right wing corners to Jones and Colcombe.
CARDIFF CITY (4-4-2): D Williams H Fleming, L Jarman, L Baddeley, D Searle A Scully, P Harding, S Young, J Gardner C Dale (sub: S Flack, 83min), A Philliskirk.
DONCASTER ROVERS (4-4-2): G O'Connor R Kirby, J Schofield, P Marquis, S Parrish S Colcombe, M Carmichael, L Warren, P Robertson G Jones, C Cramb (sub: S Maxfield, 40).
Referee: M Pierce.
HELMUT KOHL and other senior German politicians allege that Britain, by talking down the chances of a European single currency or progress towards a united Europe, threatens the foundations of the continent's peace in the next century.
However, their anger is less a dire prediction and more a symptom of the panic in the German establishment as it realises the rest of Europe is suffering federalism fatigue.
Nowhere was the new British aggression and German hesitation more evident than in Munich last Friday during a European foreign and defence policies discussion led by the Foreign Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, and his German counterpart, Klaus Kinkel.
British ministers no longer seem worried about saying the unsayable. Mr Rifkind was accompanied to Munich by Nicholas Soames, the junior Defence Minister, who told German listeners their ideas for a European army run by the EU did not make military sense.
German arguments for centralising EU foreign policy sound like flimsy mantras repeated out of habit rather than conviction, and the idea that a Maastricht Two treaty should make the leap towards a federal Europe is disappearing under worries about rising unemployment.
Wimbledon 2 Manchester United 4. Flying Frenchman makes a triumphant touchdown on his return to Selhurst Park
THE calm after the Selhurst Park storm of one year ago came to Eric Cantona on Saturday. There was evil afoot in the background, but Cantona had no part in it. He scored twice, he put himself at the service of his team, he roamed to find space, he tackled back, he lent his height to his defence, and throughout the afternoon the word best suited to his performance was composure.
Alex Ferguson, his manager, dismissed all talk of Cantona's return as trivial but Joe Kinnear, the Wimbledon manager beleaguered by a list of absentees running into double figures, was more effusive. "Cantona? He's got everything that's great about a player. He drifts in, ghosts in and out, making it almost impossible to do anything about him. Some say he's a lesser player since he's come back, but I can't see that."
Perhaps, after all, the uniform dictates the mood. When Cantona lost self-control and assaulted an abusive spectator, he wore that dreadful black kit. This time he was in the proper colour, a veritable pimpernel in red, the player handed the captain's armband when Steve Bruce had to go off to have 14 stitches inserted in his gashed forehead, the result of meeting the elbow of Dean Holdsworth. But that only emphasised that United are such a big club compared to the remarkable family affair that is Wimbledon.
Wimbledon have had seven senior players under the surgeon's knife this season. Though they were angels on the field against United, they have previously compounded this loss with suspensions to Earle, Ekoku and Harford. A lesser team, a club of lesser spirit, would have folded even more easily under a United team that regained second place in the FA Carling Premiership with this victory.
United have won on five out of their past six visits to this inaccessible south London club. The victory seemed assured in the four minutes before half-time when Cole, still seeming a misfit on a wavelength different from that of his colleagues, rose to head the first goal from Irwin's cross, and then Perry, the Wimbledon defender, added an own goal.
That description is harsh on Perry. First, the goal should be claimed by Beckham, whose tremendous free kick defeated Sullivan, the goalkeeper, crashed down from the crossbar, and appeared to cross the line. When it rebounded, Perry did indeed head it back into his own net but the force used in his back by Keane should have made his resultant misfortune irrelevant.
Kinnear admitted that his Wimbledon was a strangely submissive one before half-time. Once he had hectored them about their natural principles, the up-and-at-'em esprit de corps, they came out running, redefined as a 4-2-4 attacking unit.
Initially, it seemed, United could repel them at their ease, particularly with Gary Neville, the England right back, proving such a perceptive reader of the game at centre back.
Complacency crept in, however, and perseverance from Wimbledon was rewarded when Clarke chased a lost ball, Kimble put it back into the United goalmouth and Gayle slid in to half-volley the ball past Schmeichel.
Then came Cantona's denouement. Three minutes after Wimbledon's goal he engineered and scored with a level of class that will live in the memory. He and Beckham exchanged passes up the right that were beyond the scope of Wimbledon, passes that ultimately led to a headed goal of great timing and bravery as Cantona stooped to meet the ball, ignoring the raised boot of Perry.
Behind the goal, where the majority of the 15,000 United supporters in an attendance of 25,380, were ecstatic, the police reacted as if in fear that the dreaded London supporter who had caused Cantona's moment of madness in 1995 had returned. Not so: these supporters were friendly and admiring.
Wimbledon, however, were not inclined to tolerate that. They hit back in the proper manner when Keane sold his goalkeeper short with a poorly timed header and Jason Euell the next Ian Wright, according to Kinnear stole between them to make the score 3-2. Inevitably, though, Cantona had the final sting.
Giggs began the counter-attack with breathtaking pace, Cole, for once, produced a measured return pass that Cantona brought down from shoulder height and Giggs, involved again, hit the ball against Cunningham. It appeared to be handled involuntarily but the referee said it was a penalty and there was nothing to question about the imperious nature, the nerveless relish, with which Cantona dispatched the ball from the penalty spot to the netting behind Sullivan.
All that remained was the rancour surrounding the absence of Vinnie Jones. Kinnear says it is the parting of the ways, that Jones, once the embodiment of Wimbledon camaraderie, insists on leaving. "The Secret Squirrel mob," said Kinnear, referring to agents, "have been at work again. They and small fry [as he called Barry Fry, the Birmingham City manager], are trying to take Jones away behind my back. He can go but I've made it clear that £300,000 is a derisory figure."
The Uniteds of this world can take the points from Selhurst Park, but nobody is going to steal Wimbledon players on the cheap.
WIMBLEDON (4-4-2): N Sullivan K Cunningham, C Perry, A Reeves, A Kimble N Ardley (sub: J Goodman, 78min), S Talboys, O Leonhardsen, M Gayle D Holdsworth (sub: J Euell, 74), A Clarke.
MANCHESTER UNITED (4-4-1-1): P Schmeichel D Irwin, S Bruce (sub: D Beckham, 15), G Neville, P Neville R Giggs, R Keane, N Butt, L Sharpe E Cantona A Cole.
Referee: P Durkin.
GERMANY and the United States tried unsuccessfully at the weekend to ease Russian fears about Nato enlarging eastwards. However, they succeeded only in triggering concern in Central Europe about the West's true intentions.
At the same time, Gennadi Zyuganov, the Russian Communist Party chairman who looks likely to be the leading challenger to Boris Yeltsin in the June presidential election, gave a warning that any expansion by Nato into Central Europe would disrupt the balance of power and could jeopardise ratification of the Start 2 nuclear disarmament treaty.
Mr Zyuganov, speaking at a press conference yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, attempted to reassure Western governments about his party's geopolitical intentions.
He recognised the United States as the "clear leader" in the new global structure, but insisted that Russia could not simply be "written off" as a world power.
Expanding Nato to embrace Poland and other Central European states would be a sign that the West wanted to recreate the Cold War bipolar structure. That would have "disastrous consequences for world security and the whole future of humanity", as Russia would have to reconsider its position on both conventional and nuclear disarmament, Mr Zyuganov said.
Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor, told senior politicians and defence experts at the annual Wehrkunde security conference in Munich that the West had to address Moscow's anxiety about opening up the alliance to the Poles, Czechs and Hungarians. "I have the impression that the West does not think enough about the psychological situation in Moscow," he said. Germany, with Britain, has been an energetic champion of Central European membership of Nato. But over the past few months there have been signs that Germany is becoming lukewarm about the idea, at least until after the Russian election.
Every effort had to be made not to irritate Russia, Herr Kohl said. "We must consider the understandable security interest of Russia and Ukraine. It goes without saying that it can only be harmful if a matter this important becomes a campaign theme on either side of the Atlantic."
Lip-service was certainly paid to enlargement yesterday as both William Perry, the American Defence Secretary, and Javier Solana, the new Nato chief, emphasised the advantages to Moscow of a larger Nato. "Nato, far from being a threat to Russia, actually contributes to the security of Russia as well as the security of its own members," Mr Perry said. However, he conceded: "When I reached that conclusion most of the Russians I talked to fell off the cliff."
The strongest tone at the conference was set by Andrei Kokoshin, the Deputy Defence Minister and chief Russian speaker, who said enlargement could topple Russia's reform process. "The expansion of Nato in violation of the obvious obligations of the West not to expand it after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union consent to German unification might fundamentally undermine Russia's confidence in the policy of the West," Mr Kokoshin added.
Nato was still seen as a basically hostile alliance. "Many of you see it as a changing entity. Russians view it as something that has not changed, which is taking advantage of our difficulties."
Arsenal 1 Coventry City 1. IT WOULD be stretching a point to compare Arsenal without Adams, Bould and Keown to Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark: more like Macbeth without the three witches. But in the absence through suspension and injury of those Highbury totems, the home team lacked their usual authority. Even Ian Wright was less than his normal predatory self, failing in several confrontations with Ogrizovic, the Coventry goalkeeper, including one from the penalty spot.
The visitors also missed chances in a game not lacking in entertainment. However, for all the attacking promise of Whelan and Dublin, and the cajoling, encouraging and organising influence in midfield of Gordon Strachan, their defence, the most generous in the FA Carling Premiership, nearly proved their undoing again.
The uncertainty of Arsenal was exposed from the kick-off. "We might have been three up before they realised we were playing," was how Ron Atkinson, the Coventry manager, viewed the opening exchanges. Indeed, the centre of Arsenal's defence seemed to dissolve on contact with anything sky-blue. Seaman was called on to save spectacularly from Shaw and Whelan, and Dixon cleared Whelan's header from under his own crossbar all in the first four minutes. When Jensen sent Wright through, it seemed Coventry would rue those misses, but Ogrizovic smothered the shot.
The visitors took the lead when Whelan showed Wright how it should be done as he advanced into the area before clipping the ball over Seaman. There was a suspicion that the England goalkeeper had been slow to leave his line. Presumably these situations are usually dealt with by Adams's raised arm. Seconds later, Helder went past Borrows and Busst then crossed for Bergkamp, unmarked, to crack an equalising header past Ogrizovic: Coventry in a nutshell.
Wright should have put Arsenal ahead when he was brought down after 51 minutes but his penalty was too central and Ogrizovic was there to meet it, as he was when Wright shot low after Merson gave his acting captain another clear run on goal. Both teams went for victory; at one point six Coventry players were stranded upfield as Arsenal broke, but neither goalkeeper deserved to finish on a losing side.
"The scoreline could have been anything," Atkinson said, singling out his two most senior players. "We keep showing Gordon Strachan clips of Stanley Matthews. Ogrizovic made good saves. He's part of our youth policy he's only about 38."
ARSENAL (4-4-2): D Seaman L Dixon, S Marshall, A Linighan, N Winterburn A Clarke, J Jensen (sub: S Hughes, 69min), P Merson, G Helder D Bergkamp, I Wright.
COVENTRY CITY (4-4-2): S Ogrizovic B Burrows, D Busst, R Shaw, M Hall G Strachan (sub: P Ndlovu, 78), K Richardson, P Telfer, J Salako N Whelan, D Dublin.
Referee: S Dunn.
"THIS is the best day I have had in four years," said Danka, a middle-aged woman who was reunited with her husband yesterday. Danka, a Serb from Sarajevo, had been staying at the family's country house in Ilidza when Serb forces took the suburb. Her husband, a doctor, stayed in the capital.
Although only a few miles away from each other, the couple were unable to meet for nearly four years. Three times they spoke through ham radios and once on the telephone. Danka said that yesterday she took sedatives and walked to Sarajevo across the former front line to find her husband. "We have both been crying all day," she said with a big grin.
Alternating between laughter and tears, Danka said it was terrible to see the destruction of Sarajevo. "Our apartment was just strewn with bullet holes and a lot of our paintings were destroyed," she said.
Still, Danka will be moving back to the capital permanently in the next few days.
THE Bosnian Government yesterday reasserted its authority over all of Sarajevo after more than three years of war had divided the city into separate sectors.
Hundreds of Sarajevans from both sides trickled across the former front line into neighbourhoods they had not been permitted to see since April 1992 when the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina began. As they embraced family members and friends who had been on the other side of the line, they were also making a statement. Sarajevo, once divided by checkpoints, sniping and shelling, was again united under the authority of the central Government.
Civilians had been permitted to cross front lines since the Dayton agreement took effect in December, but residents on both sides had been wary of moving into areas still under the control of their enemies. Now they are doing so with increasing regularity.
"I feel like I was born again," said Slavo, a 71-year-old Serb Sarajevan who visited his godson in Serb-held Ilidza yesterday for the first time since 1992. "I just got on the tram ... only Ifor soldiers stepped in to say good day."
Yesterday Elisabeth Rehn, the United Nations Rapporteur for Human Rights, said that several thousand Bosnian Muslims, missing since Serbs overran the UN-designated enclave of Srebrenica last July, are dead. Ms Rehn said a Serb official in the region told her that the Muslims, estimated at between 3,000 and 8,000, had been "killed in battle" and were "buried around [the Srebrenica region]." It was the first time that a Serb official had indicated that any of the missing men were dead.
In a separate development, Warren Christopher, the American Secretary of State, said yesterday that Yugoslavia would not be fully rehabilitated until it restored human rights in Kosovo and secured the extradition of Serbs accused of war crimes. The warning, made after Mr Christopher held talks with President Milosevic, comes at a time when some European states have been pushing for diplomatic recognition to reward Belgrade for helping to secure the Bosnian deal.
According to the terms of the Dayton peace agreement, the Bosnian Serb militia which controlled five suburbs in Sarajevo had to vacate the areas by midnight on Saturday. Nato said that the deadline was met without incident.
Although the Serb militia has moved out of the suburbs, Bosnian Serb police and other civil authorities will remain in the areas for 45 days. The decision to permit Serb authorities to stay was brokered at the 11th hour by Carl Bildt, who is in charge of implementing the civilian aspects of the Dayton plan. Mr Bildt was hoping to prevent panic among Serbs in those areas who fear for their safety when government authorities take over. About 20 per cent of the Serb population has left the areas that are due to be handed back to the Bosnian Government.
The Bosnian Army, police and civilian authorities are to take full control of the areas on March 19, although Ifor, the Nato peace implementation force, will remain in the areas until December.
President Izetbegovic of Bosnia protested to Mr Christopher about Mr Bildt's decision, accusing him of misinterpreting the Dayton agreement. Hasan Muratovic, Bosnia's new Prime Minister, demanded that the decision be revoked within seven days. However, mediators said the Bosnians reluctantly agreed to the plan after emergency talks with Nato officers. Last night Bosnian Serb police imposed a curfew in the Serb suburbs despite the fact that they had reverted to Bosnian control. The move was bound to infuriate the Government.
Southampton 2 Everton 2. FOOTBALL managers, like cricket coaches, do not need to have made a name for themselves as players. Roy Evans was given a handful of first team appearances by Liverpool and yet gains the respect that is his due. Dave Merrington's playing career belongs in the appendix to some out-of-print almanac.
Here, though, was a man whom Alan Ball a front-rank footballer, thought able enough to become his assistant at Southampton. When a successor was required in the summer, Lawrie McMenemy told the club's directors that Merrington was their man and their manager. He could hardly have had more emphatic commendations than that.
The enthusiasm that this palpably straightforward man brings to management has been heightened by the fact that his opportunity has come well into his middle years. Before Ball departed, he was little known. Now, at the end of one of his post-match pronouncements, it is impossible not to comprehend what he represents.
Merrington talks of his players needing to pull their pistols out of their holsters, and of the game having to pay for Margaret Thatcher's belief that an individual has to look after himself. His giddy discourse continued as he lauded Southampton's players for their performance. This was, he said, "a typically English game of end-to-end football."
Indeed it was. It was a match full of technical errors, misplaced passes, balls thumped upfield and an inability to beat offside traps, all masked by four goals in the second half and performances by Le Tissier and Kanchelskis that set them apart.
In England, a match strewn with mistakes is perceived as thrilling if it finishes as a draw with four goals scored in a frenzied climax. Southampton's equaliser, Magilton volleying past Southall, was seemingly a cracker. Yet the ball reached him through the kind of misplaced header that would be scoffed at on the Continent.
It was all too physical, too frenetic, too English. None of this particularly disconcerted Le Tissier, whom Merrington feels is enjoying his football again, or Kanchelskis. "A classic counter-puncher in the modern game," as Joe Royle, his manager, called him. The way in which he laid on Everton's goals for Stuart and Horne justified the description. That was not always the case with every summation on Saturday.
SOUTHAMPTON (4-5-1): D Beasant J Dodd, R Hall, K Monkou, S Charlton M Le Tissier, B Venison, J Magilton, G Watson, M Walters (sub: M Oakley, 83min) N Shipperley.
EVERTON (4-5-1): N Southall M Jackson, C Short, D Watson, A Hinchcliffe A Kanchelskis, B Horne, J Parkinson, G Stuart, A Limpar (sub: P Rideout, 70) D Ferguson.
Referee: D Elleray.
Blackburn Rovers 3 Bolton Wanderers 1. A FOOTBALLER'S strength cannot be quantified. It is not about the hardest shot or quickest feet, but the barely discernible traits such as knee and thigh in emphatic harmony or a midriff that expands to nurse a high ball past a defender.
Alan Shearer is the modern embodiment of this covert but imperial strength. Bolton Wanderers played a triad of centre backs on Saturday at Ewood Park but Shearer defied their honest brawn three times, often using their leaden muscle as a spiral staircase when it suited his needs.
Blackburn Rovers' largest crowd of the season lent its unequivocal support to a rare episode in the life of the FA Carling Premiership a Lancashire derby aside from the biannual conflict of the Manchesters, City and United.
The Bolton supporters, a braying, seething assembly in the Darwen End, wanted the victory, probably more so than their team. Bolton might be going down, but their supporters covet the right to a parochial sneer.
Thankfully, intelligent and resolute football won out over dogged endeavour. Ray Harford, the Blackburn manager, conceded that his team had been edgy in the first half, a condition probably brought on by Bolton's pugnacious approach.
Shearer's opening goal was a mere tap-in after some intricate passing. Blackburn crafted chances but found Branagan and a crossbar in collusion against them. On their first substantive attack, nearly 30 minutes in, Bolton scored. Curcic crossed from the right and Green headed past Flowers.
With seven minutes remaining and Blackburn supporters bemoaning the injustice of it all, Branagan groped at a corner and Shearer rammed the ball home. The scoreline was made to mirror the play when Shearer, although marked by three players, headed a sublime cross from Sherwood past Branagan.
Shearer's only error of judgment was to have some fun with a linesman. The referee, Paul Alcock, raced 20 yards to book Shearer for mimicking the official. "The linesman was licking his lips, so I thought I'd lick mine. The linesman was laughing with me. The referee obviously doesn't understand jokes," Shearer said.
Harford and Shearer concluded that the enforced break caused last week by the icy weather had done the striker the world of good. If Shearer is permitted a few weeks of rest between the end of the English domestic season and the start of the European championship this summer, a nation of football lovers might well be licking its lips, too.
BLACKBURN ROVERS (4-3-3): T Flowers H Berg, C Hendry, C Coleman, J Kenna K Gallacher, T Sherwood, L Bohinen S Ripley (sub: W McKinlay, 6min), A Shearer, M Newell.
BOLTON WANDERERS (5-3-2): K Branagan J Phillips, C Fairclough (sub: D Lee, 87), G Bergsson, A Stubbs, S Green S Curcic, S Sellars, R Sneekes J McGinlay (sub: N Blake, 37), M Paatelainen.
Referee: P Alcock.
Official history lifts lid on undercover missions that prepared the ground for D-Day. THE full story of how clandestine flotillas were used to ferry secret agents in and out of France and North Africa during the early years of the Second World War has been disclosed after an unprecedented decision to open the archives of the Secret Intelligence Service and the Special Operations Executive.
Sir Brooks Richards, an official historian who served with the SOE in the war and was security co-ordinator in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s, was allowed to see the files of "O" section of the SIS, which was involved in the covert operations that helped to provide intelligence during the years leading up to the D-Day landings.
The fall of France in June 1940 had left the coastline of Western Europe in hostile hands. It was as great a strategic threat to Britain as any since the Spanish Armada. The secret services were under enormous pressure to gather intelligence, particularly on any attempt by the Germans to mount an invasion. The SIS man charged with establishing links with agents in occupied France was Commander Frank Slocum, known as "O".
Much has been written about the covert air operations, but Sir Brooks says that his book, Secret Flotillas, is the first to tell of the naval crews who carried agents to France. He had unique access to closed official intelligence files for the book, which is published by HMSO in association with the Cabinet Office.
In 1940, the SIS had no available assets in France because of a gentleman's agreement with the French Service de Renseignements not to conduct espionage. Slocum had to start from scratch, recruiting, training and briefing agents. The SIS sought help from intelligence officers working with the Vichy Government and also from the intelligence service of the exiled Polish Government, whose officers ran daring operations for SIS from Gibraltar to Morocco.
Slocum set up two sections to obtain intelligence in France, one under Commander Wilfred Dunderdale, who had been head of the SIS's Paris station until the fall of France, and Commander Kenneth Cohen. Between June and October 1940 agents were landed in The Netherlands, Belgium and the north coast of France from whatever surface craft were available. The first French operation recorded by Slocum successfully landed an agent near Brest on the night of June 20, 1940.
Dunderdale's section ran operations in Brittany using Breton fishing vessels. His operational base was in Mylor Creek, near Falmouth, Cornwall. The crews were Free French naval volunteers on secondment to the SIS.
Sir Brooks, who at one point ran guns to Corsica by submarine, said that one remarkable agent was a Frenchman called Daniel Lomenech, who was only 19 when first recruited. He had escaped from France and volunteered to go back as an SIS agent.
Early in November 1940 he landed on a beach in Brittany with another agent from a trawler. It returned a month later but developed engine trouble and, while it was being repaired at a French port, the four crew went off drinking. When they returned, the boat had blown away.
Sir Brooks said: "It was an awkward situation, four sailors without a boat ... and two spies stranded with their intelligence becoming stale." Lomenech eventually returned in another boat.
The missing boat was reported to the French authorities and was recovered, but German military customs learnt of it and found British provisions on board. Berlin was informed that this was the first known case of a fishing boat being used to convey people from England.
In 1942 Slocum got permission for a new 55ft boat to be built with 500-horsepower engines, giving a speed of up to 20 knots. It was named L'Angele-Rouge, after Slocum's auburn-haired secretary, Miss Sykes-Wright. Another was the salvaged Ar-Morscoul, which Lomenech had found half-submerged in Newlyn harbour.
The "strikingly handsome" Lomenech commanded the L'Angele-Rouge on its first three operations, before transferring to submarines. He was awarded the DSO in October 1942.
Later, when L'Angele-Rouge was commanded by Lomenech's successor, Lieutenant J.J.Allen, it ran into the middle of a German convoy while returning to England with two agents and secret mail. As the German warships steamed by, the SIS men could hear the sound of a gramophone playing and saw German officers peering at them through binoculars. But the convoy passed on.
Another legendary wartime SIS figure was David Birkin, father of the actress Jane Birkin. He joined Slocum's section after Naval Signal School and took part in numerous clandestine trips to France.
Sir Brooks said Birkin found "the Scarlet Pimpernel" character of the work fascinating, although he was not a natural sailor. Like Nelson, he never overcame seasickness and always had to work with a bucket and towel at hand. As navigator on 33 missions, he carried in his jacket pockets his pipe, enough tobacco for two days, his box of survival rations, a bottle of morphine tablets and a Luger.
Until silence became a necessity as they approached their rendezvous point, their progress across the Channel would normally be accompanied by the strains of the ship's radio, usually playing Vera Lynn. In one mission, Birkin was sent to pick up seven airmen from the island of Tariec, near Brest. They had made their way past German patrols by disguising themselves as seaweed gatherers and shell collectors.
Slocum's counterpart at the SOE was Leslie Humphreys, who was also told to organise a section to run agents in France. In one rendezvous to pick up intelligence material, an agent called Gerry Holdsworth took a boat to the French coast and met a sailing vessel whose two-man crew handed him a package of clandestine mail. On their return to England, they were spotted by a customs officer who demanded to see the contents of the bag. Holdsworth refused but later had to get a licence from the customs service, granting him immunity from inspection for the rest of the war.
In the case of another SOE mission, which took place on the night of February 25, 1944, no detailed report has been preserved, except the name of one of two passengers being dropped off at a headland called Beg-an-Fry. It was a young Francois Mitterrand, future President of France. The SOE had offered to return him to France after de Gaulle refused to do so, possibly because of Mitterrand's known connections with the Vichy Government.
Simon Barnes on a forgotten man back on centre stage at Manchester City
How would Liverpool reserves go in the FA Carling Premiership? You would have to fancy their chances of avoiding relegation at the very least certainly more than Queens Park Rangers and, perhaps, more than Manchester City. There is a huge amount of talent, as well as money, playing regularly in the Pontins League.
It is the same with all the big clubs. While journeymen battle for Premiership survival with the lesser clubs as they visit the big stages of Anfield and Old Trafford, various sublime talents costing millions purvey their out-of-favour skills in secret. It is our loss.
So it was with Nigel Clough, once considered the connoisseur's footballer, once the player on whom Liverpool and England would build their future. Some 21/2 years back, he cost £2.3 million to move from his father's former club, Nottingham Forest, to Liverpool. A man apparently custom-made to fulfil the long Liverpool tradition of quiet excellence. Yet he fell out of favour with a change of management. He became Pontins Man.
The situation, hardly unique, is created by the lack of parity of competition in the Premiership. Big clubs don't let their big assets go easily, there being big money tied up in them. And, sometimes, they just do not want to have them playing for rivals. Keeping a good player Pontins-bound can be a sound tactical move in the increasingly loony world of the top half-dozen clubs.
And so we have been deprived of our connoisseur's player, deprived of all those neat touches and thoughtful passes. A cerebral player, Clough. But he has been rescued by Alan Ball and Manchester City, who paid £1 million for him, while Clough took a painful cut from his reported £5,000-a-week Liverpool wages.
At least he is playing Premiership football again, and we are watching him do it. More than two years at Liverpool and only 38 league appearances. Football talent is a precious thing because it lasts for so short a time say, ten years. Clough has just wasted 20 per cent of his footballing life and he is now 29.
The move is a part of Ball's top-to-bottom reshaping of City. In less than a season, there have been 22 comings and goings at the club. He has signed seven players for a total of £7 million, getting £2 milion back on sales. All this while Liverpool spent £8.5 million on a single player.
For the relegation six-pointer against Rangers on Saturday, City had three players making a home debut as starters: Clough, the German international left back, Frontzeck, and a teenaged winger, Martin Phillips.
And there was Clough, looking, as ever, like an actuary in unaccustomed shorts rather than a professional footballer. Speed of thought and deftness of touch have always been his assets: his lack of speed over the ground is almost as famous as his father's personality.
Not one of life's rebels, Clough. Son of a tumultuous and overwhelming papa, he chose to follow his father's profession at his father's club. Clough pere tells a story about an opposing park-team player who threw a cup of tea over his Nigel, purely because Nigel was his son. You could take that. But Clough Sr had the man arrested, took him to court and fined. Dad, can't we deal with this thing quietly?
It was pleasant to see Clough purveying his diffident skills at Maine Road and a goal to greet the occasion, too. It came with a cross from young Phillips. Sommer came out for it, topped his punch and it fell for Clough, who reached back, turned and pulled it into goal, a single touch and a low, neat, unemphatic shot. A Clough goal through and through.
City's second came from a free header from a dozen yards; you are not supposed to score from them. Symons got fair contact on the ball and Rangers just watched it go in. They have a doomed look about them.
Not so City. While this is still a team in which the parts are greater than the sum, there were plenty of good things to enjoy this, despite a ludicrous, scene-stealing performance from the referee, who made 11 bookings, two for poor Dichio, the Rangers substitute, who had to go.
Frontzeck is a fearsome as well as a footballing defender; the Georgian, Kinkladze, is a one-man revival of the term "to dribble" and as for that teenaged winger well, what a debut. He is 19; he was young and infallible and altogether immortal for an afternoon. If he trains on, he will be quite a player. I wonder how much City will sell him for. Watch out for the Pontins Trap, young fellow.
MANCHESTER CITY (4-4-1-1): E Immel N Summerbee, K Symons, K Curle, M Frontzeck M Phillips, G Flitcroft, G Kinkladze, S Lomas (sub: G Creaney, 82 min) N Clough U Rosler (sub: I Brightwell, 82).
QUEENS PARK RANGERS (4-3-1-2): J Sommer S Yates, A McDonald, D Maddix, T Challis S Barker, N Quashie (sub: M Brazier, 73), I Holloway T Sinclair M Hateley (sub: D Dichio, 62), B Allen (sub: K Gallen 62).
Referee: G Poll.
WARS have been endemic in the Balkans for centuries. Where there is war there is squalor, and where there is squalor there are rats and mice. It is therefore not surprising that the Balkans also have an endemic kidney disease that is spread by rodents. From time to time this causes epidemics and whenever an army fights over countryside there is an outbreak.
In Bosnia, the first British soldier has fallen victim to Balkan nephropathy, one of the group of diseases, the Hanta virus, spread by eating mouse or rat droppings, or food contaminated by rodents' urine. The soldier has made a good recovery.
The virus is named after a Korean river, and was described as the cause of the local variety of the disease Korean Haemorrhagic Fever long after that war ended and the armies returned to their home bases.
In Korea the disease, which causes pain and tenderness over the renal angle and poor kidney function, sometimes resulting in complete renal failure, is particularly lethal, with a 20 per cent mortality rate. The Hanta viruses also cause spontaneous bleeding in organs other than the kidney, the skin and sometimes the brain and spinal cord, so that patients develop stroke-type symptoms. In wars, or in large-scale army manoeuvres, the rats and mice are as much on the move as the armies. They are disturbed from their normal habitats and, by taking advantage of a sudden increase in food available, breed rapidly.
The risk to soldiers depends on the war zone. If they were not careful to keep the mouse droppings out of the soup in Korea, the death rate was as high as 20 per cent, whereas the variety of the virus which would be found by any of our special forces exercising in northern Europe causes a comparatively benign strain which has a death rate of only 1per cent.
In terms of its lethal effect, the Balkans species is probably midway between the Far East version and the Scandinavian.
As there has been no war on American soil since the Civil War, the virulence of the local virus has not been thoroughly tested, but it is interesting that, although the Americans are great at living an out-of-doors life, the type of Hanta virus found in American rats and mice has never been known to affect people. The American Army in Germany, however, suffered a serious outbreak after exercises in 1990.
West Ham United 1 Nottingham Forest 0. WHEN Kriss Akabusi, at the launch of a £20 million campaign to promote London as a tourist attraction, said the capital could boast theatres, restaurants and football clubs, the best being West Ham United, the organisers must have groaned at the thought of Japanese tourists shuffling towards Upton Park searching in vain for Gary Lineker and gazing in horror at the grubby high street before catching the first flight to Paris.
A week ago, when the air at Upton Park reeked of relegation, their concern would have been justified. Now it wafts around like copious amounts of perfume. West Ham have signed, on loan from Sporting Lisbon, Dani, the most good-looking footballer in the world.
As he moved away from the substitutes' bench to begin warming up on Saturday, women teetered on tiptoe straining to catch a glimpse of the exceptionally pretty 19-year-old Portugal international. He only played for eight minutes, but quickly acknowledged his role as a tourist attraction by attempting to chip the goalkeeper from the halfway line.
This was probably not what Sporting Lisbon had in mind when they sent Dani to London to gain some maturity. Poor performances by the Portuguese club had put pressure on Dani to keep on saving the day, pressure he found difficult to handle.
Fortunately for Dani, West Ham have suddenly embraced glamour and will not rely too heavily on him. They have also signed Slaven Bilic, the outstanding Croatia defender, and Ilie Dumitrescu, the underrated Romania forward.
It was Williamson, 22, a product of the youth policy, who dominated this game. Playing, unusually, in his favoured central role, he tore Nottingham Forest apart. It was his pass that induced the error from Cooper that allowed Slater to score the decisive goal.
West Ham no longer look like relegation fodder, although the real test will come over the next fortnight when they play two London derbies away from home and then Newcastle United.
One other tourist attraction at Upton Park, their Super Screen System, is the most unintentionally entertaining of its type. "Player injured" its graphic screamed when all 22 were happily on their feet. "We are not worthy" a bowing Pinocchio cartoon informed us when the ball rolled unimpressively out of play for a throw-in. However, if West Ham maintain their momentum there will be plenty of sides discovering, as Forest did, that they are indeed not worthy.
WEST HAM UNITED (4-4-2): L Miklosko M Brown, M Rieper, S Potts, J Dicks R Slater (sub: A Whitbread, 90min), D Williamson, I Bishop, M Hughes I Dowie, A Cottee (sub: Dani, 82).
NOTTINGHAM FOREST (4-3-2-1): M Crossley D Lyttle, C Cooper, S Chettle, D Phillips S Gemmill (sub: AI Haaland, 70), C Bart-Williams, I Woan A Silenzi, B Roy K Campbell.
Referee: K Burge.
David Miller sees Liverpool's goalscoring edge blunted by a display of tactical mastery
In the fiefdom of Derek Hatton and the late Bessie Braddock, sending your child to a politically incorrect school is less heinous than passing to the wrong team at Anfield. Tottenham Hotspur cleverly forced Liverpool to do this rather a lot during a tense goalless draw on Saturday.
Because Anfield is also an arena that eschews the premise that competitive sport is harmful to the development of character, dissatisfaction reached a crescendo after an hour when the home supporters were hooting at their team, never mind its second position in the FA Carling Premiership. Bill Shankly's absurd maxim pre-Heysel that the game is more important than life or death hung uncomfortably in the air.
Here, in fact, was a marvellously disputed match in which the collective goalscoring abilities of Fowler and Collymore for Liverpool and Armstrong and Sheringham for Tottenham were continuously denied. Frustrating, but still fascinating fun for all 90 minutes, during which there were 18 scoring chances or half-chances: 11 to Liverpool, seven to Tottenham.
The level of tactical intelligence of both teams and a simultaneous intensity of pressure on the individual in possession were extreme. Tottenham defended ruggedly, the veteran Mabbutt in particular, smothering Fowler and Collymore through the middle and funnelling back to force Jones, McAteer and McManaman on the flanks to go wide. Intercepted passes were an inevitability.
The frustration of the crowd was equally understandable. Victory over Aston Villa at Villa Park in midweek had fuelled speculation that Liverpool might somehow overhaul Newcastle United in the coming weeks, so to slip back to third place was a severe anticlimax. Yet there was no discredit. Tottenham, with the more dangerous moments, might have won. The man of the match, if not Mabbutt, was Armstrong.
If there was a criticism of Liverpool, it was that Barnes and Thomas, in the centre of a midfield line of five, occasionally seemed weary; that the final pass around the edge of the Tottenham penalty area was occasionally misplaced; and that McManaman, so exciting on the run, and McAteer finished inaccurately. Such is the cost of competent opposition, though McManaman's lack of firepower may have disappointed the watching Terry Venables. England urgently need a midfield goalscorer to replace Platt.
The main criticism, however, was of the officials. One of the linesmen, for instance, watching from a distance of no more than a few yards, could see nothing wrong in Babb having both arms locked around Armstrong tighter than a sumo wrestler. Such illegal practice has become commonplace and almost ignored by officialdom.
As for Stephen Lodge, the Barnsley referee, he ran beaverishly up and down the centre of the field attempting to keep pace with the shuttlecock play and repeatedly managed to obstruct the line of passing movement. Here was a definitive illustration of the need in the modern game for a two-referee system to reduce the physical burden and double refereeing vision.
The first glaring opening fell to Tottenham after a quarter of an hour. At the other end, Walker had just saved low and comfortably from Collymore. Now Fox put Armstrong away on the right and his early low cross flashed in front of James five yards out. Sheringham came sliding feet first and failed to make contact by only inches.
Shortly before half-time, Tottenham might again have taken the lead. Campbell, a few yards outside the penalty area, fed a sharp pass to Armstrong, who swivelled to take the ball round the advancing James. The ball ran clear, but the spin from a deflection off James carried the ball too far left and an open goal went begging.
Once more, Liverpool had cause to breathe thankfully eight minutes into the second half. Sinton's curling, lofted cross was powerfully met by Armstrong no more than four yards out. A 40,000 crowd was looking for the ball in the back of the net before they realised that James had made the most spectacular of reflex saves.
Now Liverpool began to wind up the pressure and the frustration. They crowded around Tottenham's penalty area but could find no way through. A sizzling drive from 27 yards by Collymore caused Walker to blink as he instinctively parried the shot. McManaman, breaking free on the left, shot weakly.
With two minutes remaining, Tottenham again held victory in their hand. Armstrong's run on the left had McAteer and Wright trailing; he cut inside, let rip right-footed and James did well to turn the shot away for a corner. In the last gasp, consecutive shots by McAteer were held by Walker and flew wide.
Tottenham's performance confirmed the quality established by their manager, Gerry Francis, though they continue to miss the influence of Anderton. The title may be out of reach for Liverpool, but some opponents, unlike Tottenham, can expect to be destroyed.
LIVERPOOL (3-5-2): D James J Scales, M Wright, P Babb J McAteer, M Thomas, J Barnes, S McManaman, R Jones (sub: I Rush, 83min) R Fowler, S Collymore.
TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR (4-4-2): I Walker D Austin, G Mabbutt, C Calderwood, J Edinburgh R Fox, S Campbell (sub: S Nethercott, 75), C Wilson, A Sinton C Armstrong, E Sheringham.
Referee: S Lodge.
MORE than 300 Anglican church leaders worldwide, including a number of Church of England bishops, are backing a call for a debate into the ordination as priests of practising homosexuals.
They are signatories to an advertisement that will appear in religious newspapers on Friday to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement. The signatories are believed to include Dr Desmond Tutu, the Archbishop of Cape Town, and Anglican leaders in Scotland, Canada and the United States.
Yesterday the Church of England played down the significance of the advertisement, saying a call for debate should not be interpreted as support for one side of the argument. The Rev Eric Shegog, the Church's spokesman, said: "The advert does not change anything."
The Rev Richard Kirker, secretary of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, which campaigns for homosexuals to be ordained, declined yesterday to say which Church of England bishops had signed the advertisement. It is thought not specifically to call for the ban on practising homosexual clergy to be lifted. Mr Kirker said: "We are committed to trying to make the Church do what it should do instinctively to make clear that all people are welcome."
He also confirmed that the movement would be announcing this week that it had been given permission to hold a service at Southwark Cathedral to celebrate its 20 years.
Mr Kirker said that many homosexual and lesbian members of the clergy were not celibate, because they were in a stable relationship or wanted to be. "Homosexual clergy are victimised by being made to pretend they are not in a relationship. That's the price they have to pay if they wish to receive support from their employers."
Mr Shegog said the House of Bishops had called for a debate on the issue in 1991 while making clear that active homosexual practice among the clergy was unacceptable. "That debate has been going on since then, so all these posters and the clergy who have signed are saying is that they want to encourage debate."
A VILLAGE rector has won approval to remove historic oak pews from his church to give his growing "charismatic" congregation more space to clap and dance.
Diocesan officials have given their blessing for the 150-year-old pews at St Nicholas's at Ashill, Norfolk, to be replaced with chairs. The issue split the village and the rector, the Rev Martin Down, argued that the 14 th-century church was a living place of worship, not an antiques shop.
The Norwich diocese received 80 letters about the 16 pews. An advisory committee that visited the church said it had "no objection in principle" to the pews' removal. The congregation has grown from about 25 to more than 90 since Mr Down arrived.
The ornate pews are likely to be sold to a crematorium or to another church for a four-figure sum to help to meet refurbishment costs. Mr Down, 55, added: "The committee said it would like to see them in a place of worship rather than a pub. There was never any question of them being destroyed."
A DISABLED man and 20 cats died in a house fire yesterday. Roy Lacey, 62, who suffered from a Parkinson's-type disease, was unable to get out of his bed after it became engulfed in flames in the early hours.
His wife Joyce, who was sleeping beside him, woke up and tried to put out the fire with a coat but was beaten back by the thick smoke. She ran next door to get help from a neighbour who dialled 999. However, when firemen reached Mr Lacey he was found to be dead.
The couple used their bungalow in Lambourn, Berkshire, as a cat sanctuary for a local vet. When the fire broke out there were 36 cats in the house and 20 of them perished.
A PRIMARY school in Birmingham is to become the first state school in Britain to make its own arrangements for Muslim religious education. The move, which departs from the 1988 Education Act's demand for a daily act of collective worship "of a broadly Christian character", follows the withdrawal of 1,500 Muslim children from religious education lessons in West Yorkshire last month.
Muslim parents at Birchfield Primary in Aston, Birmingham, where 70 per cent of pupils are Muslims, say that multifaith religious education has failed their community's children.
Muhammad Mukadam, a parent governor at the school, said on BBC Radio 4's Sunday programme yesterday: "When you understand the multi-faith approach you realise that it is actually designed to destroy all faiths because it teaches that all faiths are equal.
"If you ask a child to choose a religion he will say, ‘well, if they are all equal I can become a Sikh tomorrow, a Buddhist on Wednesday, a Christian on Sunday.' The danger is that in the end he becomes nothing."
Mr Mukadam, a college lecturer, added: "We found the children were getting confused because they were being told one thing at home and another at school. It makes sense and accomplishes what the Government wanted in improving moral and spiritual development. It also fulfils the Government requirement that the teaching should reflect the pupil's background. Whatever your faith, you have a right to get it across to your child.
"There was a willingness to work together all round to understand the needs and problems of our children. We presented them with the problem and then presented them with the solution. This is the only state school where lessons are Islamic based."
Mr Mukadam also paid tribute to the school's headmaster, a committed Christian, for respecting the rights of Muslim parents.
The new syllabus has been agreed by all the concerned parties including Birmingham City Council and the Schools Advisory Council on Religious Education, which is responsible for RE curriculums on a local level.
A trained Muslim teacher has been appointed to run the Islamic course, which will be in English and attended by more than 500 children. Multifaith classes will still be available for children whose parents do not want them to attend the lessons for Muslims.
The Department for Education said yesterday that it had no objection to the school's decision: "Ultimately, it is for parents and schools to decide on a local level what form religious education should take. Also, all parents have an absolute right to withdraw their children from all RE classes if they so wish."
A right-wing education pressure group has also backed the Muslim community's wish for separate religious education. Fred Naylor, secretary of the Parental Alliance for Choice in Education, which is backed by prominent Conservatives, said that the multifaith ethos of the 1988 Act had caused confusion and weakened individual religious commitment.
He said: "The progressive liberal idea of religious education was first suggested by the Church of England in its 1970 Durham report which called the change a minor revolution. I would argue that it is not a minor revolution but a major revolution. What we should be respecting is the right of other people to have their own faith. The multifaith approach is an attack on parental rights, and that's why I am so sympathetic to the Muslims for defying this, giving a lead, which I hope Christians will take."
But the Professional Council for Religious Education said that parents were misunderstanding the purpose of religious education. Lat Blaylock, the council's executive officer, said: "School RE is educational. It's not about indoctrination or conversion it doesn't have that as an aim and it doesn't happen as a result of school RE. I don't think this kind of separate development is really in the interests of the children. In the primary age group the learning is from one or two different religions, a reasonable way forward for religious education."
Yesterday Mr Mukadam met the Muslim parents who withdrew their children from schools in West Yorkshire last month. He argued against withdrawing children in favour of the system adopted in Birmingham of teaching Islam to Muslim children.
When the dust has settled and those passions upon which this fixture depends so much have dimmed, this match will be remembered simply for England's win but also, sadly, the overwhelming banality of the way it was achieved. As so often in this fixture there was the brief memorable shaft of brilliance, this time by Wales that produced their first try and was inspired by Arwel Thomas's audacity in ignoring an opportunity to kick a penalty and running with the ball instead. But generally it was of a low standard.
England, despite their fine words in public, should take no comfort from the outcome. There were signs in the running of Guscott and, particularly, Carling of the kind of rugby they say they aspire to. But more indicative of their thinking and the inhibiting caution that almost suffocates them, is their negative approach to the scrum.
Time and again the ball was held and held and held once more until the scrum swivelled and asked to be reformed. The ball remained at the feet of the No8 and held to the vast Twickenham chorus of "heave". This tedious and, as it turned out, fruitless tactic was pursued relentlessly whether close to the Welsh line or some considerable distance away, and hardly mattered whether Wales or England were in the lead and the scrum included eight Welshmen or fewer.
The tactic remained. With a 15-5 lead and Wales very much on the ropes in the middle period of the second half, England's purpose remained of the defensive kind. There was little desire to attempt much more.
Unquestionably, they have a problem and Jack Rowell, their manager, knows exactly what it is. "It is not a matter of training harder," he said afterwards, "but of thinking smarter."
It is a difficult problem to overcome because if this is to be so, one will have to begin considering the constitution of the back row. All three are powerful and are comfortable ball-carriers but they are either unwilling or unable to part with the ball. They are reluctant distributors. Their aim in life is to go to ground. All this was at a time when the centres had the chance of enjoying the kind of freedom in midfield which hitherto has been foreign to them.
England seemed governed by fear. They are victims of their own success. The difference lying between being motivated by defending that reputation instead of attempting to promote it further.
If anything, Wales, despite their defeat and lack of consistency, may well draw a greater comfort than their opponents. There is a way forward for them and they are not so set in their ways. "This was a start of something," Kevin Bowring, the Wales coach, said, "not an end."
They were like terriers snapping at the heels of a tired old warhorse. Things did go wrong for Wales, more so than Bowring would have wished, but at least they were willing to test and to tease.
Both players at half back were relaxed and at their confident ease. The other youngsters did well enough, too. Justin Thomas, for his part, however, will have learnt in his match-losing misjudgment, that led to Guscott's try, that to create the time and space in club matches is not quite what it is in the international arena where players are swifter and more clever. If it was not an auspicious time for him, the feeling remains that there is a match-winning game in him.
If Bowring found the unpredictability of these youngsters "heart-stopping" then it must be something he will soon learn to live with. It is the kind of rugby that all Wales wants to see. It is something that he does not want to hinder or shatter.
Each coach envies what the other possesses. Bowring might wish for England's power and ability to maintain possession, whereas Rowell must yearn for the hints that Wales gave of a willingness to avoid the predictable and repetitive.
A BIG drop in the number of British nuns has forced many religious orders to abandon their rejection of the material world and advertise for new recruits. Catholic convents are closing one by one as an ageing population of nuns dies and young women, rejecting a life of sacrifice, fail to come forward.
The classified section of the Catholic Herald is full of small ads from orders exhorting volunteers to devote themselves to a spiritual way of life. A spokesman for the newspaper said: "Convents and monasteries have for a long time used the classified section to attract new recruits, but there have been more and more of late, often emphasising a New Age rejection of mainstream society. Most are desperate to attract younger women before their order dies out altogether. They must get some response because they keep advertising and the ads are on the increase."
Since 1985, more than 2,500 sisters have been lost from Britain's 200 orders and, of the 8,000 remaining, almost half are more than 70 years old. Nuns between 30 and 50 years old account for only 10 per cent of the total, according to the Catholic Media Office. Kieran Conry, of that office, said: "Some orders are doing better than others, but the ones that are doing worst are the enclosed orders and those founded for specific jobs such as teaching and nursing.
"When they were founded centuries ago, there was no welfare state and they provided a service they helped the poorest members of the community. Now there is free schooling for all and the National Health Service. Nuns have been supplanted by the State."
Rob Andrew argues that recalling Dean Richards would lift England morale and give Will Carling valuable support
Iam beginning to understand the frustration of the supporter in the stand watching England. Like many others I was really excited about the prospect of the game with Wales, after England had shown so much character in a narrow defeat in France last month.
I believed that Tim Rodber would return steaming at the indignity of being dropped, determined to make sure it would not happen again, and that England would produce an explosive opening 20 minutes to put Wales in their place. At the same time it was an opportunity to get the crowd, critical of some of the decisions taken against Western Samoa in the previous home match, back on their side.
It did not happen and, in the closing minutes, England were in the position of having to scrap it out just to make sure of victory. They cannot pretend it will get easier. Murrayfield in a month, against a Scottish team which could be playing for a grand slam, will be no place for airy-fairy rugby.
This is the dilemma of trying to take the game forward amid the cauldron of the five nations' championship and it is where I take issue with those from the southern hemisphere who say that England should have a go and be prepared to lose a few games.
You have to be prepared to grind out victories to develop the confidence which allows you to make progress in your playing style. Even some of the experienced English players are finding that tough, despite the time spent together in preparation. There has been talk of this being a new-look team but it is far from inexperienced; Will Carling, who played with genuine fire in his belly on Saturday, needs support in the leadership stakes.
The forwards have not played well this season and there is a strong case for bringing Dean Richards back to lift the morale of the pack. In the past the forwards were always able to turn to him and Brian Moore for physical and mental resolve, and Richards is still available, in an area where I remain to be convinced that the balance is right anyway. Indeed, England's back row has not yet found a credible successor to Peter Winterbottom, who retired more than two years ago.
The lineout, always an English strength, has been poor for successive matches and that has deprived England of a crucial platform from which to build a game. That is another issue to be resolved in selection. Your hooker may be industry itself about the field but his primary job is at the lineout and if England are not functioning on their own throw-in, they have to establish why.
But on Saturday, England's game crumbled for technical reasons. Paul Grayson, normally such a fluent striker of the ball off the ground and out of hand, was badly out of sorts. He had played so well in Paris and it may be that at Twickenham the pressure (horrid word) affected him. But when you miss kicks to give your team the advantage, and the opposition rub it in by scoring a great try, then it does affect team morale.
If you miss touch it makes it worse, particularly from penalties. That should be gilt-edged possession deep in opposition territory and three times England could not find touch from penalty awards. No matter how you try to paper over the cracks, as Carling understandably tried to do, they were clearly visible and were emphasised by the poor tactical kicking which lacked purpose or plan.
Even so England fought their way back into the game and the turning point should have arrived when Jerry Guscott scored his try. It was a fortunate one but imagine how dispiriting it must have been for Wales. England should have been able to press home their advantage, but when Carling went off, they shut up shop ... and nearly threw it away.
England 21, Wales 15. Rowell's problems accumulate as stuttering victory fails to mask embarrassment at Twickenham
THE Welsh, when seeking an adjective for someone who is slow on the uptake, describe them as "dull". England are playing "dull" rugby this season, both in the Welsh sense and, ultimately, in the more prosaic sense of the word.
They held the game at Twickenham on Saturday in the palm of their hand and they let it go through a stubborn inflexibility for which they will pay dearly if it is reproduced against Scotland next month. Perhaps it is as well that England have a break from the five nations' championship now; they need to take a long, hard look at how, and with whom, they are playing the game.
The only part of England's game that functioned to any degree in the Save and Prosper international was the midfield, where Will Carling and Jeremy Guscott carved out the sort of openings rarely seen in international rugby. For a year now, the scrum has not been the force England claim it to be and the lineout was even more of a disaster than in Paris last month.
For that, the Welsh deserve credit and no one more than Gareth Llewellyn, who insinuated himself in front of England's jumpers and contributed substantially to Wales's 16-7 lineout dominance. Elsewhere, the sense of adventure that earned Hemi Taylor his try must be set against the indiscipline that littered the Welsh game and, quite justifiably, incurred the wrath of the referee, Ken McCartney.
They were penalised 21 times to England's nine, sometimes for the kind of "professional" fouls that, by and large, rugby has escaped: when Guscott creates an opening and looks for support, only to find Mike Catt physically restrained by Leigh Davies, it is time for referees to ponder the route taken by Tony Spreadbury when he awarded that controversial penalty try in the University match in December.
Yet Wales, for whom Robert Howley played so well on his debut, contrived a pattern of sorts, whereas England were knocked sadly out of kilter. Jack Rowell, the manager, will have been embarrassed to have been caught by the microphone in the players' tunnel muttering that he could not believe what he was seeing as the game neared what might be inaccurately described as its climax, but he could be excused.
There is no doubt that the England manager has a problem. The inability to translate apparently good training habits to the field of play is a commentary either on his management skills or those of his executives captain, pack leader, senior players. Criticism of the clubs can only be taken so far, since the absence of an identifiable English style has been overcome in the past.
At present, England are not rucking like Bath or mauling like Leicester; they are not playing fast and loose like Wasps or Sale. They are an amorphous mass relieved only by the odd flash of inspiration by the centres and the faithful support of Lawrence Dallaglio. They must rediscover some focus, but there is little sign of the incumbents providing it. For Ben Clarke to claim that England are "close to brewing up a storm" is faintly ludicrous.
They are incapable of sustaining any degree of momentum. The one piece of genuine continuity that led to Rory Underwood's try his fiftieth in international rugby stuttered before Jon Sleightholme bowled out a pass that bounced fortuitously for Catt and all Underwood had to do was run over in the corner.
Otherwise, they are prey to the curse of the northern-hemisphere game ball killed on the ground. Players, from both sides, are not permitted to ruck properly. John Humphreys, the Wales captain, said: "If you are going to lie on the wrong side of the ball, you know exactly what to expect and you have to roll away. Spectators come to see running rugby and if people are going to kill the ball, they are stopping the entertainment we can give."
One wonders, though, if England recognise quick ball. So much is held in the back row of a scrum, which is not dominant, that their backs are left with nowhere to go. The direct channel would give Matthew Dawson some opportunities and would, at the very least, leave the decision-making in the hands of the half backs rather than with the back row, whose vision is necessarily more limited.
England must hope that Paul Grayson has had his one bad match of the season. He missed four first-half penalties and sliced his punts so wretchedly that he could count himself fortunate that Justin Thomas, the Wales full back, was equally poor in his catching and kicking.
Wales, recognising the need to keep the ball as far away from the England pack as possible, attempted little off the back row yet Taylor was one of the most influential players on the field. All their kicking was away from the opposing forwards, including the kick-off, and Arwel Thomas provided the game's magical moment when he tapped a kickable penalty, looked to a void on his right and then turned left for Gwyn Jones, Wayne Proctor and Leigh Davies to send Taylor over.
Underwood's try gave England their 7-5 interval advantage and, when Justin Thomas was casual about his clearance, Guscott charged the kick down and ran on to score. With Grayson finding his range at last and the England forwards beginning to rumble, England should have seized the game; instead, Carling left with a recurrence of a knee injury and their aspirations dwindled.
At 21-8, they should have buried Wales. Instead, an appalling drop-out by Grayson left Wales with a midfield scrum and the chance of a try, taken with alacrity by Howley through a gap in the English wall. "We have got a Welsh team playing not just for each other but for the Welsh nation and if they get behind us we can take anyone on at home," Kevin Bowring, their coach, said. Even Scotland?
SCORERS: England: Tries: Underwood, Guscott. Conversion: Grayson. Penalty goals: Grayson (3). Wales: Tries: Taylor, Howley. Conversion: A Thomas. Penalty goal: A Thomas.
ENGLAND: M J Catt (Bath); J M Sleightholme (Bath), W D C Carling (Harlequins, captain), J C Guscott (Bath), R Underwood (Leicester/RAF); P J Grayson (Northampton), M J S Dawson (Northampton); G C Rowntree (Leicester), M P Regan (Bristol), J Leonard (Harlequins), T A K Rodber (Northampton/Army), M O Johnson (Leicester), M C Bayfield (Northampton), L B N Dallaglio (Wasps), B B Clarke (Bath). Carling replaced by P R de Glanville (Bath, 53 min).
WALES: W J L Thomas (Llanelli); I C Evans (Llanelli), L B Davies (Neath), N G Davies (Llanelli), W T Proctor (Llanelli); A C Thomas (Bristol), R Howley (Bridgend); A L P Lewis (Cardiff), J M Humphreys (Cardiff, captain), J D Davies (Neath), E W Lewis (Cardiff), G O Llewellyn (Neath), D Jones (Cardiff), R G Jones (Llanelli), H T Taylor (Cardiff). Humphreys replaced by G R Jenkins (Swansea, 57), Lewis and R G Jones temporarily replaced by S Williams (Neath, 36-40).
Referee: K W McCartney (Scotland).
DETAILS P W D L F A Pts Scotland 2 2 0 0 35 24 4
England 2 1 0 1 33 30 2
France 2 1 0 1 29 31 2
Ireland 1 0 0 1 10 16 0
Wales 1 0 0 1 15 21 0
RESULTS: France 15 England 12, Ireland 10 Scotland 16, England 21 Wales 15, Scotland 19 France 14.
FIXTURES: Feb 17: France v Ireland; Wales v Scotland. Mar 2: Ireland v Wales; Scotland v England. Mar 16: England v Ireland; Wales v France.
ROGER HAMMOND, occupied with university examinations during January, knows he can do better and must do if he is again to be a world champion at cyclo-cross.
For the opening half-hour of the world under-23 event on the eastern outskirts of Paris on Saturday, Hammond, in his final year at Brunel, gave every hope of repeating his 1992 success, when he won the junior title. He was one of half a dozen early leaders on the muddy circuit, beneath which ice threatened the unwary, and he had the power and confidence to do his share at the front.
As the 21km race went into the closing stages, however, Hammond's body drained of strength and he appeared to be going backwards as riders quickly came from behind to overhaul him.
Miguel Martinez, of France, riding a mountain bike, seized his chance to snatch victory in 46min 57sec, with Hammond trailing in still the best Briton nineteenth and 1min 18sec behind the new champion.
The Five Cities track league series at the National Cycling Centre ended in victory for Manchester, with a 13-point lead over London and 20 points over Edinburgh.
CRICKET is not the easiest sport to introduce to youngsters. The traditional game demands time and patience and a high level of skill, something that small children do not usually possess. They like action and non-stop involvement compressed into short periods of the primary school day.
The London Schools' Cricket Project has met these difficulties head-on. Desperately keen that more youngsters should be introduced to the sport, it sent coaches to 811 primary schools between 1990 and 1995 to give concentrated instruction and supervision of Kwik cricket. In this academic year alone, it is hoping to visit 622 schools in the capital.
The William Davies School in Forest Gate, East London did not have the most cheerful of January afternoons last week to introduce youngsters to England's traditional summer game. The sun may have been shining but a sharp wind cut across the playground. With 30 pupils eager for exercise, it did not seem to be a suitable day for refining individual technique.
Yet, what was remarkable was the amount of individual tuition that was possible by one coach, while still keeping the interest of the rest of the class. During bowling practice, the youngsters would deliver their balls and then run across the tarmac to swap places with their partners. In this way, not only did they keep warm but they also got more exercise.
Vic Griffith, the coach, said: "I always try to get their attention, to get them to focus on me and, while they are in the cold, to get them to move up and down. They should have as much enjoyment and exercise as possible."
At this co-educational school, he is preaching, if not always to the converted, at least to the interested. Ninety-five per cent of the 250 pupils come from the ethnic minorities, particularly the sub-continent.
Gill Gordon, the head teacher, said: "They know far more about cricketers than footballers and their fathers will often play cricket with them on the park. They support England against Australia or the West Indies, but when England are playing India or Pakistan, they sometimes do not know where they are."
She has always welcomed the Project's suggestion to send in a coach for five sessions a year. "Cricket teaches teamwork and the discipline of learning a game, with its rules and need for fairness."
The Project has a budget of about £100,000 for this year to help to pay for two full-time and ten part-time coaches to tour the London schools. This total includes £5,000 from Tesco the supermarket chain plus a further £5,000 from the Government's Sportsmatch scheme.
This particular sponsorship encourages youngsters to attend more advanced free coaching clinics in their boroughs, after their initial "taster" courses in their individual schools. The rest of the funds come from MCC, county clubs, charitable and cricket trusts and donations from the schools.
Oliver McClintock, the deputy co-ordinator of the Project, says: "If just one child from each school wants to play cricket at recreational level as an adult, we will have 600 children going into the game every year. However, we are not only creating the players of the future. We are also creating the parents and paying public of the future."
Haydn Davies, vice-chairman of the Essex Schools Cricket Association, added: "The main idea is to get children involved with bat and ball, so they will at least try the game out at secondary school."
The hour-long session ended with 25 minutes of Kwik cricket, which allows everyone to have a go, either hitting Griffiths' deliveries across the playground to everyone's delight or missing the ball.
One pupil, Bilal Hassan, 9, said: "I like whacking the ball a long way." He was bowled by one ball, that may have turned on the tarmac. "The ball went wonky," he said.
Wellington was not joking when he made his crack about the playing fields of Eton. "If you want to interest a Frenchman in a game," it has been said, "tell him it's war. If you want to interest an Englishman in war, tell him it's a game." The French, a capricious lot themselves, have never been entirely comfortable with gifted mavericks from these isles. On Saturday they flew the flag of surrender once more and the score had a historic ring to it, 1914, although 1815 would have done just as nicely.
France went to Murrayfield scenting blood; instead they shed their own. That breaking of the dam against England two weeks ago counted for nought as Scotland tore into a team of obvious talent and little resolve. After paying full tribute to Scotland, and one must for theirs was a considerable performance, this was nevertheless a shocking, almost spineless display by the French.
Just when it seemed they had assembled a team that rugby followers of every hue could celebrate, and it is fair to say everybody loves them when "they play as only they can", France revealed the obverse side of their nature. They submitted. It all brought to mind the joke about why trees line the Champs Elysees "next time the Germans can march in the shade".
This France team was tree-like but made of willow rather than oak. The Scottish wind plied them double for 80 of the most exhilarating minutes this ground has seen in recent seasons. People could not quite believe what they were seeing, France outplayed by Scotland, so much so that Jim Telfer suggested afterwards with a note of regret that "we let them off the hook a little bit". Not really: the hook was baited well enough.
Tallest among the Scottish oaks stood Rob Wainwright, flanker and captain of indomitable spirit. When Gavin Hastings retired, the talk was not of replacing him as captain but of "succeeding". Hastings's boots, it was assumed, were too big. Wainwright, practical chap, has tried them on and found they fit him rather well. He gathered his players round him and they responded as young men can, but seldom do.
Like many other Anglo-Scots, Wainwright has one of those refined speaking voices that send Scots from the west of the country running for cover. With his strangulated vowels, Wainwright could be the chap finally to replace (whoops! succeed) the much-missed Kenneth Williams on that wireless favourite, Just A Minute. Indeed, as he is an Army doctor, he can say, as Williams once did, "oo-ooh, matron!"
Wainwright confessed to nerves before the game, which may account for the blistering way his team began it. That opening surge was clearly a release of stored-up nervous energy, as if vessel-bound seamen had suddenly been sent ashore.
It was intoxicating stuff and the confident ball-handling and support play made England's talk of an "expansive" game which means what, widening the pitch? sadly hollow.
"If you go through the team," Wainwright said, "you will find they all played like heroes." Nowhere more than at full back, where Rowen Shepherd, of Melrose, came of age, and on the wing, where Michael Dods claimed both tries, the second after a bit of a juggle, and all 19 points. The contrast with France's three musketeers was pointed. Sadourny, Ntamack and Saint-Andre left their sabres sheathed.
Scotland's ability to replenish their stock of players from within a small pool is little short of astonishing. They were thought to be treading water but are now halfway to a grand slam. Wainwright and Telfer will not need to remind the players that the more difficult half lies ahead because England, for all their shortcomings, will not lie down as feebly as the French.
Men in kilts are already hooting "bring on the English" and Murrayfield's magnificent stadium should witness a mighty struggle on March 2. The small-minded attitudes regarding England are still present in these parts and they will not have got much bigger in a month's time, particularly if Scotland have swept Wales out of the way by then.
In the meantime the message from Scotland in this five nations' championship is clear: get your tanks off our midden.
Scotland 19 France 14. France flop at Murrayfield as underdogs have their day to head championship table
SCOTLAND will head for Cardiff in a fortnight's time the only unbeaten team in the five nations' championship. The dramatic manner of their victory over France on Saturday at Murrayfield will see them start favourites to beat Wales and leave them scenting the possibility, when they meet England next month, of a first grand slam since 1990 a highly satisfying position for a team dismissed as "potentially hopeless" only three weeks ago.
The Scots were emphatic winners over a pedestrian French side, one clearly shaken by the vibrancy of Scotland's performance. Jean-Claude Skrela, the France coach, paid his hosts the ultimate compliment after the match Scotland, he said, had played the kind of rugby that France aspired to.
The performance was not flawless there are still question marks about Michael Dods's reliability as a kicker, while the inablity to convert pressure into points remains a concern but it would be churlish to be negative when there was so much to enjoy. Rob Wainwright, the Scotland captain, who admitted to being more nervous than he had ever been before an international, said: "It is an incredible feeling. The gratifying thing is we put into practice what we try on the training ground and credit must go to Richie Dixon and David Johnston, the coaches, for all the hard work they put in."
Jim Telfer, the Scotland manager, was anxious to keep things in perspective. "I think we let them off the hook a little bit. It was not completely fulfilling. We were trying to entertain rather than play a balanced game. We should have calmed the game down a bit in places, but if you don't take chances, you don't win anything."
At the heart of it all was another inspiring display by the Scottish pack, which, while half a stone lighter per man than their opponents, was light years ahead in speed of thought and movement. Repeatedly, the Scots reached the breakdown in numbers, tackled ferociously and drove the French back around the fringes. When France tried to expand, the Scottish cover defence was exemplary.
The French front row was anonymous, Merle and Roumat lumbering and the back row, even Benazzi, obliterated. There must be a huge question mark about their overall fitness: it was sad to see Cabannes barely bother to chase back as he and Dods followed an exquisite chip, delivered with the inside of his right foot, by Bryan Redpath, which resulted in Scotland's first try after eight minutes.
That score was no more than Scotland deserved after a blistering start that rocked the French on their heels and epitomised the Scots' spirit of adventure, with Shepherd, who had a splendid match, leading the charge impressively from full back. When Merle, who was later to receive a yellow card for stamping, stopped him with a throat-high tackle, Clayton Thomas, the referee, allowed more than a minute's advantage, time in which Scotland scored, but only after the full back had again been involved in the move with a marvellous flipped pass behind his back.
Scotland were often electric, yet again Townsend, with wonderful half-jinks that constantly kept France guessing, and Redpath, with his sublime service, were the catalysts for some exhilarating and entertaining rugby. Occasionally in the second half, they were over-elaborate, but whenever danger threatened, Scotland were able to regroup quickly.
The lack of a killer instinct is Scotland's Achilles' heel, but while that will come with experience, it meant on this occasion that, instead of turning round with a commanding lead, the advantage was only three points after Castaignede had kicked a penalty and Benazzi had twisted over from a lineout and maul. Dods replied with two penalty goals in four minutes, but he was otherwise wayward with his kicking, succeeding with only three out of nine attempts in the match.
With the scoreline so close, France tried to up the tempo but were stopped in their tracks 12 minutes into the second half. Scotland ran a penalty on the 22 and a huge floated pass by Redpath reached Dods in the clear. The wing juggled with the ball, but held on to touch down in the corner. Lacroix, who had been badly cut in the first minute, twice reduced the Scots' lead and agonising memories from the World Cup were rekindled. Dods, however, kept his nerve when it mattered to convert his third and most difficult penalty and, when the diminuitive McKenzie somehow stole French ball at a maul two minutes from time, Scotland knew the day was theirs. The lessons from Pretoria had been learnt.
SCORERS: Scotland: Tries: Dods (2). Penalty goals: Dods (3). France: Try: Benazzi. Penalty goals: Lacroix (2), Castaignede.
SCOTLAND: R J S Shepherd (Melrose); C A Joiner (Melrose), S Hastings (Watsonians), I C Jardine (Stirling County), M Dods (Northampton); G P J Townsend (Northampton), B W Redpath (Melrose); D I W Hilton (Bath), K D McKenzie (Stirling County), P H Wright (Boroughmuir), R I Wainwright (Watsonians, captain), S J Campbell (Dundee HSFP), G W Weir (Newcastle), I R Smith (Gloucester), E W Peters (Bath).
FRANCE:J-L Sadourny (Colomiers); E Ntamack (Toulouse), A Penaud (Brive), T Castaignede (Toulouse), P Saint-Andre (Montferrand, captain); T Lacroix (Dax), P CarBonneau (Toulouse); M Perie (Toulon), J-M Gonzalez (Bayonne), C Califano (Toulouse), A Benazzi (Agen), O Merle (Montferrand), O Roumat (Dax), L Cabannes (Racing Club), F Pelous (Dax). S Glas (Bourgoin-Jallieu) temporary replacement for Lacroix (1-13min).
Referee: C Thomas (Wales).
STEVE DAVIS, without a snooker tournament victory for 13 months, returned to his dominant best with a 6-0 whitewash of Ken Doherty in the Benson and Hedges Masters at Wembley Conference Centre last night.
The six-times world champion has found a lack of scoring this season an Achilles heel, but, against Doherty, Davis produced a display in which one frame-winning break followed another.
It took Davis only 52 minutes to establish a 4-0 lead with runs of 65, 88, 104 and 73 as, pouncing on every mistake from Doherty, he exuded the aura of confidence that was ever-present when he ruled snooker during the 1980s.
Davis, who completed victory with a 78-break in the sixth frame, believes that his new-found form is the result of a new, two-piece, 17oz cue specifically designed for him by John Parris. "I have hit a purple patch and you've got to think it's because of this new cue," Davis said.
"It's great to occasionally throw off the chains that keep every snooker player down. I've only had the cue for ten days, but, since then, the game seems effortless and I'm enjoying my snooker more than I have in a very long time. I'd never thought too much about how equipment can improve your game before, but this is something special."
Matthew Stevens, 18, from Carmarthen, took advantage of his wildcard entry to the game's most lucrative invitation event by beating Terry Griffiths 5-3. Stevens acquitted himself considerably better than many other Masters debutants.
Considering the acute disappointment that he felt after losing 9-3 to Mark Williams in the final of the Regal Welsh Open on Saturday, John Parrott did well to reach the quarter-finals with a 6-5 victory over Tony Drago, of Malta, in which the highlight was a 117 clearance in the seventh frame.
Parrott partially exorcised his Newport demons by winning the deciding frame 73-0 and will now meet James Wattana or the winner of the wildcard play-off match today between Andy Hicks and David Roe.
Williams benefited from one of the worst performances of Parrott's career to win the Welsh Open and become the first player from the Principality to capture a world ranking title for seven years. Not since the 1989 world championship final, when Parrott collapsed to an 18-3 defeat against Davis, has he played so poorly.
Impressive run puts Olympic champion on track to defend her title. SALLY GUNNELL yesterday surpassed her most optimistic assessment of how she might do in her comeback when she ran 400 metres quicker than she managed in her first race of 1993. That was the year she set a 400 metres hurdles world record, adding the world title to her Olympic gold medal.
Now she can look forward with renewed confidence to defending her Olympic title six months hence. In finishing second behind Melanie Neef in the AAA of England indoor championships in Birmingham, she recorded 53.07sec, compared with the 53.36sec she ran first time out in 1993. "I could not have asked for more," Gunnell said.
Neef's presence was just what Gunnell needed. Drawn inside Gunnell, Neef made up the stagger on the first bend and front-ran to the finish, setting a Scottish record of 52.50sec.
This was Gunnell's first appearance on a British track for 17 months and only her third race in that time. It was a thorough test of the heel and tendon injury that prevented her from defending her world title last year. Not only was Neef, the European Cup champion, a formidable opponent, but Gunnell had to race two rounds on Saturday to reach the final.
"I was worried about doing three rounds; I thought I might push my foot too much," Gunnell said. She realised she probably was not pushing too much "when I woke up at 3am to go to the loo". No sign of stiffness after two rounds on Saturday.
"I wanted to run what I did going into 1993," Gunnell added. "I would have been happy with anything in that region."
Given that, after surgery, it was November before Gunnell resumed full training, December before "it was starting to flow" and January before she was training twice a day, this was a highly satisfactory weekend. She has three more indoor races planned. Gunnell is up to date with leg drills over hurdles "what I usually do at this time of year" and will start work on her stride pattern next month.
Although Gunnell has no intention of attempting the European indoor championships next month, Neef probably will, as will Mark Hylton, winner of the men's 400 metres. Hylton has won the title twice before his twentieth birthday. His 46.45sec puts him seventh on the British all-time list and he will expect to be quicker next week when, back in Birmingham for the Ricoh Tour, he faces Darnell Hall, the world indoor champion, Charles Gitonga, the Commonwealth champion, and Du'aine Ladejo, the European indoor and outdoor champion. "I cannot wait; I am going out to get a few scalps," Hylton said.
While Gunnell arrived after injury to test her fitness, Linford Christie, Britain's other Olympic champion, arrived fit but left injured. Christie pulled up in the 60 metres final after showing impressive form over 100 metres in Australia the weekend before.
Christie, who hurt an adductor, will inform the British Athletic Federation (BAF) today that he is out of the Birmingham meeting on Saturday. "He is definitely out," Sue Barrett, his manager, said. He will fly to Germany this week to visit the Munich doctor to whom he usually turns for treatment. "We do not know exactly the extent of the damage," Barrett added. "It does not look as if there is much of an indoor season left for him."
Michael Rosswess, who trailed Christie when injury struck, was thus fortunate to win a third successive title. Mike Oluban, Rosswess's coach, has taken a job in Japan which means that, not only has the athlete lost his trainer, but Birmingham has one less female entertainer to call on. Oluban is on a one-year contract coaching Japan's leading sprinters.
It strikes Rosswess as ironic that the Japanese federation is putting financial support into its sprinters while he has to "go it alone". He suggested it was derisory that, according to the BAF pay scale, a 10.40sec 100 metres was worth an appearance fee of only £100. "BAF do not support you," Rosswess complained.
Nick Buckfield set his third British indoor pole-vault record in eight days, with 5.61 metres, Doug Turner moved up to No8 in the all-time 200 metres rankings, winning in 21.06sec, Michelle Dunkley, 18, won the women's high jump and Judy Oakes has almost as many national titles as she has had birthdays. Aged 37, she has 36, after winning the shot.
The Great Britain Olympic marathon selectors met on Saturday and will announce names today. The meeting took three hours. The runners they have chosen are expected to be quicker in Atlanta.
By far the most impressive indoor performance of the weekend came from Haile Gebresilasie, of Ethiopia, who set a world indoor 3,000 metres record yesterday when he ran 7min 30.72sec at a meeting in Stuttgart. The previous record, of 7min 35.15sec, was set by Moses Kiptanui, of Kenya, in Gent, Belgium, in February 1995.
Traditional families pushed out by new breed of criminal. A NEW type of sophisticated young gangster is taking over Britain's underworld and ousting the traditional criminal families.
Research compiled for chief constables identified 300 leading criminals who stay in the background as "fixers" and organisers, hiding behind legitimate businesses and arranging the links for big drug consignments or distributing expensive stolen cars.
Traditional family gangs still exist in cities such as London, Manchester and Newcastle upon Tyne, but their influence is diminishing. Police found there were no modern versions of the Krays or the Richardsons who carved up much of London in the 1960s, and hierarchical gangs such as the Thompsons, who ran crime in Glasgow over several generations, were declining.
Colin Philips, the assistant chief constable heading CID in Greater Manchester and the leader of the research team, said: "The criminals network as assiduously as businessmen. We are not saying people don't follow their fathers into crime, but now they are not family hierarchies. Drugs are the criminal currency. In the 1950s and 60s it was vice, prostitution and pornography. In the 1980s it was car crime, then fraud. Now it is drugs."
Drug investigations take up 40 per cent of detective work in some forces. According to detectives, the typical gang leader is in his late 20s or 30s. "They are leaders because, when push comes to shove, they will walk into a pub and shoot someone," a London officer said. "If someone has them over, they take revenge. If you have money off them, there will be retribution."
Gang leaders have always left school early and have convictions that give them status with other criminals who turn to them for help. Sometimes they are the sons of minor criminals.
The gangs usually number 15 or 20 core members who have grown up together. Violence between the gangs is far less than expected. It will be used to defend territory in "turf wars", but there is so much criminal business available that the gangs do not need to compete.
Times have changed since the early part of this century when gangs grew among the new immigrant communities in London, Liverpool and Glasgow. Razor gangs ran bookmaking on racecourses across the country, leading to fearsome battles between rivals. In 1921 the Birmingham and Leeds mobs turned on the "Italians", a gang led by the Sabini family, on the last day of the Derby meeting. There was a brief battle after which 23 people were convicted.
In the postwar era, gangs turned to vice, clubs and gambling, with the likes of Billy Hill and Jack "Spot" Comer fighting for control of underworld business. The Krays and Charles Richardson also based their empires on clubs, fraud and intimidation. The Krays adopted a high profile, cultivating society contacts and trying without a great deal of sucess to move into the West End of London. After police broke the gangs of the 1960s, their successors shunned publicity.
As a more liberal atmosphere allowed legal competitors into the vice industry, organised criminals turned first to armed robbery and then to drugs, building contacts in Spain, South America and North Africa.
They move quickly with drug trends. In the 1990s they have invested in raves and the supply of synthetic drugs from the Continent. Like the razor gangs of the 1920s they still protect their territory, but now they use sawn-off shotguns and hired hitmen.
Networking between gangs and operations across police boundaries presents the greatest problems for a law-enforcement system based on regional forces, the report compiled for the chief constables says.
TEDDINGTON staged a fine recovery to draw 2-2 at home with Reading in the National League yesterday when the hockey season resumed with a full programme after the winter break.
Reading, the sharper side, led 2-0 with a goal by Ashdown late in the first half and another by Osborn from a short corner early in the second period. Teddington were then kept in the game by French, their goalkeeper, whose excursions to the top of the circle checked the flow of Reading's attacks.
Between Conway and Billson, Teddington's fortunes were restored. Conway laid on the chance for Billson to score in the 45th minute and Conway, himself, obtained the equaliser from a short
corner 12 minutes later.
Further saves by French rescued Teddington.
A goal two minutes before the end by Bilsland enabled Guildford to draw 3-3 with Cannock, who at one time were leading 3-0 with goals by Crutchley, Hughes-Rowlands and Chris Mayer. Markham, from a short corner, and Don Williams brought Guildford back into the game before Bilsland snatched their late equaliser.
Old Loughtonians were beaten 3-2 at Sainthill by East Grinstead, for whom Barnes scored the winning goal seven minutes from time with a penalty stroke. Bill Williams and Lee had earlier scored for Old Loughtonians, with Byfield and Head replying for East Grinstead.
With Reading, Cannock and Old Loughtonians all dropping points, Southgate now lead the first division after their 6-0 victory at Bournville on Saturday. Gisborne scored two of Southgate's goals from penalty strokes.
Calum Giles converted two short corners for Havant in their 7-1 home win over Indian Gymkhana, with Havant's other goals coming from Pattison (2), Nail, Glover and Cross. Molloy scored four times for Surbiton, one from a short corner, in the 9-0 defeat of St Albans.
The position at the top of the second division is unchanged after Beeston's 2-1 victory over Sheffield. Huckle scored twice for Beeston and Woolfrey replied for Sheffield.
Patricia Davies spends an afternoon at the mangle as the women rugby players of Wales are taken to the cleaners
We all have days like this: starting off full of hope and ending up mangled. At Welford Road, the home of Leicester, yesterday, Wales's women rugby players continued their losing streak against England; steamrollered into the mud, 56-3.
Wales were plucky. Near the end of the match, someone called for them to "buck up", a quaintly old-fashioned request, one you suspected the visitors' combative No7 would not have appreciated. She was spoken to by the referee after a swipe at an opponent early on there had been an elegant bit of lifting by England in the lineout, mind and late on she had been given a severe talking-to after some shenanigans in one of those forward melees civilians like me will never understand.
In any case, by then my attention had started to wander, my feet and hands were icing up and the match was too one-sided to be enjoyable as a contest. Not that England or their supporters minded the strains of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot were heard before the game even started and 1,205 hardy souls took a spirited interest in the proceedings. There were plenty of stewards on duty, looking rather under-employed because there was plenty of room for everybody and nobody felt inclined to streak on such a chilly afternoon.
This being a proper international, the teams lined up for the two anthems and sang as lustily as they were to play on a pitch one of the photographers described as being "like glue". Since he and his colleagues had to trawl up and down the touchline in it, he was not a neutral observer. The Wales players did not seem to run out of puff, however, even though it was 41-0 before they scored their only points a dropped goal from Amanda Bennett, their chunky stand-off half from Saracens.
Just before that England had elected to kick a penalty, which I found a trifle baffling since they were 38-0 up and in no danger of losing their 100 per cent record against Wales, extending now to 11 internationals. Then I realised why it was to allow Gill Burns, of Waterloo, the captain and No8, to show off her kicking technique from wide out on the right. She converted and the desultory chant of "Boring, boring rubbish" was replaced by appreciative cheers.
Burns, 31, is a school teacher, measuring 5ft 11in, weighing 12st 7lb (there is no modesty in a rugby programme) and Wales, whose No8 was 5ft 4in, could not hold her. She scored the first of her team's eight tries, rolling out of a tackle and then powering over the line in jubilation.
"Just like Deano," said a Leicester man used to the exploits of Dean Richards. Well, maybe a little faster.
Just before the try, there had been a lineout and I am sure the codeword was "elephant". Then, there had been a mix-up between the Wales full back and right wing, who went for the same high ball. The full back was furious. "I called," she spat. Well, I did not hear her either. I have to confess I had called her a "twit" for not calling. Shows how wrong you can be from the sidelines.
There was plenty of that esoteric rummaging about and crunching tackles that made me realise I was too old and too timid to take up the game but there was lots of handling, too, some of it decidedly slick. However Wales, whose coach, Paul Ringer, looked on philosphically, tended to drop the ball at crucial moments and England would pick it up and charge off to notch up yet another try. There was nearly a charge-down reminiscent of the one at Twickenham the previous day and England made several interceptions; if my fingers had not seized up I might have made a legible note of how many had led to tries.
I have seen many men's club matches a lot less skilful and the spectators, a mix of young and old, male and female, were quick to applaud the passing moves the men's teams are often afraid to try in these win-at-all-costs days. "I like their shirts better than the men's as well," commented one England supporter, obviously of the old, unadorned school.
It was well worth the detour even the beefburger, bought out of duty, was excellent, though the hot toddies had to wait until after the drive home.
THE most important professional post in English cricket falls vacant today, when Alan Smith will inform the chairmen of the first-class counties that he is to stand down as chief executive of the Test and County Cricket Board (TCCB). The job is to be advertised in The Times on Wednesday.
Smith will be 60 in October and it is understood he will technically remain in office until then. A successor is being sought with some urgency, however, and it is planned that he should work alongside Smith during the summer.
The timing of the announcement will surprise many. Although Smith had insisted privately to friends that he would retire this year, there was a cynical view sponsored by his many detractors that he would seek to cling to power through the formative years of his brainchild, the English Cricket Board, the tortuous formation of which should be completed within 12 months.
Smith, who captained Warwickshire and played for England as a wicketkeeper-batsman, occasionally diversifying into a curiously effective swing bowler, graduated to the top job in the game in 1987. Often pedantic, invariably misunderstood, he has nonetheless displayed vigilance, integrity and boundless energy during a sensitive and highly-charged era for the professional game.
"I have had to operate within a system," he says in answer to criticism. "There are a number of things that have happened while I've been here that I have disagreed with, sometimes quite strongly, but I am not a dictator and I have had to bite my tongue"
Ironically, Smith's successor will inevitably be endowed with more executive powers within a somewhat streamlined system.
David Miller on whether leading events should be ring-fenced for public television
Lord Howell, the former Minister for Sport, yesterday welcomed a psychological advantage before the first ball: the agreement by BSkyB to allow BBC Television to screen highlights of the forthcoming cricket World Cup. Sky, with exclusive live coverage, had attempted to block the BBC's bid.
The controversy over the Broadcasting Bill, tabled by the National Heritage Department, takes a critical step tomorrow with debate in the Upper House, at the committee stage, on amendments submitted by an all-party group led by Howell. These amendments include the key issue of "unbundling": the principle of any channel with exclusive live rights allowing limited, delayed highlights by another.
Sky's contract with the European Professional Golfers' Association, for example, specifically banned highlights being allocated to BBC. At the heart of the debate lie counter-philosophies, on which Virginia Bottomley, the Heritage Secretary, in her intended comments of clarification last week, remained equivocal.
On the one hand, Howell, supported on both sides of the Lords, seeks to preserve the widest audience for "listed" events on terrestrial rather than satellite channels in order to generate maximum interest in the game and to foster the development among young people inspired by witnessing the action. Nick Faldo was ten when he first saw Jack Nicklaus on television.
On the other hand, sports governing bodies seek a free market to expand income. The Test and County Cricket Board (TCCB) has campaigned for cricket to be taken off the protected list, with the Boat Race and the first 11 days of the Wimbledon tennis championships. Cricket's television income has risen from £1.5 million in 1989 to £60 million in 1996, 20 per cent of which is earmarked for grassroots development.
"Sky are trying to say we want to stop sport on Sky, which is quite untrue," Howell said. "We are seeking to protect the listed events." Those are the FA and Scottish Cup finals, the Grand National and the Derby, the Wimbledon finals and home Test matches, the Olympic Games and football's World Cup finals. The amendments include a prohibition on subscription as well as pay-per-view satellite channels; the prevention of sports bodies such as the Premier League creating its own channel; and the establishment of an advisory board.
David Elstein, head of programmes for Sky, insists that there should not be legal obstruction of the free market by Act of Parliament, an opinion seemingly supported by Bottomley. Elstein argues that, theoretically, the listed events provide BBC and ITV with larger audiences at the expense of the sport, which might otherwise gain a higher rights fee.
So far, BSkyB 40 per cent owned by News International, owner of The Times has not bid for the subscription channel rights to listed events, which the amendment seeks to block, and only 1 per cent of BBC and ITV events have shifted to Sky. BBC's main losses are to ITV the FA Cup Final and Formula One motor racing from next year and the Cheltenham racing festival to Channel 4.
Bottomley's error is not to have initiated consultation among various parties before drawing up the Bill. There are five separate areas of interest in the sale of an event by the rights owner: the broadcaster, which wants ratings; the event-sponsor partners, who want exposure; the governing body/rights owner, which as trustee wants cash; the viewers; and, in an abstract sense, the reputation of the sport itself. All are affected.
A public service broadcaster like the BBC has a partial duty to inform as well as entertain; to be balanced and, in that sense, educational. Public service broadcasting goes hand in hand with John Major's initiative, Raising the Game, which pursues both grassroots development and international excellence at Olympic level.
If, as Sebastian Coe pointed out in the first stages of the Commons debate, more than 22 million people in Britain are in some way associated with sport, there is a risk that exclusive coverage of a leading sport by a satellite channel creates a kind of cultural denial.
Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, is adamant that the Olympics remain with terrestrial broadcasters for maximum audience, irrespective of bid offers. That is why massive contracts have been signed with NBC for American rights until 2002 and, last week with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) until 2008. The EBU deal, for $1.44 billion (about £930 million) was a third less than that of The News Corporation, parent company of The Times.
The TCCB will say, unofficially, that while it prefers to be with BBC it welcomes satellite because it pushes up the price. It also offers the opportunity for huge expansion financially and in availability of air time.
Elstein suggests membership of the "list" if there is to be one should be voluntary. Yet protection could become irrelevant, with 70 per cent of viewers under 45 predicted to have satellite access by 2000. The excellence of BBC's sports broadcasts, and lack of experience and knowledge of some commentators on satellite, is insufficient argument for permanently ring-fencing BBC and special events.
WITH Australian cricketers giving warning that they will refuse to play in Sri Lanka because of fears of more bombings after the explosion in Colombo last week, the World Cup organisers will today consider moving the four matches on the island to India and Pakistan, co-hosts of the 12-nation tournament, which opens next Sunday.
As the pressure mounted on the authorities to call off the fixtures in Sri Lanka, where up to 80 people were killed and 1,200 injured in an attack by the Tamil Tigers last Wednesday, Shane Warne, the Australia spinner, said that the team "could be risking their lives for one game" if their fixture were to go ahead in Colombo on February 17. He added that several team-mates shared his views.
The Australian Cricket Board will give its formal response today to the crisis while Pilcom, the three-country organising committee, is in a dilemma over the political problem. Jagmohan Dalmiya, the convenor of Pilcom, said: "It is a most difficult situation with which we are faced. It could have far-reaching implications."
However, he hinted that the committee was considering a switch of venues, although such a move would risk alienating the Sri Lankans, who would regard it as an insult. They have pointed out that the Tamil separatists have never targeted sports events in their struggle for independence.
Three centres in India Hyderabad, Bangalore and Bombay have offered to host matches scheduled for Sri Lanka, while the Pakistan authorities said they were willing to take an additional game. Sri Lanka are scheduled to play three fixtures in Colombo, against Australia (February 17), Zimbabwe (February 21) and West Indies (February 25), and one in the hill resort of Kandy, against Kenya on March 6. If the organisers do not move the games from Sri Lanka, it is possible that some of the visiting countries may forfeit the games on the island. Australia could be the first.
"I do not really want to go to Sri Lanka," Warne said yesterday. "Imagine if you were in Sri Lanka at the moment playing in the World Cup and you were walking down the streets to have a look at the shops and there is a drive-by bombing. Okay, it is fair enough from their point of view to think they cannot give in to terrorism, but we have to play cricket in the country and, for this one game in Sri Lanka, is it worth risking our lives ?"
There has been particular tension in the Australian camp because there was a telephone bomb hoax against Craig McDermott last Friday. This followed an acrimonious tour by Sri Lanka in which there were accusations of ball tampering and the no-balling of Muttiah Muralitharan, their leading wicket-taker, in two matches by Australian umpires.
Meanwhile, the England team have arrived in Lahore to prepare for their first game against New Zealand in the Indian city of Ahmadabad on February 14. Ray Illingworth, the team manager, said that he thought Graeme Hick could be "the outstanding player of the tournament".
"I have told him so because I believe that he [Hick] is batting better than ever before," Illingworth said. "Graeme was moving a little bit leaden-footed early in his career. However, he moves much better now and gets up on to the balls of his feet".
Illingworth said that Hick had benefited from the advice of John Edrich. "The time he has spent with John has helped a lot. One of the things that John got him doing during their sessions together was skipping, because that encourages good movement and Graeme has carried on with it."
THE captaincy of the European Ryder Cup team for the match against the United States at Valderrama, Spain, in 1997 has been offered to Severiano Ballesteros. The possibility that he will become the first playing captain since Dai Rees filled both roles at Royal Lytham and St Annes in 1961 has been discussed and has not been dismissed.
"I can confirm that I have met Seve in connection with the Ryder Cup and the captaincy of the 1997 team," Schofield said in Perth last night. "In fact, I've had two meetings with him, one before Christmas and one since. They went very well. I now have to report back to the Ryder Cup Committee which will meet within one month."
Ballesteros is the natural successor to Bernard Gallacher, the captain of the 1991, 1993 and 1995 teams, and is the obvious choice to succeed Gallacher when the first Ryder Cup to be held in Spain is staged in September next year.
Hitherto, however, discussions with Ballesteros had not taken place and there was also concern as to how best to approach the delicate issue of whether or not Ballesteros would want to be or could be a playing captain.
The recent announcement of Tom Kite as the captain of the American team injected some urgency into the selection process regarding the European captain.
To that end, Schofield began talks with Ballesteros and I understand that the Spaniard, who is coming to the end of a five-month break from competitive golf, was as receptive to all that Schofield said to him as Schofield was to what Ballesteros said.
At this stage I do not believe there is any real barrier to Ballesteros becoming a playing captain should he rediscover his real form and should he so wish it. "Following our talks I am very optimistic on all fronts," Schofield said.
JOHN MAJOR faced demands from Labour yesterday to dismiss William Waldegrave if the Scott report says that he signed letters which contained untrue or misleading information over the arms-to-Iraq affair.
Copies of the report will be delivered to Mr Major on Thursday via Ian Lang, the President of the Board of Trade. But the report will not be published until February 15. As ministers prepare to mount a damage-limitation exercise, Labour called for a commitment from the Prime Minister to sack any colleague criticised in the report.
Mr Waldegrave, the Treasury Chief Secretary, and Sir Nicholas Lyell, the Attorney-General, are likely to be at the centre of criticism in the 2,000-page report. Although no copies of the final report have been issued, friends of Mr Waldegrave, the former Foreign Office Minister, said yesterday he did not expect it to be as critical of his actions as draft versions had been.
However, ministers recognise that there will be wide-ranging criticisms of government conduct, in particular the use of public interest immunity certificates, dubbed "gagging orders", which prevented witnesses from giving certain evidence in trials.
In the drafts, Sir Richard Scott criticised Mr Waldegrave and other former colleagues for giving misleading and inaccurate information to MPs. The final report will take into account written explanations sent by those involved, including Mr Waldegrave.
Robin Cook, Labour's Shadow Foreign Secretary, is to complain that ministers will receive copies seven days ahead of publication.
He said yesterday: "John Major should make it clear that there will be a mandatory sentence of dismissal for any minister found guilty of keeping Parliament or the courts in the dark. If the Scott report does indeed confirm that William Waldegrave repeatedly signed official letters that were untrue and which he knew to be untrue, he cannot remain in office."
Sir Richard reacted angrily to reports yesterday that a late draft was similar to an earlier one leaked last year. In a comment that could offer some comfort to Mr Waldegrave, Sir Richard made it clear that he had taken into account Mr Waldegrave's further submission. The judge said that it was "premature and mischievous to base articles on anything other than the final report".
Mr Christopher Muttukumaru, the inquiry secretary, said: "No one claims that these are anything other than old draft extracts."
Iva Majoli, of Croatia, right, beat Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, the No3 seed, 6-4, 6-1 to win the Pan Pacific Open women's indoor title in Tokyo and then, understandably, said that the win had capped the best week of her life. Majoli, 18, took only 72 minutes to beat Sanchez Vicario, having accounted for Monica Seles, the No1 seed, in the quarter-finals.
Katja Seizinger, of Germany, right, was in a class of her own yesterday in Val d'Isere as she recorded a victory, her third in as many days, in the super giant slalom, earning her the World Cup title in that discipline with one race remaining. She also leads in the overall World Cup, having won another super giant slalom on Friday and a downhill on Saturday.
Hampton, with three men on board who competed for Great Britain in the world junior championships last year, began the 1996 season with a victory by 1sec on their home course on Saturday. In spite of the early date, 124 eights and fours competed in the Hampton Head and the home club pipped a large St Paul's crew stroked by Dan Ouseley, who was in the 1995 Great Britain coxless four.
Cardiff Devils scored three unanswered goals in the last period but still had to be content with an 8-8 draw with Humberside Hawks in the British League. They lost some ground at the top of the premier division as Sheffield Steelers beat Fife Flyers by the odd goal in seven to increase their lead to three points. Nottingham Panthers beat Milton Keynes 6-3.
Cecilia Mason, the Scottish lance corporal who was banned from taking part in the skeleton bobsleigh World Cup series because organisers ruled that only men could compete, yesterday finished second in a women's international event in Germany. Mason, 20, recorded 1min 45.28sec on a track at Konigsee. The winner of the event, in which competitors reach 85mph on sleighs that look like tea trays with runners, was Michelle Kelly, of Canada, in 1min 43.49sec. Five nations took part.
MICHAEL HOWARD'S plans for automatic life sentences for second-time rapists and violent offenders were attacked yesterday by one of his former prisons ministers. Sir Peter Lloyd joined critics including Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone, a former Lord Chancellor, and members of the judiciary.
The criticism came after the Home Secretary defended his plans at what he described as a "very vigorous" private meeting with judges in Northampton on Saturday. Sir Peter, Tory MP for Fareham, said Mr Howard's plan, to be unveiled in a White Paper in the spring, was cumbersome and unconvincing.
"I don't think he has convinced the judiciary or myself yet that his approach with this very real point is the right one," he said. "I don't think we're talking about very large numbers and I don't think we need to go to something cumbersome like a life sentence for the second offence.
"I'm not convinced there is a need for a mandatory, automatic life sentence for the second offence."
Sir Peter, speaking on BBC Radio 4's The World this Weekend, said a judicial-medical mechanism was needed, by which prisoners who were still violent could remain in jail until they were no longer seen as a risk to society.
Lord Hailsham attacked the Home Office's tendency to impose sentencing policy on the judiciary. He said on GMTV: "One shouldn't, if one is Home Secretary, seek to impose one's views either on colleagues or on the legislature. This business about mandatory sentences must be held in very grave suspicion."
Last night, Lord Denning, 97, the former Master of the Rolls, agreed: "I am all in favour of the views of Lord Hailsham on this issue. It is the province of the judges to do the sentences; they have heard all that is to be said on each side. They are in the best position."
However, if Parliament took a different view, the judges would have to go with the legislation, he said.
Under the proposals, minimum sentences would be imposed on persistent burglars and drug dealers, and automatic life sentences for second-time rapists and other violent offenders. Mr Howard signalled a substantial reduction in the sentences imposed by courts when he met about 30 judges at the private meeting of the Criminal Justice Consultative Council on Saturday.
He said he would expect judges to take account of his plan for "honesty" in sentencing, in which the sentence imposed by the court would be served in full. "I want the offender to know the full weight of the sentence. I do not want him saying to himself, ‘I know he said three years, but it only means 18 months'." This would need guidance from the Lord Chief Justice, Mr Howard said.
He rejected a warning from Lord Justice Rose, the Court of Appeal judge chairing the meeting, that rapists would commit murder if they knew they were going to be jailed for life anyway. "Taken to its logical conclusion, this suggests there should not even be a life sentence available, even on a discretionary basis, for murder."
But Mr Howard made clear that automatic life sentences would, like discretionary life sentences, have the release date decided by the Parole Board and not the Home Secretary. The courts would fix the "tariff" served for retribution and deterrence. Once that had been served, the Parole Board would decide when a prisoner should be released.
His proposal for minimum sentences for drug dealers and persistent burglars provoked the most criticism at the meeting. Mr Howard did not spell out the number of previous convictions which would trigger a minimum sentence or the length of the jail term.
DENIS PANKRATOV became only the second swimmer to hold simultaneously world records at 100 and 200 metres butterfly in both long and short course (25-metre and 50-metre pools) as the sixth round of the World Cup reached Paris at the weekend. Previously, only Michael Gross, of Germany, had held all four records at the same time.
The Russian last night swam 51.94sec over the 100 metres short course, 0.13sec inside the record that had stood to Marcel Gery, of Canada, since 1990. On Saturday, over 200 metres, he swam the whole of the first length underwater, bar one stroke into the turn, and left Franck Esposito, of France, trailing by five seconds as he won in 1min 52.34sec, 0.71sec inside the time that Esposito set two years ago.
NICK FALDO was again frustrated by the weather in his attempt to win the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am when the third round was washed out for the second successive day on a wet and windy Monteray peninsular yesterday.
Faldo and Howard Clark, of Yorkshire, were six under par and two shots off the lead held by Jeff Maggert, of the United States, and they faced another lengthy wait before learning whether they must return to complete the tournament today.
Officials were particularly anxious to complete a minimum of 54 holes with the tournament contested on three different courses. All 180 professionals must play on each course for the £1.5 million purse to count as official winnings, thus becoming eligible for the money-list which affects entry into lucrative events later in the year. Faldo was scheduled to have played at Pebble Beach yesterday and Clark at Poppy Hills, which were playable, but the other course, Spyglass Hill was under water, forcing officials to implement another postponement.
David Eger, the tournament director, said: "Two fairways are out of action and some tees are flooded. It would mean moving the tee boxes into the rough and we are not prepared to do that. This is a unique event and we badly want to complete three rounds but that will depend on many factors, including the weather forecast."
LABOUR is considering taxing child benefits for the richest families in an attempt to curb rising welfare costs.
Chris Smith, the Shadow Social Security Secretary, said yesterday: "I want to look at the ‘Duchess of Westminster' problem, where people who are right up at the top end of the income scale can still walk down the road and into a post office and draw child benefit.
We are looking at options to see if there might be some way to claw back some of the money that goes to people who actually don't need it."
Mr Smith, who recently visited Singapore to study its system of social security in his search for ways of pruning the welfare state. is determined that Labour would tackle the problem of the £90 billion-a-year benefits bill. He emphasised that "the broad mass of people" did rely on child benefit. "I'm absolutely committed to the universal payment of child benefit," he said. "It's an essential part of child support in this country and I want to see it continue as universal payment."
In an interview on GMTV's Sunday programme, Mr Smith said that Labour was examining a "benefit-to-work" strategy which would give people "a hand up" rather than just a handout.
"If we can get people off unemployment, out of dependency, back into work, with opportunities, instead of having great blocks and obstacles put in their way, as happens at the moment, then I think we can begin to see some really radical changes in the nature of the system."
But the Shadow Social Security Secretary cast doubt on Labour adopting a Singaporean-style pension scheme in which people put 20 per cent of their income into compulsory savings schemes. Mr Smith said that instead of such a scheme, "which no one in Britain could afford", he wanted to create a new, funded, secure pension scheme for people who did not have decent occupational or personal pensions. However, he did not say whether the new scheme would be more expensive than the present state pension system, which cost £28 billion last year.
One of the more popular programmes offered by an American television station before last weekend's Super Bowl XXX was apparently a racy little number called Real Men Don't Watch Pre-Game. I'm not entirely sure what the content was, but its title returned to haunt me on Saturday afternoon.
With racing from Chepstow and skiing from Garmisch cancelled, the end of Football Focus heralded the beginning of an unexpectedly long Road to Twickenham. It was barely one o'clock. Was this really a proper way for anyone to spend the first half of Saturday afternoon? Well, unexpectedly, it was to such an extent that for anyone watching in England and Wales the pre-game (or build-up as we call it on this side of the Pond) was actually more interesting than the match itself. The Scots, of course, fared rather better.
The key to the BBC's success was Nick Farr-Jones, as articulate and outspoken an Australian as you could hope to meet. Introduced by Steve Rider as a man capable of giving "the impartial view", Farr-Jones went for England like ... well, like a former captain of the Wallabies. He had left Parc des Princes "very deflated", he told us, and then, without repetition, hesitation or deviation, explained why. It was good stuff especially if you were Welsh.
Stung by the attack and mindful perhaps that this handsome Australian could be after his slot as the drinking woman's pundit, Rob Andrew met fire with fire trading long sentences and technical insights with dazzling ease. Rarely can four chiselled cheekbones have duelled to such good effect.
With none of his colleagues' natural eloquence (or their cheekbones) Jonathan Davies sensibly opted for long periods of silence, just occasionally contributing a comment about "the lads" or "commitment". Amid all the talk of drift defences and the expansive game such old-fashioned punditry was rather refreshing.
In the commentary box, Bill Beaumont stepped temporarily aside to let Eddie Butler, a Welshman, in to work alongside the ever-so-English Nigel Starmer-Smith. They worked well together, but perhaps should have been harder on the catalogue of unforced errors. Perhaps, like Jack Rowell and the rest of us, they couldn't believe what they were seeing.
The one exception to the BBC's admirably balanced approach to commentary teams is the French. A fortnight ago Starmer-Smith and Beaumont was considered the appropriate mix for France against England and so it was again at Murrayfield, where Bill McLaren and John Jeffrey were suitably impartial for Scotland and France. Given that most of the French team now speak better English than some of their home nation counterparts, it is a policy whose days are surely numbered, n'est-ce pas?
A significant pause by Starmer-Smith, shortly after the final whistle, marked the only part of the day that did not go according to plan. The Twickenham public address system gave away the result from Murrayfield before the highlights had been shown. Huge cheers in the crowd, huge groans in the BBC's mobile control unit.
But the best own-goal of the weekend goes to Eurosport, which, after showing more than 20 games from the African Nations Cup, was forced by prior commitments to the ATP tennis tour to show a recording of the final between South Africa and Tunisia six hours after President Mandela had presented Neil Tovey with the trophy.
The end, I suspect, could not come soon enough for Archie Macpherson, who has spent the past month in Eurosport's Paris studios, pretending he is in South Africa, pretending he can read the names and numbers of the players' shirts off a television monitor. By Saturday night, it sounded like cabin-fever had set in, with Macpherson tackling race, apartheid and, somehow, the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior with terrifying abandon. Eventually, the final whistle brought relief. "It's all over," shouted Macpherson. "It's all academical [sic] now." Thankfully it was ...
STAFF employed by a Labour council will receive redundancy notices today with a warning that they can have their jobs back only if they agree to cut their annual holidays by up to nine weeks.
Long-serving staff at Camden, north London, may take up to ten weeks' paid leave a year to look after sick close relatives, in addition to the four weeks' holiday allowed to all staff. The new contracts will cut dependency leave to five days a year.
Unison, the staff union, is to call meetings this week to consider industrial action in protest. About 2,400 staff have signed the new contracts but 3,200 have so far refused.
Another Labour council in the capital is to end a no-redundancy policy costing £2million a year. From April, Hackney town hall staff no longer required by their department will have six months to find a permanent post elsewhere on the council or face redundancy. The council plans to save another £13million which will mean up to 100 compulsory redundancies.
Winston Benjamin, the West Indies fast bowler, has told Hampshire that he will spend the summer as their overseas player. Benjamin was sent home from the West Indies' tour of England last summer for disciplinary reasons and has been omitted from their World Cup squad. "He is halfway through a contract and intends to see it out," Mike Taylor, the Hampshire commercial manager, said.
James Male, the world champion, looked sharp and determined as he reached the quarter-finals of the Lacoste British Open championship, beating Howard Angus, the former world champion, in three entertaining games.
Angus showed flashes of his old skills, but Male was always a class apart, raising his game whenever he needed to and playing some exquisite double-handed winners.
Ryder Cup player back to his best. IAN WOOSNAM seems hellbent on dismissing the memories of a wretched 1995. After victory in Singapore last Sunday, he snatched first place in the Heineken Classic at The Vines here yesterday from under the nose of Paul McGinley.
Woosnam did it in the thrilling, nerveless way that true champions are supposed to, and in doing so he transported us back to 1991, the year of his victory in the US Masters, when he last won successive tournaments. In those days, the world No1 made the complicated business of hitting a golf ball look as simple as knocking the heads off daisies with an upturned walking stick.
An engrossing afternoon's play on a severe course made all the more difficult by a testing wind came down to a test of Woosnam's skill and courage, two of the requirements for a true champion. Could the Ryder Cup player squeeze a birdie out of the 517-yard closing hole and draw ahead of McGinley and Jean van de Velde, who, playing just ahead, had finished on 278, ten under par?
You might as well ask whether Woosnam is Welsh and whether he has lost his club contract with Maruman, for he now keeps his clubs in a black golf bag unmarked save for the name of the club that he represents, Celtic Manor, the new complex at Newport, Gwent. The answer to both queries is yes and the challenge to Woosnam's nerve that was issued just before six o'clock on another glorious sunlit afternoon was also answered affirmatively.
After a long drive that avoided the Scylla and Charybdis of water on the left of the fairway and three menacing bunkers on the right, Woosnam hit a five-iron with thrillingly accuracy, foregoing the comfort of aiming for the fat of the green.
His ball plummeted into the putting surface less than three feet from the flag and stopped ten feet away. Two putts later, he had gone round in 72 for a 72-hole total of 277, 11 under par. It was his 29th victory in a European Tour event and his 38th worldwide.
Woosnam's revival is the result of changes both physical and technical. Doctors have told him that he must not strain his back. "Swimming every now and then is all right," Woosnam was told. He liked that advice because he is not one of life's natural exercisers, preferring instead to pass the time sitting with a drink in his hand and a cigarette in his mouth.
Bill Ferguson, a down-to-earth Yorkshireman who has been Colin Montgomerie's only coach, has helped to get Woosnam's swing back on track.
"I'm a natural," Woosnam said. "Bill has persuaded me to keep doing it simple. He makes nothing complicated. It's impossible for me to think of ten things to do with each swing. He just keeps my rhythm going."
Woosnam was paired with John Daly, his co-leader after 54 holes, but the strong wind accounted for the Open champion, who completed 72 holes without once using a wood. These two moved so quickly that they were constantly waiting for McGinley and Van de Velde. Daly, for example, had walked five yards from the tee of the short 4th before his ball landed on the green.
McGinley offered the most resolute challenge. He started the day at ten under par, birdied the 1st, and made almost his only mistake over the last five holes when he missed the fairway at the 18th.
This meant, that knowing he needed a birdie, he forced himself to the limit with his second shot. He used a driver, where Woosnam would later use a five-iron. Straining every sinew, McGinley mishit his shot slightly, the ball ended in a rake mark in a greenside bunker and he could not hole out in two strokes from there.
McGinley had to settle for a 72 and his fourth second place finish on the European Tour since he turned professional late in 1991. Not winning when he could, and perhaps should, is becoming a thing with him, but McGinley, 29, from Dublin, can take consolation from the fact that he was beaten by a great player at the peak of his form.
"I am very disappointed," McGinley, who had held the lead on his own several times during the last round, said. "I had the chances and I did not take them; but I have to take it on the chin. Besides, Woosnam is a streak player, and when he is on form, as he is now, he is the best player in the world."
THERE is a danger of an IRA split over the slow pace of the Northern Ireland peace process, George Mitchell, who chaired the advisory body on decommissioning terrorist arms, said yesterday.
Sir Hugh Annesley, the Chief Constable of the RUC, expressed his own fears at the weekend that the IRA would wage a mainland bombing campaign if the ceasefire broke down. Security measures protecting Northern Ireland Office ministers and senior Cabinet members would be stepped up.
Amid fears in the Province that IRA terrorists were responsible for a gun attack on the home of an RUC officer last week, Mr Mitchell, speaking on BBC's Breakfast with Frost, said: "I think there is a danger of a fracture within that organisation. It seems clear that not all on the republican side favour the ceasefire and the potential for some elements to take direct and violent action, I think, does remain."
He hoped that the IRA would not split because it would be a "tragedy of huge proportions" if violence resumed. Sinn Fein and the loyalist parties must be brought further into the political process.
Mr Mitchell praised John Major's commitment to the peace process, but his comments highlighted his irritation with Britain for rejecting his report's finding that all-party talks should begin before terrorists have disarmed.
Martin McGuinness, a Sinn Fein leader, said: "Since the beginning of the ceasefire, the IRA have proved themselves to be a very disciplined and cohesive organisation ... I don't believe that there is any danger of a split."
Four possible scenarios under which IRA violence could resume are:
Britain fails to organise serious all-party talks.
With growing internal opposition to the ceasefire, violence could be seen as the only way of maintaining IRA unity.
The IRA and Sinn Fein engineer a split. Under this scenario the IRA would resume its violence, while Sinn Fein would try to maintain its role in the peace process.
A breakaway faction could resume violence to challenge the leadership.
Carl Prean, the English national champion, who was controversially selected for an Olympic Games place for Great Britain despite having refused to play for England this season, suffered an unexpected defeat in the final of the Welsh Open in Cardiff yesterday. Prean, who has not played in English tournaments this season, was beaten by Bradley Billington, the England No6, 21-19, 21-17.
Castleford 16 St Helens 58. DURING his first match in charge of St Helens, Shaun McRae could be seen drawing his peaked cap over his eyes as his rugby league side endured shaky spells on its way to overwhelming victory yesterday in the Silk Cut Challenge Cup fourth round.
McRae, a pragmatic Australian, despite his anxieties, does not want to sacrifice St Helens' natural attacking inclination to the need for sounder defence. After an unsatisfactory half-hour, in which Castleford twice fought level, the balance was struck. The visitors scored the remaining seven of ten tries without reply.
"At half-time, I made the point that, if they wanted to play touch rugby, they should go to the local park; it was a case of we score, you score," McRae said.
Paul Newlove's three tries were instrumental in his man-of-the-match award, but the predatory instincts of Chris Joynt made a good case for recognising the powerhouse in the second row. Bobbie Goulding had on his ringmaster's hat in organising the show and landed nine of ten goal attempts.
With a fifth-round encounter at Rochdale on Sunday, St Helens can look to the quarter-finals with confidence, while Castleford, whose spirit drained away in alarming fashion, have much to do before the Super League starts at the end of next month.
The home side maintained a dogged pursuit before being brushed aside in as contemptuous a manner as old stagers at Wheldon Road could recall. Smith, following up a teasing chip by Steadman, replied to Arnold's opening of the St Helens account, which Newlove promptly re-started with two quickfire tries, in supporting first Sullivan and then Joynt down the left.
In the gentleman's excuse-me that passed for both defences in the opening half, Goddard had a free passage for Castleford's next try and Sampson was allowed to reach out and score, before St Helens steadied the ship with two outstanding tries.
Out of the back of his hand, Newlove popped up a pass on halfway to Sullivan, who just outpaced Smith to slither over. Then, Joynt stumbled his way in from 30 metres out.
The second half was one-way St Helens traffic over a well-trampled Castleford. Northey, Hammond, Newlove, with his third try, Matautia and, finally, Prescott, going the length of the field, brought McRae and St Helens to their feet.
SCORERS: Castleford: Tries: Smith, Goddard, Sampson. Goals: Goddard (2). St Helens: Tries: Newlove (3), Arnold, Sullivan, Joynt, Northey, Hammond, Matautia, Prescott. Goals: Goulding (9).
CASTLEFORD: J Flowers; C Smith, A Flynn, R Goddard, J Coventry; G Steadman, G Stephens; D Sampson, C Maskill, N Sykes, I Smales (sub: L Harland, 15min), A Schick (sub: B Tuuta, 50), T Nikau.
ST HELENS: S Prescott; D Arnold, A Northey, P Newlove, A Sullivan; K Hammond, R Goulding; A Perelini (sub: V Matautia, 33), K Cunningham, A Leatham (sub: Perelini, 54), C Joynt, S Booth, D Busby (sub: P Veivers, 63).
Referee: S Cummings.
IT WAS Hemel Hempstead Royals' bad luck to meet London Towers, the Budweiser League leaders, last night, just 48 hours after they had suffered their first home defeat of the basketball season.
Still smarting from their unexpected 73-72 loss against Birmingham Bullets on Friday, the Towers made the Royals pay at Wembley, crushing the league's bottom club 86-57 to stay two points clear of the champions, Sheffield Sharks.
Should London follow last month's victory over the Sharks by beating them again on Friday week, the title will probably be theirs. "At the moment, it's a two-horse race, but, if they win that game, there will be only one horse in it," Chris Wright, the Sheffield owner, said.
Danny Lewis, who had not only failed to score against the Bullets but did not even attempt a shot, made some amends by scoring 24 points against the Royals, four more than his fellow American, Tony Windless.
The Sharks gained their fifth victory of the season against Manchester Giants, 71-68. Garnet Gayle was their saviour. Facing the prospect of a rare reverse when they trailed 67-65 with three minutes left, Gayle scored six successive points, including a three-pointer, to open a decisive gap.
The Giants are out of contention, having also lost at home by 83-77 to Worthing Bears on Saturday. Colin Irish produced the match-winning contribution, scoring 33 points for Worthing. His new team-mate, Tim Garrett, scored just four and admitted afterwards: "I couldn't score a basket to save my life."
THE Royal Air Force is reviewing its exchange posting scheme after a crash last month involving a Tornado flown by an Italian pilot.
An RAF Tornado GR1 from 14 Squadron at Bruggen in Germany crashed into a wood southwest of Munster. The pilot, an Italian Air Force officer, and the RAF navigator both ejected safely.
"The scheme is under scrutiny following this crash," a senior officer said. "There have been a number of incidents which confirm our view that Italian pilots can be too temperamental when cool heads are required."
The £20 million Tornado suffered a minor instrument failure, but not at a critical moment. Concern was expressed as to why the Italian ordered immediate ejection.
The scheme involves crew from the United States and other European air forces. "The Yanks are by far the nearest to our standards but the Italians leave much to be desired," the officer said.
Correction: Headline: Tornado crash;Letter;Correction Issue Date: Saturday Febru ary 10, 1996 Page: 21 From Air Commodore G. L. McRobbie Sir, Contrary to you r report ("Rethink on RAF swaps after crash", February 5), we would like to make clear that the RAF is not reviewing its exchange posting scheme. The Torna do which crashed near Munster in Germany last month did not suffer a "minor instrument failure", nor did its Italian pilot order or initiate the ejection sequence. The RAF respects the ability of our Italian aircrew colleagues every bit as much as we respect the abilities of our other Nato partners. All all ied air forces strive hard to achieve good flight safety standards. Yours si ncerely, GORDON McROBBIE (Director of Public Relations (RAF)), Ministry of De fence, Main Building, Whitehall, SW1. February 6.
SUPPORTERS of Lance Corporal Lee Clegg, the paratrooper who was jailed for the murder of a joyrider in West Belfast, said yesterday that they had new evidence which they hoped would quash his conviction.
Simon McKay, Clegg's legal adviser, said that ballistics tests carried out on fragments of bullets used in the shooting showed that the paratrooper did not fire an illegal shot.
Clegg, 27, was jailed for life in 1993 for the murder of Karen Reilly, who died when he and colleagues opened fire on a joyrider's car after it drove through a checkpoint in 1990. The paratrooper, who fired four shots at the car, was convicted of murder because Mr Justice Campbell ruled at Belfast Crown Court that he fired the fourth shot illegally at the back of the car after the perceived threat had passed. Clegg was released on licence last July.
Mr McKay said the report would show that a bullet previously not linked to any soldier was Clegg's fourth shot, fired at the car's front wheel-arch.
THE saga of Faustino Asprilla's proposed £7 million transfer from Parma to Newcastle United came to an abrupt end when officials of the clubs met in Milan yesterday. Parma, the Italian League club, withdrew from the deal, claiming that Newcastle had tried to cut the fee because of doubts about Asprilla's knee.
"Newcastle continue to maintain that there are problems with Asprilla's knee, and so they want a big cut in the price," Giorgio Pedraneschi, the Parma president, said after his club's 1-0 win over Sampdoria yesterday. "We have medical reports which tell us the opposite, and as a result it was not possible to reach any agreement."
With Sir John Hall away, Douglas Hall and Freddie Shepherd, two directors, in Daytona, and Freddie Fletcher on his way back from Milan, nobody from Newcastle was available to comment last night. That, at least, was in keeping with the progress of negotiations so far, the club having had little to say on the transfer from the moment that doubts surfaced about Asprilla's fitness.
The transfer has been on ice for two weeks, ever since an X-ray during Asprilla's medical revealed a problem with his knee. Parma have maintained that this was from an old injury, in 1991, and that Asprilla, the Colombia international forward, has been untroubled since. Newcastle have wanted further tests, which the Italian club refused.
Parma have maintained that the transfer was agreed, and are now considering whether to seek arbitration from Fifa, football's world governing body. "We will decide that in the next few days," Pedraneschi said. "If we do do that, it will be above all to protect ourselves, and so that everyone knows that the contract is valid and the player is healthy."
Asprilla watched Parma's win yesterday, which took them to second place in Serie A. "I am still tempted by Newcastle's offer, but, seeing how things have gone, I'm happy to stay with Parma," he said.
The Football Association of Ireland is expected to announce today that Mick McCarthy, the Millwall manager, will be the new manager in succession to Jack Charlton.
Chelsea 5 Middlesbrough 0. CHELSEA have not flowed like this, not dominated opponents or passed the ball with such mellifluous touch, for at least a quarter of a century. They were ruthless for 70 minutes yesterday, taking a pitiable Middlesbrough apart, scoring five times when the total could almost have been doubled.
It takes them to within three points of the fourth-placed team in the FA Carling Premiership. It takes the fathers of small sons back to their own boyhood when players of the essence of Charlie Cooke, Alan Hudson and Peter Osgood were filling Stamford Bridge with film stars, non-stars and tens of thousands of people who came to appreciate that the ball had a greater purpose than merely being a windbag hoofed uncaringly the length of the field by British boots.
In fact, this was the biggest Chelsea win in the top flight since 1964 and only Ruud Gullit, of this side, was alive, just, in that vintage year. Glenn Hoddle was then a youngster and is now the builder of this new Chelsea revolution, a builder who learnt that he and his wonderful brand of football was better appreciated on the Continent.
So it is that Hoddle may be a target for the Football Association as coach of England instead of the man whose team whose reserves his Chelsea so soundly whipped yesterday. Bryan Robson reiterated afterwards that he has not been offered Terry Venables's job and that he feels such an offer would be premature in his coaching life. Hoddle was somewhat more enigmatic when the same proposition was put to him by the press, for they are messengers only of speculation and Hoddle insists that nobody can turn down a job that "nobody has been offered".
Ken Bates, the Chelsea chairman, revelling in rumours of renewed feuding in the boardroom, was in typically "shy" mood on Saturday when asked if he would release his manager for the betterment of England. "Glenn would be an absolute idiot if he were to take the England job," Bates, who happens to be an FA councillor, retorted.
Yet why pontificate on what may or may not be when the football laid before the audience at Stamford Bridge was so majestic? Gullit, effectively the coach in motion, the catalyst for the quite astonishing improvement in passing and vision at Chelsea, could himself be a candidate to lead England if ever Lancaster Gate drops its appalling "no foreigners" myopia.
From midfield, Gullit orchestrated the slaughter of the Middlesbrough lambs. The visitors, still struggling to acclimatise to life in the Premiership after their promotion from the Endsleigh Insurance League first division last season, could not cope with not only Juninho but five other senior players absent. They did not show the slightest knowhow of how to stop a giant Dutchman with a 9ft stride and marvellous peripheral vision. They did not dare go forward enough to prevent David Lee, an English defender, from coming forward to stroke the ball 20 or 30 yards with his right foot as if he were ... well, another Gullit.
Thus they destroyed Middlesbrough. The first goal, it has to be said, was an error by that excellent referee, Keith Cooper. After a corner from Lee in the 25th minute, Middlesbrough pushed up out of defence, leaving Gullit patently offside, his enormous frame right in front of the goalkeeper, Walsh. Nevertheless, when Peacock struck the ball with his right foot, the shot was allowed to bounce in front of and then past the unsighted keeper and to count as a goal.
That slight excuse began Middlesbrough's haze. Three minutes later, a thoroughly legitimate second goal came via the exceptional passing ability of the Romanian, Petrescu. His arrival after two strangely wasted seasons at Sheffield Wednesday has coincided with his opening up of skills seen to the full in the Romania national team and his pass to Spencer was followed by fine control on the thigh by the little Scot and then a merciless right-foot shot across Walsh.
Seven minutes later, Gullit was pulling the strings again. He exchanged a one-two with Spencer, both of them moving off the ball with intuitive expectation, and then the Dutchman, with the goal seemingly at his mercy, selflessly turned inside instead, saw Peacock and presented his colleague with his second goal of the afternoon.
Peacock was to complete his hat-trick, the first he has scored in the Premiership, after Spencer's wonderful lob in the 55th minute, but, before then, the 21,060-strong Chelsea crowd saw something they had given up hope of seeing on their own turf a goal from Furlong. Even he, apparently a bad buy by Hoddle at over £2 million, is learning the art of refinement. Gullit, inevitably, began the move, striking the ball 40, maybe 50 yards to Petrescu. The Romanian looked for Furlong, found him and then the big centre forward gathered the ball with his left foot, held
off Liddle with body strength and
finished the goal with his right
foot.
Some people became heated by a little spat on the touchline involving Mike Kelly, the Middlesbrough goalkeeping coach, Hudson and Osgood, but why did they bother? We had watched a master class in action, we had seen before our very eyes that a foreigner like Gullit (if there are any more) can inspire and instil British players to use the ball mesmerically, inventively, accurately. Confidence, says Hoddle, is the key.
CHELSEA (3-4-2-1): K Hitchcock F Sinclair (sub: E Johnsen, 80min), D Lee, S Clarke D Petrescu, E Newton, R Gullit, T Phelan J Spencer (sub: J Morris, 74), G Peacock P Furlong.
MIDDLESBROUGH (5-3-1-1): G Walsh N Cox, N Pearson, S Vickers, C Liddle, C Morris C Hignett, K O'Halloran, C Blackmore N Barmby J-A Fjortoft (sub: P Wilkinson, 60).
Referee: K Cooper (Pontypridd).
THE political fate of David Ashby, the Tory MP who lost a libel action in December over a report that branded him a homosexual, liar and hypocrite, will be decided at a special meeting of his local Tory party next month.
He held long discussions yesterday with senior local party members who did not hide their dismay at his behaviour. The constituency party of North-West Leicestershire, which Mr Ashby won with a majority of 979, is concerned about his £500,000 legal bill and by the sleaze allegations. They were embarrassed by members of the Ashby family giving vitriolic testimony against each other.
Mr Ashby, 55, met the chairman, vice-chairman and four members of the association at his home in Ravenstone for more than three hours. They made clear that they did not want a by-election which they would almost certainly lose but would like fresh blood to fight Labour at the next general election.
Viewers of Coronation Street are using the Internet to alert each other to future twists in the plot. In the past four months, 28,000 people have logged on to the unofficial World Wide Web site devoted to news and gossip on the 35-year-old soap opera.
Two boys who were caught "train surfing" riding on top of fast-moving rail carriages may be prosecuted in what is thought to be the first case of its kind, police said yesterday. The boys, aged 12 and 14, were caught in Birkenhead, Merseyside.
THE Government will come under pressure this week to outlaw age discrimination in job advertisements after a study by Age Concern found that nearly 20 per cent bar people over 40.
More than 200 MPs of all parties are supporting a backbench Bill this Friday to help to fight ageism, which hinders millions of older people seeking work or a change of job. According to Age Concern, only 52 per cent of men between 60 and 64 are economically active compared with nearly 90 per cent in 1951.
In one Sunday newspaper last week more than 25 per cent of job adverts included phrases such as "You are probably under 40" or "Those over 50 need not apply". Most recruitment agencies are also backing the Bill. They conducted their own survey of 250 personnel directors, which showed 86 per cent regarded the under-35s as their ideal recruits for jobs ranging from cleaners to senior managers.
The Bill, introduced by David Winnick, Labour MP for Walsall, would outlaw blatant age bars in job advertisements. Mr Winnick says that similar legislation has already successfully combated sexism, racism and discrimination against the disabled.
The Labour front bench has also pledged to introduce anti-age-discrimination laws if it comes to power. Age discrimination is illegal in America, Australia and parts of Europe but the Government says it prefers a voluntary code of practice, claiming that legislation in America is unenforceable. The Confederation of British Industry says that older workers cost more and are harder to retrain.
Phillip Walker, who runs the Campaign against Age Discrimination in Employment, tried to commit suicide when he lost his directorship of an advertising company. He has compiled 5,000 case histories of age discrimination. "We have a range of people who have been discriminated against from security officers in supermarkets to chief executives," he said.
Correction: Headline: Confederation of British Industry;Correction Issue Date: T hursday February 08, 1996 Page: 5 Although the Confederation of British Indu stry is opposed to legislation outlawing age discrimination, it does not bel ieve that older workers necessarily cost more or are harder to retrain (report , February 5).
A GOLF club is being evicted from a course owned by a tycoon who was stripped of one of the world's leading pro-am golf titles last week for alleged cheating.
Members of the Welcombe Golf Club have been told that they will not be able to renew their subscriptions, which expire at the end of this month. The course is in a 157-acre park around the Welcombe Hotel near Stratford-upon-Avon, bought for an estimated £17million six years ago by Masashi Yamada, a Japanese property magnate.
Tom Wood, the club chairman, said: "We are being tipped out on to the street with nowhere to go and have been given no reason for it whatsoever. Our members are shattered and I have seen one senior member in tears.
"We have a great community spirit and want to stay together but the clubs round here are full with long waiting lists and none could take in all our 407 members." The club has used the course since 1982, paying more than £250,000 a year for facilities including a clubhouse.
There was no written contract but Mr Wood, 70, said: "We had a gentleman's agreement to use the course and nobody ever complained about anything we did. It is a fine course and we are proud of it."
The course has been highly regarded since it was upgraded to 18 holes in 1978 and last year the club hosted the Midland PGA championship.
Last week Mr Wood was called in by John Moore, the hotel's general manager, and told that members would not be allowed to use the course after February 29. They pay annual fees of £505 of which £475 is passed on to the hotel.
A spokesman at the hotel said last night that the course was being closed for refurbishment. It was not known how long this would take or whether the club members would be allowed back afterwards, he said. Hotel guests would continue to be allowed to play the course.
Mr Yamada, 72, is a keen golfer who last year partnered Bruce Vaughan, a little known American professional, in the Pebble Beach Pro-Am championship, which was founded by Bing Crosby in 1964. The pair won the title ahead of some of the best-known names in golf thanks largely to a succession of fine rounds by Mr Yamada, who was playing off a handicap of 15.
The organisers later discovered that Mr Yamada's true handicap was ten strokes better than the one he had used to help him to the title. His incorrect handicap had been issued by a club he owns in Japan. The organising committee, chaired by Clint Eastwood, decided on the evidence to strip the title from Mr Yamada.
A PSYCHIATRIST who has studied the earliest known portrait of Elizabeth I believes it shows that she was abused as a child. Dr Elinor Kapp, a consultant in child and adolescent mental health with a special interest in the history of art, says the expression of "frozen watchfulness" is reminiscent of the victims of deprived or abused childhoods.
The portrait, which hangs in the present Queen's collection at Windsor Castle, shows Elizabeth at 13 in the last year of the reign of her father, Henry VIII. Dr Kapp writes in the Psychiatric Bulletin: "Her eyes are candid but the set of her head on the neck and the folded lips show a wariness that gradually, as one studies the picture, becomes the most striking thing about it. There is a haunting loneliness about its reluctant but obsessive secrecy ... a frozen watchfulness that recalls to me countless victims of deprived or abused childhoods."
Dr Kapp points out that when Elizabeth was three her mother, Anne Boleyn, was beheaded, she was regarded as illegitimate, had three stepmothers and was the subject of constant scheming. If her childhood "were translated into modern terms, social workers would have been round at Henry's door constantly".
THREE long-serving members of Jersey's honorary police force have been sacked for alleged racial discrimination against a Brazilian clergyman who ministers to the island's Portuguese community.
The sackings came after they jointly tendered their resignations when the Rev Vivaldo Filho was made a constable's officer. Stephanie Nicolle, Jersey's acting Attorney-General, said the attitude displayed by the three showed that they were "unfit to carry out their duties".
Miss Nicolle told Gerry Sutherland, Alan Allix and Lilian Minchinton that they would not be allowed to leave the honorary police of their own volition but were being forced out for discriminating against a fellow officer "on the grounds of national and or racial origin". Mr Sutherland's wife, Annette, denied that her husband and his two colleagues were racist. "This was simply a clash of personalities. Gerry is not a racist, he has helped lots of black and coloured people in his 17 years with the police. We are terribly upset at what has happened."
Senhor Filho, who has lived in Jersey for ten years and is a British citizen, has questioned the claim that a "clash of personalities" was at the heart of an increasingly acrimonious affair. He said he had never worked with the three and met them only once, when he was elected last December.
Yesterday Senhor Filho refused to comment on the affair, but one of his supporters warmly welcomed the sackings. Leonard Springate said: "Thank God they have been given their marching orders. This has been a thoroughly disgusting business. The Rev Vivaldo is a wonderful man who gives his all to the community. He is a real Christian, which is more than can be said for some on this island who have now got their just deserts."
ANITA RODDICK, the founder of The Body Shop, is to launch a "green college" in a crusade to ensure that tomorrow's business leaders are more ethically aware.
Mrs Roddick, a former teacher, wants her courses to be as environmentally friendly as the mango body butter and raspberry ripple bath bubbles on sale in her high street stores. Lectures at her New Academy of Business will build on the lessons learnt in turning The Body Shop from a small boutique in Brighton into a global empire with 1,200 outlets.
Mrs Roddick has spent £250,000 preparing a series of short courses for those already working in industry. The next stage is to develop a masters degree awarded by an existing university and in the long-term full undergraduate courses.
Mrs Roddick spent several years as a school teacher before embarking on her business career. She now earns £122,000 as chief executive of Body Shop International.
Courses will teach regard for human rights, spirituality in business life and "socially responsible investment and finance". Mrs Roddick said: "Business education must contain the language and notion of social justice, human rights, community economics and the development of the human spirit."
Dr David Wheeler, head of ethical audit at The Body Shop and an authority on waste reduction and the re-use of materials, is helping to set up courses. Gill Coleman, who has spent four years as director of studies for the MBA in international business at Bristol University, is the academy's course director.
Four short courses are already being offered at various centres around the country by the academy, which as yet has no permanent base, and interest is spreading largely through word of mouth.
Students at Kingston and Lancaster Universities are among the first to experience the socially responsible business course which is an option for second-year undergraduates this term. The students will study the way that forward-looking companies are trying to "redefine the relationship between business and society".
A LORRY driver has lost a new job as a chauffeur in the Philippines after oversleeping and flying 2,000 miles past his stop.
Stephen Rees from Bradford was due to have disembarked in Manila to take up the post. He slept on until he woke to the sound of the pilot announcing the aircraft's approach to Tokyo.
Mr Rees, 36, claimed the cabin crew should have woken him and threatened to sue the airline, Egypt Air. He arrived in Tokyo with only £50 and the clothes he was wearing because his suitcase had been taken off in Manila.
Mr Rees said he managed to find work on a Tokyo building site to raise money for his fare home. That was not the end of his problems. He bought a ticket to Seoul, South Korea, thinking it was on the most direct route home. On arrival he was deported to Hong Kong but officials there sent him back to Seoul.
Korean Air finally gave him a ticket to England where immigration officials questioned him for several hours. In all his detour lasted 17 days and he arrived home out of work and penniless. Mr Rees said yesterday: "It's given me a few nightmares. Egypt Air would not accept responsibility for what happened.
"They even told me I shouldn't have fallen asleep and was lucky I wasn't charged for the flight to Tokyo. I left Bradford because I needed a good break. I don't think I'll be going anywhere for a while now."
John Ryan, his solicitor, said: "It's not the first time that someone has sued an airline, but it may be the first time they've sued one for not waking them up. He may have a case for breach of contract or negligence."
The Irish Navy is hoping to contribute to the Northern Ireland peace process by having its latest vessel built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Protestant East Belfast. Under a plan being drawn up by senior naval officers in the Republic, the £25 million vessel would be built in Belfast and then fitted out across the border in Cork.
The navy, which has seven ships, needs the new vessel to patrol the Republic's fishing waters in the Irish Box. Since the beginning of this year 40 Spanish fishing vessels have been allowed into the Box, which has increased the navy's work by more than 30 per cent and meant that it has had to halve the amount of time allocated to servicing.
The European Union is expected to provide the bulk of funding for the new vessel.
TONY BLAIR has watered down plans to allow British Telecom to invest billions of pounds in the information superhighway within two years of a Labour government being formed.
The Labour leader has agreed that smaller cable companies should be protected from early competition from the telecommunications giant.
Mr Blair had angered the cable industry when he announced at last year's Labour conference that the party had agreed a deal with BT giving the company access to the cable market in 1998 if Labour was in power. Some companies already installing cables said that they could be put out of business by the move.
Now Mr Blair has agreed that a Labour government would give companies seven years to establish themselves before BT could compete directly against them, meaning that BT would be able to begin only a small number of cable networks in 1998. Labour leaders have also conceded that allowing BT into the market would require two complex and time-consuming pieces of legislation.
Last year's agreement meant that BT would connect schools and hospitals to a national computer network in return for access to the home cable market.
It drew heavy criticism from the industry, the telecom regulator and Tory ministers, who claimed that Labour was giving too much opportunity to the market leader to dominate the cable industry. Michael Heseltine, when President of the Board of Trade, had ruled that BT could not enter the contest to supply cables to homes until 2002, giving smaller companies the opportunity to establish themselves.
Labour sources say that there was a need to "rebalance the equation", after Mr Blair's conference speech. The agreement to limit BT's early involvement in providing computer information follows a meeting between the smaller cable companies and Mr Blair after several months of talks between Geoff Hoon, Labour's technology spokesman, and the industry. After meetings with the Cable Communications Association, whose members are investing £2 billion a year into the cable network, Labour has agreed that it would limit BT's influence. Under Labour, the national network would not be opened to BT initially and there would be selection by area.
Dan Somers, head of Bell Cablemedia, said: "Labour has now learnt from us about what we are doing."
MICHAEL HESELTINE came under heavy criticism from his own party and from business last night for undermining government efforts to force companies to pay bills promptly.
Two days after the Government published legislation stopping companies and Whitehall departments from delaying payments, the Deputy Prime Minister advised businesses to delay paying bills if they were in financial difficulty.
Mr Heseltine yesterday repeated publicly the comments he had made in private last week, when he admitted that he had deliberately delayed paying bills when his company was in difficulty. "Everyone who has started a small business knows the strains. Many people face moments when they find it difficult to pay their bills. I certainly went through that experience and certainly in those circumstances the creditors waited for their money."
His comments, on BBC1's Breakfast with Frost, were attacked as "absolutely appalling" by Sir Michael Latham, a former Tory MP who chaired a government-appointed commission into late payment.
The proposals of the Latham commission, for an end to delaying tactics used in the construction industry, were included in a Bill published last Friday by John Gummer, the Environment Secretary. Mr Gummer bowed to pressure from Tory MPs to ensure that government departments were forced to comply rather than be allowed immunity from prosecution.
Sir Michael said: "These comments set an absolutely appalling example when the Government is trying to get payments speeded up. The result of businesses paying late is that someone else does not get the money and may go out of business.
"If a big company doesn't pay a smaller company, then the delayed payment is simply passed on, until the self-employed person at the end doesn't get paid at all. If companies or government can't afford to pay their bills, then they shouldn't order the work, and that's the message that should be put out."
Mr Heseltine amassed a fortune at the multinational Haymarket publishing empire.
John Prescott, Labour's deputy leader, has demanded an apology from Mr Heseltine, and Robin Cook, Labour's Shadow Foreign Secretary, said yesterday: "I know Mr Heseltine has been telling private audiences for two years that late payments are a good idea. The fact is that late payment is the curse of the small business."
When publishing the construction Bill on Friday, Mr Gummer underlined his determination to outlaw "notorious" delaying tactics in the construction industry. Explaining his decision to extend the rules to Whitehall, Mr Gummer said: "Government has set itself the target of becoming a best-practice client. It is only right that we should take the lead in applying these reforms to the way we do business with the construction industry."
The Confederation of British Industry is surveying members to find out whether slow bill-payment is a particular problem and how long it takes for firms to be paid. It recently issued a code of conduct encouraging members to pay their bills promptly and has a list of members who have signed up to the code. "It is of concern when people do not pay on time. It is particularly difficult for small businesses. If they are not paid on time then they cannot pay their own bills," a CBI spokeswoman said. "Some people blame late payment for their firms going under but it can never be pinpointed as the only cause."
THE managing director of LTS Rail was told only hours before the planned handover that the deal to buy one of Britain's first privatised railways was off. Chris Kinchin-Smith had spent four years planning the deal and had led the management team bidding for the line.
The team had won the franchise in December after beating three other bidders, all backed by bus groups. The management bid is thought to have won through a combination of lower subsidy than that provided to BR and an imaginative package of proposed improvements to the service known by commuters as the Misery Line.
Mr Kinchin-Smith, 46, a career railwayman with a background in engineering, gathered a team of five to launch the management bid for the company. The five are all believed to have made substantial personal financial commitments which, in some cases, could mean their houses being at risk if the company fails to perform over the life of its franchise.
One of the managers, Colin Andrews, the commercial director, resigned on Friday. He was unavailable for comment yesterday at his home in Rusthall, near Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Mr Andrews is another career railwayman, with a background in investment planning. He was appointed a director of LTS Rail in September 1994.
The allegations that came to light last week are believed to involve the allocation of revenue from the annual £1,300 all-zone London Transport passes, which can be bought from Tube or rail stations. LTS keeps 78 per cent of the revenue from passes sold at Fenchurch Street, but only half the revenue from those sold at Upminster.
It is thought that LTS staff expolited the difference by recording the sale of passes at Upminster as being made at Fenchurch Street. That way, LTS could keep more than £300 per pass that would otherwise have to go to London Transport. Rail officials are investigating.
Industry commentators said that such a practice went against the traditional spirit of co-operation and could be a pointer to the privatised railways of the future, as hard-pressed operators attempted to maximise revenue at the expense of their competitors.
"There has always been a concern that, when a person who has been used to working in the cause of public service suddenly comes under pressure to achieve personal financial targets, this sort of thing would happen," one leading industry figure said. "This would not have happened under the old system because what is the point of taking money from one state-owned body to defraud another state-owned body?"
Only hours after the last celebrating rugby fans left local pubs, Britain's first private scheduled passenger train for half a century, run by SWT Stagecoach, crept out of Twickenham before dawn yesterday.
It fell to the 0510 Sunday service to Waterloo, an otherwise unremarkable 38-minute ramble through southwest London, to herald the brave new era of the privatised railways. On the train, normally reckoned to be busy if its complement of passengers reaches double figures, yesterday's tally of nine was swelled more than ten fold by journalists, cameramen and officials.
IT WAS back to the future, an historic day for train travellers: the first privately run mainline railway for nearly half a century. Images of Brunel and Betjeman were floating through the brain.
"So, this must be a pretty exciting day for you," I whispered to a guard steering passengers towards the 10.32 to Exeter. He regarded me strangely. "Oh yeah!" he hissed. "Thrilling!"
Maybe everyone at Waterloo looked so drawn because they are having as tough a time working out what is going on as the passengers. Inquiring on different occasions since Friday, I was told there was no 10.32 to Exeter, or that there was, but you had to go by bus from Basingstoke to Reading, or change trains at Woking, or change at Basingstoke and get a bus at Pinhoe. Even a last minute double-check at Waterloo yesterday morning proved chaotic. "There is no 10.32 to Exeter," said the man in the ticket office.
"But it's up there on the departures noticeboard."
Then, four minutes later, and after flicking through some timetables, he said triumphantly: "Oh, I see what they've done," as if his advice had been correct all along. The area served by South West Trains Surrey, Hampshire and Dorset is known as the "gin and Jag belt". Now we know why: decoding the timetable sends travellers rushing for a drink and their cars.
At last we were off, through Barnes and Staines, Chertsey and Virginia Water, Woking and Hook. Shortly after leaving Basingstoke at 11.52am, the train supervisor was on the tannoy: "Due to engineering works this train will terminate at Pinhoe, where a special bus service will take passengers to Exeter. There will be no buffet facilities. This is due to circumstances beyond my control."
The train supervisor said: "The buffet staff aren't part of the same company. If they're short of staff, they just don't come, see? It don't matter what it says on the timetable, or what the station supervisor at Basingstoke tells you. I know it's advertised as a buffet service, but you're not guaranteed a buffet, see?"
And then, hungrily, to Whitchurch, Andover, Salisbury and Sherborne. At Pinhoe we boarded a coach like the ones you used to see in 1950s movies and now usually only come across as makeshift mobile homes inhabited by dog-on-a-rope travellers.
On the drive to Exeter, we had time to reflect on how beautiful the English countryside can be, and how inaccessible Britain's railways can sometimes make it seem.
Great Western, the second railway that reverted to private hands yesterday, beckoned. New manager-owners plan to pay homage to the glory days of Brunel who built the line in 1833 by adopting the original livery of pre-Victorian days.The 14 million passengers who use the Great Western each year will settle for punctual trains. On platform 5, the 14.48 for Edinburgh still hadn't arrived at 15.15. The 15.10 to Manchester didn't leave till 15.28. Our own 15.27 to Paddington was a modest 11 minutes late.
"I thought that under the new management all the trains would be running on time," harrumphed one passenger to a guard.
"Well," a guard replied, reassuringly, "perhaps the new management intends to run it just the way it's always been run."
And back to London by InterCity, stopping just twice before catching sight of Brunel's "railway cathedral" of Paddington, which helps to restore your faith in rail travel. Just remember to bring your own sandwiches.
Michael Volino, a New York police sergeant, failed to win a million dollars by kicking a 35-yard field goal during half-time at an American football game in Hawaii. The ball bobbled along the ground. "It was a little hard to concentrate," Sgt Volino said. He got a $10,000 consolation prize.
Most of the antiques worth £50,000 stolen from the Duke and Duchess of Kent last week have been recovered after being offered to dealers, Sussex police said early today.
SARAH COOK, the Essex teenager who married an 18-year-old Turkish waiter, will return to Britain today, according to a report last night from Turkey.
Essex Social Services and Foreign Office officials were trying to confirm that Sarah, 13, had been persuaded to leave Turkey by her mother, Jackie Cook. If she does return she will be forced to surrender her passport after a decision by the High Court in London to make her a ward of court after her illegal marriage to Musa Komeagac. The social service department has given assurances that it would not seek to take Sarah into care.
Turkey's semi-official Anatolian news agency said that Sarah and her mother would be flying from Adana on the Turkish Mediterranean coast to Istanbul and then to Britain. The agency reported Mr Komeagac's father, Ali, saying: "It wasn't Sarah's idea but for some time her mother has been putting pressure on her to leave. I'm sorry that it is happening. My son is still in jail. We loved her more than our own daughter but by tomorrow she'll be gone."
Musa Komeagac is due to appear in court again in 10 days' time, charged with statutory rape.
At the weekend, Sarah appeared wearing a conservative Muslim headdress on the cover of the religious weekly, Aksyon Magazine. There she explained how she willingly embraced Islam and that she had no intention of leaving her spiritual home.
MORE than 70,000 women are to be recalled for cervical cancer smear tests after checks revealed errors at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital.
Letters are to be sent to the women warning them that their results could be wrong and a helpline is being set up today to allay the fears of those affected by what is believed to be the largest case of its kind.
The problem was identified during quality control procedures being introducted in laboratories. Routine checks revealed that the hospital had a "higher than normal rate of error". The results were so worrying they were sent for another independent test; in some cases staff may have failed to spot early signs.
RUSSELL BROWN, 4, thought they were two unexpected friends to keep him company after he woke to go to the lavatory in the middle of the night.
He chatted politely to the burglars, helpfully pointing out his mum and dad's most valued possessions. He promised to be a good boy and make no noise while his parents slept upstairs.
He showed them the video recorder and the hi-fi. He told them where his mother kept her purse hidden in the kitchen, with more than £200 set aside for the week's groceries. He obliged with another £100 from the mortgage fund in a pot at the back of a cupboard in the living room. He remembered that the garden shed at the bottom of the garden at his home in Alderman's Green, Coventry, was never locked. The burglars helped themselves to Russell's father's Christmas present, a power drill.
Russell held open the back door while his new friends loaded their haul into a car. He went back to bed, while his parents Russell and Wendy and his sister Reanne, 2, slept on.
At 9am Reanne woke her parents to say they had better get up because Russell had made a mess in the living room. They took the children to Mrs Brown's sister, who telephoned later to say that Russell had confessed to his part in the burglary last week. "We thought he was dreaming it," Mr Brown, 31, said, " but when the police came round to take a statement from him they said that he was telling the truth. His description of events was too detailed to be made up."
The Browns said they had not punished their son. "At the end of the day you've just got to laugh about it. Anything could have happened to him, so we're glad he's OK."
Three men have been arrested and charged in connection with the burglary.
A YOUNG woman became the first female firefighter to die on active duty yesterday when the roof of a blazing supermarket collapsed after she went inside to check for trapped people.
Fleur Lombard, 21, was hit by falling debris after entering the building with another officer. He went home after hospital treatment for facial burns, cuts and bruises.
The two were found and pulled clear by six colleagues after becoming trapped minutes after fighting their way into Leo's supermarket in Staple Hill, near Bristol. Paramedics tried to revive Miss Lombard but she died minutes after reaching hospital.
Miss Lombard had been a firefighter for about two years. She was one of the first women to join the 700-strong Avon Fire Brigade full-time, having served in Derby as a part-time retained firefighter. Only a handful of women have taken the opportunity to become firefighters since Britain allowed them to serve on active duty in 1982.
Her father, Roger Lombard, a businessman, of Furness Vale, New Mills, , Derbyshire, said: "We were extremely proud of her. She died doing what she wanted to do. Our only consolation is we have been told she knew nothing of what happened.
"She achieved the extremely high distinction of being the first female fire officer to be awarded the Silver Axe." The honour goes to each 15-week training course's best recruit.
Rob Seaman, 27, the officer in the building with Miss Lombard, was recovering at home last night with his wife, Sarah, and their six-month-old daughter. Mrs Seaman, a nurse, said: "He was very lucky to get out alive. Physically his wounds are superficial but mentally the scars will go much deeper."
John Terry, Avon deputy chief fire officer, said: "Our job was to get in straight away and that was what she did. She died doing her job. Everyone in the brigade is absolutely devastated."
Andrew Smith, 29, a fireman who served with Miss Lombard in Derbyshire, said she was "the best firefighter I have ever seen". He added: "She was brilliant and excelled at everything she did."
The alarm was raised about midday by Sylvia Anstey, 45, who said: "I saw a blanket of thick black smoke gushing through the windows. A couple were climbing out of ground-floor office windows."
Staff cleared the building within minutes of flames being seen. Miss Lombard was with the first two units to arrive from the Speedwell station, about a mile away.
It took four hours to bring the blaze, fought by 60 firefighters with eight fire appliances and a turntable ladder, under control. The building was gutted.
Last night, the shell was still burning and the cause of the fire was being investigated. The brigade confirmed that investigators were looking at the possibility that a flashover, or rolling wall of flame, caused by spirits from the drinks section, had exploded and brought the roof down.
Since 1990, some 21 firefighters have been killed in Britain. The tragedy came three days after two who served part-time Stephen Griffin, 42, and Kevin Lane, 32 died in Blaina, Gwent. They had gone back into a house for a child who had been saved.
BRITAIN has more than 300 criminal gangs with between 5,000 and 10,000 members who pose a greater threat than the Triads, the Mafia and the Yardies, according to a police report on organised crime.
The report, drawn up by senior detectives from 11 forces, will show that a new breed of young gangster is ousting the traditional underworld families. The gangs are supported by 300 top criminals who arrange and finance their operations.
They operate across towns and cities, making their money from an ever-expanding trade in drugs, theft of performance cars, serious fraud and armed robbery.
Although violence is used over "turf wars", there is so much criminal business available that the gangs do not need to compete, it says.
The report, to be circulated to chief constables this month, will show that police are ill-prepared to deal with the growing threat from organised crime because of poor co-operation between forces, parochial attitudes and inadequate information.
Chief constables are already making plans for the creation of a new national CID unit, and MI5 is being brought in. Last month, Colin Phillips, the assistant chief constable of Greater Manchester, said: "The biggest threat is now from local criminals who organise themselves for a common purpose. There is no godfather who runs everything."
GOVERNMENT plans for a high-profile launch of yesterday's rail privatisation were left in disarray as ministers faced demands for a criminal investigation into allegations that a private operator was involved in ticket fraud.
The sale of the London, Tilbury and Southend service, known to commuters as "the Misery Line", was stopped by Sir George Young, the Transport Secretary, just ten hours before it was due to go ahead.
At 2am yesterday, private companies took control of scheduled passenger services for the first time since the railways were nationalised in 1948. Two out of three private operators took charge. South West Trains, from Waterloo to Hampshire, Dorset, Surrey and southwest London, and Great Western, to the South West and South Wales, will run 1,000 trains a day.
LTS was due to take over its service at the same time, but a routine audit by British Rail on Thursday uncovered "a serious breach" of rules governing ticket revenue, involving up to £30,000 a month. The revenues due to London Transport, which shares several stations with LTS Rail, are believed to have been rerouted to the train operator's bank, although there has been no question of personal financial gain. Colin Andrews, the commercial director of LTS, resigned on Friday.
Department of Transport officials were told immediately and Chris Kinchin-Smith, the managing director of LTS Rail, informed his five-man board on Friday that Mr Andrews had resigned.
Ministers spent Friday debating whether the sale should be stopped. On Saturday, a story appeared in a national newspaper and the BBC's South East television news reported Mr Andrews's resignation. Sir George decided to ditch the proposed sale at around 5pm on Saturday.
Brian Wilson, Labour's transport spokesman, said yesterday he had written to the Director of Public Prosecutions urging an immediate inquiry because the breach involved public money. "This is not an internal matter for the Government," he said.
Labour will seek to exploit the issue again on Wednesday when they have a Commons debate on rail privatisation.
Sir George played down the suspension of the franchise. "This is a momentous day for the railways and I hope that, in years to come, people will look back on today as a turning point the point at which the renaissance of the railways began," he said.
"We would have liked to have got three out of three away today but we have got two out of three ... I hope we can sort out the matter of LTS Rail soon. It is a good bid, they have promised new stock and an improved service."
However, he could not disguise the damage inflicted on the Government. Ministers had hoped that it had weathered the worst of the political row over its highly unpopular rail privatisation proposals.
Rail experts said the incident raised new concerns about the structure of the new-look railways, in which dozens of private operators must co-operate over the allocation of ticket revenue. Twelve franchises, almost half those up for sale, have to share revenue with London Transport.
Mr Wilson claimed that the first privatised train was in fact a bus, when engineering works forced South West Trains's 1.12am Sunday service from Waterloo to Southampton Central to finish at Eastleigh, Hampshire. Passengers had to board a bus for the last five miles of their trip.
"It is a fiasco," said Mr Wilson, who was at Eastleigh station at 3am yesterday to meet the bus. "The first train has turned out to be a bus and there's going to be an awful lot of that under privatisation."
WHEN Oliver Askaroff, managing director of Simplantex Health Care, took on a student through Step last summer, he could hardly have realised the effect this would have, both on his business and the student, Caroline Todd (above). "We were startled by what she achieved," he says.
The company, at Eastbourne, East Sussex, is a brand leader in the manufacture, sale and distribution of accessories for electric scooters and wheelchairs for children and adults. Ms Todd's project was market research the first of its kind to discover the clothing needs of disabled people. She organised a questionnaire, arranged mailshots, conducted interviews and won publicity on television and radio. She also chose the designs and designer.
Now Simplantex is investing £185,000 in a manufacturing unit for a range of clothes for wheelchair-users. In three years, the company expects to have created 20 new jobs; seven have already been filled.
Ms Todd, a 21-year-old history undergraduate at Birmingham, won the 1995 "Most Enterprising British Student" award of £1,000.
MORE small businesses will have the opportunity in 1996 to employ second-year undergraduates for project-based assignments during the summer vacation.
Thousands of small companies have benefited since Shell Technology Enterprise Programme (Step) began in 1986, with a pilot scheme in the North East. Last year 1,200 students and companies were brought together. This year, the tenth anniversary, it is hoped there will be 1,300.
Long-term benefits include cost savings, job creation and higher turnover. Last year's survey of Step employers found that more than 96 per cent are likely to take part again. As one employer puts it: "Companies like ours have no spare capacity for developing projects, and these students are at an age to have initiative and a lively mind." Many companies, realising the value of their contribution, decide to employ a graduate for the first time.
Students also gain: they acquire skills and experience during the eight-week scheme and realise the career possibilities offered by smaller companies.
Payment is £100 a week, the employer and Step paying half each. The scheme is supported by the Department of Trade and Industry, which is currently investing £500,000 over three years.
This year Step planners hope to achieve national coverage, filling gaps in Scotland such as Highlands and Islands. They also want to locate more companies, around Manchester, Birmingham and North Yorkshire, and to have a programme in the area of every training and enterprise council, local enterprise company and Business Link.
"We hope to raise the profile of the programme among small businesses, and show the result it can have on their bottom line," said Liz Rhodes, director of Step, who can be contacted on 0171-936 3556. "There is a great demand by students for work placements, and we want businesses to be aware of the potential."
Sally Watts assesses the Shell-sponsored scheme that allows businesses to focus on product development.
One of the big attractions of the Shell Technology Enterprise Programme (Step) is that it gives small businesses the opportunity to develop a sound idea. This was the case ten years ago when Roger Pannell, an electronics engineer, set up Global Communications (UK) near Maldon, Essex, to make components for satellite television.
At first there was only himself and his wife, Helen Crossley, the company secretary. Now there are 25 employees in design, marketing and business, plus sub-contractors. Most of the products are exported. In 1994 the firm took on two Step students. One, studying production engineering, implemented manufacturing software.
The project for the second John Cooper, a UMIST student of electrical and electronic engineering was to take forward Global's noted ADX black box, which upgrades and transforms an old satellite receiver into a modern one. Some 500,000 have been sold. John designed a box that allowed viewers to receive programmes from two different satellites, whereas previously they were limited to one block of channels. Now a graduate, he is back with Global as a design engineer. "We were impressed with the quality and quantity of his work," says Mr Pannell. "I would recommend Step as an economical way of developing an idea ... held up for want of time and money."
After employing a Step student for the first time last summer, the tiny Monmouth company of Hughes Whitlock has signed up its first full-time graduate. The company manufactures instruments that detect bacteria and measure surface contamination, ranging from radio isotopes to microbes.
Zoe Davis, 22, a biological science student at Exeter University, was supplied by Step for eight weeks to assist in developing and refining a protocol for using the bioprobe to establish the level of contamination in water. Part of her remit was to experiment with the reagent needed to get the best performance from the instruments.
Ms Davis's achievement was to move the protocol forward; it is now the established method within the company for checking the level of microbes present in water.
Doreen Whitlock, who has run the company since her husband, Gerald, died, believes that both the business and Ms Davis benefited from the Step programme. "It helped us decide to take on our first staff graduate a young male microbiologist and we are very pleased," she said. "If a vacancy exists when Zoe graduates, we will seriously consider offering her a job too, and we hope to take more Step students."
Mrs Whitlock believes the project made Ms Davis aware of the possibilities and pressures of working for a small firm, and the skills needed.
WEST INDIES last night followed Australia's lead by asking for their World Cup match in Sri Lanka to be switched, further undermining the troubled competition that is scheduled to begin next week.
Hours after Australian cricket officials had announced that they would not be sending their team to Colombo, a statement from the West Indies Board of Control revealed that it has requested the World Cup committee to move their match against Sri Lanka, on February 25, away from the island. The inference is that, like Australia, West Indies would rather face the consequences of refusing the fixture than the potential consequences of playing it.
The West Indies squad is at a training camp in Barbados, where some of the players have expressed concerns about going to Colombo. Yesterday morning, having risen to hear the latest developments in Australia and India, the president of the West Indies board, Peter Short, said that the paramount issue was the safety of his players. The board's unambiguous threat to follow the Australians' action was issued yesterday evening.
Pilcom, the joint Pakistan-India-Sri Lanka committee, is now in a fearful mess. Despite Australia's entreaties, Pilcom has declined to countenance switching matches away from Colombo, where 80 people died in a city-centre bombing last week, and must now decide how to handle the decision by two of the leading teams not to play there.
Australia and West Indies may be told that they must forfeit the points from the games concerned, which would, coincidentally, smooth Sri Lanka's path towards a favourable quarter-final. Conceivably, as Mark Taylor, the Australia captain, acknowledged yesterday, his team and the West Indies could be disqualified. Much the most rational option, utilising available grounds in India to stage the games, seems to have been sacrificed to stubbornness and political grandstanding. It would take an act of judicious humility by Pilcom to reconsider.
The issues here have little or nothing to do with cricket. Sri Lanka's Government is understandably anxious to avoid giving any signals of weakness against terrorism and, to this end, is effectively seeking cricketers as hostages to fortune. Pilcom, already facing barely practicable completion schedules on ground improvements and under constant pressure from the television companies who are making the event prosperous, are equally anxious not to move the furniture at short notice.
These twin motivators brought forth some ripe comments yesterday, none more striking than those from Lakshman Kadiragamar, the Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka, after his announcement that the Australians, if they would reconsider their position, could expect the type of security normally only offered to visiting heads of state and would need only to stop in his country for one night.
He was probably wasting his breath but, undeterred, he said: "Great sportsmen are always under constant threat from lunatics and psychopaths. Being a sportsman is not a cakewalk but, eventually, it is the viewing public that matters. You try not to let them down. Despite the Munich massacre, the Australians took part in the Olympics. It must be too much of a courageous act for today's sportsmen to take part in a match in Sri Lanka."
As if this tub-thumping was not enough to alienate further the Australians, Kadiragamar then ridiculed the fears of Shane Warne that he could be a casualty of a bombing while out shopping in Colombo. "Where is the time to shop during a one-day match?" asked the politician, adding scornfully: "Shopping is for cissies."
No one is under greater stress, with the opening ceremony only five days distant, than the convener of Pilcom, Jagmohan Dalmiya. He is deserving of sympathy, though he may regret his ill-judged comment on the Australian request for a venue switch. "We have considered it carefully," he said, "and the situation does not warrant a change." Given the sensitivities between Australia and Sri Lanka even before the bombing last week, one wonders quite what circumstances Dalmiya would require before agreeing to a change.
The Australian board, while under no illusions about the seriousness of its latest move, cannot be blamed for its caution. Taylor explained: "There was no lobbying of the ACB by the players. The board has made a unanimous decision which took it out of our hands." Taylor admitted to being "relieved", an emotion shared by Warne, who asked "is it worth risking our lives?"
Australia are due to revisit Sri Lanka in August for a three-Test tour but the political unrest would need to have calmed considerably for that series to go ahead. Yesterday, Leicestershire, who had arranged a pre-season trip to Sri Lanka next month, cancelled it, while from Lahore, where England are warming up for the competition, Raymond Illingworth, the team manager, spoke supportively of the Australian stance.
"You have to feel sympathy for what they have done," Illingworth said. "It would have been a difficult situation for us if we had been due to play in Colombo." England do play in some sensitive areas, and in both Peshawar and Karachi they will be heavily guarded and advised not to leave their hotels. However, the assistant manager, John Barclay, said yesterday that he was satisfied with the Pakistani security arrangements.
Indeed, while other countries debate where and whether to play, England's concerns yesterday extended only to where they might take refreshments. Their first game in Pakistan, against the United Arab Emirates on February 18, falls in Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, and they have been told that, when drinks intervals fall due, they must take them out of public view in the dressing-room.
Faustino Asprilla's £6.7 million move from Parma to Newcastle United could still go ahead, the Italian club's lawyer said yesterday. Leandro Cantamessa put the problems surrounding the transfer down to "misunderstandings" about the deal and Asprilla's fitness.
AFTER weeks of speculation, Mick McCarthy, the Millwall manager, was yesterday confirmed as manager of Ireland in succession to Jack Charlton. His appointment was announced at a press conference here yesterday afternoon.
"Mick had an excellent career, has a superb background, he was a widely experienced player, is an experienced manager and we are excited that he has agreed to join with us," Louis Kilcoyne, the president of the Football Association of Ireland (FAI), said. "There is a difficult road ahead, but it's the dawn of a new era for Irish football, and an exciting prospect for Mick."
The announcement was hardly a surprise. As Kilcoyne conceded, several names were discussed initially when the FAI were looking for a manager with a higher profile than McCarthy, but moves for Alex Ferguson, Howard Wilkinson and Joe Royle were blocked by their clubs.
So, ultimately, was a move for Kenny Dalglish, who had widespread support. Although Dave Bassett and Kevin Moran both impressed in a round of interviews, McCarthy, Charlton's captain for most of his 57 caps, was the favourite even before Joe Kinnear withdrew last week.
"It's a job I've always wanted and I'm looking forward to it," McCarthy said after being offered the job at his meeting with the FAI executive. "It is an exciting prospect, but it is a bit of a daunting one as well following on the years of success that we've had. But that can't deter me from what I want to do, which is to have a go at it and try to qualify for the World Cup in France." McCarthy's contract initially ends in two years, taking him up to those World Cup finals. He is under no illusions about the requirements of the job.
"If we get to France, they'll probably be talking about me being here for ten years. If we don't, I could be on the next ferry out of Dun Laoghaire," he said. McCarthy will, at least, waste no time in taking up his post. Tomorrow he flies to Malta to watch Russia, who will visit Lansdowne Road at the end of March, which is when he will meet his own squad. Lack of knowledge of his own team, however, should not be too much of a problem.
McCarthy has played with many of them, his last game for Ireland coming in 1992, and since then he has stayed close to the Ireland scene, talking regularly to Charlton. He watched their last two matches under Charlton, the defeats by Portugal and Holland at the end of last year, which brought Charlton's ten years in charge to an untimely end.
Following Charlton, who transformed the status of the game in Ireland as well as that of the national team, is not easy. Charlton's team qualified for two World Cups and the 1988 European championship, raising expectations possibly beyond realism. McCarthy will have to try to meet them with a team many observers think is in decline.
"Some of the players are ageing and I will have to have a talk with them about how they feel. But it is also exciting to find new players and to try to produce a team capable of competing in the way we did," McCarthy said.
One player he is likely to try to persuade to make himself available for Ireland is Chris Armstrong, the Tottenham Hotspur striker. Armstrong is eligible for Ireland because of an Irish grandmother and he had been approached by Charlton a year ago, without success. Yet, as one of McCarthy's former players at Millwall, the manager clearly feels it would be worth having another try.
McCarthy's appointment is, in many ways, a vote for continuity, with some commentators dubbing the Barnsley-born McCarthy "son of Jack". Both are tall, both were uncompromising centre halves from mining backgrounds, but behind the bluff exteriors there are differing philosophies. "I probably had more rows with Jack than anyone," McCarthy said. His approach at Millwall certainly speaks for different views on the game.
Yesterday he suggested that, depending on the players available, he might play with a sweeper, an approach that Charlton would not consider.
The prospect of Frank Williams, the Williams team owner, and his technical director, Patrick Head, facing manslaughter charges over the death of Ayrton Senna at the San Marino Grand Prix in May 1994 receded yesterday. Italian legal sources said that it was "increasingly unlikely" that any action would be brought against them.
THE Benetton Formula One team began life after Michael Schumacher here yesterday by swapping their roaring cars for a horse and cart. In a day laden with symbols of renewal and rebirth, they launched their attempt to retain the world constructors' and drivers' championships won so convincingly last year by creating a new identity for themselves.
They colonised this small, chic resort town in the shadow of Mount Etna, bedecked it with posters and flags and used it to bathe in their recently established Italian nationality and the Sicilian heritage of their new star driver, Jean Alesi. In a riot of pomp and celebration that cost more than £1 million, they made a clean break with their glorious past to make a show of going back to their roots.
Formula One had never seen a launch like it. It began in an ampitheatre used by the Romans to stage gladiatorial combat with the unveiling of the car that Alesi and his team-mate, Gerhard Berger, will drive this season against the might of Ferrari and Schumacher, and the championship favourites, Williams and Damon Hill. The blue drape was pulled away in a flourish to reveal the Benetton-Renault on a pedestal against a backdrop of huge stone columns and a majestic view.
Then Alesi and Berger drove their cars through alleys so narrow they made the streets of Monaco look like six-lane highways, besieged by a delighted and clamouring crowd. After they had completed a pit-stop in a piazza, the drivers leapt into a cart and were led back through the throng by a white horse adorned by a head-dress of ostrich feathers. It seemed like a medieval feast day.
The event was a prime example of the Benetton philosophy of taking the sport to the people. Journalists were flown in from all over the world to witness the team embracing its Italian nationality. "We are a team now with a heart that beats in Italian," Alessandro Benetton said. "But we communicate all over the world in different languages. It is important we carry on as the smiling team in Formula One."
At the centre of the festivities was Alesi, the man Benetton have singled out as possessing the charisma and driving style to lessen the trauma of Schumacher's departure. The new man was treated as a returning hero by the thousands who lined the Corso Umberto, the main thoroughfare. One group of supporters danced in front of his car holding up a banner thatread: "Alesi, your hour has come."
In his four years at Ferrari, Alesi never quite fulfilled the great expectations he had built up in his short time at Tyrrell. But Flavio Briatore, the Benetton managing director, has taken him to his heart, determined to create the supportive atmosphere many feel he needs to thrive. Although born in Avignon, in France, his parents were both natives of Sicily and he was christened Giovanni. And so the idea of a launch here was conceived.
More and more it seems that, although he and Berger are supposed to enjoy equal status within the team, Alesi may be more equal than the Austrian. The team is adamant that both will be treated the same, but Berger may find himself struggling to compete.
"I used to come here as a child for holidays," Alesi said, "but I never imagined I would ever be here driving a Formula One car through the streets. It was an amazing feeling being so close to the people and being able to feel their enthusiasm.
"When I was with Ferrari, I was with a really top team. But, by joining Benetton, I know I have joined a winning team. They have won the drivers' world championship for the last two years and I have to work now to be able to continue this level of success.
"I feel I have a chance to do my best again now and be able to do something really good. It is a strong feeling. I know that I have great possibilities at Benetton and my ambition to be world champion is clear."
At the end of a day that was crowned by the presentation of last year's championship trophy by Max Mosley, president of the International Motor Sport Federation (Fia), Briatore was exultant. "Before, no one knew whether we were English or Italian," he said. "Now everyone knows."
PETER WHITEHEAD, the leading British marathon runner in the world athletics championships last year, was rewarded yesterday for his personal financial commitment to his athletics when he was chosen to run in the Atlanta Olympic Games. Alan Warner, the chairman of Great Britain's marathon selectors, described Whitehead as "a journeyman runner who has made all the sacrifices".
On the strength of a best time of 2hr 17min, at the age of 29, Whitehead gave up his job, remortgaged his house, left his wife working in a bank in Leeds and went to Albuquerque, where heat and altitude provided him with an ideal training environment. Nine months later, in August last year, he finished fourth in the world championships in Gothenburg. It was a steamy day but the closest African finished four minutes behind. The humidity and heat of Atlanta hold no fears for him.
Since Gothenburg, Whitehead has remortgaged his house again and turned down $20,000 (about £13,000) to compete in Korea next month. His debts are mounting, especially after another spell in Albuquerque and spending more than £1,000 on treatment for a pelvic injury. His selection yesterday was conditional on him proving his fitness in a "competitive" half-marathon by May 31.
"I have been paying my rent, paying to live, and paying for treatment, while Sandra [his wife] has been living in Leeds," Whitehead, now back in Britain for specialist advice, said. "I could have done the marathon in Korea, turned up half-fit and taken the money, which would have sorted me out financially, but it would have risked bringing the injury back on.
"It could have jeopardised my Olympics so I am saying ‘no'. I am putting everything on the line for Atlanta."
The other runner selected yesterday, Richard Nerurkar, the 1993 World Cup winner, has also been injured but has almost recovered. He, too, must prove his fitness in a half-marathon by May 31.
Only two of the three places have been filled, so the announcement yesterday that Eamonn Martin, Paul Evans, Gary Staines and Jon Solly will contest the Flora London Marathon on April 21 is timely. The remainder of the Britain Olympic squad will be announced a week later. Two women will be added to join Liz McColgan, named yesterday, plus reserves.
Warner insisted that London did not constitute a run-off and that "performances in the type of conditions that are going to pertain in Atlanta" remained important.
However, any Briton winning in London would surely have to be picked. Disquiet yesterday that Nerurkar has been selected prematurely would reach a crescendo if, with only one place left, two men beat 2hr 10min, which no Briton has since 1989.
THERE was more than a touch of irony when Darren Morgan celebrated in a somewhat confrontational manner after his dramatic 6-5 victory over Peter Ebdon on a respotted black in the second round of the Benson and Hedges Masters at Wembley Conference Centre yesterday.
Twelve months ago traditionalist eyebrows were raised when Ebdon, full of adrenalin, held his cue aloft and gave a clenched-fist salute after fighting back from a 4-2 deficit to beat Stephen Hendry in the quarter-finals. It was, therefore, surprising that he found Morgan's similar expression of joy hard to accept.
Admittedly, after rolling in the all-important tie-break black to a balk pocket, Morgan did shake Ebdon's hand rather ferociously, but it was difficult to imagine that there was any malice behind this.
More likely, Morgan's over-exuberance was fuelled by the relief of having been given the chance to make amends for missing a straightforward blue in the deciding frame that allowed Ebdon to clear up and level at 74 points each.
Ebdon did not see it that way, saying: "It makes no odds to me, but I considered it unprofessional and immature." Playing down the incident, Morgan said: "I've had a go at Peter in the past for doing it but, when I got in that situation, I couldn't help myself. I went a bit mad."
From 4-2 up, Ebdon totalled 22 points in three frames to fall 5-4 behind before he potted 12 reds with 12 blacks for a 96 break in the tenth frame. A maximum break had looked possible but, with a Mercedes and £10,000 on the line, he missed a tricky thirteenth red across the top cushion.
Andy Hicks, who saves his best performances for the big occasions, made an exceptional Wembley debut when he beat David Roe 5-2 in their wild-card play-off match. Hicks, playing on a sponsor's invitation, became only the second player to compile three century breaks in a best-of-nine-frame contest at the event with runs of 102, 125 and 103.
Women's championship
The world championship for women is currently in progress in the Spanish town of Jaen. In the first round the defending champion, Xie Jun of China, defeated her challenger, Zsuzsa Polgar from Hungary, the eldest of the three prodigious Polgar sisters. Two further draws followed, after which Polgar equalised the score in game four.
White: Zsuzsa Polgar
Black: Xie Jun
Women's world championship, January 1996
Benko's Opening
1 g3 g6
2 Bg2 Bg7
3 e4 e5
4 Ne2 Nc6
5 c3 Nge7
6 d4 exd4
7 cxd4 d5
8 e5 f6
9 f4 0-0
10 0-0 Bg4
11 Nbc3 fxe5
12 fxe5 Rxf1+
13 Qxf1 Qd7
14 h3 Rf8
15 Nf4 g5
16 hxg4 gxf4
17 gxf4 Qxg4
18 Qe2 Qg3
19 Qf2 Qxf2+
20 Kxf2 Nxd4
21 Nxd5 Ng6
22 Nc3 c6
23 Be3 Bxe5
24 Rd1 Nxf4
25 Bxf4 Rxf4+
26 Ke3 Nf5+
27 Kd3 Rg4
28 Bh3 Rd4+
29 Ke2 Rxd1
30 Nxd1 Nd6
31 b4 Kg7
32 a4 Kf6
33 Nf2 Bd4
34 Nd3 b6
35 Nf4 c5
36 Nd5+ Ke5
37 bxc5 bxc5
38 Ne7 a6
39 a5 Nc4
40 Nc6+ Kd6
41 Nb8 Kc7
42 Nxa6+ Kb7
43 Nxc5+ Bxc5
44 a6+ Kb6
45 Kd3 Nd6
46 Ke2 Kxa6
47 Kf3 Kb6
48 Be6 Kc7
49 Kg4 Kd8
50 Kh5 Be3
51 Bg8 h6
52 Bb3 Ke7
53 Kg6 Ne4
54 Bd1 Ke6
55 Bg4+ Ke5
56 Bd1 Bg5
57 Be2 Kf4
58 Bd1 Ng3
59 Ba4 h5
60 Bd7 h4
White resigns
Diagram of final position
Raymond Keene writes on chess Monday to Friday in Sport and in the Weekend section on Saturday.
RACING'S rulers and paymasters were seriously at odds yesterday over the Ladbrokes report which advocates important changes to the controversial "customer-friendly" fixture list.
Rodney Brack, chief executive of the Horserace Betting Levy Board, confirmed the analysis produced by Britain's biggest bookmakers that switching dozens of meetings from afternoons to evenings had affected off-course betting turnover and all-important levy revenue, which underpins the sport's finances.
He disclosed the betting decline would contribute to the closure of 700 of the nation's 9,500 betting shops in 1996 and implicitly acknowledged the need for the fixture list to be fine-tuned to satisfy the interests of the off-course betting industry as well as the needs of racecourses.
However, David Oldrey, the chairman of the British Horseracing Board (BHB) and mastermind of the fixture list, rebutted the central plank of Ladbrokes' financial analysis, warned of the dangers posed by their suggested reforms to the fixture list and insisted the principles behind his "customer-friendly" fixture policy were correct.
Switching meetings back to the afternoons was not "good business" for racing, he said. The fixture list had resulted in the best racecourse crowds for years. Overall, National Hunt's coffers had benefited from summer jump racing and Ladbrokes' recommendations to have round-the-year Flat racing could be "catastrophic" for jumping's finances.
"We are making considerable efforts to accommodate the views of the off-course bookmakers in agreeing on guidelines for the 1997 list and it is disappointing to see so little actual response in substance from Ladbrokes, even if the rhetoric is a considerable advance," Oldrey said.
"Perhaps it is as well to make clear that the BHB has no intention of going back on the principles of its customer-friendly fixture policy. That being so, it is impossible to fulfil more of Ladbrokes' wish list for 1997 than we have already indicated we plan to do, in terms of restricting evenings to four per week as far as possible, consolidating Sunday fixtures into blocks and looking for a further small reduction in the number of Wednesday and Thursday afternoons with two fixtures.
"Indeed, unless we sell jumping down the river, it will not happen thereafter until there are more horses or more money [or both] available to us in making our plans at the BHB."
The Ladbrokes report highlighted how the switch of meetings from afternoons when betting shops are relatively full to evenings and Sundays when more people can go racing had hit betting turnover and levy. It cost an estimated £1.5 million in 1995. The absence of 102 third fixtures on weekday afternoons, compared to 64 in 1993, would deprive racing of potential levy earnings of £3 million, the report said.
Brack disclosed that betting turnover is expected to fall by 4 per cent this year, with levy yield dropping from £55 million to £48 million. While the National Lottery was largely to blame Ladbrokes estimate it is responsible for 75 per cent of the fall Brack confirmed "there is little doubt that the racecourse ‘customer-friendly' fixture list has also had an adverse effect on off-course betting," and estimated that this year betting shops would fall from 9,500 to 8,800.
With important talks over the shape of the 1997 fixture list due over the next few weeks, Brack added: "Racing is a spectator sport and we must not lose sight of that, but the objective should be to balance sufficient opportunities for racegoers with a programme which provides the maximum levy income for the industry.
"I believe there is scope for arranging the 1997 fixture list in a way which satisfies both the interest of the racecourse and the off-course betting market. Ladbrokes' report identifies some of the options."
Steve Bruce, 35, the Manchester United captain, yesterday agreed a new contract with the club that will run for a further 18 months and earn him up to £1.5 million.
His basic salary over the period will be worth £600,000, but he also stands to gain another £750,000 if he can fill Old Trafford, with its new capacity of 55,000, for a testimonial match planned for next season. Bonuses and a new signing-on fee will take the figure close to the £1.5 million. Bruce said: "United have been very fair to me, and I believe I can perform at this level for a little while yet."
WILL CARLING, who has been far more positive about England's erratic victory over Wales in the rugby union five nations' championship than many of the team's critics, called yesterday for the earliest possible selection of the XV to meet Scotland next month. Whether the captain's wish will be granted, however, lies in the hands of Jack Rowell, the manager.
Rowell has much to ponder in a season when, after four matches, England have shown little sign of coherent rugby. In particular, he must consider whether to modify his approach so that his players can ensure that fundamental elements of their game, the set pieces, are in working order.
"Geoff Cooke was a meticulous planner, a great man for detail," Carling said of the manager who preceded Rowell. "Jack's view is that you need players who can play a flexible game. We feel we need to develop a broader canvas." Rowell claims to articulate the squad view rather than his own and Carling denies any difference of opinion between him and the manager.
However, Rowell's hope that the same squad would serve throughout the championship must come under review. The lineout is not functioning, which, given the proven abilities at lock of Martin Johnson and Martin Bayfield, suggests Mark Regan's place at hooker is under threat. The short-term choice as a replacement is Graham Dawe, although his throwing-in is not the best part of his game, and the long-term is represented by Richard Cockerill, of Leicester, or Phil Greening, of Gloucester.
To select either against Scotland on March 2 would be a gamble. There must also be an acknowledgement that too many wise old heads have departed. Neither Dean Richards nor Andy Robinson enjoy making up the numbers at squad weekends and both regard themselves as capable of international rugby.
Of the two, Richards would provide a core of common sense, which seems patently lacking in the England pack. His return, probably at the expense of Tim Rodber, would help to restore traditional strengths at scrum and lineout.
Don Rutherford, the Rugby Football Union (RFU) technical administrator, has acknowledged that some of England's rugby in the 21-15 win last Saturday was sterile. "People want to be entertained and just winning isn't going to be acceptable any more," he said. "People felt short-changed."
England have pleaded a change of personnel in mitigation for their uninspired form, but it does not appear to have upset Scotland, who have a clutch of inexperienced players in key positions yet now lead the table. They will name their team to play Wales on February 17 tomorrow, while the French brace themselves today for four or five changes against Ireland. Experienced players such as Olivier Merle and Thierry Lacroix face the guillotine.
Carling's knee injury is likely to keep him out of the delayed Pilkington Cup tie between Harlequins and Newcastle at Kingston Park on Saturday, but the RFU has confirmed that, whatever the International Rugby Football Board stipulation about 180-day transfer periods, Nick Popplewell, the Ireland prop, may take his place in the Newcastle front row.
Tony Hallett, the RFU secretary, wants a conference of rugby-playing countries in Europe, so that a formal agreement can be reached over transfers which does not conflict with European Community law. "You can have an open gangway between EC countries providing the unions affected agree to the transfer," Hallett said after consultation with lawyers.
"Only when one union says no to a transfer will we get a test case and I believe that should be handled by the governing body, rather than an individual club. All our advice is that, if clubs have agreed terms, a refusal would not be sustainable."
A CROWD of 12,386, a record for British ice hockey, saw Manchester Storm beat Bracknell Bees 4-2 to maintain their hold on the leadership of the British League first division.
Storm led 2-1 at the end of the first period and two second-period goals from Hilton Ruggles gave them a three-goal cushion. The Bees could score only once in the final period. With Blackburn Hawkes beating Telford Tigers 9-7, the Bees lost some ground and, although they are still in third place, they are seven points behind Blackburn and 15 points away from top place.
In the premier division, Cardiff Devils drew within one point of Sheffield Steelers after their 8-4 win over Newcastle Warriors in which Ian Cooper, Randy Smith, Doug Smail and Steve Moria each scored twice.
Slough Jets gained a rare win, beating Basingstoke Bison 7-5 with Dan Gratton and Rob Coutts each scoring three goals.
The Bison slipped further behind the leading pack and, if their injured players do not return soon, they may even find themselves struggling to qualify for the championship play-offs. Durham Wasps remain in fourth place and completed a miserable weekend for Fife Flyers, beating them 9-6, with Kip Noble and Kim Issel leading the way by scoring three goals apiece.
Milton Keynes Kings, who have recently shown improved form, lost their way against Humberside Hawks and were defeated 3-1 at home.
THE English Open table tennis tournament will be the first competition in an eight-event professional tour that will culminate in a final in China.
The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) tour will carry total prize-money of $250,000 (£165,000) with the English Open, to be staged at Kettering Arena from April 3 to 8, worth $30,000.
The English Table Tennis Association is still looking for a suitable sponsorship deal. The ITTF is talking to the International Management Group about promotion and sponsorship of the tour, and the likelihood is that, while the final will be sponsored, an umbrella sponsorship may have to wait until the 1997 tour. With the world's best players likely to be attracted to Kettering, the event could be the highest-quality competition held in this country since the 1977 world championships in Birmingham.
Edward Gorman meets a housewife ready to take on the stars of yacht racing.
You have to admire the woman's pluck. As she said herself yesterday, at one of the more bizarre press conferences followers of the Whitbread Round the World Race have experienced, she is hardly a renowned international racing sailor. Yet that is not going to stop Jackie MacGillivary from skippering an entry in yachting's premier racing event this year.
She did not pretend to be anything other than an enthusiastic amateur. "I'm sorry I'm not one of the well-known, high-profile names usually associated with the Whitbread," she said at the Royal Thames Yacht Club in Knightsbridge, central London, where the Sussex Challenge was launched yesterday. "But I am someone with the guts, the determination and, more importantly, the will to win.
"I'm the ordinary average housewife mother of two. I woke up one morning and said: ‘Gosh, it's a nice day I'll do the Whitbread."'
MacGillivary, 42, and her Brighton-based crew will be the only amateurs in a star-studded field and the least experienced in top-class off-shore racing. Their chances might have looked a little brighter in one of the early runnings of the race, when enthusiastic amateurs competed in varied company.
But, with budgets now starting at £4 million for a credible crack at the honours and the yachts now standardised as Whitbread 60s (60-feet long), the emphasis is very much on fine degrees of speed and sailing performance and pushing complex racing machines to the very limits to win.
MacGillivary's sailing CV includes an Atlantic crossing with a blind crew and she has more than 500,000 racing and cruising miles under her keel. And, importantly, she has convinced Bupa International, which has a large base in Brighton, to get on board.
Together with the Eastbourne College of Arts and Technology, they have put up enough money to pay for a boat the old Hetman Sahaidachny which came seventh in the last race with a Ukrainian crew and to finance a full-time racing programme in the 12 months leading up to the start. Another sponsor is still required to pay the huge cost of getting through the race itself.
Also on board will be MacGillivary's husband, David, whose job, according to the briefing documents, will be to "protect the crew from the skipper", and Maureen Polhill, 45, who has run a hair-dressing salon in Worthing for the past seven years.
The skipper was unfazed by the task ahead of her yesterday and warned those who doubt her to be ready to think again. Her team was already a cohesive unit. It had the right brand of mental toughness and the will and capability to win. "Do not make the mistake of dismissing us as rank outsiders," she said.
The Super League is set to abandon the traditional one-to-13 numbering on shirts by following the example of the FA Carling Premiership in football in adopting squad numbers and names on players' backs. The proposal by the chief executives of the 12 clubs goes before the Rugby League Council tomorrow. Chorley, of the second division, have appointed Kevin Tamati as successor to Bob Eccles. London Broncos have made Bev Risman, a former dual international, director of development.
Chris Okoh stopped Darren Westover in the second round to take the vacant WBO inter-continental cruiserweight title at the Crook Log Leisure Centre in Bexleyheath last night. Okoh, 24, from Croydon, is also the Commonwealth champion.
Richie Wenton, the British super-bantamweight champion, has a chance to win a Lonsdale Belt outright when he defends his title against Wilson Docherty, of Scotland, at the Basildon Festival Hall tonight.
Italian Serie A players, fed up with what they say is a high-handed attitude by officials, have called a strike for March 17. Gianluca Vialli, the Juventus striker and a member of the Italian players' association committee, said: "The players don't count for much and it's not democratic.
We want to vote on the decisions that interest us." Sergio Campana, the leader of the association, said that if the players did not hear back from the authorities, the strike would go ahead next month.
Court of Appeal. Miah v Sewell and Another
An order in the county court striking out a plaintiff's claim because of his manifest default in complying with the terms of an "unless" order by failing to file and serve evidence within the prescribed time was a very strong order to make but did not fall outside the ambit of the discretion vested in the judge.
The Court of Appeal (Lord Justice Nourse, Lord Justice McCowan and Lord Justice Thorpe) so held on January 23 when dismissing an appeal by the plaintiff, Jetu Miah, from Judge Chalkley's order in Basingstoke County Court on October 31, 1994, striking out his claim against James Sewell and Shamim Hussein for damages for injuries.
LORD JUSTICE THORPE said that the plaintiff accepted there had been mismanagement of his case but argued that striking out was too blunt an instrument with which to punish him for his failure. But the judge, having made efforts to bring the case back on to the rails, had understandably been vexed by the plaintiff's disregard for his orders.
It was a strong order to make; especially in a case where the plaintiff would have been bound to succeed against one or other of the defendants. But it had been incumbent on the plaintiff in such circumstances to advance such excuse or explanation to the judge by evidence served in advance of the hearing.
There had been no such evidence to explain the plaintiff's manifest default. The judge had not exceeded the discretion vested in him by making the order.
In Penrose v Official Receiver (The Times December 19, 1995) the defendant should have been the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and it was wrongly stated that the Official Receiver had opposed the application.
Queen's Bench Division. Regina v Flax Bourton Magistrates' Court, Ex parte Commissioners of Customs and Excise
Before Lord Justice Kennedy and Mr Justice Forbes
[Judgment January 29]
In determining whether an either way offence should be tried summarily or on indictment, section 19(3) of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980 required justices to apply their minds, inter alia, to the question whether or not their powers of punishment would be adequate if they dealt with the case summarily.
Where justices were in doubt as to the appropriate level of sentence for a particular class of case, they should seek their clerk's assistance.
Having decided to try a case summarily, section 38 of the 1980 Act, as amended by section 25 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991, gave justices an unfettered discretion to commit a defendant to the crown court for sentence.
The Queen's Bench Divisional Court so held, granting an application by the Commissioners of Customs and Excise to quash a decision of Flax Bourton Justices, sitting at Long Ashton, on August 25, 1995 not to commit the defendant, Simon Roger Allan, to the crown court for trial on charges under section 72(1) of the Value Added Tax Act 1990, of being knowingly concerned in the fraudulent evasion of value-added tax.
Mr David Barnard for the commissioners; the justices and the defendant did not appear and were not represented.
LORD JUSTICE KENNEDY said that the justices were aware of section 19(1) and (3) of the 1980 Act and the guidance contained in Practice Note (Mode of Trial: Guidelines) ([1990] 1 WLR 1439) as revised in Mode of Trial Guidelines (HMSO) issued by the Secretariat of the Criminal Justice Consultative Council on February 1, 1995, which provided, inter alia:
"(f) In general, except where otherwise stated, either way offences should be tried summarily unless the court considers that the particular case has one or more of the features set out in the following pages and that its sentencing powers are insufficient.
"(g) The court should also consider its power to commit an offender for sentence under section 38 of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980, as amended ... if information emerges during the course of the hearing which leads them to conclude that the offence is so serious, or the offender such a risk to the public, that their powers to sentence him are inadequate. This amendment means that committal for sentence is no longer determined by reference to the character and antecedents of the defendant."
Their attention was also drawn to R v Dover Justices, Ex parte Pamment ((1994) 15 Cr App R (S) 778) and R v North Sefton Magistrates Court, Ex parte Marsh ((1995) 159 JP 9), which showed that section 38 of the 1980 Act, as amended, gave justices an unfettered discretion to commit for sentence after a decision as to mode of trial had been made.
The justices concluded that the case was not one of those specified in the guidelines as suitable for trial on indictment and they accepted jurisdiction.
The prosecution submitted that the justices failed to take into account whether their powers of punishment were sufficient as required by section 19(3).
There was nothing in the cases which relieved a magistrates court of that statutory obligation. All that the recent cases said was that if, having decided upon summary trial, justices later came to the conclusion that their powers were inadequate, they could change their minds and commit for sentence. But justices still had to make up their minds in the first place. The words of the statute prevailed.
His Lordship would not have been prepared to grant relief had the justices applied their minds to section 19(3). If justices were in doubt as to what the level of sentence should be, they should have assistance from their clerk.
Having regard to decisions in the particular class of case, it was difficult to envisage the justices concluding that their powers would have been adequate had they formed a view under section 19(3).
Mr Justice Forbes agreed.
Solicitors: Solicitor, Customs and Excise.
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Reckley v Minister of Public Safety and Immigration and Others (No 2)
Before Lord Keith of Kinkel, Lord Goff of Chieveley, Lord Browne-Wilkinson, Lord Hoffmann and Sir Michael Hardie Boys
[Judgment February 5]
The exercise of the prerogative of mercy in a death sentence case under the Constitution of the Bahamas was not justiciable.
The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council held that the decision in de Freitas v Benny ([1976] AC 239) remained good law, and refused to grant the petitioner, Thomas Reckley, leave to appeal from the refusal by the Court of Appeal of the Bahamas of a stay of execution until final determination of his constitutional motion which alleged that the carrying out of the sentence of death passed upon him would contravene his constitutional rights.
Article 92 of the Constitution provides: "(1) Where an offender has been sentenced to death ... the minister shall cause a written report of the case from the trial justice of the Supreme Court, together with such other information derived from the record of the case or elsewhere as the minster may require, to be taken into consideration at a meeting of the advisory committee...
"(3) The minister shall not be obliged in any case to act in accordance with the advice of the advisory committee."
Mr Geoffrey Tattersall, QC and Mr Timothy Straker for the petitioner; Sir Godfray Le Quesne, QC, Mr Michael Hamilton, Director of Legal Affairs, the Bahamas, Mr Bernard Turner, Deputy DLA, the Bahamas, and Mr Peter Knox for the respondents.
LORD GOFF said that the petitioner was convicted of murder in 1990 and sentenced to death. His appeal against conviction and sentence was dismissed by the Court of Appeal in 1991.
His petition for special leave to appeal to the Privy Council was dismissed in 1992. The Advisory Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy met to consider his case on May 18, 1995, and thereafter the minister decided to advise the Governor-General that the law should be allowed to take its course.
A warrant for the execution of the petitioner signed by the Governor-General directing that the execution should take place on May 30 was read to the petitioner on May 26.
Constitutional proceedings were commenced claiming that execution would be contrary to his constitutional rights on the grounds, inter alia, that he had not been afforded the right to see the judge's report and other material placed by the minister before the advisory committee, and to make representations to the committee with reference to that material before they tendered their advice to the minister.
On May 29 Mr Justice Osadebay refused a stay of execution until final determination of the constitutional motion. Acting Chief Justice Fountain, sitting as a single judge of the Court of Appeal dismissed the petitioner's appeal from that decision. The petitioner petitioned for leave to appeal against the refusal of a stay.
The substantial point was the advisory committee point. Their Lordships recognised that it was unusual for a point of that character to be considered upon an adjourned hearing of a petition for leave to appeal from a refusal of stay of an execution, but had taken that exceptional course in the present case because it involved a challenge to a previous decision of the Privy Council and so could not have been successfully advanced in the Bahamian courts.
Article 90 of the Bahamian Constitution conferred on the Governor-General a wide range of powers exercisable by him in accordance with the advice of a designated minister, including power to substitute a sentence of life imprisonment for a sentence of death.
Article 91 provided for the advisory committee comprising the designated minister, the Attorney-General, and between three and five other members appointed by the Governor-General.
Article 92 was concerned with the functions of the advisory committee. Article 92(1) was directly in point in cases such as the present.
In death sentence cases the question of the exercise of the prerogative of mercy would automatically be considered by the committee and, apart from the trial judge's report, there was no obligation on the minister to place any particular information before the committee.
The respondents submitted that the exercise of the prerogative of mercy in death sentence cases was a personal discretion vested in the minister to depart from the law, as a matter of grace.
Mr Tattersall's first submission on behalf of the petitioner was that the exercise of the prerogative of mercy was in the present case amenable to judicial review. His second was that, in any event, the principle of fairness required a man sentenced to death should be entitled to make representations to the advisory committee; and since effective representations could not be made by him unless he or his advisers were aware of the nature of material before the committee antagonistic to his case, the gist of that material had to be made known.
Mr Tattersall's submissions immediately faced the difficulty that they were contrary to the decision of the Privy Council in de Freitas v Benny ([1976] AC 239).
In that case, which arose under the Constitution of Trinidad and Tobago, the appellant claimed that he was entitled (i) to be shown the material which the designated minister placed before the advisory committee, and (ii) to be heard by the committee in reply at a hearing at which he was legally represented.
It was claimed that the functions of the committee were quasi-judicial in nature and accordingly that any failure to grant to the appellant the rights he claimed would contravene the rules of natural justice and infringe his right not be deprived of life except by due process of law. The submission was rejected by the Judicial Committee in a judgment delivered by Lord Diplock (see pp247-248). His observations were equally apposite to the Constitution of the Bahamas.
Articles 90-92 of the present Bahamian Constitution first appeared in the Constitution of 1963. The introduction of the advisory committee, and the statutory provisions governing the exercise of its functions in death sentence cases, reinforced Lord Diplock's analysis in de Freitas v Benny.
First, every death sentence case had to be considered by the advisory committee. There was no question of such consideration depending on any initiative from the condemned man or his advisers.
Second, despite the obvious intention that the advisory committee should be a group of distinguished citizens, and the fact that the minister was bound to consult them in death sentence cases, he was not bound to accept their advice. That strongly indicated an intention to preserve the status of the minister's discretion as a purely personal discretion, while ensuring that he received the benefit of advice from a reputable and impartial source.
It might be inferred that the reason why provision was made in the Constitution for an advisory committee was to provide a constitutional safeguard in circumstances where the minister's discretionary power was of such a nature that it was not subject to judicial review.
Third, the material which had to be taken into consideration at the meeting of the advisory committee was, apart from the trial judge's report, "such other information derived from the record of the case or elsewhere as the minister may require". That was inconsistent with the condemned man having a right to make representations to the advisory committee.
The point could be placed in a broader context. A man accused of a capital offence in the Bahamas had his legal rights. He was entitled to the benefit of a trial, with all the rights which that entailed. After conviction and sentence, he had a right to appeal to the Court of Appeal and, if his appeal was unsuccessful, to petition for leave to appeal to the Privy Council.
After his rights of appeal were exhausted, he might still be able to invoke his fundamental rights under the Constitution. A man was still entitled to his fundamental rights, and in particular to his right to the protection of the law, even after he had been sentenced to death.
If it was proposed to execute him contrary to the law, for example because there had been a failure to consult the advisory committee as required by the Constitution, he could apply to the Supreme Court for redress under article 28.
The actual exercise by the designated minister of his discretion in death sentence cases was different. It was concerned with a regime, automatically applicable, under which the designated minister, having consulted with the advisory committee, decided, in the exercise of his own personal discretion, whether to advise the Governor-General that the law should or should not take its course.
Of its very nature the minister's discretion, if exercised in favour of the condemned man, would involve a departure from the law. Such a decision was taken as an act of mercy or of grace.
As Lord Diplock had said in de Freitas v Benny (at p247): "Mercy is not the subject of legal rights. It begins where legal rights end." And the act of the advisory committee in advising the minister was of the same character as the act of the minister in advising the Governor-General.
Mr Tattersall had invoked a number of authorities in support of his argument, but they did not assist him. His Lordship referred to Council of Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service ([1985] AC 374), R v Secretary of State for the Home Department, Ex parte Bentley ([1994] QB 349), Burt v Governor-General ([1992] 3 NZLR 672) and Lauriano v Attorney-General of Belize (unreported, September 20, 1995).
He continued that the petitioner faced similar difficulties in respect of the alternative submission that the principle of fairness required that he should be entitled to make representations to the advisory committee and, for that purpose, to see, or to be provided with the gist of, the material which had been placed before the committee.
Reliance was placed on R v Secretary of State for the Home Department, Ex parte Doody ([1994] 1 AC 531), but that concerned a different subject matter. Lord Mustill, with whose speech the remainder of the Appellate Committee agreed, was careful to distinguish that case from a case in which the prisoner was essentially in mercy, where there was no ground to ascribe to him the rights which fairness might otherwise demand.
That was precisely the present case. It was clear from the constitutional provisions under which the advisory committee was established and its functions regulated that the condemned man had no right to make representations to the committee in a death sentence case; and so there was no basis on which he was entitled to be supplied with the gist of other material before the committee.
That was entirely consistent with a regime under which a purely personal discretion was vested in the minister.
The condemned man was at liberty to make such representations, in which event the minister could, and no doubt would in practice, cause such representations to be placed before the advisory committee, although the condemned man had no right that he should do so.
Their Lordships wished to stress the nature of the constitutional safeguard which the introduction of the advisory committee had created. On the committee, the designated minister and the Attorney-General would be joined by a group of people nominated by the Governor-General.
Those would be men and women of distinction, whose presence, and contribution, at the heart of the process would ensure that the condemned man's case was given, and was seen by citizens to be given, full and fair consideration. Such people would expect to be provided with all relevant material, including any material supplied by or on behalf of the condemned man; and in the most unlikely event that the responsible civil servants did not place such material before them, they were capable of making the necessary inquiries.
Those who drew the Constitution were well aware of the personal nature of the discretion to be exercised by the minister and the consequent absence of any supervisory role by the courts, but also considered that, by introducing an advisory committee with the constitution and functions specified in the Constitution, they were providing a safeguard both appropriate and adequate for the situation.
The decision in de Freitas v Benny remained good law and, in a case arising under the Constitution of the Bahamas, was determinative of the advisory committee point. There was no arguable point to justify the grant of leave to appeal from the decision of Acting Chief Justice Fountain refusing a stay of execution, and leave to appeal was therefore refused.
Their Lordships' opinion on the advisory committee point had been expressed solely with reference to death sentence cases, for which special provision was made in article 92(1). Their Lordships recommended that the petition should be dismissed.
Solicitors: Clifford Chance; Charles Russell.
Catrin Griffiths looks at the law firms set up by accountants.
Legal feathers have been ruffled this week with the news that the accountancy firm, Price Waterhouse, is setting up an associated legal practice in direct competition with law firms. The firm is following in the footsteps of Arthur Andersen's lightning strike at the legal scene in February 1993, when the world's biggest accountancy firm established Garrett & Co.
"Price Waterhouse UK has been only too aware of what Andersen has done with Garrett," says Ian Taplin, Price Waterhouse's tax partner. "We have been monitoring it to see if we could do something similar."
Setting up Price Waterhouse's legal arm is being done by Chris Arnheim, Hammond Suddards' City partner, who approached the firm early last year. No stranger to start-up ventures, Mr Arnheim who was still negotiating exit terms at press time established Hammond's corporate practice in London four years ago.
Because Price Waterhouse is constrained by Law Society rules disallowing multidisciplinary practices and formal fee-sharing arrangements, it can only opt for the same route as was taken with Garrett & Co: setting up a separate law firm but selling it as the first step to a one-stop shop. "It is a potential enhancement of our service to clients," says Mr Taplin. "We have a vision of developing a good quality commercial capability in a fairly short period of time."
Price Waterhouse's confidence in the immediate growth of the venture is underlined by the fact that it has allocated office space for ten lawyers. Now that there are two major accountancy firms in the market for legal services, the UK corporate lawyers initially sceptical about Garrett & Co cannot ignore the threat to the legal status quo. "I welcome the move it shows we're in the right market at the right time," says Julia Chain, Garrett & Co's managing partner.
According to Mr Taplin, Price Waterhouse made the move in order to fill the gap in its European network, which covers France, Spain, Portugal and Germany. However, UK lawyers are unlikely to see it as anything other than a challenge to corporate practices here. "It is clearly a challenge to law firms," says Bill Tudor John, a senior partner in City firm, Allen & Overy. "As soon as Arthur Andersen moved into the area it was obvious that other firms would follow."
Price Waterhouse's venture will almost certainly flush out other major accountancy practices which have been quietly circling the legal market. The accountants could certainly tap into the dissatisfaction felt by partners in mid-tier commercial law firms. As one senior insolvency lawyer puts it: "The phones will be hot. It could turn the legal profession on its head."
The author edits Legal Business magazine
Frances Gibb reports on the battle to defend London as the arbitration capital of the world.
London's reputation as the world centre for arbitration an industry worth many millions of pounds is facing challenge. A large proportion of arbitrations involve a foreign company or individual and huge volumes of commercial and international work is generated from the settling of their disputes.
For two centuries, the City of London's place as the arbitration capital of the world has been unrivalled. But increasingly other business centres in France, Sweden, Holland and the Far East are trying to seize a share of the business. Now the industry is fighting back. The Arbitration Bill, at present going through Parliament with all-party support, is set to revolutionise the law and the practice of arbitration, both domestic and international.
The Bill is the brainchild of Lord Justice Saville, the Court of Appeal judge who formerly headed the commercial court. Almost single-handed, he has rewritten all existing law on arbitration into a single statute, and also modernised procedure in line with the trend towards more user-friendly ways of settling disputes.
The problem, he says, is that the law was scattered in a diffuse body of (often arcane) cases which made it hard for people to understand or find. The statute law is also spread across three Acts in 1950, 1975 and 1979 each largely a reaction to tackle perceived defects in the common law.
"We have highly developed rules and principles governing all aspects of arbitration, which is one of the main reasons why this country has been and still is a world centre for arbitration. But there is a major defect in that it is very difficult, without expert legal knowledge, to find even the most basic of the rules and principles governing arbitration," Lord Justice Saville says.
There are other criticisms. Arbitration is in vogue as a way of resolving disputes outside the courts. The parties agree to appoint an arbitrator, usually an expert in the field, and the hearing will take place in private. The idea is that it provides a quicker and cheaper way to settle disputes than going to court. But many arbitrations have become bogged down in court-like procedures, and got slower and more costly.
For ten years there has been a movement to reform arbitration law. There was consensus on the need for reform; but not on how to do it. In 1985 the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law adopted a model law on international arbitration. The Department of Trade and Industry then set up an advisory committee under Michael (now Lord) Mustill, the law lord, on whether the model should be adopted in place of our laws. The committeee in 1989 decided against, but recommended all existing law be replaced with a new Act, using the language and framework of the model law.
That led in February 1994 to a draft Bill from the DTI which was essentially a consolidation measure. It was widely criticised. "It quickly became apparent from the large number of responses to the draft that this was not what was wanted," Lord Justice Saville recalls. In November 1994, he was appointed to take over chairing the committee from Lord Steyn (who had replaced Lord Mustill). His committee scrapped the Bill and began from scratch. It suggested a new structure which follows a step-by-step guide to arbitration, starting with general principles and the scope of arbitration, arbitration agreements, how to begin proceedings, appointing an arbitral tribunal, its powers, how it should be conducted and so on. "Every attempt was made to set out the provisions in ordinary English, without recourse to legalese. The idea was, in short, to provide a narrative which an ordinary person could read, and from which such a person could learn what arbitrating in England entailed."
The committee produced a draft which was published as an interim report. On the basis of that, parliamentary counsel was then brought in to draft a new Bill. The whole process has been remarkably quick. The first draft was out by July 1995, responses made in the summer, further drafts produced and a final Bill introduced in the Lords last December. The judge took just March 1995 off from judging to work on what became the interim report and then a couple of weeks in October for the final draft.
The Bill is more than just a radical rewriting of the law. First, it strictly limits the right of appeal to the courts against an arbitration finding. One criticism of arbitration is that if one party does appeal, the courts have been too ready to overturn the finding. The courts will now be able to intervene in only limited circumstances. Secondly, it seeks to tackle the criticism that some arbitrations have become mini-courts.
The Bill imposes a statutory duty on arbitrators to adopt procedures suitable to the dispute; makes clear that hearings do not even have to be oral; and that it may sometimes be appropriate to adopt an inquisitorial approach.
One crucial reform will concentrate the minds of those using arbitration: the Bill provides that unless the parties otherwise agree, the tribunal may set a limit on the legal costs which they can recover, whatever they spend in practice. This will keep down costs, Lord Justice Saville argues; and prevent the inequality where one party, with bigger financial resources, "spends a lot of money on the case in the hope of frightening the other into settling".
What has emerged is tailor-made for the London arbitration industry of the future. Lord Justice Saville pays tribute to his committee, including Arthur Marriott, a solicitor who "kept alive the idea that we could do something like this and that it was what was wanted".
But the DTI gives full credit to his own contribution. Jonathan Evans, the minister who saw the Bill published, said: "The work he has done is remarkable, in co-operation with the DTI and parliamentary counsel and the universal view is that the Bill will make a great contribution in ensuring that London maintains its pre-eminence in arbitration work."
The bitter criticisms of the legal system made last week by Ron Lipsius, one of the King's Cross Tube station fire victims, were a reminder to Lord Woolf of failures in civil justice which he is trying to rectify.
Mr Lipsius compared his seven-year fight for compensation, for hands so badly burnt that he can no longer earn a living as a professional guitarist, to the trauma of the 1987 fire itself, in which 31 people died including the person with whom he was travelling. Mr Lipsius, now 39, said London Transport (LT) had shown no sympathy, but prolonged his suffering with its unbending opposition. "People were killed," he said, "and they threw the survivors to the legal sharks."
His case was no worse than many other personal injury claims in the civil courts and better than some, where liability is not even admitted. But its details have refuelled debate over the proposals so far floated by Lord Woolf for reform. One prominent plaintiff solicitor described Lord Woolf as "naive", and questioned his awareness of the antagonistic tactics of many commercial organisations faced with personal injury claims.
Mr Lipsius issued his writ in January 1989. LT admitted liability and made interim payments totalling £225,000. But it did not agree any actual amounts of expenditure. Mr Lipsius was told only in December 1995 that £40,000 for his years of physiotherapy and £21,451 for surgery on his hands had been "properly incurred". Some minor items were also agreed then, such as £50 for the trousers burnt in the fire.
In January 1995 LT transferred the papers from its in-house litigation department to the City firm Herbert Smith. Howard Watson, handling the case, offered no more than the £225,000. Mr Lipsius's solicitor, Patrick Allen, then applied for a court date and amassed statements from 43 surgical, psychiatric and musical witnesses, including a 62-page statement from Mr Lipsius himself. Costs escalated dramatically.
Defendant witnesses included Maxwell Brittain, a musician, who produced a report highly critical of Mr Lipsius's pre-fire guitar playing. An employment expert, Mary Groves, was to testify to Mr Lipsius's ability, in current market conditions, to land a telesales job. The defendant, meanwhile, paid £500,000 into court. This offer, refused by Mr Lipsius, was increased to £600,000, then to £650,000 on the Friday before the trial's scheduled start. This fell below the lowest of Mr Lipsius's three future earnings claims, £700,000.
The legal costs were estimated at £200,000. With £225,000 already paid, Mr Lipsius faced potential financial ruin if he failed to increase that payment. On January 29 he accepted £650,000, to cover all treatment, loss of earnings and all other loss caused by the fire. "You just have to settle for less," he said, disappointed and battle-weary, "or go through an incredible amount of stress and maybe get less."
Costs, for which LT is liable, are estimated at £300,000. Mr Allen denounced the aggression with which the case was fought, saying Mr Lipsius should have been given the benefit of the doubt: "Every case is taken on as a war. The defendants could have settled earlier and saved themselves money."
A spokesman for London Transport said it was "inappropriate" to discuss individual cases but that LT had "always expressed sympathy for the King's Cross fire victims and their families". She added that if Mr Lipsius had thought the settlement unfair, he could have proceeded to trial.
Ian Walker, a partner in the plaintiff firm, Russell Jones and Walker, and executive committee member of APIL, the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, said insurance litigation is increasingly aggressive. "Insurance companies are not there for plaintiffs. They are there for themselves. Some take ridiculous positions on liability and miserly attitudes to damages. Lord Woolf is naive about how the system works," Mr Walker said. "Many insurers fail to apply cost-benefit analysis, or are simply incompetent."
Lord Woolf says: "I recognise the present system is unequal. I am not saying I am producing a perfect system but I am making the balance fairer." Mr Lipsius's remarks contrast starkly with the standard verbose discussions about the Woolf reforms: "I was treated as the enemy, the nightmare on the balance sheet. Lawyers fall into this, convincing themselves they are just doing a job."
Injured people have to fight hard for their rights in expensive and tortuous legal actions. But not all claims are as strong as the case study below. But how should such cases be dealt with in the courts? Frances Gibb on the reforms of Lord Woolf.
Ahuge question mark looms over how the legal system in the year 2000 will be handling people's claims for injuries. Law suits over accidents, medical mistakes, drugs or defective products are among the most expensive and tortuous in the civil courts. They can also be some of the most emotional. People with devastating injuries find themselves embroiled in a complex legal system which, by its adversarial nature, only adds to their pain (see right).
Lord Woolf, the law lord appointed by the Lord Chancellor to investigate the problems of civil justice and to recommend reforms, wants a change of culture. He has already outlined a series of radical reforms to make the system less lawyer-driven; to impose tight time limits on hearings and to make judges trial managers.
Last week he issued a dossier of six consultation papers on some of the most intractable problems, including medical negligence, group actions (usually drugs or products) and the general issues of cost and expert evidence.
The problems of cost and delay bedevil all personal injury cases but with medical accidents, the system is exposed at its worst. First, it is harder with such cases to establish causation and liability than with any other accident claims. Doctors' insurers and doctors themselves may strongly contest liability: in many cases, there may be no single identifiable cause of injury as with other accidents. Doctors are also understandably protective of their professional reputations, which they may feel are being wrongly impugned. Further, investigations, which require increasingly expert medical witnesses, are costly and protracted. All these problems, Lord Woolf said, may be aggravated by "distrust and hostility on the part of one or more of the parties".
With medical negligence there is also the issue of funding. Nearly all medical negligence claims as with those over drugs or products are pursued with legal aid because of the excessively disproportionate costs involved. But whereas most accident claims are successfully settled, that is not so with medical negligence cases. It means what Lord Woolf called an "enormous" drain on the public purse.
Sir Tim Chessells, chairman of the Legal Aid Board, told a recent conference held by AVMA (the Association for Victims of Medical Accidents) that medical negligence claims in the year ending 1994 cost the health service £125 million. The total is now thought to have reached £150 million. Of some 12,000 medical negligence cases closed by the board in the year up to March 1994, only 12 per cent were successful; the normal success rate in personal injury claims is more than 90 per cent.
There is some concern (among the British Medical Association, the Bar Council and Lord Chancellor's Department) that the legal aid scheme funds too many unmeritorious claims. Dr Anthony Barton, a doctor who works with a law firm, points to arguably the biggest legal aid injustice: that the legally aided plaintiff does not have to pay the other side's costs if he loses. "The risks of litigation are thus tilted in favour of the plaintiff who has nothing to lose, against the defendant (and any insurer) who has nothing to gain but usually incurs irrecoverable expense."
Although legal aid is outside Lord Woolf's remit, his proposals will have a knock-on effect for the £1.4 billion legal aid budget. He was unequivocal about the need for change. There was, he said, a "heavy onus on both the legal and medical professions to find a better way to resolve allegations of medical negligence than exists at present".
Sarah Leigh, a specialist medical negligence solicitor who is co-ordinating the work for Lord Woolf in this area, has put forward various proposals to make the settling of claims more just and economical. The idea is to keep disputes out of the courts where possible by adopting agreed codes of practice for handling disputes. This would include record-keeping and reporting of accidents to help hospitals to dispose more quickly of claims, without litigation.
Smaller claims of up to £3,000, where victims often just want an explanation or apology, could be handled in-house, by trained hospital "claims managers". The Woolf paper asks if such mediation or in-house settlement should be compulsory for these cases.
When cases do come to trial, the approach should be more inquisitorial. Lawyers and judges should be specially trained. If cases move towards trial, there should also be agreed procedures to govern mutual disclosure of material and simultaneous investigation, where possible.
The proposals here chime with those for other civil claims: judges to take control of the pace of trials; the possibility of using a single expert witness, either appointed by the court or agreed by the parties; and a fast-track procedure for claims of up to £10,000 where there is a limit (say £3,500) on costs which can be recouped.
The most controversial of these is the idea for a single expert; and the compulsory settling of smaller claims without a court hearing. Janet Sayers, a partner with Kennedys, a law firm which acts for defendant insurers in medical negligence and product liability cases, says: "We endorse the thrust of the inquiry as seeking to reduce litigation costs, improve speed and efficiency." But she is "strongly opposed to a single expert, jointly instructed, determining issues of professional negligence", and to small claims being resolved without a hearing.
Whatever the outcome, the question of future funding is critical so that people can pursue legitimate claims, and public funds are not wasted. But above that, Lord Woolf believes there needs to be a change of attitude: first, to develop a culture in which it is accepted that "doctors, like others, make mistakes". Secondly, when a mistake is made, it needs to be swiftly and publicly acknowledged, so victims receive adequate compensation without the need to battle with both legal and medical professions en route.
Geese search for feeding grounds near Stirling after snow blanketed Scotland, Wales and northern England yesterday.
The players' weekly and overall scores and their values if you are considering the transfer option. Steve Morgan, a Coventry City full back, talks about his ITF selection.
FROM the start I decided to ignore the expensive players and go for the people I knew and had played against and who were a bit cheaper. Looking at it now I think I have got some real bargains in my team.
When you have only £35 million to spend it is easy to go over the limit. Every player picked means you have to see what is left in the kitty and work out how you are going to make up the rest of the team with what is left. Some of the prices are huge Shearer costs £10 million but I do not think that it is the expensive players who are necessarily going to do a good job for you week in, week out.
All my midfield men are steady players. They may not be been piling up loads of points every time they play, but they have been getting enough to get me to tenth place in the league. I picked them to do a job and so far they have been doing that for me.
My star players, if you like, are Jamie Redknapp and Teddy Sheringham. You can see Redknapp is a class player and he is still young, so he has a great future. Sheringham, too, has real class and is always going to get goals.
At first, I wanted to have Andy Cole in my side. Before the season started I was thinking about him because of his reputation as a goalscorer at Newcastle United. But I thought I would save a little money and go for Sheringham instead and now I would never change my mind.
At Newcastle, Cole had the wingers whipping in balls to him all the time and it seemed easy for him. You only have to look at the number of goals Les Ferdinand has scored since he has been at Newcastle to see what a difference that sort of service makes. At Old Trafford it is a bit different, but I think Cole is settling in there and at least he is sticking at it. I think he will have a good season next year.
If the money did not matter, I would definitely have Ferdinand in my side, but he is not cheap. Another player I did not pick because he was so expensive was Steve McManaman. I think he and Ryan Giggs are the two hardest players to play against. They are tricky players, men who can change a game for their teams and can be a direct threat on goal or set things up for other people. You are never quite sure what they are going to do next.
The midfield men I did go for were Roy Keane and David Batty. I have known Batty for years since we played England schoolboys and under-19s together. He is always steady and consistent and when I saw how cheap he was, he was straight in the side.
Mark Bright was another bargain. Strikers do not come cheap, but he was only £2.5 million and yet he always pops up and scores goals. He is in double figures most seasons so he was another easy choice for Dred Select.
The team name comes from my nickname. When I was at Plymouth I used to have my hair permed on top and shaved at the sides. It looked a bit like dreadlocks. So when the lads saw me they called me Dred straight away and that is what I have answered to for years.
I have been out all season with an Achilles injury and I am only just back in training now.
ITF manager of the month offers new Ireland manager a helping hand
The celebrations continued long into the night after a momentous day for Irish football management north and south of the border. Just as the news of Mick McCarthy's appointment as the new Ireland manager had raised the spirits of those in the Republic, so Michael Brennan, who is from Belfast, discovered he was the Interactive Team Football manager of the month. He was £500 the richer and planning on raising a few spirits of his own.
Mr Brennan's team, Cliftonville FC named after an Irish League side gained 147 points in January to take the prize in a high-scoring month. The news of this achievement took Mr Brennan by surprise. Initially he had misread the rules and thought that only matches involving two opposing Premiership clubs counted towards the ITF points total.
The philosophy behind his team selection owes something to McCarthy. "I heard Mick McCarthy quoting Alex Ferguson today. He said ‘if I played a team of people I liked, I would win nothing'. That's how I select the team. These are not my favourite players, they are just people I know will do the job for me. You've got to be ruthless."
Mr Brennan has the full list of fixtures for the season and his aim is to play for the monthly manager's prize. Plotting the travels of every Premiership club for the next four weeks, he aims to make maximum use of the information month by month.
At the moment his team consists of Walker (Tottenham Hotspur), Wright (Aston Villa), Pearce (Nottingham Forest), Ruddock (Liverpool), Mabbutt (Tottenham Hotspur), Curcic (Bolton Wanderers), Ebbrell (Everton), Newton (Chelsea), Draper (Aston Villa), Ferdinand (Newcastle United), Stuart (Everton), Redknapp (West Ham; manager).
"I was fortunate when I brought in Stuart and Pearce," Mr Brennan said. "The first game Pearce kept a clean sheet and scored a goal to win seven points and Stuart has scored every game since. And Stuart only cost £2 million."
As McCarthy takes over the reins from Jack Charlton, Mr Brennan is willing to lend his support. "He can drop me a line any time if he wants any advice," he said.
If your team could be doing better, with your players lacking form and fitness, or perhaps the luck of the Irish, you can move into the transfer market. ITF has a transfer system that allows you to change up to two players each week. Which player you want to offload and who you replace him with is up to you, although you must replace the outgoing player with one from the same category (ie, a full back with a full back) and keep within your £35 million budget.
The ITF transfer system also allows you to adjust your team if one of your players is actually transferred out of the FA Carling Premiership. He would then no longer be eligible for ITF and would have to be replaced. Any other overseas or Endsleigh Insurance League players who move into the Premiership during the season will become available for transfer.
You can make transfers only by telephone. Using a Touch-tone (DTMF) telephone (most push-button telephones with a and a hash key are Touch-tone), call the 0891 333 331 line during the times given. Calls will be charged at 39 pence per minute cheap rate, 49 pence per minute at other times. If you are calling from Ireland, you must call 004 499 020 0631 and you will be charged at 58 pence per minute at all times.
When making a transfer, you must ensure that the team value still falls within your £35 million budget and does not contain more than two individuals from the same club.
If you are lagging behind the leading team selectors, the transfer system will be an appealing option to you in the chase for the £50,000 prize or the monthly £500 prizes.
With ITF, not only are you pitting your selectorial skills against other readers of The Times, you are also matching your wits against those in the know. With the support of the Professional Footballers' Association, Premiership players have entered sides of their own, and Steve Morgan, of Coventry City, gives his selection on the opposite page. Like him, you may spend £6 million on Teddy Sheringham but will he do better than cheaper alternatives?
All matches in the Premiership and those in the FA Cup involving Premiership clubs count and your players and manager win and lose you points. With Gohils Gods 65 setting the pace, is it time for you to delve into the transfer market?
All transfer queries regarding Interactive Team Football should be directed to 0171-757 7016. All other inquiries can be made on 01582 488 122.
THE BAR'S new complaints system is expected to cost up to £150,000 to put into place this autumn. The existence of the new system, through which people will be able for the first time to bring complaints of shoddy work against barristers, is likely to prompt more complaints than the current 450 a year itself an increase of 24 per cent on the year before.
David James, head of professional standards and services at the Bar Council, says in Bar News that this is causing an "almost intolerable strain in terms of workloads" and "excessive backlogs and thus delays". Meanwhile, opponents of the new scheme may still seek to force a second ballot or even a judicial review which could delay the scheme until next year.
TWO SOLICITORS William Simmonds and Nicholas Woolf from the law firm Woolf Simmonds have participated in the seventh Monte Carlo Challenge to raise funds for Barnardo's. The five-day challenge, for vintage and classic cars, is said to be the toughest of its type.
The lawyers drove a 1960 Morris Mini which they bought for the occasion. The pair are inviting donations; call 0171-262 1266 for details, or send cheques payable to Barnardo's to the firm's office.
DAN NEIDLE and Simone Murray from the University of London Union won the European inter-varsity debate against stiff competition from across Europe. Michael Boots, of the University of Leiden in Holland, which also made it through to the finals, won the best speaker award.
The City law firm Clifford Chance sponsored the event and its senior partner, Keith Clark, says: "Such was the quality of the speakers that the panel had quite a heated debate itself to choose the winning team. We were delighted that a continental European team reached the final for the first time, although it was somewhat sobering to concede that the most articulate speech was delivered by a Dutch student."
ARE THE judges getting nervous about offending Michael Howard? The National Association of Probation Officers (Napo) was given leave to go ahead with its judicial review of training plans only after Mr Justice Sedley asked for an undertaking that they would not be challenging the Home Secretary on grounds of reasonableness.
Counsel for Napo, Edward Fitzgerald, told the court that he thought it "questionable" that judges could extract such an undertaking and that it was contrary to public policy.
IF YOU want to hear your lawyers' voices before you instruct them, try calling a firm such as Lewis Silkin. If you progress far enough into the firm's automatic answering system, you will access a programme where each of the firm's lawyers in turn tells you their name and extension number. Some are very slow and precise. Some hurry.
Some politely say thank you. Some try to break the mould with a trendy approach. But perhaps the ones to avoid are those who get the message wrong, and forget to mention their number at all.
WHICH law firm did City giant Clifford Chance turn to when it found itself sued for C$1.3billion (£610million) by four Canadian banks which have lost money in the Canary Wharf bankruptcy?
The firm declined to name its lawyers. But the solicitor charged with the job of saving Clifford Chance from writing a very large cheque the lawyer's lawyer, he could claim to be is partner Michael Seymour at fellow City firm Lovell White Durrant.
MAGISTRATES in Richmond, Surrey, have been practising the kind of hands on case management which judges are being encouraged to display. A report in the Richmond & Twickenham Times describes how magistrates refused a temporary drinks licence for a parent-teacher association party at Sheen Mount School, after police said there would not be enough food.
The bench advised Philip Crowther, the man in charge of catering, to discuss his menu with police. When he returned next day and announced that a chicken casserole would be served, magistrates had no reservations about granting a licence.
THE BAR Council has mounted a furious lobbying campaign to get as many chambers as possible to sign up to its new Pupillage Application Clearing House scheme (PACH) in time for the February 16 application deadline. David Penry-Davey QC, the chairman of the Bar Council, has been telephoning heads of chambers to press them to join. He describes the response as "very encouraging".
The next set of hospital wards to reopen ought to be devoted to image transplants for the medical establishment, a body which is suffering from rigor mortis of the communication joints. No group of people on the British landscape, with the possible exception of politicians, is more adept at making a reasonable case sound like pompous stonewalling.
Take for example last night's Cutting Edge: The Treatment (Channel 4). On the one hand we had Cari Loder, the vivacious and confident young woman who may have stumbled upon a treatment for multiple sclerosis.
The facts of the matter are that Loder, having developed MS at the age of 31, went to her doctor for antidepressants and, shortly after taking the drugs (along with others prescribed for the MS) found that all of her symptoms went into remission.
Loder has turned into a one-woman band of hope. Hundreds of other MS sufferers contacted her and many of them have had similar results. After a long battle with indifference, a drugs company has at last agreed to carry out clinical trials.
Whether Loder's "cure" is real or psychosomatic or a mere fluke I know not. Loder herself makes no claims, beyond: this is how I was, this is what I did and this is how I am now. One might think that the medical powers that be, faced with a cripple who has taken up her bed and walked, would hurry round to find out more, to investigate.
Alas. Here is Professor Ian McDonald, a distinguished practitioner from the Institute of Neurology: "In 90 per cent of patients there is spontaneous remission which, occurring in the early stages, is complete."
No doubt this statement is accurate but is it the kind of response likely to assist Big Medicine in its battle for public sympathy? And how exactly does that response square with the case of Sarah Rose, an MS sufferer for 27 years, whose symptoms dramatically declined within weeks of starting to use the Loder treatment?
The key point is a broader one. Professor McDonald and his kind are right to be sceptical, otherwise every half-baked notion would turn into a potion for rubbing on the limbs or pouring down the throats of patients desperate for a straw to clutch at.
One problem with such public expression of this scepticism is that it has the reverse effect from the one intended. It drives us towards alternative sources of comfort, be they ever so wacky. It encourages the belief that the medical establishment regards itself as having sole access to that which is good for us and will be sure to let us know when and if some suitable tablets can be brought down from the mountain.
In public relations terms, this leads to a case of the devil having all the best tunes. Loder's massive personality thrusts aside doubt: when she had a minor attack of MS symptoms late in the filming of this documentary, she put it down to stress. Well, maybe. Looked at clinically, the attack perhaps reinforced what Professor McDonald had to say. But by then I would hazard that most viewers had entirely forgotten him, except as a vague figure standing in the way of what they wished to believe.
The present series of Omnibus (BBC1) has produced some excellent films and A Day on The Mountain continued the run. Omnibus took a poet, a painter and a photographer to interpret Saint Victoire, the mountain in Provence which became an obsession for Cezanne.
One of the points to emerge, notably through the relative honesty of the camera lens as the photographer set up his shot, was that Cezanne always painted the mountain proportionately much larger than it really is, much like a child recalling the house in which it grew up.
The film also used some words of Cezanne, brought to light for the first time, from a rare interview he gave 100 years ago. He explained his passion for detail and the reason he revisited so many subjects so many times: "The same subject seen from a different angle gives a study so varied that I think I could be fully occupied simply by bending a little more to the right or the left."
Cezanne's real and only subject, whatever appeared on the canvas, was paint and painting. Colour, light, shade and their relationships. In these matters he was a genius, recognised as such at the highest level: "In heaven, they know I am Cezanne." I cannot think what he meant by that but I am sure he was right.
Channel 4's series Classic Ships took fishing boats for its second part and took some licence with the theme by straying too far into the fishing and not far enough into the boats. But it was good to see the Cornish lugger still afloat, a vessel craftily designed: it needed five men to sail it, the same number as were needed to do the fishing.
In this, the early part of the century, no Common Fisheries Policy had evolved to issue monthly quotas and pay fishermen to set fire to their boats: oh no, these were the bad old days.
A few sceptics did wonder why luggers were built to be so fast and why some of them had hollowed-out keels. The answer was that the vessels had to be able to outrun Revenue boats, given the illicit booze in the keel. Smuggling? Shame on you for such a thought.
"It's not smuggling, free trading we called that," announced a Cornish voice. We Cornish have always believed in free trade, the difference being that nowadays we can bring back all the booze we can carry. It's the fish we have to smuggle.
Mr Justice Butterfield to be a judge of the Employment Appeal Tribunal.
Today is the 44th anniversary of the accession of The Queen.
Rabbi Lionel Blue, author and broadcaster, 66; Mr Nicholas Brett, Editor, Radio Times, 46; Sir Denys Buckley, former Lord Justice of Appeal, 90; Mr Peter Cadbury, company chairman, 78; Mr Leslie Crowther, comedian and actor, 63; Mr Tim Ewart, broadcaster, 47; Mr John Flemming, Warden, Wadham College, Oxford, 55;
Professor Roger Greenhalgh, vascular surgeon, 55; Professor J.E.C. Hill, former Master, Balliol College, Oxford, 84; Miss Gayle Hunnicutt, actress, 53; Mr Patrick MacNee, actor, 74; Mr George Mudie, MP, 51; Mr Denis Norden, scriptwriter and broadcaster, 74; Mr Manuel Orantes, tennis player, 47; Mr Ronald Reagan, former American President, 85; Lord Roskill, 85; Mr Brian Simpson, MEP, 43; Mr Jimmy Tarbuck, comedian, 56; Mr Fred Trueman, cricketer, 65; Mr Keith Waterhouse, writer, 67; Mr Kevin Whately, actor, 45.
A Service of Thanksgiving for the life of Lavinia Duchess of Norfolk, LG, will be held in the Cathedral of Our Lady and St Philip Howard, Arundel at 2.30pm on Friday, March 1, 1996. Admission is by ticket only. Please apply to The Dover House, Poling, Arundel, West Sussex, BN18 9PX, by February 12, 1996.
A Service of Thanksgiving for the life and work of Harold, Viscount Watkinson, of Woking, will take place in St Margaret's Church, Westminster Abbey, at noon on Wednesday, April 24. Those wishing to attend are requested to apply for tickets to: The Rector's Secretary, Room 24, 1 Little Cloister, Westminster Abbey, SW1P 3PL, enclosing a stamped addressed envelope. Tickets will be posted on April 15.
Orchestre de Paris/Bychkov, Barbican
How nice it would be if every performance in the series or even most of them would vindicate the marketing tag of the Barbican's "Great Orchestras of the World". It has to be said that only the presence of their guest soloists really lifted the playing of the Orchestre de Paris, under Semyon Bychkov, to anything like the expected standard.
The outstanding event of their two-day visit was Maxim Vengerov's performance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. With every sinew of his body extended to seek out and stretch the work to its expressive limits, Vengerov fused passionate involvement in every passing second with a poised nobility of overview. There was so often a heady new excitement in the bite of the bow as it tracked the ascents and descents of the opening movement. There was a lucid line of song at the work's centre. And the finale braced itself into new, vital contours by accents and upbeats which redefined and surprised.
Vengerov, who always seems eager to play on and on into the night, gave two rapturously received encores: Kreisler's outrageous Caprices Viennois and Chinois. He made the Mendelssohn sound urgent; something that could hardly be said of the UK premiere of Gilbert Amy's Trois scenes pour orchestre, commissioned by the French Government and the Orchestre de Paris to celebrate Amy's 60th birthday this year.
Competently enough written, these symphonic scenes ("the staging of an imaginary opera plot", according to the composer) bore all the heavy trademarks of Boulez-style post-serialism. This colour-card of a concerto for orchestra at least gave individual sections their head, as did the final performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. There were those bright woodwind characters, shamelessly coarse brass; and there, too, was the enthusiasm and vitality.
Its musical discipline and understanding and, of course, that of Semyon Bychkov did not extend to Mahler's Second Symphony. This was an episodic caricature of a performance, edgy and ragged, and ennobled only by the committed singing of mezzo-soprano Jard van Nes, soprano Elizabeth Norberg-Schulz, and the London Symphony Chorus.
Oxford The Eldon Law scholarship for 1996 has been awarded to Andrew Richard Thomas, Balliol College.
Merton College
To Postmasterships: J E Ratzer, formerly of Eton College; R.L. Behr, formerly of the City of London School.
To an Exhibition: Miss E.J.C. Brown, formerly of Westminster School.
Surrey
Recent grants include:
Prof B Sealy, Prof P L F Hemment, Prof K G Stephens, Dr R P Webb: £3,741,929 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for "The University of Surrey Ion Beam Facility for Microelectronics".
Prof H G Muller-Steinhagen: £225,374 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for "Development of low-fouling heat exchanger surfaces".
Prof M Ghadiri: £211,012 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Realising our Potential Award) for "Mitigation of attrition in fluid catalytic cracking units".
Prof B G Evans, Mr S P W Jones: £206,000 from the European Commission for "THESEUS (Terminal at high speed for European stock exchange users)".
Prof J V Kittler, Dr M Bober: £202,200 from the European Commission for "Scalable architectures with hardware extensions for low bitrate variable bandwidth realtime video communication - Scalar".
Dr M J Carter: £169,564 from the Medical Research Council for "Intracellular aspects of astrovirus infection: Non-structural proteins and determination of host cell range".
Dr J Illingworth, Dr A J Stoddart, Mr T Windeatt: £161,848 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for "ASPMIC Automatic Solder Paste Monitoring, Inspection and Control".
Dr J W Dale, Dr L J Eales, Dr J McFadden: £152,387 from the Medical Research Council for "Gene replacement in Mycobacterium tuberculosis".
Prof B G Evans, Mr R Tafazolli: £150,480 from the European Commission for "SECOMS-Satellite EHF communications for mobile multimedia services".
Dr J Illingworth, Prof J V Kittler: £148,699 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for "Hidden Markov models for the recognition of handwritten words".
Dr P R Voke, Dr P E Hancock: £148,281 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for "Large-eddy simulation of unsteady flow over turbo machinery blades".
Dr J N Hay: £139,571 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for "Clean synthesis of acrylic copolymers in supercritical carbon dioxide".
Prof I P Castro, Dr A G Robins: £135,000 from Natural Envinronmental Research Council for "The Environmental Flow Research Centre".
Dr M J Carter: £129,456 from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council for "Stable attenuation of DHV-1 for vaccine purposes".
Prof J E Castle: £123,475 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Realising our Potential Award) for "Adsorption and stability of corrosion inhibitors on duplex steels: In-situ investigation by chemical force".
BIRTHS: Christopher Marlowe, dramatist, Canterbury, 1564; Queen Anne reigned 1702-14, St James's Palace, London, 1665; Sir Henry Irving, actor, Keinton Mandeville, Somerset, 1838; Frederic William Myers, poet and co -founder of the Society of Psychical Research, Keswick, 1843; George (Babe) Ruth, baseball champion, Baltimore, Maryland, 1895; Ramon Novarro, silent film actor, Durango, Mexico, 1899; Bob Marley, singer and songwriter, St Ann's, Jamaica, 1945.
DEATHS: King Charles II reigned 1660-85, London, 1685; Lancelot (Capability) Brown, landscape gardener, 1783; Joseph Priestley, Presbyterian minister, chemist, discoverer of oxygen, Northumberland, Pennsylvania, 1804; Ellen Wilkinson, trade unionist and politician, London, 1947; King George VI reigned 1936-52, Sandringham, Norfolk, 1952; Marghanita Laski, writer, London, 1988.
King James II acceded to the Throne, 1685.
Queen Elizabeth II acceded to the Throne, 1952.
Seven members of the Manchester United football team were among those killed in an air crash at Munich, 1958.
France and Britain agreed on the building of a Channel tunnel, 1964.
Appointments The Rev Roderick Jones, Selection Secretary, Advisory Board of Ministry, Church House, Westminster: to be Vicar, St Mary the Virgin, Horsell (Guildford).
The Rev David Kennedy, Tutor at The Queen's College, Birmingham: to be Rector, Haughton Le Skerne (Durham).
The Rev Jonathan Lawson, Assistant Curate, Sedgefield: to be Assistant Curate, Usworth Team Ministry (Durham).
The Rev Kevin McGarahan, Team Vicar, Madeley Team Ministry (Hereford): to be a Royal Army Chaplain.
The Rev Mark Nicholls, Vicar, St Andrew, Wigan: to be Vicar, St Margaret, Bulawayo, diocese Matabeleland.
The Rev Stephen Oliver, Rector, Leeds City Team Ministry (Ripon): to be also an Honorary Canon of Ripon Cathedral.
The Rev Christine Owen, Chaplain to London University and Hon Curate, St Marylebone w Holy Trinity (London): to be Precentor and Minor Canon of Worcester Cathedral (Worcester).
The Rev Bob Redrup, Vicar, Kea (Truro): to be also an Honorary Canon of Truro Cathedral.
A memorial service of celebration and thanksgiving for the life of Mr Billy Marsh, theatrical agent, was held yesterday at St James's, Piccadilly. The Rev Donald Reeves officiated. Mr Jim Moir, Mr Bill Cotton, Mr Rolf Harris and Mr Michael Grade paid tribute.
Mr Norman Wisdom sang his own work Don't Laugh at Me‘Cos I'm a Fool. Miss Jacqui Scott sang Oscar Hammerstein II's and Jerome Kern's Bill and Ira and George Gershwin's Someone to Watch Over Me. Miss Lisa Hull sang Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again with words by Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Mr Stephen Hill sang Ned Washington's and Leigh Harline's When You Wish Upon a Star. The choir also paid musical tribute. Among others present were:
Mrs T Port (sister), Mrs Joy Abbott, Mr John Port, Miss Linda Port; Lord and Lady Grade, Lady Delfont, Dame Shirley Oxenbury.
Mr Jim Kennedy and Mrs Jan Kennedy, Mr and Mrs Ernie Wise, Mrs Bill Cotton, Mrs Joan Morecambe, Mr Garry Morecambe, Mrs Tracey Dawson, Ms Mo Moreland, Mr Paul Raymond, Mr Tony Hatch and Miss Jackie Trent, Mr and Mrs Johnnie Mans, Miss Joan Regan, Mr John Inman, Mr Burt Rhodes, Mr Chubby Oates, Mr Michael Aspel, Mr David Jacobs, Mr Nicholas Parsons, Mr Richard Johnston, Mr John K Cooper, Mr David Lingwood, Mr Robert de Winter, Mr and Mrs Alvin Stardust, Mr Robin Cousins, Miss Anita Harris.
Mr Mike Yarwood, Mr and Mrs Rolf Harris, Miss Bindi Harris, Mr Ronnie Corbett, Mr Don Black, Mr and Mrs Paul Nicholas, Mr Brian Tesler, Mrs Penny Grade, Mr Harold Fielding, Mr and Mrs Al Heath, Mr and Mrs Richard Mills, Mr Barry Stead, Mr Jed Leventhal, Mr and Mrs D Thurlow, Mr and Mrs Gerry Kunz, Mrs Zara Land, Mr Geoffrey Irvine, Mr and Mrs Chris Corcoran, Mr Vaughan Kennedy, Mr Garry Brown and Miss Lorna Dallas, Mr Peter Howarth, Mr Eddie Waters, Mr David Taylor, Mr Paul Gyngell, Mr and Mrs Kenneth Earle, Mr David Graham.
Mr and Mrs Paul Hart, Mr Kenny Clayton, Mr and Mrs Philip Jones, Mrs T Cavanagh, Mr and Mrs David Lewin, Miss Yvonne Littlewood, Mr Les Cullen, Mrs Susan Shaper, Mrs Eileen Milson, Mr Kenneth Jones, Miss Sheila Holt, Miss Rosemary Garrett, Ms Marcia Stanton, Mr Richard Johnson, Mrs W Ryder, Mrs Pamela Dutton, Mr John Avery, Mrs Gwyneth Spurling, Mr Dave Freeman, Mr and Mrs Brook Land, Mr Jay Vickers, Mr Jack Douglas, Mr Robert Israel, Mr Henry Gagan, Mr Alistair MacMillan, Mr Tony Harrison, Mr Andrew Michaelides, Ms Nina Yianni.
Mr John Adrian, Mr Philip Hindin, Mr Len Lowe, Mr Ronnie Hazlehurst, Mr Joe Church, Mr William Foux, Mr Mike Craig, Mr Peter Elliott, and Mr George Elrick (Grand Order of Water Rats); Mr Charles Vance (Theatres Advisory Council), Mr Jarvis Astaire (Variety Club of Great Britain), Mr John Bishop, Ms Sally Fincher and Mr Richard Holloway (Carlton TV), Mr S Vauncez (The Stage), Mr Baz Bamigboye (Daily Mail), Mr Alex Armitage and Mr Charles Armitage (Noel Gay Organisation), Mr Cyril W Wilds (British Music Hall Society), Mr Sandeman Allen and Mr and Mrs Peter Holden (Guinea Pig Club), the Rev Guy Bennett (chaplain, London Palladium).
Stanley Sadie visits a new celebration of Salzburg's favourite son.
Everyone who has been to Salzburg knows the Mozart birthplace museum, the Geburtshaus, by far the most popular composer museum in the world. Fewer will know the city's second Mozart museum. Until now this has been a decidedly modest affair, but since his birthday on January 27 it has become a serious rival attraction.
The new museum is in what is called the Mozart-Wohnhaus, or Mozart's Residence, in Makart-Platz on the opposite side of the river from the old part of the city where he was born. The family moved there in 1773 when Wolfgang was 17 and father Leopold had finally decided that they were unlikely to escape from Salzburg and had better make the best of it. They moved to a spacious first-floor apartment in what was then Hannibal-Platz, a part favoured by noble families.
There was room here for Leopold to trade in musical instruments and to take in resident pupils. The building was known as the Tanzmeisterhaus; it had been the property of a French dancing master earlier in the century, and the main hall, the Tanzmeistersaal, was still used for balls.
The half of the house lived in by the Mozarts was destroyed by bombs in 1944. The International Mozart Foundation had had designs on it long before then, but the owner eventually sold the site for development and, in spite of opposition, a six-storey office block was put up in the early 1950s. Mercedes cars were sold from the Mozart house.
But with the approach of 1991, the bicentenary year of Mozart's death, the foundation was able to raise enough funds to buy the office block. Demolition began in April 1994 and the foundation stone of the new building was laid in June.
The basic intention was to replicate the original building, at least at the first-floor level where the Mozarts lived. Broadly, this has been done; the three rooms along the Makart-Platz frontage and those round the corner along the Schwarzstrasse are much as they were.
The Tanzmeistersaal ballroom is the point of entry: used for small-scale concerts in recent years, this room is now restored in pale green and greyish white (the colours that careful scraping of the layers of paint suggest were used in Mozart's time) and has the famous Mozart family portrait by Johann Nepomuk della Croce as well as showcases, subtly lit, with exhibits chiefly concerned with Mozart works dating from his years in the house such as the Haffner Serenade and the early piano concertos and the games played by the Mozarts in the house and its garden. There are also a variety of keyboard instruments.
The theme of the museum is "The Mozarts and their Salzburg Context 1773-80"; its motif is an obelisk. Two are inscribed on the doorway. A giant glass one, bearing lettering in black, dominates the first front room of the Mozart apartment, which shows letters and operatic music from his years in the house (and broadcasts excerpts over the individual handsets); Mozart's tea and sugar box is here too. The next room, dedicated to Leopold, has two large obelisks, enclosing books from his own collection; the corner room is dedicated to Nannerl.
These are simply exhibit rooms, but the next, a large one with an alcove, is furnished, lightly, with pieces of the period in some degree an evocation of Mozart family life. A further obelisk in the fifth room publicises the New Mozart Edition, prepared by the International Mozart Foundation, and shows a map of Mozart's travels; the visitor can illuminate any of the journeys and can see appropriate scenes on monitors while listening on the handset to matching music. A still more appealing use of modern technology comes in the slide-show room, where half a dozen projectors, some with revolving mirrors, some with zoom, offer a carefully co-ordinated and visually beguiling account of Mozart and Salzburg, in six languages, with appropriate music.
Some museumgoers might feel, not unreasonably, that the opportunities offered by the house that Mozart lived in are only half acknowledged. There is not much here to suggest the man or his personality; curiously, Leopold Mozart emerges perhaps more forcefully than his son. One is more conscious of artful design than of atmosphere or of the house as locus genii. But the new museum does appeal rather more than does the Geburtshaus, in its recently refurbished design, where the Mozart family rooms are unbelievably sparse.
Last month's opening ceremonies were partly an acknowledgement of the many and generous patrons who made the new museum possible, and especially the Japanese, notably Dai-Ichi Mutual Life, who played a central role in the funding. The artists at the opening events included the Berg Quartet in a taut, rather nerve-edge performance of two Mozart string quartets and Berio's Notturno. Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert gave a rousing performance of Haydn's Missa in tempore belli that thrilled the audience, and the Vienna Philharmonic was conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt in Beethoven and, of course, Mozart.
SANDRINGHAM, NORFOLK February 4: Mr Frederick Waite was received by The Queen when Her Majesty invested him with the Insignia of a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order.
ST JAMES'S PALACE
February 5: The Prince of Wales, Colonel-in-Chief, Army Air Corps, this morning received Lieutenant Colonel Michael Wawn upon relinquishing his appointment as Commandant, School of Aviation, and Lieutenant Colonel Nigel Thursby upon assuming the appointment. His Royal Highness this afternoon presented the Laurent-Perrier Champagne Award for Wild Game Conservation at Apsley House, London W1.
The Prince of Wales, President, The Prince of Wales's Institute of Architecture, later held a meeting of the Institute's Council at St James's Palace.
His Royal Highness afterwards received the Rt Hon John Major MP (Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury).
THE number of houses that started construction in the final three months of 1995 slumped 20 per cent from a year earlier, presaging more misery for the industry and suggesting that, overall, the economy will fail to pick up much steam.
In 1995 as a whole, housing starts, including those built by the private sector and housing associations, totalled 169,700, a drop of 15 per cent compared with 1994. Private housing starts in the final quarter totalled 30,200, the lowest figure since the final three months of 1992. Indeed, there have only been two lower quarterly totals in the last decade. In December, private starts totalled 10,200, nearly 21 per cent down on December 1994. Separate figures yesterday showed a drop in M0 narrow money supply in January, giving the lowest annual growth rate since October. Although the once close relationship between M0 and retail sales has broken down in recent years, the City still took the figures as a sign that the high street had a sluggish new year after a relatively healthy Christmas season.
Neither figures were deemed weak enough to weigh in favour of yet another cut in interest rates at tomorrow's monthly monetary meeting between Kenneth Clarke, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Eddie George, Governor of the Bank of England. Having cut base rates by a quarter point in both December and January, the Chancellor is unlikely to push for another easing and Mr George exceedingly unlikely to advise one.
Howard Davies, Deputy Governor of the Bank, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, yesterday that the Chancellor's forecast of 3 per cent growth this year, regarded as optimistic by many independent forecasters, was "well within the realms of possibility". His comment suggests that the Bank continues to believe that the recent weakness in economic activity is a pause in growth and will not lead to a more serious slowdown and that therefore there are few grounds to cut rates on this score. However, the latest evidence on the economy appears to leave the way open for another rate cut or two later in the spring. While the implication of M0 is not clear, housing starts have proved to be a good indicator of future economic performance.
Michael Saunders, UK economist at Salomon Brothers, noted that an abrupt plunge in housing starts in 1989-90 was one of the first clues to the severity of the subsequent recession, and the continued refusal of starts to pick up in 1991 and early 1992 correctly signalled that the overall economy would remain sluggish. Mr Saunders said that housing starts have weakened steadily over the last year. He added that this implied that the broader economy was likely to grow only slowly.
M0 money supply fell by 0.2 per cent in January, the first month-on-month drop for a year. This took the annual rate of growth to 5.3 per cent from 5.7 per cent in December, lower than the City had expected. Part of the reason for the fall in M0 in January was a sharp decline in bankers' operational deposits, which are extremely volatile. However, stripping these out and looking at growth in notes and coins in circulation, the annual rate of growth still slipped to 5.7 per cent from 5.8 per cent.
The City will now be waiting for the Confederation of British Industry's latest distributive trades survey published on Friday to see whether the drop in M0 will be reflected in weak retail sales.
The London-based newsletter Foreign Report is published by Jane's Information Group (report, January 27).
In the obituary of Marcia Davenport (January 31) the date of her mother's wedding was wrongly given as 1906. In fact, Alma Fiersohn married Bernard Gluck in 1902.
The bursting of the Holme reservoir killed more than 90 people and devastated the countryside.
FLOOD AND LOSS OF LIFE IN THE
NORTH OF ENGLAND.
... In the neighbourhood of Manchester the rivers were so much swollen by the rain that many of them overflowed their banks, submerging all the low grounds in the neighbourhood. At Wallness, on the north-west side of Manchester, the left bank of the Irwell was overflowed, and a great portion of the Peel Park laid under water. A large portion of Lower Broughton was also submerged, the ground in some places being covered to a depth of 9 feet. Two rows of houses at Broughton-view, between Broughton-lane and the river Irwell, seemed, at 4 o'clock on Wednesday afternoon, in imminent danger of destruction. The flood had cut off all the approaches to these houses, and a strong wind which was blowing at the time drove the water against the walls with such force that Mr. Hacking, the proprietor, expressed a fear that the buildings would be washed down during the night, having been erected under contract, in a not very substantial manner. Mr. Beswick, the chief superintendent of the Manchester detective police, who resides in the neighbourhood, exerted himself for the assistance of the inhabitants, who were in the greatest alarm and consternation. He despatched some officers for a boat, in order that
those who were afraid of remaining in the houses might be removed to a place of safety.
ANOTHER ACCOUNT.
From the succession of rainy weather, which has continued with slight intervals for the last five or six days, all the watercourses, streamlets, and rivers in Yorkshire have been filled with water, and many of them have overflowed their boundaries, in several instances doing injury to the surrounding property. One truly awful calamity has occurred, in which 60 or more human beings have lost their lives. A large reservoir of water, containing many thousand gallons, known as the Holme Reservoir, situated on a high piece of moorland, above the valley of the river Holme, a few miles from Huddersfield, became over-charged, and burst about 1 o'clock yesterday (Thursday) morning, the flood carrying destruction and death in its course. The noise made by the bursting of the bounds of the reservoir was very loud, and the roar of the water in its destructive career down the sides of the hills and through the valley was tremendous. The reservoir was used for supplying several of the large woollen mills, and also, we believe, some of the household dwellings in the neighbourhood with water; and in the valley were some extensive woollen manufactories and the cottages of many of the workpeople. In its mad career the water inundated one of these manufactories and upwards of 20 dwellings, overwhelming, as it were, by one fell swoop, not only the buildings, but the inhabitants, nearly all of whom were asleep in their beds, in one fearful doom. Altogether, the number of persons drowned is said to be 60 or upwards. Many of the bodies, as well as the furniture of the houses and other articles, were carried a considerable distancesome into the Holme, and thence into the Calder. The writer of this heard that the body of a woman, with a child in her arms, who had lost her life by this melancholy casualty, was found in the latter river, several miles from the scene of the catastrophe ...
Sometimes it seems self-evident that artistic talent runs in families;
sometimes it is hard to feel so sure. Certainly the talent of Julian Bell must come from somewhere, and it cannot be entirely coincidence that he is the son of Quentin Bell, grandson of Vanessa Bell, great-nephew of Virginia Woolf and great-grandson of Leslie Stephen. He proves to be a brilliant but unpredictable painter. He is evidently well schooled in the art of the past, and his work teems with references and echoes. He is a master of present-day Impressionism (The Mobile Phone), chic Neo-Classicism (Accident in the City), elaborate chiaroscuro (Candaules, after Herodotus) and other, more experimental styles.
Perhaps the most astonishing work is Crucifixion, which shows soldiers in vaguely modern uniforms dicing for the garment at the foot of the cross, seen en plongee from Christ's point of view. A variety of dramatic concepts and complete technical mastery make one wonder what Bell will do next; but it is bound to be interesting.
Francis Kyle Gallery, 9 Maddox Street, W1 (0171-499 6870), until March 7
IT IS surprising to find that all Christa Gaa's training was in Germany, because her work looks so English. Her great devotions, apparently, were to Chardin, Bonnard and Morandi, but they might just as well have been to Sickert and William Nicholson. She came to Britain in 1980, married fellow painter Ken Howard in 1990, and died in 1992, when in her 50s. The memorial show at the New Grafton Gallery covers the whole of her brief painting career, and consists mainly of watercolours and gouaches, with a handful of oils. They are about half-and-half landscape and still-life, and although the landscapes are attractive, they do not have quite that special touch of the still-lifes: for once the reference to Morandi, greatest of modern still-life painters, in two of the titles seems neither irrelevant nor impertinent.
New Grafton Gallery, 49 Church Street, Barnes, SW13 (0181-748 8850), until Feb 17
THE work of John Currin raises, in an extreme form, the question of whether artists today are to be judged primarily by what they do, or by what they say about what they are doing. What Currin, an American painter now in his early 30 s, actually does is to paint slightly primitive-looking, slightly kitsch images in a broad, cartoony style. These often show lightly clad bimbos romantically entangled with bearded older men: the vision falls somewhere between Thomas Hart Benton and Donald McGill.
If Currin were showing at a gallery like, say, the Portal, it is doubtful whether any of the critical establishment would take him seriously. But instead he is showing at the ICA, and talks up a storm about himself and his knowing defiance of contemporary convention. Critics (in America, at least) have rushed in to supply comparisons with everyone from Tiepolo to Manet to Magritte. Brits may well suspect that McGill is nearer the mark.
Institute of Contemporary Art, The Mall, SW1 (0171-930 3647), until Feb 18
AS A painter, Rose Warnock seems to live in a private world, where miniature mountains rear into irregular Chinese shapes, columns of smoke rise undisturbed to the unthreatening clouds, water meanders through the landscape and trees (of which there are many) seem constantly on the point of transforming themselves into something else. There are sometimes people in these pictures, mild-eyed and melancholy, as befits lotus-eaters. Some may find the pictures cloying, others see them as slightly sinister. But the skill and the sense of painting history are clear enough: this is a world that Altdorfer would recognise across the centuries. In the rear gallery downstairs there is, as usual, an historical show which in some way complements the new work.
This time it is of Graham Sutherland's haunting early etchings, made in the 1920s, when he had first been awakened to the wonder of Palmer's visionary years. Whatever the judgment of posterity on Sutherland's later work, the magic of these tiny prints triumphantly survives changes of fashion.
Jason & Rhodes, 4 New Burlington Place, W1 (0171-434 1768), until Feb 17
Professor Cyril Tyler, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Reading University, 1968-76, died on January 25 aged 85. He was born on January 26, 1911.
CYRIL TYLER will be remembered for four achievements: his skill as Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Reading during the university's period of rapid expansion, and the years of student unrest; his research work, principally into the structure of egg shells a subject in which he became an acknowledged world authority; his considerable ability as a communicator of ideas; and his cricket, which he played for Gloucestershire for three seasons before the war.
Yet he often joked that little of this would have happened had he not been found, at the age of four, playing in a hayloft with a dangerous piece of agricultural machinery. The response of his father, a Yorkshire miner, and his mother, a "shoddy" millworker, was to send him to school nearly two years early, if only to keep him out of further mischief.
From the start he excelled both academically and on the sports field. He went on to Ossett Grammar School and took a first in agricultural chemistry at Leeds University, following it with a PhD. At the same time he made his name as a bowler of some promise in the West Riding Heavy Woollen District League.
His move south in 1936, to a post at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, like his early schooling, had an almost accidental air to it. Presenting his impeccable academic achievements to his interviewers, he found them more interested in his cricketing talents. He was offered the job with more or less unlimited time off to play on condition that he always wore the college blazer.
For three summers, before war broke out, he played at least one three-day game a week for the county, often in the company of some of the great names of the era, such as Hammond, Goddard and Emmett. He attributed much of his success on the field to the fact that he was a better soil scientist than any of the other bowlers. Eventually the question was asked in a newspaper headline: "Is Tyler The Man For England?" "Alas the answer was ‘No'," he used to say, "but at least the question was asked!"
He moved to Reading University in 1939, as a temporary assistant lecturer in the agricultural chemistry department, and began serious ascent of the academic ladder. He wrote three books one of which, Organic Chemistry For Students Of Agriculture, has stood the test of time and dozens of papers on calcium metabolism in poultry and the structure of egg shells. He also became an expert on German agricultural history, translating many papers into English, including a whole book of Wilhelm von Nathusius. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and was awarded a DSc from Leeds University.
He was appointed professor at Reading in 1947, Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture in 1959 and Deputy Vice-Chancellor in 1968. His department changed its title three times during his leadership, first to physiological chemistry, then to physiology and biochemistry leading a fellow academic to remark of him that he had not so much held a chair, more a settee.
It was very much his sense of humour which he brought to the task of helping to shepherd the university through its difficult period of transition in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Not all his colleagues always agreed with him; nevertheless, the vast majority paid tribute to his steadying influence during this period, and to his never having shirked the difficult and the disagreeable.
However, his first love was teaching. A number of prominent academics in the field drew their early inspiration from his lectures. Sometimes they responded to his humour with their own. On one occasion he lectured, without appearing to notice, to 60 students and a horse, only noting afterwards that the horse seemed more interested than the students.
His first wife, Myra, died in 1971. He is survived by their two sons and a daughter and by his second wife, Rita.
Ruth Berghaus, German stage director and choreographer, died from cancer in Berlin on January 25, aged 68. She was born in Dresden on July 2, 1927.
RUTH BERGHAUS had fiercely held beliefs, many of which were in political line with those prevailing in the German Democratic Republic where she first achieved artistic success. She was a Brechtian through and through and took over the artistic direction of the Berliner Ensemble in 1971, when Brecht's widow Helene Weigel died. But it was as an opera producer that Berghaus achieved most notoriety outside the GDR.
Her stagings were, with very few exceptions, uncompromising. She took a view of each work that she tackled and that view was highly personal, based on her own experiences and credos, sometimes to the point of obscurity. She drove the idea of "producer's opera", fashionable in the 1980s and beyond, to its ultimate limits. The stage directions of the composer and his librettist were not considered important and on occasion were jettisoned altogether. What mattered was the Berghaus vision.
Berghaus productions, often emphasising urban decay and brutality, heavily influenced a new generation of directors who began to arrive at opera houses with the "concept" of the piece they were about to stage already parcelled up. Concept began to be spelt with a capital C or, according to the cynics, with a capital Germanic K. Berghaus collected disciples David Alden and David Fielding working at the English National Opera probably came under her spell at one time and revilers in equal measure. She became as accustomed to the boos and outrage of affronted traditionalists as she was to the adulation of those determined to push out opera's frontiers. Her name on a production was to some a call to worship and to others a sharp warning to stay away.
Her British debut in 1984, made with the Welsh National Opera, was characteristic. Brian Macmaster, then in charge of the company, was an expert on East European theatre and engaged her for Don Giovanni. He provided a strong cast, with William Shimell in the title role and Anne Evans as Anna. The WNO's music director, Sir Charles Mackerras, conducted and Berghaus provided the scandal. The Times described the set as resembling a "wide crazy-pavement of baked mud", on which the cast discovered objects which included socks, shoes and a teapot. Don Ottavio sang his Act II aria in a snowstorm. The production was almost universally condemned, but the WNO stuck to its guns and brought it to London later in the year for a short season at the Dominion, where it was again booed on the first night but applauded on the second. Berghaus, though, did not return to the WNO.
Perhaps she had no need to. Her reputation was being established at the Frankfurt Opera, with the help of the conductor and administrator Michael Gielen. It had begun with a production in 1981 of Mozart's Die Entfuhrung, which stressed the constancy of women and the self-preening of men: one of Belmonte's arias was flanked by flambeaux and a grand piano. Her peak was almost certainly a Ring which drew all Berghaus devotees to Frankfurt. There was a certain irony in the representative of the still hated GDR being much feted in one of West Germany's richest cities.
Ruth Berghaus started by studying choreography at the Palucca Schule in her native Dresden. In her early twenties she saw the Berliner Ensemble in Brecht's Mother Courage and was so impressed that she determined to work for the company. This she did after a spell at the Komische Oper in East Berlin, where the theories of Walter Felsenstein rather than Brecht still reigned.
Berghaus's first success with the Berliner Ensemble was her choreography for the battle scenes in Coriolanus, a production that was later to come to London. She met the composer Paul Dessau, who had spent the war in America, partly working in Hollywood, before returning to Berlin and announcing solidarity with the GDR. Dessau wrote the music for a number of Brecht plays. Berghaus married him in 1954, although he was thirty years her senior, and she started to direct his operas. Dessau's Die Verurteilung des Lukullus was the first Berghaus production to be seen in the West.
Dessau died in 1979. Two years earlier Ruth Berghaus had resigned from the Berliner Ensemble, which was by then far from being the force it once had been, because of resistance to many of the changes she proposed. Much of her operatic work was done at East Berlin's Staatsoper. But in 1984 she shocked the quite staid Munich public with a production of Rossini's Barber of Seville, which began by filling the stage with a huge female nude and had Rosina making her first appearance peeping out of a nipple. The casting was very respectable Hermann Prey, Reri Grist the staging was not.
The Berghaus reputation grew fast and she appeared to have no difficulty in getting exit visas from the GDR. The Paris Opera invited her in 1985 to do Alban Berg's Wozzeck, designed by one of her regular collaborators, the architect Hans Dieter Schaal. She jettisoned Berg's very precise stage directions and opted for an urban jungle. Transvestites filled Berg's country tavern and Wozzeck waded to his death not into a lake but through a sea of waving arms. The early choreographic training and the insistence on meaningful movement never left her, even though the composer's intentions sometimes did.
Berghaus's devotion to her own artistic principles could never be questioned. She was ready to put her head on the block even when everything was running against her. Teresa Stratas, who was scheduled to sing the title role of Alban Berg's Lulu in Brussels under Ruth Berghaus's direction, fell ill on the opening night. Berghaus had another soprano perform offstage while she herself acted the part, making light of the fact that at sixty she was no femme fatale.
Major houses, although not in London, continued to take a risk with Berghaus. At the Vienna Festival she and Claudio Abbado resurrected Schubert's unwieldy opera of knightly chivalry, Fierrabras, and against all the odds together they made a success of it. Rolf Liebermann in Hamburg engaged her Tristan and entrusted her with his own piece Freispruch fur Medea. Life with Berghaus was never dull. Her view might have been bleak, with perdition often just around the corner, but it was unwavering. She made sure that those who saw a Berghaus production did not forget it.
Bernard Jones, horticulturist died on January 25 aged 89. He was born on August 4, 1906.
ONE of the great sweet pea exhibitors of his day, Bernard Jones was an authority on the cultivation and hybridisation of the "queen of annuals". Although a pharmacist by profession, it was sweet peas, with their delightful fragrance and their pastel flowers, which were his passion. In his book The Complete Guide to Sweet Peas he wrote: "I do sincerely believe that this most absorbing of pursuits can be a great aid to happiness in life for those who follow it."
Bernard Rees Jones began his career as a seaman, venturing as far as Iceland and Egypt in order to finance his studies in pharmacy. He qualified in 1930, and spent the rest of his career as a hospital pharmacist, first in London and later in Warwick. For thirty years he lectured to nursing students at Coventry Technical College.
It was after his move to Warwick, in 1943, that he began seriously to cultivate the sweet pea. Every autumn, seeds were sown in pots, then nurtured in cold frames before being planted out in beds. In late May and June they flowered in a frilled mass from which specimens were cut to make up vases for the show bench or kept for hybridisation and trial.
Jones worked on improving the modern Spencer sweet peas, which were vigorous plants with large blooms, but which lacked the perfume of older varieties. One year his experiments included a sowing of stock grown from the original Cupani purple scented variety, introduced to Middlesex in 1699.
Between 1953 and 1979 Jones won the National Sweet Pea Society's Clay Cup nine times. He also bred several new varieties, including an orange cerise bloom "Alice Hardwicke" named after his mother "Cream Beauty" and the frilled lavender Clay Cup winner "Jack Davis". For many years Jones lectured and wrote the National Sweet Pea Society cultural bulletins. Occasionally he made radio broadcasts with Percy Thrower. He also served as a member of the joint trials committee of the Royal Horticultural Society.
He is survived by his wife Nora, whom he married in 1929, and by their two sons.
Colonel Kaj Birksted, OBE, DSO, DFC, Danish Second World War fighter ace, died in London on January 21 aged 80. He was born on March 2, 1915.
ALTHOUGH a Dane (and the only Danish pilot to become a wartime ace, ie, to destroy more than five enemy aircraft) Kaj Birksted commanded one of the RAF's two Norwegian squadrons and subsequently led the Norwegian Wing. From mid-1941 onwards he was involved almost continuously in combat.
He took part in the early sweeps through which Fighter Command tried to gain control of the air over occupied France after the Battle of Britain. He had a leading role in repelling German raids on Thames Estuary installations in 1943. During his period as CO of No 132 (Norwegian) Wing he made it for a time the top-scoring unit in the RAF. And when finally rested from operations in the spring of 1944, he made an important contribution to the planning of fighter cover for the D-Day landings, on the planning staff of 11 Group.
His men esteemed him not only for his qualities as a fighter leader, but for his acuity in dealing with any problem relating to flying personnel, and for his organising ability and quickness to solve any difficulty.
Kaj Birksted was born in Boston, Massachusetts, where his father was working at the time. But at a young age he moved back to Denmark with his parents. In 1938 he graduated as a pilot officer in the Royal Danish Navy. On April 9, 1940, the day Denmark was occupied by the Germans, he was duty officer at the Royal Danish Naval Air Station at Copenhagen. A week later, he escaped to Sweden in a rowing boat and from there he went all the way up to North Norway to join Norwegian and British forces. But he arrived there only to find that the futile campaign against the Germans was coming to its end, and early in May 1940 he was evacuated to England in the destroyer Wolverine.
Birksted joined the Royal Norwegian Air Force and spent about six months at the "Little Norway" training camp in Ontario Province, Canada. Early in 1941 he was transferred to England where he was posted to 43 "Fighting Cock" Squadron RAF, flying Hurricanes on daytime sorties and night intruder operations over enemy-held territory.
When, in July 1941, the Royal Norwegian Air Force established its first fighter squadron, No 331 operating Spitfires, Birksted was transferred to it. His knowledge of air fighting and tactics, combined with his quick thinking and sound judgment soon ensured that, notwithstanding that he was neither Norwegian nor British, he was promoted squadron leader and commanded the squadron from August 1942 until April 1943.
He led it in more than sixty offensive operations, and when it joined with Norway's second squadron, No 332, to form the Norwegian Wing, he led the combined unit. During this period, his squadron destroyed at least 17 enemy aircraft and damaged 23 more.
He then spent two months as an instructor at the Fighter Leaders' School where his energetic input made him to a considerable extent responsible for its success. Birksted returned to North Weald in July 1943, and in August he was appointed Wing Commander Flying. From that point the wing destroyed more than 39 enemy aircraft for the loss of only four pilots. This achievement was largely attributable to Birksted's leadership in the air and to his conscientious work and sound organisation on the ground.
After having flown some 500 operational hours in command of the Norwegian Squadron and the Norwegian Spitfire Wing, he was posted to HQ No 11 Group in March 1944. He was made adviser on day operations to the Air Officer Commanding and responsible for planning the group's fighter cover and for escorts for all major air operations.
This included the intensive fighter operations in support of the Normandy invasion, the battle for Arnhem, and the day-to-day cover of ground operations.
Birksted ended his war with ten kills credited to him, and might well have had more. In addition to his DSO and DFC for his skill and leadership in the air, and his OBE for his contribution to planning, he was also invested with Norway's Order of St Olav.
With the war over, he returned to Denmark and became special adviser to the Minister of Defence on the rebuilding of Danish military aviation. When the Royal Danish Air Force was established in 1950, he was promoted lieutenant-colonel and, two days later, colonel and Chief of Staff of the Air Force. However, in spite of the leadership he had demonstrated during the war, he ran into difficulties in his relations with the higher command of the postwar Services.
He was not given the top post of Chief of the Air Force (carrying with it general's rank) as he had hoped and for which his record appeared eminently to fit him. In 1954, therefore, he took up a civilian post at Nato, first in Paris and later in Brussels. On retirement he settled in England.
Birksted will be remembered as a fine pilot, a crack shot, a resourceful tactician and a courageous wing leader. He was a first-class officer who, by his example, was an inspiration to all with whom he came into contact, not only in the RAF during the war, but also in the difficult build-up phase of the postwar Royal Danish Air Force.
He married, in 1945, Sonja Irgens, and is survived by her and by their son.
The Indonesian Heri Dono has brought his art - and his protest - to England. Sacha Craddock reports
A large gallery upstairs at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford has been painted khaki. It is lit to appear simultaneously light and dark: an artificial twilight. Huge, bulbous tree-figures balancing on relatively delicate artificial legs amble across the gallery. Our view of the figures is like a child's: we have to look up to these strange, oversize wire-wrapped figures, with their emphatic chests and red lights on top. Military camouflage softens the gallery ceiling. Army boots, helmets and guns suggest a dangerous presence in the dusk.
Blooming in Arms, an installation by Heri Dono, a 35-year-old artist from Indonesia, is the culmination of a short residency at the museum. Dono is well-known in Japan, Australia and his own country, but this is his first exhibition here. During his stay he has made drawings, collages and watercolours (a selection of them is also on show in the library at the Institute of International Visual Arts in London). He has also given a performance in Oxford and lectured at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies. Throughout his time in Britain he has repeatedly addressed the question of how to make critical, political art in Indonesia and survive.
The installation at Moma is laden with irony. The military regime in Indonesia simultaneously encourages people to plant trees as part of a "green" policy and allows the destruction of forests in Sumatra, Kalimanjan and Irian Jaya. The figures' false legs are a reference to landmines; the militarism, of course, reflects the presence of soldiers in the country's daily life.
Not that the connection between the message and intention behind a work and its success as art is necessarily automatic. For Dono, as he says in the exhibition catalogue: "What is important is to keep the quality of the ethical problem in art. Sometimes the political idea is good but the painting is not so good."
It was while being taught at art school in Yogyakarta, on the island of Java, that Dono first came across the perennial argument between followers of the "traditional" and the "modern"; between an often artificially imposed concept of national identity, on the one hand, and the wholesale embrace of Western artistic values on the other. Dono is fascinated by tradition his performance in Oxford was based on traditional puppet theatre but maintains that it is no longer effective or possible for him to work in any single mode.
Dono lives, through choice, in a village away from his country's main centres. By using complicated but apparently naive methods, and by seeming simple in his approach, he creates plenty of opportunities to show his work. "I have to use tricks," he says. "I am an artist and I have to use my brain."
He explains how geographical distance from Jakarta, the capital, drunken local policemen, and a reliance on impromptu happenings have allowed him to keep one step ahead of those who would clamp down on his work. His 1994 piece, Fermentation of Minds, for instance in which rows of cast heads were stuck behind rows of school desks, nodding in mechanical unison to the sound of chanting was first seen in public when he simply put it out in front of his studio in the village. It is a matter of surviving, so that he can continue to make his art, rather than have his shows shut down. In Indonesia it is not unusual, he says, for an artist to be told an hour before an exhibition is due to open that it is not going to open at all.
The directness of his work has a lot to do with the diversity of its audience. Not only is there a multiplicity of cultural backgrounds and languages in his own country, but Dono acknowledges that a Western audience will have quite different visual expectations. By using a variety of media, from performance to painting and sculptural installation, and by mixing local satire and comic-strip narrative with a full-frontal Modernist style, he manages to cut through the particular and strike a chord of collective recognition.
Heri Dono: Blooming in Arms at the Museum of Modern Art, Pembroke Street, Oxford (01865 722733) and Institute of International Visual Arts, Kirkman House, Whitfield Street London W1 (0171-636 1930) until Feb 11
From Mr A. L. Lunt
Sir, Mr Michael Heseltine's defence of the practice of delaying payments to suppliers will be taken as justification by those who pursue this policy, and will be abhorred by all who have a policy of on-time payment and expect the same in return.
Late payment is little short of stealing; by forcing a weaker company to borrow and pay interest, or to forego interest, it is certainly dishonest. Mr Heseltine's statement does no credit to him or to the party he and I support.
To restore its reputation the Government should reject his position unequivocally. Legislation for companies to have the right to receive interest when payments are delayed without justifiable cause is now overdue.
Yours faithfully,
ANTHONY L. LUNT,
40 Stile Hall Gardens, W4.
February 4.
From Mrs Barbara Roche, MP for Hornsey and Wood Green (Labour)
Sir, The criticism of the Deputy Prime Minister for boasting about not paying creditors on time ("Heseltine attacked for bill advice", report, February 5) is amply justified. John Gummer, however, cannot get away with saying that government "has set itself the target of becoming a best-practice client".
Answers to parliamentary questions I have recently received suggest that last year across Whitehall at least £232 million was paid late by government departments, and the worst offender the Treasury paid 25 per cent of its bills late.
Yet, like Mr Heseltine, ministers do not seem unduly concerned about this. Angela Knight, economic secretary to the Treasury, wrote to the Director-General of the CBI last month that her department's record for late payment of bills between the end of the 1994-95 and the start of the 1995-96 financial years was "not exactly the ‘crime' it has been portrayed".
I have asked the Public Accounts Committee to investigate the scandal of late payment by government departments. Small firms are hit hardest by late payment, with some going to the wall and others being unable to invest and grow because of cashflow problems.
Small businesses are the backbone of the British economy and the Government should be supporting them, not sanctioning kicking them in the teeth.
Yours sincerely,
BARBARA ROCHE
(Shadow Small Business Minister),
House of Commons.
February 5.
From Emeritus Professor Harold Carter
Sir, Mr Norman Berdichevsky (letter, January 27) refers to a figure of 550,000 speaking, reading or writing Welsh, derived from the Census and included in the book A Geography of the Welsh Language 1961-1991 by Professor J. A. Aitchison and myself. He should have referred to "speaking, reading or writing Welsh in Wales".
In spite of consistent requests the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys refuses to ask the question as to ability in Welsh in the rest of the United Kingdom. There is no way, therefore, of knowing the total number of Welsh speakers.
The crudest estimate, by taking the numbers in the rest of the UK born in Wales and assuming that the proportion of Welsh speakers in Wales can be applied to it, would suggest that there are something like an additional 100,000 on top of those actually recorded in the Census.
The questions on Welsh, Gaelic and Irish should be asked in a standard format throughout the UK so that a proper enumeration of these languages is obtained.
Yours faithfully,
HAROLD CARTER,
Tyle Bach, Maes Y Garn,
Bow Street, Aberystwyth, Dyfed.
January 29.
From Mr John Wilkinson, MP for Ruislip Northwood (Conservative)
Sir, The French Defence Minister, Charles Millon, is quoted ("French policy boost for British Aerospace", January 25) as saying that "we think it better to create a European arms industry, thus alliances between companies, thus common programmes, thus a European weapons agency".
These sentiments were echoed in a European Commission communication launched the same week by Commissioner Bangemann proposing that EU rules on state aid, competition and the award of public contracts should apply to the defence industry. This would involve harmonising import duties and tackling distortions due to differences between national export control policies.
In the debate on the Royal Navy on February 1 the Minister for Defence Procurement, James Arbuthnot, MP, stated that "collaboration especially in Europe will be increasingly important in the future. That is why we are pursuing the concept of a European armaments agency and why we wish to participate in the Franco-German armaments structure that came into being at the start of 1996" (Hansard, Vol 270, No 41, cols 1141-2).
May I inject a note of caution? First, weapons procurement is best achieved by commercially-driven industrial arrangements, not by the superimposition of bureaucratic European agencies.
Second, any policy which impaired the Armed Forces' ability to buy the most cost-effective equipment from any appropriate source must reduce their operational effectiveness. Collaboration with American manufacturers can be just as fruitful as that with European companies.
Finally the European Union has an ambition to arrogate to itself a defence role. The means envisaged are through EU control of arms development, production and procurement. However, defence rightly remains the prerogative of sovereign states whose defence budgets are voted by national parliaments. Likewise, export licensing of armaments should remain the responsibility of the British Government answerable to the British Parliament.
Yours faithfully,
JOHN WILKINSON,
House of Commons.
February 2.
From Dr William Alcock
Sir, Mr Winston Graham (letter, February 2) wonders why the snow which fell in his area on January 26 had almost gone within three days although the ambient temperature during the period never rose above the freezing point of water (32F).
Certain substances have the property of changing, in certain circumstances, from the solid to the vapour state without first melting: water in the form of ice is one, iodine in crystal form is another.
The condition is known as sublimation. Mr Graham's snow vaporised.
Yours faithfully,
W. ALCOCK,
46 Park Road,
Watford, Hertfordshire.
February 2.
Correction: Headline: Here today ...;Letter;Correction Issue Date: Tuesday Febru ary 13, 1996 Page: 15 From Mr J. A. W. Jennings Sir, The reason why the snow had almost gone within three days although the ambient temperature during the p eriod never rose above the freezing point of water (letter, February 2) was beca use the radiant heat from the sun imparted far more energy to the snow than to the surrounding air. Sublimation of snow could not take place out of doo rs, as Dr William Alcock says (letter, February 6), because the atmospheric pr essure would always be too high. Sublimation depends on the boiling point o f the solid substance being lower than its melting point at the pressure of the atmosphere. Yours faithfully, J. A. JENNINGS, Babington House, Frome, Somerset. February 7.
GALLERIES: At 64, Bridget Riley shows no sign of moderating the visual demands of her art, says Richard Cork
Nobody could accuse Bridget Riley of pallid English reticence. Ever since she launched her first assault on our retinas, her work has never been afraid to dazzle and overwhelm. Riley is a fierce painter, flouting the stereotype of the "gentle" female artist with eye-bending verve. The toughness of her work has become legendary and in her 65th year she has no intention of dropping her guard.
Walk into her exhibition of recent paintings at Waddington Galleries and the visual barrage hits you at once. Hung at a disconcertingly low level, these high-keyed canvases pulsate with intense colour contrasts. Their surfaces are immaculate. Flat, orderly and calculated to a hair's breadth, they betray no sign of the artist's own mark-making. The paint is applied with impersonal precision. Sensuous brushwork is not permitted to seduce the viewer, or impede the clean, hard-hitting energy generated by Riley's particles of form. They demand an alert response, and have no patience with the notion of a faint-hearted viewer.
Not that the Riley of the mid-1990s is quite as combative as the young artist who emerged 35 years ago. In that eruptive early period she restricted herself to black and white. Once viewers became ambushed and ensnared, they found themselves crushed by converging walls of rectangles or pulled into fierce whirlpools. In the Tate Gallery's Fall, painted in 1963, undulating lines rush down the canvas like an unstoppable flood. Most of those precocious, single-minded paintings are painful to look at and demand a formidable commitment from anyone who stares at them for a time.
The Rileys at Waddington do not require quite so much perceptual stamina. The harshness of black and white has been replaced, here, by an almost profligate richness of colour. If her early work was cold, the new paintings are hot. Riley is unafraid to allow puce, orange, scarlet and maroon to play prominent roles. Even though Riley moderates them with light green, deep blue and bleached yellow, the overriding mood is one of Mediterranean radiance.
So how dependent is Riley on the stimulus of luminous surroundings? At Karsten Schubert, where her recent gouaches are on show, many of the exhibits are inscribed with the name Bassacs, where she stays in France. Executed between April and July of last year, they are all paler than the paintings and less busy in their congregation of forms. Strong uprights dominate each image, albeit sliced by diagonal intruders. They are reminiscent of trees, but Riley is enough of an abstractionist to make me wary of reading landscape references into her work. The light-suffused planes floating in these gouaches insist on a life of their own.
Like many abstract artists before her, in the High Modernist tradition to which she still proudly adheres, Riley is fascinated by the parallel between painting and music. She particularly admires The Poetics of Music, the lectures Stravinsky delivered at Harvard where he lauded the benefits to be derived from moving within the limits of a narrow frame. The idea that "music provides a sensual experience by the organisation of a limited range of formal means notes, scales, intervals and their possible relationships" has a direct bearing on Riley's own hopes and ways of working.
But that does not mean she shuts herself away, refusing to be aware of visual stimuli outside the studio. Robert Kudielka, who has written extensively on her work, recalled visiting Munich with Riley on a bright March day in 1972. Leaving the great collection of Rubens in the Alte Pinakothek, they wandered across to the Hofgarten and sat at a tree-sheltered table laid with a white cloth. "It was about mid-day," he remembered. "A waitress brought us glasses of wine which sparkled yellow and green. The light grew brighter and stronger every minute ... Bridget stopped and exclaimed: ‘Look at it! Just look at it!'." There was, Kudielka went on, "nothing to look at in the proper sense of the word, no particular incident or object to be observed. It was rather as though we were sitting in the middle of an all-enveloping event."
Those final words apply very well to the experience on offer at Waddington. Standing in the gallery, I found myself surrounded by the vibrancy of the colours marshalled so exactingly on the wide canvases. The titles Riley has chosen for these pictures In Attendance, From Here, Reflection and August are free from any dependence on a specific, observed location. They do not, however, rule out the notion of an artist responding to, and meditating on, a more general apprehension of time and place. For her, looking is a central activity and she can trace it back to childhood years in Cornwall.
While Barbara Hepworth was nourished by the intensity of her reaction to the landscape around St Ives, the young Riley went on clifftop walks with her mother and discovered the intoxication of looking. She was lucky: Cornwall has a special ability both to sharpen and cleanse the perceptions of the artists who live there. But she also knew how to learn from that formative experience, and apply it consistently to her work as a painter.
More, perhaps, than the majority of artists, Riley has always been highly disciplined; she imposes rigorous constraints on herself. In the Waddington exhibition, they are most apparent in the meticulous organisation of the images. Each picture is a patchwork of angular segments, systematic enough to rule out the inclusion of a single renegade curve. The proliferation of these segments generates a powerful sense of restless dynamism across the surfaces. They hover on the edge of shimmering.
But, despite her admiration for Seurat, whose exquisite Le Pont de Courbevoie she once carefully copied, they never become broken or blurred. Riley retains her passion for hard definition. Her recent work is as crisply structured as ever, and within its spangled complexity she ensures that every unit of form retains a clear-cut identity.
The longer we look at her paintings, though, the less confident we become about finding our bearings within their bristling facets. The diagonal movements, which seem so dominant at first, are counterbalanced increasingly by the strength of upright, pillar-like presences. However forcefully they seem to be pierced by the diagonal shafts, they stay erect. And then we notice how ambiguous they really are. Riley never lets us decide which forms are solid. She plays with possibilities continually, in an almost teasing manner. What starts out resembling a tree may well become a slice of sky.
The airiness of these new paintings is very striking. It suggests that Riley wants more and more to break up the rigidity of her pictures and let them breathe. Sometimes, in her earlier canvases, she would pack them so tightly that a distinct feeling of claustrophobia ensued.
Now, by contrast, the overall mood is more expansive. Hedonism has become a potent force, and Riley seems more prepared to let us establish our own relationship with her work. She is, perhaps, entering into a greater state of relaxation. The play of dappled light is omnipresent, encouraging us to feel blessed by its capacity to soothe. Riley is an admirer of Matisse, and what she describes as his "great shout of joy". These new paintings seem suffused with the heat and luminosity of the south, and invite us to discover an awareness of wellbeing.
Even so, I cannot imagine Riley ever likening her art, in Matisse's words, to "a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue". However many changes her art may undergo in the future, it will always insist on the ability to be bracing. A good Riley does its best to invigorate. It purges us of lazy ways of seeing, and invites us to scrutinise the world with renewed clarity, wonder and zest.
Bridget Riley at Waddington Galleries, Cork Street, London W1 (0171-437 8611) and Karsten Schubert, Charlotte Street, London W1 (0171-631 0031), until March 2
From Mr Steven Barnett
Sir, The House of Lords has the opportunity tomorrow to vote on a piece of legislation which will, in my view, instantly endear it to the great majority of voters. A proposed amendment to the Broadcasting Bill reinstates the principle of "listed" sporting events which I believe, as part of our national heritage, should be freely available to all on terrestrial television.
Such an amendment will instantly reassure the 80 per cent of households who do not have satellite or cable television that they will continue to get live coverage of the country's major sporting events for the cost of a licence fee. The argument that such a provision will prevent sporting bodies from realising the full market potential for their sports no longer holds water; the fierce competition between the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and from next year Channel 5, will ensure that a proper market for sports rights is preserved.
It is important that their Lordships are not distracted by the Government's "consultation" paper on TV sport (report, February 3). Virginia Bottomley's stated intention to "focus the debate" is a disingenuous ploy heavily dependent on figures and arguments from BSkyB to deflect what appears to be a likely government defeat.
There is no doubt about the weight of popular opinion, and public fears have been fuelled by The News Corporation's recent bid for the Olympic Games. If the House of Lords has the courage to follow its instincts on this issue, it will earn the thanks of a very grateful viewing public.
Yours faithfully,
STEVEN BARNETT
(Author, Games and Sets: the changing face of sport on television),
University of Westminster,
School of Communication,
Watford Road,
Northwick Park, Harrow, Middlesex.
February 4.
From the Chief Executive of the Rugby Football League and others
Sir, Nobody should be surprised by the current frenzy surrounding the public debate about broadcasting and its future relationship with sport ("Right to view strikes back as pay to view", Sport, February 5).
The fact that an overwhelming majority of people care passionately about sport and their access to it, whether as participants or spectators, is a considerable comfort to all sports governing bodies.
In the past five years the cosy terrestrial duopoly has been broken and a true market established for sporting rights. The financial benefits flowing from this have enabled us to provide better stadia and better training facilities, more help for the stars of tomorrow and, crucially, a better prospect of higher standards of achievement on the field.
There has also been a boom in the exposure of sport through the media not just for the traditional sports but also for those such as ice hockey or basketball which have had coverage unthinkable in the days of the cartel.
So who really has been the loser? Certainly not Sky, which has brought dedicated sports channels to Britain for the first time and filled them overwhelmingly with quality sports action, much of it previously unavailable to the domestic audience.
As for the terrestrial channels, why the shrieks of anguish when, within the past year, long-term contracts have been signed with the BBC or ITV for FA Cup and England football coverage, Formula One motor racing, and Wimbledon lawn tennis not to mention the Olympic Games?
It is in nobody's interest that sport should be available merely to two men and a dog, at whatever price to the broadcasters. Let the politicians debate the issue by all means. But let them also be certain that they really know better than sport itself what is best for the future.
Yours faithfully,
MAURICE LINDSAY
(Chairman, Major Spectator Sports
Division, CCPR; Chief Executive,
Rugby Football League),
MICHAEL BONALLACK
(Secretary, Royal & Ancient
Golf Club of St Andrews),
TONY HALLETT
(Secretary, Rugby Football Union),
GRAHAM KELLY
(Chief Executive, The Football Association),
IAN PEACOCK
(Executive Director,
Lawn Tennis Association),
ALAN SMITH
(Chief Executive,
Test & Country Cricket Board),
The Central Council
of Physical Recreation,
Francis House, Francis Street, SW1.
February 5.
From Dr T. D. Andrews
Sir, What is the annual cost of replacement batteries for Dr Roaf's three-seater Kewet El-Jet electric car? Such batteries do not last forever.
Granted there is satisfaction in knowing that the power used by Dr Roaf for her house and car is not the product of any polluting process (excluding that caused during the manufacture of the solar panels and the car batteries); but it is most certainly not free.
Yours faithfully,
T. D. ANDREWS,
Clapper Farm House,
East Bergholt,
Colchester, Essex.
February 2.
From Mr M. A. Challoner
Sir, I admire Dr Roaf's science and enthusiasm in having constructed 26 Blandford Avenue. Unfortunately I cannot afford to do the same.
However, I take some comfort from the fact that, by her spending of an extra £40,000 on the building costs, the financial gain is probably nil. The interest on this amount ought to produce at least £2,400 per annum, and that should be sufficient to pay for the expected heating costs in a similar but standard house, together with the petrol for up to 12,000 miles a year.
Yours faithfully,
ALAN CHALLONER,
13 The Village, Bodelwyddan, Clwyd.
January 28.
From Mr P. F. de Cuyper
Sir, Your leading feature in the Weekend section of January 27, "This house and car cost nothing to run", has much to commend it in raising the profile of energy self-sufficiency and especially in proving that such designs can work in practice. It suggests that self-sufficiency can be achieved at a fairly modest incremental capital cost of 25 per cent an extra £40,000 in addition to a traditional cost of £160,000.
If this was correct, then we should all be building to the standards in Dr Susan Roaf's house as the payback period of the additional investment would be counted in years rather than decades.
My own limited experience of building a self-sufficient dwelling, now in course of construction, without recourse to any fossil fuels, would suggest an incremental cost per square foot in the order of 60 to 75 per cent primarily due to converting theoretical design ideas into engineering reality. This is compounded when executing an untested project within planning constraints on a fixed cost basis.
Moreover, as your article points out, the design has to rely on more than one energy source to top up any shortfall in the main supply in Dr Roaf's case, solar topped up with a condensing boiler burning fossil fuel. I have also looked at solar as a main source, but topped up with a small wind-powered generator to counter the loss of efficiency of solar energy in winter, when loads are invariably increased.
Our European neighbours buy surplus energy from domestic renewable sources at the price they charge rather than at a fraction of their cheapest rate, as is the case in the UK. The regional electricity companies may wish to take note in view of last week's threat of a national electricity shortfall.
Yours faithfully,
P. F. de CUYPER,
2 a Shirleys, Lewes Road,
Ditchling, East Sussex.
February 5.
From Mr Edward Armitage
Sir, Instead of a national monument or enterprise, or even in addition to a national effort to mark the millennium, might I suggest that each county be encouraged to embark on a project that would display that county's features and character.
One can already envisage a most exhilarating and educational holiday tour of all the county exhibits a grand tour of Britain, in fact, rivalling in esteem the previous exhibitions of 50 and 100 years ago and, one would hope, of a more permanent nature.
Yours sincerely,
EDWARD ARMITAGE,
11 Cambridge Road,
Ely, Cambridge.
January 31.
From Mr M. R. Adams
Sir, May I suggest a millennium scholarship trust to last into the conceivable future. This would avoid wasteful expenditure on grotesque buildings, controversial celebrations or sculptural and artistic abominations.
Each university in the United Kingdom and Ireland should devise a number of studies in important and imaginative areas. The awards should be for UK and Ireland nationals only and the studies should take place at the university which makes the award.
Since Christ is the cause of the millennium but not of conflict between Christian denominations, no studies should upset Christian beliefs. Religion should not be a subject for any of the studies nor should the media or sport, and medicine should account for no more than a small element.
The trust should be set up immediately with its members being chosen in such a way that it will be guaranteed from its conception to be an organisation of great importance and of excellence.
Yours faithfully,
MICHAEL ADAMS,
The Willows,
Dulcote, Wells, Somerset.
February 2.
From Dr Derek Nuttall
Sir, In considering suitable ways of celebrating the millennium (Simon Jenkins, January 27) would it not be appropriate to recognise in some permanent form the contribution made to civilisation during the last thousand years through the book and the printed word?
By the start of the 21st century, it is highly probable that new means of communication will have virtually superseded books, magazines and newspapers.
How about a "Museum of the Book" where the skills of calligraphers, illuminators, and bookbinders, along with the many ingenious machines and technical processes developed for letterpress, lithographic and intaglio printing, could be preserved for those who will follow us in the third millennium?
Yours sincerely,
D. NUTTALL,
Langdale,
Pulford Lane,
Dodleston, Chester, Cheshire.
January 29.
From Mrs Anne Tayler
Sir, I have been sent The Complete Guide to What's on Talking Tapes and I would like to share parts of it with you.
Serendipity, I think, is the word that best describes the pleasure to be found in searching its pages for your favourite writer or title. Your own Alan Coren is listed under A for Alan, and Eliot under TS. Having grasped this the Sherlock Holmes fan will flick the pages back to A for Arthur Conan Doyle, and be foiled, for Conan Doyle is under S for Sir Arthur.
Byron, naturally, is under L for Lord. Hamlet and Measure for Measure appear, though, under S for Shakespeare and not W for William: never mind, the missing William turns up for The Canterbury Tales under yes, William Chaucer. I have looked in vain for Lines Written upon Westminster Bridge under G for Geoffrey Wordsworth.
One of my favourites is A Tale of Two Cities in the S (for Shakespeare) section.
Having completed one's order for Talking Tapes, it is reassuring to know that it will be dealt with by "experienced, knowledgeable telephone operators". Happy listening!
Yours faithfully,
ANNE TAYLER,
8 North Street,
Nazeing, nr Waltham Abbey, Essex.
February 1.
Australia must play up, play up and play the game
The current Australian cricket team may be good at winning cricket matches, but they confirmed yesterday that they lack their predecessors' understanding of the game's true spirit. In deciding to forfeit their match against Sri Lanka in the forthcoming World Cup to be played in Colombo they have acted neither with courage nor with diplomacy. Instead, they have upset the organisation of a complex tournament and handed a propaganda victory to the murderous Tamil rebels who hold Sri Lanka to ransom.
Cricket has never lacked squabbles and tiffs, but not since the Bodyline series has the game been such a fecund source of diplomatic friction. Consider the words of Lakshman Kadirgamar, the urbane Sri Lankan Foreign Minister, spoken yesterday to Gareth Evans, his Australian counterpart: "If any campaign is mounted by the Australian Government to persuade other countries not to come for their matches, it would be considered a hostile act in relations with the Government of Sri Lanka." The West Indies appear, on latest accounts, to have followed the Australian example: but there can be no doubt that the cricket administrators of the distant Caribbean islands would not even have contemplated such a step had not Australia set such a craven example.
Inevitably there will be pressure on Colombo to concede the political match. If two of the four games cannot take place, the island leg of the World Cup will of course be devalued by those who fail to meet their sporting commitments. Yet few love their cricket more passionately than do the Sri Lankans, and the security guarantees extended to all players by the Government there "equivalent to that provided for visiting heads of state or government" ought to calm the panic of all but the most fearful. If those arrangements would be good enough for the Queen or Paul Keating, the Australian Prime Minister, they ought to be good enough for Shane Warne. There is an offer, also, to fly the players in and out from south India on the day of the match itself.
Since the World Cup does not begin until the 14th of this month, pressure will not abate to transfer matches from Sri Lanka to India or Pakistan. Ultimately, the decision to play or not to play and where depends on the organisers of the tournament, in close consultation with the host Governments. The Sri Lankan games may eventually be played elsewhere: but that would be a no-ball. A strife-torn island would be deprived of important days of sport and pleasure. The terrorists would have won a victory. Australia's cricketers, winners on the field, have lost an important game off it.
Woodhead paints a gloomy picture of teaching practice
Why are British school standards so low? Not enough money, shouts one side. Too much local authority control, shouts the other. Yesterday the still, small voice of Chris Woodhead, Chief Inspector of Schools, brought some calm reason to the debate. The problem lies with neither of the above, he argues, but with the educational philosophy and poor quality of many teachers.
Mr Woodhead, in his annual report, concedes that a small minority of schools could benefit from more books and equipment or better accommodation. But cash does not solve the problem of poor teaching in new schools. Nor is the structure and management of education necessarily the culprit. When the intelligence of pupils is taken into account, grant-maintained schools do no better than their local authority counterparts.
His findings make depressing reading. "Secondary schools often receive pupils with very low levels of literacy." Standards of numeracy "remain disappointing". A slowing in pupil progress in the first two years of junior school "has become a worryingly persistent feature of inspection findings" and "is strongly associated with a fall in the quality of teaching". Overall, standards of achievement need to be raised in about half of primary and two fifths of secondary schools.
Many of the problems could be addressed simply with a change of attitude among teachers and heads. Research conducted by Ofsted and other bodies provides a wealth of guidance about which teaching methods work best. The use of phonics (sounding out letters) in reading, more whole-class teaching, and the grouping of children by ability all lead to higher standards. Teachers who are ideologically opposed to these practices must open their minds if their pupils are not to suffer as a result.
A more specific problem, however, is the dip in standards in the second half of primary schooling. Here teachers often lack confidence in some subjects; this insecurity feeds through to the children. It is hardly surprising that the standard of teaching falls when teachers are expected to be equally competent in English, mathematics, geography, science, history, design, religious education and information technology all at the level required by a ten-year-old. Private schools see the merit of moving to specialist teaching at the age of eight; state schools, as far as possible, could follow suit.
Mr Woodhead identifies about 15,000 teachers who can be classed as "poor". Some may be irredeemably so, and should not remain in their jobs. But others could benefit from further training in the subjects in which they are weak. Here, targeted extra spending would surely bear fruit. For the education of a child can be blighted, sometimes for good, by having a bad class teacher for a whole year of primary education.
The other way of raising standards in primary schools is to give parents more information. So it is welcome, if overdue, that Gillian Shephard has agreed to publish league tables of 11-year-old test results. At the moment, parents have little more than word of mouth to rely upon in choosing a primary school. From next year, they will have hard facts. Primary schools will then have all the incentives to improve that are already raising standards in the secondary sector.
The West should not turn a blind eye to Peking's provocation
If Russia were to threaten missile attacks on a neighbour, the West would act swiftly to impress on Moscow that military intimidation was intolerable. By contrast, there has been barely any response, even in the US, to equally menacing behaviour by China. Over the past year, Peking has sold missiles and nuclear technology to Iran, grabbed the Mischief Reef on the disputed Spratly Islands, laid claim to parts of Indonesian waters and harassed shipping in the South China Sea. Above all, it has set out to intimidate Taiwan, the prosperous and newly democratic island off China's southeast coast to which Chiang Kai-shek fled in 1949.
Western assumptions that China will not cross the line between psychological warfare and military action against Taiwan require urgent and sceptical review. Having tested the Pentagon's reflexes with a series of military exercises last year, powerful factions in the Chinese military appear to have concluded that America will not intervene.
The uneasy truce with Peking over Taiwan's future has ended since Taiwan's conversion to democracy, which will be complete with next month's direct presidential elections. China sees these elections as a symbolic step towards independence. Officially, Taiwan continues to hold that it is part of "one China", to be peacefully reunited one day with the mainland. But political liberty has given rein to a flourishing Taiwanese opposition which demands with some historical justification sovereign independence. President Lee Teng-hui, the almost certain winner, has sought international recognition short of independence for Taiwan, including membership, as a self-governing territory, of the UN and other international bodies. Elected, he will be strongly placed to press his case that reunification should wait until China has the same democratic, free-market system as Taiwan.
China has always maintained that it would invade Taiwan if it declared independence. Now faced by what it sees as an intolerable affront by a "renegade province", it has deliberately blurred that line. It justifies the use of force on pretexts so vague that they could cover almost any Chinese whim, "chaos" in Taiwan, or a decision that Taiwan's politicians were covertly bent on "splitting the motherland". In a speech last week Li Peng, the Chinese Prime Minister, threatened to act against "foreign forces who attempt to interfere in China's reunification" a clear "hands-off" signal to America. This month, China is reported to be planning massive military manoeuvres in Fujian province, which lies opposite Taiwan and has been declared a "war zone" by Peking. It has pointedly declined to deny reports that it will subject the island to daily missile attacks in the wake of next month's elections.
China could decide on a pre-emptive strike, forcing a rupture between China and America with global implications. The Pentagon consensus is that China is not yet capable of invading. But it could easily launch missile attacks on Taiwan's petrochemical industry, or mount a blockade of the Taiwan Straits by mining sealanes and sealing major ports. Taiwan has fuel and food reserves for only a few months.
China's neighbours would prefer to look the other way. Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew likened China's grab on the Spratlys last year to "a big dog lifting his leg". Although such leg-lifting is incompatible with China's obligations under international law, even America seems reluctant to say so firmly. It slipped the aircraft carrier Nimitz through the Taiwan Straits last December, but then diluted this already modest message by giving "inclement weather" as the reason.
Indecision is dangerous. China has a history of chaotic and violent changes of dynasty. Contenders for Deng Xiaoping's mantle are tempted to bang the patriotic drum. At such times the military, ardently courted by President Jiang Zemin, exercises enormous influence. Indecision would also be politically hazardous for President Clinton: the Taiwan lobby is one of the strongest in Congress. Before China goes further, he needs to leave Peking in no doubt that, whatever Taiwan's legal status, its right to be left in peace has his determined support. China will denounce any firmness as barbarian provocation; China is the provoker. The greatest risk lies in turning a blind eye.
Bring back imagination, says Anatole KaletskyWhat will become of Europe if Europeans lose their capacity to think? As they mouth slogans about competitiveness and the challenge of the global market, Europe's politicians and businessmen are in danger of forgetting that Europe has one and only one genuine competitive advantage: the capacity to think, to argue, to defy conventional authority and so to innovate. If Europeans lose the ability to think openly and critically, we will indeed be overtaken by such closed societies as China, not to mention Korea and Singapore.
Yet clear, honest thinkers are an endangered species in Europe. Many politicians, especially in Brussels and Paris, seem determined to extinguish critical debate in European public life. And the paralysis seems to be spreading to business.
This is the frightening thought that struck me at the World Economic Forum, an intellectual cornucopia served every winter in the Swiss resort of Davos to a thousand businessmen by an astonishing array of politicians, economic officials, management theorists and Nobel prizewinning scientists and artists. This year two contradictory leitmotifs ran through the forum. For the Americans and Asians, the Central Europeans and even many of the Russians, the future seemed to be full of the excitement of new technology and new political systems, the opportunities of entering the global market and recasting management structures in a world of constant innovation and rapid growth.
But the West Europeans seemed to be living on a different planet. For our politicians, the great issues were not the future of Russia or America's increasing lead in the industries of the future, but monetary union and EU enlargement. For our businessmen, competitiveness was not about harnessing technology or turning change into a factor of competitive advantage; it was a matter of governments reducing regulation, unions accepting lower wages and electorates agreeing to welfare reforms.
The Americans and Asians seemed to be pulling out of the gloom of the last recession, preparing for growth and taking responsibility for their own future. The Europeans seemed always to be looking backwards to the Treaty of Maastricht or the heyday of the welfare state and trying to pass the buck, from business to government or from politicians to central bankers.
Worse still was the absence of honest debate or intellectual curiosity among the Europeans. Monolithic thinking is suffocating Europe's political culture. The obsession with EMU has distracted politicians from much more important matters, such as the relationships with America and Russia, reform of the welfare state and even the monetary arrangements between the dollar and the mark. To make things worse, having focused all their attention on EMU, they have now declared EMU out of bounds for serious debate. The future of Europe is deemed to revolve around EMU, but any open discussion about EMU is deemed anti-European. Ergo it is now anti-European to discuss Europe's future.
This conspiracy of silence explains much of the disillusionment with politics in Europe, as well as the woeful mismanagement of monetary policy in both Germany and France. But what struck me in Davos was that monolithic thinking also threatens Europe's economic and business life.
Consider Europe's present obsession with competitiveness. International competitiveness, like EMU, is probably the wrong issue to preoccupy Europe's businessmen in 1996. But more serious still, the new political correctness has made it impossible even to discuss competitiveness intelligently.
International competition is certainly not the only reason why Europe's unemployment is so high or why our welfare states must be reformed. Unemployment is also caused by lack of demand, bad management and labour relations and a backward industrial structure. The welfare state needs reform because it will eventually go bankrupt, not because of competition from Japan and America.
But suppose I am wrong and the root cause of Europe's problems is high labour costs, relative to America and Japan. Then economics suggests a simple, quick and reliable answer: ease monetary policy until European currencies fall sharply against the dollar and yen. In practice, such a devaluation might not be easy or might have unwelcome side-effects; but to discuss competitiveness without even mentioning monetary policy and exchange rates is either ignorant or dishonest. Yet that is exactly the intellectual betrayal now being enforced.
So there you have it. Europe's politicians have imposed on themselves a vow of silence over what they have deemed the most important issue of the decade: EMU. Europe's business leaders refuse to discuss the central issue in the competitiveness debate. Perhaps the outlook for Europe really is grim in a new century, when the only currencies of value will be knowledge, imagination and independent thought.
Chris Woodhead charts the way forward for failing schools
If some schools can do it, why can't all the others?
Primary schools, for so long the poor relation of secondary, are now very much in the public eye. The most important conclusion in my annual report as Senior Chief Inspector of Schools, published yesterday, is that standards of literacy and numeracy must be raised. The second is that the quality of teaching in the junior age range must be improved significantly in perhaps half o all primary schools.
Why does underachievement remain endemic in so many schools? Why is it that, despite the hard work and dedication, the genuine concern for children which the majority of teachers demonstrate, it is proving so hard to raise standards? If some schools can do it, why can't others? Why is it that standards need to be raised in half of all primary schools, when
in others the quality of teach
ing and standards of pupil achievement are so exceptionally high? What is happening in these outstanding schools which has yet to happen in many others?
Over the past year or so, I have put these questions to primary head teachers in meetings across the country. Nobody can defend a situation in which between 20 per cent and 30 per cent of lessons are unsatisfactorily taught. So why has nothing happened?
One set of answers concerns the context in which teachers work. If primary schools had more resources, I am told, then standards would immediately rise. If the media, fuelled by evidence from "negative and punitive" inspection reports, did not focus remorselessly on weaknesses and depress morale, then all would be well. If the Government had not "imposed" an unworkable national curriculum and pushed through a huge programme of reform at unworkable speed, then, I am told, there would be no problem.
There is a truth in each of these responses. A minority of schools are clearly experiencing significant difficulties in providing resources for the national curriculum. Ofsted has a responsibility to identify success as well as failure. I recognise that the national curriculum has had to be revised.
But these arguments are not a sufficient explanation. The problems lie as much within the profession as without. To begin with, there is the pressing need to do more than has been done in the past about the minority of incompetent teachers who are failing our children. They are an extremely serious problem, but, given proper management will, it is relatively tractable.
What is much more difficult being both more nebulous and more pervasive is the failure to question be
liefs, about the nature of
education and how children should be taught, which in practice obstruct their intellectual development. I have in mind, for example, the belief that the national curriculum militates against the teacher's responsibility to develop the unique potential of each child; the antipathy to didactic teaching, and the reluctance to challenge children which flows from the concept of the teacher as a facilitator. Above all else, the continuing commitment to such ideas in too many schools explains why
it is proving so difficult to
raise standards of primary education.
We must, therefore, probe these beliefs. In part, they stem from the influence of academics and educational advisers who are not convinced of the need to rethink current assumptions about what and how children should be taught.
Furthermore, primary teachers, unlike their secondary colleagues, have never had a professional identity which relates to the subject they teach. The secondary teacher is usually a graduate in a particular discipline. Not so the primary teacher, who, after four years spent studying a range of academic subjects and a number of courses in the theory and practice of education, has, more often than
not, to teach all nine subjects
of the national curriculum. So, inadequately prepared, and faced with a challenge of this magnitude, some primary teachers understandably embrace an educational theory which plays down the importance of intellectual content, and puts a concern for the child at the heart of the educational process. Everything possible, therefore, must be done in the initial and in-service training of teachers to ensure that they have the firm grasp of the subject knowledge they need.
Beyond this, the key to raising standards lies in the new system of school inspections. Before 1992, a primary school could expect to be inspected once every 200 years. Now it is once every four years. As a consequence, the gap between the achievements of the outstanding and the failure of the weaker schools has been thrown into sharp relief. This is true not just when comparing schools in leafy suburbs with those in inner cities. Schools serving very similar communities achieve very different results. The clearer this variation in achievement becomes, the less easy it is for anyone to justify it.
Not surprisingly, those who feel most threatened by the spotlight of accountability have mounted a vigorous attack on an inspection regime which they deem to be "judgmental" and "punitive". Judgmental, yes. To inspect a school obviously means coming to a conclusion about its strengths and weaknesses. If a school is failing, then its weaknesses need to be brought out into the open, so that parents are informed and something can be done. But is this really "punitive"? Only, I would have thought, to those teachers who are unable to accept that they must be accountable to the parents of the children they teach.
Holly Cole, Ronnie Scott's, Birmingham
BECAUSE her first internationally released album was for Blue Note, and because she was appearing at Ronnie Scott's, it might seem obvious to classify Holly Cole as Canada's newest jazz singer. From the first dramatic notes played by her pianist, Aaron Davis, with one hand on the keys and the other damping the strings inside the piano, it was clear as her set began that she's a singer beyond category and that part of her originality is the way she has integrated her own eclectic style with her accompanying group. Many jazz singers have been most effective interpreting current pop songs. Instead, Holly Cole has creatively exploited the territory between jazz and pop, with a vocal timbre from the delicate to the brassy, faultless intonation and charismatic stage presence.
From time to time her quartet fell into the role of a conventional jazz rhythm section, though her choice of tempos and carefully shaded arrangements meant even old standards like Que Sera Sera took on new life. But for most of the evening Cole and her group created a range of music that travelled far beyond jazz. Some songs from her recent album, based around the work of Tom Waits, took on a country feel, others, including Invitation to the Blues, had overtones of Kurt Weill.
Although cabaret songs depend on a sense of the dramatic, and Cole invests all her lyrics with a touch of drama, the overall effectiveness of her work is, nevertheless, a team effort. Waits's Train Song took on eerie effects from Kevin Breit's slide guitar and Breit's versatility extended to some equally effective backing on mandolin and zither.
Holly Cole is already well known in Canada, with her own Internet site. Her Birmingham date was the last of only three appearances in Britain but she should equal her Canadian following on this side of the Atlantic very soon.
FORTUNATELY for South Africa's High Commissioner in London, his country's Transport Minister Mac Maharaj is a forgiving man. In London to speak to businessmen, he was greeted by locked doors when he arrived 20 minutes early for a function at South Africa House.
The Minister and other VIPs stood outside in sub-zero temperatures while someone tried to persuade conscientious security guards to open up. Last September, Bantu Holomisa, the deputy Tourism Minister, had a similar experience. Mr Maharaj, who was imprisoned on Robben Island with President Mandela, said that he and his friends had "thought about staging a demonstration out there, but someone opened up just in time".
The Tory candidate for South East Staffordshire, Jimmy James, is aware of the pitfalls of constituency canvassing. At the 1992 election, he was fighting Dennis Skinner in Bolsover, unaware of the popularity of the northern comedian Jimmy James, who died in the 1960s. Approaching one house in Bolsover, he announced: "I'm Jimmy James." Bolsover man replied: "And I'm Donald Duck. Now clear off."
DOUGLAS HURD is soon to present a BBC documentary series on international relations, but his journalistic career is still burgeoning. The former Foreign Secretary has just signed up to write a column for the Toronto Globe and Mail.
Have British editors shunned him in the mistaken belief that he is too gentlemanly to produce a lively column? The Globe and Mail is not considered a light read, but Hurd's column will surely be no match for that of the former American Secretary of State, James Baker, whose pronouncements are syndicated worldwide to an open-mouthed audience of insomniacs.
THOSE grappling with the estate of Brodrick Haldane, the delightful society photographer who died last week, are scratching their heads. What to do with his birds? For years, Haldane let canaries and finches fly free around his flat in India Street, Edinburgh, making for hazardous tea-parties.
Nigel Buchan-Watt is feeding the six finches and four canaries for now. "If they have names, then only Brodrick would know," he says. "Perhaps he made provision for them in his will, but we may well be looking for new owners."
The rougher types at Westminster are questioning William Hague's bottle. The Welsh Secretary was not at Twickenham for the England-Wales match on Saturday. Was it that, as an Englishman and Yorkshireman to boot he would have felt queasy cheering for Wales? Or could he not bear the humiliation of gunning for the losing side?
TONY BLAIR has accepted a sporting challenge in the House of Commons this Thursday, which should calm fears that he is deserting the ale-and-sandwiches brigade of old Labour.
On Thursday, he will be picking up his arrows and "toeing the oche" in a darts match to commemorate ten years of the provision in the Commons of Federation, the Newcastle beer. His opponent will be John Lowe, twice world darts champion, who is no more shapely than John Prescott.
IT IS A marriage that even the most sceptical punter would rate a racing cert to breed success. Frankie Dettori, the irrepressible Italian-born jockey, who has twice been British champion, is to marry Catherine Allen, daughter of Cambridge University's first pro
fessor of equine reproduction.
Dettori, 25, who on Lammtarra won Ascot's King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes, as well as the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe last year, met Catherine at the yard of the trainer David Loder, where she rides. She is training to be a teacher, but has an excellent racing pedigree. Her father is Professor "Twink" Allen who in the autumn took up his regius saddle at Cambridge, after consulting on stud reproductive matters for Sheikh Mohammed.
The jockey has an infectious laugh, and his flamboyant dismounting style has raised eyebrows in the winner's enclosure. But when it came to proposing, he took a leaf out of the chivalrous book of old, popping the question in an Italian restaurant with an attentive audience. A hush descended as fellow diners held their breath to see if she would accept.
"It was a nerve-racking experience, but during the dessert I got on my knee and asked her, and she said yes," says Dettori. Lammtarra apparently tops the wedding invitation list.
FRANCE:Alternative medicine enjoys a high level of respect among patients and the medical establishment, with many French GPs practising both homoeopathy and acupuncture. More than one in three people use homoeopathic remedies; however, such treatments are not reimbursed by social security.
GERMANY: Some 50 per cent of the population say they use natural or herbal medicine and orthodox doctors have used elements of homoeopathy and natural medicine since the 1920s. Spa cures have been a standard part of German culture for 200 years. Since 1950 they have also been available through the national health system, as are many of the costs of prescribed alternative treatments.
ITALY: The medical establishment remains highly sceptical of alternative medicine. However, a population disappointed with the shortcomings of its ramshackle national health system is turning increasingly to homeopathy, acupuncture, traditional herbal medicine and shiatzu massage. But people have to pay, since most private insurance policies do not cover alternative remedies.
SPAIN: Alternative medicine is widely practised in Spain and every major city has health shops offering everything from herbs to patent medicines. The attitude of the medical profession is one of cynical tolerance. South American doctors practising their own traditional medicine are popular here. Alternative treatments are not available on the health service.
ISRAEL: Given the rapidly increasing popularity of alternative medicine, it is no surprise that a shop devoted to Chinese herbal recipes has opened in Jerusalem; aromatherapy and reflexology are also fashionable. None of these can be obtained on the health service. Orthodox practitioners tend to oppose alternative treatments, apart from osteopathy and chiropractic, claiming their popularity is a symptom of increased stress.
UNITED STATES: Alternative medicine is booming with oriental medicine becoming popular. Treatments are cheaper than orthodox medicine. America's 10,000 alternative practitioners are more regulated than in Britain. The first licences were issued to practitioners in 1974, and some have been successfully prosecuted for practising without a licence.
WITH its polished wooden interior and expensive tiles, The Life Centre, in west London, looks like an upmarket hairdresser. But the centre has become a haven for stressed professionals and celebrities such as Cher and Brian Eno.
At reception, you can buy rainbow crystals, Mayan chiming balls and rainsticks. The building has even been Feng-Shui-ed, to ensure that the building's maximum Qi or universal energy is maximised.
The Life Centre is to the gym what a kitten is to a rottweiler. "What we are offering is a natural lifestyle, which doesn't involve sweating buckets," says Diana Heyer, a reflexologist and centre administrator.
The centre specialises in dynamic yoga, a high-energy workout which involves nearly every muscle and the utmost concentration on breathing. Visitors can also choose from a smorgasbord of alternative therapies, which range from more recognised treatments such as acupuncture and osteopathy, to numerology. Prices vary from £7 for an hour's yoga class to £65 for an hour's psychotherapy.
While the Life Centre radiates New-Ageism, the Hale Clinic, the prototype of alternative health centres, bristles with efficiency. The Princess of Wales, the Duchess of York and Ruby Wax are among the clinic's 1,000 visitors a week.
"Many people see us as the last-chance saloon when conventional medicine has been unable to help," says Jane Marten, the sales manager. The dimly lit clinic's atmosphere is low-key and reassuring. Men and women in white coats hurry about. The air is filled with the slightly rancid aroma of health food, emanating from the well-stocked shop.
New patients visit a "gatekeeper", one of 20 doctors, trained not only in conventional medicine but in a range of disciplines. From there they will be referred to one of the 100 therapists, specialising in everything from hypnosis to colonic irrigation, which was made famous by the Princess of Wales.
Treatments cost, on average, £50 an hour. "We do have a reputation of being very upmarket, but this is more than a spa," says Ms Marten. "This is about health, not lifestyles."
Life Centre, 15 Edge Street, London W8 (0171-221 4602). Hale Clinic, 7 Park Crescent, London W1 (0171-631 0156)
Erasmus Montanus, BAC, Battersea
YOU might call this the return of the pedantic son. Rasmus Berg is back from college and insisting that everybody calls him Erasmus Montanus. Returning to the family farm, he addresses the farm hands in Latin, syllogistically proves that his mother is a stone, and pushes his luck by announcing the world is round.
The 18th-century playwright and Latin professor Ludvig Holberg, hailed in his native Norway and Denmark as their Moliere, is worth unearthing. The Gate recently brought us Jeppe of the Hill. Now BAC gives a second lease of life to this Greenwich Studio Theatre production about young Master Berg enraging the yokels.
Holberg's play is more than an historic comedy of manners. For all the satire of dead languages, there is a startling timelessness in this portrait of a youth pushing away his family, fixing on a new identity and fighting for his radical opinions. Holberg beat Dennis Potter to the post by a couple of centuries in depicting a college boy dropped back into his rural community.
Moreover, Erasmus Montanus proves to be a polemical play of ideas and a drama of rising tensions as the snubbed peasants (led by thickset David Peacock) turn the tables and bully the swot. With a hint of The Crucible, the superstitious villagers cry heresy on Erasmus's Copernican science. The Deacon, beaten in Latin disputation, tries to label Erasmus as demonically possessed. Holberg flicks between perspectives, ridiculing the vainglorious student, making him a mobbed missionary of the Enlightenment, or suggesting a devilish amorality in his educated arguments.
Greenwich Studio Theatre is a commendable fringe company, translating and staging little-known classics on a small budget. The downside is that the cast is not top-notch. Andrew Muir's Erasmus has the condescending preciousness of the scholar, but is too cold. There is no struggle in him when his sweetheart urges him to sacrifice his school of thought. The set, with sawdust, timbers and the odd cartwheel, has a DIY "olde worlde" look. Find a designer.
Julian Forsyth's adaptation wisely replaces the Deacon's desperate out-takes of now-obscure grammar-book Latin with common phrases: dulce et decorum et al. Elsewhere, however, the contrasting speeches of pedant and peasant might be more idiomatically colourful. His joint direction with Margarete Forsyth could also be sharper. Ultimately, while the Earth may not be flat, one cannot say the same of the production. Still, this play is a discovery.
THE DANGERS OF MISDIAGNOSIS
I FIRST encountered alternative medicine during my early months in a general practice in Norfolk. I was called to an isolated cottage to see a cowman. He was in bed, pale, thin and paralysed from the waist down. Apparently he had complained for several months of severe low backache; he had continued working although he was in agony and had lost weight. Desperate to rid himself of the torment he visited a local bone manipulator who twisted his spine this way and that way. There was a loud click and the cowman was paralysed. It later transpired he had secondary malignant growths in his spine and as cancerous bones are weakened it had fractured easily.
The cowman's case provided a valuable lesson: not that manipulation was necessarily unhelpful, for it can be miraculous, but that any spine which is going to be manipulated should first be carefully X-rayed and, in doubtful cases, examined with an MRI scanner.
In the 1950s and 1960s the BMA was very conservative; it was presided over by men of stature who, dressed in dark suits and wearing watch chains, behaved like senior civil servants and shared the values of Mary Whitehouse. The idea that any qualified doctor would consider co-operating with an osteopath (unless medically qualified), a chiropractor or any other advocate of alternative medicine was anathema, and if detected in his or her iniquity the doctor would be struck off. I never shared the BMA or GMC views and disobeyed their diktats, for I had seen too many people helped by medically unqualified people practising one or other of the alternative medical arts. What was apparent from the case of the cowman and many other instances was that although masseurs and manipulators have great physical skills their powers of diagnosis are often exaggerated, and their understanding of basic medical science is not matched by clinical experience.
Manipulation was the first of the alternative medical skills to be accepted; unfortunately claims that it is able to cure a host of complaints which could only remotely be associated with the spine should be greeted with considerable suspicion. One practitioner not only lists a wide range of orthopaedic problems that can be alleviated but also asthma, fatigue, high blood pressure, sinusitis, heartburn, hiatus hernia, colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, diverticulitis, skin diseases and menstrual problems.
The study of herbs is often thought of as an alternative medicine but in the past the great majority of medicines were herbal; traditional herbal medicines are still used and recent research has found new powerful drugs in plants, capable in some instances even of controlling cancer. However, dead cows that have eaten yew, or children who have swallowed laburnum illustrate that all that is natural is not benign. Gabrielle Hatfield, in her book Country Remedies, describes a wide variety of plant nostrums which, within living memory, were still being used in country districts. She draws a distinction between traditional domestic medicines which used local plants and the advent of 19th-century herbal medicines which relied heavily on imported herbs. Research on Chinese herbal medicines by dermatologists at the Royal Free Hospital in London has not only confirmed their ability to succeed when orthodox medicines have failed, but has also demonstrated a power to cause serious side-effects.
The help that patients can derive from manipulation, herbal medicine, relaxation therapy and other complementary aids is clear. But that doesn't mean their practitioners have the training to make a diagnosis which, if delayed, could be life-threatening. Having spinal manipulation for heartburn and indigestion could deprive the patient of an early diagnosis of cancer of the oesophagus. Consult your doctor first.
Day two: Therapies around the world and where the stars go
CHINESE MEDICINE
When Amber Stanley-Bristowe was two weeks old, her parents were told that without a complex operation to remove her bile duct, their daughter had only months to live. Even if it was successful, she would spend the rest of her life on medication.
Desperate to avoid such a drastic measure, Donald and Karen Stanley-Bristowe decided to explore alternative remedies and were put in touch with the Chinese health centre run by Dr Duo Gao. "He took her pulses and touched her stomach before making up a herbal tea which I gave to her twice a day for about three weeks," Mr Stanley-Bristowe says.
A week into the treatment, Amber's doctors requested that she have another liver biopsy. This time, they said her liver had improved and their original diagnosis was no longer valid.
"Amber was due to have the bile duct operation in two days if that had failed she might have had a liver transplant but after the biopsy the doctors said her liver had improved naturally and there was no need for the operation," Mrs Stanley-Bristowe said.
Brian Wilce is another of Dr Gao's satisfied patients. Four years ago, aged 56, he developed diabetes and had resigned himself to a strict sugar-free diet and regular insulin injections.
After questioning him on diet and lifestyle, Dr Gao prescribed a combination of herbs and advised him to drink less alcohol. He had to return three weeks later and the "prescription" was modified. "About four months later Dr Gao told me I didn't need to come and see him any more." Using an ExacTech blood glucose sensor, Mr Wilce found that his blood sugar level had fallen to near normal.
Dr Gao, considered one of the top five Chinese medicine practitioners in the world, works from the Chinese Herbal Medicine and Health Care Centre in Fulham, southwest London. Here, with shelves full of herbs, roots and beans, Dr Gao and his partner, Dr Yilan Shen who are both trained in Western as well as Chinese medicine treat disorders ranging from diabetes, allergies and infertility to chest pains and rheumatism.
Chinese medicine is primarily based on two books transcribed 2,000 years ago, the Ben Chou Gan Mu and the Yi Zhing Ji Jian, Dr Shen explains. While Western medicine tends to concentrate on specific, isolated areas of disease, Chinese herbal medicine emphasises the interaction of body, mind and spirit, together with man's relationship with the environment.
"We place a great deal of emphasis on the Qi (pronounced Chi), which is the life force, or vital energy of the person. Chinese doctors believe that this Qi can be improved and enhanced."
Where Western doctors look for a cause or causal agent such as an individual virus or bacterium, Chinese medicine will take into account the mental state of the patient, his or her environment, lifestyle and any events which may have resulted in imbalance.
Atypical visit to the Fulham surgery takes around half an hour. Patients explain their problem and then their pulses are examined. "In the left wrist there are three points which correspond to the heart, liver and kidney," Dr Shen says. "In the right the three points relate to lung, stomach/spleen and kidney. There are 28 variations of pulse pace which enable us to identify things like high blood pressure." The doctors also evaluate tongue and facial colour.
"We then prescribe a combination of herbs, selecting around four from a total of 400 we could use. They are to be soaked in water, boiled and drunk," Dr Shen says.
There is scepticism over Chinese treatments some doctors believe recovery is coincidental, or the result of an improved psychological attitude. There have also been well documented cases of poisoning apparently deriving from herbal potions.
These instances, Dr Shen says, are few and far between and the result of unscrupulous practitioners who have only superficial knowledge of Chinese medicine. Chinese doctors in Britain are hoping to establish a governing body to regulate their practice.
Whole Lotta Shakin', Belgrade, Coventry
IN 1958, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Louisiana-born rock'n'roller known for hits such as Great Balls of Fire, took a 14-year-old bride, Kate Bassett writes. To aggravate matters, the girl was his cousin. The public responded with horror; television and radio stations boycotted his music; Lewis vanished off the face of the earth. Or so it seemed.
Already a none-too-cute guy, Lewis started seriously hitting the bottle and popping pills, especially after the deaths of his son and mother. Still, the man made something of a comeback, via country music, in the 1960s.
Yes, this is yet another rock star's life story recreated on stage. It is hard to believe that director Simon Usher really thinks Todd Wm Ristau's thin script is worthwhile theatre. The staging looks rather scrappy with a piano here, some amplifiers and mikes there, a rear steel balcony and photographs of Lewis in the wings. Jerry Lee ain't even dead yet, so the story ends in mid-air. But heck, the songs are what matters as the star, played by Billy Geraghty, keeps telling us.
Actually, Geraghty's stage skills are also saving graces. His performance makes this show roll. Geraghty, who played Buddy Holly for three years, makes a passable Lewis with his slicked-back hair shaking loose. He also plays his white piano with real pizzazz, streaking his thumbnail up the keys and jazzily quick-slamming chords, sometimes hitting the high notes with a heel or buttock.
The thumping beat gets monotonous as the songs pile up, while the snapshots of Lewis's life cut cursorily between his late and early career (Christopher Egan plays the young Lewis). The quieter country numbers and songs infiltrated with resurfacing religion are the most interesting.
The show's portrait of Lewis is pretty simplistic, underlining the pull between his strict religious roots and his going to the devil, tempted by the swinging blues clubs in his small hometown. One might presume the lesson to be learnt is to burn your pop record collection, for therein lies Lucifer. But this piece sketches Lewis's relationships so quickly, sometimes risibly so, that we have scant chance to feel sympathies or take moral stands.
Lewis's attraction to Myra the minor (Kate Wilton) is unexplored, making their marriage seem unremarkable. Still, Geraghty's achievement is to convey seedy arrogance and still exude the cool and charisma that got the audience jiving in the aisles.
AT FIRST glance, the well-groomed business traveller, with his Louis Vuitton luggage and 96-page passport, may not appear to have much in common with the snotty-nosed Cub Scout, more concerned with his woggle than world trade. But they share an obsession both will do anything to get a gold badge.
The blue, silver and gold tiers of British Airways' Executive Club have become the most important indicators of rank since the erosion of the class system, and an accompanying snobbery is rife.
The Executive Club is linked to the Air Miles scheme, a reward for regular business travellers who would not otherwise bother to shop around. But the colour of your membership card is as much about kudos as convenience.
Bottom of the line is the blue card, issued to any business flyer, and used to register the Air Miles which may one day yield a free trip to Torremolinos. But make, say, consecutive return trips to Sydney, New York and Paris, and you have the 700 points needed for promotion to silver membership.
The new card will get you into the executive lounges normally reserved for first and club-class travellers. You will also get the silver luggage tags which are the must-have accessory of the modern traveller, and make you king of the airport.
Until, of course, someone arrives with a gold tag on his briefcase. He will have made at least another three trips to Australia, and can expect airport staff to notice his label and whisk him off for priority check-in, free travel insurance, bump-ups to first class, and general sycophancy.
Rampant one-upmanship has members slapping as many tickets on their bags as they can, to taunt their envious co-travellers. But according to Alex McWhirter of Business Traveller magazine, the scheme has its dark side.
"In America," he says, "people are so desperate for gold status that they take roundabout routes to accrue Air Miles flying New York to London via Zurich, for example and agents are having to police business routes because ‘clubbers' are costing companies money."
Suddenly, no more registering Air Miles in your wife's name to beat the taxman for without them your status will remain blue. And no more unclaimed Air Miles either at present there are 2.75 billion in circulation, enough to take an adventurous businessman to Neptune.
One mystery remains. "There is a premier card," a BA spokesman told me. "But we do not talk about it. I can say no more than that it is issued only to our most valued customers." Rumour holds the card to be platinum, but who has one and how far they had to go is shrouded in secrecy. The Duchess of York, it is said, must now be close to the premier league. So if ever you see a red-head in sunglasses with platinum tags on her luggage, you can be fairly sure it is someone using up her free mileage.
Carrying a handgun has become de rigueur for America's rich and famous women. Quentin Letts on the return of the pearl-encrusted pistol.
When Clarissa Bronfman disclosed the other day that she sometimes carries a miniature revolver in her handbag, it confirmed a trend that has gained ground in recent years. American women, quietly, calmly, are choosing to "pack heat", as the expression goes. The days of the pearl-encrusted pistol are back.
Gun dealers report a surge in the number of sales to women, and male instructors at shooting ranges no longer react with surprise when a "dame" arrives for a session of target practice. From female judges to single mothers, there appears to be a steady rise in handgun ownership. The women have their role models Cybill Shepherd, Dolly Parton and Joan Rivers but for those who buy a gun as a fashion accessory there are as many who carry a "piece" for protection.
Mrs Bronfman, who let slip her gun habit to American Vogue, is bright, beautiful and rich in her own right. Edgar Bronfman Jr, the whiskey heir, courted her with a bombardment of roses and love songs. He would fly 2,000 miles to take her out to dinner, and promised her the world. But Clarissa Alcock, as she then was, was no pushover. She demonstrated her independence at a restaurant one night when she produced from her handbag a highly polished gun and casually entrusted it to the care of the young man behind the coat-check counter.
Joan Rivers has two guns, a .38 and a .357, as favoured by "Dirty Harry". Mary Lou Whitney, the philanthropist and unofficial queen of Kentucky and Saratoga society, feels comfortable with a pistol at her side. Billionaire John Kluge's former wife, Pat, is another ace shot, and Diane Feinstein, the Democrat Senator for California, has recently acquired a handgun permit.
In New York City, which has the strictest gun control laws in America, permits are more readily given to the rich or to people in public life on the ground that they can demonstrate a greater need for self-protection. The process of acquiring a permit takes time and costs money. The net result is that packing a gun in your vanity bag is a sign of social status. Just as Leona Helmsley said that only little people pay taxes, so handgun ownership is for plutocrats.
At New York's Downtown Rifle and Pistol Club, where members can practise on a 75ft range and load up on ammunition and gun chat, regulars include actresses, media babes and a female heart surgeon.
Sales of the Smith & Wesson Ladysmith, a $562 gun introduced four years ago at the first signs of the female gun growth, have done well. Frank Ingrassia, New York's top gun dealer and head of the local branch of the National Rifle Association, sells the Ladysmiths almost as fast as he can unpack them.
Derringer makes a weapon that is small enough to fit inside a belt buckle, though specialists say it is too small to be accurate; and sales of AMT's $295 pistol, compact enough for the female hand, are flourishing.
Mr Ingrassia's John Jovino shop, near Chinatown, has window mannequins dressed in bullet-proof vests and a huge gun sign over its front door. Inside, the lighting is harsh, the counters groan with firearms hardware, and there is a smell of gun oil. To this decidedly male shop, women arrive in burgeoning numbers. There have been diplomats' wives and Upper East Side heiresses, female lawyers and career girls. On the evening I visited the shop, a cool blonde squinted one eye in expert appraisal down a pistol barrel.
Mr Ingrassia has the air of a piano tuner and his delight is palpable when he pulls down two pearl-inset, gold-plated guns, one a Colt Automatic, the other a pretty Browning .25 Automatic. Though deadly, they are things of beauty. "Gold-plated guns say that you're powerful in two ways," he says. "You've got money, and you've got that gun in your hand."
Quite apart from the self-protection aspects, women who carry guns have become one of Hollywood's erotic fixations. The opening credits of James Bond films feature lithe female forms alongside gun barrels and pistol grips, while movies such as Thelma and Louise, Blue Steel and Natural Born Killers have promoted an image of women in command of deadly weapons. We have come a long way since Doris Day's chirpy You can't get a Man with a Gun in Calamity Jane.
Photographs of women in gun magazines are increasingly common, and gun advertisements have appeared alongside the nappy ads in women's glossies. Larry Pratt, director of the lobby group Gun Owners of America, says that firearms dealers across the country are reporting an increase in female customers. The gun legislation debate in America is familiar ground, and Mr Pratt comes out with all statistics blazing. "There are 30,000 attempts at rape every year in America," he says. "In 32 per cent of cases the rape is carried out, but when the woman has access to a gun that figure drops to 3 per cent." Car bumper stickers note that "Nobody Ever Raped A .38" and Mr Pratt adds: "A guy's ardour cools when he sees a gun."
Mr Pratt tells the story of a woman he knows who urged her new husband to get rid of his gun, saying she would not have it in her house. Some days later she found herself alone in the house when burglars struck. Terrified, she locked herself in her bedroom. When she saw the door handle being tested she shouted: "You guys had better get out of here, because I have a gun."
The burglars promptly fled, and the woman is now not only a member of the local gun club, she is also, like Clarissa Bronfman, a first-class markswoman.
I know, to my cost, that adverse comment about the Royal Family or the airing of insufficiently sentimental and therefore unEnglish views about animals inevitably excite the biggest postbag. But for sheer vitriol and threatening aggression or perhaps rather more accurately, defensiveness you cannot beat the transsexual correspondent.
I have twice, in completely different contexts, written about transsexuality. In neither case did I ridicule or sneer at those who claim to be trapped that is inevitably, word for word, the complaint in the wrong body, but I did question them, and it: and hence a batch of letters, the hostility of which it is hard to convey.
Perhaps one of the most telling symptoms of the transsexual is that there is no other interpretation allowed of their malaise than the one they choose to put on it.
As tonight's moving television programme, The Wrong Body (part of Channel 4's Decision series) shows, even while transsexuals complain about the intolerance that the rest of us have for them and their condition, it is they who are so intolerant.
In the first instance, they cannot tolerate their sex, in fact are so unable to tolerate it that the only way they have of dealing with it is first to deny it and then, if possible, to do away with it.
But this intolerance extends to a refusal to consider any other explanation for their distress, indeed to a tendency to feel annihilated by any such unauthorised approach. There is obviously an identity problem here, but I cannot help feeling that it is not one that can always so easily be solved with a sex-change operation or, as it is now called, gender reassignment.
The issue of this operation, and whether it should be available on the National Health Service, is becoming ever hotter. More and more health authorities are refusing treatment, and indeed only last week a number of transsexuals who have been unable to receive the treatment they want on the NHS began legal action to try to enforce their rights to it.
At the same time, a rather more straightforward legal battle is being fought to allow transsexuals to alter their birth certificates after surgery, so that their given sex accords with the sex they have been changed into. I'll agree that it does seem crassly illogical to allow people to have sex-change operations perfectly legally, but then use the law to prevent their living as the sex they have, to all intents and purposes, become.
What I'm not saying is that such operations should be outlawed. Those who want undiseased breasts and wombs and penises removed are right, of course, to say that it is their body, their choice. The NHS may also be right, at times, to respond that it is their budget, their choice. But it must be wrong for the issue to be decided on grounds of funds and finance. The question is, what is the nature of the problem and what therefore is the appropriate treatment?
Treatment there should definitely be these people are suffering horrendously but I cannot see that this should inevitably be in the form of surgery. All transsexuals are utterly convinced that they are, as they say, trapped in the wrong body. But does this make them right? I know psychiatric care is already provided, but there must be some kind of approach that might help people really to work out what is at the root of this incredible distress.
I was stunned in the programme by two unconnected comments by a couple of the girls who wish to be boys. The one, in her/his late teens, spoke of her/his horror at developing breasts at puberty: "I wanted to be like my father." The other, a child of 13, brought up by mother and stepfather, said that she/he wanted to be called Rick "short for Richard which is my Dad's name". You don't need to be Freud to see there is something going on there.
The voice-over of tonight's programme, however, reported that some post-mortems of transsexuals showed that their brains accorded with the sex they thought they should be rather than with the sex their genes made them. This, if true, would indeed be staggering evidence, though the vague, unscientific nature of its reporting hardly makes it sound, so far, conclusive.
The Decision: The Wrong Body is on Channel 4 at 9pm.
Alison Krauss, Festival Hall
ALISON KRAUSS's reaction to winning four of last October's Country Music Association awards, including female vocalist of the year, must have been one of elation and bemusement. A young veteran of bluegrass music who made her first album at 14, she suddenly found that her music of 100 per cent natural goodness had drawn in a huge audience desperate for health food. Krauss's platinum-selling Now That I've Found You: A Collection will shortly complete a year on both the American country and pop charts.
In Britain there has been a quieter momentum of appreciation, leading to an almost sold-out, eight-date British tour and this London show.
The hall was comfortably warmed by New York singer-writer Marcus Hummon, another of the artists helping to stir some fresh flavours into the Nashville stew. Arriving onstage with her four-piece band, Union Station, Krauss seemed every bit as nervous as on her awards night and did not speak for four numbers. But when she did, one sensed the audience giving her a collective hug. They were rewarded with a wonderful performance.
Union Station is full of the acoustic accoutrements of bluegrass, such as the mandolin, banjo, stand-up bass and sometimes two guitars in addition to Krauss's nimble fiddle. But the choice of material which has helped to open Krauss's door to the mainstream is as likely to include an old rock or pop tune from her Illinois upbringing as any rustic roots piece.
Hence, in among songs by such favourite writers as Nelson Mandrell and her own band's Ron Block, she will toss such unlikely delights as Bad Company's Oh Atlanta or the Foundations' Baby, Now that I've Found You, beguilingly restyled. The co-writer of that pop gem, John MacLeod, was in the audience to accept Krauss's humble introduction.
The group encored with Lennon and McCartney's I Will, the hall glowed with bonhomie, and one gave thanks to the world of awards for bringing us a nightingale.
THERE were two large aftershocks yesterday as hundreds of thousands of survivors of China's biggest earthquake in eight years struggled to keep warm in freezing temperatures.
One aftershock measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale shook the tourist town of Lijiang and surrounding villages in remote Yunnan province in the southwest, 30 hours after an earthquake measuring 7.0 killed 240 people and injured 14,000. There were fears that the final death toll could be nearer 300.
Among the injured was a tourist of unknown nationality who was seriously hurt, and four other foreigners, who were slightly injured. There was a second aftershock of 4.8 and about 180 smaller ones.
Chinese Red Cross officials said that there were almost certain to be more casualties from the aftershocks.
More than 186,000 homes have collapsed leaving hundreds of thousands of people homeless, officials say. Those whose homes are intact are also staying on the streets.
THE Hong Kong Government has published a guide for civil servants on the Chinese Communist Party.
In 37 pages the booklet "aims to give our civil servants some idea of the basics of China in a self-learning form". Academics were commissioned to draft the guide and were to told to confine themselves to facts, a civil service spokesman said.
The Communist Party of China begins in the party's second year, 1921, and apart from a few comments ends in 1982. What Hong Kong civil servants are getting is a version approved by Deng Xiaoping, China's senior leader.
The Deng version of party history emerged in its clearest form in 1981, with the Resolution on Certain Questions in Party History. In this version it is admitted that the party and Chairman Mao Tse-tung made mistakes, some serious, in the period up to Mao's death in 1976, that Mr Deng had attempted unsuccessfully to prevent them while Mao was still alive, and thereafter set China on the right path.
The study's language resembles party style. The party's founders are remembered for "repudiating feudalism, advocating democracy and science, and promulgating Marxism". Feudalism is party jargon for the bad past. The Politburo and its standing committee are described as "elected", whereas they appoint themselves.
Omissions mar the study. The most startling is the failure to mention the Hong Kong branch of the party.
After 1949, no mention is made of the killing of at least one million landlords or of the persecution of hundreds of thousands of intellectuals. The break with the Soviet Union is unrecorded. Neither the catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution nor the Gang of Four is mentioned. The study ends in 1982, "beginning the era of Deng Xiaoping". The crackdown in Tiananmen Square is also left out.
Emerson Quartet, Queen Elizabeth Hall
AS THE Emerson Quartet's complete Beethoven cycle gained momentum, it became increasingly apparent that the final pair of concerts would prove the most absorbing. Such stimulating players as the Emersons were always bound to be most exciting in the composer's late quartets, but there was also the feeling that as the series seven concerts over ten days progressed, they communicated with the audience more directly and with greater intimacy.
Of course, no performances of this music on this level could fail to enthral. The late quartets are among the profoundest of musical utterances: they were radical in Beethoven's time and still have the power to bewilder and amaze. Their complexities cannot simply be explained away in terms of the safe haven Wagner and the late Romantics provided.
Heard chronologically, as the quartets have been on the South Bank, there is also the mystery of Beethoven's return to relative simplicity in the final work, Op 135. It has often been seen as a conscious reintegration of the language Beethoven had just dismantled. But not only did the Emersons' witty performance of Op 135 shed objective light on its transcendental predecessors, it also suggested that Beethoven was indifferent, and was looking back with a shrug.
Such bold statements as Beethoven made call for bold performances, and that is what the Emersons gave. Although their "big" tone had, at times, been overpowering in the earlier works, it was surprisingly well suited here. Their sound is based on four different musical personalities working together.
In Op 132 (A minor), which opened Thursday's concert, they evoked the hushed mystery of the beginning and threw themselves into the fierce lines that follow, but not at the expense of the movement's soaring lyricism. The central Heiliger Dankgesang had rapt intensity. The B flat quartet Op 130 (just out on the Emersons' new Deutsche Grammophon disc) was the highlight of both evenings. The players relished the ambiguity of the opening, dispatched the Presto with virtuosity, and brought real affection to the German dance. Their Grosse Fuge had vigour and attack, and an unmistakable aura of expressionist madness.
After quartets in five and six movements, Friday's concert opened with one in seven Op 131 in C sharp minor. The Emersons caught all its many facets, but the searching lines of the slow, concentrated fugue and the stamping rhythms of the finale were especially satisfying. The more conventional Op 135 in F was no less compelling, and the lively accents of its finale suggested that these American players had stepped out of a hoe-down.
Finally, they offered the alternative ending to Op 130 that Beethoven wrote, after Op 135, to replace the Grosse Fuge. Its Classical sheen is a little disturbing but it provided a perfect coda to this most memorable cycle.
A HUGE Chinese troop mobilisation along its eastern coast facing Taiwan, ahead of the first presidential elections there, led to mounting tension in East Asia yesterday.
Reports said the build-up of 400,000 men signalled China's determination to prevent Taiwan from declaring independence. Peking has accused President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan, who is almost certain to be re-elected in next month's poll, of seeking independent status for the republic.
Sing Tao Daily, a Hong Kong newspaper, reported that China would begin a month-long military exercise this week. It will involve 400,000 infantry, air force and navy personnel, which the paper said showed China's determination to keep Taiwan in check.
The report led to an initial fall in share prices in Taipei, the Taiwanese capital. President Lee declared that Peking was "scared to death" of the scheduled elections.
Peking has not commented so far on the Sing Tao report. Earlier reports, which had said military exercises would be held near Taiwan either before or after the March 23 polls, were dismissed as "speculative".
although there has been no independent confirmation of the build-up, Sing Tao said the Nanking military district had ordered all its forces to mobilise and that leave for troops had been cancelled.
Last week the United States State Department said it saw "no imminent threat" to Taiwan, but it was monitoring the situation.
Li Peng, the Chinese Prime Minister, in a recent speech, did not rule out the use of force but also did not make fresh threats against Taiwan. A report last month by Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, said the success of a series of military exercises last year by the People's Liberation Army had shown that its "weapons and military quality have been significantly improved".
China and Russia are also reported to have reached agreement on joint production of Su27 fighters, seen as more effective aircraft than anything presently on the strength of the Chinese Air Force.
Diplomats in Peking said the reports of military action, whether true or false, suited China's style of keeping Taiwan off balance. But they said further Chinese exercises in the Taiwan Strait, of the kind that increased tensions during its missile tests last year, were fraught with risk.
The diplomats believe that Chinese "sabre-rattling" is also to do with uncertainties in domestic politics. Deng Xiaoping, 91, the senior leader, is ailing and all sides involved in the succession issue want to demonstrate their nationalist credentials.
THE Clinton Administration yesterday warned a top Chinese official that planned military exercises in the Taiwan Strait would aggravate tension and lead to political instability in the region.
Evidence of the planned military exercises, supported by hard intelligence data, has come at a time of renewed difficulties in Sino-American relations and as CIA reports showed China violating American non-proliferation laws by its export of nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan.
Washington believes the exercise may be at least as big as the one held last September, which involved 40 ships and 100 aircraft, and could provoke similar anxieties among both business and political communities in Taiwan and neighbouring countries.
As a result, the Administration has been making explicit warnings to Peking, including an official caution yesterday during a meeting at the State Department between American officials and Li Zhaoxing, the Deputy Foreign Minister.
"We are making it clear to China our concerns that there should not be efforts made to undermine peace and stability in the strait near Taiwan," said a State Department official.
The Administration has stepped up intelligence-gathering in the region and started to take a new look at how Washington might respond to any direct attack on Taiwan.
In a letter to President Clinton, Republican congressmen urged sanctions against China. Senator John McCain, a leading Republican on the armed services committee, said yesterday that the military exercises and further evidence of proliferation required an immediate, harsh response.
THE planned show of force by the Chinese in a military exercise in the strait separating China from Taiwan is seen in the West as a deliberate demonstration of power aimed at unsettling its capitalist neighbour.
However, although the reported month-long amphibious exercise involving 40 naval vessels and more than 100 aircraft will serve as a reminder of China's military power, Taiwan's continuing strength as the potential David to Peking's Goliath has been its acquisition of superior defence technology. China has always been a generation behind Taiwan in terms of its main weapons, although the Chinese are slowly narrowing the gap.
On paper, however, there is no contest. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in its latest Military Balance, China has an army of 2.2 million, up to 8,000 main battle tanks, 2,000 light tanks, 4,500 armoured infantry fighting vehicles and armoured personnel carriers, 14,500 towed artillery pieces and 3,800 multiple-rocket launchers.
The Chinese Navy has 52 submarines, 18 destroyers, 32 frigates and about 870 patrol and coastal vessels. Its naval air force has 855 shore-based combat aircraft and 68 armed helicopters. It also has a marine force of 5,000 and 25,000 coastal defence troops. The Chinese Air Force has about 4,970 combat aircraft, some of them nuclear-capable.
By comparison, Taiwan has an army of 240,000, with 570 main battle tanks and 905 light tanks. Its navy consists of four submarines, 22 destroyers, 16 frigates and 98 patrol and coastal vessels. The Taiwanese Air Force has 430 combat aircraft.
Bonn: The German police admitted yesterday that they had manhandled, beaten or verbally abused individual foreigners but denied there was any widespread violation of regulations.
The police union called for more anti-stress and communications training to help officers to cope with their problems.
The report was released at the same time as scathing accounts of German police behaviour were published by Amnesty International, the human rights group. Amnesty cited several cases, including that of a Turkish man detained in Frankfurt, who was allegedly handcuffed, then punched and kicked in his cell by two policemen.
Matt Wolf meets film star Elizabeth McGovern, making a British stage debut in The Misanthrope
Elizabeth McGovern had barely graduated from high school in 1980 when Robert Redford cast her in a supporting role in his Oscar-winning Ordinary People. A year later the fresh-faced actress was an Oscar nominee for her performance in Milos Forman's Ragtime. Since then the cinema has been less than kind; does anyone remember The Bedroom Window or Johnny Handsome? But the stage has offered McGovern a home. For much of the 1980s she was a regular fixture on and off Broadway.
This week, the London resident her husband is the BBC producer Simon Curtis makes her British stage debut ("Don't remind me," she laughs) opposite Ken Stott in a new version of The Misanthrope. The Moliere play, adapted by Martin Crimp, allows London to find out what New York has long known: an erstwhile teen discovery can hold her own as a classical actress.
"I had always had a passion to do theatre," says McGovern. The 34-year-old actress is talking during her lunch break backstage at the Young Vic, where she was summoned less than a week before rehearsals to replace Rachel Weisz (who, ironically, forsook the production to co-star in her first Hollywood film). "Even though I was working in movies, I was always auditioning for the stage. Either I was getting rejected, or doing awkward performances and learning by them. I feel proud of that.
"It's taken me a long time to learn how to be an actress on the stage. But I have, in the sense that not every performance I do is going to be brilliant, but I'm certainly a lot better than when I started." Indeed, McGovern spent a year at New York's Juilliard school Kelly McGillis and Kevin Spacey were classmates only to give up the course in order to do Ragtime.
She is the first to admit that her screen start was a heady one. As the showgirl Evelyn Nesbit in Ragtime, McGovern dominated reviews amid a cast featuring no less a legend than James Cagney, then aged 81. The film itself was nominated for eight Academy Awards, though McGovern missed the ceremony because she was in New York filming the forgettable Dudley Moore comedy, Lovesick.
After such beginnings, was a fall inevitable? McGovern addresses the point with characteristic lack of pretension. "I say with great amusement that I've been slowly working my way down my whole career," she smiles. "Though I don't really feel that way: I actually feel very proud of my career." Since moving to London four years ago she has done two BBC2 Performance films of plays produced by Curtis: Tales From Hollywood (1992), with Alec Guinness, and The Changeling (1993) with Bob Hoskins, which was also directed by Curtis. Prior to both, she appeared in 1991 in the BBC1 adaptations of Somerset Maugham's Ashenden spy stories.
The Misanthrope, updated by Crimp to contemporary London and directed by Lindsay Posner, reconceives Moliere's Celimene as Jennifer, a glamorous American film star arriving in Britain to promote her newest project. "The challenge was to create a modern woman out of a 17th-century woman," says McGovern, describing the character as "Madonna-esque" in ways. "She's not a rock star per se, but she has absorbed the Madonna message. She's comfortable with her own appetites, with that facade of ‘I'm in control of my career, my choice, my sexuality, my life'. She projects the in-vogue way to be that Madonna taught us; she's a 25-year-old who has taken all that very much to heart."
Does the character tally with the sought-after McGovern of years past? "In some ways she is what I would have been if I could have pulled it off, basically: that is, someone who knows how to play the game, go to all the right parties, and embraces the game and loves it. I never really could manage to do that, so I'm having fun doing it on stage and in England."
That McGovern never gave herself over to the Hollywood system "It was always much more alluring to go off and do plays" is partly due to her background. Though Los Angeles-born, she was raised in an environment "about as far from show business as you could get". Her father was a law professor at UCLA; her mother teaches high school English. A film career, she says, was never inevitable. "I didn't grow up watching movies and absorbing them like mother's milk. Somehow, we existed in a world that even though it was in LA was far from the Hollywood people have perceptions about, especially in England."
Now a mother herself she and Curtis have a two-year-old daughter McGovern has shifted her focus to domestic concerns in the family's Hammersmith flat, far from a Hollywood that in any case calls less often than it once did. A spate of movies over the years has hardly shown the actress to best advantage: Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America, for example, playing Robert De Niro's girlfriend; or She's Having a Baby, which wasted both her talents and those of Kevin Bacon. Everybody emerged badly from Volker Schlondorff's chilly and ponderous 1990 film of The Handmaid's Tale, and the best of her recent films Steven Soderbergh's underrated King of the Hill was seen by virtually no one. Her latest feature, Wings of Courage, is a 3-D venture.
"I'd love to be offered a good part in a movie, believe me; I don't feel cavalier about it," says the actress. But while some might balk at keeping such a distance from the industry that launched them, McGovern sounds genuinely pleased with the unexpected path her life has taken. "Having found myself in a family with a child, I feel stronger and more grounded, I suppose, as a person, which makes me freer to enjoy my work.
"I really think it would be wise not to write Hollywood off; I worked hard for ten years and just to abandon it is not something that interests me. But most important beyond making a living is working on material that I find exciting. Without a doubt it means as much for me to be working on this play now with these people as it does to do a big Hollywood movie."
The Misanthrope previews from Thursday and opens next Tuesday at the Young Vic (0171-928 6363)
Chefs apply the finishing touches to a giant cake model of the al-Haram mosque in Mecca, which went on show in a hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, yesterday.
The cake, measuring 28 square yards, took 2,000 hours to prepare, and included 176lb of icing sugar, 22lb of glucose, 66lb of palm sugar and about nine pints of egg white. The cake will be on show throughout the holy month of Ramadan
A LARGE majority of Germans are in favour of European projects, including common foreign and defence policies, in spite of growing scepticism about economic and monetary union.
Opinions polls in the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung yesterday show that the Germans are broadly behind their Government when it comes to intensifying European integration in non-monetary matters.
The newspaper said that 71 per cent of Germans support a common foreign policy, 55 per cent want a common defence policy and 74 per cent favour a strategy against drugs. This, said the paper's chief European commentator, demonstrated that Germany was still wedded to the European idea.
"Because of their disappointment with the achievement of the European Union, citizens are looking at European institutions and the grand projects of the future, monetary union and enlargement, with increasing, perhaps healthy, scepticism," conceded Klaus Dieter Frankenberger. "Even so, Germans expect much from Europe. These expectations are geared to security and welfare."
The gap between leaders and led on EMU has become a central preoccupation of the Bonn Chancellery. On Thursday, Germany is likely to announce that unemployment has passed the four million mark a psychologically critical level that will frame the political agenda. The Government will try to recast monetary union as a generator of jobs.
Bonn has promised to help to create two million jobs by 2000, provided unions restrain their wage claims. It has not made clear how monetary union will fit into this so-called "alliance for work". The promised measures were co-ordinated to some degree with France. Economic specialists from the French parliament will visit their counterparts in Germany tomorrow to work out how EMU, with its tough yardsticks on debt, budget deficits, inflation and exchange rates, could be presented as an employment-creating policy.
Both Helmut Kohl, the Chancellor, and his chief lieutenant, Wolfgang Schauble, the Christian Democrat parliamentary leader, have argued that the collapse of monetary union would unravel the single market, and that this would radically increase unemployment.
The calculation in Bonn is that German fear of losing the strong mark, which is fuelling domestic opposition to monetary union, will be trumped by the growing awareness of the burden it imposes. A strong mark is identified by some union leaders as a "job killer".
Karachi: A general strike called by Benazir Bhutto, the Prime Minister, in solidarity with the separatists in Indian Kashmir brought businesses in Pakistan to a halt.
COUCH potatoes in America have rebelled against an attempt by McDonald's to convert them to healthy fast food.
The country's largest restaurant chain is to phase out a five-year-old product known as the McLean Deluxe which boasted just half the fat of the regular quarter pounder, because of a hostile reception from consumers. With just 10 grams of fat, the McLean Deluxe contained a seaweed derivative that some customers said gave the burger a different taste. Sales of the low-fat burger were so slow company officials concluded that its experiment with healthier food had failed.
McDonald's plans to cut two of the salads on its menu the chef and side salads.
A SMOOTH-TALKING African who claims to be King of Guin and last week received a red-carpet welcome to Texas was yesterday challenged to prove his bona fides.
Francois Ayi, who prefers to be addressed as "His Royal Highness King Ge Fiovi Francois A. Ayi of the Kingdom of Guin", has been delighting polite circles in Austin, Texas, with his regal manner and elaborately charitable sentiments. His every word was cherished, and among the matrons of Austin there developed a rapacious market for his company.
One person not convinced, however, was the state's attorney-general, Dan Morales, who issued Mr Ayi with a subpoena to produce documents confirming the charitable status of his "foundation". The deadline passed yesterday but there was no sign of the papers.
Mr Ayi, 33, claims to be monarch of Guin, part of the West African republic of Togo, and says his family's rule extends back to 1663. He sought funds to help the poor among his "people". Texan understanding of Togo's political system appears to have been sufficiently sketchy to allow him to convince generous hosts that he was an important man. A $50 (£33) a plate fund-raising dinner on Friday night was supported by local politicians.
It now seems they were gulled. Rich Appleton, Togo desk officer at the US State Department, said: "The guy is very, very good at spinning stories. I can tell you this much. There's no kingdom and there's no king."
Togo's Embassy to the United States denied that he was a head of state and speculated that Mr Ayi springs from a mildly prominent family in the Togolese village of Glidji.
Sarah Bagnall on a high street empire-builder
Stephen Hinchliffe, Sheffield's king of the high street, has achieved something remarkable. In 18 months, he has built, from scratch, one of the country's largest privately owned retail empires.
Facia, in which Mr Hinchliffe owns 100 per cent of the ordinary equity, set out on its acquisition spree in August 1994, snapping up famous high street names at the rate of one every two months. The result is a retail group with about 900 stores and 7,700 employees generating sales of more than £300 million a year statistics that earn it the title of Britain's second-largest independent retailer.
The company's cache includes Sock Shop, Torq, the costume jewellery chain, Red or Dead, the fashion and footwear company, Salisbury's, the luggage and handbag group, Contessa Ladieswear and Oakland Menswear. Last August, he acquired, from Sears, 245 shoe shops trading under the banners of Freeman Hardy & Willis, Manfield and Trueform. At the weekend Facia bought a further batch of shoe shops from Sears, paying an undisclosed sum for 134 Saxone and Curtess stores and £10 million of assets.
Mr Hinchliffe says: "We have built up a business of critical mass. I wouldn't miss an opportunity to acquire another business if it came along, but, if one doesn't appear, there is plenty of organic growth." A former director of Sheffield United Football Club who still owns a 15 per cent stake, Mr Hinchliffe has raised a few eyebrows in the City over Facia's rate of expansion. Some analysts have questioned how Facia funds its rapid expansion.
Mr Hinchliffe says the funding is straightforward. He amassed a sizeable fortune from his previous business incarnations, which, together with short-term bank debt, helps Facia to finance its acquisitions. The short-term borrowings are then repaid out of the cash the businesses generate.
Some analysts question the ability of Mr Hinchliffe and Gary O'Brien, Facia's finance director, to turn the businesses round in the prevailing trading environment. But Facia has bought at the bottom of an economic cycle and the prices paid were only a fraction of the value the chains possessed in the heady days of the 1980s.
Facia has the added advantage of acquiring the retail operations without having their massive overheads. Vendors of the retail brands often say the chain is loss-making at the point of sale but this frequently comes after they have made hefty contributions to group overheads. Stripping out these overheads, the businesses are said to be contributing to group profits.
However, as the company is privately held and Mr Hinchliffe is the sole shareholder bar Murray Johnstone with a small preference shareholding there is no onus on the group to reveal the nitty-gritty of its operations.
Facia completed its first full year of trading on January 6, so outsiders will have to wait until about April before they are privy to the group's financial health. This is when Mr Hinchliffe expects to file Facia's first set of accounts at Companies House. "People will be pleasantly surprised by what we have achieved," he says.
Mr Hinchliffe, 46, trained as an accountant but began in marketing, and then moved into property and computing before branching out into retailing in 1985. He played a major role in the buy-in/buyout of Wades department stores from Asda and ended up with a 40 per cent holding in Wades, which was sold for £7.3 million in 1987.
Two years later, Data Memories, his computer company, was reversed into Lynx Group. He received a 25 per cent holding in the company, which grew rapidly until he left under a cloud in 1992. At the same time, he abruptly parted company with James Wilkes, the engineering group of which he had been chairman, in the middle of a hostile takeover bid by Petrocon.
It is not surprising that Mr Hinchliffe now wants to remain private and in control.
IAN LANG, President of the Board of Trade, faced every signatory's nightmare yesterday. The dapper minister was poised to sign a memorandum of understanding between Britain and China on automotive matters at a ceremony at Lancaster House when the pen ran out of ink. He had been handed a Parker fountain pen from the Board of Trade's "pen set" used for DTI signing ceremonies which (temporarily) let him down. However, as to be expected of a Secretary of State, Lang immediately reached into his breast pocket for his own fountain pen to complete his side of the bargain.
The growing number of single parent families is having an effect on the pet food market, a City analyst told those Dalgety followers willing to listen yesterday as the company, producer of Felix for cats and Pedigree Chum, revealed lacklustre results. The truth is smaller family units are more likely to have a cat than a dog and environmental lobby objects to Dalgety products being deposited on pavements.
AFTER the problems that have halted the Government's privatisation of the "Misery Line", I have to report a case of high dudgeon on the Metropolitan Line that is bemusing commuters to the City from the stockbroker belt of Northwood.
New Scientist's Feedback column recently reported seeing two announcements outside Northwood's ticket office "with an explanation in brackets for the slow-witted".
They were: "08.00 Baker Street trip failure (a safety brake type of thingy)", and "08.05 Watford crew incomplete (driver ........ off)".
Northwood's ticket office is not amused, and the latest message on its otherwise friendly board reads: "Due to false allegations that have been made in a recent edition of the New Scientist magazine about train information.
THE questionnaire for PRWeek's fifth annual survey of pay and perks within the PR profession is illuminating.
Boxes in which to tick basic salary start at £12,000 and run up to £100,000 plus. In the section "What percentage was your last salary increase", there is a space to tick 30 per cent, and there is a box to tick if you have had three or more salary increases in the past year. As for how you rate job satisfaction, respondents can go for "downright exploited" if so inclined.
BELEAGUERED Lloyd's names, whose Lime Street "head office" has been sold to a German property fund, can only hope that good luck runs in threes. Equitas, the company being established to reinsure the Lloyd's 1992 and prior liabilities, has appointed the redoubtable Gisela Gledhill as company secretary and corporate counsel.
Gledhill, a barrister educated at Vienna and London universities, joins Equitas after three years with Wellcome, which was taken over by Glaxo last year. She went to Wellcome from Consolidated Gold Fields, which was taken over by Hanson in 1989. On this form, is Equitas in line for a takeover?
Seismic shifts in the way we British spend our money suggest that this nation of shopkeepers would do well to consider a quick career change.
Up and coming entrepreneurs are running sports centres, restaurants and hotels, travel agencies, cleaning firms, colleges and nurseries. We are spending proportionately less on consumer durables and more on a mixture of self-indulgence and self-improvement. Spending on services almost single-handedly kept growth going in the latter part of last year, but the business and financial services field, the usual engine of this sector, is no longer the only star performer. Spending on education is soaring, as it is on all types of leisure activities and, of course, gambling. Yes, nobody can ignore the ubiquitous National Lottery in any analysis of how the British spend their money.
The rise in spending on intangibles may, of course, turn out to be a temporary phenomenon. Various readings of consumer confidence have strongly suggested throughout the recovery a reluctance to splash out on big-ticket items hardly surprising given the squeeze exerted on disposable income through higher taxes, low pay rises and servicing the considerable debts still lingering after the 1980s spending spree. This may change over the coming year as large chunks of money fall into people's pockets from utility rebates and building society merger windfalls, taxes and interest rates fall, and the housing market begins to recover (fingers crossed).
Even then, spending is likely to vary from one product to another. After all, British households already own what seems to be regarded as the minumum level of creature comforts for a modern society. The 1996 edition of Social Trends finds that 97 per cent of British households have a colour television set, 89 per cent a washing machine, 77 per cent a video recorder, and 67 per cent a microwave.
Without the allure of technological change and ever more outrageous gadgetry, some of these areas will soon be close to saturation. But one sector that should continue to thrive and has already underpinned retail sales during the recovery is computers. This is understandable since, to date, only 24 per cent of households have a home computer. In Tony Blair's brave new Labour world of surfing the superhighway, we had all better get wired up.
The two other growth areas in spending, highlighted by Stephen Radley, of The Henley Centre, are the desire for self-improvement and the need to hire household services in two-career families beset with "time-poverty". Both of these are phenomena of Britain's flexible labour market, an anodyne economic concept that represents the deepest imaginable change in the way we live.
Spending on education and training has been growing strongly since the 1980s, but is accelerating at an extraordinary pace. Henley research suggests that such spending grew by 27 per cent between 1984 and 1990 but by 40 per cent between 1990 and the second quarter of 1995. That is remarkable since
a recession and then a
consumer squeeze dominated that period. Henley expects spending to rise by more than 60 per cent in the final five years of this decade. Increasingly, we are dipping into our own pockets to update and broaden skills, supplement the existing schools system with extra lessons for our children, and pay for our toddlers to go to playgroups and nursery school.
Spending on household services rose by 26 per cent between 1984 and 1990 and by 21 per cent beween 1990 and 1995. Henley expects further growth of nearly 21 per cent by the end of the century as two-earner households buy the services that let them devote themselves to working. The income gap between skilled, full-time earners and those who help them to oil the wheels will widen further, but both sets of people suffer increased stress. One group is beset with increasingly long hours and ferocious pressure to perform, the other by a poisonous drip-feed of insecurity.
For both, the antidote seems to be more spending on recreation. Escapism is a major ingredient in spending decisions nowadays. And, after all, a good meal, a weekend break or a game of football cannot be repossessed if you find yourself out of a job.
Pipeline TV's high hopes are unfulfilled. Eric Reguly looks at why
There's little doubt that cable company executives woke this morning in a worse mood than usual. Call it resentment born of envy. The record interim profits expected today from BSkyB, the satellite television broadcaster, have only reinforced the lack of success in their own industry.
BSkyB, which is 40 per cent owned by News International, the owner of The Times, is essentially in the same business as the cable companies. They all supply programming ranging from Live TV to the Disney Channel to paying subscribers across the land. The difference is that BSkyB, which dominates programming and has not been saddled with billions of pounds of construction expense, is making a fortune while the cable companies are mired in debt and losses.
John Foley, of Convergent Decision Group, a broadcasting research boutique, said: "One has to look at cable as the Channel Tunnel project of the TV industry. The payoff might not come until the next millennium."
To say that cable companies are in trouble is no exaggeration. The share prices of the seven cable companies that were floated in London and the US last year have rarely risen above their issue prices. In recent weeks, several American investors, notably funds run by American Express, have baled out, pushing prices down to new lows. Nynex CableComms, the second-largest cable company, was floated last June at 137p. Its shares recently slipped to 851/2p and are now trading at about 95p.
Since the cable companies have no earnings, pay no dividends, are less than half-way through a £12 billion construction programme, and are pioneers in a new industry, the City has had a difficult time valuing them. The share prices, in other words, may fall even further. David Miller, finance director of General Cable, said: "No one knows if they're cheap enough to buy now."
The root of the problem is the dismal operating figures. After three years of energetic shovel-and-spade work, cable passes some six million homes in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But only one in five of those homes subscribes to the TV channels on offer. Cable telephony has had somewhat more success, with one in four taking the service.
Even the most optimistic cable executives are unhappy with the figures, especially since they have shown little improvement over the past year. Nynex's cable-TV penetration, for example, has been stuck at less than 20 per cent since late 1994. The consensus now is that cable penetration rates in Britain will never reach levels found in America, where two-thirds of homes in franchised areas take the service. Last year, the cable industry was saying 50 per cent cable-TV penetration was realistic. They have since downgraded their forecasts and would be delighted if the level reached 30 per cent in the short to medium-term.
What went wrong? To be fair, the industry is less than five years old and, until recently, has been more concerned with ripping up streets than gaining customers. Nonetheless, no one in the business thought that the numbers would look this bad.
Dan Somers, the executive chairman of Bell Cablemedia, the third-largest cable company, puts a lot of blame on terrible service. "We have not done a good job of delivering our product to our customers," he said. "It's an industry problem. We have not met customers' expectations." Indeed, cable has become synonymous with bad service. The companies generated ill-will from the start when they were seen to dig up streets haphazardly, sometimes killing trees and disrupting power and water supplies. Then, in many cases, they just disappeared.
One customer said a flyer promoting the service popped through his letterbox two years ago. He has never been contacted since and does not even know how to reach the cable company. Others have complained about aggressive marketing, inaccurate bills, failure to set up direct-debit accounts properly, failure to mail literature, such as Cable Guide magazine, general rudeness and lousy programming. The Mirror Group's Live TV, with its topless darts, News Bunny and the soap Canary Wharf, has not been everyone's idea of dazzling programming.
Expense has been another problem. The basic cable service costs about £15 a month but viewers who want BSkyB's premium movie and sports channels have to pay around £35. Viewers who receive the direct-to-home satellite service pay about £10 less per month for the premium packages, which is another reason why BSkyB is performing better than its terrestrial brethren. BSkyB subscribers, however, have to pay £200 or more for the satellite dish and decoder.
Some cable companies, General, Bell Cablemedia and Videotron among them, blame BSkyB for their lack of progress. They have complained to the Office of Fair Trading about BSkyB's practice of "bundling" channels, which means that subscribers have to pay for several channels in order to get the one or two they do want. The complainants want their customers to be able to buy individual channels a la carte.
Mr Somers thinks that scoring a victory with the OFT and developing alternative programming will boost the industry's fortunes. "Our goal is to offer more flexibility to our customers in terms of their choices," he said. Tackling BSkyB, though, will not be easy and not everyone wants to. TeleWest and Nynex, the two largest players, are happy with the programming supply deals they struck with BSkyB.
In the meantime, the industry faces a make-or-break year. Unless the penetration rates increase and the "churn", or disconnection rates, go in the opposite direction, the task of raising debt to fund construction, acquisitions and day-to-day operations will become increasingly difficult. There is talk that some American and Canadian groups have read the riot act to their cable subsidiaries in Britain. New managers are being appointed to shake things up. Nynex and Bell Cablemedia have recently replaced their chief executives.
The cable companies plan a vigorous effort this year to improve customer service. Mr Somers, for one, has insisted that every complaint reaches his desk. The companies will also launch a £12 million national advertising campaign in the spring to raise awareness about the programming choices available and to promote the telephony services, which they claim substantially undercut BT.
In the coming years, they will try to introduce so-called broadband services, such as video-on-demand, Internet access, and home shopping and banking. Their message will be that a single cable can provide any electronic service you can imagine. "This is a ten-year game; we don't have to get it right just now," Mr Miller said.
But there's a good chance all this extra effort won't give the cable industry star status. BSkyB is getting bigger, notably on the sport front, a fifth terrestrial channel is coming, and, more importantly, so is digital terrestrial TV.
Within a few years, the average residential customer will enjoy a wide choice over how to receive programming, and cable will be just one of them.
NEVER a year goes by without another attempt to create a property futures market. The last serious effort ended with a minor scandal and considerable egg on the face of London Fox, the former futures and options exchange, but that is not a reason to denigrate the proposed Real Estate Index Market (REIM).
There is, in theory, enormous need for an investment product that injects liquidity into the physical property market. Shares in property companies are not a useful proxy, in part because they are overly affected by sentiment towards equities but also because shares are as much a punt on management as bricks and mortar.
A property futures contract would theoretically mirror the market directly, allowing the purchase of a contract to gauge his exposure without the intervention of an expensive management team, or payment of an agent's commission. There are problems, however, that will still hamper creation of a liquid market. Property is not as volatile a market as equity shares. Absence of frequent trades in the underlying bricks and mortar means that evidence of movement in values is patchy, straining the credibility of any index. Moreover, scarce information means that sentiment tends to move one way, leaving little scope for a two-way market in futures. The members of the REIM working group look impressive, but unless they are prepared to back words with cash, the new market will not happen.Edited by Carl Mortished
A LESS than pristine set of results from WMI, the waste management company, has left shareholders reeling. WMI has never come close to realising the promised 20 per cent growth rate, nor has it matched the original 582p flotation price.
Initially, it profited from the brief fashion for "green" stocks, but the shares are now beached, some 250p below the offer price.
Yesterday's results followed a familiar pattern as profits continue to dive in spite of a rise in revenue, helped by a series of small acquistions. The company wheeled out the usual excuses, blaming political and financial difficulties in Italy and France for its poor performance. WMI is over-reliant on the Italian market, which accounts for nearly 20 per cent of sales.
The restructuring plan, for which the company took a £123 million charge, should help to alleviate some of the problems by the end of the year. But with WMX,, its parent, having an 80 per cent stake, the needs of private shareholders are unlikely to be top priority. For the time being, WMI's shares will continue to trawl the gutter.
NOTHING Dalgety said yesterday was enough to remove the question mark over last year's £442 million purchase of Quaker's European petfood business. Even news that £40 million of cost savings will be achieved in full next year, rather than the year after, failed to dispel the gloom. Instead, pessimists point to a petfood price war.
When Dalgety signed the deal many thought they had overpaid. Yesterday analysts were hunting for signs that they were right or wrong but the company revealed little. The restructuring programme is ahead of schedule but there is uncertainty that the full benefits will fall through to the bottom line. The competition's reaction to the takeover to initiate their own cost-cutting programmes hardly helped to instil confidence, while the launch by Sainsbury's of its own-label brand signalled costly price wars.
The interim results showed that Dalgety's original Spillers business had a tough time. This was expected and a recovery is now under way but some of the remaining operations produce lacklustre results.
Dalgety shares are trading on about 19 times future earnings, a hefty premium to the sector and much of the recovery has already been factored in to the share price. Dalgety will have to show more than the initial cost-savings to sustain the rating at a time when prices are under pressure. That will prove a difficult task.
AIRLINE costs are notoriously difficult to control, and no one knows that better than British Airways.
The world's most profitable airline had all its ducks lined up in a row with revenues, load factor and yield all showing comfortable increases. But even BA cannot afford to be complacent, and, as if to cock a snook at the management for its bravado, employee costs shot up in the third quarter. Add to that higher selling costs, a pension revaluation and increased rents, and BA's operating profit grew less than 3 per cent in the last quarter, causing the shares to slide.
The reaction is excessive but it highlights the extent to which BA is exposed to rising costs. During the recession, BA made deep cuts in operating costs, but as the market picked up, the company found itself exposed. Customer service is an area where an airline cannot afford to be seen to be understaffed and BA has beefed up employee numbers.
A high level of variable costs not only means more smiling people in navy blazers but more commission and discounts to travel agents as the passenger numbers increase. In response, BA needs to target its fixed administrative overhead as aggressively as it once cut operating costs.
Depsite their hi-tech image, airlines cope with huge volumes of paperwork, and an operation as large as BA has an army of 1,000 staff dealing with ticket accounting. The laborious process of matching tickets and checking for fraud is one that could be outsourced, along with other administrative functions. By keeping its nose to the ground rather than in the air, BA could really cut costs.
Hanson shares lost a further 4 1/2p at 192p after last week's announcement that the group is being split.
NatWest Securities, the broker, is urging clients to sell. Analyst Chris Ralph calculates that the total amount of dividend paid out will be lower once the dermerger has been completed.
THE London stock market is likely to suffer a major correction before too long. That is the conclusion of a growing number of brokers who have become increasingly worried by the erratic behaviour of the market in recent weeks.
Bonds on both sides of the Atlantic and equities in London fell sharply yesterday, while gold continued to trade at a five-year high. Gilt-edged prices have suffered heavy losses during the past couple of weeks despite a further softening of interest rates.
Steve Scott, gilts analyst at Kleinwort Benson, says economists are becoming increasingly alarmed about growth, suggesting that inflationary pressure is still giving cause for concern. "Economic growth is just not compatible with the fall in bond yields seen of late", he adds.
It is no doubt something that Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor, and Eddie George, Governor of the Bank of England, will address tomorrow at their monthly economic meeting.
Meanwhile, a leading equity trader also gave warning: "Bond markets are on the slide again and the equity market is too high. The day of reckoning is just round the corner. I think we should be bracing ourselves for a major correction of several hundred points in the short term".
He pointed out that the last major correction began on February 7, 1994, which preceded a quarter-point cut in base rates to 5.25 per cent. It was to be another 18 months before the index regained those levels.
In the event, yesterday's losses in the bond market and an opening setback for the Dow Jones average on Wall Street left the FT-SE 100 index nursing a fall of 34.7 points at 3,746.6. Turnover reached 722 million shares.
There was the usual clutch of bid stories doing the rounds. The first suggested that Pearson was about to be bid for by Viacom, the US entertainments group. Both companies have interests in publishing and television and Pearson would make an ideal break-up situation. Pearson rose 15 p to 670p.
Scottish Television leapt 36p to a new peak of 566p on talk of a possible bid. The Daily Mirror holds a 20 per cent stake in the company, with the FMR Corporation accounting for a further 7.67 per cent. Speculators say the bid is more likely to come from Carlton Communications, which holds the London area independent television weekday franchise. Carlton eased 3p to £10.67, while the Mirror Group rose 4p to 195p.
British Aerospace dropped 24p to 875p after Kleinwort Benson, the broker, altered its recommendation from a "buy" to a "hold". BAe is also being mentioned as a possible bidder for Fokker, the troubled Dutch aircraft-maker.
Sears, the retailer, firmed 1 1/2p to 97p after announcing the sale of Saxone and Curtess shoe shops to Facia, the fast growing retail chain headed by Stephen Hinchcliffe. Only last year Facia acquired the Freeman Hardy Willis, Trueform and Manfield shoe shop chains. Sears says it will now concentrate its efforts on its British Shoe subsidiary.
Ferguson International touched 192p before ending the session 21p lower at 196p after warning of a profits shortfall. The labels and hangers group said it would struggle to exceed £11.5 million, down from the previous year's £11.7 million. The group is currently looking for a buyer for its Hangers business. Last year shares of Ferguson reached a peak of 351p.
Confirmation of a profits setback left Dalgety 2p easier at 413p. Pre-tax profits in the first six months fell from £60.9 million to a bottom-of-the-range £47 million. The decision simply to maintain the 8.5p dividend and the news that restructuring charges will now be carried through to the second half caused a few raised eyebrows.
A 30 per cent leap in British Airway's third-quarter pre-tax profits to £104 million and an encouraging view of prospects failed to impress the City. The shares ended the session 19p down at 502p, with brokers becoming increasingly concerned about rising costs.
Profits for nine months have grown to £534 million, with brokers forecasting £580 million for the full year.
Bardon firmed 1p to 40p, with the speculators still looking for a bidder to emerge. Those mentioned as potential suitors include Camas, down 1p at 83p, and RMC Group, 11p off at £10.21.
Vodafone fell 6 1/2p to 237 1/2p on learning that Cellnet, a rival mobile phone network operator, was planning to cut call charges. Cellnet says the move could lop as much as 30 per cent off bills. The move is expected to intensify the current price war. Cellnet is owned by BT, down 6p at 356 1/2p ahead of figures tomorrow, and Securicor, unchanged at £16.20.
The announcement of a major reorganisation and job losses lifted Amstrad 1 1/2p to 187p. About 150 jobs are set to be shed, mostly at the group's headquarters in Essex. Plans are also afoot to rationalise the Amstrad Trading and Amstrad Direct divisions to cut costs and improve competitiveness.
Quality Software Products continued to lose ground after last week's profits warning, dropping a further 27p to 383p.
Gilt-Edged: The slide continued, with losses stretching to more than £1 at the longer end. Dealers said the falls reflected weaker overseas bond markets. Certainly, the recent fall in yields is now starting to unsettle investors.
In the futures pit, the March series of the long gilt tumbled £1 3/16 to £108 1/2 in heavy trading that saw 96,000 contracts traded.
In the cash market, Treasury 8 per cent 2013 tumbled £1 3/8 to £99 3/4, while at the shorter end Treasury 8 per cent 2000 dropped £17/32 to £103 7/8.
NEW YORK: Shares on Wall Street bounced back after a weak start. The Dow Jones industrial average set its eighth closing record this year, 33.60 points higher at 5,407.59.
SHARES of Scottish Television, the ITV company in central Scotland, rose to a new high yesterday as rumours circulated that it was a takeover target (See Pennington, this page).
City analysts said the shares rose because the market now believed that Flextech and Mirror Group, which each own 20 per cent of Scottish Television, would welcome a takeover at the right price.
Roger Luard, chief executive of Flextech, would say only that "at the end of the day, there's a price for everything".
Scottish Television shares rose 36p to 566p, breaking their previous high of 530p, on volume of 292,000. SBC Warburg is to publish an investment note this week that is said to value the company at £6 a share.
The most likely buyers are Granada, Carlton and MAI, each of which will have room to expand under the ownership rules of the new Broadcasting Bill. Under the proposed legislation, Mirror Group would be prevented from buying Scottish Television. HTV, the ITV company in the West of England and Wales, would not comment yesterday on reports that it was in merger talks with Carlton. There is speculation that Carlton will attempt to buy Scottish Television if any talks with HTV break down.
HENDERSON Administration, the fund manager, suffered a £10,000 fall in pre-tax profits, to £14.85 million, in the nine months to December 31, in spite of an exceptional profit of £297,000 from selling its interest in The Administration Partnership.
Total funds under management fell from £11.9 billion to £11.37 billion over the nine-month period, but rose from March's £11.1 billion, reflecting positive movements in world markets.
Funds under management in investment trusts increased from £3.6 billion to £4.2 billion. Unit trusts rose from £1.27 billion in December 1994 to £1.35 billion, and Peps were up from £406 million to £510 million. The biggest fall was in institutional funds, down from £4.5 billion to £2.35 billion.
Ben Wrey, chairman, said the final-quarter outcome would depend mainly on world market levels, but Henderson's changed mix of business sources showed the potential "for future growth".
AMSTRAD, the computer company, is to cut up to 150 jobs in a reorganisation of its consumer electronics division.
Amstrad Trading, which concentrates on retail sales, will be slimmed down to improve efficiency and will work on developing new product lines. Amstrad Direct, which was launched only last year, will be relocated at Alperton, northwest London, and will be managed as an independent subsidiary by Viglen, Amstrad's computer-making subsidiary. Amstrad Direct's factory in Shoebury will be closed by May of this year.
Amstrad's consumer electronics division has not made a profit for three years and last year disclosed a £16 million loss. In December, David Rogers, chief executive, resigned over the plans to reorganise the consumer division. After the restructuring is complete, Viglen will continue to concentrate on the professional market while Amstrad Direct will remain focused on the consumer market. Amstrad said that it would attempt to relocate staff within the company, but it predicted a total reduction in staffing levels of about 150. There will be further job losses in the European subsidiaries.
Alan Sugar, the chairman, said: "The market trend in consumer electronics means that only lean organisations who concentrate on their core skills will flourish.
"This reorganisation puts Amstrad Trading and Amstrad Direct on an equal basis to their respective competitors."
Amstrad shares closed up 1.5p, at 187p.
SHARES in CentreGold were suspended at 37p yesterday after the troubled computer games distributor said it was in advanced negotiations concerning a possible offer for the company.
CentreGold first confirmed persistent City rumours of a possible bid for the company in December, when the board declared that a number of parties were interested in buying all or part of its business, but nothing has been heard since then.
The shares were floated on the stock market in October 1993 at 125p each. In 1995, it issued two profit warnings and indicated that it would pass the final dividend.
PROFITS of Waste Management International slumped to £23.13 million before tax, from £165.16 million last year, as heavy restructuring costs took their toll.
The company, the UK arm of America's WMX Technologies, charged £123 million against the restructuring, which took place largely in the final quarter. The overhaul included closing offices to cut overheads and withdrawal from markets no longer having potential for significant growth.
There was a loss per share of 0.9p, compared with earnings of 27.8p in the previous 12 months. Again there is no dividend. The shares fell 6p to 332p. When the company obtained a stock market listing in London, in 1992, they were offered at 585p.
Since then, intense competition in a contracting market, particularly for industrial waste, and the increasing burden of complying with tighter regulation, have dogged the company, which now operates in ten European countries and has smaller operations in Asia and Latin America.
Waste Management reported favourably on operations in Britain, The Netherlands and New Zealand. Operations in Italy suffered from political and financial instability and rising labour costs. Business in France suffered from nationwide strikes late in 1995. Waste Management last year made 25 acquisitions, mostly small, to expand its recycling capacity, in Britain and Italy in particular.
The company said that it expected cash flow to rise to about £70 million in 1996, from £41 million last year. Approved capital spending for 1996 is £150 million.
Joseph M. Holsten, chief executive, said: "Our performance in 1995 was disappointing. We have, however, taken steps to position ourselves for improved results." The restructuring would let management focus resources in areas that, in the long term, would provide the greatest returns.
THE arrival in the market of rumours of a special dividend as a sweetener to the impending break-up of Hanson smacks of desperation, as well as a distinctly un-Hansonish attack of short-termism.
Last week there was no detail on how the balance sheets of Hanson's four constituent parts would measure up post-demerger, and not a whiff of a payment to those loyal investors who have stayed in as the shares have underperformed the market year after year. Now the company has confirmed, that, yes, such a payment is being considered, although nothing has been decided as yet. This begs the obvious question why it was not hinted at in last week's exhaustive briefings. The even more obvious answer is that it has something to do with the lukewarm response in the City to the demerger plans.
If this is the case, then it has not had the desired effect of sparking any great enthusiasm in those plans. Hanson shares were on the slide again yesterday, admittedly in a falling market. All it has done is raise expectations of a payout which the company, if the final decision goes the other way, will have difficulty in playing down again.
The City was always going to be lukewarm. Most analysts are timid creatures and hate change, while the benefits of break-up are not going to become apparent for several years at least. Hanson's dismal share price performance notwithstanding, the company has sufficient clout to square up to the doubters if the board and advisers generally believe in their stated strategy.
Hanson's 12p dividend last year was less than twice covered by earnings, and analysts' projections suggest no change in this state of affairs if, as expected, it is held at this level this year or next. Any doubling, as is being suggested, would have to be a one-off that could not be justified on trading grounds.
It would have the advantage of persuading those income funds that are now supposed to be considering dumping their Hanson shares to stay in for now. Their concern is that some or all of the four little demerged Hansons might not be able to hold dividends at the levels they have come to expect.
But a £640 million special pay-out, as being forecast, would have to come off the balance sheets of those companies, pretty well ensuring that some future dividends have to be cut for example, at a chemicals business that will sooner or later have to face up to another cyclical downturn.
Sensing this, the income funds might just cut and run as soon as the special dividend is paid, leaving other investors to brave any subsequent fall in the shares. This is presumably not the legacy Lord Hanson wishes to leave, and it is a long way from adding shareholder value. If the strategy was right last week, it is right now and does not need a dollop of syrup to sell it to the faint-hearts. Lord Hanson should stand firm.
THOSE capable of casting their minds back as far as the last election, if no further, will be aware of the inadequacies of modern opinion polls.
The annual stockbroker survey by Consensus Research, on behalf of the Securities Institute, confirms the pre-eminence of Warburg, in its latest, Swiss-owned, incarnation. Warburg's lead has even been extended, rather than being whittled away by recent traumas.
However, the survey also suggests, somewhat tongue in cheek, that corporate opinion-makers' view of City research has been rising without a break over the past decade. Last year a net "improvement" of 31 per cent was detected, as measured by the difference between those who unaccountably thought the City's work was better and those sensing a deterioration.
All this proves is the statistical tendency towards positive thinking of anyone filling in such a questionnaire unless its subject is British Gas or British Rail. Corporate Britain is deeply sceptical about the quality of research carried out on companies, if not quite as unimpressed as the fund managers to whom such research is normally marketed.
The experience is the same for any decent-sized company required to put on results briefings for the City. Some 40 or 50 analysts will arrive, far more than the volume of business in that sector can ever support, of whom perhaps a dozen are fairly competent. Three or four may be outstanding, and to them go the six-figure salaries.
The middle-rankers can be left alone to look after themselves and not cause too much damage. The duffers have to be nurse-maided by expensive investment relations teams so that their profits forecasts are on the right block and do not cause mass panic when reality and the next set of figures eventually intrude.
The fund managers are more brutal. Nine-tenths of broker's circulars go in the bin straight away, and few of the rest are read cover to cover. Those managers know who the three or four heavy-hitters are in each sector and restrict their attention to them. This is why the same names reappear year after year on the annual analysts' ranking surveys and why these are a far more reliable pieces of statistical research.
THE commercial television companies are heading for another round of frantic thrashing and floundering within their little corporate goldfish bowl.
This summer should, with a little help from the Government, see at least a couple lose their much-prized independence.
The cross-holdings between Scottish TV, HTV and the Mirror Group are complex, but they are due for some simplification now Flextech has effectively put Scottish on the market. HTV is already thought to be in its own talks with Michael Green at Carlton; Mirror Group is the most obvious buyer for Scottish.
Any HTV deal needs the passage of the Broadcasting Bill later this year, which by calculating the permitted combinations on size of audience rather than number of franchises will allow Carlton to expand. It could also be frustrated by a rival bidder.
One of the attractions for HTV in talking to Carlton, ironically, is to avoid the attentions of Scottish, which itself has 20 per cent. Flextech, with a similar stake, now wants out, having abandoned plans of a Celtic alliance. Then, of course, Carlton could go for Scottish, so acquiring a chunk of HTV ...
How reminiscent it all seems of that frantic round of bids and deals a couple of years ago that last carved up the ITV map and there is also the question of who is stalking Pearson, a big player if one not represented on that map. But under other cross-media ownership rules, Mirror Group has a problem. It can grow no further in TV, because of its 23 per cent share of the national paper market.
David Montgomery, increasingly preferring TV, even topless darts players on Live TV, heaven help us, to the written word, is lobbying hard for a change to the rules. The Mirror chief executive wants the limit raised from 20 to 25 per cent to allow a purchase. His only other option is to sell or close a newspaper or at least, to threaten such a drastic move in order to put pressure on the Heritage Department.
DALGETY, the petfood giant that owns Spillers and Felix, yesterday revealed a sharp fall in underlying pre-tax profits from £60.9 million to £47 million in the six months to December 31.
The results were at the lower end of City expectations, prompting several analysts to trim their full-year forecasts by about £10 million to £125 million.
Including several one-off items that resulted in a £22 million net gain, the pre-tax profit comparison improved to £69.4 million against £60.9 million last time. This was mainly owing to a £62 million profit on Dalgety's sale of its Homepride cooking sauces, Golden Wonder snacks and instant hot snacks.
However, partly offsetting this gain were £29.6 million of reorganisation costs and a £10 million provision for revaluing property.
The reorganisation costs are part of the £70 million that Dalgety is spending on integrating Quaker's European pet-food interests, which it acquired for £442 million last year, with its existing pet-food operations. Richard Clothier, chief executive, disclosed yesterday that the resulting benefits of the programme would be achieved next year a year earlier than originally forecast.
However, analysts questioned whether the annual saving of £40 million would feed through in full to the bottom line.
The City was slightly disappointed by the group's decision to hold its interim dividend at 8.5p, but most analysts agreed that this was prudent given the company's current financial state.
The Quaker acquisition helped the group to lift pet-foods profits from £11.6 million to £16.5 million on sales of £387 million, up from £160 million last time. Stripping out the benefits of the Quaker business reveals that Dalgety's original Spillers business suffered a fall in profits. However, Spillers' performance is now on the mend.
Maurice Warren, the chairman, said: "The Quaker business has fully lived up to our expectations and so have the opportunities for cost reduction. Sales of the long-established Spillers products were lower in the period immediately after the acquisition, but I am pleased to say that the sales levels are now recovering."
Agribusiness profits rose 25 per cent to £20.7 million, while food ingredients' profits slipped from £18.1 million to £15.1 million, reflecting higher raw material prices.
The group's food distribution arm saw profits slip from £7.7 million to £6 million.
The dividend is due on June 3 and is payable out of underlying earnings per share of 10.8p, down from 16.9p last time. The shares fell 2p to 413p.
CRAY ELECTRONICS, the data communications company whose shares collapsed last summer, has conditionally agreed a £3.3 million management buyout of IT Management Programme, its subsidiary.
Management at ITMP already owns 25 per cent of their company, which is a subscription-based research business for information technology in industry and commerce. ITMP made an operating profit of £208,000 on turnover of £1.35 million in the year to April 1995. The sale will require shareholder approval.
LLOYD'S OF LONDON is to invite bids from a group of UK and US fund managers to manage more than £10 billion of assets that could generate fees of up to £50 million a year.
The assets are due to be transferred into Equitas, a new reinsurance company being set up by Lloyd's to take over all the insurance market's old-year liabilities. The assets are currently held by Lloyd's syndicates as reserves to meet these future liabilities. However, a proportion of the assets will come from Lloyd's names in the form of a fee payable to Equitas in return for off-loading their liabilities to the reinsurance company.
Equitas, intends to invite about 10 fund managers to bid for a share of the £10 billion-plus contract. A short list is expected to be drawn up in the next couple of months with the selection of managers taking place in April or May.
A large proportion of the insurance market's future liabilities relates to asbestosis and pollution claims from the US. Reflecting the currency of the underlying risk, up to 70 per cent of the assets will be in the form of US dollars.
The future of Equitas has yet to be secured and depends on the go-ahead of several parties, including names and the Department of Trade and Industry. The formation of Equitas is an integral part of a £2.8 billion recovery package that Lloyd's is in the process of forming. The recovery package aims to settle the mass of legal actions taken by names against Lloyd's agents as well as offering financial help to names struggling to meet the bills Equitas will present to them for taking over their old- year liabilities.
For the plan to succeed, Lloyd's needs its names' support. The timing of when names vote on the recovery plan may suffer a delay as Lloyd's ruling council may decide tommorow against asking names to vote when they do not know the final details of their individual bills from Equitas or their share of funds available to settle their litigation. As a result the vote, due before the end of March, may be put off until May.
BLOOMSBURY, the publisher founded in 1986, has announced record book sales for January.
The company reported pre-tax losses of £391,000 to June last year but has shown signs of recovery with three books in The Sunday Times bestseller list. Snow Falling on Cedars, a first novel by David Gutterson, has sold more than 270,000 copies in paperback and, along with the official film edition of Sense and Sensibility, is credited with leading the way in Bloomsbury's recovery.
REDLAND, the building materials company, may consider asset swaps for parts of its brick-building business.
Paul Hewitt, group finance director, said yesterday: "We would certainly look favourably upon a company that could give us something in return apart from just cash."
Redland also confirmed that it is looking to restructure its European roof-tile operations. The brick-building division was worth £220 million at December 31, 1994, and pre-tax profits were £24 million. Redland shares fell 9p to 395p.
ANALYSTS would not be surprised to see the gold price ease back to about $405 an ounce after the recent jump that has lifted the metal by $30 since the beginning of the year.
Gold last night closed hardly changed at $414.50 an ounce in what dealers said was a pause for consolidation. Andy Smith, gold analyst at UBS, the broker, said the market continued to be bullish but "after a $10 movement in one week, you would expect a pause for thought". Healthy profit taking was to have been expected after the reported rush of US funds into the metal last week.
IOC INTERNATIONAL, which designs and manufactures optoelectronic components used to modulate beams of light within a fibre optic system, is applying to join the Alternative Investment Market.
The company proposes to raise £5 million through a placing of shares by Henry Cooke, Lumsden, the broker, with trading expected to start next month. Private investors may apply for shares through ShareLink. The company requires funds to finance additional working capital as sales grow, to invest in capital equipment and to repay its preference share capital.
IN SPITE OF its troubles last year, Warburg now SBC Warburg has held on to its reputation as the top investment bank for UK research.
A survey of 213 of the UK's biggest publicly quoted companies put Warburg top for research for the fifth successive year and top for expertise in corporate finance for the ninth year.
But according to the annual broker survey, published by the Securities Institute, the professional association of stockbroking firms, it fell to second place for corporate finance advice, beaten by Cazenove.
After its collapse and subsequent rescue by ING last year, Barings slipped from fifth to tenth place in the rating of banks. NatWest Securities has leapt from fifth place to second in the research league, followed by Kleinwort Benson, which has slipped from second place.
The survey of finance directors and corporate treasurers was undertaken in November last year. It demonstrated the inroads made by US and continental European houses, with Merrill Lynch, formerly Smith New Court, moving from sixth to fourth place, and UBS moving up two notches to sixth place.
BZW fell four places to seventh and James Capel, which held on to its place in the top two between 1986 and 1993, fell from fourth to sixth place.
Roger Moore, Warburg's property analyst, held on to top place for three years in a row as did Fergus MacLeod, NatWest's oil and gas analyst. John Spicer, Warburg's brewing analyst, kept his top place, as did Mark Duffy, its food producers analyst, and Ewan Fraser, James Capel's engineering analyst.
On the financial side, Richard Coleman, of Merrill Lynch, was top banking analyst and his colleague, Stephen Bird, was top insurance analyst.
The survey also showed that finance directors and corporate treasurers were less confident about the prospects for UK industry as a whole this year the first fall in confidence since 1990 and the lowest since 1992.
Only 45 per cent expressed optimism for UK industry this year, compared with 69 per cent last year.
THE Bosnian Government has detained a Serb general, a colonel and six other men as suspects in war crimes, Nato officials said last night.
The general was identified as Djordje Djukic, a close associate of General Ratko Mladic, who has been indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.
Bakir Alispahic, the Bosnian Interior Minister, said his office had informed the tribunal of the arrests and requested that the suspects be interrogated today. He said his office would provide the tribunal with detailed evidence against the men.
The arrests are bound to inflame tensions in Sarajevo and give rise to claims that the Bosnians have breached the Dayton peace accord. The Serb Army said that three of the men were seized between the suburbs of Lukavica and Ilidza, neutral territory protected by Nato.
Hundreds of angry women from Srebrenica have meanwhile been demonstrating, including throwing bricks through the window of a Red Cross office, in Tuzla and Sarajevo, demanding action to account for an estimated 7,000 men who disappeared after Bosnian Serbs overran the enclave in July.
On Sunday, Warren Christopher, the US Secretary of State, persuaded President Milosevic to permit international war crimes investigators to open an office in Belgrade. Under threats of withholding full diplomatic recognition of Yugoslavia, Mr Milosevic agreed to this but said that the suspects would have to be tried in Serbia because the country had no extradition provisions.
IAN PLENDERLEITH, the Bank of England monetary policy director who was asked to become non-executive deputy chairman of the Stock Exchange to help it through its leadership crisis last month, has said the Exchange needs to develop "a more closely focused role". In a speech in Cardiff last night, Mr Plenderleith gave his opinion of the exchange's future role and the debate over trading systems for the first time. He said the exchange "still has an important contribution to make to our financial system".
The Exchange has been accused by critics of attempting to maintain its dominant position in London by keeping out new competitors. But he said it is operating in a world in which technology makes it possible for new trading mechanisms to spring up quickly in response to needs. The Exchange's aim, he said, was "to offer competitive services for investors with capital to invest and for companies needing to raise capital. It in no way seeks any special status as of right, nor any exclusive position."
He said it would develop a more closely focused role by concentrating on providing a primary market structure for companies to raise capital and by providing a liquid and fair trading market structure for secondary trading of securities. He reinforced the Exchange's position on electronic order-matching as part of its Sequence project. A committee will report to the board on its introduction in March.
Mr Plenderleith was asked to become deputy chairman after Michael Lawrence lost the confidence of the board and was dismissed as chief executive. His appointment is seen as providing reassurance to the City.
A Russian pilot takes a ride on his Sukhoi SU31 fighter in Singapore yesterday as it is towed into place for the Asian Aerospace‘96 airshow, which begins today
THE compliance cost to employers of implementing self-assessment, the new tax regime whereby taxpayers will be required to assess their own liabilities, will exceed £500 million, according to new research by taxation specialists at Coopers & Lybrand. The figure compares with the Inland Revenue's estimate of between £60 million and £122 million.
The accountant also believes additional recurrent costs to employers will exceed £100 million each year, which differs significantly from the Revenue's forecast of between £20 million and £30 million. The total cost equivalent of individual taxpayers' time in reading through and completing the "easy-to-follow, new-look tax return" could amount to £1 billion a year. This estimate is based on the latest draft of the tax return which currently runs to at least 62 pages for an individual with one job and no other income. Martin Benson, a Coopers & Lybrand employee tax specialist, said he thought the £500 million compliance cost "a conservative estimate".
Ian Lang, President of the Board of Trade, and He Guangyuan, of China's Ministry of Machinery Industry, yesterday signed an agreement that
is expected to lead to collaborative projects in the automotive industry between the two countries. China is expected to be the biggest automotive
market in the world by 2005, requiring components worth £6 billion up to the end of the century, and £24 billion in service parts.
A MAN who has won greater renown as an eye surgeon than a politician threw his hat into the ring of the Russian presidential election yesterday and promised to be an unpredictable "third force" in the race.
In an energetic performance at the press conference to launch his campaign, Svyatoslav Fyodorov, 68, one of the surprise successes of the December parliamentary elections, cited a number of influences for his brand of popular capitalism, from the Scottish Utopian philosopher Robert Owen to the Pope and the former American presidential challenger, Ross Perot.
"I met Ross Perot not long ago and he is fully in agreement with my ideas and those of my party," Professor Fyodorov said. He also quoted with approval the maxim of Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader, that it is not important what colour a cat is, so long as it catches mice, and said the rapid growth of the Chinese economy was an example to Russia.
Like Mr Perot, Professor Fyodorov is a self-made millionaire. His pioneer laser eye surgery is one of the few unqualified success stories in Russia over the past ten years. He has treated more than a million patients and records mounting profits each year.
In December's elections to the state Duma, Professor Fyodorov's Party of Workers' Self-Government won 2.7 million votes. Although this was not enough to gain representation in parliament, the party out-polled many more established groups. Professor Fyodorov won a local seat in the city of Cheboksary and has been negotiating with other centrist parties in an attempt to establish himself as their common candidate. He has recently had talks with Nikolai Ryzhkov, the former Soviet Prime Minister, and Aleksandr Lebed, the retired general.
The professor's economic policy, which he has put into practice in his 12 eye hospitals, encourages workers to take a stake in their companies and receive a proportionate share of profits. He said one of the main mistakes of Russia's transition to capitalism was that it had not fostered thousands of small businesses and created a nation of entrepreneurs.
He inveighed both against the current Government, which he said was turning Russia into a "colonial state", and against the Communist Party, which he said promised only a return to a bureaucratic enslavement by the party nomenklatura.
SEARS, the retail group, yesterday announced the sale of Curtess and Saxone, the high street shoe chains, in a move that will result in 290 job losses over the next year.
A total of 134 Saxone and Curtess stores were sold to Facia, Britain's second largest privately owned retail group, at the weekend, making the group's ninth acquisition in 18 months. City watchers estimate that Facia paid up to £5 million for the brand names.
The deal is the second between Stephen Hinchliffe, the Sheffield businessman and sole holder of Facia ordinary shares, and Sears. Last August, Facia acquired 245 shops in the Freeman Hardy & Willis, Trueform and Manfield chains from Sears.
Excluded from yesterday's deal are about 40 Curtess and Saxone stores that Sears is retaining and converting into its new formats, which include Shoe Express and Shoe City.
AN arsonist has confessed to setting more than half the fires in a small village in the Jura mountain range which have baffled scientists, terrified inhabitants and obsessed the French reading public since last November.
Thirteen fires have broken out in the village of Moirans-en-Montagne in the last three months, killing two people and creating a mystery which grew with every passing day and every new fire.
A man was arrested on Sunday night shortly after setting another blaze and later confessed to lighting seven of the fires, the public prosecutor in the case said yesterday.
The identity of the suspect has not been revealed, but he is believed to be an acquaintance of the Raffin family, in whose houses most of the fires began. He has not, however, confessed to starting the fire which killed Annie Raffin and Gerard David, a volunteer fireman, on January 20.
In the absence of any obvious explanation for the fires, theories and rumours spread rapidly. The local magistrate brought in electricity experts to see if an underground cable was the cause, and some seismologists argued that inflammable gases might be leaking out of underground caves beneath the mountains.
Investigators repeatedly said they could find no scientific or rational explanation for the fires, but yesterday they insisted that arson had never been ruled out. "That was part of the strategy in that it allowed the police to pursue their criminal investigation," Marie Christine Tarare, the public prosecutor, claimed.
But by refusing to say arson was a possibility and emphasising that there was no "electrical, nuclear or magnetic anomaly" to explain the fires, the authorities stirred up panic and speculation, ranging from the scientific to the supernatural.
Some inhabitants maintained the town was under attack by laser beams from satellites. Six fires still remain officially unaccounted for.
ONE of President Yeltsin's closest aides is poised to severely embarrass the embattled Russian leader with the publication of a new book revealing the power struggles and intrigues inside the Kremlin.
Vyacheslav Kostikov, the former presidential spokesman and now Russia's Ambassador to the Vatican, offers the first inside story of the transformation of President Yeltsin from champion of democracy to the ailing and unpopular leader of today.
Although the book about his work in the Kremlin between 1992 and 1994 is not yet complete, there is such public interest that some chapters have been serialised in the weekly Argumenty i Fakty newspaper. Mr Kostikov, known for his sharp mind and even sharper tongue, paints an extraordinary picture of Kremlin life, which resembles more the court of an ageing tsar than the office of Russia's first elected head of state.
In one section he describes the atmosphere of paranoia that reigns in the Kremlin, where cronies run day-to-day affairs, eventually driving out far more qualified aides. He recalls that all offices and telephones in the Kremlin were bugged by the presidential security team, so that when Kremlin staffers got together for a drink after work they would often address each other by fictitious names.
Much of Mr Kostikov's criticism is directed at General Aleksandr Korzhakov, the presidential bodyguard, and Viktor Ilyushin, his aide, who effectively run the Kremlin and decide whom Mr Yeltsin meets and what he reads.
In an interview with Itogi, a weekly current affairs programme, Mr Kostikov said a common expression in the Kremlin was "it is no business of the Tsar's", meaning that the aides, rather than the President, would make the decisions.
General Korzhakov, a shadowy former KGB officer, comes across as the classic Russian servant who loyally devotes himself to his master but gradually takes over the running of the estate.
According to one passage, he found out that Mr Kostikov was planning to write about his experiences in the Kremlin when he took up his new foreign post. The burly bodyguard came to Mr Kostikov's farewell party and told him not to write anything critical.
Mr Kostikov has gone to great pains to insist that he does not want to hurt his former boss and that he has deliberately withheld potentially damaging information, including details of a drunken boat trip when Mr Yeltsin reportedly threw his spokesman into the Volga River.
Nevertheless, the Russian leader, who is preparing for his re-election battle in June, is unlikely to be pleased with his description as a "lone and tragic figure" void of any beliefs, who is desperately clinging to power at any cost.
"Yeltsin does not have a personal democratic ideology," Mr Kostikov concludes. "His ideology, his friend, his concubine, his mistress, his passion, is power."
So far the Kremlin has not officially responded to Mr Kostikov's remarks. As for the author, he will not easily be silenced. A former journalist and committed democrat, he is no stranger to controversy and was ousted from his job for privately criticising President Yeltsin for his drunken public appearances.
New York: Michael Volino, the New York police sergeant, failed to kick his way to riches in front of millions of American football fans and was booed off the pitch.
Sergeant Volino, the winner of a lucky draw, was offered $1 million by a chocolate company if he succeeded with a single place kick at the Pro-Bowl in Hawaii. Regardless of the result however, the policeman was promised a consolation prize of $5,000 (£3,300) and a four-day holiday.
AMERICA'S budget fiasco reached new levels of absurdity yesterday when President Clinton formally submitted a 1997 budget plan even though he and the Republican Congress have yet to agree a plan for the present fiscal year, which began last October.
Mr Clinton was meeting a legal requirement and tacitly admitted that the situation was ridiculous. Budget plans normally run to about 2,000 pages; yesterday's bare-bones offering was just 20 pages.
"The 1996 budget process is being lapped by 1997," said Robert Reischauer, former director of the congressional budget office. "We have the runners for the previous race still on the track and the gun is going off for the new race."
Mr Clinton vetoed the Republicans' 1996 budget last November, saying it would devastate key social programmes in order to balance the budget by 2002. Newt Gingrich, the House Speaker, twice shut down the federal Government, but Mr Clinton refused to give in.
The Republicans abandoned their hardline tactics last month when it became clear that they had lost public support. Budget negotiations have all but collapsed.
Mr Clinton's 1997 budget proposal mostly restated his last offer to the Republicans, which was a balanced budget in seven years achieved through smaller tax cuts.
IRAQ appears to be edging towards a deal with the United Nations that would allow it to sell a limited amount of oil on world markets for the first time since the Gulf War, in order to buy food for its starving people.
An Iraqi delegation led by Abdul Amir al-Anbari, the former Ambassador to the UN, is due to start talks with officials in New York today on an "oil-for-food" scheme approved by the Security Council last April. Under the scheme, Iraq would be permitted to sell $1 billion (£640 million) worth of crude oil every three months for food and other humanitarian supplies.
Thirty per cent of the total revenue would be diverted to the UN Compensation Commission, set up to pay reparations to victims of the Gulf War, while a further $150 million of every $1 billion would be spent on the Kurdish population who live beyond Baghdad's control in three northern governorates.
Until now, Iraq has rejected the UN terms for an oil sale, particularly the set-aside for the Kurds and the requirement that the "larger share" of the exported oil be shipped through the Kirkuk-Yumurtalik pipeline across Turkey. Baghdad claimed such conditions were an unacceptable infringement of its sovereignty.
Reports in official Iraqi media yesterday suggest, however, that Baghdad may be softening its resistance to the requirements. The al-Jumhuriya newspaper reported that President Saddam Hussein was ready to ship food to the Kurds and said that agreement between Iraq and the UN would be "a humiliating defeat for America".
Diplomats noted that the black market exchange rate for the Iraqi dinar had fallen from 3,000 to the dollar to just 460 on the expectation of an oil deal.
Iraq's readiness to enter talks with the UN about the "oil-for-food" scheme, spelt out in Resolution 986 by the Security Council, has prompted speculation that Saddam's regime is finally running out of cash. UN agencies report dire conditions in the country, with four million people, or a fifth of the population, at severe nutritional risk and a new generation growing up stunted by malnutrition.
The market cost of food for a family of five is estimated at $26 a month, while the average wage is only between $3 and $5 a month. Some Iraqis are said to be so desperate that, having sold all their furniture to buy food, they are now dismantling their homes to sell the bricks.
Western diplomats remain sceptical, however, that Iraq will actually accept UN terms. Iraq has always feared that, if it accepts the scheme, it will postpone the time when it can obtain a complete lifting of the oil embargo.
Under the resolution that ended the Gulf War in 1991, the oil embargo must be lifted unconditionally once Iraq has satisfied UN weapons inspectors that it has dismantled its capacity to develop ballistic missiles and biological, nuclear and chemical arms.
Even if Iraq meets UN demands, Britain and the United States would still want to control its oil sales to keep a rein on Saddam, rather than allowing his Government to sell oil again freely on world markets.
The Arab League expressed the hope yesterday that the talks, which are expected to last for some weeks, will be successful. However, the UN cautioned that there would be "no quick fix". Sylvana Foa, a spokeswoman for the organisation, said: "These discussions will be difficult. It is going to take time."
SOUTH Africa's state broadcasting corporation, once a pillar of the apartheid regime, has been relaunched to reflect the cultural and linguistic demographics of "the rainbow nation".
Changes to give all 11 official languages a representative share of airtime have prompted angry protests. Particularly controversial is the downgrading of Afrikaans from more than 30 per cent of the total broadcasting time to less than 5 per cent. English will dominate, while Afrikaans will share a secondary channel with four African languages, the third channel going to Zulu and Xhosa.
Several white Afrikaans and English-speaking presenters and weather forecasters have been axed. Marietta Kruger, a veteran news presenter, made an emotional farewell appearance on last Friday's news with an appeal that Afrikaans be accorded its rightful place.
The issue has stirred heated debate between the political parties and has become entangled in the question of impartiality. The corporation's chief executive, Zwelakhe Sisulu, is the son of President Mandela's former cellmate, Walter Sisulu.
At the relaunch ceremony on Sunday night, Mr Mandela said: "We are shedding another layer in the baggage that has clouded our nation's vision of itself. We are here ... to join you in acknowledging and reasserting your independence."
Washington: Seven years after leaving office, Ronald Reagan is 85 today, but he is too ill with Alzheimer's disease to attend his birthday party in Los Angeles tonight at the restaurant where he proposed to Nancy.
Guests include Bob Hope and Charlton Heston.
IT IS eight against one, but concerted attacks by the rest of the Republican field have yet to puncture the Steve Forbes bubble.
Robert Dole, the front-runner, has rounded on the multi-millionaire publisher because he has been shaken by his rival's recent surge in popularity. The seven other candidates have ganged up on Mr Forbes because he prevents them from getting a clear shot at Mr Dole.
In speeches and advertisements they denounce Mr Forbes's "flat tax", his political inexperience, his social libertarianism and his attempt to "buy" the presidency, but the most they can claim to have achieved is to have capped his rise.
"The more he is attacked, the more supporters come to his aid. There's a circle-the-wagons mentality," said Frank Luntz, the pollster who advised Ross Perot's independent presidential campaign in 1992, helped to devise Newt Gingrich's 1994 Contract with America and has made the "angry white male" his speciality.
Last weekend Mr Luntz brought together 14 of Mr Forbes's New Hampshire supporters for a detailed two-hour discussion and let reporters watch through a one-way mirror. They learnt that Mr Forbes's greatest asset was his status as a political outsider. His trademark "flat tax" plan merely reinforced that status because it would end the legitimised corruption of Washington where politicians trade tax concessions for financial contributions. "The ‘flat tax' draws attention to Forbes, but voters stick with him because he's not a politician," Mr Luntz said.
Mr Forbes's original backers were the anti-tax brigade, but he increasingly draws support from what a Dole adviser termed the "anti-Washington, anti-political, anarchic wing of the Republican Party". This makes it easy for him to deflect attacks from his rivals and from the media by portraying them as the product of a worried establishment. In one advertisement Mr Forbes outlines his goals then adds: "The politicians will try to stop us."
Mr Forbes's willingness to dip deep into his personal fortune also enables him to swamp his rivals' messages. He has spent $18 million (£11.9 million), most of it on saturation advertising, and he dominates the airwaves in Iowa, whose caucuses are on Monday week, and in New Hampshire, which holds the nation's first primary in a fortnight. Brent Siegrist, the Republican leader of Iowa's House of Representatives, told Time: "He's on the radio all day at work. He drives you home and he puts you to bed."
In attacking Mr Forbes, Mr Dole also risks reinforcing his reputation for meanness. His new strategy is to let surrogates do the dirty work while appearing to be above the fray. The chief surrogate is Steve Merrill, New Hampshire's Governor, who appears on Dole advertisements claiming the Forbes "flat tax" would cost his state's average household $2,000 a year.
Buchanan backed: Pat Buchanan received a boost on the eve of today's Louisiana caucuses when he was endorsed by Mike Foster, the Governor. The caucuses launch the race for the Republican nomination but only Mr Buchanan, Senator Phil Gramm and Alan Keyes, a black radio talk show host, are taking part.
Washington: Hot on the heels of Primary Colors, the thinly veiled but bestselling account of the Clinton campaign, comes a new roman a clef that will send shudders through the White House in a presidential election year.
Purposes of the Heart by Dolly Kyle, a Dallas lawyer, claims she has had a nearly lifelong affair with President Clinton. Written initially as a "therapeutic journal", the novel talks of a man she has "loved on and off" since they grew up together in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
The last encounter, which sets the opening scene for the book, took place in 1994 at their thirtieth high school reunion. In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Ms Kyle said she was motivated to publish her journal in novel form shortly after Mr Clinton's 12-year affair with Gennifer Flowers became public. She was apparently incensed to find that she was not the only serious other woman in his life. Her agent, Lucianne Goldberg, said her book is a "Southern sizzler". Names, dates and places have been altered and Ms Goldberg is in the process of selling rights to the highest bidder.
Primary Colors, sold on the anonymity of its insider writer, has kept Washington enthralled as to the identity of its author. The Kyle book is likely to add spice as the Clinton campaign begins in earnest.
NEW York's Museum of Modern Art, one of the most acquisitive galleries in the world, plans nearly to double in size. It has signed a $50 million (£33 million) deal to buy neighbouring buildings in central Manhattan.
The ambitious expansion is likely to take ten years and will cost "several hundred million dollars". It will allow the museum to display more than the current 10 per cent of its total collection.
By buying three buildings the museum has added 250,000sq ft to its existing space of 350,000sq ft. The buildings have high ceilings and offer different-shaped rooms. The galleries have been criticised for being too rectangular and low-ceilinged. The expansion means that the museum will occupy the best part of a block.
It has the most comprehensive modern art collection in the world. To pay for the development, the museum intends to run a vigorous appeal. There is little doubt that the funds will be raised.
ICE floes have appeared in the Hudson and moustaches have snapped off in Minnesota. Record low temperatures were recorded yesterday in the eastern half of America as the freezing weather continued.
Television news broadcasts carried warnings of the danger to facial hair after men reportedly lost their moustaches by trying to brush away icicles in -60F (-51C) temperatures. Liz Cunnane, a New York trichologist, said moustache-wearers should wrap upper lips against the extreme cold and not attempt combing until the hair was completely defrosted."Hair has a 12 to 14 per cent moisture content and in such temperatures it may freeze almost instantaneously," she said. Frostbite could lead to hair loss.
Keith Pickus, an assistant professor of history at Wichita State University, Kansas, said: "On a five-minute walk across campus, my beard turned into one big stalactite. If you are not careful, it will break off like the stem of a good champagne flute."
Forecasters predicted a gradual improvement in the conditions, but 60 people are now reported to have died as a result of the Arctic chill. One victim, an Alzheimer's sufferer, wandered round in a daze after a car crash in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and died of exposure. An 80-year-old woman in Wisconsin froze to death after locking herself in her garage, and a man in Houston, Texas, died after trying to warm himself over a brazier. A spark from the hot coals set fire to his woollen mittens and then to the rest of his clothes.
Winter sun-seekers in northern Florida awoke to temperatures below zero and a wind chill factor which took the mercury to -8F (-22C). The state's citrus farmers had to take emergency measures to protect crops, spraying fruit to create an insulating outer layer of ice. Bobby McKown, chief executive of Florida Citrus Mutual, predicted bad defoliation of orange trees. The damage may push up the price of orange juice.
Many motorists had trouble trying to start their cars. Residents of Windsor Locks, Connecticut, awoke yesterday to temperatures of -13F (-25C), and in upstate New York the waterfall at Haines Falls froze, creating an array of icicles. Petrol pump attendants complained that their hands were too numb to handle change, and thousands of people in Tennessee were left without electricity after ice unbalanced power pylons. Along the shores of the Great Lakes, pedestrians were urged to "keep blinking" to protect their eyes.
In Atlanta, Georgia, schools and businesses did not open because of the -6F (-21C) conditions, and firemen set light to a frozen water hydrant to thaw it out before fighting a fire. But for the people of Duluth, Minnesota, yesterday morning's -10F (-23C) was a welcome rise on Friday's -60F
(-51C).
"This," said John Myers, a local reporter, "feels positively springlike."
PROPOSALS for a property derivatives market have been drawn up by a group of institutional investors.
The aim is to add liquidity to the sluggish property market. A working group chaired by AMP Asset Management has drawn up a product and concept document for the Real Estate Index Market, a futures market based on indices published by Investment Property Databank. The working group will apply soon to the Securities and Investments Board for a licence to operate an over-the-counter futures market.
Support for the Tories has at last started picking up, but how real is the upturn? Opinion changes in response both to occasional well-publicised shocks (rows, scandals and the like) and to less immediately discernible shifts in underlying attitudes.
In January 1995, Tory support jumped by five percentage points, and Labour's rating fell by a similar amount, according to the regular MORI polls for The Times. This followed reports of internal Labour arguments over VAT, education and Clause Four. This was the first check to Tony Blair's previous ascent in the polls. Once he quelled the dissent, Labour recovered much of its previous support. Similarly, the Tories' rating leapt seven points at the end of last June after John Major's dramatic initiative over the party leadership. A month later, Tory support fell back again for two months. Once these shocks had worked their way through, it was possible to discern a gradual rise in Tory support, of roughly three percentage points over the year as a whole. This trend was underlined by the last MORI poll, published 12 days ago, which put the party on 29 per cent, its highest level for over two years.
This poll was taken before the Harriet Harman affair made its full impact. Party strategists are eagerly awaiting the next polls, from ICM, due tomorrow, and from Gallup, due later in the week, to see how the ratings have moved. But in nine days will come another shock in the form of the Scott report on the Iraqi arms affair. The consequent row will almost certainly damage the Tories. It is impossible to tell what the lasting impact of these shocks will be. The only certainty is that the next month or two's polls will be distorted, probably in both directions, by these shocks.
Current signs of a pick-up in Tory fortunes from the low levels of the 1993-95 period are underlined not just by voting intentions figures but also by other questions about political attitudes. These point to a firming of support, particularly for Mr Major himself, among traditional Tory backers, while economic optimism has begun to recover.
A poll of 1,000 people who claim to have voted Tory in 1992 by the Opinion Research Business for James Capel has shown the first signs of a return of the "feel-good" factor (measuring optimism about personal finances, the economy and unemployment). The poll, undertaken between January 25 and 28, suggests that the improvement is especially marked among previous Tories who have switched to support other parties. There is not yet evidence of any improvement in the Tories' share of the vote among this sample, but the pollsters say that some of the background factors necessary to achieve this are beginning to turn, not just the "feel-good" factor but also Mr Major's personal standing. He is a big asset for the party. Moreover, even among those who have switched away since 1992, the enterprise economy (a Tory slogan) is preferred by a two-to-one margin over the stakeholder economy (Labour's slogan). However, a clear majority of these 1992 Tory supporters think that Labour will win the general election, and there are worries that the Tory party
has swung too far to the right.
It is uncertain how long it might take for such stirrings of better feelings about the Tories to translate into firm votes. My hunch is that it will be very hard, if not impossible, for the Tories completely to reverse the record drop in their economic competence and leadership ratings as a result of Black Wednesday, sterling's forced exit from the European exchange-rate mechanism in September 1992. That still looks like the decisive event of this Parliament.
THE National Audit Office has been asked to examine why Whitehall departments were late in paying bills of at least £232 million last year.
Robert Sheldon, chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, is holding discussions with the spending watchdog. According to figures obtained from the Government by Barbara Roche, Labour's spokesman for small businesses, one of the worst offenders was the Department of Trade and Industry, which delayed almost £50 million of payments last year. In a letter the The Times today, she says that small firms are "going to the wall" because of late government payments.
Labour MPs were quick to point out that the head of the department last year was Michael Heseltine, who admitted last week that as a businessman he had often delayed paying creditors.
EDDIE GEORGE, Governor of the Bank of England, issued a stern warning last night that proceeding too quickly towards a single currency could cause serious political tensions in Europe.
Mr George insisted that monetary union would only succeed if all the countries involved had met strict conditions to bring their economies into line.
He said: "What's really important is that the economic conditions should be right before people move ahead and that's actually more important than the calendar in my view."
Mr George's views will dismay Euro-enthusiasts such as Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor, and Jacques Santer, the President of the European Commission, who have been trying to talk the EMU back on the timetable laid down in the Maastricht treaty. M Santer said at the weekend that any delay in the implementation of the single currency could lead to the collapse of the single market.
Mr George's comments echo those made last month by another senior British banker, Lord Tugendhat, chairman of Abbey National.
Mr George added that he did not believe Britain would be at a disadvantage if it were to remain outside EMU, but stressed that he saw advantages in a single currency. He said: "The main benefit is that it would facilitate resource allocation across Europe which would generate economic efficiency and therefore economic welfare. The political advantages would be very considerable if the economic conditions were right.
"The important thing is that we should continue to drive towards establishing stability because if we do get stability then conditions for the single market to function effectively will be met and that's what is going to deliver real economic benefits."
THE benefits of occupational pension schemes will be extended to the staff of small firms under plans to be unveiled by Peter Lilley tomorrow.
Such workers largely missed out on the pensions boom in recent years because their employers lacked the expertise and manpower to run the kind of scheme offered by big companies. They have had to rely instead on the state pension or more expensive private pensions.
But in a speech on the future funding of retirement, the Social Security Secretary will seek to extend the occupational umbrella to all employees. He will allow a "third tier" of pensions in addition to the basic state pension and the compulsory second pensions of Serps or contracted-out occupational or private schemes.
Mr Lilley's inaugural
lecture to members of Politeia, the newest of the Conservative think-tanks, will come against the background of renewed debate in Tory circles about the future of the welfare
state. Although right-wing ministers are privately
applauding his success in cutting real growth in social security spending from 3 per cent a year to 1 per cent,
they still want to see more of the burden transferred to
private individuals and insurers.
But Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor and foremost exponent of the One Nation tradition, is expected to counter calls for radical change in a speech on the welfare state to the London School of Economics today.
Mr Lilley will make it easier for bosses of small firms to offer their staff "group personal pensions" under which a big commercial fund manager would set up a scheme for the employees of dozens of companies. It would be up to the employer to decide whether to boost payouts by also contributing to the fund.
The idea is that employers would be able to offer their workers a chance to join a group scheme and so benefit from the lower administrative costs of arrangements covering hundreds of people. Regulations under the Financial Services Act that inhibit bosses from recommending pensions providers could be amended by the Government.
Mr Lilley will highlight what he regards as the success of the Government's pensions policy, pointing out that total funds invested in occupational and private schemes stand at £600 billion more than the rest of the European Union put together. The national kitty has grown by a startling £100 billion in the past year more than the £90 billion spent by the taxapayer on the whole of the welfare state over the same period, of which £32 billion went on state pensions.
He will claim that Britain is far better placed than its neighbours to cope with the burdens of an ageing population as the numbers of pensioners rises by 50 per cent to 16 million by 2030. But he will accuse Labour of planning pensions changes amounting to a backdoor way of raising taxes. He will say that Labour's proposals for extending means-testing and creating a guaranteed minimum pension would penalise people who have saved for their old age and undermine incentives for the present generation of workers to do likewise.
Labour's interest in the Singapore Central Provident Fund under which employers and employees each contribute 20 per cent of earnings into a government-run welfare fund will also be attacked as a long-term threat to individual savings. Mr Lilley will point out that the average rate of return from the Singapore fund is only one fifth that of privately managed UK pension funds and suggest that Labour is secretly planning to get its hands on some of the pensions surplus to use for higher state spending.
The models Jerry Hall, left, and Marie Helvin arriving at the Conservative Winter Ball in London last night. About 200 guests attended the fundraising event
DOUBTS about the ability of British Airways to go on reducing costs hit the company's shares despite record profits of £534 million in the nine months to December 31, up 24.5 per cent. The shares ended at 502p, down 19p.
Passenger traffic and revenues continued their climb during the third quarter. But what worried the City was the 9.2 per cent surge in group operating expenditure in the quarter, accompanied by a 5.9 per cent rise in unit costs to a level uncomfortably above the projected rate.
BA said the increase reflected investments in its first class and club world services, which are to offer passengers beds and cots on long-haul flights. A third of the cost increase was blamed on exchange rate movements.
But the rise provoked concern that BA might be coming to the end of its ability to cut £150 million from its operating costs every year, although Robert Ayling, the chief executive, is leading a crackdown on costs. Derek Stevens, BA's finance chief, said that while the task remained tough, the savings represented only 3 per cent of BA revenues. Cost reduction programmes were being implemented through engineering, cargo, computers and improved financial management. Like rival carriers, BA is benefiting from a strong recovery in air travel. Sir Colin Marshall, the chairman, said the "industry environment ... remains favourable, with demand running ahead of capacity increases". Bookings had recovered from a January fall-off and "a record profit for the year is anticipated".
The number of passengers carried by BA during the first nine months reached 24.8 million, up 5 per cent on the same months of 1994. Because passengers are tending to fly further, revenues per passenger were up 9.6 per cent on the same nine months of 1994, while BA flew with 74.8 per cent of its seats full, up 2.4 per cent on a year ago.
The third-quarter figures were down a touch, partly reflecting the disposal of BA's Caledonian charter operation. Even so, BA achieved new third-quarter operating records. Sir Colin expects to derive increasing benefits from its links with USAir, Deutsche BA and TAT European Airlines, its French operation.
A GLOBAL shake-out in equity, bond and futures markets yesterday saw leading shares in London fall heavily. The FT-SE 100 index ended 34.7 points lower at 3,746.6, with 633.5 million shares traded. Most international equity indices lost between 1 per cent and 2 per cent of their value. A sharp correction in US treasuries and European bonds left UK gilts languishing with losses of 1 at the long end.
YESTERDAY in the Commons: questions to national heritage ministers and the Lord Chancellor's Department. A Private Notice Question on rail privatisation was followed by debates on policing in London and on the Sheffield supertram. In the Lords: Criminal Procedure and Investigations Bill, report; and Agricultural Holdings (Fee) Regulations.
TODAY in the Commons: questions to defence ministers and the Prime Minister followed by debates on the future of GP fundholders; Collective Redundancies and Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (Amendment) Regulations; proposed closure of Frances Withers Home, in Sutton Coldfield. In the Lords: debates on the Broadcasting Bill, committee stage; health and safety in farming.
DON CRUICKSHANK, the Oftel chief, is ordering British Telecom to cut £50 million a year from charges for delivering long-distance calls carried by rival phone companies.
In a landmark determination, the Director-General of Telecommunications said that Britain's dominant phone company must cut so-called "access deficit" charges levied to compensate for losses on local exchange lines by 8 per cent.
At the same time, he ordered BT to cut inland conveyance charges by around 10 per cent. BT will lose around a fifth of its £250 million revenue from other phone companies chiefly Mercury Communications and the impact will become ever more significant as rivals eat into BT's share of the UK telephony market.
BT indicated that it will accept the Oftel determination but Peter Howell-Davies, chief executive of Mercury, was "appalled" that rivals would be obliged to share part of the cost of BT's redundancy programme.
The ruling is the first arising from the newly imposed obligation on BT to separate the accounts of its network from the provision of phone services. It confirms Mr Cruickshank's determination to prevent BT from loading inappropriate costs onto businesses where other companies are obliged to share them.
Industry sources suggested the impact on BT would be up to £50 million a year, although analysts believe the company may seek to exaggerate the impact in business as part of the drive to maximise revenues from rival operators. Nonetheless, the cut in charges will make it easier for rivals to attack BT's core business and domestic telephone markets.
Cellnet, the mobile phone company owned 60 per cent by BT and 40 per cent by Securicor, is to cut charges by 30 per cent and switch to per-second billing.
MINISTERS voiced their confidence yesterday that elections paving the way to all-party talks in Northern Ireland will be held within months.
The Government believes that, in spite of their initial strong reservations, the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, Sinn Fein and the Irish Government will eventually come round to elections as the "passport" to talks.
After John Major completed his first round of talks with political leaders yesterday, an informed ministerial source likened the process to people "dancing round the bonfire, poking at the flames". He said that eventually they would go along with elections and that both Sinn Fein and the SDLP had been careful not to rule out taking part.
Even so, ministers are taking seriously the warnings of a potential split within the
IRA over the peace process. "We know that 30 per cent of them were against it in the first place it is always a risk. But we think that is another reason why Sinn Fein will want to use the elections route."
Mr Major met John Alderdice, leader of the Alliance Party, yesterday. The political leaders will now have detailed talks with Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Northern Ireland Secretary, and his deputy Michael Ancram, before having a second round of discussions with Mr Major.
Mr Alderdice said that the meeting had been "very encouraging and worthwhile". He had urged Mr Major to seek elections "as quickly as is humanly possible" and to reassure nationalists that they would lead to serious all-party negotiations. He wanted to see elections by April or May.
Downing Street said that there was agreement on the importance of "moving forward as rapidly as possible".
A row has broken out within the Northern Ireland Police Authority over proposals to reform the Royal Ulster Constabulary to make the force more acceptable to Roman Catholics. Unionist members of the authority have threatened to table motions of no confidence in David Cook, the chairman, over his plans to question the RUC's use of British symbols.
In a forthcoming report Mr Cook is expected to say that if the RUC is to create a neutral working environment it must examine issues such as flying the Union Flag. He will balance his report by recommending that the RUC's name, resented by many nationalists, should not be changed.
BOMBARDIER of Canada has opened talks with administrators of Fokker, the collapsed Dutch regional aircraft builder.
The Canadian group, which owns De Havilland, Canadair, LearJet and Short Brothers in Belfast, confirmed discussions after repeatedly insisting it was not interested. The jobs of 1,500 workers at Short Brothers depend upon production of wings and components for the 80-seat and 110-seat jets built by Fokker.
Ben van Schaik, the Fokker chairman, told a press conference at the Singapore Air Show that Bombardier was among five companies in talks with Fokker and its administrators.
The others were British Aerospace and Aerospatiale of France, which are partners in regional plane-maker Aero International Regional (AIR); Samsung Aerospace Industries of Korea and Taiwan Aerospace Corporation.
BIGGER juggernauts and higher road taxes are the answer to the traffic congestion that is costing Britain
£30 billion a year, Neil Kinnock said yesterday.
Increasing the maximum lorry size would lead to fewer journeys, and raising road tax would encourage more people to use public transport. Mr Kinnock said that he had been converted to the cause of bigger juggernauts since becoming the European Union's Transport Commissioner.
"On the figures available to me, I believe the argument is very strong," he said. "Increased size is better than a congested infrastructure and is preferable to the misery of incessant traffic to those who live beside lorry routes."
Mr Kinnock, addressing a conference organised by the Association of London Government, said that the EU was threatened with "economic thrombosis" by the growth of road traffic. "Endless traffic jams, suffocating urban air pollution, epidemic delays and rising insurance bills are already everyday facts of life and of death."
Building more roads was no answer and people had to be persuaded to make better use of public transport. "There needs to be a fairer and more accurate pricing of road use to encourage a shift. Even though motorists pay a lot there is a real gap between what users contribute and what they cost society. It may be that the only way to ensure a more judicious choice is made about the various modes of transport available would be to introduce a fairer pricing regime."
Mr Kinnock said that the European Commission was producing figures which would show that for many people a car was an expensive luxury. "People will see that it is cheaper to hire a car when they need one rather than keep one as an extraordinary decoration to their homes, as a kind of mobile topiary."
He said it had taken him 25 minutes longer that morning to travel from Heathrow to the centre of London than to travel from Brussels to Heathrow. He believed that congestion could be eased by greater use of the Thames. "When there is access to the equivalent of a ten-lane motorway without any of the environmental pressures, that access should be fully used."
After the conference Mr Kinnock described his decision to allow a £440 million subsidy to the Spanish airline Iberia as "legally sound" and said that British Airways and the Government had little if any justification for challenging it.
"Some of the hostility is well rehearsed some of it was just a knee-jerk reaction," he said. Concerns about the subsidy were natural but he was determined to ensure that there would be no uncompetitive practices.
UP TO 700 jobs are to go at Scottish Widows, the UK's fifth-largest life office, in a nationwide cost-cutting exercise that will reduce expenses by 30 per cent.
Most redundancies will be at the head office, in Edinburgh, where operations are being streamlined and between 500 and 600 jobs will be lost by next January. A further 100 will go from the regional centres in Birmingham, Bristol, Croydon, Leeds, London and Manchester.
David Graham, head of marketing, said that all applications for life and pensions policies would be handled in Edinburgh from June 30, and compulsory redundancies would be necessary. "We will try to lose the 600 jobs in head office through retirement, voluntary redundancy and natural wastage, but I expect few members of staff in the regions will want to relocate to Edinburgh," he said.
Mr Graham said this was in line with requests from independent financial advisers that new business processing be concentrated in one centre, although the IFA sales force would not be affected.
Mike Ross, chief executive of Scottish Widows, said that the action followed "a comprehensive examination of all functions at head office".
The Manufacturing Science and Finance Union described the losses as catastrophic. Roger Lyons, its general secretary, who is seeking an urgent meeting with Michael Forsyth, Secretary of State for Scotland, said: "If this continues, the future of Edinburgh as a financial centre will be in grave doubt."
RESIDENTS in a growing number of old people's homes are being put through the trauma of closure and relocation as a financial crisis grips the private care sector.
At least one home a day is being deregistered and thousands are in financial difficulties as owners struggle with falling property values, growing competition from large companies and the impact of government policy to care for old people in their own homes.
There are 21,000 private care homes in England and Wales, of which three quarters care for the elderly. Experts say family-run homes are disappearing as the market is increasingly dominated by big corporations running chains of homes and as council social services departments cut back on referrals and payment of fees.
Chris Vellenoweth, nursing homes project manager at the National Association of Health Authorities and Trusts, said: "Inspectors have had to step in to help relocate residents suddenly when homes have closed without any notice at all. In some cases the gas or electricity has been cut off and there is no means of providing residents with their next meal. These are vulnerable people who are unable to fend for themselves."
Health authority inspectors say owners are keeping their financial difficulties secret until the last possible moment, triggering a crisis and putting old people at risk. Frank Ursell, administrator of the Registered Nursing Homes Association, said: "Nursing homes in receivership are now advertised every week. You never saw that before."
Ian Wilkie, national healthcare director of Christie & Co, the largest agents in the market, said he was seeing many more receivership and distressed sales.
Social services departments, which face budget cuts, are closing council-run homes. West Sussex, which is seeking £2million savings, is to close seven homes. In Birmingham no new referrals have been made to private old people's homes for two months.
Relatives of old people who have been forced to move when homes close say the experience is traumatic. Hazel Hodgkinson transferred her 93-year-old mother, Hilda Eburth, to Abbotsford care home in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, after her previous home, where she had lived for almost three years, shut because of financial and staffing problems.
"She lost contact with all the people she knew and she had to start again. It caused a great deal of fear at a time of life when you want security," she said.
Residents of a home in Scotland were shocked one afternoon last month when sequestrators holding court papers walked in and set about closing it. The owners of Overton Hall, near New Galloway, had been made bankrupt a month before but had not told them.
Nor had they told Dumfries and Galloway local authority, whose social workers called emergency meetings to work out how to rehouse the six residents, some in their 80s and suffering from senile dementia. Relatives, one family from as far as London, had to be called to help.
Owners of care homes say that the pressure on them increased sharply when the Community Care Act took effect in April 1993. Local authorities, who took over financial responsibility for people in residential care, sought to keep people in their own homes and cut fees. At the same time, inspectors demanded costly improvements.
Many local authorities have not increased fee levels since the late 1980s. In Cheshire, the local authority has terminated contracts with nursing homes worth £322 a week and is to renew them next March at £303 a week.
Eric Milner, who closed Riell House in Tholthorpe, near York, in December, ran the home for seven years with his wife, a nurse. He is now working on a pig farm.
"We were registered for nine residents and we were down to six, below breakeven point. The inspectors kept demanding improvements such as thermostatic valves for the radiators. We couldn't afford it. You can't provide personal care anymore. We ran the home like a large family."
The growth of old people's homes began in the late 1970s and early 1980s when residents without large savings could get their fees paid automatically by the Department of Social Security. Public spending grew from £10 million to more than £1billion by 1990 as more homes opened.
A HOSPITAL in Sheffield is offering to treat patients referred by GP fundholders up to four times as quickly as those from non-fundholding GPs.
Patients requiring hip replacement surgery at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital have to wait 52 weeks if they are referred by a non-fundholding GP but can get their operation in 12 weeks if they are referred by a fundholder.
The disclosure, on the eve of a government debate on GP fundholding in the Commons, was seized on by Labour as the clearest evidence so far of the two-tier service created by NHS reform. It follows reports last week that Glasgow Royal Infirmary was offering speedier treatment to patients of fundholder GPs.
The Central Sheffield University Hospitals NHS Trust, which includes the Royal Hallamshire, has issued a table of prospective waiting times to GPs and health authorities which shows that the waiting time for cardiology is 26 weeks for patients from non-fundholders and 12 weeks from fundholders. For neurology it is 38 weeks for non-fundholders and 14 weeks for fundholders.
Harriet Harman, Shadow Health Secretary, said: "We must have a health service which treats people on the basis of their clinical need and not on the purchasing power of the health authority."
Fundholding GPs have their own budgets to pay for hospital treatment for their patients. Patients of non-fundholders have their hospital treatment costs met by the health authority.
Chris Linacre, deputy chief executive of the trust, said waiting times applied to routine treatment and urgent cases would be seen within a few days. "There is a growing gap between the demands on us and what purchasers are willing to fund. Some say they want patients to wait no more than 12 months and others are willing to let it go to 18 months. It sounds desperately unfair but that is how it is.
"When we are asked what waiting times are we have to give 57 different answers. That is not what the NHS is supposed to be about but that is the way it has become."
MUSLIM parents who have withdrawn 1,500 children from multifaith religious education classes in West Yorkshire yesterday demanded exclusively Islamic lessons.
The parents from Batley met fellow Muslims who successfully campaigned for Birchfield Primary School, Birmingham, to become the first state school to make its own arrangements for Muslim religious education. Muhammad Pandor, the Batley spokesman, said: "We intend to follow suit and wish to discuss the matter with Kirklees council."
Muhammad Mukadam, the leader of the Birmingham parents, who is against withdrawing children, said: "The representatives seemed to like our ideas very much. They have now gone back to Yorkshire to discuss it further within their community."
Mr Mukadam said that it made sense for Muslim parents across Britain to follow the precedent set by Birmingham. He said that he had already had inquiries from Muslim leaders in the London borough of Tower Hamlets, where an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 Muslims live.
The pressure group Parental Alliance for Choice in Education, which helped the Birmingham Muslims with the legal and educational implications of their decision, was also represented at the meeting.
Fred Naylor, the alliance's secretary, said that it had offered the same support to the Batley parents. He believed the events begun in Birmingham could snowball, affecting every Muslim parent in Britain.
Mr Naylor also urged Christian parents to push for their children to have an undiluted religious education. "I hope that ... this multifaith, progressive education nonsense is blown sky-high."
A spokesman for Kirklees Borough Council said the situation in Kirklees was totally different from Birmingham. "There are more than 40 schools affected by this, and I can't see how one school in Birmingham could set the pace." Further discussions with the parents were planned.
Stephen Orchard, director of the Christian Education Movement, questioned the legality of the decision to opt out of agreed multifaith syllabuses. He said that the 1988 Education Act, which provides for local agreement of religious education, was designed to prevent each denomination having separate classes.
SECONDARY SCHOOLS.
Very large majority of pupils entered for GCSE; increased the proportion getting five A-C grade passes by more than the national average; increase of more than 10 percentage points between 1992 and 1994. All had very good inspection reports.
All Hallows RC Secondary, Farnham, Surrey
Allerton Grange, Leeds
Altrincham Boys' Grammar, Bowdon, Trafford
Archbishop Blanch School, Liverpool
Archbishop Sandcroft High, Harleston, Norfolk
Backwell School, Bristol
Brookvale High, Leicester
Central Foundation Girls', Tower Hamlets, London
Convent and Jesus & Mary GM High, Brent, London
Cranbourne Secondary, Basingstoke, Hampshire
Gillingham School, Gillingham, Dorset
Guiseley School, Guiseley, Leeds
Hall Green Secondary, Hall Green, Birmingham
Healing Comprehensive, Grimsby, Humberside
Heart of England School, Balsall Common, Solihull
Helsby County High, Warrington, Cheshire
Holmer Green Upper, High Wycombe, Bucks
Holy Cross RC High, Chorley, Lancashire
Honiton Community College, Honiton, Devon
Ibstock Community College, Ibstock, Leicestershire
John F. Kennedy RC, Hemel Hempstead, Herts
La Sainte Union Convent, Highgate, NW London
Lancaster Girls' Grammar, Lancaster
Levenshulme High, Manchester
Lowton High, Wigan
Manhood Community College, Chichester, W Sussex
Minsthorpe HS & Comm Coll, S Elmsall, W Sussex
Monkwearmouth School, Sunderland
Mount St Joseph School, Bolton
Newquay Tretherras School, Newquay, Cornwall
Notre Dame High, Southwark, S London
Oaklands Community School, Southampton
Pershore High, Hereford and Worcester
Priory High, Ormskirk, Lancashire
Purbrook Park, Waterlooville, Hampshire
Queen's Park County High, Chester
Sacred Heart of Mary RC, Upminster, Havering
Sandon High, Stoke-on-Trent
Sandringham School, St Albans, Herts
Sawston Village College, Cambridgeshire
Sheldon School, Chippenham, Wiltshire
Sir Joseph Williamson's Maths, Rochester, Kent
Smestow School, Wolverhampton
St Edmund's RC, Portsmouth
St Gabriel's RC High, Bury, Lancashire
St Hilda's RC High, Burnley, Lancashire
St John Fisher RC High Wigan
St Mark's RC Secondary, Hounslow, W London
St Mary's RC, Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire
St Mary's RC High, Leyland, Lancashire
St Patrick's RC High, Stockton-on-Tees
St Paul's RC Comp, Abbey Wood, SE London
St Peter's C of E High, Plymouth
St Peter's Collegiate School, Wolverhampton
St Thomas More School, Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex
Tadcaster Grammar, Tadcaster, N Yorkshire
Teign School, Newton Abbot, Devon
The Abraham Darby, Telford, Shropshire
The Burgate School, Fordingbridge, Hampshire
The Castle School, Taunton, Somerset
The Grange School, Stourbridge, Dudley
The Grey Coat Hospital, Westminster
The Harvey Grammar, Folkestone, Kent
The Hugh Christie, Tonbridge, Kent
The Snaith, Goole, Humberside
The Village College, Comberton, Cambridgeshire
Trinity C of E High, Greenheys, Manchester
Weavers GM, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire
William Howard School, Brampton, Cumbria
Worle School, Weston-super-Mare, Avon
MIDDLE SCHOOLS
Middle, primary and nursery schools judged by inspectors to give pupils a "secure start" and "high standards of literacy and numeracy"; also to "maintain a positive ethos and manage their resources effectively".
Abbotswood GM Middle, Southampton
Aston Fields Middle, Bromsgrove, Heref'd & Worcs
Chalfont St Giles Middle, Buckinghamshire
Emmanuel Middle, Verwood, Dorset
Gosforth Middle, Newcastle upon Tyne
Lake Middle, Sandown, Isle of Wight
Moatfield Middle, Redditch, Heref'd & Worcs
Necton VC Middle, Swaffham, Norfolk
PRIMARY SCHOOLS
Alexandra Infant, Kingston upon Thames
All Saints C of E, Barnet, N London
Alphington Combined, Alphington, Devon
Alverstoke Infants, Gosport, Hampshire
Bare Trees, Chadderton, Oldham
Beauclerc (Controlled), Sunbury-on-Thames
Berkeley Infants, Scunthorpe, Humberside
Bethune Park, Hull
Bishop Wilton C of E, Whetstone, Humberside
Bolling Road First, Ben Rhydding, Bradford
Bolton County Infant, Warrington, Cheshire
Branscombe C of E Primary, Seaton, Devon
Broad Lane C of E Primary, Nantwich, Cheshire
Bury C of E Primary, Pulborough, W Sussex
Bushey Manor Junior Mixed, Watford
Charlton Kings GM Infants', Cheltenham
Christ the King, Coundon, Coventry
Common Road First, South Kirkby, Wakefield
Crofton Junior, Orpington, Bromley
Crosshall Junior, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire
Crowlands Junior, Romford, Havering
Dalton Infant and Nursery, Dalton, Kirklees
Dawpool C of E Primary, Thurstaston, Wirral
Debden C of E Prmary, Saffron Walden, Essex
Devoran County Primary, Truro, Cornwall
Edenthorpe Hall First and Middle, Doncaster
Etching Hill Primary, Rugeley, Staffordshire
Flitwick Lower, Bedford
Front Street Primary, Whickham, Gateshead
Gamston C of E (Aided), Retford, Nottinghamshire
Great Missenden C of E Combined, Buckinghamshire
Grendon C of E Primary, Northamptonshire
Halfway Infant, Halfway, Sheffield
Hartford Manor CP, Northwich, Cheshire
Hempshill Hall Primary, Nottingham
High Fernley First, Wykde, Bradford
Higher Bebington Junior, Wirral
Horbury St Peter C of E Junior, Wakefield
Keston Junior, Coulsdon, Croydon
Lady Boswell's C of E (Aided), Sevenoaks, Kent
Langdale, Newcastle under Lyme, Staffordshire
Leckhampton C of E, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Lovington C of E, Castle Cary, Somerset
Maltby Manor Infant, Rotherham
Monkhouse Primary, North Shields, N Tyneside
Morley Primary, Derbyshire
Nether Alderley CP, Macclesfield, Cheshire
North Kelsey Primary, Lincolnshire
Oakdene Primary, Prescot, St Helens
Oatlands Infant, Harrogate, N Yorkshire
Old Hutton C of E, Kendal, Cumbria
Pickering County Junior, Pickering, N Yorkshire
Polebrook C of E, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire
Richmond Hill First, Sprotbrough, Doncaster
Riddings Infant School, Alfreton, Derbyshire
Roecliffe C of E, York, North Derbyshire
Rothwell Infant, Kettering, Northamptonshire
Samuel Whites Infants, Hanham, Avon
Sir Harold Jackson School, Sheffield
Snape County Primary, Bedale, N Yorkshire
Southwark Infant, Nottingham
Southwater Infant, Horsham, W Sussex
St Bede's RC Infant, Widnes, Cheshire
St Boniface RC, Salford, Greater Manchester
St John's C of E, Princes Risborough, Bucks
St John's C of E, Sandown, Isle of Wight
St Mary's C of E Junior, Dollis Park, Barnet
St Mary's RC Primary, Beckenham, SE London
St Winifred's RC, Lewisham, SE London
Sudbourne Primary, Lambeth, S London
Sutton-on-the-Forest Primary, York
Westerton Junior and Infant, West Ardsley, Leeds
Westfield Primary, Cottingham, Humberside
Wimborne Infant, Southsea, Hampshire
Woodlands Junior, Tonbridge, Kent
Wortham Long Green School, Diss, Norfolk
NURSERY SCHOOLS
Atkinson Road Nursery, Newcastle upon Tyne
Sir James Knott Memorial Nursery, N Tyneside
Susan Isaacs Nursery, Bolton
Truro Nursery, Cornwall
Worsbrough Dale Nursery, Barnsley
SPECIAL SCHOOLS
All were judged to be "highly effective" by the inspectors.
Fountaindale, Mansfield, Nottinghamshire
Grangewood, Eastcote, Hillingdon, NW London
Hindley Borsdane Brook, Wigan
Northease Manor, Lewes, E Sussex
Park Crescent, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire
Pathfield, Barnstaple, Devon
Pictor, Sale, Trafford
Southall, Telford, Shropshire
St Francis, Lincoln
Woodlawn, Whitley Bay, N Tyneside
Correction: Headline: Minsthorpe Community College;Correction Issue Date: Thursd ay February 15, 1996 Page: 5 Minsthorpe Community College is in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, and Roecliffe CE School is in Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire (report , February 6). Headline: St Peter's C of E High School;Correction Issue Date: T hursday February 08, 1996 Page: 5 St Peter's C of E High School (report, Feb ruary 6) is in Exeter, not Plymouth.
THE later years of primary education and the start of secondary school are identified as the problem years of state education in Chris Woodhead's annual report.
An analysis of the biggest ever pool of information assembled on schools shows a dip in standards between the ages of seven and twelve. The 3,500 inspections undertaken in 1994-95 showed more lessons taught poorly to that age group, confirming weaknesses exposed in last month's test results. With basic literacy and numeracy causing most concern, Mr Woodhead lays most of the blame on poor teaching. "Many schools need to tackle urgently mediocre and poor standards by reviewing the quality and consistency of teaching in order to set and achieve higher targets."
The Office for Standards in Education, which Mr Woodhead leads, is launching an inquiry into the teaching of mathematics, reflecting fears that too little time is dedicated to arithmetic. Yesterday's report also suggests that the teaching of reading contains too little emphasis on phonic skills. Mr Woodhead finds "disturbing" shortages of books and materials in one in seven primary schools and one in four secondary. "Teachers who lack proper resources or who work in poor buildings experience problems which ... at worst defeat their best efforts to do a decent job."
But he says that poor teaching can be found in the best equipped schools. Some resource problems flow from spending decisions by local authorities and schools themselves, not government funding. Other inquiries will examine the distribution of resources and local authority effectiveness in raising standards in schools.
Gillian Shephard, the Education and Employment Secretary, said the report showed that the quality of teaching and leadership, not resourcing, were the key to quality. "There is no comfort in this verdict for anybody who wants to hide behind a lack of resources for giving a less than competent lesson."
Although the proportion of unsatisfactory lessons appears to have dropped to about one in five, most statistics in the report point to broadly similar levels of underachievement to previous years. Standards of teaching and achievement are "satisfactory or better" in most schools, Mr Woodhead says.
Inspectors found standards of reading required "considerable improvement" in one in ten primary schools, and of writing in one in seven. In the early secondary years, they found under-achievement in one in five schools. In mathematics, pupils performed well in just over two fifths of primary schools and about half of secondary schools. But by age 11, inspectors found, "too many pupils remained reliant on their fingers for counting, were unable to use a ruler correctly and were wild in making estimations".
Mr Woodhead said the good news in his report was that some schools were achieving so well, including many in unpromising circumstances. "The bad is that there are still too many which are failing to give their pupils a satisfactory education."
In many junior schools, teachers showed insufficient knowledge of their subject, inadequate planning, a failure to stretch pupils and left them too much to their own devices.
INSPECTORS' reports will provide head teachers and governors with new information to help to dismiss incompetent teachers from April.
The latest annual report suggested there were up to 15,000 poor teachers, and 48,000 that could be considered "first-rate".
The new inspection framework will oblige teams from Ofsted to name outstanding teachers and those regarded as particularly weak. Chris Woodhead, the Chief Inspector of Schools, said it would be up to heads and governors to decide how to use the information; many would offer extra training and support before considering dismissal.
Allowing for appeals, the dismissal process can take up to a year once governors have decided that it is the only option. Labour has promised to speed dismissal procedures but has given no details of its plans.
Shephard hails triumph for champions of selective entry and hints at more to come.
CHRIS WOODHEAD, the Chief Inspector of Schools, held up 200 schools as beacons of excellence yesterday and urged thousands to follow their example in a crusade to raise standards. For the first time, he listed the best schools visited by inspectors in the past year, handing a publicity coup to supporters of selective education.
As disclosed by The Times last month, grammar schools dominated the education "Oscars" given to outstandingly successful secondary schools, accounting for 22 of the 32 awards. Nine comprehensives and one city technology college also featured.
The report also named 70 good and improving secondary schools, 84 excellent primary and middle schools, five excellent nursery schools and ten "highly effective" special schools.
Gillian Shephard, the Education and Employment Secretary, promised to congratulate the "success stories" at a party later this year, but said there was still a long way to go. "We cannot ignore the chief inspector's judgment that overall standards of pupil achievement need to be raised in half our primary schools and two-fifths of our secondary schools."
Independent schools complained they had been left out even though they are also examined by Ofsted, the inspection agency.
Vivian Anthony, secretary of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, said: "If it is right and proper for Ofsted to inspect a given proportion of independent schools, then surely they must be treated in the same way when it comes to recording good results and inspections. Schools that are surely by anyone's reckoning among the best in the country are not on the list."
Last year Ofsted gave very good reports to four schools which are members of the conference, Westminster, Shrewsbury, King Edward's in Birmingham and the City of London School.
A spokesman for Ofsted said: "We have only managed to inspect about 20 independent schools this year and it would have been ridiculous to set them against the 3,500 inspected in the state sector."
One in three of the grammars inspected was said to be outstanding compared with one in 50 comprehensives. More than half the top schools are single-sex, with ten girls-only and eight boys. Thirteen outstanding secondaries are grant-maintained.
Mr Woodhead said the appearance of so many grammars in the list was explained largely by their selective intake. Mrs Shephard said she had "absolutely no problem" with more selection, and the presence of grammar, specialist and grant-maintained schools among the success stories vindicated the Government's belief that choice and diversity contributed to excellence.
Mr Woodhead said the top schools were chosen because they also offered a "rounded development" with exceptional out-of-hours activities, and entered at least 95 per cent of pupils for GCSEs, achieving an average points score equivalent to at least nine GCSE grade C passes each.
His annual report highlighted success in difficult circumstances. Sudbourne Primary School, in Lambeth local authority in Brixton, was named an excellent primary. Yet in October Mr Woodhead ordered an inspection blitz on every school in the south London borough after one in three was found to be failing.
Sudbourne is just a mile from one of the worst schools seen by inspectors, Mostyn Gardens, where every subject apart from music was sub-standard and one child was found by inspectors not to have spoken for three years.
Inspectors pointed to Sudbourne's long-serving "calm and greatly admired" head teacher, a caring atmosphere and enthusiasm for books among the pupils. The school puts pupils in sets according to ability in reading and mathematics, and encourages children to recite their times tables.
The Ecclesbourne School, a comprehensive grant-maintained school in Duffield, near Derby, was awarded a place among the elite secondary schools. Dr Robert Dupey, the head teacher who has been in post for 20 years, pointed to tried and tested teaching methods for the school's all-round high standards.
Dr Dupey said: "I have seen lots of heads who move in, do their thing and move out again, leaving their mistakes behind. The only dogma here is about doing the best for the young people."
OUTSTANDING SECONDARY SCHOOLS These schools entered at least 95 per cent of their pupils for GCSE, achieved well above average in the proportion getting five high-grade passes and an average of at least nine passes at grade C. They had excellent inspection reports and exceptional extra-curricular provision.
Alcester Grammar, Warwickshire
Altrincham Grammar for Girls,
Trafford
Arden, Solihull
Aylesbury Grammar, Bucks
Barton Court Grammar,
Canterbury, Kent
Camden School for Girls, London
Cape Cornwall, Truro
Chelmsford High for Girls, Essex
Colyton Grammar, Devon
Copthall, Barnet, London
Dartford Grammar, Kent
Dr Challoner's Grammar,
Amersham, Buckinghamshire
Ecclesbourne, Belper,
Derbyshire
Emmanuel CTC, Gateshead
Harrogate Grammar
Heckmondwike Grammar,
Kirklees
Invicta Grammar for Girls,
Maidstone, Kent
Kendrick Girls' Grammar,
Reading
King Edward VI, Handsworth,
Birmingham
Presdales, Ware, Hertfordshire
Queen Elizabeth's Boys', Barnet
Ringmer Community College,
Lewes, East Sussex
Royal Grammar, High Wycombe
Sir Henry Floyd Grammar,
Aylesbury
St Thomas More Catholic High,
Crewe
Grammar School for Girls,
Wilmington, Kent
The Henrietta Barnett School,
Barnet
The King's School, Grantham
The Liverpool Blue Coat
N Halifax Grammar, Illingworth,
Calderdale
West Kirby Grammar for Girls,
Wirral
Westcliff High for Boys, Essex
ANDREW PARKER BOWLES, whose marriage to Camilla ended in divorce after the Prince of Wales made a televised admission of adultery, is to remarry.
His new wife will be Rosemary Pitman, 55, a divorcee and mother of three, who is an old friend of Mrs Parker Bowles. They used to organise charity sales together.
Mr Parker Bowles, 55, has lived with Mrs Pitman at her home in Brokenborough, Wiltshire, since last July. They have been friends for years but became close when he separated from his wife in 1993.
The Parker Bowleses, who have two children, decided to divorce after the Prince of Wales's admission in a television interview with Jonathan Dimbleby in 1994. Mr Parker Bowles left the Army last year with a £65,000 lump sum and an annual pension of £27,000.
Camilla Parker Bowles was a girlfriend of the Prince before she married. Mrs Pitman's 30-year marriage to Hugh Pitman, a wealthy Old Etonian, ended in divorce in 1991. He has since remarried. She has a house in Wiltshire and a flat in Kensington.
A hospital cat that sits on patients' laps and helps them to relax needs a new home because he weighs two stone. A spokesman for Knowle Hospital in Fareham, Hampshire, said: "Patients can't pick him up any more."
Colonel Gaddafi has lifted the ban on Richard Branson's balloon Virgin Challenger crossing Libya's borders on its round-the-world attempt. Weather is still delaying take-off from a Moroccan airfield.
GREY squirrels are to be poisoned by conservationists in an experiment aimed at saving the rapidly dwindling native red squirrel population.
Food laced with warfarin, which kills by causing internal haemorrhaging, will be placed in special hoppers on Anglesey. The Ministry of Agriculture has previously prohibited the poisoning of greys for fear that reds might also die. But the Forestry Commission has designed a feeding hopper with a flap-door that it believes only the stronger greys can open. There are about 1,000 grey squirrels on the Welsh island, compared with 50 reds.
Malcolm Smith, director of science and policy at the Countryside Council for Wales, said: "This project is the only way we have left permanently to conserve a red squirrel population. Without it, we believe our native red faces extinction, eventually throughout the country. Many people will be unhappy at the thought of deliberately killing squirrels, but we are not trying to eradicate greys. The aim is to keep their numbers to a level that permits coexistence with reds."
Scotland with 120,000 is the main bastion of the red squirrel. England has 30,000 and Wales 10,000. Reds are extinct in southern England apart from Thetford Forest in Norfolk, the Isle of Wight, and islands in Poole harbour.
FRESH doubts about the accuracy of cervical screening tests carried out on millions of women were raised yesterday as a hospital disclosed that it would re-examine 70,000 cervical smears because of an unacceptable error rate.
The Kent and Canterbury Hospital was deluged with calls from hundreds of anxious women after it disclosed that its detection rate for abnormal smears had fallen below the expected standard. Instead of picking up between 85 per cent and 95 per cent of abnormalities, over five years its detection rate was between 65 per cent and 75 per cent.
A helpline set up to deal with the alarm had taken more than a thousand calls by early evening. A team of 40 operators is telling women that the results of every screening made between 1990 and 1995 will be re-examined.
They will be contacted by letter within 14 days. The check of all results will cost at least £140,000 and it is expected that about 350 women previously given a clean bill of health will now be told they are in the risk category.
The case is the latest in a series of scandals involving smears being inadequately taken or read which has undermined public confidence. Management of the national cervical screening service was transferred to the breast screening programme in April 1994 and new guidelines for laboratories were issued last October.
The Canterbury failures were attributed to inadequate training and experience of laboratory staff and had been uncovered during routine checks. Doctors said it was likely that other hospitals had similar error rates.
However, Julietta Patnick, national co-ordinator of the cervical screening programme said a detection rate of between 65 per cent and 75 per cent was unusually low. Laboratories were expected to compare their results with national guidelines and investigate discrepancies. "What happened at Canterbury is a symptom of things being put right. If we didn't look we wouldn't find mistakes."
The hospital said the threat to health was "minimal" because the wrongly diagnosed smears showed early abnormalities and cervical cancer normally takes between 10 and 15 years to develop. Dr Kate Neales, consultant gynaecologist at the 428-bed hospital, said: "It must be a combination of things such as training, experience, staffing levels and the number of checks made on each smear. We are not looking at one individual who has failed. If anything it is a systems failure."
Women may have to wait months for the results. Dr Neales said: "It is extremely unlikely that any of these women have cervical cancer."
The problem came to light in October when analysts took the test results of a handful of women with abnormal smears and compared them with their last normal test. Some supposedly normal smears were found to have abnormalities when re-examined.
After that random exercise, another 10,909 smear tests were independently reassessed in Birmingham and Manchester and 89 mistakes found. The screening, which costs £100 million a year nationally, involves taking cells from the neck of the womb. Deaths from cervical cancer in England and Wales fell from 1,485 in 1993 to 1,369 in 1994. In east Kent there were 19 deaths in 1993 and the figure is falling in line with the rest of the country.
The national screening programme began in 1988, offering tests every three or five years to women aged 20 to 64. After five years of the programme the number of women screened was 80 per cent of the age group, with 4,000 cases of invasive cancer and 18,000 cases of pre-cancer being detected annually.
Between 1,000 and 2,000 lives a year are saved. In 1994, after it was found that several smears were unreadable and that there were local variations in the proportion of abnormalities, the national co-ordinating team for breast screening took over administration. Laboratories have since received guidelines.
The helpline number is 01227 766016. By 10pm last night more than 1,300 calls had been received. It will reopen at 7am today.
MORE than 130 people began a legal action yesterday against the manufacturer of a widely used anti-malaria drug that can cause serious psychological side-effects.
The number involved in the group claim for compensation from the maker of Lariam has almost doubled since two news reports in The Times last month highlighted the dangers. Christiane Goaziou, the solicitor who is heading the action against Roche, the manufacturer, said: "We realise that this is a David and Goliath battle but we will still try to win." Last night the BBC1 programme Watchdog produced further evidence of the drug's side-effects, which in extreme cases can include manic depression, fits and panic attacks.
Sue Woodford, who is married to the Labour peer Lord Hollick, told the programme: "I got very frightened. The reaction was so extreme. I thought I was having a brain haemorrhage. This was the effect of taking just one pill."
Roche says that its research indicates only one in 10,000 users has serious side-effects, although more than 20 per cent experience a lesser reaction. "Serious" is defined as death, hospitalisation or disability.
Doctors continue to prescribe Lariam for travellers to equatorial Africa, the Far East and the Caribbean because it is by far the most effective anti-malaria drug, working in 95 per cent of all cases. Last year 11 British travellers died from malaria.
In a statement last night Roche said: "Effective drugs have side-effects. Roche Products has always stated that Lariam can cause a range of side-effects and the product data sheet says that the incidence of such side-effects is known to be 22 per cent."
The company said that it was in continuous discussions with the British regulatory authority. "If it is considered appropriate to make any changes to the product information, those changes will be made."
A DOCTOR told a High Court libel trial yesterday that he became the sacrificial lamb in an attempt by Virginia Bottomley to deflect criticism from a national shortage of neuro-surgical beds after a dying patient was flown 200 miles.
Anthony Percy, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon, became known as Dr Dolittle in the Daily Mirror after he was criticised in an internal investigation for failing to attend Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup, where Malcolm Murray, 45, was taken with serious head injuries just before midnight on March 6 last year.
Mr Percy, 55, advised from his home by telephone that efforts should be made to trace a bed elsewhere because there was no clinical help he could offer. During the next six hours the nearest bed that could be found was in Leeds. Mr Murray was flown there but subsequently died.
Charles Gray, QC, for Mr Percy, said Mrs Bottomley, then Health Secretary, called for his role to be "highlighted" and a note written on a draft inquiry report asked: "What about consultant refusing to appear?" Mr Gray told the jury it was "transparently obvious" the inquiry into Mr Murray's death was "seeking to use his professional reputation as a sacrificial lamb to deflect attention being given to particular failure to provide sufficient neuro-surgical beds."
Mr Gray said medical opinion doubted whether Mr Murray could have survived his injuries even if a nearer bed had been found.
Mr Percy is claiming damages from Mirror Group Newspapers which, he claims, suggested in an article on March 29 and two further reports that he was guilty of gross dereliction of duty, bore some responsibility for Mr Murray's death, and should be suspended. The publisher denies libel and the trial continues today.
AN AMERICAN scholar who has spent 30 years following in the footsteps of Cezanne has tracked down the settings for a dozen of his best-known paintings.
Pavel Machotka, Professor of Psychology and Art at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has dated and retitled some pictures after finding locations in Provence and on the outskirts of Paris.
One of his discoveries, as he travelled through France seeking to match hundreds of photocopied images to places, was that a church which had long been assumed to be in Aix-en-Provence was at Montigny-sur-Loing, in the north.
For decades, its ambiguous title was no more than Village Church. Professor Machotka said that it could have been any one of a hundred similar churches in France. Drawing on the locals for guidance, his detective work led him to the building.
As a surprising number of landscapes have remained as Cezanne would have known them, the professor was able to find clusters of trees or groups of stone houses set against rocky landscapes, and to take colour photographs of them in the same light that Cezanne painted them.
He recalled how he found the Rocks at Estaque, sculpted by nature: "The rock formation had never been seen before.
"It was obviously a bay at Marseilles, but nobody had found the formation. The motif is unchanged except for high-tension wires. It was extraordinary.
"I was looking at what Cezanne was looking at. After several hours of climbing, I had found the site."
The professor's findings are published this week by Yale University Press, coinciding with the exhibition at the Tate Gallery that opens on Thursday. The first Cezanne retrospective since 1936, it is expected to be one of the gallery's most successful shows.
First Call, the advance booking agency, has already broken records set by ticket sales for the Monet exhibition and the Tate is preparing for some 300,000 visitors, at a conservative estimate. Cezanne sold barely any of his works and was not given a solo show until he was in his late fifties. Matisse would have thought the show was long overdue: in his eyes, Cezanne was a "god of painting".
Among some 90 paintings and 70 watercolours to be seen at the Tate are images that Professor Machotka matched to their locations. Using colour photographs, he was able to explore physical surface, colour relationships and the extent to which Cezanne was painting exactly what his eye was seeing.
"Cezanne had a passionate attachment to visual reality," he said. "Unlike other scholars who have viewed Cezanne as an early Cubist, I view him as a painter determined to extract as many visual resonances between the components of the motifs as possible."
For example, in taking a colour photograph of La Montagne Saint-Victoire at 9.30am, something that had never been done before, he was able to show the gradual progression of colours from blues to greens which the master subtly incorporated into his painting and the shadows which he transformed into dramatic diagonal, semi-abstract lines.
In The Lake at Annecy, one of Cezanne's most famous images, lent by the Courtauld Institute Galleries to the Tate, Professor Machotka's first photograph of the scene shows how similar it is today. A composition that was formerly titled La Saint-Victoire, Environs de Gardanne, he has retitled as Hamlet near Gardanne. He was able to pinpoint its isolated location "by searching for places where a hillside might intersect with the foot of the Sainte-Victoire; by a gradual approximation, I eventually found the hamlet at the end of a narrow road. Cezanne placed his easel at the edge of a field." He added that to judge by the low sun and the brown meadows, Cezanne had painted it late in the year and at 10.30am.
The professor said: "A photograph of the site of a well-known painting arouses our curiosity right away: it breaks open the sealed world of the landscape canvas, situates the artist in a place and a moment, and reminds us that an artist searches, gazes, at times disembles, and recombines. It also encourages the hope that we will better understand the artist's purpose and vision."
It was impossible to find some sites, particularly those in Paris, which had changed beyond recognition, or the town of St Henri, near Marseilles, whose charming streets had been bulldozed to make way for motorways.
DARIUS GUPPY was freed from jail yesterday after paying a large sum of compensation to Lloyd's insurers he defrauded of £1.8 million.
Guppy, 30, left Ford open prison in West Sussex at 8am after serving almost three years of a jail term imposed for staging a bogus gems robbery in New York.
The Old Etonian, a graduate of Magdalen College, Oxford, was released from jail after paying part of a £227,000 compensation order imposed by Redbridge magistrates last July. The court had ordered him to serve two years and nine months' further imprisonment after he failed to pay the cash.
Guppy was released after a benefactor paid £150,000 to Lloyd's insurers. Solicitors acting for the anonymous person contacted the prison at the end of last week and said their client was settling the compensation claim on behalf of Guppy, according to prison sources.
It is understood that Guppy, of Notting Hill, west London, did not pay the full amount as the final sum takes into account the time he has served in prison since last July.
Under the terms of the deal, Guppy has also reached agreement with his trustee in bankruptcy to provide further payments to Lloyd's and his other creditors. David Reynolds, a solicitor representing Lloyd's, said: "He has agreed to pay further sums in due course. I cannot tell you how much. There is a confidentiality clause."
Earlier civil proceedings against Guppy had been settled after he pledged to pay the compensation plus £250,000 after his release. He hopes to earn money from writing and interviews with the media.
Guppy, best man at the wedding of Earl Spencer, the brother of the Princess of Wales, was driven from the prison for a reunion with his wife Patricia and the couple's 21/2-year-old daughter Isabella.
He had been convicted with his co-accused, Benedict Marsh, at Snaresbrook Crown Court, east London, in February 1993 for faking a jewellery robbery in New York in 1990 and claiming £1.8 million insurance. He was jailed for five years.
At his trial he was said to have boasted of pulling off the "perfect crime". Guppy set up the fraud with Marsh, a friend from Oxford. The two were partners in Inca Gemstones and while in New York in 1990 paid an associate £10,000 to tie them up and supposedly rob them at gunpoint.
It fooled New York police and insurance loss adjusters. After returning to London, the pair presented false invoices and were paid by a number of underwriting syndicates within a week. The next day, Guppy and Marsh flew to New York to retrieve the jewels from a safe deposit box.
MOTORISTS are being locked out of their cars by radio hams, the Automobile Association disclosed yesterday. The hams' broadcasts can jam remote locking devices that beam coded radio signals to the car.
The AA said that it had recently been called out to help scores of members in Buckinghamshire who had found themselves unable to open or shut their cars.
Dave Lang, the association's chief engineer, said: "The European radio authorities have allowed car manufacturers to use a frequency for their remote control keys that was already allocated to radio hams. When a radio ham is transmitting, the signal is so strong that in some cases motorists near by cannot activate their car's central locking, alarm or immobiliser systems."
Mr Lang said research was urgently needed on car security systems to minimise interference.
A radio ham can use up to 100 watts of radio frequency power to transmit all over the world. Remote control keys use up to 0.01 of a watt and work over a range of 5 to 15 metres.
According to the AA, the only solution for a car immobilised by a blocked radio beam is to be towed outside the influence of the radio ham's transmitter. The remote control devices come with a metal key, but that is for turning on the ignition only. Trying to use the key to open the door will trigger the vehicle's alarm system.
A spokesman for the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said: "It is a recognised problem but we are hardly at panic stations."
It's official. Don't buy Edwina Currie's latest book. Madam Speaker says so. Tony Banks (Lab, Newham NW) started the trouble. Raising a point of order after Questions yesterday, he asked the chair: "Is there anything you can do to dissuade Honourable Members of this House from writing works of fiction about our proceedings?
"There is a book that is currently being sold, written by the Hon Member for Derbyshire S (Mrs Currie) which more or less suggests that this place is full of Members drinking themselves into oblivion and bonking their eyeballs out.
"Unfortunately this isn't the case (laughter) and I do feel that we need to be protected from such unfounded allegations." There was a murmur of sympathy as much, we regret to report, from her colleagues as from Labour.
Miss Boothroyd herself has surely not combed A Woman's Place for personal references. There can therefore be no connection between the answer she gave Mr Banks and the page in Mrs Currie's novel where the Commons Speaker is described as calling time after Questions "like a northern barmaid". So how would she reply to Banks?
"Don't buy it," she shrieked, "and don't read it."
If I have any sense of Currie's instinct for publicity, this will appear on the sleeve of the paperback edition of A Woman's Place, by Edwina Currie. "Tacky" Evening Standard. "Don't buy it; don't read it" Madam Speaker. It isn't the bonking or boozing stories that really infuriate Mrs Currie's colleagues. It's the fact that she's earning greater fame and more money than they, doing what they do but more shamelessly.
In Currie's spectacular talent for self-promotion they recognise what they, too, crave: but more timidly. What enrages more than a caricature of ourselves?
Sadly, Currie herself was not in the chamber for these jollities. Had the subject for Questions Arts and National Heritage driven her away? Did she perhaps fear an unfavourable comparison with Proust? She need not have feared. We move from legover to rollover. These days, MPs have virtually given up serious discussion of the arts, sport, or national heritage in their questions to the Secretary of State.
As elsewhere in Britain, nobody discusses anything but the National Lottery. Television viewers without satellite dishes may face a black-out on major sporting events; the Royal Opera may face a funding meltdown; galleries and museums cry out for cash; and the Greeks want the Elgin Marbles back ... but all MPs want to talk about is scratchcards, double-rollovers and Mystic Meg.
Of the 27 questions down for answer yesterday, questions 5-7, 12-17, 20, 22-25, and 27 were about the lottery. Even the man who started it, Peter Brooke, the former Heritage Secretary, is getting nervous. Yesterday he asked his successor, Virginia Bottomley, whether "she feels pleasure at, or concern about, the fact that more than half the questions on the order paper are about the National Lottery?" Mrs Bottomley took this vinegar for wine, and burbled merrily away about what an immense success the lottery was.
But then you could hand Mrs Bottomley a sackful of jelly babies and she would burble merrily away about the huge increase in the number of jelly babies under the Conservatives. The more I see of this woman's ability to burble merrily away about anything which comes to hand, the more considerable a political talent I recognise.
MORE than 14 million acres of the Scottish Highlands are to be handed over by the Government to the 1,400 crofters who tend them, Michael Forsyth said yesterday. He told a meeting of the Scottish Grand Committee in Inverness that he had been surprised, when he took up the post of Scottish Secretary, to find that he was the largest crofting landlord in Scotland.
"We sang at the rugby international on Saturday of our ancestors fighting for their ‘wee bit hill and glen'. This Government offers crofters an opportunity to secure that." The new scheme will represent the largest transfer of land ownership in the Highlands since the First World War.
A Free Presbyterian minister in the Outer Hebrides has called on the Queen to "kneel down and repent of her sins" because he claims she has broken her vow to be faithful to the Protestant religion.
The Rev Kenneth MacLeod, of Leverburgh, a leading churchman on the Isle of Harris, says in the Free Presbyterian magazine that God has been "conspicuously dishonoured" by the Queen's attendance at ecumenical services and at a Roman Catholic service taken by Cardinal Hume at Westminster Cathedral last year.
A Brighton antiques dealer can expect a "substantial" reward after handing porcelain figures stolen from the Duke and Duchess of Kent's home to the police.
The unnamed dealer saw a picture of the pair of Chinese pheasants and realising they were identical to the pair he had just given to Sotheby's, the auction house, for valuation, he alerted Sussex Police. They have interviewed several people in connection with the find. The Kents are offering an undisclosed sum for the recovery of missing items.
The Government's move to withdraw welfare benefits from most asylum seekers suffered a setback yesterday when a judge allowed a High Court challenge to go ahead tomorrow.
Mr Justice Brooke agreed to allow the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants to apply for judicial review of the new benefit regulations, which are designed to save £200million a year. However, he refused to allow a stay on the introduction of the rules, which came into force yesterday and are intended to stop bogus claims.
Four big charities launched their own scratchcards yesterday in direct competition to Camelot, the National Lottery operator.
Age Concern, Cancer Research Campaign, Scope and the National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children joined forces, under a scheme called Partners in Action, to raise £4 million this year from the sale of more than 16 million £1 scratchcards. The top prize will be £50,000. The cards will be issued collectively and individually under the name of each of the four charities.
SIR RICHARD SCOTT will enter the propaganda war tomorrow over his arms-to-Iraq report with a plea to John Major to treat his findings "without preconception". In his first public utterance since completing the report, he will show his anger at attempts to discredit his conclusions before publication next week.
Sir Richard will also have in his sights Lord Howe of Aberavon, the former Foreign Secretary, and others who have criticised his methods. The judge's warning to the Government not to play party politics with his report will come in an interview on the Channel 4 programme Dispatches on the day the 1,800-page document is delivered to Downing Street.
Robin Cook, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, is to voice Labour's dismay that while the Government will get eight days to prepare a defence, the Opposition will not see the five-volume report until half an hour before it is presented to the Commons on February 15. The report is being published under the 1840 Parliamentary Papers Act to prevent Sir Richard being sued for libel.
Labour is also unhappy that the judge has decided not to produce a summary of the report. Sir Richard's judgments are regarded in legal circles as being woven into a long narrative sometimes obscurely. A source close to the inquiry said that there would be "a highlighting of conclusions" and an index.
The Government will produce its own summary and Labour believes that ministers hope to blur criticisms and win favourable news coverage before anyone outside Whitehall has been able to digest the report. Sir Richard says in the interview: "I hope that people will read it and will not form their opinion of it simply from a view being thrust upon them by sources who have not read it."
BRITISH Transport Police is prepared to launch a full criminal investigation into allegations of ticket fraud at LTS Rail, the train franchise that was pulled from the brink of privatisation at the weekend.
The force's fraud squad has had talks with British Rail officials who are carrying out an inquiry. Sir George Young, the Transport Secretary, told MPs that BR "won't hesitate to call in the British Transport Police if that seems appropriate in the light of their investigations".
MPs were also told that the franchise for the London, Tilbury and Southend line which had gone to a management buyout team may be put out to tender again. Sir George said the decision would be taken by Roger Salmon, who is the franchising director.
The Transport Secretary had earlier celebrated the successful sell-off of the first two franchises, South West Trains and Great Western, during a ceremony at Waterloo station, London. Hundreds of thousands of commuters travelled to work on the privatised rail services for the first time yesterday. Sir George said: "We have reached a truly historic point in the revival of Britain's railways."
Three investigations are under way into the claims that LTS Rail ticket staff were involved in a scheme to divert up to £50,000 of revenue from London Underground to the franchise. The scheme is said to have started when the LTS management was awarded the franchise in December.
The results of the inquiries by John Swift, the Rail Regulator, BR and London Underground are expected later this week and the Government hopes to be able to proceed with the sale of LTS next month.
Mr Swift said: "It is very important that those taking over the stewardship of assets being transferred from the public sector to the private sector are, and are seen to be, acting in the public interest."
Barbara Mills, Director of Public Prosecutions, is considering a letter from Brian Wilson, Labour's rail spokesman, in which he demands "a full police inquiry into the allegations of fraud" at LTS.
Colin Andrews, LTS commercial director, has already resigned and Ian Burton, the retail manager, was suspended yesterday.
The buyout's backers, the venture capital groups 3i and Gresham Trust, were standing by the management team yesterday. "We have not withdrawn our backing as yet as we are awaiting the outcome of the investigations," Paul Murray, of 3i, said.
The Government is believed to favour awarding the franchise to the second-placed bid if the management buyout cannot proceed. Two of the defeated bidders for LTS Rail, Prism and GB Railways, said yesterday that they would be interested in rebidding if the management buyout were abandoned. "We are watching developments with interest," Kenneth Irvine, chairman of Prism, said.
Answering an emergency question yesterday, Sir George assured the Commons that there was "no question of financial irregularities being tolerated in a modern railway, whether it is publicly owned or privately owned".
Pressure to reopen the tendering process came from Clare Short, the Shadow Transport Secretary. "Will you now give us an undertaking that the offer to allow this management team to run this service will be withdrawn, because they have shown themselves to be a corrupt management team ...?" Amid Tory protests, she added: "... if the allegations are true."
Sir George said a routine audit had disclosed the irregularities. But last night an
anti-privatisation campaigner, Keith Bill, said that an LTS employee had told BR of the alleged fraud.
The claims are said to centre on the reissuing of tickets at a station used by mainline and Tube trains. London Underground is said to have been deprived of a portion of the fare estimated to total £30,000 a month.
London Underground managers were said last night to be increasingly concerned that the financial irregularities uncovered could be repeated at stations across the network.
The company fears that private rail operators could be tempted to "launder" sales of London Transport passes through stations such as Surbiton, southwest London, where the operator is allocated the bulk of the revenue. "We are now checking carefully to see if there are any areas where we may be exposed to risks in order to make sure we have robust procedures in place to avoid similar potential losses to those alleged," London Underground said.
PADDY ASHDOWN won an unreserved front-page apology and undisclosed damages last night from a newspaper that published allegations about his private life.
The climbdown by the Western Daily Press came only hours after libel proceedings were started.
The regional paper said it had never believed the "completely untrue" claims made against the Liberal Democrat leader, which it published yesterday. Mr Ashdown had earlier condemned the article in the Bristol-based newspaper, which circulates in his Yeovil constituency, as "utterly disgraceful".
By 9pm yesterday the newspaper had announced it was making a full apology to Mr Ashdown, whose car was destroyed by a firebomb early on Friday outside his Somerset home. In the apology published today it said: "Yesterday morning we published details of allegations made against the Rt Hon Paddy Ashdown MP by a Mr Peter Stoodley and an unnamed woman.
"We apologise unreservedly for doing so and accept that those allegations are completely untrue. If people tend to think there is no smoke without fire, we are happy to confirm that this is the exception."
The newspaper argued that it had published the allegations only to demonstrate the forces he faces in his campaign to defeat racism in Yeovil.
Mr Ashdown said last night: "The apology speaks for itself." He would continue to challenge the "scourge of terrorisation and intimidation" in his constituency. Police had earlier revealed that they had warned him at the weekend he was facing a vendetta by some of his constituents. A brick was thrown through the window of his car several weeks ago, he has received threatening letters and telephone calls and was allegedly threatened at knifepoint in Yeovil at the end of November.
Police installed surveillance equipment in the garden of his thatched cottage at Norton sub Hamdon and Mr Ashdown has bowed to pressure to have bodyguards there for the first time.
Mr Ashdown is due to appear in court on Thursday as a witness against a man accused of assault on him. Three local men have been arrested in connection with the firebomb attack.
EDDIE GEORGE, the Governor of the Bank of England, challenged European leaders last night by predicting serious political problems if they pressed ahead too quickly towards monetary union.
Mr George entered the increasingly strained debate over European integration by giving warning of social turmoil if politicians relaxed the economic conditions that must be met before countries can join a single currency.
In comments that added weight to government resistance to early monetary union, Mr George said there was no guarantee that the planned 1999 start date could be met. He also warned European leaders such as Jacques Santer, the EC President, against plans to make it easier for countries to meet the economic convergence criteria.
Supporting John Major's stance on the need to meet tight economic conditions rather than a set timetable, Mr George said: "What's important is that the economic conditions should be right before people move ahead. That is actually more important than the calendar in my view.
"The important thing is that we should continue to drive towards establishing stability. If we do get stability then conditions for the single market to function effectively will be met and that's what's going to deliver real economic benefits."
Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor, has also made clear that economic entry conditions must be enforced rigorously.
Mr George, in an interview on BBC's Nine O'Clock News, added his weight to the Government's case by saying: "The genuine risks are that it would become extremely difficult if there were diverse economic conditions in different parts of the monetary union area ... In those circumstances you could have depressed conditions in one part of the region and conditions of strong growth, pushing towards inflation, in another. That would mean there would be a tendency for people to migrate from one part of the community to another and that could prove politically divisive."
His remarks come days after Chancellor Kohl of Germany raise the temperature of debate over the single currency by giving warning of the dangers of allowing some nations to slow down moves towards closer integration.
THE BBC launched a last-minute campaign yesterday to prevent Britain's biggest sporting events being broadcast only on satellite television.
As peers prepared for a knife-edge Lords vote on televised sport, senior BBC figures promised to spend more on sport to compete with satellite companies. Peers will vote tonight on Broadcasting Bill amendments aimed at keeping events such as the
FA Cup Final, Grand National and the Olympics on terrestrial television.
A large all-party group of peers is lining up to support an amendment which would prevent eight listed events being shown exclusively on subscription channels such as those operated by BSkyB, which is 40 per cent owned by News International, owner of The Times. Senior government sources conceded that the vote would be extremely tight and that the outcome could depend on the weather, which is likely to prevent many peers from attending. Labour peers were optimistic of winning.
Will Wyatt, managing director of BBC Network Television, last night took the unusual step of briefing journalists at the Commons on the BBC's plans for sports coverage. He said that, as well as protecting listed events, terrestrial stations should have the right to buy highlights of non-listed events, such as golf's Ryder Cup or the rugby union five nations' championship, if a subscription channel bought exclusive live coverage.
Mr Wyatt said much more money would be made available, although he refused to specify the amount. "We have put a lot more in and we will put a lot more in," he said.
In a letter to The Times today, six senior sports executives strongly defend BSkyB's involvement in sport. They write: "In the past five years the cosy terrestrial duopoly has been broken and a true market established for sporting rights."
In the Commons yesterday Jack Cunningham, Shadow National Heritage Secretary, demanded tougher rules to prevent a satellite monopoly of top sporting events. "Isn't it now appropriate, given the widespread public concern about these issues, that the law should be strengthened to prevent the creation of a broadcasting monopoly while not excluding any individual broadcaster from participating?" he said.
Virginia Bottomley, the National Heritage Secretary, said that there had been a "huge increase" in the amount of television sport and the larger sums spent had led to "greater participation and better facilities up and down the country than at almost any previous phase".
Hitmen who shot the wrong player during a soccer match in front of hundreds of witneses were jailed yesterday.
Robert Taylor, 28, from Glasgow, who shot Charles Ballantyne, 32, in the head and back, was jailed for 25 years, including five for firing at spectators. He admitted attempted murder. Andrew Elliott, 31, from Glasgow, who held off the crowd by pretending he had a gun, was jailed for 20 years. Easdale Campbell, 37, from Hamilton, the getaway driver, who involved police in a 90mph car chase, was jailed for 20 years.
Sarah Cook, 13, from Essex, who went through an Islamic wedding ceremony with an unemployed Turkish waiter she met on a family holiday, decided yesterday to postpone coming home for at least another night amid reports that she was pregnant.
Miss Cook, who was expected back in Britain last night, is still in the village of Kahramanmaras in southeast Turkey, where she has been living with her "husband's" family. Musa Komeagac, 18, was arrested and charged with statutory rape two weeks after the service.
A wide-ranging independent inquiry into the pay, allowances and pensions of MPs and ministers is expected to be announced today.
The Senior Salaries Review Body, which already recommends pay levels for judges, senior civil servants and top military officers, is likely to be asked to report by June.
The government announcement of the investigation, led by Sir Michael Perry, head of Unilever, follows discussions over the past few days between the party leaderships and reflects their wish to defuse the present controversy over their salaries.
Most MPs believe pay must be improved to attract good parliamentary candidates.
THE cricket World Cup was thrown into turmoil yesterday when the West Indies joined Australia in asking that their games in Sri Lanka should be rescheduled because of fears for the safety of their teams.
With the 12-nation tournament being held in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and the Indian section due to start on Sunday, the organisers are trying to balance the demands of the visiting teams and of the Sri Lankan Government. Colombo is outraged by the Australian and West Indian attitude.
After the terrorist bomb attack in Colombo last week that devastated the centre of the capital and killed more than 80 people and injured 1,400, Australia asked Pilcom, the three-country organising committee, to reschedule their match on February 17. When they refused, the Australians decided to forfeit the match.
The Australian action was followed by the West Indies Board of Control asking for their fixture in Colombo, on February 25, to be moved to either India or Pakistan for the "safety and peace of mind" of their players.
The Sri Lankans have offered tight security of the sort usually reserved for heads of state if the two teams change their decision. Neither Zimbabwe nor Kenya, the other two nations due to play matches in Sri Lanka, has made any announcement about not fulfilling fixtures there.
Denis Rogers, the chairman of the Australian Cricket Board, said there were legitimate fears for player safety despite Sri Lankan assurances, but Lakshman Kadirgamar, the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister, said he had no sympathy for Shane Warne, the Australian leg-spinner, who had said that the team could be victims of a bomb if they went shopping. "Where is the time to go shopping in Colombo during a one-day match? Shopping is for sissies."
Mr Kadirgamar also said that any campaign mounted by Australia to persuade other countries not to come to Sri Lanka for their matches would be considered a hostile act in relations with his Government. If they wanted to, the Australians could stay in India or the Maldives instead of Colombo. They would be flown by helicopter from the international airport to their hotel, 21 miles away, and on the day of the match.
LESS than two weeks after his wife appeared before a federal grand jury, President Clinton was subpoenaed last night to testify in an Arkansas fraud trial.
Mr Clinton has not been charged and will act only as a witness at a trial in Little Rock next month, but the prospect of the President being ordered to testify so soon after his wife's appearance in Washington can only bring further embarrassment to the Clinton White House in election year.
A federal judge in Little Rock last night accepted demands by Susan McDougal, one of the Clintons' partners in the failed Whitewater Development Corporation, for the President to testify at her trial. Her lawyer said the President's testimony as a character witness could clear his client, who is accused of receiving a $300,000 loan which a former Arkansas banker claims that Mr Clinton pressured him to make.
Mrs McDougal's husband, James, the other Whitewater partner and a co-defendant, is also attempting to obtain Mr Clinton's testimony but without resorting to a subpoena.
The Administration is expected to seek an agreement with the prosecution allowing Mr Clinton to give evidence by video from the White House without actually having to appear in court. The White House made no official response last night.
HALF of all primary schools and four out of ten secondaries are falling below acceptable standards, the Chief Inspector of Schools said yesterday in a critical annual report demanding an overhaul of teaching methods.
Chris Woodhead pointed to widespread literacy and numeracy problems, and called for greater use of streaming according to ability although he stopped short of demanding a wholesale return to traditional teaching.
His report confirmed weaknesses identified in last month's poor test results for 11-year-olds and Gillian Shephard, the Education and Employment Secretary, immediately announced that school league tables for the age group would be published next year.
Mrs Shephard, who resisted the move a fortnight ago, said the level of concern was such that performance tables had become a priority. "It seems to me that after these two sets of evidence about what primary schools are producing, we have to make sure that they are being made fully accountable and that the results are transparent for all to see."
Primary schools were the main targets for criticism in yesterday's report, which is based on 3,500 inspections by the Office for Standards in Education. Mr Woodhead said that basic numeracy and literacy remained causes for concern, together with the teaching of children aged between seven and fourteen.
The teaching of reading was "mediocre or poor" in many junior schools, with too little use made of phonics, a traditional method which involves sounding out letters. In mathematics, number work was neglected and progress was "disappointing".
Mr Woodhead said there were twice as many excellent teachers as poor ones, but he stood by his previous estimates that 15,000 were incompetent and should be sacked if they could not be retrained. Those teaching the four years of junior school, between seven and eleven, often had insufficient knowledge of their subjects, and throughout the primary years, more use should be made of "whole class" teaching alongside the individual teaching that occupied three-quarters of the primary school day.
Mr Woodhead also called for more grouping by ability only 4 per cent of primary school lessons were streamed, compared with 60 per cent in secondary schools.
The proportion of junior school lessons judged unsatisfactory dropped from 30 per cent to 21 per cent, but Ofsted said that last year's high figure came from only 80 inspections. Junior schools were still producing more unsatisfactory and fewer excellent lessons than other sectors.
Mr Woodhead's report named 200 highly successful schools inspected in the past year. Two-thirds of the outstanding secondary schools were selective and a third of all the secondaries listed had "opted out".
Mrs Shephard said that the "success stories" should be congratulated and held out as an example to all, but there was still a long way to go. David Blunkett, the Shadow Education and Employment Secretary, described the report as a very serious indictment of the Government's record on primary schools. "The difficulties being faced particularly by seven- to eleven-year-olds highlight the need for strong action at this level."
Union leaders meanwhile insisted that it was "wrong and simplistic" to blame teachers burdened with an overloaded curriculum for poor standards. They pointed to disruptive children, uncaring parents and limited resources.
The National Union of Teachers also criticised Mrs Shephard's plans to publish performance tables for 11-year-olds. Doug McAvoy, the general secretary, said: "Parents have a right to receive information about the quality of education their children receive. Snapshot inspections and crude league tables do not provide this."
The National Association for Primary Education said league tables would seriously damage standards.
SNOW was being driven by high winds across much of Britain last night and motoring organisations warned drivers to prepare for a hazardous journey to work today.
Weather forecasters said the snow would settle and temperatures would hover around zero until the end of the week, when another weather front gathering over the Atlantic might bring further snow.
The London Weather Centre said: "We expect most places, with the exception of East Anglia and parts of Kent, to have some snow by this morning."
The storms, increasing to blizzards in some areas, began yesterday in Scotland, Wales and Dartmoor and Exmoor and moved south and eastwards throughout the night. Weather warnings for Lancashire, Wales and the South West were extended to cover the Home Counties.
In Scotland and Wales, many mountain and rural roads were blocked and parts of the A74 between Glasgow and Carlisle were closed. Thousands of children were sent home from school.
Nuclear workers spent the night at the Sellafield complex because snowdrifts prevented them getting home. All roads south to Barrow had drifts up to 6ft deep and trains were unable to use the coastal line to the Furness area.
In Falkirk, Sheriff Albert Sheehan was so concerned that a 60-year-old vagrant would die in the freezing conditions that he jailed him for 60 days for a breach of the peace. Sheriff Sheehan said of John Bain: "If I don't send him to prison, he will walk out of here into that weather which is going to get worse."
MPs and agencies representing vulnerable groups, including Age Concern and Help the Aged, renewed their demands for changes to the Government's cold weather payments system.
BRITISH GAS is expected to announce today that it is to be split in two and that its chief executive Cedric Brown is to step down.
Mr Brown, 60, has been under pressure since the furore over his 71 per cent pay rise in 1994. He is now the only member of the British Gas "old guard" on the board and last night he told managers, union leaders and the industry's regulator that he intends to retire. It is believed that he could go before the company's annual meeting in May.
The plan to divide the company would mean the biggest shake-up yet seen in a privatised industry. The exploration, international and pipeline business would become a new quoted company, while the trading business would be quoted separately. British Gas, however, refused to comment on the plans last night.
The move is designed to protect British Gas's more profitable businesses from losses of up to £1.5 billion on contracts to buy gas at a fixed price. The company made profits of £1.24 billion last year, but will face full competition in the household market from 1998.
It was once regarded as a model privatisation, but has been damaged by a series of public relations disasters and a dismal share performance. The number of customer complaints doubled last year, and while the directors' pay bill rocketed, the company announced that 25,000 jobs would go over the next three years.
During 1995, the company's share price fell by 23 per cent while the FT-SE 100 index rose by 26 per cent and shareholders are believed to have told Richard Giordano, the non-executive chairman, to make swift reforms or they would block the renewal of his contract.
The relationship between Mr Brown and Mr Giordano has always been regarded as strained and many observers believe that Mr Giordano could have done more to shield the chief executive when he was vilified over the 71 per cent pay rise that took his total renumeration to almost £500,000 in 1994.
The company saw off a shareholders' rebellion on the issue at the annual general meeting last May when big institutional shareholders backed the board, although they made clear that they expected improved performances both from Mr Brown and the company if he were to remain on the board.
Mr Brown subsequently tried to appease his critics by rejecting a bonus scheme that could have earned him £2.4 million over four years. Although no details were available about Mr Brown's severance package last night, any pay-off is likely to provoke a renewed public outcry.
A PILOT project using a robot telescope on the Pennines to teach schoolchildren astronomy has been completed by Bradford University.
It was recently visited by veteran television astronomer Patrick Moore, who said he had expected the telescope to be good but added: "It is 50 times better than I ever imagined."
The project has used the Internet to allow schoolchildren to control the telescope to view the northern sky. The scheme, discussed at the annual Astrofest astronomy meeting in London last weekend, was pioneered by Dr John Baruch.
The project has been tailored so children aged from seven to 12 have access to Bradford Robotic Telescope to help complete work under the National Curriculum. Images taken by the telescope have been used by pupils to make measurements of the moon's face.
The telescope was set up three years ago and linked with the Internet. The original idea was to have a telescope that could make observations without the assistance of an astronomer but university researchers soon recognised its educational potential and funds from the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council helped extend the use to schools.
A BREAKTHROUGH by Japanese scientists could prove a godsend for parents of gadget-crazy children.
Researchers have harnessed a superconductor to power a golf cart along without a battery. Just imagine the savings this could mean in the home. Modern, battery-powered toys are often just a few pounds to buy, so the toy box heaves with gaudy trains, planes, cars, cassette players and other power-hungry playthings.
Since running them all at the same time would bankrupt Nuttall Inc, I will be writing to the clever chaps in Japan for assistance.
OFFICE secretaries might be wise to take up running exercises. The dawn of the super-fast fax machine is at hand and messages they have to pass on will soon be spewing out like confetti.
Most existing machines run on 9,600bps modems and work at a civilised speed. At The Times, this just about allows Val and Lynette to cope.
But the International Telecommunications Union is poised to ratify a 28,800bps standard for faxes which will make them 200 per cent faster.
While this might turn a fax machine from a Reliant Robin to a mid-range saloon, even worse is in the pipeline. A veritable Ferrari fax is being schemed which, at 33,600bps, will require the fleet-footedness of Florence Griffith-Joyner.
Some weeks ago Interface reported that a Utah supernerd had, like the early bird, stolen Bill Gates's worm. Steve Jenkins, you may recall, had registered a net site called Windows 95 before the billionaire.
Now, in this dog-eat-dog world of registering domain sites, Michael Doughney, a Maryland computer buff with a wry sense of waggishness, has raised even more hackles.
His registered site, PETA, has angered the animal welfare group with the same name. While their abbreviation stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, his stands for People Eating Tasty Animals.
The site, http://peta.org, is unashamedly politicallly incorrect. It is a "resource for those who enjoy eating meat, wearing fur and leather, hunting, and the fruits of scientific research".
The site also links to other interesting areas including the National Pork Producers' Council and the Florida State Taxidermists' Association.
It is a salutary lesson for welfare groups here. The International Fund for Animal Welfare might be dismayed if the Canadian sealers register IFAW as the International Fund for Animal Warfare. And what about the RSPB? Royal Society for the Persecution of Birds, perhaps?
Huddersfield Town 2, Peterborough United 0
THE best thing that can be said about this contest is that it was played at all. In fact, it is virtually the only thing to be said about it, Huddersfield Town emerging, almost shamefaced, from an awful FA Cup tie on an awful night to secure their place in the fifth round.
The Yorkshire club can rightly be proud that their modern Alfred McAlpine Stadium allowed this match to go ahead, less proud of their first-half performance and relieved, ultimately, that they produced the result everyone expected in defeating Peterborough United, 39 places below them in the Endsleigh Insurance League. After a terrible first half vapid would be too kind it was not such a foregone conclusion.
Goals from Darren Bullock and the impressive Andrew Booth gave them a home fixture with the winners of the tie tonight between Middlesbrough and Wimbledon. It is the first time they have reached the last 16 for 24 years. The goals were of surprising quality, given the mundanity that had gone before, and Peterborough had no response.
It had been a contest of grim attrition on a pitch not
enhanced by the rigours of rugby league, all slipping and tripping. The first half saw nothing of consequence, aside from two shots that Francis, the Huddersfield goalkeeper, fielded at the second attempt, and an effort from the home team that barely warranted the description "shot".
Peterborough, in fact, were the more accomplished up to the interval, and it took an interjection from Brian Horton, the Huddersfield manager, to change the course of the game. His method was simple and to the point. "I had the biggest moan-up since I came here," he said. "We were rubbish in the first half and couldn't have been any worse."
Minutes after the restart, his mysterious "moan-up" (peculiar, perhaps, to the West Midlands) had the desired effect. Bullock gave Huddersfield the lead in the 53rd minute with a goal that, but for the biting cold, could have been passed off as a mirage. He combined delightfully with Booth, turned adroitly on the edge of the box, and found the corner of the net with precision and power.
The goal deflated Peterborough's admirable resistance and Huddersfield at last offered some evidence of their status near the top of the first division. Confirmation came after 74 minutes when Booth produced a rare moment to savour, and no doubt raised the supposed price on his
head another couple of notches.
He shot strongly after a fine left-wing cross from Dalton and was alert enough to dispatch the rebound when it came back his way from Sheffield's save.
Dalton could have given the scoreline a flattering appearance when he crashed a late effort against the crossbar. Enough was enough, though. Peterborough's 1,500-strong travelling support had been subjected to their share of misery on a night when sensible people surely stayed indoors. Football, though, is hardly a sensible pastime.
HUDDERSFIELD TOWN (4-4-2): S Francis S Jenkins, L Sinnott, K Gray, T Cowan P Reid, D Bullock, L Makel, P Dalton A Booth, R Rowe.
PETERBOROUGH UNITED (4-4-2): J Sheffield L Williams, G Breen, S Clark, A Spearing (sub: G Rioch, 88min) D Carter (sub: L Power, 66), B Sedgemore, M Ebdon, D Morrison S Farrell, G Martindale.
Referee: S Mathieson.
Minute fluctuations in gravity may one day be used to reveal military secrets. Researchers in America have found a way of measuring these minute fluctuations, and deducing the shape and bulk of the objects causing them. The technique could be used to scan military vehicles, to check what type of arms are being carried.
The gravitational field at any point on the Earth is related to the mass of the object at that spot. This unevenness leads to a measurable gradient, which can be measured at a distance by an instrument called a gravity gradiometer.
However, this distance must be far enough away to allow the object to be approximated to a sphere. Most objects are not spheres close-up, so the closer the gradiometer gets, the less accurate the calculated mass will be.
Dr Steven Gray, an electronic engineer at the Mitre Corporation in Massachusetts, and two colleagues, have found a way of correcting these errors. Their sophisticated mathematical method was published recently in the Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics.
Separate studies have suggested that gravity profiles could be used to tell the difference between conventional and nuclear weapons, or to count warheads on ballistic missiles. According to Electronics World, gravity gradiometers would also be better than other methods of arms limitation monitoring because it is non-contact, and unlike X-rays, does not reveal sensitive design secrets, making it less likely for warring parties to protest.
Dr Gray and his colleagues, who were funded by the American Government, tested their method by running computer simulations. They hope to turn their research into a working device, and test it in practice. Gravity gradiometers, which can measure the change in gravity induced by the presence of 10 grains of sand, are already used by the military for navigational purposes.
A new computerised information system designed to keep the Royal Navy afloat at all times has won ministerial and Treasury approval. Called Upkeep, it will provide logistical support for 16 Navy submarines, 40 frigates, destroyers and aircraft carriers and 100 shore-based establishments by 1999.
The multi-million pound system will be installed in the first ship by the middle of next year. At its simplest level, it will ensure that if something vital breaks at sea the nearest replacement can be tracked down immediately.
Upkeep will also ensure that replenishment at sea exercises ("rasing" as they are called in the Navy) which are essential in keeping vessels topped up with storea and supplies are carried out as efficiently as possible.
"The system is designed to maintain a strong level of support for front-line forces but to achieve savings at the same time," says Tim Magnus, marketing manager for EDS Defence, the global IT company which has developed Upkeep with the newly-formed Naval Support Command.
"It provides a fully integrated system for handling invoices and warehouse management and offers global visibility of available stock. It is part of an enterprise that extends much wider than a new IT system. The major benefits will come from adopting new business processes, many of which reflect accepted best practice in industry."
Bill Barnes, of the Fleet Support Directorate, says: "Upkeep is important because it consolidates a large number of existing computer systems to provide Naval Support Command with an integrated single information system.
"We selected EDS, our prime contractor, as early as possible in the project's time scale to ensure the company's early understanding of our requirements and committment to them. We have worked hard together to establish a united approach to the task and to maintain momentum".
Some decisions still have to be made about the hardware to run the system but EDS and Naval Support Command have selected digital alpha machines for the shore bases which will use Informex relational data bases and Mincom software packages.
Computer users are being sold software which is untested, poorly written and without documentation as market pressures force suppliers to cut corners, says Julian Webb, senior lecturer in computing at the University of the West of England. He believes that unprofessional behaviour is growing among software developers of all sizes.
Webb told the first Professional Awareness in Software Engineering conference last week that his investigation of software houses found them failing to follow acceptable programming standards; failing to produce suitable documentation or indeed any; failing to test software adequately; hiding the likely true costs of custom development; and exaggerating their hardware or software experience.
These short cuts had been forced on companies in an increasingly crowded specialist application markets, Webb said.
Meanwhile customers are pushing down prices because they compare specialist products or custom development with the low prices of big-selling word processing packages.
"Developers of specialist software, especially for smaller businesses, find that producing a marketable system means cutting testing, support and documentation to the bone," Webb said.
"Meeting marketing deadlines takes precedence over developing a solid product."
Big companies are as guilty as small firms, because of their expensive fixed overheads, Webb said.
The rush to use new software development products also hit quality, he said. There had been a dramatic increase in the number of such products and, far from improving quality, this made development unstable. Development teams were moving to the new products and methods without fully understanding them and, under pressure, skimping on testing processes to the extent of turning customers into unwitting testers.
"There is the alarming strategy of releasing an under-tested product into the open market," Webb said. "The developer relies on customers to report problems as they arise. This brings considerable savings, as testing can take up half the total development time. And correction work can be focused on only the faults serious enough to inconvenience the users.
"This is frustrating and potentially expensive for customers. They may even be turned against computerisation, especially if they are expected to pay again for a corrected version by buying a new release or through maintenance charges."
THE sixth annual Windows Show, at Olympia, London, between February 27 and March 1, is lining up to be the largest IT conference ever staged in Europe. There will be more than 150 free seminars, 1,000 software demonstrations and updates on Internet developments. Tel: 0660 600 677; Fax: 0891 516800.
February 27-March 1: Windows Show, Grand Hall, Olympia. Software innovations. Contact Jane Garry. Tel: 01256 381456; Fax: 01256 381593.
February 28-29: Microsoft Project Introduction. Lee Valley Technopark, Ashley Road, London N17 9LN. Contact: 0181-880 4063; Fax: 0181-880 4061.
February 28-29: Rural Telecommuniations 96. Waldorf, London. Tel: 0171-915 5055. February 29: IMRG/CBI conference, Centre Point, London. Contact Jo Tucker. Tel: 0171-303 6603; Fax: 0171-303 5881.
March 19-21: DB World‘96. Olympia, London. Tel: 0181-541 5040. Fax: 0181-974 5188.
March 20-22: BIS Strategic Decisions. 19th European Ink Jet Printing Conference, Swissotel, Neuss, Germany. Contact Suzy Shavin. Tel: 01582 405678; Fax: 01582 482959.
April 22-May 1: Document Management Roadshow, at sites around Britain ending in two days at the International Hotel, Earls Court, London. Contact ITx. Tel: 01905 613236; Fax: 01905 29138.
May 8-9: Information Society Convention, Metropole, Birmingham. Tel: 01934 625964; Fax: 01934 625399.
May 20-24: Informatique conference Montpellier, Languedoc, France. Contact Graham Whitehead. Tel: 01372 363386.
May 30-June 2: The Home PC Show. Contact Hilary Broadley. Tel: 0181-849 6200.
June 18-20: Multimedia 96. Interactive business show. Business Design Centre, London. Contact Norma Hughes. Tel: 0181-741 5522; Fax: 0181-563 9443.
E-mail details of events to times.interface@dial.pipex.com or fax them to 0171-782 5013
Q.Everybody tells me I should make regular back-ups of my PC in case something goes wrong. But I have something like 400 megabytes of stuff on the hard drive. Backing that up to floppy disks would take forever, surely?
A.You are absolutely right. The pat advice that tries to get you to invest in lorryloads of floppies just to take a mirror image of your hard drive is nonsense. For some people, back-ups make no sense at all; others can be a lot more selective than the manuals let on.
Q.You mean my computer might not crash at all?
A.Heavens, no. Hard disks go bad as night follows day. But the only stuff worth backing up from your hard drive is the stuff you can't replace from the master floppy disks or CD-Rom that came with your system and software in the first place. There is absolutely no point in backing up applications or system files, unless you have done something to customise them.
Q.So most of the stuff on my hard drive doesn't need backing up?
A.Probably not. Imagine, for example, that you have a vast Windows system, folders for Encarta, lots of games, a word processor and a home finance program. Everything there is easily, if tediously, replaced from the master disks. All you need to back up are the files you create with your applications.
Q.Is that so? But they're all over the hard disk.
A.Well they shouldn't be. Create a nice little folder called Documents and store them all in there from now on in sub-folders for letters, accounts or reports, if you need them. Then, when you want to back up, just drag the contents of the folder to a floppy disk.
Q.And that's it?
A.That's back-up in a very simple way. If you have valuable documents such as important business letters or accounts, find a back-up program that automatically detects when files have been changed and then backs them up incrementally. If your needs merit it, invest in a £175 external Zip drive from Iomega, which stores 100 megabytes of data.
It is three in the morning and you'll be wondering, I imagine, why I'm up so late. I have just the one word: Netscape.
Look, this is The Times, right? We don't use anything but the best here. And although every so often readers write to me to tell me that there is net life beyond the web and that even within the web there are other browsers but that made by the Netscape Corporation, I'm picky. As far as I'm concerned, if you want to browse, Netscape is it.
Except that every 90 days it dies on me. This is what they call in the trade a "design feature". The deal is that Netscape is free but that its freedom is curtailed by a licensing clause which says I am not using Netscape but "evaluating" it. In fact I've already evaluated it; my evaluation is that it's good. That's not good enough for Netscape, though, and so every three months I have to go through the fiction that I want to evaluate it all over again just in case a couple of new features have been added. Invariably they have, but as they are equally invariably tiny features which were apparent, but disabled, on the last version, it's hardly a re-evaluation.
And so every 90 days I log on and a message comes up on my screen telling me that my evaluation licence is about to run out and will I download a new version. This time round, I admit, I put it off. Downloading Netscape takes an awfully long time, even with a fast modem, and last time I downloaded the application corrupted itself in transit and I had to do it all over again.
Tonight I logged on and got a different message: Netscape had passed its log-on-by date and I needed to download the new version. The only area of the web into which it would allow me was that controlled by the Netscape Corporation.
If I was more far-sighted than I am, I'd have a bookmark already in place linking me to the Imperial College mirror site two miles down the road from my modem. As it is, I've got the Netscape Home Page bookmarked and 15 minutes later it let me in. I started with the Imperial site: Netscape had never heard of it. I tried the site in Germany. "Where?" said Netscape. I tried the Swiss site and one in Austria and both tossed my query back at me. On the basis that the 20-odd American sites would still be dealing with Americans, I worked east around the world until I got to the site in Adelaide which managed to drop my connection altogether.
I was now an hour into my attempt to get Netscape. If they wouldn't give me a copy, I'd buy one. I got my Visa card out, clicked on "Quick Purchase" and the top-of-the-range one-year licence button. It took 20 minutes to tell me the Netscape General Store was closed and to apologise for any inconvenience.
Like a mad thing I went through each of the American sites in turn. Nothing. Nada. Zip.
It has been, according to my PPP clock, two hours and 24 minutes. I am without Netscape. I am going to bed where I shall meditate on the extent to which the share issue for the Netscape Corporation was oversubscribed when offered on the US stock exchange last year, and about how one of the advantages of the net was unlimited choice.
ATV camera that connects with home video recorders to record intruders on tape has been launched by a British security company.
The ProwlaWatch system combines heat sensors of the type now commonly used to switch on floodlights and a small camera to provide a picture that can be fed to a TV set or video recorder.
If the family is already viewing, an alarm is rung or the picture is automatically flashed on the screen as soon as the sensor is triggered, so the family can immediately prepare to defend themselves against burglars, welcome Aunty Ethel or ignore the door-to-door dishcloth salesmen.
If the family is out, the triggered sensor automatically starts the video, so intruders can be recorded. The makers say the tapes could be vital to police inquiries, providing evidence that could be used in court.
The dilemma is whether to advertise the presence of the video security system. On the one hand, having a notice saying "Video Camera Operating" might deter would-be burglars who would see the increased likelihood of being caught. On the other, they might break in anyway and simply steal the video, complete with tape.
If you go on holiday, you are faced with a choice: record your favourite programmes and forget the security or keep the security cameras on and miss finding out what happens in Neighbours. The alternative could be buying another video specially for the security system, a substantial addition to the £425 cost of the system, though it could save on house contents insurance premiums, the makers say.
The system has a big advantage in that it does not simply raise the alarm and hope that someone else will do something.
The ProwlaWatch is made in the UK by Testworth (Tel: 0171-245 9445), which owns the Spycatcher shop in the West End of London. Ian Hall of Testworth said: "It is designed to be installable by any member of the public so it must be as simple as possible."
VIEWERS can vote for their favourite films and TV shows in the Lloyds Bank Bafta Awards for the first time by calling up a web site.
All they have to do is access http://www.bafta./org/ and fill in their personal details, then nominate their favourites. They can even vote for the animal showbiz personality of the year. The pig from the film Babe is tipped to win.
Everyone who votes, including those who ring a separate "people's vote" hotline on 0345 000555 or use forms available in branches of Lloyds, will be entered into a prize draw.
The winner will win a trip to the Bafta Awards ceremony in London on April 21, including dress hire.
The word "menu" was well chosen, you know. And I assume it was an analogy dreamed up by an American. For the experience of scanning through lists on the Internet has much in common with that ghastly business in American restaurants, where no choice is ever as simple as it seems, and the supplementary question-and-answer saps all the life out of you, leaving you not caring whether you eat or die.
In America, "I'll have the chicken," is not an end in itself, oh no. "How would you like your chicken today?" says the waitress. "Dead, stunned or unawares? Plate, bowl, cup, leaf, or plastic bag? Lead-free or regular? Griddle, Navajo pit-style, or blow-torch?" I have a friend who once squabbled over a breakfast sausage in Miami and still reacts badly to the mystery phrase "Linxer patties?". "In the name of sanity," she cried aloud, "just give me some food!"
The Internet is exactly the same. Make your choice, and get another choice. Each menu leads to another menu, from which you must make an arbitrary selection arbitrary because your information is laughably incomplete. This makes it all the more frustrating when the sign comes up: "The server does not have a DNS entry". Because it's like being offered an assortment of 54 cheeses, and then having to choose again, because the Swiss goat brie roulade with sun-dried tomato (which you didn't particularly want) isn't available after all.
Obviously information has to be ordered and organised and the system of menus on the Internet will doubtless teach many young people the value of a tidy mind. But to the user, there is one particular aspect to which I strongly object: you are never allowed to specify "Whichever is easiest." This week I called up a vegetarian information site at the University of Indiana. It took a while to connect, but I was in a good mood, ready for anything. From the first menu, I made a sensible choice; and from the second option I chose a promising item called "Recipes". But it was at this stage that things went wrong. I chose a "Sourdough Archive" for purely frivolous reasons because it made me think of floury academics stuffing pastry into filing cabinets. It was the decision of a moment, a mere bagatelle, for which I paid dearly. Because while the Recipe menu was sited at the University of Indiana, the Sourdough Archive was (you'll never guess) in Texas.
Nobody tells you this. You are led to believe that all choices are an equal amount of trouble, and entail an equal amount of hanging about. But this is not the case, and the uncertainty drains the life out of you. It's like cheerfully ordering a pizza in London and seeing a motorcycle messenger roar off into the night to collect it from Gatwick. Had I known the Sourdough was a separate trip, I would certainly not have bothered.
I have spent my whole life saying "Whichever is easiest" and genuinely meaning it. After an hour exploring the Veggie News, I came up with a recipe for tamales which started with "one bag of cornshucks". Yes, gastronomically speaking, it's another world.
Veggie news is on http://www. honors.indiana.edu/veggie.recipes.cgi/
Even if you believe passionately in a free press, you are not obliged to become a martyr to a journalist in pursuit of a story
Why did he do it? The question dogs The House, the much-praised series on the Royal Opera House with two weeks still to run on BBC2. How could Jeremy Isaacs, the general director and a man who knows a thing or two about television, let the candid cameras in to wander about, with results that could harm his reputation and the House's subsidy?
As an Isaacs fan, who believes that his contribution to British cultural life the famed World At War series, the creation of Channel 4 has been insufficiently rewarded (where is his knighthood?), I'm sure the answer is a surfeit of fairness. If you believe in the public's right to know what goes on in public institutions, it seems only right to open the doors.
Right, perhaps, but not essential. There is no duty, even for champions of the free press, to talk to the press just as there is no need to pay more tax than you owe. Social responsibility does not require martyrdom.
Mr Isaacs could justifiably have refused the series on the same principle by which barristers never ask a witness a question to which they do not know the answer. The risk to those you represent is too great.
Fly-on-the-wall documentaries, in particular, have given their programme-makers an opportunity to be brilliant at the subject's expense. Remember The Family?
In the end, Mr Isaacs's trust may be proved right. The Royal Opera House, as in last night's brilliant episode showing the parallel ballets of young dancers competing and trade unionists negotiating, emerges as a microcosm of British life. Many who never go near the place will end up loving it.
Anyone faced with a similar invitation, however, would do better to take the advice of that sage Californian, Nancy Reagan, and just say no.
To do so, though, is not without risk. As a journalist, I spend my days asking people, often strangers, to supply information for a work-in-progress which, they know, is unlikely to show them as they see themselves. I am continually grateful that they do answer my questions and return my calls. I am especially grateful to press officers in large organisations, who know that only a novice would stoop to the crude question, which no self-respecting journalist would answer: "What sort of line is your article going to take?"
But there is a lot of anti-press grievance about well short of anything to merit the attention of the Press Complaints Commission, but which could be avoided with a few simple precautions. Don't ramble on and on, for example, and then complain that you have been quoted "out of context"; all quotes are out of context. Anyone agreeing to give an interview should read what else the interviewer has written. There are certain specialists in bitchiness against whom no one wins. Another good rule Maeve Binchy, the Irish novelist, says Gore Vidal passed it on to her "never let them interview you at home because they'll interview your house". The peeling paint on the door, the unwashed cat-dish, the personal telephone call that arrives in the middle of the interview all become fair game to the journalist invited over the threshold. Neutral territory, such as a restaurant, is safer but only if any mention of what is eaten or drunk is rules out in advance. "She toyed with her tripe a la mode de Caen as she reflected..." is very voguish in journalism.
A lot of experts reel in shock from having their brains picked. They should learn to be on guard against the telephone call that begins: "We're preparing a programme on astrobotany and wonder if you can spare a few minutes?" This is how a researcher extracts someone's lifetime knowledge without issuing an invitation to appear on the programme.
Shrewdly, the Committee for Public Understanding of Science (Copus), keeps a list of scientific experts prepared to talk quickly and clearly to the press. Other kinds of expert should consider such tactics as asking for a modest consultancy fee, offering to write an article themselves, or, at least, ask that the quotations to be attributed to them be read back. If the result is still infuriating, a letter to the editor or ombudsman is worth doing. Even if it does not get printed, it will give the offender a bad quarter of an hour.
The ordinary citizen who picks up the telephone and finds the press on the line should take extreme care. Some tips. On no account be flattered. Find out to whom you are speaking. Don't answer more than you are asked. If you have something you really want in the press, ring the paper of your choice and ask who is covering the story. If you really don't want to talk, ask when the deadline is, and call back ten minutes before it. And don't say "off the record" halfway through, or worse, slalom in and out of confidentiality so that neither of you knows where you are.
Above all, remember you are furnishing meat for someone else's salami. There's no shame in not contributing. When you hear, as on Monday's Newsnight, "British Gas refused to comment on the FT's story", did you feel embarrassed for British Gas? Of course not. Silence is often the better part of PR.
Alexandra Frean on the Scott inquiry, coming to television screens soon
If the Government thought that television would confine its coverage of Sir Richard Scott's much-delayed report into the arms-to-Iraq affair to long-winded news and current affairs programmes, it is going to be sorely disappointed.
Both the BBC and Channel 4 have turned the inquiry, which contained more dramatic and amusing one-liners than most sit-coms, into novel forms of drama and comedy that bridge the worlds of current affairs and light entertainment.
Channel 4 has cleared its schedules late this Saturday evening to make way for a two-hour 15-minute satirical extravaganza of sketches and reconstructions of the most striking scenes from the inquiry. The programme, Scott of the Arms Antics, will be anchored by Sheena McDonald and will feature the satirist Rory Bremner and the investigative journalist Paul Foot.
Rory Bremner believes that broadcasters have to tread a fine line in mixing satire and current affairs. "There is a danger that it could become too facetious and smug. I don't want John Major to dismiss it as a lot of smart people distorting the truth that, after all, is what they have been doing," he says.
The way to avoid this, Mr Bremner says, is through thorough research he spent 18 days wading through transcripts of the Scott inquiry and careful, "light-touch" scripting.
A week later, on Sunday February 18, the BBC is to screen Half the Picture, a film reconstruction of the Scott inquiry starring Sylvia Syms as Baroness Thatcher and Michael Stroud as Sir Richard Scott. The film is based on the Tricycle Theatre production of the play by the dramatist John McGrath and the journalist Richard Norton-Taylor. For broadcasters, Scott is a gift. Rarely has an opportunity presented itself to television to explore the machinations of government in such a dramatic and entertaining way. What script writer would have dared to invent John Major's comment to the inquiry: "One of the charges at the time, of course, was that in some way I must have known because I had been the Chancellor, because I had been Foreign Secretary, because I had been Prime Minister what was going on"?
When a civil servant was challenged by Sir Richard that a statement in a document was "junk", who could have invented the answer, "As a basic principle but not necessarily total junk"?
As Mr McGrath, co-writer and producer of Half The Picture, says: "You couldn't make it up. And if you did, nobody would believe it."
David Lloyd, Channel 4's senior commissioning editor of news and current affairs, who commissioned Scott of the Arms Antics, believes that the implications are so great that broadcasters have a duty to give it special treatment and invent new formats for it. "The event demands it. What we are trying to say is ‘don't imagine that this is just about arms trading, it is also about the way government runs this country'," he says.
Mr Lloyd hopes that the programme will reach beyond the core current affairs audience. "I want viewers to come away from it with an extremely clear idea about the issues behind it. Scott has been given an unparalleled opportunity to shine a light on the system and that will be his legacy," Mr Lloyd says.
Mr McGrath hopes that by packaging the entire Scott inquiry, which took 11 months, into a 90-minute film, "people will get the overall picture".
"It will show the contradictions that emerged over many days in the inquiry in a single picture," he adds.
He points out that as the television cameras were banned from the inquiry, it is difficult for most people to appreciate just how sensational much of it was.
George Faber, head of single drama at the BBC, who commissioned the film, agrees that it will make the complexities of the Scott Report more accessible to a wider audience.
Mr McGrath, who was the originating director of the Z Cars series, says that the inquiry was a dramatist's dream. "There is certainly a lot of drama in the individual exchanges and in the way successive exchanges reveal what is going on. It is almost like a whodunnit."
Both the BBC and Channel 4 say they have exercised great restraint in order to ensure a fair and balanced view. "It would have been easy to make some people look very silly, but we have tried to avoid that by careful editing. Even then, what comes out is a murky picture," Mr McGrath says.
Both hope that their respective dramatic treatments of the Scott inquiry and report will set a precedent for them to mix politically and publicly sensitive current affairs events with drama and entertainment in future.
The BBC is already preparing dramatisations of the Nick Leeson story, of the search for the killers of Julie Ward and of the Gulf War.
Mr Lloyd says that Channel 4 "has been searching for years for a model of programme that could say something serious but which would also entertain and would not just draw upon the natural tools of the current affairs department.
"We are planning to run something similar during the general election campaign."
Every home will have one on top of the TV in a few years, predicts Clive Parker
Within the next year we will be able to connect to the information superhighway using a television and a set-top "black box" or even a games console.
Industry experts believe many consumers are still wary of traditional PC-compatible computers and will react more favourably to a device that looks more like a satellite receiver and uses a hand-held remote control.
As a result, Viewcall Europe is developing the Viewcall system, a compact set-top box reminiscent of a satellite receiver. Using technology developed by Online Media, part of the Acorn Computing Group, the Viewcall box plugs into a TV set in the same way as a video recorder. The main difference is that another lead connects the box to a phone socket, providing the connection to the Internet. All options are controlled by a hand-held remote control or using an optional infra-red keyboard.
The technology will be cheap. Viewcall plan to supply the hardware free to its subscribers, who will probably pay about £15 per month, dropping to £10 as more subscribers sign up.
People will also be able to buy Viewcall units in high-street electrical outlets such as Dixons or Comet, and branded versions of the Viewcall system could be rented from Granada or Radio Rentals. The Viewcall hardware has already been licensed to a US company, Viewcall America.
You can already connect to the net using the Philips CD Online kit and a Philips CD-i player with Digital Video (DV) cartridge. The CD Online kit costs £100 and contains a US Robotics Sportster modem, a CD-i disc containing the net browsing software and all the leads you need to connect the CD-i player to the phone system. Philips CD-i players with DV start at around £400, which seems costly. Access is slow and some functions are limited by the lack of any data storage or printing options. The hand-held remote control is awkward to use, but a plug-in keyboard is promised soon.
Surprisingly, several Internet add-ons are being planned by games console manufacturers, all for use with TVs. Sega is working on a modem add-on for its Saturn games console, set to go on sale in Japan this summer. The Vice-President of Sega, Mr S. Irimajiri, says: "Our console owners are more likely to connect to a network using the games consoles they are used to using at home. PC-compatible computers are not very common in Japanese homes."
An all-in-one version of the Saturn, complete with modem, is under development for release into the US and European market later this year. The add-on modem unit should cost around £90, while the all-in-one Saturn if released in the UK should be under £500.
Other console manufacturers are also keen to grab a slice of the market. Matsushita of Japan, owner of the Panasonic 3DO Real games system hardware, is developing network capability into the second generation of 3DO consoles, which will have a PCMCIA card slot, so standard PCMCIA modems designed for PCs can simply be plugged in. Sony has expressed an interest in developing an Internet add-on for its PlayStation console, although it seems more likely this will be held over until PlayStation 2 is marketed.
Nintendo is working on network capability for the imminent Ultra 64 games console, and Bandai are developing the Pippin games console under license from Apple. The Pippin is basically an Apple PowerPC in a console-style casing with the MacOS operating system build into 4Mbytes of Rom, 6MBytes of memory, quad-speed CD-Rom drive and a Motorola PowerPC 603e processor.
Viewcall Europe: 0171-439 3187; e-mail viewcall@easynet.co.
uk Philips CD Online 0171-436 8677; e-mail info@cd-online.
co.uk, http://cd-online.co.uk/
Clive Parker is technical editor of .net magazine.
A BIZARRE murder mystery is unfolding on the Internet. Grisly deaths have occurred in Frankfurt, Melbourne, Hong Kong, London and Paris and the only link is that they have taken place while international art fairs were being staged in the cities.
Surfers eager to follow the case to its conclusion and unmask the villain will, however, be unlucky. For what has appeared so far is only a sample, part of an original idea by art lecturer Peter Hill to auction his new novel on the net.
Instead of sending scores of copies to literary agents and publishers he has put a chapter on his web site and invited agents to come to him.
"I have had my own site, called the Museum of Contemporary Ideas, for more than a year and had about 10,000 people from all over the world pass by," Hill says. "So it seemed an ideal place to sell my novel.
"Many writers and artists see the net as a vehicle for developing creative ideas and I am looking forward to staging exhibitions linked to the novel. I wrote a bad novel 20 years ago which never got published but I think this one deserves to go into print."
Callers at his site will certainly find the first chapter intriguing. They will meet Zoran, a Croatian writer, who is "a creature of habit: breakfast at Sweaty Betty's, his favourite caff down on the beach, read the papers she gets in, then return home to write for eight hours with a measure of whisky every hour on the hour".
Other figures to emerge are Zoran's effete London agent, Helen Wolfe Brown, and Jacko, a taxi driver who used to transport art works to the art fairs. Hill says he has written 40,000 words, about half the novel, and promises to introduce us to gallery owners, publishers of glossy art magazines, curators and critics.
One suspects he is going to enjoy killing them off in print, in much the same way as the makers of Theatre of Blood, the classic British spoof horror film, killed off a clique of London critics.
Hill is no lover of the art world. Born in Glasgow in 1953, he studied art, travelled to art fairs in the 1980s and went on a British Council lecture tour but found his own abstract ideas were ignored. He ended up teaching in Hobart, Tasmania, where he created his "museum".
Supposedly located on Park Avenue, Manhattan, with "lecture theatres enhanced by infrared amplification facilities backed up by off-planet broadcasting systems", it is a clever hoax.
The novel, however, is not a hoax. He has been contacted by agents in London and Tokyo and sent out further sample chapters of his work. "I shall wait for a further three or four weeks to see what further response there is and then invite my chosen agent to auction the novel," Hill says.
Alan Mitchell on the promotion worth $400 million
The battle of the Pogs is upon us. Since the Pog was introduced into Britain last year, this latest playground craze has swept the country, captivating five to 11-year-olds, boys and girls alike. Now these little tiddlywink-like tokens have become the subject of a marketing war between Britain's snack companies. And if safety campaigners have their way, they could also trigger new legislation.
The Pog craze took off when a Hawaiian drinks company revived an old Hawaiian game as a promotion for its Passion fruit, Orange and Guava (POG) drink. It put colourful designs on its bottle tops so that kids could collect them. The kids went crazy.
The American games entrepreneur Doug McFadden (other hits: Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary) and friends liked the promotion so much they bought the company. Now they are turning it into a global brand. Mr McFadden is in London this week to sign up a major drinks company to sell Pog drink across Europe.
The success secret behind the game of Pog, he says, is its old-fashioned simplicity. "They're like marbles. Kids can stuff them in their pocket, collect and trade them, and they can afford them [in the UK they cost 99p for six]." Parents love Pogs because they get the children away from the computer screen and playing together instead.
Like marbles, they're won and lost in playground competitions, says Barry Walker, chairman of the British Association of Toy Retailers, which last week named Pogs the toy of the year.
All three major crisp-manufacturers, Walkers, KP, and Golden Wonder, have launched, or are about to launch Pog-related promotions. Together, they'll push the UK's Pog population up to around half a billion, or ten for every man, woman and child.
Starting in a few weeks, Golden Wonder will be distributing 45 million Pogs in its crisp packets. Not to be outdone, Walkers will begin placing 250 million Tazos (its own version of Pogs) in packets of Walkers Crisps, Doritos, Quavers and Monster Munch. This represents a magic figure of 25 for every person under the age of 15.
"Walkers' parent company PepsiCo Foods International has had staggering success with Tazos promotions in other countries and, in its experience, at that level of Pogs per capita the craze really takes off," declares its UK marketing vice-president, Martin Glenn.
While the original Pog is cardboard, Tazos are plastic. Tazos also have a notch in them that allows children to stick them together. "We have a point of difference. Ours are buildable," boasts Mr Glenn.
"We are offering the genuine article," replies Nigel Parrott, marketing manager of Golden Wonder, which paid Waddington's, the owners of the UK licence, for the privilege.
Earlier this year United Biscuits subsidiary KP withdrew 12 million packets of Skips after consumers complained that the Pog-like "milk caps" it had used in a promotion could be swallowed. Now, in the wake of reports that a Belgian woman choked to death on a crisp-packet Pog, safety campaigners are calling for the promotions to be halted.
"If Pogs are small enough to be put in the mouths of children they are dangerous. It's an unnecessary hazard," says James Tye, director-general of the British Safety Council.
The council has been campaigning against similar promotions in cereal packets for the last 30 years, and this week Mr Tye called for legislation to prevent future Pog-style in-pack promotions. Both Walkers and Golden Wonder insist that their brightly coloured toys, which are separately wrapped in plastic, are safe.
Indeed, their safeguards go beyond what the law requires. "We have passed all the choke tests," says Mr Glenn. In Holland, where a similar promotion is well under way, there have not been any reports of problems, he adds.
Meanwhile, there is big money to be made out of little Pogs. Last year Waddington's sold more than 100 million of the cardboard discs while the brand's owners, the World Pog Federation, totted up global sales of $400 million. Golden Wonder is spending £3.5 million on its promotion, including TV advertising. It is hoping for a 20 per cent sales boost.
Walkers still expects its Tazos promotion to generate huge sales increases. PepsiCo Food International decided to "go global" with Tazos promotions after initial tests produced sales increases of 50 per cent and more.
In Holland, more Tazos collectors' albums have been purchased than the country has children. If Walkers achieves half of that sort of uptake here, it will be close to overtaking Coca-Cola to become the country's biggest supermarket brand.
PEOPLE whose faces have been damaged by fire, disease or accidents now have a better chance of regaining smiles and normal facial expressions.
Medical researchers have developed a computerised scanner that can create 3-D moving images of someone's muscles, tendons and bones. It offers plastic surgeons the chance to insert exactly the right length of muscle or shape of bone.
Gus McGrouther, Phoenix professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery at University College London, says the device marks a significant breakthrough in rebuilding everything from faces and hands to arms and spines.
He says medical technology can allow doctors to peer inside the body but how nerves, muscles, bones and tendons moved and linked together often remained a mystery.
"We do not fully understand how the eyelids move for blinking or the mouth opens or pouts. We have imaged these muscles and discovered all sorts of knowledge that is not in the anatomy books," he says.
He says the device, developed by the university's medical physics laboratory, could also be used to rehearse a complicated operation. "You would never fly in an aeroplane if a pilot had not be trained on a simulator. But you are all prepared to have an operation with a surgeon who may not have seen that piece of anatomy since he was a medical student. You can actually do things to the anatomy on computer to assess the outcome."
The equipment has already been used to make moving images of the insides of healthy people. The next step is to use it to help patients needing reconstructive surgery.
For example, someone who has lost half their face following cancer would have their healthy side studied with hundreds of anatomical, 3-D moving images, made while frowing, smiling or laughing. The device would then create a mirror image of the internal working of the healthy side, which would then be used to reconstruct the damaged one.
Fleet Street offers many spectator sports The Sun v the Daily Mirror, The Guardian v The Independent, the editorship of The Observer but none is more engaging than the epic battle between the resurgent Mail group and the steadily sinking Express group.
So there was huge entertainment to be had from the Daily Mail on Monday when it trumpeted its sales had risen above two million.
For Paul Dacre, Editor of the Daily Mail since 1992 after the 21-year reign of Sir David English (now chairman of Associated Newspapers and Editor-in-Chief), the announcement will have offered several reasons for relish. In an era when sales of national newspapers have been falling, to sell more than two million copies a day up 250,000 copies on a year ago and for the first time for 28 years is a huge achievement in itself, albeit with help from a scratchcard promotion and the death of Today.
It meant, too, that under Dacre the Daily Mail has achieved a significantly higher sale than was ever recorded during the editorship of the legendary English.
A greater reason for relish, however, was that sales of the Daily Mail went up in January as those of its rival, the Daily Express went down. In what many see as a final attempt by Lord Stevens of Ludgate, chairman of Express Newspapers, to revive the flagging sales of his two flagship national titles, new editors were appointed in December to the Daily Express and Sunday Express.
Both Richard Addis and Sue Douglas got their main experience on the Daily Mail. With the promise of millions of pounds of investment, they have hired and fired with abandon. Addis, who went to the Daily Express, instantly recruited five of Dacre's most senior lieutenants as well as a clutch of his star writers, some of whom turned down offers of even more money to stay.
At the Sunday Express, Douglas recruited eight journalists, having approached 40, from The Sunday Times, where she had been deputy editor. She has recruited Julie Burchill from The Sunday Times as a columnist and moved the paper upmarket.
Neither Addis nor Douglas will get sympathy from the cut-throat world of Fleet Street, but both deserve it: simply to arrest four decades of declining sales would be an achievement.
Yet in January, when sales start rising after the Christmas dip, sales of both their papers fell again. When the monthly Audit Bureau of Circulation report is published on Friday it is expected to show that the Daily Mail increased by 79,000 last month against a loss by the Daily Express of about 19,000.
Meanwhile, the Sunday Express shed 43,000 sales, as The Mail on Sunday boosted its circulation by more than 100,000 to over 2.1 million and for the first time in history The Sunday Times, at about 1,295,000, sold more than the Sunday Express.
The sales figures will put both editors under renewed pressure to show results for the money they have spent some writers are now on more than £100,000 a year. They need the investment they have been promised in the sort of reader promotions at which the Mail group excels. That investment needs to be continuous rather than spasmodic a new Express scratchcard game last month failed to lift sales.
Cover Story - The web is a catch-all for every musical taste. Nick Rosen suggests some of the best sites to keep an eye - and ear - on
Every kind of music from Bach to Blur is available on the Internet, but it also offers huge opportunities to smaller players in the industry. They are free to put up their own web sites on an equal basis with the world's biggest labels.
Take "trip hop", for example, a new style now sweeping through some British clubs. Though still a tiny minority interest, it has a site on the net, with sound samples and pictures competing with the likes of the Rolling Stones, Cliff Richard, Black Sabbath, Mantovani and even classical composers.
The net is also a fan's paradise, packed with information and lyrics. They can analyse, for example, the true meaning of Wonderwall by Oasis. Enthusiasts use it to find where to buy rare records, join fan clubs, check out what's hot or gather pop trivia to dazzle their friends.
The big names are all on the net already but the wannabes are also there, in ever-increasing numbers. The latest garage band from San Francisco, bangra from Bengal, soca from Brazil, or electrodub from Peckham are just a mouse click away. Here are some that are well worth tapping into.
STARTING POINT MUSIC LINKS
Supersonic Guide to British Indie Music
http://www.freestyle.com/supersonic/Grand Central
A "safe haven for Britpop" designed for Americans.
http://www.grfn.org/mod/grand/Underground Music Archive
http://www.uta.edu/library/internet/classed/class30.html
Internet Music Resource Guide
http://www.teleport.com/celinec/music.html
Rocktropolis
http://rocktropolis.com/
CLASSICAL
Bach
Bach's official page has a searchable index of the composer's work, including a detailed biography.
http://www.tile.net/tile/bach/RCA Victor Classical World
Not as sombre as the other classical sites, and even includes an idiot's guide to classical music.
http://www.rcavictor.com/rca/hits/index.html
Nick & Cyrene's Classical Music Links<nip> Lots of useful links; operas, composers, performers, what's new, record labels and events.
http://westnet.com/ngcpc.music.html
POP, INDIE, RAVE
The most popular artists have official sites (produced by them and/or their record company) as well as unofficial ones (produced by fans). It's interesting to see which is better, the official blurb or the adulation of a fan with access to a university computer somewhere in Utah. There are also sites such as the rave-hater's page, where you can pillory your most hated bands.
There are many music "newsgroups" where fans discuss their favourite artists and argue over which guitar riff is the best.
Bjork
Graphically this is one of the best sites, but the audio excerpt from It's Oh So Quiet lasted ten minutes and produced only 11 seconds of Icelandic madness.
http://www.bjork.co.uk/bjork/
Everything But The Girl
Unofficial site:
http://www.eskimo.com/vready/ebtg.htm
Official site:
http://www.ebtg.com/
A very personalised site with superb pictures.
Blur
Unofficial site:
http://lispstat.alcdsoton.ac.uk/prbt/blur/
Official site:
http://www.musicbase.co.uk/blur/
Michael Jackson
http://www.en.com/users/brown-mt/smb/main.html
His official net fan club:
http://www.fred.net/mjj/ Pulp
http://ns.ph.liv.ac.uk:80/mbs/pulp/pulphome
Oasis
http://www.cts.com/browse/ginger/
ABBA
http://phymat.bham.ac.uk/ABBA/
http://phymat.bham.ac.uk/ABBA/
Jimi Hendrix
http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/jimi/jimi.html
Elvis
Unofficial homepage:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/elvis/elvishom.html
This site asks you to report any sightings of the King!
Future Sound of London
Science-fiction sounds.
http://raft.vmg.co.uk/fsol/
The World Wide Jungle page
http://durhamnet.com/jungle/
Tribe
A site for rave culture
http://benji.colorado.edu:8080/tribe/
Newsgroups worth checking out
alt.music.independent
alt.music.blur
alt.music.pop.will.eat
rec.music.beatle
alt.music.bjork
alt.fan.madonna
alt.music.alanis
rec.music.tori-amos
alt.music.oasis
tw.bbs.music.pop
Newsgroups with more beats per minute
alt.rave
alt.music.techno
SOUL, JAZZ, R&B
BB King
An interactive biography as told by the man himself.
http://bbking.mca.com/
The Cardigans homepage
Impressive site from this Swedish jazz/pop band.
http://lindstedt.mech.kth.se/
Newsgroups with soul
rec.music.bluenote
alt.music.soul
REGGAE, HIP-HOP
Capleton
An excerpt from the single Obstacle is excellent quality.
http://www.defjam.com/defjam/artists/capleton/capleton.html
Hip-Hop Connection
The UK's hip-hop magazine on the net.
http://www.musicians-net.co.uk/
UK Hip-Hop
All you need to know, including a listing of UK artists.
http://www.aaln.org/
Bob Marley
Unofficial homepage:
http://www.missouri.edu/
Happy 50th birthday Bob Marley page: http://www.netaxs.com/aaron/Marley/Marley.html
Other sites:
http://gene.fwi.uva.nl/
http://www.in.tu-clausthal.de/wallner/BobMarley/BobMarley.html
Funky Newsgroups
rec.music.hip-hop
rec.music.funky
alt.music.ska
Nick Rosen can be e-mailed at nick@intervid.co.uk
Additional research by Zoe Baxter
THE BBC's quest to boost its drama ratings and compete effectively with ITV in this field is showing promising signs of paying off. The corporation occupies ten of the top 20 drama programmes in our ratings chart this week.
The epic series Our Friends in the North shot straight to the top of the BBC2 ratings chart with 5.1 million viewers. The question now is whether it can maintain this audience for all nine episodes.
The BBC's latest detective series, Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, is also scoring well with more than ten million viewers.
The BBC cannot afford to be complacent, however. ITV is soon to air a raft of strong popular drama series which regularly top the ten million mark. These include Kavanagh QC, Peak Practice and Band of Gold 2.
THE ubiquitous microchip has moved into one of the most traditional areas of British industry the blending of fine whisky.
United Distillers produces 26 million cases of blended brands, including Johnnie Walker Black Label and Bell's, every year, which means that every week staff in 49 warehouses need to move 20,000 casks of different whiskies.
It used to take five full-time employees to co-ordinate the task but now, thanks to a Windows-based application from Attar Software, based on Attar's XpertRule, it takes one person just three hours a week.
FELIX the Cat has a site on the World Wide Web thanks to an American student.
Felix, the creation of cartoonist Otto Messmer, is 77 this year. He was the most popular animated character in the world before Mickey Mouse. Now David Gerstein, a student in Massachusetts, has created a net site about Felix.
Cartoons on the site include the first Felix strip, which appeared in Britain in the Daily Sketch on August 1, 1923, three weeks before it appeared in the Boston American.
Gerstein has assembled a filmography of all Felix films made between 1919 and 1936. Visitors can download the theme tune of Felix's TV series in the 1950s and Felix Kept On Walking, one of the big hits of 1923.
The page is at http://wso.williams.edu/faculty/psci335/gerstein/felix.html.
Tony Cawkell wonders if our viewing habits are about to change
Ayear is a long time in electronic technology, which makes the design of the UK's television system positively ancient. When it was introduced in 1936, the concept was regarded as brilliant.
It was, and still is, an analogue system, although after the Second World War the picture was improved from 405 lines in black and white to 625 lines in colour. It is surprising that a public used to the cinema, which provides a picture equivalent to at least 3,000 lines, is not more concerned about quality.
Now the world has gone digital and television has struggled to dislodge the enormous investment in the present analogue system. There are about one billion receivers worldwide. Forty million of these are in the UK, still receiving an acceptable picture.
But digital television will make several changes. There will be a greater choice of programmes. Picture quality will be somewhat better and, eventually, much better, as will stereo sound. Later, high-definition television will be digital. Later still, the arrival of digital interactive TV and converging digital sources on the digital information superhighway will demand it.
Changes in a TV picture produce smooth changes in transmitted analogue signals. For digital transmission, picture changes are converted into coded impulses which may be processed, stored or regenerated by semi-conductor chips like those used in a computer, while analogue signals are far more difficult to manage.
Digital signals can be compressed at the transmitter and decompressed at the receiver by inexpensive chips. They then occupy much less space in the transmission channel and channels are in short supply. Multiplexing enables a number of channels to be transmitted independently within a single channel frequency. These advances mean that about 20 new channels will become available. Today's TV services will linger on for some years.
Technical details are still being debated for digital TV. A set-top box, resembling that used for satellite reception but probably costing more, will enable sets currently in use to receive digital signals. A buyer will have to decide if it is worth buying the new box for greater programme choice.
Regulatory aspects are dealt with in the Broadcasting Bill, which is at the committee stage.
Twelve-year licences will be issued to new operators, depending on their ability to convince the Government that they can offer a good service. It is possible that people in the UK will be receiving digital programmes by next year.
The major revolution is still some years away, but a high-definition service on a wide screen will result in a much better picture.
Later we may see interactive services on an all-digital information superhighway which includes "movies on demand" during the first decade of the new century.
Tony Cawkell is an information technology consultant and author.
TO SPEED download times even further, the vastly comprehensive full Contents page of the Internet edition of The Times and The Sunday Times has been restricted to give specifically the section and allied sub-sections requested.
The full list of daily hypertext links can still be reached, by clicking on to the Index, the top tab of the bar running down the left of the page. The link to the front page has been moved to the top right of the page.
Readers who might have experienced difficulties with the Personal Times should be aware that access via the Interactive Times button is intended for those wishing to change their a la carte choice of items from the edition. To access the personal contents page, use the bottom (black) button on the tab-bar.
Interest continues to grow, and registered readership now stands at over 80,000. In the past week, the web studio has been visited by journalists from Denmark, Ireland, China, New Zealand and Brazil eager to learn about The Times on the Net. The edition can be found on http://www.the-times.co.uk
Intelligent software that can "understand" what you want from the Internet, then go off and find it for you without bringing along a load of irrelevant garbage as well, has been developed by a British firm specialising in neural networks, computers that mimic the human brain.
The big problem with searching the net is that all current search engines simply look for the key words you enter, and the more often the key word appears in the document, the more relevant it is deemed to be. As a result, search results always seem to include tracts from religious fundamentalists, and at least one collection of science fiction.
Now a small software company, Cambridge Neurodynamics, has added artificial intelligence to the search engine to create what it calls an autonomous agent, software that knows what you want and can assess material it finds so that only relevant documents are retrieved.
Richard Gaunt, technical director of Cambridge Neurodynamics, explains: "An autonomous agent could be an agent that went out, got some documents that had a key word in, and came back with that. We've put some intelligence into them by using neural networks developed for our facial and fingerprint recognition systems."
The system, called AutoNomy, is "trained" by exposing it to as many documents as you already have on the subject, from which it establishes what you regard as interesting. It then searches the net, comparing documents it finds with its criteria, and bringing back those that score best.
The system seems almost perceptive, according to Gaunt. "It can seem to be pretty clever, even though it is only a dumb computer," he said. "It gives the impression of reading and understanding documents."
Although the immediate application will simply be as a search engine, the implications for the future are immense. "We are going to the management of knowledge. First we had data, then information. Now we have knowledge," said Gaunt.
Your agent, for example, could talk to other agents it meets on the net, and gather information from them. "Agents could talk to each other, so one which has just searched an area could save your agent time by giving it the information," Gaunt explained. "Or if you were not authorised to go in to the area, it could at least tell you that you should apply for membership."
The agent will also look behind the labels to discover unexpected things: "It is the equivalent of getting a trained investigator in a fraud trial. It throws up things you would not have expected."
If you think autonomous agents will be strictly for academics or professionals looking for obscure information, think again. We will eventually all have one as a cybergofer to organise our electronic lives.
"The dog analogy is a good one," said Gaunt. "The autonomous agent could have the ability to get up in the morning and get the electronic papers, looking through them to find articles of particular interest to you. Or, if you get hundreds of e-mails, it could prepare them for you with the really important ones on top."
It is likely that a shrink-wrapped version of the software will be out in a matter of weeks, costing less than £100. The company is also negotiating with suppliers of Internet viewers such as Netscape with a view to bundling AutoNomy with them.
Court of Appeal. William Boyer (Transport) Ltd v Secretary of State for the Environment and Another
Before Lord Justice Stuart-Smith, Lord Justice Evans and Lord Justice Roch
[Judgment February 6]
The meaning of enforcement action "taken or purported to [have] take[n]" within the meaning of section 171B(4)(b) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, as inserted by section 4 of the Planning and Compensation Act 1991, within the previous four years had to be action, or purported action, which itself was valid under the ten-year provisions in section 171B(3), or which was within the four-year extension after such a notice given by section 171B(4)(b).
The Court of Appeal so held in a reserved judgment in dismissing an appeal brought by the Secretary of State for the Environment from the decision of Mr Jeremy Sullivan, QC, sitting as a deputy judge of the Queen's Bench Division, on November 22, 1994, holding that two enforcement notices served by Hounslow London Borough Council were out of time and should be quashed.
Mr Richard Drabble, QC and Mr Ian Albutt for the secretary of state; Mr Duncan Ouseley, QC and Mr Timothy Corner for William Boyer (Transport) Ltd.
LORD JUSTICE EVANS said that the enforcement notices related to alleged breaches of planning controls which commenced after the end of 1963 but before July 1982. The latter was relevant date if the ten-year limitation period and associated provisions introduced by the Planning and Compensation Act 1991.
The Planning and Compensation Act 1991 (Commencement No 5 and Transitional Provisions) Order (SI 1991 No 2905) introduced transitional provisions which were relied upon in the present case. Article 5(2) made reference to section 171B(4)(b) of the 1991 Act, which permitted the issue of a further enforcement notice within a period of four years following an earlier notice, if the first notice proved invalid or was withdrawn.
The complication regarding further notices lay at the heart of the present case, because both the notices in question were further notices issued on August 19, 1993, after earlier notices which were issued on July 24, 1992, three days before the transitional provision ceased to have effect, were withdrawn.
Mr Drabble submitted that the first notices alleging breaches which occurred after the end of 1963 were valid under the transitional provisions because the old time limit applied, and that further notices were issued within the four-year extension period permitted by section 171B(4)(b).
Mr Ouseley contended that the subsection did not permit the extension, except in relation to breaches which occurred within the ten-year period before the first notices were issued. Accordingly, he submitted that the cut-off date was July 24, 1982, ten years before the first notices were issued.
Once section 171B came into force the ten-year time limit became mandatory, subject only to the provisions of subsection 4 which provided for further enforcement action when the local planning authority had taken or purported to take, enforcement action during the preceding four years.
In his Lordship's judgment, that could only mean that the previous action was within the time limits specified in section 171B itself. If that was not the meaning, then it would be open to the authority to issue a first notice out of time, withdraw it and issue a further notice relying of subsection 4.
That could not be right, and his Lordship would hold that enforcement action "taken or purported to be taken" within the previous four years had to be action, or purported action, which itself was valid under the ten-year provisions in subsection 3, or which was within the four-year extension after such a notice given by subsection 4(b).
Thus the further notices in the present case were not permitted by subsection 4(b) because the first notices were outside the ten-year period. So the question was whether they were validated, or prevented from being out of time, by reason of the transitional provisions in article 5 of the 1991 Order.
Article 5(1)(b) validated the first notices, nothing in section 171B(3) prevented an enforcement notice from being issued in respect of a breach after the end of 1963. So the question arose whether subsection 4(b) or the terms of article 5 itself permitted further enforcement action when the original notice was valid, in the sense of not being time barred, not under section 171B but under article 5.
His Lordship would hold not, because, for the reason given above, section 171B(4)(b) did not permit further enforcement action unless the original notice was in time under the provisions of that section.
The deputy judge placed emphasis on the policy objectives of the amending provisions of the 1991 Act, and like him his Lordship would regard them as supporting his conclusion that subsection 4(b) did not permit a further notice in the circumstances of the case. But his Lordship would also accept Mr Drabble's submission that that consideration was not determinative of the correct interpretation of the statutory provisions.
Mr Drabble submitted, finally, that the question whether the further notices were permitted under subsection 4(b) depended upon the validity of the original notice. His Lordship agreed.
But in his Lordship's judgment the subsection operated only when the original notices were not time barred under the provisions of subsection 3, that is, the ten-year limit, and in the present case, they were. Accordingly, the appeal would be dismissed.
Lord Justice Roch delivered a concurring judgment and Lord Justice Stuart-Smith agreed.
Solicitors: Treasury Solicitor; Bird & Lovibond, Uxbridge.
Court of Appeal. Hyland v Chief Constable of Lancashire Constabulary
Before Lord Justice Staughton, Lord Justice Ward and Sir Ralph Gibson
[Judgment January 25]
Actions against the police for false imprisonment and breach of statutory duty could not be taken by a detainee for alleged unnecessary detention after he had been remanded to a police station under section 128(7) of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980, as amended by section 48 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.
The Court of Appeal so held, allowing an appeal by the defendant, the Chief Constable of Lancashire Constabulary, against the decision of Mr Recorder Morris at Preston County Court on September 27, 1994 that the plaintiff, Francis Charles Hyland, could bring an action against him for false imprisonment and breach of statutory duty. The chief constable's appeal against the decision to give the plaintiff leave to amend his particulars of claim to include a claim for malicious process was dismissed.
In August 1988 the plaintiff was arrested and charged with going equipped for theft. He was remanded to a police station by Lytham Justices under section 128(7) of the 1980 Act in order that inquiries into other offences could be made. He was released three days later.
The plaintiff was subsequently acquitted. He alleged that throughout the three day period there had not been a need for his detention to inquire into other offences.
Section 128 of the 1980 Act, as amended, provides:
"(7) A magistrates' court having power to remand a person in custody may, if the remand is for a period not exceeding three clear days, commit him to detention at a police station.
"(8) Where a person is committed to detention at a police station under subsection (7) above (a) he shall not be kept in such detention unless there is a need for him to be so detained for the purposes of inquiries into other offences; (b) if kept in such detention, he shall be brought back before the magistrates' court which committed him as soon as that need ceases..."
Mr David T. Eccles for the chief constable; Mr Charles Davey for the plaintiff.
SIR RALPH GIBSON said that the chief constable had argued that no action for false imprisonment lay against the police because detention in a police station under section 128(7) was the consequence of a judicial act and depended on the refusal of bail. The order dealt only with the place and not the fact of detention. If the police acted improperly the remedy was an action for malicious process.
In his Lordship's judgment, section 128(7) did not apply to a person who was otherwise to be released on bail. If the police neglected to comply promptly with the provisions of section 128(8) the detention was not false imprisonment at common law.
As to breach of statutory duty, the provisions of section 128 were of a regulatory character and directed to the proceedings of the magistrates' court.
His Lordship could see nothing to indicate any intention that a person should have a civil right to damages for a breach of section 128(8).
That did not mean that a person had no remedy if those provisions were breached; he could apply to the High Court for bail or take an action for malicious process.
Lord Justice Staughton and Lord Justice Ward gave concurring judgments.
Solicitors: Mr G. A. Johnson, Preston; Linskills, Liverpool.
English cases in The Times Law report are supplied by barristers of the Incorporated Council of Law reporting for England and Wales, 3 Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, London, WC2A 3XN: Tel 0171 831 6664; Fax 0171 404 1098.
Court of Appeal. Smith v Linskill
Before Sir Thomas Bingham, Master of the Rolls, Lord Justice Peter Gibson and Lord Justice Schiemann
[Judgment February 5]
A claim brought by an intending plaintiff against his former solicitors, for alleged negligence in the preparation of his defence to a criminal charge of which he had been convicted, amounted to a collateral attack on the decision in the criminal proceedings.
Since he had been afforded a full opportunity to challenge the criminal charge within those proceedings, and since there was no fresh evidence of so compelling a nature as entirely to alter the aspect of the case, the general rule of public policy prevailed that such a claim was an abuse of the process of the court.
The Court of Appeal so held, dismissing an appeal by Christopher Smith from Mr Justice Potter ([1995] 3 All ER 226) who determined, as a preliminary issue, that his claim could not proceed against the defendant, Julian Linskill, practising as Julian Linskill & Co, for damages for negligence and breach of contract in the preparation of his defence to the criminal charge of aggravated burglary.
Mr Smith had pleaded not guilty but had been convicted at Mold Crown Court in 1984 and sentenced to seven years imrpisonment. His application for leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, had been refused on paper by the judge and on renewal before the full court.
Mr Andrew Nicol, QC and Mr Gavin Millar for Mr Smith; Mr Guy Mansfield, QC and Mr Andrew Sander for the defendant firm.
THE MASTER OF THE ROLLS, giving the judgment of the court, said that the leading modern authority on abuse of process in cases such as the present was Hunter v Chief Constable of the West Midlands Police ([1982] AC 529, 541) where Lord Diplock had laid down what had since been regarded as the governing rule on the subject:
That the abuse of process in such a case was the initiation of proceedings in a court of justice for the purpose of mounting a collateral attack on a final decision against the intending plaintiff which had been made by another court of competent jurisdiction in previous proceedings in which the intending plaintiff had had a full opportunity of contesting the decision in the court by which it had been made.
His Lordship said that Mr Smith had certainly initiated the present proceedings and that his conviction in the crown court amounted to a final decision by a court of competent jurisdiction in previous proceedings against him.
The thrust of his case in the present proceedings was that if his criminal defence had been handled with proper care he would not, and should not have been convicted. Thus the soundness or otherwise of his conviction was an issue at the heart of the present proceedings.
Were he to recover substantial damages it could only be on the basis that he should not have been convicted. Even if he established negligence he could recover no more than nominal damages if the court were to conclude that, even if his case had been handled with proper care, he would still have been convicted.
It followed that the present proceedings did involve a collateral attack on the decision of the crown court.
It was not the intention of the House of Lords in Hunter's case to lay down an inflexible rule to be applied willy-nilly to all cases which might arguably be said to fall within it.
Lord Diplock had been at pains to emphasise the need for flexibility and the exercise of judgment: see Walpole v Partridge & Wilson ([1994] QB 106, 116) per Lord Justice Ralph Gibson, that there were at least exceptions to the principle.
It was none the less noteworthy that in McIlkenny v Chief Constable of the West Midlands ([1980] QB 283, 333) Lord Justice Goff, whose judgment was unreservedly approved by the House of Lords, expressed the opinion that to allow relitigation of an issue which had previously been the subject of final decision "must prima facie be an abuse of the privilege of the court".
The court rejected Mr Nicol's argument that Mr Smith had not had a full opportunity of contesting the decision in the first court because the defendant's negligence had prevented him from deploying his full case .
The court considered that that argument was founded on a minsunderstanding of what Lord Diplock had meant. It was plain from his speech in Hunter (at p542) that he was giving his ruling with reference to both civil and criminal cases.
It was evident in civil cases particularly that a party might lack any opportunity to resist a hostile claim, as where judgment was entered against him for procedural default, or might lack a full opportunity, as where summary judgment was given against him.
The court understood Lord Diplock to have been intending to preserve a party's right to make a collateral attack on a decision made against him in such circumstances.
Having reviewed the opportunity afforded to Mr Smith in the handling of his defence and appeal, including the settling of grounds of appeal which drew attention to some at least of his complaints about his solicitor's handling of the case, the court concluded that, even if it were true that valid criticism could have been made, it was impossible to hold that he had lacked a full opportunity to contest the charge.
Were that the correct meaning of the rule, then the rule itself would be virtually meaningless, since it was hard to imagine a case where a convicted defendant could not find some plausible ground on which to criticise his solicitor's preparation of the defence.
The court also rejected Mr Nicol's submission, seeking to distinguish Hunter's case, that the present proceedings were not an abuse of process because it had not been found that Mr Smith's real purpose was to attack his conviction; his only and genuine purpose being to recover damages for professional negligence.
It was true that Lord Diplock had (at p541) attached considerable significance to the plaintiff's ulterior purpose in that case.
The court had no doubt but that the existence of such an ulterior purpose provided a strong and additional ground for holding proceedings to be an abuse.
But such an ulterior purpose was not, in its judgment, a necessary ingredient of abuse: see Walpole's case (at p120). The rule rested on public policy the basis of which was the undesirable effect of relitigating issues such as the present.
The court could not see how those undesirable effects were mitigated by the motive of the intending plaintiff to recover damages rather than simply to establish the unsoundness of the earlier decision.
It was plain from Hunter's case (at p545), that the existence at the commencement of the civil action of fresh evidence obtained since the criminal trial might justify making an exception to the general rule.
It was also plain that the test to be met by such evidence was stricter than the ordinary Court of Appeal test: see Ladd v Marshall ([1954] 1 WLR 1489, 1491. It had to be such as "entirely changes the aspect of the case": see Phosphate Sewage Co Ltd v Molleson ((1879) 4 App Cas 801, 814) and Hunter v Chief Constable of West Midlands Police ([1982] AC 529, 545).
The court referred to evidence said by Mr Nicol to fall within that test and concluded that there was none which brought Mr Smith within measurable distance of satisfying it.
The main considerations of public policy which underlay the existing rule were threefold:
1 The affront to any coherent system of justice which had necessarily to arise if there subsisted two final but inconsistent decisions of courts of competent jurisdiction.
Such would be the case here if there were subsisting decisions of the crown court, that Mr Smith was beyond reasonable doubt guilty of aggravated burglary and, of the civil court, that if his defence had been properly prepared he would and should have been acquitted.
No reasonable observer could view that outcome with equanimity.
The court could not shut its eyes to the possibility that a criminal defendant might be wrongly convicted, perhaps because his defence had been ineptly prepared or conducted.
When that occurred there were two possible solutions: one, to relax the present restraint on seeking to establish the injustice by civil action; the second, which had been favoured over the past century, was to ensure that in appropriate cases the conviction could itself be reviewed: by giving a right of appeal; by providing a relatively low standard for the admission of fresh evidence on appeal; by empowering the appellate court to order a new trial; by giving the Home Secretary power to refer a case back to the Court of Appeal; and by proposals to establish a new review body.
2 The virtual impossibility of fairly re-trying at a later date the issue before the court on the earlier occasion.
3 The importance of finality in litigation. The present rule had been seen by some as a rule invented by judges to protect their professional brethren.
It was of course true that no one welcomed a negligence claim against him; but the maxim "interest reipublicae ut finis sit litium" was not invented by English judges, and nothing, on one view, could better serve the personal interests of the legal profession than endless relitigation of the same issues. If as was suggested in Bleak House "The one great principle of English law is, to make business for itself" there could be no better way of doing so.
But the view had long been taken that a final decision should, save in special circumstances, be final. Those broad considerations of public policy remained compelling. Even if it were open to the court to vary the general rule propounded in the Hunter case, it would not feel justified in doing so.
Solicitors: Strain Keville & Co; Weightman Rutherford, Liverpool.
RESIDENTS of nations from Morocco to the Arab Gulf will soon be able to tune into 56 television channels.
The Nilesat satellite is being built for ERTU, the Egyptian Radio and Television Union, by Matra Marconi Space in Toulouse, France. In a vote of confidence for European technology, it will be launched on a French Ariane rocket.
Nilesat, which is designed to last for 17 years in geosynchronous orbit over the earth, will contain 12 100-watt Ku band transponders and a transmitting antenna with a 2.3 metre antenna built by Alcatel Espace.
The direct digital transmissions will be aimed at the Arab language market, where resistance to "unsavoury" Western channels is high.
The satellite will be launched from Ariane's space centre at Kourou in French Guiana next year.
AN ADVERTISING agency that has won awards for its creative campaigns is now selling itself in cyberspace. Lowe Howard-Spink, whose clients include Heineken and Smirnoff, is showcasing its multimedia activities on a new web site (http://www.lowehoward-spink.co.uk).
The site includes downloadable versions of several TV advertisements, such as Prunella Scales taking that fish back to a Tesco store.
THE Country Landowners Association (CCLA) has launched a news-based web site that covers issues affecting rural life in England and Wales.
The site (http://www.paston.co.uk/users/bhr/clahome.html) includes information on CLA goals, topical issues such as access to the countryside and environmental protection, and the latest changes in EU policy that affect landowners and farmers. The association, which started in 1907, has more than 50,000 members.
In an era when the Pope travels widely throughout the world it makes strange reading that until Cardinal Ratti's election no Pope had been seen in public for more than 50 years.
THE NEW POPE.
CARDINAL RATTI ELECTED.
(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)
ROME, FEB. 6.
Cardinal Ratti, Archbishop of Milan, has been elected Pope. He takes the name of Pius XI.
About 20 minutes after Cardinal Bisleti made the announcement of the election of Cardinal Ratti the latter appeared on the outer balcony of St. Peter's overlooking the Square and blessed the crowd of people assembled there. This is the first time that a Pope has appeared in public since 1870, and is a departure from the practice of the Popes elected since that date, who gave their blessing within the basilica, and as such is not without political significance.
This morning the crowd was much smaller than yesterday, partly because everyone had come to the conclusion that the Conclave was going to await the arrival of at least one of the three North American Cardinals and partly because the skies were grey and heavy with rain. The great Square was covered with umbrellas like great black toadstools. But the patience of the people was rewarded on this occasion, for suddenly, at 11.35, a small wisp of smoke came from the chimney. The colour could not be distinguished, but there was so little of it that the cry went up, "The Pope is made. We have our Pope," and a few moments later there appeared on one of the terraces of the Vatican in a part of the building which was reserved for the Conclave a row of priests under umbrellas . .
The Sacristans signalled for silence and the Cardinal's voice rang out over the Square. "I announce you great joy. We have a Pope," and then followed the name of Cardinal Ratti. Owing to the height of the building there was serious confusion, for some of the listeners thought that Cardinal Tacci and not Cardinal Ratti had been made Pope, with the result that the newspapers brought out special editions announcing Cardinal Tacci's election, and one had the extraordinary spectacle of people arguing violently over the identity of the Pope and supporting their arguments with different announcements in different editions of the same newspaper.
But then came a great surprise. The iron gates of St. Peter's were not flung wide to admit the people for the traditional blessing of the new Pope, and the glass door of the outer balcony remained open. Presently the Pope himself appeared on the balcony, followed by many of the Cardinals.
No man, whatever his creed, could fail to be thrilled by the sight of the crowd standing there hatless in the rain while the Pope gave Rome and the world his first Papal blessing. The utterance of the blessing from the outer balcony has caused such a sensation that already an official statement has been issued modifying its effect. In it the Marshal of the Conclave states that the new Pope had "given his blessing from the external balcony with particular intention that the blessing itself shall be not only to those present in the Piazza di S. Pietro, not only to Rome and to Italy, but to all nations and peoples, and that it may bring to everybody the wish and the announcement of that universal peace we all desire."
Sir Archibald Ross, KCMG, former Ambassador to Portugal and to Sweden, died on January 25 aged 84. He was born on October 12, 1911.
EVEN in his heyday 30 years ago, Archibald Ross seemed the quintessence of the old school of diplomacy. Today he would have seemed a dinosaur of the trade. But he brought to every post he occupied a penetrating mind, a sense of duty, and quiet kindness to those around him.
Archibald David Manisty Ross was the son of a father who was a member of the Indian Civil Service and a mother who had that service in her blood. A conventional education at Winchester and New College led him to an Oxford double first, the Gaisford Prize for Greek verse and a travelling fellowship. When he passed top into the Foreign Service in 1936 he brought to it a trained and first-class mind and a willingness to learn its arcane ways.
His first posting was to Berlin in that worst of all years, 1939. He was transferred to Stockholm when war broke out and stayed there through most of it. Tours in the Foreign Office and at Tehran followed, and at the age of 39 he was promoted to head the Eastern Department of the Foreign Office at a time of chaos and escalating threats to Britain's oil interests in Iran.
He brought to this job, as to everything he did, a measured and formal manner which stood him in good stead when others were wilting under pressure, but in which some of his colleagues detected even then rather too much of old-world diplomacy. The job of minister in Rome which followed was an easier one, but three years later Ross was back in London as an assistant under-secretary with responsibilities for the Middle East.
It was 1956, that annus horribilis for Britain, which saw the Suez crisis and the collapse of Britain's old position in the area which followed. It was also a year in which convention went out of the Foreign Office window. Within, Ross held fast to the old verities of truth, fairness and straightforwardness, and contributed much to the rebuilding of trust between Britons and Arabs.
In 1961 Ross got his first ambassadorial appointment, to Lisbon. He stayed there five years, before transferring to Stockholm, where he had in effect begun and was to end his overseas career. Both missions were places that called for the decorum and calm judgment which were Ross's trademark and he conducted them well, but neither was of a weight to test his intellect and diplomatic skill to the full.
He was much helped in both by the charm and skill which his wife Mary, whom he had married in 1939, brought to their social responsibilities. He retired in 1971, calm and contented, but at the end of a career that had turned out to be less glittering than he might have expected when he joined it, heaped with academic honour and full of diplomatic promise, 35 years before.
Ross had been appointed KCMG on his posting to Lisbon. In retirement, he took the chair of a succession of British subsidiaries of Swedish companies, and he and his wife, who gave herself generously to good works, remained socially very active through a long old age. She survives him together with a son and a daughter, one son having predeceased him.
The Right Rev Vernon Nicholls, Bishop of Sodor and Man, 1974-83, died on February 2 aged 78. He was born on September 3, 1917.
THE only diocese within the domestic Church of England which is not eligible for a seat in the House of Lords, the offshore see of Sodor and Man has not always been an easy one to fill. But in 1974 the Crown made a shrewd choice when it selected the then Archdeacon of Birmingham to take charge of the smallest of the CofE's 44 dioceses. At that stage Vernon Nicholls had had no experience of Manx life indeed, he had spent the previous 18 years in the Midlands, where he had made a great impact as vicar and rural dean of Walsall before in 1967 moving to Birmingham.
He belonged, however, to the Evangelical tradition which has always tended to be supported by the second oldest diocese of the Church of England. Even more important than that, he was essentially a man's man a quality much appreciated in the robust atmosphere of Manx public life. It was wholly typical of him that, when sitting on the Legislative Council (the Upper House of Tynwald in which the bishop has a seat as of constitutional right), he should, without hesitation, have opposed a Bill seeking to end the use of the birch on the island. Such support of corporal punishment might well have put him at odds with the majority liberal opinion on the episcopal bench; but on the island itself, and even among the clergy, it merely served to underline his bona fides.
Vernon Sampson Nicholls was born in Cornwall and was educated at Truro School. From there he went to Durham University and then on to Clifton Theological College. He was ordained in 1941, first to a curacy in the Bristol diocese and then to one in his native Cornwall. In 1944 he volunteered as a chaplain, remaining with the Army until he was appointed vicar of Meopham in Kent in 1946. In the Low Church Rochester diocese he soon made a significant mark becoming rural dean of Cobham in 1954 and even serving (as an independent) on the Strood Rural District Council.
The proof that he was regarded as a potential church leader came in 1956 when he was offered the vicarage of Walsall by the Bishop of Lichfield of the day, A.S.Reeve. This was a tough assignment but still a potentially influential one. The town had too many churches and it fell to Nicholls to rationalise the structure of the Anglican ministry within it. This he did successfully demonstrating that he possessed both financial and administrative gifts, something which no doubt played its part in Bishop J.L.Wilson's decision to offer him the archdeaconry of Birmingham in 1967.
This was another challenging job but Nicholls once again proved more than equal to it. In addition to his archidiaconal responsibilities he became co-ordinating officer for Christian Stewardship within the Birmingham diocese as well as playing a leading part in the building of churches and schools, particularly on the new housing estates of the 1960s and the 1970s.
The summons to become Bishop of Sodor and Man was perhaps an unexpected one for a man whose reputation had largely been made in an area involving the Church and the inner city. But on his arrival in the Isle of Man Nicholls made it clear that he was not prepared to preside over a feudal backwater. Provoking a measure of controversy, he announced that he was not proposing to live in the historic episcopal palace Bishop's Court at Kirk Michael and for some time, before a house was bought for him in Douglas, occupied a perfectly ordinary residence in Ramsey.
To the affairs of the Manx diocese he brought the same brisk air of efficiency that had characterised his way of doing things in both Birmingham and Walsall. More at home with Donald Coggan than he could ever have been with Michael Ramsey, he nevertheless was not notable for the part he played in the wider counsels of the Church of England. Any Bishop of Sodor and Man tends to feel isolated and, in Nicholls's case, this tendency was, if anything, highlighted by his appearing, even by the 1970s, a slightly old-fashioned figure. It was not just a question of his support for corporal punishment (though he was perhaps unwise to return to this topic in his diocesan newsletter, thereby ensuring that his views were much quoted in the secular press). Also slightly suspect, at least by the days of Robert Runcie, was his pride in his association with Freemasonry, of which in his retirement he became Grand Master of the Warwickshire Province.
But the greatest shadow that hung over his episcopate was undoubtedly a sad business that surfaced some years after it was over. In 1990 it came to light that in 1982 the bishop, while still in office, had removed £100,000 from the account he kept at the Isle of Man Savings and Investment Bank just weeks before it went into liquidation.
When this was disclosed, it naturally caused fury to the thousands of other investors who had lost all their money. Bishop Nicholls had, in fact, a convincing answer in that at the time he was engaged in the search for a retirement home, which he eventually found in Stratford-upon-Avon. But he certainly did not help to banish the doubts that he must have had a private tip-off by muddling dates and making claims such as that he had moved his money to Barclays "in order to get a better rate of interest" that later came under challenge. Inevitably anti-clericalism raised its head in the wake of this controversy, with one Manx MP sneeringly demanding to know what "divine guidance" or "light from above" had saved the bishop from losing all his savings, as had most of his constituents.
The whole episode greatly distressed Vernon Nicholls, who otherwise spent a very fruitful retirement as an Assistant Bishop in the Coventry diocese, where his personality and contribution were highly valued. He is survived by his wife Phyllis, whom he married in 1943, and by a daughter and a son.
Brigadier Donald Nott, DSO, OBE, MC and Bar died on February 5 aged 87. He was born on April 27, 1908.
ALTHOUGH he was a professional soldier to his fingertips, no part of Donald Nott's adventurous career is more memorable than the part he played in General Orde Wingate's unconventional campaign to restore Emperor Haile Selassie to the throne of Ethiopia. Nott joined Wingate's Gideon Force, with which the explorer Wilfred Thesiger was already serving, in late 1940. The force comprised a handful of British regulars, Abyssinian patriots and a Sudanese battalion. Officially, Nott was Deputy Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster General, and at that moment the force's only staff officer. But Wingate had little time for staff work.
Having crossed the Egyptian frontier on January 20, 1941, with the Emperor and his bodyguards, Wingate rallied the Gojjam chieftains and their tribesmen in support of Gideon Force and drove Colonel Maraventano's Italians south-eastwards, reaching the near bank of the Blue Nile by April 4.
He then put Nott in command of a small force of British regulars with instructions to pursue the Italian 3rd and 19th Brigades towards the Ethiopian capital 60 miles away. With only a few of the patriots and local tribesmen to supplement his group, which was just 130-strong, Nott was counter-attacked on May 3 by an Italian brigade, well supported by artillery. But coolness and professional training paid off. The skilful siting of his automatic weapons inflicted heavy casualties on the Italians and Nott beat back the attack without undue loss.
Joined by Wingate and the Emperor shortly afterwards, Nott accompanied them on the final dash to Addis Ababa. In defiance of orders from his commander-in-chief, General Sir Alan Cunningham, Wingate conducted Haile Selassie into the capital on May 5 at the head of the remnants of his patriot battalion. Subsequently, Nott conducted negotiations on Wingate's behalf for the concentration and surrender of Maraventano's troops at Fiche, 50 miles to the north.
Nott was mentioned in dispatches and awarded the DSO for his skill and courage in defeating the numerically superior Italian force and the Haile Selassie Military Medal for his part in the restoration of the Emperor. He had already received his first Military Cross for gallant conduct and inspiring leadership in command of a small force engaging a terrorist band at Bani Na'il near Hebron, during the second Arab revolt in Palestine in 1938.
On conclusion of the campaign in Ethiopia, Nott rejoined the 1st Battalion The Worcestershire Regiment, by then in the Western Desert. During what Basil Liddell Hart described as "Rommel's High Tide" the mid-1942 German assault on the British-held Gazala Line Nott was commanding D Company 1st Worcesters on Point 187, south of Acroma between the vital "Knightsbridge" road junction and Tobruk on the coast road.
The battalion was attacked by a German force of 60 tanks supported by artillery and lorried infantry at 0800 hours on June 14. D Company bore the brunt of three successive attacks, during the first of which the enemy penetrated Nott's position far enough to begin clearing his defensive mines. He forced the enemy to withdraw a second time and was still inflicting heavy casualties on the attacking infantry as German armour began to overrun his trenches in the third attack just before last light, when he was ordered to withdraw. He was awarded an immediate bar to his Military Cross for the Gazala action.
When General Ritchie ordered the Gazala Line to be abandoned, the 1st Worcesters withdrew into nearby Tobruk, where they were taken prisoner when Rommel captured the fortress a week later. After starting the war so brilliantly, Nott was to be a prisoner for the remainder of it, except for five months on the run in the Apennines after escaping from the Fontanellato PoW camp near Parma in 1943. Together with two companions, he trekked southwards, begging or stealing food and sleeping in woods to avoid the Fascist militia, the Carabinieri and the Germans.
When such news as could be got from peasants who had heard BBC broadcasts indicated the slow pace of the Allied advance northwards, the group decided to cross the mountain range and attempt to acquire a boat on the Adriatic coast. After a 2,000ft climb and descent, the party spent seven weeks in a deserted cabin preparing for their intended voyage. When they were ready and had negotiated for a boat to be provided, the three were betrayed and recaptured at the water's edge on February 10, 1944.
After release in 1945, Nott briefly commanded the 9th Worcesters and later the Officer Cadet School at Eaton Hall, responsible for training National Service officers. He was appointed to command 4th (Uganda) Battalion King's African Rifles in Kenya during the Mau Mau campaign. Prompt return of his battalion to Uganda and his personal calm and that of his troops did much to defuse a tense local situation when Kabaka Mutesa II was exiled in 1953. At the end of his period of command, he was appointed OBE and promoted to command 158 Infantry Brigade of the Territorial Army at Lichfield.
After retirement from the Army in 1960 he served as Assistant Civil Defence Officer for Worcestershire. He was Colonel of his Regiment from 1961 to 1967 and appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of Worcestershire in 1963.
Donald Harley Nott was born in Leominster, Herefordshire, on April 27, 1908. His father enlisted at the age of 42 at the outset of the First World War and died at Gallipoli. Nott was educated at Marlborough College and at Sandhurst and commissioned into The Worcestershire Regiment in 1928. He served with his regiment in the Army of the Rhine, in Malta, China and India before accompanying the 1st Battalion to Palestine in 1938. He played rugby for the Army in 1929 and 1930 and was in the Army Hundred at Bisley. He also represented Devon and Kent at rugby and played hockey for Berkshire and Herefordshire.
He was twice married: to Eve Harber in 1933 and to Elfride Kahler in 1947. He is survived by his second wife, a daughter of his first marriage and by a son and daughter of the second.
AN IMPORTANT Maya sculpture commemorating the accession of an early king has been found at the site of Palenque in Mexico. A depiction of the king confronting a kneeling captive is accompanied by a hieroglyphic inscription.
The text names the king, Ah Kul Ah Nab, who reigned from AD 501 to 524, and confirms for the first time that he was the younger brother of the ruler Sak-Chik, who reigned for 14 years from AD 487. They were the sons of a long-lived king, presently known only by the nickname "Casper", who came to the throne at the age of 13 and remained there for 52 years.
The new tablet, made from a creamy limestone and carved in low relief, was found in Temple 17, a structure believed to have been built nearly two centuries later, during Palenque's apogee under the ruler Chan-Bahlam. The Mexican archaeologist Arnoldo Gonzalez Cruz, who found the elaborate tomb of a royal woman at Palenque in 1994 (The Times, June 4, 1994), has published a photograph of the carving in the journal Arqueologia Mexicana.
The inscription gives a date in the Maya calendar equivalent to August 26, AD 490, before noting that Ah Kul "took the white headband" on his accession on May 6, 501. It also records that just before this, perhaps as part of a campaign to prove his fitness for the throne, he had captured a noble prisoner, presumably the youth who is shown kneeling before him.
The new inscription can be read almost in its entirety, thanks to the rapid decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic writing in recent years. At least 13 kings of Palenque in a dynasty reigning from AD 437 to after 799 have now been documented.
CLARENCE HOUSE
February 6: The Hon Mrs Rhodes has succeeded Dame Frances Campbell-Preston as Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.
ST JAMES'S PALACE
February 6: The Prince of Wales, Colonel-in-Chief, The Royal Gurkha Rifles, this morning received Lieutenant-General Sir Peter Duffell (Colonel).
His Royal Highness later planted a tree and attended a Reception at the residence of the Indian High Commissioner to celebrate Indo-British Friendship.
The Prince of Wales this evening visited the "Design of the Times" Exhibition and attended a Centenary Dinner at the Royal College of Art, London SW7.
KENSINGTON PALACE
February 6: The Princess of Wales, President, this morning visited the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, London WC1.
YORK HOUSE,
February 6: The Duke of Kent will this evening attend a reception for the Transnet Libertas Choir of South Africa, hosted by the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Marlborough House, Pall Mall, London SW1.
THATCHED HOUSE LODGE
February 6: Princess Alexandra this morning visited the Cassel Hospital, Ham Common, Richmond, Surrey.
Mrs G.T. Banks, former Registrar General for England and Wales, 63; Lord Bellwin, 73; Mr P.W. Bennett, former chairman, W.H. Smith and Son Holdings, 79; Mrs Caroline Bingham, writer, 58; Miss Dora Bryan, actress, 72; Mr Gerald Davies, rugby player, 51; the Earl of Harewood, 73; Mr Tony Howitt, management consultant, 76; Mr Ian Jack, Editor, Granta, 51; Mr Michael James, writer and nuclear energy adviser, 55; the Hon Peter Jay, writer and broadcaster, 59; Lord Keith of Kinkel, 74; Mr D.R. Langslow, chief executive, English Nature, 51; Sir John Leahy, diplomat, 68; Sir George Moseley, civil servant, 71;Sir Geoffrey Mulcahy, chief executive, Kingfisher, 54;
Sir Philip Myers, former Chief Constable, North Wales Police, 65; Mr David Park, author, 43; Earl St Aldwyn, 46; Mr R.W. Watson, former director-general, NFU, 70.
Mr Anthony Everett and Mr John Trotter have been appointed Deputy Lieutenants of Greater London.
A NEW series of CD-Roms will become the first database to make available for comparative research the scattered, unmanageable, yet vital information from fundamental sources for the 18th Century.
It makes possible for the first time comprehensive examinations of all aspects of social development and regression in the period 1680-1830, chronologically, geographically, by trade, office and sex. Individuals and families can be traced through the period in various facets of their lives, from birth, through marriage, work, reading interests, office, children and social groupings, to death.
The series of disks has been put together by John Cannon, emeritus professor of modern history at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and a team of more than 17 advisers. It includes town directories and trade directories; information about births, deaths and marriages, appointments, promotions and bankruptcies, taken from The Gentleman's Magazine; book subscription lists on the first disk you can discover which books were bought by Samuel Johnson; and society membership lists.
The Biography Database 1680-1830 is available from Avro Publications, 20, Great North Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE2 4TS.
The corridors of power are used to being stalked by the great and the good. But only one diplomat reigns supreme in the Clinton administration: Socks the cat.
The most famous feline in America, fresh from mouse patrol in the Oval Office, now has a new job as a tour operator, leading an online guide to the White House's reorganised web site.
"Hi. My name is Socks. I am a member of the Clinton family," he announces. "I will be your guide to the White House web site. If this is your first time here, begin your adventure by clicking on my picture below." Socks introduces the humans in his family Bill and Hillary Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea then gives visitors the chance to see and read about other pets who have lived with previous inhabitants of the White House.
They include Amy Carter's cat Misty Malarky Yin Yang, Lyndon B. Johnson's dogs Yuki, Him and Her and Fala, Franklin D. Roosevelt's Scottie.
The tour also includes a guide to children who have lived in the White House, a map of how to find the building and when you can visit it, an outline of its history, and biographical details of the President and Vice-President. Links allow visitors to send e-mail to them.
A children's version of the tour features Caroline Kennedy's pony Macaroni, a present from Lyndon Johnson, and her dog Pushinka, a present from Nikita Khrushchev. Then there is Rex, the Cavalier King Charles spaniel who shared the White House with Ronald and Nancy Reagan.
"Rex often pulled too hard on his leash and would drag the Reagans away from reporters before anyone could ask the President any questions!" Socks jokes.
A TOTAL of 70 per cent of all British insurance companies will be on the web by 1998, say market analysts Datamonitor.
More than 20 insurers - including Royal Insurance, Allied Dunbar, Sun Alliance, Norwich Union and Legal and General - already run information-based web sites.
Several brokers offer instant quotations for motor or household coverage through their sites and Datamonitor predicts that many large insurance companies will sell policies directly online in the future.
SCHOOL and corporate librarians will see the latest information technology at Computers in Libraries International‘96 (February 20-22, Novotel, Hammersmith, London).
The three-day event includes conferences designed for today's information professionals and a hands-on exhibition of IT products for "the library of the future". For more details, access http://www.learned.co.uk/li/
THE Perkins Group, the leading diesel engine technology company, has bought its core financial and business administration system from Syntech, the computer systems suppliers. The £190,000 order for Syntech's Conquest Professional accounting system is for 32 users and replaces a number of standalone systems.
Children cover their ears against the noise as the Honourable Artillery Company fires a 62-gun salute at the Tower of London yesterday to mark the 44 th anniversary of the Queen's accession to the Throne; Picture: Tony White
The memorial service for Denzil Sebag-Montefiore will be held at Bevis Marks Synagogue, London, EC3, on Monday, April 15, at noon.
A service of thanksgiving for the life of Sir Godfrey Agnew, KCVO, CB, will be held in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, on Wednesday, March 27, at noon.
The life barony conferred upon Mr Dick Taverne, QC, has been gazetted by the name, style and title of Baron Taverne, of Pimlico in the City of Westminster.
Mr Paul Ronald Mildred to be a District Judge, assigned to the South Eastern/Midland and Oxford Circuit.
BIRTHS: St Thomas More, humanist and statesman, Chancellor 1529-32, London, 1478; Henry Fuseli, painter and writer, Zurich, 1741; Charles Dickens, novelist, Portsmouth, 1812; Sir William Huggins, astronomer, London, 1824; Sir James Murray, philologist, Denholm, Borders, 1837; Alfred Adler, psychiatrist, Vienna, 1870; Sinclair Lewis, novelist, Nobel laureate 1930, Sauk Centre, Minnesota, 1885.
DEATHS: James Stewart, 2nd Earl of Moray, murdered at Deonibristle, Fife, 1592; William Boyce, organist and composer, London, 1779; Ann Radcliffe, novelist, London, 1823; Henry Neele, poet, committed suicide in London, 1828; Joseph Sheridan LeFanu, novelist, Dublin, 1873; Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone, Paris, 1894; Daniel Francois Malan, Prime Minister of South Africa 1948-54, Stellenbosch, Cape Colony, 1959.
William Lloyd smashed the 1st-century Portland vase at the British Museum, 1845.
185 people died when HMS Orpheus was wrecked off the coast of New Zealand, 1863.
The main group of the Dead Sea Scrolls was discovered, 1947.
Grenada gained independence, 1974.
From Mr Robert Garwood
Sir, I had reason to ring the British Gas inquiry line today. Perhaps in view of its record on customer complaints it carried a recorded message: "Thank you for calling. All our staff are currently attending an important briefing. Please call back later."
Yours truly,
R. GARWOOD,
60 Kirby Drive,
Barton Hills,
Luton, Bedfordshire.
February 6.
From Mrs Kimberley Jordan Reeman
Sir, Higher education is not and never has been free in Canada, or in the United States, nor has anyone ever suggested or expected it (letters, February 2). Students pay a yearly tuition fee in addition to paying for their books and accommodation.
If required, financial assistance is available in the form of repayable grants, or, for the academically outstanding, scholarships. The majority of students work from April to September to finance their education.
This system engenders a certain commitment and maturity among Canadian and American students, who choose university not as a place to waste three government-funded years of their lives, but for the love of knowledge and as preparation for a career.
Higher education is not a right. It is and should be a privilege, for which my generation (I am a 41-year-old Canadian graduate) was paying the equivalent of £300 a year in tuition fees twenty years ago.
Yours,
KIMBERLEY JORDAN REEMAN,
Blue Posts,
Eaton Park Road,
Cobham, Surrey.
January 30.
From Mrs Ada Day
Sir, One of our Methodist ministers gave us some good advice (letters, February 5), "Don't count the sheep talk to the shepherd."
Yours faithfully,
ADA DAY,
26 Nickson Court, Hazlemere,
High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.
From Mr Simon Callow
Sir, It is one thing to be panned in one's lifetime (First night, January 31), quite another to be falsely maligned after one's death, as has happened to poor Orson Welles, who Benedict Nightingale uses as a stick with which to beat me and my production of Les Enfants du Paradis; guilt by association?
Welles did not, as Nightingale alleges, try to put the whale on stage in his 1955 Moby Dick Rehearsed at the Duke of York's theatre. It was a notably economical and evocative evening, much admired at the time; Sir Peter Hall still regards it as one of the best productions of his theatre-going life.
Perhaps your critic was thinking of Welles's version of Around the World in Eighty Days. Told by The New York Times that he had put everything in it bar the kitchen sink, Welles repaired the omission the following night by appearing at the curtain call carrying that item of kitchen furniture.
Yours sincerely,
SIMON CALLOW,
c/o Marina Martin Associates,
12-13 Poland Street, W1.
February 2.
From Mr Najam Butt
Sir, The refusal of the Australian and West Indian cricket teams to take part in the Sri Lanka leg of the World Cup (report, February 6) should be condemned. The organisers should not reschedule the fixtures.
Would these players have considered abandoning an international fixture in England if, say, the IRA had just bombed London? I do not believe so. This appears to be a petty continuation of the bad spirit in which recent matches against Sri Lanka have been played. Remember, the Aussies were threatening to withdraw before last week's bomb in Colombo.
Yours sincerely,
N. BUTT,
41 Jordan Road, Perivale, Middlesex.
From the Reverend David Mason, Chairman of the Electoral Reform Society
Sir, The single transferable vote would not have the effect on British politics that Anthony Howard has claimed ("Hemsworth, PR and the lessons for new Labour", February 3). The experience with STV in Ireland is that it does not lead to a great proliferation of parties and a party would need around 15 per cent of the vote to be elected in a constituency.
The alternative vote which he proposes is not a proportional system. If you look to the example of the 1990 general election in Australia, where it is used, it led to the Liberal/National coalition, with more votes getting fewer seats than the Labour opposition.
The British university seats, until 1950, used the single transferable vote, not the alternative vote, in two or three-member, though not, of course, single-member seats.
It is up to the British people to decide on the type of democracy they want in a referendum, not for politicians to decide for them behind closed doors.
Yours sincerely,
DAVID MASON,
Chairman,
Electoral Reform Society,
6 Chancel Street, Blackfriars, SE1.
February 5.
From Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber
Sir, I am sorry that I did not make entirely clear to your Arts Correspondent what I feel about contemporary pop (report, January 29; letters, February 5). For more than a decade, I and others have been trying to create forums for the discovery of new composers. This is why I support the National Youth Music Theatre, with two clear objectives. First, to encourage the NYMT's wonderful group of performers, and secondly to bring to the attention of the creative world a young and enthusiastic musical theatre group ready, willing and able to perform new works.
When I sponsored the NYMT's visit to Broadway last year, it was to put them under a spotlight to show just what they could do. They received fabulous reviews and played to full houses, but the lack of coverage of their success in the UK did not encourage young writers to come forward. A full-page advertisement in The New York Times has not yet borne fruit.
Musical theatre badly needs new writers and pop should be one of their influences. However, I continue to feel, from a musical theatre perspective, that the last decade in pop was not very encouraging; it was a pretty barren period melody-wise.
I am not a fan of compilation musicals, but I think it would be very hard to put together a compilation evening of any pop writer from the mid-80s to mid-90s in the way that has been successfully done on Broadway with the songs of, say, Leiber and Stoller in Smokey Joe's Cafe.
However, I totally agree with those who have commented that the pop charts have taken a turn for the better in the last few months. I for one would be very excited if new writers like Noel Gallagher started experimenting in the theatre and I hope that the recent trend, particularly in British pop, continues apace.
Yours faithfully,
ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER,
22 Tower Street, WC2.
February 5.
From Mr Tony Cunningham, MEP for Cumbria and Lancashire North
(Socialist Group (Labour))
Sir, The international community was too late to avert catastrophe in Rwanda. When the media finally started covering the genocide, it was too late for international peacekeepers to act. UN troops were sitting in their barracks watching the massacre, able to do nothing because they had no mandate to act. Millions had died before the international community was ready to react.
We now know that a similar situation is just waiting to happen in Burundi. Members of the European Parliament heard on January 30 in Brussels that tension is mounting in the country. There are two million refugees and displaced people. The capital, Bujumbura, is now a Tutsi city. It used to be a mixed city of Hutu and Tutsi. Ethnic cleansing has already taken place. The Government has asked some non-governmental organisations to leave Burundi.
The European Union, the Organisation for African Unity, the UN and NGOs all want to do something to help. But a lack of co-ordination is hindering humanitarian efforts. Of the possibility of sending peacekeeping troops into Burundi, Emma Bonino, the European Commissioner in charge of humanitarian affairs, told Members of the European Parliament that the EU's efforts are severely limited by its lack of a common foreign policy.
The EU is spending half a million dollars a day in the central lakes region on humanitarian aid. But keeping people alive in the short term will not solve the long-term problems. The international institutions need to devise mechanisms to allow them to help prevent economic and ethnic tensions from escalating into civil war and genocide. In the short term they must act to diffuse the potential for genocide.
Yours faithfully,
TONY CUNNINGHAM
(European Labour Party's
Spokesperson on Development),
European Parliament,
97-113 Rue Belliard,
B-1047 Brussels.
February 6.
From Mr David McKeand
Sir, Christian forgiveness: well, yes. But who is to forgive the insufferable conceit of all us forgivers?
Yours faithfully,
DAVID McKEAND,
Middle Beard's Mill,
Leonard Stanley,
Stonehouse, Gloucestershire.
February 1.
From Mrs Claire Foster
Sir, Together with the pupils to whom I teach religious studies I was interested by Matthew Parris's honest if despairing account of the impossibility of true forgiveness of others and even more interested in the range of responses his columm evoked (article, January 22; letters, January 27, February 3).
I wondered in particular at the accuracy of Mr Richard Gunning's view, that "Christians are not supposed to like their enemies". He is correct, of course. Christians are not supposed to like their enemies, they are supposed to love them (Matthew v,44; Luke vi,27).
The love that Christ taught, universal in its scope and unchanging in the face of any change, would not edit the "hurt file" in Matthew Parris's brain. It would delete it altogether.
Yours faithfully,
CLAIRE FOSTER,
40 Cardross Street, W6.
February 1.
From Mr Daniel Lightman
Sir, Replying to the assertion by the obituarist of Gerry Mulligan (January 22) that "most great jazz artists have matured only in their fifties", Mr Solomon (letter, January 26) rightly points out that many jazz masters did not even live to the age of 50. He should have added that several of those (few) jazz greats who did survive that long had ceased to make any significant musical contribution many years before they reached 50.
In some cases this was due to ill-health Buddy Bolden lived to 62 but spent his last two decades in a lunatic asylum; in others, because the public lost interest in music it regarded as outmoded Jelly Roll Morton's polyphonic sound was no longer appreciated in the big band era; and some such as Artie Shaw, still alive today at 85 but retired from performing for over 40 years simply became disillusioned with the jazz world.
Yours faithfully,
DANIEL LIGHTMAN,
5b Prince Arthur Road, NW3.
From Mr Laurence Cotterell
Sir, Herr Kohl takes his evident aversion to militarism a bit far when he transfers an old cavalry metaphor to the high seas as "the slowest ship in the convoy should not be allowed to determine its speed".
This transfer is the more remarkable when one considers that the original concept is often attributed to, among others, his countryman, General von Seydlitz (1721-83): "the speed of a cavalry charge is the speed of the slowest horse".
Yours faithfully,
LAURENCE COTTERELL,
121 St Paul's Wood Hill,
St Pauls Cray, Kent.
February 3.
From Mr P. A. Rawlings
Sir, How little we learn from history. Today you quote Chancellor Kohl as saying that "the slowest ship in the convoy [Britain] should not be allowed to determine the speed". Perhaps he should be reminded that the convoy system was developed to combat German aggression (ie, the U-boat threat) and only worked because the convoy did travel at the speed of the slowest ship.
Yours faithfully,
P. A. RAWLINGS,
6 School Road,
Sible Hedingham, Halstead, Essex.
February 3.
From Mr Ian Curteis
Sir, In his speech invoking the possibilities of war if the rest of us fail to conform to the sort of Europe Germany wants Chancellor Kohl once more misuses the word "nationalism".
Nationalism is the sense of nationhood, no more and no less. It is as natural and healthy an instinct to a citizen of any country as the sense of belonging to the unit of a family is to children. To imply that there is something sinister and retrogressive about it, and that a nation is really no more than an administrative unit, flies in the face of two thousand years of European art and literature and all we know about the human psyche.
To ignore nationalism is not only foolish, it is dangerous as the bloody reversion of the nations press-ganged to make up the artificial USSR, and the artificial Yugoslavia, shows so clearly. To attempt to build a new Europe by suppressing it is like designing a house which ignores the forces of gravity, and the result would be the same.
Yours truly,
IAN CURTEIS,
The Mill House, Coln St Aldwyns,
Cirencester, Gloucestershire.
February 5.
From Sir Anthony Meyer
Sir, There are valid arguments for relaxing some of the Maastricht criteria for European monetary union, and even for postponing it; and these are quite fairly set out in your leading article of February 5, "A heavy tread".
However, the Germans and others are rightly suspicious of such advice coming from those who have not only been the slowest in the convoy, but have boasted of their slowness; and they are equally right to insist that the European single market will remain precarious until it has monetary stability.
When Chancellor Kohl warns that nationalism means war, he is not overlooking the fact that it was Nato which averted a war with the Soviet Union; he is reminding us that it has been the European Community principle of pooled sovereignty which has imposed restraint on its member states, and that if this principle is rejected there is a very real danger that governments in both Eastern and Western Europe will feel compelled to protect their vital economic and political interests by all means, including force.
I am, etc,
ANTHONY MEYER,
European Movement UK,
11 Tufton Street, SW1.
February 5.
From Mr Michael Welsh
Sir, The Euro-sceptics' advocacy of the indiscriminate use of the British veto at the forthcoming inter-governmental conference, such as that put forward by William Cash in his letter of January 27, reveals their intellectual bankruptcy.
As Chancellor Kohl made clear at Leuven last week (report, February 3), our European partners are determined to press ahead to closer integration because they believe that their national interest requires it; it would be neither morally acceptable nor politically wise for Britain to use her veto to frustrate the wishes of 14 other sovereign states.
The last person to attempt this kind of bullying was General de Gaulle in 1965. After nine months of the "empty chair" he was forced to back down because the other member states realised that the Community could not work if one member required its national interest to prevail over all the others.
If our Government attempted to follow his example the leaders of the European convoy might well come to the conclusion that it was not worth jeopardising the entire fleet for the sake of one recalcitrant member who refused to keep on station. Willing and active co-operation between independent sovereign states can work only if there is an underlying willingness to co-operate.
While the Atlantic Alliance has triumphantly seen off the Soviet threat, the European Community has neutralised the aggressive nationalism that has disfigured so much of our common history by making war between the partners impossible. Most Europeans rightly value this achievement, and they are not likely to allow the British to undermine the process that has made it possible.
Yours faithfully,
MICHAEL WELSH
(Chief Executive),
Action Centre for Europe Limited,
181 Town Lane, Whittle le Woods,
Chorley, Lancashire.
February 5.
From Mr John Gudgeon
Sir, Mr Roger Panaman, who writes to you (February 2) on behalf of the Carnivore Wildlife Trust, himself appears to live in Oxfordshire.
In view of his comments on the diversity of the wolf's habitat, may one ask why no one seems to be proposing to reintroduce the animal there, specifically Church Street, Kidlington?
Yours truly,
JOHN GUDGEON,
2 Clackclose Road,
Downham Market, Norfolk.
February 2.
From Nicholas Wilski
Sir, I read with great interest Jim Crumley's article (Weekend, January 27; see also letter, February 2) about a project to bring back to the Scottish Highlands animals such as wolves, beavers and lynx.
My father is Polish and we often go on holiday to the Tatra mountains where wolves, bears, lynx and wild boar still live in the wild. It makes the pine forests of Poland so much more exciting to think that those dangerous and frightening animals are there.
I think that it is a very good idea to make the Scottish forests also exciting.
Yours etc,
NICHOLAS WILSKI (aged 11),
Claremont CP School,
Banner Farm Road,
Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
February 2.
"Renuncie, Samper!" "Resign, Samper" is a cry now heard across Colombia. The country is still old-fashioned, so the cry is always made in the polite form of the imperative: but as the clamour grows daily more impassioned, the position of the man who is the focus of this ire has become indefensible.
Ernesto Samper, Colombia's President, may soon face impeachment by his country's Congress. He stands accused of having accepted, in his presidential campaign in 1994, millions of dollars in donations from the Cali drugs cartel. Judicial officers, acting with integrity and courage, will soon pass the results of their investigations to a congressional committee. Since Senor Samper's Liberal Party enjoys a majority in both parliamentary houses, he may yet salvage his much-tarnished political career. That, however, would be a shame for Colombia, and the least satisfactory end to the sordid affair.
The evidence in the public domain is so far inconclusive. But there is no question that Senor Samper has lost the confidence of the electorate. Key ministers and ambassadors have resigned. Both the treasurer and the manager of his election campaign are in prison. When the latter stated recently that the President knew of the tainted source of much of his campaign money which the President immediately, and strongly, denied nationwide polls revealed that few were prepared to believe Senor Samper.
The evaporation of confidence has not occurred in Colombia alone: there has, for months now, been an almost total collapse in relations between the American Administration and the Samper Government. The activities of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the extent of Colombian collaboration in the fight against the narcotraficantes, have suffered as a result of "Caligate".
Colombia's people could have to pay a hefty price for Senor Samper's refusal to step down. On March 1, the American administration is due to announce its annual "certification" of countries engaged in the battle against drugs. This brings all sorts of benefits to the certified country, most importantly a large package of American aid and a preferential tariff rate for the export to the US of a range of goods. Last year, Colombia received only a "conditional" certification, based on "American national security interests". But the conclusion was then recorded that Colombia's fight against drug-traffickers was less than wholehearted.
An adverse decision by the US in March would not be without its risks: anti-American feeling in Colombia, now dormant, may be rekindled. Senor Samper, if still in office, would be ill-advised to make populist capital out of Washington's censure. Worryingly, he has not often spurned a populist trick: only last month he sought to circumvent the judicial process by calling for a referendum on his fitness for office. That will not happen, of course, as the rule of law is still held in esteem by Colombians. Senor Samper, however, is not. He should find another job.
Not so very long ago the problems pages of magazines targeted at teenage girls offered advice on acne creams and that first kiss. Now they are more likely to discuss contraceptive pills and that first night. The Tory MP Peter Luff tried yesterday to limit the access of adolescents to explicit material in magazines by introducing a ten-minute rule Bill in the Commons. It is unlikely that the Bill will pass into law, and even less likely that legislation would achieve his aims, but Mr Luff's ten minutes have not been in vain. Exploiting adolescent sexuality for money is an ugly business and it needs to be fought.
It is impossible to ignore the curiosity about sex among teenagers and naive to imagine that their magazines could avoid exploring emotions. Indeed, given the embarrassment some parents feel, magazines could play a part in educating teenagers and encouraging responsibility. But few seem inclined to preach the virtues of restraint.
More, with a significant readership under 16, prints a new sexual position for its readers to try every fortnight. Looks carries a feature on "Phwoor-play". TV Hits advises a reader who inquires about oral sex to "lie back and enjoy it". The magazines may insert warnings, but readers are left with the impression that most girls of their age are already sexually active. Peer pressure is insidious at any time, but few are more vulnerable than adolescents. Fashion matters to teenagers and in these magazines chastity has all the allure of a ra-ra skirt.
Fashion magazines have already played a part in blighting the lives of many young women by draping the most attractive of clothes on surreally thin models. The dominance of this skewed notion of beauty has coincided with a worrying increase in the number of young women with dietary disorders. How much more irresponsible is it to encourage a hedonistic attitude to sex when teenage pregnancies are still too high and evidence strongly suggests that early sexual activity increases the risk of cervical cancer?
Mr Luff, like many parents, was shocked to see just how explicit were the magazines his ten-year-old daughter read. His Bill would lead publishers to print the approved age range of a magazine's readership on the front cover to protect the innocent. Sadly, his measure would probably prove counter-productive. Branding a magazine "adults only" gives it all the allure of the forbidden. The answer is not the heavy hand of statute but closer parental control and an honest searching of editorial consciences.
Parents should make it clear that new sexual positions are not suitable reading matter for girls under 16, reassure their daughters that they are in the majority if they wait, and warn them of the real dangers of early experimentation. Editors and proprietors should ask themselves how happy they are to bid for pocket money by promising sex. They have a duty of care to their readers as much as their marketing departments. They should tread more warily.
Today or tomorrow, an enormous tome will thud onto selected ministers' desks. Two years late, the report by Sir Richard Scott into government policy on arms sales to Iraq is finally complete. The coming days will become dominated by the release of the Scott report, by selective leaks, alleged leaks and strategies for defence, attack and survival.
Readers may be forgiven if they have forgotten what it is about and why it is important. In a sentence, ministers stand accused of misleading Parliament about the sale of military equipment to Iraq and of trying to keep secret evidence that would have prevented directors of the Matrix Churchill company being unjustly sent to jail. The issue is not the rightness or wrongness of government export policy, but the uses and abuses of official secrecy. The charge against the Government is that in the name of the public interest, it resorted to measures aimed at avoiding political embarrassment.
Politicians are gripped by how they can control the consequences of this inquiry. Top of John Major's priorities is the avoidance of a ministerial resignation. Stung by Tony Blair's recent accusation that he buckles under pressure, he will do all in his power to keep the two most vulnerable ministers, William Waldegrave and Sir Nicholas Lyell, in their posts. If he manages to do so, he hopes he will be judged as vindicated by Sir Richard. If he does not, Labour will jubilantly claim its own victory.
To this end, the Government seems prepared to use every power at its disposal. One of these is the ability to control the report's publication schedule. For those politicians whose careers are on the line, the defence strategy can begin in earnest tomorrow. For other parties to the issue, lawyers, the unjustly accused and the pressure groups for civil liberties, the wait will be longer. Ministers will have a languid week in which to reflect upon Scott's findings and prepare their soundbites. They have allowed no such luxury to anyone else.
Journalists and opposition MPs will have, instead, a scant hour or two late on February 15 to digest a 2,000-page document and pass their first (and, from the Government's point of view, most significant) judgment upon its implications. This may seem a small matter of concern chiefly to newspapers. But it is also one of the instruments of control that the Government is prepared to use against a report which it commissioned three years ago but would rather it had not. A machine wedded to secrecy is being used against a judge appointed to examine the harmful consequences of that very addiction.
For journalists and opposition spokesmen to absorb 2,000 pages and form a lasting judgment upon them takes longer than half an afternoon. Yet the reaction that readers will find in Friday week's newspapers and the instant attack that Labour will be expected to mount will necessarily be upon the basis of a hurried reading of the report.
The summary that will accompany the findings will have been drafted by the Government, not by the author. It will be all too easy to highlight passages that exonerate ministers and to pass over those that do not. When the Franks Committee reported on the events leading up to the Falklands conflict, great initial attention was drawn to the one paragraph in the conclusion quite at variance with the rest of the report that portrayed government actions in a rosy light. Inevitably this tended to colour the coverage of the findings.
Journalists will obviously do their best to avoid being "spun" by spokesmen of all the groups involved. They have been warned of what to expect by Lord Howe's attempts to smear the character of Sir Richard and the terms of his inquiry. They will try not to allow the selective leaks that will undoubtedly appear between now and next Thursday to influence their final judgment.
Ministers should be clear, however, that the full judgment on Scott will not be complete by Friday morning, and the fate of ministers will not be determined by Friday week's headlines. The influence of the report upon the conduct of government will go further than the achievement or avoidance of a ministerial resignation. The Scott report will shine a light into Whitehall cellars that have never before been illuminated. The consequences will take time to emerge.
THE troubled cricket World Cup may survive until its opening ceremony in Calcutta on Sunday but now even that event is the subject of controversy. Local politicians are bowling bouncers at the ceremony organisers over plans for what they argue is a suggestive strip-show.
Sushmita Sen, a former Miss Universe and a heroine in the city, is scheduled to appear wearing scarf-sized national flags of the 12 participating countries, which she will then peel off and hand to team captains.
Protestations from organisers that she will be decent underneath have fallen on deaf ears. "What is planned is totally vulgar," said Samar Chakraborty, a Congress leader in Calcutta. Police expect excited crowds. "The World Cup has enough problems and we don't want another controversy," says a senior officer.
Cedric Brown was curiously camera-shy yesterday. After his news conference, from which TV cameras were banned, he rushed to hide in a side room, before being coaxed out for undignified interrogation in a corridor.
JEREMY PAXMAN made an early departure from the Oldie of the Year lunch yesterday in London. It was a pity, really, for the Wannabe Oldie of the Year award went to Caroline Hook, more commonly known as the northern housewife with a perm, the television chat-show host and recent Times columnist Mrs Merton.
As Ned Sherrin introduced the Merton faux naif interviewing style he explained that it was not abrasive: "No Paxman assault from her." Nevertheless, her technique is not something that Paxo appreciates himself last year he refused an invitation to appear on her show.
A CERTAIN amount of regrouping among the cast of the rugby show The Changing Room which kicks off in the West End tonight. One of the stars, David Michaels, who was to play the part of the full back, was being operated on yesterday for a broken leg. He had picked up the injury while playing soccer.
The incident occurred when Michaels turned out for the National Theatre's side, Teatro Nazionale, in a Sunday league match. "The chap who was playing the reserve has been brought in to shore up the side at fullback and the understudy is now first reserve," says a spokesman.
THE MISERY continues for Yorkshire Water. Now they are running scared of the Devil. Richmondshire District Council has ordered them to pull down a bridge over the River Ure in Wensleydale built as part of plans to extract water. The official reason is that planning permission had not been sought. However, locals claim the council is heeding their warnings about disturbing Beelzebub. According to folklore, bridges over the river failed to stay up until the devil agreed a pact with villagers in the 12th century. He ate a farmer's dog in return for building the bridge.
"He left one stone missing, saying that if ever it should be completed he would eat the locals," says Jacqueline Wells, a parish councillor. "We told Yorkshire Water that if they ever completed their bridge the wrath of the Devil would be unleashed. Now they are removing it."
UPROAR IN the world of easy listening; a hoaxer has been trying to bump off Radio 2's disc jockeys.
The individual, who clearly harbours a bizarre vendetta against certain celebrity voices, has caused panic by spreading rumours that presenters have expired.
Three times recently the man has set up an elaborate web of lies to persuade newspapers and TV companies that a particular presenter has died. Radio 2, with a line-up that includes Terry Wogan, Jimmy Young, and the linguistically-challenged Derek Jameson, refuses to confirm the identity of the targeted broadcasters.
The caller's tactics vary, but this week he rang a newspaper and pretended to be an agent, offering obituary details and bursting into tears for extra effect.
"The hoaxer seems to have a very detailed knowledge of how news organisations work," says a BBC spokesman. "He seems to be very calculated in causing as much distress as possible. It is very chilling. This is not a joke. It is the act of a very sick individual."
Kenneth Clarke and Peter Lilley gave simultaneous speeches at the London School of Economics yesterday. The Social Security Secretary, who was pelted with flour and eggs on his last visit, gave a well-publicised talk to the Conservative Association and was heckled on his way in. The Chancellor's address to the Centre for Economic Performance, however, was private and discreet and he was untroubled. "I call the Social Security Secretary my human shield," said Clarke cheerfully.
There is no shortage of people proposing what they believe to be perfectly -formed means for constitutional change. But those would-be reformers wrongly assume that our present arrangements are inadequate. To lose sight of the strength and ends of our constitution could lead to lasting harm.
Of course, there is no human institution which could not be made better. But it is false logic to argue that any change must therefore be an improvement. First, it is necessary to see the value of what we have. Central to what we have is the Union, developed over a long and important period of our history.
For me, as a Scot, the value of our Union is beyond price. It is the means through which all the citizens of the United Kingdom can live together in unity and diversity. Our diversity is not in doubt. The Union consists of nations of very different sizes. It accommodates two distinct systems of law, three of education, two established churches, different languages, and many distinctive traditions. Its unity is our strength. Under the Union we have built common institutions which reconcile order with liberty under the law, national difference and common citizenship. I feel no less a Scot for having the privilege of being Lord Chancellor of Great Britain.
To "sleepwalk into separatism" would diminish us all not only the Scots. I look at proposals on devolution and ask four questions: What are the constitutional ends that should be served? What would devolution offer me, as a Scot? What would be its practical consequences? And is there a better way?
First, the end must be to ensure that power is exercised as close as possible to the people. Civil society works when it has institutions with which people have an historic affinity, which are close to them and through which they know they can exercise power: a vigorous society in which citizens do more than pay their taxes and then abdicate. Despite all the criticism, I believe the House of Commons serves our people well, and that we should cherish the direct relationship between constituents and their MPs.
Devolution would interpose a new layer of politicians between the people of Scotland and their MPs at Westminster. Yet Parliament would continue to have responsibility for what is vital for the United Kingdom its economic position, its foreign affairs and defence. It would also retain responsibility for the distribution of the proceeds of the Union Exchequer between the parts of Britain. In short, Westminster would remain the centre of power. The proposed parliament in Edinburgh would be just a sop. If you doubt this, ask the senior members of the Labour Party who propose devolution how many of them would wish to serve in Edinburgh rather than at Westminster.
Would devolution increase my sense of being a Scot? No. Would it change Scotland's distinctive legal or educational system for the better? No.
What then of the practical consequences of devolution? What the Scottish convention proposes is a separate, single-chamber parliament with tax-raising powers, able to legislate on virtually everything except what is really important for the United Kingdom. This raises three huge practical issues.
First, the West Lothian question so-called because it was first asked by Tam Dalyell, the West Lothian MP about the role of Scottish Members at Westminster if there were a separate Scottish parliament. If English and Welsh MPs had no say in exclusively Scottish matters, why should Scottish MPs be allowed to vote on English or Welsh matters?
Some constitutional radicals pretend to solve the West Lothian question simply by ignoring it. The Opposition, with greater intellectual honesty, recognises that the question exists, and seeks to answer it by proposing English regional assemblies. This only equates Scotland with an English region. But in any event, the proposal for regional assemblies is a plant without roots. Are the Union and its institutions to be sacrificed for an unconsidered, unwanted patchwork of federalism? So the West Lothian question remains unanswered.
What of a Scottish parliament's tax-raising powers? Some argue that these need not be exercised. Then why propose them? To increase taxes uniquely in Scotland would, I believe, be profoundly bad for Scotland. But in the unlikely event of the powers being used to lower taxes, constitutional as well as economic issues would arise. Government expenditure in Scotland is nearly one-third higher per capita than that of England. How long would English MPs continue to vote more money to Scotland than to their own constituents, only to see it used to fund tax cuts north of the border?
Atax-raising Scottish parliament would soon be in permanent confrontation with Westminster. Break-up of the United Kingdom would then be but a step away. The devolutionists suggest that disputes would be resolved by judicial or appellate committees. Better, surely, to avoid creating the disputes in the first place. From my position in the judiciary, I doubt whether this would bring government closer to the people, or make it more responsive. A field day for the lawyers would be a bad day for representative democracy.
Our living constitution may look untidy, but like the Wynds in the old parts of Scotland's towns it is homely, it is ours, and it has grown through our history. It may need some repair and renovation, but how much finer and closer to us it is than the soulless constitutional tower blocks with which the radical reformers would replace it.
Last year there was an increasing realisation on both sides of the Atlantic that the relationship between Europe and the United States remained the most important relationship for each party, but that recent developments, such as the end of the Cold War and the successful Gatt negotiation, made its modernisation essential.
As European Commissioner in charge of relations with America, I put to the Commission and the Council of Ministers last summer a proposal that the EU and the US should launch a major initiative to strengthen ties in a whole range of policies. This was warmly welcomed by the Americans, and after months of negotiation the initiative was crowned in Madrid last December, when President Clinton joined the EU in signing the blueprint for this new relationship.
Throughout the process, the Commission worked closely with the Spanish presidency and was bolstered by valuable support from Britain, Germany and others who see transatlantic ties as vital to their national interests. The Commission is now pressing ahead with a similar initiative towards Canada.
There can be few European policies which dovetail so neatly with British interests. Most significantly of all, the initiative has kept alive the flame of freer trade across the Atlantic which is very dear to Britain. It does not create a full free trade area, but if, after a joint study by the Commission and the American Government, it is deemed politically, economically and legally feasible to cut all tariffs, a free trade area could ultimately result.
So far so good. A substantial advance in transatlantic relations, one of Britain's major foreign policy objectives, has been achieved by the European Union with no help from the anti-European tub-thumpers in Westminster, but with great support from the British Government. It has been achieved by making friends and influencing people in Europe. That is proof, if proof were needed, that a positive attitude to Europe pays far more dividends than the penny-wise and pound-foolish approach of defending "national sovereignty" at all costs.
Britain on its own could not have achieved this major step. But by joining with EU partners who share Britain's priorities, effective action was possible. This illustrates the point made by Raymond Seitz, former American Ambassador in London, that Britain can maximise its influence on America by working through Europe. The realistic choice for Britain is not between America and Europe. It is, rather, between seeming semi-detached from and hostile to Europe as the Euro-sceptics wish and being positive towards Europe and therefore influential in strengthening the transatlantic relationship. If Britain wants to go further, as the Foreign Secretary's most welcome speech yesterday suggests, it must persuade its EU partners that free trade with America is in their interest too. The Euro-American initiative proposed by Brussels and backed by all 15 EU countries shows that in advocating closer relations Britain is pushing at a door already two-thirds open.
That door will open wider only if others feel that Britain wants to strengthen rather than dilute Europe by removing more barriers to trade with America. In my view, persuading them of this is perfectly possible, provided that the Foreign Secretary's positive approach is not distorted by those wishing to misrepresent it as giving encouragement to Euro-sceptics who wish to detach Britain from Europe. These objectives can be achieved only through Europe.
The same applies to the removal of economic barriers worldwide. Europe as a whole, negotiating as a single unit, has opened far more world markets than any one country could have done on its own, as even the most blinkered sceptic would be hard pushed to deny. The biggest bonfire of trade barriers that the world has ever known was ignited by Brussels through Gatt, with the support of Britain and other countries. Those who had blocked the deal in the past were won over because the advocates of free trade convinced them that Europe would be stronger in the world as a result. And hard though it is for Euro-sceptics to swallow, the European Commission was the toughest advocate of them all.
The British people are told by much of the media to see every policy emanating from across the Channel as threatening our right to govern ourselves, not as a chance to boost our influence. The development of Europe's relationship with America shows how untrue this is.
This Government must show that such fears are unfounded, and must highlight the benefits of EU membership. It has chosen to do so in its reaction to the new era in Euro-American relations, and wisely so. It must apply the same approach elsewhere, weighing up every issue in the balance of British interests, rather than heeding those who cry "Save our sovereignty" whenever anything comes from Brussels, however much it may be in Britain's and Europe's interest.
One of the occupational hazards of spending hours alone in a darkened room watching strange documentaries is that you become specially attuned to particular narrators. It's like acquiring a new set of friends - they only have to utter a few words and you pretty much know what sort of evening you are in for.
Let me introduce you. First, meet the supremely calm Veronika Hyks she normally means we are on BBC2 watching serious science. Then there's Jancis Robinson. Hardly needs an introduction these days - BBC2 again, could be wine, could be managerial melodrama, normally some nice music playing in the background. Andrew Sachs, now he's more difficult - a sort of cross-channel utility narrator who can pop up anywhere with anything, but tends to specialise in medicine and the tragedy of the human condition. When you hear Sachs, you know you are not in for many laughs.
Two of the Big Three were on duty last night and I'll begin with Robinson on the ground that The House (BBC2) has become an almost unmissable event. That said, when Robinson opens with "Act two of Wagner's marathon opera Die Meistersinger and the trumpet players have time on their hands..." you sense that Michael Waldman's wonderful series is beginning to run out of puff.
Last night, despite Robinson's best endeavours, the dramas were few and far between. Mike Morris, our man in personnel at the Royal Opera House, finally got a new agreement with the unions, revealing in the process that the basic rate for stage crew was around £27,000 a year. At £200 a ticket, I made that three rows of front stalls per salary. Presumably, Jeremy Isaacs gets the circle.
What else? We met the barmen who have spent the last 30 years working opposite ends of the Crush Bar without talking to each other "there's a sea of tranquillity between us". We eavesdropped on auditions for The Nutcracker at the Royal Ballet School, where young talent succumbed to trial by whispered asides. "Every performance will be different - she'll forget where she's going."
And we met Naomi, the pretty 12-year-old who was picked to play Clara for the opening night, didn't forget where she was going and danced beautifully. "Ooh, I feel all tingly," trilled the school's principal from the wings. Bah, happy endings, can't bear‘em.
Actually, by that stage, we were in need of a few happy endings. A double dose of Sachs, a little earlier, had been conspicuously short of them. Sachs's duties began with Great Ormond Street (BBC1), a programme very similar in style to The House - but with a wholly different emotional impact.
These are real, life-threatening crises and what we are doing watching them escapes me. I have this ghastly picture of a BBC producer creeping up to tearful parents to ask: "Do you mind if we film your every move while you wait to see whether your daughter pulls through? We won't be in the way. Sorry, was that a yes or a snivel?"
Goodness knows what the Amjad family can have made of it, having flown in from Pakistan with their seriously ill daughter, Sarah. Perhaps all patients in British hospitals have film crews following them. Pretty soon, of course, they will have.
Sarah's story was doubly awful. First, because the original, very reassuring prognosis turned out to be horribly wrong. In tightly edited succession, Sarah went from "I can't promise, but you probably won't need an operation" to biopsies, ultrasounds scans, an operation, pathology tests, and eventually chemotherapy. The news was broken bluntly to her worried parents but nothing like as bluntly as it was to the cameras in the operating theatre. "I don't think it's looking good...it looks like a very nasty tumour...I wouldn't be too optimistic."
The second unedifying aspect of Sarah's treatment was the struggle her parents had paying for it. The cameras watched as an initial deposit of £4,000 (raised by her extended family) was quickly used up. "I can pay another £2,000 tomorrow," promised her father. The hospital, fairly but firmly, insisted on another £4,000. The treatment eventually cost the family £30,000. I wouldn't have blamed Mr Amjad if he had turned to the cameras and asked the BBC to pay for the film rights.
Sachs was back again later with The Decision (Channel 4), a series that honours its promise to look at the ethics of modern medicine but often ignores the underlying science. Last night the dilemma under consideration was that facing transsexuals, the unfortunate one in 17,000 trapped inside bodies of the wrong gender.
The cameras followed three transsexuals travelling to Amsterdam in search of happiness, hormone treatment and radical surgery. But on the way we ignored several bits of important science. "Post-mortems reveal that the brains of transsexuals are the brains of the gender they always believed they were." No further evidence. "It is a very simple diagnosis." No further evidence. "Many children grow out of their gender confusion." No evidence and no quantification which was worrying, given that one of our subjects was 131/2.
He had been born she, was called Becky at school, Fred at home but actually wanted to be Rick. He wanted Rick to be short for Richard but had run into parental opposition familiar to adolescents of either sex. His well-intentioned mother wanted Rick to be short for Reuben. "That's going to make my life even harder at school." I think he had a point.
Lynne Truss is on holiday
Why is the Government stopping at primary school league tables? Why does it not go further? A good teacher should not be tarred by the performance of a bad school, or a bright child be lumped in with dunces. There should be national league tables of teachers, of children, even of parents. Gillian Shephard and her schools inspector, Chris Woodhead, are missing a trick. They could prove conclusively that the middle classes are top, that exams "work", that smart schools do best, that the poor are dumb and getting dumber. Why not? There might be votes in it.
I leafed through yesterday's announcement on school standards, full of the platitudes and factoids beloved of the modern audit. Mr Woodhead has found that the teaching of 11 to 14-year-olds is "disturbingly weak". Schools are subject to "unacceptably wide variations". One in five lessons is of "poor quality". Shortage of books and equipment is affecting a "disturbing proportion" of primary schools. Standards need to rise in half of all primary schools and 40 per cent of secondaries. Mr Woodhead's team have counted (but not named) 15,000 teachers who should be sacked, of whom a neat 7,500 are in secondary schools.
This is useless information. It is gibberish, bumpf, make-work for bureaucrats. Such an approach to education policy reminds me of the fate of a friend whose enterprise went bankrupt with a dozen poorly paid, poorly qualified staff. His demise was attended by two brilliant accountants, a brilliant solicitor, a brilliant bank manager and a brilliant civil servant. All gathered with their fees around his grave and tut-tutted at his failure. All were secure in their professions and would not dream of risking themselves at his coalface. In Britain there are clever people aplenty to monitor, inspect, criticise those doing really hard jobs but never to join them.
When the Inner London Education Authority was abolished in 1988, it was criticised by the Government because 20 per cent of its teachers were doing advisory work outside the classroom. As in all bureaucratised services, professionals had fled the front line. Mrs Shephard is imitating the ILEA. She has officials drawing up behaviour codes for teachers, moral and spiritual codes for teachers, dress codes for teachers, assessments, examinations, tests and league tables for teachers. In 1990, Her Majesty's inspectors cost the taxpayer £4.8 million. After five years of scrutinising what they claim to be declining standards, they now cost £11 million. Wheelbarrows are needed to cart their paperwork into the nation's schoolrooms. They recently sent 25,000 schools a 23-item survey featuring such questions as "What are the similarities and differences between social and moral development?" Small wonder they had just six replies. Schools were too busy trying to teach.
I am sure the professional audit has its uses. I like to know that my doctor, lawyer, accountant or bank manager has qualifications, operates according to rules and is up-to-date in his or her knowledge. I take residual comfort from the deterrent value of negligence law. With schools there is little such reassurance, and teachers' associations have never bothered themselves with professional standards. Teachers are not "struck off" by their peers. Too rarely are they sacked by their employers. Hence the need for an inspectorate.
Yet an audit should convey meaning. Parents need to know what is going on inside a school, and that it lives up to some professional standard. In cities, where parental choice is feasible, some means of comparing adjacent schools helps both choice and monitoring, especially where there is no good reason for a wide variation in performance. To be known as the worst school in town might lead governors and the local authority to take remedial action, devastating though it must be to the morale of staff, parents and children.
All of this is to be overwhelmed by a national league table. Such tables may be of use in the case of private boarding schools. For local day schools they are mere Whitehall games. They cannot compare like with like, or measure a school's real achievement in responding to the challenge of its neighbourhood. They are an institutional beauty parade, reducing education to the level of a Eurovision Song Contest.
The Woodhead/Shephard thesis is that a bad professional in this case a head teacher is best improved by being publicly humiliated. A recent report by the Royal Statistical Society dismissed such league table comparisons as meaningless. Researchers pointed out that few schools have enough pupils for annual data to be reliably comparable. A flu epidemic can alter a national ranking by a hundred places. Primary schools are even smaller institutions. I cannot believe a reputable statistician would go near an attempt at national tabulation.
As for yesterday's lumping of good and bad together to validate a welter of gloomy generalisations about national standards, the result is equally unhelpful to individual schools. It is like the Board of Trade announcing that 40 per cent of British companies "could do better" or that one in five is "disturbingly weak". A measure of the quality of this exercise is the unsurprising discovery by the inspectors that two-thirds of schools measured as "outstanding" have a selective intake at 11. As a piece of social science, this ranks with discovering that three-star restaurants serve remarkably good food or that the rich have lots of money.
Professional league tables are now sprawling across the public sector. They have crept into hospital waiting-lists, child mortality figures, crime records, police clear-up rates, 999-call response times, university research output, courtroom efficiency and Royal Family engagements. They arise from a legitimate search for value for money, but rely only on "value" that can be calibrated. Such old-fashioned professional inputs as trust, care, reassurance, time spent listening and the creation of confidence are not measurable. Nor is such a result as a healthy, alert or well-educated person. In a league table culture, only what is measurable counts.
This is government by excoriation. I suppose the pillory had its uses in the Middle Ages, as had the ducking-stool. Not many drowned. During China's Cultural Revolution, any teacher who deviated from a national norm was forced to wear a dunce cap and stand penitant in a public place. Students of the Great Terror know that a proletariat likes nothing so much as a profession in a state of ridicule. To politicians, the nomination of the "best and worst schools in Britain" is the least-cost way of appearing to be doing something.
If the Government response were to devote money and care to helping the "worst", there might be a justification for this crudity. But the whole drift of yesterday's announcement was that the quality of a school depends solely on good teaching as assessed in government tests. Thus Crofton Junior School in Orpington was said to excel almost twice the national average score at English because of the organisation of its teaching. This is the latest orthodoxy. Everybody can see that Crofton excels principally because it is middle-class, all-white and in Orpington, not Southwark. But nobody dares say so.
I am mystified at what purpose is served by the new political correctness. League tables are about rewarding success and punishing failure, but the concept of success and failure that they inculcate is naive. To all criticism of league tables, Mrs Shephard and her officials reply not that they are valid but that they are "popular". So is the Eurovision contest. True, tables get easy coverage. Readers enjoy marvelling at success and gloating over failure. But such pulp faction is not usually part of the public service mission. We expect policy to be directed at improving the quality of a service overall.
If subsidy is needed, it should be directed especially at families least able to help themselves. But I cannot imagine a more crass way of crushing their self-esteem and that of their children than a national league table of primary schools. Perhaps the poor have had their day. But the Tory party's contempt for their future schooling must be reckless. As a victim said of J.B. Priestley's famous inspector, "I remember how he looked and what he made me feel: fire and blood and anguish."
Faustino Asprilla's transfer to Newcastle United is back on. Forty-eight hours after the £6.7 million deal had apparently collapsed amid accusations of bad faith, Newcastle and Parma confirmed yesterday that the transfer could be completed by the weekend.
Negotiations were resumed by telephone yesterday afternoon involving Sir John Hall, the Newcastle chairman. Asprilla, the Colombia international striker, had said earlier after a training session in Italy: "I believe Kevin Keegan [the Newcastle manager] wanted me at all costs."
ROGER STANISLAUS was yesterday sacked by Leyton Orient after testing positive for cocaine at the Endsleigh Insurance League third division match away to Barnet in November.
Last week, Stanislaus, 27, the former Arsenal and Brentford defender, was suspended by the Football Association for a year. He is the first player to have tested positive for a performance-enhancing substance after a professional match.
Barry Hearn, the Orient chairman, said yesterday that he felt the FA ban was a lenient one and that the board had no alternative to dismissal to preserve the reputation of the club and "football in general".
The Orient directors had agreed unanimously that Stanislaus had breached Football League regulation 63, section four, which covers "serious or persistent misconduct".
Hearn said: "The fact that Roger's version of events that led to him testing positive for cocaine was heavily contradicted by expert medical testimony has, in our opinion, left the club with no possible alternative."
Experts say cocaine can improve a player's performance. Dr David Cowan, the director of the laboratory at King's College London, which analysed the urine sample, said: "There is no question cocaine improves alertness. It can sustain stamina and endurance. It might also help a player through the pain barrier."
Hearn said that the "last thing that a club wanted to do was to lose the £40,000 that Stanislaus cost us. However, there are much bigger issues at stake here and we have made it clear that Leyton Orient will not tolerate any form of drug abuse by any of our players. I hope our message is clear".
Stanislaus did not attend the meeting but Hearn telephoned him to tell him the outcome. Hearn said: "He expected it. He was resigned to it and took it in good grace."
Hearn said that he would be contacting the FA to urge the governing body to extend its anti-drugs measures. He believes that samples from entire teams should be taken by officers of the independent Sports Council, instead of from only two players on each side. A total of 280 tests will be carried out in England this season.
THE QUIET ACHIEVERS
SIMON CRESSWELL, 35, a partner in the estate agency Finlay Brewer: "I think one of the reasons why no one ever hears the voice of the middle classes is that we were all brought up not to shout. We were raised to behave well, to be nice, to do unto others as we would be done by. We are too well mannered to stand up and say what we might really think and mean about other sectors of society.
"There is a selfishness about the upper classes and the working classes that is missing from those of us who live in the middle.
"And our fear of offending others has made us a bit of a joke.
"It's been said before, but I do think that it is true that the middle classes are the real workers. We have been raised to believe that hard work, that real endeavour, will pay off. We work to targets set by our mothers and fathers. We just get on with it, quietly achieving because we work hard and believe in things like responsibility and security.
"But no one, and certainly not the Conservative Government, seems to recognise this fact. It's ironic, but maybe we need a Labour government to give us back our worth and self-respect. Perhaps Tony Blair will start to shout for the middle classes."
THE FEARFUL
LIV O'HANLON, 40, mother of two, who lives in a gentrified square in south London: "I am bourgeois on both sides, and probably slightly ashamed to admit it. I live in what I suppose you might call a middle-class enclave in Lambeth.
"In the centre of our square is a garden, the upkeep of which is paid by the freeholders here. But, of course, we don't use it because the people from the high-rise blocks down the road exercise their dogs in it their rottweilers and alsatians and we can't let our children play there because they might be savaged or contaminated by dog faeces. In fact, the chap who was the keyholder was so frightened by the responsibility and the way in which the dog-walkers abused him that he threw away the key.
"We daren't say anything because the yobbos with their cans of lager would send their dog Tyson to rip out our throats. In a sense, I suppose you could call us the oppressed middle classes of Lambeth because, when a neighbour of mine recently applied for planning permission for a tiny extension to his house, he was refused by the council on the ground that his house was quite big enough already.
"Meanwhile, the properties owned by the housing associations are allowed to do whatever they want. When my friend questioned his refusal, he was asked why he wanted to live here and was told that Lambeth didn't want the middle classes. Even though, of course, we're probably the only residents who pay their rates.
"Most of us here are liberal middle- class, and we have got to the stage where we would shudder to say boo to a burglar for fear of not understanding his motivation."
THE QUIET REBEL
ALIXE KINGSTON, 41, mother of two, who lives in a leafy suburb of Twickenham: "There is a stigma in society about being middle-class. In the current climate of political correctness you cannot say anything derogatory about any group of the population apart from the middle classes. We are sneered at and despised for being sensible and honourable and responsible. We are looked down upon because we live in the suburbs and don't read The Guardian. And while I accept that there was a time when the middle classes were repressed emotionally, I don't think that is true now. We do show our emotions, we do pay our taxes, we do care and we do take responsibility for ourselves and our families.
"There has never been a middle-class serial killer, middle-class children are not generally on ‘at-risk' registers, middle-class people don't as a rule behave in a way that offends or disturbs others. Yet it is open season for others to insult you if you are educated, employed and decent.
"We are the only people still flogging on, still saying to our children ‘you have got to work hard if you want to get on', even though we have a nagging doubt that perhaps it isn't worth it.
"The middle classes are the glue that holds society together. There isn't a true democracy in the world that doesn't have a large middle class. Without the middle classes you have a dictatorship. Yet no one seems to appreciate that it is the middle classes that are funding the whole show. I think we are about to see a backlash, a middle-class uprising."
THE FA Cup has not yet ground to a halt but its weather-beaten schedule is groaning. Although the Football Association is optimistic of the fourth round being completed without too much delay, it said yesterday: "It's a case of grin and bear it."
Two ties Bolton Wanderers v Leeds United and Ipswich Town v Walsall were postponed for the second time last night. Ipswich will try again on February 13, as will Bolton on February 14. The matches at Shrewsbury Town and Swindon Town, due to have been played tonight, are off, as is the fourth-round replay between Port Vale and Everton.
Swindon try again on February 12 and Port Vale on February 14. Shrewsbury's meeting with Liverpool will now take place on Sunday, February 18, the weekend originally set by for the fifth round. The game, which will, on police advice, kick off at 11am, replaces Shrewsbury's league match against Wrexham.
"Whatever happens, it looks as though the fourth round will eat into the dates of the fifth round," an FA spokesman said. The FA's nightmare scenario is if Grimsby Town and West Ham United draw tonight, which would mean a replay on February 14. The winners would play at home to Chelsea but, because police would require time to prepare, the tie could not go ahead until February 21.
Leeds face a Coca-Cola Cup semi-final first leg against Birmingham City on Sunday, an FA Cup fourth-round tie against Bolton next Wednesday, and then, if they beat Bolton, a fifth-round FA Cup game against Everton or Port Vale on February 17.
In rugby league, two Silk Cut Challenge Cup fourth-round games, Whitehaven v Halifax and Workington v Widnes, were called off yesterday.
Racing at Ascot and Ludlow, scheduled for today, was lost to the weather. However, the Wolverhampton meeting has been switched to the all-weather track at Southwell. There will be inspections at Huntingdon and Wincanton today to see if racing can go ahead tomorrow.
AFTER days spent looking on in helpless frustration at the disintegrating shape and unity of the imminent World Cup, the International Cricket Council (ICC) is mobilising in an attempt to resolve the chaos. Sir Clyde Walcott, the chairman, and his chief executive, David Richards, leave today for Calcutta, where they will call together all the parties involved in the impasse over matches scheduled for Colombo, the bomb-torn Sri Lanka capital.
Last night, it seemed likely that the present state of confusion will remain until the weekend, when the players and officials of all 12 competing nations are to gather for the opening ceremony. Only then, three days before the tournament opens with a game between England and New Zealand, will the ICC be able to convene the discussions it still hopes can repair the damage caused to the competition by the refusal of Australia and West Indies to play in Colombo, and Sri Lanka's reluctance to release the games to alternative venues in India.
The situation reached stalemate yesterday when Australia rejected Sri Lanka's renewed offers of top-level security and elaborate plans to fly them in and out of Colombo in a single day. Stung by what they see as divisive and uncooperative actions by Australia, the Sri Lankans insisted that they must still host the disputed fixtures and Pilcom, the three-nation organising committee, pledged that the games could only be moved with Sri Lankan approval.
Bizarrely, the ICC is officially powerless to act, having handed over control of the competition to Pilcom, but late yesterday Sir Clyde plainly decided that he could not indefinitely stand on ceremony while the game's premier global event fell into discredit.
A past president of the West Indies Board of Control, which on Monday decided that its players, too, should not visit Sri Lanka, Sir Clyde issued a statement from the Lord's headquarters of the ICC in which he admitted to being "extremely concerned by the overall situation" regarding the World Cup. And well he might be.
He added: "Very considerable efforts are continuing behind the scenes to find solutions to the present difficulties. I will be having further discussions with everyone involved in Calcutta over the coming weekend but, in the circumstances, it is not appropriate that the ICC makes any further comment at this time."
Doubtless, both Sir Clyde and Richards have been busy on the telephone over recent days, trying to loosen different parties from their adhesive stands on this matter. Now, though, they have decided that face-to-face debate is the only answer to a stand-off that threatens far more damage to the game than the disruption of two one-day games.
Throughout the winter, the ICC has been involved in legal arguments, first over the bribery allegations by Australia players against the former Pakistan captain, Salim Malik, and then over a ball-tampering charge against the Sri Lanka team, which was subsequently mysteriously withdrawn. Now, the threat of litigation looms once more, with sources in Sri Lanka indicating they might sue for compensation if Australia and West Indies carry out their boycott.
Thilanga Sumathipala, vice-president of the Sri Lankan Cricket Board, said yesterday that he hoped all parties would continue to lobby Australia and West Indies to change their mind. But he added a barbed warning about the losses that would afflict Sri Lankan cricket if they did not and said his board would look into "the financial obligations of the defaulting teams".
Those who feel most strongly about the issue would go so far as to eliminate Australia and West Indies from the World Cup, while the alternative possibility exists that Sri Lanka themselves may withdraw if their fixtures are unilaterally taken from them. Sir Clyde is venturing into a diplomatic minefield which could fracture the already frail harmony of the international game.
None of this is being helped by the political posturing emanating from the host nations. Yesterday, for instance, Zafar Altaf, an official of the Pakistan Cricket Board, accused Australia of "trying to spoil the atmosphere through statements". He also suggested that, if Pilcom acceded to their request and relocated their Colombo fixture, they may still not be satisfied with the offered venue. "There is no end to it," he claimed disingenuously.
What is ever clearer is that Pakistan, whose recent relations with Australia have been anything but cordial, will fall in behind Sri Lanka, even if the Indian elements on the organising committee wish to be expedient and move the games. Arif Abassi, chief executive of the PCB, said that fixtures were organised by Pilcom and added: "We stick by those arrangements."
Kenya, the fourth and last team due to play in Sri Lanka, confirmed yesterday that they would abide by their fixture list, but Zimbabwe, scheduled to play in Colombo on February 21, seemed less certain. Don Arnot, chief executive of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union, said that he would continue to "monitor the situation".
South Africa are not involved in the dispute, but Ali Bacher, managing director of the United Cricket Board, has come out in support of the organisers. "I understand the actions of these two teams," Bacher said, "but South Africa would not have pulled out if we had been scheduled to play in Sri Lanka."
For once, England are approaching a leading event with the spotlight turned off. They enjoyed another practice session in Lahore yesterday at Aitcheson College, Imran Khan's old school, and even the disclosure that they had kept quiet about a hamstring injury to Darren Gough made few waves. He is expected to be fit for the first match a week today. Whether peace will have broken out in this troubled event by then remains to be seen.
THERE were fresh indications yesterday that Diane Modahl may have her name cleared of drug allegations by the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF). She may even be reinstated without having to face an IAAF arbitration hearing.
The IAAF announced that, after a recommendation from its doping commission, its council would discuss Modahl's case at its next meeting, in South Africa on March 24 and 25. The hearing, which was to have been the next step in the 20-month saga, has thus been put back a stage.
However, the arbitration panel may not be needed. "If the council has an opinion that it is not necessary to go to arbitration, theoretically it is possible, but the other alternative is just as possible," Istvan Gyulai, the IAAF secretary, said. "The case is referred to arbitration but, should this recommendation of the doping commission result in a different opinion of the council, the council has the right to change that referral."
Modahl was sent home from the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria, as she was about to defend her 800 metres title, after failing a drugs test taken ten weeks earlier. She was banned for four years, a decision confirmed by a British Athletic Federation (BAF) disciplinary hearing. However, a BAF appeals panel lifted the ban, freeing her to return to competition, though she has yet to race.
Last August, the medical commission recommended arbitration but, having met within a week of the BAF appeals decision, it had no time to examine the evidence. Now the council has been called into the process after research by the IAAF's medical experts.
This latest development suggests the medical commission may have reached a different conclusion, in line with the British verdict.
TWO of Britain's leading sporting attractions, Frank Bruno and Naseem Hamed, may feature in one of the most exciting boxing presentations seen in this country. Hamed will defend his World Boxing Organisation (WBO) featherweight title on March 16, at the Scottish Exhibition Centre, Glasgow, just a few hours before Bruno steps into the ring against Mike Tyson in Las Vegas.
The bouts will be shown on Sky Television, but the spectators at Hamed's bout may be able to see Bruno's defence on the big screen in the hall. Frank Warren, the promoter of the Glasgow show, is discussing the logistics of putting on the double feature with Don King, Tyson's promoter, and Showtime, the American cable television company.
Hamed's contest, which will be against Said Laval, of Nigeria, will also be shown live in the United States. Joe Bugner may also be on the Glasgow undercard.
"There is a possibility of Bruno being shown [at the Scottish Exhibition Centre]," Warren said. "We have to finalise what Sky are doing, but it will be one of the biggest nights for British boxing."
Hamed said that he regretted not being on the Bruno card in Las Vegas, but added: "I like being the main attraction because I think that is where my role is." Warren said: "People are going to be sitting up in the morning wanting to see the Bruno fight. They have got nothing else to do, so I thought, ‘let's get this one on'."
An injured right hand has prevented Hamed boxing since he won the WBO title from Steve Robinson in September. He said that he had not required an operation on his hand, as had been reported, but had undergone cortisone injections and physiotherapy. Hamed is back in training but has not started sparring. Nonetheless, the Sheffield boxer insisted that he would be in shape to "knock out Laval" in March.
After the Glasgow bout, Hamed has his sights set on a defence against Arnulfo Castillo, of Mexico, and a challenge to Azumah Nelson for the super-featherweight title in September in Britain.
Are the mocked and beleaguered people of suburban Middle England about to hit back? Jane Gordon defends a world of good sense and traditional values
It occurred to me last week, at the birthday party of a friend, that there was one thing left in life for which a person can never be forgiven. Half of those present in the elegant drawing room filled with faded antiques were keen to appear effortlessly "at home" with the upper-class hostess, while the rest of the throng were happier to expose, and in some cases exaggerate, their working-class roots, with strangulated accents, aggressive poses and overbearing opinions.
Somewhere in between these two extremes stood the unforgiven. A man called John and me. The only two representatives, at least the only happily self-confessed representatives, of the much-maligned middle classes.
Conversation was a little stilted. I found myself on the fringe of a cosmopolitan grouping that included a man who had recently emerged from an open prison, a woman who had married a Muslim and converted to the faith and a chap who was a political refugee from some unpronounceable African state.
Everyone looked very intent as they described their various origins. Until, that is, someone asked me where I was "from".
"Well, Surrey originally," I said.
"How simply terrible for you," said the hostess, repeating my reply, at the top of her high-pitched voice, to the merriment of all the other guests.
"Actually," I said a little defensively, "it wasn't terrible at all. It was really rather idyllic a secure childhood with lots of freedom and countryside ..."
"Green-belt rather than green-wellie," sneered a member of the smart set.
John, whose upbringing in Hertfordshire was marginally less amusing, was the only person who seemed to have shared what the others scoffingly dismissed as a "Just William, Acacia Avenue" childhood.
At a pre-Christmas publishing party a few weeks earlier I had been subjected to a similar display of comic disdain.
The star guest that night was a very charming (as it turned out) shaven -headed "working-class" writer who had just published a rapturously reviewed novel written entirely in his own brand of provincial patois. The head of the publishing house wore him like a red ribbon on her lapel the whole evening, and at some point during the evening somebody introduced him to me.
"Should I know you?" he said.
"Oh no," said a man from the publishing house, "she's middle market - more Blyton than Booker."
Middle-class people, I have subsequently decided, are not expected to think, or worry or create in the way that the eccentric upper classes or the tortured working classes do. We are not supposed to have any sort of sensitivity, compassion, instinct or insight into the human condition. Rather, we are condemned as repressed, suburban, unimaginative and outmoded.
On the way home from the party I made mental notes about the way in which the rest of society views the middle classes. And gradually I began to realise that the so-called moral decline that everyone is always bemoaning could be directly linked to the unfashionability of middle-class life, values and aspirations.
Driving my Volvo down the middle of the road towards home, I was struck by how all those things that have become part of the eternal parody of our class have, in fact, much more worth than anyone will acknowledge. Oh, I know that the Volvo is not an exciting vehicle, I know that supposedly no one ever made love in the back of one, but the marvellous thing about the car I drive is that it has a unique safety factor - its middle-class driver - that renders it beyond the interest of the casual car thief, joyrider or, for that matter, the policeman.
Then I began to make a list of the other middle-class icons that were generally ridiculed by the rest of the population but which were sound and sensible innovations - Laura Ashley, Scholl sandals, cardigans, Viyella shirts, Teasmades, hostess trolleys, garden centres and The Archers - to identify but a few.
I quickly realised that however much other people might howl with laughter at these symbols of middle-class life, they had about them an inherent value or practicality that was missing from the rest of our harsh, modern, anti-middle-class world. Traditionally thrifty and careful with money, the middle classes are responsible for many of what might be called consumer endurables - things that pass the test of time.
Which is not to say that, in our way, we are not pioneers leading the way to exotic things such as the Dordogne, dishwashers, Delia Smith and dyslexia, Indeed, so much that was once foreign might still be if the middle classes hadn't discovered them - Montessoris, muesli, pasta, parmesan, woks, Bulgarian cabernet sauvignon and sun-dried tomatoes.
Moreover, all of our society's most responsible, caring and considerate innovations and inventions are middle-class. Who would worry about scooping poop, the National Trust, meals on wheels, Poppy Day, bottle banks, school league tables or saving the whale if the middle classes didn't?
Almost everything that is dismissively labelled middle-class has, in its way, improved the quality of life a great deal more than anything created by or for any other sector of the population.
What have the upper classes contributed to our society - apart from blood sports and the ideal example of the dysfunctional family offered by the Windsors? What have the working classes given us - apart from pit-bull terriers, ghetto-blasters and the replacement of the once crisp Celia Johnson BBC accent with a media dominated by Estuary English?
But the time is right for a middle-class revival. People are beginning to realise the value of the things that have always preoccupied the middle classes - the traditional family, sound education, marriage, security, responsibility, good health and good manners.
In fact there are signs that as we move into the next century the middle classes might become fashionable again. Already market analysts have noted that the trend in the late Nineties will be towards what they now term "defensive spending", rather than the "profligate spending" that has dominated the past three decades.
Why, there is even a middle-class youth cult emerging "easy listening" where the young go to clubs that play Burt Bacharach records wearing cardigans, cravats and stay-pressed trousers.
Very soon it may be safe for those of us who are middle-class to stand up with pride without facing a barrage of abuse. With Tony Blair on our side we might, perhaps, be able to convince the world we are a moral majority and not, as it feels right now, a moral minority.
Ten things that the middle classes have saved from extinction
The piano
The horse
The whale
The labrador
The ozone layer
BBC2
Tuscany
Breast feeding
Church of England
The National Trust
Ten things made popular by the middle class
Brown bread
Montessori schools
Muesli
Acupuncture
Herbal teas
Lego
Mineral water
Skimmed milk
Which?
Dualit toasters
Ten medical phenomena we owe to the middle classes
Anorexia
Dyslexia
Bulimia
PMT
Natural childbirth
ME
HRT
Braces
Cholesterol
Food allergies
Ten civilising influences we owe to the middle classes
The poop scoop
The bottle bank
Neighbourhood Watch
Garden centres
Marmite soldiers
Cling-film
Yoghurt
Radio 4
John Lewis
Unleaded petrol
Ten surprising heroes of the middle classes
Karl Marx
Trotsky
Mick Jagger
Tony Blair
Damon Albarn
John Osborne
Harriet Harman
Vivienne Westwood
Kelvin MacKenzie
Mussolini
IT WAS not originally intended that the sixth cricket World Cup should be staged on the Asian sub-continent. As long ago as 1989, the tournament was earmarked for England. Then came the infamous meeting of the International Cricket Council (ICC) at Lord's on February 2, 1993, which one experienced administrator described as a "shambles".
That meeting, which was destined to last 13 hours, reached deadlock because India and Pakistan, already promised the seventh staging of the event, had submitted along with Sri Lanka a financially superior bid to England's for the 1996 tournament.
Neither bid could secure the necessary two-thirds majority of votes. England were backed by Australia, New Zealand and West Indies; the three Asian countries by South Africa, Zimbabwe and a majority of associate member nations. Each of the nine Test-playing countries carried two votes, each of the 19 associate members one. Under both bids all would have been financially rewarded, though slightly better under the Asian one.
The impasse was resolved by England's magnanimous decision to step aside. "After hours getting nowhere," Alan Smith, the chief executive of the Test and County Cricket Board, said, "it was clear that under ICC rules there was deadlock. Indeed, there seemed a grave danger of the ICC totally disintegrating. In the best and wider interests of the world game, England agreed to withdraw their bid."
It is noticeable that in the present dispute over whether matches should be staged in Sri Lanka, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya, an associate member, remain aligned with the hosts, while Australia and West Indies stay in the opposite camp.
This is probably a coincidence, although Kenya and Zimbabwe may feel an obligation to stand by those they supported three years ago. England have expressed sympathy for the dilemma that faces Australia and West Indies, and South Africa through the mouth of Ali Bacher have not.
There will certainly be several delegates who attended the Lord's meeting in 1993 smiling ruefully and saying to themselves that it would not have been thus had the tournament gone to its first home. That would be a trifle unfair because the previous time the World Cup was staged on the sub-continent, in 1987, it passed off with scarcely a hitch and the organisers were widely praised.
Ironically, the Cup was won on that occasion by Australia. Under the leadership of Allan Border, a young side reached fulfilment, coping well with the difficulties of the heat and humidity. The tournament, hosted only by India and Pakistan, was played under the slogan Cricket for Peace.
Since then, though, the sub-continent has descended into deeper and more intractable difficulties. Apart from the long-running troubles in Sri Lanka, relations between India and Pakistan have deteriorated, with border skirmishes a regular occurrence.
India and Pakistan have not met on anything but a neutral venue for seven years because of threats of disruption from fundamentalists, and have been kept apart in the qualifying stages. Another irony is that the organisers discussed what should be done if the sides met during the knockout stages and considered switching the match, for security reasons, to Colombo. The idea was discounted.
Some, but not all, of the problems of the past week might have been eased had the organisation been left to the ICC, but it was decided at that same fateful meeting at Lord's in 1993 that Pilcom, the joint Pakistan-India-Sri Lanka organising committee, should act as agents for the ICC.
That was in the days before the ICC had full independence from Marylebone Cricket Cricket whose secretary and president automatically occupied senior positions within the ICC and such a situation will not happen again. Also, the venue for the World Cup is now determined by fixed rota, with England scheduled to stage the event next, in 1999.
The cost to the Sri Lanka cricket board of the events of the past week may be great. It had been looking forward to the matches against Australia and West Indies at the 35,000-seat Premadasa Stadium, which were sold out but will not now take place at least not in Sri Lanka.
The board has not yet decided whether to refund tickets and is fearful of losing money from advertising revenue and television rights.
Pilcom is looking at the financial obligations of participating teams, but there is believed to be little in the agreement signed by the competing countries in the way of penalty or liability clauses if they refuse to fulfil their fixtures.
If athletes don't cheer you up when your life is miserable, then what on earth is the point of them? And God knows, the people of Sri Lanka need cheering up. I am not suggesting for a second that a few cricket matches could diminish the horror of the Colombo bombing, but a spot of decent sport could, at least, allow the citizens of Colombo to set it aside for a few hours.
Yet Australia and West Indies are all set to drop out of their World Cup matches in Colombo. Thus they fail in their duty to Colombo, to Sri Lanka, to cricket and to the entire concept of international sport.
Sri Lanka is a sad and lovely island and, in 1981, I spent a happy couple of months there. I remember drinking the demon arak and talking late into the night with my late friend, Nalin: black sheep, as he told me, not without pride, of a famous family, a man who, among other achievements, pioneered the plays of Jean Genet in Colombo.
Over the arak, we talked politics and cricket, for this is an island full of both. While I was in Colombo the police, seconded from the south to the northern, Tamil areas, had rioted, raiding booze shops, attacking Tamils and torching the library in Jaffna, destroying a treasure-house of centuries-old Tamil manuscripts.
Jaffna was considered a no-go area so, naturally, I went, not brave but curious, eager for a damn good story (I wrote it up for the Far Eastern Economic Review). I encountered not violence but sadness, staying with a once-rich Tamil family reduced to taking in boarders, their home and property in the south destroyed by looters. They were not angry, certainly not supporters of the Tamil Tigers: just sad.
As I was returning south, waiting for a bus, a cyclist stopped, dismounting with that bewildering leg-flick that modesty requires of a dhoti-wearer. He asked me the all-important question of that year. "How is that bottom?" Meaning, of course, Botham.
Politics, sadness, cricket. All part of Sri Lankan life. Cricket is important because, in the midst of troubles, nothing cheers as much as triviality. Tickets for the Australia-West Indies match in Colombo sold out in two hours; they cost as much as the Sri Lankan average monthly wage.
It is Australia's blessing to be free of war. As a result, they have come to a dreadful error of vision. They think that cricket is actually important. More, they think that cricketers are important, that cricketers have no duties beyond sport and themselves.
I am not saying that the idea of playing cricket in Colombo is a comfortable one. It remains true, however, that apart from the horrific exception of Munich in 1972, with the murder of the Israeli competitors, athletes have not, thank God, been the target of lethal political action.
It is also true that England's 1984-85 cricket tour of India was similarly affected by political horrors. The Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated; so, a few days later, was the British Deputy High Commissioner, Percy Norris. Naturally, the cricketers were upset and wanted to go home. Instead, they went to Sri Lanka. Then, when the official period of mourning was over, they went back to India, continued the tour and won the series.
Top international athletes are, on the whole, a xenophobic bunch. But it is not that they are uninterested in abroad; they are not interested in much outside the team or, if involved in individual sports, anything outside their own heads.
This is not really a criticism, it is simply an aspect of the sporting mentality. Call it single-mindedness. I remember when covering a tour of India, I visited the Konorak Temple. You would expect most cricketers to display a passing interest in this monument, a short drive away from the team hotel. After all, it happens to be covered absolutely encrusted with pedantically detailed carvings of bosomy girls in a series of elaborate priapic grapples. But I think only Derek Pringle visited it, though perhaps Robin Smith went too.
When West Bromwich Albion made their historic visit to China, only three of them went to visit the Great Wall. These, inevitably, were the three black players known as the Three Degrees, Cyrille Regis, the late Laurie Cunningham and Brendon Batson.
Xenophobia, then, is part of sporting life. It has to be: every time you visit a country, it represents the enemy. All this is inevitable, but those of us who are not international athletes should not make the same error. That appears to be what has happened to Australia and, by craven imitation, West Indies.
A suggestion, then. The New Zealanders, I am sure, are above such a xenophobic and pusillanimous failure in the duty owed to international sport. England and New Zealand should offer to play their opening match in Colombo. That way the poor, sad, bewildered Aussies will be able to play their own opening fixture against Sri Lanka in the comfort and safety of Ahmedabad.
Perhaps West Indies will meet Australia in the final of the World Cup. If so, we can only hope that they both lose.
Karpov outplayed
In the international tournament at Belgrade which is currently in progress the Russian grandmaster Evgeny Bareev has won a fine game against the Fide champion Anatoly Karpov.
After an opening which went slightly in his favour Bareev proceeded to deprive Karpov of any vestige of counterplay. He gradually tightened his noose on the queenside and transposed into an endgame of queens and pawns which, in spite of an extra white pawn, still seemed difficult to win.
The elegant coup de grace, though, came with White's 40th move, e4. Were Black to play 40 ... Qxe4+ then 41 Qf3+ forces a trade of queens with a winning king and pawn endgame for White.
White: Evgeny Bareev
Black: Anatoly Karpov
Belgrade, January 1996
Queen's Indian Defence
1 d4 Nf6
2 c4 e6
3 Nf3 b6
4 a3 Bb7
5 Nc3 d5
6 cxd5 Nxd5
7 Qc2 Nxc3
8 Qxc3 Nd7
9 Bg5 Be7
10 Bxe7 Kxe7
11 g3 Nf6
12 Bg2 Qd6
13 b4 Rad8
140-0 Bxf3
15 Bxf3 Qxd4
16 Qxc7+ Rd7
17 Qc2 Qe5
18 Rac1 Rhd8
19 Bc6 Rd2
20 Qa4 a5
21 Bf3 g5
22 Rc6 R8d6
23 Rxd6 Rxd6
24 bxa5 bxa5
25 Qc2 h6
26 Rc1 Rd4
27 e3 Rd6
28 h3 Nd7
29 Bc6 Nb8
30 Ba4 Nd7
31 Qc8 Qe4
32 Bxd7 Rxd7
33 Rc7 Rxc7
34 Qxc7+ Kf6
35 Qxa5 Qb1+
36 Kh2 Qc2
37 Qe1 Qa2
38 Qc3+ e5
39 Kg2 Qd5+
40 e4 Qa2
41 Qc5 Kg6
42 Qd6+ Kh7
43 Qd5 Black resigns
Diagram of final position
Times book
All games of the world title match are available with commentary by Raymond Keene in a Times book, World Chess Championship: Kasparov v Anand (Batsford £9.99). Credit card orders should be telephoned on 01376 327901 (please quote 5/655).
Raymond Keene writes on chess Monday to Friday in Sport and in the Weekend section on Saturday.
MYSTIQUE is a vital strand running through racing's rich fabric which extends from the secrets of the betting ring to the magic of the big race. The Hennessy and Mackeson Gold Cups, or the Ebor and Royal Hunt Cup, have their own special aura built upon an enticing pot-pourri of tradition and folklore which underpin the sport's appeal.
When the mystique begins to fray at the edges, the effect can be catastrophic as those who have inherited the task of running the Derby are discovering to their cost. Suddenly, a race which people not so long ago lauded as one of the sporting occasions of the year can be in danger of losing its identity and public support. Once the spell is broken it is difficult to weave another and headlines in sports pages become dominated by football rather than celebrated moments of the Turf.
In the eyes of many, the Grand National epitomises racing's mystique, thanks to the derring-do of horses like Red Rum, the bravery of people such as Bob Champion on Aldaniti, the bad luck of Devon Loch, the Queen Mother and Dick Francis in 1956 or the good fortune of Foinavon, the 100-1 winner in 1967.
And yet there are dispiriting signs that the magic of the National may have peaked and could even be on the wane. Was the sudden and unexpected slump in BBC viewing figures last year down to 11.9 million from an average of 16 million in previous years just a one-off or the start of a trend?
If a crack is beginning to appear in the appeal of the "world's most famous steeplechase", the reasons are not difficult to identify. Each year the mystique used to begin with the announcement of the weights allocated to the entries by the (then) Jockey Club handicapper. Until recently it was the one occasion in the season when Christopher Mordaunt was released from the manacles of official ratings and free to create a one-off handicap for the National which took into account the mysterious "Aintree factor".
His decisions, which often involved giving extra weight to horses who had run well previously at Aintree, caused considerable debate and controversy and all-important ante-post interest as punters became carried away by the intrigue.
However, the "Aintree factor" no longer applies because of the modifications made to the toughest obstacles. The changes to the fences, which followed public concern about the welfare of horses, nibbled at the unique nature of the National and relegated it to just another staying chase for handicapping purposes.
Once Mordaunt had decided that Master Oats should carry top weight of 11st 10 lb for this year's race on March 30, he was then reduced to the role of automaton as official ratings determined the weights to be carried by other horses. Indeed, his calculations were accurately predicted by the racing trade press yesterday before their official launch at the weights lunch in London.
To make matters worse, the weights lunch an essential part of the National build-up and traditionally the catalyst for acres of press hype and publicity has been altered at the behest of meddling marketing consultants.
Until last year, the weights were issued before the lunch which provided ideal time for trainers, jockeys and owners to offer their sober analysis, take much-publicised advantage of the juicy ante-post prices being offered by bookmakers' representatives and for racing journalists to obtain the necessary material for the next day's stories.
Last year, the weights were deliberately held back until the lunch was well under way, all in the name of "impact". The only impact was to endanger the very oxygen of publicity which launches the National dream each February, as infuriated members of racing's fourth estate scrambled around for the comments of well-lunched guests.
The warning signs are there for all to see, including Patrick Martell from the race sponsors, and Peter Greenall, chairman of Aintree, if they choose to acknowledge them.
With only 16 days separating the Cheltenham Gold Cup and Grand National this year, it will be crucial to look for horses being prepared especially for Aintree. The only possible exception would be the ultra-tough Monsieur Le Cure, who won at both meetings two years ago.
However, my three against the field at this early stage are Smith's Band, Life Of A Lord, and Deep Bramble, who is a best-priced 25-1 with Coral and well worth an ante-post interest.
Three mothers photograph their children in this spring's looks
It used to be that parents would dread the day that their sons and daughters turned 13. Teenagers wanted to do their own thing, listen to loud music well, they called it music and hang out with their friends to all hours. Mostly, they wanted to choose their own clothes. But I have some bad news. Today, the under-fives know exactly what they will and will not wear.
The children's-wear industry has shown phenomenal growth in the past five years. Whereas previously the search for anything more adventurous than a tartan mini-kilt or a pair of denim dungarees would necessitate a trip to the Continent, there is now an endless choice of brands and labels to suit every occasion on every high street: from Naf-Naf and Oilily to Boots and French Connection. Selfridges on Oxford Street now has a huge department called Kids Universe, a Willy Wonka-esque wonderland which caters to a child's every desire.
The antithesis of the formal velvet dresses and mini-blazers of the traditionalists, the guiding trend for children's wear is colourful and comfortable. The consensus of the children who modelled for our fashion page was their desire to look "cool". This can describe anything from a padded puffa jacket to a handkerchief worn bandanna-style.
Bright paintbox colours are popular with both parents and their children. Many of the latest styles feature snazzy patchwork fabrics and applique patches. Gingham is once again a favourite for younger babies' wear while older ages prefer the oversized street-style look of utilitarian parkas with lots of zips and pockets, and baggy combat trousers. The funky looks of today's pop and rap groups provide a template for five-year-olds who can't even spell MN8.
Mothers tend to look for easy clothes which will wash and wear.
As proud parents are forever flashing happy snaps of their offspring, The Times asked three mums to become photographers for the day and snap their children in some of this spring's latest looks.
Cassia
Her mother, Jacqueline Clarke, says:
"Cassia enjoyed drssing up and thought it was great fun. The little dresses were very pretty without being too cute. When buying clothes I try to find practical, easy-to-use pieces. I tend to buy a lot of all-in-ones rather than separates."
Delilah
Her mother, Ninivah Khomo, says:
"Delilah enjoyed wearing the gingham pants, patchwork knit cardigan and reversable puffa jacket. She thought they were cool. When buying for Delilah, I look for different types of looks from traditional pretty dresses to casual sporty looks.
Rory
His mother, Florence Torrens says:
"Rory thought the clothes were cool and comfortable. He loves bright colours and is interested in what he wears. He has a uniform for school and looks forward to the weekends so he can wear what he likes. I buy big separates which he can grow into. He also loves wearing hats."
ONLY the ignorant and the English believe that Uefa is about to topple at a summit meeting of 33 leading European clubs in Geneva today. There is talk of an immediate Super League, a breakaway of the likes of AC Milan and Manchester United. There is talk of European football masters telling the European Commission to take the Bosman ruling and jump with it into Lake Geneva.
Such silly talk. What is happening in Geneva today, tomorrow and Friday is a meeting of clubs representing the 12 leading football nations on the Continent, a talking-shop called by Lennart Johansson, the president of Uefa, to try to get some unity in preparing the sport for the immediate future.
Johansson knows this because he has met Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire owner of Fininvest, a conglomerate of 150 companies, of which Milan is one. And Berlusconi, after their discussions, has assured Johansson that he is not the leader of a revolution, that the European Cup Champions' League is "good for the moment".
Johansson agrees with that. He concedes that the Champions' League, already an elitist system that shuts out the champions of the majority of European nations, is purely a financial compromise. "It cannot be denied that 90 per cent of the total income comes from these major clubs, and that if they demand change, we have to listen," Johansson said. Yet last November, when Real Madrid threatened to call for a breakaway European Super League, Johansson at once warned them that they would run the risk of being out of business.
After Real Madrid, who are £75 million in debt, deposed their president, Ramon Mendoza, Johansson called the meeting for today. There is no likelihood that 33 clubs would all be involved in a Super League, so why would they vote for one?
Furthermore, when Uefa, the game's governing body in Europe, heard that Milan, Juventus, Barcelona and Ajax had plans to form a marketing cartel, and had even designed their logos, Johansson again showed his strength of personality. "If you start anything without our [Uefa's] acceptance, you are out," he informed them. "Come to Geneva, let us sit down and talk about what we all want; if we need some changes in the format of our three competitions, and if that is what the majority want, then we will have it. I never said that the present Champions' League format was the final solution."
Indeed, when one talks at length to Johansson, one appreciates that a scenario far likelier than a European Super League is developing. Substantial television concerns, at present outside those involved in Uefa business, are shaping up for a world Super League that would heavily involve the Europeans. This, possibly even by the turn of the century, would be the principal playing field for the likes of Milan, Manchester United and Rangers.
One is, necessarily, putting business before sport. Any truthful person admits that the essence of the old, knock-out, egalitarian European Cup was sold some time ago to the avaricious demands of the triangle that involves sport, television and sponsorship.
The Champions' League last year brought in £102.7 million alone, attracted a global television audience which exceeded three billion and paid the leading clubs profits such as: Milan, £9.1 million; Ajax, £8.7 million; Paris Saint-Germain, £8.4 million; Bayern Munich, £6.5 million; and Barcelona, £5.4 million. This came from the sponsorship of seven leading companies, from television in 43 European countries, almost all of it terrestrial, and from television in 150 other countries, the bulk of it satellite or cable.
Given that Milan, Juventus and company can take £2 million on the gate per match, who is going to opt out of such business? A world Super League, should it come, might well be organised under Uefa's auspices.
Meanwhile, what of Bosman? One senses that the principal clubs, rather than attending the summit with a breakaway in mind, will barter for the freedom of being allowed to play however many European nationals they can hire. Manchester United, for example, will volubly push that case, having had their team badly affected by the "three plus two" agreement three foreigners and two assimilated players.
This palpably breaches the Treaty of Rome. The law says that any worker from a member country can be employed anywhere in the European Union. While European politicians ignored their own rules to make football a special case five years ago, the political climate is now different.
Uefa, trying to do the best for everyone, has little choice but to stop wasting time and energy on fighting the law. There is, after all, something illogical in handing out the profits from a game that is increasingly wealthy and, at the same time, claiming that its business, its sport, has special needs and must operate outside the spirit and the operation of European law.
LIVERPOOL have reacted with dismay to the news that their twice postponed FA Cup fourth-round tie with Shrewsbury Town has been moved to Sunday, February 18, with an 11am kick-off, by West Mercia Police for safety reasons.
"Many of our supporters travel great distances, and for them to get to Shrewsbury for a morning kick-off is unfair," Peter Robinson, the Liverpool chief executive, said.
Birmingham City have called for their Coca-Cola Cup semi-final, second-leg tie with Leeds United at Elland Road on Sunday, February 25, to be switched to the following midweek after a request from West Yorkshire Police for the 4 pm kick-off to be brought forward to 11.30am, again for safety reasons. This would force ITV to abandon plans to televise the match live because of their commitments to religious programming.
Ajax, the European champions, scraped a 1-1 draw against Real Zaragoza, the Cup Winners' Cup holders, in the first leg of the Supercup final in the Romareda Stadium last night. Javier Aguado gave Zaragoza a first-half lead, but Patrick Kluivert, the Holland striker, equalised for Ajax. The return leg in Amsterdam is on February 20.
Motor racing: Takachiho Inoue, the Japanese driver, will race for Minardi in the 1996 Formula One season, the Italian team announced yesterday.
Rugby league: The troubled move by Barrie-Jon Mather to Perth Western Reds is near to completion, in spite of the rejection by Wigan of a £50,000 offer for the England and Great Britain player.
Rugby union: Ulster ran in nine tries in a 40-33 win over a New South Wales team with five Australia internationals in Belfast last night. David Humphreys, at stand-off half, scored 17 points for the province.
Cricket: England recovered from early batting setbacks to beat Zimbabwe by 25 runs in the first under-19 one-day international in Bulawayo yesterday. Noel Gie, of Nottinghamshire, scored 36 in a total of 209. Paul Hutchison, of Yorkshire, took five for 33.
Speed skating: Marianella Canclini, of Italy, established a short-track speed skating record for the women's 1500 metres at Guildford last night. Her time of 2min 27.27sec was 0.11sec ahead of that recorded by Lee Kyung Chun, of South Korea, a year ago.
Basketball: Crystal Palace's attempt to add Sheffield Sharks to their list of Budweiser League victims in the National Cup met with gallant failure in the first leg of their semi-final at the National Sports Centre last night.
The Sharks, 70-63 winners, were made to fight for every basket by the unbeaten leaders of the first division, who will not have given up hope of erasing the arrears in the second leg next Wednesday.
RICHIE WENTON, of Liverpool, won the Lonsdale belt outright after retaining the British super-bantamweight boxing title against Wilson Docherty, of Scotland, at Basildon last night. Wenton won the contest by 1181/2 points to 1161/2, but could never take his eyes off his incoming opponent.
Wenton appeared to be losing interest in boxing as a result of the death of Bradley Stone, after his match with him 22 months ago, but last night he boxed with enthusiasm for the full 12 rounds.
PRESIDENT Milosevic of Serbia has recently met Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader who is wanted by the International War Crimes Tribunal. Dr Karadzic led a delegation to Dobanovci, an army compound near Belgrade, pressing for the lifting of the border blockade which Mr Milosevic imposed in 1994.
The aim of the meeting was to lift the blockade "discreetly" because Mr Milosevic is anxious not to jeopardise his high standing with the international community. "Everybody knew. It was reported, and yet British and European diplomats decided to turn a blind eye," a Belgrade observer said.
THERE were no drum rolls or trumpet blasts, just an elegantly understated expression of intent. The Times MeesPierson Corporate Golf Challenge was launched into its fourth season yesterday with a message that left no room for misunderstanding: "Records are there to be broken and break them we will."
Last year, the Challenge attracted entries from 800 companies up and down the country in the only golf competition in the British Isles to be aimed specifically at the business community. More than 50,000 amateur golfers took part. The goal this year is to take the Challenge to 1,000 entries at least.
The launch at St Andrew Golf Club, in the City of London, was told by David Chappell, sports editor of The Times, that the newspaper was as committed to the competition as it had been since its first day in 1993. "We will be putting all our resources, including a 24-page supplement which will be in the paper on Friday, behind a drive towards and beyond the four-figure mark this year," he said.
His words were echoed by John Mitchell, the event director. "We have seen this event grow dramatically from its introduction and we believe that it can only continue to expand," he said. This year, the number of regional finals has had to be increased from ten to 12.
The launch was treated to a demonstration of power-hitting by Mark Glynn and Rick Adams, the Titleist long-driving team, who have recently had their feat of driving the ball a remarkable 359 yards on the fly ratified by The Guinness Book of Records.
Glynn and Adams were present at the Challenge national final at the Hyatt La Manga Club Resort last year, when adverse weather conditions prevented them from trying to extend the record. The two big-hitters added their unique talents to an event that is, itself, the biggest of hits.
Details of the Corporate Golf Challenge can be obtained from 77-78, Bolsover Street, London W1P 7HH or by telephoning 0171-436 3415.
DIONICIO CERON will attempt an unprecedented hat-trick of men's London Marathon titles on April 21. His participation was announced yesterday, as was that of Malgorzata Sobanska, the defending women's champion.
Ceron's earnings from the London event, already some $500,000 (about £325,000), will be close to $1 million if he can set a world-best time.
The mark which has stood for eight years, was set in Rotterdam by Belayneh Dinsamo, from Ethiopia, at 2 hr 06min 50sec. Ceron, from Mexico, is the only athlete to have run sub-2:09 twice in London: 2:08.53 in 1994 and 2:08.30 in 1995.
On neither occasion did he have the best of the weather. Blustery in 1994, the winds returned last year, albeit less severe on a warm day.
"If we can get something between the two, without the wind, he is clearly somebody who can run under 2:08," Dave Bedford, the director of the elite race, said.
Bedford promises a field of "higher international quality" than for any of the previous 15 London Marathons. Under a new sponsor, Flora, other overseas signings have been made, but Bedford is not naming names yet. The leading Britons, of those announced thus far, are Eamonn Martin and Paul Evans.
Ceron is the only man to win twice in London but he had to settle for the silver medal at the world athletics championships in Gothenburg last year, where he was beaten by Martin Fiz, of Spain. "Winning London for a third time would make up for Gothenburg," Ceron said.
Sobanska, from Poland, was a surprise winner last year. "Nobody in Poland expected her to win," Piotr Mankowski, her coach, said. "The federation, journalists, and even her family were all surprised.
"Her family were watching on Eurosport and they were all crying mother, aunt, sister, father."
The handkerchiefs may be out again in Poznan this spring. So keen is Sobanska to repeat her London experience that she took the initiative and contacted Bedford to ask to come back. Usually, the race director has to go chasing.
Harare: Police surrounded the offices of Zambia's independent Post newspaper in Lusaka while Fred Mmembe, Bright Mwape and Masautso Phiri, three executives, were held on sedition charges.
The move came after disclosures of a planned referendum on constitutional changes.
John Hopkins hears one of golf's senior statesmen take Greg Norman to task
As the Heineken Classic concluded in Perth on Sunday, one of the most interested observers at The Vines was a stocky man with stout brown shoes, a skew-whiff smile and crinkly black hair that rose and fell back from his forehead in waves.
Peter Thomson, five times the Open champion between 1954 and 1965, watched with pleasure as five of his fellow Australians finished in the top ten of the first joint event between the tours of Australia and Europe. But he was disconcerted that appearance money, which he has fought against for years, remains such an important issue in the modern game.
"I am pleased with golf these days, except for the ugliness of appearance money in these parts and in Europe," Thomson, 66, who was president of the Australian Professional Golfers' Association for three decades, said. "Sport is sport. It is not a business or entertainment. The moment entertainment overtakes sport you have wrestling. If you pay people to strut the stage that is disastrous.
"Australian golf has never been stronger but it is under the spell of Greg Norman. It is hard to mount a series of events without him. It would be good if he gave Australian golf more help by not taking so much money out of the pot. This is a very expensive sponsorship by Heineken and it may or may not be profitable. If Heineken could get the same exposure for half the price there would be no question as to its profitability. Who knows, Heineken may decide it is a poor investment. In my time there has been a procession of sponsors who do it for a year or two and then decide they can no longer afford it.
"Greg and I are not friends. I live in Australia, he in the United States. We are polite when we meet. As a player he is amazing, unique even. His swing is technically correct now. We thought it was perfect when he was 25. But he can make such hard work of some simple shots, it's almost as if he is ungifted. Almost any drive involves tortuous preparation. He can take such a long time to do something that others do in the flick of an eyelid."
Thomson's trenchant views have appeared in the columns of the Melbourne Age newspaper for 40 years. He was the first professional to augment his prize-money with income from writing, and one of the first to leave golf and attempt to enter politics.
Memories of his unsuccessful attempt to get into the Victorian state legislature in 1982 have been revived because his son, Andrew, is a candidate in the general election in Australia on March 2. "He is a Liberal and standing in a safe Liberal seat I expect him to win," Thomson said. "I loved the manipulation of the media, which is what politics is all about. The media like to be tickled. I had a constituency of 44,000 and I knocked on 8,000 doors over 15 months. There were 19,000 Greeks and four out of five of them voted Labour. We Liberals were demolished by a landslide. Had I got in I would still be there."
Instead, Thomson voyaged to the United States, made a small fortune on the seniors' tour and began the profitable golf course-building firm he now runs. Though his travelling keeps him away from his home in Melbourne for six months of the year, he has discovered the delights of being able to play golf without marking a card. "Pencil-less golf, I call it," Thomson said. "For the first time for 40 years I can play without returning a score. It's wonderful. I always say to people I am two Scotches short of perfect health and two rounds away from competitive pitch."
THE attraction that English rugby in the open era will continue to have for players from the other home unions and further afield was emphasised yesterday when Richmond announced an investment worth nearly £3 million intended to restore the club to the top flight.
Richmond, 135 years old, were a founder member of the Rugby Football Union. They are top of the third division of the Courage Clubs Championship, but have ambitious plans: they seek first-division rugby, competition in Europe and the inauguration of an academy for youth.
The means to these ends have been given them by Ashley Levett, a 35-year-old millionaire living in Monaco. Though his involvement has to be formally sanctioned by the club's 1,300 members at a special general meeting next month, Levett will put £2.5 million into the club and will underwrite a share issue for a sum not far short of £500,000.
In return he will hold a controlling interest of 80 per cent, with members holding the remaining 20 per cent and contributing two directors to a five-man board which will run Richmond. Though no overt moves will be made to recruit new players until after the general meeting, Richmond have already made unofficial approaches to members of the England squad.
Richmond are the third club in London, following Saracens and Nigel Wray, and the Harlequins deal with NEC, to attract substantial financial support in rugby's new era. The capital has always been a Mecca for ambitious players and this will only increase in what is certain to become a ferocious battle for talent, though yesterday it seemed a partnership between the Welsh Rugby Union, Bridgend and Ogwr Borough Council had dissuaded Robert Howley, the Wales scrum half, from moving from Bridgend to Saracens.
However, Levett's involvement is also instructive because of his previous connection with lowly Winchester. He has effectively been the owner of the Hampshire league one club since 1993, and though International Rugby Football Board regulations forbid one individual owning more than one club, a structure has been put in place which may establish Winchester as, in effect, a feeder club to Richmond.
"The success of Winchester has been nothing short of remarkable," Symon Elliott, a business colleague of Levett and Richmond's chief executive-designate, said. "This prompted Ashley's desire to become involved in the game at a higher level. We believe Richmond can be a driving force in British and European rugby."
Like Saracens, with their capture of the Australian, Michael Lynagh, Richmond will hope for a "headline-grabbing" signing as an indication of intent. They seek to establish a core of quality players of international or near-international status.
Richmond are also in the unique position of sharing facilities with another leading club, London Scottish. They have been partners at the Athletic Ground for more than a century and Richmond officials said that whatever developments they put in place will be done after consultation with London Scottish.
A SPATE of apparently unprovoked attacks on off-duty British soldiers in Cyprus has angered senior commanders, who fear that increasing resentment among the troops could lead to reprisals against Greek Cypriot youths.
In the most serious of three incidents last month, a young lance-corporal was beaten unconscious in the tourist resort of Ayia Napa and flown back to Britain for treatment to a fractured skull. He is still in hospital two weeks after the attack. Another soldier needed five stitches over his eye and four above his mouth when he was assaulted by a gang of cosh-wielding Cypriots as he left a pub in Limassol. Army investigators said that in most cases the soldiers were greatly outnumbered by their attackers, who were usually armed with sticks or bats.
"It is never a fair fight," a senior officer said. "Our worry is that if our guys are thinking, ‘right, that's how it is', then they'll start saying, ‘we'll get them back'. We are concerned for the welfare of our personnel and there is a feeling that the Cypriot authorities are not doing enough to prevent this kind of attack," the officer said.
The Army prides itself on cordial relations with the Cyprus Government and there has been virtually no political agitation against the two sovereign bases which Britain retained as one of the conditions of Cypriot independence in 1960. Contacts on the streets between youths and British soldiers, however, are often strained by rivalry over women and racist attitudes.
The Army insists that the violence is not related to the prolonged trial of three British soldiers charged with the manslaughter of Louise Jensen, a young Danish tour guide, in 1994.
A DECISION to allow districts, rather than clubs, to represent Scotland in the European Cup next season might be beneficial in the short term but would ultimately weaken the structure of Scottish rugby, the senior clubs claimed yesterday as they revealed their proposals for the future of the game north of the border.
The clubs, who will present their case for inclusion in Europe at a special general meeting of the Scottish Rugby Union (SRU) on Friday, dismissed the union's pro-district document as a paper which "does not address the requirements of the changing rugby world and the opportunities which the new professional era present".
They argue that clubs are the traditional power-base of the game in Scotland and are best placed to retain and attract the top players in the domestic game, internationals who would otherwise be lost to England. Ambitious clubs would attract better coaches, produce better players and create a stronger and much wider base than the "restrictions provided by a narrow base of three or four district teams".
Those districts would, according to the clubs, become "super clubs" themselves, the antithesis of what the SRU intends. Players would be under contract, administrative costs would increase and the number of players exposed to a higher standard of rugby would be restricted. Clubs would be relegated to the status of nurseries and, with no incentive, would soon lose ambition.
The Scottish selectors are today expected to name an unchanged side, for the third consecutive international, to play Wales in Cardiff in the five nations' championship on February 17.
Kenny Logan, so far ignored by Scotland in the five nations', plays his first competitive game of the year for the Development XV that meets New South Wales in Galashiels on Sunday. He replaces Hugh Gilmour, of Heriot's, who is injured.
The SRU yesterday went live on the Internet, the first step towards what it intends will be an interactive system encompassing merchandise sales and ticket booking.
SCOTTISH DEVELOPMENT XV: G Fraser (London Scottish); A Stanger (Hawick), I Wynn (Orrell), A James (Wasps), K Logan (Stirling County); M McKenzie (Stirling County), A Nicol (Bath, captain); R McNulty (Stewart's-Melville FP), S Scott (Melrose), M Stewart (Blackheath), M McVie (Edinburgh Academicals), K Stewart (Cardiff), B Ward (Currie), G Mackay (Stirling County), S Holmes (London Scottish). Replacements: M McGrandles (Stirling County), D Bain (Melrose), J Hamilton (Leicester), S Grimes (Watsonians), G McIlwham (GHK), N Dickson (Boroughmuir).
Referee: S Piercy.
THE WORLD of flamenco was yesterday lamenting the loss of one of its greatest dancers, Antonio Ruiz Soler, 74, who died in Madrid after an illustrious career as El Gran Antonio.
Antonio was the first ambassador of flamenco, taking the duende the soul and feeling for flamenco song, dance and guitar around the world. Some of his greatest triumphs were at Carnegie Hall in New York, La Scala in Milan and the Cambridge Theatre in London.
Yesterday he lay in state in his dance studio as a host of fellow artists paid their respects. The dancer died at home on Monday from a thrombosis, having suffered a stroke in 1994. Antonio had a colourful private life. His lovers allegedly included the Duke of Windsor, the Duchess of Alba and Ava Gardner.
"He was God in the flamenco world," Elke Stolzenberg, a German photographer of flamenco, said yesterday. She was one of the stream of hopefuls from around the world who came to Spain to learn flamenco after its art was spread by Antonio. Madrid's flamenco dance studios are now full of foreigners.
Three new caps to face Ireland.
HAVING had their hopes of a grand slam shattered by the Scots at Murrayfield last Saturday, the French selectorial guillotine fell with a vengeance yesterday. Four members of the XV beaten 19-14 by Scotland lose their places for the next round of the five nations' championship, against Ireland in Paris on February 17, and the positional merry-go-round is reminiscent of the 1970s.
The casualties include Olivier Merle, the lock who received a yellow card for stamping at Murrayfield, and Alain Penaud two players of considerable experience. Philippe Carbonneau and Michel Perie, both capped for the first time this season at scrum half and loose-head prop respectively, are relegated to the replacements' bench, and caps are awarded to three newcomers.
England A's front row may not be surprised to see Franck Tournaire, the Narbonne tight-head prop, elevated to the senior side. Tournaire, 23, was part of a hard-bitten trio in the A international last month and, to accommodate him, Christian Califano moves to loose-head prop.
Abdelatif Benazzi must count among the world's best back-row forwards, but he moves from blind-side flanker to lock, where he replaces Merle. This leaves a vacancy for Richard Castel.
The 23-year-old student was not first choice in the Toulouse team which won the Heineken Cup last month, but his vigorous play won him a place among the replacements against England, and now he takes the final step.
The third new cap goes to Olivier Campan and illustrates the problems France have in creating a successful midfield. They thought they had found one when Thomas Castaignede and Richard Dourthe linked in the autumn; now Dourthe remains suspended and Castaignede, whose dropped goal beat England, moves to stand-off half.
He changes places with Thierry Lacroix, who thought that he had found his correct position when chosen in the No10 shirt against England. Now, though, he reverts to the position where he has won most of his caps, alongside Campan, 25, who plays full back for Agen.
Agen, of course, is Philippe Sella's club, and it may be some small comfort to England to know that, like them, the French are hard-pressed to replace their great players. Sella's 13-year international career ended when he announced his retirement his club future has yet to be resolved in December and, since then, events have conspired against France.
Yet the number of changes they are prepared to make in midstream is remarkable, though French pundits do not necessarily see it that way. The changes reflect the disappointment felt by Jean-Claude Skrela, the coach, who said that he felt let down by the display against Scotland.
"If players want to be regarded as professionals, they must accept the responsibilities that involves," Skrela said. "The problem with this team is that they seem to be unable to put together three or four good games in succession. They must become more self-critical."
The final change restores Guy Accoceberry to scrum half and recreates a new international partnership. However, Castaignede has appeared at stand-off for France, before, against Romania in the Latin Cup last October, when he scored 22 points; it is the position he occupied in junior football, though forced by the presence in the Toulouse side of Christophe Deylaud to move to centre.
In the past four years, France have used 16 different combinations at half-back, which may help to account for their swoops and dips in form over that period. Quite what the Irish can expect from this latest selection remains to be seen but, after losing to Scotland themselves, they have enough problems of their own.
The Ireland selectors' visit to Belfast last night to watch Ulster against New South Wales was made less relevant by the late withdrawal of three injured contenders, Jeremy Davidson, Dennis McBride and Jonathan Bell, though they would still have been interested to see Paddy Johns back at lock. The side to play France in Paris will be named on Saturday.
FRANCE J-L Sadourny (Colomiers); E Ntamack (Toulouse), T Lacroix (Dax), O Campan (Agen), P Saint-Andre (Montferrand, captain); T Castaignede (Toulouse), G Accoceberry (Begles-Bordeaux); C Califano (Toulouse), J-M Gonzales (Bayonne), F Tournaire (Narbonne), R Castel (Toulouse), A Benazzi (Agen), O Roumat (Dax), L Cabannes (Racing), F Pelous (Dax). Replacements: P Bernat-Salles (Begles-Bordeaux), S Glas (Bourgoin), P Carbonneau (Toulouse), S Dispagne (Toulouse), M de Rougemont (Toulon), M Perie (Toulon).
WAR crimes investigators from The Hague yesterday questioned three high-ranking Bosnian Serb military officers seized by the Bosnian Government in Sarajevo last week, and examined Bosnian demands that they should be indicted as war criminals.
The investigators, from the International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, said it was far too early for any findings and they had still to question other men being held by the Government.
Bakir Alispahic, the Bosnian Minister of the Interior, insisted, however, that the Government had evidence that the two senior Bosnian Serb officers, General Djordje Djukic and Colonel Aleksa Krsmanovic, "not only participated in killing civilians but also helped organise the killing of civilians".
The Bosnian Serbs, who had reported the disappearance of eight soldiers to Nato officials in Sarajevo, said they were breaking off relations with the Bosnian Government in retaliation for the arrests a move that could have serious implications for the Dayton peace accord.
With tension over the arrests growing, Carl Bildt, the international mediator, urged Hasan Muratovic, the Bosnian Prime Minister, at a joint news conference in Davos, Switzerland, yesterday to clear up the highly charged issue "very quickly indeed".
Bosnian police captured the eight Bosnian Serb soldiers on three occasions between January 20 and February 2 in circumstances which are unclear but which Mr Alispahic described as "extensive traffic control checks".
The Government said it would release three of the eight, but claimed to have evidence that three others, in addition to General Djukic and Colonel Krsmanovic, had carried out massacres of civilians. A government spokesman said all the evidence would be turned over to The Hague investigators, three of whom are conducting inquiries in Sarajevo. Mr Alispahic refused to give details of the evidence.
Mirza Hajric, the Bosnian government spokesman, said the detainees would be released if the investigators determined that there was not enough evidence to prosecute them. "If The Hague says there is not enough evidence to prosecute them, we will release them," he said.
General Djukic is a close associate of General Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb army commander who has been indicted by the tribunal for alleged war crimes. General Djukic and Colonel Krsmanovic were believed to have been arrested on government territory on January 30 in Sarajevo on their way to a Nato meeting.
The three others under investigation were identified as Tese Tesic, Petar Todorovic and Dusan Borovic, and were said to have carried out massacres in the east Bosnian towns of Zvornik, Vlasenica, Visegrad and Foca. Mr Alispahic said they were arrested when their civilian car was found carrying rifles, hand grenades and a substantial amount of ammunition.
Officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross requested permission to visit the prisoners yesterday but were denied access by the Bosnian Government, according to Anne Sophie Bonefeld, the Red Cross spokeswoman.
Nato officials said that the arrests were likely to inflame tensions around Sarajevo and could jeopardise the fragile peace process taking hold across the country. Brigadier Andrew Cumming, the Nato spokesman, said the arrests were "provocative and inflammatory".
Relations between the two former warring sides around Sarajevo, which officially came under Bosnian government control on Sunday, have been tense since the peace process began. Thousands of Serbs have been leaving the region, fearing that the Bosnian Government would mete out revenge when it took over the area. The arrests are likely to fan their fears and quicken the exodus.
The war crimes tribunal, set up by the United Nations and headed by Richard Goldstone, the chief prosecutor, has so far charged 52 suspects with war crimes linked to the Bosnian War. Only one, a Bosnian Serb, has been taken into custody.
RONNIE O'SULLIVAN, the title-holder, transformed a 4-1 deficit into a 6-5 victory over Nigel Bond in the second round of the Benson and Hedges Masters snooker tournament at Wembley Conference Centre last night.
O'Sullivan, troubled by inconsistency all season, seemed destined for another disappointing defeat when he trailed Bond, the beaten finalist in the 1995 world championship, 4-1 after sitting out breaks of 46, 110, 97 and 45.
Whether the large roast dinner he consumed during the interval acted as the catalyst for the sustained feast of potting which followed is doubtful, but suddenly he found form.
O'Sullivan, 20, won the next four frames in just 27 minutes. He totalled 392 unanswered points, a Masters record, and compiled breaks of 109, 56, 81 and 128, the last of which was the highest of the tournament so far and occupied him for only 41/2 minutes.
After failing to pot a single ball in that time, Bond did admirably to level at 5-5, and he fought back from 43-0 down in the deciding frame to edge 52-44 ahead. However, he narrowly missed the yellow using the rest, and O'Sullivan cleared to the pink to set up a quarter-final against Darren Morgan tomorrow evening.
Andy Hicks, who produced a 67 clearance to defeat James Wattana 9-8 on the final black in the last 16 of the United Kingdom championship in November, benefited from two similar escapes to beat the Thai 6-4. Hicks, a wild-card entry who constructed a trio of century breaks during a 5-3 win over David Roe in the previous round, won the third frame on a respotted black and led 3-1, but Wattana ground out the next three frames.
Just when the match appeared to be slipping away, Hicks levelled at 4-4, and when Wattana jawed a simple blue when leading 45-9 in the ninth frame, Hicks coolly cleared to pink with 56.
That was 5-4 in favour of the world and UK championship semi-finalist of last year, and he secured a quarter-final against John Parrott by fashioning a 47 clearance in the tenth frame after Wattana had again misjudged a cut red when 52-27 up.
Madrid: A founder member of the ruling Spanish Socialist Party and brother of a former Justice Minister was shot dead yesterday by suspected Eta terrorists in San Sebastian as violence mounted in the Basque region in the run-up to the general election on March 3.
Fernando Mugica, 61, a lawyer, was shot twice in the back of the head by two masked men as he took his customary afternoon walk in the Basque resort.
New York: The United Nations has been ordered to pay compensation and make a public apology to a British man dismissed from its peacekeeping operation in Somalia after £2.6 million was stolen from the UN base in Mogadishu.
Douglas Manson, 68, who lives in Ontario, Canada, said he felt vindicated.
THE former RAF Alconbury, four miles northwest of Huntingdon, is to be put on the market in April by the Ministry of Defence, with the prospect of its conversion to an international distribution centre.
Bidwells of Cambridge, appointed to prepare a marketing campaign for the 1,100-acre site, regards it as potentially the UK distribution industry's most significant site. Ian Hudson of Bidwells says: "The location of Alconbury and its air, road and potential rail links place it firmly in a European context."
For the first phase Huntingdonshire District Council planners prefer a 70:30 split between warehouse development and mixed development, including leisure and heritage uses. The former Second World War control tower and surrounding buildings have been preserved and could form the nucleus of a visitor centre.
AN INNOVATIVE funding deal between Hanover United Property Trust and the Lend Lease Group has enabled a start to be made on the 112,000sqft Clockhouse Place office scheme at Bedfont Lakes, Heathrow, one of the largest speculative office schemes in the region since the early 1990s.
Hanover, which bought Bedfont Lakes from the Rutland Group in 1994, says the funding represents the first UK example of the Lend Lease Group's solutions to property financing. Lend Lease has agreed to guarantee the project's construction loan, arranged with the Royal Bank of Scotland, in return for a guaranteed fee and profit participation.
Healey & Baker and Strutt & Parker are seeking to let the building as a whole, or in two blocks. No quoting rent has been announced, but forecasts suggest £27.50 a sq ft for the area by mid-1997.
SPACE at the recently developed building at 159 New Bond Street, London, is to be offered at £35 a sq ft through Jones Lang Wootton on behalf of the landlord, the Swedish Life Fund Trygg Hansa. Three floors of about 7,300sqft each are available in an area of the market that is increasingly under-supplied.
David Crawford reports on a case that will determine a county council's powers to adopt its own structure plan
Property professionals throughout Britain are keenly awaiting the outcome of a High Court challenge to Berkshire County Council's recently adopted structure plan, which is due to be heard on April 2.
The case concerns official housing allocations for the M4 county, but Douglas Evans, the lawyer leading a House Builders Federation (HBF) challenge to the Liberal Democrat/Labour-controlled authority, sees the battle as being about more than new homes.
"Though important, housing is in a sense a proxy issue," Mr Evans, a partner and head of planning at Theodore Goddard, says. "What is really at stake is the way in which a county council is using new powers to adopt its own structure plan and ignoring the recommendations of the independent panel which carried out the plan's examination in public (EiP)."
He sees this as a potential threat to a range of property interests throughout the county in employment-related development as much as housing. But even without these wider implications, the 40,000 additional houses which Berkshire has eventually agreed should be built, mainly in Bracknell, Newbury and Wokingham, are being criticised as insufficient to accommodate natural growth during the plan period to 2006, let alone the influx resulting from new commercial development and job creation.
The issue arose when Berkshire, which gained self-adoption powers under the 1991 Planning Act, originally proposed only 35,670 new dwellings in its structure plan on environmental grounds. The independent EiP panel, which reviewed the plan before the council adopted it last November, recommended 48,000 homes 8,000 above the southeast regional guidance level.
The panel advised that the original figure, proposed to protect the county's "environmental capacity", was excessively biased towards such considerations. The total of 48,000 dwellings could be accommodated without overdevelopment, it said.
Local property professionals who agree include Ian Tant, of the Barton Willmore Planning Partnership in Reading. He says: "Even 48,000 homes would not meet the workforce requirements of committed employment land. Berkshire is the most extreme case yet of divergence from panel recommendations."
Chris Perry, resident partner at Vail Williams's Reading office, fears that Berkshire "could become the poor relations among the south-eastern counties. Potential relocators do their research, and housing shortages will deter them."
Supporting them are figures which show that Berkshire has existing planning consents for 11.5 million sq ft of employment space enough for some 60,000 new jobs. Employment, too, has been rising countywide from 334,800 to 342,100 jobs between 1991 and 1993 despite regional policy attempts to divert growth to eastern counties such as Kent and Essex.
The only movement in the controversy so far arises from last year's intervention by John Gummer, Secretary of State for the Environment, who directed Berkshire to modify its figure to one "not less than" the 40,000 regional guidance level, leaving the final decision to the council. Berkshire's response was to comply with the direction and stick at 40, 000.
"The crucial issue," Mr Evans says, "is that, with self-adoption, the EiP panel system is now the only independent procedure for scrutinising draft structure plans and ensuring that wider public interests are considered. If panel recommendations can be ignored without good reason, then everyone in property is vulnerable to decisions over which there is no longer any effective external control."
The county council takes its stand firmly on local issues, arguing that the 40,000 homes directed by the Environment Secretary are already more than the county can take without serious damage to its environment. "We have worked hard to balance the need for housing and employment with environmental considerations," says Keith Reed, county environmental officer, who is confident of victory in the High Court.
"But we didn't start our structure plan process with a clean sheet there were already substantial commitments to employment uses. If we give in completely to market pressures, we risk damaging an environment which is itself one of the main attractions for incoming employers."
"We are being used as a test case," Councillor John Albinson, chairman of Berkshire's environment committee, says. "We will defend our right not to be pushed beyond what we have agreed to satisfy the Secretary of State."
If the HBF wins, Mr Evans says this will be a "warning to other local authorities and Hampshire shows signs of following Berkshire's example not to take undue advantage of their power to adopt their own plans". If the HBF loses, both it and commercial developers faced with adverse planning policies will feel able to question the reliance to be placed on assurances which ministers gave on the preservation of the public interest when self-adoption was extended to structure plans in 1992.
New York: Dudley Moore, the actor, escaped with little more than dented pride in a mountain-road car accident near a leading American ski resort.
He was driving his car when it left the road near Telluride, Colorado, and fell 150ft before coming to rest upright on a bank of snow.
Ken Eisner, a Telluride man who spoke to Mr Moore soon after the crash, said last night: "He came through fine and was in good spirits not at all injured. He was able to make jokes but realises that he isn't the greatest driver in snow."
Locals said it was not the first crash Mr Moore, who had been in Telluride since giving a New Year's Eve concert, has had in the Rocky Mountains.
LSO Brass, Barbican
IT IS now ten years since Philip Jones packed away his trumpet for the last time, causing the world-famous ensemble that bore his name to rechristen itself London Brass. Since then, Jones has been Principal of the Trinity College of Music, but his retire- ment offered the opportunity for a tribute from some of the many players who have reason to thank him.
Before the founding of the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble in 1951, there was virtually no repertoire in the medium. Nowadays there is a plethora of music from all periods to choose from, as Sunday's concert by the LSO Brass demonstrated.
One of the masterworks of the repertoire established in that time is Elgar Howarth's arrangement of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. The breathtaking skills called for by this showstopper may be found more widely today, but the handful of minor mishaps from these top players served as a reminder that it remains an extremely demanding piece. The scurrying semiquavers depicting the market at Limoges were dispatched fearlessly, and Eric Crees's direction built to a magnificently climactic opening of the Great Gate of Kiev.
In an onstage interview, Jones commented that a greater variety of styles was expected of players in brass ensembles than in orchestras. A greater sensitivity to matters of balance and voicing too, he might have added. For this ensemble an expanded LSO brass section included the very same players who now routinely blast their ear-splitting way through any orchestral tuttis put in front of them. Paradoxically, the exclusive company of brass players encourages them to listen to each other.
Inner voices were also heard to advantage in Christopher Mowat's arrangement of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No 3. This is another skilful transcription that throws the three instrumental groupings into relief, and the reduced ensemble managed some stylishly tapered phrasing.
Whether Elgar Howarth's settings of early 17th-century English keyboard pieces (Byrd, Farnaby and Bull) can ever sound stylish on modern brass instruments is a moot point. For all the virtuosity with which the passagework was delivered, these transcriptions seemed more convincing the more they were removed from their original context.
Something that has always come a good deal easier to LSO players is the assimilation of jazz style, and the remainder of the programme was sheer delight: six movements from Andre Previn's Triolet for Brass, three from Jim Parker's superbly idiomatic A Londoner in New York, and Eric Crees's own arrange- ment of a suite from Bernstein's West Side Story.
This was masterly playing, and a worthy tribute to the man who made it all possible.
SCO/Varga, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh
THE Scottish Chamber Orchestra has been excelling itself recently not so much in performing standards, that is, as in programming. Only a couple of weeks ago it gave a most attractively compiled Spanish concert with the guitarist Sharon Isbin, and a few days after that it was accompanying Michael Collins in the first performance of Mikhail Pletnev's fearless arrangement for clarinet of Beethoven's Violin Concerto.
Since then the SCO has been involved with Christian Lindberg in the first European performances (in St Andrews, Ayr and Edinburgh) of Fantasma/Cantos II which, unlikely concept though it might seem, is a trombone concerto by Toru Takemitsu.
The question was how the Japanese composer would integrate the assertive voice of the trombone with his characteristically fragile, minutely detailed, impressionistic orchestral textures. The answer is that he doesn't.
The orchestral part sounds like decadent Debussy, as though the characters of Jeux had retired from the tennis court to a dance hall. They pursue their amorous manoeuvres in the new setting, but mainly in the background now as some Tommy Dorsey of a trombonist takes the stage with a sentimental number.
It is just the sort of thing which Lindberg, for whom the work was written last year, would enjoy. It is not so dramatic that he wasn't tempted to compensate by running back on to the stage of the Queen's Hall to deliver some aggressive encore of whoops and eructations and growling discords. On the other hand, Fantasma/Cantos II clearly appeals to the crooner in him. He probably also enjoyed playing the alto trombone in three movements allegedly drawn from a larger work by Leopold Mozart: an entertaining piece so idiomatically written for the trombone of a hundred years later that it is difficult to believe in it.
The concert began with Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture and ended with the same composer's Scottish Symphony (No 3 in A minor). Though genially conducted in both cases by Gilbert Varga, neither performance offered the more necessary reassurance that the SCO has not declined in style, wind intonation and string ensemble while it has been ploughing through the more conventional programmes of the past few seasons.
A MYSTERY 400 years old may be solved by archaeologists who have disinterred the body of Anastasia, the queen of Ivan the Terrible, one of Russia's most bloodthirsty tsars.
"We cannot rule out poisoning," was the verdict yesterday of a chemical expert, Natalya Voronova, who had examined Anastasia's body in her tomb in Archangel Cathedral, in the Kremlin. Ms Voronova said she had found large doses of mercury salts in the queen's hair. Hair preserves poisons longer than any other part of the body and indicates how much the body has absorbed.
Tradition has it that the young Anastasia was poisoned by jealous rivals at court, who resented her influence. Born Anastasia Zakharina, she was Ivan IV's first wife and a love match who bore him six children. She came from a wealthy family, ancestors of the Romanov dynasty, but was considered by many courtiers to be an upstart not worthy of a tsar.
The Byzantine intrigues of the affair are known to millions of Russians through Sergei Eisenstein's film Ivan The Terrible. Political murder was a not uncommon way of settling scores in 16th-century Moscow and Ivan himself later stabbed and killed his favourite son in an argument.
It was the early death in 1561 of his beloved Anastasia, who was still in her twenties, that pushed Ivan, who had a reformist reputation in the early years of his reign, into the reign of terror that earned him his sobriquet "the Terrible" (in Russian, "the Cruel"). He married six more times and was eventually excommunicated by the Orthodox Church.
Anastasia's sarcophagus was opened during a dig in the Kremlin cathedral, the burying place of all the early tsars. The Kremlin is being gradually restored, allowing archaeologists unique opportunities to excavate the tombs.
Mercury salts could be procured from physicians in 16th-century Moscow, and although a court plotter may have slipped them into the queen's wine there may also be a more innocent explanation, Ms Voronova said. The salts were used in the distant past as a medicine for a range of diseases, including leprosy and syphilis, she said. Traces of mercury were also found in the remains of Ivan himself when they were examined in the 1960s, leading many historians to believe that he died of syphilis.
Nash Ensemble, Wigmore Hall
THE Nash Ensemble, in one of its most revelatory series, has been observing our turning century begin in Vienna; listening to the first rumblings of the First World War; straining an ear for echoes of an even earlier Vienna. Saturday saw the culmination of four months of offerings in a concert whose mainstream elements contained as much risk and surprise as did its stranger tributaries.
Mahler's orchestral songs have been heard, illuminatingly, as chamber music in arrangements made by fellow composers; and the grand finale was Reinbert de Leeuw's arrangement of the Kindertotenlieder, with string quartet, bass, woodwind, horn, piano, harmonium and the voice of the young German baritone Matthias Gorne. Gorne's performance, feeding each word along tenderly and powerfully inflected lines, would have been remarkable enough in itself. But how revealing the piano-dappled lights of the first song; the solo cello melting into the clarinet line as the voice rises into the second; the piano's strange, echoing footfall in the third.
This arrangement, which lit anew Mahler's settings of Ruckert's painful poems, was in the tradition of the chamber-musical orchestral reductions played with enthusiasm at the concerts of Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances. Erwin Stein's arrangement of Busoni's Berceuse elegiaque follows the same pattern: this sombre lament for the death of Busoni's mother was given a haunting performance by Philippa Davies, flute, Michael Collins, clarinet, Ian Brown, piano, Catherine Edwards, harmonium, Corin Long, bass, and string quartet.
This, together with a robust performance of Webern's early Piano Quartet all ten minutes of it were the rarities. But the central classic work, Beethoven's Ghost Trio, was every bit as remarkable in its way. The Nash has a healthy way of trying out new blood, and on Saturday we heard a new guest leader, Leo Phillips, from the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He and cellist Christopher van Kampem reacted to each other with meticulous sensitivity and, with Ian Brown's piano playing contributing to the unforced ease of converse, even in the momentum of the final presto rondo, this was a performance which will linger long in the memory.
Roger Boyes reports form Bonn on suspicions that Germany is slipping back into its role of occasional apologist for the Russians.
HELMUT KOHL, the German Chancellor, is preparing to meet President Yeltsin next week amid fears that Germany is slipping back into its historical role of explainer of, and occasional apologist for, a restless Russia.
The suspicions were fuelled by the tone of Herr Kohl's address to the annual Wehrkunde defence conference in Munich at the weekend. He talked of the need to understand the psychological vulnerability of the Russians and hinted that the West should tread lightly with its plans to enrol Central European states in Nato. Coming from the West's chief bridge-builder with Russia, the comments had an unsettling effect on the Central Europeans and confused Western participants.
An interviewer this week for the Polish government daily Rzeczpospolita mirrored her country's anxious view of the changing relationship in a question to Klaus Kinkel, the German Foreign Minister. "After a frosty period because of the Chechenia war, German-Russian relations seem to have become very close and friendly again although all reformers have been excluded from the Moscow Government and despite the Russian Army trampling over human rights in Dagestan. Despite all this, you supported Russian admission to the Council of Europe. Is Russia being judged by different standards?" The minister dodged the question; he emphasised that Germany had a parallel Ostpolitik: to enlarge Nato and the European Union and simultaneously to strike up a special relationship with Russia.
There is no doubt that all groups within Russia are opposed to Nato enlargement eastwards. Yet Nato retains this as one of its defining missions and Germany, of all the Western allies, has the most to gain from moving Nato's border from the River Neisse to the Bug. There is no way of squaring the circle; one of the priorities has to give way. In the negotiations before the Kohl-Yeltsin meeting, due to begin on February 18, the Russians have come up with different, mainly warmed-up, ideas. Nato, or individual Nato countries, could strike bilateral security agreements with Central European states; that, the Russians say, would be preferable to fully fledged membership.
Or the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe to which Western countries, the Central Europeans, the Ukrainians and Russians belong could be given more muscle. None of this convinces Central Europe, nor has it persuaded the German leadership. But the emphasis now is on understanding Russian fears rather than on swiftly accommodating the Central Europeans. Javier Solana, the Nato Secretary-General, notably omitted any dates for Nato enlargement in Munich last weekend, yet emphasised the need for quick progress on developing a strategic partnership with Russia.
As President Yeltsin became more erratic, the political friendship with Germany came under strain. But senior German diplomats, having studied carefully the recent utterances of his Communist rival Gennadi Zyuganov, seem to have come to the conclusion that a Yeltsin victory in the presidential election would be marginally better for German-Russian relations.
It is, however, a finely balanced calculation and talk of Nato enlargement is being muffled, at least until after the Russian election in June. The critical question is how much Mr Yeltsin can be offered by Germany, on behalf of the West. Germany and Nato could never offer Russia a veto on alliance affairs.
Germany's shrewd Ambassador to Moscow, Otto von der Gablentz, recently hinted at the changing mood. "There is no real threat" to Central Europe, he told German reporters. "Our position has shifted a little. EU enlargement will be far more important for our Eastern neighbours."
MUSIC: Richard Morrison meets Mark Elder as the dynamic conductor returns to ENO.
There are many superb opera conductors around. But it is hard to think of any who exude such a passion for the theatre for all the graft, the guile, the greasepaint as Mark Elder. His credo is simple to declare, fiendishly difficult to follow: "The greatest challenge for the opera conductor," he says, "is to strike a balance between theatrical and musical gesture."
But that is the challenge which has spurred Elder to his triumphs. Whatever the critics said about the more lurid English National Opera productions of the late 1980s, they agreed on one point: Elder's interpretations were electrifying. They surpassed most of what came from Covent Garden at that time, and little that has happened at ENO since Elder's departure in 1993 bears comparison.
Now Elder is back, temporarily. At the Coliseum on Saturday he conducts a new David Alden production of Tristan and Isolde. Elder's experience of conducting Wagner is extensive: Dutchman, Lohengrin, Rhinegold, Valkyrie ... and, as he rather bizarrely points out, "more performances of Meistersinger than any other living Englishman". But Tristan is new to him. "It isn't like any of the others. It has such a burning passion, first of all expressed as longing and pain, then exploding into that incandescent second act."
Back in 1970, fresh out of Cambridge and on the Royal Opera staff, the 23-year-old Elder prodigiously musical son of a Crouch End dentist had an amazing introduction to Wagner. In one season he assisted on the Ring, Meistersinger, Parsifal with Goodall and Tristan with Solti, and then conducted an amateur performance of Flying Dutchman. It was the kind of crash course that money can't buy.
"Yes," Elder agrees. "Crash and crush. I mean, I had a huge crush on Wagner. When you find this music for the first time it's overwhelming: a wall of feeling hitting you in a wall of sound. It seems more powerful than anything you have ever heard. I'm not saying that it doesn't now. But when you work on these pieces for years you learn where to turn on the heat, where to pull back, how to make the singers sound well. You realise that you don't have to be in awe of these operas. They are theatre pieces like any other, and you have to get your hands dirty to make them work."
Elder spent nearly two decades at ENO, first as a staff conductor, then for 14 years as music director. The success of the relationship he built with ENO's general director, Peter Jonas (now running the Munich opera house), and the producer David Pountney, rather obscures the fact that when Elder first became music director as a forceful and opinionated 32-year-old he had to fight terrible battles internally at the Coliseum. Particularly with the orchestra, who dubbed him "the Ayatollah".
"That was because I wanted to change the way some of them felt about their jobs," Elder says. "You have to remember that in the 1970s it was possible for ENO orchestra members to pay other musicians to play for them. It sounds amazing now. I believed that the management had to control who was at any performance or rehearsal, not the players. It was quite a revolutionary thought for the orchestra to handle. I also wanted the same players to be present for all rehearsals and performances of difficult operas, like Peter Grimes and Wozzeck. Achieving that was the single most important way for the orchestra to develop."
When Elder left, ENO appointed Sian Edwards hoping, no doubt, that this gifted young conductor would turn out as the young Elder had done. The experiment failed; Edwards resigned last autumn. "That shocked me," Elder says. "There are so few places in this country for a conductor to get experience of running an opera house. The music profession must train people to take on these roles. It's very tempting for a management just to hire guest conductors. But a real music director is someone who imparts an attitude, a style and an aspiration to a company that is otherwise lacking."
Elder says this, and he undoubtedly means it. Yet for the past two years, since leaving ENO and then the Rochester Philharmonic in America, he has been nothing but a guest conductor utilising his huge repertoire to conduct operas in Munich on no rehearsal whatsoever ("you have to go at it with absolutely no hesitation ... and have luck on your side"); as well as at the Met, in Paris, in Geneva and Chicago. At 48 he is belatedly carving the reputation in high places that his talents deserve but his intense loyalty to ENO delayed.
However, nobody who knows Elder can believe that he will remain for long without a permanent operatic post. It's too much in his blood. And the job looming largest is at the Royal Opera. Bernard Haitink has said that he will relinquish the music directorship when Covent Garden closes for redevelopment. Would Elder, who conducts Arabella there next month, be interested? "I would certainly consider it," he says, with a glint in his eye.
That might seem odd. Elder is the quintessential Islington liberal; the man whom the BBC sacked from conducting the Last Night of the Proms during the Gulf War because he threatened to cut the patriotic songs. Covent Garden, on the other hand, is the very nest of Establishment privilege.
Nevertheless, for Elder the musical challenge would be irresistible: to conjure for the Royal Opera the same sort of ensemble spirit that he achieved at ENO, but with the added bonus of international-class singers. And doubtless, where Elder went, the old chums Jonas and Pountney could be persuaded to follow. The prospect of the celebrated ENO triumvirate of the 1980s being transposed lock, stock and super-ego to the 21st-century Covent Garden would undoubtedly delight some and horrify others. It certainly wouldn't be boring.
Tristan is at the Coliseum (0171-632 8300) from Saturday
PHILIPPE CEZANNE was feted in London this week as he arrived for the opening of an exhibition of his great-grandfather's work. Selling out fast, with thousands of people jamming the Tate's switchboard, the exhibition is expected to be more popular than the Picasso display in London in 1994.
Two of Cezanne's great-grandsons are in town for the exhibition, which opens tomorrow. Neither M Cezanne nor his cousin, Pierre Gobert, 61, inherited any of the paintings but confess to sharing the artist's temperament. "Like my great-grandfather I am stubborn," M Cezanne, who works as an art expert, said. "I explode just like Cezanne exploded. I bottle up annoying remarks that people have made until suddenly a little thing sets me off. Cezanne was like that. That is something of Cezanne that we have kept. We are all opinionated."
M Gobert has not inherited any of his great-grandfather's talent but sees some similarities in his work as an aeronautical engineer. "I have inherited in my work his perfectionism. Just like him, I do not like things to be badly done even if it is just changing the taps in the bathroom." Both men share Cezanne's introversion.
"My great-grandfather went into painting like some go into religion," M Cezanne said. "He decided from the outset to be alone, solitary like a monk. All the family is shy."
M Cezanne says he knew he would never become a painter. At school, his art teachers would reproach him. "They would always say to me, ‘If only your great-grandfather could see you'. And that was terrible." He now owns a gallery near the Louvre. The name of Cezanne, he admits, has helped him in his career, although it bothered him at first. "I wanted to be known for myself, but it was difficult."
His father had wanted to be a magician, but was pushed towards painting by an ambitious grandmother. There is now only one artist among the descendants of Cezanne, and she prefers not to be connected with the name of the great painter, to ensure her own artistic freedom.
The cousins' grandparents sold all Cezanne's paintings and they had to wait for the exhibition to see some of them again. M Gobert was visiting a gallery in Paris with his mother when he saw a watercolour which looked familiar. She reminded him that it used to hang on the wall at home when he was a child.
Those anxious to find out about Cezanne, the man, from his descendants will be disappointed. M Cezanne said: "He was a very secretive man. It seemed normal that we had connections with Renoir's family and that they would come to the house.
"One can only know him through his paintings and this exhibition will allow the public to really know the artist and to understand him through his work."
Welt-Parlament, Liederhalle, Stuttgart
CHARM and humour have been playing merrily on the surface of Stockhausen's pieces for some years now, in odd combination with the grandeur that the scale of his works and of his claims for them would suggest we ought to be hearing. Welt-Parlament, which had its first performance last Saturday, is true to form. The piece lasts for 40 minutes, which is a long time to be listening to unaccompanied voices, especially when the consistent tone is one of gentle hubbub.
The World Parliament (which, the composer told us, he expects to become a reality, with communication not in English but in music) is convened by its president, who comes on to an empty stage, strides up to a high dais, and strikes a bell. Thirty-six singers then enter, chanting severally on the bell's note, middle D, as they take their places on platforms to either side of the president, who announces that the subject for debate is love. The voices continue to mingle and swirl, drowning particular features in close canons, thick textures and amplification. The intention, Stockhausen says, is to focus attention on spirals of tone colour unfolding as the vowels change, but the bright babble makes it hard to listen to such effects with sufficient concentration.
There is also the problem of the interventions, funny though these are. Every so often parliamentarians come forward to deliver themselves of orotund banalities in song. "Love is forgiveness," offers a sweetly uncertain bass. "Not always!" the president crisply replies, at which the nine tenors rise with a unanimous "Ach, so!"
Best is the end. After an exultant pulsed section reminiscent of Messiaen's Cinq rechants, the president concludes the session, and the parliamentarians leave the stage all but one, the tubbiest of the basses, who dithers to right and left and finally remains alone. He manages to stutter out a remark: "Yes, and here would come the next scene."
Achim Jackel was touching in this role; he and his colleagues in the choir of South German Radio, under their president-conductor Rupert Huber, were excellent all through.
MALCOLM RIFKIND, the Foreign Secretary, claimed yesterday that Britain would lead the way in Europe in strengthening relations with America and promoting transatlantic free trade. His claim was hotly disputed by Sir Leon Brittan, the European Commissioner responsible for relations with America.
Mr Rifkind also said Britain was the "enterprise centre of Europe", and claimed that the Government had forced the pace within the EU on liberalising trade with America. Without Britain's efforts "aided by Germany, Sir Leon Brittan and others" the Union would not have won agreement at the Madrid summit in December to look at how remaining trade barriers could be scrapped.
His speech comes amid a counter-offensive by Brussels against what it sees as British attempts to delay or derail European economic and monetary union (EMU). Mr Rifkind is seen as taking British policy further down the road to Euro-scepticism.
Sir Leon, who on Monday publicly derided any attempt to delay the proposed start of EMU in 1999, today mocks the Euro-sceptics, saying that the EU had achieved substantial advance in transatlantic relations "with no help from the anti-European tub-thumpers in Westminster". Writing in The Times, he welcomes Mr Rifkind's speech, but notes that Britain alone could not have achieved this key step.
He says Britain is pushing at an open door in urging Europe to seek closer relations with America. The aims are attainable "provided that the Foreign Secretary's positive approach is not distorted by those wishing to misrepresent it as giving encouragement to Euro-sceptics who wish to detach Britain from Europe".
Mr Rifkind, addressing the Transatlantic Policy Network, said: "We must apply the transatlantic partnership to furthering our prosperity, just as we do for our security. Britain will be leading the way in this. As Europe's foremost proponent of free trade, Britain will be a champion of greater economic liberalisation across the Atlantic."
His speech dwelt on the need for a new international framework to underpin the close economic relations between Europe and America.
His remarks will, in themselves, raise no hackles in the Commission, which is committed to deepening ties with Washington. However, Britain's attempt to claim credit for the new initiative will irk Sir Leon and the Spanish, who made a revitalised European Union relationship with America a centrepiece of their presidency.
Moving to head off a clash with Sir Leon, Mr Rifkind last night denied any suggestion that he was championing closer relations with America because the Government was taking a more Euro-sceptic view. "My advocacy of a new transatlantic partnership is based on the benefit for European jobs, prosperity and security that will flow from an enhanced relationship between Europe and North America," he said.
THE Queen has invited President Chirac of France to pay a state visit to Britain just weeks before the likely start of the inter-governmental conference, or IGC, on the European Union's future.
The timing of the visit, from May 14 till May 17, is significant. Buckingham Palace, at the prompting of the Government, has invited M Chirac within a year of taking office and only months after he was given an effusive welcome by John Major at Chequers last October. With the close relations between London and Paris, cemented by co-operation in Bosnia, there is talk of a new entente cordiale. President Chirac may also be invited to address a meeting of the Houses of Parliament.
There is little disguising Britain's political interest in such a visit. In the run-up to the IGC, which will review the Maastricht treaty, the Government is anxious not to be isolated and is making strenuous efforts to forge alliances with partners in the EU.
An undeclared aim of policy towards France is to wean Paris from the federalist European embrace of Germany and prevent a Franco-German front on negotiating issues.
Schoolchildren are learning to write songs like Berg rather than Blur, writes Hilary Finch
The young autodidact Alban Berg cut his compositional teeth on songwriting. On the basis that what was good enough for him was also likely to do the trick in north Westminster, the Wigmore Hall which has increased young audiences for Lieder to an extent that German and Austrian houses still find hard to believe introduced a songwriting project in four inner London secondary schools.
Each school received four visits over five weeks from a team of professionals. Berg's Seven Early Songs, with their challenging fusion of tonal, atonal and 12-tone writing, acted as focus and inspiration for new poems, new songs. Now the whole lot will be performed at the Wigmore Hall at the end of the project, on Friday.
Schools don't come much grittier, or much more musical, than North Westminster Community School. Its 1,900 students are spread over three grim concrete sites. Twice a week, a group of 16 GCSE music students pass through a hefty security door protecting their precious keyboards, piano and computer.
Al Hanson, head of music and jazz saxophonist, is ambitious for his charges. He has set up, single-handed and unpaid, Saturday Music School, attended by 70 per cent of his Year Ten pupils. He runs a string ensemble, a percussion ensemble, an improvisation class, and much more.
Now he was trying out his latest masterclass: Howard Moody (pianist), Mark Withers (clarinet and animateur), poet Jo Shapcott and Berg. Shapcott first. Berg's song Im Zimmer ("Indoors") was the focus. So what was indoors? Home? School? A place to retire to, inside your own head? And how was it? What did it sound like, smell like? What did it say?
"Indoors smells like burnt toast. Indoors tastes like a charcoal roast. Indoors says I'm in hell. I reply, oh well." That was Jerone Emanuel. For Laura Webb, "the sound of indoors is loud/But it smells suffocating. Indoors whispers stay. I reply: we'll see."
Poems were read out loud, accompanied by greater and lesser guffaws of embarrassment, heavy chewing of gum. A piano and a clarinet busked their way around two distinctive sound palettes of notes: one a gentle and comforting whisper of white notes, the other a more menacing mix of all-blacks. Moody and Withers played Berg's own Indoors. Silence gripped the group. Rapping feet were stilled. "It's the difference between painting a picture and taking a photo, isn't it?" Hanson said.
For their own picture, the students selected the set of notes they preferred. Then, having drawn a single line tracing the shape of their own declaimed words, the line was transferred into the black notes. Piano and clarinet transcribed the written line into sound. Mouths gaped at the magic of transformation.
The following week, the song had to be fixed. Shapcott had distilled into a single lyric a potent recipe of images from each student. Every individual poem would be printed in a programme book; several would be read out loud. But only one composite work would be fine-tuned and performed. Editing began: more performance now, with real showmanship and not a little choreography. Shapes were found for words, notes for shapes, the tone-row selected. "Sad, dark and lonely/Not very homely. Burnt toast, charcoal roast ..."
Hanson was thrilled with the new insights and options offered to his fledgeling composers. "Nearly all their own private listening experiences are lyric-based, but so often it's all bound up with social function and self-identification," he said. "This has shown them how song can be about self-expression too. And they vote with their feet they've all turned up. I'm pleased, because they're pleased."
Indoors will be performed at the Wigmore Hall, Wigmore Street, London W1 (0171-935 2141) on Friday (5.45pm). It will be followed by Berg's Seven Early Songs as part of the International Songmakers concert at 7.30pm
FACING allegations that he won the presidency of Colombia with $6 million (£4 million) in secret donations from drug lords, President Samper is fighting for political survival against increasing odds.
As Senor Samper's Government teeters near collapse, his electoral campaign manager and treasurer, once trusted friends, are under arrest and are telling investigators about alleged financial misdeeds by the Liberal Party. Moreover, Washington is threatening to cut financial aid to Senor Samper's Government and warning him that it will seek the extradition of jailed drug lords if they are not given harsh sentences.
A lawyer by training, Senor Samper insists he is innocent. While few believe such a large sum of money could have been received by his campaign without his knowledge, the President seems confident that there is no firm evidence against him. "There does not seem to be anything that really nails him," one diplomat said. "There is no cheque with his name on it and no video of him with suitcases of money."
But Senor Samper may still be forced to resign. In 1994, his campaign spent $12 million, three times the legal limit. Besides about $6 million in drug money, his party also allegedly received through fraud $2 million from a public fund for election campaigns.
Despite the lack of proof linking Senor Samper to drug money, his role in electoral fraud and overspending may be easier to establish. In that case, experts say, he may be offered a more dignified exit thus avoiding any criminal charges.
On March 1 the White House is due to announce its annual certification of nations involved in the war on drugs. With Senor Samper still in office, Washington has made it clear Colombia will fail the test, at a possible cost of $70 million in US aid.
The Good Woman of Setzuan, Orange Tree
BRECHT'S notions of kindness and fellow feeling, inside or outside Setzuan, are at best peculiar, at worst nonsensical. Shen Te, the so-called good woman, gives food and tobacco to beggars, trusts thieves, and allows herself to be ruined because she never bothers to read the small print.
In fact, she is The Simple-Minded Woman of Setzuan, but Brecht does not call her this because he wants to make out that he is establishing a dialectic between decent humanity and ruthless capitalism. So Shen Te has to be described as good, while her cousin, Shui Ta, brought in to run the business productively, is hated by all.
The engine of the plot is that they are the same person: Shen Te invents the cousin to do the disagreeable deeds she can't bring herself to do in her own name. When one cousin is there the other is not. To adapt the words of the old song, you can't have one with the other. Man cannot be good and at the same time succeed in this heartless world.
The pity is that an idea which certainly contains more than an element of truth is fleshed out with such thinly textured events, and placed in a story that guilefully calls things the wrong names. But this is how Brecht felt he could best present the argument in order to awaken the spectator's capacity to act.
More interesting than the play's argument is the style of direction that Sam Walters employs to demonstrate it, developing his own Verfremdungseffekt from his author's famous "alienation effect".
So that we shall not identify Shen Te with any one actress, all five play her in turn, handing over a shawl at the moment of switch, unless she is acting Shui Ta, in which case she passes a wide-brimmed hat and cane. Some actresses play one or both better than the others. Teresa McElroy made an impossibly sweet-natured goodie but her stern, unbending Shui Ta was the best of the baddies.
The production is described as "promenade", but all this means is that the audience stands at the sides or sits on the floor. This is not greatly different from the ordinary arrangement, although more uncomfortable.
The company of nine creates neat thumbnail impressions of the water-seller, the wastrel, the barber, the baby and others, and there is humour in some of the lines, or in the playing of them. The play was stylistically innovative in its day, but that style has passed into theatrical language and leaves the simple content isolated and exposed.
Cat and Mouse (Sheep)/Services, Gate, W11
THE Gate theatre's inaugural Biennale Festival kicks off so inauspiciously it is almost stunning. I certainly glazed over long before the blokes in the bear and moose suits started lurching about inside the toilet cubicles, supposedly having it away with two bored housewives. That was presumably the outre/absurd climax of Services, Elfriede Jelinek's crudely feminist play about suburban Austrians' sexual urges.
This season of brand new European plays sounds promising, pioneeringly working against British theatre's insularity. However, it opens with an experimental double bill which is, one hopes, the pits. Jelinek's housewives and their chauvinist husbands, pulling in at a motorway cafe which is actually a sex joint for frustrated women, talk in a laboured style. The dialogue shunts between the obvious and the obscure.
Annie Siddons's cast, in Day-Glo Lycra, fail to awaken our interest by delivering their lines extra loud. The production suggests parallels with Cosi fan tutte and Shakespeare's Merry Wives. But this brash modern effort is hardly on a par with its forebears.
Services is preceded by Cat and Mouse (Sheep), an anti-play and satire of post-Thatcherite society by British playwright Gregory Motton, a misfit here who is admired abroad. Funny and intriguing at first, this piece is directed with careful crafting by Motton and Ramin Gray (bizarre blackouts and one splendidly bad splurge of electric organ music). The cast imbue their deliberately flat-toned, front-facing acting with humour.
We are in a council flat which is also a council chamber hung with Old Masters. Actress Rudi Davies is selling groceries. Next minute she is a dictator called Gengis. Character is a slippery concept. Gengis's uncle, dry Tony Rohr, veers between liberal utterances and fits of fascistic vitriol. This can be amusing, or radically unsettling. The scrambled scenario does not develop clearly enough to sustain interest. No need to start counting the animals in brackets.
New York: Three works of art worth an estimated $15 million (£9.8 million) disappeared from New York's John F. Kennedy airport after an apparent gaffe by security guards.
The pictures, which include two pieces by Picasso, should have been placed under special guard after they were held at the airport due to bureaucratic problems. Instead, the outside contractors entrusted with their care allegedly treated them like a routine package. The three missing pieces are a 1927 Picasso painting, Woman Seated With Skull in Left Hand, a 1956 Picasso drawing called Portrait of a Woman Dedicated to Jacqueline and an 1897 painting, Paris Street by Pissarro.
They arrived in New York last Thursday in the hand luggage of Avelino Gonzalez, a Mexican businessman and co-owner of the art. He was intending to take them to New York auction houses for evaluation.
Senor Gonzalez was told that he lacked the proper paperwork and a "house broker" to take them through customs. In exchange for a receipt, he surrendered them to officials for safeguarding in a bonded holding area. Dynair, a company which transports goods to the holding area, allegedly violated its own rules by failing to give the paintings special protection.
When Senor Gonzalez returned to the airport the following morning to claim the pictures, they could not be found. The FBI has been called in to investigate.
Valley Song, Royal Court
Somewhere in his diaries Athol Fugard remembers the moment in 1968 when it hit him that his life's work was "to witness as truthfully as I can the nameless and desperate of this little corner of the world".
He went on to do just that, giving the world his observations of the human impact of pass laws, the destruction of shanty towns, poverty, displacement, police sleaze, "immorality" acts, imprisonment and much, much else. In his unassuming, unpretentious way he helped to destroy apartheid and with it, you might suppose, he ended his career as the great South African witness.
But the play he has written at the age of 63 proves that this is not the case. There are troubled people in the new South Africa, too, and fresh fears in need of a truthful recorder. Change, even positive change, is frightening. That is the message of Valley Song and, since Fugard has not only directed it but plays two of its three characters, it is surely a pretty personal one, aimed partly at himself.
On the face of it, Valley Song is an embarrassingly simple piece, couched in language that can venture perilously close to the banal. The main character, a 17-year-old Cape Coloured called Veronica, wants to leave the rural outback and hone her singing talent in Johannesburg. The plan is resisted by her grandfather, who lost his daughter and her mother to the big city, and gently challenged by a character irritatingly called the Author, a white Fugard-clone seeking escape from the whirl of the South African theatre in the same valley.
It is yet another variation on the tale of the child-in-search-of-a-fortune, but, as it turns out, more subtle and resonant than it seems. The Author wants to want change, yet admits to a fierce nostalgia for the "unspoiled, innocent little world" that the valley once was. Fatalistic old Buks, as the grandfather is called, clearly feels secure with rigidities of caste that vex his spirit yet strike him as God-given.
Both old men believe in roots and fear rootlessness. Yet the play paradoxically suggests that roots trap and destroy as well as give nourishment and a sense of belonging, and that rootlessness offers the freedom to range and start again as well as the danger of loneliness and loss.
Nor is this an abstract dilemma. It is a matter of burning concern to Esmeralda Bihl's appealing Veronica, who angrily rejects both her grandfather's suggestion that she work as a skivvy for the Author and the Author's prophecy that she will end up collecting wood on some veld, barefoot and with a child on her back.
She is a confused, optimistic adolescent and the spirit of Mandela's young South Africa. She prefers to dream, hope and run risks rather than do the economically sensible thing, which is clean all-white houses for a living, as her grandmother did before her.
Just to add to the complexity, her ambition seems to be less to sing well than to make the sort of spoof-American noises she thinks will bring her fame and wealth. Like South Africa itself, she has difficulties and disillusion ahead.
Does that sum up the play's conclusion? Probably not, given the many contradictions beneath its plain-looking surface. It has a ruminative, questioning feel, the more so because of Fugard's presence both as the sophisticated Author and, with a twist of the vowels and pull of the hat, the shrewd if illiterate Buks.
He is not a hugely gifted actor, but there is something about his tiny, bony, earnest face that grabs the attention and leaves you in no doubt that matters of real moment are being aired. See it, see him.
AS Louisiana Republicans prepared to cast the first votes of America's 1996 presidential election last night, new figures revealed the breathtaking sums Steve Forbes is spending on his maverick bid for the White House.
In 1995 the publishing heir spent $18 million (£11.5 million), Robert Dole $20 million and Phil Gramm $19 million but then Mr Forbes did not enter the race until September. In the last three months of 1995, Mr Forbes spent $14 million compared with Mr Dole's $8.4 million, Mr Gramm's $5.4 million, Lamar Alexander's $3.5 million and Patrick Buchanan's $3.2 million.
Since the beginning of the year, Mr Forbes's spending has actually accelerated and his total outlay must now exceed $20 million. That is a staggering amount considering actual voting is only just beginning, but one that has propelled him into second place in most polls.
Moreover, these figures from the Federal Election Commission understate the huge advantages Mr Forbes enjoys as a result of using a personal fortune of roughly $440 million to finance his campaign.
Firstly, he has been able to drown out his Republican rivals' messages. Nearly $10 million of his $14 million expenditure in the last quarter was on advertising, while a lot of his rivals' was on fundraising. He has spent four times more on commercials in Iowa, scene of next week's caucuses, than any other candidate. The average voter in New Hampshire, which holds the first primaries on February 20, now sees Forbes advertisements 34 times a week.
Secondly, Mr Forbes's spending has forced his rivals to dig deeper into their war chests to remain competitive. This virtually ensures the swift departure of all candidates who finish outside the top three in Iowa and New Hampshire.
However, Mr Forbes is not bound by any spending limits as he is not receiving taxpayer funds, and he promises to remain in the race right up to the Republican nominating convention in August. He says he will "invest and spend whatever it takes to get my message of hope, growth and opportunity across to the voters", and could surpass the record of $60 million which Ross Perot spent on his independent candidacy in 1992.
Mr Forbes's rivals accuse him of trying to "buy" the Republican nomination, but voters seem unconcerned. Many consider his wealth makes him incorruptible and beyond the reach of lobbyists.
Mr Forbes also argues that all his spending would be futile if he did not have a powerful message. In 1980, John Connally, the former Texas Governor, spent $12 million chasing the Republican nomination but won not a single primary. Mr Gramm, the Texas senator, has spent more than $20 million but remains stuck in single figures in the polls.
Mr Gramm had to win last night's Louisiana caucuses to maintain his credibility, but faced a strong challenge from Mr Buchanan, the conservative commentator. All other candidates besides Alan Keyes boycotted the caucuses to appease Iowa voters furious that Louisiana has violated their right to hold the first contest.
Mr Gramm had worked Louisiana hard from his base in Texas and the party heirarchy rigged the rules in his favour. However, Mr Buchanan barnstormed through the state in recent days. Both wanted to be able to fight Iowa next week as the conservative standard-bearer.
THE US Congress will suffer one of the biggest exoduses in its history this November as moderates of both parties are driven away by the increasing rancour on Capitol Hill.
On Monday, Virginia's L.F.Payne became the 39th member of the House of Representatives to announce that he would not be seeking re-election. Thirteen senators will be retiring, breaking the record of 11 set 100 years ago.
Congressmen have to spend more time fundraising in return for fewer perks. However, it was Congress's capture by a new breed of hardline Republican ideologues in 1994 that seems to have been the last straw. Most leavers are Democrats who hate being in opposition, but moderates of both parties say they are appalled at how basic civility has given way to invective and compromise has become a dirty word.
The retiring members "share a common level of frustration over the absence of political accord and the increase in personal hostilities", William Cohen, one of the Republican senators who is leaving, said. "Those who seek compromise and consensus are depicted with scorn as a ‘mushy middle', that is, weak and unprincipled. By contrast, those who plant their feet in the concrete of ideological absolutism are heralded as heroic defenders of truth, justice and the American way."
Mary McGrory, the liberal Washington Post columnist, wrote that "under Newt Gingrich and his commando freshmen, the usually raucous, but often jolly, House has taken on the charms of downtown Sarajevo a war zone".
The exodus, if anything, will accelerate the polarisation of Congress. Those leaving the Senate include Sam Nunn of Georgia, Bill Bradley of New Jersey and Jim Exon of Nebraska, all Democrats; and Mark Hatfield of Oregon, Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas, and Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who are Republicans.
All have been willing to cross party lines in order to reach compromises, but their replacements will almost certainly be more liberal or more conservative. The same is true in the House.
The Democrats have little hope of recapturing the Senate, which the Republicans control with 53 seats to 47. The Republicans must defend 19 of the 33 contested seats, but eight of the 13 retiring senators are Democrats and the Republicans look certain to capture three of their seats. The Democrats have more chance of retaking the House, where all 435 seats are in play and they need a net gain of 20.
THE White House yesterday sought to play down a subpoena for President Clinton to testify at a fraud trial in Arkansas as Republicans seized on the latest political embarrassment as further evidence of misconduct by the First Family.
Mr Clinton had been subpoenaed by a federal judge as a witness in the Little Rock trial of Susan McDougal and her husband, James, the Clintons' business partners in the failed Whitewater land venture, and their co-defendant and Arkansas Governor, Jim Guy Tucker.
Mrs McDougal, who claims the President's testimony is vital to her trial next month, has been accused of receiving a $300,000 (£190,000) loan that David Hale, a former municipal judge, says Mr Clinton and others pressured him to make to her in 1986.
Mr Hale, the prosecution's star witness, has accused Mrs McDougal, her husband and Mr Clinton of taking part in a scheme to defraud the Small Business Administration of the loan.
The former judge, who last year pleaded guilty to an unrelated fraud, later made a plea bargain to testify in the Whitewater investigation.
Mr Clinton has denied the allegations and agreed to testify next month. Lawyers for Mrs McDougal still hope the President will appear in person, but it seems certain he can satisfy the subpoena by offering either a videotaped deposition or live testimony by satellite from Washington.
The White House has been quick to argue that Mr Clinton is being called only as a character witness and other Presidents have given testimony in criminal cases. Ronald Reagan did so by videotape at the Iran-Contra trial, but he had left office by then.
Gerald Ford gave similar evidence at a trial of a woman who was convicted of trying to shoot him, while Jimmy Carter gave a videotaped deposition in a 1978 trial relating to the fugitive financier, Robert Vesco. Perhaps most famous of all was the written testimony offered by Thomas Jefferson in the murder trial of Aaron Burr.
The prospect of a personal appearance would place an enormous spotlight on Whitewater and could expose Mr Clinton to cross-examination by Kenneth Starr, the chief prosecutor.
As a new musical gets set to bring back Liverpool's glory days as the home of Merseybeat, Alan Jackson visits a city keen to cash in on its fab heritage
That relatively new phenomenon, the heritage industry, encourages every corner of Britain to aspire to theme-park status. At times, the marketing style is so mannered and discreet it is almost painful witness Sissinghurst, where visitors scything their way through tasteful tea towels, pot pourri and superior jams may find themselves aching for the respite of souvenirs as unashamedly vulgar as a Vita Sackville-West fridge magnet or glove puppet. Elsewhere, the relationship between inspiration and self-exploitation is more bizarre; in Haworth, bodies weary from the climb up picturesque but steep and user-unfriendly cobbles may be revived by a Bronteburger and chips, as well as the more traditional tea and scones.
It should come as no surprise, then, to those arriving in Liverpool as day-trippers and 92 per cent of the city's annual £73 million tourist income comes from that Lennon and McCartneyesque category that a big wide world of Beatles-related opportunities awaits them. Sitting at a window table in the Lucy in the Sky cafe, situated in a mini-mall which rose from the rubble of the original Cavern Club, I scan a list of neighbouring retail and leisure attractions. Some are merely pun-inspired assaults on the passing pound, dollar or yen Soley For Men (shoes) or Top Knots (hairpieces, wigs and toupees) but most claim some connection with the Fab Four.
Around the corner at the Cavern Pub, the pun-hungry visitor can order a Sgt Pepper Steak Sandwich or portions of either Give Peas a Chance or John Lemon Meringue Pie. Those with an appetite for proper mementos are to be found in the Beatles Shop, where a comprehensive range of memorabilia is on offer, ranging from rare records, photographs and posters to fridge magnets and glove puppets (although not, alas, tea towels, pot pourri and upmarket jam). Those purists horrified by the destruction of the Cavern it has subsequently been replicated here, and recreated, in its original state, at the Albert Dock would choke on their Beatlesburger.
"The importance of the group and, indeed, of the whole Mersey sound, cannot be overstated where tourism is concerned," says Mike Wilkinson, Liverpool's head of tourism, arts and heritage. "When you ask foreign visitors what they knew about the city before they came here, it boils down to football teams and pop groups.
"Last week Paul McCartney was in town for the opening of the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts, and the level of excitement was phenomenal. It's my belief that we've previously undervalued and underutilised the impact that the Beatles in particular had."
Wilkinson's post is less than three years old, underlining Liverpool's new commitment to marketing itself as a centre of tourism. Working in alliance with various other regional bodies in the public and private sectors, he has created a three-year strategy which includes the promotion of the Cavern Quarter Initiative, within which local business interests are considering the opening of a Beatles-themed hotel and the creation of a Beatles trail, featuring actual discs sunk into the pavements, a la Hollywood Boulevard.
"Pop-related tourism has developed a lot already, but there's quite clearly scope for a great deal more," he says. "New Orleans has jazz. We have the Beatles. It's definitely an important way forward."
Meanwhile, in a shabby rehearsal studio, the cast members of Ferry‘Cross The Mersey The Musical go through their paces for the impresario Bill Kenwright. "The best two hours I've spent since Everton beat the‘pool 2-1 three months ago," he says of the show, which tells the story of "a headstrong young Liverpudlian and his band storming their way to the top at the height of the Merseybeat boom".
The show has its premiere next week at the Liverpool Playhouse (of which Kenwright is executive producer), then sets off on a 14-venue regional and, possibly, pre-West End tour. "If you've got it, flaunt it," Kenwright says of the revenue potential of the Mersey pop legacy. "Just as Stoke capitalises on its potteries, so we must capitalise on our musical past. If we don't, we're fools. It's a key to our ability to thrive again."
Downstairs, in Lennon's Bar, the revue's narrator-star Gerry Marsden admits to being humbled by the enduring success of a song that took him just ten minutes to compose more than 30 years ago, yet which has not only permeated the wider consciousness as an emblem of Liverpool's civic pride, but is also piped to passengers as today's ferry service docks at the Pierhead. "I don't think the city ever really appreciated quite how big it was internationally," he says. "If it had, it would never have allowed anything so lunatic to happen as the demolition of its ultimate attraction, the original Cavern Club."
Now 53 and resident across the water in Wirral, Marsden claims that he and his Pacemakers never really appreciated the fact that they represented a footnote to musical history. "Until Brian Epstein came along to manage us and take everything forward, we thought only of playing for enjoyment and, hopefully, making a few quid along the way. Even when we had our first hit (How Do You Do It? in 1963), we still thought we had no more than a five-year career. More than 30 years on, the same songs are still earning me a living. Amazing!"
And still earning him respect, too. The tourists queueing to take the daily Magical Mystery Tour of Beatles sites may comprise young, camcorder-wielding Japanese, but Lennon's Bar regulars still recognise a local hero when they see one.
A small group of twentysomething lads chatting about football are galvanised by Marsden's unexpected appearance. "Respect due, man," says one, entranced, before extracting the star's promise to hold still until a camera can be found. "Please, have this one on me," adds unemployed Jason, buying a drink for a man who found success before Jason was even born. And "make sure you put forward a positive image of Liverpool not the usual rubbish that's written," cautions his pal Stephen, on discovering a journalist is present.
"You see, they've got a great spirit here," says Marsden proudly. If the marketing men could bottle and sell such a commodity, they probably would.
Ferry‘Cross the Mersey The Musical is at the Liverpool Playhouse (0151-709 8363) from Monday until March 9
IF HER past is any guide, she will be marrying again soon.
After eight weddings to seven men in 41 years, Elizabeth Taylor has filed for divorce from the man of whom she announced in 1991: "This is it, for ever." Ms Taylor, 63, met Larry Fortensky, a building worker 20 years her junior, in a California drug rehabilitation clinic in 1988.
When they married five years ago at a "private" ceremony at Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch, helicopters laden with television cameras jostled for airspace and paparazzi hid in the bushes.
They separated last August and the divorce papers, filed at the California Superior Court in Los Angeles on Monday, cited "irreconcilable differences". The actress's lawyer, Neil Papiano, said she was still fond of Mr Fortensky and that the divorce would be swift, amicable and private. He declined to confirm whether there was a pre-nuptial agreement, but such contracts have smoothed her previous divorces.
Ms Taylor's first marriage in 1950 was to Conrad Hilton, the hotel chain heir, when she was 18. After less than a year she left him for Michael Wilding, who was more than twice her age. In 1957, she married Mike Todd, who died when his plane crashed a year later. She was married once to Eddie Fisher, once to Senator John Warner and twice to Richard Burton.
Of all Ms Taylor's matrimonial adventures, none was stranger than the one just ended. All the couple appeared to have in common was their choice of clinic a Betty Ford centre near Palm Springs and a dependence on painkillers.
Within months of their wedding, there were rumours of discord in Ms Taylor's Bel Air mansion, where she was struggling with arthritis that led to two hip replacement operations and Mr Fortensky was said to prefer beer and television to his new wife's social round.
A HINT by Britain to the tiny African kingdom of Swaziland that the time has arrived to come to terms with democracy or face the economic consequences was spurned yesterday when police arrested a leading trade union official.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey, the Minister of Overseas Development, urged King Mswati III and his government ministers not to be too slow in introducing changes. Her visit on Monday to Mbabane, the capital, came after an eight-day general strike last month that crippled the country. Swaziland, landlocked between South Africa and Mozambique, is ruled by an absolute monarchy.
After his talks with Lady Chalker, King Mswati said he would revive the suspended constitution. and seek views on the type of political system people wanted.
But last night, as the King's announcements were rejected by the country's largest underground political party, the People's United Democratic Movement, police in Mbabane arrested Jabulani Nxumalo, assistant general secretary of the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions, on perjury and forgery charges dating back to 1984.
The federation has called for a second general strike from February 18 and a union official in Mbabane said he feared that the country was heading for bloodshed and violence.
Beryl Dixon reports on a yearly guideline for pay and benefits
Every year, in association with The Times, the recruitment consultancy Gordon Yates conducts a survey into secretarial salaries and conditions.
The survey is eagerly awaited by employers who often make use of it when conducting pay reviews. "It is seen as a guideline rather than a definition of going rates," Richard Grace, the managing director of Gordon Yates, says. "We find that many companies like to know that they are somewhere between the average and the upper quartile."
Average salaries looked like this:
College leaver with less than one year's experience £10,310 in small companies (those with fewer than ten staff); £11,012 in large companies (more than 1,000 staff).
Junior secretary with one year-plus experience £12,524 (small); £13,222 (large).
Manager or team secretary £16,118 (small); £19,336 (large).
Chairman, chief executive or senior partner level secretary £20,538 (small); £23,547 (large).
Salaries are 1.3 per cent higher than the average in the City while companies outside central London pay 7.3 per cent lower. However, averages do not show the total picture. There are considerable differences between the separate business categories. Of those included in the survey, head offices came first in the pay ranking order, followed by solicitors. In general, the more glamorous industries are towards the bottom of the pay league. If you want to earn a fortune avoid publishing, the television, music and film industries and some public sector organisations.
Benefits paid on top of salary which also vary can add to an annual salary. Overtime for instance, paid by one in five companies, adds 8.4 per cent to pay. The most common perks are still, as last year, season ticket loans, pension schemes and private health insurance. Life assurance, subsidised lunches and sports and social facilities come next.
The survey revealed few surprises. "Salaries are coming on apace," Mr Grace says. "Not dramatically the average increase was 4.1 per cent but it is interesting to see which sectors are catching up after lower periods of recruitment. Consultancies, which are very responsive to the progress of the economy, are bouncing back. Small companies in the leisure, retail and marketing sectors which were slammed by recession are making up numbers, too."
The survey did reveal some trends. Employers were asked to forecast growth in their payroll numbers. Consultancies forecast a 32 per cent increase. Leisure and marketing were also high, expecting to increase numbers of staff by 25 per cent and 26 per cent respectively. Solicitors predict an increase of 20 per cent. Right at the other end of the scale, television, music and film companies and architects predict no growth.
Few people choose an employer on financial grounds alone. Most choose a sector first, then plump for job satisfaction within it. Good working conditions and personal preferences regarding variety and responsibility take priority. However, everyone knows what their financial commitments are and also has an idea of their own worth.
If you wanted to use the survey as a pay bargaining tool you might have limited success indications being that employers are still reluctant to pay premium salaries unless obliged to do so but it is always worth a try, particularly if your job duties have changed so much that you think a salary review is called for. And of course, if you are considering changing jobs and consciously seeking work in a different sector it makes sense to establish what the pay range is before deciding whether you can afford to make the move.
You could also see where the jobs are opening up. Gordon Yates has asked employers to forecast their payroll numbers increase for some time now. Monitoring over the past few years has shown these to be remarkably accurate.
THE north Indian state of Haryana has announced that all rural liquor stores must close permanently by April 1. The decision marks another attempt by politicians to control the nation's appetite for alcohol.
The ban is a victory for women, who rose in anger because so many of their husbands were spending their meagre wages on alcohol at small government-run shops. Not that the ban will work, of course; as in other states that have introduced prohibition, it will simply create a bootlegging industry and drive up prices.
Andhra Pradesh, the big southern state where women launched an unprecedented campaign against the shops, has been experimenting with prohibition for a year. Women shaved the heads of drunken men after they passed out and they refused to cook or wash the clothes of persistently drunken husbands. They even went on sex strikes.
The result is that politicians moved into the illegal distilleries racket, enriching themselves while paying lip-service to the evils of drink. Gujarat, the home state of Mahatma Gandhi in western India, has had prohibition for years, in deference to the anti-alcohol sentiments of the father of the nation, but the ban is a farce. Drink is readily available, albeit at high prices, from bootleggers. Illicit stills are common in the countryside.
Every political party in Haryana, a farming state, has been forced to support prohibition because the anti-drink movement, backed by Hindu religious organisations, has gained such momentum. As in Andhra Pradesh, women attacked liquor shops and delivery vehicles to stop sales of drink in their villages.
Members of the Bharatiya Janata Party, a Hindu nationalist political group, plan to enter the homes of Dalits (Untouchables) and low-caste people in Haryana in search of alcohol bottles that will be smashed in a public demonstration. Similar gimmicks were employed by Hindu organisations when Andhra Pradesh officially went dry.
Tipplers in Andhra Pradesh complain that black-market whisky is triple the price of pre-prohibition days. Even the cost of the local toddy, arrack, has soared. The price of imported whisky would seem huge in rural India. A standard bottle costs about 900 rupees (£16.60), which is more than most people earn in a month.
The distilling of arrack has become a cottage industry in rural Andhra Pradesh, with entire families engaged in the trade. Local toddy tappers, who extract the principal ingredient for arrack from palm trees, are in greater demand now that whisky is so expensive on the black market. Arrack is often laced with chemicals to give it extra kick, sometimes with fatal results.
Fines for possession of alcohol are high. Houses can be raided without a warrant, government officials can be dismissed if caught drinking and repeat offenders risk jail. For the most part, people simply bribe the police.
One well-off man caught with three bottles of premium whisky said that he had had to pay more than £2,000 to get the case dropped.
YESTERDAY in the Commons: questions to defence ministers and the Prime Minister and a statement on British Gas followed by debates on future of GP fundholders; Collective Redundancies and Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (Amendment) Regulations; proposed closure of Frances Withers Home, Sutton Coldfield. In the Lords: the Broadcasting Bill, committee stage; health and safety in farming.
TODAY in the Commons: backbench debates followed by Foreign Office questions Labour-initated debates on rail privatisation and the "renewed threat of Post Office privatisation", and backbench debate on sanctions against Libya and Iraq. In the Lords: debates on employment in financial services industries; overseas aid; Community Representation Bill, second reading.
A TORY backbench move aimed at curbing the sale to young children of sexually explicit teenage girls' magazines cleared its first Commons hurdle yesterday.
The Periodicals (Protection of Children) Bill would require magazines to carry cover-page warnings about articles that may be unsuitable for readers below a certain age. Peter Luff, Tory MP for Worcester, introduced the Bill after reading magazines bought by his 10-year-old daughter.
He said yesterday: "These magazines undermine the value and importance of sex. I want to help parents and schools by making it easier to learn what is inside. I want editors and publishers to decide what their lowest target age is for each magazine, and say so on the front cover."
Most ten-minute rule Bills are used to publicise an issue and rarely have any chance of becoming law. But Mr Luff's Bill, given its first reading without a vote yesterday, has widespread support.
Some retailers recently banned a magazine for children aged 10 to 17 because it offered explict advice on performing oral sex. Mr Luff told MPs that the letters pages in magazines such as Sugar, Mizz, It's Bliss, 19 and More! often degenerated into "squalid titillation, salaciousness and smut". He acknowledged that the magazines sometimes gave sensible advice but said that the language used was of a kind more usually seen on the walls of public lavatories.
Simon Hughes (Lib Dem, Southwark and Bermondsey) said that the Commons had to proceed carefully. "We must not end up with an age marking that makes these magazines more appealing rather than less appealing."
Tory sources said that if the Bill did not succeed the Government might consider introducing a code of practice.
A TAX-RAISING Scottish parliament could soon be in a permanent confrontation with Westminster, the Lord Chancellor says today as the political parties prepare for a fresh battle on constitutional reform.
Tony Blair, delivering the John Smith Memorial Lecture in London tonight, will outline Labour's plans for Scottish and Welsh devolution, reform of the House of Lords, freedom of information and a Bill of Rights. He will also call for a "stakeholder democracy", arguing that the Tory defence of the status quo will fuel public dissatisfaction with politics.
At the same time Brian Mawhinney, the Tory party chairman, will launch a pre-emptive strike against Mr Blair's proposals for a Scottish parliament, claiming that they are a direct threat to the survival of the United Kingdom because they would put the parliament on a collision course with Westminster. In a foretaste of the campaign the Tories intend to run against the "tartan tax", Mr Mawhinney will question why Labour MPs sitting for Scottish seats but paid in London should be exempt from a tax they wish to impose on their constituents.
Writing in The Times today, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, makes a rare foray into the constitutional debate, saying that giving Scotland tax-raising powers could lead to a "field day for the lawyers". He questions why tax-raising powers should be given if politicians are arguing that they may not be needed. To increase taxes uniquely in Scotland would be bad for Scotland. But in the unlikely event of the powers being used to lower taxes, profound constitutional as well as as economic issues would arise. How long would English MPs continue to vote more money to Scotland than to their own constituents, only to see it used to fund tax cuts north of the border?
He adds: "A tax-raising Scottish parliament would soon be in permament confrontation with Westminster. Break-up of the United Kingdom would then be but a step away."
The Labour leader, however, will use his speech to go on the offensive, trying, his aides said, to change constitutional reform from a chattering-classes issue into a radical populist vote-winner. He will challenge the Government to say whether it thinks that the constitution works well. He will say that "power to the people is not a slogan but a necessity if we are to reconnect politics with the people".
Dr Mawhinney will make plain that the constitution is the next front in the anti-Labour offensive. He will argue that representative government, the rule of law and personal liberty among the Union's historic achievements are threatened by Labour's plans. He will repeat claims that a Scottish parliament would have a "tartan price tag" of 3p on income tax.
PEERS from all sides of the House queued up yesterday to denounce the Government over its plans for television sports coverage.
They were speaking on the first amendment of the Broadcasting Bill, which would deny subscription channels exclusive rights to broadcast eight major sporting events. Most emphasised that it was vital to keep the main sports events available on terrestrial television because only 15 per cent of viewers had satellite or cable services.
Several peers aimed their criticism at Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of The News Corporation, of which News International is a subsidiary. BSkyB satellite television service is 40 per cent owned by News International, which owns The Times.
Lord Howell, a former Labour Sports Minister, was one of the sponsors of the amendment. He told the Lords that they were fighting for the "ethic and spirit" of sport as well as the economics and financing of major events.
"I have a profound belief in the social purpose of sport. In essence the social purpose of sport is best expressed through its spirit, commonly known as sportsmanship. These precepts are being increasingly undermined by the total domination within sport of financial considerations above all others."
Lord Howell said that the Bill ignored up to 40 million people who could not get or could not afford Sky television. "They ignore the elderly and the infirm, who now apparently can be sacrificed in the interests of one man Mr Rupert Murdoch," he said.
He warned sports organisations not to become too enamoured by lucrative deals with BSkyB. "Anybody who wants to get into bed with Mr Murdoch never gets out of bed the same man," he said.
Lord Peyton of Yeovil, a former Tory minister, admitted that there were detailed problems with the amendment but said that peers should support it as "a nudge to the Government to produce something better to cope with some really difficult problems". He warned the Government: "There are many millions of the public who would find themselves very unhappy at being denied access to what are major national events simply because they could not afford the gadgetry necessary."
Lord Peyton described Mr Murdoch as "a man who owes this country no allegiance and who doesn't seem to be overwhelmed by admiration for its institutions or its way of doing things". He added: "I doubt whether there is any other country in the world which would have allowed a man who was a non-national to acquire quite the degree of immense power and influence which Mr Murdoch has, by his very great ability, achieved by himself."
The crossbencher Lord Wyatt of Weeford opposed the amendment, accusing Lord Peyton of being xenophobic. "It is a concerted attack on one man because he has been more successful than others. The one thing people in this country don't like is people who have been successful," he said.
He defended Sky's record of increasing sports coverage and helping to finance sports, and said that the elderly and the young could watch the programmes for free in pubs that had satellite television. "The BBC forces the elderly and infirm to buy a TV licence."
Lord Wyatt, chairman of the Tote, added that horse racing had been badly hit by the National Lottery. "Racing really deserves to get as much money back in as it can," he said. "I don't think it's impossible or wrong for anything racing owns to be sold to the highest bidder."
The former Commons Speaker Lord Weatherill, leader of the cross benches, supported the amendment. "In recent days I have lost count of the number of people who have said to me: ‘What are you going to do about this so-called crown jewels of sport Bill?"'
The former Home Secretary Viscount Whitelaw was one of only four out of 16 peers who spoke for the Government. He appealed to the House to give the Government more time and to leave the final decision to the Commons. "It is important to try and get it right. I don't think that would be done by this measure at this time," he said.
Achieving a happy wedding day requires meticulous planning. Sarah Harding has advice on the most important decision: the dress
The proposal has been accepted, the ring is on the finger, and the announcement in the newspaper. For a moment life is a bed of roses. Then the full weight of the nuptial preparations dawns: where to find the photographers, videographers, typographers, car, dress and tent hire, the balloons, Bentleys and bridesmaids. And what about the dress, the big frock for the big moment? When it was my turn last year, I opted to wear my mother's dress, a 1962 "Camelot" design that was all the rage 30 years ago. It saved fuss and fittings, but it didn't stop me from taking a peek at what every good bride is now wearing.
Across the Channel at the French couturiers, the finale wedding dress shown a fortnight ago at the spring-summer‘96 collection of Christian Lacroix comes, in his office's words, in "white, white, white" whirls of A-line duchesse satin. Christian Dior's is tight-fitting; Yves Saint Laurent's a colourful muslin affair in white, green and gold.
Back home, however, Jasper Conran, who created the streamlined silk georgette and organza dress with ruched bodice for Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones's marriage to Daniel Chatto, is finding that girls are avoiding frou-frou like yesterday's lover and bucking the couturier trend by favouring off-white.
This is supported by Caroline Castigliano, director of Castigliano (average cost of a dress £1,200-£1,500) which sells Conran, Jenny Packham and David Fielding and consultant to Liberty's bridal department (average cost of a dress £450-£2,500). "Like Sarah Armstrong-Jones, girls want a very sleek, very chic, very simple style in ivory, a colour which suits the English skin tone," says Ms Castigliano. "Gone are the roses, bows and sequins associated with the dress that the Princess of Wales wore."
Cathy O'Neill, marketing and PR manager of Pronuptia (average spend on dress £300-£500), agrees: "Brides-to-be certainly come in asking to try on the sophisticated, straight lines. But once the dress is on, many change their minds. This is partly because it may not flatter their figure; partly because a meringue-style A-line suits their long-held notion of floating down the aisle." This is particularly true, it turns out, if they come in with their mothers, who tend to have shared the same romantic dreams about their daughters.
So if girls will be girls when it comes to sticking to fairy-tales, do they still wear long, floaty veils? "Less so," says Ms O'Neill. "Brides are older and want less fuss. Also, with the increase in civil settings, such as hotels, veils are becoming redundant."
It is a sentiment shared by bride Lucy Dillon, who made a bare-headed descent towards the altar last June: "I did not wear a veil because I don't like the materials that they are made out of. It worried me, too, that I would not be able to see where I was going a bit like when your goggles steam up when you're swimming..."
However, such groping about in the murky waters of bridal arrangements may be less frenzied from tomorrow until February 11, when Olympia, London, hosts the first National Wedding Show. Here all matters relating to the big day including information about caterers, toastmasters, horses and carriages, disco hire, shoes, housewares, florists and fine wines will be shared among 150 stands.
A 50ft replica church will provide the backdrop for a catwalk launching outfits for brides, bridegrooms and mothers of the bride, as well as going-away outfits, swimwear and lingerie. Designers include Berkertex, Elizabeth Emanuel and Hollywood Dreams.
Employees of Brides and Setting Up Home magazine will be on hand to provide tips from cost-cutting to etiquette, and Wedding and Home magazine is giving hair and make-up demonstrations.
Prospective grooms can relax in the "men's creche" watching sport on television and drinking beer, or take note of waistcoats by designers such as Lee Lamont. Tickets cost £7 on the day; £5 in advance. To reserve a ticket, call 01733 890187 (quoting reference DX). Six people can enter for £20 if tickets are booked in advance.
MPs will face a key vote in July on whether to accept an independent review that is almost certain to recommend a big increase in their pay before the general election.
The Government has asked the Senior Salaries Review Body to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the pay, allowances and pensions of MPs and ministers, calling for recommendations if possible by the end of June. The body is expected to recommend a new mechanism for determining the annual uprating of MPs' pay without the need for a parliamentary decision.
MPs want to avoid what has become an annual embarrassment over their pay. The senior Labour backbencher Alf Morris, a sponsor of the Commons motion that has led to the inquiry, welcomed the decision to hold an independent review. He said: "Nobody I know has asked for a doubling of MPs' pay. What the motion did and what unites us all is to make it clear that MPs' pay should no longer be decided by MPs themselves an unwholesome, invidious and wrong system. We are now very glad it has gone for independent adjudication."
Yesterday's move follows talks between the party leaderships over the past few days. Both wanted to defuse the issue after protests from poverty groups. However, the June target date is regarded as highly important. Labour wants the issue well out of the way before a general election that it expects to win.
THE Harriet Harman row has hardly dented Labour's support, according to the latest ICM poll for The Guardian.
Half the public, including a half of Labour supporters, think that Ms Harman was right to send her son to a selective grammar school, despite Labour's opposition to selective education. This may explain why the affair has had so little impact on Labour's standing.
The poll, undertaken between February 2 and 4, shows that Labour support has declined by only one point since early January to 47 per cent, according to ICM's adjustment of the figures. The Labour lead has narrowed from 22 to 16 points because support for the Tories has risen from 26 to 31 per cent over the month. This is in line with other evidence suggesting that the Government's rating is beginning to pick up.
The Tories' gain was largely at the expense of the Liberal Democrats, whose support slipped from 22 to 19 per cent. These changes reflect a comparison with the immediate aftermath of Emma Nicholson's defection.
Kenneth Clarke yesterday tried to satisfy two contrasting audiences voters worried about the welfare state and Tory MPs and activists keen for cuts in public spending. He was only partly successful, and so may satisfy neither.
Politics is, of course, about reconciling conflicting aims. In the short term, an adroit Chancellor can fulfil the desire of people both for better public services and cuts in taxation. But, in the long term, the pressures cannot so easily be reconciled.
In his London School of Economics lecture yesterday, Mr Clarke made a convincing case for gradualism. He hardly needed to cite the riots in Paris before Christmas against social security changes as a warning against sudden reforms. Calls by the unthinking Right for cuts of £10 billion or more at a stroke are nonsense. Of course, there is always scope to eliminate waste but this can never be more than a partial contributor to cuts in overall spending. Long-standing commitments cannot be torn up suddenly. There is no alternative to the piecemeal approach of Peter Lilley in limiting future commitments. Over time, these can produce sizeable savings.
Mr Clarke argued that as a result of these and other changes the real growth of public spending has been limited to 1 per cent a year, compared with 11/2 per cent a year during the 1980s. Despite the recession and big increases in spending before the 1992 election (though he did not mention these) the peak level of expenditure of 431/2 per cent of national income in the 1990s was two points less than a decade earlier and nearly four points less than in the mid-1970s. Moreover, spending is forecast to fall to 40 per cent within two years. And, Mr Clarke diplomatically added, he and the Prime Minister "have both said we will then aspire to reduce it further". As long as the economy continues to grow and spending is held down in real terms, there are no limits as to how much the share can be reduced though, unlike John Major, he did not refer to a 35 per cent figure.
The absence of such a specific long-term target, or even aspiration, will not satisfy the Tory Right, but it is the limit of prudence as long as the Government claims, in Mr Clarke's words, to be developing "a strong welfare state". He made a powerful case for free health and education services and a safety net for old age paid for out of general taxation as an important reassurance for people at a time of rapid economic change, "complementing more flexible markets by reducing fear of change and opposition to it".
But there are long-term tensions between these commitments and overall spending restraint. Much can be done through structural changes to improve efficiency. But these savings are not sufficient to finance technogical improvements and to meet the ever-rising demand for better services. Current plans for spending to remain more or less constant in real terms imply a continuing squeeze in the real pay of public sector workers and cuts in many popular programmes. These cannot be sustained indefinitely. This is not an argument for a big rise in total spending, but rather a recognition that it can only be held down, let alone cut in real terms, if more provision is financed by the private sector.
There is no reason why the public sector should remain the sole, or even predominant, supplier of some services which people clearly want. This is already occurring in pensions, as Mr Lilley will point out today, but it needs to happen elsewhere. Otherwise, despite Mr Clarke's best efforts, repeated squeezes on spending will merely result in more public complaints about inadequate services, with little reduction in the burden of expenditure or taxes.
This is the first national action week to draw attention to Britain's 800,000 empty homes.
Most empty property is privately owned, often pending sale. But there has been an increase in the number of homes kept empty by government departments. The worst offender is the Ministry of Defence, which has 13,000 empty properties, almost one in five of its stock. Earl Howe, the Defence Minister, has admitted that the MoD's record is "lamentable".
All parties agree on the need to act, when 127,000 families were acknowledged as homeless last year by councils. In the Government's housing White Paper, it promises to try to reduce the number of empty private homes to fewer than 450,000.
Property professionals and council officers are increasingly taking up the challenge. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the Incorporated Society of Valuers and Auctioneers jointly last year reported that the average property costs £5,600 a year in maintenance, council tax and lost potential rent to keep empty.
One answer could be improvements to letting laws. Up to 800,000 assured shorthold tenancies have been created since the 1988 Housing Act. However, such tenancies provide insufficent assurances to owners that they will be able to evict unsuitable tenants quickly and pursue them for rent.
Lenders could make it easier for owners who want to let their only asset. In 1993, the Council of Mortgage Lenders advised building societies on how to turn empty mortgaged properties into homes, but more needs to be done.
Bob Lawrence of the Empty Homes Agency, a charity, says: "Repossessed homes stand empty for an average of six months. Lenders may see the sense of letting these homes instead."
Empty Homes Agency, 0171-828 6288.
Rachel Kelly on the rising popularity and prices of London's new riverside area
London's Docklands is conforming to one of the oldest laws of the property jungle: that cities develop after the bankruptcy of their first developers.
Only now, nearly a decade after the first Thatcher-backed development in the area, are there signs of a sustained, market-led demand. A second wave of investors and builders is now in the market.
Agents are reporting off-plan sales, overnight queues for property, and the arrival of an older and more cautious buyer. The recovery has followed a pick-up in the commercial property market and the completion of key infrastructure projects such as the Limehouse Link road tunnel.
Last year saw the successful sale of Canary Wharf to a consortium led by Paul Reichmann, and the tower is now 76 per cent let. The recovery is being led by the developers Barratt, Regalian, Bellway and Berkeley Homes, and Galliard Homes, which specialises in buying sites from receivers, doing them up and selling them on.
Builders are keen to start developments before the London Docklands Development Corporation is wound down in 1999. Planning permission will thereafter be given by the borough of Tower Hamlets.
Prices are still below their 1988 peak, but 20 per cent up on their 1992 low. For example, at the Circle development in Shad Thames, a flat in 1988 would have cost £200,000. The same flat would have fetched £70,000 in 1992, and now costs £110,000, according to the agents Cluttons.
At the Vogen's Mill development at St Saviour's Dock in Mill Street, SE1, a flat cost £350,000 in 1988, £120,000 in 1992, and £200,000 now. "Prices in 1988 were silly. Developers were building schemes, pricing their flats, and then almost immediately going bust," Richard Cotton of Cluttons says. The area probably saw the greatest price inflation in the late 1980s property boom than any other.
At the depths of the recession in 1992, there were 3,500 unsold new homes in the area. By the summer of 1994, there were fewer than 100. Agents are now complaining of lack of supply.
"In Wapping, Limehouse, Shad Thames and Canary Wharf, there is not enough stock," Russell Taylor of Savills says. "Buyers are attracted by the ten-minute commute to work and the area's improved infrastructure." The Jubilee Line Tube extension will open in March, 1998.
Other Dockland enthusiasts cite history. Nick and Lesley Lipczynski moved into Lantern House, a new development in Wapping, last autumn. "We love living so close to London's centre. We are bewitched by the Thames and the sense of being next door to the Tower of London. The area is developing into a community," Mrs Lipczynski says.
Successes include the sale of Old Sun Wharf by Galliard Homes in Narrow Street, Limehouse. Thirty-six flats were reserved at the weekend launch last October, and 18 flats have exchanged. At the Keyside development of 141 flats in the Limehouse Basin, by developers St George, 51 flats were sold at the November launch and a further 50 per cent reserved off-plan. Developers started 1,000 homes last year, double the figure for 1994. A further 1,500 homes await planning permission this year.
However, developments in less fashionable parts of Docklands are still languishing. The boundary of acceptability has shifted east down the Thames, taking in St Katharine's Dock, Wapping and Shad Thames and has finally reached the Isle of Dogs, dominated by the Canary Wharf tower. Estate agents have dropped its old nickname "Dogs" and now refer to "life on the island". New developments are concentrated on the Isle of Dogs and Surrey Docks, but there are relatively few high-quality flats on prime sites near the City.
Developers are building more expensive properties to cater for demand. Galliard bought Jubilee Wharf in 1994, a prime riverside site in Wapping, and plans to build £250,000 flats. Sam Chapman, from Savills Docklands office, says: "Developers are tending to build two-bedroom flats instead of studios these days." Mr Cotton of Cluttons notes that the quality of finish by developers has improved. They are now providing sensible rather than over-luxurious fixtures and fittings which buyers will no longer pay for.
Along with City professionals, new residents tend to be slightly older, aged between 30 and 40, and work in the area. Families are rare, discouraged by the lack of schools. The closer to the City and the river, the smarter the area.
The more people who work there, the greater the demand for corporate rental property. Knight Frank, which barely touched rentals five years ago, now splits its business 50-50. There is now only one building in the nine-building Canary Wharf complex still to let. BZW is moving its entire City operation about 3,500 people to Canary Wharf this summer.
"There is a huge undersupply of good quality flats to let," Mr Chapman says. Typical rents range from £175 to £225 a week for a one-bedroom flat and £250 to £350 for a two-bedroom flat.
RICHARD JONES, a financial adviser who has a ten-minute trip to the City, and his wife Julie, a nurse, bought their £79,995 flat at Sovereign View, a new development, last year. The mortgage payments were cheaper than the rent on their previous three-bedroom flat in Bermondsey.
The £30 million development on the Thames in Rotherhithe (London SE16) is now sold out. Mr Jones says: "We're investing in our own property for the first time. It is very satisfying to think that ultimately we will own the flat. The rent was effectively dead money." Moreover, the developers, Barratt, paid £300 towards their legal and survey fees.
Mr Jones says: "Rotherhithe is a fabulous place to bring up kids. There are playgrounds, a City Farm, walks and nature reserves, and from our window we can see swans and passing boats." The Joneses even find the light at Sovereign View different. Their flat overlooks a particularly wide stretch of a curve of the Thames.
All 300 homes at Sovereign View have been sold ahead of the building programme and Barratt has acquired the adjoining riverside site, Pageant Steps, where it has started a further 83 houses and flats.
IS OUR language sick? Jean Aitchison asked last night, with a clear flavour of rhetoric. Professor Aitchison, who holds the Rupert Murdoch chair of Language and Communication at Oxford University, sought to answer her own question in the first of five Reith Lectures entitled The Language Web on Radio 4.
The professor, a linguist, believes that English, far from being sick, is in rude good health. Last night's lecture, playing on her theme of a language-web, focused on a "web of worries" trivial anxieties about the state of our language.
Professor Aitchison asserted that English changes constantly, and that such transformation "is a fact of life". Even Chaucer, in the 14th century, noted that "in forme of speche is chaunge", and she believes that the same is true today. But such change, she argued, must not be confused with decay an argument the professor has made at greater length in her elegant book Language Change: Progress or Decay?, first published in 1991. British English, emphatically, is not changing for the worse. On the contrary, the Reith lecturer may have come tantalisingly close to arguing that English is changing for the better. She did not say so explicitly, of course, but she did refer with approval to the modern-day loosening of some of the language's "artificial rules".
These pseudo-rules she dates, in many cases, to the 18th century. "Around 1700, the seemingly fixed grammar of Latin aroused great admiration, at a time when English itself was in a fairly fluid state," she said.
Professor Aitchison even cited a letter to the Lord Treasurer from Jonathan Swift, urging the formation of an academy to regulate language usage comparable, one assumes, to the modern Academie Francaise.
Swift believed, as did Robert Lowth, an 18th-century Bishop of London, that Latin usages would fertilise a "correct English". Professor Aitchison gave listeners a few examples of these "artificially imposed rules". The apparent prohibition of "different to" she described as "a misguided attempt to make English behave more like Latin". She has often mounted the same defence in favour of split infinitives.
Futhermore, she asserted that it is only due to "an old and illogical belief that logic should govern language" that English has a ban on the double negative. "This is odd," Professor Aitchison declared, "because in most languages of the world, the more negatives, the stronger the negation". The central message of last night's lecture was that we need to understand language, not try to control it. When new forms flood in and wipe away older usages, the process should not be likened to "disintegration". "Sweeping up old oddments is good housekeeping," Professor Aitchison pointed out, in the accessible manner that is her trademark.
In her second Reith Lecture next Tuesday, the professor will lecture on the origin of language in the human species. "Crucial to its development," she said intriguingly last night, "were two loosely woven webs, a web of deceit and a web of friendship."
Professor Aitchison's Reith Lectures will be broadcast for the next four Tuesdays at 8.30pm on BBC Radio 4.
A year ago a woman had her throat slashed on a country road. Today her killer is still at large
THE past few days have been hard for Elsie Wilson, a slight, silver-haired Yorkshire farmer's wife. She has been gathering her courage to face the anniversary this weekend of the savage and motiveless murder of her twin sister.
A year ago on Friday Margaret Wilson was attacked as she walked home from her daughter's house to the family farm on the edge of the Yorkshire Wolds village of Burton Fleming. Two men working in a field saw a motorist stop his car and jog several hundred yards back to slash her throat and leave her dying on the roadside with a gaping wound.
The attack stunned the close-knit rural community, where murder is viewed as the stuff of TV and the distant big cities. Edwin Wilson, Margaret's husband, and their son Alan were working only hundreds of yards away and were among the first on the scene. They know that the motiveless nature of the killing means finding the murderer is well nigh impossible.
A year on, despite widespread publicity, police admit they face an uphill struggle. The 6ft attacker, aged about 30 with collar-length dark hair, vanished, leaving almost no clues. Even the unusual murder weapon, a stubby blunt-ended knife, designed for shoe-making, has failed to provide a conclusive lead.
Elsie Wilson lives less than 400 yards from the murder scene. "I see it every day, but you just have to get on with life, you push thinking about it out of your head," she said. She has lived all her 67 years within five miles of the family home and cannot countenance moving.
Mrs Wilson and Alan, her nephew, agreed to a police request to break their year-long silence and speak to the media in an attempt to find new clues. As Mrs Wilson offered journalists traditional hospitality home-made fruit cake and tea she said: "People have asked me if, as a twin, I had felt some premonition of Margaret's death, but no, I knew nothing. I had been in the hairdressers when my husband told me. I could not believe it. I do miss her."
The sisters were close. They grew up together on the Wolds, both joining the Brownies and Guides and falling in love with two local brothers. They had a joint wedding in 1948 and honeymooned together in the Lake District. They were pregnant at the same time twice. They would often joke about choosing the same greetings cards for relatives.
Alan Wilson still finds it difficult to accept the death. "I come in expecting her to be there, or think of something I must tell her. She was simply the best mother in the world."
He and his aunt are convinced someone is sheltering the killer. "A wife or girlfriend must be aware that something was wrong that day," he said. "They should come forward now. If he is as unhinged as we think he must be, he could do it again and they could be the next victim."
Detectives have traced 3,000 white Montego estates similar to the killer's and taken 5,000 statements. The offer of a £15,000 reward by Humberside Police and Crimestoppers has had no effect.
Detective Superintendent Tony Corrigan, leading the investigation, said the killing remained an enigma, but added: "I am convinced there are still people holding information which might help us."
MICHAEL JACKAMAN, who is standing down at the end of March as chairman of Allied Domecq, has decided how he will be spending his retirement.
He is to be chairman of an appeal to raise £20 million for a new children's hospital in Bristol.
CITY types will be brushing up their buzzer skills for the St John Ambulance annual Brain Game general knowledge quiz at Guildhall tomorrow, won last year by the law firm Allen & Overy. For the fourth year running, the questionmaster will be the sports commentator Dickie Davies.
At £2,000 a team ticket, it's all to raise £50,000 for St John Ambulance, the Lord Mayor's charity.
BRIAN QUINN has been hailed a "missionary" at the Bank of England where he has worked for 26 years, latterly responsible for banking supervision and surveillance. He retires on February 29, and the next day joins his beloved Celtic Football Club as non-executive director and vice-chairman. A bank colleague said Quinn "tried to convert everyone, and even put a green and white poster in his PA's office".
THE sale by Hambros Bank of its mining subsidiary brings with it some unexpected dividends.
Hugh Jenkins, the former investment director of the Prudential, has found office space within Hambros's Tower Hill premises, for the time being at least. Jenkins, who is non-executive director of such organisations as Rank, Thorn EMI and Gartmore, as well as being the chairman of Hambros Falcon property trust, should not get too comfortable, however. The bank is planning to move the occupants of its Brentwood office down to Tower Hill and, of course, there could well be increasing competition for the desk.
CEDRIC BROWN, who has managed to irritate most of British Gas's 1.8 million shareholders and many of its 19 million customers, was in danger yesterday of offending the most important man at the privatised company Richard Giordano, who will effectively be chairman and chief executive from May.
Brown insisted he is retiring because British Gas will be turning itself into Siamese twins and "new management teams will be appointed ... and they will want two young chief executives".
He added: "They don't want old men staggering around."
If Giordano didn't wince at the man on whom he had just lavished praise, he should have.
Brown, who was born on March 7, 1935, is almost a year his junior. His grand "old" chairman Giordano turns 62 on March 24.
Privatisation of the Royal Mail is an issue once more, Philip Bassett says
In the next few weeks, business and consumers will receive an unhappy jolt to outgoings when the Post Office announces a price rise of probably 1p on stamps which will also affect the Government's efforts to control inflation.
Politics and the post are interwoven, and the two come into play today when MPs debate the future of the Post Office. The Labour-sponsored debate has been prompted by the raising once again, by the Prime Minister, of the possibility of privatising the Post Office. John Major last month surprised many Conservative MPs when he said that the Government would consider whether to include a new attempt to privatise the Royal Mail in its general election manifesto.
"I think it will be in," says one minister. "The benefits of including it are twofold: it takes the agenda forward, and shows we are not being complacent. And it does give a positive focus on privatisation, after a couple of years in which because of British Gas and other things it has not gone as well as it should."
After failing to privatise the Post Office two years ago, when, in spite of efforts led by Michael Heseltine, ministers could not muster a majority of its own backbenchers for the move, returning to the issue might appear to be somewhere between brave and desperate.
Labour will argue that Mr Major's suggestion, which followed similar musings by Mr Heseltine and Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor, is engendered by internal politics of the Conservative Party John Major's need to offer some red meat to the Tory Right.
Kim Howells, Labour's spokesman on the Post Office, says: "This is entirely driven by Major's desire to emphasise that he is not scared to take on the most controversial issues."
Phillip Oppenheim, the Industry Minister, will attack what he sees as Labour's lack of detailed, practical policy on the Post Office and will emphasise the Post Office's performance under the Conservatives. He says: "There is a strong case on investment by the Post Office, which, in real terms, is double what it was 15 years ago."
The Government's aim is to give the Post Office as much commercial freedom as it can, without going as far as the Post Office wants "We're not going to allow them to sell condoms," says one Department of Trade and Industry source because of the effect on competitors of a Post Office free to do whatever it likes in the high street.
Labour's problem with the Post Office is as acute, and in some ways a test of whether some policies promoted by Tony Blair work in practice. For a Labour government, would there be a realistic middle way between the two extremes that Mr Blair rejects, of untramelled free markets and privatisation, and of the old nationalised control?
Both political parties, too, face the difficulty of weaning themselves off the cash that the Post Office provides for the Treasury. To the annoyance of its senior managers, the Post Office faces contributing close to £1 billion over the next three years to the Government's cash flow. They doubt that Labour could resist the milch cow any more than can the Conservatives.
When Bill Cockburn was its chief executive, the Post Office was seen to have painted itself into a corner seeking privatisation, and with nowhere to go when denied it. Mr Cockburn is now with WH Smith, and his successor, John Roberts, wants to draw a line under the insecurity of the past three years, while the Government considered its future, and to concentrate on winning business in Europe and the US, as European postal businesses and other communications eat into the Post Office's market.
If that means rejection of Mr Major's dalliance with privatisation, so be it. Post Office managers calculate that, to proceed, the Government would need to be re-elected with a majority of 20, and consider that unlikely on poll evidence. So the Post Office is buckling down to business, leaving the politicians to it, but knowing that the next election is crucial for Britain's postal services.
A JUDGE who used the phrase "nigger in the woodpile" during a case in which a man of mixed race sought damages from the police has been cleared of racial bias by the Court of Appeal.
The comment was made in 1994 by Judge Bernstein during summing up at Liverpool County Court in the case of Valentine Reid, who was seeking £50,000 from Merseyside Police for alleged malicious prosecution.
Judge Bernstein, 64, was referring to white police officers when she made the remark. After losing his action, Mr Reid appealed on the basis that, even though the judge immediately apologised, she should have stopped the case upon letting slip the offending phrase.
Peter Herbert, of the Society of Black Lawyers, said in the appeal court that the judge had displayed racial bias even if it was unintentional.
Lord Justice Waite, sitting with Lords Justices Beldam and Morritt, said that while it was right to highlight the risk of prejudice in racially sensitive times, it was "fanciful" to suggest that any jury would have been influenced by the remark. Mr Reid's appeal was dismissed.
From Mr K. D. Boyd
Sir, I believe regulation will never work. The pensions mis-selling arose largely because Andrew Large and others failed to see the pitfalls of deregulation of pensions. Now a scapegoat must be found. The next phase of this idiocy will occur when actuaries in charge of pension funds are asked to reinstate those mis-sold. Actuaries, as you know, are honourable men and none is going to take advantage of the current position by demanding impossibly high reinstatement figures. Nor are they going to quote identical figures for identical mis-selling. The opportunities to argue and not act are going to be legion, adding further to delay, fudge and compromise.
Far cheaper and more effective would be for responsibility for compensation to be placed in the hands where it belongs, ie, the consumer rather than the regulator. The PIA, for instance, as it has demonstrated, can add no benefit to the problem, but only exacerbate an already complicated situation. By all means use Andrew Large as a scapegoat, but can his successor fare any better? Before such things as regulators we had caveat emptor, which did us well for many years. Why fix something that is not broken?
Yours faithfully,K. D. BOYD,Boyd & Associates(Independent Financial Advisers), Holt Pound,Farnham, Surrey.
THE mystery surrounding the death of the Duke of Northumberland, one of Britain's most flamboyant peers, was cleared up yesterday when an inquest was told that he died of amphetamine poisoning.
An earlier hearing was adjourned after a post-mortem examination had failed to find a natural cause for the 17-stone duke's collapse.
The 42-year-old bachelor was taking a daily average of 20 of the tablets, which can be used as a recreational drug, but had been prescribed for a rare medical condition.
The 11th duke, a godson of the Queen, had almost four times as much amphetamine in his system when he died as most people would have who were using the drug therapeutically. "He didn't intend the outcome," said Dr John Burton, the West London Coroner, "therefore I will put it down as an accidental death."
The duke, Richard Henry Alan Walter Percy, was found dead by his valet, Brinnley Moralee, at Syon House in west London. The duke's body was by his bed and he appeared to have died while getting up. His tablets were arranged on a cabinet.
Margery Meakes, personal assistant to the duke, said: "He would fall asleep often during the day because he couldn't sleep at night."
The coroner read a report that said the duke's medical condition began to deteriorate in his early 20s. He lost weight and developed depression. He was prescribed amphetamine and then became very heavy.
David O'Connell, the duke's doctor since 1990, diagnosed a rare disorder of the glands, hypogonadotrophic hypogonadism, which causes sleep problems and excess weight. The duke was given Dexedrine, which contains amphetamine, to keep him awake during the day. To reverse that, he was prescribed sleeping pills for the night. By August 1995, he was taking a daily average of 20 Dexedrine pills and up to 20 Parstelin.
The coroner said: "There is absolutely no question of these being used as drugs of addiction in this case."
Dr Richard Shepherd, a pathologist at Guy's Hospital, said death resulted from amphetamine poisoning which caused an irregular heart beat leading to heart failure.
From Mr Robin Hill
Sir, Much is being said on behalf of those who may have suffered through the alleged "mis-selling" of pensions but nothing on behalf of the very many long-established policyholders who are well satisfied with the advice received but are understandably concerned about the possible effect of any compensation payments on the performance of their own policies, particularly those with mutual societies.
We are innocent bystanders and must be protected. Who is representing this majority interest and what assurances can be given that existing policyholders will suffer no loss over this issue?
Yours faithfully,
ROBIN HILL,
Southdown House,
Lower Froyle, Alton, Hants.
From J.T. Beckford
Sir, Why make such a mystery of the continued discrepancy between LFS and unemployment statistics ("Would real earnings growth spell economic suicide?", January 30).
Some employers, in the interest of downsizing prestige and a tendency to discount casual or part-time labour, will deliberately minimise their workforce. At the same time, those recently laid off, for reasons of pride, shame or hope, may well delay joining the dole queue; while many women who take on short-term part-time jobs find it too much trouble to register as unemployed when these jobs are not available.
These human factors make it seem unlikely that the "gap" will ever be closed.
Yours faithfully,
J.T. BECKFORD,
112 Churchill Road,
Cheltenham,
Gloucestershire.
From Mr Noel Falconer
Sir, By what authority does Alliance & Leicester propose to discriminate between its members ("Free share bonanza for A&L members", February 1)? This must surely be in a form that the courts will recognise. Approval by the Building Societies Commission looks less than adequate. Retrospective action, after gaining from the situation that is being altered as A&L has with speculative deposits is a breach of natural justice, that may be appealed to the Court of Human Rights. In UK company law, treating members differently, benefiting only some from a common resource, is a "fraud on the minority" less grave than it sounds but which cannot, in these circumstances, be legitimised by an AGM.
Yours faithfully,
NOEL FALCONER
223 Bramhall Moor Lane,
Hazel Grove, Stockport.
From Helen J. A. Gibbons
Sir, It was good of Tempus to elevate the village of Ashtead to a Surrey town, namesake of Ashtead Group plc (Business News, February 1).
Thanks to overzealous parking restrictions in the late 1980s, followed by attempts by landlords to hike rent reviews massively, the village of Ashtead was all but lost.
In the space of a few years, the butcher, baker, watchmaker, ironmonger, cobbler, confectioner, travel agent and others disappeared. Some are now returning to join the public houses (three) and banks (five) able to ride the recession.
Yours faithfully,
HELEN GIBBONS,
10 Greycoat Place,
SW1P 1SB.
From Mr Chris Humphries
Sir, Your article "Freedom for Tecs urged in call for savings" (January 22, 1996) misrepresents the reaction of Tecs to the recently published efficiency scrutiny.
Tecs have supported the efficiency scrutiny since its outset in its attempt to simplify the level of imposed bureaucracy which surrounds their operation, and frustrates employers and training providers in serving the needs of staff and clients.
Throughout the report, the need to maintain adequate levels of accountability for public funds is acknowledged, and the report seeks to identify ways by which that can be achieved whilst reducing unnecessary administrative burdens.
It was, in fact, the Tec National Council which wrote to Ministers asking that the report be implemented in full, and that there be "no cherry-picking" (although we didn't use that phrase). Ministers have, in turn, indicated to the council that they will give the report their fullest consideration.
Yours faithfully,
CHRIS HUMPHRIES,
Director of Policy and Strategy,
Tec National Council
Westminster Tower,
3 Albert Embankment,
London SE1.
AN AMERICAN doctor whose new British employers paid for his rottweiler and eight-year-old pick-up truck to be brought from Missouri said yesterday they were all he had left after a messy divorce settlement.
As part of the relocation package for Craig Baldwin, who has remarried, the Hartlepool General Hospital in Cleveland agreed to pay £2,300 for quarantine and travel for Fritz and shipping the vehicle.
Dr Baldwin, 52, who was recruited as a £52,000-a-year consultant anaesthetist, said he had decided to make a fresh start here with his new wife, Tricia, 51. "I have spent 12 years going back and forth to court. I was left nearly bankrupt. I liquidated my assets and handed them over to her (his ex-wife) so she would leave me alone.
"I agreed to come over to work in England as long as my dog and truck came and that was accepted as relocation expense. I hope people do not think I am costing the trust extortionate amounts of money. I took a 70 per cent pay cut to come here.
"There were many reasons I wanted to come to England but one thing that would have stopped me was if Fritz could not come. I don't think it was unreasonable of the trust to pay the bill; I didn't make the quarantine laws. My truck is a 1988 GMC pick-up with 75,000 miles on the clock. The resale value would be virtually nil. I need a vehicle and could not afford to buy a new one in England where prices are double those in the States."
Brian Hanson, chairman of the Peterlee and Hartlepool NHS Trust, said: "Nationally, there is a problem getting qualified staff and some trusts have had to hire consultants at double the going rate, paying £100,000. We have avoided doing that and believe this one-off payment was money well spent."
THE MOUNT in Gibraltar is among 31 "top brass" homes to be sold after a review of Service houses and entertaining requirements.
The Mount, worth about £5million, is set in four acres of grounds, and has six bedrooms and a staff of 12. It is currently the home of Royal Marine Major-General Simon Pack, commander British Forces Gibraltar. He will stay until spring next year. His successor, a one-star or brigadier appointment, will be housed in more modest married quarters.
Yesterday's announcement arose from a study last year by Sir Peter Cazalet, chairman of the food company APV. Two other prestigious residences will be sold: the RAF's Haymes Garth in Cheltenham which sparked the review after £387,000 was spent on renovation and the Bois de Mai in Brussels. Another 28 will be sold and leased back without the special privileges allotted to official residences. This will reduce the number of residences from 75 to 44.
The others will have cuts of more than 50 per cent in their full-time "dedicated" staff, including cooks and gardeners.
Ross Tieman looks at how British Gas has had to come to terms with a more competitive market
Ten years after flotation as a vast monopoly, British Gas is breaking itself up. The decision to demerge the business that supplies gas to 19 million homes and a third of Britain's businesses is a logical response to the piecemeal introduction of competition over the past decade.
With the last vestiges of its guaranteed market on the verge of being prised open, the board, under American Richard Giordano, has concluded that British Gas is a dinosaur, incapable of survival in today's cut-throat world. Only by reinventing itself, in two parts, can it thrive.
At a special meeting in April next year, the company's 1.8 million shareholders will be asked to approve the creation of a new listed company.
Provisionally called British Gas Energy, this will contain the gas supply business, selling gas to families and businesses; the service business, looking after appliance maintenance; a gas trading arm, called Accord; and the North and South Morecambe gasfields, accounting for 15 per cent of United Kingdom peak demand.
If the proposal is approved by holders of 51 per cent of British Gas shares, the company's investors will receive free shares in British Gas Energy. They will also retain their shares in the far larger residual business, provisionally named TransCo International.
This will own the pipeline system, delivering gas for shippers, including British Gas Energy, in return for fees. It will also own the rest of British Gas's exploration, production and distribution activities concentrated in Asia, South America and Eastern Europe and its gas-fired power stations in Britain and overseas.
Such an outcome would have been inconceivable on that day 30 years ago, when the first gas from the newly discovered southern North Sea basin was piped ashore.
In the two decades that followed, Britain's coal-grimed town centre gasworks, with their coking ovens and gasometers, were progressively levelled. In their place, British Gas, a state-owned monopoly, built a high-pressure network of pipelines and mains beneath the streets, delivering natural gas to almost every sizeable town in England, Wales and southern Scotland.
It was a formidable engineering achievement, and the envy of many countries overseas. At privatisation, in 1986, gas had come to account for 50 per cent of Britain's primary energy consumption, from just seven per cent two decades earlier.
By the time the Government got around to selling British Gas with its celebrated "Tell Sid" advertising campaign in 1986, many politicians and academics already had their doubts about privatising monopolies. When British Telecom was sold two years earlier, the Government had licensed Mercury Communications, owned by Cable and Wireless, to build a rival phone network.
But intense lobbying by Sir Denis Rooke, the tough and abrasive British Gas chairman, combined with the desire of Lord Walker, the then Energy Secretary, to maximise proceeds from the sale. It was inconceivable that anyone could afford to build a rival pipeline network. Gas distribution was deemed a "natural" monopoly and left intact. The company was sold with a 25-year monopoly of the gas market under 25,000 therms, giving only big business the right to choose alternative suppliers. But once the Government had tucked away its £5.43 billion sale proceeds, the gas regulator, Sir James McKinnon, quickly began to pick away at this cosy arrangement.
Although Sir Denis and his successors resisted at every turn, Sir James gradually turned competition into reality for business customers. He forced British Gas to charge realistic prices for gas delivery, and also snipped away at the myriad bindings that impeded efforts by customers to buy their gas elsewhere.
Because of its statutory obligation to ensure that gas supplies would be maintained, even on the coldest winter day, British Gas bought virtually all the North Sea gas output, on contracts lasting up to 40 years. At one point, Sir James was obliged to introduce a "gas release" scheme, simply so that rivals could obtain adequate supplies.
This stubborn resistance to competition sowed the seeds of British Gas's biggest troubles today. Producers responded by putting in hand the development of massive new capacity. Today, the spot price of gas has halved, rivals can undercut, and British Gas has more fuel than its diminishing band of customers can burn. Moreover, it is paying more than the market price for the fuel.
Quite why British Gas continued signing long-term contracts despite mounting evidence that the Government would tear up its monopoly remains a puzzle. Successive reports from the Monopolies and Mergers Commission showed which way the wind was blowing. The first, in 1988, obliged the company to publish tariffs to industrial and commercial users, paving the way for a massive loss of market share.
In a surprise move in May 1992, Tim Eggar, the Energy Minister, abruptly cut the competition threshold from 25,000 therms to 2,500 therms. A subsequent two-year inquiry, triggered in July by Cedric Brown, chief executive, in an effort to clarify the pace at which competition was to spread, tore up the privatisation deal.
The Monopolies and Mergers Commission concluded that British Gas should be obliged to separate its pipelines business from its supply arm, so that the entire market, including 19 million homes, could be opened to competition. But the timetable for the separation was to be a gentle one, stretching into the next century to minimise the trauma.
Ministers bought the idea, but spurned the patience. The Government then drafted a new Gas Act, passed last autumn, which opens the household market to competition progressively by January 1, 1999. A pilot trial for the phased opening, embracing half a million homes in the South West, is running late but is set to start in May or June this year.
TransCo, operator of British Gas's £18 billion pipeline network, is already, to all intents and purposes, a stand-alone company. It generates profits of around £700 million a year in spite of its prices being capped by the regulator. TransCo is the cash-cow funding overseas expansion in oil/gas exploration and production, distribution and power generation. These businesses, which will form TransCo International, are the heart of the existing British Gas.
Demerging British Gas is largely designed to spin off the problems arising from the company's failure to respond effectively to the faster than expected loss of its monopoly. Since being allowed to abandon publication of tariffs, British Gas has arrested the decline of its share of commercial and industrial markets at 35 per cent. But its deliveries to households can only fall as competition takes root.
That will increase the company's gas surplus, making it all the more urgent to renegotiate take-or-pay contracts with North Sea gas producers, which are also being dumped in BGE.
To offset these liabilities, currently estimated at £1.5 billion, BGE will be bolstered with the key assets of British Gas's Morecambe gasfields in the Irish Sea. All these uncertainties and liabilities will make for an explosive cocktail. Shares in BGE will be a speculator's play: not for the faint hearted, and certainly not for widows and orphans.
Even TransCo International will be a far cry from the steady-as-she-goes utility sold to the public in 1986. But with Cedric Brown, 40 years in the industry, goes the last of the British Gas old guard. The new companies will have younger managers, trained in the private sector.
At last, British Gas has bowed to the logic of its increasingly competitive market. Perhaps the new companies may at last begin to reward, rather than fail, their shareholders.
A NEW approach to treating rheumatoid arthritis could come from studies at Birmingam University that have clarified the causes of the disease.
Professor Paul Bacon, of the department of rheumatology, said that the discoveries had revolutionised the way scientists thought about the disease. Far from being the product of an overactive immune system, he said, it is caused by an immune system that is too sluggish in some respects. This means that drugs that aim to suppress the immune system may be the wrong approach to treating the disease.
Rheumatoid arthritis often starts as a flu-like illness. The body's immune system produces killer T-cells to destroy the infection and, once they have done so, they should disappear in a process known as apoptosis. In arthritis, the Birmingham work has shown, these cells linger in the joints, causing damage that leads to chronic disease and pain.
THE trouble with Eurotunnel is that its successes simply do not matter. Yesterday's traffic figures showed dramatic year-on-year gains in passenger and freight volumes, but these are a molehill of good news compared with its mountain of debt.
Sir Alastair Morton's quixotic tilts at two governments, three national railway systems and 225 banks are entertaining, but time is running out for Eurotunnel. Interest on the £8 billion of borrowings is accumulating at the rate of £600 million a year. Interest on the deferred interest shovels another £50 million a year on to the pile.
Having been rebuffed by the French and British Governments over a bizarre scheme for a state underwritten megabond to pay off the banks, Sir Alastair is beginning to run out of options. Any suggestion that the Labour Party might come to the rescue after the next election is clutching at straws.
However, new Labour is unlikely to be attracted to the idea of bailing out shareholders in Eurotunnel, a project that was a showpiece of Thatcherite private finance. In any event, Gordon Brown is unlikely to get the keys to the Treasury in time.
IN A curious twist of fate and after decades of disappointment and public money down the tube, Britain now boasts an engineering company with a leading position in the semiconductor industry. Through ACI, its newly acquired US subsidiary, Johnson Matthey will become the biggest producer of laminate packaging for semi-conductors.
JM is not quite there yet production is still in the low thousands but what has changed with yesterday's purchase of a factory from Cray is the speed at which ACI will be able to deliver. Previously, JM believed that it would take two-and-a-half years to build a factory from scratch and bring it to peak production but JM reckons it will be working flat out within a year.
If JM is to be believed, the potential is staggering, with annual sales of $100 million only a year away. The growth is expected because major companies, such as Intel, are converting from ceramic to plastic packaging, a market worth $170 million in the current year with a projected growth rate of 100 per cent. That would transform JM's electronics material division.
The technology is not unique two Japanese companies are capable of producing laminate packaging, but JM's advantage, for the moment, is speed. With the Cray factory, it is probably a year ahead of its competitors and in this industry, early birds catch worms.
KNOWN best for its skill in squeezing more oil out of mature North Sea fields, Clyde Petroleum's decision to operate the Kakap field in Indonesia might seem rash. For oil companies, Indonesia is a notoriously harsh regime with typical production-sharing contracts reserving 85 per cent of the price of every barrel sold to the Government. Investors will also be aware that Clyde is investing in a field where big brother Lasmo recently sold a stake. However, Clyde argues that a strategy that makes money from mature assets in The Netherlands also applies further afield.
The price struck at about $3.50 per barrel for Clyde's 11 million barrel net interest looks sensible, especially when compared with its sale last year of part of the Gryphon field in the North Sea at a price equivalent to $7.50 per barrel. More interesting is the scope to increase reserves through low-risk exploration. High Indonesian tax rates carry the benefit of full deduction of exploration costs and Clyde reckons the two wells it will drill this year carry a net cost of only $500,000. Clyde's strategy is to pick up the scraps discarded by major oil companies. Kakap fits the bill, being too small to justify the overheads of a Marathon. Under Clyde's lean management, the number of expatriate staff will fall by a third and the company hopes to make a 20 per cent return with profits from exploration on top.
MORE than 1,000 people are dying from asthma in Britain each year because doctors prescribe the wrong drugs, experts said yesterday. Many chronic sufferers are given treatments that relieve their wheezing but do not tackle the underlying condition.
Under-treatment can result in permanent damage to the lungs and increases the risk of a severe attack leading to hospitalisation or death. A global campaign has now been launched to improve treatment of the condition, which affects 150million people worldwide.
It has risen by more than 50 per cent in most affluent countries since 1970 but the reasons for the rise are not understood. Asthma is the only preventable disease for which deaths in Europe and the Americas have risen over the past 20 years.
The Global Initiative for Asthma, started by the World Health Organisation and the US National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, has produced treatment guidelines for doctors and patients. Romain Pauwels, chairman of the initiative and Professor of Respiratory Diseases at the University of Ghent, Belgium, said yesterday: "Between 60 per cent and 70 per cent of deaths from asthma could be prevented with modern treatment. We are confident 100,000 lives a year could be saved worldwide by our programme. Modern treatment can reverse the disease and allow most of those affected to lead a normal life."
Advice has changed since the mid-1980s, when patients were told to use broncho- dilators to ease their wheezing and switch to anti-inflammatory steroid inhalers only when their disease became too severe to control in this way. Now experts say patients using a bronchodilator three times a week should switch immediately to inhaled steroids to prevent damage to their lungs.
Professor Albert Sheffer of Harvard Medical School said: "Earlier intervention with inhaled anti-inflammatory drugs gives the best hope for a future free of asthma. Nobody should die, lose a night's sleep or a day's work."
Dr Martyn Partridge, a consultant chest physician in London, said that British studies showed a quarter of asthma patients were being prescribed bronchodilators at a level which suggested they should have been switched to inhaled steroids.
"Giving bronchodilators is like painting over rust or sticking a plaster on a boil. It does not treat the underlying condition," he said.
The global initiative is funded by 15 drug companies. Panel members said that, although inhaled steroids are more expensive, they save costs by reducing hospital admissions and days lost.
IT SEEMS sadly appropriate that Michael Jackaman's farewell speech should contain a warning that Allied Domecq's interim profits will fall 20 per cent. Having landed the top job almost five years ago after the company made big losses in foreign exchange, he has presided over a lengthy period of stagnation.
Profits have remained flat, the share price has gone nowhere and the company's stock market value of around £5.3 billion is little changed since late 1991, despite the £700 million Domecq acquisition. Shareholders who attended yesterday's annual meeting to see Mr Jackaman hand the baton to Sir Christopher Hogg had little for which to be grateful, even before the warning. Most accept that it will take more than a change of chairmanship to restore growth.
Allied's investment timing could certainly have been better. Domecq increased its exposure to markets in Spain and Mexico just as the former entered recession and the latter became insolvent.
The Carlsberg Tetley joint venture in UK brewing is big, but not big enough to dictate terms to the market and its brands are unloved. Potential buyers are scarce and the scenario is unlikely to change, at least until the market impact of Scottish & Newcastle's Courage takeover is clearer.
Spirits will continue to be dogged by sluggish demand in the main markets, where Allied's brand portfolio is often second best. High street names such as Big Steak Pubs and Dunkin' Donuts do not set consumers' pulses racing. Fundamental change is required if Allied shares are to benefit from a rerating.
A BABY who has spent most of her seven months in a sterile plastic bubble has returned from hospital in Newcastle upon Tyne to Ireland after recovering from a usually fatal condition. Soon after Carol O'Gorman was born, Breda, her mother, told her three other children that their sister would die.
Carol was diagnosed as suffering from severe combined immunodeficiency, a rare genetic flaw in which the body's main defence against infection is not properly formed.
Dr Terry Flood, a specialist in paediatric immunology at Newcastle General Hospital, knew her only hope lay in a bone marrow transplant. No donors could be found in her family but, against the odds, an unrelated donor was found and her condition improved, although she remains ill.
Vaux, the pubs to nursing homes group, fell 8p to 283p as 355,010 shares were traded in a market where dealers normally make a price in 5,000 shares at a time. The group gave a presentation to brokers and failed to make much of an impression. It seems that occupancy levels in its nursing homes are on the slide.
SARAH COOK, the 13-year-old girl who illegally married a Turkish waiter she met on a family holiday, was back in Britain last night having denied reports that she was pregnant.
The teenager arrived at Heathrow yesterday afternoon on a Turkish Airlines jet, accompanied by her mother, Jackie, 39, who, according to Miss Cook, had convinced her to return home. Dressed in a peasant headscarf and long red coat, Miss Cook was last off the flight. Turkey had paid a regretful farewell to the girl from Braintree, Essex, who had earned the title of the "nation's daughter-in-law".
Aksyon, a weekly news magazine of Islamic bent, believed that the pressure for her to return had been caused less out of concern for her welfare and more out of anger that she had rejected her Western roots. The girl's mother came to symbolise, in parts of the Turkish press, the wrath of a scorned Western culture. "Torn between two mothers," said the daily Hurriyet with Miss Cook depicted between her mother (in stretch pants) and mother-in-law (with her head covered, in Islamic fashion, like the girl).
Yesterday at Heathrow, police covered Miss Cook's head with a blanket as they escorted her to a car, and Mrs Cook and her daughter were driven away to avoid the media. Before leaving Istanbul, the girl told journalists that, contrary to stories in the Turkish press, she was not pregnant. Her father-in-law had told a news agency that she was expecting his son's child.
When asked about Musa Komeagac, the 18-year-old she had "married" in his home village of Kahramanmaras and who is now in jail on a charge of statutory rape, Miss Cook said: "They are taking my husband away. We will wait for each other and I will return to him as soon as I can if I get my passport back."
The teenager, who had been ordered back to Britain by a High Court judge on January 26, said she had not wanted to return. However, having been made a ward of court, she felt she had no alternative. "If I did not go, they might have sent my parents to prison."
IF the measures taken by British Gas to sort out its far-reaching problems had been designed to impress the stock market, they failed miserably.
Traders appeared perplexed by the news and the equity market spent another cautious session. But it gave investors the opportunity to recover their poise after Monday's sharp falls.
Share prices generally traded in a 12-point band and not even an early jump in the fortunes of the Dow Jones average could inject new life into a tired looking market.
The FT-SE 100 index closed virtually all square, ending just 0.9 of a point better at 3,747.5. Turnover reached 833 million shares, helped by heavy trading in British Gas, where 53.8 million shares had changed hands by the close. Genuine retail support remained thin on the ground.
In early trading, British Gas touched 253p, with market-makers ready to take a positive line on the proposed split and departure of the much criticised Cedric Brown as chief executive.
Not everyone was pleased. Some analysts were quick to pour scorn on the decision to put the Morecambe Bay gasfield into the British Gas Energy division. In the event, shares of British Gas closed 2p easier at 242 1/2p.
There was not much else in the way of good news to cheer investors. Depressed sales of spirits and the effects of recent disposals among its food interests have taken their toll of Allied Domecq, whose interests include Tetley's beer. Shares in the group fell 8 1/2p to 506 1/2p after it gave warning that profits in the first six months of the year would be down by around 20 per cent.
Brokers immediately downgraded their profit estimates, with most of them now looking for between £575 million and £620 million at the pre-tax level, compared with £635 million last time.
Lehman Brothers, the broker, also expects that the company will have to cut last year's dividend payout of 39.35p by about a third.
The warning came at the group's annual meeting, where Michael Jackaman, chairman, told shareholders that European spirits markets remain difficult and that Mexican profits in sterling terms are down. Profits would also be hit by cuts to both jobs and stock levels throughout its supply chain.
Analysts were also considering the possibility of lowering their profit forecasts for BSkyB after the news that the Office of Fair Trading had referred the group's two exclusive agreements to screen Premier League football to the Restrictive Practices Court. The OFT said both deals contained significant restrictions on competition. The move came on the day when BSkyB, which is 40 per cent owned by News International, owner of The Times, reported an impressive set of half-year figures showing pre-tax profits surging from £55 million to £106.3 million. The figures were accompanied by a maiden interim dividend of 2.5p, with Sam Chisholm claiming there was further scope for increased revenues and profits in the second half.
The BSkyB share price finished 22p down at 392p, with brokers worried by the growing prospect of regulatory interference which could affect the group's long-term earnings potential.
Signs that Eurotunnel may be starting to pull ahead on the battle for cross-Channel ferry traffic lifted its shares 5p to 79p. The latest figures show Le Shuttle doubled the number of cars it carried during January, to 96,971. A total of 1.2 million cars were transported in 1995, which brokers said gave it about 40 per cent of traffic. P&O, its big rival, seemed unperturbed, finishing 3p firmer at 541p.
Frost Group, the petrol retailer, clawed back some of its recent losses with a rise of 8p to 123p as it emerged that Mercury Asset Management had taken advantage of the weak share price to mop up a further 1.7 million shares.
This takes its total holding to 14.5 million, or 15.4 per cent. Frost has been a casualty of the recent petrol price war.
Johnson Matthey climbed 8p to 567p after announcing it was buying the in-house printed circuit board operations of Cray Research for $40 million. The group gave a briefing to brokers after the announcement and left them with a favourable impression.
A threat by Beazer Homes to spike the proposed acquisition of Trafalgar House's Ideal Homes by Persimmon failed to rattle the latter, whose shares finished unchanged at 186p. Beazer complained it had not had enough time to top Persimmon's £170 million offer but intended to renew its interest. Trafalgar finished 1p cheaper at 31 1/4p while Beazer firmed 1 1/2p to 173 1/2p.
RTZ, the mining finance group, slipped 5p to 943p on suggestions that James Capel, the broker, had reduced its recommendation from a "hold" to a "buy".
Nervous selling also left Maid, the recent high-flyer, 16p down at 153p. Only last month, the shares were changing hands at 229p and last year trading at 354p.
Gilt-Edged: A better performance was enjoyed as investors took the view that Monday's losses had been overdone. Prices opened firmer and sentiment was cheered by news of a drop in manufacturing output last month. Banks and building societies were reported to be active buyers of stock trading in the five to seven-year range.
In the futures pit, the March series of the long gilt jumped £13/32 to £108 9/32 as the total number of contracts completed reached 65,000. In the cash market, Treasury 8 per cent 2013 rose £7/16 to £100 3/16, while at the shorter end, Treasury 8 per cent 2000 was £3/16 better at £104 1/8.
NEW YORK: The Dow Jones industrial average soared 52.02 points to close at 5,459.61, prompting the stock exchange to set curbs on index-arbitrage orders. Analysts said renewed investor interest in the hard-hit technology sector was helping to change market psychology.
THE inquiry into what went wrong with Yorkshire water supplies last year began yesterday when Professor John Uff, leading the inquiry funded by Yorkshire Water, declared it fully public and appealed for the support of Yorkshire MPs who are seeking a government investigation. He said: "This is a completely open debate and I hope the MPs will take part so they can see it constitutes what they are calling for."
Professor Uff, an engineering expert with arbitration experience, said that the inquiry would produce guidelines for maintaining water supply. He said: "We must never get to the situation again when we have to have tankering."
Last year, Yorkshire Water, whose leakage rate has been calculated at 33 per cent, one of the highest in the developed world, ran tankers from the Tees to maintain supplies after last year's dry summer lowered reservoir stocks to about 10 per cent of capacity.
Professor Uff aims to deliver his report, which will have fundamental implications for all privatised water companies, by the end of April after he has considered written evidence and held two weeks of public hearings. The report will go to Yorkshire Water, whose chairman, Sir Gordon Jones, last year said that he wished to leave before his compulsory retirement date of next year, and to contributors. Professor Uff said that he was confident that the report would pass into the public domain swiftly.
Yorkshire Water said it hoped the inquiry would lead to the creation of standards of service for the industry.
ALISTAIR DEFRIEZ at SBC Warburg helped to defend Forte in a battle that was ultimately lost in part because Granada promised to pay a special dividend out of Forte's funds.
Mr Defriez is now at the Takeover Panel, the first principle of whose code states that all shareholders must be treated equally a principle apparently contravened by such dividends, which offer tax advantages to some. Mr Defriez said last night it was too early for him to comment on this happy coincidence. No doubt he will get around to it.
A GYNAECOLOGIST on holiday in Turkey to celebrate his retirement was shot dead in front of his wife by a 13-year-old boy, an inquest was told yesterday.
Michael Kettle, 60, died after being shot in the back in woodland near the resort of Marmaris in June 1994. Mr Kettle, a pioneer of screening for foetal abnormalities, had retired after 27 years as a consultant at St Mary's Hospital, Portsmouth.
The inquest in Portsmouth was told that Mr Kettle and his wife, Frances, had been out walking when approached by a boy carrying a hunting gun. They gave him some water and he accompanied them as they picked flowers. Mrs Kettle said in a statement that the boy tried to indicate that they were walking the wrong way. He then followed them.
"I heard a single shot and my husband said he had been shot and fell to the ground. The boy ran off." Mr Kettle, who lived in Southsea, Hampshire, died from nine wounds from a single cartridge.
The inquest heard that the boy, named as Zeki Demir, had been tried in Turkey and sentenced to 24 years' imprisonment, later reduced to five. James Kenroy, the Coroner for South East Hampshire, recorded a verdict of unlawful killing.
ONE could be forgiven for seeing Armageddon in yesterday's slump in manufacturing, but the very dreadfulness of the figures contains the seed of renewed growth.
The sharp contraction in output has probably come as firms meet demand from the huge stock levels built up last year. This aggressive destocking suggests that there is some demand out there. The sooner that stocks return to more normal levels, the sooner growth can resume. This should make the stocks cycle a temporary blip, a matter of timing which does not affect the overall path of the economy.
But therein lies the danger. The current cycle is quite extreme. In the first nine months of last year, around 1 per cent of the 1.4 per cent growth in GDP was due simply to the build up of stocks. Theoretically, the same will have to come off GDP, and manufacturing may even enter technical recession. It is then crucial how companies react in terms of staffing levels.
If they ride out the stocks cycle and hang on to staff, they can probably look forward to a bright second half. But if they start to shed labour and the announcement by Jaguar yesterday is a warning the outlook is rather less promising.
Jobs go, consumer confidence and spending falls, the Chancellor misses his growth and public borrowing targets, taxes do not fall again in the autumn. Calamity for the Government, for the economy, and for us all.
ALLEGATIONS of fraud on the railways, a demerger at British Gas, fat cats in the utility boardrooms, no water in the pipes in Yorkshire.
Even Conservative ministers admit privately that the ideological crown jewel of privatisation has lost some of its shine.
Coal Investments' administrators were keen to point out yesterday that the company is still trading while they examine the options, but the move into legal protection marks a further moment in the souring of the privatisation ideal.
If Coal Investments' troubles are not on the scale of Gas or the trains, this is only because the company is that much smaller. Rooted in the Conservative folk memory of the nationalisation of the pits and the strikes of the early 1970s, coal was seen as the ultimate privatisation.
As well as freeing the country from the political grip of the miners, it would free British Coal's managers and workforce from the iron grip of statism to grapple with the new world of energy competition. Some of it has indeed worked out: few would now dispute, for example, the claims of Tower Colliery in South Wales to be a success.
Malcolm Edwards, British Coal's former marketing director, looked as if he would dominate this new world. Rapidly out of Hobart House after clashing with the chairman, Neil Clarke, Edwards and his Coal Investments sold themselves hard to the City and to the generators as the key player in coal's post-privatisation landscape.
But the fatal blow for Mr Edwards looked to be when England's deep mines were handed out to rival Richard Budge's RJB Mining. Though the company's coal reserves in its pits are greater, if anything, than RJB's, the cost of rejuvenating old capacity, rather than RJB's business of running going-concern pits, has prompted more cashflow difficulties than banks have been able to stomach.
Accusations of bad faith, broken deals, overconfidence and overselling will now abound, no doubt. But the sorry road to the High Court yesterday may say as much about the tarnished reality of some privatisations as it does about the company which ended up there.
DARIUS GUPPY, who was convicted of a £1.8 million jewellery insurance fraud, was offering yesterday to sell his story to the media after a deal with a tabloid newspaper collapsed.
Mr Guppy, 30, who served less than three years of a five-year sentence, was released from Ford open prison early on Monday after an anonymous benefactor paid £156,000 to secure his freedom. It is thought that Mr Guppy had hoped the deal with the Daily Mirror would have recompensed his friend.
Last night the Daily Mirror refused to comment on reports that David Montgomery, the chief executive, had vetoed the deal because it was in direct contravention of the paper's code of practice which forbids a convicted criminal from profiting by selling a story.
Piers Morgan, Editor of the Daily Mirror, said in a statement: "The Daily Mirror has an absolute policy of not paying money to convicted criminals."
David Price, a solicitor acting for Mr Guppy and his wife, Patricia, confirmed that his clients were prepared to talk to interested parties. He added however that Mr Guppy, who is a declared bankrupt, had set certain conditions on any deal.
WE all seem to have stepped into one of those funny little parallel worlds dreamt of by theoretical physicists, where the Spanish Armada won, perhaps, or Rome never fell, or Jeremy Beadle became Prime Minister.
We used to live in a world where you signed deals and were required to honour them. We woke up in a place where a business can shrug off its responsibilities like a snake shedding its skin.
British Gas is splitting in two, with the Government's blessing, please note, so the good bits can sail happily and profitably into the sunset. The bad bits are lumped together in one big sack, tied up with assets of unquantifiable value, and cast adrift to see if they will float. This may be the easiest way out of the take-or-pay contracts quandary, but it sets an awful precedent.
The concept of ring-fencing doubtful debts is an old one, if not especially honourable. You lend a thousand pounds to a subsidiary knowing well that if trading conditions turn sour, the liquidators can put in however much cash is held by the parent a hard lesson learnt a year ago by creditors of the Athena chain when Pentos put the shops into receivership.
What British Gas is doing is extending this a step further, creating a sort of retrospective ring-fencing. You are owed a thousand by company A. You receive a letter explaining that due to difficult trading, the company has been split into company B (quite possibly bust) and company C (highly profitable). Your debt, alas, is with company B, it has been decided. Would five hundred quid do?
The North Sea producers were always going to have to bear much of the cost of those contracts because neither the consumer nor the taxpayer could accept any pain so close to an election, and British Gas could not afford to shoulder the burden alone.
But from now, the tougher the producers are in negotiations, which they say have yet to begin in earnest, the more likely the company holding those contracts is to fold. For this to happen, and for a company of Gas's reputation effectively to walk away from its obligations, is unthinkable one can only hope.
Gas even has its own purpose-built scapegoat in Cedric Brown, who has to spend another couple of months in the public stocks in return for his contractual entitlement and a cushy retirement. This neatly diverts attention from the role of Dick Giordano, even if his arrival as chairman two years ago did little to stem the group's abrupt decline.
Note also the inactivity of well-rewarded but supine non-executives including Peter, now Lord, Walker. His Energy Department first privatised the brute, with a promise of undying domestic market monopoly that allowed yet more of those disastrous North Sea contracts to be signed subsequently. What a tolerant lot they must be in the British Gas boardroom, to keep him around for so long.
LETTERS chronicling efforts to secure a pardon for a young midshipman sentenced to death after the mutiny on the Bounty are expected to fetch up to £80,000 at auction.
Peter Heywood, a teenager from the Isle of Man, was saved by his sister from hanging despite the best efforts of his former commanding officer to condemn him. The letters will rekindle the long-standing debate on whether the master of the Bounty, Captain William Bligh, was the heartless
martinet portrayed by Hollywood or a steadfast man of courage.
Captain Bligh does not emerge well from the 200-page archive, collected initially by Heywood's family and now being offered for sale by an Oxfordshire collector. Heywood went on to have a distinguished career, rising to the rank of captain.
In a letter to Heywood's uncle informing him that his nephew was among the Bounty mutineers, Bligh wrote on March 26, 1790: "His ingratitude to me is of the blackest dye, for I was a father to him in every respect. I very much regret that so much baseness form'd the character of a young man I had a real regard for, and it will give me much pleasure to hear that his friends can bear the loss of him without much concern."
The efforts by Nessy, Heywood's sister, to secure a pardon may have cost her dear: she died a year later, apparently of exhaustion.
Her case rested largely on a letter, also in the archive, from Heywood to their mother in which he said he had remained aboard the Bounty with Fletcher Christian, the leading mutineer, only because he believed that Captain Bligh and the loyal lieutenants who were abandoned in mid-ocean in an open boat would probably be killed by natives. Heywood wrote: "I never to my knowledge whilst under his command behaved myself in a manner unbecoming to the station I occupied."
David Park, manuscripts specialist at the auctioneer Bonhams, said that the letters indicated Heywood's pardon was justified. "Bligh's blood was up and he wanted revenge, whatever the cost to a young midshipman who may just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. This archive shows just how keen he was for vengeance."
Ian Mackenzie, of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, where a Navy inquiry exonerated Bligh and decreed that he had been the victim of a blatant piratical act, said yesterday: "Bligh was not the flogger that Hollywood has made him out to be. He always made sure that his men had dry clothing and hot drinks ... but he did have an unfortunate manner with people. We all know someone like that."
The auction, on March 20, will include a chunk of wood from the Bounty's rudder and rudimentary scales used by Bligh and his officers to measure out meagre rations after they were cast adrift.
JOAN COLLINS swept into a New York court yesterday "to speak for many authors" in a dispute with the publisher who rejected a novel that took her two-and-a-half years to write.
Miss Collins is being sued by Random House for the return of a $1.2 million (£780,000) advance after she delivered a "fragmented and implausible" manuscript for A Ruling Passion, a potboiler of the sex-and-shopping genre. Miss Collins, 62, denies that the manuscript is unusable and is counter-suing for the rest of the $4 million contract.
The Dynasty actress's arrival at central Manhattan's courthouse brought a touch of soap opera to the building's municipal sobriety. In a blaze of flashbulbs she declared: "I did what I was asked. They reneged on their part. If you dedicate two-and-a-half years of your life to writing two novels and then they say they don't want them, I do think that is very cruel."
Inside the court Robert Callagy, representing Random House, told the jury that Miss Collins must be treated "just like any person". He said she had guaranteed to deliver complete manuscripts for two novels, the first of which was A Ruling Passion. An incomplete manuscript for that appeared but nothing for the second, Hell Hath No Fury.
To the left of Judge Ira Gammerman, from an anteroom, courthouse workers peered through a door and pointed at the actress, who was dressed in a black suit, black boots and a white silk shirt. The case went out live on a local cable TV channel.
Mr Callagy said that in letters to Random House Miss Collins had admitted there were shortcomings in her manuscript. "This is just a very rough draft," she wrote. Mr Callagy added: "The character development is not there, the time-frame is out of whack. Contrived subplots are missing." Miss Collins, her cheeks already rouged, appeared to blush and she shook her head.
Kenneth Burrows, representing Miss Collins, said that Random House was "trying to twist and distort plain English to save itself from two contracts it signed with her". Random House is one of the most powerful publishers in the world, he said, yet it withheld editorial assistance from Miss Collins "once it realised it could never sell enough books to make that money back".
Leaked extracts from A Ruling Passion reveal a plot centred on European royalty. It offers analysis of men's chat-up lines, of Roman "studs" and middle-aged lust. Miss Collins, whose sister Jackie is a celebrated author, has had three other novels published.
EXTRACTS Was this the man she loved? The man two short months ago that she had promised to love and honour till death parted them? Alain looked puffy, debauched, strung-out. His yellow hair was beginning to be laced with grey now and there were tired lines running from his nose to his mouth.
"What have you been doing, Alain? Tell me the truth, please, because I know."
"Know what, cherie?" His face was a picture of boyish innocence. "What do you think you know, my little cabbage?"
"Don't call me your little cabbage," she said savagely. "I'm nobody's cabbage. Not yours, not anyone's."
"What is it?" he asked. "This isn't like you. What's wrong, Venetia?"
"You're gay, aren't you, Alain?" she asked calmly. "You're still gay, after all these years." He stared at her, his eyes so blue like hers, doleful, then he drained his glass of vodka and went to pour another. "Who told you?" he answered huskily.
They couldn't believe it when they saw the rushes ... Venetia's young bronzed body filled the screen, writhing, moaning and screaming in paroxysms of pleasure which, Fabio could tell with an unaccustomed flash of jealousy, were not faked ... both men knew they had a goldmine on their hands.
PERSONAL blue flashing lights, which caused derision when they were first tested by police in London, are to be issued by Scotland Yard to all officers who request them.
Initially officers reacted to the tiny strobes, which are clipped to the shoulder or chest, by imitating police car sirens. But the flashing lights, which are similar to those used by cyclists, quickly won acclaim. They are now used to identify officers involved in incidents in isolated areas or road accidents.
The lights were first introduced in Kingston, Chingford, Marylebone, Kentish Town, Teddington and Hampton last March at the suggestion of an inspector. Officers found them particularly helpful if they were searching on a roof or walking across railway tracks.
They could also be useful in Underground tunnels and when searching areas of wasteland or fields. Inspector Michael Hallowes, who thought up the idea, said at first officers imitated police car sirens after putting the lights on. "Often the initial reaction during early trials was to laugh. But once they were in use, attitudes changed to enthusiasm," he said.
Officers on the beat should continue to wear their traditional helmets, the Police Superintendents' Association said yesterday. It spoke out after the Greater Manchester force became the first in England and Wales to announce that helmets would be replaced by chequered caps as part of a uniform redesign.
Chief Superintendent Brian Mackenzie, the association's president, said the helmet symbolised the policeman and should not be jettisoned lightly. But David Wilmot, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, said there was overwhelming demand from officers for caps.
INSPECTORS joining the new Environment Agency will be offered clip-on ties, ultrasonic stun-guns and courses in unarmed combat to deal with scrapmetal merchants with big dogs.
The agency, which comes into force in the spring, merges the National Rivers Authority, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution and regional waste authorities. A priority is to crack down on flytippers and companies using small rubbish or scrapmetal merchants to dump toxic waste.
A national force of inspectors will be better placed to pick up the illegal shipping of hazardous wastes from one region to another. Peter Hinchcliffe, head of waste regulation, said inspectors were likely to face violent situations as "they turned up the heat on some of the small operators who have ignored proper waste disposal procedures".
Ed Gallagher, chief executive of the agency, said "Those in local authority waste regulation units have recently been on a course in unarmed combat. This is so they can deal with the illegal end of the waste disposal market safely. By this I mean the scrapmetal dealer with two rottweilers."
GILLIAN SHEPHARD is asking her curriculum advisers to consider introducing formal tests for nine-year-olds in an effort to counter widespread alarm about primary school standards.
The Education and Employment Secretary called for research on testing at nine after the first national results at 11, published last week, showed worryingly low achievement levels in English and mathematics. Concern deepened yesterday when Chris Woodhead, the Chief Inspector of Schools, singled out primary teachers for criticism over the way standards slip between the ages of seven and nine.
Mrs Shephard has also asked officials from the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority to devise ways of assessing five-year-olds so their progress can be constantly checked against national targets. Ministers believe regular test results will bring pressure from parents for standards to be raised if schools are under-performing. The latest results for 11-year-olds showed 48 per cent reached the expected standard in English and 44 per cent in mathematics. For seven-year-olds, the figures were 75.5 per cent and 78 per cent, while at 14 they were 55 per cent and 57 per cent.
Mr Woodhead, writing in The Times, said: "The quality of teaching in the junior age range must be improved significantly in perhaps half of all primary schools."
The authority's own report on last year's tests highlighted concerns that the four-year gap between tests at 7 and 11 should be bridged by some from of assessment. The report said: "Some teachers have suggested that, to track children's progress across the four years more effectively, there could perhaps be more formal assessment halfway through the key stage."
The report added that any move to introduce tests at nine "would need to be balanced against the implications that such assessment would have for teachers' workload, and the costs of providing the necessary materials".
Mrs Shephard has ruled out making any new tests compulsory since the national curriculum framework is fixed until 2000. It would be the 1997-98 school year before tests at nine could be piloted and only after that would they be offered to schools as an option.
Teachers unions are sceptical of the value of more tests. Nigel de Gruchy, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers, said: "We cannot have testing all the time because there would be no time for teaching. If it is going to mean extra work we may have to consider reintroducing our boycott of testing."
SIR SIMON RATTLE is to step down as music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, it was announced last night.
By 1998, when Rattle's contract expires, he will have been with the orchestra for 18 years; he joined the CBSO in 1980 as principal conductor and became music director in 1991. After his contract ends, he will work as a guest conductor. Edward Smith, chief executive of the CBSO, said the conductor had not been appointed to another orchestra.
Rattle, 41, said last night: "The position of music director requires 150 per cent energy and commitment, and there are only so many years that any person can keep up the sheer intensity necessary.
"I will look forward to giving of my best as a guest from 1998 onwards. We have open-ended plans to tour and record together and I will continue to work with the CBSO more than any other orchestra our musical bond is so strong it's bound to endure."
He added: "My years with the CBSO have been the most satisfying and fulfilling that any musician could imagine. With the consistent wholehearted support of the city, we have travelled a long road and have remained not only a good team but good friends."
Rattle has been acclaimed as a guest conductor with orchestras round the world.
Sir Michael Checkland, the CBSO's chairman, said: "All of us cannot thank Sir Simon enough for his outstanding and challenging artistic leadership over so many years. It has been his total dedication to the orchestra which has transformed the CBSO into the very fine organisation it is today."
BSKYB, the satellite broadcaster, said yesterday that it planned to introduce pay-per-view programming by the end of this year and confirmed that it wanted to supply news to the ITV network.
Information on the expansion plans of BSkyB, which is 40 per cent owned by News International, owner of The Times, came as the company reported its strongest set of interim profits since its formation in 1990. It also announced a maiden interim dividend of 2.5p. BSkyB said it would launch the pay-per-view channels in analogue form once it found enough spectrum space. Items to be broadcast would include films and sporting events. The same film, for example, could be broadcast every 30 minutes in the evening, allowing subscribers to pick their viewing time. Sam Chisholm, chief executive, said that the pay-per-view service "will create a brand new market".
Meanwhile, the company is pressing ahead with plans to start digital services, a move that would greatly expand the number of channels on offer.
David Elstein, head of programming, said that BSkyB was seeking to end the monopoly held by Independent Television News in supplying news to ITV. The Broadcasting Act 1993 called for competition in that business. ITV's current contract with ITN, worth about £57 million a year, expires next year.
BSkyB's pre-tax profit for the half year to December 31 almost doubled to £106.3 million on turnover of £464 million, up 30 per cent. Earnings per share were 5.6p against 3.3p.
A sharp rise in the number of subscribers was behind the results. BSkyB took on a record 568,000 new subscribers in the half-year period, raising its total to 5.2 million. Revenue from direct-to-home satellite customers rose 26 per cent to £337.8 million, while advertising revenue was up 18 per cent to £50.7 million.
The interim dividend will be paid on April 11. The shares closed down 22p at 392p. Traders said the decision by John Bridgeman, Director-General of Fair Trading, to refer BSkyB's agreement covering TV rights to Premier League football matches to the Restrictive Practices Court was behind the share slide.
GMTV, the breakfast station launched in 1993, reported its first profits yesterday and said that the worst trading days were behind it.
The company had an operating profit of £1 million in 1995, against a loss of £1.6 million in 1994 and £10.8 million previous year. It said that the turnround was down to an 8 per cent growth in advertising revenue, to £80 million, plus a substantial increase in programme sponsorship revenue.
GMTV was also able to repay a £4 million loan to its owners, Carlton Communications, Granada, Scottish Television, Guardian Media Group and the Walt Disney Company.
Last year's profits came after payments of £48 million, covering the licence fee and a percentage of advertising revenue, to the Government. GMTV hopes to negotiate lower payments in 1999.
FIVE Ukrainian sailors stranded on Tyneside for ten months are setting off for home in a convoy of three battered old Ladas.
They are the remaining crew members from the tall ship Tovarisch, marooned since last April, when safety experts declared that it would cost £2 million to make her seaworthy. Since then, they have been relying on the generosity of local people for food and clothing.
The original crew of 34 dwindled to just Captain Oleg Vandenko and five shipmates, who have spent two months repairing the Ladas, which they bought for £1,200. On Friday, they will drive to Harwich for the Hamburg ferry. In the best tradition, Captain Vandenko will stay with his ship.
Valera Karpenkov, 25, the third mate, said: "Everyone has been great but I haven't seen my wife, Natalie, and my home in Lvov for almost a year.
"In England there are many jokes about Ladas, but in Ukraine we will be the envy of our friends." His crewmate Vasily Fesenko, 23, was married just six months before he set sail for Britain. He said: "We spent what was left of our savings and money from home on the cars. They look good as new."
One local garage, Central Motors in North Shields, even spent three days working on one car without charge to make sure it was ready.
The crew's wages were still paid direct to their families back in Ukraine, but a lack of foreign reserves saw their overseas allowances run dry. They were looked after by the Tovarisch Support Group, which includes youngsters from inner-city estates in North Tyneside and Newcastle. The bond was formed during the 1993 Tall Ships Race when some of the youngsters enjoyed a sail training course on the ship.
The Tovarisch was brought back to Tyneside in April by the Coalition Against Crime, which bought 1,200 sail training places for underprivileged youngsters. The group was originally told the Tovarisch could be repaired for £500,000. She is now at North Shields, as the support group tries to raise funds to sail her. The crew will be back in six months.
JOHNSON MATTHEY, the industrial holding company, is adding to its burgeoning interests in advanced technology materials with the acquisition of the in-house printed circuit board (PCBs) interests of Cray Research in America for $40 million.
The proposed acquisition stems from Johnson Matthey's $170 million acquisition of Advanced Circuits, a market leader in high-technology PCBs and in plastic laminate packaging for semiconductors. Under the Cray deal, Johnson Matthey will acquire land, buildings, plant and machinery, and a workforce of about 350 people. The Cray facility at Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, is considered one of the most advanced in America.
Johnson Matthey shares rose 2p to 561p yesterday.
A SOCCER player was jailed for five years yesterday for killing a man by kicking his head like a football.
James Kelly, 22, of first division club Wolverhampton Wanderers, was seen to "volley" Peter Dunphy in an early-morning brawl outside a hotel after being refused entry to a party. Liverpool Crown Court was told that Mr Dunphy, 26, died immediately.
Mr Justice Kay told Kelly, who admitted manslaughter: "It may well be that a sentence of imprisonment will ruin your chosen career, but you will be able to rebuild your life in the future. The deceased is denied that opportunity."
Kelly's 23-year-old brother, John, and Kevin Atkinson were jailed for nine months after admitting assault. The assault happened when Kelly, of Willenhall, West Midlands, and his friends were refused entry to the Bradford Hotel in Liverpool in September 1994. A night porter who heard a distinctive crack told police: "I don't think he could have kicked him any harder." Afterwards, Kelly shouted: "You wanted it and you got it. You should have let us in." The former England and Wolves manager, Graham Taylor, described Kelly as "extremely popular, trustworthy and with an excellent reputation".
BRITISH TELECOM will today unveil a strategic alliance with RWE and Viag, two leading German utility companies, as it seeks to expand its international business.
The joint venture will offer services over fixed networks for business and private customers in Germany, and will operate independently of BT's Viag Interkom venture established last year.
The first stage would involve forming a joint network company that would combine fixed network activities in Germany. This could be expanded to include mobile phone services and satellite communications.
The three companies will sign a letter of intent in Bonn today, with a final agreement expected by the middle of this year. Neither RWE nor Viag has a mobile phone concession in Germany, but it is expected they will bid when the next licence is awarded.
RWE had previously been a shareholder in CNI Communications Network International, a joint venture with Mannesmann and Deutsche Bank but pulled out over differences in strategy and control with Mannesmann. CNI has subsequently signed a letter of intent to form an alliance with Unisource, a joint venture between America's AT&T, Swedish group Telia and the main telephone operators in The Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland.
BT, whose chief executive is Sir Peter Bonfield, yesterday asked the European Commission to examine the competition implications of North American technology being used by Unisource to provide one-stop telecoms services to multinational corporations.
BT believes that Unisource is likely to adopt AT&T software and standards for services such as private voice networks and fears this could lock the European partners into buying American hardware, restricting competition.
MORE than 1,000 high-speed Eurostar passenger trains passed through the Channel Tunnel between London, Paris and Brussels last month, a threefold increase over January last year, Eurotunnel announced yesterday.
A total of 1,071 high-speed Eurostars sped through the tunnel in January, against just 318 in January 1995.
There were also dramatic increases in the number of cars, motorcycles, trailers, caravans, campervans and coaches using Eurotunnel's Shuttle trains, with an increase from 45,352 vehicles in January 1995 to 98,799 last month.
A total of 45,763 trucks went through the tunnel on freight shuttle trains last month more than double the 20,739 of January 1995. Through-freight trains last month totalled 536, up from 368 in January 1995.
The figures remain far short of forecasts made at the time of the 1994 rights issue. Just over three million passengers used Eurostar last year, against a forecast 9.2 million in Eurotunnel's prospectus. Five million passengers are expected to use the trains in 1996.
The prospectus also forecast total freight traffic of 11.14 million gross tonnes in 1995. Latest government figures suggest an actual figure of about 4.5 million tonnes.
SARA LEE, the American consumer products company, has been ordered to pay a record $3.1 million fine for failing to notify US antitrust authorities before the acquisition of assets from Reckitt & Colman.
The Justice Department filed the suit and settlement agreement in the US District Court, claiming that Sara Lee violated antitrust notification requirements with its 1991 purchase of the shoe care products division of Reckitt & Colman for about $25.8 million. The complaint said that the contract failed to provide a fair market value for the US assets.
Sara Lee gave a low estimate of the US assets, claiming that it was not required to report the transaction because the assets were worth less than the $15 million limit.
At the time of the acquisition, Sara Lee and its Kiwi division had a 90 per cent share of the US shoe polish market Reckitt & Colman's Griffin was one of the few remaining competitors.
"The law is simple and clear. So is Sara Lee's violation," said Anne Bingham, assistant attorney general. "Sara Lee flouted its legal requirements in order to frustrate legal scrutiny."
Officials said the penalty was the highest ever imposed under the 1976 Hart-Rodino antitrust law.
A ROCK climber was rescued early yesterday after he clung by his ice pick for more than 12 hours to a ledge on a 700ft frozen waterfall. The rescue party fought through driving snow on mountains near Dinas Mawddwy, south of Dolgellau in Gwynedd, to reach Charles Wallace, 47, of Coven, near Wolverhampton.
His cries for help were heard by Wyn Jones, a farmer who was tending his sheep near by. He alerted the Outward Bound Wales search-and-rescue team who made their way from Aberdovey to the Nant Maes Glasau Falls.
Mr Wallace was criticised by David Williams, 46, a Snowdonia Park warden and leader of the nine-man rescue team, for making fundamental errors. Mr Williams said: "First, he went solo in an area he didn't know and when he wasn't aware of the standard of climbing required. Second, if he had listened to the weather forecast he would have known that the conditions weren't suitable.
"It was lashing with snow. The climber had managed to drag himself off the ice on to a small frozen ledge, securing himself with an ice axe." The climber had no torch and was hard to find. Apart from being cold he was uninjured.
In Cumbria, a solicitor was trapped in the heavy snow on Monday night three miles from Whitehaven. David Hammond telephoned colleagues at his Sunderland law firm and told them he had been forced to wrap himself in newspapers to keep warm as he had no warm clothing with him. Yesterday colleagues said Mr Hammond still appeared to be missing.
Police arrested a burglar after tracking him through the snow to his home. The man broke into a garage and took a wheelbarrow, leaving tracks which police followed to his house in a nearby road in Swindon, Wiltshire.
THE Gardiner Group, the wholesale distributor of electronic security systems, hopes to expand its closed-circuit television division in continental Europe, which is considered to be a less mature market than the UK.
Gardiner reported pre-tax profits of £3.34 million for the year to October 31, against £3.5 million previously. The results were affected by net costs of £424,000 against acquisition costs and a loss on a fixed asset investment. Earnings per share were 2p (2.17p). The total dividend rises to 0.85p, from 0.8p, with a 0.58p final, due on April 12.
RAILWAYS.
AN RAF helicopter picked up 19 people from a snowbound train yesterday as the weather caused havoc with rail services.
The Wessex rescue helicopter was called in when ScotRail's 7.02am service from Stranraer to Glasgow became stuck in a high moorland cutting near Girvan, about 45 minutes into its journey.
The aircraft, based at Aldergrove, near Belfast, was on a training mission and had landed at HMS Gannet, near Prestwick, when it was pressed into service to rescue the 16 passengers and three crew.
They were flown about ten miles to the village of Barrhill where they were given hot food at an hotel before being taken by road to Stranraer or Glasgow. Bill Campbell, a passenger on the train, said: "The crew were very good at keeping us informed. We were waiting for a railway crew to come and try to dig us out but they could not get near us and went back again.
"They had a mobile telephone that operated only from the top of a hill, so they climbed to the top and called again. A helicopter arrived 20 minutes later."
Sleeper services to Scotland arrived up to two hours late yesterday. Most InterCity routes were reported open during the day, although the Cumbrian coast and Wirral branch lines were closed by snowdrifts in the morning. There were severe delays on local services in South Wales.
In southern England, trains run by the two newly privatised rail operators, Great Western and South West Trains, were badly affected. Great Western had to provide a bus service for InterCity passengers between Exeter and Plymouth when sea defences were breached near Dawlish in Devon.
Railtrack attributed the delay to a combination of unusually high tides, storm-force winds and crumbling sandstone cliffs along the exposed stretch of track.
Commuter services run by South West Trains were left in chaos when five trains broke down early yesterday.
There were further delays and cancellations during the evening rush hour as South West struggled to cope with the disruption caused by the three inches of snow that blanketed Hampshire and Surrey.
CLYDE PETROLEUM is to take over the operation of four oilfields in Indonesia with estimated gross reserves of 70 million barrels.
In its first venture in South-East Asia, the North Sea exploration company is paying $51 million for Marathon International's 31.25 per cent interest in the Kakap Production Sharing Contract, which covers the Natuna Sea. Clyde, which is buying Marathon Petroleum Indonesia, a subsidiary of the US oil company, says gross production this year will be about 43,000 barrels per day.
A FLEET of four-wheel-drive vehicles ferried a group of 50 handicapped children home from school yesterday after they were forced to spend the night there marooned by snowdrifts.
The children and about 20 staff were trapped at Mayfield special school, near Whitehaven, Cumbria, when drifts cut off access by ordinary vehicles. Ann Greggain, chairwoman of the governors, said: "The youngsters had been very upset. Because of their disabilities, many were unable to comprehend why they weren't allowed to go home last night. It was very difficult for the school staff, who stayed and cared for their pupils throughout the night."
Four of the children had to be given specialist treatment because of their disabilities and were taken to West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven by members of Wasdale mountain rescue team. A hospital consultant was also taken to the school to give children check-ups. A spokesman said last night that three of the children had been allowed home from hospital after treatment. The fourth was detained because her home was cut off by snow.
Thousands of other children enjoyed a day off when their schools closed for the day, with some kept at home by their parents for the second day running. Schools were closed throughout the Dumfries and Galloway region in the Scottish borders.
In South Wales more than 120 schools and colleges were closed for the day. Another 250 schools were shut across Glamorgan, Clwyd and West Wales. More than 60 schools in Gloucestershire, most of them in the Forest of Dean, were closed after up to nine inches of snow fell.
Many schools across Berkshire and Wiltshire were closed. Educationists complained that the closures were the worst in 15 years.
SCOTTISH LIFE has launched a new international life group and fund management subsidiary in Edinburgh.
In the UK, Scottish Life International will sell personal equity plans, open ended investment companies, Pep mortgages and guaranteed funds through a new fund management subsidiary. Internationally, it will sell offshore investment and protection products. Scottish Life International Holdings is the holding company, with Scottish Life and Kleinwort Benson the only two shareholders.
IN NORFOLK the winter of 1963 was nearly as bad as that of 1947. Returning from seeing a patient in the early hours, even my overpowered Mini Cooper fitted with snow tyres was unable to penetrate the drifts. Fearing a night in the snow I started to dig. In the distance I could see the local authority gritting lorry similarly stranded.
After hours of digging I was away and as I slithered past the lorry I saw that my old friend, one-eyed Kelly Hodds, the local roadman, was tucked up in the cabin, head covered with balaclava as well as a hat, his hands with gloves and mittens, and he was wearing an ex-Army greatcoat over layers of pullovers.
The exhaust of the lorry was well above the level of the snow and with the heater on and his engine running he was as warm and comfortable as a bug in a bed. He wound down the window and shouted: "So sorry I didn't see it was you doctor. If I had I would have lent a hand." A true knight of the road.
The AA's advice is not to travel in the snow unless it is essential but, if it is, to take a shovel, blankets, a flask with a hot drink and chocolates or other calorie-rich snacks. When stuck, the association recommends that the snow from in front of all four wheels should be cleared, the wheels should be straightened and earth or sacking should be put beneath them, then cross your fingers and hope to get away.
Cold kills and as the body's temperature falls the intellect becomes blurred, decisions are unreliable and death may approach unnoticed. Heat has to be preserved. The AA would have thoroughly approved of Kelly Hodds's precautions.
Put on as many layers of clothing as is possible. Never forget that the clothed body loses not less than 25 per cent of its heat through the head, so that too should be covered. Drivers who venture out into blizzards should carry bin-liners as mountain walkers do. A couple of bin-liners with a hole cut in one for the head will keep anybody as warm as Mr Hodds.
The principle is always that the more layers the better, with each layer of clothing looser than the one beneath it.
The AA recommends that when several cars are stranded passengers should move into one of them; the more bodies there are huddled together the greater the heat generated.
A scarf should be tied to the aerial to attract attention. Engines and heaters can be left running provided that there is a clear airway so that the exhaust fumes can be blown away.
The youngest and fittest should be sent out to brave the blizzard and the windchill factor. Ageing and obstructed coronary arteries are vulnerable to cold.
Hot soup is ideal sustenance, enhancing morale and providing a few calories. Chocolate is also excellent. Alcohol is a mistake; it may make life seem better for the stranded traveller but it increases the rate of heat loss. Do not touch metal parts of the car with bare hands. Contact with cold metal at very low temperatures soon causes frostbite.
THE Daily Mail and General Trust yesterday unveiled plans to establish a string of radio stations in Australia.
The group, which has interests in more than 30 radio stations in the UK, said that expansion would be primarily through the acquisition of new FM broadcasting licences in Australia's larger cities, which are due to be auctioned by the Government for about A$16 million (£7.96 million) each from next year. The group will also acquire existing radio stations.
FOKKER, the troubled Dutch aircraft manufacturer, has drawn up a shortlist of potential buyers to rescue the company, but given warning that any solution would exclude investors who own its bonds and shares.
"So far none of the candidates has announced it is considering a bid for the bourse-listed shares or bonds of Fokker," the company said. Earlier the company said it hoped to reach a solution by March before a 365 million guilder (£145 million) cash lifeline from the Dutch Government is exhausted. The loss-making planemaker has been fighting for its life since Daimler Benz, its German majority shareholder, cut off crucial cash support on January 22, forcing Fokker to seek court protection from creditors.
Four companies British Aerospace, Aerospatiale of France, Samsung Aerospace of South Korea and Bombardier of Canada have confirmed that they are talking to the company. The fifth potential suitor is believed to be McDonnell Douglas, although this has not yet been confirmed.
HUNDREDS of nuclear workers spent a second night at the Sellafield complex last night after access roads were blocked by the heaviest blizzards for decades. The site's two reprocessing plants were shut down for safety reasons.
Four-wheel-drive vehicles yesterday managed to take home more than 1,000 employees, who had spent Monday night at the nuclear complex in Cumbria, but by late afternoon the roads were again blocked and the remaining staff were forced to bed down beneath their desks for a second time.
Managers were able to get emergency food supplies into the site and chips, beans
and sausages were being served in three canteens last night. Extra clothing was also distributed.
The reprocessing plants were shut down on Monday because emergency services would have had difficulty reaching them in an emergency and because of the lack of fresh staff. Workers trapped on site were carrying out maintenance to fill the hours. Sam Kelly, plant director, said: "I cannot recall them being closed because of the weather for at least 20 years." The Calder Hall nuclear power station, on the same site, was working normally.
One executive said last night: "The atmosphere is remarkably cheerful. There is a wartime spirit of camaraderie. There are shower facilities and the food isn't that bad. The place is warm and we are becoming experts at poker. We are expecting to be stuck for another 24 hours at least.
"I only came in today to bring in the food. Unfortunately, the road closed again before I could leave so I'm stuck as well."
The adverse weather closed airports at Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, East Midlands and Birmingham for several hours and backlogs of domestic and international flights developed. A Glasgow airport official said: "Domestic flights were worst affected because of the closures at other airports. It is the worst shutdown for a long time."
An East Midlands official said: "It is a combination of snow on the runway and high winds. We are braced to have to deal with it all again tomorrow." Police in Reading, Berkshire, were forced to close both carriageways of the A329(M) between Winnersh Triangle and the town last night after a 15-vehicle crash in which two people were injured.
An ambulance sent to the scene was caught up in the incident when a lorry skidded out of control and ploughed into its rear.
A police spokesman said: "The conditions are horrendous. The gritters are out but they are fighting a losing battle. The roads are freezing over quicker than they are being gritted."
Ewan and Melanie Campbell and their 15-month-old daughter Anya were stuck in their car for eight hours before being taken to a rescue centre in Moffat, Dumfries and Galloway, at 1.30am. "We had to give a wide berth to some of the lorries as they were swerving all over the roads as they tried to get traction on the ice," Mr Campbell said.
Some residents in the Rhondda Valley were without water as well as power yesterday. They will have to rely on bottled water until their electrical pumps are restored.
TURNER BROADCASTING, the television and entertainment company set to merge with Time Warner, reported a 27 per cent drop in net income for the fourth quarter, although full-year profits more than quadrupled as the cable television operator attracted record audiences.
Net income fell to $19 million from $26 million in the three months to December 31, affected by expenses of $10 million related to the proposed merger. For the full year, profits rose to $103 million from $21 million in 1994. Turner's cable operations include the TBS, TNT and Cartoon Network channels.
Universities are pushing ahead with plans for a £300 signing-on fee after being offered no long-term funding reform yesterday by Gillian Shephard, the Education and Employment Secretary.
Mrs Shephard met vice-chancellors to try to defuse the dispute over university budgets, which led them to threaten a levy for students starting in 1997.
Professor Gareth Roberts, chairman of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, welcomed a move by Mrs Shephard to investigate the effect of cuts in last November's Budget. But he added: "On the crucial issue of longer-term funding, Mrs Shephard provided no reassurance." Mrs Shephard promised further proposals before the vice-chancellors meet again on February 16. They hope these will amount to more than another inquiry.
UNION leaders and board members from Grundig, the German television and radio maker, held a meeting yesterday to discuss the company's plans to cut 3,000 jobs worldwide, more than two thirds of them in Germany.
The consumer electronics company, an affiliate of Philips Electronics since 1984, announced the restructuring along with the news that its operating loss in 1995 increased to DM330 million from a DM127 million loss in 1994. Since the start of the decade, Grundig has cut almost 10,000 jobs. It currently has about 11,500 employees worldwide.
JAGUAR became the first carmaker to be squeezed by stagnant UK sales and a rapid slowdown overseas when it sent home a third of its workforce yesterday.
It signed off 2,200 production workers from plants in Coventry and Birmingham for the rest of the week, costing output of 900 saloons and sports cars worth about £36 million at showroom prices. Workers will receive lay-off pay about 80 per cent of their normal wage.
The announcement surprised the motor industry, which had seen Jaguar's fortunes revive with the launch of the XJ saloon range. Sales last year jumped 30 per cent worldwide and were up 18 per cent in the US, the company's biggest market. A spokesman said: "We are taking prudent measures now because we can see that the rate of growth we have been seeing will not go on throughout this year."
Motor industry sales last month totalled 191,761, only 0.3 per cent ahead of the same month last year. Carmakers pinned their hopes on a good January, the second biggest sales month of the year, believing interest rate cuts and lower mortgage rates could stimulate the market. Manufacturers kept assembly lines running last year by increasing export sales 20 per cent, but fears are growing that a slowdown overseas will force more lay-offs. Carmakers have told the Treasury that another year of stagnation, after six years of recession and unsteady recovery, could hit jobs and output. Neil Marshall, director of economics at the Retail Motor Industry Federation, said: "The Treasury told us that growth would show through in the first quarter of the year, yet January has shown us that the trend is not significantly upwards at all.
"We are going into the seventh year in which we face little or no growth and the Government will have to face up to that. We got little sympathy from the Treasury. Carmakers have been doing everything they could to keep their plants busy while registrations here have been flat, but now we are seeing signs of what could be an extremely difficult time ahead."
Registrations were helped last year by a plethora of new models. However, companies have less to offer this year, and many will have to survive by discounting and special offers. But that is a costly option. Vauxhall last week reported profits down from £79 million before tax to £3 million because of what it described as "severe and costly competitive action in a stagnant UK market". Vauxhall's sales slipped again last month, from 31,780 to 27,957, while Jaguar was off by 94 sales at 1,065.
Ford led the market with 41,837 registrations, although that figure was down by 1,400. Rover's performance stayed about the same as January 1995, at 20,776. The best-selling cars last month were: 1, Ford Fiesta; 2, Ford Mondeo; 3, Ford Escort; 4, Vauxhall Astra; 5, Vauxhall Vectra; 6, Vauxhall Corsa; 7, Peugeot 306; 8, Rover 400; 9, Renault Clio; 10, Rover 100.
LLOYD'S OF LONDON is expected to reveal its first profit since 1987.
IIS, a Lloyd's adviser, predicts that the market's thousands of investors will have made a profit of about £1 billion through insuring risks during 1993.
This is in sharp contrast to the £1.2 billion loss on the 1992 year of account unveiled last May, which pushed the total losses shouldered by names over a five-year period above the £8 billion mark.
The profit will be announced in the summer. Based on syndicate forecasts and its own calculations, IIS expects names to have made an average return on capacity of 11.12 per cent.
This excludes names' expenses and any potential special levy imposed on the membership.
However, IIS believes that some underwriters are erring on the side of caution and as a result the best-case scenario could be a return of 13.55 per cent, which gives a profit of £1.18 billion.
The worst-case scenario produces a return of 8.7 per cent or a profit of £759.4 million.
The results for the 1993 year of account are announced this summer because of Lloyd's three-year accounting system.
The years of 1993 and 1994 were widely expected to produce good profits because of higher rates and higher deductibles together with markedly fewer catastrophes.
During the years of 1987 to 1992, the insurance market was hit by a string of disasters, including Piper Alpha, Exxon Valdez and the hurricanes Hugo, Andrew and Iniki.
Reflecting the benefits of these factors, IIS calculates that the best performing sector of the market will be the marine market, followed by the motor market.
IIS is forecasting the marine market makes an average return of 14.87 per cent, resulting in a profit of £480 million.
IIS has increased an earlier forecast for the 1994 year of account from £700 million to £1 billion.
The company's best-case scenario predicts a profit of £1.27 billion, which is slightly ahead of 1993.
However, 1994 saw a marked increase in capacity, resulting in too much money chasing the available insurance risks.
As a result, IIS expects the return to drop from 11.12 per cent in 1993 to 9.45 per cent in 1994.
This is below the target return on capacity of 10 per cent that Lloyd's set in its 1993 business plan.
The outlook for 1995 looks even less favourable as the overcapacity forced rates down as underwriters fought for market share.
IIS has pencilled in a return of 8.2 per cent, equating to a profit of £835.6 million.
ALISTAIR DEFRIEZ, a director of SBC Warburg, is to become Director-General of the Takeover Panel on March 11 on a two-year secondment. He succeeds William Staple, who is returning to NM Rothschild.
Mr Defriez is no stranger to controversial takeover situations he was head of the Warburg corporate finance team advising Northern Electric on its defence against a £1.1 billion hostile bid from Trafalgar House, which was advised by SBC. The bid was the first of a series last year for regional electricity companies.
When SBC bought Warburg last summer the bid was on hold pending a review of electricity prices, but seeing the conflict, the Takeover Panel advised Warburg to step down as adviser to Northern. The most recent high-profile bid Mr Defriez was involved with was advising Forte in its defence against Granada.
Mr Defriez is following in the footsteps of John Walker-Hawarth, the Warburg corporate finance director who was director-general from 1985 to 1987.
Mr Defriez said that the panel was doing an excellent job. "It is an institution that is widely respected by practitioners and others in the City." He added that its non-statutory status enabled it to respond more informally and faster than would be permitted under a legal structure.
He said that the continuing challenge for the Panel was to respond to change in the market, "particularly in the way that contested bids are conducted to ensure a proper flow of information".
He said that 1995 had seen a good deal of takeover activity and he expected another busy year. However, he added: "I think it depends to a large extent on stock market circumstances and people's confidence."
MEDEVA, the UK pharmaceuticals company, has sold Ribosepharm, its German operation, to Klinge Pharma for £53.8 million.
Ribosepharm, which sells a range of products against cancer, was bought in 1993 with the aim of promoting it to a new core business. Medeva said it found it hard to develop the business, which earned operating profits of £7.2 million in 1995 after a 1994 loss of £14.6 million. Klinge will pay £49.4 million in cash on completion, with the balance as security against tax and other warranties.
KEN WILKIE, chief executive of Xyratex, above, said the company, a manufacturer of information storage products, earned pre-tax profits of £11 million on revenue of £279 million in the first full year since the buyout of IBM UK's Havant division.
Mr Wilkie said disk drive manufacture achieved year-on-year growth of 20 per cent and the test division enjoyed four-fold growth. Cost savings of £500,000 were achieved through new policies to reuse and recycle.
Xyratex, whose customers include Fujitsu, occupies a 600,000 sq ft manufacturing plant at Havant, Hampshire.
ALLIED DOMECQ, the international spirits and retailing group, warned shareholders that interim profits were likely to fall by about 20 per cent this year.
Michael Jackaman, chairing his final annual meeting before his retirement, said the spirits business had faced difficult trading conditions, particularly in Europe where the market had resisted price increases.
In America, Christmas trade had failed to meet expectations, with wholesalers carrying relatively high levels of stocks.
Mr Jackaman said factors affecting the performance of the spirits division, compounded by the dilution caused by disposals in the food sector, would result in a 20 per cent decline in profits for the six months to the end of February, indicating a fall of about £62 million to £248 million.
The impact of these factors would ease in the second half, he said, and the second half performance would be assisted by cost cutting, a more favourable profit comparison in Mexico and Spain, and an improved trading performance overall.
Despite his reassurance, shares in Allied Domecq fell 14p to 501p yesterday. The shares have fallen from 556p in mid-January, losing 27p last week alone in response to a profit downgrade by Cazenove.
Analysts now believe profits are unlikely to exceed £620 million in the current year, against original forecasts of £650 million.
One broker expects profits to fall as low as £583 million, against a reported £635 million before exceptional charges.
Mr Jackaman said the second-half profit from Domecq would be about £25 million ahead of that for the corresponding period last year.
Allied Domecq Retailing "continues to trade soundly", while Carlsberg-Tetley, the UK brewing joint venture, was on an improved trend.
Mr Jackaman, who has been at Allied Domecq for 30 years, is succeeded as chairman by Sir Christopher Hogg.
Scottish Widows, the mutual life insurance fund, is to transfer administration of its £22 billion investment portfolio to WM company, a specialist investment administrator. While Scottish Widows will continue to manage the portfolio, WM will be responsible for trade settlements, securities reconciliation and tax recovery.
Tim Hawkins has left his job as managing director of PPP, the private healthcare insurance group, on the eve of the company's plans to turn itself into a £500 million limited company.
Mr Hawkins, 48, is believed to have left as a result of a boardroom dispute over the direction of the group when it ceases to be a provident institution.
Motorola, the electronics group, has revealed plans to build a £116 million European headquarters in Swindon, Wiltshire.
The investment is expected to create 700 jobs by the end of 1998 to add to Motorola's 1,400-strong workforce in Swindon. The 66-acre Groundwell West site will be acquired by the cellular telecoms company subject to planning approval.
LORD YOUNG of Graffham, the ousted chairman of Cable & Wireless, is on the verge of making a comeback by forming a new "boutique bank". The bank will advise businesses on investment opportunities in the Middle East, Far East and China.
The new company, to be called Young Associates, will be registered in April. It is understood the business will remain private. Lord Young left C&W in November after falling out with the board over strategy and is still negotiating with the company over compensation.
MANUFACTURING activity slumped unexpectedly badly in December, leading to the weakest quarterly performance since early 1992 and making the City even more certain that base rates will fall further in the weeks ahead.
Manufacturing output fell 0.7 per cent, having declined 0.1 per cent in November, according to the Central Statistical Office. Output fell 0.2 per cent in the final quarter, compared with the previous three months. The CSO says it now estimates that there is zero underlying growth in the sector. Industrial production, which includes energy production, rose 0.4 per cent in December as cold weather boosted demand for gas and electricity. But even in this series, the CSO estimates that growth is running at about only 0.5 per cent a year. There are few betting on the third base rate cut in a row after today's monthly monetary meeting between Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor, and Eddie George, Governor of the Bank of England. But many expect that rates will be cut by another quarter point at the meeting next month.
Ian Shepherdson, UK economist at HSBC Markets, said: "If these figures don't frighten the authorities, nothing will. The outlook for the next few months is bleak."
Economists put the sharp decline in manufacturing down to companies aggressively selling out of the substantial stockpiles built up last year when demand slowed unexpectedly sharply. This phenomenon is expected to continue for some months and to continue to depress overall economic growth.
COAL privatisation claimed its first casualty yesterday when Coal Investments, the UK's second-largest mining group, was placed in administration after the breakdown of a rescue attempt.
Administrators said they planned to carry on trading while they considered options.
CI, set up three years ago by Malcolm Edwards, the former British Coal marketing director, applied yesterday to the High Court for an order under the 1986 Insolvency Act after lengthy talks with the company's three bankers.
The company said administrators had been brought in after its banks failed to agree on an attempt to raise new cash. The company said that Union Bank of Switzerland had asked for administrators to be appointed after differing with NatWest and Banque Indosuez over a plan to extend debt facilities.
CI, which has also been trying to raise cash in the City, had used up its £30 million borrowing facility and was looking for another £8 million to help it to increase capacity.
National Power, the electricity generator, confirmed that it had been involved in talks over a possible rescue deal for the company.
The court appointed three partners from Arthur Andersen, the accountant, as joint administrators. They held talks yesterday with Department of Trade and Industry officials and with the Coal Authority, which has responsibility for aspects of the industry.
CI's deep mines are Hem Heath and Silverdale near Stoke-on-Trent, Annesley Bentinck near Nottingham, Trentham at Coventry, and Markham Maine in Doncaster. CI also has a 32.5 per cent stake in the Mining Scotland group.
Arthur Andersen said CI, which has up to 1,500 miners and staff, had been experiencing severe cash flow problems as a result of greater than expected difficulties and costs in reopening and developing the mines previously closed by British Coal.
Murdoch McKillop, one of the administrators, said: "We plan to carry on trading while we review all the options open to us." CI's shares have been suspended since December after losses escalated to £18.3 million.
DEMERGER plans brought starkly contrasting reactions from British Gas shareholders. The most hostile came from the Pensions Investment Research Consultants (Pirc), which advises institutional shareholders on investments.
Anne Simpson, a Pirc director, said splitting British Gas into two businesses would not make the contract problem go away. Shareholders would still "own" the problem in the form of shares in the new company.
She said Cedric Brown was the fourth executive to receive increased salaries under British Gas's new pay policy and subsequently announce his retirement from the board. She urged British Gas to seek shareholder approval of its remuneration policy.
However, British Gas's bigger institutional investors were broadly in favour of the plans and expressed sympathy with Mr Brown. One said his firm had been irritated with British Gas's lack of openness about the contracts problem, but had sympathy with the view that when they had been signed the company was in a monopoly position. The demerger appeared to make sense as the company was essentially two different businesses. However, he said, "our view is that BGE will struggle".
Sir Anthony Beaumont-Dark, the former Conservative MP who chairs the TR High Income Trust, which has £700,000 of British Gas shares, called for Mr Giordano to stand aside. He said his fund would vote against Mr Giordano taking on the chief executive's role when Mr Brown retires. "I hope other institutions will follow our lead," he said. However, his fund would back demerger as the best solution to British Gas's problems, he said.
RICHARD GIORDANO, the former New York lawyer who became non-executive chairman of British Gas two years ago, has emerged as a survivor in the company's restructuring. Mr Giordano will replace Cedric Brown, initially as chief executive. His basic salary of £450,000, however, will not be increased.
Mr Giordano, who was chief executive of BOC Group before joining British Gas, was supposed to have worked only three days a week.
Instead, he found that defending Mr Brown's salary and overseeing a company under severe competitive threat were full-time jobs. He will have ultimate responsibility for the success of British Gas's split into two separately listed companies. Mr Giordano has no intention of leaving when the demerger is finished in the spring of 1997. He wants to become non-executive chairman of both BGE and Transco.
Relations between Mr Giordano and the seven non-executive directors, who are charged with ensuring that shareholders' rights are protected during the demerger process, are said to have deteriorated during the past year.
There is a good chance that Philip Rogerson, 51, an executive director, whose portfolio includes the pipeline and overseas development divisions, will become chief executive of TransCo. Roy Gardner, who succeeded Mr Rogerson as finance director in 1994, is thought to be gunning for the chief executive's position at BGE.
IN SPITE OF his many achievements, the name of Cedric Brown will always be associated with a 30-stone pig that buried its snout in a bucket labelled Share Options outside a British Gas shareholders' meeting last summer.
Cedric the pig was brought to the AGM by some small shareholders furious at what they claimed were the excessive pay and perks of BG's top directors. It was one of the stormiest AGMs the City has seen. More than 4,500 small shareholders attended to vote against the reappointment of four directors, but proxy votes from institutional investors holding 97 per cent of the votes won the day. The Yorkshireman, who rose from gas fitter to BG chief executive over 44 years, put the episode down to "part of life's rich experience". Colleagues say it was his iron will and driving ambition that kept him going. Mr Brown says his time as an engineer taught him to solve problems through practical measures, although his critics portray him as a man steeped in the utility culture with little experience of the outside world. He left school at 16 to become a laboratory assistant with the East Midlands Gas Board. Then, 22 years later, he became East Midlands director of engineering and hit the fast track. A head office post came three years later, and in 1980 he was put in charge of BG's first big offshore development, the Morecambe Bay gasfield.
He was made chief executive in 1992. In November 1994, he gained a £205,000 rise, bringing his salary to £475,000. On April 30, he will walk away with a pension that could be worth up to £4 million over the next 15 years.
The splitting of British Gas will cost £50 million over the next 14 months in advisory and other fees.
Fees will be payable to Schroders, its financial adviser; ABN Amro Hoare Govett and Cazenove, the joint brokers; Linklaters & Paines, its solicitor; Price Waterhouse, the accountant; and the Maitland Consultancy, its financial public relations adviser.
Restructuring prompted by loss of supply monopoly and massive liabilities
BRITISH GAS yesterday unveiled the most radical restructuring in British corporate history, detailing plans to give 1.8 million investors free shares in a demerged gas supply business.
The company is to float off its gas supply business, together with Britain's biggest gasfields and its £40 billion of loss-making, take-or-pay contracts. The move aims to free the utility from the uncertainties and liabilities arising from the Government's removal of its monopoly over the supply of gas to households and smaller businesses.
The demerged British Gas Energy, as it has been provisionally named, will have 22,000 employees, annual sales of £8 billion and net assets of £2.6 billion. It will also include British Gas Service, the loss-making contract appliance maintenance arm.
Stripped of its gas supply business, the remaining British Gas company, provisionally renamed TransCo International, will have at its core ownership of Britain's £18 billion gas pipeline system. Operating under a price cap set by Ofgas, the gas regulator, this business will earn profits of around £700 million a year from fees paid by shippers, including British Gas Energy.
Cedric Brown, the 61-year-old chief executive of British Gas, is to retire at the company's annual meeting in April. But final proposals for the demerger, requiring approval by investors controlling 51 per cent of the shares voted, will not be tabled until the April 1997 annual meeting.
However, Ian Lang, President of the Board of Trade, has approved changes in British Gas's licence that will enable it to transfer assets into the new supply business. Executives to head the new businesses and oversee the integration will be named in early summer.
Richard Giordano, chairman of British Gas, said that TransCo International will be a capital-intensive, long-term business operating in world markets, generating a steady stream of dividends. By contrast British Gas Energy "will seek to return funds to shareholders by way of dividends or share repurchases when it judges that circumstances make it appropriate to do so".
BGE will be loaded with £40 billion of take-or-pay gas contracts, with liabilities estimated at £1.5 billion. To balance these, British Gas has allotted the company its prized North and South Morecambe gasfields, capable of supplying 15 per cent of Britain's peak gas needs.
The first task of the new management will be to renegotiate gas-purchase contracts with 40 leading North Sea producers, at a time when spot prices are around half the level of British Gas's average 20p-a-therm contract price.
TransCo will end up with most of British Gas's debt, which at the end of the last financial year was £2.3 billion and has since risen by several hundred million. It will have assets of about £21 billion against the £2.6 billion in assets that will be held by British Gas Energy.
Two of Britain's best-known volunteer fire brigades, at Gordonstoun school and Balmoral, are under threat from local authority budget cuts, it was claimed yesterday.
The Fire Brigades Union said that Grampian fire service was being forced into a £1.6 million spending reduction which would mean the closure of six of its part-time fire stations. One of the brigades is based at the Queen's holiday home and is manned by 20 workers on the Balmoral estate.
Relatives and friends of four Britons held hostage in a remote jungle region of Indonesia yesterday appealed for their release in a broadcast on the BBC World Service.
There has been no news of William Oates, Daniel Start, Annette van der Kolk and Anna McIvor, all Cambridge University students, for ten days. Maarten van der Kolk, father of Annette, 21, said: "Whatever the cause, we urge Kailik Kwalik (the rebel leader) to make contact and free them right away."
A Belgian lorry driver who was falling asleep behind the wheel when he crushed to death a motorcyclist was jailed for three years yesterday for causing death by dangerous driving.
Relatives of the victim, Charles Mitchell, condemned as inadequate the sentence on Eddy De Meersman, who pleaded not guilty. He had driven more than 600 miles in breach of European Union regulations when he crashed on the A1 near Newark, Nottinghamshire.
Tens of thousands of solicitors in England and Wales are working in legal limbo without a practising certificate because of the failure of a £2.5 million computer system at the Law Society.
The society is now in breach of the law because it has failed to discharge its core functions under the Solicitors Act 1974 of issuing certificates within 21 days of receiving a solicitor's application and accounting for the £50 million in fees paid by the applicants.
Correction: Headline: Solicitors' practisinng certificates;Correction Issue Date : Tuesday February 13, 1996 Page: 5 Although the Law Society has had problems with a new computer system (report, February 7) all solicitors' practising cert ificates remain valid, and applications from those seeking a first certificat e are being processed by hand. We accept that the Law Society is not in breach o f its statutory responsibilities.
Detectives were questioning a man last night over the kidnap and murder of Diana Goldsmith, whose disappearance in January last year after she dropped her three children at school has remained a mystery.
The 28-year-old man was arrested in southeast London after an appeal by Kent police on the anniversary of the incident. The body of Mrs Goldsmith, 45, former common law wife of the multimillionaire inventor Derek Goldsmith, has not been found.
CHECKS on exhaust fumes from thousands of "green" cars have been suspended after widespread discrepancies were found in the new MoT pollution test.
The Transport Department admitted yesterday that it had told 18,000 MoT testing stations to suspend the special emissions test introduced to examine cars with catalytic converters, the device designed to absorb noxious gases from petrol engines.
It is understood that information supplied by manufacturers on maximum emission levels for regularly serviced cars proved optimistic. As a result, thousands of cars registered on or after August 1, 1992, are unexpectedly failing the MoT test, even with catalysts in perfect order.
The emissions test suspension involves cars from Ford, Rover, Daihatsu, Isuzu, Mazda, Porsche, Proton, Subaru, TVR, Caterham, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Lada, Lancia and Mercedes-Benz. Owners of other makes of car are still expected to put them through the emissions check.
A police informant is suing a chief constable for £30,000 that he claims he is owed for cases he helped to solve.
The man, who lives in the Portsmouth area but whose name is being kept secret, has launched the action against John Hoddinott, Chief Constable of Hampshire. The police acknowledge he is listed on their confidential register of informants. They have paid for help in the past but are disputing what is thought to be a unique claim.
Independent observers could be permanently based in police stations in London to reassure the public about the treatment of prisoners, Sir Paul Condon, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said yesterday.
Sir Paul and senior officers are looking at proposals to introduce observers in sensitive areas such as Brixton and north London first. Observers drawn from local police consultative committees already have the power to make unannounced visits.
THE ban on homosexuality in the Armed Forces is to remain in place, it emerged yesterday. Michael Portillo, the Defence Secretary, will announce the decision later this month when the MoD publishes a long-awaited internal review of the policy.
The move will come as a relief to service chiefs who have been fighting a two-year battle to prevent any relaxation in the law. The decision will almost certainly prompt a clash between the Government and the European Court of Human Rights.
Four former servicemen and women who were dismissed for their homosexuality have taken their cases to the European Court after their legal challenge was rejected by the Court of Appeal last year. Although ministers have accepted the view of defence chiefs that homosexuality is incompatible with service life, they emphasise that the decision is not a moral judgment but a question of operational efficiency. They are understood to have rejected compromise proposals that would allow homosexuals to join up but not practise homosexual acts.
Yesterday in the Commons, Nicholas Soames, the Defence Minister, refused to confirm or deny reports that the ban would remain. But he told MPs: "The view of the service chiefs and of ministers is not based on any moral judgment but on the impracticality of homosexual behaviour, which is clearly not compatible with service life."
He said that neither he nor Mr Portillo had seen the report drawn up by the MoD's homosexuality policy assessment team. The report will be passed to the all-party Armed Forces Select Committee for consideration before the matter comes before MPs.
During defence questions Mr Soames did accept an assertion that many homosexual servicemen had been decorated during the Second World War. Tony Banks, MP for Newham North-West, asked: "Is there not an inconsistency here? It is technically possible for a Defence Minister to be homosexual while it is unlawful for a member of the Armed Forces to be homosexual. It is unfair and it is inconsistent."
Mr Soames replied: "I have rarely found any inconsistency in any government policy of any sort."
GERMAN provincial governments were heading for a confrontation with Britain and the European Court of Justice last night after moving to ban all imports of British beef.
In a renewed scare over BSE bovine spongiform encephalopathy, the so-called "mad cow" disease a ban has already been announced in Rhineland-Palatinate. It is likely to be adopted by all Germany's 16 regional states, which are angry at the way the issue of suspect cattle imports has been handled by the federal Government.
Rhineland-Palatinate's ban is complete and will be strictly enforced. Every beef delivery in the region will have to be accompanied by a certificate stating that it is not of British origin.
Sir David Naish, president of the National Farmers' Union, said: "I am horrified that a country which professes to be the most pro-European in the EU is taking illegal action which has no scientific justification."
SLASHING the welfare budget overnight could lead to riots in the streets, Kenneth Clarke warned the hardline Tory Right yesterday as he mapped out a gradual path to reducing state spending.
Reform of the £90 billion-a-year social security budget would inevitably be a lengthy process, the Chancellor said. Measures in hand were saving £5 billion a year and winning broad public support. But precipitate action could have disastrous consequences.
"You cannot expect to get to grips with a burgeoning social security bill overnight," he said. "The recent events in France, riots on the streets of Paris, illustrate the social disruption which sudden reforms can bring."
Mr Clarke's remarks were a rebuff to rightwingers such as Norman Lamont, his predecessor, who, at the Tory conference in October, called for the transfer of large parts of the social security system to the private sector and new ways of funding healthcare.
Some rightwingers believe that Britain will be able to compete internationally only if it is prepared to make room for decisive tax cuts by dismantling the welfare state and ending free health and education.
Rejecting this view, Mr Clarke said: "I believe that we can have modern public services and, at the same time, be a low-tax economy."
The Chancellor's remarks, at the London School of Economics, were also designed to kill off speculation of a rift with John Major over public spending and place the Chancellor in the mainstream of Tory thinking over tax, spending and the welfare state. In a speech agreed between the two men after a flurry of reports alleging tensions in Downing Street, the Chancellor reaffirmed his determination to reduce public spending to "below 40 per cent of gross domestic product".
He expected to achieve that milestone by next year and would then go further. His remarks were in line with Mr Major's "aspiration" of spending at 35 per cent of GDP.
"The Prime Minister and I have both said that we will achieve that target and we have both said that we will then aspire to reduce it further," he said. Spending at 42 per cent of GDP was down on its previous peaks of 43.5 per cent in the recession of the early 1990s, 45.5 per cent in the early 1980s and 47.25 per cent in the mid-1970s. The Chancellor said he expected state spending to remain broadly flat over the next three years.
"I've slept with over 100 boys!" declared Peter Luff (C, Worcester) to the House yesterday. A lady tourist, ushered by chance into the Strangers' Gallery as Mr Luff spoke, dropped her jaw in amazement. So all those stories about Tory MPs were true! It really was as bad as the tabloid newspapers said! She struggled to her seat and sat down. Composing herself, she looked up, resuming her attention to the debate.
Luff warmed to his theme. "I was gagging," he cried, renewed horror clouding the tourist's gaze, "to see how we'd compare to a bunch of lechy lads out looking for a bit of skirt action!"
Our spectator was now thoroughly confused. Was it skirt action the MP for Worcester sought, or another kind of action? Or both? Was he one of these what was the word? bi-axial (or was it bi-focal?) politicians? Only last Wednesday, a press release from the BBC had promoted the corporation's coverage of "the Doncaster bi-election": maybe MPs like this were elected at bi-elections?
Sadly, the truth was duller. Our tourist had missed the early part of Peter Luff's speech in support of his Bill on "Periodicals (Protection of Children)". Luff was not offering shock personal testimony; he was quoting from the magazines his Bill sought to improve. Madam Speaker braced herself as Luff announced: "Men unzipped: an intimate guide to men's minds (and bodies!)" She flinched at his declaration "Boys in the Buff shots so hot we sealed the pages." She gripped the arms of her chair at the promise "Red hot! Sizzling male model posters inside."
In fact, young Mr Luff, fresh-faced and earnest, made his case well. His aim was to oblige teenage girls' magazines to declare what age range they were written for. This, he believed, would be a discipline for editors and a guide to parents. He accepted the strength of the argument for freedom of publication, and answered it.
Speaking without preachiness, and allowing that modern teenagers did need more open discussion of sex (and at an earlier age) than had been thought proper when their parents were young, Luff's success proved what so many MPs seem to miss: that a case made carefully and without theatricality, an argument which acknowledges objections instead of ducking them, a theme expressed without pandering to the extremism of some supporters, can be the more powerful for its modesty. Luff's case was essentially for honest packaging rather than for censorship, and very hard to oppose.
This did not stop the Liberal Democrats' dynamic and likeable Simon Hughes (Southwark & Bermondsey) from opposing it. Opposing a ten minute rule Bill is the only way any MP other than its proposer can get in on the act. Luff's theme will provide a number of radio and television opportunities in the weeks ahead. Broadcasters will be looking for an interested MP to put another view. Now they know where to look.
Mr Hughes was one of the few (among many anxious to speak) called in the much-broadcast 1994 debate on the homosexual age of consent. Opinion divided between proponents of 21, 18 and 16 as the right age. Hughes won his platform by moving an amendment proposing 17.
Yesterday, it is possible he was driven by a deeply felt objection to Mr Luff's proposals. It is possible that pigs will fly. It is possible that a day will come when Mr Hughes says something interesting. Yesterday was not the day.
MEMBERS of the professions will no longer be able to evade jury service under Labour plans to ensure that fewer criminals are let off.
Jack Straw, Shadow Home Secretary, intends to stop people avoiding jury service by citing business commitments, holidays or minor illness. The right of some professionals to refuse to serve they include MPs, peers, doctors, dentists, nurses, vets and chemists and anyone in the Armed Forces will also be reviewed. He believes that juries which are supposed to be selected at random no longer reflect the community and are "skewed" towards the working class and the unemployed who are often unsympathetic to the police and more likely to acquit criminals.
Mr Straw points out that under present "loose practice", professional people can avoid being jurors, particulary for long trials, by arguing that they cannot take time off work. Business commitments and holidays are listed as reasons for exemption, as well as illness and physical disability. He unveiled new figures disclosing that in some courts more than one third of people asked to serve on juries avoided service.
Mr Straw also wants to revise the list of professionals who have the legal right to be excused, if they wish. A number of people are automatically banned from serving on
juries such as lawyers, policemen, the judiciary, those with a criminal record, the mentally ill and the clergy. Anyone else between 18 and 70 is qualified to serve on a jury provided they are on the electoral roll. But self-employed people also wriggle out of jury service, by failing to put their names on the electoral register. They argue that the subsistence allowance, a basic £44.80 a day, does not compensate for loss of earnings.
"Jury service should be brought back to being an obligation that ... everyone has to fulfill," Mr Straw told The Times. "The fact that some people can avoid responsibility has quite significant practical consequences because you get juries that don't properly reflect society and may be more prone to acquit people."
Mr Straw would tighten up the law to require people to do jury service when asked, rather than giving jury officers total discretion over whether to accept excuses. He points out that in 1988 the law was relaxed making it easier for people to get out of jury service by asking for it to be deferred.
The jury-summoning official can also use his discretion to excuse people altogether. A prospective juror is told that the trial will last about ten working days, but if the trial is expected to be longer the juror will be asked at court if this would be difficult.
Figures produced by the House of Commons Library show that the number of acquittals in contested cases before Crown Courts has risen in recent years. In 1986-87 half the cases resulted in acquittals, but in 1994-95 this rose to 60 per cent.
BROADCASTING of top sporting events on BBC and ITV was guaranteed last night after the Lords defeated the Government in a campaign to prevent them going exclusively to satellite television.
A cross-party alliance of peers secured a 117-vote victory in its campaign to ensure the general broadcasting of eight events cricket Test matches; the Derby; the Grand National; the football World Cup finals; the FA Cup Final; the Scottish FA Cup Final; Wimbledon finals weekend; and the Olympics.
The Lords ignored appeals from Virginia Bottomley, the National Heritage Secretary, to wait for the results of consultation, and instead delivered one of the biggest government defeats in the Upper House in recent years. Ministers conceded immediately that there was no chance of the amendment to the Broadcasting Bill being overturned in the Commons, but they claimed that the Government was relaxed about it.
The amendment means that subscription television channels will not be able to buy exclusive live rights to the events. It would extend to satellite stations such as British Sky Broadcasting the present restrictions which prevent pay-per-view channels buying exclusive rights to the events.
The decision was a rebuff to Mrs Bottomley, who angered peers by publishing a consultation document on televised sport only days before the vote. If, as expected, the decision is backed by the Commons, it will represent a setback for satellite television, particularly BSkyB, 40 per cent owned by News International, owner of The Times. A consortium, including BSkyB, failed last month in an attempt to buy European rights to the Olympic Games up to 2008 for satellite TV. BSkyB has expressed no interest in bidding for exclusive rights to any of the domestic events.
Both the BBC and BSkyB welcomed the vote. A BBC spokesman said: "The Lords decision is a welcome endorsement of the widely-held public view that these great national occasions should be available for all to see."
BSkyB said that the wording of the amendment would allow it to bid for "listed" events, provided it was not exclusive coverage. "Under the existing legislation, sports bodies cannot offer television rights on a pay-per-view basis. The new words say that broadcasters can buy listed events on a pay-per-view or subscription basis, provided the rights are not exclusive. The amendment effectively means that Sky can get in and offer the listed events on pay-per-view television."
The decision came as football authorities and broadcasters prepared to fight a move to refer FA Premier League television contracts with BSkyB and the BBC to the Restrictive Practices Court. John Bridgeman, the Director-General of Fair Trading, decided to refer a £304 million five-year agreement, the biggest in British sports history, and a subsidiary one, in which the league agreed to award the rights for a further five years to the two companies, if either matched any other broadcaster's offer.
The Conservative peer Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare said that he voted with the Government "but we were smashed on this. Our opponents won the debate fairly and squarely. The Government will have to have a rethink on this. They can't just charge on as if nothing has happened."
However, ministers admitted that they expected a backlash from some sports bodies which have campaigned to be allowed to conduct negotiations with broadcasters without being constrained by legislation. Some sports managers are likely to protest that a decision has effectively been taken before the three-week consultation process is complete.
MUCH of Britain was paralysed yesterday by some of the heaviest snowfalls for 50 years, with motorists stranded for a second night in their cars, hundreds of schools shut and thousands of homes without power.
A state of emergency was declared in Dumfries and Galloway, in the Borders, where 24 inches of snow fell in 36 hours. The council co-ordinated emergency services from an underground nuclear bunker. Territorial Army officers boosted the rescue services trying to reach motorists stranded overnight. About 1,000 motorists were trapped in their cars in Dumfries.
A man whose daughter was stranded in her car near Lockerbie became so desperate that he tried to hire an RAF Sea King helicopter using his American Express platinum card. The company, which boasts a personal service to platinum holders, tried to rent a private helicopter from Glasgow airport at 2 am. When none was available, it tried to hire a Sea King, which costs £5,000 an hour, from RAF stations at Lossiemouth, Boulmer and Kinloss.
It was told that the RAF does not send out its rescue helicopters except at the request of the police. "To the best of our knowledge this is the first time anybody has tried to hire us with a credit card," an RAF rescue co-ordination centre official said. "It would have been nice if we had been able to say ‘That will do nicely' and rent them a helicopter, but it was impracticable."
The woman spent 24 hours in her car before police officers reached her.
The AA described Cumbria and the Borders as a "no-go" zone for motorists, with most roads blocked. The M74, the main road between Carlisle and Glasgow, became a giant lay-by as about 1,000 cars and lorries were abandoned. The AA said: "There are more roads closed than open."
More than 12,000 households in Dumfries and Galloway and another 15,000 in South Wales were without power after blizzards brought down electricity lines.
Scotland, Wales and western and central England bore the brunt as temperatures fell to -7C (19F). A second cold front is forecast to unleash freezing rain or fresh snowstorms over southern and central England and East Anglia later today.
THE Olympic dreams of one of Britain's brightest young swimmers have been shattered by a head-on car crash in which she broke both legs.
Alex Bennett, who will be 19 in two weeks, was injured on her way to a training session on Monday. She underwent ten hours of surgery at the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham and will be unable to compete at the British Olympic trials, to be held in Sheffield next month.
The Commonwealth gold medallist had postponed going to university as she concentrated on preparing for the Atlanta Olympics in July. She had been training for 20 hours a week and was driving to one of her regular evening sessions at Beechdale Baths in Nottingham when the accident happened on the A612 between Thurgaton and Lowdham in Nottinghamshire.
She awoke yesterday to the news from her parents, Roger and Chris, that she has metal pins and plates in both legs, one hip, one foot and one ankle. One of her kneecaps was also reconstructed and she suffered cuts to her face. Although still breathing oxygen through a mask, she joked that they should tell her coach, Bill Furniss, "that I'll be a bit rusty when I come back".
Her mother said yesterday: "She's alive and that's lucky, that's what counts. They did all the surgery in one go and Alex has been awake quite a lot but I don't think she quite realises yet just how long a recovery she's in for." She said her daughter was emotionally "still pretty stable".
Mr Furniss said last night that she was the "kind of girl who will be back in six months, where it would take others a year".
Miss Bennett was a national champion at 400m freestyle and a former butterfly champion who won a gold and two silver medals at the Commonwealth Games in 1994 as a member of the England relay teams, for medley and freestyle. She first competed for England at the age of 13.
SID, the archetypal small shareholder eagerly pursued when British Gas was privatised ten years ago, is being told that he is not wanted now that the company is to be split up.
Private investors are to be encouraged to sell their shares because the chairman, Richard Giordano, says it would be "inappropriate" for the new supply company to have a register of 1.8 million names.
The rebuff came as Mr Giordano outlined his plans for dividing British Gas and immediately plunged the company into a new controvery over its chief executive's retirement package, which could be worth more than £4 million.
Cedric Brown, whose 71 per cent pay rise sparked the "fat cats" row about boardroom greed, retires in April with an annual pension of £247,000, a chauffeur-driven Jaguar, a secretary and a £120,000-a-year consultancy contract.
The deal prompted rowdy exchanges in the Commons yesterday when Tony Blair challenged the Prime Minister to say whether he thought it justified, given the doubling of customer complaints.
The Prime Minister said it was a matter for shareholders, but the Labour Leader went on to contrast British Gas with Michael Heseltine's remarks on late payment of business creditors as "one group of hard-working people told to wait for their money, the other given licence by the Government to print it".
Away from the Commons, Mr Brown was confronting journalists who demanded to know whether he was being pushed out. He insisted: "It is my decision to retire." When he was promoted in 1992, he had set out to reorganise the company, he said. "I believe that to a very large extent, the task I set myself has been completed." He admitted, however, that it had not been pleasant in the 15 months since his pay rise was announced in the middle of a massive job-shedding programme.
Mr Brown, 61, will now hand over his role as chief executive to Mr Giordano, but will continue to work for the company virtually full-time. "He is there to do the demerger," a spokesman said.
Provided shareholders approve, British Gas will be divided into two independent companies next year: British Gas Energy (BGE) will serve its 19 million customers while TransCo International will own and operate the pipelines.
Investors will receive free shares in BGE, but Mr Giordano said it would be inappropriate for the new company to keep the huge register of its parent, so advisers were aiming to make it easy for small shareholders to sell.One option being studied would see people with a few shares being invited to sell their holdings on a no-fee basis, or at very low commissions, the company broker who would then sell the shares to institutional investors.
The move strikes at the heart of the share-owning democracy ideal promoted by Margaret Thatcher when British Gas as privatised, but advisers believe that many people will be keen to sell, since BGE will pay no dividends for several years.
When British Gas was floated on the stock market in 1986, it had 4.4 million investors and private individuals owned 62 per cent of shares. Today, they own only 15 per cent.
David Walker on giving local government a single voice
In recent years central government has chipped away at council powers in education, housing, health and police, but Whitehall and Westminster have left one local authority service almost entirely alone.
It has been exempted from rules on compulsory competitive tendering, the amount of money spent on it has gently risen without ministers making a fuss. That function is town and country planning and the main reason it has been left alone is that for elected politicians, planning decisions generally spoil trouble. Ministers and MPs would much rather the onus of accepting or rejecting planning applications or proposals for development fell on local councillors.
So if planning is indisputably a local function, it is perhaps appropriate that what is certainly local government's key job during the next five years has just been given to a chartered town planner. This is Brian Briscoe who later in the spring will become the first member of staff appointed to the new Local Government Association.
The LGA, which barely exists beyond occasional committee meetings in borrowed offices, is scheduled to be born on April 1, 1997, when it supersedes the existing and separate bodies which speak for the metropolitan boroughs, the shire districts and the counties and in theory for the first time gives English local government a single voice. As secretary Mr Briscoe will have barely 12 months to create the organisation from scratch.
Well, not quite from scratch. For there is another salient fact about Mr Briscoe which may well explain his emergence as convincingly as his solid and professional career credentials. He is chief executive of Hertfordshire and before that worked for Kent. As such, he brings a county perspective to the new organisation to balance the metropolitan outlook of the councillor who is chairing the new body, Sir Jeremy Beecham, former leader of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Hertfordshire moreoever is not being restructured out of existence. The Government has decided, after extensive local soundings, to keep not only the county but the lower tier districts within it. It was the likelihood of widespread abolition of counties and districts which in the event has not been realised that prompted councils to begin the negotiations leading to the creation of a single association.
The Local Government Association is thus walking a tightrope. A couple of authorities, Labour Durham and Conservative Bromley, have refused to join. Others will be looking anxiously to see whether their interests as counties, districts and boroughs will get submerged.
The whole affair is a test of whether English local authorities can break out of their parochial perspective and put money and effort into establishing an organisation that can successfully "take on" Whitehall. North of the border a single association, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (Cosla) has operated successfully for years.
Cambridge-educated Mr Briscoe made the switch from planning to general management five years ago. One of his delicate jobs is to become a figurehead for local government without trespassing on territory appearances on the Nine O'Clock News, for example that elected politicians feel is their own.
His ambition now is to pool the resources and strengths of the three local government associations and build up the research potential of the LGA in order to increase local government's contribution to the development of public policies.
But first Mr Briscoe has to go out and about the boroughs and districts making friends for the new body, reassuring them it speaks for them and their patch. "He has quickly got to show the LGA can do things demonstrably better than the existing bodies," a colleague says.
Rodney Brooke, secretary of the Association of Metropolitan Authorities and one of the contenders for the job said: "We are all facing an interesting time with the general election coming up and a very active legislative programme."
The official formula for the LGA, put by Sir Jeremy, is that it will assist local authorities to "set the agenda for their communities in the new millennium". It will, in addition, have to steer a careful course between the political parties (Labour is overwhelming now in the town and county halls) while striking an original voice in the debates which the next government will certainly be having over Europe, regional government and policies for community care and education.
"There is a whole class of issues, for example, the environment, which will be addressed only by long-term programmes driven by local communities through their local authorities," Mr Briscoe says. In the short run Mr Briscoe has to find himself a perch an office at the Local Government Management Board is available while he begins the tortuous business of recruiting some, but not all, of the existing staff of the three associations while advertising for the new blood which is going to need to flow if the LGA is to make an impact.
From Mr Hugh Caldwell
Sir, Esperanto lives, as Mr Norman Berdichevsky (letter, January 27; see also letter February 6) says; it lives, though, on the life-support machine supplied by language hobbyists.
I happened to be in a restaurant in Belgrade, in happier times, when it was host to a conference of Esperantists. A table of enthusiasts was enjoying a conversation in their hobby-language. When the waiter approached they all switched immediately to English .
German would have done as well, but Esperanto would have been useless, of course.
Yours sincerely, HUGH CALDWELL, Clos du Cinquantenaire 2-B8, Brussels B-1040.
Men everywhere, it was that sort of night. Hollywood men, acting up, Whitehall men, ditto and Marina Warner on men among other things. So the choice, in terms of starting points, is between filmic frivolity, dark tales from the Scott inquiry and Warner's intellectual analysis.
The least shall be first. Hollywood Men (ITV) was the last in the series and concluded with a frightening caption which said: Coming soon, Hollywood Pets. I can hardly wait but will try.
This episode was called The High Life but that only arose out of the need to give it a title. In reality (though that word is ill-chosen), sundry Hollywood men talked about anything that came into their heads. What kept me going was the list of subtitles. A man would appear on the screen and start to talk. A few seconds later his name would appear and under his name there would be a description of his role in life.
Judging by appearances, which is the only way to judge this kind of programme, the names were pretty much interchangeable. The descriptions, though, were pure gems. They included: "Millionaire romance icon" and "Ex-drug dealer to the stars" and "Writer's block therapist" and "Professional friend". I assume these job descriptions are designed to brighten the day of bored customs officers checking passports at LA International.
Such oddities only help to underline the point of Hollywood, which is its risibility, its knack of being gloriously fatuous. After all, the films are not often much good, certainly they are rarely half as much fun as programmes such as this.
I think it was the millionaire romance icon there's an ambition for a lottery winner who put Hollywood in perspective once and for all by saying: "You see a man in a Jaguar convertible with a luscious blonde at his side. You think he must be somebody. The chances are he is some actor's jeweller."
The difficulty with such nonsense is that it creates a Hollywood so false that when truly awful things happen they become just another anecdote. Robert Evans, the producer of The Godfather, stayed away from drugs for most of his career but then he was dragged in to a cocaine bust in New York because his name came up as one of the alleged customers for the drugs.
For Evans the result was humiliation and disgrace. So much so that when his son graduated from college, the boy could not even find a girl willing to be his date for the graduation ball. Hollywood, a mobile society fuelled by gasoline and cocaine in equal measures, summons hypocrisy in even fuller measure to wreak ultimate revenge.
Meanwhile in Whitehall, drama of a very English kind unfolds. Next Thursday the Scott report on arms to Iraq will be published but those whom it may or may not impugn are getting their retaliation in first. Dispatches (Channel 4) talked to Sir Richard Scott and to several of his detractors.
Lord Howe, the detractor-in-chief, reiterated his line that the inquiry was structurally unsound but denied absolutely that there was an organised campaign against Scott. Not at all. There was, however, "a series of recurrent outbursts of anxiety", as perfect an example of Whitehall-speak as one might encounter outside Yes, Minister.
Lord Howe has been put forward as what Hollywood would surely call the professional friend of the Government vis-a-vis Scott, but this does not necessarily mean that Howe is wrong. But the public will surely make a judgment next Thursday on the content of the report, as expressed in dramatic headlines. And if the Government rejects the report, the public will judge that the Government is shooting the messenger.
This may be "unfair", in Lord Howe's word, but several people pointed out in Dispatches that it was John Major who appointed Scott (the man who, as Lord Justice Scott, had demonstrated his independence by rejecting the Thatcher Government's attempt to suppress Spycatcher). And it was Major who appears not to have told Scott how he should conduct the inquiry. As ye sew, so shall ye reap.
Perhaps the real problem, in Whitehall as in Hollywood, is all these damned men running things. Marina Warner said of men, in a stimulating interview for The Big Idea (BBC2), that "their access to a range of opportunities in their lives was being narrowed by the constant emphasis that the only way to be a powerful figure was through the elimination of antagonists".
This is a thought she aired during the Reith Lectures last year and it was based on observing young men in a video arcade, where most of the games involved conflict. Now Warner is starting to worry about a related, larger threat, which is the fear of intelligence.
She cites The Silence of the Lambs and Seven, the new film about a serial killer, in both of which the monster is a person of considerable intelligence. Of course, these are merely modern examples of the "mad scientist" and the link suggests that men are not much altered.
New man? Warner is sceptical, citing "poor levels of involvement in the family...the pressure on young men not to be seen to be domesticated or tame".
Interesting that of three programmes under review, two factual and one a philosophical discourse, the last had moments when it was more enlightening about the underlying forces at work in Hollywood and Whitehall than either of the others.
STEPHEN HENDRY recorded his 25th victory in 27 matches since making his Benson and Hedges Masters debut in 1989 when he finished strongly to defeat John Higgins 6-4 in the second round of the invitation snooker tournament at Wembley Conference Centre last night.
Hendry arrived at one of his favourite venues determined to shake himself out of a now customary post-Christmas recession, during which he has prevailed in only two of his first eight competitive outings in 1996.
Yet, when Higgins, who beat Hendry 5-4 in the opening round of the Liverpool Victoria Charity Challenge last month after trailing 4-1, confidently established a 4-1 lead, Hendry must have been seriously concerned about his chances of progress.
The world champion rarely fails to rise to a challenge, though, especially when facing a potential reversal against a fellow Scot and when he rallied from 0-58 in the seventh frame to 3-4, Higgins must surely have expected a late surge from the only player stationed above him in the provisional world rankings.
Hendry cued beautifully in the next three frames, completing a thoroughly professional performance with breaks of 64, 55 and a 144 total clearance which superseded a run of 128 from Ronnie O'Sullivan, the title-holder, as the highest of the tournament so far.
The break, which also installs Hendry as a firm favourite to collect a £10,000 bonus, was the second highest in the 21-year history of the Masters, exceeded only by a 147 maximum from Kirk Stevens, of Canada, in 1984.
"I was pleased with the way it ended," Hendry, who now meets Jimmy White, said. "I've been cueing fantastically but I missed too many easy balls in the early stages and at the interval I kept telling myself I had to concentrate a lot harder and eradicate the mistakes."
In a totally contrasting match yesterday afternoon Alan McManus, relying on his competitive instinct, took four hours and 39 minutes to edge Matthew Stevens 6-5 after a turgid, if ultimately tense, encounter.
McManus was guilty of committing one mistake after another in falling 4-1 adrift, but for the remainder of the match Stevens' inexperience proved to be an insurmountable handicap.
ROBIN SMITH, the most prolific limited-overs run-scorer in the England World Cup party, may be out of the competition after damaging a groin muscle during his team's first formal practice match, in Lahore yesterday. Smith sustained the injury while holding a brilliant catch in the closing stages of England's 62-run victory over a Lahore City XI at Aitcheson College.
Groin strains are notoriously difficult to assess, and there was uncertainty yesterday as to how long Smith might be incapacitated. "We should know more in a day or two," Raymond Illingworth, the England manager, said, "but, if the muscle has really gone, then it's a three-week job and Robin would be out of the competition."
Smith was ordered to rest in his hotel room last night while having ice-pack treatment. "I feel very depressed at the moment; I'm very, very low," he said. "I've been told I should be reasonably patient because, at best, it's going to take a short while. That's just devastating for me."
Even if Smith makes a quick recovery, the chance of him playing in England's opening group match, against New Zealand in Ahmedabad next Wednesday, appears small. A serious pull would almost certainly lead to him being replaced, probably either by Mark Ramprakash or Nasser Hussain.
Ramprakash is one of two players the other is Angus Fraser, a bowler on standby for the tournament. On the England tour of South Africa, he again failed to fulfil his promise, although he looked less vulnerable in the one-day matches. Hussain is also match-ready, having captained the recent England A tour of Pakistan.
The England party was uncertain yesterday about the competition rules relating to replacements for injured players, but it is thought that, as long as the request is a reasonable one as would seem to be the case in this instance the organisers would have no objection.
Smith, who is regarded as one of England's weaker fielders, was perhaps guilty of trying too hard yesterday. To complete his catch, he sprinted 20 yards and then dived full length at deep mid-wicket to grasp a skyer hoisted by Manzoor Elahi, the former Pakistan Test player.
"I felt it as I dived and that's when I must have pulled the muscle," Smith said. "At this stage, it feels very stiff and very sore. Hopefully, there will be a quick improvement, but, at the moment, it doesn't feel any easier than when I did it."
If Smith, 32, is out of the World Cup, it would be a doubly cruel blow because he missed the climax of the 1992 competition after slipping a disc. "This World Cup is going to be my last one and it means everything to me," he said. "I wanted to prove people wrong and show everyone I was still good enough to play and do a very good job. For this to happen at an early stage is a major blow."
Despite Smith's excellent record in one-day matches, he was not assured of a place in England's strongest one-day team. Earlier in the day, he had done nothing to change that view by getting out to his first ball. He was caught off an attempted cut against Ali Asad, a teenage fast bowler.
Smith featured in a typical England middle-order collapse; four wickets fell for 19 runs to leave them 86 for five. It started with Hick's dismissal for 38, Thorpe was also out for nought and Fairbrother scored only five. Earlier, Atherton, the England captain, was also out for five.
The damage was repaired by Stewart, who scored 65, and Russell, 60, in a partnership of 72, and Craig White later hit out effectively with 37 off 38 balls to take England to 247 for eight in their 50 overs.
England had little difficulty defending such a total. Cork claimed two early wickets and White three in an opening spell of four overs as the local team slumped to 63 for six.
Elahi and Mohammad Hussain added 90 in rapid fashion before Smith intervened with his costly catch to give White a fourth wicket. It set the seal on the match and possibly on Smith's World Cup.
SCORES: England XI 248 for 8 (50 overs; A J Stewart 65, R C Russell 60; Ali Asad 5-38); Lahore City 181 (44.4 overs; C White 4-19).
Graham Halbish, the chief executive of the Australian Cricket Board, said yesterday that the World Cup organisers would not receive a cent should they seek compensation from Australia after their refusal to play a match in Sri Lanka.
Wolverhampton Wdrs 0 Tottenham Hotspur 2
Wolverhampton taught emphatic lesson as Londoners reach fifth round.
TOTTENHAM Hotspur have the scent of the hallelujah trail. With goals in the first ten minutes from Rosenthal and Sheringham, they elegantly, easily, dominantly bestrode the field at Wolverhampton last night to take their place in the fifth round of the FA Cup against either Nottingham Forest or Oxford United, who drew 1-1 at the City Ground.
Tottenham were so much the class team, so untroubled until the 84th minute when Ball, the Tipton terrier, swivelled and, from 25 yards, forced Walker into a mid-air save. The 27,846 capacity crowd suffered a bleak kind of heroism, sitting like icicles in the Antarctic night, applauding (perhaps to warm themselves) the smarter moves of the visitors.
Snow on the touchline is supposed to be a great leveller, to daunt the players from a superior league. The Cup, of course, is meant to whet our appetite for romance, to diminish that gap which pays men thousands of pounds per match more to be of a higher calibre.
Nothing doing at Molineux. Tottenham had discipline and greater concentration in defence, they broke with devastating thrusts, they finished in the seventh and ninth minutes with goals as sharp as a serpent's tongue. Both emanated from the unpredictable nature, the flair that Kevin Keegan is attempting to import with Faustino Asprilla.
Ruel Fox is no wolf, and about half the size of Asprilla, but my, can he run when the mood takes him! His low centre of gravity, his slippery elusiveness, created goal No1. It came straight from a corner, a Wolverhampton corner.
Mabbutt, the Tottenham captain, comfortably dealt with it in the air and released the ball to Fox. The little winger ran with the ball and joy in his soul 50, perhaps 60 yards, and, when in turn he let it go, it was with a pass that split the three centre backs, inviting Rosenthal to glide in and push the ball between the goalkeeper's legs.
"Concentrate, Wolves, concentrate." You could almost hear Mark McGhee, their manager, breathing those words from the perspex dugout, and you could certainly see the Wolverhampton players ignoring the message.
Deaf and almost blind to danger, Thompson attempted a back-pass, dealing with a long kick from Walker, the goalkeeper, which fell to the one opponent you would least desire it to do. Sheringham, lurking on the right, measured the distance to goal with his eye and delivered the ball, almost a pass to the net, from an acute angle all along the ground.
Premiership quality was utterly eclipsing the pretenders from the Endsleigh Insurance League. How on earth had Wolverhampton come away from White Hart Lane on equal terms?
Tottenham, a team now well-drilled in the Gerry Francis mould, stern in the art of denial and so rapid on the counter-attack, may not resemble the push-and-run ebullience of teams of old, but two defeats in 18 games, the best away defensive record in the Premiership, testifies to their reliability.
Wolverhampton? They sorely lacked the assurance of Dean Richards, the England Under-21 defender. They played nevertheless with three centre backs, and frankly it may as well have been five, such were their individual failings compared with the men in white.
The Wolverhampton supporters were prepared to believe in anything that might revive the match, even an illusion. For that is what came and went five minutes after half-time, when Osborn crossed the ball high from the left and Bull, the man who has scored 262 times in his nine years as a Wanderer, rose to meet it.
He hung in the air and then his forehead connected ... but, alas, while many thought that it had entered the net, it actually finished behind the near post.
After that, the hopes melted quicker than the ice in the turf. Tottenham should have scored again in the 56th minute, when Rosenthal scorched through the defence, but Stowell denied him bravely and alertly with his legs. Even then, the rebound invited Fox to score, but he drove the ball wastefully over the crossbar.
Fox was, however, in costly company. Armstrong, though his running and mobility up front was an asset, should have scored in the 76th minute, when, from only six yards and unmarked, he missed the target completely.
Wolverhampton had spirit, but, aside from the greater balance and technique of thier visitors, they still looked a side struggling to master the transition from Graham Taylor's long ball theory to McGhee's ideals of possession football.
WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS (3-5-2): M Stowell E Young, N Emblen, M Venus M Rankine (sub: A Daley, 58min), M Atkins, S Osborn, D Ferguson, A Thompson S Bull, D Goodman.
TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR (4-4-2): I Walker D Austin, C Calderwood, G Mabbutt, C Wilson R Fox, J Dozzell, S Campbell, R Rosenthal E Sheringham, C Armstrong.
Referee: D Allison.
UEFA and Europe's leading football clubs yesterday agreed to allow the Continent's eight leading nations an automatic second entry into an expanded European Cup, but ruled out any move towards a super league.
The unprecedented meeting between Europe's governing body and clubs, including Arsenal, Manchester United, Bayern Munich, AC Milan and Real Madrid, accepted that, from next season, the European Cup should be expanded to 32 clubs.
The plan, in which countries such as England, Italy, Germany and Spain would have a second club in the annual tournament, should be finalised at an executive meeting next month.
Lennart Johannson, the Uefa president, proposed that the 32 teams in the European Cup would play each other in a preliminary knockout
competition each season to determine the 16 who would take part in the Champions' League. The 16 losers would go into the Uefa Cup.
The holders of the trophy and the champions of the 23 best-ranked nations would be entered in the original 32 entries, along with eight more from selected countries granted a second entry.
Frits Ahlstrom, the Uefa media director, said: "There seemed to be no general backing for a super league and even the big clubs recognised that European competition should run alongside domestic leagues."
Southampton 1 Crewe Alexandra 1
THE presence of Crewe Alexandra in the FA Cup fourth round, on the rare occasions that they progress that far, tends to evoke memories of February 1960 and Tottenham Hotspur. It was a 2-2 draw at Gresty Road then a 13-2 thrashing by Tottenham at White Hart Lane.
At The Dell last night, there may not have been a Les Allen (five goals), a Bobby Smith (four) or a Cliff Jones (three), but a Matthew Le Tissier there most certainly was. Le Tissier scored a stunning goal to save the FA Carling Premiership team from going out to Endsleigh Insurance League second division opponents.
Le Tissier gave up the Southampton captaincy in mid-December because his form had dipped and only now is it beginning to return. His goal, which takes the teams to a replay on Tuesday, was his first for three months.
It came after Crewe had led for 59 minutes, having scored after just four. Maddison pushed the ball forward to Le Tissier, who had his back to the target just outside the area; he turned and struck a curling shot across the goal and into the far corner of the net.
Southampton deserved, at the very least, not to be eliminated. They played more than an equal part in a stirring tie. Crewe, though, will be disappointed that, having weathered the worst of the storm, they were denied by a goal conjured out of nothing.
Afterwards, Dario Gradi, the Crewe manager, summed up the best and worst of Le Tissier, a spontaneous genius whose workrate is often questioned. "You are never sure you want him playing for you, but you are sure you do not want him playing against you," Gradi said.
Southampton must have begun to wonder how they were going to beat Gayle, the Crewe goalkeeper. In the first half, he blocked a shot from Le Tissier and stuck out a foot to deny the unmarked Magilton. In the second half, he made an acrobatic one-handed save to keep out Watson's overhead kick and denied Watson again, diving to his right to keep out a header.
Profligate finishing also played a part in denying Southampton a win. Watson headed wide of an open goal and one of his crosses was put narrowly wide by Shipperley. Again Shipperley was wasteful when he fired over from close range after Le Tissier had cut the ball back.
Crewe had taken an early lead when Whalley sent in what appeared to be a cross from wide on the left. Edwards may have got the faintest of touches with his head, but, as the ball followed a path from the left wing into the far corner of the net, Whalley turned away to claim the goal. Nobody was arguing. Crewe were leading and a Cup shock was in the air.
"I do not think Edwards got a touch," Gradi said. "We will have to look at it on the video going home." The video will also record a remarkable save by Beasant who, caught off his line when Edwards tried a lob from 40 yards, scrambled back to save.
Beasant was the Wimbledon goalkeeper when Gradi was manager at Plough Lane in the early Eighties. "He was always very atheltic, still is," Gradi said. "He has long arms and they just get longer."
If Crewe felt hard done by, it was because they had just seen Rivers miss a double chance to increase their lead. It was the 56th minute when he broke clear of Dodd. Beasant blocked his initial shot, but it rebounded into his path, only for him to fire wide of an unguarded net. Seven minutes later, Le Tissier equalised.
"I don't think we're going to win the Cup this year," Gradi said later, "but the more games we have, the more fun we'll have, and the more money we'll make."
SOUTHAMPTON (4-4-2): D Beasant J Dodd, K Monkou, R Hall, S Charlton M Le Tissier, J Magilton, B Venison (sub: N Maddison, 34min), M Walters (sub: M Oakley, 61) N Shipperley, G Watson.
CREWE ALEXANDRA (4-3-3): M Gayle L Unsworth (sub: F Tierney, 32), W Barr, A Westwood, S Smith N Lennon, W Collins, G Whalley R Edwards, D Adebola, M Rivers (sub: S Garbi, 72).
Referee: P Alcock.
1932 Olympic silver medal-winner looks back on pay day of memories.
The secret of time travel in sport is not to take a time machine, but to hitch a lift instead with one of those original chariots of fire. They are hard to find these days, but, at the weekend, one of the last living players from a vanished and golden age of British athletics transported a small group of sportsmen back through time.
Jerry Cornes was a lean and elegant Oxford graduate of 22 when he stepped onto the Olympic rostrum 64 years ago in Los Angeles. He had just run the race of his life to carry off the silver medal in the 1,500 metres. Today, an Olympic performance like that could set him up with sponsorship, agents and rich rewards. However, as Cornes 85 and still fit enough to hold a room spellbound remembers, sport and the world were very different in Los Angeles in 1932.
A 12-day journey from Southampton, first by boat, the Empress of Britain, then by train, took the Great Britain team to a Los Angeles that was determined to put on a show despite the depression. The Americans feared that the Games would be a flop because it was so far to travel, but, to the visitors, the welcome seemed fabulous. They built an Olympic stadium to hold 104,000 which was so good that they used it for the next Games in Los Angeles, 52 years later. The track was the fastest that most had ever run on. There was the first purpose-built Olympic village; and, with a touch of Hollywood, there was even the first appearance of the "Olympic flame".
Olympic sportmanship, too, burnt with a brightness that might seem quaint to some of the competitors of today. In the 400 metres hurdles, for instance, Lord Burghley, of Britain, and Morgan Taylor, of the United States, were reckoned to be the best in the world. Taylor had been given the task of carrying the American flag at the opening parade a tiring job in the Californian sunshine. So, in order not to gain an unfair advantage, Burghley carried the British flag at the same time. Both lost in the race to Bob Tisdall, an Irishman.
To Cornes, who is Britain's last living individual track medal-winner from 1932, it was all great fun. He was off to serve in the Colonial Service in Nigeria and, because he had won a place in the Britain team, he was allowed to travel there via California.
On August 4, 1932, he finished second in the 1,500 metres final to Luigi Beccali, the fast-kicking Italian, who ran 3min 51.2sec an Olympic record. Beccali covered the last 300 metres in around 41sec, a killing pace in those days. Cornes ran 3min 52.6sec the fastest by a British athlete to that time. Jack Lovelock, his friend from New Zealand (who was to win gold four years later), trailed in seventh.
Cornes had prepared himself for this performance on training that would be considered inadequate for a schoolboy athlete today. "I ran only twice a week through the summer," he said. "Absurd compared with what they do nowadays."
The Games over, Cornes set out for Nigeria, where his arrival coincided with the staging of an annual "round the wall" event, a cross-country race between two gates of the ancient city of Katsina. Cornes ran, but was out-kicked by a local perhaps the first time, but certainly not the last, that a British champion was to be beaten by an unknown African.
In 1936, Cornes was back in the Olympic team and, in the 1,500 metres in Berlin, he sacrificed his own chances to set the pace for Lovelock, who won the gold in world record time. Cornes himself, in sixth place, ran a full second faster than in Los Angeles.
That was virtually his last track race, but the old chariot of fire kept rolling. As late as 1949, he was turning out in the Southern Counties cross-country championship, trailing in 20 minutes behind the winner, to make up the team for Thames Hare and Hounds, his club.
In 1984, he returned to Los Angeles to be reunited with Beccali. At the weekend, he turned out for his club again to share his memories and to meet up with Wendy Sly, a fellow club member and another Los Angeles Olympic silver medal-winner (in the Zola Budd/Mary Slaney 3,000 metres in 1984).
Flickering newsreel footage transported him back to an August afternoon in 1932, and a simpler age ... an age when winning a medal brought you not a big pay day, but memories enough to enrich you for a lifetime. Sixty-four years on, Cornes still runs the race in his head, and he still reckons that he might have won if he had not been so busy watching the Finns.
"The middle distances were the British events and, as the first string, it was up to me to win," he said. "At Oxford, we were keen to beat Cambridge, and then together in the Achilles Club we would try to take on the world." The film shows what Cornes has always believed, that he hung back too much in the middle of the race. "I was very disappointed not to win the gold," he said. "At the finish, I was hardly tired."
Sarah Forde meets a teenager touted as the future of England women's football.
When the England women's football team takes the field against Portugal in Lisbon on Sunday, English eyes are likely to turn to one player Kelly Smith, who is fast earning a reputation as the female Paul Gascoigne. Part of that comparison has been built on her considerable talents on the field, and part on her unconventional attitude off it she has a soft spot for junk food, although "not before a game", and recently she had her nose pierced.
The excitement began at Roker Park last November when Smith, making her debut for England against Italy three days after her seventeenth birthday, produced a moment of magic. In the eighth minute, she controlled the ball with a deft touch and played an intuitive one-two with Marianne Spacey before setting off down the wing. Her pace took her past Frederica D'Astolfo and a feint saw off Manuela Tesse. The Italy pair, with 71 caps between them, stood mesmerised.
It was the first of many a raid down the left and Tesse will have had nightmares about Smith, her tormentor that night.
Smith capped a remarkable performance in her second international, against Croatia, with her first goal for England, a penalty in the last minute. Andreja Rogar, the Croatia defender, tired of being left in her wake, pulled her down and, as Gillian Coulthard, the most capped England player, prepared to take the kick, Ted Copeland, the England manager told Smith to take it, "as a reward". Up she stepped and, left-footed, coolly placed the ball low to the goalkeeper's right.
Copeland described Smith as "exceptional" against Italy and "outstanding" against Croatia. So what is it that makes the girl from Garston, near Watford, so special?
Her confidence and composure on the pitch is extraordinary, but her life away from football could not be more ordinary. She lives with her parents, is studying for a diploma in sports science at West Herts College, enjoys going out with friends and likes dance and chart music.
Smith is an Arsenal supporter and her bedroom is a shrine to Ian Wright, whom she admires because of "his enthusiasm and appetite for the game and determination to win."
Glen, 14, her brother, plays for his local team but will always live in her shadow. "She's the natural, he has to work a lot harder," Bernard, her father, one of the three wise men who have nurtured her undoubted talent, said.
Norman Burns, the manager at Pinner Park, her first club, and John Jones, her manager at Wembley, make up the trio who have nurtured their outstanding player thus far. Jones, passionately vocal about women's football, has played a steadying role in the development of the mild-mannered teenager. He is excited by her ability, but cautious of her rapid ascent.
"Every so often, someone comes along in a sport who has natural ability and, at a very early stage, you say, ‘That's going to be an England player'," he said. "You recognise them. With Kelly, we are encouraging and enhancing her strength, teaching her what the game is about so she can be a match-winner for 90 minutes at the top level."
Smith knows that she has plenty to learn, but her meek demeanour does not fully mask her self-belief. On comparisons with Gascoigne, she said: "I'm not as strong as him but I have the same skill. I'm more like Ryan Giggs, I like to run at players." An accurate self portrait, although some would say that she is a better crosser of the ball than Giggs was at 17.
Smith has no hesitation in naming her best goal, scored for Wembley Reserves against Arsenal Reserves; a goal that "did the Arsenal", who were previously unbeaten.
Jones described the moment with misty-eyed admiration: "Kelly broke down the left, hit the ball from 30 yards out into the top corner. People pay loads of money to see that. It was a goal of the season a classic. That made it 3-2 and the whistle went not long after."
Kelly Smith has always been a match-winner. On Sunday, she will make her third appearance in an England shirt, against Portugal in Beneventi. She is an exciting talent with the potential to become great. Only time will tell.
Polgar leads
After a bad start she lost the first game Zsuzsa Polgar, the higher-rated favourite in the women's world championship, has assumed the lead with two easy wins. She leads by 3-2 in her challenge against Xie Jun, of China, the champion. In her first win, Polgar weathered an assault by the champion and finished by trapping her queen. In the second game, Xie Jun mishandled a variation popularised by the Kasparov Short match of 1993 and was torn apart by White's pair of bishops.
White: Xie Jun
Black: Zsuzsa Polgar
Women's world championship
Fourth game, January 1996
Sicilian Defence
1e4 c5
2Nf3 d6
3d4 cxd4
4Nxd4 Nf6
5Nc3 Nc6
6Bg5 Qb6
7Nb3 e6
8Qd2 Be7
9f3 0-0
10g4 Rd8
11Be3 Qc7
12g5 Nd7
130-0-0 a6
14h4 b5
15h5 Nb6
16g6 Bf6
17h6 fxg6
18hxg7 Na4
19Nd4 Nxd4
20Bxd4 Bxd4
21Qxd4 Nxc3
22bxc3 Qxg7
23Qb6 Qe7
24e5 d5
25Bd3 Bd7
26Rdg1 Be8
27f4 d4
28cxd4 Rab8
29Qxa6 Rxd4
30f5 exf5
31Bxf5 Qxe5
32Be6+ Kh8
33Kb1 Ra4
White resigns
Diagram of final position
White: Zsuzsa Polgar
Black: Xie Jun
Women's world championship
Fifth game, January 1996
Scotch Game
1e4 e5
2Nf3 Nc6
3d4 exd4
4Nxd4 Bc5
5Nxc6 Qf6
6Qd2 dxc6
7Nc3 Be6
8Na4 Rd8
9Bd3 Bd4
10c3 b5
11cxd4 bxa4
12Qc2 Qxd4
13Qxc6+ Kf8
14Be2 Ne7
15Qc2 f5
160-0 Qxe4
17Qxc7 Kf7
18Bh5+ g6
19Bf3 Qc4
20Qxa7 Qd4
21Qa5 Nd5
22Rd1 Qc4
23Bg5 Rd7
24Rac1 Qxa2
25Bxd5 Black resigns
Raymond Keene writes on chess Monday to Friday in Sport and in the Weekend section on Saturday.
VALUE-SEEKING readers of The Times were quick off the mark yesterday to take advantage of the generous ante-post prices being offered against Young Hustler, Rough Quest and Deep Bramble in the Martell Grand National.
Both William Hill and Ladbrokes reported plenty of money for Young Hustler, recommended by Robert Wright in his Racing Ahead column yesterday, and were forced to trim Nigel Twiston-Davies's chaser from 20-1 to 16-1 joint-favourite.
Wright also recommended Rough Quest at 33-1 and Coral shortened Terry Casey's stayer to 25-1. The Barking firm also stood out with their offer of 25-1 against Deep Bramble, my long-range tip for the Aintree showpiece, and by the end of business yesterday Paul Nicholls's nine-year-old was 20-1.
Although there was support for Smith's Band, Monsieur Le Cure, Party Politics, Earth Summit and Tartan Tyrant, the trio of horses recommended here yesterday were the only entries to have their prices clipped.
As the big bookmakers look ahead to the biggest betting day of the year, their main concern is the effect of the lottery on turnover. Will the once-a-year punters who have always had a bet on the National remain loyal, or are they hooked on the lottery?
Mike Dillon, of Ladbrokes, confirmed: "The lottery will have an effect on turnover because the Grand National has traditionally drawn much of its turnover from the once-a-year flutterer who is now gambling every week on the lottery.
"To what degree it is difficult to say and it will depend to a large extent on how the different parties get behind the National to promote it and put it in the forefront of the public's mind. Obviously, we will be doing a lot to make sure that happens and much depends on press coverage."
With the first running of the Dubai World Cup being staged on March 27, some of the newspaper coverage normally devoted to the National in the run-up to the race looks sure to be taken up by the $4 million contest.
Coral's Rob Hartnett believes the lottery helped to reduce Grand National turnover by 10 per cent last year. "People always liked the excitement and slightly risque nature of having a flutter on the National. Now they have got it every week and the National has lost its place a bit in our hearts."
THE remarkable transformation in the fortunes and public appeal of Ascot was underlined yesterday by crowd figures for 1995, which revealed an increase of more than 15 per cent compared to an average national rise of less than 1 per cent.
The attendance statistics are the clearest evidence yet of the impact made on racegoers by the new "customer-care" policy, introduced by Douglas Erskine-Crum and Nick Cheyne since they took over the day-to-day responsibility for running the royal racecourse in October 1994.
Without eroding the centuries-old tradition and championship quality racing at Ascot, the dynamic new team has set about removing the outdated stuffiness and needless red tape which was proving a turn-off for spectators. However, even they could not have hoped for such a swift response.
Total attendance in 1995 was 418,806, compared to 363,149 in 1994, which means Ascot attracted nearly 9 per cent of all spectators attending Britain's 59 racecourses.
In 1994, Ascot had one less fixture and lost two days to weather. Even when attendance figures for the equivalent three days last year are removed from calculations, the increase is still 34,742 or 9.6 per cent nearly ten times the overall national increase.
While the glorious weather, which blessed the four-day royal meeting, contributed to an increased attendance of nearly 20,000, the sun alone would not have brought about the 8,172 rise (21 per cent) on the Friday.
Although final attendance figures for most courses are still being collated by Weatherbys, Haydock's Flat crowds were down by 8.6 per cent, despite staging one extra fixture in 1995; Kempton was down 2.6 per cent from the same number of Flat cards while York suffered a 6 per cent fall. Newmarket, which has benefited from the impact made by Peter Player as chairman, saw numbers swell to 290,241 an 11 per cent increase from 32 days racing compared to 31 in 1994.
Erskine-Crum, Ascot's racecourse director, said yesterday: "We have put considerable emphasis in the last 12 months on developing customer relations, improving facilities and making the racecourse accessible and friendly. We have also worked hard to maintain a programme of the highest quality across our 24 race-days.
He added: "We have many new plans for the future, all geared to providing our racegoers with the best possible entertainment, enjoyment, comfort and value for money. Racing has to compete for its market with a growing number of other sports and rival entertainments, so strong marketing and promotion, as well as improved customer-care, have to be a key part of any strategy."
After appearing not so long ago to be still residing in the era of the quill pen, Ascot now has a new computer system which takes care of everything from accounts and marketing data to the ordering, allocating and printing of tickets and a discount is being made available for the first time on Royal Ascot grandstand tickets bought before Derby Day.
Most of the infuriating "By Order" signs, telling spectators what they must not do, have been removed and the members' enclosure restaurant has been refurbished. A £2 million project, which will be completed in time for this year's royal meeting, will see the longest and largest bar in any British racecourse built in the grandstand area.
Racecourse of the Year would have been unimaginable two years ago. Now it is only a question of when.
This could be the year of the Green Goddesses as fire brigades in England and Wales struggle to deliver the services required by law with £34 million less than they say they need to do so. Brigades on Merseyside have been conducting sporadic industrial action since the autumn in protest at the cuts. Their stand could spread as brigades grapple with the task of paring services to the bone.
Three out of four of the 54 brigades in England and Wales are already spending more than the Government believes they need to to maintain services. On the Isle of Wight the brigade costs almost 30 per cent more than its theoretic budget ceiling.
"I am filled with dismay for the coming financial year," says Mick Warner, chairman of the Association of County Councils' fire planning committee. "We have been raiding budgets for education, social services and anything else we can find. We cannot go on doing that. If we cannot get more money, frontline services will probably have to be cut."
He praises the efforts made by Baroness Blatch, the Home Office minister responsible for fire brigades, but he doubts her voice is loud enough to wring more money from the Treasury. The Audit Commission has identified £67 million worth of savings it believes that brigades could make. This is only 5 per cent of their total £1.25 billion budget and compares with the average 10 per cent savings the commission usually claims are possible.
This shows fire brigades are already better managed than most of the other public bodies the commission investigates. Mr Warner points out that brigades are spending £90 million a year over their permitted cap. "Even if we succeeded in saving £67 million immediately we are still going to need over £20 million more than we are being given by central government," he says.
The financial difficulties are exacerbated by the arcane system of funding. Fire brigades receive cash on the basis of the size and density of the population they serve. The number of fires they put out is built into the equation, but the number of rescues they make of people trapped in cars or helped in other emergencies is not. As rescue work of this kind requires specialist equipment, some brigades are now considering charging for its use.
Fire prevention is, perversely, another problem. If a brigade is successful in reducing the number of fires in its area, it gets less money.
In the year ahead, there will also be extra costs in Wales and the abolished counties of Avon, Humberside and Cleveland. According to Ronnie King, who has been appointed fire chief of the new Mid and West Wales Fire Authority formed from three former brigades his brigade will need more than 11 per cent more cash next year just to maintain services at their present level.
Computer systems will have to be standardised, payrolls merged, standing orders agreed, and new logos painted on the side of the fire engines. The Government has been asked for extra help but it is likely only to allow the new combined brigades to borrow money to meet the extra costs.
"Paying the interest on those loans will dig even deeper into our resources," Mr King says.
The most serious problem of all, however, lies ahead. The ticking of what the Audit Commission calls "the pensions time bomb" is growing louder with each passing year. Firemen, like the police, have an unfunded scheme and brigade members contribute 11 per cent of their salaries towards the annual cost of pensions. This is nowhere near enough and the amount needed has to be topped up from the brigades' own resources. Some brigades will probably end up paying out more to pensioners than they do to existing staff.
"There is a real danger that the projected further increase will eat into the front line of brigades operations," the Audit Commission says. "The overall picture is one of failure by the nation to respond to fire."
Middlesbrough 0 Wimbledon 0
BRYAN ROBSON, the Middlesbrough manager, must be hoping that transfer negotiations with Branco, the Brazilian full back, which continued late into the night, are soon completed. He desperately needs some inspiration for a side that has gone into alarming decline after such a promising start after promotion to the top flight.
They were woeful against Wimbledon in this re-arranged FA Cup fourth-round tie, fortunate to escape with a replay after a drab, lifeless contest in which the visitors created what little there was in the way of entertainment.
Coming after a run of six straight FA Carling Premiership defeats, it was hardly surprising that Middlesbrough trudged from the field to a backing track of disquiet from their supporters.
Branco, if he does eventually sign, will not be available for the replay on Tuesday, a significant date as Robson faces up to the first troubled spell of his charmed management career. Joe Kinnear, the Wimbledon manager, believes that his side will be favourites at Selhurst Park. "We have put ourselves in a position where we think we can finish the job," he said. "We created the better chances, looked the better side and we are reasonably confident of finishing them off back at our place."
Most of those Wimbledon chances came in the first half, when Middlebrough scarcely ventured out of their own territory. They were constrained by the inability of Juninho, their Brazilian midfielder, to provide a creative influence. Superstar he may be, but Wimbledon dealt with him comfortably by detailing Harford, their ageing centre forward, to close down his space in midfield.
Despite his dodgy knees, Harford, 36, even found time to lumber forward to cause confusion in the home defence. Twice within a minute, he saw dangerous close-range efforts cleared by the intelligent interventions of Pearson, the admirable Middlesbrough captain.
Gayle should have avoided the necessity for a replay when he was presented with an inviting shooting opportunity after Walsh had flapped like a startled seagull at a cross from Clarke. He lost his head, however, and shot wildly over the bar. Clarke, too, lacked composure when he had only the goalkeeper to beat. Middlesbrough's best chance came from a free kick that Juninho curled over the crossbar.
Viv Anderson, the Middlesbrough assistant manager, said after the game that a decision was expected from Branco before he returns home this morning. "Negotiations are continuing even now, that's why I'm doing the press conference, not Bryan Robson," he said. "There are still one or two things to iron out."
MIDDLESBROUGH (5-3-2): G Walsh N Cox, S Vickers, N Pearson, P Whelan, C Morris J Pollock, Juninho (sub: C Freestone, 80min), K O'Halloran N Barmby, P Wilkinson.
WIMBLEDON (4-4-2): N Sullivan K Cunningham, C Perry, A Reeves (sub: A Pearce, 71), A Kimble F Castledine, M Harford, S Talboys, A Clarke (sub: N Ardley, 87) D Holdsworth (sub: J Euell, 90), M Gayle.
Referee: R Dilkes.
Kelly Holmes won her first race of the year when she took the Army women's cross country title over a snowbound course at Longmoor, Hampshire.
Mark Foster won a Fiat car after setting the fifth-fastest 50 metres freestyle time at the World Cup meeting at Imperia, in Italy, yesterday. The Briton won in 21.70sec, 0.02sec outside the world record held by Alexander Popov, who was second.
Great Britain maintained their unbeaten record to take another step towards qualification for the 1998 Winter Olympics with a 3-2 victory over Denmark in Copenhagen last night. Denmark went ahead in the eighth minute, but Britain drew level in the seventeenth when Tommy Plommer converted Tim Cranston's pass, then went ahead in the 34th through David Longstaff.
Paul Adey increased the lead to 3-1 and Denmark managed just one more goal, from their seventh powerplay, in the final quarter.
THE International Hockey Federation (IHF) announced yesterday that an inquiry will be held into allegations of bribery in the Olympic qualifying tournament in Barcelona last month. The decision follows further information supplied by the Canadian hockey authorities.
The Canadians alleged that Malaysia tried to bribe England before their match and also questioned the goalless draw between Malaysia and India that enabled the Malaysians to qualify.
Coventry City 2 Manchester City 2
WITH eight minutes remaining at Highfield Road last night, Manchester City appeared to have clinched an FA Cup fifth-round tie against Manchester United. Garry Flitcroft's goal, his first of the season, had given them a 2-1 lead and left the television moguls salivating at the prospect of another helter-skelter Mancunian derby.
They had not, however, reckoned on the persistence of Gordon Strachan, who knows not when to give in nor when to retire. Strachan may be 39 tomorrow, and the legs do not scurry in the same frenetic fashion of old, but the Coventry City player-coach still knows how to rescue apparent lost causes. With the delayed fourth-round encounter entering time added on for stoppages, he weaved his way to the byline, crossed to the near post and saw Dublin crash the ball home via the crossbar.
That Strachan had been the most accomplished player on view spoke volumes for the way that an initially engrossing match had swiftly degenerated after the half-time break, into an undignified scrap. Only the goals, necessitating a replay at Maine Road on Wednesday, brought any relief to the turgid closing stages.
"I still thought we were entitled to get something out of the game," Ron Atkinson, the Coventry manager, said. "I didn't like the way we left it so late, but I thought we deserved a replay. There's only a hair's breadth between the sides it could go to extra time and penalties next time."
While Strachan probed and prompted, Coventry always had a chance. Though they have not reached the last 16 of the competition since they won it in 1987, they set off as if they meant to address the problem seriously and went in front after only 128 seconds. Shaw's deflected shot veered into Whelan's path and he deftly, almost arrogantly, lifted it over the diving body of Immel, the Manchester City goalkeeper, for his sixth goal in ten games since moving from Leeds United.
Manchester City's recovery took time, with Brown's energetic tackling and Rosler's unselfish running aiding the cause, but they eventually equalised in the 33rd minute. Clough delivered an exquisite pass to Rosler on the right wing and he produced the nightmare of all crosses for any defence low, accurate and with pace.
Busst was the first to react, an outstretched leg easily
diverting the ball into his own net.
The second half was instantly forgettable until Lomas centred and Flitcroft volleyed past Ogrizovic, the Coventry goalkeeper. Although United beckoned for Manchester City, Strachan and Dublin combined to blunt their hopes. "Have you ever known anyone as fit as Gordon at 39?" Atkinson was asked. "Raquel Welch," he replied. What better tribute.
COVENTRY CITY (4-4-2): S Ogrizovic B Borrows, D Busst, R Shaw, M Hall G Strachan, K Richardson, P Telfer (sub: P Ndlovu, 82min), J Salako D Dublin, N Whelan.
MANCHESTER CITY (4-4-2): E Immel N Summerbee, K Symons, K Curle, I Brightwell N Clough, S Lomas, G Flitcroft, M Brown U Rosler, G Kinkladze.
Referee: G Ashby.
West Ham United 1 Grimsby Town 1 GRIMSBY Town were patient, almost to the point of lethargy at times in this FA Cup fourth-round match, but their composure paid off. The Endsleigh Insurance League first division club will believe themselves capable of taking a Premiership scalp on home territory.
"I am not sure some of their players will fancy coming to Grimsby on a cold winter's day," Brian Laws, their player-manager, said. West Ham United probably cannot believe they still have a fourth-round hurdle in prospect. They began tentatively last night and were punished by Laws's well-taken goal in the 25th minute, but they picked up the pieces quickly to equalise and then create new mischances.
West Ham have a great Cup tradition, but it is slowly sliding deeper into the history books. A poignant reminder of the club's glorious past came before the kick-off, when a minute's silence was held for Alan Sealey, who died at the weekend. Sealey played throughout the 1960s and scored twice in the 1965 European Cup Winners' Cup final. Footage of these goals, against Munich 1860, was shown on the vast video screen inside Upton Park. No wonder that West Ham began in a fidgety mood. Reminders of the high expectations in east London are seldom delivered so close to the start of a match.
Grimsby travelled with their own confidence at a low ebb, having tumbled in the league after a promising start, but their composure brought reward when Bonetti, their Italian import, passed to Forrester who, in turn, fed Laws.
It was Laws who attempted an ambitious long-range shot early on. It was also Laws, the former Nottingham Forest player, who appeared to have given away a certain penalty when he tackled Slater inside the area. The referee gave him the benefit of the doubt and then, eight minutes later, he scored.
West Ham's equaliser came courtesy of a deft header from Dowie, a chance made possible by the excellent Williamson, whose cross was perfectly judged.
The home side then stepped up the pace. "At times, it was like the Alamo," Laws said, but luck was on his side. Cottee blasted over from six yards, a header from Hughes hit the bar and the save of the evening came when Lazaridis forced a powerful header goalwards and Crichton tipped the ball to safety. In the final 15 minutes, West Ham pressed forward so desperately that they left gaping holes in defence but Grimsby were too weary to take advantage.
Laws is right. No London club will fancy a trip that far north, which is why Chelsea, already certain of their fifth-round place, are probably hoping that West Ham win the replay.
WEST HAM UNITED (4-4-2): L Miklosko S Potts, A Whitbread, M Rieper, J Dicks R Slater (sub: S Lazaridis, 46min; sub: K Rowland, 80), D Williamson, I Bishop, M Hughes A Cottee, I Dowie.
GRIMSBY TOWN (4-4-2): P Crichton J McDermott, P Groves, M Lever, B Laws G Childs, C Shakespeare, G Croft, I Bonetti (sub: N Southall, 86) N Woods (sub: S Livingstone, 62), J Forrester.
Referee: G Willard.
Nottingham Forest 1 Oxford United 1
Endsleigh League clubs emerge with FA Cup honours at City Ground and Upton Park.
YOU could call it a 1-1 massacre. Nottingham Forest should have had a shoal of goals in the first half of this delayed fourth-round tie at the City Ground last night, but could score only once. Oxford United, remarkably, snatched a draw with three minutes to spare.
Stuart Massey's fourth goal of the year, a close-range header after Moody had glanced on Beauchamp's second consecutive corner, means that Forest must go to the Manor Ground on Tuesday to decide who meets Tottenham Hotspur. Yet they might have had five or six goals before half-time, and went ahead in the second half with a sharp counter-attacking goal by Campbell.
On the hour, Oxford should have been buried out of sight. In a scramble in their goalmouth, Silenzi, who played an intelligent match on the right as deputy for the injured Stone, hammered a loose ball against the crossbar. The ball flashed downwards, hit Whitehead, the Oxford goalkeeper, on the back and bounced over the bar. It was that kind of match.
"Some of our side thought one goal was going to be enough," Frank Clark, the Forest manager, said. "We controlled the game and I was disappointed we didn't kill it off."
Oxford packed their defence as tight as six tennis balls in a box ... except there were ten of them. Forest's incessant attacking from early on flowed around the edge of the Oxford penalty area, but much of the time could find no way through. With a 4-1-4-1 formation, Oxford were keeping ten men behind the ball most of the time, and the swarm of yellow shirts, rugged and determined, was not to be easily overcome.
Denis Smith, the Oxford manager, had given his men a piece of his mind at half-time, critical of their negative attitude. It had not been his idea to fall back in such numbers; he intended to play with three men forward, two of them wide. It had not happened.
"I've got a team that's comfortable on the ball, and some of them believe they should be playing in a higher division," he said. "I was very disappointed with their first half performance, but at home we've won nine out of 12, and we're going to be difficult to beat."
Nearly 3,500 made the journey from Oxford to support their team, yet, initially, it seemed that they were facing a rout. After 15 minutes, a hooked drive by Roy, bound for the net, was accidentally deflected wide of the post by Woan. Two minutes later, Whitehead, with the first of a string of outstanding saves, parried a fearsome blast by Silenzi. Then came a thunderbolt from Bart-Williams as Silenzi turned the ball square across the penalty area. His shot hit the right post and rebounded nearly out of the area.
So it went on. Oxford had not mounted an attack worth the name. Silenzi, with a studied volley, put the ball a yard wide, Whitehead tipped over the bar from Phillips, but, just on half-time, in their only moment thus far, Oxford might have snatched the lead. Crossley scraped a high cross off Moody's forehead and the ball was lofted over by Massey.
The onslaught continued into the second half, but now Oxford were coming forward. It seemed to cost them dearly when Roy, on a rapid counter-attack, sent Campbell free to slide the ball past Whitehead. Now, however, Forest's poise evaporated. Elliott missed an open goal at the end of a
70-yard run, but Massey gave them something to savour.
NOTTINGHAM FOREST (4-4-2): M Crossley D Lyttle, C Cooper, S Chettle, D Phillips A Silenzi, C Bart-Williams, S Gemmill, I Woan K Campbell, B Roy.
OXFORD UNITED (4-1-4-1): P Whitehead L Robinson, M Elliott, S Wood, M Ford R Ford J Beauchamp, S Massey, D Smith, C Allen (sub: M Murphy, 74min) P Moody.
Referee: D Elleray.
NICK FALDO welcomes Severiano Ballesteros's nomination as Europe's next Ryder Cup captain, but has some reservations as to whether he should also fulfil a playing role against the United States in Spain next year.
Ballesteros has expressed a desire to become the first playing captain since Arnold Palmer in 1963. Yet Faldo believes that would be a tremendous strain, even though the Spaniard is better equipped than most to cope with the intense pressure.
"If anyone can do it, Seve can, but it will present an awful lot of headaches," Faldo said on the eve of starting his challenge for the Buick Invitational, that begins today in San Diego.
"I am sure Seve will work out a game plan of how to cope with it mentally, but it is going to be very difficult. It is exhausting enough just playing, let alone trying to fulfil two roles and being concerned with what the rest of the team is doing."
Faldo, the most experienced of Europe's Cup squad with a record-equalling ten appearances, would also like to see the burden lifted from the captain's shoulders in the two-year build-up to an event that has grown into golf's most glittering spectacle.
Lanny Wadkins, the beaten United States captain, was restricted to 20 tournaments last year and finished 162nd in the rankings. "I felt sorry for Bernard Gallacher (the Europe captain), who spent two years before the match doing public relations stuff, and that's not right," he said. "It is no coincidence that a captain's form suffers."
Faldo, who was within striking distance of his first win of the year before rain washed out the final two rounds of the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am last weekend, played a practice round yesterday even though fog reduced visibility to less than 80 yards on the south course at Torrey Pines.
Barry Lane was unable to get on to the course, because he was confined to bed with a throat infection.
Oliver Holt meets a driver determined not to dwell on the glories of last year.
It is nearly three months since Colin McRae won the world rally championship, but it does not seem to have changed him. He has not developed a taste for fancy jewellery, he has not mastered the art of the soundbite for the media who crowd around him, he still gets his mum to do his ironing whenever he can and he wants to win just as badly as ever.
McRae begins the defence of his crown in Karlstad tomorrow on the first day of the Swedish rally. Some have suggested that his motivation may not be what it was because he has already claimed the sport's biggest prize. Others, including Carlos Sainz, his arch-rival, have predicted that his
rivals will try to make it especially difficult for him to repeat his success.
"I know what it is like trying to defend a title," Sainz, who was involved in a bitter battle for the championship with McRae last year, said.
"There is no doubt Colin will be a marked man. When you are world champion, everyone is out to beat you. The pressure on Colin to continue his winning streak will be tremendous. Everyone will be expecting him to keep delivering the goods."
McRae, 27, has reacted to all the speculation with his usual sang-froid. Yesterday, he warmed up for the rally in the frozen wastes of northern Sweden by clowning around on a skidoo.
His responses to the doubters were characteristically short and to the point. He wants more, not less. "In many ways, I think the pressure on me this year will not be as great," he said.
"I want to win again and I probably feel a bit more confident than last year because of having one title under my belt already. People are talking about this year as though there is nothing left to achieve, but it is still a big, big challenge.
"One of the largest motivating factors is that there have only been two other drivers Miki Biasion and Juha Kankkunen who have won back-to-back world rally championships, so to equal them would be a big thrill.
"Then, I want to go on and win a third, and no one has done that before."
McRae's main challenge this year may come from Kenneth Eriksson, his new team-mate, but the Scot is the hot favourite. Sainz is driving for Ford this year and is unlikely to be competitive early in the season, and even though the New Zealand rally, which McRae has won two years in succession, and the RAC rally are not on the calendar this year, it is still packed full of the type of gravel events that he relishes.
"The rougher gravel rallies suit me a lot better, but I went head-to-head with Carlos on tarmac last season in Catalunya so I don't even have any hang ups about that any more," he said.
"Nothing has really changed from last season. I have been too busy testing and doing a team tour to the Far East to notice any differences in my life caused by being world champion. I was invited on Question of Sport, but that is about it."
SCOTLAND, predictably, named an unchanged rugby union side yesterday to play Wales in the five nations' championship in Cardiff on February 17; but, while selection was automatic after the victory over France last Saturday, Jim Telfer, the team manager, moved quickly to ensure that none of the players would get carried away by the euphoria that greeted that victory.
Telfer told a press conference at Murrayfield yesterday: "I still think that the performance in Ireland was more complete (than that against France), because we stuck to our game plan better. I think we showed inexperience against France, almost to the point of naivety; luckily it wasn't punished. There is a lot of tightening up to do. I feel a lot of the players were doing something which they have never done before.
"Personally, I was worried about the lack of composure, the inability of the players, when they were 16-8 ahead, to go further ahead. France did not impose themselves that much."
Harsh words, perhaps, but, in his own way, Telfer was already indulging in the sort of psychological warfare that is an intrinsic part of modern sport. He was also ensuring that the players in his charge, many of whom were written off a month ago, keep their feet on the ground in the wake of two subsequent victories.
Telfer is a pragmatist and, as he admitted yesterday, he prefers to look for flaws. "I like working from a position of adversity," he said.
He expressed surprise that the home victory over France, which partially avenged the disappointment of the World Cup, had had such an impact when wins at Murrayfield 15 years ago were "run of the mill".
He said: "The manner may have been different, but we should not get carried away by winning at home." Telfer stressed that he was taking nothing away from the players who "work well for each other". More pointedly, he added: "There are no stars, as yet. They are still on a learning curve and, as long as they stick to that, the better."
Looking to the challenge of Wales, Telfer said that he had been especially impressed by Robert Howley, the scrum half who made his debut against England, a player whom he likened to Joost van der Westhuizen, the South African who almost singlehandedly destroyed Scotland at Murrayfield in 1994.
He believes that Wales would have gained more from the international at Twickenham last Saturday than England, who appeared riven by internal strife. "They (Wales) will be a completely different team (than France)," he said. "It is a new side and they will make life difficult for us. They are very fit and work for each other, they seem to have no inhibitions, some of them are not old enough even to have nerves."
With a possible grand slam showdown against England in a month's time on the horizon, Telfer likened the match in Cardiff to a cup semi-final ... "and everyone hates to lose semi-finals," he said.
SCOTLAND: R J S Shepherd (Melrose); C A Joiner (Melrose), S Hastings (Watsonians), I C Jardine (Stirling County), M Dods (Northampton); G P J Townsend (Northampton), B W Redpath (Melrose); D I W Hilton (Bath), K D McKenzie (Stirling County), P H Wright (Boroughmuir), R I Wainwright (Watsonians, captain), S J Campbell (Dundee HSFP), G W Weir (Newcastle), I R Smith (Gloucester), E W Peters (Bath). Replacements: K M Logan (Stirling County), C M Chalmers (Melrose), G Armstrong (Newcastle), S Murray (Edinburgh Academicals), A P Burnell (London Scottish), J A Hay (Hawick).
THE Australian Rugby League (ARL), which spent £5.5 million on nine British-based players at the height of the inflationary war with Super League last year, yesterday announced that Ellery Hanley, the former Great Britain captain and coach, will be joining Sydney Tigers for the forthcoming ARL season. He will be 35 next month.
Hanley received an initial £250,000 signing-on fee from the ARL and is due a further £200,000 over three years. His last competitive appearance was for Leeds ten months ago. A damaged shoulder, which would have put lesser players out of the game, has undergone extensive repair.
Hanley maintains that he is fit, but part of his job description involving junior coaching and marketing may occupy more of his energies than might have been expected of a full-time player. The ARL expected Hanley to compete in the World Sevens last weekend, but he attracted criticism for standing down from a well-beaten Great Britain side.
It was thought that he would fill a senior coaching position at one of the dozen clubs to remain loyal to the ARL in its dispute with the breakaway Super League. However, nothing was seen as suitable, so Hanley was given a playing contract with the former Balmain club, where he had a summer stint eight years ago. Wayne Pearce, the Tigers' coach, said that he intended to use Hanley's experience in a wide range of positions.
Hanley, who is expected to return to Sydney before the season starts, in three weeks, said: "I have fond memories of my time there in 1988 and am looking forward to helping the Tigers become a top premiership side."
Craig Innes, Hanley's former Leeds colleague and another highly-priced ARL recruit from the British game, had planned to leave Headingley today to join Manly-Warringah, but has been persuaded to stay on, at least until after the Silk Cut Challenge Cup fifth-round tie at Warrington on Saturday.
As Innes, the New Zealand centre, is under contract at Leeds until June and Manly want him immediately, the decision on who benefits from his services appears to be destined for the courts.
Of the remaining recruits, only Hanley and Lee Jackson, the Great Britain hooker, now at Newcastle Knights, have had their futures with the ARL determined. Jonathan Davies, who received a £100,000 signing-on fee, is back in rugby union at Cardiff. Martin Hall, Jason Robinson and Gary Connolly are tied to Wigan for one, two and three years, respectively. Kevin Ellis, a member of a discredited Great Britain sevens entry in Sydney, is only nominally linked to North Queensland and Steve Hampson, 34, another Britain veteran now at Salford, has still to be allocated a club.
Embarrassment at the sums paid by the ARL extends to the calibre of some of those signed up; not that sense prevailed in the ARL's desperate mission to buy players and win kudos in the marathon struggle against Super League, in which it is now isolated from the rest of the rugby league world.
The ARL season starts at the same time as the ten-team Australasian Super League is due to launch on March 1 the European version begins on March 29 although the imminent judgment of James Burchett, an Australian federal court judge, on loyalty contracts that the ARL claims clubs signed before switching caps to Super League, is of more immediate concern.
News Limited, the Australian arm of the News Corporation, which is the parent company of The Times, claims the agreements were signed under duress, are anti-competitive and should be declared void. Whatever Judge Burchett's decision, it will not mark the end of the legal road. Both sides have indicated that, should they lose, they will appeal.
A Rugby Football League board of directors' proposal for a change in voting rights was overwhelmingly accepted by a special general meeting of clubs in Leeds yesterday. Super League clubs will receive four votes each, first division clubs two apiece and second division clubs one each. The clubs added a rider that at least 16 of them would have to back any proposal for it to be passed.
OVER the years, since southern-hemisphere referees have been officiating in rugby union's five nations' championship, spectators have become accustomed to an upraised hand after a prolonged stoppage in play a signal to the match timekeeper that the clock should resume.
As from this Saturday, the same practice will begin in first division matches in England. The Rugby Football Union (RFU) is to experiment with independent timekeepers for the remainder of this season in the belief that increased playing time will offer greater value for money.
Rugby's laws state that the referee shall keep the time, but, in the southern hemisphere, it was realised long ago that it is one duty of which the match official could reasonably be relieved. Part of the climax at important club or representative occasions in, for example, Australia is the crowd counting down the seconds when a clock is visible.
Each first division club in the Courage Clubs Championship has been sent a klaxon and stop watch and has been asked to provide a location at the side of the pitch where the timekeeper an off-duty RFU assessor will sit. He will take account of injury stoppages, starting the clock to coincide with the recommencement of play.
He will also take account of goal kicks that take more than than 40 seconds, though that is covered in the laws anyway.
At the same time, the timekeeper will have a second watch, that will keep "running time" that is, the actual time from the start of each half to full time so that the results of the experiment can be more accurately analysed.
The first match where the timekeeper can operate will be at Sudbury on Saturday, where Wasps are due to play Sale.
The following have passed the Institute of Legal Executives (ILEX) Part II membership Examinations, Autumn 1995.
Names follow in alphabetical order, not available on the Database.
Court of Appeal. Parlett v Guppys (Bridport) Ltd and Others
Before Lord Justice Nourse, Lord Justice Roch and Lord Justice Hobhouse
(Judgment February 1)
The provisions in section 151 of the Companies Act 1985 prohibiting a company from giving financial assistance for the acquisition of its own shares did not apply to an agreement whereby four private companies together assumed liability for making future payments of salary, bonus and pension, subject to their being sufficient profits, to one of its shareholders in return for that shareholder transferring shares in one of those companies.
Taking into account only that part of the salary that was immediately payable at the time the agreement was executed, there was no material reduction in the net assets of the relevant company.
The Court of Appeal so held in a reserved judgment allowing an appeal by the plaintiff, Leslie N. Parlett, from part of the decision in favour of the second and third defendants, David Parlett and Robert Parlett, by Judge Raymond Jack, QC, sitting as a judge of the Queen's Bench Division in Bristol Mercantile Court in June 1994, that an agreement in 1988 for the transfer of 26,000 shares in Guppys Estates Ltd, the fourth defendant, was unenforceable.
Section 151 of the 1985 Act provides: "(1) ... where a person is acquiring ... shares in a company, it is not lawful for the company ... to give financial assistance directly or indirectly for the purpose of that acquisition before or at the same time as the acquisition takes place."
Section 152(1) defines "financial assistance" as including "(iv) any other financial assistance given by a company the net assets of which are thereby reduced to a material extent..." Section 152(2) provides for "net assets" to mean "the aggregate of the company's assets, less the aggregate of its liabilities..."
The plaintiff in person; Mr Michael Todd as amicus curiae; Mr Michael Templeman for the defendants.
LORD JUSTICE NOURSE said the statutory provisions prohibiting a company from giving financial assistance for the acquisition of its own shares were in sections 151 to 158 of the Companies Act 1985. Their complexity in contrast to the relative simplicity of their predecessor, section 54 of the Companies Act 1948, was explained by Parliament's intention to relax the rigidity of the former regime in certain respects, more especially in its application to private companies.
One such relaxation was that assistance, not otherwise objectionable, which did not reduce the net assets of the company to a material extent was no longer prohibited. Whether there was or was not such a reduction in net assets was the principal question for decision on the appeal.
The proceedings arose out of a dispute between the plaintiff and his two sons. The plaintiff would only continue working for the family companies if he was paid a salary and a share of the profits.
Thus in July 1988 it was agreed that four family companies should between them provide the plaintiff with a salary of £100,000, bonus and pension in return for the plaintiff transferring his shares in the fourth defendant into the joint names of himself and his sons. The agreement to make the payments was made subject to there being sufficient profits.
In 1991 the writ claiming the balance of salary and bonus alleged to be owed to the plaintiff was issued. The judge held that the defendants had made out their defence under section 151.
The parties agreed that if, and only if, Guppys Estates' participation in the agreement caused a material reduction in its net assets, it had given unlawful financial assitance for the acquisition by the sons of its own shares, contrary to section 151(1).
The defendants submitted that when the financial assistance consisted of the assumption of a liability to make future payments, the company's net assets were at that time reduced by taking into account all those payments, even if the liability was limited to payment out of future distributable profits. Thus, it was argued, the reduction in Guppys Estates' net assets had to be measured by taking into account the capitalised value at that date of all future payments to the plaintiff under the agreement.
Mr Todd submitted that it was incorrect to take into account anything more than that part of the salary and bonus which was immediately payable on the conclusion of the agreement and that in any event there had to be taken into account the counterbalancing asset acquired by Guppys Estates in the shape of the plaintiff's services.
In principle Mr Todd's submissions were correct. However, the judge thought that the value of the plaintiff's services to the fourth defendant, objectively judged, was not worth as much as much as £100,000 a year plus one quarter of the profits so on that footing there was a reduction in the net assets of the group of companies. That in itself was not enough to bring the 1988 agreement within section 151(1). The decisive question was whether there was a reduction in the net assets of Guppys Estates to a material extent. Sufficient material existed for the court to decide that there was not.
Lord Justice Roch and Lord Justice Hobhouse agreed.
Solicitors: Treasury Solicitor; Hancock & Watson, Truro.
Admiralty Registrar. Practice Note (Admiralty: Caveat by fax)
A praecipe for caveat against release could be filed by fax when the Admiralty and Commercial Registry Office was closed.
The Admiralty Registrar so stated in a practice note issued on January 15 which said:
1 The purpose of the new Order 75, rule 14A, inserted by rule 8 of Rules of the Supreme Court (Amendment No 3) (SI 1995 No 3316 (L20)), was to avoid prejudice to claimants should a release of a vessel and/or cargo be sought after the court offices were closed to the public.
2 The designated fax number for the filing of a praecipe for caveat against release by fax was 0171-936 6056.
3 It was essential that the designated fax number was used and no other, as that fax machine was manned 24 hours a day by court security staff (tel 0171-936 6000).
4 Use of a fax number other than that designated would be ineffective for the purposes of the rule.
5 The Admiralty and Commercial Registry would not accept a praecipe for caveat on the designated fax number or any other during the times the office was open to the public.
6 The praecipe for caveat should be transmitted with a note in the following form, for ease of identification by security staff:
"Caveat against release
"Please find praecipe for caveat against release of the (name ship/identify cargo) for filing in the Admiralty and Commercial Registry."
Chancery Division. Barclays Bank plc v RBS Advanta
Before Mr Justice Laddie
(Judgment January 26)
Although the drafting of subsection (6) of section 10 of Trade Marks Act 1994 was a mess, its primary objective was to legalise "comparative advertising" and the onus was on the owner of a mark, who claimed that such advertising, referring to his mark, was unlawful, to show that such use would not be considered honest by members of a reasonable audience.
Mr Justice Laddie so held in the Chancery Division, in refusing an application by the plaintiff, Barclays Bank plc, owner of the registered trade mark "Barclaycard", for an interlocutory injunction restraining the defendant, RBS Advanta, a joint adventure incorporated in Scotland, from referring to that mark in literature intended to promote its own RBS Advanta Visa credit card.
In Bismag v Amblins (Chemists) Ltd ((1940) 57 RPC 209 (CA)) comparative advertising in which one trader made express reference to a competitor's mark was ipso facto held an infringement.
To rectify that, section 10 of the 1994 Act provided: "(6) Nothing in ... this section shall be construed as preventing the use of a registered trade mark by any person for the purpose of identifying the goods or services as those of the proprietor or a licensee.
"But any such use otherwise than in accordance with honest practices in industrial or commercial matters shall be treated as infringing the registered trade mark if the use without due cause takes unfair advantage of, or is detrimental to, the distinctive character or repute of the trade mark."
Mr David Young, QC, for Barclays; Mr Michael Silverleaf for RBS.
MR JUSTICE LADDIE said that RBS's amended literature, intended to advertise a new credit card of its own, referred to the services offered by a number of major competitors, in particular mentioning "Barclaycard Visa", with the result, according to Barclays, that RBS's card would get an unfair advantage in the market.
RBS put its case in two ways: Even though under American Cyanamid Co v Ethicon Ltd ((1975) AC 396) it was only necessary for Barclays to show an arguable case, it had none; but even if it had, under his Lordship's decision in Series 5 Software Ltd v Clarke (The Times January 19) Barclays' case was too weak for relief to be granted.
RBS's mailshot included a leaflet, listing 15 ways its card was said to be a better card all round and a brochure: one page of which included a comparative table, listing six competitors' cards, including Barclaycard Standard Visa and RBS's card, with headings including annual fee, annualised percentage rate on purchases and on cash advances, and monthly rate per cent. A second table on that page, of similar layout, also referred to Barclaycard.
Counsel were united in criticising the drafting of section 10(6) of the 1994 Act. His Lordship agreed it was a mess. The first half was home-grown but the second could be traced back to the Paris Convention for the protection of industrial property 1883, as revised at Brussels on December 14, 1900, dealing with unfair competition, and thence to article 6(1) of the EEC Trade Mark Directive 89/104/EEC (OJ 1989 L40/5).
That had been adopted, with minor changes, as section 11(2) of the 1994 Act: "A registered trade mark is not infringed by (a) the use of a person of his own name and address, (b) the use of indications concerning the kind, quality, quantity, intended purpose, value, geographical origin, the time of production of goods or of rendering of services, or other characteristics of goods or services or (c) the use of the trade mark where it is necessary to indicate the intended purpose of a product or service ... provided the use is in accordance with honest practices in industrial or commercial matters."
It was difficult to formulate any construction of the proviso to section 10(6) which afforded every word a distinct function and which was also consistent with sections 10(3) and 11(2). It seemed to his Lordship that its primary objective would be to allow comparative advertising so long as use of a competitor's mark was considered honest by members of a reasonable audience; honesty being gauged against what was reasonably to be expected, by the relevant public, of advertisements for that kind of goods or services.
Mr Young had accepted that Barclays could not have complained if RBS had simply said its card was better; but in descending to details it had not compared like with like and implied its card was better on all 15 points.
His Lordship said that read fairly, all the material conveyed was RBS's belief that its card, taken as a whole, offered customers a better deal. In the result, and taking into account both his Lordship's views on the balance of convenience and on Barclays' slender prospects of winning the action, interlocutory relief would be refused.
Solicitors: Lovell White Durrant; Stephenson Harwood.
Court of Appeal. Dhak v Insurance Company of North America (UK) Ltd
Before Lord Justice Neill, Lord Justice Aldous and Sir John Balcombe
(Judgment February 6)
An insured person who took a calculated risk and embarked deliberately on a course of conduct which led to some bodily injury could not claim under a personal accident insurance policy if the bodily injury was the natural and direct consequence of the course of conduct.
The Court of Appeal so stated dismissing an appeal by the plaintiff, Mr Kashmir Singh Dhak, suing as administrator of the estate of his deceased wife, Mrs Inderjit Singh, from the decision of Judge Malcolm Lee, QC, sitting as the mercantile judge at Birmingham on February 28, 1994 whereby he ordered that the plaintiff's claim against the defendants, the Insurance Company of North America (UK) Ltd should be dismissed.
The deceased was a ward sister at Birmingham General Hospital. She suffered severe back injury as a result of lifting a heavy patient and had a short period of treatment as an in-patient in hospital and then went back to work. She continued to suffer pain and began drinking alcohol in the hope of relieving the pain.
On October 28, 1986 while recovering at home from influenza she died and a post mortem showed that the blood/alcohol concentration in her body was very high. The verdict recorded at the inquest was death by misadventure.
The deceased had a personal accident policy which specified that benefits would be payable for "Bodily injury resulting in death or injury within 12 months of the accident occurring during the period of insurance and caused directly or indirectly by the accident".
The plaintiff obtained letters of administration and made a claim under the policy. Liability was repudiated by the defendants and the plaintiff sued them.
Mr Michael Spencer, QC and Mr Richard Hone for the plaintiff; Mr Crawford Lindsay, QC and Mr David Pittaway for the defendants.
LORD JUSTICE NEILL said that to bring the claim within the terms of the insurance policy the plaintiff had to establish (i) that the deceased sustained a bodily injury (ii) that the bodily injury resulted in death and (iii) that the bodily injury was caused by accidental means.
An important issue at the trial was whether the deceased died from the toxic effects of the ingestion of alcohol or whether she died through asphyxiation. It might be that it was for that reason that the question whether the inhalation of foreign matter which led to asphyxiation did or did not involve some bodily injury was not fully explored when the three pathologists gave their evidence.
Accordingly, in considering the questions whether the deceased suffered a bodily injury and whether that injury resulted in death one had to bear that point in mind.
The judge had held that "the immediate mechanism of death was asphyxia caused by the regurgitation of the contents of the stomach of the deceased in her lungs" and that there was no bodily injury resulting in death. The defendants supported the judge's findings.
His Lordship was quite satisfied that the deceased's death resulted from bodily injury within the meaning of the policy for, inter alia, the following reasons:
1 The defendants were prepared to admit that in certain circumstances the swallowing of a peanut causing asphyxiation and death might involve bodily injury. But in such an event the mechanism of death would be similar to that in the present case.
The blockage of the windpipe would lead to apnoea and after a short time to congestion of the lungs. That would be followed or accompanied by petechial haemorrhages and the absence of oxygen would then cause damage to the brain by anoxaemia.
2 Bodily injury would often involve some external trauma. But, in the absence of express words, his Lordship saw no reason why bodily injury should be restricted to some injury to the exterior of the body.
The introduction of some foreign matter into the body or into a particular part of the body which caused harmful physiological changes in the structure of the body could, in his Lordship's view, amount to bodily injury.
It would be remembered that "bodily injury" was defined in the policy as "bodily injury caused by accidental means". It was argued for the plaintifff that the deceased's death was plainly an accident.
His Lordship had come to the conclusion that it had not been established that the bodily injury to the deceased was caused by accidental means within the meaning of the policy. In reaching that conclusion his Lordship had been persuaded that the words "caused by accidental means" were a clear indication that it was the cause of the injury to which the court pay its attention.
In the course of argument the court was referred to a number of cases on accidental injuries decided not only in England but also in Australia, Canada, the United States of America and New Zealand. Some of the decisions were impossible to reconcile. In a number of the Canadian decisions the distinction between accidental means and accidental results had been rejected.
In his Lordship's judgment, however, whatever the position might be in other jurisdictions, the terms of the policy required a court in England to concentrate on the cause of the injury and to inquire whether the injury was caused by accidental means.
It was common ground between counsel that a proximate cause meant the effective or dominant cause. The point at issue was the application of the law to the facts.
The submission of the plaintiff was that the excessive intake of alcohol was a part of the background but not the effective cause of the injury.
In his Lordship's judgment, however, the correct approach to the question of cause in the present case was to adopt the analysis approved by Lord Justice Mustill in De Souza v Home and Overseas Co Ltd (unreported, July 20, 1990, CA). In addition one should consider whetehr the insured tok a calculated risk.
His Lordship would put the matter as follows:
Where an insured embarked deliberately on a course of conduct which led to some bodily injury one had to consider the following questions:
(a) Did the insured intend to inflict some bodily injury to himself?
(b) Did the insured take a calculated risk that if he continued with that course of conduct he might sustain some bodily injury?
(c) Was some bodily injury the natural and direct consequence of the course of conduct?
(d) Did some fortuitous cause intervene?
In the present case there was no suggestion whatever that the deceased intended any bodily injury to herself. One had therefore to examine the other three questions. At the same time one must take account of all the circumstances including the state of knowledge or presumed state of knowledge of the insured.
In considering what could be foreseen one must apply the standard of foresight of the reasonable person with the attributes of the insured.
His Lordship had come to the conclusion that the judge was justified in finding that the deceased must have been well aware of the consequences and dangers of drinking alcohol to excess and that she must have been taken to have foreseen what might happen in the event of somemone drinking to excess. She was a ward sister with many years of experience as a nurse.
His Lordship felt quite unable to say that the deceased's injury and death were the direct result of some fortuitous cause. It was the direct consequence of her drinking to excess.
Indeed, his Lordship felt bound to say that for someone with her knowledge and experience she must be regarded as having taken a calculated risk of sustaining some bodily injury.
Lord Justice Aldous and Sir John Balcombe agreed.
Solicitors: Graham Pearce & Co, Solihull; Barlow Lyde Gilbert.
Court of Appeal. Greenwich London Borough Council v Regan
Before Lord Justice Millett and Lord Justice Ward
(Judgment January 31)
It was a question of fact in every case whether a new tenancy or a licence was created when a landlord, who had obtained a suspended possession order for non-payment of rent against a secure tenant, allowed the tenant to remain in occupation after a breach of the order or reached agreement with the tenant as to the repayment of rent arrears.
In a case where the landlord had waived breaches of the tenancy agreement, the original tenancy agreement continued in being and sections 82(1) and 85 of Part IV of the Housing Act 1985 did not operate to bring into being a new tenancy or licence.
The Court of Appeal so held dismissing an appeal by Robert Regan against the dismissal by Judge Harris in Woolwich County Court on September 7, 1995 of his application for a stay of possession and giving leave to his landlord, the London Borough of Greenwich to execute a warrant for possession of 48 Wixom House, Kidbrooke, Blackheath for non-payment of rent.
Section 82 of the 1985 Act provides: "(1) A secure tenancy which is ... a weekly or other periodic tenancy ... cannot be brought to an end by the landlord except by obtaining an order of the court for the possession of the dwelling-house."
Section 85 provides: "(2) On the making of an order for possession of such a dwelling-house ... or at any time before the execution of the order, the court may (a) stay or suspend the execution of the order, or (b) postpone the date of possession for such period or periods as the court thinks fit.
"(3) On such an adjournment, stay, suspension or postponement the court (a) shall impose conditions with respect to the payment by the tenant of arrears of rent (if any) and rent or payments in respect of occupation after the termination of the tenancy (mesne profits), unless it considers that to do say would cause exceptional hardship the tenant or would otherwise be unreasonable."
Mr William Geldart for the tenant; Mr Ian Peacock for the council.
LORD JUSTICE MILLETT said the council had first served the tenant with a notice seeking possession for rent arrears in September 1988. Proceedings had begun in June 1989 and on July 24, 1989 an order for possession had been made, suspended upon weekly payments of £1.75 towards the arrears.
There had been further breaches of the payment terms and the council had warned the tenant that he was in danger of eviction for non-payment. On February 4, 1994 the council had agreed to accept £10 a week towards the arrears, in addition to rent of £45.82. The council had said: "If you miss any payments in future, the possession order against you will be enforced and you will be evicted."
It had been submitted that the secure tenancy had ended on September 4, 1989 when the tenant first committed a breach of the tenancy conditions and that the local authority must be taken to have entered into a new tenancy agreement. Alternatively, it was argued that a fresh tenancy was created in February 1994.
His Lordship reviewed the relevant sections of the Housing Act 1985. The judge had held that the combined effect of those provision was that the termination of a secure tenancy was never final until the warrant was executed and that there was no reason in principle why a new tenancy should have arisen.
The object of suspension of possession was to give the tenant an opportunity to rectify his default. The tenancy would continue in the meantime and would never have been brought finally to an end and on discharge of an order there would be no date on which the tenant was to give up possession.
It was a question of fact in every case whether the parties' conduct was consistent with their relationship being modified or whether it was a new relationship altogether.
The facts of the present case could be distinguished from those of Burrows v Brent London Borough Council (The Times July 21, 1995; (1995) 27 HLR 748), where the court had held that a new lease or licence was created.
LORD JUSTICE WARD said section 85(2) envisaged two different situations (a) the date under which the tenancy was to have been given up would have passed and (b) the date for termination had been postponed.
The power to order mesne profits was exercisable even if the tenancy had terminated by operation of section 82. If the order for possession was discharged the termination of tenancy which was dependant on that order must fall with it.
If the position was that the court could suspend possession, was the position any different when the parties agreed among themselves to suspend the possession order and not trouble the court? If it were, it would be necessary to go back to court every time a due payment was late.
His Lordship was reluctant to conclude that the local authority would be at risk of creating a new tenancy if it accepted payment without the court's sanction. The answer was in what Lord Justice Auld had said in Burrows v Brent: "It all depends what the parties intended in the circumstances."
On the facts of the case it was clear there was no intention to create a new tenancy.
Solicitors: Hudgell & Partners, Woolwich; Mr David Atkinson, Greenwich.
Queen's Bench Division. Department of Social Services v Taylor Secretary of State for Social Security v McKay Same v Brown Same v Shotton.
Before Mr Justice Latham
(Judgment January 23)
Justices had no power to order the Child Support Agency to make restitutory repayments to the person who was the subject of the order even where it was conceded that the attachment of earnings order was defective.
Mr Justice Latham so held in the Queen's Bench Division in upholding the appeal of the Secretary of State for Social Security against the order of Watford Justices on January 25, 1995 that the Child Support Agency should repay money deducted from Graham McKay under a defective deduction from earnings order and in upholding the secretary of state's appeal against decisions by justices to quash deduction from earnings orders made against Peter Francis Brown and George Shotton and to refuse to grant a liability order against Graham Taylor.
Mr Mark Shaw for the Secretary of State; Mr Nicholas Lockett for McKay: the other respondents did not appear and were not represented.
MR JUSTICE LATHAM said that it had been conceded before the justices that the deduction from earnings order against Mr McKay was defective.
The justices held, having been referred to Woolwich Equitable Building Society v Inland Revenue Commissioners ((1993) AC 70), that they had power, having quashed the CSA order, to require repayment by the secretary of state for the sums paid under that order on the basis that it had been made pursuant to an ultra vires demand by a public authority.
The justices had held that Mr McKay was entitled at common law to repayment of those sums, pursuant to the court's powers under section 58 of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980.
That raised a fundamental principle as to the powers of the magistrates' courts. The jurisdiction of magistrates' courts was governed by statute.
They had no power to consider questions or make orders where there was no statutory provision empowering them to do so. It would be surprising if the power to quash a deduction from earnings order was intended to include a power to order repayment.
It had to be remembered that the CSA was merely collecting money on behalf of the parent who had care of the child.
The consequence of an order for repayment, simpliciter, would be to require the CSA, which had not been unjustly enriched because the money had gone to the parent with care of the child, to pay a sum of money to the liable parent which would either be a windfall to him or her, or could be claimed back immediately by the CSA as the sum due and owing under the maintenance assessment.
former result had nothing to do with principles of restitution but had the characteristics of a penalty; the latter produced a nonsense.
For those reasons, his Lordship rejected the argument that a magistrates' court had any power to order repayment of sums paid under a defective deduction from earnings order.
Solicitors: Solicitor, Department of Social Security; Pictons, Watford.
FEWER than one in five British holidaymakers who went to France last year plan to return in 1996 because of the surprisingly high cost of living, according to a survey published this week.
France is perceived to offer the worst value for money and to be far more expensive than expected by 45 per cent of those who visited in 1995, says American Express.
On the other hand those who spent their holidays in Australia, New Zealand and Cyprus found them to be less expensive than they had anticipated.
British holidaymakers spent more than £13 billion abroad last year, of which 44 per cent went on meals out; sightseeing accounts for the second largest amount of holiday spending, at 22 per cent, and drinking is third, at 14 per cent. About 20 per cent of men of all age groups said that drinking was their greatest expense on holiday while for women the figure was only 9 per cent.
MANY British executives continue to take the plane rather than the train when travelling to or within Europe in the misguided belief that flying saves time. But this is not always the case thanks to newer trains and better scheduling. There is now often little difference between the two on many medium-length journeys, yet a first-class rail ticket can cost up to 75 per cent less than a one-way flexible air fare. As a further bonus, rail passengers avoid taxi fares to and from airports and tickets are free of airport taxes.
An executive planning a short-stay midweek trip from London to either Paris or Brussels would pay as little as £59 or £69 return by Eurostar in standard or £155 in first-class compared to the cheapest equivalent air fares of more than £200. Even when based on flexible first-class tariffs, Eurostar still undercuts business-class fares to Paris or Brussels by more than 15 per cent.
But the greatest savings are within mainland Europe. A first-class passenger taking the train between Paris and Brussels pays £66, against the air fare of £189. Frankfurt-Zurich costs £107 by rail compared to £217 by air. Zurich-Milan by air is £273 whereas the first-class rail fare is £70.
Europe's current leaders in high-speed rail (trains running at up to 186mph) are France and Germany. Germany's ICE trains run on purpose-built 186mph lines such as the Hamburg-Frankfurt-Munich one. They also make forays over conventional track on routes such as Frankfurt-Berlin and Frankfurt-Basel-Zurich. France's famous TGV trains run over long stretches of 186mph track south to Lyons, Geneva, Marseilles and Nice, west to Britanny and southwest to Bordeaux and Biarritz. And the Paris bypass line (the rail equivalent of London's M25 motorway) means UK passengers heading beyond Paris no longer need to change in the French capital.
"Passengers arriving on Eurostar at the new Lille Europe station can connect with TGV trains south to Lyons in two hours or Marseilles in four hours and 30 minutes," says Peter Mills, the French Railways spokesman. "Later this year a further link will enable the TGVs to run Lille-Nantes in three hours and Lille-Bordeaux in four hours," he says.
From June there will be a dramatic reduction in the time taken to cross the Alps by train. Pendolino "tilting trains" (made by Fiat of Italy) will cut an hour off the journey to Milan from Basel, Berne, Geneva and Zurich. While from October there will be a further reduction in the journey time between Paris, Lyons and Milan/Turin.
But rail travel does have some drawbacks: the booking systems are old-fashioned, so changing your ticket can be a hassle. And even buying a ticket in the UK can be a chore because few agents are rail-minded, although matters are improving. French Railways has opened "Rail Shops" in London, Manchester and Glasgow while London-based European Rail and Hogg Robinson are two agents now meeting demand with dedicated rail ticket offices.
INTER-CONTINENTAL Hotels this week announced plans to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in the spring by appealing to business travellers who stay in its 170 hotels worldwide to make a special donation to Unicef, the United Nations Children's charity, which also celebrates its golden jubilee this year.
Inter-Continental is asking its guests, 70 per cent of whom stay on business, to round up their bill by about $10 as a donation to Unicef's work.
Such a donation would, says Inter-Continental, provide enough vitamin A tablets for 300 Third-World children to be protected from blindness. A $20 donation would provide clean water and sanitation for a child for a year.
The hotel chain hopes to raise at least $1 million (£650,000) from the idea, but would like to generate up to $5 million during its anniversary year.
Guests will be asked when leaving their hotel if they want to make a donation which will be included on their bill; if they prefer, a separate credit card donation can be made. Staff have been trained not to pressurise guests, especially those who frequently stay in an Inter-Continental hotel.
Robert Collier, joint managing director of Inter-Continental, said yesterday that the campaign was "aimed at being helpful yet unobtrusive, and is being fully backed by our staff who are holding their own fundraising events during the year".
Robert Smith, Unicef's executive director, pointed out that the charity's work over the last half century "had helped to reduce global child mortality from 25 million a year to 12.5 million, although that figure is still too high".
While Inter-Continental is the first hotel chain to organise such a scheme on behalf of Unicef, British Airways has for the past two years operated a system called Change For Good, which encourages it's passengers to donate their foreign coins and notes to Unicef.
The scheme, which initially operated only on long-haul flights, has just been extended to cover European short-haul flights out of Manchester and Birmingham. BA says that more then £2 million has so far been raised for Unicef.
The airline's surveys indicated that the 200 million or so international air travellers each year are left with about $40 million in non-convertible foreign coins and low value notes. This, it says, is usually put into a "safe place", and promptly forgotten.
Unicef: 0345 312312.
WELL-HEELED Concorde passengers have demanded that British Airways set aside at least eight seats for passengers who want to smoke.
From May 1 British Airways is to ban smoking on flights to all United States destinations and to the Caribbean journeys which can last up to ten hours. But after pressure from supersonic passengers, two rows of seats on Concorde flights to New York and Barbados, taking only a little over three hours, will remain available to cigarette smokers. The airline has, however, drawn the line at cigars, which will remain banned in flight.
"Our passengers decided that they wanted to retain the right to choose for themselves," a spokesman said. "We always listen to our customers and Concorde pasengers clearly did not want smoking banned altogether. Perhaps they are older, or more tolerant, than the average passenger and have grown up in a culture which is not so against smoking."
A return fare between Heathrow and New York on Concorde, which has 100 seats, is £5,606. During detailed market research into smoking on board, BA was stunned by the vociferous reaction of Concorde passengers, who made it plain that they were not prepared to be dictated to even though most do not smoke themselves.
All BA flights within Britain went non-smoking in 1988, followed by more than 400 European flights and services to Australia, New Zealand and Canada in 1994.
Air France's recent decision to re-time its eastbound transatlantic Concorde service spells good news for British travellers. At present, travellers flying from New York to London or Manchester are forced to overnight in Paris because there is no same-day connection (although there are good connections westbound from the UK). But from March 31, Air France's Concorde departs New York at the earlier time of 8am which, allowing for a short transfer at Paris Charles de Gaulle, will enable travellers to the UK to be there by evening. Air France also undercuts the direct-flight fare. The BA London to New York Concorde flight costs £5,606 return, and discounts are rare. Air France supersonic flights are available for less than £3,000 return.
LUFTHANSA's telephone check-in facility for passengers flying to Germany and beyond is up and running at Heathrow, Birmingham and Manchester. Passengers with only hand baggage dial 0345 737310 and collect boarding passes at the airport.
AMERICAN Airlines is offering first and business-class passengers a 40,000-mile bonus on transatlantic flights taken before March 31. Details: 0345 567567.
FROM April 1, Jersey European will operate jet flights between Londonderry, Birmingham and Stansted the first time this route has been served. Details: 0345 676676.
BRITISH Airways £99 World Offer excursions to Bordeaux and Toulouse are now available for travel on any day of the week. Details: 0181 -897 4000.
RETURN flights to Johannesburg from £435 are offered by Flightbookers. Tickets for departures until the end of March from Heathrow or Gatwick. Details: 0171-757 2444.
UNIJET is celebrating its new association with KLM with special deals to New York (£189 return, book within the next week), Toronto (£283) and Bangkok (£450) for departures before March 31; all flights via Amsterdam. Details: 01444 440011.
NORTHERN Ireland day trips are available through Driveline Europe, using P&O's Cairnryan to Larne crossing from £10 a car and £4 a passenger. Details: 01707 660011.
P&O EUROPEAN Ferries is quoting B&B short-breaks to Belgium for two nights from £79 per person including ferry from Dover or Portsmouth, valid until the end of February. Day returns on Dover-Calais cost £19 per car (£29 Saturdays), £4 per foot passenger. Details: 01992 456045.
THE SeaLynx catamaran has begun service on the Dover to Calais route and starts from Newhaven to Dieppe on March 20. Day trips for a car and five people start at £30 (£40 on Saturday) and a three-day fare at £49 (£59) for travel by April 30. Details: 0990 707070.
LE SHUTTLE is giving away bottles of Lanson champagne to customers booking a £126 standard return, or a full-fare short-break, which start at £70. The Channel Tunnel car service also quotes Monday-Thursday day trips for £39, weekend prices at £49. The promotions run until the end of March. Details: 0990 353535.
NEW high-speed links to Ireland and France herald early discounts from the Stena line. The Stena HSS is due to operate from March 1 on the Holyhead to Dun Laoghaire route. The crossing takes 90 minutes and two-day returns are being offered from £99 for a car and five passengers.
Details: 01407 606765
THE 200-acre Highbullen Country Estate and Hotel in North Devon is offering unlimited free golf for guests on its new 18-hole course which opens at Easter. Prices range from £47.50 to £70 per person per night.Details: 01769 540561.
HILTON National has published its new Past Times Heritage weekends brochure featuring short breaks linked to historic events including the centenary of designer William Morris' death and battles of the English civil war. Prices start at £147 per person. Details: 01923 246464.
GUESTS staying at the Chelsea Hotel in Knightsbridge on February 29 who are also celebrating their birthday will get an additional 15 per cent discount on the rate of £158 a night, which includes champagne and chocolates. Details: 0171-838 9650.
ANY marriage proposals made by diners in the Oak Room restaurant at Le Meridien hotel in Piccadilly on February 29 will qualify for a free bottle of champagne... if the proposal is accepted. Diners can also win a weekend trip to Paris for two staying at another Meridien hotel and travelling by Eurostar. Details: 0171-734 8000.
STAPLEFORD Park in Leicestershire is guaranteeing a "lady-free" day for bachelors anxious to avoid proposals on February 29. The "great escape day" costs £200 a person and includes a five-course dinner and sporting activities such as clay pigeon shooting. Details: 01572 787522.
LOW-COST hotels (from £13 a night) and car hire (from £11 a day) are featured in the new British Airways Holidays brochure. Details: 0345 222111.
SINGLE travellers can make great savings on ESCOA cruises in the Far East this year as single supplements for trips aboard the Superstar Gemini have been reduced to £20 instead of the usual 55 per cent levy on a normal fare. Details: 0117-927 2273.
CLUB MED is offering "one in two fly free" deals to many of its ski resorts, including Chamonix and Les Arcs, for holidays starting on March 3, 10 and 17. Details: 0171-581 1161.
FLY to Goa at bargain prices with Inspirations; flights are from Glasgow on February 17, Newcastle on February 18 and 25, Manchester on February 24 and Gatwick on February 29. Guesthouse prices start from £355 and hotels from £484 for a fortnight. Details: 01293 822244.
ARTSCAPE is offering a trip to The Hague on March 21-23 to visit a special Vermeer exhibition. Travel to Holland is by ferry and minicoach with 3-star hotel accommodation. Price per person: £189. Details: 01702 435990.
BARGAIN holidays in the Algarve, with flights from Gatwick and Glasgow on February 19, are available from Co-op Travelcare. The price from Gatwick for a fortnight is £219 per person; from Glasgow for a week £149.
Details: 0161-827 1030.
TURKEY specialist, SunTours, is offering three, four and seven-night holidays in Istanbul at prices between £129 and £189 per person until the end of March, with flights from Gatwick on Fridays and Mondays starting tomorrow. Details: 0171-434 3636.
LONDON'S Science Museum is boldly going where no museum has gone before, with its most successful exhibition ever the display of Star Trek costumes and memorabilia which is estimated to have attracted more than 250,000 "trekkers" since opening last October.
The popularity of the exhibition is such that the museum has just decided to extend its run for an extra two weeks, until March 10.
And it may also propel the Science Museum ahead of its neighbouring museums in the capital's league table.
The Science Museum visitor numbers in recent years have been static at about 1.3 million, although this year it believes the popularity of Star Trek will push it above 1.5 million visitors in total; more than the Victoria & Albert and neck and neck with the Natural History Museum.
More importantly, according to Mark Sullivan, the project director, the exhibition has attracted people who do not visit museums.
"We are clearly drawing the museum's attention to people who might not have considered us in the past," he said.
The popularity of the exhibition has been helped this year by the thirtieth anniversary celebration among fans of the original series featuring Captain Kirk which first hit television screens in America in 1966.
It is estimated that Star Trek which has spawned seven films and three other television series is now being screened somewhere on earth 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Star Trek The Exhibition, until March 10 at The Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London SW7. Admission (exhibition only): £4.95 for adults, £2.95 children and concessions; combined ticket £8 and £4.50.
THE travel industry is preparing to face up to one of its toughest challenges: the premature enthusiasm of seasoned travellers and avid partygoers to celebrate the millennium in style.
Special brochures will start appearing later this year, hotels are already trying to sift thousands of applications for 1999 New Year's Eve parties and organised companies have laid spectacular plans. However, travel experts are attacking the industry for a lack of originality.
"The trouble is that all the best hotels are always full at new year and need do little more than arrange a bigger party than usual," says Ann Scott, a leading travel consultant. "As far as exotic holidays are concerned, there is nothing new about a balloon safari over Africa or swimming with dolphins in Florida."
The most original ideas so far include seeing in the millennium twice: either by flying Concorde to New York, or by cruising in the South Pacific. A nine-day voyage will call at Fiji for New Year's Eve before crossing the international dateline to catch the party in the Cook Islands.
The dawn of the new millennium will rise on Chatham Island, an outpost of New Zealand which is the first place to see the sunrise each day. This stony and inhospitable spot loses out as a party location. However, the idyllic Vavau in Tonga, just west of the dateline, will host a $3,775-a-head (£2,450) party with entertainers such as Jean-Michel Jarre.
Closer to home, the Savoy Hotel in London already has enough potential bookings to fill up twice over. A spokeswoman said a shortlist ballot would be held next year.
The owners of the Simpion-Venice Orient Express and the luxury British Pullman train are considering offers to hire them at more than £20,000 each. The Millennium Society, based in America, has booked the QE2 for a 20-day jaunt, culminating in a grand firework display at the foot of the Egyptian pyramids.
After balloting 1,000 regular travellers to discover their ideas, Thomas Cook will publish a special millennium brochure later this year featuring trips to the Pyramids, Sydney and the Taj Mahal. "It seems people want to make the big day really stand out," a company spokesman said.
Miss Scott believes romantic or inspirational places will be the best venues to celebrate, depending on people's tastes. "What could be a more inspiring place to welcome a new millennium than the Taj Mahal or the Abdydoes temple on the Nile?" she asks.
"For an opera buff, what could be better than sitting in the Teatro la Fenice in Venice, providing the restoration has been completed?"
Party planners who want to get away from the crowds have asked to hire the National Trust's more remote cottages: the most asked-for location is Cornwall.
Meanwhile, people who would rather avoid the millennium altogether, can trek to Nepal with Exodus Travel where, because of the different calendar, the year will be 2050; or they can join a trip to Ethiopia where it will be 1993.
Correction: Headline: Cunard;Correction Issue Date: Tuesday February 13, 1996 Pa ge: 5 Cunard has not yet announced its millennium plans for the QE2 (repor t, February 8), and the American-based Millennium Society has no booking with Cu nard.
BRITAIN's third largest charter airline, Air 2000, is to start selling Newcastle United football shirts on board flights from the North East from April. And P&O European Ferries is also experimenting with the team strips of four Premiership clubs on its cross-Channel ferries.
The moves come as transport companies seek to improve their proportion of tax-free sales, ahead of the 1999 scrapping of duty-free allowances on goods such as alcohol and cigarettes.
Air 2000 has also invested £500,000 in an on-board computer system, designed to speed up credit-card transactions, improve tracking of sales and inventory, and read bar-codes on goods.
In trials, the system has increased sales by 5 per cent. The airline is hoping to improve on last year's on-board sales of £20 million, which averaged just £5 per head.
Aircrew will distribute shopping magazines and tell passengers of special deals. As well as team shirts relevant to the departure airport, the new range of goods includes exclusive perfumes.
With duty-free sales due to be scrapped, ferries, airports and airlines are placing more emphasis on tax-free goods such as toys, gifts and perfumes.
"We have to get away from the concept that the only items people want to buy in the air are alcohol and cigarettes," said Air 2000's managing director Bill Kirkwood.
"The buying of duty-free goods also tends to be focused at the airport. We are telling customers that buying on board can be more comfortable and cost-effective.
"The average on-board spend in the past couple of years has been flat. We have to persuade people that shopping in the air can be part of a holiday experience."
P&O now carries 11,000 tax-free product lines on its 23 ships. Duty and tax-free sales accounted for 30 per cent of its £600 million revenue last year, with tax-free a growing proportion of the total.
SPAIN had another record year last year. There were a total of 63.5 million visitors 3 per cent more than in 1994 of which 45 million were tourists, about eight million of them from Britain.
The country is trying to attract a "better class" of tourist by increasing prices and improving offers, particularly for those exploring the hinterland. Now that its 17 autonomous regions have the responsibility of promoting tourism in their areas, rather than the central government, a deluge of helpful information is available as Fitur, the Spanish travel trade fair, showed last week in Madrid.
Benidorm, already rid of its lager-lout image, is taking a gamble by restricting bookings from British tour operators. Bookings by Thomsons are about 15 per cent down and prices are up to pay for improvements in accommodation and the town's amenities. The resort is also welcoming more Russians some 10,000 paid up to £1,000 each last year for a two-week package from Moscow.
For those driving in Spain, two of the main wine regions, Rioja and the Duero valley, offer special routes to take in the bodegas, scenery and historic sites. Pedro Benito Urbina, the director of Rioja's oenological station, says last year's harvest was perfect. "If we had to create the ideal conditions in a laboratory, they would not have been so good," he said.
Each region is offering information on rural hotels and traditional houses. And around Seville, in Andalucia, visitors can imagine themselves as sherry barons in sprawling country cortijos, with luxurious suites and fine horses to ride.
TOUR OPERATORS are targeting older holidaymakers as research underlines their high spending power and determination to travel. Almost all the big holiday companies now have specialist units determined to cash in on one of the most lucrative sections of the struggling holiday market.
According to Sovereign Holidays, 36 per cent of the over-55s have a gross income of more than £19,500 a year. Many have paid off their mortgages and 38 per cent have an income from private pensions.
With so much money to spend by next year the total amount of discretionary income in the hands of 45 to 70-year-olds is expected to be more than £10 billion it is not surprising that tour operators, who face a fall of up to 30 per cent in bookings from the family market, are switching their attention to the "greys".
Holidays are high on the list of priorities for the over-55s, with more 55 to 65-year-olds taking an annual holiday than any other age group, and spending an average of £574 per person. Older people also take more holidays in a year than the average. By 2000, the over-55s will make up 26 per cent of the population.
Research shows that although 53 per cent choose a holiday by the sea, they also want to be able to pursue their hobbies, take cultural tours and ensure their creature comforts are well looked after.
"Nearly two thirds of our clients come from the upper age groups and are looking for slightly more sophisticated and tailored holidays," Steph Pritchard, marketing manager for Sovereign Holidays, says. "With years of experience of foreign holidays under their belts, the over-55s are proving to be ever more discerning customers."
Inspirations has launched a brochure aimed for the first time at the older, retired holidaymaker. Prices in the Warm Winters brochure start at £121 for seven nights self-catering in Benidorm including return flights.
The importance of older people has long been recognised by the highly profitable and fast-expanding Saga Holidays. It has specialised in taking them all over the world during the quieter months when families with school-aged children cannot generally get away.
Now Saga is launching a range of holidays to cater for single people aged over 50. The brochure, Specially for Singles, includes activities such as ten-pin bowling, ice skating, canal cruising, walks, talks, dry slope skiing, surfing lessons, swimming, music evenings or visits to country pubs.
Prices range from £204 for a week's half-board at a horticultural college campus near Chelmsford to £538 for two weeks in Rhodes where Greek dancing and scuba diving are on offer.
Italiatour, which specialises in Italy, is also offering a discount of £30 per person on holidays taken midweek or during school term time.
THE V2 rocket, Hitler's secret weapon which was intended to bring Britain to its knees in the Second World War, will soon be used to woo British tourists to a new exhibition centre in the north of France.
One of the rockets, now disarmed, will take pride of place in the gallery being built in the same bunker which the Nazis planned as the base from which to launch a final assault on Britain. Detailed plans for the centre and the construction work completed so far were unveiled by the French yesterday.
They include a display of secret German weapons, an exhibition showing how the rockets have been developed for use in the Western world's space programme, and two cinemas which will show films compiled from hundreds of hours of footage from British, French, American and German archives.
Work is well advanced on converting the bunker, which was built in a quarry at Helfaut-Wizernes near St Omer and covered with a 15ft-thick concrete dome. Builders will also soon start work on a striking, modern reception hall in front of the bunker and the new attraction, the European History Centre of the Second World War, which will open early next year.
The £800,000 project has been devised by historians who recognised the huge bunker's importance, and local government and tourism officials, who realised its potential for attracting visitors to an area now by-passed by Eurostar trains and the A26 autoroute.
"We don't want to see the trains and the cars go past, and know that this is an excellent opportunity to create an historic and symbolic tourist centre," Guy Froment, the centre's managing director, says. "The bunker symbolises the dark past of Europe but the modern architecture of the reception will be a symbol for the Europe of the future."
The Germans started building the bunker, designed to launch 50 V2 rockets a day, in August 1943. The plans included workshops, stores, barrack rooms, a hospital and dozens of miles of tunnels.
The structure was spotted by the British, however, and between March and July 1944 the Royal Air Force unloaded 3,000 tons of bombs in the area. The Nazis were forced to abandon their plans and launch the rockets from mobile sites, although the dome was only slightly damaged.
Initial market research has suggested that British tourists will be eager to visit the site and see what they were spared. M Froment said seven out of every ten British travellers interviewed thought that they would visit the centre on a future trip. An extra exhibition focusing on the special relationship between England and northern France is also planned.
The centre is expecting a total of 240,000 visitors a year. They will begin their tour in the airy reception building designed to convey an image of brightness and progress, in contrast to the initial gloom of the bunker, which they will enter through a long tunnel.
Headsets will enable them to follow the infra-red, audio-guided tour at their own pace as they pass through scenes recapturing the period of the German occupation of northern France before they arrive at the foot of the Polygon, the unfinished site of the great rocket preparation room.
A lift will take them 100 feet up into the main exhibition area and cinemas beneath the great dome.
THE ORIGIN OF SATAN A Social History By Elaine Pagels, Viking, £20.
It is a sad paradox that even though Jesus preached a gospel of love, Christians have often felt justified in cultivating a righteous hatred of those whom they believe to be in error. Crusaders slaughtered Muslims and Jews; the orthodox have killed heretics, and for centuries Catholics and Protestants have vilified and persecuted one another. Frequently Christians accuse the "other" side of being in league with Satan.
In this erudite and illuminating study, Elaine Pagels has traced this tendency back to the New Testament. She argues persuasively that belief in Satan originated in certain Jewish sects, whose members denounced their fellow Jews as the sons of darkness. The Hebrew Bible, however, has no conception of the Devil. Satan is simply a member of the angelic court whose task is to obstruct human activity, sometimes as in the case of Balaam in a way that is beneficial to humanity.
But later, during the troubled years of the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, radical Jews told stories about angels who had fallen from grace, basing these tales on obscure and ambiguous scriptural texts. When they asked "How could God's own angel become His enemy?" they were also asking, in effect, how their fellow Jews, who did not share their religious passions, could have turned away from God. Such sects as the Essenes saw themselves as a righteous elite at war with the demonic "powers of darkness" who had infected the rest of the Jewish community.
Pagels shows that the first Christians shared this vision of a universe divided between God's people and Satan's. Her penetrating critique reveals a stream of pure hatred running through each one of the four Gospels. The demons of the New Testament, which liberal Christians prefer to ignore, are central to the story of Jesus. The four evangelists all revile their Jewish contemporaries, who refused to accept Jesus as the Messiah, as apostates in Satan's thrall.
In each successive Gospel the Jews become increasingly demonic, while Pontius Pilate, who was renowned for his ruthlessness and cruelty, becomes ever more sympathetic. Mark, who was writing in about AD70, shows Jesus battling with Satan at the outset of His career and insists that the Jews forced the Romans to execute Him. Some 15 years later, Matthew denounces the Pharisees, the Jewish leaders of his day, as "Sons of Hell" destined for the "fire reserved for the Devil and his angels".
Luke, the only gentile evangelist, goes further. He suggests that the Jews are allied with "the powers of darkness". He has Satan entering into Judas Iscariot and setting in motion the events that would culminate in the Crucifixion. Finally, writing in about AD100, John shows Satan becoming incarnate in human form: first in Judas, then in the Jewish authorities, and lastly in "the Jews", who form the armies of hell in ceaseless conflict with the forces of light.
Besides teaching the importance of love, therefore, the Gospels laid the foundations of that virulent anti-Semitism which has led to some of the most shameful chapters in Christian history. But the habit of hatred did not stop there. From the Gospels, later Christians learnt to demonise their other enemies. Their faith became paranoid, embattled and defensive: Christian soldiers must march onward, as to war.
Pagels shows that during the Roman persecutions, Christians believed that they were engaged in a cosmic battle with Satan: a martyr's death frustrated a diabolic conspiracy against humankind. The pagan gods became devils in their minds, Greek and Roman culture was now demonic and teachers such as Origen undermined the religious sanction for the State. Finally, "heretics" who did not share the opinions of the Establishment were denounced as Satan's agents.
Pagels does not deny that many Christians have transcended this sorry legacy. Many, however, have not; they see no incompatibility between the gospel of love and a righteous denigration of people from other ethnic, religious or ideological groups. Only by acknowledging this tragic flaw, which Pagels's important book has shown to be deeply embedded in their tradition, can Christians hope to correct it and avoid the hatred that their faith has so often tragically inspired in the past.
THE SIXTH EXTINCTION Biodiversity and its Survival By Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £18.99. ANCESTRAL PASSION The Leakey Family and the Quest for Humankind's Beginnings By Virginia Morell, Simon & Schuster, $30.
In the history of ideas, a long struggle has been fought between stasis and catastrophe. The Old Testament gave catastrophe a running start, with its emphasis on flood, plague, and pestilence, but in the 18th century along came James Hutton, a Scottish physician who declared that the Earth had always been much as it seemed. Every feature on its rumpled surface could be explained by the infinitely slow processes of geology, operating over unimaginable stretches of time.
In spite of the efforts of arch-catastrophist Georges Cuvier, who claimed that life was wiped out regularly by floods, Hutton's uniformitarianism soon became the dominant idea. Darwin believed that fossil evidence of past catastrophes was merely an index of that record's incompleteness. An attempt earlier this century to overthrow uniformitarianism by Immanuel Velikovsky, author of Worlds of Collision, was easily seen off and the scientific community cheered. But the celebrations were premature.
In the past 20 years it has become clear that catastrophes really have happened and that evolution, far from being a steady rise from single-celled bacteria to Masters of Balliol, has been a rollercoaster. In the Cambrian explosion half a billion years ago, a huge number of new species emerged in just a few million years, a burst of creativity unmatched before or since. And the fossil record, pace Darwin, shows a string of catastrophes of which the most recent was the elimination of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin now want us to believe that the five recorded catastrophes are being succeeded by a sixth, for which the human race is responsible. The thesis is propounded in a book that is by turns intimate and academic, passages of first-person narration interspersed with an excellent account of recent work in evolution and ecology; though the two elements do not always gel.
The claim that man's dominion has made life harder for countless other species is not exactly new, but here the evidence is superbly marshalled and undeniably persuasive. The extinction of a range of huge creatures from the American continent 11,000 years ago has in the past been blamed on climate change, but recent evidence implicates the Clovis people, who started killing elephants, mastodons and giant sloths and didn't know when to stop. In New Zealand, the Polynesian settlers saw off a whole menagerie of flightless birds. Similar destruction continues today, though some creatures have powerful friends to protect them not least Richard Leakey himself, who raised the plight of the African elephant to worldwide prominence.
But everywhere smaller animals, insects and birds are disappearing, or so the ecologists claim. What, if anything, can be done about it is a different question.
As Leakey and Lewin make clear, ecosystems are fragile, unpredictable, and made up of a range of species which owe their presence there largely to chance. Given the pressure on space, even the best-intentioned of human societies are going to continue to wreak havoc. As the existing balance of species is not God-given but the consequence of accident, does change matter so much?
To most people, the wilderness has no moral authority. They regard the claim made by the ecologist Les Kaufman that "a piece of the American soul died along with the passenger pigeon, plains buffalo and American chestnut" quoted approvingly here as a self-indulgence worthy of Pseuds' Corner. Mankind may have to learn to run the planet like a garden, but most people prefer gardens to wilderness, anyway. The problem is that managing ecosystems is so complex a task that the attempt is doomed to failure. Small wonder that the book leaves one with a sense of impotence.
Virginia Morell's account of the Leakey family is a labour of love, for she makes it clear that this is the recent history of palaeontology told from the Leakey viewpoint. The approach has its drawbacks, because the field is riven by dispute and personal animosity, and the American palaeontologists Donald Johanson and Tim White, for years at loggerheads with the Leakeys, declined to be interviewed.
But she is at pains to be fair and the book bulges with detail. Louis Leakey, the founder of the clan, ultimately triumphed after his first finds had been ridiculed and his academic standing destroyed. To him and his wife Mary, Richard's mother, is owed a large part of the credit for establishing that Africa was the cradle of mankind. But he was impulsive, made enemies easily, and never quite won the support of more conservative colleagues. When he died, the family dallied over placing a headstone on his grave and when they got round to it, found that one of Louis' many lady friends had already done it without even asking. "The nerve!" says Richard.
The story is a compelling one, and very well told. It sheds light on a field where a powerful personality may be as valuable as a good mind: a science that is still in some ways pre-scientific.
The Times/Dillons lecture by Richard Leakey will take place in London on February 12. Details and ticket coupon page 33.
THE FIRST MRS WORDSWORTH By Michael Baldwin, Little, Brown, £16.99.
It is 1791, which in France some are calling the Third Year of Liberty, and the young Englishman shod like a carthorse is a poet. He makes ponderous jokes and drinks his wine only by sniffing at it. He speaks atrocious French and his name is unpronounceable: Wodsod, Wodswort, Wozwoz, something like that.
Annette Vallon sets out to be his tutor in her language, but before very long he has her in his bed. A royalist, she rejects the brick from the broken Bastille which this naive republican brings her as a love-gift. She calls him "Mr Williams", however, and is sufficiently well-pleased by his attentions not to be able to recall if he removes his boots during their performance.
Using the few facts known of Wordsworth's early affair with Annette Vallon, Michael Baldwin manages at first to make quite a plausible romance of them. His Annette, spirited but vulnerable, observes for instance that her lover seems to think her body to be "like one of his country paths, to be strayed over at will and revisited whenever it suited him". This catches Wordsworth with his pants down in a way that might well be true. It is clever of Baldwin, too, to show the poet turning aside from love-making to compose the only lines in his Descriptive Sketches which could possibly be read as directly erotic lines which the later Wordsworth was most careful to suppress.
The novel goes wrong when Baldwin has William and Annette "married before God" by a non-juring priest in a cowshed. There is no evidence whatsoever that Wordsworth loved Annette, let alone married her. All that we know for certain is that she bore his child a month or so after he had fled away to England, and that his abandonment of her and their daughter did not do his conscience any good. The matter goes unremarked in The Prelude, but forms the theme of Vaudracour and Julia, about two lovers who have an illegitimate child.
A novel is a licence to suppose, but The First Mrs Wordsworth strains credulity by supposing too much and shattering the psychological verisimilitude it has itself created. Only a reader unfamiliar with Wordsworth's life and work could readily swallow its central thesis: that the couple went through a form of marriage.
Baldwin seems to have taken literally a single letter in which Annette calls William "mon mari" but as Emile Legouis remarked long ago, when first turning up the whole sad story, this must have been wishful thinking on the part of a young woman who read too many novels.
Frankly, had Wordsworth been a bigamist then the tension might have improved his later verse. But it is possible to forgive Baldwin his flight of fancy for the sake of the wholly believable Wozwoz who stalks through his earlier chapters he of the bone-white legs and the clumpetty boots, "a man of preternatural animal sensibilities".
TERRIBLE HONESTY By Ann Douglas, Picador, £20
A NARROW partition separates the comprehensive from the rag-bag. Ann Douglas's account of Manhattan in the 1920s is certainly pell-mell, and could hardly be otherwise. The period fulfilled Wallace Stevens's remark about "this electric town, which I adore". By the 1920s, he was in Hartford and missed the metropolis. Reason for this is clear even from the sporadically lit path that is the 600 pages of Professor Douglas's prose.
Refreshingly, Professor Douglas ranges across cultures, so many of which were brought together by radio. Vulgar relish is integral to true civilisation, that sense of what Chandler called "terrible honesty". Professor Douglas often appears to be a human CD-Rom, immediately able to summon up a dozen authors' variants on that phrase, just as she readily asserts that New York City had more automobiles than all of Europe and gives an alarming catalogue of alcoholic authors.
She admits that this book took two decades owing to her own alcoholism, which has made her alert for such self-destructive creation as Scott Fitzgerald's.
Early on, apparently, Alcoholics Anonymous took as its Bible The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. Although dead in 1910, he remains central to Professor Douglas's view of emergent urban America, as is Sigmund Freud, who spent only one week in New York (enough time for him to be offered $100,000 to write a movie script). All this leads her to think that the period contained the most "penetrating analysis, sophisticated spoofing, and exciting storytelling the American mind has ever stocked at one time".
It was also an era, bracketed by the Great War and the Crash, which was "a kind of paradigmatic set-up for manic depressive illness, an illness with which I believe America is still, and at times, it seems, helplessly, afflicted" (her next book will be about psychopaths of the 1950s).
HOWEVER that might be, her labour was worthwhile for the bibliography alone. As is the fashion, this is not a list but a closely-printed 90-page essay, chockful of books to seek out (galling how many American books, past and present, are unavailable here). One is grateful to learn of the early novels by Billy Walker's collaborator, Charles Brackett, and the memoirs by the singer Ethel Waters; glad too, that somebody else enjoys the witty novels by Katharine Brush; but puzzled that she overlooks a masterpiece which encapsulates the era that semi-rhyming, free-verse tale of drunkenness and debauchery, Joseph Moncure March's 1928 The Wild Party (now available in an elegant Picador volume, illustrated by Art Spiegelman).
SECRET LIFE An Autobiography By Michael Ryan, Bloomsbury, £8.99 paperback original.
Michael Ryan is an American poet who has won many awards for his work and who used to teach at Princeton, until his sexual pursuit of students led to his being sacked. He describes himself as a "sex addict". It could be argued that, since sex is as compulsive a need as food or excretion for most people, the majority of mankind are sex addicts. But Ryan's case is different.
His sex life began when he was five years old, when a neighbour's son began taking photographs of him and proceeded to sexual touching and then fellatio. The relationship persisted for about a year. This is a depressingly familiar story; but Ryan conveys an aspect of it which victims often omit. Although his sexual initiation was distasteful, and the secrecy demanded of him was alarming, Ryan felt that, because he was emotionally important to his seducer, he both valued the man and had power over him. This ministered to his self-esteem.
It is hardly surprising that the little boy responded to a man who was kind and in a distorted sense loving, since Ryan's father was an alcoholic who beat his children with a belt and maltreated them physically in other ways. His advice on sex to his adolescent son consisted of a single sentence. "When you're with a woman, use a rubber."
At the age of 50, Ryan seems to have total recall of his childhood and adolescence. "For hours a day when I was bowling, time would evaporate. I'd think about my approach, my backswing, the angle of my thumb when I released the ball, whether or not I was getting enough finger lift." But Ryan is no Salinger, and British readers will find his detailed accounts of his successes and failures at baseball and at bowling tedious. His sexual encounters, with girls, men, and the family dog are scarcely more enthralling.
What is amazing, and largely unexplained, is how so philistine a boy is transformed into a poet who taught at Princeton. It seems probable that an eccentric professor at Notre Dame with a gift for talent-spotting was responsible. However that may be, Ryan was fired in 1981.
What this unusually honest book does, and does very well, is to demonstrate one possible outcome of early sexual molestation. If sex is the only thing in life which makes a boy and a man feel valued, he is likely to become a compulsive Don Juan. The accompanying publicity sheet informs us that "In 1990 he realised that his sex addiction was out of control and joined a programme along with other addicts to cure his insatiable need for sex." It would be interesting to know the outcome of his treatment.
CHILDREN OF DARKNESS AND LIGHT By Nicholas Mosley, Secker & Warburg, £15.99.
Nicholas Mosley is a novelist who seeks order in entropy and has the courage to grapple with the unknown, says Rachel Cusk
Novels are so often about what the novelist knows that it comes as rather a surprise to read one that is about precisely the reverse. Where the writer can frequently be found standing at his own fishpond, paying out his line with greater or lesser elegance to reel this knowledge in, Nicholas Mosley wades out to sea with nothing but his bare hands in the hope of catching something new. Whether he succeeds or not is another question; but the profoundly experimental nature of his writing marks him out as one of our most adventurous and provocative voices.
Children of Darkness and Light is a curious but timely novel, as remarkable as it is often opaque, which attempts to address the subject of human entropy while seeking some occluded, necessary order within it. More specifically, it is about the problem of investigation and the difficulties too of inhabiting the tense, shifting border between what is known and what is not.
Harry is a journalist increasingly drawn to this border, the place where in the act of observation reality is manufactured, whose desire to be the factotum rather than the author of truth has stripped him of agency. His fragmented, disordered consciousness is jeopardised still further by drink, and by an itinerant lifestyle which strains his already fragile marriage.
What appears at first to be incoherence, as we are borne along on the muddled stream of Harry's thoughts, is in fact a welter of unprocessed intelligence; the narrative of a mind reluctant to stamp experience with personal interpretation. As Harry's sense of himself dissolves, so his observations proliferate: identity is here an obstruction, an interference without which things might happen as they were meant to and reality thus be ensnared.
As he goes about his investigations, Harry's passivity becomes almost comic: "I had become imbued with the idea that unnecessary questions might divert the course of understanding or even of what would happen." What he is investigating is the story of a group of children in Cumbria who claim to have received a visitation from the Virgin Mary, and have subsequently decamped to the hills above their seaside village and set themselves up on their own.
Some of the children are from Bosnia, where a few years previously Harry covered a similar story; a story in which he interpreted the repetitiveness of the Virgin Mary's visits as an attempt to bore the human race into taking the initiative itself. "I said that the Virgin Mary must know that her instructions weren't working because they had been tried so often and had been ineffective; what she must really want was for us, her children, to recognise this and grow up and start working things out on our own."
Once in Cumbria, Harry discovers that the apparition is not merely a metaphor, but an entire fiction written, in some sense, for him. His suspicion on arrival that he has been expected, that everybody knows who he is and what he represents, that a play is waiting to be enacted for which he is the necessary audience; all this suggests that by singling himself out as invisible, he has become visible, known; that rather than observing the story, he has caused it.
Rumours abound of radiation leaks from a local nuclear plant, of abuses of the children by Social Services; but the more Harry tries to confirm or dispel these rumours, the more facts refuse to perform. "Would it be possible," he wonders, "to devise an experiment at which one could be looking without exactly looking?"
Mosley cleverly withholds daylight until the darkness has become unbearable; for it is only when events have reached a pitch of mystification that one becomes conscious of interference from somewhere else. What looked like an enigma was in fact more of a trick. Harry, it is all at once clear, is not functioning properly, and is labouring beneath things which require disclosure. As he begins to reveal more of what happened to him in Bosnia, a spiritual and philosophical crisis of vast proportions unfolds. "I had wanted not so much to report on the horrors of war many others were doing that as to look for what might be at the back of this apparently so arbitrary fighting: at the way in which so many people seemed to feel just what fun war was."
In discovering that people have no real desire to make things better, no appetite for good, Harry finds a positive motivation towards evil, decay, disorder, pollution "people feeling at home if they land themselves in the shit". He comes to believe the only notion of order is to let things happen, to let them get worse. In the grip of this abdication of responsibility, he rescues a Bosnian child from an orphanage, setting up intolerable conflicts in himself; conflicts which lead him to the belief that if children are tormented enough by adults, they will eventually overthrow them. "And might they not have a chance of doing this especially in times of war ... Might they not become, that is, like those bacteria that learn to survive under stress that produce mutations necessary for survival in terms of stress?"
Two extraordinary images of good and evil conclude a novel which, if it resolves few of them, raises many potent and pressing questions about our moral landscape; and which, for its evocation of modern consciousness alone traumatised and immolated by information is a fine achievement.
THE OXFORD HISTORY OF THE PRISON Edited by Norval Morris and David J. Rothman, OUP, £25. THE INVISIBLE CRYING TREE By Tom Shannon and Christopher Morgan, Doubleday, £9.99
One can learn a great deal about a society by visiting its prisons. They show a great deal about values, beliefs and social attitudes. Through a series of learned but never dry essays The Oxford History of the Prison tells how this extraordinary institution developed from the early forced labour fortresses of ancient Egypt, like the one in Luxor, where Potiphar confined Joseph (of the coat of many colours), to the violent human warehouses of today's big American cities.
It crosses continents to show the varied traditions, and what the State can do to its citizens under the aegis of a justice system is graphically described. Eight full-colour pages of prisoners' paintings show how creativity can blossom within the razor-wire and grey brick walls.
Prisons in North America and Europe, prisons for women, reformatories for juvenile delinquents, penal colonies in Australia, are all discussed. Punitive regimes, rehabilitative regimes, forced labour are described. What comes across is the dreary sameness of the prison experience. Whether it is Illinois or London, 1850 or 1950, the illustrations are the same: human beings lying close together in rows, usually filling every space at every level, the top row so near the ceiling they can barely raise their heads.
Material on the United States predominates, perhaps understandably. The modern prison is said to have been invented there in the 1820s, with competition between the systems in New York and Pennsylvania. In New York the prisoners slept in single cells, but worked and ate together although they were forbidden to communicate by word or glance. In Pennsylvania prisoners were in solitary confinement the whole time. The New York system won the day, because it was cheaper.
Now, nearly two centuries later, the United States is one of the world's greatest consumers of imprisonment, doubling its use between 1970 and 1980 and more than doubling it again between 1981 and 1995. One and a half million Americans are currently in prison. The chances of a young black man in America going to prison are greater than his chances of going on to higher education.
Britain, too, now seems set on a course of ever-increasing imprisonment. Yet, as all the contributors point out, as a method of crime control, prison does not work. So why do we keep on believing in it and demanding it be provided? The answer, according to one of the distinguished editors, Norval Morris, seems to be that imprisonment has become the "plaything of politics". So politicians build more prisons, using money that would otherwise go on schools and hospitals. This is "a sin against the future".
The breadth of history and wide-ranging theory set out in the Oxford volume are richly complemented by another very worthwhile and moving book, The Invisible Crying Tree. Through the Prison Reform Trust a farmer, Chrisopher Morgan, became the penfriend of Tom Shannon, a life-sentence prisoner, and the book consists of their year-long exchange of letters.
The farmer writes of his family, combine harvesters, the common agricultural policy, the weather. The prisoner writes of brewing illicit alcohol, wrapping excrement in newspaper and throwing it out of the window, drugs, stabbings, hunger strikes, being in the segregation unit listening to Mozart. It is a blast of reality for those who think prisons run according to rules and regulations. It should be required reading for people who still think prison is a holiday camp.
Both these books throw light on a major social question. To understand the prison of today we need to know its history. Imposing imprisonment as the main punishment for crime did not start until the early 19th century. Before that, compensation or physical punishments such as execution or mutilation were the norm and they were then replaced by transportation to the New World.
Punishments, then, are not static. There is change and development. Do we really intend to carry on beyond the millennium with a system that costs so much, causes so much pain, and does so little good?
Vivien Stern is the Director of the National Association for the Care and Rehabilitation of Offenders.
IMAGININGS OF SAND By Andre Brink, Secker & Warburg, £15.99.
The elections in South Africa two years ago were a momentous event, a bend in a long straight road. A country went back to the drawing board, started to rewrite its history and redefine its culture in the face of a new future. Andre Brink, perhaps inevitably, has placed his magnificent book, Imaginings of Sand, in the few uncertain weeks surrounding the elections. But like many of his previous works, this book reaches so much further, gathering in fragments of the past, in order to re-examine and reassemble them in the light of what will come to be.
Kristien, a detribalised Afrikaner, is called back from London to her dying grandmother's bedside. Her grandmother, Ouma Kristina, has been the victim of arsonists, who tried to burn down the turreted ostrich palace in the semi-desert where she lives.
Ouma refuses to die before telling Kristien stories about her ancestors, a line of extraordinary women; Kamma, who was picked from her Khiokhoi tribe by a large Afrikaner and became a tree in 1870; her daughter Lottie, who vanished in search of her shadow; her daughter Samuel, and so on down the tree to Ouma and finally to Kristien.
The magical stories Ouma tells, hovering on that uncertain line between believability and fantasy, cover the time from when the Afrikaners first settled in South Africa to the present day. Kristien sits by Ouma's coffin, which the old woman has insisted on climbing into, recording the stories "before she retreats into her inner desert again, that place of moving dunes that shift position from one day to the next, ceaselessly rewriting their landscape and redefining their space" and the rest in the reality of a country she escaped over a decade before.
In this "real-time", she meets the inhabitants of the desert, the players in the South African chess game. Here are the Afrikaners, afraid of losing the land they loved and "paid for in blood and shit", the liberals, the wise old black people, the disaffected youth, the smart new politicians, the bigoted old ones, the hawker for whom the election will change nothing: "I'll still have trouble selling vegetables."
Each has his stance, and if I have a criticism of this book, it is that some of these caricatures lack life; they appear to have been created only as a mouthpiece for a sharply-defined set of views.
But this hardly mars a wonderful book. Like the history of South Africa itself, it has many layers, and also many truths. It is about discord and reconciliation: between Kristien and her downtrodden sister Anna, between Kristien and the country she had sworn never to return to, between new and old, black and white, dreams and reality.
It is like a rite of passage; after reading it, one is well-placed to contemplate what might be in the South Africa of tomorrow. As one of its characters, an old ANC warrior, says on being asked why he is here: "Write a new chapter, yes. Close the old books, no. We can't imagine the future by pretending to forget the past."
Samantha Weinberg's novel, Last of the Pirates, is published by Jonathan Cape
DRIVETIME By James Meek, Polygon, £8.99 ppb original.
READING Drivetime, James Meek's second novel, is not unlike finding yourself in a hall of mirrors where illusion and reality appear as one and images multiply into infinity. So in this novel sanity and insanity seem to be more or less indistinguishable and the many-layered plot to forever fold in on itself.
When Alan Allen, a student of English literature at Edinburgh University, is thrown off his course, he decides to begin a new life in Glasgow, where the people are "hard and cool and warm". To reach Glasgow he needs a car and to buy a car he needs money, which is why he accepts the offer of a stranger met at a party, called McStrachan, to collect an antique egg from "down south".
So begins a nightmarish journey, and not just geographically, along the motorways of Europe, with the elusive egg and the promised land of Glasgow ever receding.
Alan's driving companions are not well chosen: Deirdre, a psychiatric nurse, loved by Alan; Mike, a baseball-bat-wielding fellow student, literary purist and possible psychopath, loved by Deirdre; Sim, an elegantly dressed systems analyst who suffers from an incurable disease which accelerates the ageing process. Mike rants, Deirdre teases, Sim shrivels and the hapless Alan, dogged by personal misfortune and civil anarchy, keeps driving.
In Northampton he is arrested and accused of perversion and cruelty by an animal rights activist. In Salerno he is left abandoned, penniless and at the mercy of an Italian family, who put him to work making cream horns. In Russia he endures a spell in a mental hospital, where both Mike and McStrachan appear to have been former inmates; after being mistaken for a local Edinburgh councillor he unwittingly unleashes a wave of riots across Europe. The look-a-like councillor is just one of several recurring characters who haunt Alan and provide a strange constancy amid the changing landscape.
THIS is a novel where disturbing coincidences, improbable connections and cases of mistaken identity are rife. But although its humour leans towards the laborious, Meek has a gift for the surreal throwaway image.
It is rather as though David Lynch had been let loose on the set of a drawing room comedy. There will be readers who find this peripatetic fantasy too wacky, but they may still admire the dexterity with which Meek juggles his shifting characters and ties up the ends of his narrative.
THERE is a certain ironic appropriateness about putting contemporary art on the radio. And perhaps a certain sense of relief: this way, at least one does not have to look at it. But there are more positive reasons for welcoming Private View, a new Saturday lunchtime series on Radio 3.
Nicholas Ward-Jackson, an art dealer and curator, presents Private View and for the most part he is set on responding to the standard media attitude to such art as a model asleep in a tank and, yes, that severed cow of recent notoriety.
The central figure in part one of the series was Douglas Gordon, a Glaswegian and rising star of contemporary art who is ominously described as "out to unsettle his audience". He was certainly out to unsettle Ward-Jackson, who had to pursue Gordon by telephone halfway round Europe.
They finally met in Amsterdam, where Gordon was attending a football match. Gordon has a passion for the game and its curious sub-culture, and one of his works consisted of projecting the Millwall slogan "We are evil" on to the dome of the Serpentine Gallery in London.
Gordon is multimedia, as they say. He regards the telephone, for example, as an artistic medium. He is fond, apparently, of having messages delivered to diners in restaurants. One of these runs: "You cannot hide your love forever."
What does this mean? Is it art? Ward-Jackson comes from a traditional art background and, if he is sceptical about the contemporary scene, he hides it well beneath an enthusiasm to discover just what is going on.
There are people and you may count me in who think that piles of bricks at the Tate could do with a set of wheels: that way they would more plainly state that we are being taken for a ride.
On the other hand it is quite an enjoyable ride. Artists like Gordon make us think and, merely by doing that, they qualify as assets in a bland modern world.
Barry Millington talks to the highly acclaimed Russian pianist Nikolai Demidenko
Talking to the Russian pianist Nikolai Demidenko is an exhilarating but disconcerting experience. You soon discover that Demidenko has no time for the usual platitudes. Expressing himself in clearly articulated English, he overturns expectations at every step.
The Russian system of musical education now in disarray has a reputation as something of a forcing school. Did he find himself pressurised at the Gnessin Music School in Moscow? "No, an awful lot of things to learn, but I wouldn't say it was terribly pressurised." At the Moscow Conservatoire he was fortunate to study with Dimitri Bashkirov. "I'm still convinced he's the best teacher in the world. He never told us how to play the music at the level of details. He worked in more important directions. That's why no two pupils of his play the same."
Demidenko waxes lyrical about another Bashkirov protege, the 24-year-old Arkady Volodos. "He is phenomenal. It is comparable with Rubinstein's 1964 performance in Moscow, with Horowitz's visit to Moscow, with the debut of the young Kissin, with Karl Bohm's conducting Tristan und Isolde. When that guy has his debut in London, rush there." In fact, we do not have to wait that long, because Sony has recently recorded a Volodos recital disc for release later in the year.
Talking of Kissin, I had heard that Demidenko had helped to bring the 13-year-old prodigy to public attention in 1984, and I invited him to take his share of the credit. But no, refusing to play ball again, he tells me that he was just "one of the people" who were able to bring about Kissin's legendary debut (though it was Demidenko who persuaded the conductor Dimitri Kitaenko to hear him).
"At the first rehearsal for that performance, the orchestra started playing the Chopin E minor Concerto. Little boy, just turned 13, sitting there waiting, and they played the first tutti in an absolutely ordinary manner. Everything changed at the start of the piano part. From the first note, I've never before seen all the wind players watching what the pianist is doing."
Nowhere has Demidenko sought to avoid the obvious more than in his choice of repertoire. In 1993 he gave a series of six recitals at the Wigmore Hall which explored an astonishing range of piano music, from the instrument's early period (C.P.E. Bach, Vorisek, Mozart), through the riches of the 19th century (Liszt, Kalkbrenner) to the complexities of the 20th (Berg, Gubaidulina). What was the thinking behind such an intrepid traversal of the repertoire? "I considered it a challenge. I just wanted to prove that I could do it."
But he is far from wedded to the idea of such live recordings. "To me, at least, live performance is one world, and recording is a completely different art. I'm much closer to the position of Glenn Gould, who claimed that musical recording doesn't have to be a snapshot of a moment; it has to have its own system behind it, rather like plastic surgery. It's not the music which happens in the concert hall; it's the music as I would like it to appear. Some phrases come from a different perspective, from a different pair of microphones. You can't move around in the hall during the recital. But you can move on the record and sometimes the results are very beautiful, so why not?"
The thought of major one-composer cycles does not excite him, though he has a double CD of Schubert's piano music on the way, from Hyperion, which is also recording Prokofiev piano concertos with him.
At his Barbican recital on Sunday, he will once again avoid the obvious by including Chopin's least known piano sonata, No1 in C minor: "It's not any worse, it's just different." And he will also be presenting Schumann's Etudes Symphoniques in the less familiar first version, before it was heavily edited by the composer's wife, Clara, and Brahms. "There is a huge chunk of music, a whole page, in the first version, which didn't make it into the edited version of 1852. He also showed where he wanted one of the extra variations." In the middle of another variation, the metronome markings were changed too. "It turns out that what Schumann demands is to play almost the whole set in the same tempo. It's an impossible thing to do, but it's an interesting idea."
Nikolai Demidenko plays at the Barbican (0171-638 8891) on Sunday at 4pm
The Makropulos Case, Metropolitan Opera, New York
A famous cartoon in The New Yorker, published 30 years ago when the house in Lincoln Center opened, showed a ghoulish, misshapen figure skulking out of the old Met, hailing a taxi, and slipping into the back door of the new house to take up residence. If there is an evil phantom of the opera at the Met, he was certainly at work in recent weeks, as the company attempted to give a house premiere to Leos Janacek's Makropulos Case.
The first attempt was aborted ten minutes into the performance by the tragic death on stage of the tenor Richard Versalle, who was singing the small part of the law clerk Vitek. Versalle suffered a heart attack and fell from a 20ft ladder on to the stage moments after singing the line, "Too bad you can only live so long."
The second scheduled performance was scratched by the worst blizzard in New York in 50 years. The third try proved to be the proverbial charm. Once past the first scene (which was restaged for Versalle's replacement, Ronald Naldi, without ladder-climbing), there was an almost audible sigh of relief, and the performance got to the end of the piece without mishap.
The haunted mood of the evening was not inappropriate to Janacek's strange, absurdist opera, which has been given the most interesting production at the Met thus far this season. As conceived by producer Elijah Moshinsky, this Makropulos is a star vehicle for Jessye Norman as the ageless (almost) opera singer Emilia Marty.
Norman, it seems, has staked out a claim to the diva roles at the Met; three years ago she appeared in a new production of Ariadne auf Naxos (also produced by Moshinsky) as the Prima Donna. Much slimmed down, she exuded star quality without lapsing into the campy pose-striking that has marred some of her previous appearances here. She sang with liquid, silvery warmth, soaring almost effortlessly through the high tessitura in her final monologue.
The sets, by debutant Anthony Ward (whose credits include The Way of the World, currently at the National Theatre, and Oliver! at the Palladium), kept the eye focused on Norman. When the curtain rose, it revealed a billboard-size image of her face (which, in a thrilling coup de theatre, went up in flames in the finale). In the second act, Norman was seated upon a massive sphinx was Emilia Marty perhaps singing Aida? where she received her suitors one by one.
She was generally well supported by the cast, particularly by Graham Clark as Albert Gregor, who sang with brilliant plangency; Donald McIntyre brought an effective, Wotan-like gravity to the role of Kolenaty. Hakan Hagegard was a bit nondescript as Prus, sounding weak and sketchy in the lower register.
The Met orchestra was conducted by David Robertson, who has led this work at the Welsh National Opera. It was generally a coherent performance, but the strings at moments were uncharacteristically out of tune and a bit untogether; this orchestra, it seems, is never entirely happy except when James Levine is conducting.
Friends of the Tate queueing in London yesterday for the Cezanne exhibition, which opens to the public today.
Richard Cork begins a short series to mark the major Cezanne retrospective at the Tate Gallery
I doubt if 1996 will produce a grander exhibition than the overwhelming Cezanne retrospective which opens today at the Tate, and which I reviewed in The Times when it was in Paris last October. For the first time in decades, the totality of his work is assembled in a loan show which, if anything, enlarges an already legendary reputation still further.
Cezanne was disgracefully under-appreciated during his own lifetime. Well into middle age, he was regarded as a failure even by sympathetic writers. By the end of the 19th century, when he had only six years to live, an increasing number of critics and young artists had begun to recognise his greatness. But only after his death did Cezanne come to be regarded as the man who, more than any other painter from the Impressionist era, mapped out the territory for modern art to explore.
To celebrate the Tate exhibition, The Times is publishing a daily series devoted to exceptional paintings from the show. They are particular favourites of mine, and reveal different aspects of his achievement. But these five paintings cannot tell the whole story about a complex painter whose work underwent a startling change.
As a young man, Cezanne became notorious for the violence of his art. He painted rape and murder, heaping pigment onto canvases where the turbulent brushmarks reinforced the strength of his volcanic feelings. They are often disturbing images, alarmingly uneven in quality. In the finest, though, Cezanne's passionate sense of attack is immensely powerful. And the same strength of feeling fuels his later work, even after he learnt how to curb his imaginative excess and discover, through observation of nature, how to impose classical order on everything he painted.
The war may have been over but the world food shortage clouded the peace. Butter, margarine and cooking fats were reduced from eight to seven ounces, and in May, for the first time, bread was rationed.
THE FOOD SHORTAGE
TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES
Sir,If, as the Food Minister tells us, the present needs of the wheat importing countries are " appalling," and we in Britain have to forgo 250,000 tons of our anticipated wheat imports during the current half-year, with a prospect of further drastic curtailments thereafter, is it true wisdom to trust to spring-sown wheat (accurately described by your Agricultural Correspondent as a "chancy" crop in our climate) to fill the gap?
In spite of the extra labour involved in planting and lifting, should we not rather concentrate this spring on planting a large additional acreage of potatoes? They are universally acknowledged as the chief dietetic equivalent of wheat. Unlike wheat and barley, they are plantable everywhere, yield a heavier per acre output of energy-producing food, and are consumable alike by man and beast.
Yours faithfully,
Lydney, Feb 6. BLEDISLOE.
Sir,Today's announcement by the Minister of Food shows clearly that the need to grow the largest possible acreage of wheat in this country is as great as ever. Three steps are necessary, and there is no time to be lost if spring wheat is to make up for at least part of the deficiency. (1) The immediate reinstatement of the acreage payment for wheat to £4 (now reduced to £2). (2) Absolute priority for the threshing and delivery of seed wheat varieties suitable for spring planting. (3) A reasoned appeal to farmers to grow as large an acreage of spring wheat as they can.
When the acreage payment for wheat was reduced, a wheat glut in the world markets was expected. The statisticians were wrong, and unless the Government moves speedily wheat that could and should be grown in England will never be planted.
I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
W. FREUND.
Wilcote House, Charlbury, Oxon., Feb. 5.
CALL FOR SACRIFICES
FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT
MELBOURNE, Feb 7.
Almost every Australian newspaper makes the British food crisis the subject of its chief editorial to-day, urging Australians to limit their demands on their abundance in order to divert as much as possible to those whose needs are infinitely greater.
This, it is suggested, can be done by a number of measuresby tightening the administration of rationing, especially of meat, of which at least as much should be sent to the United Kingdom as was being supplied to the American forces; by supplementing shipments of butter with useful supplies of cooking fats, which are daily wasted in Australia; by using substitute stock feeds and economizing in bread consumption to provide more wheat for export; and by reducing the existing rations of meat, sugar and butter.
Typical of the comments from public men is that of the Premier of Victoria, Mr. John Cain, who declared that the news that the lion-hearted people of the United Kingdom were to have their rations further curtailed was too fearful to contemplate, and he promised the Victorian Government would do everything it could to help them.
Substantial quantities of food, including meat, butter, cheese, and eggs were stored in Australia at the end of 1945 for shipment to the United Kingdom, and it is believed that there is no reason why this food should not be exported immediately provided that shipping is available.
Ben Hur, Warehouse, Croydon
BEN HUR? Well, Ben Her actually. In Rob Ballard's spoof of the big-screen epic about the Roman Empire, Charlton Hestonesque heroics have not only been cut down to size, they have changed sex.
Ballard's Performance Theatre Company has a history of staging flagrantly silly low-budget revisions of the adventures of great figures: anyone from The Three Musketeers to Marx (where Groucho arrived to run the Communist Revolution).
This time round Ben Hur, the Judaean who will not buckle under Roman rule, is 5ft 2in and patently female. Charlotte Palmer's Hur is still apparently butch. She floors Messala, an erstwhile buddy but now the province's chauvinistic governor, with a bit of judo. Still, the false beard is fooling no one.
Unfortunately Palmer, while being prettily petite, has small talent as an actress. Her Hur's show of machismo comes down to a vague swagger and a lot of nodding. When, no longer incognito, she falls for Caesar, her portrayal of a sexy lover is no less feeble. Finally, bereaved and bitter, challenging the evil Messala to the mighty chariot race, Palmer narrows her eyes to show us she is determined.
Now, a big part of the joke in a Performance Theatre Company show is its awfulness. The gags rise to "Rome is where the art is" and the like. Centurions' helmets are colanders crested with kitchen sponges. Playing a thousand parts, costume-swapping and adlibbing, the four-strong cast (including the eternally chirpy Ballard) is a shambles.
The chaos is occasionally entertaining. The chariot race, with pantomime horses under strobe lighting, is splendidly silly. However, this script is scrappy and the performers lack comic timing. Were this a Christmas show, it might seem jolly. After January, it looked merely juvenile.
Edward Goodman, author, died on February 3 aged 81. He was born on January 13, 1915.
EDWARD GOODMAN liked to describe himself as an author, but his contribution to liberal thought both with a capital "L" and a small one was much greater than that of the three books he wrote. As the founder of the Acton Society and a trustee of the Joseph Rowntree Social Service Trust he helped to put into practice his passionately held beliefs in the principles of individual freedom, toleration and decentralisation.
Edward Frederick Weston Goodman was the son of a successful estate agent who sent him to Mill Hill, then a strongly Nonconformist public school. It was here that he first developed his interest in politics and the League of Nations. However, Goodman was dissuaded from pursuing his education further by his father who, suffering from ill-health, wanted help with the family business.
After a brief rebellion against parental wishes, when, on the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Goodman travelled to Spain his father only discovered this when he saw his son's byline in a newspaper he reluctantly went into estate agency and qualified as a surveyor. This qualification, which in later life used rather to embarrass him, nonetheless enabled him not only to earn a comfortable living but was also responsible for him meeting Seebohm Rowntree, the man who was to transform his life.
Rowntree, the scion of the York chocolate manufacturer and dedicated philanthropist, spotted Goodman as a likely Liberal who could help his trust's property portfolio. In 1946 Goodman became a Rowntree trustee, and two years later he founded the Acton Society. This was intended to be a liberal version of the Fabians a social research foundation which would propagate the ideas of Lord Acton, the 19th-century Cambridge historian, and attempt to reconcile Liberal, Marxist and Christian thinking particularly in Government and industry.
The society's first work was to study the newly-formed National Health Service and it produced a series of pamphlets on the composition of the boards and hospitals. It financed pioneering work on issues like local government and housing and in 1953 Goodman published his first book Forms of Public Control and Ownership.
In the 1950s Goodman, regretting his lack of university education, enrolled at the London School of Economics where he came under the influence of Karl Popper and Lionel Robbins. He never took a degree, something which always saddened him, but was instead urged by Robbins to concentrate on his writing. In 1969 he published The Impact of Size, a book which developed many of the ideas popularised in E.F.Schumacher's Small is Beautiful, though where Schumacher had tended to focus on appropriate technologies, Goodman concentrated rather more on the types of organisational structure which would secure more meaningful work for individuals and a thriving industrial and commercial culture.
In the mid-1960s Goodman moved his home to Italy, a country whose regional government, civic pride, industrial structure and banking system he greatly admired. He was particularly interested in the role of the small firm in the Italian "economic miracle". But he remained an active Rowntree trustee and, when the trust set up 9 Poland Street as a powerhouse for pressure group politics, he kept an office there. At this stage he also played a key role in setting up a study of toleration at York University.
Meanwhile, from his base in Italy, Goodman continued to write often scribbling his ideas down on the back of envelopes in the middle of the night for a succession of research assistants to transcribe in the morning. In 1975 he published A Study of Liberty and Revolution, a book which attempted to resolve the conflict of modern industrial society with human values, and put forward a theory of liberty, first as a social philosophy, then as a force for social change.
Despite a somewhat unorthodox personal life, Goodman remained a committed Anglican, struggling in Florence to go to church every Sunday, before his eventual return to Britain when symptoms of Parkinson's disease first began to show. Goodman also remained a committed Liberal and was amused just before his death by the suggestion that he had pioneered the concepts of stake-holding and communitarianism which Tony Blair has recently made so fashionable.
Edward Goodman was married and divorced twice. He is survived by a son and two daughters, and by his partner Gill Carter, with whom he lived for 18 years.
Sam Green, CBE, campaigner for the disabled, industrialist and inventor, died on January 21 aged 88. He was born on February 6, 1907.
SAM GREEN reorganised Remploy, the leading employers of the disabled, placed it on an industrial footing and expanded about a dozen workshops to 90 factories. He used his industrial experience and connections to persuade industry to provide work for disabled people. Green performed similar services as chairman of the Industrial Advisers to the Blind and for the Royal British Legion.
He was an inventor who later became chairman of the Institute of Patentees and Inventors (IPI) and vice-president of the International Inventors Federation. A man of many interests, a keen walker and cyclist, Green was also involved in founding the British Youth Hostel Movement.
Sam Green was born in the cotton town of Oldham, Lancashire, and started work at the age of 13 at Platt Bros, textile manufacturers. Having qualified both as an electrical and mechanical engineer, he became a draughtsman. In 1936 he invented the box motion of the four-colour automatic loom for the Northrop Loom Company.
As chief engineer of Betts & Co, London, in 1939 he put their factories on a war footing. In 1945 he joined the International Commercial Finance Corporation as an industrial adviser.
In 1952 Sir Walter Monckton, as Minister of Labour, appointed him managing director of Remploy. He enlarged the company, introduced machinery to make work easier for the disabled and established an incentive scheme.
In 1961 he was appointed CBE for his services to the disabled. Four years later he became chairman of the Industrial Advisers to the Blind, and the Royal British Legion approached him to organise its Poppy Factory and Legion Industries in a similar manner to the work he had done at Remploy.
Green was a director and chairman of private and public companies. He never wished to retire and continued working in his electrical business until last October. He maintained his interest in the disabled and inventions. He is survived by his wife and daughter.
Confusions, Richmond
THE best of these five playlets, written by Alan Ayckbourn in 1974, is the one in which a long-suffering waiter (nicely played by Christopher Timothy) serves dinner to two discontentedly married couples and catches their rancorous conversation only when in their vicinity. When he moves out of earshot, the actors mouth their lines silently. On his return he, and we, pick up the next fragments of the worsening rows, during which we realise that the husband at table A has just returned from a holiday with the young wife at table B.
The play is no more than this, but some typical restaurant behaviour is neatly caught in Gareth Tudor Price's production and Vincent Brimble shows that a menu can be funny when read with the vocal equivalent of a pair of tongs being used to remove something the cat has left on the rug.
The plays were written for a cast of three men and two women and links connect some of the plays, though this is unimportant. The weakest of the group is set in a northern hotel, where a sales rep (Timothy again) vainly tries to persuade a girl to come to his room. I suppose the way the man denies his intentions in one sentence and lets them slip out the next is neat, but the piece lacks surprise.
The scene-changes of Colin Winslow's sets are modestly ingenious, particularly the one where the marquee of a washed-out garden fete is carried aloft and leaves a municipal park in its place. Modestly ingenious just about describes the whole show: inoffensive, an artful theatrical device per play (except in the hotel) but nothing special.
In the opening play, for instance, the sales rep's abandoned wife (Joanna Myers, good in a wide range of roles) is so absorbed in keeping her unseen children in order that she treats her neighbours as five-year-olds too. At the fete, to be opened by the civil but unbending councillor (Rula Lenska), the sound system starts working just as the gawky schoolteacher tells the pub-owner he has made her pregnant. Her confession is publicly announced across four acres of fields. And yet her scoutmaster fiance (Graham Seed) is a cliche character, and so is the vicar, hopping and skipping. This is Ayckbourn on autopilot.
Agnes Latham, Reader in English at Bedford College, London, 1958-75, died in Pickering, North Yorkshire, on January 13 aged 90. She was born on January 31, 1905.
A SCHOLARLY woman born into an age which did not make life particularly easy for talents like hers, Agnes Latham will be best remembered as the editor of what is still the standard edition of the poems of Sir Walter Ralegh. Undertaken with no more than a year's research grant from the corporation of Wakefield (to whom eternal credit is due for their farsightedness), her edition of The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh was published in 1929 and later reprinted. Although some of the poems she included have since been attributed to other authors, she was canny enough to disarm potential critics by noting her own reservations.
As remarkable as the edition itself from one so young as she then was is her introduction to the volume. It demonstrates a scholarly but also instinctive insight into the fiery spirit of Ralegh and his age, and of the vagaries of life in the often dangerous royal circle. As she noted, the seaman, poet and chronicler "is yet a lonely and enigmatic figure. Of all those curious dead-and-gone folk, who hide we know not what of human passion and desire behind the scant memorials and alien manners of the sixteenth century, he is the most baffling... He planned skiey palaces and mapped new worlds; and his contemporaries, of less vaulting mind, could make nothing of them. He was not a man of achievement but a man of promise, a quickening spirit. His world is, and was, the world of the creative imagination."
Agnes Latham was for thirty years after the war a much respected teacher in the University of London. She also devoted years to an edition of Ralegh's letters which is being prepared for publication.
Agnes Mary Christabel Latham was one of three sisters, descended on their mother's side from the Booths, well known in Yorkshire as organ-builders. From Wakefield Girls High School she won an entrance scholarship to Oxford and read English language and literature at Somerville, graduating with a first-class degree in 1926. She almost immediately began work on her celebrated edition of Ralegh's poems. Notwithstanding this feat, like so many outstanding women scholars of her generation, she found the university teaching profession closed to her, virtually until after the Second World War and an appointment to the staff of Bedford College, London, in 1939 had to be held over until 1946.
Meanwhile she taught in schools, which she probably found somewhat irksome although her pupils were undoubtedly very well instructed, and those able to respond amazingly well-informed. In the 1930s, however, she had already begun work on an edition of Ralegh's letters, to replace and augment that of Edward Edwards published as long ago as 1868.
After the war, first as a lecturer and, from 1958, as Reader in English Literature at Bedford College, she continued, with the stimulus of university teaching and the accessibility of her main sources at the Public Record Office, the British Library and, most important of all, the Cecil papers at Hatfield House, to transcribe the letters in the elegant and legible hand which delighted those who corresponded with her to the end of her life.
In the 1970s she was invited to join a team led by Professor Pierre Lefranc of Laval University, Quebec, which was to prepare for publication, with support from the Canada Council, the whole of Ralegh's works. This brought her into touch with other North American Ralegh specialists such as Ernest Strathmann of California, and David Beers Quinn and the late Alison Quinn of the University of Liverpool. These were contacts she much enjoyed. They also provided her with the additional resources which enabled her to add substantially to her collection of letters many of them never before printed from repositories all over the northern hemisphere.
The demise of the Canadian project in 1975 left her free to complete her edition independently, which she aimed to do in retirement in her beloved Yorkshire. But with advancing years and beyond the easy reach of libraries she found the last lap beyond her. To her great joy, the completion and publication of her meticulously-edited texts are being undertaken at the University of Exeter.
Ralegh was not her only concern. In fact, progress on the letters was held up while she prepared her text of As You Like It for the Arden Shakespeare series, published in 1975. This won her many new admirers and friends.
Agnes Latham must have appeared to many as reserved and to others as somewhat formidable. But to those who came to know her well she was delightful company, kind, generous, witty and a keen observer of the world from which she contrived to remain wonderfully detached. Her review of yet another biography of Sir Walter Ralegh began, "It's that man again".
She was a writer of great elegance with a prose style that became sparer yet even more pregnant as the years went by. Although a scholar's scholar she was also a natural literary journalist who communicated her meaning in short, pithy sentences. Characteristic of her powers of wry observation was a short essay on Ben Jonson which she contributed to The Times in 1963, and which concluded: "In Jonson a love of literature amounted to a passion. If he liked a poem he had it by heart and repeated it aloud at the least provocation. He tended to associate poetry with getting slightly drunk. It offered an experience at once real, immediate and exhilarating, a shared pleasure and not one to be pursued in drawing rooms."
Agnes Latham continued to the very end to attend and to chair WEA classes in Pickering, and in spite of increasing frailty she was an indefatigable partaker in excursions into the North Yorkshire countryside.
She never married.
Sir Neil Lawson, Judge of the High Court of Justice, 1971-83, died in London on January 26 aged 87. He was born on April 8, 1908.
NEIL LAWSON believed in, and served, the rule of law. He was a vigorous and committed socialist in his personal life; in his professional role, as a junior and as a silk, he was a vital and ubiquitous advocate who was in demand from every sector of national and political life. His practice was enormous and his appetite for work commensurate with it.
Always in chambers before 7am, with the window wide open in mid-winter and his door ajar, he would boast to the next arrival of the low cost of his "workman's ticket" (a ticket then available at cheap rate only to those who travelled to work very early) all the time dispatching consultations at 20-minute intervals until the moment came, just before 10.30am, for him to leave for court in a blizzard of energy.
His range of clients was wide: ranging from Marlene Dietrich to the Electricians' Union (in the "ballot rigging" case) and from murderers of policemen to commercial institutions. In the eastern world he made and retained a giant's reputation as adviser to the Sultan of Brunei, as a result of which the title of "Dato" was bestowed upon him on three separate occasions. With the Sultan's team in 1959 he undertook long and tough negotiations with the British Government, which resulted in the transferring to the Sultan of full control over the internal affairs of Brunei. Previously, he had been constitutional adviser to eight rulers of the Malay States before their country acquired its independence as Malaysia (from which Brunei wisely kept out) in 1957. Thereafter he helped to draft several contemporary constitutions, including those of Ghana, Uganda and Nigeria.
He was a prominent left-winger of the 1930s. He conducted an inquiry into the Reichstag fire of 1933, which was credited with forcing the Nazis to release Georgi Dimitrov and his Bulgarian colleagues before its conclusion. (It was a feat which, Lawson liked to recall, was acknowledged by his being granted the right to travel free on the tramcars of Sofia for life.) He was a founder member of the National Council for Civil Liberties and, during the war, joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve.
Once the war was over, he returned to practise at the Bar, taking silk in 1955. After ten years as a leader he was an obvious choice as Sir Leslie Scarman's deputy on the founding of the Law Commission, which he joined in 1965 and worked at tirelessly until his appointment to the High Court Bench in 1971. He was made an honorary fellow of the London School of Economics in 1974, partly in recognition of this work. After Scarman left the Law Commission, Lawson became its chairman and genuinely enjoyed the process of law reform, although by no means always the committee system through which he had to operate. It was a time when governments acted on Law Commission proposals with more alacrity than later tended to be the case. Many effective reforms were made and several parliamentary Bills successfully enacted.
The High Court Bench proved to be scarcely less eventful. Lawson's independence of spirit led him to criticise injustice wherever he saw it. This caused him on occasions to remark unfavourably on the strict rules of precedent under which puisne judges have to operate when dealing with decisions of the higher courts. But the same lack of respect for rank ensured a fair, if rapid, hearing for all comers to his court. There were no preconceptions there, except possibly for a sneaking affection for the underdog.
When he retired his output of work, if anything, increased. Just as, when at the Bar (before legal aid) he was always willing in a proper case to act for nothing, and was in private life a generous man, so after his time on the Bench he declined private work and continued in public service for several years sitting as a Judge in Chambers in "Room 98" at the Royal Courts of Justice.
This was no Orwellian room of horrors (save perhaps for an underprepared advocate) but a place where he was able to indulge his intellectual speed and voracity for work. It was a period he later remembered as his happiest time as a Judge.
He is survived by his wife Gwen, a son and a daughter.
Lee Evans, Lyric
Lee Evans begins his one-man show by strutting down the brightly lit stairs traditional on such occasions only to find that the landing at the bottom of the first flight is cardboard. Climbing up and out, he gets trapped, first behind a falling scrim, then behind the theatre curtain. No sooner has he fought his way out than the front-of-stage mikes keep falling and rising just as he is rising and falling, until he ends up on the floor, his head beneath one and his legs around the other.
The message, as he puts it at the close, is that he is "a fool, a flop, a failure", and the implicit promise is that he will mess up his Shaftesbury Avenue debut. In neither respect does he wholly disappoint us. Evans has his funny moments all right, but I found that only sporadically did he unlock my sense of humour and open up the bit that emits laughter. Actually, nothing afterwards amused me as much as an opening sequence that must have lasted all of four minutes.
What is he like? Imagine that the young Norman Wisdom, whom he uncannily resembles, has fallen in with a rough crowd in Dagenham or Basildon. A natural nerd, he ingratiates himself with his new friends by mugging, using the f-word a lot and telling jokes that jink and scramble along in an awful rush, as if he is afraid someone will get bored and hit him. Also, he seldom ventures far from Essex man's world: service stations, supermarkets, burger joints, pubs, dole centres with chairs screwed to the floor, so you can't throw them at the sadistically grinning officials.
Some of his gags are undeniably promising. I liked the one about the non-alcoholic lager-louts going out to break up fights and clean vomit from Chinese takeaways. Ditto the plea for bronze swimming certificates for the plucky sperm who don't quite make it to the egg, and the suggestion that you can avoid dropping your bread butter-side-up either by dropping it before you put on the butter or buttering the floor first.
But again and again a nice, surreal idea tapers away before he has extracted the most from it. Such generosity is, I suppose, better than endlessly squeezing a joke that tapers in the first place. Unfortunately, Evans does that, too. The episode in which he spins plates on poles with the help of a drag queen in a bathing suit is not pretend-incoherent, like some of his stuff, but authentically incomprehensible and bad.
Nevertheless. As he might say, maybe with a goofy gurgle of shrill, self-mocking laughter, I don't want to, you know, sort of, well, effing badmouth him. Apart from anything else, he is a good mimic and an excellent mime. With a bend of the head, a twist of the body, a clatter of oddly angled legs, he can become a butterfly, an OAP on skis, a man trying to look cool while walking on a pebbly beach, a wobbly diner in search of a wobbly table to eat at. Some members of the first-night audience clearly found him hilarious. One day, I suspect that I may too.
Dalya Alberge talks to Ted Danson; environmental agitator, paparazzi hater and sunny star of Loch Ness.
The massive, unlit cigar that the actor Ted Danson was holding up was a misleading guide to his character. A cigar of that calibre, which everyone associates with caricatures of Hollywood producers, suggested a man who takes himself over-seriously. Far from it.
Danson finds so much of life tragic that he tries to laugh it up "being goofy", as he puts it. Only the environment, for which he campaigns vigorously, is beyond a laughing matter for him. He exudes a confidence that thrives on charm rather than arrogance. Like many Americans, he can break down barriers within minutes and make you feel that you have known him for years.
His confidence was not surprising this week: as he sat in a London hotel, the world's press was queueing to talk to him about himself and his role in the new film, Loch Ness. Danson, who says he is inspired by the comic genius of Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers, made his fame and fortune through Cheers, the television comedy that ran for 11 years, and for which he was rumoured to be paid £200,000 an episode.
Now he is appearing in the lead roles in two productions at the same time. Besides playing a scientist in Loch Ness, a gentle movie with a strong environmental message, he will be the one bound by Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels, a series due to be screened by Channel 4 in the spring. The series has already been a huge hit in America. The broadcast, last weekend, of the £13 million production, with its state-of-the-art special effects and a line-up that reads like an A-Z of star actors, was watched by an astounding 50 million people. Variety enthused that there was "no weak link in the production", and Newsweek applauded the stars as "the film's special effects".
Danson says that getting away from Sam Malone, the womanising bartender of Cheers, was not easy. His character was so believable that he seemed interchangeable with the off-screen personality. Danson admits to having been surprised by the extent to which he was subsequently typecast, but jokes about audiences watching Gulliver's Travels and expecting to see "babes in Brobdingnag" the land where giants are as tall as steeples. (I, too, found myself watching Loch Ness expecting him to serve a drink or two in the scenes set in a bar.)
The gossip columns have played their part in maintaining his playboy image. Danson describes the frustration of being hounded by the paparazzi, of how they can take a picture of someone crinkling up their face to sneeze and then write a headline that suggests a completely different scenario. The latest technique in America, he says, is to entice celebrities into reacting, so creating a story. "I'm as peaceful as you can find, but I fantasise about ways of getting back at them." At the Loch Ness premiere in New York, which he attended with his wife and co-star, Mary Steenburgen, the cameramen enticed him to "kiss her" and "give us something worthwhile".
It was Cheers which enabled Danson to co-found American Oceans Company, through which he lobbies politicians and corporations on environmental issues. Initially, eight years ago, he funded it himself. He recalls how he wanted to use responsibly the "silly amounts" of money that Cheers was paying him. He says it was "enough to cause concern, a little scary" to have so much money. Today, he stages fundraising events, appealing to the same corporations that "we used to beat up on".
Although Loch Ness has an environmental message, Danson's imagination was inspired by "the power of myth" within its script, the romance of believing in the monster's existence.
"We must all have something hopeful in life," he said. "We must all have something bigger than ourselves to believe in: the possibility that there is something magical beyond the everyday. I believe in anything and everything. I have no fear of being conned, even if proved wrong, as long as I have enjoyed the ride".
They may read like cute lines from a Hollywood script, but somehow Danson can get away with saying them.
Every week, young film fans discuss some of the new releases. The first panel comes from Scotland ...
CLOCKERS
Louisa Pollock, 18: Quite powerful, very realistic, very well acted in a documentary style. But it was overlong and I didn't care what happened.
Alan Muir, 21: I disagree. It was really punchy, it came right at you. It tried to cut through all the gangster stuff and show you what it is really like to live in the New York projects, where people deal drugs as a way of life and people are killed as a by-product of that. It showed reality.
Dawn Grant, 21: Not usually the sort of film I go to see, but I thought it was quite moving. I felt really sorry for Strike, the main character: Mekhi Phifer played him really strong.
Ross Cowan, 21: I don't think it glamorised violence. The characters acted cold because that's how they would act.
DESPERADO
Alan: I tell you, this film will knock your teeth out and bury them in the garden. It's bullet-ripping, heart-thumping, explosive, it's just amazing. Banderas is cool, mean, moody, magnificent.
Dawn: I can sum it up in one word: garbage.
Ross: Desperado takes black humour and shoots you in the face with it. It is unrealistic, but that's why I enjoyed it.
Louisa: It was gratuitously violent. There was blood everywhere, it was completely unbelievable and I loved it. It was stylish, it was cool, quite like Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction but much funnier. Banderas was brilliant; he smouldered his way through with big sexy looks.
JOHNNY MNEMONIC
Dawn: It took me a long while to get into it, because the acting is so hammy. Keanu Reeves is a good actor as long as he keeps his mouth shut.
Ross: It started off like Star Wars and I thought it was going to be really good. But Keanu's opening lines are dreadful, and from then it went steadily downhill.
Louisa: I liked it. It was spectacular; the special effects were in your face. Fair enough, Keanu is wooden when he has to talk, but when he's running around he's great to look at.
Alan: The guy's so wooden he could be sold as a cabinet. And the effects were rubbish: all the old Blade Runner stuff.
In association with Moviewatch, produced by Chapter One for Channel 4
Lord Cameron, KT, 96; Professor Averil Cameron, Warden, Keble College, Oxford, 56; Miss Rachel Cusk, author, 29; Sir David Elliott, civil servant, 66; Mr Osian Ellis, harpist, 68; Marshal of the RAF Sir John Grandy, 83; Mr Harman Grisewood, former chief assistant to the director-general, BBC, 90; Admiral of the Fleet Lord Hill-Norton, 81; Lady Howe of Aberavon, chairman, Broadcasting Standards Council, 64;
Lord Jakobovits, 75; Mrs Diana Ladas, former Headmistress, Heathfield School, 83; Professor Ann Lambton, Emeritus Professor of Persian, London University, 84; Mr Murray Lawrence, former chairman, Lloyd's, 61; Mr Jack Lemmon, actor, 71; Mr Roger Lloyd Pack, actor, 52; Miss Morag Macdonald, former company secretary, Post Office, 49; Sir Francis McWilliams, former Lord Mayor of London, 70; Sir Kenneth Maddocks, former governor, Fiji, 89; Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, 87; Mr Alexander P. Papamarkou, international financier, 66; Dr June Paterson-Brown, former chief commissioner, Girl Guides Association, 64; Lord Rayne, 78; Dame Laurie Salas, UN worker, 74; Sir Richard Southern, former President, St John's College, Oxford, 84; Mr G.J. Strowger, former managing director, Thorn Electrical Industries, 80; Mr Richard Tracey, MP, 53; the Rev Dr John Tudor, former superintendent minister, Westminster Central Hall, 66; Mr John Williams, composer of film scores, 64.
Mr Reggie Norton to be chairman of Anti-Slavery International in succession to Mr Michael Harris.
BIRTHS: Robert Burton, scholar, Lindley, Leicestershire, 1577; Jean Andre Deluc, geologist, Geneva, 1727; John Ruskin, writer, artist and social reformer, London, 1819; William Sherman, Union general in American Civil War, Lancaster, Ohio, 1820; Henry Walter Bates, naturalist and explorer, Leicester, 1825; Jules Verne, novelist, Nantes, 1828; Dmitri Mendeleyev, chemist, Tobolsk, Russia, 1834; Martin Buber, philosopher, Vienna, 1878; Dame Edith Evans, actress, London, 1888; King Vidor, film director, Galveston, Texas, 1894; James Dean, actor, Marian, Indiana, 1931.
DEATHS: Mary Queen of Scots, executed at Fotheringay Castle, Northamptonshire, 1587; Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia 1682-1725, St Petersburg, 1725; Aaron Hall, poet and dramatist, London, 1750; Robert Southwell Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo, Viceroy of India 1869-72, assassinated at Port Blair, Andaman Islands, 1872; Berthold Auerbach, novelist, Cannes, France, 1882; R.M. Ballantyne, novelist, Rome, 1894; Prince Peter Kropotkin, geographer and anarchist, Dmitrov, Russia, 1921; William Bateson, biologist and geneticist, Merton, Surrey, 1926; Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, architect, London, 1960.
Rioting and looting followed a peaceful demonstration of the unemployed in Trafalgar Square, London, 1886.
Kenneth Robinson, health minister, announced that cigarette advertising was to be banned from British television, 1965.
Fourteen British mercenaries were executed by firing squad in Angola, 1976.
Shergar, the Aga Khan's Derby winner, was kidnapped from a stable in Co Kildare and a £2 million ransom was demanded, 1983.
Geoff Brown hails the unlikely success of an inexperienced director and an old-fashioned children's story.
A Little Princess really has no right to be so good. The director, Alfonso Cuaron, is a Mexican whose only previous cinema movie was Love in the Time of Hysteria, a sex comedy with an Aids background. Scouring the cast list for stars, you find Eleanor Bron plus a heap of nobodies. The story it tells, updated from Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel, was good enough for Mary Pickford in 1917 and Shirley Temple in 1939; but this is 1996, and we don't take to spoilt, self-assured little girls with fancy white coats and frilly hats. Shouldn't this film make the stomach heave?
No. A miracle has occurred and a minor masterpiece is born, right from the moment when Captain Crewe tells his young daughter Sara that she "always will be my little princess" and the two dance on ship deck beneath twinkling lights. Burnett set her story in Victorian London, but here it is 1914, and Sara is en route from a luxurious life in India to a boarding school in New York, where she seems like someone from another planet. As father leaves for the First World War, headmistress Miss Minchin (Eleanor Bron) remarks what a pleasure it will be to take charge of so charming a girl.
But behind Minchin's smile lies a battle-axe who bans all make-believe after Sara disrupts the school's dull calm by spinning stories of Indian myth. Then, when news suggests Captain Crewe is no more (along with his money), the prize pupil is stripped of all splendour to join the drudge Becky, a black girl, in her dingy quarters in a Gothic tower. Minchin reckons, however, without the power of the imagination; and the same power that sustains Sara keeps the film glowing with wit and splendour.
Displaying uncommon mastery of Hollywood resources, Cuaron weaves a path through three different worlds, conjured up on the studio sound stages and a backlot street exterior. The tales Sara tells from the legend of Ramayana come in eye-popping oranges, yellows and creamy whites. The school she spins them in is a menacing dark green. Then, with one snip of the editor's scissors, we squat in the trenches of the First World War, smoke looming, planes diving. Every visual mood is exaggerated, fit for a picture book; yet the artifice is never stifling.
The performances are pitched with equal care. Sara could easily appear an insufferable darling, but Liesel Matthews never slips into saccharine smiles. Bron's Minchin is no pantomime ogre, but a genuinely malevolent figure born of spite and repression, and Liam Cunningham lends gravity to the stock figure of the noble father fighting the Hun.
Richard LaGravenese and Elizabeth Chandler's script pays its dues to political correctness, with glancing treatments of oppression through sex and colour, but they never distort Burnett's plot. The only flaw lies with the composer Patrick Doyle: a film so satisfying and replete with magic deserves something better than his banal score.
With Hollywood's other offerings we plunge back into the routine. Gunshots. Blood. Dead bodies. Clockers thrusts them in our faces in an opening collage of crime photographs from the New York sidewalks. Having begun his movie in hob-nailed boots, Spike Lee stomps for two more hours as Brooklyn kids get sucked into the spiral of drugs and crime while Harvey Keitel's homicide cop breathes down their necks.
"You are selling your own people death!"; "You ain't nothing but a bunch of death-dealing scum!": every 15 minutes or so mothers and cops turn on their siren wail. One scene collides with the next like cars crashing. Behind the camera, Lee plays rough-textured images against smooth, scatters video game footage: anything to jolt our arm. Lee's social commitment may be exemplary, but his passion is no excuse for bad, ostentatious film-making.
The pity is that Clockers could have been different. It stems from a fat novel by Richard Price about life in the housing projects and the low-grade dealers who work round the clock. Martin Scorsese was originally to direct; in the event Casino called, although he stayed to produce. Even with Lee's film you can glimpse something better lurking inside. You note how the cops handle a corpse with the finesse of a butcher manhandling a chicken. You feel the peer pressure among the kids, for whom crack seems the gateway to success. But then Lee mounts his soapbox; the film thunders on, then limps to a weak conclusion.
There is even more violence in Desperado: after one bar-room apocalypse, the blood needs mopping from the floor. This film is Robert Rodriguez's reward for making a hit of his shoestring lark El Mariachi: he gets to play with Columbia's millions and bags a fast-rising star, Antonio Banderas, for his lead.
The material is much the same. The Mariachi character, a balladeer with a guitar case full of guns, tangles with drug barons and a lady of dubious loyalties. At first, Banderas's hair is swept back, Latin charm in full view. Then he becomes an unkempt, scowling demon, shooting ostensibly for revenge, although we never feel his moral superiority. People are killed for the sake of it (one corpse is Quentin Tarantino's); death is worth only a joke.
Rodriguez's black humour and cheeky approach to low-budget film-making made El Mariachi a beguiling affair. The capering looks much less attractive in plush surroundings which demand a degree of control this young maverick cannot offer. Desperado soon grows repetitive, and trades genuine excitement for a chic bloodbath.
Meanwhile, Keanu Reeves is having a problem. In Johnny Mnemonic, his information courier is carrying 320 gigabytes worth of data in a brain that can only cope with 160. If Johnny does not download soon, he could implode. He is also suffering from memory deprivation. He wants a life or, as Reeves expresses it in a heartfelt cry, "I want room service. I want my shirts laundered."
Laughing at this dreadful film is the audience's means of survival. Everything was geared for fashionable success: a story by William Gibson, the writer who thought up "cyberspace"; direction by Robert Longo, the American conceptual artist; and Reeves, newly popular after Speed. But the hands that saved a runaway bus are ill-suited to saving the planet from Nerve Attenuation Syndrome. For that you want some signs of emotion; you certainly want a better script and a director who gives actors guidance.
Longo, however, appears too wrapped up in technical gadgets to notice human beings. Not so Eric Rohmer, veteran of the French New Wave and 75 this year. Like most of his films, Rendez-vous in Paris flits along on the charms of young people talking, walking, flirting and manoeuvering through the streets and parks of Paris. He does not go in for post-production sheen: in some scenes you can hear the camera's motor whirring. Any artifice is reserved for his script, which presents three tales of love affairs spiked by chance meetings.
Do people really talk in Rohmerese, finding elegant words for all shades of emotions, seeking parallels in park statuary or a Picasso painting? Maybe not, but Rohmer's gift for coaxing natural performances from young actors makes us believe they do. The last segment, a hesitation waltz between a painter, a Swedish visitor and a women encountered at the Picasso museum, is especially crisp and delicious.
There are greater Rohmer films than this featherweight affair; but who else among current directors shows such directness, such sensitivity to people and places, such obliviousness to fashion?
The Loch Ness monster may be a boon to the tourist trade, but it appears to do film-makers no good. In 1934 The Secret of the Loch failed to charm. Now Loch Ness wastes its potential by chasing pretty scenery, acting quaint, and mooning over the personal problems of Ted Danson, the American zoologist sent to nail the myth with a sonar scan (see interview below). Joely Richardson provides romance; John Henderson, from British TV and commercials, directs. It is very dull, but harmless.
Cambridge
Fitzwilliam College
The following have been elected into Fellowships in Class C from October 1:
Stuart James McLelland, BSc (Hull), currently research student at Leeds University, for the purpose of research in geography;
Emma Kathrine Widdis, MPhil (Peterhouse), currently research student at the Department of Slavonic Studies, Cambridge, for the purpose of research in Slavonic Studies.
Ulster
The university is to award Honorary Degrees to the following:
Mr Paul Costelloe, Irish fashion designer (D Litt).
Mr Paddy Devlin, writer, trade unionist and politician (DUniv).
Ms Barbara Hosking, Director of Westcountry Television and radio broadcaster (DUniv).
Dr Alan Howard, authority on obesity and coronary heart disease (DSc).
Mr James McGuigan, for longstanding service to Medical Laboratory Science (MSc).
Dr Ann Reynolds, Chancellor of the City University of New York (DSc).
Dr Brendan Hegarty, Senior Vice-President, Seagate Technology (DSc).
In 1996, the university is signalling its interest in good education at primary, secondary and tertiary levels by awarding Honorary Degrees to the following exemplars in education:
Dr Rajamal Devadas, Chancellor, Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women (DSc); Mr Eric Boyd, Head of Music Services, North-Eastern Education & Library Board (MA); Mrs Denise Ferran, Art and Design Education Officer, Ulster Museum (MFA); Ms Carmel Gallagher, NI Curriculum Council Professional Officer (MEd); Ms Roisin Skeffington, primary school teacher, Belfast (MEd); Dr Nicholas Todd, Head of Mathematics, Banbridge Academy (MSc).
Mr David Francis Healy, of Richmond, Surrey, the American-born actor, who won the Olivier Award for Actor of the Year in a Supporting Role for his performance as Nicely-Nicely Johnson in the National Theatre production of Guys and Dolls, left estate valued at £149,860 net.
Mrs Ann Livermore, of Sandycombe Lodge, St Margarets, Twickenham, west London, who restored Sandycombe Lodge, designed by J.M.W. Turner (who lived there from 1812 to 1826), and wrote studies of the artist's appreciation of music and verse, left estate valued at £160,804 net.
Mrs Joan Cicely Conway, of Turville, Buckinghamshire, left estate valued at £6,149,556 net.
She left £3,000 to the Jewish Board of Guardians for Relief of the Jewish Poor.
Mr Leslie James Wilson, of Somerton, Somerset, managing director of Lulsgate Airport, Bristol, left estate valued at £231,852 net.
Other estates include (net, before tax):
Margaret Katherine Lumsden Boyle, of Matfield, Kent£623,304.
Mrs Betty Browne, of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk£659,205.
Mr Reginald Edward Cave, of Slough, Berkshire£623,277.
SANDRINGHAM, NORFOLK
February 7: By Command of The Queen, the Earl of Courtown (Lord in Waiting) was present at Heathrow Airport, London, this evening upon the Departure of The Duchess of Kent for India and bade farewell to Her Royal Highness on behalf of Her Majesty.
BUCKINGHAM PALACE
February 7: The Prince Edward this evening attended the opening night of "Late Joys" at the Players' Theatre, the Arches, Villiers Street, London WC2, at the start of the theatre's Diamond Jubilee celebrations.
ST JAMES'S PALACE
February 7: The Prince of Wales, Colonel-in-Chief, The 22nd (Cheshire) Regiment, this morning visited the 1st Battalion at Oakington Barracks, Cambridge.
His Royal Highness this afternoon opened the new Peterborough Environment Centre and Eco House, and viewed an exhibition of the work of the Peterborough Environment City Trust at Westgate, Peterborough, and was received by Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire (Mr James Crowden).
KENSINGTON PALACE
February 7: The Duke of Gloucester today visited Hampshire and was received by Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of Hampshire (Mrs Mary Fagan).
His Royal Highness opened the Science Centre at Peter Symonds' College, Owens Road, and afterwards visited Bendicks (Mayfair) Limited at Moorside Road, Winchester.
Major Nicholas Barne was in attendance.
YORK HOUSE
February 7: The Duke of Kent, Patron, British Menswear Guild, this morning visited Aquascutum Limited, Trafalgar Road, Kettering, Northamptonshire, and was met on arrival by Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant for Northamptonshire (Mr John Lowther).
His Royal Highness later visited Ilmor Engineering Limited, Quarry Road, Brixworth, and Foilwraps Flexible Packaging Limited, Moulton Park Industrial Estate, Northampton, Northamptonshire.
Colonel John Stewart was in attendance.
The Duchess of Kent, Patron, UNICEF, this evening departed London Heathrow Airport for New Delhi, India.
Mrs Julian Tomkins was in attendance.
A service of thanksgiving for the life of Canon Frederick Tindall was held yesterday in Salisbury Cathedral. Canon Jeremy Davies, precentor, officiated and Canon Phillip Roberts led the prayers.
Canon John Thurmer and the Rev David Newman read the lessons.
The Right Rev Keith Benzies, Bishop of Antsiranana, gave an address and the Very Rev the Hon Hugh Dickinson, Dean of Salisbury, pronounced the blessing.
Mr David Nickerson
Princess Michael of Kent attended a service of thanksgiving for the life of Mr David George Francois Nickerson, antiques dealer, held yesterday at St Paul's, Knightsbridge. The Rev Christopher Courtauld officiated, assisted by the Ven Derek Hayward. Canon Michael McLean led the prayers.
Mr Mark Nickerson, brother, read the lesson. Mr Jeremy Pilcher read from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran and Sir Timothy Ackroyd read Rupert Brooke's The Fish. Sir John Blofeld gave an address. Among others present were:
Mrs Nickerson (widow), Mrs George Nickerson (mother), Mr and Mrs William Nickerson and Mr and Mrs James Nickerson (sons and daughters-in-law), Mr and Mrs Neville Wakefield (son-in-law and daughter), Mrs Mark Nickerson (sister-in-law), Miss Emma Nickerson, Miss Caroline Nickerson, Mr and Mrs Edward Jewson, Viscount and Viscountess Hood, the Hon Henry and Mrs Hood, the Hon John and Mrs Hood, the Hon James Hood, Lord and Lady Northbourne, Mr and Mrs Carroll MacNamara, Miss F MacNamara, Miss Ellen MacNamara, Mr and Mrs Jeremy Carr, Mrs Timothy Denny.
The Countess of Iveagh, Earl and Countess Ferrers, Judith Countess Bathurst, Ann Countess of Coventry, Patricia Countess Jellicoe, Earl and Countess Kimberley, Earl Sondes, Lady Mark Fitzalan Howard, Viscount and Viscountess Strathallan, Lord Ogilvy, Lord and Lady Clinton, Anne Lady Elton, Lord and Lady Eden of Winton, Lord and Lady Birdwood, Lady Aberdare, Lady Richardson of Duntisbourne, Mr Tim Renton, MP, Lady Mirabel Kelly, Lady Maryel de Wichfield, Lady Mary Colman, Lady Henrietta Bathurst, the Hon Mrs Julia Fortescue, the Hon Mrs Bevan, the Hon Julia Stonor.
The Hon Lady Hastings, the Hon John Allsopp, the Hon Mrs Christopher McLaren, the Hon Raymond Bonham Carter, the Hon Michael and Mrs Spring Rice, the Hon Mrs Myddelton, the Hon Michael and Mrs Vaughan, the Hon Mrs David Bathurst, Sir Francis and Lady Dashwood, Caroline Lady Nuttall, Sir Geoffrey Shakerley, Sir Humphry Wakefield, Sir James Harvie-Watt, Sir John Gooch, Sir Ian and Lady Rankin, Lady Crofton, Lady Gage, Lady Showering, Sir Peter Wakefield, Lady Wakefield, Sir Mark Weinberg, Sir Hugh and Lady Leggatt, Lady Sowray, Lady Warner, Lady Blofeld, Lady Elton, Lady Gage, Mr David and Lady Mary Russell, Mr George and Lady Gillian Kertesz.
Baroness Bentinck, Baroness Bachofen, Comtesse de Robien, Countess Borchgrave, Mr Tim Rathbone, MP, and Mrs Rathbone, Mrs J Pilcher, Ms Jane Joll, Major and Mrs Vere Fane, Mr C Chalcraft, Mr Francis Sitwell, Mr and Mrs Michael Falcon, Major John Perkins, Mr and Mrs Bobby Nicolle, Major T G W Potts, Mr and Mrs John Yorke, Mr Jack Sykes, Mr Michael MacKinlay MacLeod, Mrs M Redfern, Mr and Mrs Andrew Buxton, Miss Nicola Buxton, Mr Desmond McSweeny, Mrs Jane Lloyd Owen, Mrs April Partridge, Mr and Mrs J Watcyn Lewis, Miss Katy Pertwee, Mr and Mrs A Guthrie, Mr Peter Dixon, Lieutenant-Colonel and Mrs George West, Mr and Mrs Timothy Elwes, Mr Duncan Ward, Mr William Clegg, Mrs Andrew Clowes, Mrs Walter Goetz, Mr Richard W Jewson, Mr and Mrs Clive Hardcastle, Mr Peter Roberts.
Dr Oliver Impey, Mrs T Miller-Sterling, Mr Philip Astley-Jones, Mr and Mrs Robert Fox, Mr Anthony Coleridge, Mr Miles Napier, Mrs Dorothy Cory-Wright, Mr A Paul, Mr and Mrs David Lloyd Owen, Mr Miles Huntington-Whiteley, Mr and Mrs Philip Wroughton, Mr Robie Uniacke, Mr Barry Sainsbury, Mrs David Lumsden, Mr Mark Waddington, Mr and Mrs Adrian Bridgewater, Mrs C d'Abo, Mr and Mrs Martin Findlay, Mr and Mrs Tom Craig, Mr Nicholas Norton, Mr Michael Goedhuis, Mrs Fiona Armstrong, Mr and Mrs Henry Blofeld, Mr Frank Berendt, Mr Timothy de Zoete, Mr and Mrs Peter Maitland, Mr Matthew Eckersley, Mr Colin Campbell, Mr and Mrs Jonathan Cavendish.
Mr and Mrs Timothy Hill, Mr Victor Levine, Mr Edward Nelson, Mr and Mrs John Hall, Mr and Mrs Paul Nix, Mr and Mrs Patrick Lawrence, Mr G Howard, Mrs J Elson, Mr and Mrs Michael Parkin, Mr R Titian, Mr Trevor Potts, Mr Michael Inchbald, Mr and Mrs Robin Kern, Mr R Courtenay, Mr Hugo Charlton, Mr Arthur James, Mr L Stopford Sackville, Mrs Mary Stoddart, Mr A Ginsberg, Mr Charles Cator, Major Michael Parker, Mr Edric van Underberg, Mr and Mrs Pierrot Roberti, Mr K Digby Jones, Mr and Mrs J Janson, Mr David Batchelor, Mr and Mrs Hamish Bullough, Mr Richard Came, Mr and Mrs David Cargill, Mr Andrew Ackroyd, Mr Christopher Gibbs, Mr Hugh St Clair, Mrs R St Clair, Mr R Phillips, Mr Didier le Blanc, Mr E Clarke.
Mr Jonathon Pilkington, Ms Catherine Grant Peterkin, Mr Gerald Kenyon, Mr Guy Timpson, Mr and Mrs Hugh Lang, Mr Christopher Vane-Percy, Mr Alistair Waddell, Miss P d'Erlanger, Mrs C Fane, Mr Christopher Hawkins Phillips, Mr and Mrs Anthony Salmon, Miss J Constable-Maxwell, Mrs J Darby, Mr and Mrs John Holmes, Mr Raymond O'Shea, Mr and Mrs David Acland, Mrs Edward Nelson, Mrs G Gough, Mr Martin Lane Fox, Mr Simon Courtauld, Mr Christopher Wood, Mr David Prince, Mr Peter Lucas, Mr Ken Gill, Mr and Mrs Michael Clark, the Rev K and Mrs Chalcraft, Mr J Bamford, Mr and Mrs David McCosh, Captain Francis Burne.
Mr Alan Heber-Percy, Mr Henry Nevill, Mr Ian Cameron, Mr and Mrs Bryan Harris, Mr Christopher McLaren, Mrs Max Harari, Mrs M MacCarthy, Mr Desmond MacCarthy, Mrs P Schroder, Mrs Peter Harris, Mr and Mrs Christopher Clarke, Mrs John Partridge, Mrs Christopher Penn, Mrs J Geddes, Mr and Mrs William Maitland, Mrs Helen Popper, Ms Anne Minoprio, Mr and Mrs Peter Blond, Mr and Mrs Antony Snow, Mr and Mrs Anthony Sykes, Mrs B Frost, Mr R Frost, Mr and Mrs I McAllister, Mr James Lindsay, Mr A Denny, Ms Nancy Mitchell, Mr J May, Mr A Macmillan.
Mr and Mrs G Sorrell, Mr John Macmillan, Mr and Mrs Mark Stratton, Mrs Peter Evans Lombe, Mr John Hill, Mrs Mark Evans, Mr and Mrs Richard Neville-Rolfe, Mr and Mrs Robin Don, Miss C Myddelton, Mr Thomas Heneage, Mr Michael Pick, Mrs John Irwin, Mr Rupert Hastie, Mr and Mrs Mark Burrell, Ms Charlotte Blofeld, Mrs S Wood, Mr and Mrs George Lane.
Mr Rex Cooper (chairman, Mallett's) and Mrs Cooper with Mr L Synge (managing director) and other members of staff; Mr Richard de Pelet (Christie's), Mr Paul Whitfield (Sotheby's), Mrs Elaine Dean (BADA), Mr Anthony Smith (Partridge Fine Arts), Mr John Morton-Morris (Hazlitt Godden & Fox), Mr Anthony Law (Apollo), Mr Richard I Robinson (Crailfern Corporate Consultants), and Mr P MacCarthy O'Hea (TGWU).
Princess Michael of Kent stands by a plaque commemorating her formal opening yesterday of the new Well Woman Centre at the Cromwell Hospital, London.
From Mrs Harriet Lear
Sir, A simple bunch of flowers instead of the often disastrous formal wreath, or even worse, plastic-wrapped bouquet, could be encouraged by a plea for "No bought flowers, please" in death notices.
Yours faithfully,
HARRIET LEAR,
Knowlands Farm, Barcombe,
Nr Lewes, East Sussex.
From Mrs M. J. Miles
Sir, Perhaps because it is now so easy to order flowers over the phone this has increasingly become the custom, particularly when a tragedy occurs that touches the heart of the nation. Such tributes are, however, almost invariably left in their florists' wrappings, so that soggy paper and steamed-up plastic obscure the beauty of the blooms.
The overall effect is often depressing rather than uplifting. Perhaps Mr Brian North Lee's excellent suggestion (letter, February 1) that single flowers and small posies might be acceptable should be adopted also on more public occasions.
Yours faithfully,
MARGARET MILES,
77 Marlborough Crescent,
Sevenoaks, Kent.
From Mr John Bunting
Sir, Most criminal business is transacted in the magistrates' courts. If Mr Straw really holds such an old-fashioned and patronising view of the working class and the unemployed as his comments seem to suggest, will new Labour, if elected, also take steps to ensure that these supposed undesirables are avoided when selections for the magistracy are made?
Yours truly,
J. BUNTING,
77 Green Lane, Buxton, Derbyshire.
February 7.
From Professor Bernard S. Jackson
Sir, I fully endorse Professor Mike McConville's view ("Putting juries on trial", January 30) that there needs to be serious research into the jury system before new policy is made. I am less persuaded that such paltry evidence as exists justifies his own evaluation.
He refers inter alia to a 1992 shadow jury experiment (conducted in the Liverpool Crown Court) which generated a television programme, Inside the Jury, and suggests that this showed the jury deliberations to be "rational and thoughtful". Not everyone would agree.
At one point, with the jury divided four for conviction against eight for acquittal, one member of the minority observed that his side consisted of "four mature men" while the majority was made up of "four mature ladies together with all the youngsters".
At another point, frustrated at the apparent impasse, the same juror suggested a compromise: there were two charges, so he proposed "an honourable or dishonourable draw" conviction on one charge, acquittal on the other. Rational and thoughtful?
In the Bible, the accuracy of the judicial function was legitimated by faith in divine inspiration: God was said to be "with you when you pass sentence" (II Chronicles xix,6). In the present state of knowledge, our faith in the jury enjoys a similar status.
Yours sincerely,
BERNARD S. JACKSON,
University of Liverpool,
Faculty of Law, Liverpool L69.
From Mr Louis Schaffer
Sir, There may be many good reasons for tightening the rules which allow persons called for jury service to avoid their obligations, but those given by Jack Straw, the Shadow Home Secretary (report, February 7), make depressing reading.
He makes at least three unverifiable assumptions: that the increase in acquittals means that the guilty are getting away with it; that juries are "skewed" towards the working class and unemployed; that such jurors are often unsympathetic to the police (an odd attitude for a Labour politician!).
Is it not naive to suppose that a juror who is annoyed at the cancellation of the family's holiday or worried about the closing of his business will be more inclined to convict?
There may be other reasons for the increase in acquittals between 1986-87 and 1994-95. One is that it is indicative of fewer miscarriages of justice. Following the codes of practice introduced under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, such as the tape-recording of suspects' interviews, which may take place only at police stations, dishonest officers can no longer invent confessions or criminals claim that they have been "verballed" and so would be advised to plead guilty. This was not the case before the Act.
Another reason has been the greater disclosure by the police of unused material which may assist the defence.
If Mr Straw is really concerned at how juries reach their verdicts and not just trying to show that Labour is tough on crime, he should be advocating a change in the law to allow research into how juries arrive at their verdicts.
Yours sincerely,
LOUIS SCHAFFER,
10 King's Bench Walk, Temple, EC4.
February 7.
From Ms Antoinette Sym
Sir, While I applaud the wider coverage given to the various healing systems that are available, I would take issue with your term "alternative". Most practitioners would prefer "complementary", and any genuine practitioner would never advise a patient to ignore their GP or forgo traditional treatment.
Traditional and complementary treatment should be able to work together for the benefit of the patient.
Yours faithfully,
ANTOINETTE SYM
(Spiritual healer),
17 Hungerford Road, N7.
From the Secretary of the General Council and Register of Osteopaths
Sir, Dr Thomas Stuttaford (February 6) cannot tar osteopathy with his broad-brush denigration of "alternative remedies". All professionally regulated osteopaths undergo extensive training in basic medical sciences, followed by appropriate clinical training. This enables them to identify cases which require immediate referral to a general medical practitioner.
The recent report of the Clinical Standards Advisory Group on Low Back Pain recommended that the optimum treatment for acute back pain was early manipulative therapy, including osteopathy. It also stated that
there is no convincing evidence that ...
X-rays are necessary before manipulation and that ... CT and MRA (scans) are unsuitable for use as diagnostic screening tests.
Well over 100 fundholding and some non-fundholding GPs have already contracted with osteopaths to provide treatment for their NHS patients and the number is increasing daily. Osteopaths are also employed in some NHS hospitals and community trusts.
The new General Osteopathic Council, the first members of which were announced last Thursday, will have similar responsibilities to those of the General Medical Council, whose president has unreservedly supported the osteopathy profession.
Yours truly,
DAVID C. WEEKS,
Secretary,
The General Council and
Register of Osteopaths,
56 London Street, Reading, Berkshire.
February 6.
From Dr Nick Argyle
Sir, I am delighted that you drew attention to the benefits provided by "alternative medicine" in your feature and leader yesterday (February 5; also articles, February 6). You are undoubtedly right to emphasise the importance of more well organised scientific studies, but where research has been done we need to ensure that the results are applied in general practice, for the benefit of both doctors and patients.
A study published a month ago in Hypertension, the journal of the American Heart Association, showed the regular practice of transcendental meditation (TM) reduced high blood pressure by about 11 points, without the side-effects of medication.
In all over 150 studies on TM have been published in scientific journals, showing that it helps with a wide range of stress-related disorders; that those who practise it have a significantly reduced need to go to the doctor (87 per cent reduced hospitalisation for heart disease in one study); and even that inflation-adjusted health-care costs can be reduced by between 5 and 7 per cent annually over a period of up to seven years (American Journal of Health Promotion, January/February).
The problem is that doctors who are aware of the potential uses of TM and wish to apply it often find it difficult to secure a budget from the local health authority. The Government and Department of Health are rightly keen for there to be more health promotion; they should therefore ensure that GPs are informed about the very significant research results on transcendental meditation.
Yours faithfully,
NICK ARGYLE
(Consultant psychiatrist),
Northwick Park Hospital,
Psychiatric Department,
Watford Road, Harrow, Middlesex.
February 6.
From the Bishop of Maidstone
Sir, In your report on matters to come before the forthcoming meeting of the General Synod ("Worshippers to be asked for 5 per cent of earnings", February 2), your correspondent spoke of "dwindling congregations".
You might be interested to know that congregations in the Archbishop's own diocese of Canterbury "dwindled" upwards last year to the tune of some 400 more worshippers on an average Sunday, and the same upward "dwindling" also took place in several other dioceses that I can name.
I say "several" simply because I have, thus far, only checked with a few.
Yours,
GAVIN MAIDSTONE,
Bishop's House,
Pett Lane,
Charing, Ashford, Kent.
February 2.
From the Director General of Save the Children
Sir, The UN Security Council meets on February 8 to decide whether to keep 7,500 peacekeeping troops in Angola. Their mandate will probably be renewed for a few more months, but the "peace process" they are overseeing is deeply bogged down.
The three key provisions of the Lusaka protocol (which created the present ceasefire between the Government and Unita rebels) have still not been implemented, 14 months after the signing. These are the demobilisation of 60,000 Unita troops; Unita to join a new government of reconciliation; and freedom of movement for people and goods throughout Angola.
In the intensive diplomatic round which must follow an extension of the UN forces' mandate much attention will be given to the first two provisions. Save the Children believes the third is equally vital.
With front lines snaking back and forth across the interior provinces, towns are cut off from their hinterlands, preventing farmers getting food to markets and essential consumer goods like salt, sugar, soap and cooking oil from getting into the countryside. Such simple exchanges could rapidly help people re-establish their livelihoods while waiting for the grant reconstruction plans which are dependent on peace.
Those of us assisting in re-establishing essential services such as primary healthcare have restricted access to populations across the lines; nor can the people come to the services. In a country where one child in five dies before its fifth birthday this is a disaster.
While the other aspects of the process may drag on for several months, freedom of movement in Angola could save many lives now and throughout this year.
Yours faithfully,
MIKE AARONSON,
Director General,
The Save the Children Fund,
17 Grove Lane, SE5.
February 6.
From Vice-Admiral Sir Ian McGeoch
Sir, A convoy (letters, February 7) is a convoy, wherever (as P. G. Wodehouse said of a hellhound) you slice it. And the essence of convoy is escort.
Who, may one ask, is to escort the European Community?
And why, in time of peace, which the Community is intended to ensure, model it on a convoy, which is the most inefficient way of using available shipping, justifiable only in war?
Yours faithfully,
IAN McGEOCH,
Kirk Deighton House,
Kirk Deighton,
Wetherby, West Yorkshire.
February 7.
From the Secretary General of the Royal Yachting Association
Sir, The proposed royal sail training ship ("Is this the new Britannia?" Weekend, February 3) would promote our maritime heritage in a quite outstanding manner. She would project a real presence, in harbour and at sea, in a thoroughly modern yet environmentally sensitive way.
The imaginative concept of Queen's cadets from the Commonwealth as well as Britain would provide young people with an unforgettable experience. The project would be a marvellous symbol of British innovation and character as we reach the end of this millennium. The Head of State, diplomatic, commercial and youth development roles are all embraced by the concept. I very much hope that it proceeds.
Yours sincerely,
ROBIN DUCHESNE,
Secretary General,
Royal Yachting Association,
RYA House,
Romsey Road,
Eastleigh, Hampshire.
February 3.
From Dr Daya Pandita-Gunawardena
Sir, The cricket-loving people of Sri Lanka, almost the whole of the island, eagerly await a change of heart and of mind by the Australian and West Indian cricket authorities. Our recent good performances abroad and the World Cup, which is the greatest sporting event in Sri Lanka, have generated tremendous enthusiasm and interest. I and many millions are crying out for a reinstatement of the full World Cup programme. The games against the Australians and West Indians would be two of the finest first-round matches in the tournament.
The Sri Lankan authorities, acknowledging the anxieties of the visiting cricketing ambassadors, have gone to extraordinary lengths to provide the kind of security usually reserved for visiting heads of state.
Disruption to the programme under these circumstances may well create a dangerous precedent. I sincerely hope that all four matches will be played in Sri Lanka as scheduled.
Yours faithfully,
DAYA PANDITA-GUNAWARDENA
(Sri Lankan Cricket Board
Representative in the UK),
132 Foxley Lane, Purley, Surrey.
From Senator John Faulkner, Minister for the Environment, Sport and Territories, Australia.
Sir, I am writing to convey my anger, and that of the Australian people, at the sentiments expressed in your editorial of February 6 (see also letter, February 7).
To brand the decision of the Australian Cricket Board not to send the Australian team to Colombo for their World Cup match against Sri Lanka as "craven" is totally unjustified and grossly unfair to everyone who has been involved in this difficult decision, most importantly the Australian team members and their families.
The Australian Cricket Board and the players are well aware of the impact of their decision on the World Cup tournament. They have decided only with the greatest reluctance not to play in Colombo in view of the very real and serious security risks posed by the current situation in Sri Lanka. Their decision has the full support and understanding of the Australian Government and people. You will be aware that the West Indies team has independently reached the same decision.
I reject utterly your assertion that the Australian players have "acted neither with courage nor with diplomacy" on the basis that "they have upset the organisation of a complex tournament and handed a propaganda victory to the murderous Tamil rebels ..." They are quite understandably concerned about their safety. The players' concerns are shared by their families and their many supporters. The Australian Cricket Board has quite rightly put the team's welfare ahead of other considerations in reaching the decision not to play in Colombo at this time.
Yours etc,
JOHN FAULKNER,
Minister for the Environment,
Sport and Territories,
Parliament House,
Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia.
February 7.
From the Executive Director of the British Metals Federation
Sir, One can readily sympathise with the predicament of the new Environment Agency's inspectors who, to quote Nick Nuttall's report (February 7), are being offered "clip-on ties, ultrasonic stun-guns and courses in unarmed combat to deal with scrap metal merchants with big dogs". They will be in the front line of the battle to rid the nation of fly-tippers, law-defying dumpers of toxic waste and cowboy operators on the fringes of metals recycling.
However, the report regrettably perpetuates a long-held public misconception that scrap metal is the prerequisite of such people. In fact metals recycling is a thriving multi-billion pound industry in the UK and arguably the most environmentally responsible. In 1995 it transformed more than ten million tonnes of redundant ferrous metals into furnace feed for steelworks and foundries; exports topped four million tonnes. Furthermore, the UK non-ferrous metals recycling industry is worth an estimated £3 billion annually.
If responsible metals recycling businesses about 98 per cent of the industry employ rottweilers, it is solely to deter thefts of their valuable equipment and materials by the miscreant 2 per cent the agency is setting out to eradicate.
As far as the members of this federation are concerned, the sooner the inspectors unholster their stun-guns, the better.
Yours etc,
RICK WILCOX,
Executive Director,
British Metals Federation,
16 High Street, Brampton,
Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.
February 7.
THE problem with financial reporting is that the better it becomes, the more people want to improve it or to expand it further. Except, that is, for anyone on the inside looking out. This week saw the publication of the English ICA's twenty-seventh annual survey of published accounts. As ever, it provides an excellent guide to how US reporting practice has developed over the past year and, as it has done increasingly, it provides a bit of a kick in the right direction towards apparent corporate laggards.
But the starting point has changed. Normally, there is a great deal of quite justified grumbling about the state of financial reporting. This year a different note is struck. Professor Len Skerratt is one of the longstanding editors of the book. He is an understanding but awkward soul, given to worrying away at things he doesn't like. Being professor at Manchester has honed his northern scepticism, which makes it all the more surprising that he seems to be sounding a celebratory note. Even before you get into the book proper, he has said in the preface that "an important feature of much of the analysis is that the abuses of the 1980s have been substantially reduced or eliminated by the financial reporting standards introduced by the Accounting Standards Board (ASB) over the past few years".
As I said, however, success breeds a desire for things to be even better. Hence Skerratt's next call for action the whole issue of financial reporting to be widened progressively. Having sorted out many of the old familiar abuses and made accounts more transparent so that new ones are more easily spotted, the ASB, he argues, should be looking at fresh fields to conquer.
"Another important theme that runs through a number of the chapters," he says, "is that company accounts should extend beyond reporting a company's financial position and change in financial position over the year." He recognises the reasons behind this. "In part, such arguments have surfaced in recent years just because the ASB has been so successful in resolving many of the previous misinterpretations which gave rise to uninformative reporting." There are other forces at work. In Skerratt's words, "the change in emphasis is also a product of the economic environment, the recession. In this sense, there has been a real and significant change in the information needs of stakeholders in a company."
For Skerratt's idea that progress should continue apace to happen, there would have to be a significant element of stick rather than carrot applied to finance directors. The chapter in the survey devoted to directors' remuneration and directors' reports on internal financial control makes this very clear.
Roy Chandler is the Coopers & Lybrand Fellow at Cardiff Business School and his analysis of the disclosure of directors' remuneration gets to the heart of the problem. Put simply, he argues that if directors dig in their heels and refuse to go with the spirit of disclosure requirements then all you finish up with is more, rather than less, confusion. Chandler suggests that it is better to be imprecise but clear than pedantically correct and incomprehensible. He suggests that a simple share option calculation based on the potential amount of gain that individual directors stand to make and calculated from the past year's low, mid and high points, would provide a rough and understandable measure. The alternatives simply do not work. "Glib remarks from remuneration committees about being ‘robust in setting demanding performance targets' are not going to reassure many investors," he says. Over this, and many financial reporting issues, company directors are their own worst enemies. This is confirmed in Andrew Chambers's incisive chapter on the efforts of directors to report on internal financial control. Chambers points out that whereas the Cadbury report wanted auditors to report on the effectiveness of a company's internal financial control, a long political battle mostly waged by finance directors has resulted in the "effectiveness" element being removed. "It is the only part of the Cadbury Code of Best Practice to have been watered down in the implementation. Either finance directors, accountants and external auditors are more prescient than others, or they are more prepared to argue the hind leg off a donkey." And that is why the pace of reform of financial reporting will slow and why company directors have many more embarrassments ahead of them.
Financial reporting 1995-96, edited by Len Skerratt and David Tonkin, is published by Accountancy Books at £63.
London falls under Cezanne's tenacious spell.
Paintings and sketches by Paul Cezanne bright leaves in an artistic whirlwind have come to the Tate Gallery in London. Prize works are here from galleries great and small: St Petersburg, Philadelphia, Sao Paulo, Paris, Berlin, Liverpool, Basle, Los Angeles and more. Londoners and London's visitors should rejoice in the unbounded opportunity now at hand to study, admire and revel in this art of many textures.
Such distinction as Cezanne's rarely comes without pain and paradox. The artist whom we regard today as the greatest of the Moderns with a certainty of belief that he, if alive, would surely have found maddening made only late and painful progress in his own lifetime. He had to wait until he was 56 years old before he had his first one-man exhibition. He had the dapper Ambroise Vollard to thank for that and the latter had reason to be grateful to Cezanne as well. The artist was to paint Vollard's portrait four years later: it is the most limpid of his later portraits, although Cezanne could not resist endowing even this prosperous Parisian picture-dealer with the hands of a Provencal peasant.
Even though the Establishment, to its discredit, found him all too easy to resist, his fellow artists were not slow to discern his genius. Degas, Monet, Gauguin and Renoir all bought Cezanne's paintings; Pissarro never doubted his greatness, even at the beginning, when he might have been forgiven for doing so; and Matisse bought the Three Bathers when he could least afford the price, declaring sweetly 37 years later that he still did not know the canvas "completely". Cezanne was less appreciative of his contemporaries: "I scorn all living painters, except Monet and Renoir," he once growled.
The splendidly hung Tate exhibition brings out Cezanne's tremendous diversity. As John Golding wrote recently in an exquisite essay in The New York Review of Books, there were very few static moments in Cezanne's career: with the various genres of painting so strongly differentiated in his mind, his art "was continually on the move". There is nothing, whether pastiche, portrait, still life or landscape, that he did not paint. From unduly violent beginnings he moved finally to The Large Bathers, strange, huge women of quite compelling mansuetude.
Yet in this array of canvas and composition, it is his still lifes which will perhaps endure best with admiration undiminished into the decades that follow our own. Nowhere is his industry more apparent, nor even his sense of symbol, than, for example, in the Still Life With Apples he completed in 1894. Go to the Tate and taste Cezanne's apples. Afterwards, there is no other fruit.
The future of pensions is private.
The central issue in every developed country, according to Peter Lilley, is how to curb welfare spending. Yesterday the Social Security Secretary outlined his modest proposals for nudging more people towards private provision. He also made short work of the small beer presented as an elixir for instant social cohesion by the Opposition. Mr Lilley has established a formidable reputation as a reformer on tricky political terrain. But there is still further to go.
Mr Lilley, in an inaugural lecture to the think-tank Politeia, chose to deal with the most significant part of his portfolio provision for the elderly. He skilfully delineated the central problem, recognised by Government and Opposition alike; in years to come an ageing population will make greater than ever demands on a shrinking workforce. He also pointed out that the State does not save, individuals do. The Government spends £90 billion a year on social security, but that is simply current expenditure immediately disbursed. If care is to be taken of the millions more who will be living on pensions in a generation's time then money needs to be put away, money the Government does not have. The proposals unveiled by Mr Lilley yesterday to encourage small businesses without occupational schemes to set up group personal pensions should help relieve some more of the State's burden.
The Opposition has not tried to pretend that the cradle-to-the-grave welfare state can continue unreformed. Its leaders know that cold arithmetic would quickly puncture any such inflated rhetoric. Instead they pose as the genuinely radical reformers. Labour figures argue that only their own party, as the founder of the welfare state, is equipped to make the tough decisions necessary. Just as only Nixon could go to China so, it is said, only Labour can reform welfare: the status quo's supporters have to be turned on by their own side.
It is a familiar argument, but one which in this case is as unconvincing as it is ahistorical. By Labour's logic it should have been the only party capable of curbing the over-mighty trades unions of the Sixties and Seventies: instead its attempts ended in humiliation. It needed Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit to put the unions in their place. The real lesson is that tough problems are only solved by politicians who know their own mind. Labour still does not, as Mr Lilley showed yesterday.
The Social Security Secretary argued that two Labour proposals, a guaranteed minimum pension and a compulsory second pension, already exist in the shape of the state pension plus income support and the State Earnings Related Pension Supplement. Labour has shown recent interest in Asian models, in the shape of Singapore's compulsory Central Provident Fund and the trade union-influenced Australian pension funds. Both, however, involve the direction of investment for political ends and both consequently yield less income than wholly private schemes.
The thrust of Mr Lilley's analysis is persuasive the most effective way to safeguard care is for individuals to make their own provision. Moving in that direction will mean that many may have to pay twice, for their own future and for those currently on the state pension. Any movement must be gradual. But the direction should be clear the erosion of state support and an eventual system fully funded by personal savings. That would be true stakeholding, and has the potential to be genuinely popular capitalism.
Labour's leader still walks on the uncertain side.
The clearest water in British politics now lies between the Labour and Conservative positions on the constitution. Yesterday, as Tony Blair set out the principles behind his support for constitutional reform, the Tory party chairman, Brian Mawhinney, gave notice that he would harry the Labour leader mercilessly over what he described as "an entirely new constitutional order based on fashionable left-wing prejudices in defiance of the wisdom of the ages".
The electoral rhetoric is clear enough. But what of the wisdom of the ages itself? It cannot be doubted that Britain's constitution is the result of evolutionary rather than revolutionary change, that it has never been torn up and replaced, simply added to and amended in response to circumstances. Equally, nor has it always stood still. The question now is whether Labour's proposals fit the evolutionary tradition or represent a damaging revolutionary upheaval.
Incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights and the introduction of a freedom of information Bill are examples of good incremental reform. As we have argued before, the human rights measure would enable British citizens to appeal to British rather than European judges if their rights have been infringed. And freedom of information would return power to the citizen that has been jealously guarded by politicians and civil servants. Neither threatens political stability.
Nor would a judicious return of powers to local government. As Simon Jenkins has often, and eloquently, argued on the page opposite, the accretion of power to Whitehall and Westminster must be reversed. Big government is almost inevitably bad government; and one reason why national politicians are held in such low repute is that people feel so remote from the political decisions that affect their lives.
Even reform of the House of Lords ought to be achievable without rending the fabric of British parliamentary life. As long as hereditary peers who have proved their worth are included in the new chamber, there is much to be said for merit, rather than birth, determining its make-up. If an element of elected accountability can be introduced too, so much the better.
The critical problem arises over devolution, particularly to Scotland. The decentralising arguments which pertain to local government are as powerful north of the border: but they have the added force that Scottish discontent with the current system has lent them. There is also a strong case that devolution would be effective at keeping the Union together, as the Unionists in Northern Ireland already understand.
The Scots have long complained that, while they consistently vote for Labour in large numbers, they end up being governed by Tories. The difficulty, though, is that abolishing this anomaly merely replaces it with another: the knotty West Lothian question which, in its many forms, draws attention to the asymmetry that would result if MPs at Westminster were able to vote on English and Welsh matters but not Scottish ones.
The logical response to this question is to prevent Scottish MPs from voting on English and Welsh legislation, confining their powers to matters covering the UK as a whole. Yet that could lead to the impossible position of a Labour majority government being unable to pass its own legislation in England and Wales: this would have been the case after the October 1974 election, when Labour's majority was maintained by its Scottish MPs.
Mr Blair is well aware of the importance of the West Lothian question. But he has yet to come up with an answer to it. Until he does, it is impossible to pass judgment upon his devolution plans. For the collateral damage that they might wreak could be greater than the discontent that they are designed to address. Evolutionary tradition demands that the risks of change should not outweigh its benefits.
Schools must reject relativism, says Nicholas Tate.
Last month The Times reported the death in Massachusetts of the last surviving speaker of Cotawba, a North American Indian language. He had faced death knowing that with him would die not just a language but a whole culture. Cotawba is not unique. It joins the long list of languages and cultures which have succumbed to the advance of the West. A new empathy for cultures which have been under threat was symbolised last year when the Queen signed legislation in the name of the New Zealand Government tendering its profound regret and an unreserved apology to the Maoris for the seizure of their land.
But we are not without cultural anguish of our own. We lament the waning of many aspects of our own culture: the continuing "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of Christianity, the decline of knowledge of the classics, the illiteracy of new elites, the passing of the England of "the meadows, the lanes, the guildhalls, the carved choirs", and the threat to cultural diversity from the global communications revolution. When half of young people aged 15-35 feel that there are no definite rights and wrongs in life, when the same proportion do not know what Good Friday commemorates, and even more are ignorant of our history, it is not surprising that some people not only the middle-aged and the nostalgic feel that cultural continuity hangs by a thread.
It is about time we had a clearer view of education's role in these matters. That is why the Government's School Curriculum and Assessment Authority is hosting an international conference this week on culture, society and the curriculum.
In my view, there are four principles on which we need to agree. First, that a basic purpose of education is to help young people to appreciate the best of our cultural inheritance and to sustain it. This needs to be said, if only to combat the romantic individualism which supposes that each new generation can somehow create the world afresh.
Second, that the curriculum needs to be firmly and proudly based in a cultural heritage with its roots in Greece and Rome, in Christianity and in European civilisation. This is why our present curriculum emphasises the centrality of British history, Britain's changing relations with the rest of the world, the English literary heritage (with Shakespeare in pride of place) and the study of Christianity, alongside the development of critical skills.
Third, that all pupils should be made aware of the rich heritage of some of the other cultures and traditions now represented in this country. All pupils, for example, should leave school knowing that both China and the Indian subcontinent are the homes of ancient civilisations with rich artistic and literary traditions. Teaching about other cultures in schools is too often about superficial features, such as saris and samosas, rather than about these great achievements.
Fourth, that schools should aim to develop in young people a sense that some works of literature, music, art and architecture are more valuable than others. Until recently, hardly anyone would have doubted this. Though they were subject to change and dispute, it was accepted that there was a literary canon, an artistic canon, a musical canon, and so on.
Today, however, cultural education takes place against a different background. The dominant intellectual current is cultural relativism. According to this view there is no difference in value between, say, Schubert and Blur, between Milton and Mills & Boon, or between Vermeer's View of Delft and a dead sheep at the Tate. All are cultural products to be understood, not in terms of their value, but in relation to the structures and circumstances including the gender, race and social class of the artist within which they were produced.
By contrast, a key purpose of the curriculum has been and should continue to be the introduction of young people to high culture: the pursuit of knowledge and the arts for their own sake, the exercise of judgment irrespective of the circumstances in which the work of art was produced, and a sense of intrinsic value of those works of art which have been supremely successful in helping us to make sense of and respond to the world.
Certain implications follow from these broad principles. The school curriculum needs to help develop a sense of civic and national identity, and to maintain the distinctive features of English as it is written and spoken in these islands, in the face of its growth as a world language. Schools should also reflect our belief that despite technological changes, the written word, and in particular the book, has a special place at the heart of our culture.
Cultural continuity is also about the transmission of moral codes. The idea of universal values has been central from the Greeks to the Enlightenment. Perhaps we need a reassertion of this moral tradition.
These issues arouse strong passions. The school curriculum has long ceased to be a secret garden, and debate needs to involve the whole community. As T.S. Eliot put it: education is a "religious question", not just a matter of "getting on".
Dr Nicholas Tate is chief executive of the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority.
You don't know how lucky I am. I have been up Cezanne's ladder. It has an iffy rung. I do not, however, intend to tell you which one. Not unless we meet, and you say: "For me, Hills and Mountains in Provence has always been the fulcrum of his development. I'm not talking only about the new audacity, I'm talking about that extraordinary palpability in its structure which shows just how far Cezanne had advanced beyond the mirages of impressionism."
If you say that certainly if the woman opposite counters with "Yes, it was once owned by Gauguin, you know, but the point came when Paul could no longer endure what he called the aggression of its solidity" I shall put down my fork and say, "I have been up his ladder."
I can do a full five minutes on Cezanne's ladder. It was a good ladder, honest, coarse-hewed, thick-poled, peg-jointed, no nails, no worm either, a bit of warp of course, after all this time, but no unsettling whip, you could be five metres up that ladder and not know you were on one, provided you remembered the iffy rung, it had this creak. I can't say whether or not it creaked when Cezanne went up it, a century is a long time in laddering. Then again, it might depend what he was carrying, he was a big man by 1886 and if he had an easel under one arm, possibly a heavy box of painter's bits and bobs under the other, it might even account for the rung becoming iffy in the first place. We cannot know all there is to know about such things, your Johnny Art is a mysterious cove, and while it is diverting to think that my ear might have shared a creak with Cezanne's, I am not jumping to any conclusions.
I rented the ladder in 1986. Not just the ladder, naturally; you do not load your family into a stationwagon and drive to Aix-en-Provence for a fortnight up a ladder. I rented a nicely mottled 18th-century house because it had this terrific swimming-pool with the Mont Ste-Victoire reflected in it, you could float through it on your back, it was the only view of the mountain Cezanne never saw, the pool wasn't built until 1920. Not that I know whether he could swim, I should have to ask the woman opposite, or that bloke at the far end who was banging on about Cezanne's architectural approach to the female buttock a bit back, green underpainting to relate flesh to rock, all that.
It was the elderly gardien who told me about Cezanne going up the ladder. His father and grandfather had been gardiens before him, and one of his grandfather's duties had been to prop the ladder against the wall so that Cezanne could climb onto the flat roof for an aspect of the mountain unavailable anywhere else. Many a morning, Cezanne would trudge a kilometre up the lane from the Jas de Bouffin, the house he inherited from his father in 1886, climb the ladder and gaze.
I did that, too. Sometimes, I took a bottle up. Between the first glass and the last, the evening mountainflank would change from pink to blue by going through a million colours between which have no names at all.
Idid not know then, of course, what a very important thing this was to have done. That was because I did not know that a huge Cezanne retrospective would open at the Tate today and become the most talked-about event in the whole history of talking. I have already been to two dinner parties and a lunch where they talked of little else and the exhibition hadn't even opened; the scalp crawls at the prospect of all the talking which lies ahead, after everyone has seen the thing. And everyone will see the thing. It is the thinking man's Mousetrap.
I do not want to hear anybody's opinion about Cezanne's pictures. I never want to hear anybody's opinion about anybody's. Not least because courtesy requires a response, and before I know it I feel my own jaw going up and down, and hear my own mouth trotting out tosh. Which is why, this time, I am one of the lucky ones. For once, I am in a position to counter the, er, mirage of aesthetic criticism with the aggressive solidarity of anecdote. I shall tell them about going up his ladder. And if that doesn't make them put a sock in it, I shall do his bucket.
Because there was this old wooden bucket in the wash-house, and the gardien said . . .
A great hospital is facing closure, but there is a better alternative.
I am not a frequent resigner. I usually accept the American adage "if you don't keep your feet under the table, you don't get to carve the turkey". However, this week I have felt that I had to resign from the task force on the future use of the St Bartholomew's Hospital site, the most important historic site in world medicine.
On Tuesday, I wrote to Sir Ronald Grierson, the chairman, with whom my personal relations remain excellent: "I feel that I should confirm my decision to resign from the St Bartholomew's Hospital Committee. As you know, my view is that the King's Fund proposal is the most promising that we have seen so far. If it is held that we cannot consider this, I see no further use in the committee."
My experience on the task force has convinced me that there is no appropriate alternative function for more than a fraction of the Bart's site which is remotely economical, and no valid non-medical use which is likely to be financable. The press states that the cost of recommissioning the site for the London School of Economics probably the most attractive non-medical proposal would be £150 million; that would have to come out of charitable or public funds. Even that excludes the £65 million of net gain from property sales anticipated in the Royal Hospitals Trust's case for a new single-site hospital in Whitechapel, and the LSE figure has probably been taken before VAT. If one includes the site value write-off, and the likely tax, the cost of transferring the LSE to the Bart's site is of the order of £250 million, more than the gross capital cost of the proposed single-site hospital, or of either of the two-site alternatives. The combined cost of building the single-site hospital, decommissioning Bart's, writing off the existing Bart's site value not to mention £100 million of recently installed medical facilities and of rebuilding to meet the LSE's needs, with fitting up and paying VAT, cannot be less than £500 million, an absurd figure.
Two 1995 consultant studies have thrown doubt on the financial calculations of the plan for a single-site hospital.
CASPE Consulting, employed by the authoritative King's Fund, comments: "The continued preference of the single-site option, on financial grounds, is reliant on the disposal of the Bart's site. Without a firm guarantee of site disposal, the taxpayer could be left holding an expensive white elephant." The York Economics Consortium commented that "the preferred option generates an additional saving of £9 million at a cost of almost £100 million additional capital spending. We believe that there is sufficient uncertainty around the estimates of net revenue savings which are central to the appraisal to make the assumed difference in costs between the options extremely sensitive".
The most recent large single-site hospital to be built in London is the Chelsea and Westminster. Combined forecasting errors came close to an overrun of £200 million. The capital cost turned out to be more than double the original business plan estimate; the property sales came to less than half, and revenue costs also overran substantially. The proposed Royal London revenue saving of £9 million on £100 million of extra capital spending could easily turn into a large revenue deficit on a larger, but unknowable, capital sum.
Both the CASPE and the York Economics Consortium studies show that the specific Bart's decision needs to be re-examined. I do not think that anyone who has been involved with the Bart's decision, or who was involved with the Chelsea and Westminster decision, could still believe in the open-mindedness of the Department of Health, or, in the Bart's case, of the Royal Hospitals Trust. Objectors have faced a mixture of dogma, bureaucracy and skilful lobbying, with minimal willingness to listen to counter-arguments.
There is already a shortage of beds throughout the National Health Service, and particularly in London. I could write several articles about the horror stories of patients, but the hard statistics make the case. Either Britain is already grossly short of beds, or the rest of Europe is grossly wasteful. Dr Max Gammon has for years followed the reduction in the number of hospital beds per thousand of population in Britain.
If one takes the latest figures available from the OECD, England in 1993 had 4.5 beds per 1,000, as against 7.6 in 1980. France had 9.4 against 11 in 1980. Germany 10.1 against 11.5. Italy 6.7 against 10.1, and Spain 4.2 against 5.4; the European average is 8 against 9.7 in 1980. All the European countries show a decline, but England shows a faster decline than any, and to a level lower than any except Spain. This has been achieved partly by reductions in the average period of stay in hospital, but also by such practices as "hotbedding", mixed wards, holding patients on trolleys and the reduction in the margin for emergencies. One major flu epidemic could well overwhelm the English hospital system.
This loss of hospital beds in England seems to have developed a momentum of its own. No fewer than 103,000 beds were lost in the 1980s, and beds per 1,000 fell further, from 5.5 to 4.5, in the period between 1990 and 1993. This is not because Britain is underspending on public health. We spend about the same in Britain as the average in the EU: around 6 per cent of gross domestic product. The rest of the EU does, however, spend somewhat more in the independent sector, about 1.7 per cent of GDP, against Britain's 1.2 per cent.
The decision to close Bart's rests on three false premises. The first is that there is a profitable alternative use for the site, or, at worst, an appropriate use which will not cost the public money. No such uses have been proposed to the task force. The second is that the cost of the new hospital will not exceed the plan estimate, and that the revenue saving will not fall short. The two most recent independent consultants question these assumptions. The third is that the reductions in the number of NHS beds can safely continue, although English beds are probably now at half the average European level. The closure of Bart's is part of the bed closure programme which has already reduced much of London medicine to a Poor Law standard. This deterioration is particularly disturbing in the Royal Hospitals Trust's deprived area.
The King's Fund scheme has many merits. The King's Fund proposal is that Bart's should have a new start under a new Charitable Foundation, with a range of healthcare institutions, some in partnership with the NHS, some charitable and some private. The foundation, according to the CASPE report, would be able to offer better services to patients, at a lower cost to the taxpayer. It would include a major non-profit-making independent hospital group, admitting both NHS and private patients, major elective in-patient services, day surgery, a much-needed out-patient consulting centre, emergency admissions for local GP referrals, and cover for the Royal London during redevelopment.
Around that core would be created the local, charitable and educational services for which Bart's is particularly well suited, together with advanced research facilities. All of this would have substantial charitable support the name of Bart's alone is worth £8 million a year as a charitable brand. If the King's Fund proposal were adopted, any cost-overruns would be the new foundation's responsibility, not the Treasury's.
Unfortunately, the Secretary of State for Health, Stephen Dorrell, refuses to reconsider the Royal London single-site solution and the closure of Bart's. He is not willing to consider the King's Fund proposal. He is not willing to "reverse the decisions of (his) predecessor", even though the King's Fund proposal did not exist in his predecessor's time, even though he admits that he might have "handled things differently".
When I became Chairman of the Arts Council in 1982, a similar prejudice existed in arts funding, a hostility against any funding that did not come from the State. The arts have benefited enormously from the development of alternative sources of funding, including sponsorship and charitable giving, but that was a change of policy for the Arts Council. The King's Fund proposal would not only make better medical provision for a deprived area, and save the Bart's tradition of excellence, but would help to bring additional funds into medical care. The Bart's issue involves the choice between catastrophe and an opportunity, between something much worse and something much better than we have at present. The orthodox view and Mr Dorrell's is that it is better to let the whole system break down than to try new methods of organisation and funding.
Elizabeth Connell, who plays Isolde in the English National Opera's Tristan and Isolde, which opens on Saturday, plans to keep sweet during the five-and-a-half-hour marathon by sticking straws through the set.
She will sneak sips of water from hidden bottles in the event of dehydration.
THE PRINCESS ROYAL'S eventing days may be over, but there are high hopes in the Queen's household of further glory in the sport. Tabitha Ross, daughter of Col Malcolm Ross, Comptroller to the Lord Chamberlain, is being tipped to represent Britain in the Olympics if not this time then in 2000 on her trusty steed, HRH.
Ross, 25, had wanted to call the horse, which she keeps at her stable in Abergavenny, HRH the Prince of Wales, because he was sired by the stallion Ascendant. "However, Buckingham Palace said we couldn't name a horse after a member of the Royal Family, but we could have HRH, which is as good as," whinnies Tabitha. "Now, because my father works for the Queen, people think we are fawning monarchists, but it was a separate thing."
Cezanne fever has gripped London, but there is also worldwide interest in the Tate Gallery's exhibition. Rumours spread yesterday that the teenage bride Sarah Cook came back to Britain from Turkey solely for the private view. And the gallery has received a call from the Bournemouth Echo. "They asked for an interview with Cezanne," explains a spokeswoman. "But only dear Doris Stokes could have accomplished that."
RELATIONS between two of the most forthright women in Westminster have turned as bitter as the winds from Siberia. Teresa Gorman has fired off an icy note to Edwina Currie over her latest appalling bonkbuster. In the book's epilogue, Edwina writes: "Teresa Gorman had at last succumbed to advancing years, stopped taking the tablets (a reference to her HRT treatment) and shrunk to a benign little granny."
"I wrote a little note to Edwina to ask her if it was really necessary for her to make such comments, and she replied saying, ‘read the book', but I really don't have time to read that stuff," explains Teresa, who distinguished herself yesterday in the MP's Bramley apple and spoon race.
"She has really fished around in the garbage of Parliament in order to make snide remarks about people. I think it's sad." And they are on the same side.
ROMANCE will soon blossom on the terraces at Old Trafford, and we are not talking about schoolgirl crushes on Ryan Giggs or Eric Cantona. Manchester United has just received a licence for marriage ceremonies at the hallowed ground. Yesterday the red army (as fans in that neck of the woods are termed) put the Old Trafford switchboard under relentless pressure. Everybody wants to score in the game of two halves.
Many will be disappointed, however. "Regulations are strict and it is important that people realise they can't get married on the pitch," says a spokesman. "We hope to be able to cope with four weddings a day." Requests for ceremonies on the roof of the new grandstand have already been turned down.
ONE SUREFIRE indication of the esteem in which the England cricket manager Ray Illingworth holds his team is the Sky Sports fantasy cricket team that he has created. He scoured the world for talent, but picked just two England players, Michael Atherton and Graeme Hick.
None of the English bowlers, it seems, are up to scratch.
UNIVERSITY lecturers are so appalled at a proposal to give Kenneth Clarke an honorary degree that they are threatening to strike. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is being considered for an honorary doctorate in Law at Nottingham Trent University, and academics are aghast.
It is not so much his academic record that has got mortarboards spinning, as the manner in which the Government has cut back funding at his behest. The lecturers also point out that the university's policy to date has been to avoid honorary doctorates for serving politicians.
A final decision about the degree will be made at the end of the month by the university's board of governors. But there are concerns that the old boy network might swing matters Clarke's way the chairman of the governors, Sir David White, was at Clarke's school, Nottingham High, and is a long-standing friend of the cherubic Chancellor.
At the weekend, the lecturers' union, NATFHE, raised the matter at a conference in London, saying: "We all want to know why the university wants to honour a serving politician who has just imposed cuts of £300 million on higher education." The university refused to be drawn on the matter plans for honorary awards are "strictly confidential".
The RICS announces that the following candidates were admitted to corporate membership in 1995 having satisfied the examination requirements and passed the Assessment of Professional Competence.
Names following in alphabetical order, not available on the Database.
DELOITTE & TOUCHE have always stood aloof in any of the arguments about firms avoiding litigation through setting up limited liability partnerships in Jersey. But that doesn't mean to say that they don't see a fee or two in the idea. Walbrook, the firm's offshore service subsidiary, has issued a brochure offering to advise anyone interested.
ERNST & YOUNG are set to paint the town red during their sponsorship of the Cezanne exhibition, which opens at the Tate Gallery today.
The firm is setting to the task with gusto. No fewer than 7,000 guests are due to attend 40 events, starting tonight with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and numerous chairmen and chief executives sitting down to dinner. And in the next few weeks a mountain of food will be consumed according to E&Y: "Six thousand quails' eggs, 13,000 mushroom parcels and 630 pounds of fresh tuna." The paintings are also delectable, we can report.
THE night that KPMG revealed their partners' pay coincided with a dinner of all the Big Six firms' senior partners and Stuart Bell, the Labour spokesman in charge of accountancy issues. Rumour has it that the new mood of the Labour Party approved of the size of the pay package of Colin Sharman, KPMG senior partner. Coincidentally, it was also the day when MPs announced that they should be paid more.
FOR the second time, the council members of the English ICA have balked at the idea of electing their first woman president. Instead, Chris Swinson, the rumbustious BDO Stoy Hayward partner, has won this year's ballot. The mild-mannered Michael Groom dropped out in the first round, and Swinson has won by a neck from Sheila Masters, of KPMG. It was a close-run thing. Swinson polled 43 votes and Masters 41. Presumably Masters's brisk "nurse-knows-best" approach to policy was too hard for council members to swallow.
Richard Watson challenges the small print of the Finance Bill.
KEEN indirect tax practitioners combing through this year's Finance Bill may have noticed a number of features that point towards a significant change in the attitude of Customs and Excise.
As ever, these are buried in the fine print of the schedules, especially the new landfill tax and the new anti-avoidance provisions on VAT. The latter are designed to counter certain avoidance schemes based on the group registration rules, which essentially allow companies within a group to behave as though they are a single person from a VAT point of view. By juggling with the membership of the group and the timing at which certain transactions are undertaken, it has been possible to avoid considerable amounts of tax. The anti-avoidance legislation is aimed at these "abusers".
It could be argued, without too much stretching of the imagination, that this legislation contains abuses. It will allow Customs to make a direction on the basis of an event which occurs after November 28, 1995, which, in effect, rewrites the history of the group for VAT purposes. The result is a situation of some uncertainty for companies that are members of VAT groups, or who could be members. Provided the event that triggers the direction occurs after Budget day last year, the direction can have effect back to April 1, 1973, when the tax began. Moreover, the rights of appeal to the VAT tribunal against a direction are restrictive.
Landfill tax also contains its diabolical details. Most indirect taxes have a fairly standard provision that provides for the treatment of long-term contracts when tax is introduced or its rate changes. Essentially this enables the supplier to pass on the additional amount of tax as though it had been included when the contract was drawn up.
The landfill tax provision, however, allows the contract to be varied only if "the circumstances are such that (had the change occurred before the making of the contract) it can reasonably be expected that the parties to it would have agreed, as the amount of any payment falling to be made under it, an amount differing from that actually agreed".
The overall effect seems to be that both parties can argue about what they would have done had landfill tax been introduced at a time when neither of them actually knew anything about its existence! In addition, the Finance Bill provides that directors of a company liable to pay landfill tax will be jointly and severally liable to pay the tax with the company itself. Customs have been challenged as to why they needed such an exceptional power and as a result ministers have agreed that it is not necessary. Score one for the industry. The only other taxes to which such a power applies are those on betting and gaming.
For many years, late payment of VAT has involved a penalty surcharge, levied only after a warning notice has been given and at rates of between 2 per cent and 15 per cent of the unpaid tax. The landfill tax legislation replaces this with compound interest levied at 10 percentage points above the standard interest rate. Currently, this would allow Customs to levy interest at 17 per cent per annum (equivalent to paying 25 per cent before tax relief).
The question that needs to be asked of Customs is whether they are preparing to change their law on all their taxes similarly in favour of the tax collector? Customs are currently conducting a project known as Legis, designed to harmonise as far as possible the administrative procedures of the different taxes. It seems strange to introduce a number of peculiarities into landfill tax if it is not also intended to include them in other taxes.
Tax administration has long been seen as a balance between the taxpayer, who wants to pay the least amount, and the authorities, which want to collect the most. There is nothing inherently wrong or surprising in this, nor is there anything wrong in either side attempting to improve its position. The danger, as always, lies in excess, which renders the operation of the tax system impossible or inefficient. It would be foolish to suggest we are at that point, but if the Finance Bill is a barometer, it was pointing to "stormy". Perhaps after Tuesday's debate it is reverting to "calm".
Richard Watson is Senior VAT Partner, Price Waterhouse
Four months after talks on liberalising air routes between Britain and the US broke down, the Americans have hinted that they are keen to restart them. As US transport officials prepare for discussions with Germany later this month on an "open skies" air pact, the spotlight has fallen once again on Britain's transatlantic relations.
After Britain, Germany is the largest market for US airlines in Europe and is the first large European nation to move to a free-market aviation pact with the US. In a thinly veiled statement last Friday, US officials said they hoped an "open skies" accord with smaller nations would force larger ones to ease their restrictions on foreign carriers.
The central issue is US carriers' access to Heathrow, the second busiest airport in the world, after Chicago, and the busiest international air hub. Discussions, which have dragged on for four years, ended in October in Washington with recriminations on both sides.
The US accused Britain of protecting British Airways' premier position at Heathrow, while the British were angry at being denied access to US domestic routes, which account for more than half of all flights worldwide. BA has almost 40 per cent of total take-off and landing slots at Heathrow and carries almost half of all passengers passing through the airport.
Feelings run high on both sides. "Restarting talks depends on whether the Americans are still determined to protect their domestic market," one industry source on the British side said. "UK airlines want to be able to fly to the east coast, and then set up routes within the US, but the Americans are reluctant to go along with that. The talks broke up because the US airlines could not stop squabbling among themselves."
The Department of Transport's official line is that "no date has been set" for full negotiations, although low-level talks are believed to have continued since last autumn.
However, the Americans expect an agreement within weeks between the German transport and foreign ministries and the US transportation department. Also on the Americans' shopping list is the liberalisation of services between the US and France, Italy and Spain. BA, which does a lot of business in Germany, will be watching events closely.
"A US-German deal could be just what is needed to kick-start Whitehall into resuming talks," one American source said. "Seeing an open skies agreement on major European cross-border routes will certainly cause the British Government some discomfort."
The British Government argues that Heathrow is so congested that there are few new arrival and departure slots even for UK airlines. Terminal Five, should it go ahead, would do little to alleviate the problem, with only a small increase likely in the number of flights.
Analysts, however, point to BA's relationship with USAir as a possible catalyst for further talks. (BA has had a 24.6 per cent stake in USAir since 1993.) Last year, USAir announced it was considering deals with other American carriers. USAir has a new chairman, Stephen Wolf, famed for cutting costs at United Airlines and expected to exact a similar turnround at USAir. Should USAir's fortunes improve, BA may be encouraged to seek a three-way alliance, drawing in a larger US carrier.
Despite the Jeremiahs, clamping public pay has worked, says Philip Bassett.
When the Government announces today its decisions on the recommendations of the pay review bodies for 1.5 million employees in the public sector, ministers expect ritual protests from knee-jerk union leaders.
But behind such well-rehearsed chest-beating from both sides lies a largely unsung success story for the Government, which may have considerable implications for the current pay round, and for public-sector pay if Labour is elected.
Today's pay review bodies are expected to recommend increases of about 4 per cent for teachers, nurses, doctors, dentists, judges, senior civil servants, and other employees in the public sector whose pay is determined by an independent sifting of evidence rather than collective bargaining.
Though today's awards cover only about a quarter of employees in the public sector, many other public-sector settlements this year will be influenced by the Government's decisions.
Four years ago, when the Treasury suddenly announced a clamp on public-sector pay, the Jeremiah chorus was all but overwhelming the experience of such policies was that they break down after two or three years. But, as a new report today by Incomes Data Services, the independent pay analysts, shows though IDS does not draw out these implications the policy adopted, not without considerable risk, has, within its terms, been a wholesale success.
First, paybill costs the basis of the restriction on pay have been kept low, with increasingly difficult freezes on 1993-94 paybill levels maintained on the basis of efficiency and manpower cost savings. Within that, settlement ranges have been tight: up to 1.5 per cent in the first year, and 2 to 3 per cent in the following two years if anything, a little below private-sector deals.
While that is satisfactory to ministers in both paybill and settlement terms, it has been satisfactory also for many employees covered by the restriction, who have been able to rack up quite large increases through improved performance, and yet stay within its terms.
With that kind of reality as a counter to the initial opposition of some union leaders, the smarter ones quietly got on with negotiating the deals that the paybill freeze presented unsurprisingly, perhaps, public-sector pay rapidly became the dog that did not bark. Treasury Ministers and officials were deeply satisfied with a policy that seemed to succeed on all accounts, and had the added benefit of making some union leaders look silly.
While the looming election might increase the temptation as IDS suggests today for ministers to relax the policy to improve the "feel-good" factor, the implications of such patterns of increases may be greater for any future Labour government.
Look for a policy on pay in the public sector in old or new Labour, and what you find is a hole. For an issue so sensitive that it brought down the last Labour Government, this is odd. The Government charges that, whatever guise its policy takes the "stakeholder" economy being the latest formulation Labour will have to reimburse its union paymasters if it gets into government.
For their part, many public-sector union leaders do have high expectations on pay, either believing or hoping that Labour will see their members right. Significantly, their claims of unsolved pay-comparability problems, with the underlying threat of strikes, float away if Labour is not elected. This suggests that the much-vaunted problem of pay in the public sector may be one of politics not pay.
Despite what looks like a policy hole, Labour may not need to do anything material about public-sector pay though a future Labour government may have to face down some public-sector, and especially town-hall, militants, who may try to use pay as a lever to activate their opposition to Tony Blair's leadership.
What this means is that, in spite of any sound and fury there may be today, neither the Government nor Labour may have to see public-sector pay as much of a problem any longer.
As long as voters are content, there is no crisis in the welfare state.
Everybody seems to agree that reducing government spending is one of the great political challenges of our time. And by everyone I do not just mean members of the Major Government, who have suddenly found a rare area of consensus on this point. After spending the past week "brainstorming" with hundreds of businessmen and politicians at the World Economic Forum in Davos, I am struck by the remarkable agreement among the global good and the great on this one point.
Yet, the most fundamental question about public spending is rarely asked and never properly answered. How much should the state spend? And how do we even approach an answer? Arbitrary figures, say 40 per cent of GDP, or 35 per cent, or whatever we happened to spend ten years ago, have neither political resonance nor economic rationale.
What about international comparisons? Surely in a global market no country can afford to spend much more than its competitors on welfare if it is to keep down its costs and keep its citizens in jobs. European countries cannot allow their governments to spend an average of 53 per cent of GDP when the American Government spends only 37 per cent and the Japanese only 35 per cent. The taxes required to pay for such high levels of public spending inevitably boost costs in Europe and make it impossible for European companies to sell their wares against competitors from countries which are less highly taxed.
This is the standard answer from European businessmen and politicians when they are asked why it is necessary to cut welfare. You will not be surprised to learn, therefore, that it makes no sense at all from an economic point of view. A country's level of taxes and public spending is not a key influence on its ability to compete in world markets. If it were, then America would have run a huge and growing trade surplus throughout the Reagan period, while Germany would by now have a foreign debt of more than $1 trillion.
The reality, of course, is exactly the other way round. A country can choose to spend whatever it wants on government programmes and still maintain both full employment and a balance in its trade with the world. The only proviso (admittedly a big one in Europe these days) is that the country must have an independent monetary policy and a floating exchange rate.
Britain could, if it wished, devote 60 or even 70 per cent of GDP to state spending (like The Netherlands and Sweden). Even if the taxes which paid for this spending were loaded straight on to labour costs, British companies could still remain competitive in world markets; the pound would simply have to fall far enough to offset the extra burden on British costs and given the attitude of currency markets to high-spending governments such a fall would be quite easy to secure. The drawback of such a policy would be that British living standards and especially our capacity to buy foreign goods would fall with sterling. In the end, a country which spent most of its income on bureaucrats and destroyed incentives with excessive taxes, might end up as poor as Albania. But that would be because it had wasted resources and destroyed incentives, not because of competition from the rest of the world.
Thus the fundamental questions that have to be answered in assessing the size of the public sector have nothing to do with global competition; they are about the effects of taxes and public spending on efficiency, incentives and productive investment within a national economy. There can be little doubt that very high tax levels say, for the sake of argument, 50 per cent plus are likely to damage incentives, efficiency and investment. But when it comes to distinguishing between lower tax and spending levels say between 35 per cent and 45 per cent the answer is less clear.
A difference in the structure of the tax system can easily have a bigger impact on incentives than a difference in the overall tax level. A big shift in the tax burden from incomes and employment on to consumption, for example, could do far more to increase investment and work incentives than a cut in the overall burden of tax. Comparing Germany with America again shows this is more than a theoretical quibble. Germany has consistently had a much higher tax burden than America, yet Germany saves and invests far more than America.
If Europe's structural unemployment is related to exceptionally high employment taxes then perhaps the first priority for governments should not be to cut the overall tax burden a task which will take years to achieve but to shift the burden from social security taxes to taxes on consumption or incomes. The trouble with this policy, of course, is that income and consumption taxes are unpopular with voters, while social security taxes are less "visible" and easier to disguise as "contributions" which will pay for later benefits from the welfare state.
This brings me to the spending side of the ledger. While it is true that total public spending is much higher in continental Europe than in America, Japan and even Britain, this does not necessarily mean that European governments waste more of their national income on employing bureaucrats or that their meddling makes European businesses less efficient.
Governments have many ways of interfering with business decisions even when they do not spend money or raise taxes. Is the regulation of business and finance really more onerous in Italy than in the US? And is Japan really the least regulated of the major industrial countries? Is it obvious that relatively transparent forms of government influence such as taxes and subsidies are more damaging to efficiency than Japanese-style administrative guidance, not to mention the corruption and coercion in many smaller Asian countries? As the charts show, the main reason why public spending is so high in continental Europe is the level of social security spending. But these are not resources used up by government they are transfers from one part of the private sector to another. For government to transfer such large sums of money may well reduce incentives, but that will depend on the structure of incentives throughout the whole economy, not just on the crude volume of money that goes through government accounts.
For example, social security transfers are much higher in continental countries than they are in Britain, mainly because European pensions are paid through the government, instead of private pension fund. It is often claimed in Britain that funded pension systems are better because they encourage private savings and investment. Yet, in reality, the level of total private savings and investment is much lower in Britain than in Italy, Germany or France. How can we be so sure, therefore, that the continental countries have suffered from their high social security spending and the absence of private pensions?
Another factor boosting social transfers in continental countries (as well as in America) is the system of health financing. Outside Britain, most of the medical care is provided by the private sector. Government insurance reimbursements then count as social transfers. In Britain, by contrast, doctors and nurses are government employees and therefore health spending counts as "government consumption". This is one reason government consumption is actually higher in post-Thatcherite free-market Britain than it is in such "corporate states" as Germany, Italy or France (see bottom left chart). As the last right chart shows, however, Britain remains a high public spender even after health is taken out. The fact is that Britain spends far more of its income on defence and policing than most countries and a slightly higher proportion on education than Germany or France.
To summarise, the real facts behind the global "crisis" of public spending are ambiguous and confusing, to put it mildly. Neither economic theory nor international experience offers any reliable rules of thumb to tell governments how much they can afford to spend and tax. Within very broad limits, each country can tax and spend as much as it wants there is no automatic mechanism in the global competition to punish those who spend too much. In the end, it is up to each country's voters to decide what public services they want and are prepared to pay for.
CORPORATE love affairs don't last long these days. Germany's Gehe Group yesterday threatened to spoil the supposed love-match between UniChem and Lloyds Chemist, which had earlier agreed a deal, with its own bid. The first closing date of UniChem's bid is Wednesday St Valentine's Day.
THE rough and tumble of the airline industry may seem a far cry from hernia operations, but a growing number of staff at PPP, the healthcare group, were schooled in management at British Airways. PPP chief executive Peter Owen is among the flock from BA, followed by Bob Challens, who flew in this week as managing director of the healthcare side. Denis Walker, Brenda Klug, and Jonathan Russell were also once part of BA's family.
WELCOME back! Rosalind Gilmore becomes chairman of the Homeowners Friendly Society in June. She knows the place well. From 1991 to 1994, before she went to Lloyd's of London, she was chairman and chief executive of the Building Society and Friendly Society Commission Homeowners' regulator. In her new position, she will answer to Norman Digance, who was her No 2 at the Commission.
MIKE FIRTH, ebullient chairman of Yorkshire Food Group, who personally lost £100,000 on his maiden Yorkshire Business Conference at Harewood House last year, is hoping for better luck on May 17.
Even though last year's event included Dr Henry Kissinger, an astronaut, a general and the Black Dyke Mills Band, only 1,300 fee-payers came to sit on chairs that were laid out for 2,000 and the marquee had to be "shrunk". This year, ticket sales at £200 a head, including 100 taken by group auditor Coopers & Lybrand, are going so well that the marquee is having to be "stretched".
Firth, spurned by six British industrialists, has lined up Donald Trump, the US property entrepreneur, Albert Reynolds, the former Irish PM, Andrew Neil, the broadcaster, CNN's Larry King and Wild Swans author Jung Chang.The NatWest Jazz Band will also be there.
And how much will speakers be paid? "Can't break a confidence," says the man who loves to promote Yorkshire. "But Donald Trump would only be flown across the Atlantic on Concorde."
THE controversy about the prevention of malaria after exotic holidays has distracted attention from a review published in Hospital Update of a particularly disgusting souvenir which can be brought back from rural areas of Africa and Central America.
Three Newcastle doctors, Dr M.H. Snow, Dr M.J. Colbridge and Dr S.K. Edwards, have written of three recent cases of infestation with bot fly larvae. The infestation, known as myiasis, is caused by a maggot-like insect penetrating the skin. The eggs of the bot fly are carried on the abdomen of another insect, very often the mosquito, and when it settles on the soft tissue of a warm-blooded animal they hatch. The larvae can pass through clothing, and within ten minutes they are safely buried in the human flesh, where they grow to thumbnail size. The larvae set up an inflammatory reaction like a boil. If a suitable paste is applied to the inflamed area the larva struggles through it to breathe, and can then be pulled out.
WHEN British tourist Charlotte Common, 55, went to Egypt recently she must have discounted anxieties about terrorists, and she would never have considered the possibility of dying as a result of a visit to a supermarket.
Mrs Common bought a bottle of apparently wholesome red wine, but later lapsed into a coma and died. Unfortunately the wine had been contaminated with methyl alcohol, the main constituent of methylated spirits.
The immediate effect of drinking methyl alcohol is less disabling than drinking the equivalent amount of ethyl alcohol, as found in normal wines, spirits and beers. The trouble only becomes apparent once it has been metabolised in the body.
The oxidation of the methyl alcohol in the liver and kidney results in the formation of formic acid and formaldehyde, which in the worst cases causes irreversible damage to eyes, severe headaches, loss of consciousness, and sometimes death.
SHAREHOLDERS in Country Casuals who resisted the instant gratification of last December's 140p bid are beginning to see their patience rewarded.
The clothing retailer has had a chequered history since it was floated in 1992 at 130p. Its core Country Casuals business has continued to perform robustly but diversions into new businesses such as Elvi and the ill-fated Koto chains have proved less successful. The spat at the end of 1994 over former chairman Alan Shannon's contract hardly helped the board to concentrate on the real problems of business.
But with Mr Shannon severing all contact with the company, it is beginning to look in better shape with news of a return to profit expected in the spring. Sales are increasing without the need to trim margin and Elvi, the outsize specialist, is also seeing revenue growth.
Results for the 1995 financial year will be marred by a provision for the 18 previously announced closures. However, free from boardroom distractions and write-offs, Country Casuals should be able to begin to prove, over the coming year, what it is really worth.
TAKING one step back for every two steps forward, housebuilders continue to stagger uncertainly out of recession witness yesterday's profits warning from Prowting. The builder's experience is typical: solid advances in early autumn were wiped out by a miserable November and December. Buyers are still shopping around to squeeze an extra few hundred pounds off the price of a semi.
This is bad news for companies like Bryant that chased up land prices in 1994 at the first signs of a recovery that proved illusory. Expensive land is now working its way through the pipeline, putting further pressure on already slim margins. In such a market, specialist builders have proved to be more adept at responding to the changed circumstances. Berkeley Group grew rapidly through the recession, selling upmarket executive homes, but the builder is now snapping up development sites and buildings for refurbishment in central London, where house prices and volumes are more resilient.
Part-exchange schemes are proving a headache for builders. Barratt Developments has shown that, aggressively managed, part-exchange can deliver benefits. However, there is a risk in tying up cash in second-hand stock in such a weak market. While the recession continues, investors will do well to avoid builders that rely on volume rather than margins.
REDLAND was bounced into displaying a wish list to the market this week. However, the chances of it achieving all the objectives look slim, and the benefits for shareholders are questionable. Redland is considering the sale of its bricks operations and an increase in control of Braas, the successful German roof tiles business in which Redland has a 51 per cent interest.
Braas is the precious stone in Redland's indifferent collection of brick and stone businesses. Last year, it generated more than half of Redland's operating profit, but contributed a much smaller percentage of Redland's huge dividend, the reason being that the Braas minority shareholders are not altogether happy at seeing the British parent siphon too much cash from the company. Redland secured agreement to increase the Braas payout rate last year, but the combination of a high dividend and high overseas earnings leave Redland with a cash-flow problem.
The price for control of Braas could be very high. Despite the slowdown in Germany, Braas is the business that makes sense of Redland. If the company is really keen to enhance value, it would seek a listing for Braas and distribute the stake to its shareholders. That would leave the rump of Redland highly vulnerable, but even today there is the risk that the attractions of Braas might provoke a pot-shot at Redland.
IN THE past, the more enthusiastic medical students used to spend hours practising tying knots. They exercised their skill by knot-tying in confined spaces and without looking at the thread.
All that activity was to perfect their operating skills so that, in years to come, they could make quick and competent surgeons, capable of tying-off bleeding arteries before their patients became exsanguinated.
These exercises were not only to improve their performance in the simple art of knot-tying, but to develop their sense of touch.
With the advent of keyhole surgery, sensitive fingers are no longer so useful. In minimally invasive surgery the diseased organs are not exposed and seen in three dimensions nor are they felt by carefully nurtured fingers, but they are only viewed on a flat television screen as a two-dimensional image.
Meanwhile the surgeon, instead of getting sight and feel on the operating field, does his cutting, tying and removal of the debris of disease by using an endoscope and other inserted instruments. He monitors his actions by watching his own surgery on the screen.
Keyhole surgery requires quite different manual techniques from those which a surgeon learnt in his youth and which he has been perfecting ever since. A surgeon's judgment, acquired over years of experience, his basic clinical skills and his pre-clinical knowledge are an essential foundation for keyhole surgery, but the type of dexterity required is different and relies on finely honed hand-eye co-ordination.
It is likely that some surgeons will never succeed in mastering the new craft.
The journal Hospital Doctor has recently reported on a study undertaken in Washington at the Interface Technology Laboratory. Skilled surgeons investigated the suggestion that a student who had good hand-eye co-ordination, and was therefore a natural master of video games, would also be one who would excel at keyhole surgery.
Forty students were filmed as each of them undertook 100 hours of simulated laparoscopic techniques (keyhole surgery in the abdomen).
The experiment showed that the initial premise was sound: the better the students were at video games the faster they were to master endoscopic surgical techniques.
Being able to use the tools of the trade isn't the only quality of a good surgeon. The skills are far more complex which is just as well, because one of the examining surgeons found that his own young schoolchildren were considerably faster than he was in acquiring any new technique.
THERE is a hint of panic in Gehe's competing bid for Lloyds Chemists. The German pharmaceutical wholesaler has plenty of reasons to want to own the 800-strong retail chain but they are tactical, not strategic. Even if Gehe fails, it will have achieved part of its objective by raising the cost of UniChem's investment.
Gehe's main interest is wholesaling, a slim-margin business in which it boasts a leading position in Germany and France and last year acquired a 30 per cent share in the UK, buying AAH, the principal rival of UniChem. The Germans readily admit that AAH is currently a less efficient wholesaler than UniChem, making less margin and operating from 16 depots, compared with UniChem's 11 sites. Gehe intends to shut down two AAH depots, but the rationalisation is taking time and that is the key to Gehe's strategy in yesterday's bid.
The Germans are attempting to rubbish UniChem's claim that it will achieve most of a total cost-saving of £20 million in one year following the bid. UniChem may be optimistic, but Gehe's reckoning that integration will take three to four years seems unduly long to close down surplus depots.
Gehe is not desperate to own a large retailer its own retail chain is considerably smaller than UniChem's. But Gehe cannot afford to let its rival pick up big savings in bulk purchasing and logistics at low cost. The market rightly believes UniChem's estimate of savings is conservative and an increased offer looks imminent. But if Gehe forces the British company to issue more shares it may feel it has successfully spoilt the party.
John Waddington, the packaging group, fell 5p to 197p. Wise Speke, the Newcastle-based broker, has placed 5.2 per cent of the company, which had been overhanging the market, with various clients. The 5.4 million shares were placed at 190p. They are believed to have been the holding of Threadneedle Investment Managers.
SHARES in Country Casuals, the high street clothing retailer, reached their highest level for more than a year after the company announced a 9 per cent growth in sales in the fourth quarter.
The share price rose 4p to close at 154p.
The company said it performed strongly in the weeks leading up to Christmas while maintaining margins. It added that, although its early January sales were disappointing, a pick-up in January resulted in a 6 per cent increase in sales on a like-for-like basis.
Country Casuals has struggled since its flotation at 130p in 1992. In October, John Shannon, former chairman, launched a £26 million bid for the company which failed. He has since sold his 18.8 per cent stake in the company for a profit of £5 million.
THE alliance formed yesterday by BT and its German industrial partners will invest about £1.5 billion to launch a competing service to Deutsche Telekom, the state telecommunications group that will lose its monopoly in 1998. BT said that the alliance's goal was to capture 10 per cent to 15 per cent of the German market. BT formed the partnership with RWE, one of Germany's largest electricity, gas and water suppliers, and Viag, an industrial group, which both have telecoms arms.
Sir Peter Bonfield, BT's chief executive, said: "We welcome the approach taken to regulation in Germany, which has provided the regulatory environment so that these three companies can plan how to tackle these markets."
Deutsche Telekom is scheduled to be privatised later this year and the entire German market, Europe's biggest, will be thrown open to competition a year later. Several groups, including Cable and Wireless and Veba, its partner, will be competing with BT's alliance for market share. BT has said it expects Deutsche Telekom's market share to decline to about 80 per cent by 2005.
BT, RWE and Viag will attack both the residential and business market. BT will provide the marketing skills and much of the technology while RWE and Viag, whose activities give it access to about 80 per cent of the German population, will provide infrastructure and billing systems.
BT said it would try not to compete on price alone. It noted that Mercury Communications, its main rival in Britain, had made little progress by attempting to undercut BT. The ownership structure of the German alliance has not been determined yet, though each of the partners is expected to have a one-third share. Separately, BT said it was unlikely to announce its French partner until the autumn. It had previously stated that a partner would be chosen by the end of last year.
The delay suggests that BT is having trouble finding a suitable candidate in continental Europe's second largest telecoms market. France is the biggest hole in its European portfolio; alliances have already been formed in Italy and Spain.
BAA, the company that runs seven UK airports including Heathrow and Gatwick, yesterday raised £260 million through an issue of convertible bonds.
The move puts BAA in a stronger position to bid for the Australian airports being privatised late this year.
BAA also announced a 14 per cent increase in pre-tax profits to £374 million for the nine months to December 31. Passenger numbers increased 5.9 per cent to 73.4 million, a rise that has continued into January.
A BAA spokesman said the bond issue took advantage of cheap money in the convertible market. The bonds will pay interest at 5.75 per cent and can convert to ordinary shares at a price of 576p, nearly 18 per cent above yesterday's mid-market price of 488.5p.
While BAA awaits the outcome of the Heathrow Terminal 5 inquiry, it is pressing ahead with international expansion. It has formed a consortium with Australian Mutual Provident, the insurer, and the New South Wales superannuation authority to buy one or more of Sydney, Perth, Melbourne or Brisbane airports, Australia's biggest.
Stansted was again the fastest-growing of BAA's airports. But Heathrow, up 2.6 per cent in January, has grown by 4.9 per cent over the last year. The airport handled 54.2 million passengers in the year to January 31, out of a BAA total of 92.2 million. Heathrow's current maximum capacity is about 60 million.
For the nine months, BAA's income from traffic and airport charges was £380 million, up by 4.5 per cent from £364 million. Passenger spending generated net retail income of £313 million, a 10 per cent rise. Property income rose 11.4 per cent to £157 million.
THE long-running battle to resuscitate Owen & Robinson, the sportswear retailer, is nearly over, with news of a £5.48 million capital injection that should see its shares relisted next month after an eight-month suspension.
If successful, O&R will be the first publicly quoted company to be saved from administration while its trading subsidiary is saved simultaneously from company voluntary arrangement. O&R's shares were suspended at 16p last July a far cry from the 782p they commanded in May 1991. The company also revealed a management shake-up involving the departure of five of six directors and the appointment of Maurice Dwek as executive chairman, a post he held until 1992. Rodney East and Keith Miles have been appointed non-executive director and finance director respectively.
The £5.48 million is being raised by way of a placing and open offer at 10p a share. The new and existing shares are expected to start trading on March 4.
O&R revealed a loss of £4.2 million (£81,000 profit) in the six months to July 31.
THE rigmarole forced on UK insurers by the EU Insurance Accounts Directive is a peculiarly pointless one even by the Eurocrats' standards.
The Pru et al will have to publish a set of figures that is supposedly standardised with their peers across Europe, showing wild fluctuations in profits as investments rise and fall in value. Insurance company accounts have never been that transparent; the new Euro-accounts will be opaque indeed.
As he drove home through the dark streets of Nairobi, British diplomat Graeme Gibson knew he was being followed. Looking carefully in the rearview mirror of his Land Rover Discovery, he watched as a battered Peugeot with two men inside shadowed his every move.
His memory of that night before Christmas is vivid. He tried to shake off his pursuers but was suddenly conscious of their car accelerating and drawing up alongside. A man leant out and fired two shots. The second hit Mr Gibson in the neck, missing a vital artery by a millimetre, but with devastating consequences.
"I knew immediately that I was paralysed. My foot went down on the accelerator and I remember trying desperately to get it off but I couldn't move it," he says.
The car slewed across the road and hit a brick wall. Because his foot was still stuck on the pedal, the car was beginning to fill with fumes. All the doors were locked, in accordance with Foreign Office security advice to diplomats.
"I can remember a crowd gathering around the car but they couldn't get me out because I couldn't move. Someone had to throw a brick through the back window to get me out. I was dragged over the back seats by a man who had seen the shooting. He cradled my head in his lap until the police car arrived and took me to hospital."
Mr Gibson, 43, had been just minutes from home in one of Nairobi's prosperous suburbs when he was attacked. His wife, Pamela, who also works for the Foreign Office in Nairobi, was told about the shooting in a telephone call from a passerby who had helped in the rescue.
"I didn't know what was going on. I thought it might have been some kind of a joke. I jumped in the car and drove around until I saw the Land Rover. He had just been taken away to the hospital, so I followed on behind."
Mr Gibson, a second secretary at the High Commission, knew the dangers of driving through the Kenyan capital at night. Four diplomats had been shot or injured in car-jackings over the previous few months. The Land Rover Discovery cars, driven by diplomats from most nations, are popular targets because of their high black-market value.
The bullet entered his neck on the right side, severing his spinal cord and leaving him paralysed from the chest down. The bullet is now lodged in a vertebra on the left side, but surgery to remove it is too dangerous and could lead to further paralysis. Mr Gibson was flown home for tests at St Thomas' Hospital before being moved to Stoke Mandeville spinal injuries unit. He has no feeling in his legs and lower arms, but some sensation in his shoulders. It could take months before doctors know the permanent extent of his injuries. He has only just learnt how to sit in a wheelchair.
Occupational therapists have now devised attachments which fix on to his hands above the knuckles, including a toothbrush, hairbrush and spatula. "He wanted to be able to do a barbecue, so they devised a spatula attachment to flip over the burgers," Mrs Gibson says.
The couple, who have been married for eight years, are determined to be positive. "Just one millimetre's difference and the bullet could have gone through his vocal cord or a main artery, so it could have been worse," Mrs Gibson says. "His spinal cord is severed so he will never walk again. But he's still very much the same old Graeme he laughs and gets irascible and frustrated just like he used to."
The couple are hopeful that he may regain some use in his thumb and forefinger, which would allow him a degree of independence. "When I stroke his hand, there is some feeling in the index finger and thumb," says Mrs Gibson. "If he could pick up a fork to feed himself, or be able to tap on a computer, the difference would be enormous."
Dundee-born Mr Gibson used to be a keen golfer, and had just taken up tennis again after a ten-year break. A self-confessed rugby fanatic, he is a member of the Hash House Harriers, an international group largely made up of expats which he describes as "a jogging club that drinks".
Mr Gibson admits that he has not fully taken in the consequences of his injuries: "It hasn't really hit me psychologically yet. I want to get on with the rehabilitation and find out what I can do," he says.
Mr Gibson has two daughters, Jenny, aged 17, and Ellen, 15, from his first marriage to an American diplomat. The two families arranged to be posted to Kenya together so that the girls could see their father regularly. Mr Gibson's first wife had arrived in Nairobi just a month before the Gibsons began work last year.
We had been working towards this for such a long time and it had finally all come together," Mrs Gibson says.
The couple have been overwhelmed by the response from friends and colleagues across the world. "Faxes have just flooded in from every continent," Mr Gibson says. "I've had loads of messages from businessmen in Kenya and Britain thanking me for the work I did in the trade department. It shows that the job does have an impact."
Mr Gibson's salary will be paid for the next six months and the Foreign Office has said it hopes he will be able to return to work possibly from home. Malcolm Rifkind, the Foreign Secretary, has visited his hospital bedside.
The future for Mrs Gibson is equally uncertain, but another foreign posting is almost certainly ruled out.
Despite the shooting, Mr Gibson's love of Africa is as strong as ever. "I'd love to say I joined the Foreign Office to serve my country but I'm afraid it was the desire for travel," says Mr Gibson. "I don't regret joining. I was just unlucky. We've had some wonderful times and met some wonderful people. I wouldn't take back a minute of it well, maybe just 30 seconds."
BRITISH TELECOM and its new German partners, Viag and RWE, are taking on Deutsche Telekom in Europe's biggest telecommunications market. Their goal is to capture as many as 15 per cent of the residential and business customers after deregulation in 1998.
In spite of the muscle and talent that the trio can offer, this looks over-ambitious. BT need only to consider the experience of its home market. When Mercury arrived in 1984, it intended building a network and offering a portfolio of services that would challenge BT's monopoly.
Mercury, of course, failed. BT, the nimble leviathan, has given up little more than 10 per cent of the market in the vast majority of service areas. BT would be foolish to expect Deutsche Telekom to fight any less furiously. What is more, the BT-Viag-RWE consortium will emerge as only one of several upstart groups vying with Deutsche Telekcom. In case anyone has forgotten, Cable and Wireless, which has infinitely more overseas experience than BT does, also has designs on Germany and has formed a broad partnership with Veba.
Mercury proved that competing on price alone is no recipe for success. In Germany, BT will not only have to be cheap, but must offer better and more innovative services. That won't be easy.
THERE was a time when being a company director was a doddle. Long lunches with the people who put the work your way and Friday afternoon on the golf course you remember how it was, old boy.In the 1980s, the culture switched to a 15-hour day, power breakfasts and the devil take the hindmost. It may have meant burn-out at 50, but again you knew where you were.
Now we are all squaring up to a stakeholder democracy even if no one knows what this entails. At the social level, it means having enough of a stake in society not to burn your surroundings down periodically out of sheer frustration at your economic impotence.
For the executive, it should involve an end to a business culture red in tooth and claw. New Labour insists that its plans, ill-defined and inchoate though they may be for a stakeholder culture, will not require extensive legal changes to those Companies Acts that define the duties of directors.
An analysis out today from Bristol University claims, too, that no large-scale changes to corporate governance law will be necessary for UK firms to become "stakeholder companies". Professor John Parkinson, a legal academic at Bristol, says there is a "slackness of legal control over business policy".
But this is a blessing, not a disadvantage. Any redefinition of directors' duties to take in interested parties other than shareholders, such as customers, suppliers, employees and the wider community, would not, he says, reduce accountability, because the system does not provide much accountability as it is. For directors and companies, there is no legal obligation to behave in a short-termist way.
It may be in the short-term interests of businesses to drive their suppliers to the wall through sharp business practice, but, notwithstanding recent remarks by Michael Heseltine, it makes no long-term sense.
As the catacomb comes back into fashion, a simple guide to reserving a last resting space.
THEY spend their lives toying with an undressed lettuce leaf in San Lorenzo, shopping on the King's Road and drinking cocktails in Kartouche. So when they die it is only natural that the ladies who lunch want to be buried as close as possible to their Knightsbridge stomping ground in the sepulchral splendour of Brompton Cemetery.
Yet the inhabitants of this gilded corner of west London have as little chance of being laid to rest in Brompton's ivy-covered grounds as of joining Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party. Along with cemeteries all over London, Brompton, the imposing home to the remains of such luminaries as Emmeline Pankhurst and John Wisden of almanac fame, has run out room.
Last week, the cemetery announced that it would be tackling its space deficit by reopening its catacombs to new inmates. At present housing 1,200 lead-lined tombs containing the rotting relics of the Victorian bourgeoisie, the catacombs may soon be welcoming the corpses of their great-great-grandchildren.
"There are many people who would like to be buried here, but at the moment they can't," says a cemetery spokesman. "The only space available is in graves purchased by undertakers who then sell the spaces on. When the catacombs reopen there will be room for several hundred more bodies."
All over London, the problem is the same. Deaths are about to boom, from the present figure of 640,000 a year to a peak of 829,000 in the middle of the next century. Yet the cemeteries are full to bursting. Anyone whose heart is set on a particular cemetery should book a plot now and expect to pay for it.
"Anyone who wants to be buried in London is talking £3,000 as a conservative estimate," says Ian Hussein, the deputy superintendent registrar of the City of London Cemeteries and Crematoria. Plots at his cemetery ("We have no famous residents, unless you count a few victims of Jack the Ripper") cost from £1,500 for a single grave to £16,000 for a family vault. "That doesn't count digging the grave, the headstone and the costs of the funeral."
Karl Marx is no doubt turning in his grave at prices in his resting place, Highgate, arguably London's most beautiful, and certainly its most exclusive cemetery. According to Richard Quirk, the manager of privately-owned Highgate, prices range from £1,300 for a single grave in the "prosaic east cemetery" to more than £10,000 for a vault in the fashionable west cemetery, near the bones of Ralph Richardson, George Eliot and Faraday.
"We do have a distinct ambience which makes us very popular," says Mr Quirk. "And yes, people of a certain persuasion might like to be near Marx's grave."
Bernard France, of A. France and Son, a funeral parlour in Bloomsbury, central London, says: "Highgate is very popular if you want to be buried with all the great and you have the financial resources. It's beautifully kept and has a distinctive, but charming, Gothic gloom. Sometimes when we are dealing with a distinguished person, you really feel you should mention it as an option."
Also popular with Mr France's customers, as well as being cheaper, is Hampstead cemetery, which houses Lister, Marie Lloyd and one Arthur Price, a ventriloquist buried with his dummy. This, however, is local-authority controlled and open only to residents of the borough of Camden.
In the private sector, Mr France recommends leafy Kensal Green, in northwest London, where Thackeray, Brunel and Trollope are buried. According to Julie Rugg, of the Cemeteries Research Group at York University, it was Kensal Green which set the trend for Victorians to be buried in cemeteries. "Two children of George III chose to be buried there the first members of the Royal Family to be buried among commoners. After that, everybody wanted to go there."
Opened in 1832, Kensal Green was the first cemetery in London, designed to house the overflow from the cramped churchyards, where gravediggers frequently had to dig through bodies to make space for new ones. The first private cemeteries, opened with profit in mind, were often so crowded that one family in the 1840s complained that the ground level at the graveyard next door had risen so high it was now level with their windows. Vicars, who received a large proportion of their income from burial fees, discouraged the development of new burial grounds.
"It was at this time that the catacombs at Brompton became incredibly fashionable," says Dr Rugg. "People saw them as being in the tradition of the landed gentry with their family vaults."
It took the cholera epidemic of 1849 to change this fashion. "Catacombs were seen as insanitary. People thought they were catching diseases from these bodies buried above the ground and the catacombs were forced to close." The City of London has never closed its catacombs. "They've never been that popular," says Mr Hussein. Brompton, meanwhile, is planning to charge between £1,500 and £3,000 per cell, using profits to restore the catacomb buildings.
Those too impecunious to reserve a place in the houses of the dead might prefer to be cremated, like 70 per cent of the population.
"For cremation, many people like Golders Green Crematorium," says Mr France. Opened in 1902, Golder's Green, a listed building with 12 acres of garden, including a dispersal-lawn planted with more than a million crocus bulbs, was London's first crematorium and hundreds of celebrities have gone up in smoke there, including Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Marc Bolan, Vivien Leigh, Sid James, Anna Pavlova and T.S.Eliot. In the grounds there are memorials to, among others, such crematees as Freud, Chamberlain, Kipling and Peter Sellers. A cremation costs £210.
For those still undeterred by the price of internment, the best solution might be to be laid to rest in the back garden. "It is not illegal, so long as you keep a burial register and are not going to poison a water supply," says Dr Rugg. "But I have never heard of anyone actually doing this. It sounds like a nice idea, but think what it does to the resale value of the property."
GIL AMELIO, boss of struggling Apple Computers, could hardly have been greeted by worse news in his first week. Packard Bell, which has taken Apple's second spot in the American market for personal computers, is being mightily armed to assault faster-growing European and Far East markets too.
The three-way deal between Packard Bell, NEC, of Japan, and Bull, the state-promoted French computer champion, illustrates, in super, user-friendly colour graphics, the weaknesses of the pc pioneer. Beny Alagem's Packard Bell prospers because it is a low-cost manufacturer. Like Compaq, the market leader, it relies on the research overheads of component and software developers such as Intel and Microsoft.
Now it has cemented a powerful tri-continental alliance that should speed development of upmarket and multimedia products and broaden distribution. No matter that Bull is doubtless pleased to be shot of Zenith, part of new management's plan to wean France's spoilt child off state aid.
It helps to build a stronger global competitor and lowers costs on new generation mass market products such as portables. By contrast, Apple continues to saddle itself with much of its own costly software and hardware development.
That is in part because it has not formed such strong strategic alliances, in turn because it does not want to give away its best secrets. When needy IBM tried an offer in 1994, Apple wanted more. Now its shares are barely two thirds of the price.
In America, which accounts for almost two fifths of the world market, growth is slowing, putting ever more pressure on costs and to share overheads. Industry analysts still expect 13 per cent growth this year, but most of that is replacement demand. Where computers are still spreading, the market is growing faster, by 70 per cent in Japan last year and a third in Europe. Pressure on margins is still intense, as even Compaq found last year. Apple, which lost $69 million in the usually most profitable Christmas quarter, won number two spot in Japan but suffered as much from intense competition there as from sluggish sales at home and its long failure to crack the dominant corporate market.
The mass personal computer market is past the era of a thousand flowers blooming. The future rests with relatively few global firms. NEC/Packard Bell/Zenith will surely be one of them, together almost matching Compaq's 10 per cent of the world market. After Microsoft bridged the technical gap with Windows 95, Apple is in danger of becoming the Sony Betamax of the pc world unless it links or specialises. Mr Amelio needs all his good friends.
Benedict Nightingale raises the curtain on a curious world where you can earn a fortune by pretending to be yourself.
Recently there was a rumour that Stephen Fry was going to play himself in a television version of Fat Chance, Simon Gray's book about the disastrous production of his play Cell Mates. In other words, Fry would be a large, worried actor who flees England for Bruges and ends up in a beret posing as someone called Monsieur Simon.
Actually, his next major task is to take the lead in a film about Oscar Wilde, and, if we are to believe its makers, this will be almost as close a match. "Stephen's intelligence, flamboyance and wit are such it makes incredible sense," one of the producers is quoted as saying. Fry will, it seems, still be somewhat typecast.
But typecasting can, of course, go a lot further than that. Anthony Quayle, who often played war heroes on the screen, really was a war hero. Tony Hancock was a gloomy, insecure man, desperate for intellectual recognition and painfully aware of the gaps in his education, just like his persona on television. Sybil Thorndike, vicar's daughter and socialist idealist, felt that Shaw's St Joan was in large part herself. Noel Coward was invariably Noel Coward, especially when he was saying Noel Coward things in Noel Coward plays.
Nell Gwyn, the first female star of our stage, brought her own mischief, gusto and erotic charisma to roles that even her great admirer, Pepys, sometimes found "very smutty". She was as much the tantalising sexpot onstage as off it, and, on the few occasions she performed tragedy, she contrived to remain her irrepressible self. After committing suicide in Dryden's Tyrannic Love, she leapt off her bier to reassure her male fans she was "the ghost of your poor departed Nelly" and promised to "come dance about your bed at night".
Of course all actors are typecast to some extent. Their bodies, faces, voices and, often, personalities dictate or limit who they can play. You would never cast Glenda Jackson as the shrinking Desdemona, or Quentin Crisp as Tamberlaine the Great, or Edward Fox, the quintessential Edward VIII, as Bill Sikes. Yet acting is a slippery business, which constantly surprises and persistently eludes definition.
It is more than padding that is currently transforming Oliver Ford Davies, who won an Olivier award for his playing of a very thin vicar in David Hare's Racing Demon, into a very fat John Ogdon in William Humble's Virtuoso at the Wolsey, Ipswich. Nor is it just a northern accent and a streetwise slouch that turns the elegant Diana Rigg into Mother Courage at the National. A mark of major actors is an uncanny ability to reinvent themselves from top to toe. It is to resist typecasting.
Even so, this often involves drawing on aspects of themselves they have in common with the characters they are playing. Though Olivier was always considered the most external of important actors one who mimicked others rather than exposed his own nature his Macbeth was praised for its uniquely dark, inner qualities. Why? Surely because he knew what it meant to hunger to become and remain number one.
The great megalomaniac actors have often scored special successes in despotic roles. The venomous Kean was a superb Richard III. Macready, who scorned other performers as "beasts from hell", was brilliant as Coriolanus and King John. Wolfit, a monster of egoism, was a wonderfully domineering Lear. Edith Evans was Lady Bracknell.
Typecasting can be deceptive. It can even be a sort of disinformation. Rex Harrison usually played cool, urbane, affable men, yet in private was the selfish ogre whose last words to his solicitous son from his deathbed were: "What can you do? Drop dead." But for better actors typecasting has meant owning up, telling truths about themselves.
Was Michael Redgrave the stronger in the role of the Captain in Strindberg's Father for being a tormented bisexual? Certainly, one critic praised him for showing "the weakness of the lonely neurotic behind the Captain's sham virility". Was the late Robert Stephens the moving Falstaff he was because he knew that drink and dissolute living had wrecked him and his career?
But here we are talking about something deeper and more private than the term "typecasting" can convey. If you want a more literal example of what it means, none is more horribly apt than John Barrymore's farewell to the stage, a play called My Dear Children. It concerned a Shakespearean ham on the skids, and at the time the once-great actor was skidding almost to skid-row.
Offstage, he was drinking everything from ammonia to camphor; he was given to urinating in lifts and hotel lobbies; his language was as vile as his appearance; he made drunken passes at anyone female, from tarts to waitresses to his own daughter to his estranged wife, who was less than half his age.
The audiences, who knew some of this, flocked to see the abject self-portrait, and Barrymore fulfilled their expectations, tipsily fluffing his lines, or falling asleep on stage, or giving crude, offensive curtain-speeches.
It was called "the spiritual striptease of Gipsy Rose John", "the complete obliteration of Dr Jekyll by Mr Hyde". And what did Barrymore do next? He made a film called The Great Profile about a ruined actor drunkenly ad-libbing through a trashy play. Typecasting has gone, or sunk, no further.
THE NEWS Corporation, the parent company of The Times, reported weaker earnings yesterday in spite of a strong performance from its British newspaper and American television divisions.
The group's operating profits, before abnormal items, for the half-year to December 31 fell 2 per cent to $492 million on turnover of $5 billion, up 11 per cent. After abnormal items and income tax, the profit was $521 million against $610 million. The latter figure includes a substantial gain from the flotation of BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster, in late 1994.
Earnings per American Depository Receipt were 65 cents against 83 cents.
News Corp blamed the lower earnings on a downturn in the book, magazine and filmed entertainment businesses. The magazine division, which includes TV Guide, and the book division, which includes HarperPaperbacks, have suffered from a 40 per cent rise in paper prices in the past year.
News Corp also reported lower earnings from its stake in Ansett Airlines, the domestic carrier in Australia.
In Britain, the company's operating profits rose by 11 per cent to $128 million, largely because of cover price and circulation increases at The Sun and The Times. It said that all the British newspapers reported higher advertising revenues in the final months of last year.
In America, the profits of Fox Television rose sharply in spite of weak advertising in the fourth quarter. An interim dividend of 6 cents per ADR will be paid on April 26.
THE weak housing market claimed another victim yesterday when Prowting, the South of England housebuilder, said that its profits had been hit by patchy demand and fierce price competition.
Prowting's shares fell 11p to 102p as Panmure Gordon, its broker, cut its profit forecast for the year from £9.5 million to £6 million. The company made £9.6 million in the year to February 28, 1995. Terry Roydon, the chief executive, blamed intense price pressure in November and December.
THE European Commission has launched an inquiry into Fr24 million of state subsidies offered to Scania, the Swedish lorrymaker, as part of Fr50 million aid to build an assembly plant in Angers in northwest France. The EC said it had serious doubts about the use of the funds.
In 1990 the Commission approved aid of Fr190 million to Scania, then called Saab-Scania. But Scania dropped the project after receiving Fr50 million in 1992. French authorities last month said Scania would return Fr26 million plus interest.
New York: Madonna, having discovered that Argentina is less indulgent to Hollywood versions of history than some other countries, has attacked critics of her forthcoming role as Eva Peron.
The American singer, whom some Argentinians consider unsuitable to play Peron in a film version of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita, called a news conference to say that she was hurt by the reaction to her arrival in Argentina to make the biographical film. She said: "Form your opinions after you have seen the movie."
She said that Peron, whom many Argentinians almost worship, had become a role model for her. "I am full of admiration for her. She came from nothing to have such influence over the country."
Madonna's announcement, part publicity stunt, included an appeal to ardent Peronists to allow the film to be made without protests.
Peronist loyalists say the wife of the former Argentinian leader should not be played in the $60million (£39million) film by a woman named after the mother of Christ who has appeared in rock concerts in skimpy outfits, singing of lust. Slogans such as "Evita Lives! Get out Madonna!" have appeared on walls in Buenos Aires.
HEADLAM GROUP, the distributor of floor coverings and fabrics, is raising £18.3 million through a rights issue to fund two acquisitions. The company is to buy Mercado Holdings, a UK distributor of carpets, for up to £11 million, and Malie Group, a Dutch carpets and soft furnishings business, for £9.7 million. Headlam is offering one new share for every four held at 185p each. Existing shares rose 8p to 220p. Headlam estimates that 1995 profits were not less than £7.7 million before tax, rising from £5.8 million in 1994.
PACKARD BELL, the fast growing American personal computer maker, is to mount a challenge for the world market after an injection of $650 million in cash and businesses from its Japanese and European partners.
NEC, the Japanese combine that owns a fifth of Packard Bell, is to provide $280 million of extra capital in exchange for preference shares. Groupe Bull, the state-controlled French computer champion, is to sell Zenith Data Systems, its US-based personal computer business, to Packard Bell, likewise for preference shares.
Bull also owns a fifth of the US company and is in turn 17 per cent owned by NEC. The sale will help the commercial turnround of Bull, after what the European Commission insisted should be the last injection of state aid.
The double deal is aimed at giving Packard Bell enough cash to integrate the technically strong but financially vulnerable Zenith and to expand outside America. It should also cement the existing three-way alliance in technology, manufacturing and distribution and accelerate development of multimedia products.
Beny Alagem, founder and chief executive, has made Packard Bell the fourth biggest personal computer maker. In 1995, it supplied 3.1 million units and took 5.2 per cent of the world market. It ranks after Compaq Computer (10 per cent), IBM (8 per cent,) and troubled Apple Computers (7.8 per cent), with NEC itself ranking fifth.
Packard Bell's share depends heavily on the slower growing US market, where it dominates retail sales of personal computers sold through shops and is second only to Compaq in overall sales.
Adding Zenith's $1.3 billion will bring Packard Bell's annual sales to $5.5 billion and allow it to leapfrog Compaq to become US market leader, with about 13 per cent. Mr Alagem aims to have his company's shares quoted in America soon.
Packard Bell has low-cost manufacturing plants, including a French factory that makes frames for Bull. In future, NEC may share more Packard Bell production facilities outside Japan.
Adding Zenith, plus closer co-operation with NEC, should also enable it to widen and to upgrade its product range. Zenith has a new range of laptop computers selling into the French public sector market and the American corporate market.
AN ELATED Pat Buchanan proclaimed himself the Republican Right's standard-bearer yesterday after dealing Phil Gramm, his conservative rival, a crippling blow in the opening battle of this year's American presidential race.
The outspoken television commentator, who grievously wounded President Bush in the 1992 New Hampshire primary, produced another giant-killing performance in Tuesday night's Louisiana caucuses, defeating Mr Gramm in a state the senator believed he had locked up.
Through days of furious tub-thumping populist campaigning Mr Buchanan cobbled together a coalition of anti-abortion activists, protectionists, isolationists and gambling foes in a deeply conservative Southern state. He was rewarded with 13 delegates to this August's Republican convention. Mr Gramm won eight and Alan Keyes, a more peripheral conservative candidate, none.
It was "a victory for a new conservatism of the heart ... a conservatism of faith, family and country", Mr Buchanan said. "The Battle of the Bayou is over and it has ended in a great triumph for the Buchanan Brigades." It was also a stunning setback for Mr Gramm, one from which this hugely ambitious but little loved Texas senator may find it impossible to recover.
He had pressed Louisiana to hold the nation's first caucuses, believing a big victory in his neighbouring state would give him valuable momentum before next Monday's Iowa caucuses. He had worked Louisiana long and hard. Its Republican establishment had rigged the caucus rules in his favour and all the leading Republican candidates save Mr Buchanan had stayed away, preferring to concentrate on Iowa.
Reporters who followed him on to his aircraft after the first exit polls said that he sat in "stunned, disconsolate silence and absently plunged an index finger into an armchair ashtray". He looked up and said: "Can't do a damn thing about it now." Mr Gramm, who has spent two years and $20million (£13million) on the campaign trail, gamely toured yesterday's breakfast television shows, insisting that he could rebound in Iowa, thanks to a strong grassroots organisation; but that is highly questionable.
Even before Louisiana, he was third or fourth in most Iowa polls and uncomfortably short of funds. His credibility with Iowa's powerful Christian conservatives and potential contributors has been gravely damaged. Other Iowans resent his failure to uphold the state's right to hold the first presidential caucuses. Compounding his woes, he was so busy campaigning in Louisiana on Tuesday that he missed a Senate debate on a farm Bill backed by Iowa's many farmers, which went down by a single vote.
Mr Buchanan said that he had the credibility to win the nomination. He is certainly on a roll and should perform creditably in his old stamping ground of New Hampshire on February 20, but few analysts seriously believe he can capture the nomination.
The real beneficiary of Mr Gramm's humiliation appears to be Robert Dole, who has always feared his Senate colleague much more than he has Mr Buchanan.
GOLDSMITHS GROUP, the jewellery retailer, has linked up with Norwich Union, the insurer, to provide replacement jewellery and watches to the company's claimants.
Norwich Union customers who have jewellery or watches stolen will be expected in most cases to find a replacement at Goldsmith shops, which include the Walker & Hall stores.
Until now, Norwich Union has settled most claims with cash, leaving policyholders free to buy replacements wherever they chose.
HE WAS always known as "Mr Relentless", the most focused, disciplined and unforgiving member of the Republican presidential pack.
Subdued by a crushing defeat in Louisiana less than 24 hours before, Phil Gramm, the Texas senator, still managed to retain a smug optimism yesterday as he arrived in Iowa for the first real test of the 1996 campaign. To the strains of a suitably chosen brass band from the Des Moines Christian school, Mr Gramm regaled his audience with a vision of America free of abortion, of quotas and set asides.
He offered no mention of Louisana, instead presenting himself as the only candidate able to stop Washington from choking small businesses and, of course, Iowan farmers. "I am your man," said Mr Gramm beneath the vaulted dome inside the state capitol building. He drew strong cheers for a "positive message", but the crowd inside was little more than 200.
Privately, many in the Gramm camp are worried that he may have undermined his position by maintaining he would achieve a first place in Louisana. "If you say that, it doesn't matter how many brass bands you may have," an aide said.
SINGAPORE is to join a Chinese-led consortium in talks with British Aerospace and other European planemakers about developing a 100-seat passenger jet.
Inclusion of Singapore Technologies Aerospace (ST Aero) in the $2 billion project will reinforce the technical capabilities of the Asian partners as the Europeans appear set to beat Boeing of America in the beauty contest being conducted from Peking.
Boeing's launch of the 737-600 aircraft last year, targeted at the same market segment, and its inclusion of Japanese partners on the larger Boeing 777 programme appears to have undermined its credibility as a potential partner.
But with Fokker now in administration, the European consortium, comprising BAe, Aerospatiale of France, and Alenia of Italy, is clear favourite to take a 20 per cent stake in a programme expected to sell 1,000 aircraft worth $20 billion.
According to an ST Aero official quoted by Reuter, Aviation Industries of China (Avic) and ST Aero "will work together to select a Western partner". The comment appears to undermine the role of Korean partners, whose demands for a second production line and a 35 per cent stake in the project have been cold-shouldered by the Chinese Government.
However, efforts to keep the Koreans involved, as a components supplier, will continue to reduce the prospect that they will build a rival aircraft.
Rolls-Royce has secured a $150 million order for Trent 800 engines to power six Boeing 777 sub-jumbo jets ordered by Singapore Aircraft Leasing, a subsidiary of Singapore Airlines.
Airtours, the holiday company, said that a legal dispute with the Asprou family arising from its acquisition of Aspro holidays in 1993 had been resolved, and a sum of money paid to Airtours. The company said the terms of the settlement remained confidential.
Bankgesellschaft Berlin, Germany's sixth largest bank, plans to cut 1,900 of its 16,900 workforce by the end of 1998. The bank said that it proposed to focus on direct banking, telephone banking and discount broking.
Senior Engineering, the manufacturer of tubing and thermal engineering components, has acquired Jackson Industries, an American business, for £5.1 million, and Habia Teknofluor of Sweden for £2.6 million. Both acquisitions are involved in making Teflon hose products and will form part of Flexonics, a Senior subsidiary.
Morgan Crucible, the ceramics to materials group, has paid £14.5 million for an 80 per cent interest in Magna Industrial Company of Hong Kong.
Morgan Crucible, which spent £35 million on three US businesses in March 1995, has an option to buy the remaining 20 per cent of Magna, which mainly supplies speciality lubricants and maintenance chemicals through a worldwide network of distributors.
Tokyo: Ryutaro Hashimoto, Japan's Prime Minister, admitted receiving political contributions from three organisations owed money by housing loan companies which the Government plans to bail out with public funds.
His admission, in parliament's budget committee session, will heighten public opposition to the bail-out scheme, which will use up at least 685 billion yen (£4.2 billion) of taxpayers' money.
EFFORTS to rescue Coal Investments, the mining group apparently forced into administration by a cash-flow crisis, gathered pace yesterday.
John Talbot, Murdoch McKillop and Peter Tuch, administrators from Arthur Andersen, received a large number of expressions of interest from rivals and potential buyers. RJB Mining, Britain's largest coal producer, said it was watching the situation, and expressed sympathy for CI's 1,500 miners and staff.
But industry sources point out that RJB, which bought all of the producing English coalmines of state-owned British Coal in December 1994, declined to take on four of CI's six pits at that time.
Nor does RJB have any shortage of capacity: rather, it would benefit from the loss of a competitor in a market facing further falls in demand.
The administrators are understood to be exploring whether it is possible to rescue part of Britain's second-largest mining group through a voluntary arrangement among creditors. That would probably involve a sale of some assets and a subsequent capital reconstruction through a debt-for-equity swap.
AMERICA'S deficit on goods and services fell sharply in November to its lowest level for more than 18 months, largely reflecting weaker imports as the economy slowed down last year and softness in the dollar which helped US exporters.
The deficit plunged 13.5 per cent to $7.06 billion from a revised shortfall of $8.16 billion in October and compared with Wall Street expectations of a deficit of $8.3 billion. Exports rose 0.9 per cent in the month, while imports fell 0.7 per cent. The politically sensitive deficit with Japan fell 13.6 per cent to $4.13 billion in November, the lowest that it has been for more than two-and-a-half years.
America's merchandise trade deficit, which excludes services, fell to $12.5 billion from $13.7 billion in October, while its surplus on services, such as travel and tourism, narrowed to $5.4 billion from $5.6 billion. Some economists expressed concern that the huge improvement in the trade performance might be another sign of the weakness of the domestic economy, which is continuing to hit imports.
ANGERSTEIN Underwriting Trust, reporting its first financial results since acquiring Delian Lloyd's Investment Trust, said it expected savings of £500,000 to arise in the first year following the merger, increasing to £650,000 in subsequent years. Angerstein reported net revenue of £1.65 million after tax for the half-year to November 30, an increase of 12.1 per cent over the first half of the previous year.
The net asset value has increased 7.9 per cent to 98.88p a share. There is an interim dividend of 1.1p a share, up from 0.8p.
Philip Bushill-Matthews, the managing director of Red Mill Snack Foods, at the company's Midlands plant.
Continental Foods, which acquired Red Mill in 1994, yesterday reported that pre-tax profits had increased to £807,000 from £432,000 for the half year to October 31. The interim dividend is lifted to 1.15p a share from 1p.
OFTEL, the telecommunications regulator, has directed BT to stop unfairly subsidising some of the services it provides to business customers. After a four-year investigation, Oftel determined that BT's rates of return from certain products offered by its managed network division were too low.
To comply with the directive, BT must raise those rates of return to 15 per cent and will accomplish that by reducing costs, raising prices, or a combination of both. BT said: "We disagree with Oftel's conclusions, but we will take the necessary steps to comply."
The network services division manages phone systems for corporate clients. Oftel said that the market was worth about £400 million a year. BT's share is thought to be about 40 per cent. The investigation was triggered by complaints from Mercury Communications and a company affiliated with AT&T. The directive covers five products, such as low-speed data-transfer systems. Oftel also wants BT to keep detailed financial records to prove that managed network customers are being charged all relevant costs.
In September, Oftel ordered BT to stop unfairly subsidising equipment sales such as fax machines and basic phones. BT had to raise the prices of these products. As a result, its equipment retailing activities have been severely curtailed.
PRUDENTIAL, the UK's largest insurance company, is to report two sets of performance figures at half-year and year-end to comply with an EU directive. The first show operating profits and the second pre-tax profits, including gains made on paper or through selling stocks. Under this system, the 1994 operating profit becomes £693 million (£603 million) and pre-tax profits £358 million (£603 million). For the 1995 half-year, they become £390 million (£304 million) and £499 million (£335 million) respectively.
KENNETH CLARKE, the Chancellor, appeared to have left interest rates unchanged after his meeting yesterday with Eddie George, Governor of the Bank of England.
There was no statement after the meeting and the Bank carried out its normal money market operations at unchanged rates. In spite of another rash of weak economic data in recent days, another rate cut was not expected after quarter-point cuts moves after both the December and January meetings.
Mr George expressed some reservations about the cut in December, strongly opposing a half-point move, and was studiously silent on the cut last month, prompting speculation that he disagreed with the Chancellor.
In these circumstances, the City would have been surprised if Mr Clarke had ordered yet another cut. However, there is still strong expectations that base rates will fall to 6 per cent from 6.25 per cent after the March meeting.
The Central Statistical Office yesterday published the latest cyclical indicators for the economy, showing that the longer leading index, supposed to signal turning points in the economy around a year ahead, is still falling.
BRITAIN'S failing export performance is hitting manufacturers across the country, a new Confederation of British Industry survey of the UK's regional industrial trends showed yesterday.
At the national level, CBI evidence shows that manufacturers' total orders are falling as exports, which have driven the recovery, drop back.
But the confederation's latest regional trends survey shows that while the decline in orders overall is not yet hitting every region across the country, the fallback in exports is having a dampening effect in a range of areas.
The survey, published jointly with Business Strategies, the regional consultancy, shows that across the 11 economic regions of Britain in the three months to January there was either a "noticeable" slowdown in orders overall or in four regions, a fall.
Orders fell in East Anglia particularly, with a balance of 26 per cent of companies those reporting a rise in order set against those registering a fall recording that orders are declining. Orders fell, though less spectacularly, in Yorkshire, the North and the West Midlands, and were flat in the South East and the North West.
The CBI said that, overall, orders had been dampened by weaker export growth, with exports from every region in Britain being worse in the three months to January than in the previous quarter.
Exports fell in East Anglia, Yorkshire and the North, with slower export growth in other areas leading to a stagnation in orders overall. But manufacturers in the South West, Scotland and Northern Ireland saw exports continuing to rise.
While future expectations across all the regions on both overall orders and exports are more optimistic than past performance, the CBI emphasised again that such expectations have not been fully realised for the last three surveys. The weakness of demand, combined with excessive stock levels, meant that output remained sluggish, with manufacturers in seven regions recording a slowdown or fall.
Despite an overall decline in national optimism, business confidence levels varied significantly between regions, with firms in Northern Ireland, East Anglia, Scotland and the East Midlands indicating they were more optimistic than four months ago.
FINAL negotiations over the £3 billion Channel Tunnel rail link contract were plunged into turmoil yesterday when auditors were sent in to investigate alleged financial irregularities at the company that designed it.
The announcement came as the Department of Transport and London & Continental Railways (L&CR), its favoured bidder, were locked in talks over difficulties with funding arrangements.
With the contract due to be awarded within days, the investigation into Union Railways, a British Rail subsidiary, could not have been timed worse for the Government. Union Railways, which planned the 68-mile route, will be transferred to the successful bidder on April 1 after the contract has been signed.
Jim Butler, chairman of Union Railways, said that he had been told on Monday of "allegations of improper processes" within the company. "I have asked our auditors, Price Waterhouse, to conduct an investigation in these allegations and they have started this today," he said. "I have informed the Secretary of State for Transport, who has asked me to keep him abreast of the progress of the investigation."
The investigation centres on irregularities in the procurement of supplies such as stationery and printing materials and the sums involved are thought to be relatively small.
The announcement of the competition winner by Sir George Young, the Transport Secretary, is already a week overdue and is now unlikely to be made before the end of next week. Government concerns over the wording of L&CR's bank agreements are thought to be behind the delay. It has asked the L&CR to provide tighter assurances from its backers that the funding will be forthcoming when the contract is signed.
Ministers are happy with the bid submitted by L&CR as it asks for a lower government grant, which is paid later. However, there are concerns, in the wake of the Eurotunnel fiasco, over the consortium's debt-financing and its ability to raise an estimated £1 billion in equity finance next year.
Both bids contain a mix of equity and debt finance. However, with the L&CR bid there is believed to be a larger portion of equity finance up to one third of the total cost or around £1 billion. The rest would constitute up to £1 billion of bank debt, European funds and government subsidy.
Eurorail plans to raise 75 per cent of its £2 billion private financing in the form of bank debt, with 25 per cent from a placing of shares with institutional investors.
The partners in L&CR are Richard Branson's Virgin Group, National Express, Ove Arup, Bechtel and SBC Warburg, which is also acting as financial adviser.
The Eurorail partners are Trafalgar House, NatWest, BICC, HSBC, Seeboard and Credit Lyonnais, advised by Kleinwort Benson.
Full funding would be required between March and September next year when the "Eurotunnel effect" is likely still to be blighting the market for Channel Tunnel projects.
The consortium has Citibank and UBS as its lead banks. Rabobank, the Dutch bank, was part of the banking group but pulled out quietly last summer. In spite of efforts last year to attract other banks, only Dresdner Bank and Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank, the Japanese bank, have agreed to act as supporting banks.
Deutsche Bank, which was backing two earlier bids, looked at the project last summer but did not sign up and L&CR has failed to persuade any of the major UK banks to sign up to the project.
Eurorail's ten supporting banks are ABN Amro, Banque Indosuez, Bayerische Landesbank, CIBC, Commerzbank, Industrial Bank of Japan, Kredietbank, Mitsubishi Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland and Swiss Bank Corp.
MARSH & McLENNAN, the world's largest insurance broker, has sold off Frizzell Group, its insurance unit, to Liverpool Victoria for £188 million £81 million more than it paid for it three years ago.
Although the US group has invested £40 million since December 1992 in new technology and systems support, some analysts believe that Liverpool Victoria has paid too much.
Frizzell Group, which has its headquarters in Bournemouth, provides motor and household insurance, banking and independent financial advice.
The deal, which has been under negotiation for a couple of months, is expected to be completed by the middle of this year.
Liverpool Victoria said there was no overlap, since most of its business is door-to-door collections of premiums in the North of England and few of its customers had bank accounts.
But analysts questioned the wisdom of Liverpool Victoria trying to compete in an insurance market that was increasingly being dominated by direct insurers.
The mutual has 6.5 million policies on its books and assets of more than £3.5 billion. David Cheeseman, corporate strategy director, said the price was fair and sensible. He added: "In negotiating a price, we looked at the opportunities for growth which Frizzell would provide."
He said Liverpool Victoria was still interested in forming a joint venture, or making an acquisition or merger if the circumstances were right. There was, however, no question of demutualising: "We are committed to mutuality and we believe it is the best way forward."
Only since the beginning of the year have friendly societies been permitted to offer a banking service, and the mutual status of many building societies and friendly societies is under threat as they merge or are taken over.
M&M, which provides insurance and reinsurance services, has 25,000 employees worldwide and is quoted on both the London and New York stock markets. It has revenues from insurance of more than £1.8 billion per annum and has invested heavily overseas in the last 30 years.
Liverpool Victoria expects to widen Frizzell's distribution channels and add to its 500,000 motor and 200,000 household insurance customers using its existing customer base.
Roy Hurley, chief executive, said: "Frizzell and Liverpool Victoria are complementary businesses with similar customer values."
THE appointment of Archbishop Desmond Tutu to head the Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigating apartheid crimes has elevated the status of the Nobel laureate to dizzying new heights. A newspaper cartoon recently went so far as to depict him walking on water.
The Anglican primate, however, is wisely not promising miracles when work begins next month. In an interview with The Times, he talked candidly about his challenging mission and in the process underlined why there is so much uncertainty surrounding the work of the commission.
"We ought not to speak glibly, as people have tended to do, who say ‘why should you have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, you are just going to be opening up wounds and stirring up emotions and that we should just let bygones be bygones,"' Archbishop Tutu said. He noted the failure to address the horrors of the turn-of-the-century Boer War. "The trouble is, dealing with it as glibly as that, they can never be bygones and, as you know, those haunting words ‘those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it'."
The legislation governing the commission says it should promote national unity and reconciliation that transcend the divisions of the past. This should be done by establishing a picture of human rights abuses committed between March 1, 1960 and December 6, 1993.
Those who make "full disclosures" may apply for amnesty from prosecution. This can be refused, thus paving the way for prosecutions. The panel can summon witnesses and refusing to answer questions can lead to a two-year prison sentence. The panel can also recommend compensation.
The merit of the commission and its direction have been contested. On one side are those who have decried it as nothing more than a "witchhunt" that will hinder reconciliation. At the other end are those who say political horsetrading has weighted legislation in favour of the perpetrator.
Archbishop Tutu, 64, is principally responsible for finding a balance and dispensing absolution accordingly. He concedes that the commission will be unable to get through all the cases: there are estimates of 100,000. There is also the issue of crimes committed outside the country. If a person admits to crimes outside South Africa, can that evidence be used under another legal system? The clergyman admits he has no idea: "It is outside our competence."
PRESIDENT Jiang Zemin of China is reported to be uneasy about jingoist leaders in the People's Liberation Army who are urging tough action against Taiwan.
According to yesterday's South China Morning Post, Hong Kong's leading English-language newspaper, Mr Jiang has warned his more gung-ho generals that an invasion of Taiwan would imperil Chinese reunification with Hong Kong next year and with Macau in 1999. Any such steps, Mr Jiang is quoted as saying, must wait until both reunifications are complete.
The generals are said to have told Mr Jiang, who is also chairman of the Central Military Commission, that China should not delay its plans for Taiwan, which they feared would soon take possession of better weapons.
Although in recent weeks Mr Jiang and other party leaders have urged the military to remain obedient to the party, the paper reported that the bellicose military attitude towards Taiwan "has more support in Peking than Mr Jiang would like".
Chinese forces opposite Taiwan are mobilising for military manoeuvres intended to intimidate the Nationalist stronghold as it prepares for its first presidential election next month. Senior military analysts in Hong Kong confirmed yesterday that the build-up is known from satellite photographs and from what is referred to as "travellers". The analysts, however, think the impending war games are not a prelude to a mainland invasion of Taiwan, which they regard as highly unlikely.
In Washington, William Perry, the American Defence Secretary, said that he was "concerned but not alarmed‘' by the mounting Chinese pressure on Taiwan, reports of which are being fuelled by leaks from Peking designed to rattle foreign investors and the island's stock market.
Mr Perry said that last November when Chinese officials in Peking asked Joseph Nye, then Assistant Secretary of Defence, whether the Americans would intervene in the event of a direct Chinese threat to Taiwan, Mr Nye responded: "We don't know what we would do, because it's going to depend on the circumstances, and you don't know what we would do."
This week in Washington, Li Zhaoxing, China's Deputy Foreign Minister, was told that a military threat to Taiwan would be regarded as "a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and a grave concern to the United States", an American official said.
It is reported that a Peking study on China's fighting ability concluded that the Americans would intervene militarily if the mainland plainly menaced Taiwan, and advised against such a threat.
GEHE of Germany and UniChem are set to join in a fierce bid battle for control of Lloyds Chemists after Gehe's decision yesterday to enter the fray with a £584.3 million counter offer.
The cash offer from Gehe, Europe's largest drugs wholesaler, was accepted last night by the board of Lloyds Chemists. UniChem, which put the company in play last month with a £530 million cash and share offer, is expected to return with a stronger bid within a week.
Lloyds Chemists said it would hold discussions with UniChem "to determine whether, in the light of the offer by Gehe, UniChem would be prepared to increase its offers".
Gehe's bid sent shares in Lloyds Chemists soaring 23p to 467p a five-year high, and above Gehe's offer of 450p a share. UniChem shares edged ahead 3p to 248p. Allen Lloyd, founder and chairman of Lloyds Chemists, saw the value of his 7.5 per cent shareholding leap to about £44 million under Gehe's offer £6 million more than under the terms of UniChem's offer.
City analysts said they thought UniChem could afford to lift its offer to about 480p a share, but any big rise would run the risk of undermining the value of its own share price.
Analysts said that they expected a bid battle for Lloyds Chemists, where Michael Ward is managing director, because neither Gehe nor UniChem would want to see the company in the other's hands.
Mr Lloyd built up the company from a single pharmacy into Britain's second largest pharmacy chain with 924 outlets. He diversified into drug wholesaling, a move that put pressure on rival pharmacy groups. UniChem and Lloyds Chemists both hold 30 per cent of the UK drugs wholesale market.
Gehe, which is majority-owned by Franz Haniel, a private company, has been rapidly expanding its drug wholesale business. It entered the UK market last year with the £400 million acquisition of AAH. In 1993, it won a contested bid for OCP, a French company into which it poured £325 million for a 95 per cent stake.
Dieter Kammerer, chairman of Gehe, said: "Our offer is generous and compares very favourably with the UniChem offer. Our offer reflects the potential enhancement of Lloyds Chemists's value, which would be realised through a combination of Lloyds Chemists with AAH."
Gehe's offer represents an 11.4 per cent premium to UniChem's offer for Lloyds Chemists ordinary shares based on Tuesday's prices. The offer is pitched at a 54.6 per cent premium to the share price just before UniChem launched its bid. UniChem's offer comprised 232p cash, plus four UniChem shares for every three Lloyds Chemists shares with a partial cash alternative.
AT LEAST 3,000 people captured during the fall of Srebrenica are dead and the Bosnian Serb authorities are responsible for the events there last July, a senior official at the International Committee of the Red Cross said yesterday.
Jean de Courten, the director of operations, told journalists that the Red Cross had repeatedly presented a list of the 3,000 to Pale over the past five months, without response.
"I would like to make it clear that the Bosnian Serb authorities have a serious responsibility for what happened in Srebrenica, and that I am convinced ... these people are no longer alive. This has been clearly stated to Mr Karadzic (the Bosnian Serb leader). And, in addition, that the information provides us with the conviction that it has been done by armed elements and the police forces of the Bosnian Serbs."
Mr de Courten, who was visibly bitter, met Bosnian Serb leaders, including Radovan Karadzic, in the Bosnian Serb stronghold late last week. Only 200 people from Srebrenica have been found so far in Bosnian Serb prisons.
Most of the Red Cross's information has been pieced together from interviews with relatives and cross-checked with other sources. The Red Cross has compiled a list of another 5,000 who went missing after they tried to flee the besieged enclave. The Red Cross has overall responsibility under the Dayton peace accord to trace thousands of people missing after four years of war.
Mr de Courten also criticised Muslims and Serbs for failing to respect the Dayton agreements on releasing detainees. Both sides have hidden prisoners, and he accused the Bosnian Government of restricting access to them.
VIDEOTRON HOLDINGS, the sixth largest cable company, has been put up for auction by Groupe Videotron of Montreal, its majority owner. The sale may trigger other takeovers as the money-losing industry tries to reduce costs through consolidation.
Groupe Videotron hired Goldman Sachs in London to handle the sale, after merger negotiations broke down with its rival, Bell CableMedia, the third largest cable company, which owns 18 per cent of Videotron.
Groupe Videotron owns 56 per cent of Videotron. Under British takeover rules, the buyer of that stake would have to make an equivalent offer to the minority shareholders. At current market prices, Videotron, whose shares are listed on America's Nasdaq market, is valued at about $900 million.
Groupe Videotron said that it wanted to sell the cable company to concentrate on its cable and entertainment activities in Canada.
Videotron, like all cable companies, suffers from low penetration rates, especially in London. Nonetheless, it was the first cable company to achieve operating profits. Revenues this year are forecast to reach £88 million, up from an estimated £58.6 million in 1995. Goldman Sachs has predicted annual revenues of almost £340 million by 2000.
Cable experts say that Bell Cablemedia is still the logical buyer for Videotron. But Nynex CableComms, the second largest cable company, is also a possible purchaser.
A CONGRESSIONAL committee investigating the so-called "Travelgate" scandal, last night issued 28 subpoenas against the Justice Department and senior presidential aides, including George Stephanopoulos and Lisa Caputo, Hillary Clinton's press officer.
The committee had demanded documents relating to the 1993 dismissal of the seven-man White House travel office.
The White House called in the FBI to investigate claims of financial mismanagement in the office, but six were exonerated. A jury acquitted the seventh, Billy Dale, after he had spent $500,000 (£326,000) defending himself against embezzlement charges.
The committee recently obtained White House memoranda suggesting Mrs Clinton ordered the sackings a charge she denies but has been unable to extract further documents from the Administration.
The subpoenas were "the only avenue left to ensure that all relevant documents that I have legitimately, responsibly and repeatedly requested are produced to the Congress," said William Clinger, the committee's Republican chairman.
Mike McCurry, the White House spokesman, accused the Republicans of issuing the subpoenas simply to embarrass the President in election year.
A BOEING 757 jet that crashed off the coast of the Dominican Republic, killing all 189 people on board, had not had a formal go-ahead from the Transport Ministry in Bonn to make the flight to Germany.
A ministry statement said the plane's operator, the Dominican airline Alas Nacionales, had failed to make an application for German approval. To back such an application, the airline would have had to submit details of the aircraft's owner, registration and a valid insurance certificate.
The ministry said there was no doubt that Alas Nacionales did have a proper insurance certificate. But it was rare for it to use a Boeing 757 on the route rather than its usual 767, which had German approval. The airline had leased the 757 from Turkey's charter airline BirgenAir for the day.
Most of the 176 tourists to die were German and the early, unfounded fears that the aircraft had not been insured led the Transport Ministry to consider legal action against the Turkish-owned airline and the tour operator. Last night 105 bodies had been recovered.
The crash renewed fears over the growing use of cut-price aircraft leased from third countries by hard-pressed holiday companies. Britain's charter airline industry has lobbied hard for tighter controls over "flag of convenience" jets.
Last night investigators were working on the theory that the jet suffered an electrical or engine failure before plunging into the Atlantic.
After the jet took off, it climbed through 7,000ft and accelerated to 275mph before appearing to go into a sharp turn and head back towards land. It plunged into the sea 13 miles offshore. There was no mayday call, possibly because at the time the pilots would have been changing radio frequencies from the airport at Puerto Plata to the main air traffic control centre at San Juan. The five British airlines, which together operate 89 Boeing 757 twin-jets, last night were waiting for an indication of what caused the crash.
Although the German tour operator, which had chartered the holiday jet, suggested that the crash may have been caused by lightning, operators of the 693 aircraft of the same type now in service were sceptical. The jet has one of the best safety records of all modern airliners and has proved itself capable of withstanding the most violent storms. There was no suggestion that the weather was exceptional, but a sudden squall could have resulted in hail or violent down-draughts known as "windshear".
Had the jet suffered an engine failure, it could have turned automatically towards the "dead" engine, appearing to radar operators to be trying to return to land. Then, if the pilots were busy resolving the immediate problem or the jet was hit by a squall, it could have been forced lower, smashing into the sea. Rafts were spotted in the shark-infested waters, possibly because they would have deployed automatically.
Flight 301 was filled with German tourists who had spent one or two weeks in the booming resorts of the Dominican Republic.
As news of the disaster reached Germany, relatives and friends arriving at airports in Frankfurt and Berlin to meet their loved ones stayed instead to find out their fate. Some wept as they fought past journalists and cameramen.
Two reporters from the mass-circulation Bild daily, posing as grief-stricken relatives, slipped past security staff and got into a lounge where passengers' next-of-kin were being counselled by a team of doctors, priests and psychologists. However, they were quickly ejected.
This year an estimated 100,000 Britons will visit the Dominican Republic 33 per cent up on last year. Its main attraction is its cheapness. A two-week all-inclusive holiday costs about £850 per person.
Oeger Tours, which organised the flights, picked the charter because it was cheaper and enabled them to save at least £100 per person. The operator has now offered to fly relatives of the victims to the Dominican Republic.
British Airways has 40 of the aircraft in service, and it is also a work-horse for charter airlines like Britannia, Monarch, Air 2000 and Airtours.
GERMAN television, once regarded as the most staid and narcoleptic in Europe, is in uproar.
The country's most adventurous maker of documentaries has been exposed as a fraud: 22 of his scoops were staged with the help of disguised neighbours and friends. Talk show hosts, desperate for new faces, have been falling for confidence tricksters. And another film-maker has been accused of fabricating drunken scenes among students at a language school in Eastbourne.
Private television channels are engaged in a fierce ratings war with the public channels and have discovered that there is a big audience for snappy news features. Since Germany has not had much snappy news over the past 50 years, there is considerable pressure on television journalists.
Enter Michael Born. The bearded 37-year-old journalist, now under arrest, suddenly emerged as a key supplier of sensational footage to private film companies such as Stern-TV. The company, associated with Stern magazine, supplies private channels such as SAT 1 and VOX.
Born was the first to expose the activities of the Ku Klux Klan in Germany, his camera secretly hidden in closed Klan sessions. However, the klansmen were in fact friends of the producer dressed in sheets. Another expose: German hunters slaughtering innocent cats. But the cats killed in grisly close-up were from an animal refuge and had been shot by another of Born's friends.
The trick was repeated in many variations. Sad, exploited child labourers making carpets for the Ikea furniture chain turned out to have been hired by the producer. Drug smugglers, filmed crossing the German-Swiss frontier, turned out yet again to be friendly actors. Born, a plump almost Rabelaisian figure, has been a freelance film-maker for more than six years. "We have known him for a long time," Gunter Jauch, the Stern-TV chief, said. "He has given us several pieces which were perfectly all right and he was well regarded by big, highly respected networks. That is why we trusted him."
The fraud came to light when the police started to investigate some of the claims made in the films, with a view to capturing the klansmen and drug-traffickers.
Born admits most of the frauds and his lawyer puts the blame squarely on the new German television culture. "There is an unbearable pressure to dramatise television reports," he said.
The problems are not confined to Born. Another documentary-maker for Stern-TV filmed students at an Eastbourne language school apparently enjoying wild parties. The introduction should have made the controllers suspicious: "Smoking pot, dancing, huge quantities of alcohol and sex. Those are the kinds of excesses that are attracting kids to Eastbourne."
The organiser of the language tours, Jurgen Matthes, is taking legal action against the television company, claiming that the students were in fact English and Norwegian, not German.
The most controversial segment of the film was shot in a discotheque unconnected with the school. The criticism, however, is disputed by Herr Jauch and a court ruling is expected next week.
Herr Jauch says: "Despite all the controls, it will always be the case that people try to cheat each other, even in journalism. There is no such thing as 100 per cent security in this matter."
GERMANY'S opposition Social Democrats took the first step yesterday towards making a big election issue out of economic and monetary union by challenging Helmut Kohl, the Chancellor, to revise the Maastricht treaty and include a new chapter on job creation.
Regional elections are to be held in three federal states next month and they will be the first test of the political volatility of the single-currency issue. The Social Democrat leadership has censored some posters on EMU, but the Baden-Wurttemberg party has approved a poster saying: "Stability and jobs have priority. So postpone EMU!"
Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, the party's Shadow Minister for Europe, attacked the Chancellor yesterday for what she called unforgivable inactivity. She made clear that introducing an employment chapter was the main goal of the opposition, that the party wanted a delay in introducing a single currency and favoured a resolutely federal and "social" Europe. Many observers feared the Social Democrats, who had announced their intention to make EMU the key election issue in 1998, were appealing to the worries of Germans about losing the mark.
However, under Oskar Lafontaine, the party's new leader, and Frau Wieczorek-Zeul the tone has changed. The party backs the Government's insistence on meeting the strict criteria for EMU entry but it insists on a comprehensive job-creation scheme. Given that anxiety about the disappearing mark is matched by concern about disappearing jobs, these are safe cards to play before a regional election. However, these goals are hard to square with a 1999 start date for EMU.
"HE IS not in," announced the aged caretaker who answered the door of Cezanne's atelier, the studio high above Aix-en-Provence where some of the artist's greatest paintings were produced.
For a long moment it was unclear whether "he" referred to the painter, who died in 1906, or to the museum curator. Perhaps she did not know herself, for the Aixois have a slightly unsettling habit of referring to Cezanne in the present tense.
The exhibition of Paul Cezanne's works opening at the Tate Gallery today is the most comprehensive assembled, confirming Matisse's assessment of the painter as the father of modern art. A restless and troubled man, Cezanne was often on the move, artistically and geographically, but it is in Aix, and among the vivid colours and contours of the surrounding countryside, that his art still lives.
Cezanne is embedded in the streets of Aix in the form of a trail of brass plaques nailed to the pavement every six feet, leading tourists from the artist's birthplace to his school and the house where he died. The most evocative of these sights is the Atelier de Lauves, built in 1901. Its curator who turned out to be a young, enthusiastic North African, far removed from the reclusive, irascible Cezanne opened the door to a scene, heavy with the scent of drying herbs, which is itself a still life: an arranged profusion of easels and brushes, letters and canvases, books and half-finished sketches. Here you find a fragment of the carpet used as background for a Cezanne still life, a visiting card, a tie stuffed in a drawer.
Designed by Cezanne to catch the maximum amount of light, one wall of the atelier is almost entirely window, next to a narrow trapdoor, 20ft high, which enabled the artist to slide his largest canvases out of the building. The workshop looks down over Aix and towards the Arc river, where Cezanne swam with his childhood friend, Emile Zola, and which became the setting for Les Grandes Baigneuses. To the north rises the silhouette of the great Mont Sainte- Victoire, the subject of so many of Cezanne's works.
If Aix provides one view of Cezanne the classically educated son of a well-to-do family then the "Sights of Cezanne" tour of the surrounding area, laid on by the local tourist authority, tells a complementary story of an artist indebted to the spectacular qualities of his native land. "I spend every day in this landscape, with its beautiful shapes ... I cannot imagine a more pleasant way or place to pass my time," Cezanne wrote to his son in 1906.
While the inhabitants of Aix may now talk about him with familiarity and pride, the relationship between Cezanne and his home town was ambivalent, to say the least. Zola dubbed Cezanne a failure after their relationship soured, but he was not alone in that view. The head of the Grandet Museum, where Cezanne first studied art, flatly refused to hang any of his paintings and it was not until 1921, when both were dead, that the museum acquired its first Cezanne.
The huge British interest in Provence is sure to redouble in the wake of the Tate exhibition. The artist would have been surprised and flattered by that, but still more astonished to find that Aix-en-Provence, a place which both inspired and rejected him, has now become "toujours Cezanne".
JEWISH groups and the Swiss authorities engaged in a bitter clash yesterday over the amount of cash belonging to victims of the Holocaust, which is allegedly being held in dormant bank accounts in Switzerland.
The dispute was sparked by a statement in Zurich by the Swiss Bankers Association, that a comprehensive survey had found the total in unclaimed assets from Holocaust victims and other foreign investors was estimated at $32 million (£21 million), a figure much lower than that estimated by international Jewish experts.
The World Jewish Congress issued a stinging response, describing the statement as "a failure of moral responsibility to the victims of the Holocaust, the survivors and their families". Edgar Bronfman, the president of the congress, said: "Contrary to the undertakings given to us, the Swiss statement was made unilaterally and is unacceptable."
At a press conference in Zurich, Jean-Paul Chapuis, the general secretary of the association, said of the investigation launched last
September: "The rumours about huge assets hidden in Swiss banks belonging to Holocaust victims are totally unfounded."
The Swiss estimate is paltry compared with claims by Jewish experts. The Israeli business daily Globes estimated that the amount involved was £4.3 billion. Priceless works of art and jewellery are also believed to be among the wartime legacy stashed away in safe-deposit boxes by the Nazis after their Jewish owners were killed.
"After 50 years we would have hoped for greater sensitivity on the part of the Swiss bankers and the Swiss Government and are waiting for a more appropriate response," Mr Bronfman said. "The Swiss bankers have not met the test of being transparent."
THE British Army has been asked to stop shelling one of Cyprus's most beautiful and unspoilt areas as the island's Government plans to declare it a national park.
The "bombardment" must end, Alecos Michaelides, the Foreign Minister, said. Cyprus was "discussing the issue at the highest level with Britain", he added.
The 1960 treaty that gave Cyprus its independence also gave Britain two sovereign bases covering 99 square miles and rights for live firing in several areas including the rugged Akamas peninsula on the west coast. The area, north of the tourist resort of Paphos, is one of the Mediterranean's last natural woodlands, while its pristine beaches are among the few where green turtles breed.
The Army insists that its use of the peninsula, where it is entitled to practise 70 days a year, has saved the area from the developers' bulldozers. A British spokesman said even the grazing of goats was a "greater threat" to the peninsula than "carefully regulated military training".
Svetlana hopes to atone for sins of atheist father who slaughtered millions of Soviet citizens.
AFTER a lifetime spent trying to escape the bloody legacy of her father, Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin's only daughter, may finally have found a sanctuary for her tortured soul.
After the break-up of four marriages and the futile search over three continents for a permanent home, the restless daughter of the Soviet dictator and the century's most ruthless atheist has retreated behind the walls of a Roman Catholic convent.
Now aged 70, she has reportedly decided to live out her remaining years as a nun, in her words to "atone for the sins of my father", who is blamed for the murder of an estimated 21 million Soviet citizens.
The disclosure appeared in the popular Italian weekly Chi, which published letters by Svetlana to her spiritual adviser, Father Giovanni Garbolino. In one letter, written while she was still undergoing training in Britain, she described how she looked forward to making her peace with the world once she had taken her vows.
"I shall be 70 when I take the veil," she wrote. "Finally, I will be able to become a nun. I am sure that God has called me to be closer to Him at this particular time, for it is inside the convent's walls that I acquired the peace for which I have been longing all my life and the hope which I had lost."
If she has indeed found peace of mind it will be the end of a lifelong search to escape the haunting shadow cast by her father's legacy. Although Svetlana does have some happy memories of her childhood, when Stalin appeared as a loving and devoted father, her life was jolted when she was aged six by the suicide of her mother, Nadezhda.
As Svetlana grew up, so the truth about her father's character emerged, most shockingly when she was a teenager and he sent her first love to the camps. Passionate and unpredictable, she married twice in quick succession and had two children before she caused an international incident by travelling to India in 1967 on a two-week visit and applied to immigrate.
Although India feared jeopardising its ties with the Soviet Union, a compromise was found when she was offered a new home in the United States. She caused an instant sensation by her anti-Soviet views at the height of the Cold War.
She settled down in Princeton, married an architect named Wesley Peters, and although she was aged 46 gave birth to her third child, Olga. In 1972 the marriage collapsed and Svetlana went to live in Britain, where her daughter went to school.
However, when reforms got under way in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, Svetlana was drawn back to her homeland, where she spent a few unhappy years attempting to fit back into life, first in Moscow and then in Georgia, her father's homeland.
Once again the experiment had failed, and this time she sent her daughter to school in England while she attempted to hide from the world in a remote log cabin in rural Wisconsin. Eventually that, too, failed to live up to her expectations and she was last reported living penniless in an old people's hostel in west London.
This international nomad may now have found her peace, reportedly in a convent in the Swiss town of Fribourg, where her identity and her past will not be allowed to interfere with her new calling. Nevertheless, it is still doubtful that the cloisters and strict routine of convent life will by themselves be able to dispel the spectre of her father, which by her own admission rarely leaves her thoughts. Although she once told an interviewer that all she needed in life was to be left alone, it is not clear that solitude will suffice.
"It has been a heavy life," she once remarked. "Heavy to listen to, heavy to live."
THE European Commission yesterday branded as illegal the decision by three German Lander to ban British beef and threatened to take the federal Government to the European Court.
A spokesman for Franz Fischler, the Agriculture Commissioner, said that the Commission had not been notified of the action but it appeared to flout the single market rules. The Commission was satisfied that there was no evidence linking BSE, or "mad cow disease", to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans and all necessary action had been take to ensure public health.
If the action is confirmed the Commission will ask the federal Government to lift the restrictions. "Failing that, it will end up in the European Court of Justice," the spokesman said.
Douglas Hogg, the Agriculture Minister, said yesterday he hoped that the European Commission would act swiftly on the ban.
"It is very regrettable that some Lander should be taking action that is clearly contrary to European law," Mr Hogg told farmers at their annual conference in London. "It would be better for the federal Government to get the Lander to obey the law, but if it does not have the competence to do so, then the European Commission must act."
Exports of British beef to Germany are negligible, accounting for no more than 200 tonnes out of a total of 190,000 tonnnes sent to the rest of the EU last year, but farmers fear that other EU members might follow if the German ban remains.
The health rules on British beef were relaxed to allow the export of beef from any animal slaughtered at less than 2 1/2 years of age. Previously, beef could be exported only if it came from herds which had been free of BSE for at least six years. Some Lander argue that the controls are too lax.
YESTERDAY in the Commons: Foreign Office questions; rail privatisation; Post Office privatisation; sanctions against Libya and Iraq. In the Lords: employment in financial services; overseas aid; Community Representation Bill.
TODAY in the Commons: Treasury and Prime Minister's Questions; Welsh revenue support grant reports; Audit (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill; Edgware General Hospital. In the Lords: Broadcasting Bill; Deregulation (Fair Trading Act) (Amendment) (Merger Reference Time Limits) Order; Deregulation (Restrictive Trade Practices Act) (Amendment) (Time Limits) Order; Deregulation (Restrictive Trade Practices Act) (Amendment) (Variation of Exempt Agreements) Order.
January 1981: Cabinet overseas and defence committee discusses "how to exploit Iraq's promising market for arms exports".
October 1985: Sir Geoffrey Howe, Foreign Secretary, tells MPs that Britain would not approve orders that would risk prolonging or exacerbating the Iran-Iraq war.
May 1987: Matrix Churchill tells MI5 that Iraq is using British machinery to make weapons.
January 1988: Alan Clark, Trade Minister, gives a "nod and a wink" to Matrix Churchill's machine tool exports knowing they would be used in Iraqi arms factories.
August 1988: Iran-Iraq ceasefire.
December 1988: Clark and William Waldegrave secretly agree to relax guidelines on arms-related exports.
February 1989: Ministers agree to further exports to Iraq, knowing they would be used to make weapons.
November 1989: Mrs Thatcher tells MPs that "supplies of British defence equipment to Iraq and Iran continue to be governed by guidelines introduced in 1985".
April 1990: Customs seize pipes destined for "supergun".
July 31, 1990: Matrix Churchill told by DTI officials that last batch of machine tools cleared for export.
August 2, 1990: Kuwait invasion.
February 1991: Three executives of Matrix Churchill arrested.
November 1992: Matrix Churchill trial collapses. Major announces inquiry and Scott is appointed.
May 1993: Public hearings start.
October 1993: Waldegrave tells Scott there had been no change in export guidelines. December 1993: Clark tells Scott that Waldegrave's evidence is "slightly Alice in Wonderland".
June 1995: Waldegrave accused of "sophistry" in leaks of draft report.
February 1996: Report completed.
LABOUR and the Liberal Democrats accused the Government yesterday of a black propaganda campaign aimed at discrediting the findings of the Scott inquiry into the arms-to-Iraq affair.
Robin Cook, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, called on John Major to declare his confidence in Sir Richard Scott's impartiality and to repudiate the attacks by Lord Howe of Aberavon and Douglas Hurd. Mr Cook predicted a week of intensive government "spinning" and "dumping on civil servants by ministers" while everyone else was kept in the dark about the report's contents.
A team of up to 17 government officials formed to respond to the report began work yesterday afternoon after receiving copies in advance of its publication. David Gould, a former Ministry of Defence official, is in charge of co-ordinating the operation.
Mr Cook claimed that the response was being dictated by party political considerations. "The Government effort is not invested in promoting the public interest but in protecting ministers' interests," he said.
With a week to go before publication, Westminster is already captivated by the report, which threatens the careers of at least two ministers, William Waldegrave, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and Sir Nicholas Lyell, the Attorney-General.
As rumour and counter-rumour circulated last night, most observers believed that whatever gloss was put upon the report, it promised very bad news for the Government. The Liberal Democrat Menzies Campbell said: "If they thought Sir Richard was going to pat Lyell and Waldegrave on the back, this campaign of denigration would not be happening."
Labour is anxious to keep the focus on what it regards as the main issues: whether the guidelines on exports to Iraq were changed and whether ministers deceived Parliament about the policy on defence sales to Saddam Hussein.
Mr Cook said that in 1989 Mr Waldegrave, then a junior Foreign Office Minister, signed 27 letters to MPs assuring them that the Government had not changed its policy on defence sales to Iraq. "If the Scott report concludes that those letters were not true and that Mr Waldegrave was in a position to know they were not true, he must go."
The other main issue is whether Sir Richard concludes that ministers were prepared to allow innocent men in the Matrix Churchill trial to go to jail rather than disclose secret documents to the court. Mr Cook said that if that was the conclusion the Government could not escape by sacrificing Sir Nicholas, who urged ministers to sign certificates withholding material vital to the defence. "The Government cannot pass the buck to Lyell as if he were a family solicitor who came up with the wrong advice. It was a collective policy."
The Association of First Division Civil Servants was consulting its lawyers yesterday over the position of officials criticised in the report. Liz Symons, general secretary, said: "Our fear is that a few middle-ranking officials could be left carrying the can."
JOHN MAJOR was on a collision course with Euro-sceptics last night after John Redwood unveiled a hard-line manifesto for next month's summit on the future of the European Union, saying that a planned White Paper should oppose a single currency.
With increasing turmoil on the Continent over the practicality of launching economic and monetary union in 1999, Mr Major and his senior colleagues have decided to duck the issue in the White Paper. For tactical reasons, they have decided it would be better if Britain's partners took the lead in slowing down the Maastricht timetable.
But Mr Redwood, backed by leading Euro-sceptic MPs, said that it was time the Government came off the fence. Publishing his own version of the White Paper due shortly before the Turin conference on March 29, the former minister said: "The UK should set out the case against an exclusive monetary union of a few countries in the centre, and the implausibility of a monetary union incorporating many states. Monetary union would be bad for Britain, bad for the excluded states and bad for France and Germany." Britain's task was to "voice fears" that a single currency would mean budget cuts, high interest rates, and too tight monetary policies.
He was supported by Bill Cash, one of the leaders of the Maastricht rebellion, who said: "It is only by saying ‘No' emphatically that we will be able to influence the direction in which Europe is going."
Eight former whipless Tory rebels promised their own paper next week.
The main parties want to make constitutional reform a centrepiece of the election campaign. But their approaches are flawed, in opposite ways. On the one hand, while the Tories' defence of the status quo is unconvincing, some of their queries about the Opposition's proposals are valid. On the other hand, while Labour is on strong ground in challenging current arrangements, there are many unresolved questions about their proposals.
Of the two cases put forward yesterday, the Tories' is the shakier. Brian Mawhinney tried to have it both ways. He proclaimed the glories of our institutions, invoking Disraeli to state that "under John Major's leadership, the Conservative and Unionist Party will fight tooth and nail for Britain's constitution". Yet, at the same time, Dr Mawhinney quoted Burke to argue that "a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation" and pointed to the Tory tradition of rolling constitutional reform. He cited the creation of the departmental select committees, the reduction of Government secrecy, the formation of the Nolan committee etc. This is a stronger record than is commonly recognised, but it undermines the Tory attempt to argue that Labour's proposals are "threatening" and amount to an attempt to "foist an entirely new constitutional order" which "would rip apart the United Kingdom".
The real argument is not whether there should be constitutional reform, but what form it should take. MORI's state of the nation polls have repeatedly shown that a big majority of the public is unhappy with the way Britain is governed. In part, this is because the Tories have been in office for so long, removing some of the normal checks and balances and increasing the powers of central government.
Tony Blair sought yesterday to move the debate away from the "chattering classes". He mostly avoided the absolutist language of the Charter 88 type of radical reformers. Throughout his lecture, he presented the argument for reform on a case-by-case basis and rejected the call of some Labour MPs for a Big Bang approach. He said there would not be "a Great Reform Bill which would attempt all this change at once". Reforms will be achieved "over a period of time".
Several of his specific proposals are likely to be popular and make sense, such as directly elected mayors for London and other large cities, creating a new elected authority for the capital and incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into British law. The Tories would also be ill-advised to make a stand in defence of hereditary peers. The Lords has virtues as a revising chamber, and as a check on the Commons, but its composition involves a heavy, and persistent, Tory bias.
Mr Blair, however, failed to address some key questions. There is strong demand for legislative devolution in Scotland, but there are implications for the Westminster Parliament the number and role of Scottish MPs in the Commons which Mr Blair ignored. Any devolution Bill will be a parliamentary nightmare unless Labour produces answers to these questions. He also made a gesture towards the Liberal Democrats in recognising more fully than he has in the past the strength of feeling about electoral reform and reaffirming his commitment to a referendum. But he repeated his own doubts about proportional representation, leaving a deliberate ambiguity.
The Tories may rally some disaffected former supporters by playing the constitutional/nationalist card, while Labour's reform agenda will appeal to the "time for a change" constituency. At present, both parties exaggerate, claiming that the constitution's survival depends on their victory. The Tories need to be less dogmatic and Labour has to address the flaws in its approach.
THE former Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath warned the Government last night against the "dogma" that everything could be privatised.
He condemned the idea of selling off prisons and the Post Office and added: "It's said the police can be privatised. I think that's an absolute horror that it should even be mentioned."
Sir Edward said that the Government was seeking in a "cackhanded" way to dispose of Britain's heritage with its plans for the Royal Yacht, the Royal Train and the Greenwich Royal Naval College. He told the Commons that ministers accused Labour of dogma while believing in unlimited privatisation. "That is the real dogma."
Speaking during a Labour-initiated debate on Post Office privatisation, he acknowledged that many privatised concerns had done well. But he opposed selling off the Post Office because his constituents were against it. For the people, post offices were "not just a service dished out, as people at the top think", he said. "It's a way of life. It means much more to them than just using stamps or drawing pensions. I ask ministers to recognise this fact." He said that he was frankly interested in winning back the public's support. "I'm not ashamed to say that. I want to be re-elected and I want a Conservative government again."
Labour's motion opposing "the Prime Minister's stated intention to reopen the question of the privatisation of Royal Mail and Parcelforce" was defeated by 289 votes to 255.
THREE council departments set up to counter discrimination and promote political correctness are being disbanded as part of a city's economy drive.
Birmingham will save £1.5 million a year by scrapping the units, which had a staff of 73 covering women's affairs, race relations and equal opportunities. They will be merged into one central equalities policy unit with a workforce of 21. Surplus staff will be redeployed to other departments.
The women's and race relations units were set up 12 years ago and grew steadily in size and influence despite widespread criticism of their activities. Among ideas for which they were responsible were a Christmas with no religious symbols, to avoid the risk of offending ethnic minorities, and a £150,000 festival of racial tolerance.
The women's unit organised an annual £100,000 women's festival, which included events for bringing together lesbians with disabilities and a history of black lesbians.
In an attempt to make staff aware of prejudice, social service consultants were called in and advised that white staff should wear badges saying "I am a racist". The council spent thousands of pounds employing interpreters to translate English into pidgin for residents who speak Caribbean patois.
The women's unit issued an instruction that all females between 50 and 70 should be referred to as "women elders" in council documents.
Pressure to get rid of the departments built up last year when they were spared cuts imposed on frontline services, including old people's homes, libraries and swimming pools. The need to make further economies this year because of the Government's tight rein on local authority spending has forced the city's controlling Labour group to take a decision to abolish them.
Brenda Clarke, the councillor who has been chairing a working party into the future of the units, said that they had done valuable pioneering work. "Their achievements have been real and measurable despite the often negative publicity from some parts of the media," she said.
A BARGAIN hunter who bought a second-hand vacuum cleaner for £2.65 was not too surprised when it blew up the first time he used it. But when Mike Thornton set about repairing it, he was stunned to find the dust bag contained gold jewellery worth at least £7,000.
Sparkling among the dirt were 17 gold rings, bracelets, necklaces, religious pendants and other gold trinkets. The hoard has been returned to its original owner and Mr Thornton, a maintenance engineer from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, has received a £100 reward for his honesty.
Police traced the cleaner to a woman who lived 40 miles away in Nottingham and had used it as a hiding place for family treasures. When they moved house, her daughter dumped the cleaner in a skip. By the time her distraught mother discovered what had happened, a scavenger was recycling it in a saleroom.
Mr Thornton said yesterday: "I couldn't believe my eyes when I opened it up and all this gold just dropped on to the floor."
A FORMER mountain boy from Nepal, heir to an 18th-century castle and a £1.5million fortune, should be allowed to stay in Britain, a tribunal said yesterday.
Jay Khadka, 19, was rescued from poverty by Richard Morley, a millionaire businessman, to honour a pact with the teenager's dead father. The immigration tribunal concluded that "there would be little sense" in deporting him, although the final decision rests with the Home Office.
The tribunal heard evidence from four members of a community set up by Mr Morley at Clearwell Castle in the Forest of Dean, where he and Mr Khadka live. The members, including Mr Morley's girlfriend, Helen Thomas, testified that Mr Khadka had become Westernised and that it would be a tragedy if he were to be deported. The appeal report said: "They told us that Jay was the heir apparent to the leadership of the community. There is not the slightest danger that Mr Khadka would ever become a burden on public funds."
The report said the tribunal had been impressed by Mr Khadka's readiness to admit that he would visit his family in Nepal, but had felt that having to live there would be traumatic for him after his experiences in Britain. "He appears a young man of promise and it would be regrettable if that promise were to be fundamentally affected by a legal process over which, in our view, he has probably had little control."
Mr Morley, 41, who has brought up Mr Khadka as his son since July 1990, said yesterday he would leave Britain for Nepal if Mr Khadka were deported. "This is not a question of wealth or bureaucracy, but of human relationships. I therefore call upon the Government to accept the recommendations," he said.
Mr Morley said that Mr Khadka should be given indefinite leave to remain in Britain under "exceptional compassionate circumstances", which would make him eligible for citizenship after five years.
Mr Khadka, who speaks perfect English and worked as head chef at the castle's former hotel, said: "I have grown up here, been educated and now have close family and friends. If I went back to Nepal I would be isolated from my family and people there might not be able to understand me. It would be heartbreaking."
The two met after Mr Morley punctured a lung in a climbing accident in Nepal in 1984. Mr Khadka's father, Basu, a policeman, trekked for three days through the mountains to seek help.
Mr Morley offered him money as a reward, but he refused and, instead, made him promise that he would care for his son when he died. The former naval officer, who made his fortune in computers, returned to Nepal in 1990 after the death of Basu and found the boy working in a stone mine in a mountain village. He spoke no English.
He lived first at Mr Morley's seafront flat in Margate, Kent. Mr Morley, a widower, bought Clearwell Castle in 1994. The teenager was educated at home, reading Dickens, Orwell and Homer. He also studied fine art and classical music.
Mr Morley, who has no children, made Mr Khadka heir to his fortune, which includes a £220,000 flat in Bloomsbury, the Margate flat, an art collection, and a 5,000-book library at the castle.
Mr Morley said: "Jay was born under extremely auspicious religious circumstances, predicted by a guru in a Buddist temple. He was born at a precise moment when the stars were in their maximum ascendency and the moon was in the lowest point during the festival of the goddess Kali."
THE Government refused to give in yesterday to vice-chancellors' threat of a £300 entrance fee for undergraduates and ruled out an early commitment to an expanded student loans system.
Eric Forth, the Higher Education Minister, accused universities of ignoring the practical difficulties of their plans. The minister also questioned the need for more higher-education places when the present recruiting freeze ended.
The vice-chancellors' proposal for an entry fee to be introduced in 1997 was prompted by budget cuts. They believe that students must pay a greater share of university costs, aided by "income-contingent" loans repaid over a long period. But Mr Forth told a Tory conference in London: "One of the things that slightly irritates me about the debate that we are now hearing is the idea that if you say ‘income-contingent loan' sufficiently frequently, the problems will go away."
Mr Forth, who is responsible for a government review of higher education launched more than a year ago, said questions remained unanswered. Among them was whether further university expansion would benefit the economy and could be sustained without damaging the quality of education.
Other options for increasing the skills of the workforce would be to channel teenagers into further education colleges or work-based vocational training. "There is a very interesting discussion to be had around what proportion of the population can reasonably be expected to benefit from what we define as higher education," Mr Forth said.
Nearly a third of young people now go on to higher education. The Conservative Political Centre, which organised the conference, called for the proportion to increase, with the costs met by replacing student grants with a system of privatised loans.
Sir Cyril Taylor, chairman of the City Technology Colleges Trust and one of the authors of the report, said there would be pressure for more university places from the growing numbers taking A levels. "I don't think it is part of Conservative philosophy to deny people that opportunity, provided that standards are maintained."
Clive Booth, vice-chairman of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, said Mr Forth had been badly briefed if he believed there were doubts about the practicality of the universities' proposals.
Government policy also came under attack from Sir Eric Ash, chairman of the Student Loans Company, who described the privatisation plans before Parliament as "unnecessarily complicated". Sir Eric said it would have been better for a consortium of financial institutions to take over the company, rather than trying to set up a new network.
SCHOOLS must introduce their pupils to high culture and help them to escape the growing creed that sees no difference between Schubert and Blur, Nicholas Tate, the Government's chief curriculum adviser, said yesterday.
Dr Tate, who recently called for a new moral code to be taught in schools, yesterday attacked "cultural relativism" and "romantic individualism" for encouraging children to place equal value on Milton and Mills & Boon, or Vermeer's View of Delft and Damien Hirst's dead sheep.
British heritage, and with it the notion of strong communities and shared values, was in danger of disintegrating unless teachers actively transmitted it. Just as Dr Tate wants children to be taught right from wrong, they should learn which works of art, music and literature are better than others. The revised national curriculum already insists, for example, that children should read two Shakespeare plays before the age of 14 and learn mainly British history.
But Dr Tate, launching a three-day conference called Curriculum, Culture and Society, proposed a series of "big ideas" to clarify the purpose of the national curriculum. He said: "A fundamental purpose of the school curriculum is to transmit an appreciation of and commitment to the best of the culture we have inherited. We need a more active sense of education as preserving and transmitting, but in a way that is forward looking, the best of what we have inherited from the past."
Dr Tate challenged the growing trend towards multimedia study by saying books must remain the medium of the future. Other "big ideas" included grounding the curriculum in ancient Greece and Rome, Christianity and European civilisation, and ensuring that "English English", not some watered-down modern version, was taught.
"The final big idea is that we should aim to develop in young people a sense that some works of art, music, literature or architecture are more valuable than others," he said. "By the post-modern view there are no differences in value between, say, Schubert's Ave Maria and the latest Blur release, or between Milton and Mills & Boon.
"The final big idea therefore is that a key purpose of the curriculum is to introduce young people to some of the characteristics of what traditionally has been known as ‘high culture', the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. I am not saying that young people should spend all their time studying Jane Austen and Shakespeare or listening to Bach and Mozart. What I am suggesting is that we, their educators, should give these things their proper value as, in the words of Matthew Arnold, ‘the best that has been known and thought'."
Other speakers opposed Dr Tate's belief. Raphael Samuel, head of history at Ruskin College, Oxford, said: "History is an argument about the past as well as a record of it. Its excitements are that it introduces children to the unfamiliar and the exotic. Lessons should be devised to encourage children to disagree and to question.
"I think the whole thought of transmitting heritage runs against the spirit of cultural inquiry. Memory-keeping and respect for the past are things historians ought to have regard to but I do not think that is what history lessons should be about."
Anne Barnes, chief executive of the National Association for the Teaching of English, said teachers constantly emphasised the difference between high culture and popular works. "Nobody disputes that Milton is better than Mills & Boon. Everybody wants all children to be introduced to Milton but if they bring Mills & Boon into the classroom then that has to be discussed in its own terms."
Bishop David Konstant, chairman of the Catholic Education Service, said the pluralist nature of society made it difficult to define a national culture. "We should be encouraging unity by developing a proper understanding of the value of difference and of the need to reconcile differences peacefully," he said.
A FOUR-YEAR-OLD girl from Wales has taught herself to speak some German in six weeks. Chantelle Coleman, from St Athan, South Glamorgan, Mensa's second youngest member, is said to have an IQ of 152.
When an Austrian magazine heard Chantelle had joined Mensa, a reporter came to interview her in December. "She had never heard a foreign language and was fascinated," her mother, Margaret, 28, said. "She started to repeat the German words, then wanted to know what they meant.
"She asks for her breakfast in German every morning. I tell her to speak English but she hands me her German phrasebook and tells me to look up what she says."
Her father, Alan, 28, taught her to count in German and the few words he learnt in the RAF. "After that we had to buy her a phrasebook and tapes," Mr Coleman said. "It's like having a foreigner for a daughter. She has mastered English and says it's too easy."
Axel Riche, lecturer in German at the University of Wales, said: "German is one of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers. She must have remarkable intelligence to pick up the language so quickly."
THE charity that houses the national fruit collection could be forced to close after a poor response to two public appeals. The Brogdale Trust safeguards 4,000 varieties of apples, pears, plums, cherries and other soft fruit.
Trustees are seeking new sources of funding and considering an application to the National Lottery for money to build a visitor centre and museum to generate long-term income. The trust was created in 1990 to take over the collection when the Brogdale Research Station closed.
AN ARMY officer who fought in one of the Falklands' toughest battles said yesterday that the new generation of recruits needed the gentle touch.
Lieutenant-General Hew Pike, who commanded the 3rd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, in the attack on Mount Longdon, told MPs that young people needed more time to acclimatise to army life. Several measures had been introduced to make life easier for the new recruit, to ensure he or she was not put off military life by an overexuberant sergeant-major.
Giving evidence to the Commons Defence Select Committee, General Pike, now deputy commander-in-chief of the Army's Land Command, underlined the softer approach adopted for recruits. He said medical records proved that the present generation was not as physically tough. "We have to take account of that in our approach to training to give recruits as gentle an introduction to the Army as we can. We don't put them into boots straight away. We monitor the length of marches and so forth."
The committee was told that as part of efforts to increase recruitment, new members of infantry, tank and gunner regiments are to be given vocational training.
The move has been ordered to try to encourage young men and women to join the infantry instead of units such as the Royal Engineers and Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, where they are assured highly specialised courses.
THE Prime Minister faces a damaging dispute with teachers and nurses after an expected decision by the Cabinet today to stagger this year's pay awards for 1.4 million public sector employees.
This afternoon John Major is expected to announce pay rises averaging 4 per cent for teachers, doctors, dentists, senior civil servants, judges and the Armed Forces after recommendations from the independent pay review bodies.
However, public sector unions said last night they would be furious if the Government staggered the award over a year, effectively reducing the rise. Labour also urged Mr Major to implement the awards in full and at once.
A Cabinet sub-committee is understood to have agreed on Tuesday that the awards be phased in to avoid cuts in health and education services and to discourage awards higher than inflation in other sectors. Ministers were particularly concerned to avert another big dispute with local education authorities over redundancies in teaching.
Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor, has made clear that the Treasury will not provide any more money for the awards, which will have to be funded through efficiency and productivity.
FRAUD squad officers are investigating losses of £4.25million from the housing department of one of Britain's poorest boroughs.
The cash relates to property and land sales in Labour-controlled Tower Hamlets, east London, in the 1989-90 financial year, when the Liberal Democrats were in power in the borough.
Documents obtained by The Times show that councillors learnt of the scale of discrepancies from a brief submission to the finance committee, listed as item number 30 after an alleged theft of cans of beer from council premises at a staff social event.
It stated: "Income from the disposal of land and buildings in 1989-90 cannot be traced. Joint investigations by internal audit, in conjuction with the fraud squad, are proceeding." The district auditor has also agreed to investigate.
Phil Maxwell, the Labour chairman of the housing committee, said last night: "Senior officers have told me that £4.25million cannot be accounted for. I fear there has been a terrible cover-up. We need an urgent explanation as to why receipts running into millions of pounds cannot be located."
The borough has one of the worst overcrowding problems in Britain.
A CHAPTER in Antarctic history comes to a close today when Britain hands over the Faraday research station to Ukraine. The oldest base on the Antarctic peninsula has been used for studying weather, the Earth's magnetic field and the ozone layer since it was set up during the British Graham Land Expedition of 1934-37.
The cost of upgrading it to modern health and safety standards has been deemed too costly. Instead the base is being given to the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, so Ukraine can restart Antarctic research after losing access to former Soviet bases.
Under the terms of the recent Antarctic environment protocol, old bases must be dismantled and removed. The handover will save £1million in dismantling costs. Ukraine has agreed to give British scientists free data for at least a decade.
The British Antarctic Survey, which ran Faraday, has four remaining bases, at Rothera, Halley, Signy and Bird Island. It said the loss of Faraday did not mark a rundown in research, as other bases were being expanded to accommodate more scientists with £4million of government cash.
Today the final party of British staff sets sail on HMS Endurance, the ice patrol vessel. The base will be renamed Vernadsky.
There was speculation yesterday that one of Russia's Antarctic bases was to be temporarily closed to save cash, putting at risk an international drilling experiment to take ice samples dating back 300,000 years.
SCIENTISTS have found that the much-photographed post used to mark the location of the South Pole is in the wrong place. American researchers using satellite mapping have discovered that the true spot is about 18in from where previous calculations had placed it.
The discovery means that glaciologists and meteorologists have, unwittingly, been standing in the wrong spot for their traditional group photographs. It also raises the possibility that Amundsen, the Norwegian credited with beating Scott to the Pole, might have undershot his target.
The Pole's new position has been plotted by the United States Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia. Gordon Shupe, a scientist with the survey, flew to Antarctica to make sure the marking post was relocated in the proper place. "It is not a big change. We presume that the new measurement is more accurate, so we yanked it in to where it should be," he said.
Christopher Doake, of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, said yesterday that the discovery highlighted the increasing accuracy of satellites for mapping.
Ancient explorers used trigonometry, working out their position from the stars, the Moon and the Sun. This method can be accurate to about 100 to 200 yards. The South Pole's previous position was fixed with the use of a constellation of satellites called Transit. They work using the Doppler effect, known to schoolboys as the change in frequency that occurs when a train approaches and passes through a station.
To find the Pole's new position the Americans used the military's network of global positioning satellites, which were also used extensively in the Gulf War to pinpoint troop positions in featureless deserts. The system is said to be accurate to within a yard, as against tens of yards for the Transit system.
The repositioning of the South Pole, reported in New Scientist, is unlikely to be the last word on the affair. Dr Doake pointed out that the location changes with the wobble in the Earth's orbit.
Meanwhile, American scientists will not be able to rest on their laurels. The ice sheets in Antarctica move by 10 yards a year, so the posts put in to mark the Pole's position stretch into the distance in a neat line. Because of the correction, there is now a slight kink in the line.
St Peter's C of E High School (report, February 6) is in Exeter, not Plymouth.
Although the Confederation of British Industry is opposed to legislation outlawing age discrimination, it does not believe that older workers necessarily cost more or are harder to retrain (report, February 5).
Twenty patients and 80 staff are to be screened after a junior doctor at Fazakerly Hospital, Liverpool, contracted pulmonary tuberculosis. A spokesman for Aintree Hospitals NHS Trust said the screening was a "precautionary and reassuring" measure. The woman doctor is thought to have contracted the disease working abroad.
TWO teenagers died when their car sank upside-down in the icy waters of a dyke. Two others managed to escape from the crash at Benwick, Cambridgeshire.
Steven Slade-Robson, 15, one of the survivors, had smashed the windscreen of the Ford Orion with his feet as it left the road and headed for the water. He managed to crawl out to safety as it sank. He then saw the hand of 16-year-old Laura Prince sticking up through the cracked ice and pulled her to safety. The two raised the alarm for their friends but rescue workers' attempts at resuscitation failed.
The dead were named as Russell Rigby, 18, the driver, and Sarah Law, 16. Inspector Adrian Tomkinson, of Cambridgeshire police, said: "Steven showed great presence of mind."
John Stewart, 66, and Eric Buchanan, 62, from Scotland, were treated in hospital for stab wounds after the fourth attack this month on holidaymakers in Cape Town by gangs of robbers.
LORD WAKEHAM, chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, has written to the National Heritage Secretary, defending his decision to reject a complaint about invasion of privacy from Julia Carling.
In his letter to Virginia Bottomley, Lord Wakeham said he was concerned that the case had given rise to mis-statements and misunderstandings that needed to be corrected. He rejected accusations by Mrs Carling's lawyers that the commission's ruling gave newspapers carte blanche to publicise the private lives of people in the public eye.
He pointed out that the commission is to uphold a complaint about invasion of privacy from the television presenter Selina Scott next month. Ms Scott objected to a News of the World article which alleged that she had had an affair more than 15 years ago with a man who had given an interview to the newspaper. Ms Scott denies the affair.
In its defence, the News of the World produced numerous articles by Ms Scott and interviews she had given since 1984. The commission will rule that none of these warranted an invasion of her privacy concerning "the reporting of events in her life a considerable time before".
Last month the commission rejected a complaint against The Sun brought by Mrs Carling, the estranged wife of the England rugby captain. It ruled that she had effectively forfeited her right to privacy by co-operating previously with media articles and interviews designed in part to enhance her career as a television presenter.
The ruling followed comments by Lord Wakeham that the Princess of Wales might have compromised her right to privacy by giving her Panorama interview.
Mrs Carling's lawyers, Stitt & Co, wrote to Mrs Bottomley, complaining that the ruling would "encourage further media excess in relation to so-called ‘public figures"'.
Lord Wakeham said that, if true, Stitt & Co's arguments would lead to the "bizarre result" of people in the public eye being free to give information about their private lives for the purposes of self-publicity and yet able to stifle reporting on the same facts on the ground that a breach of privacy had occurred.
The commission's code of conduct says that "intrusions and inquiries into an individual's private life without his or her consent ... are not generally acceptable and publication can only be justified when in the public interest". There are no specific regulations, however, on people who have willingly put information about themselves into the public domain.
Lord Wakeham said that each case was treated on its own merits and emphasised that the fact that a complainant had previously sought publicity did not mean that the press was entitled to publish articles on any subject involving that person or his or her family.
AT LEAST eight people had died by yesterday as a result of the atrocious weather. Two were killed when two vehicles collided on black ice on the A15 at Waddingham near Lincoln and a man died when his car overturned on the A3 near Petersfield, Hampshire.
Dean Hart, 28, died after diving into the Tees to rescue his dog in Stockton, Cleveland. In Liverpool, Elizabeth Wilson, 89, died after she was found frozen on her doorstep.
Elderly people were warned to stay indoors after three people from Lanarkshire collapsed and died while clearing snow from their paths. Age Concern said any exertion in the extreme cold could put a strain on the heart and advised people to call for help from relatives or friends.
While most of Scotland, Wales and western England struggled in the aftermath of heavy snowfalls, fresh blizzards hit the South West. Hundreds of drivers were trapped in cars and lorries and the main dual carriageway to Cornwall was closed in several places by drifting snow. About 2,400 homes suffered power cuts as lines were brought down in heavy winds. The lowest recorded temperature on Tuesday night was -11.3C in Madley, Hereford and Worcester colder than Helsinki.
Scotland enjoyed a respite yesterday, allowing people in the worst-affected region, Dumfries and Galloway, to clear roads and search for those trapped in the snow. But weather forecasters said blizzards would return tomorrow and at the weekend.
The M74, the main route between Scotland and England, reopened 36 hours after it had been cut off. Police began moving a thousand abandoned vehicles and escorting hundreds of stranded motorists from the emergency centres where they had been sheltering for two days.
The people of Lockerbie, whose community was devastated seven years ago by Britain's worst air disaster, won praise for opening their homes to hundreds of stranded motorists. About 150 motorists were offered beds in homes and stranded travellers were ferried in four-wheel-drive vehicles to emergency accommodation.
A lifeboat was launched yesterday to collect and deliver food to 120 children snowed in at St Bees School in the west Cumbrian coastal village of the same name. Captain Leon Goldwater, skipper of the village lifeboat, sailed to Whitehaven five miles along the coast to fetch supplies for the school and 2,000 villagers.
A solicitor trapped by snow for 24 hours in his car near Whitehaven said he kept warm by wrapping his copy of The Times around his legs. An expected 21/2-hour journey home for David Hammond, 53, to Whitburn, Tyne and Wear, took three days. At Marwell zoo in Hampshire, South African meerkats were provided with sun lamps in their outdoor enclosure to combat the cold.
Keepers at the hilltop Welsh Mountain Zoo, Colwyn Bay, Clwyd, were continually breaking the ice on the penguin and sealion pools to enable them to swim.
The holiday firm Inspirations has brought out its 1996-97 winter brochure six weeks early. "The winter brochures normally come out in March but the way the weather is, people are already thinking about getting away next year," a spokesman said.
A move to introduce automatic cold-weather payments in most of the country between December and March each year, whatever the temperature, was launched in the Commons. The present system is triggered when sub-zero conditions have been reached on seven consecutive days in a specific region.
Under a backbench Bill introduced by Margaret Ewing, parliamentary leader of the Scottish nationalists, people in northern Scotland, the coldest part of Britain, would receive payments of £11.15 a week.
Householders were told yesterday that they could face a legal writ over the clearing of snow from their paths and steps. Kerry Gwyther, a personal injuries solicitor and partner at Lawrence Tucketts of Bristol, said that under the law, if a householder attempted to clear snow and failed to do a proper job of it, he was more liable than if he had left the snow uncleared.
TWO teenage muggers whose sentences were increased from probation to 18 months in jail after police protested against excessive leniency have been released after serving 53 days.
The pair were sent to jail by the Court of Appeal after detectives complained about the original sentence imposed at Southwark Crown Court. The Court of Appeal said the trial judge had failed to recognise that the public needed to be protected from the youths who robbed a man at a cashpoint while on licence from prison where they were serving sentences for another robbery.
Robert Barthelmy and Daniel Hobbs, both aged 19 and unemployed, from Highbury, north London, were released last week under a formula which took into account their period on remand and on bail while they appealed against the sentences.
They were convicted last July of attacking a man drawing money from a cash machine on Tottenham Court Road, central London, in May. They were arrested by officers from the Holborn robbery squad who had been following them as part of a Metropolitan Police campaign against muggings.
They were sentenced to 12 months' probation each and 60 days at an attendance centre but on the same day the Court of Appeal overturned the punishment and sentenced them to 18 months' imprisonment. They were released so soon because anyone sentenced to four years or less automatically serves only half the prison term. The prison service also took into account the 85 days they spent on remand awaiting trial and the time between July 1995 and October which the men spent on bail awaiting the appeal.
Commander Malcolm Campbell, head of the detective force in northwest London, said: "We are disappointed that, after a non-custodial sentence was increased on appeal to 18 months, the two people were freed in so short a time."
A WOMAN baritone who applied to be a chorister at the Queen's chapel at Windsor claims she was rejected when it was discovered she was not a man.
Dr Joan McDonough, a vicar's wife who was the only woman among the 14 applicants for the post of baritone lay clerk, would have been the first female to hold the position in the 640-year history of St George's Chapel. Duties of the £4,000-a-year job include attending evensong and singing at the Sunday service regularly attended by the Queen.
Dr McDonough, 38, who used to sing with the Royal Choral Society, found that chapel staff had assumed she was a man only after she was turned down. An industrial tribunal in Reading was told yesterday that the chapel officers had written to one of her referees: "This gentleman has recently applied to the Dean and Canons of Windsor to be considered for appointment as a baritone lay clerk".
But the Very Rev John Allen, Provost of Wakefield Cathedral, wrote back saying he felt obliged to point out that the applicant was "no gentleman". Her application was immediately dropped and Dr McDonough said the chapel had instantly assumed that only a man could apply for the job.
Dr McDonough, of Batley, West Yorkshire, who said in her application she was a baritone, added: "I am the deepest-singing woman I know." Female baritones are rare, according to the Royal College of Music, which said contralto was usually the lowest woman's singing voice.
Dr McDonough, who was represented by her husband, the Rev Roger Stokes, said: "I was out of work and my husband was freelancing as a vicar. The job offered accommodation and a reliable income of between £3,500 and £4,000 a year." She carried out a survey which revealed that there were no women lay clerks at 40 cathedrals, evidence of "pervasive discrimination".
"I am not so voluptuous that I would look too out of place in a cassock, singing in the chapel. I do not see why the Queen should have any objection. She is, after all, head of the Church of England which has authorised that women can become priests," she said.
She is claiming sexual discrimination against the Dean and Canons of Windsor. Lieutenant Colonel Nigel Newman, the chapter clerk, told the tribunal that the college, founded in 1352 by King Edward III, had a statute which referred to staff as "he", although this could be amended. Mr Stokes said that under 14th-century law, any use of "he" automatically referred to women as well.
The tribunal was adjourned to consider the interpretations of the statutes.
CHURCH leaders emerged empty-handed last night from a meeting with Virginia Bottomley at which they appealed for reform of the National Lottery.
The National Heritage Secretary told them that millions of Britons regularly enjoyed playing the weekly draw. She rejected their claims that the poor and vulnerable were being enticed into spending more than they could afford.
Mrs Bottomley remained unconvinced by the churchmen's arguments that the age limit for the purchase of scratchcards should be raised to 18; that no further issue of licences should be made for the sale of Instants scratchcards until after further research; and that jackpots should be capped at £1 million.
She said after the one-hour meeting with the delegation from the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland: "I listened with care to what the churches had to say. Of course they have their opinion but the majority of people in the UK enjoy playing the lottery every week. I agree with the Bishop of Salisbury who said that the churches had missed the public mood."
The Rt Rev David Sheppard, Anglican Bishop of Liverpool, said the six-strong group, including members from Methodist, Roman Catholic and churches of Scotland and the Baptist Union, had not expected to change Mrs Bottomley's views. But some members said they had found her to have a closed mind.
Mr Sheppard said: "We conveyed our conviction that many vulnerable and poor people are sucked in to play the lottery and scratchcards. The Heritage Secretary says she remains sceptical about the harmful effects of the lottery and we said that made us underline the need for some independent research.
"The legislation setting up the lottery has driven a coach and horses through gambling regulations which we believe have served the country well. We believe the lottery, like other forms of gambling, needs better regulation."
The Heritage Secretary defended the draw in a statement. "I told the churches that the lottery does a huge amount for good causes the sort of causes that help bring people together, invest in communities, the environment and young people."
Milton Keynes received £19.6 million towards the construction of a theatre and art gallery. It was the biggest of 76 awards, worth £35 million, announced by the Arts Council Lottery Board.
THE widow of a Scottish-born television executive who was murdered in Australia nearly four years ago has been named as the only person with a motive for the killing.
The claim was made at an inquest into the death of Richard Diack, who grew up in the Edinburgh area before emigrating in the 1980s.
Mr Diack, 41, was bludgeoned to death on a remote track in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, in 1992.
At the inquest police alleged that Peruvian-born Ms Bresciani, a broadcaster, erased part of a computer disk containing her husband's diary, which gave details of their deteriorating marriage.
Detective-Sergeant Graeme Merkel said that "the only person identified with any possible motive was Emelia Bresciani" but there was no direct evidence to show she had any involvement in the death.
Ms Bresciani said she was hurt by the allegations. "It was very obvious from the beginning that you were treating me as the killer rather than the wife," she told the detective during the hearing in Sydney.
The inquest was adjourned.
THE Duchess of York promised yesterday to fight any attempt by John Bryan, her former financial adviser, to claim 10 per cent of her earnings from Budgie the Helicopter.
Mr Bryan's German lawyers confirmed that they were to seek payment over the cartoon character, for which the Duchess recently signed a £3 million deal with a consortium of American investors.
The Duchess's private office said last night: "Her Royal Highness The Duchess of York denies absolutely any agreement with Mr Bryan concerning the prospective income from her cartoon character Budgie. She will therefore defend vigorously any proceedings which Mr Bryan might choose to initiate."
The 40-year-old Texan businessman has instructed a Frankfurt firm of solicitors to find out details of the Duchess's American deal, which was announced last month. Mr Bryan, who has severe debt problems over the £10million collapse of his construction company Oceonics Deutschland, is said to be demanding 10 per cent of global earnings from Budgie, claiming that the Duchess originally promised him one third of income from television, film and publishing rights. Disclosing his intention to sue, he said he had supported her with "millions of dollars" in the early days of their four-year friendship. "Half of my staff were working for her and it was coming all out of my pocket. It was never supported by anyone," he said.
"A lot of people were hired just for her. There were lawyers doing all her deals and administrators for charities all on my buck."
He claims to have rescued Budgie from disaster when he negotiated the original £2.5 million deal with the Buckinghamshire company Sleepy Kids in July 1994. "That property was totally dead when I got hold of it," he is reported to have said.
Mr Bryan's move is the third threat of legal action for the Duchess in recent days. The socialite Lily Mahtani is suing for alleged non-payment of a £100,000 loan and the furniture supplier Roomservice Designs said it would issue a writ if the Duchess did not keep up £600-a-month payments on rented reproduction antique furniture. The Duchess also has an overdraft, estimated to be up to £3million, with Coutts.
Michael Korde, a lawyer with Dr Groepper and Partners of Frankfurt, said: "It is correct that Mr Bryan wants some money from her over Budgie the Helicopter. We must speak with the Duchess's lawyers and then we will see what will happen. I believe it will not be necessary to go to court."
A RAPIST who attacked a young woman days after being discharged from a psychiatric unit was given five life sentences yesterday. The trial judge criticised a hospital management decision not to renew a detention order on Glenn Grant against the advice of his consultants, social workers and nursing staff.
Grant, 27, from Brixton, south London, was nicknamed the Beast of Belgravia by police because of his claim that the turning point in his life was when he glimpsed the area's wealth during a school trip to an art gallery, and decided he had a mission to redress the imbalance by raping white, middle-class women.
The victim of his latest attack, a 26-year-old wine buyer, said last night: "He should not have been let out. They must have been able to see he was still very unbalanced. I was with him for one and a half hours and in that time I knew for certain he was not sane. He should never be let out again."
The Old Bailey had heard that Grant, accompanied by his mother, gave himself up at Brixton police station on the day of the rape. He ordered police to call him Jesus.
Grant, described as a sexual sadist and paranoid schizophrenic, had already served a 10-year sentence, given in 1984, for raping two women when he was 15. His victims had been a housewife aged 33 and a freelance artist, aged 20. He said he had been jealous of their wealth.
He was transferred to the Broadmoor top-security hospital in Berkshire during his prison term. Once his sentence was served, he was sent to Cane Hill Hospital's regional secure unit, south London, under a Mental Health Act order. Managers decided not to renew the detention order in January last year and from that moment he was an informal, voluntary patient. During home and weekend leave, he committed a series of violent robberies and aggravated burglaries in which three young women were tied up and terrorised with a gun and a married church-worker was held at gunpoint. He robbed a jewellers in Victoria.
Grant later admitted that he often replaced the medication he was prescribed as an outpatient with crack cocaine. He was formally discharged from Cane Hill on April 12, 1995, and last seen as an outpatient on April 21. He committed his third rape four days later, smashing his way into the woman's home. He beat her over the head, pulled a knife from her kitchen drawer and said he would kill her if she screamed. She was raped three times. The victim, who is single and Roman Catholic, gave evidence against her 6ft attacker.
Judge Forrester told Grant he would not be eligible for parole for 14 years and may never be fit for release. The life sentences were for the rape, two aggravated burglaries, armed robbery and having a firearm with intent.
Afterwards, the rape victim said: "I am serving a life sentence now. My life has been destroyed. The one thing that has kept me going is that I want to make sure he doesn't wreck someone else's life like he has mine. Things must change so that people like him are not let out unsupervised. I am terrified of being on my own now. I never feel safe. When I go to bed, I wear tracksuit bottoms and a jumper in case I have to make a quick escape. I feel trapped.
"I knew from the moment I saw him that he was imbalanced. In a matter of seconds he would go from one extreme to the other, one minute being violent, the next telling me he loved me and hugging me like I was his girlfriend," she said.
"My one hope was to placate him, although I think he is very clever and manipulative. This man should not be released again. To my mind, in Broadmoor he would have too much of an easy life with all those luxuries and doctors giving him attention. I am suffering every day."
She was still uneasy with men, but hoped that one day she would recover suffficiently to have the husband and family she has wanted since her youth. "I am still frightened but I have my dreams. I dream that one day I will have my husband and my own family and be happy. I will not let him take that from me."
Last night a spokeswoman for Ravensbourne NHS Trust, which is responsible for Cane Hill, admitted that medical staff had wanted to keep Grant as a patient in hospital, but he had appealed against the order being renewed when it expired on January 12, 1995, and visiting hospital managers allowed his appeal. She said: "Whilst the responsible medical officer's report supported the renewal, taking into account all the evidence and information presented on the day, the Mental Health Act visiting managers did not feel that the criteria for detention had been met."
The visiting managers are trained lay people independent of trust management and act as a tribunal. The trust added: "Mr Grant appeared at the hearing, presented extremely well, and showed considerable insight into his condition."
SCIENTISTS have discovered a link between high voltage power lines and some forms of cancer which could open the way to scores of legal actions against electricity companies and suppliers.
Researchers at Bristol University have added scientific weight to claims that people living near pylons and power lines are exposed to a greater than average risk of lung cancers and leukaemia. Their evidence challenges claims by the National Radiological Protection Board that the risk is negligible.
The research, funded by the Medical Research Council and published next week in the International Journal of Radiation Biology, suggests there is a link between power cables and radioactive radon gas, found naturally in many homes. Radon, which affects thousands of homes built on granite in counties including Derbyshire, Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, and Northamptonshire, decays into highly radioactive particles which are a known cancer risk. The Department of the Environment has surveyed 250,000 homes in areas at risk and has offered advice on ways of curbing the gas.
The electrical field around power lines is believed to add charge to the radon particles, causing them to adhere to curtains, clothes and furniture. This in turn may increase the chance of the particles being breathed in and contaminating the lungs and the bloodstream.
The full findings of the research will be awaited by residents of Fishpond Bottom in Dorset who blame nearby power cables for a high incidence of illnesses from anxiety and depression to epilepsy and brain tumours.
A High Court case is pending in which Ray and Denise Studholme, of Little Lever, Bolton, Greater Manchester, claim the death from leukaemia of their son Simon, 13, is linked to his bedroom being next to an electricity sub-station. The electricity firm Norweb is contesting the case.
John Stather of the National Radiological Protection Board said last night it was "pure speculation" to suggest that people might breathe in larger amounts of the particles because of electric fields.
SENDING in the Head of the Home Civil Service to be interrogated by a committee of backbench MPs is rather like inviting an SAS captain to face assault from a team of morris dancers. Sir Robin Butler, Cabinet Secretary, was yesterday questioned by the Commons Select Committee on the Civil Service. They might better have spent the day knitting.
This was the first time I had seen the tall and athletic Sir Robin with his clothes on. Along with most of Britain, your sketchwriter first encountered him some weeks ago, appearing in a Channel 4 documentary about a lido in Brixton. Its regular habitues were interviewed, including two lesbian ladies and the Head of the Home Civil Service. He was seen executing a graceful breast-stroke. He was also filmed clad in a pink towel, which at one point seemed close to slipping.
Yesterday at Westminster, Sir Robin's breast-stroke was effortless. Far from making a splash he hardly ruffled the water. Towel never slipped.
The MPs, chaired by Giles Radice (Lab, Durham N), had hoped to probe a little beneath the surface of change in the Civil Service. Butler was not playing their game. But with such skill was he not playing that we were not even conscious of the refusal. Afterwards, one could not remember a word he had said.
MPs took turns at trying to pin him down. I studied each reply, seeking a pattern we might commend to any ambitious young civil servant. In fact, Sir Robin's approach is almost formulaic.
Here are the elements of what I call A Talent to Diffuse:
Be relentlessly pleasant.
Sound bluff. "Grapple" with the question. Avoid the weaselly Yes, Minister style.
Use self-deprecation.
Don't deny: play down.
Never admit an "either/or" situation.
Insist that whatever has been cited is not new, and has been around since Adam.
Never contradict ministers.
Explain what they really meant to say.
Describe the unworkable as "an aim".
When asked for a solution, repeat the problem.
If pushed, cite a need for security in public buildings.
Was privatisation "political or managerial", David Hanson (Lab, Delyn) asked. "I hope the two are the same," Sir Robin said, earnestly. Had Mr Heseltine made a difference, asked Tony Wright (Lab, Cannock and Burntwood). "His activities impinge on me," Sir Robin said. What about Heseltine's idea to recruit from the professions? "I do agree with the aim." Giles Radice then suggested that Heseltine had trouble reading. Sir Robin was afflicted by a sudden deafness.
Was it advisable to combine his jobs as Cabinet Secretary and Civil Service head? "Yes, in the absence of a better solution." Problems were not problems, but seen by some as problems.
Performance-related pay? We've had it for years, Butler said. A huge cut in Civil Service costs? "A great challenge." Did it cause tension? "There is always tension." Were civil servants policy-makers or (as Stephen Dorrell had claimed) purchasers? "Both."
Ambassadors on boards? "We've done it for 20 years." Why couldn't the Civil Service Handbook be placed in the Commons library? Ah, "nothing sinister": secrecy was needed "for the security of public buildings".
Only once did the towel seem close to slipping. Asked about a scheme to let private-sector workers try their hand at Whitehall, Sir Robin assured MPs they would be placed "where they can't do much damage: drafting answers to MPs' letters, and Parliamentary Questions". The committee bristled. "Their drafts have to be checked," Sir Robin added, securing the towel. But the frisson was intended.
LONDON and Dublin were at loggerheads again last night, this time over Irish proposals for a Bosnian-style conference to break the deadlocked peace process.
Michael Ancram, the Northern Ireland Minister, said the idea was "at best premature" while Unionists and their Tory supporters at Westminster condemned the proposal as "mischievous" and a "desperate ploy".
Dick Spring, the Irish Foreign Minister, proposed that the two governments should invite all political parties in Northern Ireland to two days of intensive talks under the same roof, as President Clinton had done at Dayton, Ohio, with the warring parties in Bosnia. Mr Spring, who discussed his idea in Dublin with Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Northern Ireland Secretary, said that no party would be forced to sit down with their opponents at the talks, which could be held at Stormont.
The governments would then shuttle between Unionists and Sinn Fein to try to pave the way for all-party talks. Irish ministers are concerned that the peace process could unravel if Sinn Fein is not brought into inclusive talks by the end of this month.
British officials scoffed at Mr Spring's idea, saying it was unrealistic. They insisted that elections provided the best way of moving towards all-party talks if the IRA refused to disarm.
The Ulster Unionist MP Ken Maginnis said: "The silly thing about Mr Spring's mischievous proposal lies in the fact that terrorist Serb leaders were not permitted to attend the Dayton conference. So I assume similar constraints will be imposed on certain people as far as Mr Spring's proposal is concerned."
TONY BLAIR'S suggestion that Britain's most elite noblemen owe their status to sexual favours of past monarchs can be traced back to the philanderings of Charles II. The King sired 15 children by a variety of women, some of whom were distinctly low born, and often gave out titles to their offspring in return for keeping their counsel.
Apart from the Royal Family the number of dukes the highest rank of the peerage has fallen to 24. There are four semi-royal dukes who inherited their titles through the bastard sons of Charles II, who was responsible for the biggest growth in dukedoms.
The sons of Barbara Villiers, who became Duchess of Cleveland, Nell Gwyn, Louise de Keroualle and Lucy Walters became respectively the Dukes of Grafton, St Albans, Richmond and Gordon, and Buccleuch and Queensberry. The title of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry dates from 1663. The current duke has been paralysed since a hunting accident 25 years ago.
The first Duke of Richmond, established in 1675, was one of the King's sons. The family seat is Goodwood House, Sussex. The 14th Duke of St Albans owes his title, dating from 1684, to the King's affair with Britain's best known orange seller, Nell Gwyn.
A PROMINENT member of the Shadow Cabinet plagued fellow travellers as he made almost continuous mobile telephone calls on a recent rail journey between London and Edinburgh, the House of Lords was told yesterday.
The Conservative peer Lord Campbell of Croy told the House that the only "light relief" for the other passengers had been when the politician, whom he did not identify, made loud suggestions as to what the Labour Party should do about Arthur Scargill, who challenged Labour in the recent Hemsworth by-election with his new left-wing party.
Lord Campbell cited the case in pressing the Government to back a code of conduct for the use of mobile telephones in public places.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, Trade and Industry Minister of State, voiced support for the idea of having areas on trains, in restaurants and other public places for mobile phone users. But he dismissed a code of conduct as unnecessary.
Lord Campbell told the House that the use of several mobile phones in a restricted area was a serious nuisance. "While they may be necessary in the modern, competitive business world, shouldn't special areas be designated, especially on trains, where passengers suffer unduly especially when voices are raised to shouting when they pass through tunnels?"
Lord Fraser said many people had suffered the "intolerable situation" of being forced to listen to "extremely boring" telephone conversations in public places. "It would be polite if people did not engage in these phone calls at maximum pitch," he said. "It might be desirable if trains and restaurants did introduce some arrangements of their own."
He said things overheard on the top deck of a bus would often be "brilliant" opening lines for a novel, but he had never heard anything in a mobile phone user's conversation that caught his imagination.
Lord Beloff, a Tory peer, said people using mobile phones did so to enhance their prestige and should be awarded an alternative "badge of importance" to wear so that everyone could be spared the tedium of their conversations.
Lord Peston, for Labour, suggested a return to enclosed telephone boxes into which mobile phone users could step to have their conversations without disturbing others.
Lord Richard, Labour peers' leader, intervened to say this particular problem was likely to remain until only the next election: "After that, the members of the Shadow Cabinet will be in ministerial cars."
THEIR Lordships were eating crumpets in the wood-panelled tearooms at the Palace of Westminster when news came through that most of them might soon be banished.
Although the hereditary peers more than 750 of them are entitled to share the gentleman's club on the banks of the Thames with 300 working colleagues knew that the Labour Party was "conniving" to scrap them and introduce some sort of elected chamber, they had not realised how strongly Tony Blair felt about the issue and how quickly the change might come.
Their ancestors had won their titles, often centuries before, through gallant deeds, sycophancy, refurbishing the country's coffers or being born on the wrong side of the royal blanket. Now they might have to abandon their palace before the end of the century.
Yesterday they admitted they would be an anomaly in Mr Blair's "classless Britain". They said they were undemocratic, indefensible and male dominated, but they strongly defended their right to continue playing a part in the running of the country.
Most thought Mr Blair's reference to them all being ancestors of mistresses to kings was "a hoot". But they were horrified by the Labour leader's claim that the hereditary Lords used the Palace of Westminster like a club. They pointed out that they could quite happily use White's or Pratt's across the park in Piccadilly if all they wanted was some convivial banter and a place to smoke cigars, drink whisky and play bridge.
Most said the reason they went to the Lords was for the "stimulating debates" and to act as a balance "to the rowdier end of the Palace".
The 4th Marquess of Reading said: "When I first joined I was worried by the lack of democracy, but I now see the wisdom of the Upper House. We are a wonderful, eclectic mix who can talk on the most extraordinary range of subjects. We have also been brought up with a sense of responsibility to govern. You don't have to teach a hereditary peer the ropes.
"We do a good job of clipping the wings of the extreme Right and Left and speaking up for common sense. Winning the vote on keeping sport on terrestrial TV was an obvious example."
Lord Reading's great-grandfather was a hard-working Jewish lawyer who won his title through merit. "He certainly never flirted with royalty," he said.
The 3rd Earl Kitchener of Khartoum and of Broome said: "It may be anachronistic and illogical that I have a say in running the country, but I take this job very seriously. I would be loath to see us disappear and I am not sure the country would like it either. I have never met anyone who has attacked me over the Lords but then maybe I wouldn't meet people like that, would I?"
The Duke of Grafton, who sits on the Government's benches, said: "While I am not a very good attender, and not a terribly political animal, I would defend my right to take part in votes in the House of Lords. It would be fraught with difficulty to restart the Upper Chamber without any hereditary peers."
None of the 12 Labour hereditary peers would comment but the working peer Lord Weatherill, former Speaker of the House and now convener of the mostly hereditary crossbenchers, said: "The hereditary crossbenchers are often extremely hard-working here. They spend hours trying to unravel messy Bills from the Commons and often stay extremely late to vote. They are badly paid but they do it because they feel they owe it to their country."
The 7th Earl of Onslow, however, is one who is willing to become extinct. "I find it extremely difficult to justify the fact that, because one of my ancestors got pissed with George IV, I can boss you all about. I would be totally in favour of deeply thought out, root-and-branch reform of the second chamber."
Many of the working peers will stand up for their hereditary colleagues. Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare said: "Some hereditary peers never attend but many are extremely distinguished and would be a great loss."
Lord Winston, the Professor of Fertility Studies at London University who was recently appointed a working Labour peer, said: "I am much more impressed than I expected to be by the contribution that some of the hereditary peers make. The advantage the Lords has is that there is a huge care about the place from all peers. There is a concern to find out the truth about something. There is a feeling of co-operation." He added: "I don't believe you could get that in an elected chamber."
Baroness Blackstone, a Labour life peer, said on Channel 4 News that many life peers brought "an enormous amount of knowledge" to the House but most hereditary peers were simply there "because their great-great grandfather was a drinking mate of George IV or another of their ancestors was a mistress of Charles II".
Lord Mancroft, a Conservative hereditary peer, said Lady Blackstone "wants to get rid of George IV's drinking cronies and replace them with Tony Blair's drinking cronies".
AS many as seven out of ten prisoners tested positive for drugs in a survey conducted by the Home Office, it was disclosed last night. The tests, conducted in 100 prisons over the past year, revealed traces of drugs ranging from heroin to cannabis.
At Featherstone prison in Wolverhampton the mandatory testing showed that up to 70 per cent of inmates had access to illegal substances.
Chris Scott, the governor of the category C prison, is also chairman of the Prison Governors' Association. He admitted on News at Ten that the figures confirmed his worst fears.
The tests were carried out over a three-week period on one in ten inmates chosen at random. Results varied widely, with some prisons barely registering and others such as Maidstone in Kent producing results suggesting half of the inmates take drugs. The average proving positive was 27.8 per cent.
Ann Widdecombe, the Prisons Minister, said last night: "It's a matter of concern for us and has been for some time. Some prisons produce nil return when tested and others less than 10%, so it is not uniformly as bad as some of the figures quoted."
She said the Government was already taking measures to combat the problem including the use of cameras, searches and sniffer dogs.
DAME Pauline Neville-Jones, 56, the most senior woman in the Foreign Office, is to join the National Westminster Bank after rejecting two senior posts as ambassador to Bonn, and special adviser to the Prime Minister.
Her abrupt departure is a blow to the Foreign Office, which had hoped that her promotion would have undercut criticism that it does not offer proper opportunities to women.
Dame Pauline will take up her new full-time job as a managing director in charge of developing NatWest Market's international strategy in June. She will follow her former chief, Douglas Hurd, who joined the bank as deputy chairman on an annual salary of £250,000 after resigning as Foreign Secretary last summer. Her basic salary is likely to be just under £200,000. Her performance-related work on privatisation issues could double that.
Malcolm Rifkind, the Foreign Secretary, yesterday praised the key role she played as political director in the Bosnia negotiations and the Dayton peace accord. His words barely conceal the intense irritation in the Foreign Office at suggestions that she has been shabbily treated or that her failure to win the job of ambassador to Paris was the evidence of discrimination against women.
Until June she will remain at the Foreign Office but will be seconded to Carl Bildt, the special negotiator in former Yugoslavia. Her job will be to head the Brussels liaison office and implement the civilian arrangements in the peace accords.
The Foreign Office did what it could to stop her leaving, even proposing a specially created Cabinet Office post for a year until the present ambassador to Bonn retires. She would have been the first woman to head a Grade One Embassy, of which there are only seven in the world.
Dame Pauline, created a dame in the last New Year's Honours List, said she was taking the job because "I believe it is the right move to make at this time". She admitted that frustration with her situation at the Foreign Office had played a part in her decision. She wanted to become ambassador to Paris, but the position went instead to Michael Jay, a Deputy Under-Secretary in charge of relations with Europe and economic affairs.
The Foreign Office said her move did not reflect on the promotion chances of women, who last year accounted for 57 per cent of the intake into its fast stream.
Dame Pauline, a strong-willed diplomat with a reputation for intimidating her staff, is a respected but not popular figure in Whitehall. Her relations with Sir John Coles, the Permanent Under-Secretary, are said to have been uneasy. But she has won high praise for her robust defence of British and European interests in standing up to Richard Holbrooke, the American negotiator who attempted to shut the Europeans out of the Dayton peace negotiations.
She was prevented by Civil Service rules from speaking publicly about her treatment, but it prompted her mother, Dr Celia Winn, to accuse the Foreign Office of discriminating against women.
BETTY BOOTHROYD, the Speaker of the Commons, stepped into the growing row over the Scott report yesterday by supporting Labour demands for an early sight of the 1,800-page document.
The Speaker's intervention came only hours before Sir Richard Scott said that he had been put under pressure by the Government into giving ministers the report on the arms-to-Iraq affair seven days before it will be available to the Opposition and the media.
To the Government's obvious embarrassment, Miss Boothroyd said it would be "much better" if MPs were given advance copies of the report.
MPs and journalists have been told that only a handful of ministers and senior officials will see the five-volume report before next Thursday afternoon when it will be presented to the Commons by Ian Lang, the Trade and Industry Secretary.
Sir Richard said on BBC2's Newsnight last night that he thought his report should have been released to Government, Opposition and the media simultaneously. "But it was represented to me very strongly by the Government that that was impracticable," he said.
Amid tight security the first copies of the report were delivered to the Cabinet Office yesterday afternoon. The Government is believed to have asked for 20 copies while Sir Richard originally offered six. The number delivered yesterday was said to be "somewhere in the middle."
The Government is using the next week to "co-ordinate" its response.
Miss Boothroyd said that she had no power to intervene but she supported Labour demands for the report to be disclosed early. She said: "In my experience the questioning on any statement is much better focused when some steps have been taken to enable Opposition spokesmen and minority party spokesmen to have access some time in advance to the text of complicated reports."
Downing Street said that it would consider the Speaker's view.
Sir Richard said that no one, including ministers, should have been given prior access to his findings.
TONY BLAIR placed Britain's hereditary peers on notice to quit yesterday with his strongest pledge yet that a Labour government would swiftly end a system under which people wielded power by right of birth, not of merit or election.
He put forward a two-stage plan for Lords reform under which the right of about 750 hereditary peers to sit and vote in the Upper House would be scrapped in an early piece of constitutional legislation. Most of them were "just Tory voting fodder", he said in one of the fiercest attacks by a Labour leader on the hereditary principle. Some peers were in the Lords merely because their ancestor was the mistress of a monarch, he said.
The aim would be first to turn the Lords into a genuine "body of the distinguished and meritorious" before moving to the second stage: an elected second chamber which would retain some peers chosen either for their expertise in different fields or because they would not all wish to stand under party labels.
All the signs last night were that the second stage of the reform will not be a priority for a first Labour term.
Mr Blair's onslaught on "the oddest and least defensible part of the constitution" threw Lords reform into the centre of the political arena. Earlier in the day, Brian Mawhinney, the Conservative Party chairman, defended the Lords as a place that worked, a hardworking and serious reforming chamber that provided a vital check on the executive.
Mr Blair's vision of a new-look second chamber came in the course of a wide-ranging speech on the constitution, setting out Labour's plans for Scottish and Welsh devolution, declaring his own support for elected mayors for London and other big cities, and confirming his intention to bring in an elected authority for London and a freedom of information Act. He said, however, that Labour would not try to do it all at once in one great reform Bill. The measures could be achieved only over a period of time.
Delivering the John Smith memorial lecture in London, Mr Blair said it was wrong and absurd that people should wield power by right of birth. "What is more, there are over 300 official Tory hereditary peers, 12 Labour and 24 Liberal Democrat. Hundreds more rarely appear, but if they did, we can be sure very few would side with Labour or the Liberal Democrats. This is plainly and incontrovertibly politically biased."
Tory peers did not just use the Lords as a drinking and dining club; they voted and the poll tax, "the most expensive fiasco in fiscal history", would never have become law without the hereditary peers. "There are no conceivable grounds for maintaining this system,‘' he said.
Mr Blair confirmed that Labour was prepared to allow some of those hereditary peers who made regular contributions in the Lords to become life peers. The law lords would also remain.
In remarks confirming that Labour's plans for the second elected chamber are far from complete, Mr Blair said that whatever the final balance between election and merit in that chamber, it was impossible to justify doing nothing about a manifest constitutional unfairness, namely membership on the basis of birth. He asked: "Are we going to continue alone of all the democracies to have laws passed by an upper chamber, a majority of whose members are there by birth not merit, perhaps because 300 years ago their ancestor was the mistress of a monarch?"
Dr Mawhinney said that removing hereditary peers would deprive Parliament of a range of experience that had brought to debates wisdom and knowledge that otherwise would be missing. He said that Labour's distaste for the hereditary principle was reflected in the attitude that many socialists had towards the Royal Family. "The threat to the Lords could conceivably pose a threat to our entire constitutional settlement."
Elsewhere in his speech, Mr Blair repeated his pledge to hold a referendum on proportional representation. While making plain that he had yet to be persuaded of the case for change, he pleased some Liberal Democrats by his readiness to be convinced.
BRIGADIER Andrew Parker Bowles married Rosemary Pitman, a divorced mother of three grown-up sons, in a ten-minute ceremony at Chelsea Register Office in London yesterday.
Brigadier Parker Bowles, 56, whose ex-wife Camilla is a close friend of the Prince of Wales, declined to kiss his new wife, saying the couple were too old for that sort of thing in public. "She is marvellous. What else can I say?" he said, while the new Mrs Parker Bowles said that the ceremony had been very nice.
Unlike his first wedding in 1973, which was attended by 900 people including Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret and Princess Anne, there were just five guests at yesterday's ceremony his children Laura, 18, and Tom, 21, and Mrs Pitman's sons Henry, 33, William, 26, and Tom, 30. They all signed the marriage certificate.
Mrs Pitman's first husband, Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh Pitman, is a former cavalry officer from the same regiment as Brigadier Parker Bowles. He is remarried.
CEZANNE fever hit London yesterday as thousands of people descended on the Tate Gallery. A queue stretched the length of the main hall, through the main entrance and down the steps, before making its way round the block. It was at least a quarter of a mile long.
By the end of the day, which included an evening viewing, an estimated 8,000 people had seen the new exhibition. However long the wait, they came away thinking it was worth it.
To get in, though, people had to suffer: they stood for up to 90 minutes, in freezing conditions, cursing the gallery for not allowing them to wait inside.
These were "friends" of the gallery who, for an annual £35 subscription, see exhibitions first on a "friends' day" and have unlimited access to the shows. Several said that they did not expect to have to queue on "their day". But then the Tate has 13,500 friends, each of whom can bring a guest.
Three retired women, who had come up from Cornwall, were particularly distraught at the sight of the queue. It had not been their day: having set out at 4am, to struggle through the snow to the station, their train broke down three times and they were delayed by two hours. By the time they were likely to see the first exhibit, it would be time to catch the train home again, said Angela Curgenven: "It's heartbreaking."
Once inside, people found something else to complain about: the heat. "It's like a sauna," said a guard.
But whatever the frustrations, Cezanne soothed tempers. Colin Makey, a gardener, said he would have waited for many more hours, "days even. It's fabulous". Dana Tatum had come from Gloucestershire: "It was worth it."
THE Department of Social Security will be told today to cut its £3.25 billion running costs by at least a quarter, putting at risk thousands of jobs in the administration of welfare benefits.
The plan to cut a minimum 25 per cent from the administration budget will be unveiled in the House of Lords by Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, the Social Security Minister.
Civil Service trade unions have already served notice that they will oppose the economies which are being forced through to satisfy the Treasury demands in last autumn's spending round.
Peter Lilley, the Social Security Secretary, in a leaked letter to William Waldegrave, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, gives a warning that the scale of the cuts filled him with despair. He writes: "The impact on operations will be devastating. Quite apart from the political fallout, as the service becomes more chaotic, I am convinced that we could be cutting our noses to spite our faces."
The changes, the most dramatic for decades, are outlined in a letter from Anne Bowtell, Permanent Secretary at the DSS, which says: "To keep within budget and cope with rising workloads we need to find business efficiencies of at least a quarter by 1998-99."
In a speech yesterday in London, Mr Lilley confirmed plans, disclosed by The Times on Tuesday, for group personal pensions for people working for firms too small to run occupational schemes. Obstacles to such schemes were being swept away, he said. "This has paved the way for expansion of GPP schemes. We are examining whether any further steps are needed to facilitate their growth among employers otherwise making no pension provision."
PETER LILLEY won a High Court battle yesterday to halt benefits to thousands of asylum-seekers aimed at saving £200million a year. But the legality of the action is to be tested in a hearing in April.
Mr Justice Brooke turned down an appeal by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) to halt the cuts, saying he had no jurisdiction to intervene over the move which took effect on Monday. Mr Justice Brooke, brother of Peter Brooke, the former Conservative minister, said the number of people affected would be "comparatively small" although he expressed concern about those who would fall victim.
Under the new rules, benefits will no longer be paid to asylum-seekers appealing against a decision to refuse them status as refugees or to anyone who makes an asylum application having entered Britain for another reason. Nicholas Blake, QC, for the JCWI, said they would have to endure "extreme hardship".
The full case will be heard at the same time as a challenge by the Conservative Westminster council and Labour Hammersmith, alleging extra housing costs.
Lois Lane dropped Superman once before, in 1958
SUPERMAN, the American cartoon hero and quick-change specialist, is to be dumped by his girlfriend, Lois Lane. The split will occur on St Valentine's Day.
Sources at the New York offices of DC Comics, which produces the comic strip, said that the storyline is taking this regrettable step because Lois is not sure she can handle Superman's unreliability. The strip will begin with Lois blurting out: "I've been thinking" and complaining that "no matter how close we get, there's still a part of you that is somewhere else". Superman returns from a day's heroic deeds to find on his table the engagement ring he gave Lois in 1990.
The couple have been going out together, intermittently, since the cartoon appeared in 1938, and came to represent the chaste values of postwar America.
Martha Thomases, for DC Comics, said: "Superman will be shown to be very upset." Miss Lane, she disclosed, has received romantic attention from Peter Parker, alias Spiderman.
Chris Davies, director of golf at La Manga, gives his hole-by-hole guide to the south course
401 yards, par 4
A large fairway bunker on the right requiring a carry of 252 yards will keep the tee shot honest and save it from disappearing down the ravine parallel with the hole. Trees penalise the hook and a lake awaits the poor second shot.
400 yards, par 4
A generous landing area for the tee shot is protected by a fairway bunker on the left. The second shot to the two-tiered green, guarded by bunkers to left and right, must also carry an artfully-placed bunker.
540 yards, par 5
A large bunker at 269 yards guards the tiger line on the corner of the dog-leg. Play safe against the wind a drive with a hint of draw into the centre of the fairway followed by a wood or a long iron will probably pay dividends.
433 yards, par 4
Because this hole is slightly uphill it will play 20-25 yards longer without the wind. A 35-yard-long fairway bunker on the left, which calls for a carry of 242 yards, and the lake on the right, threaten the drive.
220 yards, par 3
The changes made by Arnold Palmer and his design team to this hole have made a significant difference to its character and degree of difficulty. A large swale has been cut from the tee to the edge of the lake.
400 yards, par 4
From the tee bordered by a lake, two raised fairway bunkers on the left leave a 45-yard-wide landing area. Trees line the hole and the entrance to the green is narrow with bunkers to left and right.
429 yards, par 4
Into the wind, two big shots are needed to hit the well protected green in regulation. The drive has to skirt a bunker on the left.
218 yards, par 3
Probably regarded as the signature hole on the course following extensive changes by Palmer. Besides the lake to the right, the hole is also guarded by a huge beach bunker that extends to the water.
591 yards, par 5
Into the wind, this hole deserves respect. From the three-tiered tee, a good drive is called for to carry the ravine, followed by a well-placed second shot to the centre of the fairway to avoid a fairway bunker and a lake.
10
368 yards, par 4
Temporary respite is afforded by this comparatively easy dog-leg hole, though fairway sand and trees on the corner of the dog-leg await an off-line drive.
11
393 yards, par 4
Another dog-leg left. Either carry the bunker on the corner of the dog-leg at 241 yards to be left with a nine-iron or wedge, or lay up short right and play a five-iron second shot.
12
133 yards, par 3
The shortest hole on the course, but by no means the easiest. The pin placements can produce problems in club selection.
13
555 yards, par 5
Players who can draw the ball will be at an advantage here, even though all the trouble is on the left, where the large, scalloped bunkers, intruding into the fairway are waiting for the off-line shot.
14
361 yards, par 4
A bunker in the middle of the fairway begs the ambitious to take it on. Wind permitting, a successful carry will leave only a short iron to the green.
15
440 yards, par 4
Rated one on the stroke index, and deservedly so. Trouble on the left for the big hitter with the tendency to hook, with a ravine running parallel to the left of the fairway.
16
370 yards, par 4
A newly-placed bunker in the middle of the fairway now tempts the player to be bold off the tee. The approach shot has to negotiate a huge bunker to the left.
17
222 yards, par 3
An exciting short hole to a well-guarded green. Anything from a three-wood to three-iron is called for here, depending on the wind.
18
485 yards, par 5
When standing on the tee players must try to forget the three lakes and bunker facing them. A drive with draw over the edge of the right-hand lake will give choice for the second shot.
Impressive line-up backing one of the biggest amateur golf competitions in the world.
CITROEN
DURING the past decade Citroen has witnessed a fundamental change in both its share of the UK market and customer profile. That change has been due to a complete replacement of its model line-up, producing a 300 per cent increase in sales and outselling Volkswagen in 1994. Mainstream cars such as the critically-acclaimed and award-winning ZX and Xantia, competing against such volume models as the Vauxhall Astra and Ford Mondeo, have found favour with the public for providing stylish, low-cost motoring with proven quality and reliability. Meanwhile, in the corporate sector, Citroen has seen even higher growth rate, with sales to company fleets now 40 per cent of the total. While the company believes that product is important, even more important is the quality of service provided by its dedicated head office team and nationwide network of specialist dealers. This has resulted in the creation of Citroen Fleet Connect, an innovative programme that allows business buyers to call a single number to solve all their business vehicle problems. It also led Citroen into associate sponsorship of The Times MeesPierson Corporate Golf Challenge, in which it is beginning its second year. Ken Forbes, national fleet manager of the company, said: "We are delighted to be associated with such a prestigious event. Companies involved with the Challenge are those dedicated to the very highest levels of professionalism and customer care. These qualities match our corporate culture and the event sits naturally with us."
HYATT LA MANGA CLUB RESORT
IN 1996, the Hyatt La Manga Club Resort, recognised as one of the finest tournament venues in Europe, will be hosting the final of the Challenge for the fourth successive year. Since Hyatt International took over management of the resort in June 1993, several events of the calibre of the Spanish Seniors' Open and the women's Spanish Open have been held there. The resort has also been used as the base for the qualifying schools for both the Women Professional Golfers' European Tour and the PGA European Seniors' Tour. The resort offers everything that a prestigious leisure and sporting destination needs three challenging courses and extensive practice facilities. The excellent accommodation includes the five-star Hotel Principe Felipe, which offers luxurious rooms and suites, and the Spanish pueblo-style Las Lomas Apartments to cater for sporting groups and families. Other facilities include a tennis centre with eight multi-surfaced courts and a wide range of restaurants and bars. Cees Howling, hotel general manager, said: "The potential of the event was almost tangible from the first day."
BRITISH MIDLAND
BRITISH Midland is the second largest scheduled service airline and the second-biggest user at Heathrow. It operates a fleet of 35 aircraft on more than 250 flights a day on an extensive European and domestic network. The company is renowned for offering outstanding service combined with competitively priced fares and has consistently championed the cause of the business traveller. Passengers on international flights can now take advantage of the airline's Diamond EuroClass service, which offers superb in-flight cuisine, complimentary drinks and newspapers, plus a range of benefits to ease the checking-in procedure. For travellers using British Midland's domestic network, the airline offers a business-class level of service but at economy fares, and as a result the airline has been consistently voted the best domestic service in the UK. British Midland is committed to the development of its international and domestic network and today flies to 11 key cities in Europe. It is still the only airline to compete head-to-head with the national flag carriers on the six busiest cross-border routes in Europe. "We are delighted to be sponsoring this prestigious event and very much look forward to bringing our customers to what will undoubtedly be an exciting Corporate Golf Challenge," Alex Grant, sales and marketing director of the airline, said.
MARRIOTT
MARRIOTT and the Country Club Hotel Group have joined forces to create an exciting new hotel company under the Marriott banner with their seven Hotel and Country Clubs, making the group undoubtedly the United Kingdom's leading golf resort operator. The marriage of the two companies will elevate the group to the No1 position in the market and brings together the best combination in the British hotel market. The Country Club Hotel Group consists of predominantly conference and leisure hotels, whereas Marriott is essentially four-star city centre hotels, and the merger has therefore broadened the sectors in which the group can operate. The diversity of the organisations means that more business people will visit the newly-branded Marriott Hotel & Country Clubs, while more leisure guests will visit the city-based Marriott hotels. This year, Marriott will host five international professional golf events at their resorts, four of which will be televised. With a portfolio of champions, including Colin Montgomerie, who has been top of the European money-list for the past two years, Laura Davies, the world's top-ranked woman player, Ian Woosnam, Philip Walton and Sam Torrance at their venues, the group is committed to providing the best facilities
for the world's top players and golf-day clients throughout
the year.
GOLF WORLD
LONG established as Britain's No1 golf magazine, Golf World's claim to be "The world's most exclusive golf club" is not an empty one. Where else can amateur golfers get regular instruction tips from the world's greatest players? Nick Price, Ernie Els, Severiano Ballesteros and Annika Sorenstam all write exclusively in Britain, only for Golf World. Their advice is complemented by tailor-made instructional advice from the magazine's panel of top-line coaches that includes Jim Christine, Andrew Hall, Beverley Lewis and Sky Sport's Tim Barter, who help to straighten out drives, sharpen short games and perfect putting. They even help with the mental side of the game. In addition, the magazine can call on the exclusive services of Peter Alliss, the voice of BBC golf, and Peter Dobereiner, one of the world's most respected golf writers. The magazine also offers unrivalled coverage for the golfing holidaymaker there are regular reports and reviews of leading resorts and destinations from Florida to France, Palm Springs to Portugal. All the destinations are personally visited by the magazine's writers, whose impartiality is guaranteed. Finally, Golf World keeps its readers up to date on the ever-changing and sometimes confusing world of golf equipment. Whatever is new in the shops, be it golf balls, clubs, sweaters or shoes, it will be subjected to a searching examination by Golf World.
WATERFORD
WATERFORD Crystal is a renowned and well respected name in the world of golf. Its unique, custom-designed trophies grace the stage of some of the finest international golf events. The Australian Masters, the USPGA Tour Championship, the World Cup of Golf and, closer to home, the Solheim Cup are just a few of the great golf occasions at which Waterford Crystal is present and presented. Associate sponsors to the Challenge for the second year, Waterford sees the event as providing the perfect target market and the opportunity to promote its product to that market in a relaxed and enjoyable environment. It believes it is the perfect vehicle to reinforce the quality, image and prestige associated with the company and its products. "We are very pleased to be associated with both of the title sponsors and the family of associate sponsors," John Warren, Waterford's manager of sports and special promotions, said. "In particular we have been excited about the coverage, publicity and branding opportunities that have become associated with this prestigious event." Waterford's team of designers created a magnificent new trophy for the Challenge, a trophy that will be retained by the winners of the national final, who this year are Hall and Coaker, for a year before presentation to their successors. In addition the four players in the winning team each receive a crystal replicato keep as a reminder of their victory.
PRODUCT SUPPLIERS
BARWELL is a privately-owned company that has 25 years' experience of organising holidays by British tourists to the Murcia region of Spain. Last year, the company took about 30,000 people to an unspoilt and beautiful part of the country, chartering aircraft from both Gatwick and Manchester. The aircraft chartered by the company an agreement was completed with British Airways last year are the major means of taking tourists to Murcia, and Barwell offers package holidays and also seat-only travel arrangements. Barwell has an Air Travel Operator's licence and is also a member of the Association of British Travel Agents, which not only gives customers access to the company's facilities through 7,000 travel agents on its database but also offers them automatic financial security. "We enjoy looking after people and listening to what they want," Richard Lemmer, Barwell's founder and managing director, said.
NEWSTRACK
NEWSTRACK is a specialised source of financial news and information on smaller companies, particularly stocks traded on the new London Stock Exchange Alternative Investment Market (Aim) and those traded on Ofex, an unregulated off-exchange dealing facility. Newstrack distributes information 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, to four major news vendors in particular, ADP (QSTLine), Blomberg, ICV-Topic3 and Reuters. These four vendors display the Newstrack service to their subscribers free of charge and this enables equity dealers in the United Kingdom and overseas to be kept up to date with basic statistical information, press releases and price information. Information on the Corporate Golf Challenge can be accessed at all times free of charge on the Newstrack service, where readers of The Times will be kept up to speed with regular news on event dates and results.
TITLEIST
TITLEIST and Foot-Joy World-wide will be well known to just about every player competing in the Challenge. The company's golf balls are used by more that 70 per cent of European Tour professionals, while it has been the No1 ball on the USPGA Tour since 1949. Worldwide, Titleist players win more titles and more money than all other balls combined. Foot-Joy shoes, too, are the overwhelming choice of the world's leading players. The company also markets a broad range of top-quality golf equipment including irons, putters, carts, bags, gloves, socks and accessories. One of the fastest-growing activities of the organisation is the logo printing service offered on all its golf balls. "We needed no persuading to continue our involvement in such a rapidly-growing and prestigious corporate golf event as the Challenge," John Peal, the marketing manager of Titleist, said. "We think this event has a bright future, and we want to support it in every way we can."
FIBERNET
FIBERNET is a world-class provider of digital communication networks for leading organisations, both in the public and private sectors. Over the past decade Fibernet has become a force in the data and telecommunications industries in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, supplying networks based upon the "back-bones" of high-capacity optical fibre. The nature of the company's business demands the very highest levels of network performance and reliability clients depend upon the networks as a fundamental means to operate their business. Fibernet was recently granted a national Public Telcommunications Operator licence to enable it to deal with its clients' needs quicker and more efficiently. "The company is delighted to be associated with The Times and the Challenge," a spokesman said. "The Times is taken by the most discerning readership, many of whom are our clients."
John Hopkins, golf correspondent, takes a browse through the newsstands
The publishers of Golf World would like to have the supremacy among golf magazines that Foot-Joy in shoes and Titleist in golf balls have in their respective markets. So far though, it falls short of the 72 per cent market-share Foot-Joy claimed of all the shoes worn at last year's Open and the dominance Titleist has in balls 19 of the top 20 on the 1995 European Order of Merit use that ball as did 117 of the 156 competitors in the Open at St Andrews. Golf World, which has joined The Times MeesPierson Corporate Golf Challenge this year as one of six associate sponsors, is the dominant golf magazine in the UK but it is not that dominant.
There are four monthly golf magazines Golf World, Today's Golfer and Fore!, all published by East Midlands Allied Press (Emap), and Golf Monthly, published by IPC. The latest ABC circulation figures give Golf World a narrow lead 82,495 per month compared with Golf Monthly's 80,098. "Golf World has integrity, authority and insight and gives good coverage of the international golf scene," David Clarke, its newly appointed editor said. "We're going to expand its coverage. Golf magazines reflect the interest in their sport, golf is a growing and vigorous sport and we want to make sure Golf World remains a growing and vigorous magazine."
The golf magazine market resembles but does not mirror the golf equipment market and the general economic climate. In the days when the excesses of the Eighties were still a reality and not a memory, the golf equipment industry touched high levels. And so did the golf magazines. In 1990, Golf World produced several issues of more than 300 pages.
In part, this was a deserved reward for far-sighted editorial thinking. "We had made a conscious effort to align the magazine with the best," Robert Green, editor of Golf World from August 1988 until November last year, recalled. "That meant we wanted the best writers, best photographers, best players, best instructors, in short the best of everything.
"We also made other changes. We determined to continue to move away from depending so much on Golf Digest [the highly successful magazine owned by Golf World's parent company, the New York Times]. This reflected the rise in European golf the success in the Ryder Cup, the way European players were winning titles, as well as a desire not to adhere slavishly to an American formula.
"Secondly, we started to develop our instruction staff. Tim Barter, the professional at Botley Park in Hampshire, was one of our finds and has now been taken up by Sky Sports. Another was Andrew Hall, who was at Blackmore Golf Club, also in Hampshire, and has now moved to Sand Martin, in Berkshire.
"Thirdly, we greatly improved our technical expertise to do with equipment and its coverage. We learnt what was significant for our readers and how best to tell it to them."
There is a view in the United States that what sells golf magazines is golf instruction and because of the success of American magazines, that view has become accepted wisdom in Britain. Speaking personally, I skim the instruction section and turn to the features and I have yet to find anyone who buys it for the technical information.
"Magazines must reflect the interest in their sport," Clark said. "I want Golf World to become a forum for intelligent debate. I want it to be the thinking man's golf magazine. What the readers of Golf World want are answers to contemporary issues in golf. I want it to be at the cutting edge of serious golfing issues.
"What you think it is that golfers are talking about in the clubhouses at any given time I want to know. Is it things like, is technology killing the game? Is it a debate saying do we need more golf courses? Are they complaining about slow play? I think these are the sort of things that golfers are talking about now and I want to make sure that Golf World becomes a vehicle where these issues can be properly aired and, if necessary, acted on."
Mel Webb on a development that slots into place the final piece of the Challenge jigsaw
It was serendipity that threw together a quintet of English rugby union supporters and a handful of their Irish counterparts in an hotel in Dublin after a five nations' championship match in 1983, an evening during which a wooden spoon was fished out of the kitchen cabinet.
Nobody present at a convivial evening of good conversation, laughter and more than the odd pint of the dark stuff would have imagined that they were witnesses to the creation of a nationwide charity that today raises more than £600,000 a year for deprived children.
After a prolonged gestation period the outcome of the night in the bar in the Ireland was the Wooden Spoon Society, a movement which today has thousands of members in all the four countries of the British Isles and is one of the leading children's charities in the land. The story is one of success, and one that is destined to impress itself on even more sporting lives this year with the announcement that the Society has become the official charity to The Times MeesPierson Corporate Golf Challenge.
The deal is simple. The Challenge will adopt the charity and give it all the support it can; the quid pro quo is that Wooden Spoon will supply walking scorers at every match in the Challenge's 12-event regional final series in the autumn.
By joining the Challenge, Wooden Spoon has completed the conceptual jigsaw of an amateur golf event that is committed to providing the players who appear in it with a feeling that they are taking part in an competition run to the highest professional standards.
At a stroke, it is also bringing two strengths to the Challenge it brings impartiality to the recording of scores, and it gives the competition the charity element that it has lacked. It is not so much a marriage of convenience, more a union between two organisations that might have been made for each other.
The Society will provide anything up to 30 scorers in each of the 12 regional finals, and in return it is planned they they will run competitions on the day as well as mounting a Wooden Spoon Society desk for information and possible
recruitment purposes.
David Roberts, executive director of the Society, is a bluff, enthusiastic Welshman who has been on the Wooden Spoon council for 13 years, and for the last two years has been one of only two full-time staff; he places great importance to what he sees as his Society's responsibility to the Challenge.
"We see our commitment to providing walking scorers as a duty that we have to perform and not some voluntary arrangement under which we can turn up if we want to," he said. "The more effort we put into the commitment, the more likely we are to get committed people who will add something to the regional finals.
"We see ourselves as very much the new boys, so we don't want to intrude into what are already very sophisticated, well organised days. We just want to seek a niche where we can raise our profile, perhaps make some money and lend an air of entertainment to the proceedings. But raising money is not the critical thing; being part of the finals very much is."
The story of the birth of the Society is a characteristically entertaining one. The morning after the meeting in Dublin, during which everybody present signed the spoon, somebody came up with the bright idea of having a day's golf, with the spoon going to the worst score of the day.From those modest beginnings grew a day's golf at Farnham Golf Club, Surrey in the autumn of that year, and it was attended not by five but by 120 players. During the evening somebody stood up brandishing one tie of 50 that had been made including the colours of the four home unions, said he would never wear it and proposed to auction it with the proceeds going to charity.
One thing, and one tie, led to another, and another, and before long more than £300 had been raised. It was at this point that Peter Scott, one of the Famous Five and a member of the Variety Club of Great Britain's Sunshine Coach committee, climbed to his feet and suggested that the money should be given towards a Sunshine Coach.
Another diner asked how much a Sunshine Coach cost and was told £7,300. Cutting a longish story short, by the time the assembly broke up that evening, £8,500 had been raised, and the Wooden Spoon Society was born. Scott, the man who sparked the whole thing off that night in Surrey, is now president of the Wooden Spoon Society having been chairman for its first 13 years.
Since then nearly £3 million has been raised for physically, mentally or socially deprived children. It is a story of unalloyed success over 13 years, and the Society goes from strength to strength. It is, quirkily, an expression of that success that has led the Society to decide to reduce its membership in the near future to a little over half the current 6,300.
Roberts said: "We have decided to change our profile to a subscribing society that will ask its members to commit themselves to an annual subscription. We will say a reluctant farewell to the members who decided they do not want to be involved, but we felt it was the best way of making the Society more streamlined."
Roberts is proud of the fact that Wooden Spoon is not what he calls a "plastic bucket" organisation. "We don't chuck a bucket on the floor and ask people to throw their spare change into it,' he said. "We believe the way to strike a chord with people is to give them something for their money, we have always been an event-creating movement."
It has proved a winning formula. The society's 14 regions put on their own events throughout the year and the society's national ball at the London Hilton is the biggest function of the year at the hotel. Last year £183,000 was raised from one evening.
"We had already identified the charity element and the need for walking scorers as important aims," Neil Gray, tournament director of the Challenge, said. "We see it as a two-way relationship, because members of the Wooden Spoon Society are likely to organise company golf days and are therefore potential entrants.
"At the same time we are providing the charity with the chance to meet their target audience and also, hopefully to raise some money. I think it's a classic win-win situation."Roberts agreed, but added his own rider. "We must play our part," he said. "Neil says it is a win-win situation but it's a lose-lose situation if we come to the party and don't do our party piece. We like to think that we can sprinkle a layer of magic dust over events with which we're involved. We want to make people glad they attended. It is our intention to do that with the Challenge."
Danny Desmond talks to Michael Clark about the formidable alliance that his company formed with the former world No1
It is not just the likes of the coach, David Leadbetter, that Nick Faldo turns to when he finds his swing is not quite up to its usual high standard. He has also been known to learn from the likes of Danny Desmond, a 13-handicapper who did not pick up a golf club until he had turned 50.
Perhaps it should be pointed out that Desmond doesn't just act as ad-hoc coach to the maestro, he is also godfather to Faldo's daughter, Natalie, and was best man at his wedding to his estranged wife, Gill.
Desmond was also ready to support Faldo after he changed his swing by becoming his lead sponsor. In fact Desmond's company sponsored Faldo for six years from 1987 through to 1993. Last year, Desmond had the opportunity to help Faldo to sort out a problem with his swing when the three-times Open champion visited him at his luxurious Hertfordshire home.
As Desmond explains, he took Faldodown to the basement to take a look at the new cimema he had had installed. Desmond's son had chosen one of the Faldo videos to screen. During the screening, it struck the golfer that his swing had become mechanical and lacked much of the rhythym for which it was once famed. Desmond agreed.
Since then Faldo has made a concerted effort to get back that rhythm and confesses that he has, of late, been "letting it rip". But while Faldo has achieved considerable success on the fairway, his friend Desmond has also been "letting it rip" in the world of business.
Bride Hall was founded in 1983 and for the first few months he ran the property company from home. The company now has offices in Mayfair and is now involved in several significant property developments. At the height of the property boom in 1987, Desmond sold 50 per cent of Bride Hall to Great Portland Estates for £12 million. The company was struggling with a £300 million development programme financed from a small capital base. It needed extra resources. Great Portland filled that role.
When the bottom dropped out of the property market, Desmond was presented with the opportunity of buying his stake back for a fraction of what he sold it for. He has since embarked on an expansion programme establishing Bride Hall as a leading player in the property market.
Faldo had just finished re-grooving his swing back in 1987 when Desmond decided to sponsor him an idea that appealed to Desmond as he continued to live in Faldo's home village of Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire.
"Nick's previous sponsor had just pulled out and his agents, International Management Group, were looking for a new one," Desmond said. He took up the reins with a sponsorship deal that had a built-in bonus arrangement.
"The Spanish Open was the first tournament Nick played in with the Bride Hall logo on his bag. I was sitting at home on the Sunday night after the competition had finished unaware of the result. The phone rang and a voice at the other end blurted "get your cheque book out".
He did, and continued doling out money throughout that season, with Faldo picking up the winner's cheque three times on the PGA European Tour alone. It became even more expensive for Desmond in 1990, when Faldo won both the US Masters and the Open. It has been reported that it cost Bride Hall a staggering £200,000 that season in sponsorship and bonus payouts.
Sponsoring Faldo also had its positive aspects. As part of the contract, Bride Hall was allowed to wheel out Faldo, then the world No1, at a number of company golf days. Desmond believes the company golf day plays an integral role in day-to-day business. "They have value, no question of that," he said. "A lot of people conduct business while playing golf. We never spend enough quality time with clients.
"The company golf day enables us to walk round the golf course consoling each other. It is a nice way to spend time."
Looking back on the link with Faldo, Desmond ponders the question of whether Bride Hall obtained value for money. "I certainly don't regret it. We found Nick an invaluable ambassador," he said. "Not only in this country, but in the US where he carried his bag with the Bride Hall logo prominently displayed during the play-off for the 1988 US Open."
Patricia Davies meets the only female to have encountered the ultimate Challenge
Christine Martin has a singular claim to fame she is the only woman who has competed in the national final of The Times MeesPierson Corporate Golf Challenge. Martin, an American who is a project manager for Data Connection, a software development company, took part in the final at La Manga last year, where she did more than make up the numbers her team finished as the runners-up.
"It was flattering to have all the attention," Martin said, "but it was nerve-racking as well because the cameras seemed to be around quite a bit." She noticed she was the only woman because of the fuss, but being an engineer she is used to working in a mostly male environment.
All the statistics say that there are more women in business and golf but where are they? John Mitchell, the Challenge event director, says they are filtering through in the early stages and it will just take time for that increase to be reflected later on. "Golf is much more accessible now," he said. "Golf used to be a male-dominated sport but that's changed. As more women move into senior positions in business so more of them will take part in company golf days."
Jane Carter, executive editor of Women & Golf, reckons the main stumbling block is time. "Golf is very time consuming," she said, "and a lot of women find it hard to juggle career, family and golf. They might take up the game, play for 18 months and then give it up when they start a family. There seems to be a lost generation between 25 and 40. Women are the biggest growth sector in the game but they have the biggest fall-out rate, too."
Carter also thought women had to work so hard to be taken seriously in business, that many felt they had no time for a frivolity like golf. "I don't really think women do that much business on the golf course," she said, "but it is a good way of getting to know people networking, if you like."
In the United States, various surveys found that women, especially if they were new or occasional players, just did not feel welcome at clubs. They were uncomfortable and not inclined try the experience twice.
They might take lessons to learn about the swing but they also needed someone to teach them about the subtleties of the game the equipment, the Rules and etiquette, how to decide who had the honour on the tee, how to attend the flag, mark the ball on the green all the little things that long-time players do without thinking and expect other people to know. In short, they wanted to be shown the ropes so that they could turn up at a strange club and feel at ease.
Addressing the need for this "orientation process", Nancy Oliver founded the Executive Women's Golf League in Florida. Its aim is: "To promote and foster a spirit of acceptance, dignity and respect for career-orientated women." It has proved remarkably successful. In 1990, there were two chapters of the League. By 1995, there were chapters in more than 100 cities, with more than 11,000 working women involved. Of course, Oliver is now so busy, she rarely has time to play golf.
There is a curious relationship that arises between a player and his audience. The rapport for some can be immediate, but others, for all their success, have to work harder to get the approbation of the crowd. Arwel Thomas, of Wales, falls into the first category, Neil Jenkins into the second. It is not just a matter of the way they play. Jenkins may be perceived as more of a line-kicker than Thomas but it is not actually the case and, at this stage, he is infinitely more accurate as a place kicker; but the crowd response differs.
A player may have behavioural problems on the field, but this hardly stops the player from being the crowd's darling. Mickey Skinner, for England, contrived the image of a lovable rogue in most people's eyes in the way that Olivier Merle, of France, could not possibly be. Eric Cantona is more likely to enjoy an invitation as a dinner guest than Vinnie Jones.
Or it may be that the attraction is as trifling as the way a player looks and whether, in a crowd's opinion, he fits the part that they have set for him. Does he look the way a centre threequarter should?
There is a difference, too, between the player who means to show off what he can do with a rugby ball and the one who simply shows off; the one who is too big for his boots. Those on the Tanner Bank, who have a fine eye and ear for these things, know the difference. They discern the player who struts for its own sake rather than swagger for the game's sake.
Yet there is more to it than this. There remains the definable quality that causes a favourable reaction in some but that, in others, stirs feelings not so much of hostility as intolerance. There is something of this going on in Wales at present.
Wales lost to England last Saturday. This, in the distant past, would have been occasion enough for wailing and gnashing of teeth. The defeat in those days was not expected to happen, so things had better be put right and soon.
More recent defeats have not been like this. They have aroused either a simple frustration or a collective bout of defeatism. The nation had grown to expect failure and wore their losses like a tattered garment of a shelterless waif. There was a sense of loss of hope; no anger, no passion.
Not so this week. From flimsy and rather fragile evidence, Wales feels not at all bad with events at Twickenham. This is not because England are perceived to have problems that are more to do with character and disposition than tactics. Deep-rootedly conservative and preferring an institutional pattern, they will find it difficult within themselves to adopt the radical change that they wish.
They know that the pattern of their games can be good, very good but only to a limited degree. Yet, if they were serious about change, they would have persisted longer, for instance, with Robinson in the back row and restored Hull to full back. If they wish to change, they will need to take risks. Is it in their character to do so?
As for the approbation of the crowd, at Twickenham, this balances on a knife-edge. It adopts a two-faced stance towards its own players. The players are either seriously in favour or joylessly out of it.
As for Wales, it is the approbation that, for the moment, is a distinctive feature. This week, nobody really dared, even if they thought so, to be even moderately critical of the team. There is a lenient, even tolerant, mood. Why?
Admittedly, there were signs that this Wales team were seen to be "having a go", which has not always been obvious of late. There was striking individual performances, particularly at half back and at wing forward. There were inklings that they were avoiding the old-hat ideas of the crash, bang, wallop type that not only disfigure the game but also are insistently unproductive in Wales. They were, in contrast, attempting to create and use the quick ball.
There were weaknesses. The penalty count against them 21 to nine was highly unsatisfactory. Possession was not maintained long enough to pose a regular threat to England. Wales did not utilise Justin Thomas to best effect to the width of the pitch, where the speed of Gwyn Jones might have profited more.
The key to the satisfaction is the youthfulness of the players. "The kids did well," has been the most common refrain all week. The kids and their exuberance have been rewarded with something far less than censorious judgment, that has been so common recently. This youthfulness is their defining quality. The crowd is on their side because they see, in them, the smiling Cavalier rather than the austere Roundhead. We must hope that the Arms Park crowd will not prove as fickle towards its players and more generous overall than Twickenham was last week.
Jock Howard looks at some of the many alternatives to the Stableford scoring system
GOLF was invented, above all else, to be fun. Too much of it nowadays seems to be a hard grind and the words of the legendary American professional golfer, Walter Hagen, have never been more appropriate: "Never hurry or worry and always remember to smell the flowers along the way." Try telling Nick Faldo not to hurry or worry after he has been fined for slow play.
Just as professional golfers tend to play interminable 72-hole stroke-play events, so amateurs tend to stick to the same tried and tested formats. You know the form if there are two of you, it must be two-ball match-play; if there are four, it must be four-ball better-ball.
That need not be the case. There are many more games than a lot of people realiseand, while most corporate golf days are played as Stablefords, it is worth remembering that there are other possibilities. Here are some of the alternatives.
FOURSOMES: Played in two-man teams, with one ball played per team, competitors hitting alternately, taking it in turn to drive. Variations: American foursomes: Both players drive and hit their partner's shot before choosing the better ball to play alternately. Canadian foursomes: both players drive and play a second shot.
FOUR-BALL BETTERBALL: Players play their own ball throughout, with the better score of the two counting at each hole. Variation: Four-ball aggregate: Players play their own ball throughout with the combined aggregate counting.
GREENSOMES: Both players drive at every hole, then the best-placed ball from each team is selected and players hit alternately. Variation: Yellowsomes: Same, except the opponents decide which drive is to be selected.
TEXAS SCRAMBLE:Teams of three or four play together. Every player drives and the best ball is selected and marked. Each player then drops a ball close to the mark and plays from there. The process is continued until the hole is completed and the strokes added up at the end of the round. Variations: Ambrose: Same as above, with each player having at least four tee shots selected in a round. Delaney: Any player may have only two shots chosen per hole. Bloodsome Scramble: As above, but the team has to play the worst of the four balls on every shot.
PORTUGUESE ONE-CLUB: Played in four-player teams with each player allowed only one club, one of which must be a putter. The team then play in turn, adhering strictly to the same order, sometimes putting with a wood or driving with a putter.
SIXES: Two-player teams, with the teams changing every six holes. Two points for a win and one for a draw, with the player with the most points at the end the winner.
BOGEY/PAR: Each player or side plays against the bogey (or par) of the hole. If a player shoots under bogey/ par it counts as a win, if he or she shoots bogey/par it's a half; over par, a loss.
PINKBALL: In teams of four, three play with their own ball and the fourth plays the pink ball. The pink-ball score plus the best of the other three counts.
REPLAY: This is a beauty. Each player can replay shots during the round equivalent to three-quarters of handicap. Just shout "Replay!" and play the shot again. The second ball must be played even if it ends up worse than the first.
When golf events take on the gravitas of religious ceremonies, it is also worth thinking about the words of Lord Balfour: "The wit of man has never invented a pastime equal to golf for its healthful recreation, its pleasurable excitement and its never-ending source of amusement."
Jock Howard is chief feature writer of Golf World. For information on how to organise a golf day, contact Mike Brosnan on 0171 537 2051 for a free quotation.
Mel Webb meets the men who ensure the Challenge finalists have a stay to remember in southeast Spain
In the three years that the La Manga Club, tucked away in a sunny corner of southeast Spain, has been the home of the national final of The Times MeesPierson Corporate Golf Challenge it has won itself a thousand admirers. Yet more important than that, it has won a thousand friends. And if that is its achievement, the people who run the resort will consider it reward enough.
La Manga, owned by Bovis Abroad, a division of P&O, since 1987, has long been one of the favourite watering holes of the sporting Briton. There is a particular magic about La Manga. It boasts a five-star hotel, the Principe Felipe, managed by Hyatt International on the owners' behalf, that suffers from none of the stuffy, nose-in-the-air ambience that blights some of its competitors.
It is, above all, a friendly place, whether the visitor is on one of the three golf courses, the 18 tennis courts, or simply lazing by the pool. In five years, nearly £30 million has been spent, including an extensive remodelling of the south course by Arnold Palmer, and rebuilding the original hotel.
There is a determination at La Manga to give people good feelings about it, hopefully when arriving and certainly when leaving. Nothing is sacrificed to imbue guests with that indefinable "feel-good" factor. And even if there is a soupcon of hard-headed business practice present, it is put into effect with a velvet glove and a smile.
John Sterling, a director of Bovis Abroad, who takes a particular interest in La Manga, is justifiably proud of what has been achieved there since it was acquired by his company almost ten years ago as a result of a takeover of European Ferries, which owned La Manga. The Challenge sits comfortably with him as the sort of event with which they want to be associated.
"We realised very early on that the direction in which we ought to be looking was the corporate market," he said. "The profile of a potential client for us is that of the business executive; we can only hope to get a return on our investment from the people who play corporate golf.
"When we were approached to stage the national final of the Challenge we were in the process of putting something together for exactly that purpose. After people come here for the national final, they take their experience back with them to the companies they represent.
"Vitally, it is proving to be the case that the aspirations of everybody who enters the event is to get to La Manga. We know clearly what our job is satisfying the expectations of those people and others like them, placing La Manga Club in a niche that means it is a place that everybody aspires at least to visit.
"If in the three years the Challenge final has come to us the facilities had not been right, people would have continued to talk about it because it would still have been a great achievement to have got there, but would they have been talking about it in the way they have if it hadn't met their expectations and more? I think not."
So, given that the corporate sector is the one identified as their prime target, why have they in recent times also hitched their colours to the mast of the Women Professional Golfers' European Tour (WPGET), staging the tour qualifying school, hosting the Spanish Women's Open and becoming the winter base of the WPGET? Is that not at odds with their stated aims?
Not so, Sterling insisted. "You ignore women's needs in golfing terms at your peril," he said. "In commercial terms, it is the lady of the house who might make the decision to buy a property at La Manga or to go there to visit. If we are seen to be supporting women's golf, women feel welcome.
"Secondly, even if they've never played golf before in their lives, they know that La Manga is a place where they might feel relaxed enough to have a go because it is the home of women's golf.
The fact remains, though and Sterling is cheerfully willing to admit it that the Challenge is one of the jewels in the crown of La Manga's golf programme. "We're not coventional sponsors." he said. "What we give is essentially in kind and we're delighted with that. Others who want to use our courses have to pay to do so.
"It is difficult to know whether something is or is not financially viable when marketing is part of the picture. So it is hard to say whether it has done a job for us it's an inexact science but I believe it has.
"On the ground, on the day, it probably breaks even, but even if it doesn't, it's something we initiated and we're delighted to stay with. The Challenge is a cracking event. Others are coming along, but they'll never challenge the Challenge."
Tony Coles, appointed as resort director in August last year after running one of the world's most highly-rated timeshare operations, La Quinta Club at La Manga, agreed. "What the Challenge brings to us is its own unique spirit," he said. "There is a passion there that no professional sport could match amateur sport has that passion almost by definition.
"The atmosphere that reigns during that week is what makes it special. It makes it special for the people who are playing in it, it makes it special for all the people involved with the event."
The Challenge, then, has been a comfortable bed-fellow with the lofty ideals of the resort. The niggling suspicion, however, is that even if it had not been, John Sterling for one, would still have retained his keenness. "In strict commercial terms, I cannot tell you if it has been worth our while or not," he said. "Even though the event might not be highly profitable, as long as everyone involved enjoys it, that's good enough for me." And you cannot be much more frank than that.
REGULAR spectators at important tournaments will recognise the Titleist Tour Van as a familiar sight adjacent to the practice grounds. Impressive a vehicle as it is, just what is it used for and what happens in there?
The primary purpose of the van is to provide Titleist Tour staff at tournaments with a mobile, comfortable and convenient place to meet players, caddies, agents and tournament officials. Being sited alongside the practice grounds, which Titleist supports with balata balls, the van is a popular gathering point for players to discuss their needs with Titleist's experts.
Certain products are issued from the van, most notably golf balls. With an average of more than 80 per cent of each event's field playing Titleist and the choice of several models and compressions, Mike Tadd, the company's European co-ordinator, is kept busy satisfying each player's preferences.
Gloves are provided to Titleist and Foot-Joy players, as well as all types of headgear. At certain events, Foot-Joy shoes are issued and these are fitted by experienced staff. Titleist's players are always keen to be in at the start when new products are introduced.
It is common for players to discuss trajectories and spin rates of prototype balls with either Tadd or John Hayles, the promotions director of the company. Titleist is a firm believer in qualifying new products on tour before they are launched to make sure that they stand up to the most rigorous scrutiny.
At times the van can also be used for private discussions with players and their managers about their agreements or others who want to switch to Titleist and Foot-Joy equipment.
Mel Webb looks at changes in golf equipment
For some of the world's leading players, there is still no substitute for the traditional blade iron that has been present almost from the birth of the modern game.
They say it gives them more control of the ball off the clubhead and imparts "feel" to the shot that cannot be equalled. But the numbers are dwindling fast. The high-level technology that goes into the production of the modern golf ball has spread in the past 20 years to the club itself.
In any ball game different players will have different
implements of preference when it comes to finding something with which to hit the ball, whether it be wood, cat-gut or metal. But the players of the 1990s, whether playing cricket, tennis, squash or golf, are hitting the ball harder, straighter and, if appropriate to the game, further as well. It truly is the age of the sporting computer-designer.
Golf is not immune from the changes being wrought in other games, and the biggest innovation of the many the golf club has undergone in the past quarter of a century is the clubhead that is cavity-backed, perimeter-weighted; call it what they might, it all comes down to the same thing.
The orthodox blade iron, still used, for example, by Severiano Ballesteros, concentrates most of its weight behind the ball, but the margin for error is correspondingly smaller. It demands a purer strike to achieve the desired effect. Things can go badly wrong from even a marginally off-centre hit Ballesteros, magician that he is, has been far from immune from that over the years.
The principle behind cavity-backed clubs is fairly simple but capable of great sophistication. Essentially, the bulk of the weight in the clubhead is placed round the back edge of the blade, producing a longer shot from the perfect strike and a more forgiving one for the stroke that brings the clubhead to the ball away from the centre of the club. The optimum sweet spot is still there, but the slightly flawed shot will still produce a decent effect.
Titleist, one of the The Times MeesPierson Corporate Golf Challenge's official suppliers, has walked further down the road of golf ball technology than any other company, and theirs is the ball of choice for the majority of the world's leading professionals.
It is not only those at the pinnacle of the game who can benefit from this, and Titleist has made sure that the cutting edge of golf-ball design has been dedicated to the amateur game as much as their high-profile cousins in the professional ranks. Titleist has historically gained its reputation from its golf balls. Until now, that is.
The company has applied the same levels of inspiration and commitment to the design of its DCI irons, and it is emerging as a new power in club technology and performance. DCI stands for Direct Central Impact, which is intended to produce maximum energy transfer, producing longer, straighter shots with consistently solid feel. The critical placing of the centre of gravity on the clubs produces a shot that bores the ball through the air, a trajectory preferred by most golfers.
Without much doubt, the star in the Titleist DCI galaxy is Sam Torrance. Torrance has been a magnificent player for more tham two decades, but the most profitable years of his career have been since 1993, the year he took up DCI irons for the first time. In his first year with the clubs, Torrance had four tournament victories, won nearly £420,000 and played in his seventh Ryder Cup match.
In 1995 even greater success was to come the genial Scot's way as he chased Colin Montgomerie all the way in the race for the No1 spot in the European Order of Merit, won more than £750,000 in Europe alone, had three tournament wins and was a member of the winning teams in both the Ryder Cup and the Alfred Dunhill Cup.
It was the best season of his life, and them some, and fulfilled the prophecy of Bob, his father and one of the world's leading coaches, who had said some years before that Torrance Jr would play his best golf after reaching the age of 40.
Asked to comment, the 42-year-old Torrance said, with typical modesty: "He was right I guess it just proved what a slow learner I am." And, he might have added, no craftsman can produce his best work without the right tools in his hands. For him and thousands more modest practitioners of the Royal and Ancient game, Titleist has again come up with the answer.
Patricia Davies on Stoke Poges, a course made famous by one fictional match
Long before Oddjob, Goldfinger's solid bodyguard, decapitated a statue in the grounds with his lethal flying bowler hat, Stoke Poges (or the Stoke Park Estate) was mentioned in the Doomsday Book. A few centuries later, having been transformed into a golf club, it provided the backdrop as James Bond (alias Sean Connery) outwitted Auric Goldfinger (alias Gert Frobe).
In the original fiction, the game took place at Royal St Mark's, the identical twin of Royal St George's, some way to the east of Buckinghamshire. Ian Fleming lovingly described the entire round but in the film there were no views of Pegwell Bay and the match was chopped to a few holes on a course noticeably unlinks-like.
However, Goldfinger's bright yellow Silver Ghost looked wonderful parked in front of the majestic Stoke Poges clubhouse and not everyone knew that when Goldfinger drove off in a huff, having been beaten, the road led to a car park.
Finalists in the west Home Counties regional final of The Times MeesPierson Corporate Golf Challenge will be able to appreciate the grandeur of the building for themselves this year. The course is being used for the first time as a final venue. Cinematic licence is a wonderful thing. When Bond wondered what the club's secretary would think of Oddjob's demolition job, Goldfinger replied "Oh, nothing, Mr Bond. I own the club ..." It was all good entertaining stuff but owed nothing to Fleming.
Stoke Poges acquired its golf course, designed by Harry Colt, in 1908. The imposing building, built for John Penn, grandson of William, the founder of Pennsylvania was completed in 1795. Bernard Darwin, first golf correspondent of The Times, described it in glowing terms in The Golf Courses of the British Isles, published in 1910: "The clubhouse is a gorgeous palace, a dazzling vision of white stone, of steps and terraces and with a lake in front and imposing trees in every direction."
The building has always looked majestic from the outside, but over the years, the interior had deteriorated to a point beyond shabby. Three years ago, International Hospitals Group, which now owns Stoke Poges, put £31/2million into a massive refurbishment programme and these days the inside is unrecognisable, returned to its former glory. It has been voted club of the year for 1996 by Following the Fairways.
Darwin, writing only a couple of years after the course opened, said: "Stoke Park is a beautiful spot, and there is good golf to be played there; the club is an interesting one, moreover, as being one of the first attempts in England at what is called in America a ‘Country Club'."
Environmentalists might object to the amount of tree felling that took place to make the course, as described by Darwin: "Never was there a better instance of the art of forcibly turning a forest into a golf course than is to be found there," he wrote.
"The beautiful old park turf was always there, cropped from time immemorial by generations of deer, who little knew what service they were doing to the greenkeeper but in every direction there stretched thick woodland, and yet a golf course was going to be made and opened in less than no time ... the thing appeared almost impossible".
But when Darwin returned a few months later, the course was ready for play. "Belts of wood had disappeared in all directions, and had been replaced by turf; yet there were so many trees left that no one could reasonably complain ... and a very good course it is long, difficult and for the most part, entertaining."
What more could the regional finalists want?
Michael Clark looks at the merchant bank that has discovered a new identity through its financial commitment to the Challenge
This year, The Times MeesPierson Corporate Golf Challenge will be bigger and better than ever. Last year more than 800 companies entered the competition, equivalent to around 50,000 golfers/businessmen and women.
In 1996, the number of companies entering is certain to exceed 1,000 and will cover all areas of Britain's industrial and commercial spectrum. The success of this venture is in no small part due to the efforts of MeesPierson, the merchant bank, which had the vision to join forces with The Times when the competition was in its infancy.
This is MeesPierson's third year as joint sponsor. It has flexed its powerful financial muscles and committed a hefty £1.1 million to the Challenge over a five-year period. It is an investment that the merchant bank says is providing useful returns and has helped to establish its name in the highly-competitive Square Mile.
Before joining forces with The Times, MeesPierson had been suffering an identity crisis. It is a well-established company that can trace its roots back to 18th century Holland, where, as Bank Mees & Hope, it helped to finance the construction of Canadian railways and arranged the sale of the state of Louisiana on behalf of the French Government to the fledgling United States.
Its subsequent merger with the rival house of Pierson Heldring & Pierson established it as one of the leading merchant banks in Holland. It is also a subsidiary of ABN Amro Bank, one of the biggest half-dozen banks in Europe.
Just as the Corporate Golf Challenge has become bigger and better, so has MeesPierson. When it first came to London ten years ago, it was much like any other merchant bank. But in the prevailing competitive climate it has learnt to develop specialist talents. These include lending to specialist areas such as shipping, energy, trade and commodity finance, media and telecommunications and property.
But has The Times MeesPierson Corporate Golf Challenge lived up to expectations as far as MeesPierson itself is concerned? The company believes it has, but takes the view that there is still scope for improvement.
Neil Odom, its marketing manager, said: "We have high hopes for this year. The venture is getting bigger, people are becoming more aware of both it and MeesPierson.
"But we are putting together a better strategy to take more advantage of the benefits arising from the competition itself. Awareness is the name of the game."
That is a theme echoed by Willem Blydenstein, the general manager of MeesPierson in London. "Our priority now is getting recognition for MeesPierson, which is a major merchant bank in Europe, but still has a low-key presence in London," he said.
It is difficult to establish whether the bank has obtained a return on its investment in the Golf Challenge already.
"There are too many intangibles involved in order to say yes we have achieved a return. The investment is self-liquidating and has enabled us to pick up new business," Odon said.
The company has also picked up new clients such as Prebon Yamane, the international money broker, whose team won the Challenge at La Manga in 1994.
"We got to know Prebon Yamane through our involvement in the Challenge and now act as their clearers," said Odom, who plays off a useful 12 handicap himself.
"The important thing is that the Challenge has made people more aware of us. It has got us through the front door. We are a private bank and have now got access to higher-profile clients which previously we would not have got near," Blydenstein said.
Mel Webb on the worldwide enthusiasm for an event that has won universal credibility
In Great Britain, The Times MeesPierson Corporate Golf Challenge has been one of the success stories in amateur golf in the Nineties. Such has been the overwhelming enthusiasm for the competition in its birthplace that the next logical step taking the event on to the world stage has now been put into effect. The signs are that it will be just as popular on a global basis.
The World Corporate Golf Challenge has been born as an extension of licensing agreements that have been granted to 17 countries by Mitchell Marketing Associates, the event's owners, whose managing director, John Mitchell, was responsible for inaugurating the Challenge in 1993 and still manages it on behalf of The Times and MeesPierson, the title sponsors.
"It was obvious from very soon after the launch that we were sitting on something that was going to take off in this country," Mitchell said. "Its growth has been phenomenal, and we expect to go on to even greater things this year. "It was also pretty plain from the outset that the structure of the UK event could be repeated in other golf-playing countries. What we did not quite realise was that its reputation would spread spontaneously beyond these shores."
"We're delighted that it has, not least because the world event is going to give our own national champions this year the chance to represent the domestic competition against players from other countries."
The essential simplicity of the Challenge makes it, first and foremost, almost infinitely flexible. The basic template 18 holes Stableford off 7/8 handicap, best two scores of a four-player team to count is the one constant factor. Everything else is negotiable.
For instance, one of the first countries to take up the Challenge was Jamaica, small in size but big on the concept of corporate unity. In golfing and business terms Jamaica recognises that it is an emerging nation and with the company golf day not yet being the phenomenon it is in this country, the style and format of their Challenge had to be moulded to their needs. For that reason the Challenge in Jamaica is open to subscription on a first-come, first-served basis. The first Challenge was held in the spring of last year and the second will be later this month.
The man behind the Jamaican Challenge was Philip Levy, the chairman of Capital and Credit, a merchant bank in which his company, Jamaica Broilers Group Ltd, acquired a one-third interest in 1994. Levy is also vice-president of finance and corporate planning at Jamaica Broilers, one of the Caribbean's leading producers of chicken and beef, and it was his imagination and the strength of his company that led to the competition's success.
"We saw this competition as an opportunity to bring together the business community in Jamaica," he said. "I am mightily glad that we did."
The competition has also been taken to Holland, and licences have been granted to such diverse business and golfing cultures as South Africa, India, where the first Challenge is being held later this year, and New Zealand; but Mitchell's greatest coup is without doubt the fact that he has now brought the United States into the Challenge family.
The huge logistical problems of making the Challenge a nationwide competition in a country as huge as the United States have not been underrated, but it has already been eagerly embraced by corporate America. The final of the United States event will be held at the prestigious PGA National course at West Palm Beach in Florida, while discussions are still taking place to decide the venue for the world final, to be held early in 1997.
The next important area for the world event to move into is the rest of Asia. "While the Asian Tour continues to strengthen its position, the World Corporate Golf Challenge provides an opportunity for corporate Asia to compete on a global basis," Mitchell said.
The prime reason for the spread of the Challenge is the acknowledgement by companies all over the planet that there are rewards to be gained by keeping staff happy. "Making employees involved in the corporate golf day shows that the company cares, and gives people the chance to compete for company honour," Mitchell said.
Not only that, but also the opportunity to experience the stomach-tightening but still delicious feeling that comes from representing your country. In November, the leading corporate golfers in the country will be playing against the rest of the British Isles. Next year, for the very best of them, the world will be their oyster.
Mel Webb on the Sussex builders who reclaimed the corporate title in 1995
Almost 800 companies registered for The Times MeesPierson Corporate Golf Challenge in 1995, which makes the feat of Hall and Coaker, a small building firm from East Grinstead, Sussex, in winning the national title for the second time in the three years of the competition all the more remarkable.
Hall and Coaker swept to victory on the South course at the Hyatt La Manga Club Resort in southeast Spain last November with a two-round Stableford total of 173 points, which gave them victory by seven points from Data Connection with Prebon Yamane, the 1994 winners, third on 163.
Three members of Hall and Coaker's winning team in 1993 the captain, Andy Coaker, his business partner, Danny Hall and Andy McClelland were at La Manga for the second time. They brought valuable experience of the competition to the final, but were nonetheless in the debt of Mick Stobbart, left-handed and talented, throughout the 36 holes.
Stobbart plays off 12, but will not be there long. He played for Sussex juniors in his youth, then gave up golf when he was 16 and did not pick up a club for 12 years before returning to the game 18 months ago. For him, single figures surely beckon.
The most memorable aspect of Hall and Coaker's victory in 1993, the first year of the competition, was the carefree way they approached a task that left others as rigid as a rabbit caught in the headlights. There is nothing like a slice of good, old-fashioned pressure to bring out the best and worst in sporting people.
The competition has grown beyond all recognition in its brief history, and is now one of the largest and most successful golf tournaments in Britain. Some of the country's biggest companies competed this year, and several were represented in the national final. They huffed and puffed and strove mightily throughout the two days, but in the end were not even in the same street as the winners.
At the end of the first day Hall and Coaker were three points behind Prebon Yamane, who, as defending champions, had had an automatic place in a regional final at The London Club and promptly won it. Prebon had looked impressive in their regional final, and in spite of subsequently losing their four-handicap captain, John Stewart, to an unavoidable business trip to Jakarta, they had a more than adequate substitute in Mark Turner, a five-handicapper.
Turner played well on the first day, as did his three
team-mates, Duncan Holdsworth, taking over from Stewart as captain, Bob Lough and Brian Thistlethwaite, all back for the second year. They scored 86 points, with Hall and Coaker in close pursuit, and Data Connection in third place a point ahead of Drakes Group. The issue was not quite cut and dried, but it would have been a surprise if victory did not go to one of the two leaders on the next day.
There was to be little upsetting of the odds on day two, unless it was a surprising collapse by Prebon Yamane. They scored only 34 points on the front nine, allowing Data Connection to pip them for second place. Hall and Coaker, meanwhile, were striding away seemingly without a care in the world. By the time they had reached the 10th tee with 42 points already tucked away, they had turned a three-point deficit into a five-point advantage over Prebon.
If anybody else was to give them a real match they would have to buckle under the pressure on the back nine. They did not; in fact, they scored 48 magnificent points to complete a momentous victory with a second-round total of 90 points, a record for the national
final.
"We thought we would probably have to get pretty close to 90 to have any sort of chance," Coaker said. "We decided that we were going to treat our round as 18 separate games the important thing was to forget what we'd just done, think only about what we still had to do." It was a policy that paid rich dividends.
When Hall and Coaker won their regional final with 99 points, itself a record, they thanked Prebon Yamane for looking after their title for them, but warned that they were coming to get it back.A few weeks later, they proved that they were men of their word.
Mel Webb heralds the launch of the 1996 Times MeesPierson Corporate
Like a turbo-charged sports car, The Times MeesPierson Corporate Golf Challenge has accelerated like lightning since its launch in 1993. However, the style of the event has always been pure Rolls Royce; quality, oceans of it, has been its byword since day one.
To continue the motoring analogy, the Challenge has gone from zero to 50,000 in three years players appearing in the competition in one year, that is. With the launch of the fourth year of the competition this week, the legitimate hope is that, with only the slightest of tailwinds, it might break the 100,000 barrier in 1996. Nearly 800 companies registered for the Challenge last year, thus endorsing by simple statistics alone the decision of The Times to put its weight behind the only amateur golf competition in Britain to be aimed directly at the business community.
It was, like all the best ideas, a simple one. John Mitchell, the man behind the Challenge, came up with it in 1992. Two of the strongest areas of The Times have historically been its coverage of business and sport. He thought; how better, then, could they be joined in one powerful package than through golf? It was all very well, Mitchell reasoned, for companies to ladle large basinfuls of money in the direction of the game in the shape of hospitality units at professional tournaments, and in the larger scale to sponsor whole events, but surely the trend was to be doing rather than watching. And anyway, not everybody could afford the high-priced investment that was required.
It was with all these thoughts in mind that Mitchell went away to perfect his grand plan. He believed it would work and The Times agreed with him. It was as well it did; for the event they created between them became in a very short time the fastest-growing sports event in the country, and one of the biggest amateur golf competitions in the world.
Companies that have entered for the Challenge have found over the years that for almost no extra effort, an important added ingredient has been appended to their company golf day. The first target, and one of which to be proud in its own right, has been one of 25 places in each of the regional finals.
The ultimate prize is an all-expenses-paid expedition to the national final to sunny southeast Spain late in the year in front of the television cameras a one-hour special will be transmitted by Sky TV for the third time this year.
The package adds up to far more than all but the most prosperous of businesses could afford. The company golf day has long been recognised by companies of all sizes as a most cost-effective and efficient marketing and public relations tool, but there have always been built-in disadvantages to be kept in mind before embarking on the exercise.
A successful golf day takes a lot of organising. Fair enough; if something is worth doing, it is worth doing well. But here is a snag is the amount of effort involved in making it a success made worthwhile by the length of time it is remembered?
Would companies set aside as many highly-paid man-hours in their normal business activities if the product of all that industry would last for only one day and would be but a distant, if pleasant, memory a week, let alone a month, later? The answer: of course not.
The Challenge answers this inherent flaw in that it offers a natural, in-built longevity. The players in it have something with which to identify in the ensuing weeks and months as they pore over the results columns that are a part of the The Times's coverage of the event.
Is the score of their four-player team still good enough to claim a regional final place? And if it is, how will the team fare against the best from the rest of the region? "We have always believed that there is more to a company golf day than 18 holes of golf," Mitchell said. "The Challenge proves the point."
Apart from that, the Challenge is, above all, a beautifully straightforward concept. Of all the thousands of corporate golf days held in the British Isles every year, probably 99 per cent contain at least 18 holes of Stableford golf, the good, old-fashioned scoring method that awards points for bogeys, pars, birdies and eagles. The Challenge asks no more than that one round of Stableford is played, so that is one potential problem out of the way.
At the end of a registered golf day the four highest-scoring players off 7/8 handicap are calculated and the names and scores are submitted to the Challenge offices. All four players should be bonafide members of golf clubs and must be prepared to back up their handicap claims with certificates from their clubs. Approval for the competition has been granted by the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, so precious amateur status is not in jeopardy.
An important change to the rules this year is that the minimum number of employees required to complete a team has been reduced from two to one. "It's become apparent that a large number of golf days will often have only one or two employees playing, which obviously reduces their chance of qualifying for a regional final," Neil Gray, the tournament director, said. "We hope this will redress the balance."
And that, as far as the organisers of the day are concerned, is that there is not even a need to purchase prizes if they do not want to, since four company-personalised trophies are provided out of the registration fee of £150.
The success of the competition can also be gathered by its ever-increasing numbers. In the first year there were five regional finals, in the second year eight. Last year, ten regions fought it out, and now that figure has been expanded to 12, to be played over four weeks from the first week in October.
Meanwhile, another surefire test of a competition's strength is its list of sponsors, and in this respect the Challenge is second to none. Leading them is The Times's co-title sponsor, MeesPierson. The Dutch-owned merchant bank, one of Europe's largest, joined the Challenge for the second year of the competition. So convinced was it of the value to the company that before the first year's sponsorship was complete it signed a £1.1 million deal that would extend its support to the end of the century.
Hyatt, one of the world's leading hotel-management companies, which will be entertaining this year's national finalists at its luxurious Hotel Principe Felipe at the La Manga Club Resort, returns for a fourth year as an associate sponsor. Also back is Citroen, which places a fleet of its award-winning cars at the disposal of the event's regional final support team, and Waterford Crystal which manufactures the magnificent trophies.
One sponsor returns with a new name. Marriott Hotels & Country Clubs is the result of a new partnership between the Country Club Hotels group, already a Challenge associate sponsor, and Marriott, another leading name in hotel management; four of the group's golf and country clubs will host regional finals in October.
Also joining the associate sponsor family is Golf World, one of Europe's premier golf magazines, which will be complementing coverage in The Times with regular reports.
British Midland, the second-largest scheduled service airline in the United Kingdom, is making its debut as an associate sponsor; it will supply flights to regional final winners in the provinces.
Backing the associate sponsors is an impressive list of official suppliers. Titleist will again supply balls to every player in regional and national finals, and the Challenge's travel agents will again be Barwell Leisure. Newstrack, a leading providers of financial information technology, has joined for the first time, as has Fibernet, providers of digital communication networks based upon "back-bones" of high-capacity optical fibre cable.
The national title went last year to Hall and Coaker, a small firm of building contractors, who upset all the odds and won the competition for the second time in three years.
The second year, the winners were Prebon Yamane, a large City money-broking firm; the two winners have proved that in this most compelling of competitions, there is room for large and small alike. Surely, it is too good a deal to turn down.
Court of Appeal Regina v Warden (Barry John). Before Lord Justice Hutchison, Mr Justice Sachs and Mr Justice Moore-Bick
[Judgment January 26]
Time spent in custody could be taken into account by the sentencing court not only when deciding the length of a custodial sentence but also when deciding the level of a fine.
The Court of Appeal so held in substituting a fine of £1,000 for one of £2,000 imposed by Judge Sheerin on June 2, 1995 at Cambridge Crown Court in sentencing Barry John Warden on his plea of guilty to a charge of permitting the supply of cannabis on his premises.
Mr Martin Evans for the defendant; the prosecution did not appear and was not represented.
MR JUSTICE MOORE-BICK, giving the judgment of the court, said that the court had to consider two points:
First, whether the fine was out of all proportion to the offence. The plea was advanced on the basis of social supply and in those circumstances the fine was excessive.
Second, was the 14 days of remand in custody relevant? Section 18(3) of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 required the court to take into account the circumstances of the case. Since the court was enjoined to consider circumstances in general, the 14 days spent on remand was a relevant consideration.
When a person had spent a period prior to sentence remanded in custody some credit should normally be given. How much depended on the circumstances of the case.
A fine of £1,000 reflected the gravity of the offence and the time spent in custody.
Solicitors: Dawbarns, Wisbech.
European Court of Human Rights Murray v United Kingdom. (Case No 41/1994/488/570)
Before R. Ryssdal, President and Judges R. Bernhardt, F. Matscher, L.-E. Pettiti, B. Walsh, N. Valticos, S. K. Martens, E. Palm, I. Foighel, R. Pekkanen, N. A. Loizou, F. Bigi, Sir John Freeland, M. A. Lopes Rocha, L. Wildhaber, J. Makarczyk, D. Gotchev, K. Jungwiert and U. Lohmus
Registrar H. Petzold
[Judgment February 8]
The European Court of Human Rights held, by 12 votes to 7, that there had been a violation of paragraph 1, taken in conjunction with paragraph 3(c), of article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights as regarded a defendant's lack of access to a lawyer during the first 48 hours of his police detention.
The Court also held, by 14 votes to 5, that there had been no breach of article 6, paragraphs 1 and 2, of the Convention arising out of the drawing of adverse inferences on account of the defendant's silence.
Although not specifically mentioned in article 6, there was no doubt that the right to remain silent under police questioning and the privilege against self-incrimination were generally recognised international standards which lay at the heart of the notion of a fair procedure under article 6.
Whether the drawing of adverse inferences from an accused's silence infringed article 6 was a matter to be determined in the light of all the circumstances of the case, having particular regard to the situations where inferences might be drawn, the weight attached to them by the national courts in their assessment of the evidence and the degree of compulsion inherent in the situation.
Article 6 of the Convention provides:
"1. In the determination of his civil rights and obligations or of any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law. Judgment shall be pronounced publicly but the press and public may be excluded from all or part of the trial in the interests of morals, public order or national security in a democratic society, where the interests of juveniles or the protection of the private life of the parties so require, or to the extent strictly necessary in the opinion of the court in special circumstances where publicity would prejudice the interests of justice.
"2. Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.
"3. Everyone charged with a criminal offence has the following minimum rights: ... (c) to defend himself in person or through legal assistance of his own choosing or, if he has not sufficient means to pay for legal assistance, to be given it free when the interests of justice so require"
John Murray was arrested on January 7, 1990 in a house in which a Provisional Irish Republican Army informer (Mr L) had been held captive.
He was taken to the police station, where a detective superintendent, pursuant to the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1987, decided to delay the applicant's access to a solicitor for 48 hours, considering that such access would interfere with police operations against terrorism.
The applicant was cautioned by the police under the Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order (SI 1988 No 1987 (NI 20)) that adverse inference might be drawn if he failed to answer questions at the pre-trial stage.
On January 8 and 9, 1990 the applicant was interviewed 12 times. Before each interview he was either cautioned or reminded that he was under caution. The applicant remained silent throughout those interviews. He saw a solicitor for the first time before the final two interviews but the solicitor was not allowed to attend.
On May 8, 1991 the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, sitting without a jury, sentenced the applicant to eight years imprisonment for aiding and abetting the false imprisonment of Mr L.
The judge, exercising his discretion under the 1988 Order, drew adverse inferences from the fact that the applicant failed to offer an explanation for his presence at the house and had remained silent during the trial. The applicant's appeal was dismissed by the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland in July 1992.
The application was lodged with the European Commission of Human Rights on August 16, 1991; it was declared admissible on January 18, 1994.
Having attempted unsuccessfully to secure a friendly settlement, the Commission drew up a report on June 27, 1994 in which it established the facts of the case and expressed the opinion that there had been no violation of article 6 paragraphs 1 and 2 (15 votes to 2), that there had been a violation of article 6 paragraph 1 in conjunction with paragraph 3(c) (13 votes to 4) and that it was not necessary to examine whether there had been a violation of article 14 in conjunction with article 6 (14 votes to 3).
The case was referred to the Court by the Commission on September 9, 1994 and by the Government of the United Kingdom on October 11, 1994.
In its judgment, the European Court of Human Rights held as follows:
I Alleged violation of article 6
A Article 6 paragraphs 1 and 2: right to silence
The Court, confining its attention to the facts of the case, considered whether the drawing of inferences against the applicant under articles 4 and 6 of the 1988 Order rendered the criminal proceedings against him, and especially his conviction, unfair within the meaning of article 5 of the Convention.
It was recalled in that context that no inference was drawn under article 3 of the order. It was not the Court's role to examine whether, in general, the drawing of inferences under the scheme contained in the order was compatible with the notion of a fair hearing under article 6 (see, inter alia, Brogan and Others v United Kingdom (The Times November 30, 1988; 1988 Series A No 145-8, p29, paragraph 53).
Although not specifically mentioned in article 6 of the Convention, there could be no doubt that the right to remain silent under police questioning and the privilege against self-incrimination were generally recognised international standards which lay at the heart of the notion of a fair procedure under article 5.
By providing the accused with protection against improper compulsion by the authorities those immunities contributed to avoiding miscarriages of justice and to securing the aims of article 6.
The Court did not consider that it was called upon to give an abstract analysis of the scope of those immunities and, in particular, of what constituted in that context "improper compulsion". What was at stake in the case was whether those immunities were absolute in the sense that the exercise by an accused of the right to silence could not under any circumstances be used against him at trial or, alternatively, whether informing him in advance that, under certain conditions, his silence might be so used, was always to be regarded as "improper compulsion".
On the one hand, it was self-evident that it was incompatible with the impunities under consideration to base a conviction solely or mainly on the accused's silence or on a refusal to answer questions or to give evidence himself.
On the other hand, the Court deemed it equally obvious that those immunities could not and should not prevent that the accused's silence, in situations which clearly called for an explanation from him, be taken into account in assessing the persuasiveness of the evidence adduced by the prosecution.
Wherever the line between these two extremes was to be drawn, it followed from this understanding of "the right to silence" that the question whether the right was absolute had to be answered in the negative.
It could not be said therefore that an accused's decision to remain silent throughout criminal proceedings should necessarily have no implications when the trial court sought to evaluate the evidence against him. In particular, as the UK Government pointed out, established international standards in that area, while providing for the right to silence and the privilege against self-incrimination, were silent on that point.
Whether the drawing of adverse inferences from an accused's silence infringed article 5 was a matter to be determined in the light of all the circumstances of the case, having particular regard to the situations where inferences might be drawn, the weight attached to them by the national courts in their assessment of the evidence and the degree of compulsion inherent in the situation.
As to the degree of compulsion involved in the present case, it was recalled that the applicant was in fact able to remain silent. Notwithstanding the repeated warnings as to the possibility that inferences might be drawn from his silence, he did not make any statements to the police and did not give evidence during his trial.
Moreover, under article 4(5) of the 1988 Order he remained a non-compellable witness. Thus his insistence in maintaining silence throughout the proceedings did not amount to a criminal offence or contempt of court. Furthermore, as had been stressed in national court decisions, silence, in itself, could not be regarded as an indication of guilt.
Admittedly a system which warned the accused, who was possibly without legal assistance, as in the applicant's case, that adverse inferences might be drawn from a refusal to provide an explanation to the police for his presence at the scene of a crime or to testify during his trial, when taken in conjunction with the weight of the case against him, involved a certain level of indirect compulsion.
However, since the applicant could not be compelled to speak or to testify, as indicated above, that factor on its own could not be decisive. The Court rather concentrated its attention on the role played by the inferences in the proceedings against the applicant and especially in his conviction.
In that context, it was recalled that those were proceedings without a jury, the trier of fact being an experienced judge.
Furthermore, the drawing of inferences under the 1988 Order was subject to an important series of safeguards designed to respect the rights of the defence and limit the extent to which reliance be placed on inferences.
In the first place, before inferences could be drawn under articles 4 and 6 of the 1988 Order, appropriate warnings had been given to the accused as to the legal effects of maintaining silence.
Moreover, as indicated by the judgment of the House of Lords in Murray v DPP ((1992) 97 CrAppR 151) the prosecutor had first to establish a prima facie case against the accused, that is, a case consisting of direct evidence which, if believed and combined with legitimate inferences based upon it, could lead a properly directed jury to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that each of the essential elements of the offence was proved.
The question in each particular case was whether the evidence adduced by the prosecution was sufficiently strong to require an answer. The national court could not conclude that the accused was guilty merely because he chose to remain silent.
It was only if the evidence against the accused called for an explanation which the accused ought to be in a position to give that a failure to give any explanation which the accused ought to be in a position to give that a failure to give any explanation "may as a matter of common sense allow the drawing of an inference that there is no explanation and that the accused is guilty".
Conversely, if the case presented by the prosecution had so little evidential value that it called for no answer, a failure to provide one could not justify an inference of guilt.
In sum, it was only common sense inferences which the judge considered proper, in the light of the evidence against the accused, that could be drawn under the 1988 Order.
In addition, the trial judge had a discretion whether, on the facts of the particular case, an inference should be drawn. As indicated by the Court of Appeal in the present case, if a judge accepted that an accused did not understand the warning given or if he had doubts about it, "we are confident that he would not activate article 6 against him".
Furthermore, in Northern Ireland, where trial judges sat without a jury, the judge had to explain the reasons for the decision to draw inferences and the weight attached to them. The exercise of discretion in that regard was subject to review by the appellate courts.
In the present case, the evidence presented against the applicant by the prosecution was considered by the Court of Appeal to constitute a formidable case against him.
It was recalled that when the police entered the house some appreciable time after they knocked on the door, they found the applicant coming down the flight of stairs in the house where Mr L had been held captive by the IRA.
Evidence had been given by Mr L, evidence which in the opinion of the trial judge had been corroborated, that he had been forced to make a taped confession and that after the arrival of the police at the house and the removal of his blindfold he saw the applicant at the top of the stairs.
He had been told by him to go downstairs and watch television. The applicant was pulling a tape out of a cassette. The tangled tape and cassette recorder were later found on the premises. Evidence by the applicant's co-accused that he had recently arrived at the house was discounted as not being credible.
The trial judge drew strong inferences against the applicant under article 6 of the 1988 Order by reason of his failure to give an account of his presence in the house when arrested and interrogated by the police.
He also drew strong inferences under article 4 of the Order by reason of the applicant's refusal to give evidence in his own defence when asked by the court to do so.
In the Court's view, having regard to the weight of the evidence against the applicant, the drawing of inferences from his refusal, at arrest, during police questioning and at trial, to provide an explanation for his presence in the house was a matter of common sense and could not be regarded as unfair or unreasonable in the circumstances.
As pointed out by the Delegate of the Commission, the courts in a considerable number of countries where evidence was freely assessed might have regard to all relevant circumstances, including the manner in which the accused had behaved or had conducted his defence, when evaluating the evidence in the case.
It considered that, what distinguished the drawing of inferences under the Order was that, in addition to the existence of the specific safeguards mentioned above, it constituted, as described by the Commission, "a formalised system which aims at allowing commonsense implications to play an open role in the assessment of evidence".
Nor could it be said, against that background, that the drawing of reasonable inferences from the applicant's behaviour had the effect of shifting the burden of proof from the prosecution to the defence so as to infringe the principle of the presumption of innocence.
It could not be said, against that background, that the drawing of reasonable inferences from the applicant's behaviour had the effect of shifting the burden of proof from the prosecution to the defence so as to infringe the principle of the presumption of innocence.
Accordingly, the Court held, Judges Pettit, Valticos, Walsh, Makarczyk and Lohmus dissenting, there had been no violation of article 6, paragraphs 1 and 2 of the Convention.
B Access to lawyer
The court observed that article 6, especially paragraph 3, could be relevant before a case was sent for trial if and so far as the fairness of the trial was likely to be seriously prejudiced by an initial failure to comply with its provisions.
National laws could attach consequences to the attitude of an accused at the initial stages of police interrogation which were decisive for the prospects of the defence in any subsquent criminal proceedings.
In such circumstances article 6 would normally require that the accused be allowed to benefit from the assistance of a lawyer already at the initial stages of police interrogation. However, that right, which was not explicitly set out in the Convention, might be subject to restrictions for good cause.
The question, in each case, was whether the restriction, in the light of the entirety of the proceedings, had deprived the accused of a fair hearing.
The Court was of the view that the scheme contained in the 1988 Order was such that it was of paramount importance for the rights of the defence that an accused had access to a lawyer at the initial stages of police interrogation.
It observed that, under the Order, at the beginning of police interrogation, the accused was confronted with a fundamental dilemma relating to his defence.
If he chose to remain silent, adverse inferences might be drawn against him in accordance with the provisions of the Order.
On the other hand, if he opted to break his silence during the course of interrogaton, he ran the risk of prejudicing his defence without necessarily removing the possibility of inferences being drawn against him.
Under such conditions, the concept of fairness enshrined in article 6 required that the accused had the benefit of the assistance of a lawyer already at the initial stages of police interrogation. To deny access to a lawyer for the first 48 hours of police questioning, in a situation where the rights of the defence might well be irretrievably prejudiced, was, whatever the justification for such denial, incompatible with the rights of the accused under article 6.
The Court therefore held, Judges Ryssdal, Matscher, Palm, Foighel, Sir John Freeland, Wildhaber and Jungwiert dissenting, that there was a breach of article 6, paragraph 1 of the Convention, taken in conjunction with paragraph 3(c), as regarded the applicant's denial of access ot a lawyer during the first 48 hours of his police detention.
II Allegation of violation of article 14 in conjunction with article 6
The applicant further complained that the practice in Northern Ireland regarding access of solicitors to terrorist suspects was discriminatory, contrary to article 14 of the Convention taken in conjunction with article 6, having regard to the fact that solicitors were not permitted to be present at any stage during the interviewing of suspects by the police unlike their counterparts in England and Wales.
However, in the light of its conclusion that the denial of access to a solicitor in the present case gave rise to a breach of article 6.1 in conjunction with 6.3(c) of the Convention, the Court held, unanimously, that it did not have to examine that issue.
III Application of article 50
As to compensation the Court recalled that its finding of a violation of article 6 was limited to the applicant's complaint concerning access to a solicitor. In its opinion, the finding of a violation was, in itself, sufficent just satisfaction for the purposes of article 50 of the Convention.
As regards costs and expenses the applicant claimed £57,263.51. Bearing in mind that the finding of a violation only related to the applicant's complaint concerning access to a lawyer, the Court awarded £15,000, less the sums granted by the Council of Europe by way of legal aid and payable within three months.
Court of Appeal Rentall Ltd and Another v D. S. Willcock Ltd and Others. Where counsel had stated at the end of the trial that he could not oppose the dismissal of third-party proceedings and that his clients would not pursue them further, it was an abuse of the process of the court for his clients to seek on appeal a new trial of the third-party proceedings.
The Court of Appeal (Lord Justice Russell, Lord Justice McCowan and Lord Justice Rose) so held on February 6, when allowing applications by the first third party, Christopher Michael Harrison, and the second third party, Coopers & Lybrand, to strike out part of the notice of appeal dated March 10, 1995 served by D. S. Willcock Ltd, Douglas Stewart Willcock and Sylvia Christine Willcock, the first, second and third defendants respectively, which called for the setting aside of an order made by Mr Graeme Harrison, QC, sitting as a judge of the High Court, on January 11, 1995 dismissing those defendants' proceedings against the first and second third parties.
LORD JUSTICE RUSSELL said counsel for the defendants had realistically apprised the judge that further conduct of the third-party proceedings from his point of view was doomed to failure. The judge had ordered accordingly.
The defendants had in effect submitted to judgment and it could not be right that they should be entitled to come back to court and resile from that position.
House of Lords Regina v Brown (Gregory)
Before Lord Goff of Chieveley, Lord Griffiths, Lord Jauncey of Tullichettle, Lord Browne-Wilkinson and Lord Hoffmann
[Speeches February 8]
Where a person, for an improper purpose, retrieved information from a computer database in the form of a screen display, but thereafter made no use of the information, he did not "use" the data within the meaning of section 5(2)(b) of the Data Protection Act 1984.
The House of Lords (Lord Griffiths and Lord Jauncey dissenting) dismissed an appeal by the Crown from the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, (Lord Justice Staughton, Mr Justice Hidden and Mr Justice Laws) (The Times June 4, 1993; [1994] QB 547), who had allowed an appeal by Gregory Michael Brown against his convictions at Maidstone Crown Court (Judge Waley, QC and a jury) on March 10, 1992 of attempted improper use and improper use of personal data, contrary to section 5(2)(b) of the 1984 Act.
Mr Timothy Langdale, QC and Mr Tom Kark for the Crown; Mr Brian Higgs, QC and Mr Robin Johnson for Mr Brown.
LORD GOFF said that Mr Brown had formerly been a police constable in the Kent Constabulary. The chief constable was a registered data user for the purposes of the 1984 Act and his agents, including Mr Brown, were entitled to make use of the data stored in the database of the police national computer for the registered purpose of policing.
Mr Brown had been friendly with a man who ran a debt-collection business. On two occasions he had used the computer to check the registration numbers of vehicles owned by debtors of clients of the business. Those checks had been made through other police officers operating the computer on his behalf.
In the first case the search had not revealed any personal data as defined by the Act because the vehicle was owned by a company. In the second case, the search had revealed personal data, but there was no evidence that Mr Brown or anyone else had made any use of the information obtained.
Mr Brown had been charged with offences under the 1984 Act of using personal data held within the memory of the computer, contrary to section 5(2)(b), (3) and (5). The judge had directed the jury that, in the first case, Mr Brown could only be guilty of an attempt.
"Data" was defined in section 1(2) of the Act as "information recorded in a form in which it can be processed by equipment operating automatically in response to instructions given for that purpose".
In other words, it might broadly be described as information recorded in computer-readable form.
Personal data was data consisting of information relating to a living individual who could be identified from it: section 1(3). Section 5(2) provided that a registered data user, or his servant or agent: "shall not ... use" personal data held by him for any purpose other than as described in the register entry.
The only action taken by Mr Brown in relation to the data had been that he had caused another officer to operate the computer and so cause the information constituting the data to be displayed on a screen. He had then read the information so displayed and observed what it consisted of, but had taken no other action in relation to it. The question was whether by so acting he had "used" the data.
Since "use" was not defined in the Act, it had to be given its natural and ordinary meaning. At first sight, his Lordship would not have thought that simply retrieving information recorded in a computer-readable form from the database in which it was stored so that it appeared on a screen or printout and could be read by a human being could properly be described as "using" the information so recorded.
Of course, the computer would be used to retrieve it, but the retrieval would not of itself be "using" it. It would simply be transferring it into a different form.
Confirmation of his Lordship's approach could be found elsewhere in the Act. The third "data protection principle", set out in Part I of Schedule 1, could not be concerned only with information while it was in computer-readable form. It was concerned with use of the information as such.
The use referred to in paragraph 7 of Part II of Schedule 1 would be inconceivable if data could only be used by being retrieved from the database. His Lordship's approach also accorded with the statutory purpose of protecting personal data from improper use.
If Mr Brown had originally been charged not with the full offence of using personal data but with an attempt to do so, the jury would have had to consider whether, on the evidence, his actions coupled with his state of mind showed that he was committing no more than preparatory acts, for example if he had just been finding out whether there was information that might be of use to him in assisting his friend, or whether he had embarked on the commission of the offence because he had had a firm intention to put that information to an improper use if it had proved to be useful for that purpose.
There was, however, in the present case, no question of upholding the conviction of an attempt in the first case or of substituting such a conviction in the second case.
Such a conviction was only possible in the present case if the jury, properly directed on the law, had concluded on the evidence that the accused had gone beyond mere acts of preparation and embarked on the commission of the offence so as to render him guilty of an attempt.
LORD GRIFFITHS, dissenting, said that if "use" were not given a broad construction the purpose of the Act would not be achieved, there would be a serious lacuna in the protection it provided and there would be difficulties in its enforcement.
The Act had been enacted to implement the obligations in the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data ((1981) (Cmnd 8341). The Act should therefore be construed so far as permissible to accord with the Convention.
Article 1 of the Convention stated that the purpose of the Convention was to secure the individual's "right to privacy". To read the personal data about an individual displayed on a computer screen or in a printout was an invasion of that person's privacy if there was no legitimate purpose for doing so.
It was not straining the meaning of language to say that a person was using the information stored in a computer if he informed himself of its contents.
Once information had entered the public domain it was impractical to attempt to place any restraints on its use or further dissemination.
Mr Brown had had no business to be reading the personal data on the police computer for debt-collecting purposes, and his Lordship saw no hardship in adopting a construction of section 5 that created an offence if he did so.
If, on the other hand, an obligation were laid on the prosecution to prove not only that illegitimate access to the information in the computer had been obtained but also how that information had subsequently been applied, his Lordship could see great practical difficulties in the enforcement of the Act and the protection of personal data that the Convention and the Act had intended to achieve.
Lord Jauncey agreed with Lord Griffiths.
Lord Browne-Wilkinson agreed with Lord Hoffmann.
LORD HOFFMANN, concurring in dismissing the appeal, said that retrieving data from a computer seemed to him a use of the computer rather than a use of the data. The scheme of the Act as a whole did not permit the phrase "use [personal] data" to be construed as including its retrieval.
The Act quite carefully used a number of different words to describe various things that could be done to personal data, including "processing".
Section 1(7) defined "processing" to include "extracting the information constituting the data". It was clear that the operation performed by Mr Brown fell within the definition of "processing", but it could not also constitute "using". The Act treated processing differently from using.
His Lordship also agreed with the reasoning of Lord Goff.
Solicitors: Crown Prosecution Service, Headquarters; Durlings, Gillingham, Kent.
MIKE CATT has thrown a further twist into what has already been a tortuous rugby union season for England by telling Bath that he seeks to play full back. Ostensibly, that is good news for the English selectors, who yesterday announced a 35-strong training squad, but not if Catt spends the remainder of the season playing second-team rugby.
Last year, he played two internationals at stand-off half, but it is as a full back that he first appeared on the international scene and Catt has decided that his future lies in a No15 shirt.
Since Stuart Barnes retired, however, he has been playing stand-off for Bath, who have Jonathan Callard, another international, at full back and Callard is preferred for the Pilkington Cup fifth-round tie at Wakefield tomorrow. Catt takes his place in the second-team game with Orrell.
"The only way for me to contribute to the expansive game England want to play in the next World Cup is to get used to playing that way at full back regularly for Bath," Catt said. "I am a better full back than stand-off, but I might be in the second team all season."
If Callard, 30 and capped five times, has anything to do with it, he will be. "I've faced challenges before, but I've got to get on with it," he said. "No one person is bigger than the club and none of us is indispensable. I wouldn't say this challenge was too daunting."
Three full backs are named in the England squad to train at Marlow on Tuesday, Tim Stimpson joining Callard and Catt; but, if Catt cannot oust his colleague over the next fortnight, England will have a hard decision to make when they name the XV to play Scotland at Murrayfield on March 2. However, irregular appearances in the Bath front row last season did not prevent John Mallett, the prop, earning a place in England's World Cup squad.
The training squad promotes three England A forwards David Sims, Garath Archer and Richard Cockerill and also includes Tony Underwood.
THE Bosman decision may have opened the gates to footballers from countries within the European Community, but the Department of Employment is beginning to flex its muscles over other nationalities. Yesterday, it refused work permits to Marc Hottiger, the Switzerland international full back at Everton, and Ilie Dumitrescu, West Ham United's Romania international.
"We will fight this all the way," Harry Redknapp, the West Ham manager, said last night. "You are talking about two world class players here, and I'm not happy about it. I never expected a problem with a work permit, but we won't leave it at that."
Everton were equally unhappy. "We are very, very disappointed, and are now considering our options and response," Michael Dunford, the Everton secretary, said. "It is possible we will request further discussion with the department. Marc's career is now in limbo, and he knows, unless it is sorted out, he must leave the country in June."
Hottiger and Dumitrescu had been given permits when they first came to these shores to join Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur, respectively. They have now fallen foul of the rule that requires them to play 75 per cent of their team's games, even though the Football Association and the Premier League are understood to have approved their applications for a renewal. The Professional Footballers' Association (PFA), however, protective of home-grown talent, was less supportive.
Hottiger joined Everton three weeks ago for £700,000. He played 51 games for Newcastle last season, but fell foul of the three foreigners rule in the pre-Bosman days of this season, with Ginola, Albert and Srnicek taking preference.
Even so, the department's statement that "he had only played in 66 per cent of Newcastle's games in the last 12 months, not the required 75 per cent", seems harsh.
The department's position over Dumitrescu, who has been out of favour at Tottenham since the departure of Osvaldo Ardiles as manager, is more comprehensible, but the implications are that an overseas player cannot afford a spell out of form or out of favour.
"Dumitrescu has played for his country regularly, he has been outstanding in the World Cup," Redknapp said. "He has not played enough games for Tottenham, but that is why players appear on the transfer list. Tottenham bought Ruel Fox because he wasn't getting a game at Newcastle; I sold Don Hutchison to Sheffield United because he wasn't in our team."
Claudio Branco, the Brazil international full back, agreed an 18-month contract with Middlesbrough yesterday, but that deal, too, is subject to the player being granted a work permit. Branco has 83 caps to his credit but has appeared infrequently for his country in recent seasons. He would appear, though, to have the support of the PFA a significant factor.
Faustino Asprilla is the next player with an appointment at the Department of Employment. The Colombia international completed his £6.7 million move to Newcastle yesterday. There should be no doubts about that one at least as long as he keeps a place in the team.
THOSE casual snooker players who pick up any old cue out of the rack at their local club must wonder what all the fuss is about. Why does Steve Davis, six times a world champion, feel that he is in "heaven" after finding success with a new cue the same weight as his old one and just half an inch longer?
Davis has won 70 tournaments more than any player in the game since 1978, but none in the past 13 months. The drought began when he accidentally broke the cue that had brought him all his important titles. Until last month, a cue borrowed from his father had proved a poor substitute, so Davis's euphoria after his vintage 6-0 victory using the new cue over Ken Doherty in the Benson and Hedges Masters at Wembley earlier this week was understandable.
The histories of billiards and snooker have repeatedly demonstrated that, while a cue alone cannot make a champion, the loss of a champion's old faithful will probably sink him.
In 1929, Willie Smith went to Australia to face the great Walter Lindrum at billiards. Lindrum was the finest ever exponent of the three-ball game, but a group of local gamblers, wishing to give their man an edge, smashed Smith's cue. Years later, aged 90, Smith was asked how he got over it. "I never did," he said.
Stephen Hendry would never play a fortnight's match for a tea service, as Smith did during that tour, but he has suffered the same kind of loss. In 1990, during a tournament in Reading, Hendry, who had captured the first of his five world titles six months earlier, walked into a hotel restaurant looking desperate. He had left his cue unattended for a couple of minutes and was clinging to the hope that its subsequent disappearance was some sort of ill-judged practical joke. It soon proved not to be so. For the next two days, Hendry was frantic enough for his manager to offer a £10,000 reward.
The exact circumstances surrounding the return of the cue, that has been the decisive instrument in the sport this decade, are still mysterious, but the Rex Williams Powerglide model, that would have cost no more than £20 in any good sports shop, was discovered on a piece of waste ground. The usually undemonstrative Scot hugged and kissed it, murmuring "My baby, my baby." Hendry's anxiety had been intensified by the knowledge that, three years earlier, Cliff Thorburn, the 1980 world champion, had arrived for a match without his cue, had borrowed another and been whitewashed 5-0.
Having a cue sabotaged or stolen is one thing, but Darren Morgan's original cue reached the end of its usefulness at the hands of his father, who smashed it over his knee during an argument. Later, Morgan Sr threw the replacement javelin-like out of the house. It landed, tip down at the bottom of the garden, no damage was done and, a few months later, his son used it to win the 1987 world amateur championship.
The rules are straightforward when it comes to a cue's dimensions. It has to be at least 3ft long and "must conform to the accepted shape and design". The authorities felt it necessary to introduce any legislation only after the Alec Brown fountain pen incident in 1938.
Brown was playing at Thurston's, the professional showcase of the game in Leicester Square, when, with the cue-ball marooned in the middle of the pack of reds, he produced a pen-like cue of no more than five inches, complete with tip. The cue, made by his father, allowed a potentially tricky shot to be played with ease, but the referee awarded a foul, ruling that the implement was outside the spirit, if not the letter, of the law.
Davis will have no such problem when he faces Alan McManus at Wembley today. To the television viewer, his cue will look like any other; but to Davis, it will look like the only one in the world.
FIVE days before their opening World Cup match, England's cricketers find their fitness concerns assuming worrying proportions. Dominic Cork, their principal strike bowler, yesterday left the field after sending down only 13 balls during England's second warm-up match at Aitcheson College, in which they beat the local Lahore side by six wickets.
Cork is experiencing pain in the tendon area below his right knee, brought on, basically, by wear and tear. The best cure, as Cork himself knows from similar trouble with his left knee two years ago, is physiotherapy and rest, although he might also require a cortisone injection that would put him out of action for at least a week.
England's first match is against New Zealand in Ahmedabad on Wednesday, their second against United Arab Emirates in Peshawar on Sunday week. While they could afford to be without Cork for the modest challenge of the Emirates, they would miss him in Ahmedabad.
"We will give Dominic three days' rest," Raymond Illingworth, the England manager, said yesterday. "We think the knee should settle down during that period. I certainly hope so."
In the past nine months, Cork has been England's leading bowler, and, in South Africa recently, he bowled twice as many overs in international matches as any of his colleagues, causing him further soreness. If England are to enjoy a successful World Cup, Cork must play a central role because their bowling resources are thin.
Robin Smith, who sustained a groin strain completing a catch during his side's first warm-up game, on Wednesday, was yesterday ruled out of England's first two matches and a decision as to whether he stays with the party will be made at the weekend.
The signs for Smith were not hopeful yesterday. "The injury is likely to take at least a week to mend, hopefully ten days at the worst," Wayne Morton, the England physiotherapist, said, "but we will know more in a day or two."
The England management is awaiting clarification about a replacement, if one is needed. Illingworth is unsure whether another batsman must be chosen from the 18 names that England submitted to the organisers last month which would mean a call-up for Mark Ramprakash or if others could be considered. If that were the case, Nasser Hussain would enter the reckoning.
Earlier this week, it was disclosed that Darren Gough is carrying a hamstring injury, although he played yesterday and took one wicket as England restricted their opponents to 166 for nine from 50 overs on a slow pitch.
Their most effective bowlers, though, were Richard Illingworth and Neil Smith, the spinners, who took three for 24 and two for 29 respectively.
England's progress was also slow, the match-winning partnership of 76 between Russell and Fairbrother occupying 23 overs.
The ever-reliable Russell, who scored 60 the day before, made a valuable 38 after yet another middle-order collapse had seen four wickets fall for 12 runs. Hick was out for eight and Thorpe for four. Earlier, Atherton, who was the top scorer with 41, and Stewart put on 79 for the first wicket.
Jagmohan Dalmiya, the convenor of Pilcom, the organising committee, claimed yesterday that it had asked the International Cricket Council (ICC) to request the United Nations to send an observer to Sri Lanka to establish whether it was unsafe to stage matches there, after the suicide bombing in Colombo.
Australia and West Indies have risked forfeiting fixtures by refusing to play on the island.
The ICC's office in London had no knowledge of such a request yesterday, and David Richards, its chief executive, spent the day en route to Calcutta, where a meeting will be held tomorrow to discuss the crisis. Inderjit Singh Bindra, another member of the organising committee, held out little hope of a solution. "I am not aware of any compromise formula, it's too late for that," he said yesterday. "We will not shift matches out of Sri Lanka. The only choice before Australia and West Indies is to fulfil their commitments."
Glenn Turner, the coach of New Zealand, who arrived in Bombay on Wednesday, spoke confidently yesterday of his side's prospects. In recent months, New Zealand have played one-day series against India and Pakistan, losing the first narrowly and drawing the second, despite Turner introducing new players.
"We could not have hoped for a better build-up," Turner said. "To be without two of our most outstanding batsmen of the past few years, Martin Crowe and Mark Greatbatch, is a big blow, but ours is a young side that can make up for their absence."
Many unkind things have been said about Peter York's Eighties, including the ludicrous suggestion that the 1980s happened too recently to merit a retrospective series. Well maybe so, if you spent the century's silliest decade making meticulous notes of who did what to whom and why. But, if it is, as it is for me, all a bit of a blur, then York's ridiculously stylised reminders of a ridiculously stylised ten years have been rather fun.
Now, what has all that got to do with last night's television, you ask. Two things. First, that at the current rate of transformation I predict Derek Hatton will have turned completely into Peter York by the year 2003. And secondly, that My Brilliant Career (BBC2) has - like York's series - been a well-timed and entertainingly executed reminder of people and events which, without a bit of help, could easily be forgotten.
Last night it was Hatton's turn to take a trip down short-term memory lane, back to the strawberry fields of Militant-run Liverpool. One of my Big Three narrators, Veronika Hyks, was wheeled out for the occasion but she hardly got a word in. For Hatton, as we were quickly reminded, has a prodigious gob on him.
These days he supplements his income as a public relations man and television presenter by picking up £1,000 a night on the after- dinner speaking circuit. The patter, as you would expect from one of the world's great self -publicists, is silky smooth, particularly on the question of would he do it all again? Yes, if it could be 1983 again but no in 1996.
"Life's very different, politics are very different, the economy's very different, people are very different and, eh, Derek Hatton's very different." The timing of the table top thud to coincide with the defiantly scouse "eh" was immaculate. As his doting father said: "He could go on the stage tomorrow and be a comedian." The only question is how would we tell?
However, it was Hatton's past, rather than his future, that was the matter in hand. His father (interviewed, rather successfully, while having his hair cut) recalled his son's early career as a fireman and his little-known involvement in the church. He was as fervent about religion as he became about politics, recalled a friendly curate. The same curate would later compare Hatton's story to that of Jesus Christ, which seemed to be stretching religious metaphor a little.
The key section dealing with the short-lived glory days of Militant was cleverly constructed, with contributions from colleagues, family and political opponents all intercut with symbolic footage of Everton beating Manchester United in the FA Cup Final. The infamous day when this Trotskyite city council actually secured extra funding from a Tory government was marked by the Everton skipper lifting the FA Cup. The crowds roared. Victory.
Patrick Jenkin, whose Environment Department provided the additional funds, was in no doubt where he had gone wrong. "The one mistake I made was trusting Derek Hatton and they used that to try and smash my political career." As summaries go, it appeared spot-on and archive footage of cheering, chanting Socialists made it difficult to disagree with Hatton when he described Jenkin as "incredibly naive".
That, of course, marked the turning point. Mrs Thatcher was "incandescent with fury", Mr Kinnock incandescent with concern that if Labour councils went round issuing redundancy notices to their own employees he could kiss the next general election goodbye. Hatton and his allies were expelled from the party, a decision which in Hatton's words, "marked the end of an era".
It also (once we had rather skated over the subsequent police inquiry and Hatton's acquittal on fraud charges) marked the end of a highly successful series. Its subjects, our fallen heroes, have been tempted by the chance to air their grievances, while we wallow in delicious Schadenfreude. A most enjoyable combination.
Over on BBC1, The Vet was also coming to an end and very silly it was, too. "Mum, she's got the bull walking around the yard," shouted Stephen down the telephone to his mother, Jennifer (Suzanne Burden). Nothing too complicated there, you might think.
After all, by that time we had spent half an hour in the company of the eccentric Miss Paley and her bull with the broken leg. Jennifer had set it herself as those who have been paying attention to the opening titles knew she would. Surely then the words "she", "bull", "walking" and "yard" would ring a few bells. But no. Cue much tossing of blonde hair and the adoption of a series of puzzled expressions: "What do you mean, Stephen?" Oh spare us the sooner she runs off with the RSPCA man the better.
Mind you, now poor Patricia (Diana Kent) has met her end in a car crash the whole field of unresolved sexual tension is wide open again. Chris (Richard Hawley) may be consumed with grief at the moment but I have a sneaking feeling that if and when a new series comes around he might just be ready for a little gentle flirting. As long as he remembers to speak slowly...well, who knows?
Finally, Thief Takers (ITV) was notable for two things, a technically impressive beginning (a single tracking shot that appeared to go through two glass windows, across a street and up a flight of stairs) and an old-fashioned but still gripping finale. You can't beat a good roadblock. What came in between wasn't bad either.
Lynne Truss is on holiday
PURFLEET Football Club this week signed Steve Portway, the striker whose 50- goal-a-season feats for Gravesend and Northfleet earned him a move to Gloucester City that was wrecked when he suffered a freak eye injury from a ball smashed into his face.
Portway's signing from Romford, of the Essex Senior League, is a determined move by Purfleet to preserve their hard-won place in the premier division ofthe Icis League; but, unfortunately, Portway is cup-tied and so must miss out on the arduous assignment against Macclesfield Town in the FA Umbro Trophy tomorrow.
Although bottom of the table, with just two wins and 20 goals in 20 matches, Purfleet registered a stunning upset when they beat Rushden and Diamonds, the runaway leaders of the Beazer Homes League, in the first round of the Trophy at Nene Park last month.
So, they know exactly how they want to play against the Vauxhall Conference champions, who are at the head of the competition once again this season.
"At Rushden, we set out to do a job," Norman Posner, the secretary, said. "We had five at the back, four in midfield and one up front, and stopped them playing football. To do that and try to get something on the break was the only possible way we could beat them."
Gary Calder, who has steadily lifted Purfleet up the non-League ladder since being appointed manager in January 1991, when they were second from bottom of the Isthmian League second division north, is taking his team to Congleton for an overnight stay weather permitting. "We're doing things properly," he said.
Calder believes that Purfleet are at the crossroads. "You mustn't forget the club is only ten years old," he said. "We either push on or slip back the way we came. I'm sure we're going to push on." The recruitment of Portway, and John Ridout, from Enfield, will undoubtedly help.
These signings are also a mark of the undiminished commitment of Harry and Tommy South, the owners of the club, who developed Purfleet's ground at Ship Lane on the playing fields of a derelict technical college.
BUCKINGHAM PALACE February 8: Sir Kenneth Scott was received by The Queen this evening upon relinquishing his appointment as Deputy Private Secretary to Her Majesty.
Later The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh were entertained at Dinner by the High Commissioner for New Zealand (His Excellency Mr John Collinge) at 43 Chelsea Square, London SW3.
Christopher Irvine finds amateurs keen to topple another set of professionals
SIX hundred yards separate the West Hull club from Hull, their professional rugby league neighbours. It is another world across the Anlaby flyover, except that the team that has gone further in the Silk Cut Challenge Cup than any other amateur side in 99 years will feel at home there in their fifth-round match against Wakefield Trinity tonight.
Two weeks ago, at The Boulevard, the backwoodsmen of West Hull ambushed York a second professional scalp in the competition to add to their humiliation of Highfield was a record. Upsets by Thatto Heath, this year, and Beverley, last season and in 1909, were one-off victories.
Wakefield's proud history in the Challenge Cup they have won it five times has heightened talk of a third giant-killing act by the Conference League team, even though the first division side should win comfortably. Not that Wakefield anticipate, or are likely to receive, an easy ride.
As much as he would have loved to have drawn Wigan, Eddie Bennett, the West Hull coach, appreciates that Wakefield at least offer some hope of advancement to the quarter-finals. "It'll go one of two ways we'll get duffed by 40-odd points, or they'll freeze, and we'll sneak it," Bennett said.
Whatever happens, the upstarts have already resoundingly made their point, raised £20,000 for club funds and revelled in their odyssey. In a city notable for the rivalry between its two professional sides, the interlopers of West Hull have gone further in the competition than Hull Kingston Rovers, who fell in the fourth round.
"People here have woken up to the fact that there is a team other than Hull and Rovers," Bennett said. "Unlike them, we seem to have the entire city behind us. We usually get 300 or so, but we're looking at around 5,000, which is better than Hull's average. If the York game is anything to go by, the passion will be unbelievable."
The recent return fire, by the cannon fodder of the amateur ranks in the Challenge Cup, has asked serious questions of several professional sides. Moreover, it is a timely reminder of grassroot teams' playing ability in the worsening rift between the professional and amateur governing bodies.
Unification is the only solution, but, in laying down terms, the Rugby Football League (RFL) and British Amateur Rugby League Association (Barla) have moved further apart. The original dispute about the running of junior rugby has got lost in a battle of bloated egos. Heads need knocking together for the common good.
Progress needs to be made and quickly. The amateur seedbed produced 200 professional recruits last season, compared with just 14 signings from rugby union. There is mutual dependence, but, without a vibrant and healthy amateur set up, the professional game would wither.
Unlike the professionals, the amateurs are sticking to playing in winter, and to the laws that existed before the mid-season introduction by the RFL of changes to the scrum, play-the-ball and restart. As the new laws apply in the Challenge Cup, West Hull must adapt accordingly. "We have coped," Bennett said, "but it's hardly designed to make life easy."
At the club, which began in 1936 and was reformed 25 years ago, the popular consensus is that the team playing today is as good as any West Hull has had. With six Barla internationals in the side, there is no shortage of talent or experience, especially in the influential presence of Dave Roe, at hooker, Stuart Farr, at stand-off half, and Carl Newlove, provided that he is fit, in the loose forward role.
Bennett admitted after viewing a borrowed video tape that Wakefield were bigger, stronger and faster. "They were all that but that's not to say they will have our spirit," he said.
Spray flies as the crews of the University of London eights, Greasy Spoon, left, and High Fibre, engage in their rowing trials on the Thames yesterday. The crews included five full Great Britain internationals, three of whom Rupert Obholzer, Tim Foster and Graham Smith are likely to be wearing Olympic vests in July. International under-23 and junior representatives were also present.
Greasy Spoon, on Surrey, won both contests, the first, from Putney to Hammersmith, by a mere canvas, and the second, from Chiswick Steps to Mortlake, by almost a length. In both races, Greasy Spoon, stroked by Stewart Whitelaw, the Great Britain lightweight international, took an initial lead but never managed to break clear. In the first contest, Obholzer, the High Fibre stroke, brought his crew back level just 15 strokes from the finish, but Greasy Spoon, with Tim Foster outstanding at No7, squeezed ahead again. In the second, High Fibre seemed to have the race won when they took the lead at Barnes Bridge, but Greasy Spoon, helped by impressive steering from Jessica Wright, held on around the outside of the bend to complete a double.
Maurice Hayes, the London University rowing manager since the departure of Paul McGann, the Australian, last summer, said that Rusty Williams, his men's coach, and Dave Martin, the women's coach, two former University of London performers, were instrumental in the club's present success and spirit. Interestingly, the spirit was enhanced by the inclusion of a race for two women's fours yesterday. Six members of the crews involved will seek Great Britain representation this summer.
GREASY SPOON: Bow, N Morrell (Hampton and UCL); 2, A Macartney (Pilgrims and UCL); 3, L Willett (KCS Wimbledon and King's); 4, T Jones (St Edwards and School of Oriental and African Studies); 5, A Cassidy (Shrewsbury and UCL); 6, D Ward (Bedford and King's); 7, T Foster (Bedford Modern and UCL); stroke, S Whitelaw (KCS Wimbledon and Imperial); cox: J Wright (Queen Anne's, Caversham and UCL).
HIGH FIBRE:Bow, J Hughes (Sir William Borlase and UCL); 2, D Burton (St Edward's and King's); 3, N Storey (Henley Col, LSE and King's); 4, K Janes (Bedford Modern and UCL); 5, D Beckley (Hampton and UCL); 6, L Nolan (St Joseph's, Galway and Queen Mary and Westfield); 7, G Smith (Westminster and UCL); stroke: R Obholzer (Hampton and Charing Cross Hosp); cox: N Attwell (King's, Ely, and St George's and St Mary's).
Picture: Hugh Routledge
A VICTORIAN artistic masterpiece which has hung in St Paul's Cathedral since the turn of the century has left the building for conservation work in London.
The study, a monumental version of The Light Of The World, the best-known religious picture by William Holman Hunt, OM (1827-1910), survived the London Blitz without a scratch, but is now showing signs of age. It will be reinstalled for Whitsun.
The picture was inspired by the verse: "Behold I stand at the door and knock ..."( 2Revelation, iii, 3). It shows Christ in a garden at night carrying a lantern to show that He is the light of the world.
It took eight men to manoeuvre the heavy 9ft by 5ft picture into Christie's which has advised on the restoration of the picture and its contemporary frame. The study was painted between 1901 and 1904, and the frame was also designed by Holman Hunt.
The conservation work was arranged by Martin Beisly, director of the firm's Victorian picture department, who noticed that the painting needed work after he bought two unsatisfactory postcard reproductions at the cathedral.
He said: "Then I went to look at the picture and realised it was very dirty. We were approached for advice by St Paul's, and are delighted that Hamish Dewar and Arnold Wiggins and Sons, the frame restorers, have generously agreed to work on it without charge."
Canon John Haliburton, of St Paul's, said: "This picture has been here for almost a century, and is an icon. When it was taken down from the wall, a whole lot of pieces of paper fell out.
"They were prayers people had said in front of the painting and then tucked behind the frame. Some of them were quite old. I gathered them all up and put them in the prayer box and we will say a special prayer for these people in the cathedral."
The painting hung in the south knave aisle but is to be rehung in the north transept when restoration is completed.
Hamish Dewar, considered to be one of the best restorers of Victorian pictures in London, said: "The picture is in good basic condition, but it has had a lot of candle smoke which comes out pretty black, so there should be a very good colour change when the work is finished."
Holman Hunt was one of the co-founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and the picture exists in three versions; the first is at Keble College, Oxford, the second is at Manchester City Art Gallery, and the third is the St Paul's version.
A.S. NEILL, founder and then headmaster of Summerhill School, said that, as none of his pupils had gone on to become Members of Parliament, he must have got it about right.
At Hilton College, near Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, I asked the second master how many Hiltonians had attained international status in sport and he sent for the marketing manager who gave me the list: 15 cricketers, including McLean, Procter, Crookes; eight rugby players P.G.A Johnstone, G Teichmann; 13 polo internationals, ten hockeyists, two oarsmen, canoers, golfers and tennis players and a dozen representatives of assorted disciplines from hot-air ballooning to rifle shooting.
"You must have got it about right," I suggested to Gordon Crossley, who, when teaching at Gresham's, Holt, in the late 1960s, scored 103 against Wisbech. Crossley said that the school was best known for its academic achievements, but then he would say that. R.J.O. Meyer used to say it about Millfield.
Last week, when the national football team won the African Nations Cup, an excited radio commentator shouted: "We have arrahved; look out world."
Bafana Bafana's (the boys') success at football followed the lifting of rugby's World Cup, Test series victory against England and there are bullish noises coming out in respect of South Africa's Davis Cup tennis chances.
It seemed a good idea to examine the infrastructure.
You turn off the N3 about 50 miles north of Durban at the Hilton exit. The sign shows Hilton to the right, Hilton College left and I turned left and drove and drove along a handsomely tarmacked road by the Umgeni river through stunning countryside, past forests of yellow-wood and pine. That is the school drive; seven kilometres on, you reach the school gate.
Hilton was founded as a school for 50 children by an Anglican minister in 1872 and the founding fathers had the wisdom to buy up land ... 3,500 acres. Today, there are 500 male pupils, about 10 per cent non-white. I arrived during central hour: 1.45-2.45, when boys can do whatever they like but not games. "If we lost prohibition, they'd all be out there playing touch rugby and cricket," I was told, and by 3pm it was all better.
By the entrance, beyond the slave bell, a boy was playing the one-hole golf course. Two sets of six cricket nets were fully occupied with three bowlers per batsman. There were four practice games. You could tell because the boys wore white shorts; longs are reserved for matches.
The pool was filled with boys swimming and boys diving; athletes ran along the drive and around the hallowed turf of the school's rugby ground, where crowds of 7,000-8,000 come when Hilton play against their arch-rivals, Michaelhouse.
Coaches shuttled boys to the river for rowing and canoeing, to the lake for sailing. In the gymnasium above the three full-size basketball courts, a couple of dozen boys were using state-of-the-art machines, with that many again busy at the hoops. There is an indoor cricket net in the corner. Squash is hugely popular, Hilton play in a summer squash league and the place abounds with tennis courts.
As this is the cricket season and the eyes of South Africans are on Hansie Cronje and his men on the sub-continent, I asked how many of the boys play competitive cricket. There are four under-14 teams; also under-15 A, B, C and D and under-16s ditto; then there are five open sides ... and for every boy who gets to play, there is probably another one waiting for his place.
On Saturdays, when Hilton plays matches against other schools (they also compete in the Natal Witness evening cricket league), parents come from wherever to sit around the ground eating picnics and watching their lads in the under-15 Cs; urging them to hone their skills and maybe make it to the under-15 Bs. Last year, Hilton sent its team to tour England and play in the Oundle cricket festival: their record was played 13, lost one.
"Who beat you?"
"Durban High School in the final at Oundle."
"Was that a big blow?"
"Well," the cricket master said, "we try to win, but we don't have post mortems. Sport occupies a high level in South African consciousness. Before we were isolated, we were the best sportsmen."
"Why?"
"Well, it's the weather and the emphasis on outdoors and our history of success in internationals, probably beginning with the brilliant fielding of Cheetham's side in which McGlew and McLean and Endean did what Rhodes does now."
I stand behind a row of six nets, watching the action and notice a fair-haired boy of 14 taking a 16-pace run and bowling with a high, smooth action on a length, on a line, at considerable pace.
"That boy has a terrific future," I was about to say when I noticed a 13-year-old in the next net late-cutting a shortish ball as handsomely as did P.G.H. Fender on the Woodbine cigarette cards of my youth.
The fact is that the place abounds with talent and ambition and sportsmanship ("please do not mention that one of the fathers at Michaelhouse is suing the school for excluding his son from the team about to tour Australia"). And as I leave this hive of sun-blessed activity, the golfer at the gate is still at it: drive, chip, putt, putt. Next year, they are going to build another hole: a 100 per cent increase in sports provision which will be nicely executed by some of the three-figure army of Hilton groundsmen.
Sunshine and inexpensive labour are helpful in the pursuit of sporting excellence, but love of the game and pride of their country is what gives South Africa the edge; this is a land of professional amateurs.
WEIRD was not what we were expecting in the stolid depths of Switzerland, but weird was most definitely what we got. The launch of the new Sauber-Ford Formula One car here yesterday cast Johnny Herbert and Heinz-Harald Frentzen, its drivers, in the roles of mildly embarrassed extras in a costume musical that made Star Trek look tame by comparison and put the extravagance of the Benetton launch in Sicily on Monday in the shade.
Imagine a science fiction version of Springtime for Hitler from The Producers and you might begin to get a picture of the cavortings on stage at the Space Dreams theatre in this village outside Zurich. There were men and women painted silver, multicoloured lasers and a vast array of pointy caps. "We will win the race, we will be heroes," the cast sang as Herbert and Frentzen looked on. "We will go faster, we will not be zeros."
It took a while for the significance of all this to sink in, but eventually it did. "We are now taking you to a different world," a Sauber official announced from the stage. "We are trying to take you to a new dimension this season, to go where no man has been before."
After what seemed like an eternity, the singing stopped and Herbert talked his way through the next act, an episode that Great Britain's most popular driver is determined will not be his epilogue after a fraught year in the shadow of Michael Schumacher, the world champion, at Benetton in 1995. Attempts to sideline him undermined his racing credibility, although he did collect his first two grand prix victories.
"It was a hard year last year," Herbert, 31, said. "From the start, there seemed to be rumours that every race would be my last race. It was stupid and it must have been coming from somewhere. Looking back on it, I think it's affected my performances and upset me psychologically.
"I really lost all the enjoyment out of racing. I hardly spoke to Flavio Briatore, the managing director, in the second half of the season and it was very difficult. Coming here, they have been friendly and welcoming and it feels as though I have got out of jail.
"So far, Heinz-Harald has shared everything with me, which is a big difference to what happened with Schumacher, and I just have to make sure it stays that way. After last season, I got the feeling that people think that I'm not as good as they thought I was. I know that I am, but I have got a lot left to prove in Formula One."
Herbert accepted that he may find himself pitched straight into a situation like the one that he laboured under at Benetton. Frentzen is one of the most highly-rated young drivers and has already been at Sauber for two years. He is the team's No1, but Herbert is confident that there will be more pooling of information this time. It could be a good year, too. Sauber are powered by Ford V10 engines, there are high hopes of the new chassis and the new pairing of drivers is being touted as an "explosive double package".
Herbert said that he would like to gain a measure of revenge for the treatment that he received from Schumacher last year by beating him in a race this season Schumacher is now at Ferrari. Herbert thinks that Damon Hill is the favourite for the world championship and that Jean Alesi will thrive at Benetton and, like everyone else, he was mesmerised by the characters on stage yesterday. "I tried to sing along," he said, "but I couldn't keep up."
IAN WOOSNAM made a disappointing start in pursuit of a third successive tournament victory yesterday. He wilted in the heat and finished the opening round of the Data Dimension Pro-am golf tournament at Sun City, South Africa, six shots off the pace.
Nick Price, a former winner of the Million Dollar Golf Challenge on the Gary Player Country Club course, shot a 68, to share the lead with Sven Struver, of Germany.
The tournament, the first of three back-to-back events that form part of the European Tour, is being played over two par-72 courses, the Lost City and Gary Player Country Club. Today, the players swap to the alternate course and then play the final two rounds on the Gary Player course.
Woosnam, of Wales, fresh from PGA European Tour victories in Singapore and Perth, shot a 74. Other European strugglers included Costantino Rocca, of Italy, on 73, Per-Ulrik Johansson, of Sweden, 78, and David Feherty, from Northern Ireland, on 79.
Price, the world No2 from South Africa, and Struver went out early, on the Lost City and Gary Player courses respectively, and held the lead throughout a long, hot day in which rounds took up to six hours to complete.
"I think it's going to be very tough to adjust from playing the Bayview grass at Lost City to the Kikuyu at Gary Player Country Club," Price said, "especially when it comes to chipping."
Struver, 28, whose best finish is a fourth place in the Irish Open, managed five birdies and a solitary bogey at the par-three 4th. "I played the best I've done in a while," he said. "I hit 18 greens and missed only two fairways and then only by a metre."
Thomas Levet, the first French golfer to compete on the US PGA Tour, in 1993, shot a disastrous 90 yesterday, with halves of 48 and 42. In with a better chance of playing the last two days are his compatriots, Christian Cevear, 74, and Tim Planchin, 75.
Wayne Westner was disqualified for practising on the Gary Player course after his 72 on the Lost City. He hit "about ten five-irons down the 10th fairway", and maintained that it had "always been regarded as a practice tee". However, Andy McFee, a Tour official, ruled that both layouts jointly constituted the tournament course.
NICK FALDO faces a stringent test of character today after he laboured to a three-under-par 69 in the opening round of the Buick Invitational on the North Course at Torrey Pines in San Diego yesterday. Under normal circumstances, the British golfer would have been content with such a score, but the short and easy North Course was so forgiving that Doug Martin, of the United States, set a blistering pace with nine birdies in a 63.
Faldo, who plays the much tougher South Course today, knows he will need a marked improvement if he is going to climb among the leaders. "That 69 felt more like a 79," he said. "It was so easy out there. I felt I should have birdied every hole. The weather was perfect and the course was set up for really low scoring. I am not surprised that some of the guys are making mincemeat of it."
Faldo, who started his round at the 10th, looked to be in a similar vein when he birdied two of his first three holes, but he had to wait until his eleventh hole before getting another, which followed a three-putt six at his tenth. "This was where I should have made an early move and now I have some work to do tomorrow, the South isn't going to be as easy as this," he said. His disappointment was compounded by an inability to take advantage of the four par fives, all reachable in two shots, which he covered in level par.
In contrast, Barry Lane was delighted with his 69 on the same course after going close to withdrawing from the tournament because of a viral infection that confined him to bed for three days.
Martin's impressive opening 63 was later matched by his countryman, Kirk Triplett.
Mr John Lapworth Holt, of West Wittering, West Sussex, the boat designer, whose first great success was with the Merlin, the 14ft racing yacht which he designed after the Second World War. He developed more than 40 class designs, including the Enterprise, Mirror Cadet, GP14, Heron Hornet and Miracle, and more than 250,000 of his designs can be found worldwide. He left estate valued at £317,421 net.
Major-General Alexander Martin Ferrie, of Hove, East Sussex, Deputy Director of Medical Services United Kingdom Land Forces 1977-81, left estate valued at £544,182 net.
Mr John Ferguson Simpson, of Upton Grey, Hampshire, the ear, nose and throat specialist, former consultant at St Mary's Hospital, London, a leading authority on throat cancer and a pioneer of laryngeal surgery, left estate valued at £369,365 net.
Marie Vera Steele, of South Normanton, Derbyshire, left estate valued at £1,095,946 net.
She left £111,000 and some effects to personal legatees, £10,000 each to the Retreat Mental Nursing Home, York, Oxfam, and Amnesty International British Section, £7,000 to the RNLI, and £5,000 each to the RNID, Bristol Cancer Help Centre, Unicef, Cruse and the RNIB, and the residue equally between the Friends Trust, Bradford School of Peace Studies, the Cheshire Home, Alfreton, the Hospice Fund at Kings Mill Hospital, Sutton in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, and Ashgate Hospice, Chesterfield.
Other estates include (net, before tax):
Mrs Aileen Constant, of Redhill, Surrey£668,010.
Mr Charles Edward Croom, of Ringmer, East Sussex£677,861.
Sarah Margaret Drake, of Guildford, Surrey£1,218,236.
Mr James Cobbett Fenton, of York£1,983,464.
Marie Gertrude Glover, of Crosby, Merseyside£713,750.
Mr Nicholas Melecka, of Doncaster, South Yorkshire£600,187.
Mr Harold Desmond Francis de Beynac-Sheen, of London W8, retired business executive£692,714.
Mr Henry Beaufoy Purcell, of London SW5£1,178,783.
Glasgow
Appointments
Professor Sandy Love to the Chair of Equine Clinical Studies. Professor Love was previously a Senior Lecturer in the university's Department of Veterinary Medicine.
Professor Peter A. Kemp to the Chair of Housing & Urban Studies. Professor Kemp is presently Joseph Rowntree Professor of Housing Policy and Director of the Centre for Housing Policy at the University of York.
Professor Ivan N Turok to the Chair of Urban Economic Development from April 1. Professor Turok is presently Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Strathclyde.
Professor Simon Wheeler to the Cormack Chair of Civil Engineering. Professor Wheeler was previously a Lecturer in Civil Engineering at the University of Oxford.
Ordinations & inductions
The Rev Rolf H Biles to Shortlees, Kilmarnock.
The Rev Ian McIlroy to Kirkmaiden with Stoneykirk.
The Rev Iain A Sutherland to Lybster and Bruan.
Induction
The Rev Bruce F Neill to Maxton with Mertoun with St Boswell's.
Translations
The Rev Kenneth J Pattison from Associate at St Andrew's & St George's, Edinburgh to Kilmuir & Logie Easter.
The Rev Hugh Watt from Lochwood, Glasgow, to Urquhart and Glenmoriston.
The Rev Ada Younger from Garthamlock & Craigend East, Glasgow to Dennistoun Central, Glasgow.
Retirements
The Rev John E Gisbey from Kirkmahoe.
The Rev John Murrie from Kirkliston
The Rev William Taylor from Buckie North.
A service of thanksgiving for the life of Mr Richard Cuthbert Giles Caldicot, actor, was held yesterday at St Paul's Covent Garden. Canon John Oates, Rector of St Bride's, Fleet Street, and Chaplain to the Adelphi Theatre, officiated.
Mr Jonathan Caldicot-Bull, son, read the lesson. Mr Frank Thornton paid tribute and Mr Alan Davis gave an address. Miss Liz Robertson, soprano, accompanied by Mr Chris Walker, piano, sang Loverly from My Fair Lady.
BIRTHS: William Henry Harrison, 9th American President 1841, Berkeley, Virginia, 1773; Edward Carson, 1st Baron Carson, lawyer and leader of the Irish Unionist Party, Dublin, 1854; Anthony Hope (pseudonym of Sir Anthony Hope Hopkins), novelist, London, 1863; Mrs Patrick Campbell, actress, London, 1865; Alban Berg, composer, Vienna, 1885; Jim Laker, cricketer, Bradford, 1922; Brendan Behan, writer, Dublin, 1923.
DEATHS: John Hooper, Bishop of Worcester, burnt at the stake, Gloucester, 1555; Nevil Maskelyne, Astronomer Royal 1765-1811, Greenwich, 1811; Henry Gally Knight, architect and writer, London, 1846; Fyodor Dostoyevsky, novelist, St Petersburg, 1881; Johann Barthold Jongkind, painter, Cote-St-Andre, France, 1891; Sir Truby King, pioneer of mothercraft, Wellington, New Zealand, 1938; Norman Douglas, essayist and novelist, Capri, 1952; Bill Haley, rock and roll singer, Harlingen, Texas, 1981; Yuri Andropov, General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party 1982-84, Moscow, 1984.
The first recorded race meeting in England was held at Roodee Fields, Chester, 1540.
Lord Darnley, Consort of Mary Queen of Scots, was murdered in Edinburgh, 1567.
The British Government declared a state of emergency after a month-long miners' strike, 1972.
Mr Norman Adams, painter and ceramic sculptor, 69; the Countess of Airlie, 63; Mr Brian Bennett, Shadows' drummer, 56; Mr Ryland Davies, tenor, 53; Air Commandant B.M. Ducat-Amos, former director, RAF Nursing Service, 75; Miss Mia Farrow, actress, 51; Dr Garret FitzGerald, former Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland, 70; Mr Paul Flynn, MP, 61; Mr Bernard Gallacher, golfer, 47; Dr George Guest, organist, 72; Mr Justice Johnson, 63; Mr Ben E. King, singer, 54; Mr Sandy Lyle, golfer, 38; Sir Donald Miller, former chairman, ScottishPower, 69; Dame Annette Penhaligon, 50; Miss Amanda Roocroft, opera singer, 30.
Professor M.J.H. Sterling, Vice-Chancellor, Brunel University, 50; Mr Gordon Strachan, footballer, 39; Miss Janet Suzman, actress, 57; Mr Clive Swift, actor, 60; Mr Brian Wenham, media consultant and journalist, 59; Lord Williams of Elvel, 63.
Mr David Tatham to be High Commissioner (non-resident) to The Maldives from March, in succession to Mr John Field who will be retiring from the Diplomatic Service.
With some occasional flippancy the writer describes a scene which is still part of the pageant of Parliament.
A SEARCH FOR GUY FAWKES
Very many of our readers have possibly never heard of a singular duty which the Lord Great Chamberlain is bound to perform on the opening day of each Session. It is enacted by an order inscribed upon the Journals of the House of Lords that, a few hours before Parliament meets, this high functionary shall, either himself or by his deputy, carefully search the vaults under the House and see that no Guy Fawkes with his dark lantern and barrels of powder, lies in wait with fell intent to blow up the Three Estates ...
Eight or nine Beefeaters in frills and rosettes, their officer, with his incongruous cocked hat, a few Marshalmen in tail coats and tags, and square caps, with a Policeman or two to remind us of the century, made up the Search party; whatever higher dignitaries may have been present were lost in plain clothes. The Beefeaters and Marshalmen and Policemen having been provided with lanterns, the procession walked through the House of Lords, the Central Hall and the House of Commons, and, turning in at a small side door, descended an iron ladder to the ventilating chamber beneath the House of Commons. This chamber and all the vaults are whitewashed and beautifully clean, and abound with ventilating machinery. Here the air which ascends to the Houses is filtered and regulated, and warmed and moistened, and otherwise made fit for legislators to breathe. Thermometers, anemometers, gauges, jets, whirligigs, and other contrivances are everywhere; but there is plenty of room to spare for a Guy Fawkes, for we walk through corridor after corridor clean and empty. The Marshalmen and Beefeaters, as in duty bound, take it all au serieux, and peer into air chambers and recesses as though they really expected to find at least a can of nitro-glycerine. Down another ladder they descend to another ventilating chamber, into which air rushes through strained canvas, which excludes the smuts. The vaults are, as it were, in three decks, and a third steep iron ladder leads to the lowest Avernus, a descent not very easy. It would be odd indeed if the searchers lit upon so much as a conspiring rat, for the whole place has been lighted up beforehand, in order that the Beefeaters and their tail may know where to step. There are lower depths and darker corners, side cellars, and shut passages into which they do not look; and what may lurk there no one knows. In fact the rule seems to be on no account to search any spot which might really hold a live conspirator.
This Searchit dates, we believe, from the time of Titus Oatesis purely a custom, for we are told that it is not, as taxpayers might apprehend, bolstered up by any fees to those concerned. It is a great, or rather a little, piece of nonsense; but there is, nevertheless, no doubt of the necessity of due and seasonable inspection of the cellars. The Clerkenwell explosion is enough to convince us of this, and we state a fact which, we believe, has never before been made public, when we say that in the Chartist days of 1848 the Home Office received information of a regularly planned Guy Fawkes' plot. A sewer was to be entered from the river, powder was to be placed in the drain already referred to as running directly under the Throne, and the British Constitution was to be blown into the air ...
Lieutenant-Colonel Brian Madden, DSO, died on January 13 aged 87. He was born on December 1, 1908.
BRIAN MADDEN was second-in-command of the 6th (territorial) Battalion The Black Watch when it arrived in Tunisia in 1943 and took over command when its CO was mortally wounded on April 12. He was awarded the DSO for the bravery and flair with which he then conducted a series of hard battles. These culminated in the final dash across the base of Cap Bon which brought the war in that theatre to an end on May 13, 1943.
Brian John George Madden was educated at Wellington, from where he went to Sandhurst in 1927. His father had died of wounds sustained in 1915 while commanding the 1st Battalion The Irish Guards, and he spent much of his youth with his mother's family, the Macpherson Grants of Ballindalloch. Here he learnt of his ancestor, William Grant, who in 1725 had raised one of the independent companies from which The Black Watch was formed in 1739; he was commissioned into the regiment in 1928.
Sent to India with the 1st Battalion he contracted a tropical disease and, judged medically unfit to serve overseas, he resigned his commission. He rejoined on the outbreak of war in 1939 and was adjutant of the 6th Battalion when it was evacuated from Dunkirk. He commanded the battalion in Italy in 1944 and won plaudits for its performance at Cassino and afterwards. He was seriously wounded in July but he recovered to participate in the battle of the Rhine crossing in 1945.
After VE-Day he was given command of the 1st Battalion The Gordon Highlanders, but early in 1946 he persuaded the authorities to let him have back the 6th Black Watch, then in Greece, for the time remaining before its disbandment in June, after which he again retired from the Army.
Madden was a supremely effective tactician and leader. He had the incisive mind of the chess and bridge-playing mathematician he was. He had complete disregard for his personal safety and it was typical of his style of leadership that as the order to go into the attack at Cassino was awaited he was walking up and down among his men, unperturbed even when a shell splinter nicked his chin. This was not bravado, but his way of showing his men that he shared their dangers.
He was a man of great humanity. He had no truck with those who counted the "bag" of the enemy dead like so many brace of grouse. He felt as much compassion for their wives and mothers as for the families of British casualties. He spared no effort to win in battle, but he was determined that war should not coarsen those who had to wage it. His own lifestyle verged on the austere; but though he himself had no taste for rumbustious and rude relaxation, he never begrudged others their fun.
In 1948 he became assistant superintendent of the Middlesex Hospital, and later secretary of the St Helier group of hospitals. He retired in 1974 and was then a governor of the Royal Star and Garter Home until 1984. In 1969 he had married an army widow, Mary Cummings. She died in 1989 and he is survived by a nephew and two stepchildren.
The Most Rev Derek Worlock, CH, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool, died yesterday from lung cancer aged 76. He was born on February 4, 1920.
The 52-year ecclesiastical career of Derek Worlock straddled the period of greatest upheaval and adjustment in the recent history of the Roman Catholic Church. Fortunately, most of it happened at a time when he was still young enough to adapt to it himself. The successful adjustment of the English Catholic community to changed social mores owes as much to him as to any man.
His remark in 1968 that avoidance of contraception was "not the acid test of Christianity", while irreproachably orthodox, nonetheless expressed an English attitude which soothed the handling of that divisive issue among Catholics in the decades ahead. Like Newman, Worlock was someone prepared to drink the Pope's health, but preferred to drink to conscience first.
By far the greater part of his influence was exercised out of sight. Those who oblige others to compromise are themselves liable to be the target of others' frustrations, and Worlock sometimes felt the weight of that. He was inclined to depression, even a touch of paranoia. He was certainly more popular and liked, both by his flock and by those around him, than he seemed willing to allow.
Derek John Harford Worlock was born in London, the son of parents, Captain Harford Worlock and Dora Worlock, who were both converts to the Roman Catholic faith. It was a lively and stimulating household, each parent taking an informed interest in the affairs of the day. His father was Conservative agent for the Winchester constituency, where the family moved in 1929, and his mother believed in and worked for the emancipation of women, particularly on the suffrage question.
Worlock was the only Roman Catholic pupil during his time at Winton House preparatory school. After his studies at St Edmund's College, Ware, he enrolled at the seminary at Allen Hall to train for the priesthood. His ordination was at Westminster Cathedral in June 1944, and his first appointment as a curate was to Our Lady of Victories, Kensington.
His discreet and conscientious manner had impressed the authorities at Allen Hall, who identified him as a potentially gifted administrator: possibly his father's example as an "organisation man" within the Tory party had shaped his operating style. Only a year after his ordination he was chosen to be private secretary to Cardinal Griffin, then in the early stages of his term as Archbishop of Westminster, and thus began Worlock's long association with the internal machinery of English Roman Catholic institutions.
He was made a monsignor at 29, a very early age, and served to the end of Cardinal Griffin's life and throughout his successor's reign. On Cardinal Godfrey's death in 1963, Worlock remained to help to settle in Archbishop (later Cardinal) Heenan, but had clearly earned himself a more senior rank. As an obvious preparation for the episcopacy, he was made parish priest of St Mary and St Michael in the East End of London, where he remained for only just under two years but still made a considerable impression.
There he developed a surprising ministry for down-and-outs, and established a pastoral service for the Irish immigrants who sometimes arrived homeless and penniless at London railway stations. It is said that on his consecration as Bishop of Portsmouth in 1965, an elderly East End tramp turned up at the cathedral to be near to the "Father Worlock" who had befriended him.
Worlock was, of all people, probably the most intimately involved in the English presence at the Second Vatican Council, both as the secretary to the English cardinals who successively took part and as a peritus, or official consultant, in which capacity he interested himself in defining and developing the role and status of the Catholic laity. He is believed to have kept a detailed private diary of the council; it is plain that his close involvement in it greatly influenced his theological outlook.
The most immediate English product of the council was the setting up of the Roman Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales in place of the more ad hoc structure of the English hierarchy, and as Bishop of Portsmouth he was the ideal choice as its first episcopal secretary. He also became a consultor to the new Council of Laity in Rome, reflecting his earlier interest, and presided over the Laity Commission which the English bishops created soon afterwards. In that capacity he played the key role in handling the widespread and threatening outbreaks of dissent following the publication in 1968 of Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae on birth control.
Worlock kept his bridges intact in all directions, including the London intellectual Roman Catholic scene where dissent was most outspoken and organised. His own view of the matter was unclear, though he had obvious human sympathies with married couples who found the Pope's teaching too extreme. He was helpful towards those of the younger clergy who found Humanae Vitae to be an acute challenge to their consciences. But there is nothing to suggest that Worlock was ever anything but completely loyal to the Pope's position, even if he might have wished it had been differently expressed.
His years at Portsmouth were successful locally, with unprecedented ecumenical co-operation and the projection of an image for the Roman Catholic Church in local political and civic affairs that was well received. He took on a programme of renewal of the local church institutional life that was a model of how things could be done, with lay people closely involved in a structure of consultation at parish, deanery and diocesan level.
Worlock was an obvious candidate for Westminster on the death of Cardinal Heenan, though his long service as private secretary to three previous incumbents had left him with a reputation, unfairly, as a hatchet man who had to carry out tough decisions on behalf of his superiors. More than anything else, this counted against him and he felt a sense of bitterness at what seemed to him to be a diocesan plot to keep him out.
But on the surprisingly adventurous appointment of the Abbot of Ampleforth, almost simultaneously with Worlock's own translation to Liverpool, he was splendidly loyal and supportive. When the newly consecrated Basil Hume led the Benedictine monks into Westminster Abbey for vespers on the evening of his installation at the cathedral itself an ecumenical breakthrough few who were there will forget Worlock was conspicuously present, the most senior Catholic prelate in the abbey.
Liverpool archdiocese had been governed benignly by Archbishop Beck but urgently needed repairs to its structural life before spiritual renewal could begin, and almost immediately upon his appointment the new archbishop tackled this vast and intractable problem. At the same time he took up an earlier acquaintance with David Sheppard, the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool, which both men nurtured into a productive, indeed unique, friendship. Nowhere else in Britain was there to be seen a better relationship between two overlapping episcopal regimes, and Worlock benefited from Sheppard's insight into inner city life as Sheppard benefited from Worlock's insights into the mission of the Christian Church. Only in Liverpool could it be said that Pope John XXIII's exhortation "to do separately only those things we cannot do together" was manifestly achieved.
On Worlock's translation to Liverpool, it was a natural progression for him to move from the post of episcopal secretary of the national conference of bishops to being its vice-president. This maintained his fruitful relationship with Cardinal Hume, who became president at about the same time. They were close allies in several projects: the Liverpool National Pastoral Congress in 1980; the attempt to move the synod of bishops in Rome in a more liberal direction on marriage issues later the same year; and the visit of Pope John Paul II to Britain in 1982.
The Liverpool congress was something of a triumph for the city's archbishop. He supported the idea in its sometimes awkward gestation period, presided over the complex preparations, moved smoothly round behind the scenes while it was taking place, attending to the fine-tuning, and brought the bishops afterwards to the point where they could endorse, as their own strategy for the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, most of what the congress had asked for.
Later that year it fell to him to tell the Pope and other world leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, in public, that church discipline on divorce and remarriage was too severe. In the context, speaking to members of the international synod of bishops in Rome, it took some courage for Worlock to question the established line, particularly as the Pope was well known to hold strong and very conservative views.
Though Worlock failed to achieve a public shift in fact the Pope took what seemed to be an even more restrictive line in his response Worlock was undoubtedly voicing a change in Catholic opinion. What he urged was a "development" rather than a change, though on the key issue, the sinfulness of every act of contraceptive intercourse, development indeed meant change. In his own archdiocese, priests were given to understand that he would not criticise them if they used their own judgment; nor if they encouraged divorced and remarried Catholics, in the right circumstances, to receive Holy Communion. But he always made plain that he sought justification for such pastoral strategies in orthodox theological thinking; he was not a rebel, nor did he encourage the rebellious.
Worlock made great efforts to ensure that the Pope was very well briefed before visiting Britain in 1982, and the visit's striking success owed much to him. Even on the issue of Holy Communion for those in irregular marriages, the Pope's remarks seemed to convey a belated acknowledgement of the strength of the Worlock case. At least he did not explicitly condemn what he must have known the Archbishop of Liverpool was discreetly encouraging, emphasising compassion rather than law, Worlock's very point.
One of his small personal triumphs was to persuade the Vatican to allow the Pope to visit the Anglican cathedral in Liverpool, and the sudden spontaneous applause of that mixed but largely non-Catholic congregation was his reward. The moment is still remembered as a landmark in relations between the different churches of a city not until then known for a spirit of religious reconciliation.
His service to Liverpool in other ways was immense. At the time of the Toxteth riots Worlock made it his business, sometimes with David Sheppard and sometimes alone, to intercede with the police and with the black community. It was in the course of observing their conflict on the street first-hand that he was almost mown down by a charging police vehicle. Toxteth brought him close to Liverpool's many agonies as nothing had done before, and opened many doors to the Church which would otherwise have stayed locked.
Two football tragedies, Heysel and Hillsborough, brought massive grief and notoriety to Liverpool in the 1980s. After Liverpool fans rioted and many fans of the Italian club Juventus died in the ensuing clash, Worlock was crucial in the effort to heal relations between his city and Turin, which he visited afterwards with a civic delegation.
The Hillsborough disaster in 1989 brought one of the most extraordinary acts of Christian ministry of his, or indeed any, career. He visited the stadium in Sheffield where the deaths happened, then returned immediately to preside over a Requiem Mass in his cathedral, broadcast live by radio and television. Spontaneously the cathedral itself was packed, and the street and open space outside became the focus of an extraordinary gathering of silent people, many of them young fans or parents of fans, all of them traumatised by their horror and loss.
The occasion, and his words of comfort so widely broadcast, seemed to bring the very mercy of God to meet the city's sore needs. What he conveyed was his total participation in the suffering, which he deeply felt. The last barrier between the shy, intellectual middle-class southerner and this tough northern working-class city had come down. For all his other efforts for Merseyside, struggling to revive its economy, pushing the idea of the free port, opposing factory closures, interceding with ministers over the chaotic local government situation, he was never more truly Liverpool's Archbishop than when he stood by its bedsides and gravesides after Hillsborough. Although it came some years later, his highly unusual appointment, for a Catholic prelate, as a Companion of Honour in the New Year Honours of last December reflected in part the gratitude of the political world for the work he did at that time.
Derek Worlock appeared to have continued the practice of keeping a diary at least until his final illness. It contained, he used to hint, some private glimpses of the Second Vatican Council at work. It would not be uncharacteristic if some of his observations were extremely candid, though in his lifetime he protected his more intimate thoughts and rarely confided in others.
Worlock published a number of books, all except Better Together (1988), written with David Sheppard, devotional in tone. He edited two anthologies. Take One at Bedtime (1962) and Turn and Turn Again (1971). Each revealed him as a man not only of wide reading but as someone who himself possessed the ability to say profound things simply.
Ronald Fletcher, radio broadcaster, died on February 6 aged 85. He was born on July 10, 1910.
RONALD FLETCHER was a BBC radio newsreader of the old school, the possessor of a well-modulated, light tenor reading voice which reminded one listener of a highly polished walnut table. Had it not been for an unhappy twist of fate, he might have made a successful transition to television. Instead, he will be remembered for presenting innumerable news bulletins and for reading the quotations on Radio 4's Quote...Unquote for almost two decades.
There was something of the gentleman amateur about Fletcher. He was not overtly ambitious, and work was done to finance his real loves of horse-racing and golf. On one occasion in 1963 he caused a wave of hysteria to ripple through the studios when he forgot his appointment at the microphone altogether (he was having breakfast), leaving a flustered sub-editor to read the 9am bulletin. There was, too, a little of the frustrated actor about him. He would occasionally suggest to Nigel Rees, the presenter of Quote...Unquote, that he try reading a certain quotation in, say, a cockney accent. Rees would dissuade him from such excesses: the whole point of the joke was that Fletcher should sound like Fletcher.
The son of a chartered accountant, Ronald Fletcher inherited wealth from his grandfather who owned coalmines in the North of England. After schooldays at Shrewsbury, he read English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. But he devoted more attention to the racecourse than to the iambic pentameter, and was sent down. The 1930s saw Fletcher fritter away his inheritance at the races, and in a string of failed business ventures. During the war he served in an anti-aircraft regiment, but he was not a natural soldier.
Back in civilian life, with no money but with a splendid voice and great self-confidence, he joined the BBC. This was the late 1940s, and Fletcher was employed first on the Light Programme and then on the serious news bulletins of the old Home Service.
His fortunes improved dramatically when he joined up with the Canadian actor Bernard Braden. In 1950 Braden had launched his own radio series, Breakfast with Braden, followed by Bedtime with Braden. These were new, informal types of comedy show, and provided a showcase not only for glamorous personalities of the day, like Braden's wife Barbara Kelly, but for the talents of young writers such as Frank Muir and Denis Norden.
Fletcher was invited to read the endpieces to the shows. And while he could hardly be said to be a comedian in his own right his announcements were written for him their success propelled him, incidentally, to a new level of celebrity. Afterwards he was asked to read for all sorts of light entertainment shows.
In the late 1960s Fletcher left the BBC's newsreading team in order to make a go of it in television. He appeared on Twice a Fortnight and on the new consumer programme Braden's Week. The latter ended abruptly in 1971, when Braden was sacked from the BBC after a row over his right to make commercials.
Esther Rantzen, who had started as a researcher for Braden's show, stepped in and began to work on a new show with a similiar formula, That's Life. Again, the show's producer thought it would be a good idea to use Fletcher to read the newspaper clippings, but because of an administrative error it was Cyril Fletcher who was approached about the job and who went on to make a long career on That's Life.
Ronald Fletcher's last post was as the resident reader of quotations in Quote...Unquote, 1976-94. He was perfect for the job, capable of bringing a lump to the throat of a listener one moment, and of making him laugh the next, without ever losing that dignified tone of delivery.
He married his first wife Terri in 1938. The marriage ended in divorce in 1958, and in 1959 he married Rita Dando. She survives him, together with their son and daughter, and the son and daughter of his first marriage.
RONNIE O'SULLIVAN, who injured his right foot when accidently kicking a concrete plant pot earlier in the day, overcame intensifying discomfort to beat Darren Morgan
6-4 in the quarter-finals of the Benson and Hedges Masters snooker tournament at the Wembley Conference Centre last night.
The defending champion, usually the game's most fluent player, was badly restricted by the injury, which required the application of an ice pack and strapping, but showed more determination than in many matches this season when he has had no such physical handicap. O'Sullivan, who will face Andy Hicks for a place in the final, compiled only two half-century breaks, of 52 and 53, but won one frame on the black and two others on the pink to record his sixth consecutive victory in the event.
It was a strange night all round. Apart from seeing the athletic 20-year-old outpaced around the table by John Street, the veteran referee, a pair of intoxicated spectators interrupted play in the fifth frame and had to be forcibly removed from the arena. Also, O'Sullivan found himself in a snooker from which escape was impossible, and, in the seventh frame, he put down his cue after potting the pink without realising that he still required the final black to win.
O'Sullivan, who confirmed at the end of the match that he would be having X-rays taken of the injured foot, said: "I just couldn't concentrate. I was everywhere and had to grind it out. In the last couple of frames, the foot grew very painful. I was really determined because I badly want to retain the title, but the only reason I won was because I brought Darren down to my level. If he had played his normal game, he would have beaten me easily."
Despite O'Sullivan's problems, he has no intention of withdrawing from the event. "Whatever the doctors say, I am going to carry on," he said. "Never in a million years will I pull out and there's nothing that will stop me getting to the table against Andy."
Hicks, who is attempting to become the first sponsor's wild-card entry to capture the Masters title since they were introduced in 1990, had earlier progressed by beating John Parrott, the former world and United Kingdom champion, 6-3. Hicks, from Devon, makes a lucrative habit of reserving his best snooker for the game's big occasions. As the world No17, he had no automatic right to compete at Wembley, but, after runs to the semi-finals of the world and United Kingdom championship last year, it came as no surprise when his inclusion in the field was announced.
From Mr Christopher Maguire
Sir, Reading Chancellor Kohl's assertion that the nation state's days are over, I wondered what lessons he had drawn from the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the largest artificial federation of all, or from the separatist conflicts in Chechenia, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland, Spain, Czechoslovakia, Kashmir, Indonesia, to name but a few.
All these conflicts seem to me to represent a revolt, whether military or political, by human groups with a common history, customs and culture against the imposition of a greater union, which in practice has meant oppressive central control and a cavalier disregard for their regional identity. Such aspirations are entirely different from the expansionist conquests of the historical nation state which Herr Kohl presumably has in mind when he refers to Germany's invasion of Belgium in two world wars.
If this interpretation is correct then perhaps Britain and John Major are far closer than Herr Kohl to the mood of the age. It is the latter's vision of a European federation with political and monetary union central control which has had its day.
Yours faithfully,
CHRISTOPHER MAGUIRE,
15 Harston Road,
Newton, Cambridge.
From the Duke of Devonshire
Sir, I write to express my alarm at the reaction in some quarters to Chancellor Kohl's Leuven speech (report, February 3; letters, February 7). It would appear that the Chancellor is telling the world that, in spite of all he and his predecessors have said, his country has not changed its spots.
He implied that if Germany did not get its way over monetary, followed by political union in Europe there might be a return to force of arms perhaps resulting in a future British Prime Minister bleating over the airwaves about some "far-away country of which we know little".
In spite of being defeated in two wars this century, modern Germany seems determined to hold sway over Europe, with a threat of aggression if it fails. Ever-closer European integration threatens the nation state the natural state of affairs for a country.
The time has come for us to stand up for the individual rights of the countries within the European Community. The siren voices of those who might say that in the interests of peace Germany's views must be acceded to must be resisted.
Yours faithfully,
DEVONSHIRE,
Chatsworth, Bakewell, Derbyshire.
February 7.
Birmingham City expect to complete the signing of John Sheridan, the Ireland midfield player, from Sheffield Wednesday today. Sheridan, 31, will move to St Andrew's for a month's loan with an option to a £600,000 permanent deal, with another £200,000 to be paid if Birmingham are promoted to the FA Carling Premiership. Sheridan will join Vinny Samways, who yesterday signed for the club on loan from Everton for the rest of the season.
Stan Lazarides, of West Ham United, broke a leg in the FA Cup-tie against Grimsby Town on Wednesday and will miss the rest of the season.
DAVE BASSETT gladly accepted one of the most precarious jobs in football - the managership of Crystal Palace - yesterday. He thus renews his acquaintance with Ron Noades, the Palace chairman, whose vigorous, hands-on approach has so often led to conflict with employees.
Bassett, 51, first laid out his ground rules before agreeing a 21/2-year contract at the Endsleigh Insurance League first division club. "I'm no puppet for anyone," he said. "Ron is an outspoken chairman and I'm sure we will have our disagreements, but I said to him that, if he wants me to manage the club, he should let me get one with it. I wouldn't be here if I thought I wouldn't be allowed to do the job."
Steve Coppell, the technical director, and Ray Lewington and Peter Nicholas, the first-team coaches, will continue at Selhurst Park. "I was keen that there should be no casualties when I came here," Bassett said. "Although I have some sympathy for Ray and Peter over what has happened, they have been doing good jobs and I'm sure they'll carry on doing so."
Bassett has masterminded six promotion-winning campaigns with Wimbledon, where he first worked with Noades, and Sheffield United. He also holds the Football League record for the briefest managerial tenure three days when he joined Palace in 1984 before changing his mind and returning to Wimbledon.
"I was a bit younger then and it seemed a good idea at the time," he said. "I soon realised I made the wrong decision." With Lewington falling out with Noades in public over team selection policy and Bassett still available after leaving Sheffield United by mutual consent in December, a change in Palace's backroom staff was always likely. That it involved an addition, rather than a replacement, was the surprise.
More strange was a lengthy statement issued by the club that stressed its commitment to "playing good football". Bassett, throughout his 16-year managerial career, has usually been associated with the up-and-at-'em, long-ball version of the beautiful game.
"I'm very conscious of being typecast like that; it sometimes irks me and irritates me," he said. "Football fashions and trends change and, of course, I would like to play eye-catching stuff, but you have to play in a style that best suits the players you've got. At the end of the day, it's all about winning. It's no good playing attractive football and then getting relegated, is it?"
Lewington will select the side for the last time tomorrow, when Palace play at home to Sheffield United, before Bassett takes control. Bassett was twice interviewed for the vacant Ireland job, but, after hearing nothing except that Mick McCarthy had been appointed, he pursued other options.
McCarthy's successor at Millwall was confirmed yesterday as Jimmy Nicholl, the Raith Rovers manager. Nicholl, 38, the former Northern Ireland and Manchester United defender, will take with him Martin Harvey, his assistant, at Stark's Park.
"I'm going to a new club and, within four months, we could be in the Premiership," Nicholl said. "Normally when you take over, the club is in a bit of a mess, but all Millwall need is a bit of fine tuning."
From Mr Martin Horwood
Sir, I wonder how much unhappiness the bleak instruction, "No flowers, please", to be found in the Deaths columns, causes to friends and acquaintances (letters, February 1, 8).
Flowers are the one personal contribution that we can make to an otherwise formal, ritualised business. The cards accompanying them provide joy and solace to the bereaved family, the flowers themselves colour and celebration to the service, a lasting memory and some feeling of participation to those who attend. The next instruction might be, "No tears, please".
Pile my coffin with flowers, I say. It is sadly, the last thing that anyone can do for me in this "vale of tears".
Yours sincerely,
MARTIN HORWOOD,
Aldergate,
Aldington Road,
Lympne, Hythe, Kent.
From Mr Hugh Colver
Sir, Mr M. G. Power's suggestions (letter, February 5) that Mr Michael Heseltine was wrong to ask civil servants to explain policy, and that anonymity is a virtue for civil servants, should not go unchallenged. It has long been the duty of the Government Information Service, in which I was privileged to serve for 17 years, to explain what they do.
Of course it is the job of ministers to explain and advocate their policies and to demonstrate how those policies relate to a particular party political philosophy. Indeed this Government has suffered politically because ministers have not sought to gain maximum political advantage from their activities.
However, it is nonsense to suggest that civil servants can never engage in dialogue about policy because any public protagonism of a policy that may be anathema to an opposition political party would make it difficult to serve a government of a different persuasion.
As a head of information in a government department it is one's duty to serve ministers and to further the policies and objectives of the Government, even if those policies are surrounded by considerable political controversy. Of course, in so doing one is furthering the objectives of the political party in office but that is perfectly proper. It is one of the benefits of political office.
In my experience ministers are very aware that they must not involve civil servants in any party political activity and government information officers are careful not to be dragged into party politics by so fierce an advocacy that misinterpretation is possible. This is sometimes a difficult line to draw, but ministers and government information officers are drawing it with great care and comparative ease every day.
Of one thing we can be sure. Any future Labour government would expect to gain maximum advantage from the trappings of political office and would not understand a Civil Service and particularly a government information service that did not see it as its job to explain and promote government policy. Especially in the run-up to a general election, the Deputy Prime Minister was quite right to remind the Civil Service of its duty.
Yours sincerely,
HUGH COLVER
(Chief of Public Relations, Ministry
of Defence, 1987-92; Director of
Communications, Conservative
Central Office, 1995),
1 St Austell Road, SE13.
February 6.
From Mr Alan Smith
Sir, The repositioning of the South Pole by 18in poses no serious threat to past explorers' claims to have reached it. Your report "Satellite technology moves South Pole to its true (sic) position" (February 8) also states that the technology used is only accurate to one yard. This would suggest that the old position and the new position are in fact the same place within this tolerance.
Yours faithfully,
ALAN SMITH,
35 Lansdell Road, Mitcham, Surrey.
February 8.
From Mrs Penelope Lively
Sir, While welcoming the principle that the book is an appropriate subject for celebration at the millennium (Simon Jenkins, January 27; letter, February 6), I would suggest that the proper medium is the British Library the national archive.
The new building at St Pancras has had its problems but these are now largely overcome, and after its opening from 1997, it will be the natural focus for any such millennial celebration of the printed word.
I write as Chairman of the British Library's Centre for the Book, which exists to promote the significance of the book in all its forms.
Yours sincerely,
PENELOPE LIVELY,
55 Gibson Square, N1.
February 6.
From Dr J. A. Collings-Wells
Sir, Dr Stuttaford recommends sacks be placed under the driving wheels of cars stuck in snow. Nearly 60 years ago my father taught me a far more effective method, learnt from his days on the mud roads of East Africa before the First World War.
Two lengths of chicken wire, each 3ft long by 1ft wide, placed under the driving wheels, provide a much better grip and work equally well in mud or snow.
This simple device has got me out of trouble on very many occasions. In the sort of weather we are experiencing at the moment it can mean the difference between getting home or spending a night out.
Yours truly,
JOHN COLLINGS-WELLS,
Rivercroft, Undershore Road,
Lymington, Hampshire.
February 7.
From Mr William J. Jory
Sir, Dr Stuttaford ("Medical briefing", February 7) rightly reminds drivers stuck in deep snow to wear adequate clothing and avoid alcohol, but it is worth re-emphasising his point about the need to keep the vehicle airway clear so that exhaust fumes can be dispersed.
As a visiting eye surgeon in northern Canada for many years, I was advised by long-distance truck drivers not to run the engine, since you may not realise if your exhaust becomes blocked by snow, which could lead to fatal carbon monoxide poisoning.
Better to carry a large candle (and matches). The lighting of candles gives off a surprising amount of heat and uses up a negligible amount of oxygen, provides a welcome boost to morale and enables would-be rescuers to find you. Sandbags, if possible over the driving wheels, can assist traction.
One hopes your readers will not require the last piece of equipment. This is a good length of rope carried next to the driver to throw out of the window if one is caught in an avalanche. The rope tends to snake to the surface of the snow, making detection and subsequent rescue easier.
Yours faithfully,
WILLIAM JORY
(Consultant eye surgeon),
21 B Devonshire Place, W1.
From Mr Andrew Harris
Sir, Surely the only justification for killing grey squirrels so as to encourage red ones is because we find the latter more attractive to look at. I know the grey squirrel is "alien", but I can't think of any reason why this should make us poison them. In any case, it would be impossible to exterminate them in this country they are far too well established.
Environmentalists will no doubt counter it is a worthwhile exercise in its own right to preserve a species endangered in some parts of Britain; but why? Species have always come and gone, and man is powerless to intervene, except at the edges.
Yours sincerely,
A. D. HARRIS,
10 Evertons Close,
Droitwich, Worcester.
From Mrs J. R. Green
Sir, The plan to distribute poisoned bait to grey squirrels in an attempt to preserve red squirrels (report and photograph, February 6) must alarm anyone who has watched what they can do with a bulk supply. For every item eaten, two or three may be buried. In our garden pigeons and tits retrieve them as soon as the squirrel moves off. Squirrels will bury nuts even when cats are around.
I hope steps will be taken on Anglesey to protect the rest of the wildlife.
Yours faithfully,
J. R. GREEN,
Red Hall Villa,
Haughton-le-Skerne,
Carlington, Co Durham.
From Mr Daniel Lyon
Sir, Anne Tayler's index difficulties are not a new phenomenon.
Thirty years ago the council I then worked for had great difficulty in showing title to a piece of land in Blackpool Road, Preston, which it had bought some eighty years before. The massive hand-written property register appeared to show no trace of the deeds, despite what I thought had been an exhaustive search.
However, they were found instantly by my successor, whose thought processes more closely matched those of the Victorian filing clerk: I had naively searched under "B" for Blackpool Road, but he went straight to "P" for Piece of Land.
Yours faithfully,
DAN LYON
(Director of Administration),
Test Valley Borough Council,
Beech Hurst, Weyhill Road,
Andover, Hampshire.
February 7.
From Mr Hugh Douglas
Sir, Serendipity of the type Mrs Anne Tayler encountered in The Complete Guide to What's on Talking Tapes (letter, February 6) is enjoyed by all of us who research in libraries.
My favourite, in 30 years of researching, was in Mr Palmer's estimable index to your own newspaper published in the years before 1906. A report of a railway accident at Nottingham sometime during the last century was listed, not under R, A, or even N, but under H.
The headline of the story read "Horrible rail crash at Nottingham". It compensated for a week's frustrating failure to find the reference I was seeking.
Yours faithfully,
HUGH DOUGLAS,
146 Broadway,
Peterborough, Cambridgeshire.
February 7.
From the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the Liberal Democrat Party
Sir, In 1929, at the inception of the Council for the Protection of Rural England's appeal for public support, our forebears, Stanley Baldwin, J. Ramsay MacDonald and David Lloyd George, pledged their support for the English countryside in a letter to The Times. In the year of CPRE's seventieth anniversary, we are pleased to make that commitment again.
During the next few months we shall differ on so many problems of public importance that we gladly take the opportunity of showing that on one subject we speak with a united voice namely, in advocating the protection of our countryside in its rich personality and character.
We do this in the full confidence that necessary development can and should be directed with thoughtful and scrupulous attention to the charm of our countryside. Much of its beauty is the direct result of man's activities in the past; and in these days when the objectives of planning and land management and the appreciation of landscape are more widely shared than ever before, we ought to be able to make necessary changes in ways that avoid injuring our precious heritage.
We are, Sir, your obedient servants,
JOHN MAJOR,
TONY BLAIR,
PADDY ASHDOWN,
As from the Council for the Protection of Rural England,
Warwick House,
25 Buckingham Palace Road, SW1.
February 8.
From Lord Denham
Sir, You report Mr Tony Blair as asserting that the poll tax, "the most expensive fiasco in fiscal history", would never have become law without the hereditary peers.
Under the Salisbury/Addison convention, agreed by all parties at the time of the Attlee government, the House of Lords does not reject at second reading a Bill that has been in the governing party's manifesto. This has since been extended to cover a genuine wrecking amendment, one which would have the effect of killing such a Bill without further discussion being possible. And this is what the amendment to clause 1 of the Local Government Finance Bill undoubtedly would have done.
It was this factor, even more than the strength of the whip that I sent out, that accounted for the size of the Tory vote on that occasion in 1988.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
DENHAM
(Conservative Whip, 1979-91),
House of Lords.
February 8.
From Mr Ian Mann
Sir, Tony Blair may view the House of Lords as the ascendancy of heredity over democracy but this is to misinterpret its true value.
The overwhelming advantage of the hereditary peers is their initial self-selection by birth, that involuntary act of fate that comes to us all. The overwhelming disadvantage of the House of Commons is their initial self selection by ego, that involuntary act of fate that comes to all politicians.
As a consequence of this the House of Commons may represent the people but, paradoxically, it is the House of Lords that is representative of the people.
Yours faithfully,
IAN MANN,
55 a Redcliffe Square, SW10.
February 8.
From Mr Norman Chang
Sir, With an elected House of Commons, one is never quite sure as to whether or not MPs, when casting votes or when offering a Private Member's Bill for reading, are attempting to further their political careers or are conscious of possible deselection when their five-year fixed tenure expires at a general election.
Hereditary peers, on the other hand, invite no such suspicion of motive. They have a life tenure and thus tend to be driven by principle and duty rather than political ambition.
Yours faithfully,
NORMAN CHANG,
11 Crogsland Road, NW1.
From Mr Peter Le Cheminant
Sir, The principle of replacing the hereditary House of Lords by an elected second chamber was clearly established by the Parliament Act of 1911. That Act expressed sorrow that "such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation".
In the light of the ensuing 84 years' delay in carrying out the then Parliament's good intentions the worldly wise will assume that the House of Commons is reluctant to share its untrammelled power with anyone. In this matter at least MPs will echo (and I suspect will go on echoing) St Augustine's prayer "Lord make me chaste, but not yet".
Yours etc,
PETER Le CHEMINANT,
23 Weylea Avenue,
Burpham, Guildford, Surrey.
February 8.
From Sir John Stokes
Sir, Mr Blair's intemperate attack on the hereditary peers (reports and leading article, February 8) shows that he has no sense of history and no realisation that the House of Lords is the most efficient and respected second chamber in the world. Under Mr Blair's rule the age of chivalry would certainly be gone, to be succeeded by the age of the common man with a vengeance, with the powerful trade unions waiting in the wings.
I do not believe that this French-style revolutionary policy is what most British people want, who respect the hereditary peers and admire their patriotism and good manners. A part-nominated, part-elected second chamber would be a recipe for disaster. As Lord Falkland said in 1641, if it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.
Yours faithfully,
JOHN STOKES,
(Conservative MP for Oldbury and Halesowen, 1970-74, and Halesowen and Stourbridge, 1974-92),
4 The Bradburys, Stratton Audley,
Nr Bicester, Oxfordshire.
We have long known that snooker players were potters of ball. Now we can confirm that they are potty of cue too. The primitive wooden implement by which balls are propelled, into pockets as deep as a schoolboy's, is for many players more than just a tool of the baize trade. For this guild, the cue is a thing of mystique and reverence and if a piece of wood could ever be described in this mixed-metaphored-manner a security blanket of blissful warmth.
On our sports pages today, we carry a report on how much their own cues mean to Britain's snooker players. The most famous of them all is Steve Davis, and his has also been the most famous broken cue in history. Snap, it went one day, by accident, and snap went his snooker form too. The man who has potted more titles than other, less-fortunate members of the fraternity of misspent youth (more titles, in fact, than any member in history) has won not a single tournament for more than 12 months now. A tragic snap: clearly, also, an expensive one.
What puzzles observers, and rightly, is why such great store is set by so simple an object. Is a snooker cue a work of complex craftsmanship, as a cricket bat is, or a hyper-modern fibreglass tennis racket? Evidently not. Do cues come in a perplexing variety of shapes, sizes, finishes, sheens and weights? No, again. So what, dear Davis, is all the fuss about?
Our out-of-form ex-whiz is not alone. Cue-spotters (with or without anoraks) will remember the case of Stephen Hendry: for the sake of a lost cue that cost less than your humblest electric kettle (£20, if you must know), he offered an impassioned reward of £10,000. Mathematical readers of The Times will work out quickly that Hendry could have bought himself 500 cues for the sum put up for his pet cue's restitution.
There are other cue stories...too many, in fact, to be told at once in this column. What is clear, however, is that snooker is played as much in the mind as it is with a cue. Snooker, as a game, makes fewer technical demands on a player than many others. Of course a snooker player needs not to be colour-blind. But more than sumptuous skills, he needs a still head, still feet and sang froid tres, tres froid. Snooker is a mind game and a lost cue, or one cruelly snapped, can sap morale in a way that those of us who do not play snooker will never understand. Or perhaps we understand only too well: and leave the game firmly alone.
Nato has made commendable headway in implementing the military provisions of the Dayton agreement on Bosnia. Armies have been separated more or less on schedule. The task of marking out internal boundaries has fallen behind, but that is because of heavy snow, uncharted minefields and problems created where the lines on the Dayton maps saw through schools and houses. In most areas, the spirit of the agreement is being observed. The bitter disputes over the future of Mostar and Sarajevo, which we report on page 12, are exceptions: but they are very important exceptions.
If these two cities become Balkan Berlins, permanently divided, all bets are off for lasting peace in Bosnia. Sarajevo's reunification is the prime symbol and test of the readiness of Bosnia's separate Serb and Muslim-Croat "entities" to coexist in a federal Bosnian Republic. It is also the necessary condition for setting up Bosnia's collective presidency, parliament and supreme court. Mostar is equally critical, for different reasons. If the city remains divided between Croats and Muslims, the Muslim-Croat Federation will collapse and with it, the entire Dayton plan. Because the federation's Muslim and Croat cantons form a patchwork that could not physically be separated were Bosnia to split in three, the federation's collapse would mean war.
The reintegration of both cities is at a standstill. In Sarajevo yesterday the Bosnian Serbs, who had already suspended all political contact with the Bosnian Government, announced that they will no longer talk to the Nato-led Implementation Force (Ifor).
The reason they give is the Bosnian Government's detention of Bosnian Serb officers, whom it accuses of war crimes. These cases are now being investigated by the Hague war crimes tribunal and unless Mr Justice Goldstone finds grounds to indict them, the men must be released. But this is almost certainly just a pretext. The Serbs have been looking for an excuse to avoid handing the Serb-held suburbs of Sarajevo to Bosnian Government control by March 19, as required by Dayton. They are out to hang onto them at least until after the Bosnian elections due later this year.
That cannot be countenanced. But the Americans must also increase pressure on the Bosnian Government, which is in retreat from the multicultural goals which won it so much international support. It has done too little to convince the Serbs and Croats who make up a fifth of Government-held Sarajevo that they will have a fair share of political power, let alone to reassure the inhabitants of the Serb-held suburbs that that they will be safe in a united city.
The ultranationalist Croats of Mostar can claim no excuse for this week's violence against Hans Koschnick, the European Union's capable administrator for the city, or for breaking into the EU's Mostar headquarters. The fault lies entirely with the Croats. Mostar's 55,000 Muslims suffered terribly at the hands of Croat forces, who fought for a year to establish Mostar as the capital of an independent Croatian state of Herzeg-Bosna. Yet they strongly support a reunited city. Herr Koschnick has produced an administrative plan, as envisaged by Dayton, which is fair and sensible. The Croats moreover asked Herr Koschnick to mediate a fortnight ago and promised to abide by his verdict. But now, urged on by Croat gang-leaders who make fortunes out of partition, the mayor of the Croat part of the city has reverted to the demand that Mostar be "the Croat capital".
Croatia, which supports Mostar's Croats while claiming that it cannot control them, has the power to stop them and must be made to do so. Klaus Kinkel, the German Foreign Minister, is right to hold President Tudjman to account. In Zagreb on Tuesday, he should be blunt that there will be no more assistance to Croatia until it curbs gangster politics in Mostar. Money has begun to talk as loudly as gunfire in the Balkans. In this most difficult of peacemaking tasks, that must be accounted progress.
It is as often a cause for alarm as celebration when the country's leaders all agree. Policies as unhappy as appeasement and the ERM have enjoyed a cross-party consensus in the past. But some worthy causes have also secured all-party backing. Sixty-seven years ago The Times was happy to publish a letter signed by the leaders of Parliament's three biggest parties pledging to preserve the best of rural England. Today we are pleased to reprint the same sentiments endorsed by the three men who lead the same parties. If only the countryside were as unchanging as the politicians' pieties.
John Major, Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown repeat, almost verbatim, the hopes outlined by their predecessors, Stanley Baldwin, Ramsay MacDonald and David Lloyd George, in 1929, on the eve of another famous election when Labour was looking to make an historic breakthrough. It is perhaps unsurprising that the current leaders feel able to echo so exactly the call for sensitive development and thoughtful conservation of another generation for they are, so strikingly, the heirs of Baldwin, MacDonald and Lloyd George.
Mr Major, is like Baldwin, an unshowy representative of Middle England who has coped stoically with royal scandal and appealed lyrically to our nostalgic sense of nation, substituting warm beer and old maids for ploughmen and scythes. Mr Blair, like MacDonald, is a rightwinger with a cautious Shadow Chancellor; Mr Blair, like MacDonald, seems happier in Establishment salons than in his own party. Mr Ashdown, like Lloyd George, combines grand rhetoric with a taste for the flashy and a special sympathy for the female sex.
Yet while these aspects of the political landscape seem surprisingly little changed, the shape of our countryside has been dramatically altered since 1929. The automobile's appetite for land, the mechanisation of farming and the twisted priorities of the common agricultural policy have combined to drive the England of Baldwin's boyhood to the margins of our memories. Village life, its rhythm surprisingly constant from the Anglo-Saxons to The Archers, has never been more changed: small shops are displaced by superstores, property prices are driven up by city refugees and public transport worsens.
Steps have been taken by the party leaders to enact policies in line with the principles to which they put their names. Last October the Environment Secretary, John Gummer, published a thoughtful White Paper on the Countryside which promised steps to safeguard village life: he has also worked hard to conserve rare species. The abandonment of many road-building schemes announced last November should also be applauded. It may be more a matter of conserving taxpayers' money than the land but it is welcome nevertheless. The main Opposition parties have been constructive critics of the roads programme. It is a pity a good case has so often been spoilt by the antics of protesters whose lifestyles mock the traditional virtues of the countryside they claim to protect.
Aside from sustaining sensitive development there is one other service that politicians could do rural people if they sincerely wish to see, "the protection of our countryside in its rich personality and character". The modish metropolitan enthusiasm for a ban on fox hunting should be opposed. A recreation enjoyed by country folk of every class, as much part of the personality of rural England as its hedgerows and Norman churches, it is a liberty worth defending. The English character may be suburban but its roots are rural. Those roots require nurturing, not just casual neglect and the occasional agreement to agree.
King Husain of Jordan has an eye for a bargain. At a powerboat show in LA this week, he was taken with a nippy vessel with a top speed of 100mph and a $400,000 price tag. He offered cash and had $10,000 knocked off.
Correction: Headline: Diary Byline: P.H.S Issue Date: Monday February 19, 1996 P age: 16 Mystery surrounds the identity of a financial heavyweight who snappe d up a powerboat recently in Los Angeles for more than £200,000, but it certainly wasn't King Husain of Jordan, as we reported (February 9). We apologise for any embarrassment caused.
TINA TURNER, she of the huge hair and the strut, is to be backed on her next record by a host of heavenly choirboys. One of the tracks on her next CD needs boy trebles, so ten choristers from Durham's Cathedral Choir School have been chosen to accompany her.
The boys, aged between 10 and 12, are being rehearsed by the cathedral's sub-organist Keith Wright. But sadly, they will not be able to chatter in the dorm after lights-out about any personal encounters with the raunchy rocker.
"Tina Turner has already done her bit in the recording studio," says the Choir School's Headmaster, Stephen Drew. "The boys will record their backing in the cathedral, and the tapes will be edited together."
Australia and the West Indies may not be prepared to play their World Cup cricket matches in Colombo, but Asian schoolboys will not be missing out. A new computer game enables them to programme any combination of players they like to compete at any of the continent's grounds, in whatever conditions and even
to decide the outcome of the tournament.
JOHN MAJOR's fragile majority of four almost suffered a damaging blow late on Wednesday night, when Jerry Hayes succumbed to the dangers of dining at the Commons. The Tory MP with the golden locks and a predilection for tacky late-night television studios, choked on a roast potato in the Members' Dining Room.
It stuck in his gullet, he could not breathe and had it not been
for the swift action of a fellow diner, Tory MP Robert Hughes, the bearded Hayes might have been heading for the great division lobby in the sky.
"Bob gave me a huge thwack on the back and the potato just came flying out," Hayes says. "Alastair Goodlad (the chief whip) was eating at the next table. He turned quite pale."
THE MYSTERY that surrounds the identity of the author of Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics, the barely disguised account of the 1992 Clinton campaign, is being stirred up by the English writer Christopher Hitchens. The anonymous book has caused a storm in the States, with its "fictional" Governor Stanton, his steely wife Susan and a Gennifer Flowers character known as "Cashmere McLeod".
On Wednesday in Washington, Hitchens who famously attacked Mother Teresa in his book The Missionary Position astonished browsers at a downtown bookstore by signing copies of
the book. And yesterday he said his own article in the current issue of The New York Review of Books, which speculates on the book's authorship, was a "double bluff".
"I am very much looking forward to being the guest of honour at the party for the book," he said. A weary voice from Random House, which refuses to name the author, adds: "He has been talking about going on a publicity tour soon, preferably to Palm Beach." Sounds like a triple bluff.
Those crusty individuals, Oxford college porters, have a soft spot for even the most disreputable of their former undergraduates. When discussing the exploits of a flamboyant Old Etonian undergraduate, one Magdalen porter was overheard saying wistfully: "The college hasn't seen his like since that Darius Guppy . . ."
JONATHAN AITKEN, who left the Cabinet to spend more time with his libel lawyers, is certainly doing his homework. He has been checking up on George Carman, QC, the ferocious Great Defender, who is expected to give the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury a grilling when his action against The Guardian comes to court.
He has spent large chunks of this week in the public gallery of Court 13 at the High Court, watching Carman's every move in his defence of the Daily Mirror in the case brought against it by a surgeon whom the paper dubbed "Dr Dolittle".
Aitken, who declared last year that he was leaving the Government to fight "the cancer of bent and twisted journalism . . . with the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of fair play", issued writs against The Guardian and World in Action over accusations about his relationship with members of the Saudi Royal Family and his business links with two Lebanese businessmen.
He has been very attentive at this week's High Court show. "Carman was doing his ‘I shall ask you one more time and then I shall move on' act. Aitken was grinning a lot," says one spectator. However, Aitken denies suggestions that he was there to get the measure of the man who has won cases for Jeremy Thorpe, Ken Dodd and Elton John. "No, no, no, nothing like that," he explains. "There are lots of things that are very interesting about the case. It's a case with important ramifications. My own counsel, Charles Gray told me about it."
The Reith lecturer has poked her stick into a hornets' nest. Out buzz the crusties swollen with venom, stinging Jean Aitchison for permissiveness about language reminiscent of the worst excesses of the Tower of Babel.
They cannot have been listening to more than the first sentence broadcast by the Rupert Murdoch Professor of Languages and Communication: "Is our language sick?" Her conclusion that this question is as illogical as "Is Friday morning pink?", is common sense as well as an academic cliche. But this has not stopped prescriptivist pseudo-intellectuals spitting with rage.
She has been abused for betraying her classical education "were it not for the fact that many classics departments have been taken over by political correctives and trendies". I have yet to meet a nasty corrective in a classics department. Classicists tend to be conservative. This is not surprising when the words for revolution in their languages are "new things". So beware of classicists, Tony Blair and your "new" Labour.
Professor Aitchison is libelled in billboard type as "A woman wot hates English as it is writ", and attacked for her supposed politics, trendiness, linguistic relativism and split infinitives especially for her split infinitives. Honest guvs, she only did it to annoy you because she knows it teases. The best reason for avoiding split infinitives is that they drive berserk the irascible pedants who believe that language runs on tramlines rather than joyriding down the open road. You do better not to split, not because you care about their taboo, but because you care about your reputation with your audience. But English is already full of engrafted split infinitives: to overthrow, to understate. And there are a few sentences where the meaning can be expressed only by splitting, when a modifier such as really needs to be handcuffed to its verb. "You are too young to really remember the war." If you unsplit by putting really before to, you could be misunderstood as focusing on too young. As a reader of a grown-up newspaper, you are too sensible to really fuss about such trivia.
Who are these prescriptivists who attack Jean Aitchison for daring to suggest that there ain't no such thing as perfect English, and for enjoying its rich varieties? They are white, middle-class, middle-browed males, middle-aged temperamentally if not temporally. Most of them earn a crust by writing "Why-oh-why?" tirades for the more excitable (and paradoxically more expensive) newspapers about how the world is going to the dogs, intellectually, morally, politically and linguistically. They misunderstand the way language works. English is the one subject on which any native-speaker can claim to be an expert. The language prescriptivists find themselves growing older in a new world, surrounded by new ideas, new words, new grammar, new fashions, and younger rivals even for the low trade of old-fogey punditry. Their problem is not the decay of English, but the male menopause.
How quaint that both sides claim Dr Johnson as their ally. Sam is like Scripture: he left so much that everyone (except a Scottish Whig) can find a supportive quotation in his work. Jean Aitchison and her critics are both right, like people describing Mont Ste-Victoire from opposite sides. As a poor Staffordshire boy who made good, Samuel was in awe of posh accents and "correct" grammar. His plan for the Dictionary declared: "The chief intent is to preserve the purity and ascertain the meaning of our English idiom." But by the time he had wrestled with his definitions for years, he had come to see that the notion of preserving the purity of a language was a will-o'-the-wisp. So in his Preface he changed his aim, to "not form, but register the language". Jean Aitchison is following in her master's footsteps, but there is far more language in different varieties than when Dr Johnson laid down the principle: masters of the shifting language record it rather than laying down rules. Johnson would have loved his blue-stocking professor as a woman with a bottom of good sense. And when vile Whiggish pedants sniggered, he would have put them down: "Where's the merriment? I say the woman is fundamentally sensible."
Advance attempts to discredit Scott and his inquiry cannot obscure the depths to whch this Government has sunk.
We are on the eve of the Scott revelations I understand that they take the form of a very thick book and you do not need to be a cynic like me to know that many people who will be discussed in its pages are now piling up the sneers, the rubbishings, the attacks and all the various reasons why Sir Richard Scott is wrong, pig-headed, lazy and ignorant. Indeed, before the magician opens his box there will be several suggestions that Scott has been insane for some time, and not a few more that he has been bribed. But I don't really need to mock the Scott tremblers, because there are so many of the real ones who are now busy lying, cheating and running away that Scott will have to write another book soon.
The bits and pieces are numerous well, that is why the story has taken three-and-half years to unfold. I do not intend to go through those bits and pieces; there will be dozens of bloodhounds hundreds clutching this document or that denial, and I propose to step back from the gigantic hurly-burly and think of what this story really tells us. For the length is deep and the depth is long.
Let me start with a minor figure, but one who embodies much of the story. He is Lord Howe of Aberavon, formerly Geoffrey Howe. Picking up of a copy of The Spectator, I find an article by him covering many pages and no joke several thousand words.
Now what has come over the old Speccers, that it allows onto its pages matter doubly unreadable once for its length and twice for its prose? We find the answer very quickly: our Geoffrey has got wind of what Scott is jingling in his pockets. Yes, but why should he be the standerd-bearer for those who are marked men? It shows great generosity, does it not? For these are interesting words:
The Scott inquiry is not a tribunal upon whose judgment the reputation of anyone should be allowed to depend. I write those words with regret and with a full realisation that no one should pronounce such a verdict without having given careful thought to its consequences . . . I scarcely believed myself when I complained initially that this was an inquiry at which as never before defence lawyers may be seen but not heard . . . Many others who appeared before Scott share this perplexed and resentful view of their treatment. Since their reputations could be severely tarnished by the outcome, the flaws I have described give serious cause for legitimate concern.
I'll huff and I'll puff and blow your house down. For nowhere nowhere amid the scores of paragraphs that spill out in this dreadful screed does our hero tell us or admit that he himself has been up before the beak: Lord Geoff has already been rebuked, albeit very mildly, by Sir Richard Scott. No wonder he was spluttering. (But Boris Johnson, of The Daily Telegraph, should be ashamed of himself for joining the gang who are trying to rubbish Scott.)
Now we are told that Sir Nicholas Lyell, the Attorney-General, is the first one for the chop. I would like a front row seat at any price, but I think that in this case there is more to a lousy lawyer than we can see for the moment. Suppose Lyell quits or is pushed; a considerable sigh of relief will, or at least should, be heard. But even I, the man who despises Lyell most, am willing to say that if Lyell is going to be the fall-guy, a very shocking miscarriage of judgment will have taken place. And I assure you that in the days to come there will be very many similar miscarriages of judgment.
Do you care greatly, readers, about the Matrix Churchill business? I am sure that many of you are thinking that it is something about Winston Churchill perhaps another statue is to be raised. I don't care much about the Matrix etc, but I follow it not because of the depressing details, nor because I am looking forward to Scott's bag of toffee-apples, but because it tells me as clearly as Big Ben that the Scott report is yet another nail in the coffin of this putrid Government.
Before Scott pulled down the blinds (and remember that there was a very long and mendacious series of statements before Scott finished his open version of what happened in Matrix-time), the whole story pivoted upon the fact that men from a British company, involved in selling arms, some of which would go to the evil Saddam, were simultaneously bringing back useful indeed vital knowledge. In the melee there were arrests, largely of the wrong people, and under the boneheads of MI6 (what bones! what heads!) it seemed that nobody had had enough sense to give a wink and a nod and shuffle off a couple of dozen Matrix Churchills when nobody was looking.
Even then, sense could have reigned, but it didn't. With a crash of cymbals, those who were there to straighten out the nonsense called up the nonsense instead: "public interest immunity certificates" were waved (would that they had been waived instead), and from that moment the tide could never be turned. Folly, stupidity and incompetence reign in this story. And something else. That ghastly business of the signing of the dirty certificates (which, incidentally, will finish Lyell off) means that only Heseltine remains in the clear (don't worry, he won't let us forget), and the rest are tarred with the dirt of the certificates. I have repeatedly said that "public interest immunity certificates" (or "gagging orders") are never in the public interest, but are always and only for the use of ministers and their minions who are trying to cover up something scandalous. (See, for instance, the attempt by Virginia Bottomley and Gillian Shephard to cover up their appalling conduct with gagging orders and other documents concerning the dangers of listeria.)
So why do I wish to add my fourpence, when we are almost on the eve of the real thing? They say it is a very thick book; I say the thicker the better. I am not going to explain what Scott tells us; he will make it very clear, I am sure. So why am I poking my nose into things that will be fully poked within days?
It is because I have to deal with what is left over: the wrappings of the sweets, the spent candle-ends, the pips and the husks. For I assure you that very soon we shall all be up to our knees in rubbish.
Oh, that's even less than nothing. Already, the Prime Minister has announced that he will not act on any of Scott's findings. True, when Scott's inquiry was set up, the Prime Minister had no objections, and gave Scott everything he wanted. But now, it might make his rancid Government even more shaky than it is already, so our brave PM looks the other way when Scott is mentioned. And he needs to, because it is clear that Scott will criticise him very mildly, as with Howe but the Prime Minister too has another small stain on his already soiled escutcheon.
And the snowball grows larger as it rolls down the hill. Try a few headlines: "Ministers start Scott damage limitation"; "Sir Nicholas Lyell is likely fall guy"; "Revealed: Scott report leak puts minister in firing-line on arms sales"; "Lyell and Waldegrave will fight resignation calls on Scott report". And, going back some time: "Lyell blames officials over PII certificates" (he would); "In Whitehall, preparations are well under way for a fierce rebuttal of the findings"; "Scott leaks ‘aimed at limiting government damage"'.
But I have nurtured, right through the years of Scott, one passage that I have kept, one paragraph that I wish I had written myself. It is by Michael Jones of The Sunday Times, and this is what he said:
The fundamental issue is this. What happened in the Matrix Churchill case threatened the rights of every British subject to a fair trial and the individual's enshrined protection from arbitrary arrest and loss of liberty. Magna Carta and all that flowed from it guaranteed no less. So what happens in the Scott inquiry and after matters deeply. At one level we find exposed those arcane parts of government that seldom see the light of day and only attract our attention when they publicly crash gears, as they did over the Matrix Churchill case. At a deeper level, we see a mind-set rooted in self-service, self-esteem and authoritarian precepts that threaten us all.
I eagerly await my copy of the Scott report. And I await, not eagerly, the realisation that whatever happens now, we shall have taken yet another step into the pit.
A friend just starting in journalism was explaining to me last week how helpful his public school background was proving. His upper-class accent and his eminently recognisable surname, he said, had not only given him an entree to the profession, it had allowed him to land a good royal story which had pleased his editor and given him a couple of rungs start on the promotion ladder. The old school tie, he assured me, had been a great asset.
I found that faintly depressing. Are a plummy accent and a few useful connections still the keys to preferment in Britain, like being given a gold credit card at birth? It is more than five years since John Major announced his commitment to a classless society, and rather more than that since Margaret Thatcher apparently swept aside the old-boy net in favour of the barrow-boy culture, so allowing talent, enterprise and red braces free rein in Britain, irrespective of accent. Yet here we are, apparently still mesmerised by the discreet charm of the aristocracy.
In some ways, it seems almost as if we have been going backwards. At the same age, and roughly the same stage in journalism, I remember desperately trying to conceal any hint of privileged upbringing, flattening my vowels and emphasising my simple peasant ancestry in order to convince my news editor that I was one of the lads. Putting on airs didn't get you far on the reporters' desk in those days, but then that was Manchester and those were the 1960s. Today, the Hugh Grant style seems once again to be a passport to success.
Recently, however, I stumbled across heartening evidence that this may be a superficial view, and that in some ways Britain is far less bothered by class, nepotism or social contacts than many other countries in Europe. Interviewed in the latest issue of the Bristol University magazine, Nonesuch, Professor Gianni Angelini, an Italian who is now a leading heart surgeon in this country, says that in his experience, Britain is the most open society in Europe, encouraging talent and skill without regard to background or influence in ways that would be inconceivable in his native Italy.
Angelini, who began his academic career at the University of Siena, set out to study medicine with only a diploma in mechanical engineering. When he arrived in Britain he could not speak a word of English, yet today he holds the British Heart Foundation Chair in Cardiac Surgery and heads Bristol University's newly opened Heart Institute.
"I couldn't have achieved any of this if I had stayed in Italy," he says. "The Italian system is too nepotistic. To climb the ladder it doesn't matter how good you are. If your father was a professor, you have a pretty good chance of being a professor. If your father was a lorry driver, like mine, I'm afraid you have a bit of a problem."
The professor told me that in Italy, where there is a surplus of 40,000 doctors, a foreigner "doesn't stand a chance". But worse than that, the medical world is in tightly gripped in the hands of a small number of professors at the top dictating all new appointments. Connections are vital. "The medical system is influenced by the political system, and very few university appointments are open to selection," he said. "This means that there is very little competition." Promotion tends to be based on the Italian equivalent of Buggins' turn. "It is like an inherited disease," says Angelini, "only the degree of the disease gets worse."
The professor has encountered none of that in Britain. From the start his progress was dictated by merit alone. One of the things that has impressed him most is the absence of political string-pulling here. "In Italy you have to be supported by a political party even to apply for a job as a road-sweeper. It's who you know that counts. Here I don't even know the name of my local MP."
France where you either are or are not part of "le gratin", the crust of society has its own form of snobbery, an intellectual brand, which means that if you are not an Enarque, a product of the top stream of the grandes ecoles, advancement is unlikely. "The aristocracy no longer counts, but the meritocracy has given us a new class system," said Stephane Crouzat, head of the French Institute in Edinburgh. "Where you went to school is all -important." Perhaps, after all, and almost without realising it, Britain is less imprisoned by its class system, less strangled by its old school tie, than some of its European neighbours.
A merchant banker in London, who told me that at one stage an Eton and Oxbridge education was almost a sine qua non in his organisation, now takes most of his recruits from Newcastle University. He reckons that in the jungle of the financial world today, a recommendation about someone's boy passed on over the brandy in Brooks's is almost counter-productive. If a candidate needs that kind of help, perhaps he isn't much good.
Another friend of mine, who interviews job applicants in a multinational company, said that recommendations from friends or relations were noted, but rarely played any part in the final decision. How odd, therefore, that they still seem to work in the freebooting world of the fourth estate. A case, perhaps, for a Fleet Street version of Lord Nolan's inquiry.
IF organic food was once the butt of gibes about beards, lentils and people employed to stick mud on to potatoes, three things have happened in recent years to make "organic" the designer label.
Genetic engineers have created fruit and vegetables that look and taste like hat decorations. Television exposes have shown the horrors of modern husbandry and BSE has made us potential co-victims of those horrors.
An organic boom has resulted and Britain now has its first organic supermarket, west London's highly funky Planet Organic, where beef sales have risen 30 per cent since the BSE scare.
Meat was once an expensive treat, but cheap meat became a daily requirement and standards fell to provide it; now we eat not only poor meat, but too much of it. Punters at Planet Organic have rediscovered a lost tradition: instead of a £1.50 frozen chicken every day, they buy an occasional £8 organic free-range bird, which tastes like chicken used to and cannot be carved with a spoon.
Instead of a steak for £1.30 that has been subjected to BSE-friendly conditions, they buy a less frequent £3.50 steak, which tastes infinitely better. A side effect, of course, of this quality-quantity trade-off will be less heart disease.
Will it catch on? In my local supermarket the free-range chickens were sold out last night while rows of merely "fresh" fowl, pallid and swollen-breasted, were undisturbed. The New Carnivore is at large, moved by respect not for poultry, but for himself.
A THOROUGHLY masculine evening at David Storey's play The Changing Room, revived at the Duke of York's naked men, most on the beefy side, with all their bantering bravado brings back memories of the days when playwrights arrived in London with attitude; gritty blokes from the grimy North ...
David Storey came from Wakefield, an interesting combination of brawn and brain: a rugby league player, son of a miner, who was also a painter, a student at the Slade. His novels were as successful as his plays: This Sporting Life, with Richard Harris, became one of those definitive Sixties films; and he won the Booker Prize in 1976 with the excellent Saville.
Didn't he have a firebrand reputation, being noted for biffing a critic 20 years ago in the bar of the Royal Court? I remembered this as I watched this big, gentle, quietly-spoken, white-haired man in canvas shoes, in his kitchen with wallpaper from Woolworths, making me a cup of Gold Blend. He and his wife, married for 40 years, live in one of the meaner streets of Kentish Town: their house, now that the four children have departed, is the one with a fresh coat of paint.
Remind me, I said, about why you struck a critic. The play was called Mother's Day. The preview houses had been full. But he had a premonition that the first night would be a disaster, and it was. One of the actors dried. Michael Billington's notice in The Guardian began succinctly: "A stinker."
Not for the first time, a playwright was convinced that his play was killed off by critics. In the bar, where Storey was addressing the cast, he belaboured Billington about the head. "Poor old Michael," he laughs. "We've got on well, before and since.
"Playwrights do get above themselves. You're in a marketplace. If you don't sell the stuff on the stall, you've had it. Your whole bloody destiny is forged in the ridiculous ritual of one night. That's what makes playwrights so sensitive to criticism. It's a young person's racket."
In those days the Royal Court was constantly in ferment. "But it had a cohesive policy. Slightly didactic, but it was the only place you could put on innovative writing with any kind of impact. Now, there are half a dozen theatres doing that but there's a scarcity of new writing."
Schooled at Wakefield Grammar himself, Storey sent all his children to state comprehensives, and kept them there even when others whisked their darlings away to independent havens. This is a pertinent tale, which the Dromeys and Blairs might heed, since at 62 he is exactly one generation older than they are.
At Hampstead Comprehensive he stood up at PTA meetings, full of indignant questions. Why had his eldest daughter, Helen, achieved one O level after years of blithe reports from her teachers? Why had there never been any homework?
"Homework," he says, "was treated as almost a fascist suggestion. ‘Some of our children,' they told me, ‘live 20 to a room (a complete lie) with nowhere to do homework.' I said: ‘Why not allocate them a classroom after school?' That would ‘stigmatise' them. I remember the headmaster saying, when I objected to the deplorable teaching standards: ‘Well, my principle is, as long as they're happy ...' That was the ethos of the time. In following the idea of equality, nothing was achieved.
"The head invited me to remove my children from the school. I said: ‘I'm going to keep them there because I believe in comprehensive education.' Late one night I got a call from a teacher: ‘I know you feel you're on your own, but there is a nucleus of older teachers who are completely behind what you're doing.'
"It was a three-year battle that I wouldn't want to go through again. But in the end all the changes I suggested like homework, and proper marking were formalised. And the school pulled round: in one year, a 25 per cent improvement in exam results. Now one of my grandchildren is going to that school."
He knew what he was talking about because he had taught in 17 schools himself, including three officially designated the worst in the country, in Islington and the East End. He describes classrooms where youths fought, wielding knives and upturned desks while a teacher sat slumped, having given up the struggle. "At least a third of the teachers should never have been allowed near a school. But teachers have been so devitalised; the profession can't attract the right kind of people."
The postscript to Storey's story is that his children have done extremely well. Helen Storey built up a successful fashion design business and has been commissioned by Faber to write her autobiography " at the age of 36", her father notes. The next daughter went to Cambridge, and is now at Oxford doing research in neurobiology. His eldest son is the finance director of a shipping firm; the youngest is an aeronautical engineer.
Of Labour politicians' dilemmas over education, he says: "It seems to me completely hypocritical, if you're professionally advocating a particular policy, to abrogate your own involvement in it. I can see that the vacillating middle ground will probably go along with Harriet Harman. So the most vacillating part of the population controls all our destinies."
The Changing Room a real period piece, 25 years on was tough to cast: rugger-playing physique matched with the right temperament. In 1971 they auditioned 650 actors. (The original players included Michael Elphick and Brian Glover.) This time they saw only 150 the reduction of drama school grants reduces the number of potential working-class actors.
He still writes every day. He has binned about 30 plays. "It's very wasteful. But I can't work the other way researching and plotting for two years first. My writing has to be organic. I start off with a first line and hope something will happen." His plays always wrote themselves in a few days. The Changing Room took five.
He rarely goes to the theatre and meets no other playwrights. He likes the anonymity. Nor does he read newspapers or watch television. "Television has turned down all my work consistently for 37 years. They turned down Home, with Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, directed by Lindsay Anderson. Eventually an American TV company filmed it, and the BBC bought it for two shillings."
His fatalistic, phlegmatic Yorkshire monotone remains, but having left Wakefield in 1953 he never goes back there if he can help it. "Yorkshire bears no resemblance now to my memory: an imaginary Yorkshire which no longer exists. Five pits have disappeared, including the two my father worked in, and it's all been landscaped, you'd never know there'd been any collieries. I'm still engaged by the people, but there's no congruity between the present and the past. I was so longing to get away I've never really lost that sense of glad relief at having escaped from it."
Yet having got off the train at King's Cross, where he and his wife Barbara lived in a room above a shop, "a true artist, starving for my vocation", and bought a white Jaguar for £7,500 with his first fiction prize "drove it like a maniac and sold it for £10" he has never left the borough of Camden.
Barbara works at the local Citizens Advice Bureau, where queues of refugees, "care in the community" patients, the disabled, the unemployed and the unemployable form daily. "All of them are desperate, a testimony to society. So many of their problems are utterly insoluble."
This house was to be a temporary base, but they have stayed nine years. In his first week here, he witnessed the first of several muggings; the police officer said: "You do realise you're living in a highly criminalised area, don't you?"
Now he finds a poem springs unbidden from him every day. A volume of 200 poems is with his publishers now. "I'm sure they welcome it with all the excitement of a bill through the post."
He accepts no advances or deadlines. A lengthy new novel is almost ready. Also a philosophical work about the structure of the psyche, based on his own experience. Not that he ever had a clinical nervous breakdown; he just felt, he says quite equably, "anxiety about the normal vacillations of life".
Andrew Longmore watches the England management bridge football's gender gap.
Don Howe tried to slip away from a vigorous five-a-side, only to be hauled back by that playground cry: "Hey, you're on our side". Poor Don. A pell-mell game of indoor football had not been on the agenda until snow thwarted his hopes for a quiet morning in the sunshine at Bisham Abbey. Now, here he was, mixing it with the best in the land at the Montem Lane Leisure Centre in Slough.
Not even such mundane surroundings could eradicate the minor moment in the history of women's football that came with the balding head and distinctive tones. Not quite El Tel, but the next best thing The Don, so universally respected within the game, he never gets the England job, he just comes with it. A name, anyway, to lift the spirits of the England women's team before their European championship qualifying tie with Portugal in Benavente, near Lisbon, on Sunday.
Not that long ago, the very notion of the most senior coach in the land investing his time with a bunch of girls would have been suitable cause for dismissal, but the Football Association runs the women's game now and is anxious to show that it means business. Howe's presence in Slough for what the FA, and the players, hope will be the first of many upmarket training sessions was a statement of intent, part PR exercise, part battle cry. Attention levels lifted dramatically.
"The girls were really buzzing," Debbie Bampton, the England captain, said. "It's good for our morale to know that a really big name is taking an interest in us. Everyone was sitting there, listening to every word."
An hour with the video and images of Gullit, Van Basten and AC Milan was followed by a more down-to-earth five-a-side. Time only for imparting general principles, not particular tactics.
"I just wanted them to ask questions about what they were seeing," Howe said. "What shape was the defence? What was the midfield doing? I wanted them to see how a team like Milan presses, not as individuals but as a team, and to look at it as professionals, not just out of enjoyment.
"They knew what was going on, they've been well coached, but, if I can help them out just by being here, that's fine. People might say, ‘If Don's there, it can't be a sissies' game'."
More important for the players was that unaccustomed feeling of recognition, of being part of the club that Howe, the England coaching coordinator, hopes will also include schoolboy, under-19 and under-21 teams. England FC, as he terms it. Encouraging girls to play football is all part of the widespread brief.
"If this team is successful, more girls will be asking to play," Howe said. "They could do with a bit of publicity. At the moment, they're paying for all this themselves."
Howe's input was welcomed by Ted Copeland, the England team manager, who led the side to the quarter-finals of the World Cup in Sweden last summer. "When Don comes down, they feel, ‘Hey, this is the big time'," he said. "It really makes the players think that people at the highest level of the game are taking an interest. I think Don has been pleasantly surprised by what he's seen, too."
Indeed he had. "I've had good vibes," Howe said. Only the gender trap kept catching him out. Man on, watch your man. Difficult to change the habits of a lifetime in one morning.
Baby-smuggling is now big business in Ukraine. RICHARD BEESTON travelled there and met one of it's victims, brain-damaged Aleksandr Brooks who was sent back by the Americans who adopted him.
In a forgotten corner of a Ukrainian hospital ward Aleksandr Brooks looks out from his dirty cot on a grim world he will never comprehend. His blue eyes dart from side to side in steady rhythm, his hands twitch uncontrollably and his tiny voice emits a high-pitched squeak.
He has no toys, no visitors and only the bare green hospital walls for company. The overworked hospital staff are not even sure of his name, so he is routinely called the "American baby". They say he only seems happy when he sleeps.
Seeing him there is heart-wrenching; listening to the history of his short but eventful life is even more so. Since his birth three years ago in the western Ukrainian city of Lvov he has had two mothers and two fathers, has travelled to America and back and has had tens of thousands of dollars spent on him.
Tragically, for this tiny blond-haired child, the money and attention is the cause of his problems. Now brain-damaged and abandoned, he is destined to spend the rest of his years in the care of Ukraine's overstretched state institutions.
In a country crippled by poverty and post-independence chaos, and still suffering the after-effects of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster a decade ago, the plight of one child does not rate high on the list of priorities.
But the story behind Aleksandr is ugly. It involves the illegal sale of babies by corrupt doctors and officials to the West, and the wholesale deception of their impoverished mothers, who were told that their newborns had died, or would have a better life being brought up by the State.
As Dr Vladimir Kolesnik, a local health inspector, explains: "A terrible crime was committed against the children of Lvov by the people entrusted with their care, and this child is their most tragic victim. I hope the people responsible will be punished."
Ever since he was tipped off anonymously 18 months ago, Dr Kolesnik has worked doggedly to expose a smuggling ring involving doctors, local officials, and even senior figures in the Government in Kiev.
In spite of attempts to hush up the scandal, which even led to the shooting two months ago of the chief criminal prosecutor on the case, Igor Pylypchuk, the investigation has now widened across the country. It is believed that 802 children may have been illegally sold abroad for adoption.
Lvov, a beautifully preserved medieval city of cobbled streets and towering church spires, has now been exposed as one of the most active centres of the adoption racket. Here more than 130 newborn babies have been stolen either from their mothers, or from the care of the State, and sold to American, German and Italian couples for as much as $40,000 each.
According to documents now in the hands of investigators, the principal operators were three doctors, now under arrest and awaiting trial. They preyed on destitute, alcoholic and drug-addicted mothers, persuading them to turn their children over to the care of the State, before falsifying their documents and putting them up for adoption. Many of the women are too ashamed or frightened to come forward. But gradually their stories are being told.
Aleksandr's case is typical of how the operation worked. Born on a bitterly cold December day in 1992 to Hala Pup, an impoverished single mother, the premature, 3lb baby was exactly what the dealers were looking for.
It took Dr Vladimir Dorochenko, the head of the maternity centre, little effort to persuade the mother to sign away her parental rights and turn the tiny, ailing child over to his care. Once her consent was secured, the infant was removed from the intensive care unit and hidden in a flat belonging to a retired nurse.
With the child now out of sight, the birth certificate was backdated six months to facilitate adoption, and negotiations for the sale began with an American adoption agency. However, the deal was complicated on New Year's Eve when the child, deprived of the intensive care he needed, contracted meningitis and was taken to hospital with a critically high fever.
Although Aleksandr was now very sick and irreparably brain-damaged, the sale still went ahead. Complete with his new identity he was flown out of Ukraine for delivery to his new adoptive parents in Massachusetts.
The American couple, Peter and Katie Brooks, both lawyers, who operated through a licensed agency, were now landed with caring for a very sick baby. After three years of expensive medical costs in the US they sent the child back. Contacted by phone in America, the adoptive father sounded very concerned about his son's tragic fate. But he remained guarded in his replies and refused to disclose any details of the adoption, in particular how much money was paid to the agency for Aleksandr.
When I told him of the appalling circumstances in which I found the three-year-old, he sounded genuinely upset. He confirmed that he and his wife, who had previously adopted an American baby, had taken the decision to return the child only after long and painstaking reflection and the mounting medical bills, costing several thousand dollars a month.
"We no longer had the ability financially or emotionally to provide the care required," said Mr Brooks, who added that he believed his adopted son would receive better treatment in Ukraine than in the US. "Sending him back was the hardest thing I have ever done. It was not done willingly or happily."
Although none of the Western couples adopting the children were aware that they were funding an illegal trade in stolen babies, the huge sums involved in the transactions simply made the middle-men even more brazen.
One of their next victims was Olga Ushakova. A young and unemployed alcoholic whose former husband is in jail, she was an obvious target for the unscrupulous doctors when she gave birth prematurely to Vitalik on July 1, 1993. The doctors told her that she was an inadequate mother and that the child was deformed.
Although she did take him home to her squalid apartment in a rough neighbourhood on the southern edge of Lvov, she was pressured again and again to sign her son over to the authorities.
"There was no room here at the time so I reluctantly agreed," she said. "Later they told me he had died." In fact, her son is alive. Now called Brent Hanson, he is being raised by his adoptive parents on a sheep farm in Iowa.
Natasha Osipova never meant to give birth in Lvov. Journeying by train in December 1993, she went into labour and headed for the nearest hospital. This lonely and vulnerable new mother was befriended there by Ludmilla Ornst, a local doctor now under arrest. Ornst persuaded her to leave her daughter, Sladja, in foster care until she was ready to look after her.
When Ms Osipova returned three months later the hospital had no record of the birth and the doctor had vanished. The baby's birth had been re-registered at another hospital with a different birthdate.
Although Ms Osipova says that she wants her child back, she has neither the resources nor the strength to retrieve her baby from her new-found life as Emilia Danzig of Cleveland, Ohio.
The scale of the baby-smuggling operation, and evidence that corrupt senior officials collaborated by signing adoption papers, initially shocked Ukraine, where Western couples are now banned from adopting children.
"Ukraine was thrown back into the Middle Ages when its neighbours took Ukrainian babies, as the Turks did to fill the ranks of their militia," said Yevhen Kraslyakov, a Communist deputy speaking at a heated debate on the subject in the Ukrainian parliament earlier this year.
However, any hopes that the real culprits will be brought to trial or that the trade has finally been stamped out raises only a cynical shrug from most of Lvov's long-suffering people, grown used to widespread government corruption and unchecked gangster rule. Part of the scepticism derives from the fact that there is no law against selling children, and the three doctors now under arrest are being investigated only for falsifying documents.
"We had eight prominent members of the city gunned down last year in gangster shootings and no one has been arrested," said Igor Pochenok, the editor of the weekly Express newspaper. "People here have become accustomed to the criminals getting away with their terrible crimes."
As for baby Aleksandr, he at least has one person who is still willing to stand up for his rights.
"I am not speaking as a Ukrainian or a doctor, just as a human being," said Dr Kolesnik. "I am going to make sure that those responsible pay for their crime and that the American couple, while not criminally at fault, are made to realise they are morally guilty.
"But as long as people continue to pay for children, there will always be a market for them."
THE DOCTORS
Vladimir Dorochenko:
As head of Lvov's main maternity centre he was known to a generation of mothers as a trusted and respected member of the city's medical profession. But after his arrest last year by police investigating the disappearance of newborn babies, he was identified as the ring-leader of a trade in children worth tens of thousands of pounds. He is suspected of falsifying the medical documents of 30 to 40 children who were then illegally sold to American couples for adoption.
Ludmilla Ornst:
Expectant mothers due to give birth in the small regional hospital of Kamyanka-Buzka near Lvov always looked forward to a visit from Dr Ornst, the deputy head physician. A young mother of three with a kindly smile and sympathetic bedside manner, she lavished attention on the poorest girls. It was only when she was picked out in an identity parade by Natasha Osipova that her real identity was exposed. Far from being a dedicated doctor, she was a key figure in procuring babies from vulnerable women for the smuggling racket.
THE snow may have been disappearing in many areas across the country yesterday, but it has already taken a heavy toll on the FA Cup. At the moment, next Saturday, the official date for the fifth round, is sure of only one tie; at most, it will have three out of the six scheduled.
"On Monday, five days before the start of the fifth round, we will still be without one conclusive tie," Steve Double, the Football Association press officer, said yesterday. "We really need the games at Swindon and Ipswich on Monday and Tuesday to be finished at the first attempt." The winners then would have home ties on February 17, joining Huddersfield Town, who will entertain Middlesbrough or Wimbledon on that day.
However, even if Swindon Town or Oldham Athletic, Ipswich Town or Walsall come through at the first attempt, the postponements on Tuesday and the batch of draws on Wednesday mean that the fourth round will not be completed before February 18, at the earliest. If Shrewsbury Town and Liverpool draw then, it would stretch until February 28, with the possibility that the fifth round could extend until March 16, a week after the sixth round is due to be played.
Snow is not the only cause of disruption. The greater notice that police require and their increased input into the choice of dates are also significant. Yesterday, Leeds United were unhappy at West Yorkshire Police's decision to demand a noon kick-off for the second leg of their Coca-Cola Cup semi-final against Birmingham City on February 25, which could cost both clubs £100,000 in television fees if ITV is unable to show the match, that originally was to be played at 4pm, at the new time.
FOR years, rugby union has tended to cast a cloak of secrecy around the amounts of money available for the sport's development in a global sense. Yesterday, however, the International Rugby Football Board (IRFB) declared its financial hand.
From the profits of the past two World Cups, £7.4 million has either been distributed to, or is earmarked for, nearly 50 countries. Moreover, the International Rugby Settlement, established in the Isle of Man in 1990, has funds amounting to £10 million a pot that is still growing for fostering the game worldwide.
"I see this as day one of the development of rugby union," Keith Rowlands, the retiring IRFB secretary, said in introducing Lee Smith, the board's first development and resource officer. It will be the function of Smith, 48, who was New Zealand's director of coaching and development, to monitor and advise on requests for grant aid.
"The litmus-paper test of how successful our system is will be seen after another two World Cups," Smith said. "When we can go into a tournament expecting a series of close games, then we will have an indication of rugby's growing maturity."
Some of the scorelines from the 1995 World Cup 145 points scored by New Zealand against Japan, 89 by Scotland against the Ivory Coast emphasised rugby's lack of strength in depth. The IRFB hopes that the rationalisation of its support programme will reduce the gap between the sport's haves and have-nots.
Smith's role will involve telling any of the 71 countries that belong to the IRFB how to apply for aid. Not every application is a request for money, but for human resources in the shape of coaching, refereeing or development officers. "I bring an understanding of the game down to the grass roots," Smith said. "That should enable me to advise countries on programmes, methods and development."
The £5.7 million that has been distributed so far (another £1.7 million was approved only last week) consists of amounts large and small. "The scattergun effect will fertilise the game and will give a kick-start to many of those unions who are desperately short of money," Rowlands said. "The 1991 World Cup created an explosion of interest in the game and the growth of national unions, all of which are under-funded one or two can't even afford to buy team shirts."
The requirements of unions boasting only six clubs clearly differ from established bodies such as that of Canada, whose grants have gone towards the establishment of an elite squad, but also towards an international rugby information centre in Ottawa.
Old Loughtonians are hoping to retain their English national indoor title at Crystal Palace tonight, with Julian Halls and Nick Thompson to guide their fortunes.
Jeremy Bates, of Great Britain, lost in the second round of the ATP Challenger tournament in Wolfsburg, Germany yesterday. He was beaten 6-4, 6-0 by Thomas Johansson, of Sweden, the No1 seed.
John Tanner, the winner of the Premier Calendar road race series last year, has gained a place in Great Britain's six-man squad for the inaugural Tour of Langkawi, Malaysia, from March 1 to 10.
Greg Norman, the world No1, who is controversially being paid appearance money in the Ford Open championship in Adelaide, lay seven shots off the pace after shooting a 74, two over par, in the first round yesterday. Glenn Joyner and Bradley Hughes, Norman's Australian compatriots, shared the lead with 67s.
Lennox Lewis, no longer the No1 challenger to Frank Bruno, the World Boxing Council heavyweight champion, could meet Ray Mercer at Madison Square Garden, New York, in May. "We don't have a solid deal, but we're working on it for May 10," Lou DiBella, the senior vice-president of HBO, the American cable television channel, said yesterday. If the Lewis-Mercer bout is confirmed, Evander Holyfield and Tim Witherspoon, the former champions, could appear in separate contests on the same bill.
MATTHEW SYED, the England table tennis No1, suffered another blow to his chances of getting to Atlanta in July when Chen Xinhua, his men's doubles partner, withdrew yesterday from the Olympic Games qualifying competition in Nantes tomorrow, citing club commitments.
Because Syed just failed to come through the Olympic singles qualifying competition in Manchester three weeks ago, he is experiencing misfortune in duplicate. Olympic doubles rules require at least one partner to have qualified in singles, and although Chen has done so by virtue of a high world ranking 19 Syed has to wait and see whether he gets a wild card for finishing as singles first reserve. That will be too late for him to go to Nantes.
From Mr P.B. Coleman
Sir, Mr Burdett (Sports Letters, February 2) blames the introduction of comprehensive education in the Sixties for the decline in British cricket. I was at school in the Sixties and began teaching in the Seventies. I did not discern any change in teachers' attitudes to extra-curricular activities during this time and I witnessed my colleagues putting in many hours of extra coaching at the comprehensive school in which I worked.
The change in the attitude of non-specialist staff (I am still a witness to the admirable efforts of PE staff) came in the Eighties with the imposition of an open-ended contract for teachers followed by the mismanagement of the introduction of the national curriculum. We all know which party was in power at the time.
Yours sincerely,
P.B. COLEMAN,
1 Hazel Close,
Newton Poppleford,
Sidmouth, Devon.
From Mr Ken Cookes
Sir, Is rugby union a science or an art? Are coaches stifling flair? These thoughts came to me while watching the England v Wales match. Two aspects of modern play particularly baffle me. Why is it trendy for the backs to lie so flat in attack and why does the No8 think it so worthwhile holding the ball at his feet when scrummaging in the middle of the field?
Are we being taken in by the "techno babble" coming from the coaches and pundits? The two ploys do not seem very effective to me. The commentators seem equally baffled.
Rugby should be about flow and speed to stretch the opposition until they run out of defenders. Play the game where the others ain't, as the Americans would say. Flat backlines tend to produce lateral rather than forward movement and receivers of the ball are frequently almost standing still rather than running forward at full speed. We used to run on to passes that were thrown at least a yard in front of us. The surge onto the ball was thrilling and irresistible. Lying flat was purely a defensive measure.
There were also only two reasons for the back row to hold on to a scrummage ball: to create a pushover try or to catch the opposition backs offside. Pickups by the No8 are so ponderous and anticipated that they frequently come to nothing. What's wrong with a lightning channel one ball spun out along the steeply raked backs?
Yours etc.,
KEN COOKES,
Staddlestones,
Chaucer Road, Bath, Avon.
PROSPECTS of a return to turf racing tomorrow have improved markedly. There are no reported problems at Ayr, while the other three National Hunt fixtures hold inspections today.
Today's Newbury fixture was called off, but there will be an inspection at 1pm to determine the fate of tomorrow's Tote Gold Trophy card.
Richard Pridham, the clerk of the course, said: "Prospects are promising. The going is good at the moment, with no frost in the ground, but there is still some snow on the back straight. Rain is forecast for tomorrow so we hope this will clear away any remaining snow."
Prospects at Uttoxeter hinge on an 8am inspection, while officials at Catterick report a rapid thaw and are hopeful of passing an inspection at 1pm.
Lo Stregone has been backed down to 16-1 joint-favourite for the Martell Grand National on March 30. William Hill and Ladbrokes have reported strong support for Tom Tate's charge.
Apprentice David McCabe rode a near 6-1 double on Seattle Saga and Moi Canard at Lingfield Park yesterday. Seattle Saga's trainer, David Loder, was full of praise for McCabe, saying: "I hope David will be champion apprentice this season." McCabe has now had eight rides this year, four of which have won.
From Mr Jim Dimmock
Sir, England's win over Wales at Twickenham last Saturday was not a victory for either attractive or professional rugby. The English rugby press, players and management have all analysed the game and, in true gentlemanly fashion, have seen faults only in the English game.
The game is now professional and, if it is to remain gentlemanly, then it must be played and judged professionally. The professional foul must not be allowed to develop.
The game against Wales had, at least, the right result, but the English were criticised for their playing style. But how can any side play to the best of its ability when the opposition is persistently and cynically breaking the law? The penalty count alone (21-9) illustrates the point, but watch the match again: persistent offside, hands in the ruck, tackling off the ball, obstruction, interference in the air. The referee tried to play advantage, but many times play was brought back because no advantage accrued or there was another infringement.
If the new professional game is to maintain rugby's traditions and not devolve into a trade-off of professional fouls, let us see laws introduced which will really penalise offenders and stimulate the open game. In addition to the kick now awarded, give one point against the offending side for a penalty offence committed in its half (where it is possible to gain the additional three points) and give two points if in the opposition half (where the additional points are far less likely).
One can only speculate how the game might have turned out if this scoring system had been in place on Saturday, but it must be assumed that Wales would not have conceded 21 penalties. At least then the score would have depended more on the ability to play expansive rugby (difficult) rather than stifle it (easy).
Yours sincerely,
JIM DIMMOCK,
Riversdale, Widbrook Road,
Maidenhead, Berkshire.
From Mr Steve Corbett
Sir, I can only disagree with recent suggestions of the need for a midwinter break in football. One major problem is the lack of a regular pattern of bad weather in this country, making the timing of a break difficult to predict.
If too much football is being played, the simple suggestion is to reduce the number of matches for each club, thus allowing players a greater period of rest. The Premiership should be reduced from 20 to 18 clubs, eliminating four league games at a stroke.
This move would also fall into line with Uefa's thinking, where the top division in each national league should contain a maximum of 18 clubs.
Boxing Day is probably one of the biggest days for football, certainly in terms of crowd numbers, and this is closely followed by the first weekend in January, when the third round of the FA Cup is traditionally played. Thus the timing of a winter break would have to be limited to mid-December until Christmas or some time in the middle of January. Neither of these times is predictable for its weather.
The suggestion is that players would be rested in this period, but this is unlikely to happen. Players will need to keep fit, so training would still take place, while the requirement for match-fitness means that some sort of fixtures would be played.
An unlikely scenario? You have only to look to Germany to see what happens. Their midwinter break saw the national team travel to South Africa for an international match before Christmas and Jurgen Klinsmann suffered a knee injury in Bayern Munich's friendly in Italy.
Clubs would see this winter break as a way of keeping players match fit by playing lucrative games abroad, negating the supposed rest period.
If there is a need to give players a rest, reducing the size of the Premiership, and a possible revision of the Coca-Cola Cup to single leg matches, should give everyone the extra time for training and recovery from injuries without a serious break in our season.
Yours etc.,
STEVE CORBETT,
1 Chelsea Court,
54 Mulgrave Road,
Sutton,
Surrey.
THE Irish jockey Norman Williamson proved his fitness to ride Master Oats in the Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup at Leopardstown on Sunday when finishing unplaced here yesterday in his first ride back after breaking a leg four months ago.
After passing a Turf Club medical examination Williamson made his comeback on Alice Freyne in a 2 1/2-mile maiden hurdle and, although the Mouse Morris-trained mare could finish only thirteenth of the 19 runners, Williamson was delighted with his fitness.
"That was great. I'm very happy with the ride and I was fitter than I thought I would be," Williamson said.
Kim Bailey, the trainer of Master Oats, and Williamson, were under no illusions about the importance of yesterday's test.
However, Williamson's comeback satisfied Bailey, watching on the SIS service at his Lambourn base yesterday. "I struggled to see him back there among the also-rans. But I just wanted to see him back on the track and he will ride Master Oats on Sunday. He will also get the opportunity to sit on the horse, either tomorrow or Saturday. It's good to have him back," Bailey added.
The County Cork-born rider has been out since breaking his right femur in a fall from Joe White at Sedgefield in October, but the frustration of the healing process ended yesterday.
The Turf Club medical officer, Dr Walter Halley, who examined Williamson, said: "I'm happy with Norman. He will take it easier than usual for a couple of days, but he is okay."
His intended comeback ride, Lucky Bust, was a non-runner, but he was fortunate enough to pick up the spare ride on Alice Freyne.
He had no reason to be anxious about his return as Alice Freyne, always towards the rear of the field, put in an uneventful display around a track where Williamson had his first racecourse winner, on Jack And Jill in 1988.
Williamson said: "That was exactly what I needed. The mare was never travelling that well so I was always pushing her along. I feel a lot better for having had a ride like that rather than on one that was taking a pull on me all the way to the last."
Williamson is waiting on the weather for more match practice. He is due to ride Eskimo Nel for trainer John Spearing in the £100,000-added Tote Gold Trophy at Newbury tomorrow.
However, if the Berkshire fixture is cancelled, he intends to switch to Navan, where the prospects are brighter. He has been offered several mounts, including another Morris-trained hopeful, What A Question, in the Boyne Hurdle.
"I was taking things slow and easy today with one ride, but I will have a couple more on Saturday and, hopefully, everything will be fine for the ride on Master Oats at Leopardstown on Sunday," he said.
Williamson also reported that Master Oats, who has stayed in Ireland since last Sunday's Hennessy postponement, is in good form. The Gold Cup winner has been stabled at Mick O'Toole's yard on the Curragh this week.
Leopardstown reports no problems at the moment for Sunday's rescheduled card. The track is raceable, but the forecast is for heavy rain and strong winds so the threat may turn out to be waterlogging rather than frost.
PAT BUCHANAN is riding high on the hog in Iowa. The firebrand commentator rarely misses an opportunity to play to a local audience, and pigs are a big issue in the Midwest heartland these days.
During the next four days the beasts may assume a pivotal role in the nomination of a Republican presidential candidate and a place in the American psyche not seen since the release of the film Babe. Mr Buchanan, fresh from a stunning victory over Senator Phil Gramm in Louisiana this week, has wasted little time in focusing his campaign on the trials of the state's booming swine industry. Iowa, he says, has been invaded by giant hog lots, massive porcine warehouses where pigs are born, fed and mated, then led to the slaughter. "It's hellish bad for the environment and I think these hog farms threaten the very existence of the Iowa family farmer," Mr Buchanan said on cue to the assembled gathering at a drab Howard Johnson motel on the outskirts of Des Moines.
He rails against the putrid odours emanating from factory farms, making the issue reminiscent of the criticism he directed against Bill Clinton in 1992 over the environmental problems caused by the Arkansas poultry industry, and depicts himself as the farmers' only ally against the cult of "efficiency and giganticism" in the heartland.
It is a popular theme for Mr Buchanan and one that dovetails neatly into his protectionist "America First" mantra, leading swiftly to attacks on the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation and what he claims are the false promises of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Every four years states such as Iowa that play an early and significant role in the presidential campaign manage to impose their own slanted perspectives on American politics. Stirred by intimate encounters between politicians and the electorate, there is no plainer way for voters to remind presidential aspirants that they have a say in what is important.
This year, when the campaign is locked on national themes such as the flat tax, a balanced federal budget, abortion and anti-Washington sentiments, encroaching hog lots could be seen as a distracting local sideshow or, in the case of Mr Buchanan, a suitable opportunity to stump up votes.
As Steve Forbes and Senator Robert Dole, the two main contenders for the Republican throne, blitz the airwaves with personal attacks on each other's values and the much vaunted flat tax, Mr Buchanan is considering a series of advertisements about pigs.
"The caucuses are the perfect vehicle for the birth of an issue," Peverill Squire, a political scientist from the University of Iowa, said. "If you can find the right cause to rally people around, you have a ready-made, committed group of voters."
Although Iowa is flat and friendly and the people here still value their pork tenderloin sandwiches, the religious Right now controls more than 40 per cent of the Iowa Republican Party. Mr Buchanan, Alan Keyes, the black former UN ambassador, and Robert Dornan, the California congressmen, are viewed as the only resolute pro-life candidates able to attract a consolidated evangelical vote, but, with Mr Dole and Senator Phil Gramm, they have divided the once powerful Christian vote.
Mr Buchanan, a voice for America's angry white males, who is trying to unite under his banner Reagan Democrats and former anti-government supporters of Ross Perot, the Texas millionaire, is hoping the Christians will also coalesce behind him, as they did in Louisiana. Experts believe his extreme views and lack of organisation are unlikely to curry favour in Iowa. However, surveys show that more than a third of the 120,000 likely to attend the 2,041 local precinct meetings on Monday are still undecided.
The latest poll by the University of Iowa has shown a flagging Mr Dole leading Mr Forbes by a margin of 8 percentage points, with Lamar Alexander, the former Tennessee Governor, Mr Gramm and Mr Buchanan running almost neck and neck. To avoid a weak ride to the New Hampshire primary later this month, Mr Dole must gain more than the 38 per cent he achieved in 1988. The Senate Majority Leader hopes the passage of a farm Bill in the Senate this week, breaking the age-old link between farm prices and government subsidies, will prove popular with farmers in Iowa and reinforce his lead.
That, of course, leads voters back to the tortured question of the pigs and the possibility that Mr Buchanan may do better in this state than the experts believe.
A MONTH after President Clinton claimed his legal bills had left him broke, it has emerged that he has received a secret windfall.
In 1991 and again in 1994 Mr Clinton bought "liability" insurance policies of a sort favoured by professionals whose work could give rise to lawsuits. He has now quietly claimed for the cost of defending himself against sexual harassment charges filed by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee, and been paid a total of $900,000 (£584,000).
With the $865,000 already collected by the President's legal defence fund, that payment will go a fair way towards meeting bills of more than $2 million run up by the $400-an-hour lawyers the Clintons have retained to defend them in the Whitewater and Jones cases.
The Wall Street Journal, which broke the story yesterday, said it was unclear whether Mr Clinton knew of the insurance payment when he told a White House press conference on January 11 that he was practically insolvent. "I feel badly that 20 years of hard effort and savings may go away," he said.
If Mr Clinton did know, he was clearly seeking to stir up public sympathy when he and his wife, Hillary, were facing renewed attacks over Whitewater. Robert Bennett, the head of Mr Clinton's defence team, said he had notified the two insurance companies early last year of the President's possible claims, but Mr Clinton "certainly has not been focusing" on them.
It was also unclear what arguments Mr Bennett used to persuade the two insurance companies, State Farm and Pacific Indemnity, to pay up. Few liability policies explicitly cover sexual harassment, but as the Journal noted, "it may make things easier when the lawyer's client is the President of the US".
Ms Jones has filed a $700,000 suit against Mr Clinton which alleges that, when he was Arkansas Governor, he asked a state trooper to bring her up to his hotel room, propositioned her and made "reckless" and "persistent" advances when she rejected him. Mr Clinton has strenuously denied her allegations.
An Arkansas judge ruled that the case could not be heard until Mr Clinton's presidency was over, but an appeals court overturned that ruling last month. Mr Clinton's lawyers plan to go to the Supreme Court if necessary to prevent the case being heard while he is still in the Oval Office.
Mr Bennett said he did not know whether the insurance money would cover all Mr Clinton's legal bills in the Jones case, or whether it would cover any damages against the President if the case were to succeed. It would not cover any of his Whitewater expenses.
The first policy was taken out in February 1991, three months before the alleged harassment. The second was not taken out until September 1994, but it covers legal costs incurred by the President in defending himself against Ms Jones's charges that he and his aides defamed her after she filed her lawsuit.
Karpov's strategy
Anatoly Karpov, the Fide champion, has registered 136 victories in first class or international level tournaments. This is a record unlikely to be broken. First prize No136 came at Groningen at the turn of the year.
At present, Karpov is pursuing his 137th success in the tournament in progress in Belgrade. In the game today from that event, Karpov subtly probes on both wings before breaking through with a bishop sacrifice on move 43 that ripped away the Black king's protection.
White: Karpov
Black: Ilincic
Belgrade, January 1996
King's Indian Defence
1Nf3 Nf6
2c4 g6
3Nc3 Bg7
4e4 d6
5d4 0-0
6Be2 e5
70-0 Na6
8Re1 c6
9Bf1 Bg4
10d5 Nb4
11Be2 a5
12Bg5 h6
13Be3 Qc7
14h3 Bxf3
15Bxf3 c5
16Rf1 Qe7
17Qd2 Kh7
18Rae1 Na6
19Bd1 Nc7
20g3 Nd7
21Bc2 Nb6
22Bd3 Qd7
23Kg2 Na4
24Rb1 Rfb8
25Bc2 Nxc3
26bxc3 a4
27Rb6 Ra7
28Rfb1 Na8
29R6b5 b6
30f4 f6
31f5 g5
32h4 Rh8
33Rh1 Kg8
34Rbb1 Ra6
35Rbf1 Qd8
36Qd1 a3
37Ba4 Nc7
38Bc6 Kf7
39Qh5+ Kg8
40Rb1 Qb8
41Qg6 Qf8
42hxg5 fxg5
43Bxg5 hxg5
44Rxh8+ Kxh8
45Rh1+ Kg8
46Qh7+ Kf7
47f6 Qh8
48Qf5 Black resigns
Diagram of final position
Raymond Keene writes on chess Monday to Friday in Sport and in the Weekend section on Saturday.
Bonn: A European Commissioner yesterday sharply criticised Bonn for its laggardly implementation of European laws.
The reprimand by Mario Monti, the Commissioner responsible for the internal market, came as three German federal states looked set to face the European Court of Justice for banning the import of British beef.
Addressing an audience at Bonn University, he struck a raw nerve of the Government. "It is certainly not compatible with Germany's leading role in the process of European integration to lag behind in this way," he said.
According to statistics, Germany has applied only 89 per cent of the measures needed to complete the European Union's single market; well behind most members. "What we need is a strong signal from Germany ... and giving an example to other member states," Signor Monti said.
He mentioned Bonn's failure to implement laws on free competition in public procurement contracts. There were 54 new complaints against Bonn last year, the most against any EU state.
Tony Evans looks at the strategic options for independent schools.
Whether the general election occurs this year or next, it is already clear that each political party sees education as a central issue in its manifesto. Indeed, it seems likely to play a more important role than in any election for more than 30 years and it is no surprise that parties now propose initiatives, such as "fast-tracking", with greater frequency than coherence.
Independent schools are intensely sensitive to this rash of conflicting proposals but it can no longer be assumed that such schools represent, as they did in the past, a safe Tory constituency. The past ten years have been characterised by a series of pragmatic accretions in educational policy, rather than by structural consistency, and those committed to the values of independent schools may well consider all politicians' rhetoric with unprecedented scepticism in the months ahead.
In this they will not be alone, for they share many of the concerns of governors, parents and staff in the maintained sector. Yet independent schools have specific preoccupations against which they will judge the plethora of political intentions.
What might these preoccupations be and how might independent schools react? It may seem a truism that independent schools value above all their independence, as do the parents of their pupils. At all costs that principle will be defended in at least five domains.
First, there is resentment of increasingly intrusive bureaucracy. This has been appreciable and few heads would affirm that it has helped to improve standards. The independent school thrives only if its critical parent body approves of its ethos and provision. It is therefore vital that heads and governors have the freedom to develop their schools in ways which they believe help pupils to succeed.
Intrusive bureaucracy erodes independence, as epitomised by the misguided format of the Department for Education's examination statistics, which distort and undervalue achievement, or the rigid requirements on registration, which give no credence to the local intelligence of responsible heads.
Secondly, independent schools will look hard at any threat of curricular erosion or dogmatism. Will a future Labour government require independent schools to observe the national curriculum in its every detail and at each key stage? Will testing be imposed? Will it modify, in the wake of the imminent Dearing proposals, or Labour's plans, a national 14-19 provision in ways with which independent schools can be at ease?
Over recent years independent schools have been vindicated in resisting inchoate or precipitous curricular change: they mainly welcomed the principle of a national curriculum but gave warning against the complex folly with which it was implemented some five years ago.
The defence of separate sciences, of classics, of English literature, concern for standards in mathematics and modern languages, opposition to modish cross-curricular themes and reservations about elaborate testing have underlined the salutary vision of independent schools. They will not compromise their academic values and freedom.
They would be unwise to barter such freedom against even assisted places, their third area of concern. The assisted places scheme, often accused of elitism, is in the social sense the exact opposite. Should a Labour government abolish the scheme or phase it out, as it is committed to do, most schools offering assisted places will remain comfortably viable. Some may choose to decrease in size but, ironically, social division will be increased, not reduced.
That will sadden independent schools, all of which seek to widen opportunity and access. Even at this stage they hope a Labour government would seek to draw strength from independent schools and devise an alternative scheme in partnership which reconciles their independence with a range of admissions across the social spectrum on the basis of need.
The experience, academic and extracurricular diversity and proven quality of so many independent schools could be used imaginatively by a Labour government. This could profitably extend to boarding schools and is already reflected in the steadily increasing number of places taken by local education authorities whose own schools cannot meet the full range of children's needs.
Fourthly, independent schools will defend resolutely their charitable status. Schools have interpreted their charitable purposes generously through bursaries, support to local communities, to the young, underprivileged and disabled through provision of sporting, musical and theatrical facilities, teacher training courses and, not least, their provision of educated, disciplined citizens.
Two thirds of independent schools report the use of facilities by community groups and nearly a quarter by maintained schools. Were charitable status removed, fees would rise but the effect, particularly in the urban day schools, would be to narrow the social base of the intake precisely where it should be enlarged. Education is a charitable activity per se. Why should a Labour government not extend charitable status to all schools?
A fifth area of concern lies with the independent inspection scheme. HMC and GSA have devised systems of inspection which are demanding and which seek to ensure that schools of the highest proven quality are further, and continuously, improved.
In this domain the Labour Party is wise to acknowledge the strengths of independent inspections accredited by Ofsted. Independent schools would not lightly surrender their stringent and appropriate system.
Independent schools are an integral part of education. They do not wish to be an enclave of privilege but to contribute to national prosperity. They seek co-operation not confrontation with government. In the five areas of concern outlined there is ample scope for respect, progress and positive partnership.
The author is Headmaster of Portsmouth Grammar School and chairman of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference.
Susan Elkin finds that good primary schools exist outside Ofsted's roll of honour.
Cecil Road County Primary School is a huge former board school built in 1909 and tucked tightly into narrow, car-lined backstreets in Gravesend, Kent. It is oversubscribed and of its 400 children about 40 per cent, predominantly Sikhs, are bilingual.
Several things strike the visitor immediately. Plants in tubs bloom on the edges of the steps to the entrance. Posted on the door are several notices stressing partnership and parental involvement. Strains of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony are audible in the distance. Otherwise, it is very quiet. Beautiful examples of children's art hang everywhere.
You begin to sense something special even before you see a pupil. As pairs of tiny children, all neatly uniformed, come to the secretary on errands or with messages, your first impression is confirmed.
The present school was formed in 1989 from the merger of three separate schools. The former junior, infant and nursery had only 200 children on roll between them. Andy Sparks, the head, says: "My motto is that you have to get the best out of what you've got. I believe in thinking positively. Take our cricket team. We haven't even got a pitch. We practise in the playground and our boys have just won a championship for the fourth consecutive year.
"And I don't complain about money," Mr Sparks adds. "I was an accountant before I came into education and I know how to get the best out of resources."
Classes are impressively orderly. Every child I met was purposefully getting on with something. Two were having a violin lesson. Another group was being taught music sitting on the floor around the teacher, the pupils concentrating intently.
A class of six-year-olds were all in their places working quietly. Even the nursery class was playing outside in an unusually disciplined and structured way. "I believe discipline is vital," Mr Sparks says. "Without it there is no learning environment."
Kamal Cox works with bilingual children to develop their English language skills. She also visits parents at home and provides an informal interpretation/translation service. "I have never heard anyone mention racial difference in this school except in a positive, celebratory way," Mrs Cox says.
It is for the management of its rich cultural diversity that the school is most remarkable. There are two ways of approaching racial integration. You can either make a complicated and self-defeating business of positive discrimination measures, or you can simply be natural and build real lasting equality as Cecil Road does.
Doreen Deakin, the grandmother of a pupil, says: "In this school everyone is welcome and everyone is important. The school is part of the community and the community is part of the school. It has changed local attitudes to racial diversity."
Mrs Deakin believes the school "doesn't receive the accolades it deserves for what it does". Earlier this year the school was nominated for a national Citizenship Award for Celebrating Diversity. Out of 170 schools, Cecil Road was shortlisted to the last three, along with a Yorkshire grammar school and a Manchester high school. As joint runner-up Cecil Road knew that it was effectively the top primary school in the country.
Mr Sparks and one of his staff went last summer to Manchester to receive the award. He believes it was a fitting end to his first five years at Cecil Road.
It is encouraging in these days when we are told so often of racial "incidents" and tensions to hear Mrs Deakin say: "The children celebrate Christmas, Easter, Diwali, Chinese new year and Jewish festivals. They are taught to understand each other's cultures.
"There is an obvious partnership between children, parents, headmaster, teachers, parents, governors and the local community."
Laura Joyce, nine, has the last word: "The really good thing about this school is that we've got all sorts of different people. There are Irish, English, and lots from other countries and they all get on well together."
When I heard that Gillian Shephard planned to introduce league tables of primary schools this autumn, my first reaction was one of fury. Not because I disapprove of rankings, or because I think they tell me nothing, but because they come a critical few months too late.
My elder daughter starts school this September. What I would give to be able to see, now, a league table of 11-year-old test results for all the schools in my London borough and its neighbours. As a journalist, I am professionally trained to conduct research. But never have I spent so much time researching a subject to so little avail.
How are parents to determine whether a primary school is suitable for their child? In rural areas, the answer is simple: all the local parents send their children to the same school and word of mouth will suffice. In big cities, however, the choice is huge and the task correspondingly much harder. In my borough, Hammersmith and Fulham, there are 25 primary schools. Add in a couple of its neighbours, and the potential choice rises to 90.
So what could be simpler? I could call just three local education authorities and ask them to send me a list of test results for the schools in their area. But no, I was told, they were not allowed to do so. How about a batch of inspection reports? No, they have to be elicited from each individual school. And even then, some schools are reluctant to put them in the post. Ofsted, meanwhile, has inspected hardly any of them.
So then I tried ringing a couple of the better secondary schools in the area to ask which feeder schools they could recommend. Apparently nothing could be more invidious than to pass judgment on individual schools. Each time, from each expert, I was told: ask other parents.
The trouble is, most of the parents I know send their children to private schools. This is, perhaps, a problem peculiar to the London middle classes. But it is a big problem. The only ones I managed to contact, through friends of friends of friends, had sent their children to the schools in question before the current head teacher had taken over. None could tell me what the new regimes were like.
So my husband and I determined to find out for ourselves. We had narrowed the choice down to three schools, but in a fairly haphazard, hearsay-dependent way.
At one school, we had the opportunity of a full interview with the headmaster, in which he patiently answered a myriad of questions. In another, the headmistress could be collared only during a parents' tour, as she showed us and ten other prospective parents around. At the third, we had a brief chat with the headmaster in the company of many other parents before two children showed us round.
When other parents are there, you feel bad about monopolising the head teacher; partly on their behalf, and also because you do not want your "pushiness" to deter the school from offering your child a place. But there are so many questions to be asked.
Nor is it often possible to elicit a sensible response. I tried non-leading questions, such as "Where would you place your school on the spectrum between traditional and progressive teaching methods?" I usually received a meaningless answer, such as "Somewhere in the middle" or "A bit of both". If I asked "Do you tend to agree or disagree with Chris Woodhead?", I would be told: "Some of his views I agree with, others I don't." If I asked whether they used whole-class teaching or phonics, they replied: "Good teaching requires a mix of different methods." All true, but not exactly informative.
Never have I had to take such an important decision on the basis of so little information. The choice we make will affect the schooling not just of our elder daughter but of her younger sister too, who will follow her a year later. Is this really what the Government means by parental choice?
THE chief American negotiator in the Bosnian accord, Richard Holbrooke, has been ordered back to Sarajevo to rescue the faltering peace.
The Dayton deal, mediated by America, is in jeopardy because of a moral crusade by the war crimes tribunal and a potential breakdown of the Muslim-Croat Federation.
Warren Christopher, the American Secretary of State, pressed Mr Holbrooke, just days away from retirement, to return to Sarajevo for talks with the key parties, the State Department said last night.
Nato officials in Sarajevo said earlier that, while all the former warring sides had withdrawn from designated zones ahead of schedule, political issues were endangering the process.
The thorniest issue is the prosecution of war criminals. International mediators are insisting that bringing the suspects to justice is essential to the peace process. But the Nato peace implementation force (Ifor) says hunting them down is harmful.
In a move that has outraged the Bosnian Serb leadership, Bosnian Government police arrested 11 Bosnian Serbs and accused them of war crimes. General Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commander, has suspended contacts with Ifor until the men are freed.
In Mostar, Nato is trying to restrain a conflict between Muslims and Croats; the latter are protesting against plans to unify the town.
We should take the inspectors' word for it if they find that standards are slipping, not rely on figures, says John O'Leary.
Throughout the 1990s, Chief Inspectors of Schools have reported that one lesson in three was badly taught in English schools. Tony Blair even used the statistic (wrongly) when he launched Labour's latest education policy.
This year, the figure was mysteriously absent from the Chris Woodhead's annual report. Instead, we were told that half of primary schools and two fifths of secondaries needed to improve.
Why the change of measure? Presumably because the proportion of poor lessons is now 20 per cent, an apparent improvement at a time when concern over standards has seldom been higher.
The biggest change is in the four years of Key Stage 2, from seven to 11, by common consent the area of the curriculum that arouses greatest concern. Last year 30 per cent of lessons were unsatisfactory; this year it is down to 21 per cent.
Unless there has been dramatic improvement which Mr Woodhead is ignoring, the only possible explanations are that earlier estimates were exaggerated, or Ofsted inspectors are more easily satisfied than Her Majesty's Inspectorate.
Last month's test results hardly support the improvement theory, but even they have their critics. Education officers in Hampshire have discovered that up to 1,000 low-achievers, who took easier tests as well as those for pupils of higher ability, have been counted twice. The result, which is likely to be repeated nationally, is that mathematics and science scores for the county were underestimated by 2 per cent.
The science results already stood out: while fewer than half of 11-year-olds reached their expected level in English and mathematics, in science, the subject said to pose most problems for primary teachers, the "pass rate" was 70 per cent. The obvious conclusion is that if all the tests had been set at the same standard as science we would have been celebrating a success story, not criticising primary schools.
Ofsted's explanation for the apparent improvement at Key Stage 2 is the size of the sample. Now that the inspection cycle for primary schools is in full swing, data from more than 1,000 reports was available, compared with only 80 last year.
But, in that case, was it a responsible use of statistics to pass judgment previously on an entire age group on the basis of so few inspections? And how small was the sample in previous years?
The demand for statistics is now such that perfectly valid judgments are taken seriously only if they have a figure attached. Mr Woodhead is in an unrivalled position to tell whether standards are satisfactory in English schools. His verdict must be taken seriously, but what is the quality threshold that half of primary schools and two fifths of secondaries fail to meet? How do schools know which half they are in?
The dominance of statistics has obvious dangers, well illustrated by the counter-intuitive measures Mr Woodhead chose to omit from this week's report. Once they give the wrong message, the only option is to find another statistic.
The annual charade over GCSE and A-level results is another example, when falling pass rates are taken to mean failure but improvement automatically means lower examination standards.
Judging educational performance is notoriously difficult and often subjective. Perhaps we should accept that and take inspectors' word for it if they find that standards are slipping.
HELMUT KOHL, the German Chancellor, was attacked in parliament yesterday after the announcement that the number of unemployed had jumped well over the psychologically important level of four million and was worse than at any time since 1948.
The leap to 4.16 million was blamed partly on unusually cold weather, but the trend was unmistakable: it was the sixth monthly increase in a row. Despite a government action plan, worked out with the tentative agreement of the unions, the employment situation is unlikely to improve much this year.
This week Grundig, once a household name in electronics, announced the cutting of another 3,000 jobs, and Theo Waigel, the Finance Minister, unveiled plans to reduce 7,000 public-sector jobs, including a 20 per cent cut in the number of German spies.
The Chancellor told parliament that his plans to cut taxes and stimulate growth would eventually make an impact on unemployment levels, but that everybody had to be prepared to make sacrifices and contribute to reforms. He let out some of his old animosity for Baroness Thatcher as he defended his cuts in social spending. He was not, he said, about to destroy the welfare state. "We never thought the example of Thatcher was something suitable for German conditions. We have completely different ideas of social obligations."
The unemployment figures were anticipated by the markets and the politicians, but they did nothing to dull the anger of debate or reduce the sense of hopelessness about the economic slowdown.
Last week the Chancellor brought together unions, employers and the Government to devise a package of incentives for businessmen, to map out welfare cuts and employment-creation measures in anticipation of the record unemployment level. Neither the Social Democrats, nor the leaders of the 16 federal state governments, nor the Bundesbank were invited to the round table and all are unhappy.
Bernhard Jagoda, head of the Federal Labour Office, said the unemployment rate had risen to 10.8 per cent from 9.9 per cent in December. The increase was more steep in eastern Germany a 42,000 jump to 1.17 million probably because of the large number of construction workers being laid off. In western Germany, where the worst affected areas were the Ruhr, Lower Saxony and Bremen, unemployment has risen to 2.67 million.
Herr Kohl has promised to create two million new jobs by 2000, but there is no sign that employers have been encouraged by his rather vague initiative.
First, there is a suspicion the Chancellor merely wants to ensure that the Social Democrats do not monopolise the employment issue. There are three regional elections next month, providing an important indicator to the Chancellor's future. Second, many employers believe that the unions are arguing on the basis of topsy-turvy economics. Union negotiators say that, since high labour costs are causing unemployment, then lower real wages should translate into new jobs.
Many employers claim it will be difficult to keep employment levels, even at their present level. David Herman, chairman of Opel, speaks for many employers when he says that unions will have to accept not only the principle of wage restraint but a lower standard of living across the board.
There is a basic resistance to big cuts in welfare spending. Rudolf Scharping, the Social Democrats' parliamentary leader, last night accused the Chancellor of deserting his responsibility to generate economic progress in a way that "intimately links it to social justice".
BLEAK PROSPECT
Mechanical engineering: Production is up 7 per cent, but the number of jobs dropped by 10,000 in the past year.
Building: 5,500 bankruptcies were reported last year and more than 6,000 are expected this year. At least 90,000 jobs are expected to go this year.
Car industry: It is estimated that 100,000 jobs will be lost in manufacturing and the spare parts sector between now and 2000.
Electronics: the industry lost 230,000 jobs between 1990 and last year. More are expected to go this year.
Retail trade: Between 30,000 and 40,000 jobs are to be cut this year. In the previous two years 90,000 jobs were lost.
A NEW law redefining rape and introducing tougher penalties for sex offences was greeted yesterday by Italian feminists as a sign that entrenched male attitudes towards women are changing.
After 16 years of fruitless debate on sex crime legislation, women MPs forced through a Bill overturning a Mussolini-era law defining rape as "a crime against public morality". The Bill, which has yet to pass through the Senate, describes acts of sexual violence as crimes against the person, a much more serious charge. It also guarantees legal aid for rape victims and raises the minimum sentence for convicted rapists from three years to five. The maximum sentence remains ten years.
Controversially, the new law legalises sex between consenting minors aged between 13 and 16. An earlier version had proposed legalising sex from 12 years. Catholics are still troubled by the move, and one right-wing MP and lawyer, Raffaele della Valle, of Forza Italia, denounced the provision as a "teenage free love charter".
Alessandra Mussolini, the grand-daughter of the Duce and a prominent member of the "post-Fascist" Allianza Nazionale, said the new law on rape was a victory for women. Maria Rita Parsi, a leading feminist and psychologist, said simply: "Italy has now joined civil society."
EMERGING doubts in Spain over European monetary union have been given vivid voice with a scathing attack by Miguel Boyer, the former Socialist Finance Minister, who helped to shape the single-currency project with Jacques Delors, the last European Commission President.
Senor Boyer, who was one of the committee of "wise men" who drafted plans for economic and monetary union (EMU) in the late 1980s, denounced what he called the "idol of Maastricht" as a ploy, with potentially devastating consequences, which would mainly benefit Germany and France. "Never has so much damage been done to so many by so few fanatics," he said.
Although Senor Boyer left office in 1986 and is now financial director of a big construction firm, his European antecedents gave weight to his anti-EMU outburst, delivered to 500 businessmen in Madrid. His attack comes after signs of wavering commitment to EMU in the Socialist Party of Felipe Gonzalez, the Prime Minister, and business worries that Spain's weak economy may doom it to a second-class existence outside the EMU bloc.
Last month Carlos Westendorp, the Foreign Minister, spoke of a crisis of confidence in Europe and aired the possibility of a delay in the planned January 1999 launch. But Senor Gonzalez and Jose-Maria Aznar, leader of the opposition Popular Party, are proclaiming strong commitment to EMU before next month's elections.
In Brussels and Bonn, the cracks appearing in Spain's hitherto seamless pro-European consensus are put down to fears of exclusion from the initial intake of EMU members in 1998. Spain now meets none of the EMU criteria, although its debt ratio is close to the 60 per cent of gross domestic product prescribed in the Maastricht treaty. Its budget deficit, however, is still over double the 3 per cent of GDP required next year for entry.
Senor Boyer said: "Monetary union is more of a political than an economic objective. The very short calendar (to introduce the euro) could result in being so harmful that, by adhering to it, the very process of European union could be damaged."
Summing up, he said: "I do not share the dream of many technocrats and certain elite politicians of maintaining to the death a fiction about dates and conditions of convergence, hoping to catch nations by surprise with economic and monetary union, the significance and costs of which they do not know."
SHE was hardly a thing of beauty. She was unstable. She was slow. She was cheap. But, like all the best love stories, France did not know quite how much it loved the Citroen 2CV until she was gone.
Exactly five years after the last of these peculiar vehicles trundled off the factory floor and into myth, Jacques Wolgensinger, the former press officer at Citroen, has written a book looking back over a strange love affair between a country and a car.
Entitled The 2CV: We Were So In Love, M Wolgensinger's is the work of a man besotted and in mourning. The 2CV's designers, he recalls, had intended to create a car that could go the same speed as a horse, or at most twice as fast, that would be economical, reliable and unglamorous, but the vehicle was widely regarded as a joke when it was first unveiled. Thousands queued up to giggle at it.
Pierre Boulanger, the inventor, had decreed that the car should have a bouncy suspension that would enable it to carry eggs across rough terrain without scrambling them, while being mechanically simple enough for a peasant to mend.
A grey, bulbous object, with a single headlight sticking out on a stalk and a wafer-thin body that dented alarmingly, the first 2CV received an equivocal response when it was presented to dignitaries and the public at the Paris motor show in 1948. "Merde alors, it is hideous," one witness remarked. The then President, Vincent Auriol, stared dubiously at the French car of the future and said "Humph" several times.
But within a very few years the 2CV had ceased to be a mere farmer's tool and had become a cherished part of the French landscape, a cult symbol that everyone could afford. The Thompson twins in the Tintin cartoon series drive a 2CV, while in the film For Your Eyes Only James Bond escapes in one. Brigitte Bardot drove a 2CV, and the transcontinental races involving the tough little car, which M Wolgensinger organised, increased its cachet.
M Wolgensinger reveals the 2CV in all its many shapes, colours and incarnations converted into a boat, a bus, rolling along a high-wire and dangling from a building.
But new laws on safety and pollution spelt the end of the affair, and in the hard, fast world of car production the soft, slow, coughing 2CV could no longer keep up. The last one was made in 1990.
"Anyone who has driven a 2CV knows that it is both more and less than a car," M Wolgensinger writes. "This little motor is an expression of the soul. Along the thousand paths of the human memory, she is rolling still, unstoppably, into the eternity of remembrance and the glory of lost youth."
THE Prince of Wales, champion of European architecture, yesterday inspected restoration work on one of the innocent victims of the Balkans War, the ancient walled city of Dubrovnik.
Wrapped in a heavy overcoat, the Prince saw how the so-called pearl of the Adriatic is slowly being pieced together again after fierce bombardment by the Yugoslav Army in 1991-92. The city, which welcomed 850,000 visitors in the year before the conflict, hopes that its shattered tourist business will soon be restored. The Prince is the first member of the Royal Family to make an official visit to Croatia since it was recognised as an independent state by the European Union in January 1992. He was welcomed at the city's reopened airport by Zlatko Matesa, the Prime Minister.
Dubrovnik was first attacked, from the sea and from the mountains, by 15,000 soldiers of the Yugoslav Army, supported by Serbian and Montenegrin troops in September 1991. The worst day was in December of that year, when more than 1,000 shells fell on the city within 24 hours. Throughout the bombardment, it received more than 2,200 direct artillery hits.
The massive 15th-century city walls withstood the onslaught well, despite taking 147 hits, but 563 buildings were shelled within the city walls, 438 roofs were damaged, delicate stone carving was shattered by shrapnel, and nine buildings were destroyed. As the shells were falling, the Prince was addressing a meeting of the European Environmental Bureau in Brussels, appealing to the world not to stand idly by.
"We have no claim to regard ourselves as in any way more civilised in this day and age if we have to witness the dismemberment of a unique city like Dubrovnik," he said at the time.
Yesterday Nikola Obuljen, the Mayor, told the Prince that the cost of restoration had been estimated at $274 million (£178 million) and the work would take 25 years. About $30 million has so far been spent, mainly on emergency roof repairs. Among the casualties inspected by the Prince were a 15th-century fountain still displaying damage, the Franciscan monastery which took 37 hits, and the small baroque Festival Palace.
The Prince later flew to Split to meet British Army back-up units of the United Nations Implementation Force at the Divulje barracks. He will meet British units in Sarajevo today.
The Bluetones take to the sky, Michael Jackson's nephews don't. Both will sell millions, says David Sinclair.
THE BLUETONES Expecting To Fly (Superior Quality
Recordings/A&M BLUE 004)
DESPITE the unseemly scramble by the latest wave of groups to dissociate themselves from the now rather dog-eared Britpop tag, the bandwagon rolls merrily onwards. And if the Bluetones are not an example of a new British band playing fine pop music, then it is hard to think who is.
Four earnest young men from Hounslow who have already been declared the great pale hopes of 1996 on the basis of a handful of singles, they offer plenty of passion, though nothing in the way of innovation. Sticking primarily to a retro formula of guitars, drums and voices, their debut album, Expecting To Fly, has a comfortingly familiar sound which will do nothing to hinder its potentially massive commercial appeal.
On songs such as Things Change and Time & Again, Adam Devlin's guitar-playing encompasses the chiming grace of Johnny Marr and the choppy aggression of Pete Townshend, while singer Mark Morriss plies his tales of romantic whimsy with a clean-cut voice, making a pleasing virtue out of his drawn-out, southern-English vowel sounds.
Disillusionment is a recurring theme "I'm not the same person I was a year ago/You cut me deeply and the scars still show" but, typically, it is music that turns a downcast mood into something life-affirming and wholly uplifting.
The Bluetones' fondness for pop melody, and the care with which the songs are written and arranged, means that they stray, at times, a little too close to the bland "tunesmithery" of the Beautiful South. But on harder numbers, such as the ambitious Talking To Clarry and Cut Some Rug (imagine the Stone Roses with a proper singer), there is a rare brilliance at work.
3T
Brotherhood
(MJJ Music/Epic 481694)
BROTHERS Taj (22), Taryll (20) and TJ Jackson (17) are the three Ts in 3T. Their Dad is Tito Jackson, formerly of the Jackson Five/Jacksons, which means that their uncle is none other than the King of Pop himself. Membership of a showbusiness dynasty undoubtedly has its advantages. Not only are the boys none of whom looks a day over 15 signed to Michael Jackson's MJJ label, but he has also contributed a new song, Why, to their album, Brotherhood.
However, the intensity of the grooming process, which effectively began at birth, and the burden of expectation which now rests on their slender shoulders is such that any spark of youthful innocence or spontaneity has been rigorously excised from this debut.
The result is a sophisticated but stodgy collection of mature soul ballads and mellow swingbeat grooves that have been polished to dull perfection. Uncle Michael sings with the boys on Why, an insipid, orchestrated ballad that addresses such big questions as "Why does Wednesday come after Tuesday?", and his involvement alone will guarantee that this album will be a substantial hit.
However, their instinctive tendency to play safe means that despite their obvious talent, the Ts sound as if they have been catapulted into an early middle-age.
THE SAW DOCTORS
Same Oul' Town
(Shamtown Records/
Pinnacle SAWDOC 004)
IMMUNE to the winds of change that constantly rake the pop landscape, the Saw Doctors continue to peddle their emerald brand of folk rock with stoic goodwill on their third album, Same Oul' Town. Songs ranging from the jolly Macnas Parade to the lilting Clare Island are peppered with the usual Irish landmarks, while the romantic refrain of "Why don't we share the darkness tonight?" is greeted (if only in the sleeve notes) with the riposte "Guinness or Murphys?"
Musically it is a rugged, if rather guileless formula "like Bono in wellingtons", as guitarist and singer Leo Moran memorably said but there is a simple truth at the heart of songs such as To Win Just Once and the recent hit, World Of Good, that makes them strangely impervious to criticism.
As they put it themselves, "Life's too short for wasting/For ifs and might-have-beens," and Same Oul' Town is an album that demands to be savoured on its own terms, unhindered by the ifs and buts of fashion, timing or taste.
STATUS QUO
Don't Stop
(Polygram TV 531 035)
IF EVER there was an argument for forcing the compulsory retirement of rock bands this is it. To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of a partnership that was forged, appropriately, at a Butlin's holiday camp, Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt have hit on the idea of putting a selection of other people's songs, some of them perfectly good to begin with, through the Status Quo grinder.
Performed with a cavalier disregard for nuance and a deadening lack of conviction, the ominously titled Don't Stop is a farrago of epic proportions. Proud Mary, Get Back, Lucille, Sorrow, Raining in My Heart and of course, Fleetwood Mac's presidential campaign song Don't Stop are just some of the old chestnuts that get a roasting.
Torpedoed by lacklustre vocals and the Quo's notoriously arthritic rhythm section, even the Move's rabble-rousing I Can Hear the Grass Grow and Robert Palmer's haunting Johnny and Mary wilt like delicate blooms in the sun, while a collaboration with the Beach Boys on a version of their surfing classic Fun Fun Fun is nothing short of tragic.
Don't stop? If only they would.
TENSIONS between China and the United States are escalating on several fronts. They took another unsettling turn yesterday with revelations that Peking has sold nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan. That could lead to Washington imposing sanctions, but President Clinton may waive the penalties for the sake of American jobs and to avoid making links even more strained.
The nuclear proliferation issue comes on top of other flashpoints, including human rights abuses, Taiwan and China's continued piracy of American software, music and videos.
There is a strong chance that China could become an election issue for Mr Clinton. His campaign taunt, four years ago, that President Bush was coddling the "butchers" of Peking could be hurled back by Republican foes. He is under pressure not to impose sanctions from Boeing, Westinghouse and other big corporations whose orders from Peking account for thousands of jobs. But China has been identified by the CIA as selling specialised magnets needed to refine weapons-grade uranium to Pakistan. Mr Clinton could retaliate by cutting off all US government loan guarantees, amounting to nearly $10 billion (£6.5 billion), to American companies doing business with China.
To waive these sanctions, Mr Clinton would have to declare that the business deals were vital to American national interests. The decision poses a quandary for the President. To impose sanctions would worsen relations with China and upset American companies. Not to do so would upset Democrats who think that halting the spread of nuclear weapons comes before business interests. In fact, business links between China and America have become so intertwined that both nations would suffer if politics and confrontation intruded. Last year the United States exported goods and services worth more than $12 billion to China, accounting for 200,000 American jobs, while Chinese exports to the US approached $40billion.
China appears unwilling to compromise. Two years ago Mr Clinton agreed to separate trade from human rights issues, yet China continues its crackdown on dissidents.
In Washington this week, Li Zhaoxing, the Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister, insisted that the technology sales were for peaceful nuclear co-operation, a claim America rejects. He blamed Washington for the downturn in relations, citing Taiwan as an example.
Peking still lays claim to Taiwan and refuses to rule out force to retake it. China is agitated over Taiwan moves towards democracy.
US intelligence believes China will stage intimidatory military exercises near the island. US officials warned China that any unprovoked attack would have grave consequences.
Caitlin Moran arm-wrestles with the hefty promise of Audioweb's eclectic sonic attack.
Feel that." An arm like a tree-trunk is extended across the table. Under the skin, muscles wriggle about like restless children under a duvet. It's certainly some arm. Most of us make do with a percentage of this arm. Parts of it appear to be in different time-zones.
"And I don't do nothing," Martin, Audioweb's divinely gifted singer, giggles. "I don't pick up nothing heavier than a pint. It's God's joke: he gave me the voice of a girl and the body of a Gladiator."
Unfortunately, Martin cannot extend himself to describing Audioweb's music so succinctly. This is not surprising as Audioweb, like Heinz, come in 57 different varieties. Imagine Jah Wobble on bass, the Edge on guitar and this Jekyll and Hyde figure up front, alternating between the blissful purity of McAlmont at his most lovelorn and Shabba Ranks chatting away nineteen to the dozen.
Audioweb are a miracle-shock when you see them live for the first time. There's a real feeling that you're witnessing an Event that you can bore your children to death with in years to come. But the furrow Audioweb plough is a fraught one.
"It is shocking how difficult it is getting press with a black guy in the band," Martin growls. "We were supposed to be getting a feature in one of the music magazines, but they pulled it because they were doing Black Grape the same week, and they said that the readers would get confused if they had two bands with black members in the same issue.‘'
Martin's record collection reflects what seems like every trend over the past 20 years. "I started off on reggae, went into ska‘cos I liked the way it was stripped down, angular. Then I had me soul phase not too much, y'know? A bit of a dabble." He giggles again. "And then I had me indie. A large part of my house is devoted to the Smiths. Sixties stuff Beatles, Stones, Hollies. Jefferson Airplane. And Paul Jones. He's a bit of a hero.
"But I can't stand much of what's happening now it all sounds the same. I turn on the radio and I don't know if it's the Stone Roses or the Bluetones." I think that's what Alan Bluetone was striving for.
"All the Britpop stuff is rubbish," Martin bellows. "I know all their references, and they're not doing much with them. The only single in the past year and a half that made me sit up was Reverend Black Grape. Then I bought the album, and that was boring.
"They really wimped out. That album should have been a rhythmic punch in the face. It was just this thing you could tap your feet to. If you were really drunk." Having dismissed most of his peers, Martin turns to those he supports.
"Supergrass are brilliant," he says. "We did Jools Holland's New Year's Eve show with them, and they were lovely. I saw Danny walking down the street a couple of weeks ago, holding this pair of trousers. He'd just come out of Top Shop and was going into Marks & Spencer. I asked him what he was doing, and he said, ‘I've just found these trousers in the street, and I'm taking them back to all the shops to see if I can get a refund. Pretend they were a present'."
Martin lets out a huge guffaw. "I started to get worried if Supergrass need to go around selling trousers after having a No1 album, it's going to take us years before we can afford to get a round in."
With which he lifts his pint and pumps those spectacular muscles a little bit more.
Audioweb's single, Yeah, is released on Monday by Mother Records.
Cleo Laine, Cafe Royal
AFTER Barbara Cook's tour de force last month, there was a danger that the rest of this winter's programme at the Cafe Royal would seem a terrible anticlimax. Cleo Laine's opening night laid those fears to rest. Though her singing does not exactly sweep you away in a storming torrent of emotion, she has lost none of her appetite for those gravity-defying, high-wire duets with John Dankworth.
On her album Solitude, released last year, Laine was matched with the Ellington Orchestra, now under the direction of Duke's son, Mercer. With Dankworth supplying most of the arrangements, the meeting went extremely well, particularly in the unearthing of a number of neglected tunes, including Reflections and the playful adaptation of Sonnet to Hank Cinq, a theme lifted from the Shakespearean collection Such Sweet Thunder.
It would take a miracle to squeeze a big band into the corner of the Green Room, and in any case the stripped-down setting of the Dankworth quartet suits Laine even better. Weaving her vocals between her husband's saxophones and clarinet and the filigree piano of John Horler, she has ample space to function as the group's third soloist.
Reaching back to the prehistoric era of W.C. Handy, Dankworth put a contemporary, funky spin on St Louis Blues. The wayfaring lyrics of I Thought About You were complemented by Malcolm Creese's insistent bass lines and Mike Bradley's train-like drum motifs. Given her range, Laine is the perfect choice to perform Creole Love Call, her tribute to Adelaide Hall, embellished in this reading by exceptional if rarely heard lyrics concocted by Lorraine Feather.
The evening sagged only in the extended medley dedicated to Vincent Youmans. There was nothing wrong with the songs themselves, but the fragmented, stop-go treatment served to underline Laine's occasional habit of treating lyrics as mere playthings. Then again her sly sense of mischief allowed her to extract the last ounce of satire from the glorious Peel Me a Grape, written by Dave Frishberg and popularised by Blossom Dearie. Frishberg's deft evocation of ennui among the up-town socialites sounds even more timely in this age of the princess, the gym and the shopping expedition.
Nick Heyward, Dingwalls, NW1
THESE days, it is widely held that the owner of the most boyish grin in British pop is Blur's Damon Albarn. Back in the early 1980s, though, that mantle was cast around a young Nick Heyward's shoulders. While many musical contemporaries were experimenting with the frilled collars and extravagant fringes of New Romanticism, the relative wit and drive of his punk-pop band Haircut 100 came as a breath of fresh air.
Their collective career was short-lived, however, and Heyward's subsequent progress as a solo artist has been hampered by the difficulties of persuading a listening public that a man first cherished for his pleasing dentistry can yet mature into a songwriter of genuine worth.
The penny might be beginning to drop though. Tangled, his recent album for Epic, has won warm reviews, going some way to repositioning the 34-year-old artist within the collective consciousness.
Driven by a much more muscular guitar sound than that which characterised his earlier work, its short, sharp songs have led some critics to comment that Heyward should be viewed almost as an older brother to the brash young heroes of Britpop. His acute lyrical eye provides the strongest support for such a theory: maturity has further ripened his ability to evoke intensely English scenes through the clever use of a telling word or phrase, so that now social comment occurs where whimsicality previously reigned.
This one-off London appearance, coming towards the end of a 14-date tour, found Heyward deploying his grin far more sparingly than before and instead thrashing out those new songs (She's Another Girl, London, Carry On Loving, the recent modest hit The World) with relative aggression. Visits to his back catalogue were few and far between: 1983's Blue Hat for a Blue Day was scarcely recognisable in its new, swaggering incarnation, though the Haircuts' Fantastic Day from a year earlier still managed to project its original charm.
An obvious determination to carve out a new musical direction is to be applauded, however. If Albarn is still writing with Heyward's current energy in 15 years' time, he really will have something to smile about.
CHINA said yesterday that the United States must stop selling advanced weapons to Taiwan if tensions between Peking and Taipei are to be eased, and it urged the Taiwanese authorities to abandon efforts to break out of diplomatic isolation.
Shan Goufang, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, reiterated Peking's commitment to peaceful reunification with Taiwan, but underlined China's threat to invade Taiwan if the island was attacked or if Taipei abandoned its avowed goal of reunification and declared its independence.
"The United States must not sell large amounts of advanced weapons to Taiwan for tensions to be eliminated," Mr Shen said.
Reports have suggested that China is planning major military exercises near Taiwan, but President Clinton said yesterday he was confident that there would be no military conflict because too much was at stake.
THE spectre of Islamic unrest spreading throughout the Gulf and threatening the conservative rulers of the oil-rich states was yesterday strengthened by a fresh attempt to crack down in the troubled island of Bahrain.
The Government has arrested a prominent lawyer and writer on the ground of inciting sabotage and arson, a move likely to inflame unrest in the small Gulf island. Ahmad al-Shamlan was arrested by security forces, who said that several suspects had disclosed under questioning that he had taken part in recent sabotage attacks and arson. He is the first prominent Sunni Muslim to be arrested since unrest at the end of 1994, largely inspired by Shia calls for an end to discrimination against the Shia majority and a restoration of the 1975 constitution.
The crackdown comes as Bahrain's neighbours are growing increasingly nervous about the demonstrations. Crown Prince Abdullah, the Regent of Saudi Arabia, said in one of his first foreign policy announcements that the riots on the island were unacceptable and the instigators should be dealt with.
The six-member Gulf Co-operation Council, which groups Saudi Arabia and conservative states in the Gulf, has blamed Iran for the unrest and accused it of stirring up anti-government violence.
Yesterday Bahrain, which has deported three dissident Muslim clergy it accused of pro-Iranian sedition, said Tehran had incited the protests. The security officials said Mr Shamlan had links and contacts with terrorist organisations abroad, and said that they would, when questioning ended, "provide full evidence supported by documents to the legal authorities".
Iran has conducted a virulent radio propaganda campaign against Saudi Arabia, which now sees Iran as the greatest threat to its security in the region. There is little evidence that Tehran has been actively conducting a campaign of subversion, although a diplomat was expelled from Bahrain last week.
There is mounting evidence that conservative Gulf rulers are taking fright at moves for more democracy and are putting pressure on neighbouring countries to clamp down on press and personal freedoms. Kuwaiti officials say they have been warned not to move any further in extending democratic rights because of the dangerous example this set.
Carmen, Hackney Empire
ANYONE in danger of falling for the official line peddled in the tabloids that opera is an entertainment fit only for "toffs" and fat cats should hurry off to Hackney tonight or tomorrow. If they can get a seat, that is the Empire was packed for Wednesday's first night, when all seats were £10; now they range up to £15.
Heaven knows what an "ordinary" audience is supposed to look like, but it must be something like this: scarcely a glass of wine, sparkling or otherwise, to be seen; rather, foaming pints in clear plastic clutched by people who could as well be at a football match or down the pub. There's a law of supply and demand at work here, with the spirit of dear, sainted Lilian Baylis hovering benignly overhead.
Yet not even so soppy a romantic as I could claim that everything about Commedia Productions' staging of Carmen is perfect no money but their intentions are the purest. Bill Bradford's permanent set serves. Costumes and production are largely DIY hence little sign of the military, and none too clear a narrative line, a problem highlighted by over-enthusiastic cutting of the dialogue.
The biggest problem was the use (for reasons of economy) of an ancient, out-of-copyright translation: it would be a pity if "ordinary" audiences thought opera librettos were as stilted as this.
You could question the non-professional chorus's intonation, but not their boldness of attack: they had worked themselves silly learning some very tricky music, and whammed into it. The band, largely one to a part, performed miracles of doubling the heroic solo horn, apart from playing what Bizet wrote for him very beautifully, nearly ruptured himself filling in for (if memory serves) second bassoon in the prelude. Geoffrey Boyd, the conductor, knew what the score should yield, and did his damnedest to realise it.
All the soloists had real voices and projected the words with total clarity. And there was genuine musical intelligence at work: when, for example, did you last hear a Toreador sing the chorus of his number piano? Or a Carmen start the Seguedille at a genuine pianissimo? Bravo Guy Harbottle and Suzanne Joyce respectively.
Neil Allen's sweet lyric tenor was perfect for Don Jose's music in the earlier acts, and through sheer willpower he found the heft for the third and fourth-act finales. The murder held the Hackney audience breathless.
And there's the nub. For all its imperfections, there was a transparent honesty about the performance that triumphed over circumstances and gave the audience a clear idea of what Carmen is all about. Would that the same could be said of the hospitality orientated, plumply feline Albert Hall Boheme, which harboured presumptuous pretensions to "people's opera".
There was amplification at the Empire, too, equally unnecessary as far as the voices were concerned, but it was a hundred times better managed.
The Invitation/Dances with Death, Covent Garden
Kenneth MacMillan was breaking taboos when he choreographed The Invitation in 1960. A landmark in British ballet, it used the language of classical dance not for the telling of fairy-tales or for the painting of pretty pictures, but for the brazen expression of human desire and damnation. And like the rape victim in The Invitation, British ballet would never be the same again.
Seeing it revived 36 years later is to appreciate how early in his career MacMillan was, like Antony Tudor before him, prepared to confront the darker side of human sexual psychology. But, unlike Tudor, he was turning those forbidden passions into gloriously effusive dance. When they come for this ballet has more padding than an over-stuffed Victorian sofa MacMillan's dance phrases are charged with expressive urgency, hurtling his dancers into flights of ecstasy and anguish.
Sex is in the air in The Invitation; it's even to be found in the naked statues in Nicholas Georgiadis's garden, and all the genteel Edwardian house guests are at it. The Girl (the role that made a star of Lynn Seymour) and Her Cousin are two innocents in their midst, folding into one another in youthful infatuation. In stark contrast, the Wife and the Husband are destroying one another with their anger and disillusion. The Wife's rather touching seduction of the Cousin is set against the Husband's brutal rape of the Girl, a moment of true expressionistic horror.
The Royal Ballet dances it well, even though the work hasn't been done since 1977. Genesia Rosato, as the Wife, was elegant and sympathetic; Stuart Cassidy's Cousin was sensitively realised. Irek Mukhamedov was powerfully masculine as the husband overtaken by his carnal appetite. And Leanne Benjamin, inheriting the Seymour role, danced as if she were caught up in a rush of adrenalin, the physicality of her performance spilling forth like floodwaters out of a burst dam elemental and unstoppable.
Sex is also a force of destruction in Dances with Death, Matthew Hart's new piece about Aids. A ballet about such a loaded issue, especially one whose pivotal character is the virus itself, could so easily descend into an embarrassment of mawkish intemperance. But Hart, although only 23, has learnt the lessons of his craft well. Dances with Death is a heartfelt and moving personal statement delivered with touches of theatrical brilliance.
The choreography, set to Benjamin Britten's dolorous Violin Concerto, is deceptively simple. At first it reads like a literal discourse on the disease at work. Darcey Bussell is the lethal virus; the corps de ballet the cells of the body, their passage from white costume to red a sign of their deadly transformation. But Hart has fractured his modest narrative into layers of arresting imagery. Some are crassly specific the moment of infection between Jonathan Cope and Belinda Hatley's lovers but others hold the eye in unforgettable imprints, best of all the final tableau of Bussell looming high over her army like a mighty general victorious in battle.
Choreographically, the men are less well drawn than the women. Adam Cooper, in particular, suffers from a diffusion of character as Cope's diseased male lover. But Hart has devised some remarkable lifts to spotlight the women: tender for Hatley's innocent victim, triumphant for Bussell's attacking angel of death.
In the end Dances with Death is an out-and-out contest between Hatley's brave survivor and Bussell's inexorable master. Hatley is gorgeous, abundant in her ill-fated yearning for the doomed Cope and in her determination to defy his disease in her own body. Bussell relishes the opportunity to undermine the sweetness of her usual image, her legs lashing out their fatal touch like an insect with poison-tipped limbs. While all around her mass the impressive forces of the corps de ballet, getting stronger by the minute.
Paris: Metropolitan France's population reached 58.3 million at the end of 1995, a year in which there was a 2.5 per cent increase in the birthrate after a three-year decline. In all, 529,000 people died and 729,000 were born, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies. The average fertility rate was 1.7 children per woman of child -bearing age, slightly higher than the 1.65 of the two previous years.
TWO Israeli Cabinet ministers yesterday demanded an inquiry into allegations that in recent years banks overcharged many of the country's 270 kibbutzim for loans, which the central bank estimates to be worth £3.26 billion.
Reports said that, without the financing, at least 100 of the communes would have gone into liquidation. The vast sum involved forced the central bank to deny a report in Yediot Aharonot which claimed that "correcting the mistakes will put the banks' stability in danger". Share prices of banks were hit for the second day.
Bank Leumi, one of the main institutions involved in bailing out the kibbutzim in a joint rescue package reached last year with the Labour Government, angrily denied the allegations. The United Kibbutz Movement, one of the two main kibbutz groupings, rejected calls to have its debt mountain re-examined; it said any possible bank error would be smaller than the debt-forgiveness package.
The financial rescue plan, the rudiments of which are now coming under scrutiny, was launched as the socialist ideology of the kibbutz was giving way to privatisation and attempts to increase individual freedoms. Many members were also deserting the kibbutzim for life on the outside.
Bank Leumi alleges that the issue is being manipulated by the cash-strapped kibbutzim to squeeze more money out of a Labour Government in the run-up to an election. The daily Maariv, in criticising the controversial rescue package, said it was "a desperate attempt to preserve a socialist way of life in a world where socialism has become, at best, a bad joke".
The paper argued that "the State of Israel has no security, economic or social interest in ensuring the artificial existence of those kibbutzim whose time has passed".
It was only in 1992 that it dawned on most Israelis that the socialist ideals of the kibbutz movement, first set up on the banks of the River Jordan in 1906, were having to give way to capitalist realities. Then, Ein Zivan, a financially strapped kibbutz on the Golan Heights, closed its communal dining hall and paid wages according to the value of work performed. This infuriated some of the pioneers.
Many analysts back the changes. One member of Ein Zivan said: "I do not want to be a museum."
THE Pope's Latin American tour, which ends in Venezuela at the weekend, is helping to erase ugly memories of his first visit to the region in 1983, when Central America was torn by civil wars.
Governments and revolutionaries were locked in power struggles fanned by the Cold War. In Nicaragua, the Sandinista Government tried to embarrass the Pope, shouting him down at an outdoor rally. In Guatemala, a military dictator sent six people to the firing squad just before the Pope's arrival.
This week, however, the pontiff has been met by large and friendly crowds in Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. The armed conflicts that raged in Central America have been extinguished in all but Guatemala.
The region is now battling growing crime, poverty and social injustice, while the radicalism that the Pope encountered on his last visit has been overtaken by a wave of conservatism.
Celebrating Mass before 150,000 worshippers in Managua, the Pope expressed happiness at changes that have brought peace to Nicaragua, but alluded to the Sandinista Government's reign as a "long, dark night".
The left-wing Sandinistas ruled from 1979 until losing elections to President Chamorro in 1990.
The Pope told worshippers that during his 1983 trip "I could not really meet the people. Since then, many things have changed".
For their part, the Sandinistas apologised for their behaviour in 1983. The former President, Daniel Ortega, leader of the Sandinista Front, took out full-page advertisements in two newspapers and rented billboards to welcome the pontiff.
President Chamorro's term ends after an October election this year and she is not allowed to run again. The opposition Sandinistas remain the largest and best organised of Nicaragua's 30 political parties.
"Thanks to divine providence, peace has returned to your country," the Pope told the crowds who attended the Mass. "The inhabitants of Nicaragua can now enjoy an authentic religious freedom."
As he departed, the Pope challenged the Managua Government and foreign donors to attack poverty, ignorance and joblessness in one of the continent's poorest nations.
President Chamorro, wearing a cross with her long white dress, escorted the pontiff hand-in-hand. A devout Catholic, she called the Pope's visit a dream come true.
It was El Salvador's turn to welcome the Pope yesterday. Hours before dawn, tens of thousands of pilgrims began streaming into a field in the capital for an open-air Mass. "Pope John Paul II, we love you," people chanted as the Pope landed at a military airport east of the capital. The flags of El Salvador and the Vatican flew from the cockpit.
There was a heavy police and military presence throughout San Salvador, and crowds gathered along the Pope's six-mile route from the airport.
The pontiff was greeted by President Calderon Sol, who knelt to kiss his hand as a military band played.
Last April the Vatican named the conservative Fernando Saenz Lacalle as Archbishop of San Salvador.
His appointment marks a radical shift from his predecessors who ministered during the country's decade-long civil war. The most notable of those was Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, whose name was associated with liberation theology, the radical grass-roots Catholic church movement that was popular in the 1980s.
The archbishop was murdered by a right-wing death squad in 1980 after speaking out against the country's poverty and social injustice.
But Monsignor Saenz Lacalle shares the Pope's dislike for controversial liberation theology, calling it a "re-reading of the gospel with a Marxist leaning".
He has said that such a religious philosophy has no place in El Salvador.
THE sight of the Pope obviously suffering in the heat of Central America i health.
It emerged yesterday that the Pope undertook the trip his 69th since being elected against the advice of Vatican doctors, who were anxious about the debilitating effect of such a gruelling journey on the increasingly frail pontiff. At Christmas the Pope suffered an attack of nausea during his seasonal message and faltered to a stop, watched by millions of television viewers around the world. At 75 the Pope is no longer the athletic figure who took over with such vigour 17 years ago, joking that he was not only the first Polish Pope but also the first one who could ski.
He now looks exhausted and moves slowly and stiffly, in part due to illness and old age and in part to the continuing effects of the 1981 assassination attempt.
In the Pope's absence, speculation has again risen over the papal succession, with attention focusing on the 68-year-old Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini. Hopes for a Third World Pope rest on Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria, 63.
Vatican sources point out that fears for the Pope's health when he toured Asia and Australia last year proved to be unfounded. The Pope intends to visit Slovenia in May, when he will turn 76. He also plans to visit Berlin, Budapest and Paris this year, and has said that he hopes to climb Mount Sinai with Jewish and Muslim leaders to greet the millennium.
The average time taken to sell a house has fallen from 22 weeks to 21 in the past year, according to the Black Horse estate agents. The North West takes longest (30 weeks) and the South East shortest (13).
Police condemned magistrates at Aldershot for fining a drink-driver £1. Christopher Walker, of Crowthorne, Buckinghamshire, was banned from driving for one year. He was 1mg over the 80mg limit.
Richard Cork continues his guide to the Tate's Cezanne retrospective.
In Cezanne's day, still life was regarded as a rather inferior subject. But with typical defiance he insisted on painting even the humblest objects in a grand and sumptuous manner.
Still Life with Apples, painted when he was in his mid-fifties, is among the most delectable of these paintings. He liked injecting tension by making the objects tilt in unexpected directions. But that does not wholly explain why the oval mouth of the green ceramic vase has been widened so surprisingly. When it suited him, Cezanne played around with perspective. Different components in Still Life with Apples seem to be viewed from different vantages. He wanted us to gaze into the welcoming emptiness of the vase. But the neighbouring glazed ginger jar is seen from lower down, so that Cezanne could emphasise its gratifying rotundity.
The plate, by contrast, is raised up steeply on the white cloth, helping us to see the ripe, burnished Provencal apples as enticingly as possible. They spill out on to the patterned drape and seem to be in danger of pushing the sugar bowl off the table. But Cezanne counters this unrest, and the almost volcanic upheaval of the cloth's mountainous forms, with the coolness of the wall behind.
Cezanne is at the Tate Gallery until April 28, sponsored by Ernst & Young. For advance booking, which is advised, telephone 0171-420 0000
Tomorrow: Richard Cork discusses Woman with a Coffeepot, c. 1895
A 75-year-old woman was rescued by a lifeboatman and his son after being thrown into the harbour in Broadstairs, Kent, when her battery-operated wheelchair went out of control.
A 7ft 1in schoolboy who eats six Shredded Wheat for breakfast is aiming for a basketball career in America after being called up by Britain's national under-16 squad.
Neil Fingleton, 15, of Gilesgate, Durham, is still growing but already he can touch a 10ft basketball rim from a standing position. He took up the game only 15 months ago with the adult Stockton Mohawks team after a member spotted him playing football. His height causes problems buying clothes and shoes he takes size 13 but he hopes it will assist entry to the National Basketball Association league in America. He said: "Obviously height is a great advantage but you still have to have good control."
Neil comes from a tall family his mother, Christine, a cook, is 6ft, and father, Mike, a fitter, is 6ft 1in. However, to achieve his dream he must add at least two stone to his 14st frame.
A nutritionist has drawn up a daily diet of 4,000 calories, including four pints of milk. Neil's food bill is £50 a week. Tony Hanson, the Mohawk coach and a former NBA player, said: "I'm sure the schools and colleges in the US are going to be interested."
LPO/Norrington, Festival Hall
ROGER NORRINGTON and the London Philharmonic continued their exploration of Berlioz at the Festival Hall with a programme of shorter works, some heard only rarely today. Norrington, in his introductory chat, described them all as "small masterpieces", which indeed they are, in their way. We were certainly given an overview of Berlioz's development as a composer, from his earliest orchestral piece, the overture Les Francs-Juges, to the Royal Hunt and Storm scene from Act IV of Les Troyens. This set up many fascinating cross-references and insights, though perhaps at the expense of the performers' collective concentration.
While there were many flashes of genius from Norrington, there were other times when he seemed so immersed in the unusual beauty of Berlioz's music that he appeared strangely indifferent to the audience. Parts of the excerpt from Les Troyens suffered from this patchiness: the storm climax, with the antiphonal outburst of "off-stage" brass and timpani, was thrilling, but the extended passage for horns, while beautifully played, was too indulged. This was generally the pattern: exhilarating climactic moments, but then a degree of self-absorption.
This was also true of the two overtures, the Roman Carnival and Les Francs-Juges. This last teems with ideas, not only in the thematic material but also in the composer's use of the orchestral palette. Berlioz clearly could not resist experimenting with every section of the orchestra, giving solos to ophicleides and trombones, emphatic pizzicatos in the double basses and so on. No ophicleides in the London Philharmonic, of course, and the fat sound of modern tubas and trombones lent a ponderous air.
The least familiar item on the programme was the Fantasy on Shakespeare's The Tempest, with the role of Spirits of the Air taken by the London Philharmonic Choir and a magical scoring that brilliantly created an atmosphere of enchantment. Much better known today is the song-cycle Les Nuits d'ete, which was immaculately sung by Ann Murray.
DRIVERS who run their engines while parked at the roadside will be fined under anti-pollution powers being given to local authorities. The Department of Transport announced yesterday that it was backing councils' calls for more weapons in the war against dirty vehicles.
Steven Norris, the Transport Minister, said council staff would also be given the right to fine drivers or ban vehicles if they failed roadside emission tests. It is hoped that increasing councils' powers will lead to greater success in the fight against pollution.
Local authorities had also asked to be allowed to stop vehicles as well as to test and penalise them, but were opposed by groups such as the Automobile Association, which argued that only the police had the training for such a task. The view was endorsed by the Home Office and has been accepted by transport ministers.
Mr Norris said: "These measures are part of our commitment to improving local air quality. This is an important move forward, allowing local authorities to take action where it is most necessary. There is no reason why a selfish minority of vehicle owners should allow their vehicles to pollute our streets."
He said it was hoped to bring in the new regulations later this year after trials in several cities. A spokesman for the department said the new powers would take into account the need for some commercial vehicles with frozen or chilled foods to keep their engines running.
Tourist coaches would have to be dealt with sensitively. "If it is a hot day and a coach has elderly passengers on board, then they might need to run the air conditioning," he said.
Concorde has broken its transatlantic record, flying from New York to London at an average 1,250mph, helped along by 175mph tailwinds. The British Airways jet completed the flight on Wednesday night in two hours, 52 minutes and 59 seconds, breaking its 1990 record by 90 seconds. Concorde, under the command of Captain Leslie Scott, was 40 minutes ahead of schedule, having averaged 22 miles a minute. There were 30 passengers on board.
Philharmonia/Wolff, Festival Hall.
CHARLES ROSEN, in his new book The Romantic Generation, proffers the notion that "the choreographic gyrations of the virtuoso conductor are important to the audience's comprehension", on the grounds that "an accent accompanied by an outflung arm seems literally to become louder and more intense".
The podium choreography of Hugh Wolff, conducting the Philharmonia on Tuesday, provided a telling demonstration. The crouching and stalking were from the Tilson Thomas school of conducting. But there was also a repertoire of less histrionic gestures that did signal the conductor's intentions.
In Beethoven's Violin Concerto those gestures drew our attention to the textural details: a crisply dotted cadence on trumpets here, a pregnant drum roll there. And all contained within a taut rhythmic framework providing a strong forward thrust (the Philharmonia on top form).
All the more curious, therefore, that the solo part, which would normally be expected to be the more ostentatious, should prove the more reticent. But this was the reticence of utter self-confidence and mastery. Gil Shaham's playing may seem to be innocently straightforward. But how telling the slightest nuance becomes in that context.
The emphatic underlining of textural details, however, is considerably less of a virtue in Sibelius. Wolff's neon signposting in the Fifth Symphony continually foregrounded material better left in shadow. The contours were big and dramatic, often arresting, but lacked the veiled, atmospheric quality that Sibelius surely wanted. However, if the spirit remained unconvincing, the rhetoric was undeniably stirring.
FANS of The Archers are spending up to £4,500 each to rub shoulders with some of the characters as the Radio 4 series follows in the wake of Coronation Street and takes a Mediterranean cruise.
Last year several characters from Coronation Street went on a cruise in a storyline that was released only as a video. Now eight members of the Archers cast are leaving Ambridge for a sea break. Scenes will be recorded on a cruise ship for the first time. There is speculation that a lottery win by regulars at The Bull may be the storyline.
About 1,500 fans have booked places for between £1,300 and £4,500 to join them on a 13-day Archers "theme" cruise aboard the P&O flagship Oriana, sailing from Southampton on July 9 to Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Elba, Sardinia and Gibraltar.
Hedli Niklaus, who plays the pub landlady Kathy Perks, said: "It will be bliss someone else will serve the drinks." Other characters on the cruise will be Lynda Snell, Joe Grundy, Pat Archer, Mike Tucker and Debbie Aldridge.
Passengers will meet the cast in organised sessions. A BBC spokesman said that P&O had approached Ms Niklaus, who runs the fan club Archers Addicts. There would be no mention on the programme of P&O or the Oriana.
The cruise was advertised in P&O brochures. David Dingle, the marketing director, said: "We have only about 300 places left.We have wanted to attract The Archers for a long time because we believe the sort of people who listen to it would enjoy our cruises. The show has a particularly strong appeal to the over-35s. It is the most upmarket soap and very British."
A LEADING republican activist, who was jailed for eight years for his part in helping falsely to imprison an RUC informer, was awarded costs of £15,000 by European human rights judges yesterday.
The judges ruled that John Murray's human rights were violated because he was refused access to a solicitor while being questioned about abetting the detention of an IRA volunteer who had turned informer. The ruling is likely to lead to changes in legal practice in Northern Ireland, where exclusion of solicitors from interviews is allowed.
But the European Court of Human Rights found in favour of curbs on the right to silence operating in Northern Ireland. They voted by 14 to five against Murray's claim that his right to a fair hearing had been infringed because the trial judge had drawn an "adverse inference" from Murray's silence during questioning and at the trial.
The decision to award costs to Murray, who played a dominant role in the incident, was criticised by Unionist MPs, who said it was "bereft of credibility".
Murray, 44, from Creeslough Park, West Belfast, was jailed in 1991 after being convicted of aiding and abetting the false imprisonment of Sandy Lynch, an RUC informer. Among others jailed with Murray for their parts in incident was Danny Morrison, the former Sinn Fein publicity director.
The court rejected Murray's claim for compensation and cut his original claim for £36,000 costs by more than half after an appeal by lawyers representing the Government. The judges ruled by 12 votes to seven that the absence of Murray's solicitor from 12 interviews infringed his right to defence, which is safeguarded by the European Convention on Human Rights.
Murray, who destroyed a tape recording of Mr Lynch's confession when police surrounded a house where he had been interrogated, stayed silent through all his police interviews. The judges said that the right to silence was at the heart of fair procedure under the Human Rights Convention. The question of whether those rights were breached by drawing "adverse inferences" from silence depended on the circumstances.
"In the court's view, having regard to the weight of the evidence against the applicant, the drawing of inferences from his refusal at arrest, during police questioning and at trial to provide an explanation for his presence at the house was a matter of common sense and could not be regarded as unfair or unreasonable in the circumstances."
But the judgment said that, because Murray chose to be silent, it was all the more important that he should have had access to a solicitor. "To deny access to a lawyer for the first 48 hours of police questioning, in a situation where the rights of the defence may well be irretrievably prejudiced is whatever the justification for such denial incompatible with the rights of the accused," it said.
John Wadham, director of Liberty, the civil rights organisation, said: "This decision will mean that suspects interrogated under the terrorist legislation will no longer be prevented from seeing their lawyers for the first two days of their detention."
Quatuor Mosaiques, Wigmore Hall
IT MAY not trip off the tongue, but the name of the Quatuor Mosaiques has been on the lips of many a connoisseur in recent years. Its recordings of Haydn and Mozart have won praise and awards, and the Wigmore was full on Wednesday.
Quatuor Mosaiques consists of three Austrians and a Frenchman, playing period instruments. Christophe Coin, the Frenchman, is a distinguished cellist. Erich Hobarth, Andrea Bischof and Anita Mitterer, the Austrians, have been associated with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Concentus Musicus Wien. The group's individual approach reminds one of those iconoclastic musicians.
The sound of their period instruments, whether in Haydn (Quartet in B Minor, Op33 No1), Beethoven (in F, Op135) or Mendelssohn (A Minor, Op13), inevitably sets them apart from conventional ensembles. The timbre is wholly integral to their music-making. An almost perverse delight is taken in presenting ordinary phrases in an unusual way. With the Andante of the Haydn sounding quaintly remote and the Presto all short bowstrokes and jokey chatter, it would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast between movements.
Beethoven's enigmatic last quartet is fertile ground for spirits such as these. If the tentative opening was shrouded in mystery, the throwaway ending was no less teasing. The Scherzo demonstrated a less positive characteristic: technical insecurity, with vulnerable intonation and notes hit less than squarely.
In the Mendelssohn, the Adagio non lento was rather a robust creation, the light touch of the Scherzo was not ideally realised, and a long pause destroyed the contrast with the explosive opening of the finale. But the ensemble contrived a breathtakingly tranquil ending to the work.
The family of Leeds schoolgirl Lindsey Rockcliffe, 13, killed by a car during a trip to France, condemned Foreign Office officials who took £2.10 from her bag to pay for the return of her effects.
A SHARP increase in rents for service married quarters was announced yesterday as part of the pay deal for the 227,400 men and women in the Armed Forces. The package will cost taxpayers an extra £227 million in the next financial year.
Most rents are to increase by 10 to 15 per cent, and by 25 per cent for the biggest houses, in an attempt by the Armed Forces Pay Review Body to match service rents with those in the private sector. To cushion the blow, the increases will be staged.
Despite increasing concern over army recruiting shortages, particularly for the infantry, pay differentials still favour the top brass. The four most senior officer ranks field marshal to major-general and their equivalents in the Royal Navy and RAF are to receive an average increase of 4.6 per cent (ranging from 3.9 to 5.6 per cent) and the remainder 3.5 per cent (3.2 to 3.8 per cent) by December 1.
The salary of Britain's most senior military officer, Field Marshal Sir Peter Inge, Chief of the Defence Staff, will rise to £125,850 and that of the most junior soldier, a newly recruited private, to £8,921. The higher award will go to 153 senior officers, including four generals, 11 lieutenant-generals and 43 major-generals.
However, the differential between the highest and lowest ranks is absorbed by two other elements of the award which only benefit service personnel of the rank of brigadier and below. The men and women in this category will receive an additional "X factor" increase of 0.5 per cent, a special "disruption" allowance, and a beneficial change in the way pension liability is assessed that will mean the equivalent of a further 2 per cent in take-home pay, phased over two years.
The rest of the pay award is also being staged so that 1 per cent of the increase will be held back until December 1. The bulk of the award will be paid from April 1.
Last year the most senior officer ranks were awarded a 3.2 per cent increase. All other ranks received an average 2.6 per cent.
Frankie and Tommy, Everyman, Liverpool
This is the story of Tommy Cooper. Thankfully, playwright Garry Lyons' portrait of the fondly remembered fez-topped comic (embodied by long-jawed, lumbering Steven Speirs) is a bit different from today's countless biographically scrappy tributes to rock'n'rollers.
True, we see Cooper rising to fame, and his final collapse. Scenes alternate between his behaviour offstage and his best-loved acts. And Speirs recreates Cooper's old tricks, combining manicness and mock clumsiness.
The surprise is that Lyons's play, first written for Hull Truck, specifically focuses on Cooper's pre-celebrity days when he was entertaining the troops in the Middle East just before demob. In Peter Rowe's energetic, stylish Everyman production, we watch Cooper in a memory-scape: an expanse of sand encircled by old props baskets with a curtain stage at the rear, its proscenium arch fashioned from corrugated iron (designer Ashley Shairp).
Actually this is a story of two men, of the short-lived double act of Tommy Cooper and little Frankie Lyons. The latter went back to working sheetmetal after his battle with Cooper's growing ego. The surnames are no coincidence the dramatist is Frankie's son.
As a consequence, Cooper is not simply fondly remembered. Combining research and poetic licence, Lyons Jr is really exploring the competitive aspect of double acts, the unfunny side of an obsessively ambitious comic, and the difference between large and small talent.
Speirs is not Cooper reincarnated. He has not got the vocal rasp, and the young Cooper was in fact more skeletal than hefty. Still, he builds up a quite complex character, sometimes hyperactive like an insecure child, sometimes bullishly crushing, maybe just driven, but perhaps a sharp careerist.
This is not a play of dazzling genius or depth. Ben Fox's basically affable, unbrilliant Frankie is not the Salieri of light entertainment. The escalating rows could also be condensed. Nevertheless, the duo's interactions, with Cooper warding off intimacy by playing the joker, are very believably scripted.
JUDICIARY
Current New
Group One: Lord Chief Justice 124,138 127,217
Group Two: Lords of Appeal,
Master of the Rolls, Lord
President of Court of Session 114,874 117,642
Group Three: Lord Justice Clerk;
Lords Justice of Appeal; Inner
House Judges of Court of Session;
President of Family Division;
Vice-Chancellor 110,137 112,791
Group Four: High Court judges;
Outer House Judges of Court
of Session 98,957 100,511
Group Five: Official referees 85,241 85,778
Group Six: Circuit judges 72,524 73,837
Group Seven: Chairmen of
industrial tribunals and
magistrates 59,327 60,270
SENIOR CIVIL SERVANTS
No in post Current New
Permanent secretary level 35 90-150,000 90-154,500
Grade Two (deputy secretaries) 113 67-98,000 67-100,900
Grade Three (under secretaries) 450 55-82,500 51-85,000
ARMED FORCES
Current Dec 1 1996
Field Marshal 121,130 125,850
General 95,050 101,230
Lieutenant-General 71,000 75,000
Major-General 63,500 66,290
Brigadier 57,736 60,257
Colonel 47,020 - 51,968 49,147 - 54,315
Lieutenant-Colonel 40,381 - 44,626 42,281 - 46,734
Major 28,643 - 34,323 30,054 - 36,010
Captain 22,571 - 26,239 23,688 - 27,521
Lieutenant 17,649 - 19,508 18,589 - 20,545
Second Lieutenant 13,352 14,063
Warrant Officer 18,944 - 26,341 19,837 - 27,583
Staff Sergeant 17,725 - 23,380 18,560 - 24,484
Sergeant 16,766 - 20,232 17,556 - 21,188
Corporal 14,164 - 18,527 14,859 - 19,439
Lance corporal 11,500 - 16,529 12,110 - 17,406
Private I-III 9,476 - 14,688 9,979 - 15,468
Private IV 8,469 8,921
DOCTORS
Current rates Rates 1-4-96 Rates 1-12-96
House officer 22,332 23,629 23,864
Senior house officer 31,330 33,137 33,457
Registrar 33,956 35,411 35,721
Senior registrar 40,798 42,557 42,997
Consultant 52,440 53,910 54,430
General Practitioners 43,165 44,340 44,770
The annual salary for doctors in training comprises a basic rate plus pay for additional duty hours. The rates shown are based on those applicable to doctors in training on the maximum of their salary scale and include the maximum number of additional hours permitted under the new deal for a partial shift of 64 hours a week.
Average intended net remuneration.
TEACHERS
Grade Salary point Salary point from 1/4/96 from 1/4/96
0 12,342 12,462
1 13,083 13,209
2 13,866 14,001
3 14,622 14,763
4 15,414 15,563
5 16,335 16,494
6 17,316 17,487
7 18,357 18,534
8 19,458 19,647
9 20,700 20,901
10 21,981 22,194
11 23,289 23,514
12 25,146 25,392
13 26,823 27,084
14 28,965 29,247
15 30,267 30,561
16 31,632 31,941
17 33,054 33,375
NURSES
Grade Current New
Student:
7,195-8,345 7,485-8,680
Nursing Auxiliary:
A 6,755-9,050 7,030-9,415
B 8,760-9,975 9,115-10,375
Enrolled Nurse:
C 9,975-11,820 10,375-12,295
D 11,435-13,080 11,895-13,605
E 13,080-15,150 13,605-15,760
Staff Nurse:
D 11,435-13,080 11,895-13,605
E 13,080-15,150 13,605-15,760
F 14,515-17,775 15,095-18,490
Ward Sister:
F 14,515-17,775 15,095-18,490
G 17,110-19,795 17,800-20,595
H 19,120-21,865 19,890-22,745
I 21,170-23,990 22,020-24,950
HEAD TEACHERS
School Group Salary range 1.4.96 Salary range 1.12.96
Very small primary 25,125 - 29,910 25,371 - 30,201
Small/medium primary 27,114 - 32,964 27,378 - 33,285
Medium/large primary 29,910 - 36,690 30,201 - 37,047
Medium secondary 33,498 - 42,009 33,825 - 42,417
Large secondary 38,019 - 48,522 38,391 - 48,993
2,000-plus pupils 42,939 - 55,032 43,356 - 55,566
SOME civil servants could have an 11 per cent pay increase this year under a new performance-related structure.
The Review Body on Senior Salaries recommended that pay increases for about 3,000 senior civil servants should range from nothing for "unsatisfactory performers" to 11 per cent for the few assessed as "truly exceptional".
Greater flexibility intended to attract senior managers from the private sector lies behind the new system. From April, individual government departments will determine pay increases, thus limiting the role of the review body, which will in future recommend only broad bandings.
A 3 per cent rise in the maximum payable to permanent secretaries will allow the Government to offer up to £154,500 to recruits from the private sector. The minimum for 35 permanent secretaries will remain at £90,000. The new structure is designed to allow "outstanding performers" to move from the bottom of the band to the top in five or six years.
In reality, no one at present is anywhere near the top of the band. Although some agency chief executives, including Derek Lewis, the former head of the Prison Service, have been paid more than £130,000, the highest-paid officer in the mainstream Civil Service is Sir Robin Butler, the Cabinet Secretary. He is paid £118,000. Sir Terry Burns, Permanent Secretary at the Treasury, is paid £110,000.
The total Civil Service pay bill is expected to fall by 7 per cent as staff numbers fall. The pay for about 1,550 judges is to be raised by 3.9 per cent, and the Lord Chief Justice's will rise to £127,217.
NURSING unions reacted with a mixture of outrage and disbelief yesterday at the gap between their award and the near 7 per cent rise for some junior doctors. Christine Hancock, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said: "Today's award is derisory. Nurses will expect equality with junior doctors. They are worth 6.8 per cent too."
The rises for doctors and dentists of up to 6.8 per cent took the highest-paid consultant to £106,140. The nurses were awarded a 2 per cent increase in national pay scales plus an unquantified amount to be negotiated locally.
The Royal College of Midwives said the award was insulting and sent a signal to women that their health and the health of their babies was being devalued.
Junior doctors' salaries range from £22,000 to £42,000 including overtime. Nurses are paid £10,000 to £24,000.
Union leaders said that the pay award would do nothing to solve staffing shortages in the health service. Malcolm Wing, deputy head of Unison, said: "Staff will continue to leave the service in droves, leading to even more bed closures. School-leavers will continue to look elsewhere for a career."
However, the National Association of Health Authorities and Trusts said the national award of 2 per cent was "too large to give the complete flexibility that trusts want" to negotiate their own rates of pay.
Philip Hunt, the director, said: "Next year will be very tight financially. Trusts want to be fair to staff but at the end of the day they can't let pay increases eat into the resources available for patient care." NHS unions are to meet on Monday to discuss plans for a nationally co-ordinated campaign to put an agreed pay demand to each individual NHS trust. Nurses sought total rises of 8 per cent and physiotherapists and other professions allied to medicine asked for 16 per cent in evidence to the pay review bodies.
The unions are angry at the Government's refusal to set guidelines for the size of the local element of pay award. Last year, nurses received a national pay award of 1 per cent with a recommendation that trusts should offer up to a further 2 per cent. By the end of the year, after threats of industrial action, all but a handful of trusts had paid the full 3 per cent.
Under an agreement that secured the end of the pay dispute last autumn every NHS trust will raise its pay scale by the full 3 per cent already agreed by the majority of trusts from March 31.
In contrast with arrangements for nurses, the Government has dropped its drive to introduce local pay for doctors. Consultants and GPs are to receive a national 3.8 per cent rise, and dentists 4.8 per cent, with no local element. The rises wil be staged, to ease the pressure on NHS trusts' budgets, with the final 1 per cent paid at December 1.
Last year consultants were offered up to an extra 2.5 per cent on top of the 2.5 per cent national rise if they signed local contracts. More than 90 per cent of consultants failed to take up the offer, according to the British Medical Association.
Junior doctors will receive increases ranging from 4.3 per cent to 6.8 per cent. However, only the few who do no overtime will receive the biggest rises.
Stephen Dorrell, the Health Secretary, said comparing the nurses' award with that of junior doctors was not comparing like with like. "The policy is not 2 per cent for nurses the policy is locally negotiated pay."
He would not be drawn on the likely size of local awards. He said the 2 per cent national rise was a floor from which local negotiations could start. "You will not find me offering any central norm on what local pay should be. That should be left to local negotiations."
Defending the size of the increases to junior doctors, he said: "They are an example of pay being targeted at specific pressure points to ease shortages."
Mr Dorrell defended the staging of the pay award to doctors and dentists, which is expected to save £30 million. "If you spend money on staff salaries you have less money for growth in activity," he said.
THE phased pay award for teachers of 3.75 per cent brought predictions of further increases in class sizes, redundancies and shortages of staff in key subjects.
Teachers will get a 2.75 per cent rise in April, with a further 1 per cent in December. The award will be worth 3.1 per cent over the full year and cost an estimated £346 million.
Gillian Shephard, the Education and Employment Secretary, accepted the pay review body's recommendation of a bigger increase in starting salaries to attract more graduates. Entrants to the profession will be paid £14,001 by the end of the year, a rise of 4.88 per cent.
Mrs Shephard accepted all the review body's main recommendations, but decided to pay the award in stages to ease the strain on school budgets. "I believe this is a fair settlement which reflects the continuing need to ensure that the profession attracts, retains and motivates individuals of the required quality."
Head teachers said the phasing was outrageous and the overall increase would do nothing to raise morale. Local authorities and governors said many schools would not be able to afford the increase without shedding teaching posts and raising class sizes.
The review body made several recommendations to make teachers' pay more flexible, encouraging governors to reward good performance. The pay spine will be lengthened with the addition of half points between each grade.
From next year, extra payments for heads and deputies will be reviewed against "performance criteria" agreed with governors. The review body did not support Mrs Shephard's suggestion that incentives should be introduced to encourage teachers to take jobs in difficult schools.
David Blunkett, the Shadow Education Secretary, said 74 of the 119 local authorities would have less to spend on education next year after paying for the teachers' pay rise, despite Budget promises of more money for schools.
"The Government is being dishonest over school funding," he said. "Ministers must now explain how increased class sizes and cuts in teaching posts, books and equipment can be avoided. It is irresponsible for ministers to accept the recommendations of the review body and then to pass the buck to a local level."
The Association of Metropolitan Authorities predicted teacher shortages would get much worse. Graham Lane, who chairs the education committee, said: "The pay review body recommended 3.75 per cent with no phasing in an attempt to head off a recruitment crisis and also to improve retention. Instead teachers will feel they have got a bad deal which lowers morale, and class sizes will rise because schools will not be able to afford extra staff to deal with rising rolls."
The National Union of Teachers accused the Government of robbing teachers at the top of the pay scale of £10 a month by phasing in their pay rise. Doug McAvoy, the general secretary, said: "The little that has been given will mean teacher job losses and an inevitable further rise in class sizes to the detriment of children. Instead of leaving schools to struggle to meet the increase the Government should accept responsibility for funding the award in full."
The last time the Government provided cash for the teachers' pay rise was during the run-up to the 1992 general election. Pupil numbers will rise by 86,000 in the new school year, adding to a 6 per cent rise since 1990 when the 439,500 teachers was the same as the present figure.
Nigel de Gruchy, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers, said: "Only last November, Chancellor Kenneth Clarke was busy handing out tax concessions. Today we are told the Government cannot afford to pay its salary bill on time. Another case of giving with one hand and taking back with the other."
The Association of Teachers and Lecturers told the review body that a rise of at least 7.5 per cent was needed to attract the best graduates. Peter Smith, general secretary, predicted further redundancies because of the Government's refusal to fund the award.
The Association of County Councils said the award would mean authorities having to find an extra £275 million over the £100 million they were already spending above budget limits.
The Changing Room, Duke of York's
There is something odd, ironic and, for those of us who admire the man, highly satisfying in finding David Storey's rugby-football drama ensconced in the West End as part of a season of Royal Court "classics". Throughout the 1980s the playhouse that had made his name as a dramatist treated him as a non-person, forcing him to give other theatres the work he had written with its proscenium arch in mind and, I suspect, stemming his creative flow as a result. But a new regime is at last making what, next to the production of a new Storey play, is the best kind of reparation.
If I had to pick a personal favourite from the work he wrote in the late 1960s and the 1970s, it would be his Contractor. Maybe next year the Court will find the courage to restage a play that requires a tent to be meticulously erected in Act I and conscientiously dismantled in Act II. But the piece at the Duke of York's is an excellent example of Storey's ability to evoke lives from snippets and a society from those lives. Less becomes more. He calls the play The Changing Room and leaves you feeling that you are seeing a changing world.
The main event, a rugby league match somewhere in Yorkshire, occurs offstage. Nothing of obvious import happens amid the dingy brown benches, the grey-green plaster, the clothes hooks and (at the back) the dreary white tiles of a locker room that would have any modern rugby-league pro on the fax to his agent with demands for hardship pay.
The players prepare for the game, they stagger in frozen and filthy at half-time and then dress and make their farewells, leaving the decrepit cleaner we met at the beginning to end the play with another despondent shove of the brush. Add to this a pep-talk from the coach, a couple of visits to the changing room by the club chairman, a casual frisking of the players by the ref, the substitution of a half-concussed forward, and that's about it. The play might almost be one of those documentaries for television that end with a studio discussion about the future of the sport between men called Brian and Ron.
Certainly, James Macdonald directs it with admirable attention to detail. And, although one or two of the bodies onstage might have trouble surviving a sprint for a taxi down St Martin's Lane, his 22-man cast create a credibly sweaty, authentically male atmosphere.
Character after character edges into being amid the mildly salacious banter and the smell of resin: Philip Whitchurch as the laughing boy whose idea of fun is urinating in the team bath; Brendan Coyle as the player who, even when half-conscious, clings pathetically to the tool-kit with which he plans to build shelves for the unfaithful wife who is ruining his game; Simon Wolfe as the wary mother's boy who examines each word for the possibility of offence; and, most significantly, David Hargreaves as the club's top dog and Ewan Hooper as its bottom one. The chairman is a rich builder who never appears without his accountant, gives the appearance of having to fake an enthusiasm for the game, and moans about the deteriorating quality of everything from bricks to chickens to men.
The cleaner's nostalgia for old days when colliers played rugby after 16 hours underground isn't to be taken so seriously, for he is a miserable old git who never watches a game. Nevertheless, he too adds to the play's often melancholy feel. As in much of Storey's work, a sense of unease and loss is all about.
But so, if only briefly, is something rare in Storey. You feel it when the time to face the crowd approaches and even the jokers go quiet. You certainly feel it when the players return, justifiably proud at a hard task well performed. Divisions have been replaced by unity. There is camaraderie, even joy. For just a few moments a game and a changing room have shown what the world might be.
THE makers of carbonated alcoholic drinks are to rename them in advance of publication of a voluntary code of practice intended to avoid confusion between alcoholic drinks and those intended for children.
Bass is to abbreviate the name Hooper's Hooch Alcoholic Lemonade to Alcoholic Lemon. Merrydown, producer of Two Dogs Alcoholic Lemonade, is to rename the drink Two Dogs Alcoholic Lemon Brew. The changes are to be made as soon as present stocks are exhausted.
Whitbread has abandoned plans to launch alcoholic carbonates under the names of Lemonade Bomb and Cream Soda Blast. Instead the drinks, containing as much alcohol as strong lagers, will be called Lemon Jag and Vanilla Heist.
Alcoholic spring water featuring a glow-in-the-dark label to "enhance its fun value in nightclubs" is to go on sale in Britain in the next few weeks. DNA, made in Australia, has a 5.5 per cent alcohol content.
Islay Kennedy, the Hertfordshire wine merchant importing the drink, said it was intended for an adult market.
The British Soft Drinks Association, which has waged a campaign against the marketing of alcoholic lemonades, said it was concerned by the product's imminent arrival.
THIS weekend everything from pizzas and loaves to cheeses and chocolates is available heart-shaped for St Valentine's Day.
Besides running special offers on red roses, bouquets at £4.99 and dozens at £9.99, supermarkets are also keen to emphasise exotic fruits such as granadilla, mango, physallis, tamarillo and passion fruit as alternative Valentine's Day gifts, and to draw attention to vegetables with aphrodisiac reputations, including red peppers, avocado, asparagus, and aubergine. For more old-fashioned romantics, oysters should be available from 49p each.
Advertised buys include:
Asda: Fresh boneless pork leg £3.28 kg, fresh beef rump steak £7.19 kg, baby new potatoes 49p punnet, tomatoes £1.19 kg, almond fingers 49p for seven.
Budgen: Sovereign fresh chicken stir fry £1.99 for 1lb, Chinese stir fry mix 99p for 370g, Ross Oriental Express egg fried rice 99p for 450g, Amoy yellow bean and black bean sauces 89p for 235g.
Co-op: Fresh pork spare-rib chops £2.69 kg, fresh whole duckling 1.8kg £4.79, sweet cured bacon steaks £1.19 for 300g, crispy breaded cod bites 79p for 195g, chicken tikka pizza £1.49 for 340g.
Harrods: Heart-shaped smoked salmon pillows £3.95, heart-shaped canapes 95p each, Rollot Coeur £3.35, Coeur de Chevre £4.50, Coeur de Neufchatel £2.95, tiger prawns with mango and ginger dressing £3.95 for 100g, smoked eel and potato salad £4.95 for 100g.
Iceland: Turkey breast fillets £2.99 for 700g, cheese and ham chicken Kiev £1.39 for two, prawns £1.99 for 200g, haddock fillets £2.79 for 680g, broccoli florets 99p for 907g, treacle tart 99p for 360g.
Marks & Spencer: Roast chicken drumsticks £1.99 for 540g, frozen at sea haddock in breadcrumbs £2.99 for 600g, chicken casserole with herb dumplings £2.29 for 1lb, Chinese menu for two £4.99 for 870g, Shamouti oranges £1.99 for ten.
Morrison's: Whole trout £2.84 kg, large cleaned salmon £4.38 kg, middle bacon £2.84 kg, Cheddar cheese £2.84 kg.
Safeway: Turkey breast steaks £3.19 for 567g, diced stewing steak £4.09 kg, fresh medium chicken £1.79 kg, medium Irish cheddar £1.89 lb, red plums 69p lb, tomatoes 45p lb, white finger rolls 99p for 20.
Sainsbury's: Chicken Kiev £2.69 for four, unsmoked rindless back bacon £1.99 for 312g, cod portions in crispy breadcrumbs £1.95 for 600g, loose new potatoes 21p lb, spinach 99p for 400g, apple crumble 84p for 450g, oranges £1.39 for eight.
Somerfield: Class A frozen chicken breasts £3.48 for 1.3kg, fresh basted turkey breast joint £2.99 for 500g, Little Gem lettuce 59p per pack, red potatoes £1.09 2.5kg, strawberries £1.09 per punnet, passion fruit 14p each.
Tesco: Half leg of lamb £5.19 kg, pork spare-rib chops £2.79 kg, brisket £3.99 kg, haddock fillet £1.98 lb, salmon steak £2.95 lb, crumpets 52p for 15.
Waitrose: British pork boneless shoulder roast £2.99 kg, English diced veal £2.59 for 340g, white celery 55p for 700g, large cantaloupe melons £1.49 each, sharon fruit 79p for four, new potatoes 29p lb.
A FAST-TRACK procedure for libel claims up to £10,000 was unveiled by the Government yesterday. The Defamation Bill will introduce a summary procedure in which judges, not juries, can dispose of more straightforward claims.
The Bill will also allow new defences for defendants willing to offer amends to plaintiffs and to pay whatever damages a judge might assess. Providers of electronic media services, such as the Internet, will be protected against libel proceedings. Those who do not have primary responsibility for publication, such as printers, distributors or sellers, would also have a defence.
The aim is to get cases before a judge more quickly and to reduce the number going before juries in long, expensive trials. Judges would have the power to dismiss weak claims and, in the case of strong claims, to make awards of up to £10,000.
TRIBUTES poured in yesterday for the Most Rev Derek Worlock, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool, who died peacefully in his sleep after a long battle with cancer.
Archbishop Worlock's close friendship with the Right Rev David Sheppard, Anglican Bishop of Liverpool, helped to unite the city and inspired better relations between the churches. Bishop Sheppard said: "All the churches have lost a great archbishop. The city and people of Liverpool have lost a great champion."
Archbishop Worlock, 76, died in hospital at 5.30am yesterday. He had surgery to remove his left lung 31/2 years ago and was admitted to hospital last July suffering from exhaustion. He had a brain tumour that was inoperable.
Cardinal Basil Hume, Archbishop of Westminster, said Archbishop Worlock was an outstanding servant of the Church. Dr George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, said: "His ministry touched with grace all the Christian churches of our land."
TWO peers from opposite ends of the political spectrum announced a merger yesterday that will create one of Britain's most powerful media conglomerates.
The Daily Express and Sunday Express, once part of the Beaverbrook empire, are combining with MAI, owner of two ITV stations and a money-broking business, in a defensive move that will remove the threat of takeover from both companies.
Lord Stevens of Ludgate, chairman of United News and Media, is a true-blue Tory who has pledged to ensure that his national newspapers continue to support the Conservative Party. Lord Hollick, chairman of MAI, is a card-carrying Labour supporter and eschews the trappings of nobility. He despises his City nickname, the Red Baron, and is referred to in the merger documents as Clive Hollick. Lord Stevens uses his title throughout.
Lord Hollick is expected to call all the shots in the newly merged group. He said yesterday: "I will probably continue to read (the Express) and continue to disagree with it ... It would be crazy to change the political stance, it is part of their brand." Observers believe, however, that the Express newspapers, which have been the most loyal to John Major of all national titles, are likely to mellow their tone under the new regime.
Although the Daily Star, United's other daily, has long been seen as its most vulnerable national title, Lord Stevens said it was safe, adding that it was an "excellent" newspaper.
In spite of their differences, the two life peers have some things in common: they are both from the middle class and built their careers in financial services. Neither has had the absolute power over their respective press and television interests of the old-fashioned media barons.
Lord Stevens was born into a middle-class family, the head of which invented the first hearing aid to be worn in the ear. Although prickly, tough and proud, Lord Stevens shows glints of humour. "He is not really the kind of person you would have to dinner unless he were chairman of a newspaper," one associate said.
Regarded by some as a shrewd operator, others consider him out of his depth in Fleet Street. Since he took the helm of United in 1981, the circulations of his two flagship titles have continued to decline. The Daily Express sells 1.28 million copies, compared with more than four million in the mid-1950s. The Sunday title has a circulation of 1.33 million, against a high of 4.2 million in 1965.
Although Lord Stevens has made a last-ditch attempt to restore the titles to their earlier glory by appointing new editors and increasing investment, it is believed that they desperately need new management.
Lord Hollick is wiry and intense, a bulldog of a man, said by associates to be driven by ambition. He is a grammar school boy from Southampton, whose father was a french polisher. He studied sociology, politics and psychology at Nottingham University, where he was president of the drama society. At 28 he became the youngest director of Hambros Bank.
He helped to sort out the Mirror group after Robert Maxwell's death but resigned his directorship soon afterwards. He moved into television in 1994 an interest that stems in part from his Trinidadian wife, Susan Woodford, a former director of ITV's World in Action.
The rationale behind the merger is that it will allow both companies to make cost savings in the areas of news-gathering and distribution. The company envisages the creation of multimedia digital newsrooms to serve its national and regional papers and its television stations. There will be also be opportunities for cross-promotion between the print and television operations.
THE managing director of an activities centre, jailed for the manslaughter of the four young victims of the Lyme Bay canoeing disaster, is to be freed. Peter Kite, 46, who has spent 14 months in jail, had his three year sentence cut by a year by the Court of Appeal yesterday. With remission he is eligible for immediate release.
Kite, of Richmond, southwest London, had his appeal against conviction on four manslaughter charges dismissed by the same judges. Lord Justice Swinton Thomas, sitting with Mr Justice Harrison and Mr Justice Thomas, said that they were "wholly satisfied" that the verdicts returned by the jury at Winchester Crown Court in December 1994 were not in any way unsafe.
But they agreed to cut the sentence after hearing from Edmund Lawson, QC, representing Kite, that the longest sentence passed for similar charges of manslaughter caused by gross negligence was 21 months.
The trial judge had based his sentence on the fact that the charges were serious and demanded a term "of substance". Lord Justice Swinton Thomas said: "We entirely agree with that comment by the judge, but in all the circumstances of the case is three years too long?" He said the judges had agreed that an appropriate sentence would be two years.
Parents of the victims gathered outside the court, comforting each other. Denis Walker, father of Rachel Walker, 16, said: "Kite was sentenced to three years, but will soon be free. My daughter was sentenced to death. Why couldn't Kite behave like a man and serve the rest of his sentence?"
Caroline Langley, mother of Claire Langley, also 16, said: "I am just sad and angry about what has happened. This is a life sentence for the parents of the victims."
Kite was head of the St Albans Centre which was also convicted of four manslaughter charges and fined £60,000 at the Winchester trial. Four sixth-formers from Southway School, Plymouth, died on March 22, 1993, during what was described at the trial as an "ill-conceived and poorly executed" canoe trip.
The teenagers took part in what was meant to be a two-hour paddle to Charmouth, Dorset, but the weather worsened and the canoes became swamped, forcing the teenagers into the water for hours. The other victims were Dean Sayer, 17, and Simon Dunne, 16. Four children and three teachers were rescued.
Dean Sayer's father, Gerry, said at his home in Plymouth that he was disgusted with the decision to free Kite. "I cannot believe it, he should have done three years because that is what he was given," he said.
JOSIE LAWRENCE, who began a comedy career in working-men's clubs, has been recognised for her work as a classical actress. Her performance as Kate in The Taming of the Shrew won the Dame Peggy Ashcroft prize for best actress yesterday in the Shakespeare Golden Globe awards. Although she had always wanted to be an actress, Lawrence, 36, had not played any Shakespeare since drama college when she was picked for the role by the RSC. Best known on television for the improvisation show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, she said: "I knew I needed to get back to more theatre. I could either do quiz shows and join the celebrity circuit, or go back to where I started."
The Sir John Gielgud award for best actor went to David Troughton, who has been playing Richard III as a devious jester and supporting John Nettles in Ben Jonson's The Devil is an Ass. The Times critic Benedict Nightingale was a judge for the awards in London.
Nick Park, 37, creator of the animated characters Wallace and Gromit, collected four awards for A Close Shave including the public choice for favourite film at the British Animation Awards.
VISITORS to the first day of the Tate Gallery's sellout Cezanne exhibition yesterday were surprised to be able to walk straight in without having to queue. Once inside there was no crush and they found they could take in the paintings at a leisurely pace.
Fire regulations prevent the Tate from allowing more than 700 people into an exhibition at a time. The gallery said that its ticketing scheme, which had not been in operation for the preview on Wednesday, which saw 90-minute queues, was ensuring that the crowds were entirely under control. A spokesman said that the weekend would be busier but they did not anticipate any serious difficulties.
The show is so popular that the advance booking agency has sold its entire allocation of tickets for the next fortnight. All "morning tickets" are sold out until the end of March.
THE Cezanne exhibition that opened at the Tate Gallery yesterday is predicted to be a great success, with at least 4,000 visitors a day.
Although the artist was financially independent after his banker father died, he was reluctant to travel. As a result he frequently painted similar scenes, be it a mountain he could see from his house, or the apples that always seemed to be inside it.
Cezanne was not alone in his love of apples, but whereas he saw in them infinite and variable beauty there are more than 7,000 varieties he and his contemporaries also valued them for the effect on their bowels.
The slogan "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" was not based on any great knowledge of the nutritional value of apples, but was rather an acknowledgement of the gentle laxative effect of apple juice. In the 19th century, regularity of the bowels was considered as important for general health as regular physical exercise is today.
Unlike the purgatives of the Victorian era, apple juice has no sinister side-effects. The Institute of Food Research has carried out extensive studies on the medicinal benefits of eating apples and also the factors that make particular apples popular in different parts of the country. They are about to launch a travelling display, Core Science, about the science of apples.
The apple-a-day advice may have a scientific basis. Apples contain sugar, dietary fibre, potassium, vitamin C and some carotenoids, responsible for the yellow, red and orange colours in fruit and vegetables.Research suggests that it is not just betacarotene which has health-giving properties carotenoids provide protection against heart disease and malignancies.
It may well be better to wash rather than peel an apple before eating it. Discarding the peel and leaving all the core halves the amount of fibre and vitamin C available. Apples are like grapes: it is the carotenoids in the grape skins that give red wine its cardio-protective quality.
THE Royal Mail has declared an entire street a no-go area after a postman was bitten twice by the same dog in a few weeks. Jock Kilpatric, 55, a postman for 32 years, was first attacked by Henry, an Alsatian cross, early in January while approaching the door of the house in Chessington, Surrey. Last week Henry struck again.
In what is believed to be the first time the Royal Mail has suspended deliveries to a street because of a dog, residents are having to collect mail from the sorting office.
Mr Kilpatric said last night: "The second time the dog appeared from nowhere and ambushed me. People regard it a joke really, saying it is just a part of the job, but when a dog bites you it hurts."
The Royal Mail said on BBC Newsroom South East that it would resume deliveries only if the owner gave a written undertaking to keep the dog under control.
A DOCTOR convicted of assault after hitting a teenager he caught stealing apples from his garden won a court case to clear his name yesterday.
Dr Sujaan Singh struck Mark Leak, 15, with a 2ft stick as he clambered over a fence with apples in his pockets. At an appeal hearing at Leicester Crown Court a judge ruled he did not know Leak was only scrumping and had used reasonable force to defend his property.
Dr Singh, 41, a anaesthetist, said: "The past 18 months has been a nightmare. But family, friends and workmates have been extremely supportive, and I thank them and all the people who have written in support of me. I still believe I did the right thing, and I would so the same again."
He told the court he picked up a stick as he ran into his garden after seeing two boys from his bedroom window. "I was shouting to the boys to stop but they kept running. One got over the fence, the other was straddling it. I just managed to reach him with the tip of my stick, with which I hit him. My intention was to apprehend him and give him over to the police."
Leak, now 17, was later cautioned for theft but told officers Dr Singh struck him twice with a metal pole when he was on top of the fence.
He said the doctor then dragged him back into the garden and warned him: "If I ever catch you on my property again I'll break your head."
Leak said he suffered bruising and swelling to his back and buttock in the attack, but no medical evidence was presented at the hearing, and a metal pole was never found.
Dr Singh's costs for the appeal and original magistrates' court hearing last summer will be paid from central funds. He had been ordered to pay £123 costs and given a six-month conditional discharge by magistrates who found him guilty of common assault.
The Crown Prosecution Service decided to prosecute him after he refused a police caution for the alleged assault on the teenager in August 1994.
SENIOR clergy have called on the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, to resolve the long-running crisis at Lincoln Cathedral and rule on the future of its dean.
About 30 canons overwhelmingly approved a resolution at a confrontational meeting between the Very Rev Brandon Jackson, Dean of Lincoln, and his Chapter yesterday, urging Dr Carey to take decisive action.
Dr Carey sent two senior churchmen to talk to both factions late last year. Many clergy in the diocese believe the archbishop has been sitting on the findings and has delayed publication.
After yesterday's meeting Canon Raymond Rodger, personal assistant to the Bishop of Lincoln, said: "The majority feel matters are so bad it can only be resolved by a change of personnel."
It was not clear last night whether Dr Jackson, 61, would comply with any ruling from the archbishop. He was appointed by Downing Street in 1989 and, legally, he is untouchable until his retirement at the age of 70.
The dispute began with an exhibition of the cathedral's Magna Carta in Australia in 1988 which lost £56,000. The following year Dr Jackson was appointed dean and asked the fraud squad to investigate the cathedral's affairs.
The atmosphere worsened last summer when Dr Jackson was acquitted in a church consistory court of sexual misconduct with Verity Freestone, 31, a former cathedral verger.
A spokeswoman for Dr Carey said: "The archbishop shares the widespread anxiety and concern that has been expressed about the situation at Lincoln Cathedral. He is actively considering the implications of the report but these are complex matters and it would not be appropriate to make further comment."
Church groups around Newbury fear that a service planned for today on the bypass site will appear to condone the protesters' activities. It has not been authorised by the Oxford diocese and will be led by a curate from Cambridgeshire.
THREE security guards employed to police the Newbury bypass protesters have changed camps because of heavy-handed tactics by some of their colleagues. Last night the men were enjoying "one or two bevvies" in an eco warrior encampment at Tot Hill, towards the southern end of the route.
Friends of the Earth, which is leading the campaign against the bypass, said it was delighted at the defections. A spokesman claimed that many of the guards were fed up with the Reliant security company. "They forbid fraternisation with the protesters and have employed heavy-handed tactics in dealing with the protests."
A spokeswoman for Reliant dismissed claims of heavy-handedness and said: "People are quite entitled to change their views of life. We cannot legislate for people's opinions. We live in a democracy." She had visited the site on Wednesday and, despite the cold, had found the 597 other guards in good spirits, thanks to three soup-runs a day.
Brette Shepherd, 20, one of the defectors, who was unemployed for two years before joining Reliant, said the final straw was being ordered by a supervisor not to chat with the environmentalists. "It was all too much, so I have given it up. I am staying at the camp for the rest of the week."
Stephen Ray, like Mr Shepherd from Portsmouth, said he had witnessed one of his superiors assaulting a female protester and making a remark. "I was told to stand in the car park of a nearby garage. While I was there I told two policemen what I had seen." He had then been sacked.
Graham Wanstall, the other defector, said he was demoted from a security cameraman to a linesman after trying to film a senior guard hitting a protester.
Friends of the Earth said last night that the three had been given free membership and were to be feted at a rally and march this weekend.
A spokesman for Thames Valley Police said he could not comment on the allegations of assault.
Earlier, rush-hour traffic in the centre of Newbury was halted when about 30 protesters climbed on to low-loader lorries and strapped themselves to machines being taken to the site. A Thames Valley Police spokeswoman said: "Both southbound lanes of the A34 through the centre of Newbury were blocked and at one point there was a nine-mile tailback." She said that seven people were arrested and charged with wilful obstruction of the highway.
JOAN COLLINS took a verbal mauling in the witness stand yesterday in a $4million breach of contract case with her former publisher. Earlier, she confessed that she had spent the $1.2 million advance at the root of the dispute. "A million dollars sounds a lot, but it actually isn't," she said.
Miss Collins is being sued by Random House for failing to deliver a satisfactory manuscript for two novels, A Ruling Passion and Hell Hath No Fury. Random House is seeking the return of its advance. Miss Collins is counter-suing for the balance on the $4million.
Outside court she said the money had gone. "The taxman takes 40 per cent, my agent took his 10 or 15 per cent I don't remember which. And that doesn't really leave you a great deal," she told the New York Post. "I don't have the $1.2 million." In court, she was called as a hostile witness by Robert Callagy, Random House's lawyer. He showed that in an earlier lawsuit, against the Globe newspaper for invasion of privacy, she claimed to have suffered from writer's block during the composition of books commissioned by Random House. Indiscreet photographs of her with a man had put her off writing her novel.
She now claims that the manuscript she delivered to Random House two months later was "complete". He said: "You tell the Globe one thing when you're suing them, and you say another thing here when you're suing Random House." Miss Collins: "No, no." Mr Callagy: "Don't you have any shame?" A red-cheeked Miss Collins replied with a weak smile.
Outside the courtroom, she criticised Callagy for his questioning and complained that she was treated worse than a murder suspect. "If Mr Callagy is reduced to hurling insults at me, he obviously has a pretty weak case. It was a shock and a great insult. I was rather upset, because I'm not used to being talked to like that."
Her lawyers did not question her, but said they would probably call her when they opened their case on Friday.
In her remarks to the Post, Miss Collins had complained that the case was costing her "a very great deal". She said: "It is about power. Random House is one of the most powerful publishers in the world. I'm one person."
She added that Random House's editor, Joni Evans, when courting her for the book deal, had "seduced" her "like a man trying to get a woman into bed. She kept telling me I was terrific."
At the end of her evidence, Miss Collins dabbed her left eye and took out a tissue. She then left for a private room, where she was closeted with her tissue box for 25 minutes.
THE head verger at Ely Cathedral resigned after admitting an adulterous affair with the organist's wife, it was disclosed yesterday. Malcolm Johnson, married with one daughter, has lost a claim for unfair dismissal.
Mr Johnson had an 18-month romance with Sally Trepte, wife of Paul Trepte, the director of music. She broke off the affair after her lover's resignation.
Mr Johnson, who is in his forties, told the tribunal at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, that he had been forced to resign. The tribunal said there was no evidence of this and that he would have been refused compensation anyway because of his conduct.
The Dean of Ely, the Very Rev Michael Higgins, told the hearing: "His position had become untenable. Anyone who works for the Church knows there are Christian principles to be observed."
A CONVICTED rapist, on the run after the murder of a Hampshire businesswoman, was named as Britain's most wanted man last night after detectives linked him with the attempted killing of an escort agency hostess.
Detectives have linked the death of Glenda Hoskins, a 45-year-old accountant, on Wednesday with the attempted murder of Ann Fidler, 43, who was left for dead at her home in Eastleigh, Hampshire, in December. They took the unusual step of naming the suspect as Victor Farrant, 45, who was released from prison in November after serving a 12-year sentence for rape. His photograph was sent to police forces across the country.
A spokesman said: "He is clearly a very dangerous man who must be apprehended without delay." Interpol has been alerted.
The body of Mrs Hoskins was found yesterday in the loft of her £115,000 home overlooking the picturesque Port Solent marina, near Portsmouth, which was used as the setting for the television series Howard's Way. Police confirmed that Farrant was the boyfriend of Mrs Hoskins, who had two teenage children.
Detectives also announced that Farrant was wanted for questioning about the attempted murder of Mrs Fidler, who ran an escort agency from her home. She was found battered and cut about the head and neck on December 27.
Mrs Hoskins was last seen at 8.30am on Wednesday when she took her children to school. The alarm was raised when her daughter Kate, 17, had been unable to get into the house when she returned from school. Kate was joined by her brother David, 14, and they telephoned their father, George, who was separated from their mother. They tried to get in on a number of occasions during the evening and at midnight police broke in and found the body. Both children were "deeply traumatised" by the discovery and were being comforted by relatives.
Farrant, 45, may have driven off in Mrs Hoskins's white Ford Escort Cabriolet car, with the registration M987 APO. Detective Superintendent David Hanna said last night: "No member of the public should approach Mr Farrant under any circumstances." He added that Farrant could be anywhere in the country and was known to have connections in Belgium.
He is described as 6ft, well built and with short, greying hair. He can put on many disguises and uses a number of bogus identities. "He is
a very plausible character. You can describe him as a
con man and maybe a ladies' man," Mr Hanna said. "We consider him to be extremely dangerous."
Mrs Fidler left hospital yesterday and has suffered permament brain damage after being bludgeoned with a bottle and stabbed with a knife. She has no memory of the attack.
Police said that they had established an "evidential link" between Farrant and the incident. "The attack on Mrs Fidler does not compare to the attack on Mrs Hoskins. However, having made the link between these two atrocious crimes it is clear that Victor Farrant is a ferocious and dangerous man who must be found," said Mr Hanna.
"There is nothing whatsoever to indicate so far that Mrs Hoskins was anything other than a normal housewife and mother pursuing her occupation in accountancy."
Mrs Hoskins worked from home. Police said it was known she had a business appointment on Wednesday after taking her children to school. Inquiries are under way to see if she kept it.
A post-mortem examination was carried out yesterday by the Home Office pathologist Dr Roger Ainsworth but the result was said to be inconclusive. She had not received any substantial injuries.
Police refused to say whether her body was naked when it was found or whether there was evidence of a sexual assault. Further tests will be made, but death by natural causes has been ruled out.
Neighbours yesterday expressed their shock at Mrs Hoskins's death. Valerie Hulbert said: "She had lived here for three years. Her children were very pleasant and must be absolutely devastated by this tragedy."
Barbara Gaynord said: "We just hope the children are going to be all right. This is a lovely area and it seems quite unbelievable that this could happen."
Correction: Headline: Mrs Ann Fidler;Correction Issue Date: Saturday February 10 , 1996 Page: 4 A photograph yesterday of Mrs Ann Fidler was incorrectly cap tioned in some editions. We apologise for the error.
From Trevor Graham Baylis
Sir, I was interested in Michael Heseltine's comments on Breakfast with Frost concerning staying in business. He was proud to say "at least all my creditors were paid".
I am a tradesman and sole proprietor of a company and have traded for 27 years. In all that time without the support from my bankers Barclays I would have gone out of business years ago and certainly would never been able to afford to develop my invention of the Baygen Freeplay Radio.
Some companies take up to 18 months to pay their bills. Others fold, leaving debts never paid. If the nation wants to encourage new business, the newcomer must not carry the interest burden created by others. I believe the solution to this problem already exists. Banks, VAT offices and tax collectors charge accumulating interest on debts. Companies should, by law, be able to enforce their practice. The tradesman would add on a percentage of this levy to the Exchequer as payment for the enforcement of this rule.
Companies would not be allowed to dictate terms that might leave low-level creditors exposed or disqualify business opportunity on the basis of payment terms.
Yours faithfully,
TREVOR BAYLIS,
Haven Studio,
Eel Pie Island,
Twickenham,
Middlesex.
From Mr David W.K. Chitty
Sir, I wholeheartedly agreed with Robert Bruce's report on the consequences of Mr John Cook's victory over the leadership of the English ICA (January 25). The English ICA has become increasingly burdened by a bloated central bureaucracy which is remote from the membership and which fails to address the issues confronting either the profession or British business. Few members actively participate in institute affairs and the institute has become publicly ridiculed by its expensive and pointless poster campaign telling the general public that they will "sleep better with a chartered accountant".
Mr Cook's actions demonstrate that the membership can fight back. The next challenge is for members to change the constitution to require the president to be elected by a vote of all the members rather than by council members behind closed doors. The proposed merger with CIMA should be rejected as it offers nothing to the members of either institute except an even larger central bureaucracy.
The Law Society has demonstrated under the leadership of Martin Mears that a great professional body can be run democratically for the interest of its members. This should be an example to the members of the English ICA who now have a chance themselves to assert their voices, achieve democracy, and collectively work together to restore the tarnished image of their profession.
Yours faithfully,
DAVID W K CHITTY
(Technical Manager),
Chantrey Vellacott,
Russell Square House,
10-12 Russell Square, WC1.
From Mr John E. Moore
Sir, I find the current discussions of earnings growth to be hollow (Philip Bassett, January 30). The views concentrate on the pay settlements and earnings growth of those who remain in their posts. Does Adair Turner really believe that everyone is on a CBI-monitored rising wage curve?
The commentators, government and private, seem to overlook completely the enormous change in the structure of the earning workforce in recent years, as huge numbers of older workers have been made redundant and, if they are lucky, rejoin the earnings ladder at a lower point. The effect of this in lowering average earnings seems to be ignored by the statisticians.
No wonder productivity per head has increased, but productivity per Pounds of earnings has surely increased much more, which is what really matters in international competitiveness.
Yours faithfully,
JOHN E. MOORE,
24 Wildcroft Drive,
North Holmwood,
Dorking,
Surrey.
From Mr James Porter
Sir, Much is being written about the size of partners' salaries in the recently published accounts of KPMG. Surely the figures are reasonable as reward for the risks taken.
The partners of an accountancy firm are wholly liable for damages they may incur during litigation, even after retirement from the firm.
Renumeration should always reflect on responsibility, and, in the case of KPMG, the extra zeros are well earned.
Yours faithfully,
JAMES PORTER,
31 Criffel Avenue,
Clapham SW2.
The institution's role as shareholder is changing, Marianne Curphey finds.
Institutional investors, who for so long have behaved like inarticulate, slumbering giants, have suddenly found their voice and are making it heard.
The most publicly transformed of all is Standard Life, one of the largest investors, which yesterday announced its objections to Farnell Electronics's proposed acquisition of Premier, the US industrial company.
The price, it said, was too high; it would dilute earnings to Farnell's shareholders and would saddle Farnell with more than £430 million net debt.
Standard Life's outburst came just days after it had questioned the wisdom of Carlton Communication's proposed bonus increases for its most senior directors.
Guy Jubb, the insurer's corporate governance director, said companies should reward management for "outstanding achievement, not mediocrity", with the implication that Carlton's executives had not delivered the required results. Yesterday he defended his comments by saying Standard Life felt it was "right to take a lead" on the issue and a company's performance ought to be "continually assessed".
Until recently, institutional investors in the UK, unlike those in America, had seemed rather passive, either trying to put pressure on companies behind the scenes, or ultimately selling shares if they were unhappy with performance.
As institutional investors have increased in size, this becomes more difficult.
In addition, the rise of indexed funds means trustees often can no longer use the option of selling shares, as they have to keep the appropriate weighting for the size of the company.
UK pension funds controlled assets worth £30 billion in 1975; today they amount to more than £500 billion. One fund manager said yesterday: "With a 3 per cent stake in a company it is impossible to sell quickly without driving the share price down. As investors get bigger, their influence over and responsibility to the stock market becomes greater."
Norwich Union, another institutional giant, has also expressed "concern" over Carlton's plans, but says large investors rarely speak publicly without first notifying the company of their intentions.
Anita Skipper, corporate governance manager at the Norwich, says: "It is a delicate balance between talking privately to companies and trying to reduce any misunderstanding between us and our policyholders. It is not a matter of washing dirty linen in public. During the row over the pay and perks for British Gas executives, individual shareholders felt we were not on their side. This shows them that we are."
So after years of secret meetings with directors and being accused of inertia and short-termism, is the culture changing?
John Holland, Professor of International Banking and Finance at Glasgow University, believes it is. His recent research has found companies make extensive use of behind-the-scenes talks to influence a company before it makes decisions on issues such as remuneration, perks, length of contracts, succession and separation of the roles of chairman and chief executive, but he is convinced changes are overdue.
One of the US's largest and most confrontational pension funds, the California Public Employees Retirement System, is already diversifying into the UK.
"Vociferous institutional investors are well established in the US and it was almost inevitable that our cousins across the Atlantic should influence us," he says. "Larger shareholders tend to speak out when negotiations behind the scenes have broken down. They have discovered a very powerful tool: by speaking out about one company, they are signalling to others in which they hold a stake that they too should step into line."
The biggest UK investor, the Prudential, still prefers discreet negotiations, though it does have a secret list of companies about which it is concerned. Fidelity and Legal & General, likewise, have so far stayed silent.
Eric Reguly and Ross Tieman look at the start of a trend.
The merger of United News & Media, a vintage, slow-moving newspaper company, and MAI, an aggressive television and financial services group, is expected to be the first of many such deals in Britain. This particular transaction was triggered by the Broadcasting Bill, now making its way through Parliament, which will remove many of the the toughest restrictions on cross-media ownership. The age of the media conglomerate is here.
If anything, Britain is a latecomer to the trend. In America, sweeping changes in communications legislation have unleashed a cross-ownership free-for-all that has only just begun. The ultimate goal is to obtain access to residential and business consumers, be it through TV and radio signals, phone lines, the Internet, online services or newspapers and magazines. Any group that controls only one or two of these methods of access is reckoned to have a limited future; the winners will be the players that control many or all of them.
Lord Hollick, the managing director of MAI, who is to be chief executive of the as yet unnamed merged group, cites The News Corporation, the parent company of The Times, as a pioneer. News Corp which owns dozens of newspapers around the world, America's Fox TV network and a 40 per cent stake in BSkyB, the satellite TV company last year joined forces with MCI, America's second-largest long-distance phone company. MCI, which in turn is owned 20 per cent by British Telecom, bought a 13.5 per cent stake in News Corp for $2.4 billion. The partners, among other things, plan to launch a satellite TV service in the US.
The recent passage in the US of the Telecommunications Bill will accelerate this process. The Bill allows local, long-distance and cable companies to attack each other's markets and will probably trigger a flurry of takeovers and partnerships. Nynex and Bell Atlantic, two US regional phone companies, are negotiating a joint venture in the long-distance telephone market. They, in turn, are expected to seek partnerships with multimedia companies so that they can provide services such as video-on-demand. British media companies, in the expectation of more liberal cross-media ownership rules, have been thinking along the same lines. The Mirror Group launched Live TV, a cable channel, and bought a 20 per cent stake in Scottish Television. David Montgomery, Mirror chief executive, sees television as the group's future. He has been lobbying the Government for an exemption that would allow the group to increase its TV interests. At the moment, it has little room to manoeuvre because it controls more than 20 per cent of the national newspaper market, a level that brings it to the ceiling on cross-media ownership under existing rules.
Pearson, the owner of the Financial Times and Penguin Books, has also been driving hard in the TV sector. It has just added SelecTV, producer of Lovejoy and Birds of a Feather, to its burgeoning broadcasting portfolio, which includes Thames TV and Australia's Grundy Worldwide.
The Telegraph group, publisher of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph, is one of the few large newspaper companies without a sizeable electronic media investment.
However, many newspaper groups are diversifying. About half of the largest newspaper companies in North America and Europe have broadcasting arms, and those are companies that investment analysts favour.
To some degree, MAI's merger with United is a bail-out of United's ailing newspapers. The circulations of the Daily Express and Sunday Express have been in freefall, although its regional titles have been more robust. Aside from pumping a fortune into the editorial departments of the papers, there seemed to be no way of stopping their decline. Efforts to stem the slide, by hiring new editors and launching an open chequebook search for new journalistic talent, are already under way.
But the rumour, denied by Lord Stevens of Ludgate, United's chairman, was that the national titles were for sale. Andrew Neil, former editor of The Sunday Times, was part of one group trying to buy the papers, and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, the composer, was said to be a member of another. Carlton Communications, the largest ITV company, was also thought to be interested and may end up spoiling the MAI-United merger by bidding for United.
The merger of United and MAI through a tax-free share swap will create what the two companies describe as "a leading British-based media group". Regional and national newspapers will account for only 25 per cent of combined turnover and 18 per cent of combined operating profits, based on financial figures for the year to December 31. Advertising periodicals will account for 10 per cent of turnover, and television and entertainment 19 per cent. MAI owns Anglia Television and Meridian Broadcasting, the ITV licensees, and makes programmes such as those based on P.D. James's Adam Dalgleish novels.
Money and securities broking will account for 20 per cent, and business media and information 26 per cent. Lord Hollick said that the group's heavy exposure to business media and information makes comparisons with Reuters, the electronic information and news group, perfectly valid. So what are the benefits of putting two companies together? On the practical front, cost savings are an obvious advantage. MAI will close its head office and move into the black and grey Express building on the banks of the River Thames. Some departments will combine and some redundancies are inevitable. Lord Hollick said cost savings equivalent to about 10 per cent of the combined operating profits of £265 million are possible.
The merger, in theory, will release financial resources to prop up the ailing Express titles. It will also insulate the companies from hostile raiders. Both United and MAI were considered highly vulnerable to takeover attempts.
But Lord Hollick sees the potential for cross-fertilisation, cross-promotion and the development of new businesses as the greatest advantage. With TV, newspapers and advertising periodicals, United and MAI will have access to huge swathes of the population, while businesses such as PR Newswire, NOP, the pollster, and the exhibitions division will give it good coverage of the business market.
Lord Hollick said: "In our view, we have three or four businesses that are pre-eminent in their markets. What they need is additional resources, and this deal gives them that." Not everyone is convinced that synergies exist. Dan Colson, chief executive of The Telegraph Group, said he sees no cross-over, for instance, between newspaper publishing and MAI's money and securities broking businesses. "It's very easy to be seduced by the theory that you have to be in all forms of the media in the first place, and money-broking isn't even media."
Nonetheless, the trend is likely to continue. There are few practical and legal reasons newspapers and electronic media should be separate businesses anymore. Not all the mergers will succeed. United and MAI, however, have to be given credit for their pioneering spirit.
ENOUGH of Fat Cats. Let's turn to British Rats, whose year, Chinese-style, begins on February 19. Traditionally, Rat years are ones of opportunity for those prepared to take risk. Lori Rei, a hand analyst of Liskeard, Cornwall, says "the Rat is a master at finding rich pickings". Those should be sweet words for some British businessmen.
Sir Christopher Hogg, the man who demerged Courtaulds Textiles from Courtaulds, and whose reputation for making businesses work harder, becomes chairman of Allied Domecq next month. The outgoing chairman has just issued a profits warning.
Gerry Robinson, with Forte tucked under his cheese trap, should be aware Rat years are "an excellent 12-month period for new beginnings and fresh starts".
John Kemp-Welch, chairman of the Stock Exchange, should be pleased to know Rei predicts a year when markets and economies are buoyant, and things are generally on the up. And Sir John Harvey-Jones can preach his gospel to new businesses that it's a year to "begin projects, launch new products and forge new links".
THE Royal Canadian Mounted Police are first on the list for a new book to be launched next week on How Not to be a Money Launderer. Nigel Morris-Cotterill, the author, received the Mounties' request days after an advert for his new book went live on the Internet. A £20 cheque has already arrived from the Canadian Mounted Police College in Ottawa, and the author has pinned the counterfoil to his wall.
THE extrovert London tones of Sir Peter Bonfield are signalling a radical culture change of a sort at British Telecom. Sir Peter, fresh into the chief executive's seat from ICL, explains that he has spent his first 40 days "up the poles and down the holes" to get to know his new company as well as meeting regulators in four countries. As it turns out, Sir Peter has not had enough safety training to be allowed up the poles yet, but spent two hours down a hole in east London's Commercial Road "helping" engineers to make repairs and noting cabling 50 years old.
NEVER say the President of the United States is not trendy. Jumping on the new technology bandwagon, Bill Clinton yesterday signed the new Telecommunications Bill which deregulates the entire US phone industry with a digital pen on a digital pad. Result: the Bill, plus President's signature, went out on the World Wide Web. But was a digital signature legally and constitutionally binding? Unfortunately, the White House did not know. Anyway, no one was taking risks. To be on the safe side, Clinton also signed the Bill in ink on paper. Some things will probably never change.
The disgraced "rave" clergyman Chris Brain has left Britain for America to try to make a comeback in the music and media business. Mr Brain, 38, who allegedly abused up to 20 women during his Nine O'Clock services in Sheffield, left the country without his wife after Christmas, according to his lawyer. Stewart Lale said: "Mr Brain has gone to America because he is less well-known there than here and he considered his chances of finding employment in Britain remote. He wants nothing to do with cults or religion."
IN THE good old days, an honest householder who suffered a burglary or flood could expect to receive a cheque from an insurance company for the value of his stolen or destroyed property. Today's distressed victim may soon have to put up with a voucher allowing him to replace his video recorder at Dixons, carpets at Carpetland and jewellery at Goldsmiths.
Fraud has made insurers more reluctant to hand money over to policyholders directly and Norwich Union has found a cunning way to keep part of the mountain of cash that leaves the company in claims.
Norwich has given Goldsmiths an exclusive right to supply replacement jewellery and watches to its policyholders, an arrangment that covers some £10 million in claims annually. The claimant will be offered a replacement from Goldsmiths, which in turn will offer Norwich a discount of about 20 per cent on the cost of the item.
Goldsmiths reckons that the deal could eventually add up to £6 million to its turnover claims for antiques or rare items may still be paid in cash by Norwich. Such a guaranteed stream of business is worth a lot to a high street retailer, certainly worth giving away almost half of the gross margin to the business provider. Norwich too will benefit to the tune of £1.5 million per year in savings. Only the poor policyholder suffers. However, he can always take his business to another insurer.
BASS has been linked with almost every recent bid rumour in the brewing and leisure sectors. Gossips have matched Bass with Ladbroke, Vaux, Wetherspoon and Carlsberg-Tetley, but the company has so far remained aloof.
Bass is in the luxurious position of having the means to launch a bid without feeling any pressure to buy. Coyly confessing that it would look at opportunities, Bass emphasises that organic growth remains important.
Yesterday's trading statement contained few surprises. The fall in the gambling division was blamed on the exceptional winter chill which hurt Coral, the bookmaker. The lottery continues to affect trading but the impact has now been absorbed by the market. While admissions to the Gala Bingo clubs have fallen, Bass is reassured by higher customer spend.
Bass has enjoyed a well-deserved rise in its share price for a year. After yesterday's setback, the shares trade on a forward earnings multiple of about 16. Without an acquisition, the shares look fairly priced.
AMSTRAD shareholders have absorbed a few shocks over the years but they will have received a severe jolt from yesterday's disclosure of a £5.4 million loss in the six months ending December 31. Fortunately, Alan Sugar, the chairman, was able to wax lyrical on some good news about the company and current operations.
Amstrad is taking drastic action to sort out the problems at the core, loss-making Amstrad Consumer Electronics (ACE) unit, including the closure of one factory and reduction of the payroll headcount by 150 people.
The cuts at ACE were unavoidable after terrible sales in Germany and the UK during the critical end of year period. Amstrad says it wants to keep ACE going but there is little doubt that failure to deliver profits at ACE will hasten the day of its closure. More encouraging results and forecasts came from Amstrad's other businesses, particularly Dancall, the Danish mobile phone maker, and the computer direct sales business, Viglen. Dancall is the reason to stay with Amstrad. Order books are said to be encouraging, production is approaching target levels and a healthy profit contribution is expected in the second half. The mobile phone market currently resembles the personal computer market of ten years ago, the sort of business Mr Sugar likes and understands. That is both encouragement and a warning to shareholders.
WOULD you put your money in a business that invests £2.5 billion a year on immobile infrastructure, knowing that the return will be decided bureaucratically after the event by its worst enemy? Amazingly, however, British Telecom still has 2.5 million shareholders content to see it underperform a rising stock market average indefinitely.
The hope has always been that the market would grow so fast that there would be room for everyone, including the Director-General of Telecommunications. That hope was shaken during the faltering recovery. In the nine months to December 31, group turnover rose only 3.4 per cent and that depended on BT's share of 34 per cent growth at Cellnet. In the third quarter there was some renewed pick-up in domestic call volumes. But BT is losing a net 100,000 customers a quarter to cable, and this should accelerate with easy number portability. Increased use of the system is therefore largely profitless and investment in extra capacity hard to justify on such a scale.
Pre-tax profits, up 13 per cent so far, were flattered by low redundancy charges. Since the annual target remains the same, that just leaves more for the final quarter. Operating profits are static. Oversees expansion owes more to strategy than to near-term profit hopes, so any worthwhile profit growth relies on BT marketing expanding the market.
The shares sell at under 12 times likely 1995-96 earnings but the comfort is in the 6.5 per cent dividend yield. That is 75 per cent above the market average, making BT an ideal defensive holding if you like regulatory risk and expect the share index to turn down.
Paddy Ashdown gave evidence in court yesterday at Yeovil Magistrates' Court against a constituent who is alleged to have threatened him with a flick knife. Christopher Mason, 51, who is charged with affray and possessing an offensive weapon, was committed for trial on March 1 at Taunton Crown Court. Mr Ashdown spent about 40 minutes giving evidence. He was also cross-examined by Michael Cullum, representing Mr Mason, who was remanded in custody. Reporting restrictions were not lifted.
Monument Oil & Gas edged ahead 3/4p to 60 1/2p, supported by a buy recommendation from NatWest Securities. It says the weak gas market has overshadowed the value of Monument's Liverpool Bay gas contracts. NatWest has faith in Monument's management, and says the company is focusing again on future growth.
ALL eyes focused on the media sector, as the City braced itself for a spate of takeovers and mergers after news of the proposed £2.9 billion merger of United News & Media and MAI.
Speculators did not have long to wait to find out the reason behind Wednesday's flurry of activity in shares of United News, publisher of the Daily Express, Sunday Express and Daily Star. But details of the merger with MAI, owner of Anglia Television and the controlling shareholder in Meridian, the independent television broadcaster holding the franchise for the South of England, surprised the market.
It had been assumed in the Square Mile that United was preparing to dispose of its stable of national newspapers. MAI shareholders will get 64 United shares for every 100 MAI held.
Brokers described it a defensive move by MAI, which had itself been seen as a possible takeover target. The speculators refuse to rule out the possibility of a bid for MAI from other quarters. MAI finished 69p higher at 448p with almost 31 million shares changing hands. United News was 28p up at 652p on turnover of 15 million shares.
But last night Carlton Communications, which holds the London weekday independent television franchise, was being ruled out as possible bidder for MAI. Carlton finished 32p lower at £10.22.
Nevertheless, the speculation excited the market which had been pinning its hopes on a spate of takeovers and stakebuilding exercises after the Government's relaxation of cross-media ownership rules.
Those companies seen as potential takeover targets include Pearson, up 5p at 690p, whose name was being linked with Viacom, the US media group. There were also gains for The Telegraph, up 8p at 463p, and Mirror Group, 6p better at 207p.
Among the television companies, Scottish TV continues to be viewed as a takeover target, with the shares adding 12p at 606p, while gains were also seen in Yorkshire-Tyne Tees, up 53p to 900p, and HTV, up 2p to 351p.
News International, owner of The Times and 40 per cent shareholder of BSkyB, firmed 1p to 304p. The company reported first-half profits of £168.9 million before tax. Last year's comparable figure of £561.9 million included a £401 million profit arising from the sale of part of its stake in BSkyB. This year's figure was struck before costs of £42.1 million relating to the closure of Today newspaper.
The market is certain to test the 3,700 level today after extending recent losses. Shrugging off another record-breaking run overnight on Wall Street, the FT-SE 100 index finished 17.7 down at 3,708.4.
Zeneca is moving in on the fast-growing migraine market with the purchase of Glaxo Wellcome's new treatment 311C90.
The drug is currently undergoing clinical trials. Glaxo agreed to abide by an undertaking issued by the European Commission to dispose of the drug when it bought Wellcome last year. Glaxo Wellcome responded with a fall of 1p to 930p, while Zeneca hardened 8p to £12.50.
Better than expected third-quarter figures cheered BT and were reflected in the share price which rose 21/2p to 359p. The market had been looking for pre-tax profits of between £750 million and £790 million, so the final outcome of £829 million exceeded even the most optimistic of forecasts. The market was also pleased with the group's pledge to settle the dispute with Oftel, the regulatory authority, by August without it being referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.
The news that Amstrad had plunged into the red during the first six months was countered by a brighter outlook for the second half and an increase in the dividend. Alan Sugar, chairman, said he does not expect to take any further exceptional charges.
He expects the amalgamation of Amstrad Direct and Viglen to save £3 million a year. The shares perked up with a rise of 18p to 201p as more than 7 million were traded.Following this week's profits warning from Allied Domecq, down 3p at 508p, comes news from Bass that it is being hit by the National Lottery. Sir Ian Prosser, chairman, told shareholders at the annual meeting that, although most of the businesses had been doing well, betting and bingo had suffered in the first three months.
The leisure retailing division had seen turnover plunge 30 per cent with Gala hit by the lottery and the Coral chain of betting shops hurt by falls in both margins and turnover. Bass reacted to the news with a fall of 9p to 734p.
Lloyds Chemists firmed a further 3p to 470p after recommending the counter-bid from Gehe, the German pharmaceutical group, worth 450p a share. That compares with an offer of about 405p a share from UniChem, which is expected to come back with a price of between 470p and 480p, valuing Lloyds Chemists at £588 million. UniChem finished 3p easier at 245p.
GILT-EDGED: Attempts to extend the previous day's gains lacked conviction, with investors anxiously awaiting the outcome of last night's $12 billion US Treasury bond 30-year auction.
In the futures pit, the March series of the long gilt traded in narrow limits for much of the session before ending a tick lower at £109 1/4 in thin trading that saw 46,000 contracts completed.
Conventional issues finished mixed with Treasury 8 per cent 2013 £1/16 off at £100 9/16, while at the shorter end, Treasury 8 per cent 2000 was a tick firmer at £104 13/32.
NEW YORK: Shares on Wall Street passed another milestone when they easily went through the key 5,500 level for the first time as investors continued to buy blue chips. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 47.33 points at 5,539.45.
To be born British, announced Peter Butler (C, Milton Keynes NE) to a packed House, "is to win the lottery of life". The Prime Minister agreed.
Mr Butler, who said he was quoting Lord Palmerston, was received with cheers if not an impromptu rendering of Land of Hope and Glory. But his claim raises difficulties. Firstly, it was not Lord Palmerston who coined the assertion, but Cecil John Rhodes. Secondly, Rhodes said "English", not "British". Thirdly, it was not a one-prize lottery to which Rhodes was referring.
This is what Rhodes said: "Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life."
Mere quibbles, of course. When (as in Butler's case) you are parliamentary private secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, you have better things to do than distinguish between one of our greatest Foreign Secretaries and a rascally commercial adventurer. English? British? From the perspective of Milton Keynes, who cares? And in Milton Keynes the pressure on libraries will be very great: there may have been no time for Mr Butler to check his references.
But the error we must correct is the idea that there is only one prize in the lottery of life. What about a second prize? This, surely, must be to be elected Conservative Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes NW. The numbers securing this prize are 01 41 76 the Tory majority. Adjacent to Milton Keynes NW lies Milton Keynes SW. This constituency is third prize in the lottery of life, and was won in 1992 by Barry Legg (C): winning numbers 00 46 87.
There are also much smaller prizes, one of which is not even in England, but Wales, where Walter Sweeney (C) won the Vale of Glamorgan: winning numbers 00 00 19. However, the chap whose fate it was to field questions at the dispatch box yesterday was the winner of the biggest booby prize in the lottery of life. To inherit the Tory leadership after Margaret Thatcher is like thinking you've won a double-rollover, then finding you've only won £1, and spending it on a duff scratchcard.
Given those circumstances, John Major put up a pretty spirited performance yesterday afternoon. Tony Blair, thin-lipped with frustration, clawed the air for a few minutes on the subject of why key ministers (but nobody else) are receiving the Scott report six days before others. He clawed in vain: the Tories, baying to order, seem to have remembered that the party that bays together, stays together. First, however, to question the Prime Minister, was Graham Riddick (C, Colne Valley). Mr Riddick dipped last year into the tombola of life (when Sunday Times reporters posing as businessmen offered him £1,000 to ask a question) and came up with only sawdust. Then he was censured by the Privileges Committee. Pluckily, he bats on, but must be judged unfortunate, so far, in fate's lottery: two blank scratchcards and his bonus ball most definitely missing.
Yesterday he wanted to place himself "four square behind the Union", criticising Tony Blair's constitutional plans. These came, he said, "from a meddling, middle-class public school boy". Sir Malcolm Thornton (C, Crosby), quoting a socialist document, said public schools "produce social cripples".
Of course Mr Major (as he reminded us) went to a grammar school. Nobody asked him whether, in his day, the senior boys received their examination papers six days early.
Dick Spring, the Irish Foreign Minister, sought to persuade President Clinton yesterday of the merits of a Bosnia-style conference to break the impasse on Ulster. One day after the British Government all but dismissed the idea, he explained it to Mr Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore during a 30 -minute meeting at the White House.
He emerged saying that the two men had agreed at least to consider the idea. The White House said only that the President "emphasised the importance of rapid progress to all-party talks". Mr Spring wants to bring all parties together in one venue but different rooms for "proximity talks" the Clinton formula that produced a Bosnian peace agreement last year. He did not entirely reject Britain's preference for elections but said these tended to be divisive and "the onus is on those proposing elections, the British Government and the Unionist parties, to convince the nationalist parties that an elective process can assist what we are all trying to achieve, which is all-party talks".
DISTURBING signs that arch-dry Peter Lilley is in danger of going native at the Department of Social Security. Defending job cuts at the DSS, he told the Today programme that "the alternative obviously is to take the money away from benefits". A telling slip, Mr Lilley. Individual benefits are fixed, although the total bill may be rising. So you are required to make cuts because the alternative is taking more money off the taxpayer.
"THE benefits of synergy", like "one careful owner" or "would suit DIY fanatic", is one of those phrases that should ring alarm bells for potential buyers.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines synergy as "the combined effect of drugs, organs, etc, that exceeds the sum of their individual effects". Corporate financiers define synergy as the easiest way they know to separate over-ambitious managements from massive fees.
Lords Stevens and Hollick define synergy, as far as one can tell from yesterday's merger of their respective companies, in two ways. There is the ability to advertise TV stations in newspapers that are within the same holding company, and the corresponding ability to advertise papers on those same TV stations.
Then there is the wrapping up of all the boring but profitable business services within both groups, which tend to miss out on the media attention to the rather sexier TV stations and newspapers, into one operation which can then sell to the same client list. One option is to cross-sell exhibitions, newsletters, market research and specialised business magazines while merging their individual managements into the same team.
On top of these, there are rather less well-defined prospects for expansion as a larger group into electronic publishing and other more rarified areas.
The first thought is that MAI and United are swimming against the prevailing tide in creating a cross-media, whisper it who dares, conglomerate, at a time when Hanson and British Gas, albeit for different reasons, are busy unbundling. But media is probably the only area where the creation of a conglomerate makes sense why else is the Government so concerned with the rules that allow this?
As part of this marriage, MAI gets its hands on the cashflow from rather more mature media businesses within United such as exhibitions, regional papers, periodicals and so on, with which to expand into who knows where. United gets proven management, in the form of Lord, sorry Clive, Hollick and his team and a semblance of a coherent strategy that has never been available for view since it became apparent the Express titles could not be sold. Note the departure of Graham Wilson, seen as Lord Stevens's right-hand man in the City. Should Stevens and Hollick ever come to blows over policy, the betting must be that the latter will prevail.
MAI will not stop here, and the purchase of yet another ITV franchise-holder, perhaps Yorkshire-Tyne Tees, looks the next step. In this they will be taking part in this year's expected carve-up of the ITV map in competition with Carlton, the chosen buyer of the Express titles until Michael Green lost patience with Lord Stevens.
Minibuses and coaches used to carry children to and from school or on school trips will have to be fitted with seatbelts from February next year, Steven Norris, the Road Safety Minister, announced yesterday. But proposals for Europe-wide regulations forcing all coaches to be fitted with seatbelts remain unresolved in Brussels and may not be implemented this century. In the meantime Britain is going alone in implementing regulations requiring a lapbelt to be fitted to every seat used by a child aged 16 and under.
A POLITICAL storm blew up last night over the Government's plans to cut social security running costs by 25 per cent, with predictions that up to 20,000 jobs will be lost.
Labour claimed the planned £1 billion cuts would push the benefits system past breaking point and encourage fraud. Unions and charities insisted the cuts in the £4.5 billion administrative budget would hit genuine claimants and said they could provoke industrial action.
Barry Reamsbottom, general secretary of the Civil and Public Services Association, said it was impossible to reduce spending so swiftly without ending the Social Security Department's policy of no compulsory redundancies. He predicted that up to 20,000 jobs would have to go in the next three years.
Chris Smith, Shadow Social Security Secretary, said that any move to greater self-assessment of benefits would inevitably give the "green lights" to fraudsters and undermine attempts by Peter Lilley, the Social Security Secretary, to crack down on false claims.
In the Commons, the Prime Minister defended the cuts, chiding Labour for carping about money spent on administrative costs and then complaining when the Government cut them to protect services.
"The Government is seeking to cut back on administrative costs in the interests of the taxpayer," Mr Major told MPs. "It's right that we should try and make these efficiencies because the alternative obviously is to take the money away from benefits, which we don't want to do."
Unions are meeting DSS officials on February 19 to discuss the implications for jobs. Mr Lilley said he hoped compulsory job losses would be avoided, but civil servants remain sceptical.
The Social Security Department was giving no details of where the cuts, announced in a letter to all staff from Ann Bowtell, Permanent Secretary, would be made. A spokeswoman said efficiency savings of £550 million had been achieved since 1989-90, but there was a need for more.
Sally Witcher, director of the Child Poverty Action Group, argued that genuine claimants would lose out.
In her letter, Ms Bowtell makes clear that the 25 per cent cut cannot be made simply by working harder or pruning costs. "The commitment and professionalism of all our staff has enabled us to deliver a major programme of change and to do our work more efficiently. But we face a significantly tougher challenge ahead ... We need to find business efficiencies of at least a quarter by 1998-99."
Mr Lilley's three-pronged attack on the social security budget involves a drive to reduce benefit payments, stop fraud and cut bureaucracy against the background of steady growth in the number of claimants.
Since 1979, claimants for the 26 benefits available on the welfare state have doubled. One in six of the working population are dependent on state benefits compared with one in 12 when the Government came to power. More than 30 million claims are paid each year, including child benefit to seven million mothers and state pensions to the ten million retired. Many claim more than one benefit.
Efforts to curb benefits such as those paid to single parents have had only a marginal impact on the growing budget. Mr Lilley has therefore switched his attention to the remaining two prongs: fraud and running costs.
YOUNG Tory bloods will stop at nothing to win themselves the chance of a seat in the Commons. But few spend £1,000 to hire a helicopter to beat the driving snow and appear before two party selection meetings in different parts of the country during the same evening.
John Bercow, special adviser to Virginia Bottomley, did exactly that on Wednesday night when he was invited to the final selection meetings for two seats, each with majorities of more than 20,000.
Mr Bercow, 33, was invited to compete with five other candidates for Surrey Heath, a new seat created by boundary changes, with a notional majority of 22,754, and Buckingham, with a notional majority of 20,644, where the list had been pared down to three.
Mr Bercow and an old political friend, Julian Lewis, organised the trip between Surrey and Buckingham. After being interviewed by Tory officials at the Lakeside Country Club at Frimley Green near Camberley, Mr Bercow dived into a waiting chauffeur-driven car at 7.35pm, arriving at Blackbushe airport at 7.50pm.
Mr Bercow, his girlfriend Louise Cumber and Mr Lewis rushed out to the waiting Twin Squirrel helicopter, crammed into the five-seater, donned earmuffs and were off.
Meanwhile two cars, with indicators flashing and headlights on, marked out an area at Finmere, near Buckingham, where the helicopter landed with a bump at 8.25pm.
Mr Bercow and his friends sped off for the school where the second selection meeting was to be held. In the car, he turned to Mr Lewis and said: "Julian, this is the best £1,000 I have ever spent." They arrived with minutes to spare.
Mr Bercow dashed onto the stage and addressed the faithful. "Just because I am a little chap, it doesn't mean I haven't got a big ambition," he told them. To top it all, he was selected, defeating Howard Flight and David Rutley.
Mr Bercow said last night: "When an obstacle is put in your way, you need some resourcefulness to overcome it. It cost me a pretty penny but it was extremely well spent."
THE first building society to announce a mutuality benefits package for members was the National & Provincial. Within months, the society fell victim to the predatory attentions of the Abbey National.
This awful memory does not seem to haunt those societies who have announced similar loyalty schemes since designed to prove their commitment to mutuality. The latest is the Britannia, which has been working on the project since last summer. In the interim the Yorkshire and the Bradford & Bingley have produced schemes to give value to members in the shape of lower mortgage rates and competitive savings deals.
Both were against paying dividends, as such payouts depend on future profits. They argued that, if margins were squeezed, the distribution to members would be put in jeopardy.
The Britannia, however, seems set to follow the dividend route, believing that this is the way to persuade its members to buy even more of its products. But there is no guarantee that they will remain true. Aspiring borrowers may still spurn the Britannia if it cannot match the rates available elsewhere.
The Britannia believes that it is acting to safeguard its independence by depleting its reserves. A miscalculation about how much it will pay and in what form could still be fatal.
WHAT on earth is going on at Farnell, a solid and respectable distributor of all sorts of useful electronic bits and bobs that would not normally trouble the scorer in the great corporate governance handicap?
Two weeks ago Farnell announced a £1.8 billion purchase of an equally uncharismatic but much bigger US business. Part of the deal, ambitious but put together by a team whose record suggested they were ready for such a challenge, was a £350 million rights issue.
Before such an issue can be launched, it is pre-marketed. This involves a traipse around the biggest institutional holders, and Farnell has at least seven with 2 per cent or more including Standard Life, to see if they will back the move and underwrite the issue.
Just what took place between Farnell and the institutions is rightly shrouded in secrecy, but there were precious few squawks from any as the underwriting fees were being counted. The deal caused some concern among some large shareholders at the size of the step planned, and the management set out to allay this with, to date, some 60 presentations. But Standard Life was apparently not one of those who expressed such concern.
Now the Scottish institution has taken the unprecedented step of saying it will oppose the deal at next week's extraordinary meeting, even if other institutions with much bigger stakes look like supporting it.
Four questions should be put to Standard Life. Is this, and the weekend assault against Michael Green's salary, just a high-profile public relations exercise, hitched to the fashionable corporate governance bandwagon? Did you initially agree to support the rights? If so, why the subsequent change of heart?
And has all of this anything to do with your wish, frustrated when you were made an insider ahead of the deal, to take profits on some of your stake in Farnell?
SHARES in Bass, the brewing and leisure company, fell 7p to 736p yesterday after it revealed that profits in its gaming division had fallen 30 per cent because of bad weather and the impact of the National Lottery.
Sir Ian Prosser, chairman, said that earnings in the first 16 weeks of the financial year had grown in line with expectations apart from in the Bass leisure division.
Admissions at the Gala bingo clubs fell 6 per cent, although the average spend rose 2.5 per cent. Turnover from Coral bookmakers was up 6 per cent but average turnover per shop was down 8 per cent because of the reduced winter racing season. Holiday Inn Worldwide, the hotels division, saw profits rise. Revenue per room rose 4 per cent in the US and 10 per cent in Europe.
Bass Taverns, the company's pub division, operated an increased number of outlets for the first time in four years. Drink takings rose 7 per cent, while food revenues were up 50 per cent and machine revenues increased 2 per cent.
Bass's brewing division increased beer volumes 1 per cent, while off-licence trade rose 10 per cent.
Sir Ian said: "I remain confident that the group will make good progress through the rest of this financial year."
JOHN MAJOR turned on his backbench critics last night, warning them that the party would not tolerate dissent as the election approached. Buoyed by the latest opinion poll showing a sharp drop in Labour's lead over the Conservatives, Mr Major sought to exploit his new-found authority to demand discipline and unity among Tory MPs.
"There is no room for fainthearts in our party. Those who think we cannot win should leave," the Prime Minister told senior party workers in London.
Improved morale among Conservative MPs was boosted last night by a Gallup survey for The Daily Telegraph which suggested that the Harriet Harman dispute had dented Labour's record lead in the opinion polls. It showed that Labour's rating has fallen six points from an artificially high level at the beginning of January to 54.5 per cent. The Tories have risen seven points to 28 per cent. Although the gap has narrowed from 39.5 percentage points, Labour is still 26.5 points ahead.
The poll also found that the public backed Ms Harman's decision to send her son to a grammar school. About 60 per cent said she was justified in her choice; nearly 30 per cent were opposed. Labour voters gave her strong support.
Last night another Labour MP was accused by Tories of "grotesque double standards" for sending his children to private schools in southeast London. Roger Godsiff, the MP for Birmingham Small Heath, sends Anthony, 13, to Colfe's School, Lee, and Carrie, 12, to Blackheath High School. The fees at each school are about £4,500 a year.
Labour is not committed to abolishing private schools but has said that it will end the assisted places scheme.
NEWS INTERNATIONAL, owner of The Times, reported first-half profits of £168.9 million yesterday, in spite of a £42.1 million charge against the closure of Today.
In the same period of the previous year, the company made a profit of £561.9 million, but that included a one-off £400.4 million gain on the sale of 20 per cent of its shares in BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster. The company made an operating profit in the first half, ending December 31 last year, of £76.2 million, an increase of 36 per cent. Its newspapers, which include The Sunday Times, The Sun and News of the World, have continued to strengthen their market position through increased circulation and growth in advertising revenue, it said.
BSkyB, in which News International holds 40 per cent, has continued to show growth in profitability and in the number of subscribers, which rose from 4.16 million to 5.18 million in the period. News International is a subsidiary of The News Corporation, which on Wednesday reported operating profits of $492 million for the same period. Leslie Hinton, News International chief executive, said: "We are delighted with these excellent results, achieved in a brutally competitive market. We are especially pleased that we have been able to maintain, and in some cases increase, the circulation of our titles despite the necessity to raise cover prices in response to significantly higher newsprint costs."
The company will pay an interim dividend to special dividend shareholders of 1.68p per share.
APPLE Computer, the struggling American personal computer group, expects to incur a bigger loss in the second quarter of its financial year than the $69 million loss it reported for the first quarter.
Gilbert Amelio, the new chief executive, also said that the company had pulled out of talks with all potential bidders.
The forecast loss is part of a new publicity offensive by the company to clear the decks after a senior management shake-up last week.
Apple is attempting to persuade customers and the stock market that it is still in control of its own destiny after several months of disastrous trading figures, intense takeover speculation, and the departure of Michael Spindler as chief executive a week ago.
Mr Amelio said that the second-quarter loss would be partly the result of further essential restructuring costs within the company. He said that in spite of the bad financial results, the foundations of Apple's business were sound and that steps the company was taking to turn itself round in the next few months would boost profitability. The company is scheduled to report its second-quarter results in April.
Mr Amelio's denial that Apple was in bid talks with any other company appeared to scotch rumours of an imminent takeover by Sun Microsystems with whom Apple has been negotiating recently.
Mr Amelio said that the persistent takeover rumours had damaged the company's performance and its share price, which is now about $28, down from $50 a few months ago.
The company has been taking out full-page advertisements in leading newspapers over the past few days, pointing out its strengths and promising that it can survive independently.
However, analysts believe Mr Amelio has an uphill struggle to salvage Apple's image and convince the public that it can recover from a string of strategic blunders as well as protect its share of the personal computer market, which has shrunk recently from more than 10 per cent to about 8 per cent.
Ladbroke, the hotels and betting company, is expanding its casino operations with the £27.5 million purchase of the Barracuda Casino from Stakis, the leisure group.
The Securities and Investments Board yesterday urged insurers to follow the Prudential and not to dismiss claims of pension mis-selling because they are late.
The industry's review of cases to uncover and compensate victims has fallen behind and SIB was replying to a letter from Bill Day, national pensions officer of the GMB union, expressing concern that many claimants could be barred by the time factor.
The Britannia Building Society plans to reward members with annual cash handouts, adding a new twist to the ways in which societies are rewarding loyal members (Pennington, this page).
Until now, societies have opted to increase savings and cut mortgage rates in an attempt to show members that mutuality is beneficial.
The Britannia's move, expected to be announced tomorrow, comes closest to the cash and/or shares rewards offered to members of societies that are merging or converting. The size of the cash incentive will be pegged to the amount a member borrows or saves.
The Britannia's cash payments are likely to be popular with savers and borrowers, but the commitment to pay cash every year could become a straitjacket.
THE Ministry of Defence has been ordered to give more weight to the impact of its procurement decisions on British industry.
Common procurement programmes with European governments are to be encouraged, as a way of reinforcing Europe's arms industry and promoting efficiency-seeking mergers between the Continent's weapon-makers. Collaboration with American arms companies will also be encouraged.
The first official confirmation of a strategic shift to take more account of industry in the MoD's £10 billion a year of equipment purchases was detailed yesterday in a government response to a joint report by the Commons Trade and Industry and Defence committees.
Ministers have accepted a broad swath of the committees' recommendations, including the argument that more must be done to preserve Britain's ability to design and build modern weapons, albeit within largely European partnerships.
Officials from the Department of Trade and Industry will now have more say in procurement decisions. Talks are under way for Britain to participate in the newly created French-German procurement agency, and Britain is willing to participate in a big joint procurement to launch it. The Government is also encouraging the creation of a Europe-wide agency.
A Ministry of Defence spokesman insisted the new policy was "an evolution of policy to meet changed circumstances".
THE Cabinet decided yesterday to allow Labour an early view of the Scott report after it emerged that Sir Richard Scott had intervened on the Opposition's behalf.
Labour protested that it would receive the 1,800-page report only half an hour in advance. Sir Richard wrote to the Trade and Industry Department that Robin Cook, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, ought to see it earlier. The Opposition will now receive it at noon, three hours earlier than planned, a concession Labour dismissed as minor.
Tony Blair urged John Major repeatedly in the Commons yesterday to say that the investigation had been fairly conducted. The Prime Minister refused to agree and appeared to be trying to convince MPs that he was relaxed about the outcome.
WESTMINSTER HEALTH CARE, the nursing home and medical services group, said occupancy rates continued to be under pressure. There were regional variations in performance and the company's development programme is likely to be biased towards the South East. In the half year to November 30, the company lifted pre-tax profits to £8 million from £6.3 million. Earnings were 11.1p a share, rising from 9.9p. The interim dividend is increased to 2.35p a share from 2.1p. In August the company raised £33.7 million through a rights issue.
BUSINESS leaders last night said that Britain's economic strengths must not be jeopardised by a Labour government uncommitted to stable economic policies.
Although Adair Turner, Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry, welcomed the shifts in Labour policy towards a more pro-business approach under Tony Blair, the CBI challenged Labour to provide specific details for business on a range of economic policies.
Government ministers were angered when Mr Turner recently advocated a rise in real wages as part of economic growth, and some are sceptical about the CBI's declared policy under Mr Turner of political neutrality in the run-up to a general election, arguing openly that business ought to support the Conservatives.
But they will be more satisfied by Mr Turner's clear attempt last night in a speech at a CBI dinner in Manchester to put pressure on Labour to flesh out the bones of its policies on the economy and business.
Mr Turner praised the UK's stable macroeconomy, low inflation and flexible labour markets as a "sound basis for medium-term growth", and in a specific reference to Labour and the election said: "It is crucial that these advantages are not put at risk."
He said: "While the Labour party has made some apparent shifts in policy towards a more pro-business approach, there are key areas where business disagrees with Labour policy."
Business was concerned about four specific areas:
Inflation: Welcoming Labour's "overall" commitment to low inflation, he said: "Business confidence would increase if Labour committed itself to a specific inflation target."
Tax: Labour should set specific targets for the top rate of tax and National Insurance, and clearly stated spending priorities.
Social chapter: Emphasising the support of business for the Government's opt-out from the EU social chapter, he said that business "does not want to see it ended. We are very concerned about the Labour Party's commitment to do so" and would be even more so if Labour supported extending qualified majority voting in the EU in this area.
Stakeholding: Having launched the word into the political domain, Mr Blair must now clarify it and say what specific policy issues would result from it.
THE planned $25 billion merger between Bell Atlantic and Nynex, two of America's largest telephone companies, has been put off in favour of a more modest joint venture. The new plan is to set up a joint venture in the long distance telephone market, which would not bring the companies the same massive cost savings as a merger.
The Bell Atlantic-Nynex talks have been prompted by the Telecommunication Bill, signed by President Clinton yesterday, which deregulates the market. It would have been the largest merger in US corporate history, but is proving to be too complex to complete.
SOME of the UK's most senior business leaders have launched a scathing attack on European monetary union, arguing it would bring higher interest rates and unemployment and harm business competitiveness.
The criticism came from Sir Stanley Kalms, chairman of Dixons, Sir John Hoskyns, chairman of Burton, Sir Alick Rankin, chairman of Scottish & Newcastle, Sir Michael Edwardes, chairman of Charter, Sir Emmanuel Kaye, chairman of Kaye Enterprises, Stanislas Yassukovich, chairman of the City Research project, and Tim Melville- Ross, director-general of the Institute of Directors.
Their stance against economic and monetary union (EMU) was in stark contrast to the sentiments expressed by Dr Ronaldo Schmitz, chairman of Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, yesterday. He said that stopping the introduction of EMU would have disastrous implications for the single market and for Europe's position in the world. The business leaders were writing in Business Agenda, a publication by the centre-right European Research Group.
Sir Stanley said business "must now gird its loins and fight with eerie weapon ... against those who seek to sell out the UK to a federal Europe". Sir John questioned whether the single currency was conceivable without European unification, while Sir Alick said that to join EMU "we must meet tough convergence criteria, pay up a huge entrance fee and put on a monetary corset". There is growing consensus among British bankers that the deadline for the introduction of a single currency in 1998 should be delayed until economic criteria are in place.
On Monday Eddie George, Governor of the Bank of England, said proceeding too quickly towards a single currency could cause serious political tensions. But at the German-British Chamber of Commerce yesterday, Dr Schmitz said: "Stopping the EMU train would spell disaster. It would mean running the risk of the hard core of the European Monetary System breaking apart." This, he said, would mean that "continental Europe would fall back into recurring competitive devaluations, with negative repercussions for the development of the single market as a whole".
Dr Schmitz said: "I would like to see the UK exert a much greater influence over the design of the EU economic framework". If sterling did not rejoin the exchange-rate mechanism by spring this year, it would not be eligible for EMU in 1998, he added.
LIVERPOOL dockworkers have rejected an offer from Mersey Docks & Harbour Company worth £8 million to settle an unofficial dispute that closed part of the port for six weeks last year. The dockers, dismissed last September for refusing to cross a picket line, rejected the offer of £20,000 to £25,000 per employee by 271 votes to 50. A spokesman for the Transport & General Workers Union said a meeting would be held today to discuss further action.
Mersey Docks shares fell 34p to 403p over fears that strikers would seek support from dockers abroad. The dispute cost the company £4 million. Mersey Docks said yesterday that pressure had been put on the dockers to reject the offer. However the company left open the possibility that employees could still claim their share of the settlement. The strikers were demanding employment for 80 other dockers who were dismissed by a stevedoring company, unconnected with Mersey Docks, which has since gone out of business.
A terrier cross-breed has been reunited with his owner after spending six days at the bottom of a 40ft well in sub-zero temperatures. Clive Wright had been walking three-year-old Hooch in a wood when the dog fell in. Mr Wright, 33, of Nuneaton, Warwickshire, called his name for an hour before deciding the dog must have been killed. Six days later Mr Wright checked if the well had been blocked up when "I suddenly heard a faint whimper". A fireman brought Hooch up after a two-hour operation, weak but uninjured.
David Southworth, managing director, with John Atkin, finance director, of P&P Group, where profits rose 57 per cent to £12.6 million in the year to November 30.
There is a final dividend of 2p, payable on May 11, making a total of 3.15p (2.6p)
The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales's December final examination results will be published tomorrow. Copies will be on sale from 10 tonight at Victoria, King's Cross and Charing Cross stations, Marble Arch and Leicester Square.
RETAIL sales are still rising, according to figures today from British industry on sales volumes in the high street.
The Confederation of British Industry's monthly distributive trades survey shows continuing strong sales growth in January after early sales activity the previous month.
The CBI's survey, covering 15,000 outlets in retailing, wholesaling and the motor trades, shows that retail sales have now risen on an annual basis for four successive months, after a year of uneven volume growth.
In January, the balance of retailers reporting an increase in sales volumes those registering a rise against those recording a fall stayed at 31 per cent. Annual sales this month are expected to continue to rise, at a slightly higher rate.
Trade in the high street in January was above average for the time of year for the second month running, and while stocks were still considered to be more than adequate, retailers expect a slight rundown in levels this month.
Grocers, chemists, and footwear retailers saw the highest rises in sales volumes compared with a year ago, while confectionery, tobacco and newspaper outlets saw their first fall since February 1994.
Alastair Eperon, chairman of the CBI's distributive trades panel, says: "Underlying volumes, as measured by the three-monthly annual trend, have been on an upward path since last September."
SHARES in Hanson, the Anglo-American diversified industrial conglomerate, fell by 5p to 185p yesterday. At the end of the day 16.32 million shares had been traded. Hanson shares have fallen from 210p since the proposed demerger of the company into four separate units was announced last week, reducing its stock market capitalisation by about £1.29 billion to £9.6 billion. Yesterday Standard & Poor's, the credit rating agency, said that the rating of the demerged Hanson businesses was likely to suffer.
PRESCRIPTION charges are to rise by 25p to £5.50p from April, an increase of nearly 5 per cent, the Government announced last night. Labour immediately accused ministers of sneaking through the increase in a parliamentary written answer and ducking out of a Commons statement.
Gerald Malone, the Health Minister, also announced that the maximum charge for dental treatment is to rise from £300 to £325, but the value of optical vouchers, given to children and those on income support, would go up by only 1 per cent. Mr Malone insisted that Britain's exemption arrangements were still among the most generous in Europe.
Fees for prescription prepayment certificates will rise by £1.30 from £27.20 to £28.50 for a four-month certificate and by £3.60 to £78.40 for an annual ticket. Mr Malone said that about 85 per cent of prescriptions dispensed in 1996-97 would be free.
Ann Lewis, the President of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society said: "The credibility of the prescription charge system is now stretched beyond breaking point. This tax is anachronistic, inconsistent in its application and widely perceived as being unfair."
MYRA HINDLEY, the Moors murderer jailed for life in 1966, should be considered for transfer to an open prison, the Parole Board has recommended.
The suggestion, which will provoke a storm of controversy, was made after a review of her case last month. Michael Howard is now considering the recommendation, which he is under no obligation to accept.
But the Home Secretary faces a dilemma because a rejection could prompt a court challenge by lawyers acting for Hindley. Yet moving her to an open jail would trigger a public outcry.
It is understood that the panel of up to four members including a psychiatrist which considered Hindley's case did not suggest how long she should remain in prison. Hindley, 54, who was jailed for the murder of four children, is being held at Durham. Her lover Ian Brady, also jailed for life, does not wish to be considered for parole.
The Prison Service has three open jails for women Askham Grange, near York, Drake Hall in Eccleshall, Staffordshire and East Sutton Park near Maidstone in Kent. Inmates are allowed great freedom to move around, sometimes outside the prison, without being guarded. None of the female open jails has a secure perimeter fence.
Mr Howard is also studying representations from Hindley's lawyers over a decision by Lord Waddington, when Home Secretary in 1990, that Hindley should stay in prison for the rest of her life.
The Bank of France yesterday cut its key intervention rate, which sets the floor for money market interest rates, to 3.90 per cent from 4.05 per cent. The Bank left its five-to-ten day lending rate unchanged at 5.60 per cent.
TI Group, through its Bundy Asia Pacific joint venture, is to invest $3 million in a new factory in China to supply components to a new car plant set up by Citroen, the French company, in Wuhan, Hubei province, where it is to produce its ZX model.
BP has agreed to sell Britannic Tower, the second tallest office building in the Square Mile, to Wates City of London Properties which plans a £100 million redevelopment of the site.
Wates is believed to be paying £40 million, with extra for the oil company depending on future success in letting the development.
Wates and Deutsche Morgan Grenfell have agreed to redevelop Winchester House in the City. The deal gives Morgan Grenfell 55 per cent of the 300,000 sq ft development and Wates the remainder.
UNILEVER, the consumer products group, said yesterday that it will take a £225 million charge in the fourth quarter to cover the cost of restructuring some of its operations in America and in Europe. Part of the charge, which will be taken against operating profits, will pay for the closure of Lever Brothers' fabric powder production in St Louis, Missouri. The product line will be transferred to Lever's plant in Cartersville, Georgia, by the end of this year. Unilever's fourth quarter and annual results for 1995 will be announced on February 20.
HOPES that British Telecom might provide a broad-band communications network receded further yesterday. Sir Peter Bonfield, BT's new chief executive, conceded that he did not personally think there would be a single national information superhighway.
"The idea of a single fibre-optic network to every household is wrong." he said. Instead, he envisaged a growing patchwork of links between different systems that would evolve at different paces in different places, using mixed technology, possibly including radio and satellites.
The Labour Party has watered down a deal to allow BT earlier access to the entertainment market to justify investment in a superhighway and connect schools, hospitals and libraries free. Sir Peter said BT would still accelerate access to a fibre-optic network for schools and possibly hospitals.
In the third quarter to December 31, BT's pre-tax profits rose 26 per cent to £829 million. Nine-month profits were up 13 per cent to £2.44 billion on turnover up 3.4 per cent to £10.7 billion. The gain stemmed almost entirely from the timing of redundancy charges. They took £60 million in the quarter against £217 million a year earlier.
The bill for 8,000 job losses should still be about £400 million for the year to March 31, suggesting a final quarter charge above £200 million.
Sir Iain Vallance, the chairman, said there had been an encouraging upturn in domestic call volumes in the quarter. The customer base shrank by 37,000 in the quarter as cable companies took a net 100,000.
Calls for an investigation to be launched into Lloyd's were made yesterday in the House of Lords. Lord Marlesford said he was a victim of the losses incurred at Lloyd's and questioned whether it had been "wholly frank" with the DTI about assets it had to cover insolvencies.
EVERY one of the 32,000 Lloyd's of London names is expected to have their debt to the insurance market capped at £100,000, according to Lloyd's sources.
The upper limit on a name's liability is struck, however, after deducting any payment or debt write-off the name will receive under Lloyd's ambitious £2.8 billion reconstruction and renewal plan. The limit is calculated after any necessary draw down on a name's funds at Lloyd's, which for many is in the form of bank guarantees against their homes.
Lloyd's is holding back £100 million of the £2.8 billion to help names who cannot afford to pay their final liability bill and is working on a phased payment scheme.
The R&R plan, aimed at resolving the mass of legal actions taken by thousands of names and at providing them with an affordable exit from the insurance market, is in its final stages. The exit route is via Equitas, a reinsurance company being set up to take over names' liabilities in return for a payment.
Of the package, £2 billion will be used to write off names' debts in cases when they cannot afford to pay them while the remaining £800 million is to compensate names for their losses.
On Wednesday the Ridley Committee, chaired by Sir Adam Ridley, reported to the Lloyd's ruling council its methodology for dividing the £2 billion of debt write-offs and £800 million between the different classes of names.
Lloyd's plans to send the committee's conclusions to names next week. This will be followed next month by statements from Lloyd's "indicating" each names' share of the £2.8 billion as well as their Equitas bill.
AMSTRAD, the electronics group that announced 150 redundancies earlier this week, has disclosed first-half losses of £5.4 million. But the interim dividend is increased to 1.25p a share from 1p.
As a result, Alan Sugar, chairman and largest single shareholder, can expect to take home about £510,000 in dividend payments. He is also paid an annual salary of £195,000.
The company said the increase in dividend was meant as a signal to investors that Amstrad is turning the corner. Mr Sugar said he expects Dancall, Amstrad's mobile phone manufacturing subsidiary, to make a healthy profit in the second half.
Earlier this week, Amstrad said it would restructure, cut its workforce mainly in Amstrad Consumer Electronics (ACE) by 150 and close one of its factories, costing it £4 million.
The company made a £25,000 profit in the corresponding period last year, and Tony Dean, finance director, said: "It is obviously disappointing to be in the red this half. We don't expect to make any further provisions for restructuring, and we hope to see some strength now."
Viglen International, which sells computers in the professional market, was profitable in the six months to December 31, while Dancall, bought by Amstrad in 1993, had made a "respectable profit" in December as it overcame a delay of four months in meeting production levels. Mr Sugar said that the full-year results should, therefore, be encouraging.
Analysts cut their full-year profit forecasts from between £15 million and £20 million to nearer £10 million. However, the rosier picture for the second half and next year pushed the share price higher, rising 18p to 201p.
"The results weren't very good, but there is plenty of room for them to grow again," said Andrew Bryant, analyst with NatWest Securities. "ACE should be back in profit in 1997, the Viglen market is growing and there is confidence that Dancall could become a real competitor to the likes of Nokia and Ericsson."
THE leaders of the three main political parties have written a joint letter to The Times to express their support for the protection of the countryside.
John Major, Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown deliberately echo the language of a similar, though perhaps even more remarkable, letter published in The Times on May 8, 1929, and signed by Stanley Baldwin, then Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald and Lloyd George.
Mr Major and his political foes agreed to set aside their differences at the request of the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), which inspired the earlier letter.
They write: "During the next few months we shall differ on so many problems of public importance that we gladly take the opportunity of showing that on one subject we speak with a united voice namely, in advocating the protection of our countryside in its rich personality and character."
Fiona Reynolds, director of the CPRE, said: "We asked the three leaders if they would write a letter in the same spirit as that of 1929 to mark our seventieth anniversary, which we are celebrating this year. We are delighted they agreed to do so."
The man credited with the 1929 coup is Sir Patrick Abercrombie, a pioneering town and country planner who three years earlier had played a leading role in founding the CPRE along with Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, the architect of the Italianate fantasy of Portmeirion in North Wales.
Ms Reynolds said: "It all seems to have been arranged through gentlemanly contacts behind the scenes. Baldwin, a keen country lover, is thought to have persuaded the other two leaders to sign." One of the few written references to the letter is in the minutes of an executive committee meeting held on April 24, 1929, which notes that an appeal for funds supported by a leading article had appeared in The Times that morning.
Sadie Ward, the archivist, said: "The secretary of the meeting then read out a letter which it was hoped would be signed by Baldwin and the other two leaders in support of the appeal. This appeared in The Times on May 8. We know that Abercrombie had been trying to get such a letter published for some time."
The only other known time that the leaders of the three parties have sent a letter to the Editor was on July 6, 1981, when Margaret Thatcher, Michael Foot and David Steel appealed for funds for a memorial to Lord Mountbatten, but on that occasion they were joined by five other signatories.
The CPRE was launched at a time of growing concern about the impact on the countryside of rapid urbanisation, fuelled by rising mobility and demand for better housing. Extensions to the Underground were making it easier for people to commute to work and the disfiguring sprawl of "ribbon development" went largely unchecked.
One of the CPRE's first successes was a campaign that forced Shell and other petroleum companies to take down unsightly roadside advertising. It also backed calls for a "green belt" (originally "girdle") round London, which was introduced in 1946.
Baldwin, who spent his boyhood in the Bewdley region of Worcestershire, reflected these concerns in a series of speeches imbued with a nostalgia for a rural England that was already passing. In 1924, he said: "The sounds of England, the tinkle of the hammer on the anvil in the country smithy, the corncrake on a dewy morning, the sound of the scythe against the whetstone, and the sight of a plough team coming over the brow of a hill, the sight that has been seen in England since England was a land, and may be seen in England long after the Empire has perished and every works in England has ceased to function, for centuries the one eternal sight of England."
The countryside he evoked still bore some resemblance to reality when Baldwin died in 1947. In the half-century since it has vanished as completely as the Empire itself. Horse-drawn ploughs, scythes and the village smithy are the stuff of history books, while corncrakes survive only on a few Scottish islands.
Mr Major shares some of Baldwin's nostalgia but not his eloquence. When he wanted to evoke a similarly romanticised idea of England he drew partly on George Orwell for his image of "long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, and old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist". Orwell's view of Baldwin was jaundiced, to say the least: "One could not even dignify him with the name of a stuffed shirt: he was simply a hole in the air."
Today the CPRE, whose current president is the broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby, has a branch in every county in England and 45,000 members who pay an annual subscription of £17.50. These do not include Mr Major, Mr Blair or Mr Ashdown.
Ms Reynolds said: "We hope they may become members. The threat from creeping urbanisation is just as great as ever as we move into the next century. We have never been in favour of pickling the countryside in aspic. What we are against is unnecessarily destructive change."
The parallels with 1929 are not exactly happy for Mr Major. Within three weeks of signing the letter, Baldwin led the Tories to a crushing election defeat, when the number of Tory MPs fell from 419 to 260. With 288 Labour MPs, Ramsay MacDonald formed a minority Government, and, just as Paddy Ashdown now hopes, Lloyd George's Liberals had a pivotal role with 59 MPs. But within two years the Labour Government had disintegrated in acrimony and a Tory-dominated coalition was in office.
THE Personal Investment Authority is reviewing the funding of the Investors Compensation Scheme for the second time in six months.
It has already drawn up plans to change substantially the funding of the ICS, which has been dogged by controversy over the past few years. This latest consultation paper is a further attempt to try to ensure the long-term viability of the scheme.
The ICS was set up by the Government to protect investing members of the public against the failure or fraud of a particular investment company. Most firms declared in default of the ICS have been independent financial advisers. The structure of the scheme meant that the remaining IFAs and the companies that transacted most of their business through IFAs had to pay the compensation bill. The result was that good firms ended up paying for the actions of the bad.
The ICS reached a crisis last year when Sun Life secured a judicial review of this funding arrangement. The uncertainty forced the Treasury to offer a £17 million lifeline.
After this, the ICS proposed the introduction of a pre-funding arrangement, under which all PIA members would pay an annual subscription totalling £15 million to cushion against losses.
The paper issued yesterday puts forward a suggestion under which all PIA members would contribute to the scheme according size. This proposal is likely to anger the banks and building societies, which maintain they have their own compensation arrangements.
THE Government angered public-sector workers yesterday by restricting nurses to a national pay rise of 2 per cent and cutting back awards to a million others, including teachers and doctors.
Britain's 480,000 nurses were told they would have to rely on local bargaining to secure more than 2 per cent, an offer dismissed by nurses' leaders as "derisory". The Government added to their anger by declining to follow last year's practice of setting a target that nurses should be able to win from hospitals.
While ministers claimed that the absence of a ceiling on local deals could mean that nurses in some areas would win much more than 2 per cent, nurses' leaders denounced the squeeze as another attempt by the Government to foist local bargaining on them.
The dispute with the nurses and allied groups such as midwives and health visitors overshadowed the announcement of more generous rises, recommended by the independent pay review bodies, for doctors, teachers, dentists, members of the Armed Forces, judges, senior military and top civil servants.
The Cabinet was forced to make staged awards to these groups to protect its counter-inflationary policy, to keep borrowing under control, and to check the risk of a pay explosion among other public-sector workers. The move, which saved £150 million, has alienated groups representing a million professionals in a pre-election year. Without staging, the pay bill would have risen by £884 million or 4 per cent. The average initial pay increase will now be 3 per cent, while the inflation rate is 3.2 per cent.
Teachers will receive 3.75 per cent, with 2.75 per cent in April and the rest in December. Doctors will get an average of 3.8 per cent, with dentists on 4.3 per cent. There will be special rises for junior medical staff; registrars will receive 5.3 per cent and house officers will be given 6.8 per cent. In all cases, 1 percentage point of the rise will be delayed until December.
Judges will be given staged rises of 3.9 per cent and senior military officers will receive an average increase of 4.6 per cent. Under a new performance-related pay structure, top civil servants could get up to 11 per cent, but poor performers might get nothing. Last year the Government paid awards ranging from 1.5 per cent to 3.2 per cent.
The Royal College of Nursing said the 2 per cent award was "utterly out of touch at a time of growing nursing shortages and rock-bottom morale". It added: "Nurses will expect equality with junior doctors. They are worth 6.8 per cent too."
Andrew Smith, the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, accused the Government of double standards. Cedric Brown, the chief executive of British Gas, could retire with £250,000 a year, while a staff nurse had been promised an increase of only £5 a week.
"The staging of the teachers' and other awards is a deception and an admission of economic failure by the Government, who are saying that they are doing so badly on the economy that they cannot afford to pay at once increases which they accept are justified," he said.
Ministers judged that the recommended pay rises could not be afforded within the spending increases announced for Whitehall departments last November. Fears that some of the extra £880 million Budget allocation for schools might have to be siphoned off for teachers' pay awards are also believed to have influenced the Government's strategy. Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, ruled out raiding the £3 billion reserve to find the £150 million needed to pay the rises in full immediately.
Senior Treasury officials insisted that the decision would not affect the Chancellor's growth forecast for this year of 3 per cent, which is based largely on expectations of an upturn in consumer spending.
Conservative MPs are concerned, however, that meddling with the review body awards could delay the reappearance of the "feel-good" factor and undermine the party's political recovery.
Many Tories saw the decision as a victory for Mr Clarke and senior Treasury officials. It was also seen as a strong signal that the Government intends to delay a general election until next spring to allow time for a fresh round of Budget tax cuts and another more generous pay round.
Last year, the nurses' review body backed 1 per cent nationally with up to a further 2 per cent to be determined locally. This year there is no such recommendation, fuelling fears that nurses may fare particularly badly. Concern among ministers that nurses might have appeared to have been singled out for harsh treatment appears to have been a factor in the decision to subject all groups to restraint.
Treasury officials said the £150 million saving was not trivial and emphasised the need to keep public-sector salary bills within the scope of public spending targets.
FARNELL, the electronics distribution company, yesterday suffered a setback in its £1.8 billion bid to buy Premier Industrial, the US-based company, when Standard Life, one of its main institutional shareholders, revealed it would not support the proposals.
The Premier purchase has aroused controversy since it was announced last month because it would result in Farnell more than doubling its size and lead to a big increase in the company's debt.
Graham Wood, head of UK equities at Standard Life, justified the decision on the gounds that the fund management group believes the premium is too high, that the deal would dilute earnings and that Farnell will be encumbered with £430 million worth of debt. But the company's unusual decision to publicise its position angered Howard Poulson, chairman of Farnell.
Mr Poulson said: "We are very disappointed that Standard Life has rather jumped the gun. We only had a short meeting with Standard Life in which to put our case."
But Mr Poulson remained confident that the deal would still be approved, stating that he believed the overwhelming majority of shareholders still supported the deal.
Guy Jubb, corporate governance manager at Standard Life, defended the decision to go public, ahead of the extraordinary meeting next week.
He said: "We feel it is right that we make our position clear so other shareholders can see what we are doing. The Premier deal has created a lot of interest in the media."
He added that Standard Life did not want to sell its stake in Farnell although a sale remained the ultimate sanction.
But Standard Life's views appeared not to be shared by other big shareholders such as Mercury Asset Management, who announced yesterday that it had increased its stake in the company from 12.1 per cent to 13 per cent.
Another large shareholder, Scottish Widows, which holds 5.3 per cent, said it was backing the deal.
Farnell's share price slipped back 3p to 642p.
THE management buyout of the LTS Rail train franchise was scrapped last night as the managing director and finance director of the company were removed from their jobs.
The latest embarrassment for the Government over the troubled launch of rail privatisation came as British Rail auditors completed an investigation into alleged ticket frauds at LTS. No evidence was found linking Chris Kinchin-Smith, the managing director, who was to have led the buyout, and Roger Turner, the finance director, with the allegations. However, British Rail said that it had decided "senior board changes were necessary" in the light of the ticket irregularities.
Both men have been transferred to new posts within British Rail headquarters at Euston. Neither was available for comment last night. They have been replaced by David Burton, director of product quality at the south and east division of British Rail, and Ian Cross, the finance director of the same division.
The sale of the franchise to a management and employee team was postponed on Saturday less than 12 hours before it was due to be transferred to the private sector. LTS Rail operates commuter services from Fenchurch Street station to east London and south Essex.
Roger Salmon, the franchise director, who awarded LTS to the management team in December, said that he would reopen the bidding to the three other shortlisted contenders: Stagecoach, the bus coach operator that won the South West Trains franchise, Prism and GB Railways.
THE consolidation of Britain's media industry gathered pace yesterday when United News & Media, the newspaper publisher, and MAI, the television and financial services group, announced a merger to create an international group ranging from the Daily Express to NOP, the polling group.
The merged group would havea market value of £2.9 billion and turnover of £1.9 billion. The deal came a day after United shares rose 29p to 624p on high volume. The London Stock Exchange is examining trading to determine if there were any unusual share price movements. Lord Hollick, 51, the managing director of MAI, and Lord Stevens of Ludgate, 59, the chairman of United, called the merger a marriage of equals.
The companies are to come together through a tax-free share swap which offers no premium to shareholders. A holder of 100 MAI shares will receive 64 United shares, while the holder of 1,000 MAI convertible preference shares will receive 241 United shares. United shares rose 28p to 652p. MAI was up 69p to 448p.
United shareholders will own 50.7 per cent of the new group while MAI shareholders will own 49.3 per cent. But MAI management seems likely to have control. Lord Hollick is to become chief executive of the group, which has not yet been named. Sir James McKinnon, the chairman of MAI and former head of Ofgas, the gas regulator, is to become deputy chairman. Lord Stevens will be chairman, a position he described as non-executive but full-time.
Both companies said they did not expect a competing bid to spoil the deal. Carlton Communications would not comment on rumours that it would bid for United, but its shares fell 32p, to £10.22, on the speculation.
The merger was designed to take advantage of the Government's plans to reduce cross-media ownership restrictions. The Broadcasting Bill will allow ITV companies to hold as many ITV licences as they want as long as they do not capture more than 15 per cent of the total audience. Newspaper companies with less than a fifth of total national newspaper circulation could buy ITV companies. The deal uses artificial "warehousing" companies, set up with UBS, United's broker, to bypass existing media ownership rules in case the Broadcasting Bill fails to become law.
The merged company will have two main businesses. The consumer side will include MAI's Meridian, Anglia and Channel 5 interests plus United's national and regional newspapers. It will also have United's advertising publications, including Exchange & Mart and Dalton's Weekly. The business side will include MAI's money and securities broking companies with the exception of Wagon Finance, a car finance company which is being sold with a price tag of about £100 million. It will also include United's PR Newswire, which provides electronic financial information, NOP, and Miller Freeman, United's magazine publishing and trade conference organiser.
MAI announced a pre-tax profit of £62.7 million for the half year to December 31 against £58.6 million in the previous period. United reported a pre-tax profit of £138 million for the full year to December 31, against £138.2 million previously. After restructuring costs and exceptional items, the 1995 profit was £104.4 million.
United is proposing to pay a second interim dividend of 15.25p, making 23p, unchanged, for the year. MAI is to pay a doubled interim dividend of 4p.
From Dame Alison Munro and Dr C. J. T. Bateman
Sir, Before dismissing the proposal for a "US-style retirememt haven" in Essex (report and leading article, January 27), it is a pity you did not take more time to ask why this type of village is so popular in the US and other countries and whether it might not fill a need here.
While most elderly people would prefer to stay in their own homes, many do not have homes or families that would allow for "the other ages' baby-sitting, spectacle-searching and changing the video". If you ask any group of elderly what they dread most in old age they are likely to say "being a burden to their families". They also dread being isolated and lonely when they lose their mobility. This is particularly distressing when couples become separated when one is removed to a home. To all this must be added the financial worries of old age.
With the aid of a charitable medical trust we hope to obtain planning permission to build a village on similar lines in West Sussex. Here the residents will have the opportunity of a high quality life combined with the knowledge that all their care needs can be met without a further move.
It is nonsense to suggest that such villages are "fortresses" or "ghettos". There can be plenty of liaison with the local community, and young company is anyway not a sine qua non of elderly enjoyment.
Yours sincerely,
ALISON MUNRO,
CHRISTOPHER BATEMAN (Medical Director),
St Richard's Hospital, Chichester, West Sussex.
THE frustration of eating out in Paris is trying to eat more than three meals a day. Breakfast, though, is the best time to visit Les Deux Magots or Cafe Flore, the landmark cafes of St-Germain. Before tourists overcrowd the terraces, you will the find regulars, there for the pleasure of "la corbeille du boulanger", excellent coffee and pressed orange.
Conveniently close to the Etoile and the Arc de Triomphe is the latest stylish adjunct to the Guy Savoy stable, Cap Vernet, at 82 avenue Marceau, (47 20 20 40). The cooking is quick and precise and the bill about Fr200-250 a head.
After a romantic stroll from Notre-Dame over the islands in the Seine, try Au Gourmet de l'Isle, at 42 rue St-Louis-en-l'Ile, (43 26 79 27). This is quintessentially Parisian, the food is staightforward and traditional, and the bill could be less than Fr150 each.
A quieter alternative in the same street is Le Monde des Chimeres, at number 69 (43 54 45 27), typical of old Paris. The cooking is familial but fastidious and one's bill about Fr300.
In the delightful Marais square, the Place de Vosges, La Guirlande de Julie at number 25 (48 87 94 07) has its terrace under the arcades. It has common ownership with the Tour d'Argent (15-17, quai de la Tournelle, 43 54 23 31) which charges astronomically for its unrivalled view of Notre-Dame and dishes that have been classics for decades. At La Guirlande the cooking is lighter, more modern and more affordable, about Fr225.
For a big brasserie try Bofinger, 3-7 rue de la Bastille, (42 72 87 82), full of copper and mirrors and waiters negotiating a tricky staircase with incredibly heavy-laden trays held boldly aloft. About Fr200 a head.
In Montmartre the best address is A. Beauvilliers at 52 rue Lamarck, a period piece serving distinguished cooking. The cost, though, is likely to be at least Fr500.
Le Cafe Marly (49 26 06 60) at 93 rue de Rivoli, overlooks the Louvre's Cour Napoleon. It is usually crowded, and service can be slow. About Fr250.
Even more distinguished is Les Monuments in the Trocadero (44 05 90 00). The food is fine, about Fr350 a head, and the view is terrific.
SELF-SELECT Peps should only be taken out by those who have the time and patience to study the financial pages to select the best shares to invest in.
This sounds good in theory, but some financial advisers point out that in practice many people may take out a plan with good intentions, but fail to monitor the perfomance of investments adequately. Self-select Peps are not necessarily the cheapest option, especially if you choose to buy and sell shares frequently, as the dealing costs can mount up. These costs compare with the entry costs on many managed Peps, which are low or nil in some cases.
You may also find it difficult to get hold of good cheap information on the particular companies you are interested in investing in. Some of the Peps which can offer the best potential for capital growth are those that have some exposure to foreign equities. Accurate information on companies in more obscure markets can be almost impossible to obtain.
One point in favour of acting as your own investment manager is that no professional fund manager can ever outperform the market consistently. Even if you find a manager with superb skills, he or she may leave the fund management group.
As with keeping fine wines, self-select Peps need a great deal of care and attention.
Caroline Merrell explains how international exposure can prove well worth the risk for investors in personal equity plans
America, the Far East and emerging markets of Latin America are not seen as the traditional markets for those who invest in personal equity plans.
But these are the areas of the world in which those looking to maximise capital growth over the long term should consider investing. Under the rules governing personal equity plans, it is possible to put up to £1,500 a year into non-qualifying investments, ie, shares in companies other than those in the UK and European Union. Long-term capital growth can be achieved through investing in smaller UK companies, through blue chip shares or via a specialist sector such as technology.
Provided the same Pep manager is used, the rest of the annual £6,000 limit can be used to purchase qualifying UK or European investments. For example, the best performing market globally last year was the US, which hit 50 successive highs and rose more than 25 per cent during the year.
Anybody who had exposure to this market through a Pep would have considerably boosted their capital growth the UK market grew by a more modest 19 per cent. Anyone who is willing to take on the extra risk which international exposure inevitably brings should invest through a collective fund like a unit trust or an investment trust. Diversifying the investment through this method should cut down on volatility.
Jason Holland, a Pep analyst with BESt Investment, the independent financial adviser, believes that Peps are fundamentally capital growth vehicles. He said: "Many of our clients are not looking for income, they just reinvest it anyway."
The income withdrawn from a Pep, and any capital gains made within it, are free from tax. Traditionally, it was argued, as most people do not pay capital gains tax, this latter advantage was merely cosmetic and the main attraction of Peps was tax-free income.
However, Mr Holland points out, as more and more companies have trimmed the prices on their plans, buying the Pep can be cheaper than investing in the underlying unit trusts themselves. He said: "The difference between funds geared towards income and funds geared towards capital growth is largely semantic."
Many fund managers who specialise in the UK produce high yields and strong capital growth, simply because the search for high dividend-paying companies tends to create its own discipline. Fund managers will sell companies if the yield drops and the price rises in order to scout around the market to find better value, which generates capital growth. Mr Holland said: "The UK is a yield-obsessed market."
Graham Hooper, investment director of Chase de Vere, the independent financial adviser, said: "Investors looking for long-term capital growth should be prepared to take a five-year view." He recommends a blue chip fund such as those offered by Schroder or Prolific.
He would consider more internationally diverse Peps for clients willing to take a higher degree of risk. He pointed out that investors also have to consider currency fluctuations when investing overseas. "However, the UK currency has been so weak recently, this really has not been a problem," he said. Among his recommendations would be Morgan Grenfell European fund or Perpetual's growth Pep.
Mr Holland recommended that anyone looking to invest in a high-growth Pep should look at the overall performance of the fund management group.
The group could have exemplary performance in managing funds in the Far East or America, but it may show less than average performance managing funds in the UK or Europe. If you invest the maximum amount possible each year, the majority of your money is going to be held in the UK or Europe. "You should split your holding across several funds, providing you bear in mind that, at some time in some market in the world, there is going to be some major disruption," he said.
Some of the problems with investing only in the UK this year were also highlighted by Mr Holland, who said: "The market is getting near to the top and the proximity of an election could have an effect." He recommended Peps with Morgan Grenfell, Schroders and Gartmore as those offering the possibility of maximum capital growth.
According to Chase de Vere, the top performing non-qualifying unit trusts over the last five years include Prolific's technology fund, Hill Samuel's smaller companies fund, Old Mutual's Thailand fund, Gartmore's Hong Kong fund and Framlington's Health fund. Gartmore's Global Pep invests in a selection of six qualifying unit trusts and four non-qualifying unit trusts. The four non-qualifying funds invest in Hong Kong, Japan, America and in a mix of different countries. As well as appealing for growth, this type of Pep can be useful for anyone who is trying to balance their Pep portfolio.
Investors who have taken out a plan every year since they were introduced will now be very exposed to the UK market. The Gartmore Pep carries a 3 per cent initial charge and a 1.5 per cent annual management charge. Gartmore will charge investors who want to switch between markets £25.
Prolific's Pep offers a choice of investment in eight qualifying and six non-qualifying funds. The non-qualifying funds allow investors to put their money in America, the Far East or in a specialised technology fund. The charges on the fund are 5.25 per cent initial and 1.25 per cent annual. Prolific will charge investors 1 per cent to switch between funds. Perpetual's Global Pep will offer the choice of investment in six qualifying unit trusts and eight non-qualifying trusts. The charges on the Pep are 5.25 per cent initial and 1.5 per cent annual.
There has been a fierce price war among Pep providers in recent months, all wanting to seize the trophy of cheapest Pep on the market. That said, fees still vary enormously and are often difficult to understand.
Take the initial charge. It usually equates to the bid/offer spread the difference between the quoted buying price and the selling price of units on a given day. Sometimes the initial charge is less than the bid/offer spread of the unit trust, with providers effectively giving customers a discount.
So if your initial charge is 3 per cent, your fund will be minus 3 per cent and will need to perform that much before you start making any profit. Some providers charge as much as 6 per cent initial charge, though that is becoming an extreme, which means your fund has even further to go before breaking even. Andrew Merricks, of Simpsons, a Pep specialist based in Brighton, says: "Clearly there is no point in paying more for something than you have to. Go for a lower charge and you are giving yourself a 2 to 3 per cent head start."
More important still is the annual management charge. Between 0.5 and 1.5 per cent will be taken out every year and over five years will have a bigger impact on the fund than the initial charge. As the fund grows, so the provider will be taking out more money.
There may also be an exit charge if you leave the plan early. M&G, for example, has dropped the initial charge on its Managed Income and Managed Growth Peps but you pay an exit charge, from 4.5 per cent, if you pull out within five years. The annual management charge is 1.5 per cent. The competition over, and subsequent reduction in, charges has come largely with the advent of tracker Peps. Since the funds simply mirror stock market indices and so move in tandem with them, there is less management. Hence lower management charges.
Last month, Legal & General cut the charge on its UK Tracking Index Peps. The total charge is now 0.5 per cent per annum. There is no initial charge, no withdrawal charge, and no administration fee. This matches Fidelity's new charge on its MoneyBuilder Index.
Michael Hayden, of Legal & General, says: "We looked at the way the market was going and saw that in two or three years' time charges would be right down. So rather than a piecemeal approach, we decided to cut our charges now."
Tracker funds are by far the cheapest funds available. A recent survey showed that actively managed Peps in the UK growth sector charge on average £684 over five years, and £1,097 over ten years on £6,000 invested.
PEPS may owe their existence to Lord Lawson of Blaby, Chancellor between 1984 and 1989, but corporate bond Peps were introduced by Kenneth Clarke, the current Chancellor, in his 1994 Budget. Mr Clarke's aim was to encourage a new source of finance for business.
Full of optimism for his brainchild, Mr Clarke announced that the new-style Peps would become available in April 1995. They were delayed until July, after disputes over the types of bonds acceptable and uncertainty over the taxation of fixed interest holdings.
ANYONE taking out a self-select plan could pay an initial charge of between 0 per cent and 3 per cent, an annual charge of 0.75 per cent and dealing charges which range upwards from 0.75 per cent.
For those who want to buy and sell their shares regularly, the costs of running a self-select Pep can mount up. Among those that offer self-select Peps are Killik & Co, the nationwide broker. It charges a dealing commission of 1.65 per cent and a dividend collection fee of £7.50 per dividend. The stockbroker would only advise more sophisticated investors to consider taking out a self-select Pep.
Sharelink, the United Kingdom's largest execution-only broker, has about 50,000 clients who have chosen to manage their own equity plans via the self-select route. It has an annual management fee of 0.75 per cent and a dealing charge of 1.5 per cent.
Fidelity Brokerage also has a number of clients who have self-select Peps. Last month, the company reduced its fee cap from £200 to £150, saving money for those with more than £30,000 invested in its self-select plans.
It, too, has a management charge of 0.75 per cent and with dealing costs on top of that. The details of how each plan manager levies its charges are laid out in the Chase de Vere Pep Guide, the industry's bible.
Spotlight on the individualists who prefer to act as their own investment manager
Competition has led to some discount deals being offered
The encouragement of share ownership was the original aim of personal equity plans (Peps). Lord Lawson of Blaby, their creator, aspired to turn a nation of homeowners into one of shareholders intimately involved in British industry. But off-the-shelf Peps, based on investment and unit trusts, have obscured this vision of popular capitalism.
However, individualists who prefer to choose their own stocks, rather than relying on professional managers, remain true to the Lawson dream. Close to 10 per cent of the Peps currently on the market are self-select plans that can be used as a home for newly acquired shares, or as a shelter for existing holdings.
In the past, there has been some controversy over the charges imposed for self-select Peps. Having assumed responsibility for the investment decisions, plan holders see no reason why they should pay large administration fees which wipe out any tax savings.
Some independent-minded investors would probably like to run their self-select plans without official intervention.
Under the Inland Revenue rules, however, a Pep must be managed by an approved Pep manager, a bank, a stockbroker or an independent financial adviser. +Increased competition in the self-select plan market has recently driven down self-select costs, with some managers providing discount deals to attract those who wish to store their privatisation shares tax-free. Special features include freecall numbers and Air Miles. At the same time, other managers started to display their charges differently. For the usual initial and annual management fees, they substituted charges of £4 or more for the collection of dividends and fees of £10 to £20 plus VAT for attendance at annual meetings. These new extras make comparing the various self-select plans on offer rather difficult.
In the decade since Peps were launched, six categories of varying risk have emerged.
There are six different species of Pep. Managed, corporate bond, self-select, advisory, corporate and single company. Each has special features, making it suitable for one type of investor, but inappropriate for others.
For example, the self-select Pep is for those steeped in stock market knowledge and able to make their own share selections. Managed Peps are for those without the time, inclination or expertise to study market trends. For a more detailed family tree, see below.
AN INCREASING number of home buyers are using personal equity plans to repay mortgages.
As with an endowment, Peps can be used as a savings vehicle to pay a loan at the end of a set term. While your investment is building up in the Pep, you pay the interest on the home loan.
The Halifax Building Society, which launched its Tax-Free Home Plan last week, is one of the latest to offer a Pep mortgage. Part of your monthly payment is invested in Halifax's Pep to pay off the mortgage, while the remainder pays for Halifax's Home Protection Benefits plan. Charges are 7.5 per cent initially, and 0.5 per cent per annum.
You can cash in part of your savings at any time, as well as increase, reduce or suspend payments, without paying a penalty. But investors need to be prepared for the highs and lows of the stock market. Pep tax breaks should help an investment to grow faster, increasing your chances of paying off a loan early. But you have to decide how much risk you are happy with, and to purchase life insurance at an extra cost.
Steve Smith, of Sedgwick Financial Services, says: "I wouldn't recommend someone aged 50 who wants to retire at 65 to take one out. There would only be 15 years to pay off the loan, and the risks are greater."
Jill Insley on what to look for when making a choice in the Pep market
With building society interest rates at an all-time low, many investors have turned to the stock market to generate income.
Income-seekers want to limit the risk to their money, and direct investment in individual shares is still too risky for most people. However, several types of share-based funds can be held in a personal equity plan (Pep) to produce income.
Haydn Green, of the Pep Shop, says: "History suggests that investors in the UK stock market can anticipate annual increases in dividends, with their income doubling every ten years or so. Simultaneously, their capital should increase in value most years."
The advantage of holding such funds in a Pep is that all income produced and any capital gains will be tax-free. An individual cannot invest more than £6,000 a year in a Pep, but if this allowance is used fully on an annual basis, an investor can build up a substantial income-producing portfolio in a few years.
The Pep investor must first assess his priorities. It is virtually impossible to earn a high income without exposing the original investment to considerable risk of erosion. Does he want to maximise income, regardless of risk to capital, or protect, and even increase the capital, and accept a more moderate income?
Peps producing the highest income are usually based on the very high-yield shares of poorer-quality companies. The yield of such companies is usually high because their dividend has stayed the same while the share price has fallen suggesting poor financial health. Holding such shares in a fund presents danger; the shares might continue to fall in value, the company may cut its dividend to ease its financial position, or the company might collapse and the fund would lose its investment.
Funds also contain a high proportion of fixed-interest securities, which are unlikely to rise very much in value unless interest rates fall. Although a high-income fund may produce the level of income you want, you could end up with less capital than you started.
Another type of high-yielding Pep fund, based on complicated financial contracts known as derivatives, also suffers from capital erosion. Foreign & Colonial's High Income Pep, which currently yields 9.74 per cent, has grown by just 8.05 per cent since its launch in March 1994 with all the income reinvested. If an investor had taken the income, the original capital would have fallen by 13.6 per cent.
Lucinda Hines, investment research manager for Sedgwick Financial Services, prefers income funds that produce a lower yield, of 3 or 4 per cent, but also offer the chance of capital growth. These funds tend to hold a smaller proportion of fixed-interest securities and a higher proportion of blue chip shares. She says: "We have to go by the client's income requirements and investment objectives. But we tend to avoid high income funds because of the danger of eroding capital."
However, she does recommend the high-yielding Schroder Income Pep, which has produced total returns of nearly 40 per cent since March 1993. Even with the 5.01 per cent income stripped out, it has still grown by 24.3 per cent. She also recommends the Save & Prosper Extra Income, currently yielding 6.03 per cent income. Its initial charge has been waived for all investments made before April 5.
Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor, introduced, in his 1994 Budget, a third type of income-producing Pep the corporate bond Pep. This is largely based on corporate bonds issued by companies to raise money, but it may also hold preference shares and convertibles.
Corporate bond Peps have been portrayed as a much safer type of income fund that still produces a high income. The prices of bonds are, on the whole, more stable than shares. However, there is little chance of capital growth, and investors' money is likely to be eroded by inflation if left in a corporate bond fund for any length of time.
Most corporate bond funds yield 7 to 8.5 per cent, and some offer guarantees. Sun Alliance's recently launched corporate bond Pep, which yields 7 per cent, guarantees to repay your original capital on the sixth anniversary of investment. However, you do not have to redeem your money then you can cash in your money at the going rate at any time before or after without penalty. Others, such as Legal & General's corporate bond Pep, guarantee to pay a set income, too. These suit more conservative investors, and are usually snapped up in two or three weeks.
However, Mr Green agrees with Ms Hines that investors are better-off sticking to equity-based income funds. "The long-term income seeker is served better by equities than fixed interest investments," he says. "The one small price to pay is that income distributions are unlikely to exceed 4 per cent per annum at the outset."
Investors who from time to time find this level of income too low could cash some of it in.
ADVISORY, For the sophisticated saver.
ADVISORY schemes are perhaps what the chancellor, Nigel Lawson, envisaged as becoming the central product for widening direct share ownership, when he announced the birth of Peps in 1986. These plans, which have a maximum annual investment limit of £6,000, hold within them a small number of shares, unit trusts or investment trusts.
They are usually offered by firms of stockbrokers who may charge a flat fee for the administration on the Pep and will also charge for each transaction carried out.
These sorts of plans are aimed at more sophisticated investors who have some idea of how the financial markets operate.
The stockbroker providing the Pep will give investors some guidance about when to buy and sell the shares.
Companies offering advisory Peps include Waters Lunniss, Wise Speke and Killik & Co.<nip> MANAGED PEPS;Spreading the investment widely helps to lessen risk.
THE most common type of plan is the managed Pep. The investor has very little to do with the choice of shares in this type of scheme. Instead, the fund manager, or the stockbroker, will decide where the money is to be invested.
Managed schemes comprise unit trusts, investment trusts or shares, or a combination of all three.
These types of Peps are offered by just about every investment institution. Even some building societies, such as the Woolwich and the Halifax, now offer managed Peps to their customers.
The risk with this type of plan is considered to be less than that with a straightforward equity Pep investing in a small range of shares.
Managed Peps tend to invest in a wide array of companies, which reduces the risk. Investors are allowed to put up to £6,000 a year into a managed Pep. It is possible to invest £1,500 in a "non-qualifying" unit trust or Pep that buys the shares of companies outside the European Union. This can increase the potential for capital growth on the
shares.
Competition on managed Pep charges is fierce. Only three years ago, investors were paying up to 5 per cent initially and 1 per cent annually for unit trust Peps. Investment trust Peps always tended to be cheaper, with only a small annual management charge.
Now it is possible to purchase a managed Pep that costs you nothing initially and only 0.5 per cent annually. Some of the cheapest of the managed Peps are offered by M&G, HSBC, Legal & General and Virgin.
SINGLE COMPANY. Sometimes it will pay to go solo.
THE £3,000 single company Pep allowance is frequently overlooked even by those investors anxious to make the most of any tax relief available. Added to the £6,000 general Pep allowance, the single company allowance enables you to put £9,000 into Peps in a single tax year. A married couple can invest up to £18,000 between them.
Experts suggest that you should only contemplate taking out a single company Pep if you have already used up your general Pep allowance. Indeed, some Pep managers will only allow you to take a single company Pep if you invest in a general Pep at the same time. The reason for this caution is the risk presented by a single company Pep: this means that if your are a poor stock picker, your Pep is doomed to failure. A single company Pep is designed to hold only the shares of one company, although some managers make a concession to this rule.
CORPORATE, Perk for specialists.
THESE Peps are offered to employees as a perk of the job. The aim is to build loyalty and encourage wider share ownership of the company. The maximum investment is £6,000. These Peps also allow those outside the company to invest. Financial advisers recommend corporate Peps for the more specialist investor. The risks are high because investors only have exposure to one share. If market conditions change, investors may find it difficult to switch.
BOND PLANS, Newcomer offers higher income.
CORPORATE bond plans are the latest member of the Pep family. The maximum that can be invested is £6,000. These plans place your money in fixed-interest securities issued by companies, such as convertibles, preference shares and corporate bonds. They aim to to pay high levels of income and are marketed as carrying a lower risk than equity-based Peps. Because they pay high levels of income, the potential for capital growth on corporate bond Peps is more limited.
Investors can either invest in the fixed-interest securities directly, through a stockbroker, or take out an off-the-shelf plan, based on a unit trust, investing in corporate bonds. These Peps, foreshadowed in the 1994 Budget, were first launched in July 1995. The most successful, to date, has been a guaranteed plan from Legal & General, which attracted more than £100 million.
SELF SELECT, For the DIY-minded investor.
SELF-SELECT Peps resemble advisory Peps. They are offered by firms of stockbrokers and banks, and can invest in a mixture of shares, investment trusts and unit trusts. Again, these savings plans are aimed at more sophisticated investors, as the plan holder must make decisions about which shares to choose and the timing of sales and purchases.
Although self-select Pep investors decide where to invest and when, Pep managers will still impose charges for their administrative services. There may also be commission to pay each time shares are bought or sold. In the past, these charges would often outweigh the tax benefits. But over the past two years, increased competition in the self-select market has driven down costs, with stockbrokers and banks undercutting each other. In some cases, there may be a cap on the charges paid by investors with considerable sums invested in self-select Peps.
SCAN the advertisements in the financial section of any newspaper and you will find many independent financial advisers offering discounts on personal equity plans.
The competition between these discount houses is especially heated at present because of the launch of three big investment trusts from M&G, Schroders and Perpetual. Investors can get a discount of up to 3 per cent on these funds by going through a cut-price broker. Among those offering discounts are Chelsea Financial Services, Garrison Investments, Seymour Sinclair, and the Pep Shop, based in Nottingham. The discount is usually taken out of the commission, which is normally paid to the adviser. It can be as much as 5 per cent of the investment. Investors can take the discount in cash, or, they can choose to invest more. Advisers can afford to offer big discounts because they believe that they will make money on renewal commission 0.5 per cent annually.
Janice Thomson, a director of Chelsea Financial Services, says: "Some of these are one-man bands, and investors need to be sure that the company they are dealing with is going to be around in a few years' time."
Chelsea is on 0171 351 6022, Garrison on 01482 861455, Seymour Sinclair on 0171 935 6445, the Pep Shop on 0115 9825105.
THE main advantage of a Pep is its tax treatment all income and all capital gains are free of tax.
Dividends on shares and distributions from unit trusts are usually paid with the equivalent of basic rate tax deducted.
One of the roles of the Pep plan manager is to reclaim back this tax from the Inland Revenue. The capital gains tax exemption is on top of the individual capital gains exemption of £6,000 a year. However, any losses in the plan cannot be offset against gains made elsewhere.
Peps can hold cash for a certain period of time, providing it is allocated to buying qualifying investments. Any interest earned from cash on deposit can be withdrawn. If more than that is taken out all the interest becomes taxable.
3i, the venture capital company that helped to bring Laura Ashley, Waterstone's, Denby Pottery and Prontaprint to the stock market, is relaunching its own Pep this month.
Since its flotation in July 1994, shares in the 3i investment trust have risen 53 per cent, outstripping the FT-SE all share index by 31 per cent. It has no initial charge, a management fee of 0.5 per cent each year and a 0.25 per cent levy on the value of shares bought or sold through the plan.
But investors who are thinking of holding 3i shares in their general Pep (it is not eligible for the single-company Pep) have to decide whether the trust's rapid rise is coming to an end. Shares have been edging lower recently and there is speculation that some large shareholders , including the Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays, may decide to sell. If that is the case, it will depress the share price further. In addition, shares are trading at a slight premium to their net asset value: ie they are selling for more than the underlying assets are worth.
Some observers, however, believe the best growth in small UK companies is yet to come and 1996 should see a year of rapid expansion. Matthew Orr, of Killik & Co, the broker, believes falling interest rates and inflation will persuade investors to switch their money into equities, thus fuelling growth.
Jill Insley meets the professional Pep pickers who publish many of the answers you seek
With about 1,200 personal equity plans to choose from, finding the fund that best suits your needs can be complicated and time-consuming.
Following the performance of your own investment portfolio may already take up more time than you want to spare, but Peps need to be monitored and, on occasion, altered.
BESt Investment Brokers, an independent financial adviser based in London, claims it can help. The firm publishes BESt PEP, a comprehensive magazine that can help to take the grind out of managing your investments. BESt PEP analyses the performance and compares the relative merits of all unit and investment trust Peps, coming up with a shortlist of fund managers offering a broad range of funds with consistently good performance. John Spiers, managing director of BESt Investment, says: "We believe firmly that private investors should put their money into collective schemes, and not in individual equities."
The detailed analysis on all fund managers is only available to other independent financial advisers. A condensed form is presented in the magazine. This shows a fund's yield the income it produces and both cumulative and discrete performance figures for up to five years.
The distinction between cumulative and discrete performance is very important. Cumulative performance figures show how much a fund has grown, or shrunk, in value over a set period.
For example, £100 invested in the Schroder Smaller Companies unit trust in 1990 is now worth £194. This figure does not show that in 1991 the fund fell in value, reducing the original £100 to just £91. Cumulative figures are particularly deceptive when used for higher risk funds that may rapidly rise and fall in value.
Jason Hollands, editor of BESt PEP, says this kind of performance is all very well for investors who do not need to cash in their investments for a specific purpose, or those who are tolerant of their investments spiralling and plummeting in value. But he adds: "The majority of Pep investors err on the side of low risk, so they cannot deal with big surprises. When we first started we recommended Fidelity's Special Situations fund, but the performance is very volatile. It has a profile that most investors are not brave enough to stand."
The BESt team initially discards any fund that fails to match or outperform its sector's index. It then checks the year-on-year discrete performance of the remaining funds for consistency.
The latest issue of BESt PEP has narrowed down the numerous fund manager companies to just eight. All appear in a clear table that lists each management company's funds according to their sector UK high income, income and growth, European, UK and international and international non-qualifying, with the BESt team's favourite funds highlighted.
Perpetual and Morgan Grenfell are named as first-choice managers, because they have funds in each of the six sectors, and recommended funds in five of them. But BESt also likes Schroder's UK Enterprise fund, Guinness Flight's Global Privatisation, UK Emerging Companies and Income Share funds, and Credit Suisse's Income, Smaller Companies and European funds. Finsbury Asset Management, Gartmore and Jupiter also appear at the top of the list. BESt PEP goes into more detail on each of its recommended fund managers.
The magazine gives brief profiles of each company, its fund managers and the company's investment approach. It lists the performance and yield for each fund, and the company's charges, as well as advising its readers on how best to allocate their Pep allowance between a company's funds. For example, someone who decides to invest his money in a Morgan Grenfell Pep is advised to put 47 per in Europe, 27 per cent in the UK, 25 per cent in the Far East and Pacific, and just 1 per cent in cash.
BESt's recommended funds are chosen for their consistently good performance, but they do occasionally fall from favour. The Newton Income fund has been one of the chosen few since 1990, but BESt stopped recommending it last summer, and is now advising investors to transfer money out of it. Mr Spiers says the fund manager, Robert Shelton, is excellent, but two years ago he moved to the Leeds office, away from the hub of Newton's business affairs.
Poor performers have their own "Spot the Dog" page. Many household names are in the doghouse, including Allied Dunbar, Barclays, Prudential and Standard Life, accompanied by blue chip fund managers such as Flemings, Foreign & Colonial, Mercury and M&G. A copy of BESt PEP magazine will be sent to all readers of The Times who ring BESt Investment on 0171-321 0100. Anyone who arranges a Pep through the company will have 1 per cent of the value of their plans donated to the charity of their choice. This donation is paid out of BESt's funds and is additional to the discounts the company offers on its recommended plans. Investors will be entitled to quarterly bulletins monitoring their plans and a free subscription to BESt Investment's Portfolio Service magazine, which is worth £145.
Single company Peps. These contain the shares of only one company, with a maximum investment of £3,000 a year. Investors can move the shares from one company to another during the year, so long as their Pep provider does not prohibit this. With some schemes, the manager chooses the company; with others, the investor makes the decision.
Corporate Peps. These are sponsored by the company issuing the shares and tend to have lower rates than regular Peps. They are usually offered by brokers, such as Barclays Stockbrokers, or administrators, such as Bradford & Bingley. There are two types of corporate Peps. Single company corporate Peps include only the shares of the sponsoring company. Investors can put up to £3,000 into the Pep in a tax year.
General corporate Peps are also sponsored by companies. In some cases, such as Guinness, these are similar to single company Peps and may only contain the shares of the named company. The investment limit, however, is £6,000, in line with the general Pep rules.
Some companies, such as British Airways, allow Pepholders to have a wider range of shares in the Pep, provided they retain a minimum number of company shares. Justin Urquhart Stewart, business planning director of Barclays Stockbrokers, says: "BA is aware that its share price may behave like its planes, but they still want investors to be part of the company." These are essentially self-select Peps, fall under the general Pep umbrella, and are subject to a £6,000 maximum investment.
Self-select single company Peps. For investors who own shares and want the tax advantages of a Pep wrapper, or complete flexibility. Some schemes restrict investments to certain companies, such as constituents of the FT-SE 100. If managing your own Pep actively, choose a company with low charges. BESt Pep Investments recommends plans offered by Charles Stanley and Broker Financial Services for low charges with an unrestricted share choice. Chamberlain de Broe suggests plans offered by City Deal Services.
Karen Zagor on the risks, benefits and the costs of going solo on a Pep
Investors who have already exhausted their £6,000 annual Pep allowance may want to invest in a single company Pep to exploit their annual Pep limits fully.
Up to £3,000 can be put into a single company Pep each year. The pepped shares are free of income tax and capital gains tax.
Single company Peps come in different forms those that basically add a Pep wrapper to shares that the investor has already bought; those in which a stockbroker selects the company and the investor joins the group investment; and corporate single company Peps, in which the company offers a pepped version of its own shares.
A single company Pep is a useful tax-planning tool for anyone who already owns a block of shares, but advisers give warning that single company Peps should be handled with care. James Higgins, of Chamberlain de Broe, the independent financial adviser, says: "Investors need to realise that a single company Pep is an allowance, not a product."
Unlike general Peps, which invest in a wide range of shares, thereby spreading the risk, single company Peps are limited to the shares of just one company. If the shares perform well, the investor will thrive, but if the shares falter, the investor can lose the entire stake.
When an investor Peps his or her own shares, there is no fund manager to monitor performance and shift the funds if appropriate. With a single company Pep, the Pep performance is based purely on the investor's ability to pick a winner.
Yet there are times when even the most cautious investor should consider a single company Pep. If you own shares in a blue chip company that you plan to keep for many years, a single company Pep may add to their benefit. A single company Pep is also attractive if you own high-yielding shares and pay income tax on the dividends.
Single company Peps are more flexible than they might appear. Although the investor is limited to buying shares in one company at a time, it is possible to switch the holding from one company to another as often as you wish. To protect this flexibility, it is important to choose a plan with no early-exit charge.
Although cash cannot be held in a single company Pep, cash from dividends can be put into the Pep and held until enough accumulates to buy further shares. The initial cash subscription in a single company Pep, however, must be invested within 42 days.
Single company Peps are particularly useful for people who hold their employer's shares through a save-as-you-earn scheme. These can be switched into a Pep within 90 days.
Choosing a manager for your single company Pep deserves as much care as choosing a general Pep. Because you are essentially managing the Pep, you should make sure that its management fees are low. It is also worth considering whether you will receive company reports. There may also be charges for reinvesting dividends. If your shares come with perks, make sure the perks still apply if the shares are pepped.
Killik & Co has an Unrestricted Pep with no annual Pep charge and no penalty for early encashment or partial withdrawal, apart from normal commission on sales. There are, however, a £25 charge for transferring out, a 1.54 per cent dealing charge, with a minimum of £40, and a dividend collection fee of £7.50. Investors have access to free advice, yearly statements and valuations. There is a charge of £10 plus VAT to attend meetings.
Barclays Stockbrokers charges its normal dealing rate of 1.5 per cent to investors who Pep their own shares, with a minimum charge of £15. Fees fall significantly if you invest in one of the 23 shares that Barclays offers in a single company Pep.
For example, a single company Pep of BTR shares through Barclays would be subject to annual fees of 0.5 per cent plus VAT, with a minimum of £10; transfers out face charges of 0.5 per cent, with a minimum of £20 plus VAT. There are no initial Pep charges and no dividend collection fees.
Barclays BTR Pep is essentially a corporate Pep, sponsored by the company, which is why the charges are so low. Justin Urquhart Stewart, business planning director at Barclays Stockbrokers, says: "Our own Pep is normally slightly more expensive than individual company Peps because the companies support their own plans. Most companies use a registered Pep manager for their own plans because it is expensive and not cost efficient to set up their own Pep manager."
Guinness, which has a corporate Pep scheme with the Bank of Scotland, says it works very closely with the bank. Investors can make a lump sum payment of at least £50, or minimum monthly payments of £50. Before leaping into a single company Pep, weigh up the costs. Unless you choose a broker carefully, fees may outweigh any tax benefit.
Today's plans bear little resemblance to the restricted offerings of nine years ago
The rules that govern Peps have been radically reformed since their launch in 1987. Peps are now easier to understand and can readily be sold to a mass market. Richard Branson's Virgin empire, also known for its cola, vodka and airline, now offers an index-tracker Pep and a corporate bond Pep. You can also buy a Pep at Marks & Spencer.
Another innovation has been the Pep savings scheme. Those who do not want to invest the full £6,000 can contribute as little as £20-a-month to an investment or unit trust Pep savings plan. Pep-based mortgages, including one from the Halifax Building Society, are now being sold as an alternative to endowment policies.
Whether you want to use Peps to save for a rainy day, school fees, repaying your mortgage or for a more comfortable retirement, it is important to understand the terms and conditions of the 1,200 plans now on sale.
Over the next two pages, we explain how much you can invest and how much you should expect to pay in charges. We also outline the differences between the various types of Pep, including single company, corporate and self-select.
TAX SHELTER THAT SPREADS RISK.
So what is a Pep? A personal equity plan is a tax shelter for investments in company shares and equity-based unit trusts and investment trusts. These trusts are funds that diversify risk by pooling the money of many investors and spreading it between a wide range of shares usually many more than investors could individually afford.
Peps escape tax on any dividend income and on any capital gains they produce. The value of these tax benefits should not, however, be exaggerated, as they can be outweighed by the various charges deducted by Pep managers. Higher rate taxpayers have most to gain from the tax reliefs.
Since last July, Peps have also been allowed to invest in corporate bonds, the fixed interest stocks, or IOUs, issued by large companies. Corporate bonds pay higher rates of interest than building societies but carry a far greater degree of risk.
FINDING OUT MORE.
Where can I go for more information? Pep Guide (£12.95), from Chase de Vere, the investment adviser, gives extensive details of the charges and investment limits for each of the 1,200 Peps available. Money Management, a monthly magazine, details unit trust and investment trust performance. Chase de Vere produces its own performance charts. Allenbridge, fund analysts, and BESt Investment produce guides.
Chase de Vere Investments, 63 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3JX. Tel: 0171-404 5766 or 0800-526091.
Allenbridge Group, 16 Bolton Street, London W1Y 8LY. Tel: 0171-409 1111.
BESt Investment Brokers, 20 Mason's Yard, Duke Street, St James's, London SW1Y 6BU. Tel: 0171-321 0100.
Money Management, 3rd Floor, Maple House, 149 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9LL. Tel: 0171-896 2574.
RESTRICTED ANNUAL CONTRIBUTIONS.
How much can I invest? Each year, you can put up to £6,000 into a general Pep. You are not permitted to split your investment in any one tax year between two or more Pep plan managers. However, in each subsequent year you can start a new Pep with a different plan manager.
General Peps take a variety of forms. With a managed Pep, the plan's investment manager will decide which shares to buy, although you may be able to guide the overall investment policy. Self-select Peps allow you to decide which shares and funds to hold, and when to buy and sell. Advisory Peps are similar, but the manager offers advice on your investments. Corporate Peps invest in a single company and are best suited for a shareholding you are confident you will not sell.
In addition to your general Pep allowance, since 1992, you have been allowed to put a further £3,000 a year into a single company Pep.
TRANSFERS MAY INCUR EXIT PENALTY.
Do I have to stick to the same manager? No. If you are unhappy with the investment performance, administration or charges of your existing plan manager, you can transfer your Pep to a different firm.
You will usually have to pay an exit penalty, and possibly further charges to your new fund manager. Pep providers are keen to attract transfers and are increasingly keen to waive their initial fees.
You can transfer a Pep started in a previous tax year without affecting this year's allowance. Some managers levy a charge on early encashment. You can also draw any income earned from your Pep investments.
What happens to my Pep investments when I die?
The tax exemption dies along with the investor. Capital gains that have already been accrued will not be taxed, but future gains and income will be.
RESTRICTIONS ON INVESTMENT.
Who can invest? Anyone, as long as you are over 18 and resident in the UK for tax purposes. Married couples each have their own Pep allowance.
Where can I invest?
To make the maximum use of your Pep allowances, you must invest in the shares of companies listed in the UK or the European Union. If you plump for unit or investment you must choose funds with at least half their money in European Union shares. Such shares and funds are said to be "qualifying".
What about international funds?
You can use Peps to invest in the Far East, North America and other non-European stock markets through non-qualifying unit and investment trusts those investing the majority of their funds outside Europe. But your total investments in such funds cannot exceed £1,500 a year. You can top up your Pep to the full £6,000 with qualifying shares and unit trusts.
CHARGES FOR PLANS CAN VARY WIDELY What access do I have to my money? You can cash in some or all of your Pep investments at any time without being taxed. By contrast, with a tax-exempt special savings account (Tessa), the tax benefits are lost if you touch the capital before the end of the five-year term.
How much do Peps cost?
Aspiring Pep investors should take time to check out the charges on the Peps of their choice.
A typical managed Pep has an initial charge of 5 per cent and an annual management charge of 1 to 1.5 per cent. But, reflecting the trend to lower charges, highly regarded managers such as Schroders and Morgan Grenfell now seek an initial charge of 3 per cent.
Charges on a self-select Pep vary considerably from fund manager to fund manager, with some imposing a charge for the collection of dividends.
Paul Durman finds out that despite a modest start, Peps have expanded and holdings grown
Personal equity plans (Peps) have become a financial leviathan. Nine years after their launch, UK private investors now have a figure approaching £35 billion invested through the Pep tax shelter. In 1994, the total was just £20.1 billion.
The popularity of Peps has grown rapidly of late. In the 1994-95 tax year a period blighted by bad stock market performance substantially more money was invested in Peps than in the entire first four years of the scheme's life. This will be another strong year, with Morgan Grenfell, the fund manager, forecasting that new investment in Peps will reach £5.7 billion.
The prospect of this success was not immediately apparent when Nigel Lawson, as Chancellor, unveiled the scheme in his 1986 tax-cutting Budget, which promoted the cause of popular capitalism.
The 73-minute speech came in a turbulent political year. January had seen the resignation from Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet of both Leon Brittan, Trade and Industry, and Michael Heseltine, Defence, over the Westland affair.
For some light relief that year the nation had the marriage in July of Sarah Ferguson and the Duke of York, and another union, Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke in the year's cinema success the steamy 91/2 Weeks. In the film, Mickey Rourke played a bond dealer, the archetypal yuppie who came to prominence after Big Bang, the deregulation of the stock exchange in October 1986. The liberalisation of the market and the ending of fixed commissions on share deals brought in its wake high salaries and expensive lifestyles for City professionals. Anxious to raise interest in the stock market, the Chancellor announced that shares held within one of his new Peps would, after one or two years, escape income and capital gains tax entirely.
Despite Mr Lawson's high hopes, the first Peps were a pale reflection of today's plans. They were heavily skewed towards direct share investment, which was doubly unfortunate since the maximum investment limit was initially set at £2,400 a year.
Although Mr Lawson had intended Peps to give fresh impetus to wider share ownership, the original design was peculiarly unsuitable for first-time investors. A £2,400 investment is much too small to buy a reasonable spread of shares, the golden rule of reducing stock market risks. Unit trusts and investment trusts, which pool investors' money and diversify risks across a wide portfolio, are a more natural starting point.
Roger Cornick, deputy chairman of Perpetual, the unit trust group, says: "The mass market is not experienced enough in investment terms to take the potential volatility of single share ownership. The restriction on collective investment schemes was rather self-defeating."
The first Peps restricted unit and investment trust investment to £600 at most and often only £420. Once investors had paid for charges on the Pep and their unit trusts, any tax savings were at best negligible. This meant that Peps were used mainly by investors with existing portfolios and by higher rate taxpayers. Andrew Dilnot, of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, says the initial direct equity Peps were "a complete flop". The investment industry gradually persuaded the Government to extend the attractions of Peps and the maximum investment limit was steadily increased to £3,000 in 1988, to £4,800 in 1989, and to its present £6,000 for the 1990-91 tax year. The restrictions against investment in unit and investment trusts also crumbled. The first step was to allow Peps to invest half their money in pooled funds, which enabled sensibly sized unit trust investments of £2,400 and then £3,000.
Roger Jennings, marketing manager at M&G Group, says the dam was finally broken when M&G launched two huge new investment trusts that took advantage of a loophole in the legislation. As fully-listed companies in their own right, newly launched investment trusts could accept the full £6,000 Pep investment or £12,000 if the launch was timed to straddle the end of one tax year and the start of another.
Faced with the possibility of a stream of new investment trusts, the Government abandoned its attempts to discriminate against pooled investment altogether. Since the 1992-93 tax year, investors have been able to put their entire Pep into unit and investment trusts.
Mr Cornick believes a more important factor in the development of Peps was Britain's exit in 1992 from the European exchange-rate mechanism. The fall in interest rates and the surge in the stock market that followed encouraged many investors to discover Peps.
An early restriction that directed Peps towards unit and investment trusts investing predominantly in UK shares has also been eased.
Since January 1992, the maximum Pep investment into collective funds requires only that the selected trusts invest at least half their funds in shares listed anywhere in the European Union. Internationally invested trusts are permitted, but Peps can put no more than £1,500 a year into them.
The impact of these changes can be easily seen. In 1987, Peps attracted £480 million, more than two thirds of which was invested directly in shares. Only 15 per cent was invested in unit trusts, and a mere 1 per cent in investment trusts. As the Pep rules were relaxed, the proportion in shares dropped sharply.
One factor sustaining the level of direct share investment is another Pep concession, the single company plan. Since January 1992, investors have been allowed to invest £3,000 tax-free into the shares of a single company. This is in addition to the general Pep allowance of £6,000.
After a period of relative stability in the Pep rules, the Government made another important change last July. It allowed Peps to invest in corporate bonds, the debt securities, or company IOUs issued by large quoted businesses. Corporate bonds offer more stable returns than those available from shares, and have particular appeal for investors seeking income.
Like any tax break, the future of the Pep is only secure as long as the Government remains committed to it. Even with the prospect of Labour taking power at the next election, few experts see much of a threat to Peps, partly because they are so widely held.
Mr Cornick said: "What's going to vote Labour in, or vote the Conservatives out, is the middle classes. The middle classes are Pep investors." Both parties are acutely aware of the need to encourage people to save, to relieve the growing financial burden of an ageing population. Mr Dilnot at the IFS believes that any new attempt to tax savings, by either party, would generate opprobrium from voters hugely greater than the marginal increase in tax revenues that would be the likely result.
Paul Durman on how a performance analyst uses statistical techniques to advise investors
The choices can be be surprising, but consistency is the keyword in choosing future winners
When choosing unit trusts and investment trusts for personal equity plans, investors tend to plump for funds that are at the top of the most recent performance charts. As a first step in the selection process, this is not a bad place to start. However, what you really want to know is which funds and fund managers will produce the best returns in the future, and the best guide to this is a record of consistent good performance.
Consistency is not easy to assess. When you come to make your investment, the most consistent performer may be unobtrusively placed, say, sixteenth out of 100 funds. Yet, in the eyes of the experts, it may be this fund that represents the better bet, not the top fund, whose performance may be a flash in the pan brought about by exceptional circumstances.
Allenbridge Group, the performance analyst, offers private investors an answer to this dilemma. Using statistical techniques, Allenbridge ranks funds both for the consistency of their performance and for their risk/return rating. A fund that has steadily delivered solid returns may score better than one that offers high returns but with higher risks and greater volatility.
Anthony Yadgaroff, managing director of Allenbridge, says: "You're not going to be able to select a unit trust or Pep unit trust that's definitely going to double next year. But there are certain fund managers who consistently outperform the others. If you can invest with one of those, that's the most important thing."
The choice of fund manager for your Pep is not an irrevocable decision. The rules allow you to transfer your Pep to a new manager without losing the tax benefits although, at the moment, relatively few investors take advantage of this freedom. "People have done a Pep and just forgotten about it," says Mr Yadgaroff. "They don't look at the performance."
Allenbridge looks at every fund's performance over the last three years. The risk/return rating measures the fund's total return in relation to the volatility of the growth in its share or unit price, which is a measure of the risks involved. The consistency rating gauges whether a fund has regularly performed well relative to its sector, or whether its growth has come in fits and starts.
The two scores are added together to give a total Allenbridge points rating. Results have ranged from minus 4 to 90. The average is 39.
High-scoring funds are then analysed further, both qualitatively and statistically. Mr Yadgaroff interviews fund managers at length to gain an understanding of each firm's approach to investment. Allenbridge is alert to a change of manager, because this can have a dramatic effect on performance. Eventually, Allenbridge draws up a list of recommendations for various categories of fund, such as UK corporate bond trusts, UK income trusts, UK growth and international growth.
These are published in its Pep Talk guide. Recently recommended funds (with three-year returns and points score in brackets) have included Barclays Unicorn Income Manager (33 per cent, 46), Jupiter Income (135 per cent, 75), Pembroke Growth (93 per cent, 56) and Morgan Grenfell European Growth (182 per cent, 90).
For each of the recommended funds, Pep Talk gives a two-page analysis, covering performance, volatility, consistency and allocation of assets, and including brief details on the company behind the fund, the individual manager, and the house investment style.
Pep Talk also identifies the worst performing funds judged not on their returns over the last three years, but on their Allenbridge points score.
Allenbridge baldly states: "If you have a holding in one of the 191 poorer-performing funds listed in our table of lowest rated funds, you should now be considering a transfer to a better-performing fund."
This advice is perhaps too sweeping. A quick look at the latest list shows a strong representation from Japanese and other Far East funds markets that many experts expect to perform well this year. It also includes funds from highly regarded managers such as Perpetual and M&G, some of which have achieved good or very good returns, but score badly on the Allenbridge points ratings.
For example, the "worst-performing" list includes Perpetual's Japanese growth unit trust (up 93 per cent over three years), the M&G Recovery investment trust (capital shares up 123 per cent over three years) and the River Plate & General investment trust (capital shares up 180 per cent). These "worst-performers" have beaten some of Allenbridge's top rated equity funds such as the Newton income unit trust (up 73 per cent) and Perpetual's PEP Growth, an international fund that was up 86 per cent.
This suggests that Allenbridge's tables must be used with care, and investors should understand the importance that is given to the factors of risk and consistency in the drawing up the tables.
Sharon Kenley, of Allenbridge, says: "People will not transfer based on the ranking table. It's a first picture. It starts them thinking."
Pep Talk was launched in September 1994, so it is still too early to judge its recommendations, particularly against the background of a strong stock market. The publication is free to investors who contact Allenbridge although, unless they pay a £15 subscription, they will be taken off the mailing list if they have not made, or transferred, their Pep investment after a year (or four issues).
Allenbridge will also produce an evaluation report on investors' Pep portfolios. This will apply the Allenbridge ranking to your choice of investment funds the firm does not comment on direct share investments. The evaluation report encourages investors to compare their holdings with Allenbridge's top recommended funds, and sets out the costs of transferring.
These reports seem predisposed to recommend that investors should consider a transfer. If you have a typical Pep portfolio split between five or six funds it is almost inevitable that one or two of these will compare poorly with Allenbridge's top-ranked funds.
If you do decide to alter your portfolio holdings, Allenbridge offers discounted terms from some of the investment groups with which it deals.
Allenbridge offers readers of The Times a free Pep health check of existing investments, free copies of Pep Talk recommendations and free access to the Pep Talk Helpline on 0500 551000.
THE magic word guarantee has proved the biggest lure for those looking to invest in corporate bond Peps. About £183 million has been invested in just two products, from Johnson Fry and from Legal & General, dwarfing the £200 million invested in 50 other corporate bond Pep providers late last year.
An analysis of corporate bond Peps by Money Management, the specialist magazine, explained that these two products were successful because both had fixed returns and guaranteed to return the capital after five and five-and-a-half years respectively. Legal & General offered a return of 7 per cent, while Johnson Fry offered deals of 6.3 per cent. Johnson Fry closed its plan to new customers this year.
Both funds exploited certain aspects of the Pep rules to offer the guarantees, loopholes which, contrary to expectations, the 1995 Budget failed to close. The magazine claims that many more guaranteed products could be on the way because of the failure by the Government to tighten the regulations.
Corporate bond Peps are considered less volatile and less risky than an equivalent equities plan and the variation in performance between plan managers is not likely to be as great.
Investment specialists point out that when choosing a normal equity-linked Pep, performance criteria should outweigh charges; when choosing a corporate bond Pep, the opposite is true.
Money Management found the cheapest Peps on offer were from Virgin, HTR, Invesco, Allied Dunbar and Barclays Unicorn. The most expensive Peps were from Commercial Union, Eagle Star and Skandia. Commercial Union defended its Pep charges by saying it was the only one to offer the option of monthly income.
Jill Insley on a product that has been slow to catch on but can go for growth without over-exposure
Until last year, investors could earn high levels of income, but risked losing some of their capital. Those who wanted to protect their capital had to accept a lower and often variable stream of income.
But the launch of corporate bond personal equity plans last summer has enabled investors to maximise their income without exposing their investments to high levels of risk.
Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor, announced an extension of Pep regulations in his 1994 November Budget to allow corporate bonds, preference shares and convertibles to be held in a Pep. The rule changes became law the following summer, and fund managers scrambled to be the first onto the market, launching completely new funds and reorganising existing funds to comply with the new legislation.
So far, investors have been slow to switch money into corporate bond funds, perhaps because they are unfamiliar and seem complicated compared with straightforward equity-based Peps.
But Paul Boni, director of Berry Birch & Noble, the independent financial adviser, says he has recommended this new type of Pep to several clients. He says: "A number of our clients are either approaching or already in retirement, and many are higher rate taxpayers. They want to reduce the risk level of their investments and still get income. The corporate bond Pep offers this opportunity."
A corporate bond is basically an "IOU" issued by a company. In return for a loan, the company promises to repay the money on a fixed date (the redemption or maturity date) at face value of the bond (the par value). It also promises to pay interest at regular intervals in the meantime.
Companies do occasionally go bust, so bonds are not completely free from risk. Some companies are more likely to go bust than others, and specialist companies check for signs of financial weakness as a way to "risk-rate" corporate bonds. Higher risk bonds tend to pay higher rates of interest to attract investors.
The market price of a bond is not only determined by company risk. It will also vary according to changes in interest rates. As interest rates go up, bonds which usually pay a fixed interest rate fall in value, and vice versa. But an investor can reduce the risk either by holding a bond until its maturity or by investing in a portfolio of corporate bonds run by a professional fund manager.
The fund manager may decide to diversify the portfolio further by investing in preference shares and convertibles. Preference shares are bought and sold on the stock market like ordinary shares, but pay a fixed dividend. Convertibles are corporate bonds or preference shares that can be converted into ordinary shares on a set date at a predetermined price.
Most corporate bond Peps provide yields ranging from 7 per cent to 8.5 per cent that vary according to market conditions. Those with higher yields hold slightly riskier, lower-rated bonds, but offer a greater opportunity for growth.
Mr Boni recommends the M&G corporate bond Pep, which invests predominantly in B class bonds. He says: "We didn't just want to look on corporate bond Peps as a type of annuity, which pays out a regular income while using up the capital. The M&G fund offers the chance of capital growth as well as yielding 7.3 per cent income."
He also favours a new corporate bond Pep launched by Sun Alliance almost three weeks ago. This Pep currently yields 7 per cent paid quarterly, no initial charge and a 1 per cent annual management fee. More importantly, 5 per cent of the money invested is used to buy an insurance policy. This guarantees to repay the original investment (including the 5 per cent insurance premium) after six years, if the capital value has fallen below the level of the original investment.
Investors are not obliged to encash their Sun Alliance Peps on the sixth anniversary. They can redeem their investment at any time without penalty.
Mr Boni says that this Pep is suitable for investors who are nervous about the market's prospects over the next few years. "There is no exposure to risk on the capital. Investors can lock in their money and stay safe from any volatility in the UK market."
MANCHESTER United hit the jackpot yesterday. The club signed a new kit sponsorship and merchandising deal with Umbro worth around £60 million over six years, setting a record for British sport that far surpasses the previous largest sum of £26 million over four years which Reebok agreed with Liverpool last year.
Neither United nor Umbro would release the exact figures, but it is unlikely to be much less than £10 million a year. "You can conjecture that the figures reflect United's status as one of the leading clubs in the world," Peter Kenyon, Umbro's worldwide chief operations officer, said at a hastily-arranged press conference yesterday.
That status, financially at least, was increased this week. It is no coincidence that the deal, and the amount, should be agreed in the week that Uefa, the European governing body of football, proposed to allow a second English club into the European Cup. With United the leading candidates to take the second place if they do not win the FA Carling Premiership, the amount of Europe-wide television they can guarantee makes them an even hotter property than did the £24 million turnover from their commercial activities, a figure that outstrips Rangers' total income.
Yet the deal also reflects the growing competitiveness of the sportswear industry, which led to the description "sportswars" being coined by one Umbro executive yesterday. Umbro had to hold off challenges from Nike and Reebok, which are both becoming leading players in a lucrative market.
Nike, one of the biggest American companies in the industry, is known to be eager to increase its position in British football and its involvement is pushing up the stakes. It came close to gaining Liverpool before Reebok won the contract with a late bid, but Umbro's success in keeping Manchester United will be an even greater disappointment to the company. Nike is believed to have offered United £50 million over four years in an effort to attract the most successful merchandising operation in sport.
"We considered three options," Martin Edwards, the United chairman and chief executive, said yesterday. "We looked at one major multibrand sports-goods manufacturer, we considered doing the operation ourselves and we looked at Umbro, who are a football specialist."
The previous four-year contract still had two years to run, but it has been subsumed under the new one, taking the agreement up to 2002. The decision to renegotiate now reflected the change in the market with the contract finally being signed yesterday lunchtime, giving time for United to inform the Stock Exchange before releasing the information publicly.
Umbro's partnership with United has proved highly profitable for both parties. The most market-conscious club in England, possibly the world, United already have national retail outlets and even a team of salesmen purveying their products in the Far East. That is likely to expand, with Umbro pursuing the growing Japanese market.
"Umbro have proved to us over the last four years that they are the most effective sports brand in the football marketplace," Edwards said.
However, its dynamic partnership with United has not been without its critics, including Tony Blair, the Labour leader, who charged the club with exploiting its supporters with the constant changes of shirt. Yesterday, in the United megastore, a boys' shirt in the latest style, the grey away strip, cost £27.99, with shorts at £14.99 and socks £5.99. The red shirt was being discounted, with a new design ready to be launched later this year.
WHO said horses are not machines? Rudolf, a non-thoroughbred of indeterminate sex and age, looks set to become the most sought-after ride in racing because he is a machine.
The mechanical horse, formally known as "The Ride-Away," is the first of its kind to be installed at a racecourse and will enable jockeys at Newbury to have a warm-up in the weighing room before riding for real at the Berkshire course.
Jamie Osborne, who, like leading riders such as Richard Dunwoody and Frankie Dettori, practises at home on a similar machine, put the stationary nag through its paces yesterday and explained the benefits.
"There are very few sports where the participants would go out and perform without having a warm-up. You can't drag a real horse into the weighing room and warm up the relevant muscles but you can on this.
"The muscles we use in riding a horse are unique to riding. Bicycling is the nearest you get to it but this machine is invaluable. You can push it as long as you like, as hard as you like for as long as you like to get fit at the start of the season or keep you ticking over during a cold snap when racing is off."
The machine was invented by Richard Perham, a leading freelance jockey riding in Saudi Arabia, and retails at £650. The frame is based on a series of springs providing a forward motion and it has a pivoted neck on which jockeys can fine-tune their riding style, whip-handling and drive-to-the-line finishes.
Carl Llewellyn, who won the 1992 Grand National on Party Politics, bought a mechanical horse last year after being banned from riding on three occasions for breaching whip rules.
"When you are unfit or not going racing due to the weather, the first thing that goes every time are the knees; that is where the main pressure is during racing," he said. "You can go bicycling, swimming or running but it never gets your knees fit. This machine does the trick."
Rob Andrew rules himself out of the national team reckoning at least until next season
The process of change through which the England rugby team is now going is not a comfortable one. It has been made worse by the constant glare of publicity that has been turned on to the sport in recent years and certainly by the declaration of the open game this season.
Inevitably, when things are not going well, press and public look back to the times and the individuals who played in the succcessful teams which created such heightened expectation. I was fortunate enough to be one of them, alongside such players as Brian Moore, Dewi Morris and Dean Richards, and, at one time or another this season, there have been calls for one or all of us to return to the side.
Such speculation is increased when my new club, Newcastle, plays against top-flight opposition, such as Harlequins in the Pilkington Cup today and New South Wales next Tuesday, but there is no prospect of my playing anything other than club rugby this season. I retired from international rugby last October and I have played only two or three games since then.
The job I have been given at Newcastle demands all my attention. It has brought a new focus to my rugby life and I don't yet know where it is going to lead. The game is changing on a weekly basis and and where I am now is exciting, exhilarating. Who knows where we will all be a year from now?
For that reason, I am not ruling out any possibility, but life has moved on and it would take a very special set of circumstances for me to appear in an England shirt again. For now, the selectors have their job to do and both Moore and Morris can be discounted; they have retired from first-class rugby.
Richards is different; he is still a member of the squad and whether he plays for England again is a matter of selectorial judgment based on their knowledge of him as a player and the kind of game they want the team to play.
Whenever a longstanding half-back partnership changes as every one of the five nations in this season's championship is in the process of finding out it must have a significant impact on the side as a whole. Yet the two positions cannot be looked at in isolation; they are only part of the character of the team.
Over the past few years, England have identified areas of strength and used them to considerable advantage. Much of the success in that period was based on forward power and, if there was a bias in that direction, at the expense of such runners as Will Carling, Jerry Guscott or Rory Underwood, it could be justified both by results and by the critical influence of the forwards in international rugby.
The trick is to achieve a balance between the two distinct areas of the game and that is not easy. You have two very different groups of people trying to build a game together, with No9 and No10 in the middle of it all attempting to pull the strings. Perhaps Mike Catt's decision to remove himself from contention as a stand-off half will take some pressure off Paul Grayson, while the squad as a whole needs its collective confidence restored. That is the role of management.
For me, my season is just beginning and I am looking forward to next September, when I can be a part of a new club team from the start; maybe, at that stage, my old friends, Dean Ryan and Steve Bates, will look at my form with a critical eye and tell me it is time to call it a day!
WHEN the first World Cup was staged 21 years ago, it opened to little pomp and ceremony. By way of gesture, England's opening match against India took place at Lord's, where Madan Lal bowled the first ball to John Jameson, Geoff Boycott preferring to turn out for his county rather than his country.
No one will describe tomorrow's opening of the sixth World Cup as understated. More than 100,000 people will assemble inside Eden Gardens, Calcutta, while two billion more watch on television, for a 75-minute spectacular masterminded by Gianfranco Lunetta, who brought the world the ceremonies that opened the 1990 football World Cup and closed the Barcelona Olympics.
The first cricket ball the crowd will see will be made of laser-beams, into which will descend Sushmita Sen, a former Miss Universe, wrapped in the flags of the 12 competing teams. Controversy has raged in India for weeks about Miss Sen's decision to divest herself of the flags and hand them to the respective captains.
It will not be the last time during the next five weeks that India could find itself torn between culture and consumerism as it attempts, along with the other joint-hosts, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, to cash in on a tournament that is expected to generate profits for its organisers alone of £25 million, some 75 times more than were realised in 1975.
The chances of the deadlock being broken over the refusal of Australia and West Indies to play in Colombo looked to have marginally improved yesterday. Officials from the International Cricket Council (ICC) had no sooner arrived in Calcutta than they began informal talks prior to a meeting of the various parties today.
The diplomacy of Sir Clyde Walcott, the ICC chairman and David Richards, its chief executive, is the last realistic hope of the crisis being resolved, though the world governing body's reputation as a toothless tiger tempered any optimism.
Richards emerged from one meeting to state that the position was very sensitive. Ali Bacher, the South African board's managing director, said cryptically: "I cannot disclose all the details but let me tell you all good efforts produce good results."
Members of Pilcom, the organising committee, were hoping that Walcott's Caribbean connections might open a path to the West Indies team abandoning its boycott of Colombo. But Walcott would say only that he had a number of options in mind.
He can only hope the proximity of tomorrow's carnival will bring home to the relevant parties the absurdity of celebrating contests that will not be taking place.
HARD on the heels of the International Rugby Football Board's (IRFB) ringing acclamation of the sport's traditional principle of touring, the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) confirmed yesterday the visit of the British Isles next year.
"We view it as a very, very important tour," Edward Griffiths, the Sarfu chief executive, said. Though the full itinerary for the 12-match tour in May and June, 1997, will not be finalised until next week, it will include internationals in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban. It is hoped to confirm the management team by the end of this season.
One of the decisions taken by the IRFB council at its annual meeting last month was a commitment to a regular programme of tours. "They are fundamental to the development of players," Vernon Pugh, the IRFB chairman, said.
Though some individual players and officials in Britain have queried the viability of the touring concept, each of the home unions has been asked to make allowance for a Lions tour every four years in their contractual arrangements with players and clubs. It has yet to be clarified who, in the open era, will pay the players in a combined team; there is a presumption that many of the costs will be borne by the host unions in South Africa and Australasia.
The Lions add variety to the southern-hemisphere season and their tour will slip in between early-season provincial tournaments and the tripartite programme organised between the three powers.
ENGLAND'S harassed rugby union officials will breathe a sigh of relief if the Pilkington Cup fifth-round ties proceed as scheduled today. If the weather intervenes once more, they are looking at such a logjam of league fixtures that an extension to the season becomes a possibility.
The thaw has come just in time, though Newcastle are making a precautionary pitch inspection this morning. However, Harlequins, their opponents, are in situ and the optimism in the North East is shared elsewhere as the 14 clubs who were forced to sit idle a fortnight ago attempt to join Wasps in the last eight.
The quarter-final draw has already been made, of course, and that knowledge may prove an additional spur for such clubs as Nottingham and Bedford. Were Bedford, of the second division, to beat Bristol, then they have the prospect of a home tie against Bath, while Nottingham, desperate for income, would relish another home tie, against Wasps.
First, however, they must make their way past Gloucester, which, even allowing for their struggles in the depths of the first division, will not be easy. Nevertheless, five of the Nottingham team can remember 1990, when they produced an unexpected 12-3 league win over their opponents today.
Since then, Nottingham have slipped down a rocky road, but they still boast three capped players to Gloucester's none even if Simon Hodgkinson, Chris Gray and Gary Rees will not see 30 again. With another old hand in Gary Hartley, who retired through injury three years ago, to steady the ship in the centre, hope will bloom eternal at Beeston.
Will Carling, the England captain, will miss the tie at Newcastle, having aggravated a knee while playing against Wales. Will Greenwood and Peter Mensah are paired at centre against a Newcastle team in which Rob Andrew, Nick Popplewell, Peter Walton internationals all make their competitive debuts. Another week and Tony Underwood might have joined them.
Popplewell is one of four Irishmen given leave by the national team management to play in the Cup before heading west for squad training. It is a sore point in Dublin, where Terenure College play Lansdowne to decide the Leinster Senior League without, respectively, Niall Hogan and Eric Elwood, neither of whom has been released to play
apparently because Pat Whelan, the Ireland manager, had not been informed of the fixture.
Jim Staples, the Ireland captain, plays for Harlequins, Conor O'Shea and the uncapped (as yet) David Humphreys for London Irish at Leeds, though the Irish are not travelling until this morning after wasting time and money on an overnight stay a fortnight ago. The delay has proved beneficial for Leeds: they can introduce Colin Stephens, their new player-coach, the former Llanelli and Wales stand-off half, in the hope of closing the gap between the fourth and second divisions.
One Irishman not required for the Cup is Simon Geoghegan, who is still struggling with a strained hamstring. Instead, Bath choose Jon Sleightholme and Adedayo Adebayo on their wings at Wakefield, though they were close to being without Jeremy Guscott. He required a fitness test on a bruised shoulder yesterday and, had he withdrawn, Mike Catt would have been moved into his position, despite Catt's expressed wish to play full back from now.
Chris Murphy returns to lock West Hartlepool's scrum against Coventry, Leicester bring Jamie Hamilton in at scrum half against Saracens for the injured Aadel Kardooni and Mark Tainton plays stand-off for Bristol against Bedford because Arwel Thomas is required by Wales.
Thomas, of course, is the incumbent as the Welsh No10, but Neil Jenkins will make a late charge for the role against Scotland. After a nine-week absence, Jenkins will play for Pontypridd in their delayed Heineken League meeting with Aberavon.
THE disruption to Wasps' season, already hit by the loss of two key players in Rob Andrew and Dean Ryan and the ravages the weather has inflicted on their league programme, has continued with a blow to their ambitious plans for redevelopment at their Repton Avenue ground in Sudbury.
Four months ago, the first division club announced a £2.5 million scheme that would take them forward into the era of open rugby, but this week Brent Council's planning department has told Wasps they will have to reconsider. Local residents have taken issue with the proposals and if their objections continue to be upheld, is it possible the club would be forced to look for a new home.
"I'm not pessimistic about the eventual outcome," Sir Pat Lowry, chairman of the club's executive committee, said yesterday. "The planning decision has been deferred, not rejected." A liaison committee will be established to explain the plan to neighbours.
"If there is some accommodation to be reached, we will do it," Lowry said, but the setback occurs at an unfortunate time as Wasps not only have to finance their proposed ground revamp but compete in the playing market against first division rivals, Saracens and Harlequins, both of whom have received money with which to compete in the professional game.
The Scottish Rugby Union last night won a landslide victory in its campaign to have districts, as opposed to clubs, represent Scotland in next season's European Cup. After a 21/2-hour special general meeting at Murrayfield, delegates voted 178-24 for district representation in Europe.
The proposal is that three Scottish districts will take part: the south and Edinburgh, one from Glasgow, while the North and Midlands will have to play each other for the final berth.
Nicola Fairbrother, one of Britain's leading hopes for the Olympic Games in Atlanta, made an unexpected early exit from the Tournoi de Paris yesterday.
The London Towers reinforced their Budweiser League title claims last night with an impressive 84-78 victory over their rivals in the capital, the Leopards. The Towers, whose victory moved them two points clear of the champions, Sheffield Sharks, were particularly indebted to Steve Bucknall, who scored 27 points, and Tony Windlass, who provided 24.
Three days before becoming the official world No1, Thomas Muster, of Austria, won his first senior match on grass yesterday, beating Marcus Ondruska, of South Africa, 6-2, 7-5, 6-2 in a Davis Cup world group first-round match in Johannesburg. Wayne Ferreira beat Wolfgang Schranz to level the tie.
COLIN McRAE experienced a troubled start to the defence of his world rallying championship yesterday. At the end of the opening day of the Swedish Rally in Falun, the Scot was lying fifth behind Tommi Makinen, of Finland.
He suffered transmission difficulties which upset the handling of his Subaru and his problems were compounded by tyres that coped badly with the lack of snow.
Makinen, in a Mitsubishi, leads by six seconds from his compatriot, Juha Kankkunen, in a Toyota, with Carlos Sainz, of Spain, in a Toyota, eight seconds further back.
OLD Loughtonians held off a spirited challenge by Hull to retain the national indoor club hockey title with a 6-5 victory in the final at Crystal Palace last night.
The 2-1 lead that Old Loughtonians established at half-time was extended to 6-2 midway through the second half, but Hull hit back with goals by Humphrey, Boddy and Steve Moat. Lee and Sutton scored two goals each for the winners.
Old Loughtonians earned their passage into the final on goal difference after a 4-4 draw with St Albans. Leading 4-1, Loughtonians eventually had their advantage cancelled out by goals from Halliday, Day and Jennings.
Hull qualified for the final at the expense of Stourport and Barford Tigers. Hull secured a 6-5 victory over Stourport with Humphrey scoring the winning goal with three seconds remaining. They went on to beat Barford 7-3 with Steve Moat, who was voted the player of the tournament, scoring five goals.
Southgate hope to consolidate their position as leaders of the National League when they entertain Teddington tomorrow, but their visitors are still chasing a top-12 finish to qualify them for first-division hockey next season, when the League will be restructured.
Guildford are pushing for third place and are at full strength for their home match against Havant. After a 7-1 win last week over Indian Gymkhana, Havant have gained confidence even though they are without Giles, who is recovering from a hernia operation. Perryman returns to the side from England Under-18 duties. Lawson faces a late fitness test.
Today Hounslow visit Reading, who, along with Cannock, are two points behind the leaders. Cannock visit St Albans tomorrow.
Beeston, nine points clear in the second division, will be severely tested away to Bluehearts, who lie third.
Rob Hughes cries out against fat cats and marketing men trying to move the goalposts
THIS has been a particularly rotten week in football. The Football Association, the FA Premier League, Manchester United and Arsenal were all party to a meeting in Geneva that sold the ethics of European competition as fraudulently as a trickster selling you a fake Rolex.
The great, the good and the greedy of 33 "top" clubs accepted a proposal from Uefa, supposedly the governors of European football, to keep the door firmly closed on the majority of national contenders. Instead, they will invite double the numbers of clubs from eight countries, England among them, to take part in competitions for which many of them have not qualified.
Of course, our representatives thought of the money, sold out the principle and returned home rubbing their hands but would it pass the Trade Descriptions Act? How on earth can you have a "Champions' League" that allows two teams from the same country? How can you have two clubs from a single nation competing in the Cup Winners' Cup?
The whole affair debases a wonderful tournament, the European Cup, that has been built up over 40 years. Worse, the acquiescence of the Uefa president, Lennart Johansson, devalues his platform to oppose the Fifa president, Joao Havelange, on the grounds that the old dictator has lost the thread of leadership.
Unsurprisingly, Havelange took one look at the Geneva proposals and denounced the "egotists" who "only think of the money, when we have to think about youngsters and the principles of serving everybody". If only more creditable figures than Havelange would say that.
Rick Parry, chief executive of the Premier League, commented: "Uefa are effectively saying it's better to have a second team from Italy than a first team from Azerbaijan in the Champions' League, but it has to be done on merit. If you lose sight of that, you lose the very essence of what the game is all about."
Double speak, double values. There can be no merit in choosing a second team, a failed contender, to take part in a so-called champions' tournament.
But it gets worse. Sir Bobby Charlton and Sir John Hall are leading men in the English game, whose knighthoods have been well-earned for services to sport and to the business community respectively. Hear then, Bobby Charlton: "Some people say it devalues the European Cup, but it's progress, it's the way we have to go eventually." No sir, it is not progress, it is retrograde thinking, giving in to the demands of clubs like his own, Manchester United, who think that their wealth and their history allows them to succeed even when they fail.
Charlton says, derogatively: "It's easier to sell to television if all the best teams are in the competition. A team like Deportivo (La Coruna) could win the Spanish championship, whereas Uefa would love to have Barcelona or Real Madrid."
The logic is finance at the cost of merit, but Sir John Hall, the Newcastle United chairman, who was appalled at the start of the week by the vote in the House of Lords in favour of listed events being saved for terrestial television and by the reference of the Premier League's agreement with BSkyB and the BBC to the Restrictive Practices Court, also was out of order.
"We welcome the increase in clubs," he said, "but selection should be on merit. The place should go to the runner-up in the Premiership."
That merely placates the argument. The truth is that the Champions' League and the Cup Winners' Cup are now tournaments for the elite. The majority of the 49 members of Uefa have been paid a significant sum to sit out the opportunity of trying to become Davids slaying Goliaths.
Goliath does not wish to be at risk any more. He demands to reap the rewards even in years when his quality fades. "He who controls the product," Sir John said, "controls the market."
Precisely, sir. The marketing men who devised this bastardisation of European events will be the first to bale out when the price drops, as it will when customers see the devaluation.
Why should the marketeers care, for their phoney compromise is intended as a short-term bridge until they move on to the next creation, the world club league.
David Miller examines a training regime which is producing results for a leading Premiership club
They say there is nothing new in football. There is at Nottingham Forest. For 2 1/2 years, it has remained a well-guarded secret, but it will be out in the open should Forest defeat Bayern Munich in the Uefa Cup quarter-final next month.
What is new is the fitness programme and the man responsible is Pete Edwards. Pete who? You will not find his name among the list of club officials on the match programme, but his imprint is identifiable on every Forest player who steps on the field. Edwards is part of the reason why Frank Clark, Forest's manager, is a potential successor to Terry Venables as England coach. Indeed, Venables is sufficiently aware of Edwards's contribution to Forest's development that he is considering utilising this dynamic trainer's skills during England's three-week fitness preparation before the European championship.
Every move Forest's squad take on the training ground from Monday to Friday is planned and directed by Edwards. He plays no part, however, in overall tactics, controlled by Clark. Edwards's self-styled title is "preparator". You will not find the word in the dictionary, yet such men are operating with most Italian and German clubs. An equally appropriate title would be fanatic. Edwards, a Londoner, is as much a driven man as was Jock Stein.
"His biggest influence, besides his technical knowledge, is his enthusiasm," Clark says. "I give him more or less a free hand and he takes charge of everything, including diet. He can be argumentative, but that's part of his enthusiasm. He has made an immense difference to the level of fitness and that's contributed to what we've achieved."
Edwards, having studied at length the methods of foreign fitness coaches, became convinced that one of the reasons for English decline was the absence of specialised training, specific to both the individual physique and positional requirement.
His background is as a modest amateur player who failed to make it under Gordon Jago with Queens Park Rangers, where the coach was Steve Burtenshaw. Subsequently he was a marathon runner, a karate black belt and a bodybuilder. In 1987, for no pay, he became coach of Kingsbury Town. Burtenshaw asked him to provide a team for a practice match with Arsenal and George Graham was sufficiently impressed to ask Edwards to spend a season working at Highbury. Inevitably, there was friction with other coaches.
Edwards knew that he should study abroad to expand his knowledge and paid his own way to work with Lazio. He was able to observe renowned fitness trainers in Italy such as Bartelloni, Zeman and Scala. "I had to throw away much of what I knew," he reflects. "You only had to look at how Italian players behaved in training: the deliberate pressure, the self-discipline, their fitness with and without the ball, their ability to produce explosive moments of action, the willingness to train twice a day."
Edwards recorded every aspect on video, then returned home to work with Leyton Orient, under Clark and Peter Eustace. The evidence of his influence, helping lift Orient up the table, subsequently persuaded Clark to invite him to Nottingham.
Small, urgent, demanding, Edwards can undoubtedly be abrasive, yet players such as Steve Stone, Stan Collymore, Ian Woan and the experienced Stuart Pearce have responded and improved under a regime they have found makes sense.
Running is geared to positional play, whether endurance or sprints, with three-a-side in confined areas punctuated on a whistle by eight sprints, simulating the pressure of play. Some sessions induce a fatigue that becomes unbearable after three minutes. Yet recovery periods equally necessary in matches between repetition sprints are incorporated into the daily programming.
Some days are low-intensity, players confined to small "boxes" so that they cannot run and must pass. Each player's diet is studied individually. Woan nowadays swears by pasta.
"He was known as ‘the moan' and couldn't run 400 metres without pains," Edwards recalls, "but he's persevered and now he's on the fringe of the international team. Collymore was the world's worst trainer, yet grew to be dependent on the work he did."
Appreciation between Clark and Edwards is mutual. "It's taken a lot of bottle for him to trust me with what I do," Edwards says, "because his job's on the line." The rewards, at a small-budget club, may yet be substantial.
THE Cambridge University Draghounds meeting at Cottenham today passed an inspection late yesterday and an exciting prospect is ready to run.
Colonial Kelly, trained by Diana Grissell in Sussex and an eight-year-old of great promise, has been kept in full work on an all-weather gallop and that could give him the edge in today's competitive men's open.
"Colonial Kelly is very well and we need to win one more open race to qualify him for the Cheltenham Foxhunters'," said Grissell, who trains a team of nine pointers near Heathfield.
Paul Hacking, who finished second on Colonial Kelly in the Times Rising Stars final at Newbury last year, will be in the saddle today, while Auction Law will give men's champion Alastair Crow his first ride of the new season in the same event.
Victor Dartnall showed the value of his all-weather gallop by training three winners last weekend and he runs Chilipour, Butler John and Phar Too Touchy at the East Cornwall meeting at Great Trethew.
Richard Barber, another with a wood-chip gallop, intends to saddle a team of nine at the meeting, which will provide the formidable Polly Curling with her first taste of action between the flags for a month. However, the Tim Mitchell-ridden Good For Business, in the intermediate, looks the yard's most likely winner.
Tomorrow's Dunston, Badsworth, and College Valley & North Northumberland meetings are all subject to inspections today, but Northern champion Kevin Anderson will be an unfortunate absentee regardless, having broken a leg and shoulder last week. Andrew Parker takes over his rides.
Today's South Dorset fixture at Milborne St Andrew has been postponed until March 10, but tomorrow's North Western Club and Tweseldown Club have been abandoned. The South Midlands Club at Heythrop, also due to be held tomorrow, has been postponed until February 24.
TODAY'S MEETINGS: Cambridge University Draghounds (Cottenham), 4m north of Cambridge (first race, 12.00); East Cornwall (Great Trethew), 3m SE of Liskeard (12.00). TOMORROW'S MEETINGS: Badsworth (Wetherby), on NH course, nr A1 (11.30); College Valley & North Northumberland (Alnwick), 3m E of Alnwick (12.30); Dunston Harriers (Ampton) 4m N of Bury St Edmunds (12.00).
At the age of 20 Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-92) was already preaching to Baptist congregations of more than 10,000. He became the most popular preacher of his day.
THE LATE MR. SPURGEON.
A manifestation of public respect and affection as striking and impressive as was shown in the case of the late Cardinal Manning was presented yesterday in the Metropolitan Tabernacle and the adjacent streets. The building was opened at 7 o'clock in the morning, and from that moment to the same hour in the evening when no more were admitted, a constant throng, varying in density, but with no gap in succession, made their way along the two aisles, past the coffin, which rests just below and in front of the platform, and through the two exits provided in front of the Pastor's College and through the gateway of the Jubilee-house, erected in honour of Mr. Spurgeon when he completed his 50th year. Persons of almost all ranks, including working men with their tools, children carrying their father's dinners, men and women little raised above destitution, made their way through the thick but orderly crowd.
Calculation of numbers in such a case can only be vague and can scarcely be accurate; but it was said that during the first hour some 3,000 had entered, and that by 11 the total was not less than 10,000. In the afternoon the line of visitors extended from the points of egress, the whole length of Temple-street, along the short
piece of the main road, and round the corner again to the main entrance of the Tabernacle. It was roughly estimated by the officials that at the busiest time as many as 1,500 persons passed through the building in the course of every ten minutes. It was gratifying to observe that the appeal to make free-will offerings in honour of the dead instead of sending flowers met with a liberal response; and a very large proportion of the visitorsalmost indeed a majority, and even those whose aspect and attire bespoke povertydropped their coppers into the wooden collecting boxes for the Stockwell Orphanage.
There was naturally none of the aesthetic display in which the Church of Rome delights; and it cannot be said that the interior of the building is beautiful. But there was by no means a complete absence of adornment. The gas brackets in the gallery were all lighted, and the pulpit and platform were draped with black hangings looped with white bows; wreaths of flowers had been placed at the foot of the coffin in the morning, and a beautiful harp with golden strings, composed of roses, violets, and lilies, had been sent by the Baptist churches of Belfast. The congregation of Gorbals Tabernacle, Glasgow, had also contributed a wreath framed into the form of an anchor, with the words "The sun shines at length," quoted from a letter of Mr. Spurgeon from Mentone. Above the harp, one of whose strings was broken, were a sword and trowel of violets, and below it were inscribed the words:-
"A master builder thou on Zion's wall
"Thy busy trowel knew no cankering rust,
"Thy sword was keen and double-edged withal
"To smite the invading foemen in the dust."
The stream of visitors rigidly maintained the two lines of approach which were corded off from the rest of the Tabernacle and proceeded without delay, slowly and quietly.
Major-General "Bill" Liardet, CB, CBE, DSO, Deputy Master General of the Ordnance, 1961-64, died on February 8 aged 89. He was born on October 27, 1906.
BILL LIARDET's long career as a tank warfare specialist included command of the 6th Royal Tank Regiment during the final disastrous retreat of the desert campaign in North Africa that preceded the turn of the tide at El Alamein.
Field Marshal Rommel and the Afrika Korps had retaken Cyrenaica during early 1942 and in May were poised west of Gazala and Tobruk. The series of actions that followed, known as the Gazala battles, showed Rommel at his best; the Germans mounting a series of opportunistic, swift right hooks towards Egypt and the Suez Canal, groping deep for the Eighth Army's lines of communication. They obtained much benefit from their superior and more flexible use of armour, their Panzer divisions being integrated with a high proportion of artillery and motorised infantry.
The Eighth Army under General Ritchie was initially surprised and suffered severe losses. Liardet's regiment, equipped with the new American-made Grant tank, and part of the 4th Armoured Brigade within the 1st Armoured Division, was, at the end of May, positioned centrally near the fortified "box" known as Knightsbridge. Early on May 27 the 4th Armoured Brigade was caught by the 15th Panzer Division while still readying itself for a move and, although the heavy Grants, in battle for the first time, shook the German tank crews, there were many losses. In conditions of chaos, the Eighth Army subsequently fought a series of rearguard actions, falling back some 300 miles along the North African coast.
Throughout June, Liardet's regiment lost about half its Grant tanks. One of his soldiers recalls long days of exhausting action and short nights with tanks in "leaguer" or on the move, and his colonel each night meticulously visiting everybody to see how they were doing.
Tobruk fell on June 21. On June 25 General Auchinleck, the Commander-in-Chief, himself relieved Ritchie as army commander and, with a quality of generalship acknowledged by Rommel, held and repulsed the German advance among the ridges near El Alamein. The 6th RTR's laconic battle narrative for these first five days in July sounds a much more cheerful note; "successful shoot and push forward"; "held the ridge".
But on July 5, Liardet was relieved of his command following a row that arose from his strong criticism of the way that the 4th Armoured Brigade had been handled. His subsequent appointment as GSO 1, or chief staff officer, to Major-General Alec Gatehouse in command of the newly formed 10th Armoured Division clearly vindicated his professionalism and tactical expertise. Gatehouse was the first career RTR officer to command an armoured division and it was his able and canny handling of tanks and artillery that made a marked contribution to the success of the crucial battles of Alam Halfa and Alamein.
After Alamein, Liardet was reappointed in command of a refitted 6th RTR and redeployed to Iraq and Syria.
Promoted colonel in January 1944, he took command of the Armoured Reinforcement Group in the Italian campaign, supplying fresh tanks to forward formations. When second-in-command of the 25th Armoured Engineer Brigade, he was awarded the DSO for his key part in a difficult assault over the River Senio in May 1945. Later, when in command of the same formation, he was twice mentioned in dispatches.
Henry Maughan Liardet always known as Bill was the fifth generation of a family of military men with strong Indian connections. His father, Major-General Sir Claude Liardet, KBE, CB, DSO, a First World War artilleryman, uniquely commanded a division as a Territorial officer and was the founding commandant of the Royal Air Force Regiment.
Rejecting a career in his father's footsteps as a Lloyd's broker, Liardet joined the Royal Tank Corps in 1927. His early service, in Rolls-Royce armoured cars on the North West Frontier of an unpartitioned India, was especially happy; he was able to get married, prove a useful jockey over the sticks at Quetta races and enjoy shikar. His wife Joan used to recall her terror, while pregnant, at being treed by a wounded buffalo.
During the Abyssinian crisis he was sent to Egypt on the staff of the Mobile Force (known locally as the "immobile farce"), returning to pass through the Staff College at the outbreak of war. This was followed by two years in the War Office working on the organisation of the Armoured Corps under the up-and-coming General Sir Vyvyan Pope. Pope took Liardet to the Middle East but was killed in an air crash and Liardet found himself on the staff of GHQ Cairo until appointed to his regimental command.
He ended the war as an acting brigadier in command of a tank brigade occupying Venezia Giulia and confronting Tito's threats to Trieste in northern Italy, followed by tours in Palestine and Egypt. Although he was appointed CBE in 1945, the postwar contraction of the Army caused a reduction in his rank. As a substantive lieutenant-colonel in 1949 he commanded the 8th RTR at Catterick, leading the regiment to a particularly fine sporting record.
Regaining brigadier's rank in 1951, he held a number of headquarters and command posts until 1956 when he became chief of staff of the British Joint Services Mission in Washington. Promoted major-general, he was Director-General of Armoured Fighting Vehicles and subsequently Deputy Master General of the Ordnance, attending the last meeting of the Army Council before Mountbatten's centralising reforms of the Ministry of Defence abolished that body.
Retiring in 1964, he was appointed CB and devoted his time to local affairs, becoming a county councillor for West Sussex and an alderman in 1970. He was a director of the British Sailors' Society for 17 years and participated in a number of service charities.
He maintained his regimental connections with enthusiasm, having been Colonel Commandant of the Royal Tank Regiment from 1961 until 1967, the 50th anniversary of the first use of the tank at Cambrai, an occasion marked by the presence of the Queen at a parade in Germany.
A man who inspired great loyalty, he was often visited by old soldiers of all ranks who had served with him, even up to the year of his death. In 1933 he married Joan Constable, who died in 1991. He is survived by his second wife Barbara and the three sons of the first marriage.
Antonio Ruiz Soler, Spanish flamenco dancer, died in Madrid on February 5 aged 74. He was born in Seville on November 4, 1921.
KNOWN simply as Antonio to a nation who adored him, Antonio Ruiz Soler danced for coins on the streets of Seville at the age of four. He claimed publicly with never a hint of denial from the ladies concerned to have been the lover of Ava Gardner, Gina Lollobrigida, Lola Flores and the Duchess of Alba. He was once thrown in jail for blaspheming while being filmed for television. He died in a state of virtual paralysis.
During his career as a flamenco bailarin, he revived much that was moribund, wrought a revolution in style and approach, took his country's flamboyant dance to most corners of the globe and cultivated a strutting conceit that appeared always to fortify his excellence.
He was born in Seville the cradle of flamenco to an utterly penniless family. Its poverty was due, in greatest measure, to the thirst for strong drink which raged within Antonio's father.
Yet in this squalid milieu, young Antonio found from somewhere and at an age when most children are content simply to walk the duende, or spirit, that fuels the best flamenco. He started at the age of three, his hagiographers say, to adopt posturitas, little postures, which often enraged his drunken father. By four he had befriended a rough hurdy-gurdy man called Juan, and together they performed Juan on his organ, little Antonio with his dance to a shower of money on the backstreets of Seville.
His talent was so nakedly apparent that an aunt, Ana, paid for him to take dance classes at the school of Realito, a local maestro. Later, when Ana could no longer afford these, Realito, by now convinced that his pupil was a treasure, waived his fees altogether.
At the age of seven Antonio gave his first formal public performance in Liege, Belgium, with a young girl, Rosario. Called Los Chavalillos Sevillanos The Kids from Seville they performed also, in the following year, at the Seville Exposition.
Antonio and Rosario were to dance as a pair for the next 24 years. She played graceful second fiddle to his frankly masculine style, which often crossed the boundary into shameless narcissism. Before Antonio's conquest of flamenco's imperium, outstanding soloists had tended to be women. He was to change all that: it was now the man who was the real star, estirao y enfadao, or "stuck-up and angry".
Antonio was inventive often astonishingly so and is credited with being the father of the martinete, a form of hammer-like stamping. It was in the film by Edgar Neville, called Duende y misterio del flamenco (1952), that Antonio performed the martinete for the first time, beneath the Arco del Tajo in Ronda.
Antonio and Rosario parted company that same year, and the bailarin began, increasingly, to turn to choreography. By the 1960s, he was to ensure that flamenco developed a ballet style, in addition to its traditional small-stage individualism. Aficionados today are as familiar with Antonio's versions of de Falla's Love the Magician and The Three-cornered Hat as they are with his haunting martinete.
Spain's dictator, General Franco, who for political reasons promoted flamenco and folklore, once pronounced Antonio as both his favourite bailarin and as an "authentic Spaniard". In 1973 Antonio had reason to be thankful for the General's admiration. Only Franco's personal intervention secured his release when, having blasphemed virulently in an angry moment during the filming of The Three-Cornered Hat, he was hauled without ceremony off to jail.
He remained a bachelor.
Sir Thomas Padmore, GCB, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Transport, 1962-68, died on February 8 aged 86. He was born on April 23, 1909.
THOMAS PADMORE was a high-ranking civil servant who worked in the Treasury for thirty years, latterly as Second Secretary, before being appointed Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Transport, 1962-68. He combined many of the virtues of the model civil servant discreet, capable and politically neutral. Politicians he regarded with a dispassionate eye and only once did he appear ruffled by a difficult working relationship with a minister Barbara Castle at the Ministry of Transport. It was unfortunate that his distinguished career should have ended, soon afterwards, on such an untypically discordant note.
Though one would never have guessed it from his accentless English, Thomas Padmore was a Yorkshireman, born in Sheffield, the son of a self-made businessman. He was educated at the Sheffield Central School and, as a scholar, at Queens' College, Cambridge (of which he was made an honorary fellow in 1961), where he read French and German.
He joined the Civil Service in 1931 and, after a couple of years in the Inland Revenue, he was transferred to the Treasury, where his advance was rapid. He had a quick brain, allied to a stong dose of Yorkshireman's common sense, and he was friendly and likeable in person. He was excellent both as an adminstrator and, for two years, 1943-45, as Principal Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
In 1951 his future seemed mapped out: he had been designated to succeed as Secretary to the Cabinet, then, as now, a key job. Much against his will, this was announced some months in advance. When the time came, however, there was a new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and the series of moves which were to lead to a vacancy at the Cabinet Office were cancelled.
Instead Padmore stayed at the Treasury. In 1952 he was promoted to Second Secretary. It seemed to his friends that he ought to have been moved out to some other department after this change of events. But he was the essential number two at the Treasury and so was kept there for more than ten years, in charge of establishments personnel and staff management and then of finance and supply. Successive Chancellors held out hopes of promotion to the top job; but they moved on, and the promotion went elsewhere. These years were increasingly frustrating ones for Padmore, and they were marred by personal sadness: the protracted, painful and ultimately fatal illness of his only son from cancer.
In 1962 he was appointed Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Transport. The chance of running a large organisation came to him as a liberation and for some years everything went well. Among other responsibilities, Padmore was involved in the early planning stages of Britain's motorways, the introduction of the 70mph speed limit and in seatbelt legislation, a subject on which he felt very strongly.
At the end of 1965 frustration came to him again, in a manner of which Barbara Castle gives an uninhibited account in her published diaries. According to her, the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, asked her to take over the ministry, with a brief to devise and implement an integrated transport policy. But he warned her that she would find there a very strong Permanent Secretary, who, the Prime Minister was convinced, had killed integration under the previous minister. She decided then and there, though at that point she had never met him, that she must get rid of Padmore. When she did meet him, prejudice hardened into dislike. Things got worse when, a few days later, one of her confidants leaked her intention to The Guardian. Padmore was outraged, and warned her that he would fight.
The battle continued throughout her time at the ministry, since Wilson typically shrank from a confrontation. Padmore won it in the sense that he was still Permanent Secretary when, more than two years later, Barbara Castle was promoted to another department. But it was a pyrrhic victory. His time under a minister who disliked and mistrusted him was inevitably unhappy. Her successor, to whom she had passed on the torch of her campaign, met with no resistance. Padmore had had enough: he was within a year of the normal retirement age, and he volunteered to retire a few months early, in November 1968.
Through no fault of his own, Padmore's career had not matched his talents. But he looked forward to enjoying his retirement, and in this he was not disappointed. A central motive was to give more time to music, both as listener and as player. He took up the violin in middle age; he claimed no skill, but it became a real pleasure to him. His experience as an administrator was often called upon but he sensibly rationed the amount of work that he took on. This did not prevent him giving valuable service in the fields of music he was chairman of the Handel Opera Society, for instance and medical research.
Once retired from the Civil Service, Padmore felt free to express his own political views. He was dismayed at the prospect of a single European currency, and what he considered to be the stealthy invasion of British life by Brussels bureaucrats, and towards the end of his life he fired off a spate of cogently-argued letters on the subject to newspaper editors. He was a well-read man, and even when he was quite old, he could quote reams of Milton and Shakespeare.
Thomas Padmore was appointed CB in 1947, KCB in 1953 and GCB in 1965. He was twice married: in 1934 to Alice Alcock, who died in 1963, and in 1964 to Rosalind Culhane, LVO, OBE, a former colleague of his in the Treasury, who died last year. Thus, he celebrated two silver wedding anniversaries. He is survived by the two daughters of his first marriage.
Glasgow. Sir William Fraser has been elected Chancellor of Glasgow University in succession to Alexander Cairncross.
ST JAMES'S PALACE. February 8: The Prince of Wales left Royal Air Force Lyneham this morning to visit Croatia and Bosnia.
His Royal Highness this afternoon arrived at Cilipi Airport, Dubrovnik, and was received by Her Majesty's Ambassador to the Republic of Croatia (His Excellency Mr Gavin Hewitt).
The Prince of Wales afterwards visited Dubrovnik to see war damage in the old town.
His Royal Highness later met British Service men and women at Divulje Barracks, Split.
The Prince of Wales this evening flew to HMS Illustrious and met members of the Ship's Company.
Mr Stephen Lamport, Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Tabor and Mr Allan Percival are in attendance.
BUCKINGHAM PALACE
February 9: The Hon David Gore-Booth was received in audience by The Queen upon his appointment as British High Commissioner to the Republic of India.
Mrs Gore-Booth was also received by Her Majesty.
His Excellency Mr Hussain Abdullatif was received in audience by The Queen and presented the Letters of Recall of his predecessor and his own Letters of Credence as Ambassador from the Sultanate of Oman to the Court of St James's.
Mrs Makki was also received by Her Majesty.
Sir John Coles (Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs) was present.
Mr Justice Moore-Bick was received by The Queen upon his appointment as a Justice of the High Court when Her Majesty conferred upon him the honour of Knighthood and invested him with the Insignia of a Knight Bachelor.
Mrs Justice Hogg was received by The Queen upon her appointment as a Justice of the High Court when Her Majesty invested her with the Insignia of a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
The Lady Wilson of Rievaulx was received by The Queen and delivered up the Insignia of the Order of the Garter worn by her husband, the late Lord Wilson of Rievaulx.
The Earl Waldegrave was received by Her Majesty and delivered up the Insignia of the Order of the Garter worn by his father, the late Earl Waldegrave.
The Duke of Edinburgh, Patron, the Scots at War Trust, this morning attended a Study Seminar at the University of Edinburgh's Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Hope Park Square, Edinburgh.
His Royal Highness this afternoon visited the Lower Methil Heritage Centre, High Street, Lower Methil, and was received by Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of Fife (the Earl of Elgin and Kincardine KT).
The Duke of Edinburgh, Permanent Master, the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights, was represented by Mr Ole Kverndal (Prime Warden) at the Memorial Service for Mr and Mrs Derek Kimber which was held in St Michael Paternoster Royal, London EC4, today.
ST JAMES'S PALACE
February 9: The Prince of Wales arrived in Sarajevo this morning and was received by Her Majesty's Ambassador to the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (His Excellency Mr Brian Hopkinson).
His Royal Highness called on President Izetbegovic at the Presidency.
Later The Prince of Wales received Admiral Leighton Smith (Commander Implementation Force) and Mr Carl Bildt (High Representative) at the British Embassy).
His Royal Highness afterwards visited the National Library which was badly damaged by shelling in 1992. The Prince of Wales subsequently visited a British relief project designed to restore gas supplies to the people of the City.
This afternoon His Royal Highness visited the Headquarters of Allied Command Europe's Rapid Reaction Corps in Sarajevo, before flying to North-west Bosnia to meet British Troops on operations in support of the Nato Implementation Force in Mrkonjic Grad.
The Prince of Wales this evening arrived at Royal Air Force Lyneham from Bosnia.
Mr Stephen Lamport, Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Tabor and Mr Allan Percival were in attendance.
YORK HOUSE
February 9: The Duchess of Kent, Patron, UNICEF, this afternoon visited the Urban Basic Services for the Poor Project, Veranasi, India.
Royal engagements
TOMORROW:
Prince Edward, as patron, will attend a ball to mark the 40th anniversary of the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain at Grosvenor House at 7.00.
The Duke of Kent, as President of the Royal Choral Society, will attend a performance of the Dream of Gerontius given by the society and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Albert Hall at 7.15.
Events
TODAY: The Queen's Life Guard mounts at Horse Guards at 11.00.
TOMORROW: The Queen's Life Guard mounts at Horse Guards at 11.00. The Queen's Guard mounts at Buckingham Palace at 11.30.
TODAY. BIRTHS: Charles Lamb, essayist, London, 1775; Samuel Plimsoll, inventor of the Plimsoll line for ships, Bristol, 1824; Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, Prime Minister 1957-63, London, 1894; Bertolt Brecht, dramatist and theatre director, Augsburg, Germany, 1898; Joyce Grenfell, actress and broadcaster, London, 1910.
DEATHS: Sir William Dugdale, Garter King of Arms 1677-86, Blyth Hall, Warwickshire, 1686; Alexander Pushkin, writer, 1837; Francis Danby, painter, Exmouth, 1861; Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister, surgeon and pioneer of antiseptic surgery, Walmer, Kent, 1912; Wilhelm Konrad von Rontgen, discoverer of X-rays, Nobel laureate 1901, Munich, 1923; Achille Ratti, Pope Pius XI 1922-39, Rome, 1939; Hugh Montague Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard, Marshal of the RAF, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police 1931-35, 1956.
The marriage of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 1840.
Conscription began in Britain, 1916.
New Delhi became the capital of India, 1931.
TOMORROW
BIRTHS: Elizabeth of York, Consort of King Henry VII, London, 1465 (she died this day, London, 1503); William Fox Talbot, photographic pioneer, Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, 1800; Thomas Alva Edison, inventor, Milan, Ohio, 1847; Farouk I, King of Egypt 1936-52, Cairo, 1920.
DEATHS: Jean Foucault, physicist, Paris, 1868; Honore Daumier, caricaturist and painter, Valmondois, France, 1879; Sir Charles Parsons, inventor of the steam turbine, Kingston, Jamaica, 1931; John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, novelist, historian, Governor-General of Canada 1935-40, Montreal, 1940; Sergy Eisenstein, film director, Moscow, 1948.
London University founded, 1826.
Bernadette Soubirous stated that a vision of the Virgin Mary had appeared before her, Lourdes, France, 1858.
The first weekly weather report was issued by Meteorological Office, 1878.
The Lateran Treaty established an independent Vatican City, 1929.
Margaret Thatcher became the first woman leader of a British political party, 1975.
The Prince of Wales standing yesterday in the ruins of Sarajevo's National Library, once a grand building in a mixture of Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman styles. "Like everybody else that has come to this city, I can only express how appalled I am at the wanton destruction, not only of buildings like this, but of other people's lives," the Prince said
Mr and Mrs Derek Kimber
The Duke of Edinburgh, as Permanent Master of the Shipwrights' Company, was represented by Mr Ole Kverndal, Prime Warden of the Shipwrights' Company, at a service of thanksgiving for the lives of Mr Derek Barton Kimber, master shipbuilder, and Mrs Gwen Kimber held yesterday at St Michael Paternoster Royal.
Canon Glyn Jones officiated, assisted by the Rev Basil Watson, honorary chaplain to the company. Mr Peter Usher, President of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects, read the lesson and Mr Jeremy Kimber, son, read The Ship by Bishop Brent. Mr T. John Parker gave an address. Among others present were:
Mr and Mrs Simon Kimber (son and daughter-in-law), Mr Anthony and Dr Jane Allen (son-in-law and daughter), Mr John Cuckney (son-in-law), Mrs Jeremy Kimber (daughter-in-law), Mr Michael Brotherton, Dr and Mrs E W Heining, Mr Mark Heining, Ms Jane Allen.
Viscount Caldecote, Sir Charles Alexander, Admiral Sir Anthony Griffin, Sir Ross and Lady Belch, Sir James Watt, Sir Brian and Lady Shaw, Sir Richard O'Brien, Sir David and Lady Nicolson, Sir Eddie Kulukundis, Lady Brittan, Sir Peter Cazalet, Rear-Admiral C A W Weston, Mr Patrick Shovelton.
Mr and Mrs J G Davis, Major-General and Mrs Nigel Gribbon, Mr John Browne, Mr Richard Holmes, Mr and Mrs C H Baylis, Mr Peter Cox, Mr G H Fuller, Mr David Goodrich, Mr John Martin, Mr John Gratwick, Mr and Mrs Peter Le Cheminant, Mr John Cousins, Professor C Kuo, Mr Peter Cowling, Mr Nigel Wilder, Mrs R Roberts, Mr S J Kulukundis, Mr and Mrs Richard Heyhoe, Mr Peter Gurney, Mr John Young.
Members of the Court and the Clerk of the Shipwrights' Company, Council Members of RINA, Mr Lawrence Turner (Master of the Engineers' Company), Mr Peter Arthur (Lloyds Register of Shipping), Mr Derek Prentis (chairman, London Maritime Association and secretary, Aldgate Ward Club) and Mrs Prentis, Mr Roger Heath (World-Wide Shipping), Mr Nigel Gibbs (Welsh Overseas Freighters) and Mrs Gibbs, Mr Finn W Arnesen (Royal Bank of Scotland, Shipping Business Centre), Mr Stewart Conacher (Chamber of Shipping), Mr Ian D McNeill (Murray Lawrence (Underwriting Agents).
Mr James W Templeton (ABS Europe), Professor P Grootenhuis and Mr Peter Moore (Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine), Mr Tim Statham (City and Guilds of London Institute) with Mrs Frances Rimmer; Brigadier John Appleton (Royal Academy of Engineering), Mr Charles Bowman (president, City Livery Club), Captain I B Sutherland (Anchorites), Mr Geoff G Mills (Mills & Co) and Mr R Charvet (Harvey Club) and Mrs Charvet.
THE Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup at Leopardstown tomorrow, postponed from last Sunday, is likely to go ahead and it affords Monsieur Le Cure the opportunity to add strength to his Cheltenham Gold Cup credentials.
They already look substantial after his excellent second in the King George VI Chase at Sandown, but the John Edwards-trained gelding can put the pressure on One Man's supporters by registering a winning effort on tomorrow's likely soft ground.
Monsieur Le Cure thrives on a test of stamina and he will get that at Leopardstown. A course spokesman said yesterday: "The forecast is for showers and high wind, but we don't foresee any problems with the card going ahead at this stage. The ground is now yielding to soft."
Soft ground will also be welcomed by the connections of Master Oats who, like Monsieur Le Cure, has been stabled in Ireland since last Sunday.
Norman Williamson, who proved his fitness after returning to race riding at Clonmel on Thursday, reports the Gold Cup winner to be in good form but a watching brief may be advisable tomorrow. After a bad mistake in the King George, Master Oats did well to finish only three lengths off Monsieur Le Cure in third place, but his disappointing performance at Chepstow before that when he was pulled up, indicated that problems with bursting blood vessels may still exist.
Another horse who will thrive on the soft is the promising Imperial Call, who may emerge as the main local hope. The trainer, Fergie Sutherland, schooled Imperial Call at Clonmel on Thursday and was delighted with the seven-year-old's form. "The softer the ground, the better," Sutherland said.
In contrast, the ground looks to have turned against Life Of A Lord, who was supported in the ante-post lists before last Sunday. Aidan O'Brien was confident of a big run then, but his jockey, Charlie Swan, yesterday said: "The grounds looks to be against him now."
There are no such concerns about Monsieur Le Cure who can prove that, on soft ground, he will be a worthy Cheltenham adversary for One Man.
TODAY. Mr Larry Adler, mouth organist, 82; Mr Michael Apted, film director, 55; Field Marshal Sir Nigel Bagnall, 69; Sir Michael Bishop, chairman, British Midland Airways, 54; Miss Olwyn Bowey, painter, 60; Dr Alexander Comfort, physician, poet and novelist, 76; Mr John Hayes, secretary-general, Law Society, 51; Professor J. Heslop-Harrison, botanist, 76; the Rev Donald Hilton, former Moderator of the General Assembly of the United Reformed Church, 64;
Mr Keith Mans, MP, 50; Mr Peter Middleton, former chief executive officer, Lloyd's, 56; Lord Milne, 87; Mr Greg Norman, golfer, 41; Lord Orr-Ewing, 84; Group Captain Sir Gordon Pirie, 78; Miss Leontyne Price, soprano, 69; Sir Idwal Pugh, former Ombudsman, 78; Miss Gail Rebuck, chief executive, Random House, 46; Lord Justice Rose, 59; Mr Mark Spitz, swimmer, 46; Mr Robert Wagner, actor, 66.
TOMORROW
Sir Ronald Arculus, former diplomat, 73; Vice-Admiral Sir Peter Berger, 71; Professor Marilyn Butler, Rector, Exeter College, Oxford, 59; Sir Alec Cairncross, former Chancellor, Glasgow University, 85; Brigadier Iain Cameron, 53; Dr Timothy Chambers, paediatrician, 50; Mr James Couchman, MP, 54; Mr C.H. Dearnley, organist, 66; Mr Patrick Leigh Fermor, author, 81; Sir Archibald Forster, former chairman, Esso UK, 68; Sir Vivian Fuchs, former director, British Antarctic Survey, 88; Mr Bryan Gould, former MP, 57; Mr Win Griffiths, MP, 53; Mr Michael Jackson, Controller, BBC2, 38; General Sir Jeremy Mackenzie, 55; Mr Leslie Nielsen, actor, 70; Miss Mary Quant, fashion designer, 62; Mr Burt Reynolds, actor, 59; the Earl of Rosebery, 66; Mr Patrick Holmes Sellors, ophthalmologist, 62; Baroness Sharples, 73; Mr Dennis Skinner, MP, 64; Mr John Surtees, former motor cycle and motor racing champion, 62; Mr E.W. Swanton, author and sports commentator, 89; Miss Mary Tregear, Oriental art historian, 72; Mr M.C. Walker, chairman, Iceland Frozen Foods, 50.
NICK FALDO went hunting for birdies in the Buick Invitational here at Torrey Pines, near San Diego, in an effort to play four full rounds for the first time in five weeks. In a round of 69, he contributed four birdies to the 652 registered during a first round in which 112 players in the 156-strong field bettered par on the receptive greens of the North and South courses.
With statistics like that, Faldo knew that he must make a marked improvement to still be in action at the weekend. "That 69 felt like a 79. It was so easy out there," he said. He finished six shots off the pace set by the American trio of Tom Lehman, Doug Martin and Kirk Triplett. Like Faldo, they, too, played the North Course, enjoying two eagles and 27 birdies between them.
Faldo, who was restricted to 36 holes when rain forced the Pro-Am event at Pebble Beach last week to be abandoned, is scheduled to take a two-week break before embarking on a run of five tournaments before the Masters.
He faced a far stricter test for his second round on the South Course yesterday. "This one is about two shots tougher than the North," Faldo said, "but I am confident because I am playing well. I just need a few putts to drop. I had a couple of mysteries on the greens and then I began second-guessing the putts."
Traditionally, this tournament has one of the lower halfway cuts on the US PGA Tour and Faldo's compatriot, Barry Lane, was also uneasy after a 69 in the first round on the North Course.
MARK McNULTY shot a five-under-par 67 to move four shots clear of the field at the halfway stage of the Dimension Data Pro-Am tournament in Sun City yesterday.
McNulty, who won the Million Dollar Golf Challenge at the South African resort in 1987, had a bogey-free round over the Gary Player Country Club course, one of two being used for the tournament.
Nick Price, his fellow Zimbabwean, who led after the first round, was ill at ease with his putter on his way to a 72. He shared second place with Andre Cruse, of South Africa, who recorded a 67 after a 73 on the opening day.
"It was a kind of nothing day for me, although I played much the same as yesterday," Price, who also played the Gary Player course, said, "but although Mark [McNulty] had a good round today, he's not out of reach."
Among those who missed the cut, set at 147, was Costatino Rocca, the Europe Ryder Cup player. The Italian followed his first-round 73 with a 76.
Severiano Ballesteros, Jose Maria Olazabal and Colin Montgomerie will all make their first appearance of the year in a four-ball challenge match, the Canaries Cup, to be played at the Royal Las Palmas club, Gran Canaria, on March 4. Sam Torrance teams up with Montgomerie, his fellow Scot, to take on the Spaniards.
WIGAN are hoping that their past does not catch up with them tomorrow. At Salford, a "little Wigan" nowadays, nostalgia will play no part in the attempt by several former Central Park stalwarts to ambush the holders of rugby league's Silk Cut Challenge Cup.
Between them, Steve Hampson, the full back, Sam Panapa, the loose forward, and Andy Gregory, the Salford coach, have 13 winners' medals from Wigan's consecutive triumphs in the competion since 1988. Their joint collection is just six fewer than that of the Wigan line-up for the fifth-round encounter between the championship and first division title-holders, if one does not count those belonging to Shaun Edwards.
Edwards had Gregory as his half back partner in five of his nine Challenge Cup successes. "Wigan's side has changed considerably since I left four years ago," Gregory said, "but they are still the best by a long way and it's still Shaun who makes them tick. When he's not there, they are nowhere near as effective."
The Wigan captain, who has already promised Gregory a consolation drink afterwards, is aiming to extend his and Wigan's phenomenal unbeaten Challenge Cup run to 44 ties since a first-round defeat at Oldham in 1987 a game in which Gregory played. "That was a surprise," he said. "The run has got to end sometime. Why shouldn't it be us?"
Scott Naylor, in the centre, and Steve Blakeley, at stand-off half, are other former Central Park rank-and-filers lying in wait for a Wigan side restored to full strength by the return to the back row of Andy Farrell, who starts his first match for two months after a hernia operation.
Warrington are gradually emerging from a slump, under the unlikely coaching alliance of Alex Murphy and John Dorahy, whose first home opponents, Leeds, only just crawled out of the hole they dug for themselves in the fourth round at Swinton. Nerves could well dictate the outcome of their televised confrontation today.
In a surprise move, Leeds have switched Francis Cummins from the wing to an unaccustomed position at full back, in place of Alan Tait. They have recalled Tony Kemp at stand-off half after a lengthy absence through injury and have replaced Barrie McDermott with Harvey Howard in the front row a problem area for Warrington. Mark Jones will step up from the substitutes' bench should a viral infection prevent Gary Chambers from playing.
Leigh, the last survivors from the second division, entertain Bradford Bulls having won their past 12 matches. St Helens have Scott Gibbs back from suspension and have moved Andy Northey from the centre to the pack as cover for Dean Busby whose damaged knee looks likely to rule him out two months for their visit to Rochdale.
In an all-first division tie, Hull are attempting to reach the quarter-finals for the first time since 1992, while Keighley have not made the last eight for 20 years. Andy Fisher is available in the second row for Hull having escaped a suspension for a tripping incident against Hunslet in the previous round.
A third giant-killing act was beyond West Hull last night as the last amateur team in the Silk Cut Challenge Cup lost 40-8 to Wakefield Trinity. Freddie Banquet, the France international, scored three of the first division side's nine tries. Craig Bellis claimed West Hull's one touchdown.
STEPHEN HENDRY broke his own record for consecutive points scored without an opponent potting a ball during an overwhelming 6-0 whitewash of Jimmy White in the quarter-finals of the Benson and Hedges Masters snooker tournament at Wembley Conference Centre last night. The match lasted only 73 minutes.
The run of 487 points, which superseded the 454 he aggregated successively against Willie Thorne in the 1994 United Kingdom championship, began when the world champion fashioned a 69 clearance in the opening frame. Hendry, who will play his fellow Scot, Alan McManus, this evening for a place in the final, followed with breaks of 134, 127, 43 and 65 before finally allowing White to pot a red while leading 49-0 in the fifth frame. Hendry clinched the final frame with a break of 105.
"I don't think I've ever cued any better than that, even when I made seven century breaks against Ken Doherty in the UK final a couple of years ago," he said. "Mind you, there's no way I'm going to get carried away because I'm only in the semi-finals."
Steve Davis was adamant that his inspired performance against Ken Doherty in the previous round was not a false dawn after losing 6-4 to McManus. "Sometimes good results are not always guaranteed to come along with good form," Davis said.
Ronnie O'Sullivan, who injured his right foot on Thursday by kicking a concrete plant pot before beating Darren Morgan 6-4, has damaged ligaments and spent yesterday on crutches. He has been issued with a plaster cast but has no intention of withdrawing from his semi-final today against Andy Hicks.
THE Tote Gold Trophy, whose prize-money of £100,000 makes it Europe's most valuable handicap hurdle, has at last enjoyed some luck from the elements and looks sure to go ahead at Newbury this afternoon. But the sponsors may be made to pay for their good fortune after offering 8-1 against Squire Silk.
Down the years, the race, which made its name as the Schweppes, has succumbed more often than any other to the elements with nine cancellations since 1969, and for most of this week the omens for today's fixture were not encouraging.
However, the sudden arrival of rain and milder temperatures should enable the biggest field since 1987 to get under way and punters, frustrated by the recent cold snap, have an ideal opportunity to strike.
Pridwell, third behind Mysilv in this race last year and at Haydock on his most recent run, is the best handicapped horse but looks to save a bit for himself at the end of races. With Martin Pipe's horses slightly under a cloud, it is worth looking elsewhere.
Express Gift impressed when finishing fast behind Lonesome Train at Cheltenham on his only run this term, but that was 91 days ago.
Although fully recovered from pulling a muscle in his hindquarters prior to The Ladbroke, Mary Reveley was cautious about his chances yesterday. "With the weather we have had in the last month, he would not be 110 per cent. It would be an impossibility. I am more hopeful than confident. He can handle soft ground but Newbury-style heavy ground would finish him off."
Warm Spell, trained by Gary Moore, bounced back to his best at Kempton last month, his first run over hurdles for almost two years, but needs to improve again. There is always a danger that horses who have run particularly well after a long lay-off can disappoint next time. His price looks plenty short enough.
Squire Silk, a winner over course and distance in October, arguably ran his best race when finishing fourth in The Ladbroke under the steadier of 11 st 5lb, having been deprived of a clear run at a crucial stage turning for home. "Paul [Carberry] thought he would have won but for that and he is not the sort of person to normally make excuses," Andy Turnell, trainer of Squire Silk, said yesterday.
Well backed yesterday at 10-1, Squire Silk can be forgiven a previous poor run at Sandown, where the track and ground may have been against him, while he failed to stay an extended 2 1/2 miles in the Tote Silver Trophy at Chepstow, the form of which now looks outstanding.
"He seems to be in great form. He's got a big heart and is a quick little horse. For a long time, I hoped he might make up into a Champion Hurdle horse and his run in Ireland gave me more heart, so he's been entered," Turnell added.
With winning form in very soft ground and in large fields, Squire Silk looks excellent value at 8-1. Express Gift is the danger.
The opening Mandarin Handicap Chase does not look punter-friendly, although the booking of Adrian Maguire for Clever Shepherd catches the eye. If Philip Hobbs's consistent chaser reproduces the form which saw him finish a good second to the progressive Smith's Band at Wincantion, he should be thereabouts.
Question marks also hang over several of the runners in the Mitsubishi Shogun Game Spirit Chase, but Viking Flagship has ground and trip in his favour for the first time this season along with Maguire and could be the value to beat Travado, who would prefer better going, and Valfinet.
Although Idiot's Lady carries considerable stable confidence in the Steve Harris 40th Birthday Novices' Chase, there could be some each-way value to be had with River Lossie. Whatever the fate of the Charlie Egerton runner, the Chaddleworth handler should be on the mark with Frontager, who merits strong support in the second and weaker division of the Val's Birthday Novices' Hurdle.
Only a breakdown of the body, the runner's machine, or the cry of a baby will stop Zola Pieterse from taking a significant stride today towards a third Olympic Games appearance. She is scheduled to run in the cross-country trials for South Africa, intent on making the team for the world championships in Stellenbosch on March 23. After that, the Olympic trials in April and the decision of whether to go for the 5,000 or 10,000 metres in Atlanta this summer or, instead, come back for Sydney in the year 2000, when she will be 34.
The most reassuring surprise about Pieterse, the former Zola Budd, is the smile: it is mature, maternal, positive ... far, far away from the 17-year-old who, under a flag of convenience, arrived in England from the apartheid-isolated South Africa a dozen years ago and, bewildered by the culture shock, peered through her glasses at the assembled press and anti-apartheid demonstrators, for all the world a cornered and frightened fawn.
One thing that Pieterse has never lost is the intensity, the inner motivation, anger even, that drove a tiny, barefoot girl into the consciousness of the world when, early in 1984, she became the fastest woman over 5,000 metres but could not have her time ratified as a world record because of South Africa's sporting isolation.
Now, there is a greater purpose to her life Lisa, a daughter who was born in October. After the birth, and despite the fact that Mike Pieterse, her husband, had left the family home, Pieterse believes that she gained physical and mental strength.
"I can't explain the feeling," Pieterse said, "but I know that, if you believe in something as much as I believe that I can run as fast as I ever did, then that is half the battle. I started running a week after Lisa was born; I know that, if I don't over-train, if the muscles don't rebel in any way, I have at least as much in there."
Yet, Lisa holds the key. That serene child dictates at what hour, morning and afternoon, her mother will take her two-hour training run across the remote veldt around Bloemfontein, where Pieterse is in her element.
She found as a child that she had a lightness and a fleetness that could defeat the boys, never mind the girls, on the ten-acre homestead. Those children were black as well as white, the offspring of the servants, and so, when Pieterse arrived in England, becoming instantly the symbol of violent anti-apartheid demonstration, the ignorance of people who ran her, literally, off the course was manifest. What they wanted her to say then and what she, an immature, solemn and withdrawn teenager could not articulate, was that there is no difference under the skin, no cause that justifies racial inequality ... but she can say it now.
She relishes the new South Africa and part of her desire is to get back on the rostrum, this time like Francois Pienaar, the rugby union captain, to be recognised by a whole nation. Yet if that baby should cry, if Lisa becomes unwell, she will not race. The priorities for the runner, as much as for any human being, change. Pieterse, herself, is the youngest of six children, but her birth almost killed her mother, who was given 13 pints of blood during the three-day struggle to produce the tiny, thin baby.
Imagine, then, the fear of Pieterse last year when her own pregnancy was diagnosed as problematical. She took six months off from running the first time in her life that she had ever obeyed warnings that to run, even surreptitiously, defied nature's alarms.
"People caricatured my life as if I was someone born to run free," she said. "I can't honestly say that I ever ran for fun; without the goals, I don't think I would ever have run in the first place. I never knew the meaning of ‘fun run'."
Now, though, there is a total change. "I don't have the time, because of Lisa, to think about my running," she said. "I don't philosophise any more. I guess what I'm saying is that, unless me and my husband work out our differences, Lisa is the only person in the world that I have responsibility for. The whole point of motherhood is that you love someone unconditionally."
At that moment, Pieterse became more introspective, talking about the anger that is exorcised in her competitive running. "When I run, it is the only time I think about things that happened, the only time I allow emotions from the past," she said.
The past is not just born out of the remoteness, the wild, of the isolated town of Bloemfontein. There, the girls wear flower dresses, the young congregate at cafes listening to Cliff Richard and Pat Boone. Unseen by the many, however, in a late-night bar, I witnessed one young Afrikaner sell another a handgun for 800 rand (about £130). They feel, the changing South Africa, the need for protection.
The next day, a month ago, Pieterse, with shoes, won a ten-kilometre race, coming in three minutes ahead of the field but two minutes slower than her best time of 32min 22sec. This, nevertheless, was remarkable timing, given that she had been back in serious preparation barely one month.
What pushes her? England does. The memory, the supressed anger, of the people who manipulated her, including her late father, who lost his daughter's trust when he took most of the money that the Daily Mail provided to take her to England, to promote exclusively her career and to persuade the Government to push her ahead of the queue for British citizenship on the grounds that her grandfather had been a printer in Hackney.
"Yes, I was very naive of the ways of the world," she said. "In my running, I was very determined; I was a student at university, but my generation had no news from outside. I didn't even know who Nelson Mandela was until I arrived in England. That couldn't happen today because we can switch on Sky News, BBC News and there will be no going back, no censorship for our children."
What, in retrospect, shocks and hurts is that nobody tried to explain to her what kind of a pawn she was perceived as. She felt still feels that she was a closed book to them and that any lingering ill feelings that she has about their behaviour is best channelled into her running.
"Even today, I probably trust animals more than I do people," she said. Her two dogs travel in her off-road vehicle, together, of course, with Lisa. She would trust, she said, her mother with money or anything else. Her father, if he were alive? No answer Pieterse saying only through measured silence the pain of her inner motivation.
That pain has always been concentrated in the death of her sister, Jennith, a nursing sister 11 years her senior, who died after an operation when Pieterse was 14. "That changed everything," she said. "I changed my school, my coach. I started to run seriously, aggressively."
Motivation now is not anger and loneliness Lisa ensures that yet while there is, as yet, no sponsor, nobody to push or prod or even guide, there is a runner whose opponents believe will return at least as strong as before. The new Pieterse is ready for the new South Africa ... if only baby Lisa will stay well and silent.
SPECTATORS at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham today are advised to expect a British record in the triple jump, perhaps even a world record. They should not, however, expect to see Jonathan Edwards.
This time, the stage is set for Britain's other potential Olympic medal-winner in the discipline. Ashia Hansen takes on Inessa Kravets, the women's world record-holder, confident that her own British record will fall, while those in the camp of Iva Prandzheva, the world championship runner-up, have been asking what bonus will be paid if the world mark is beaten.
The trio is assembled for the British leg of the Ricoh Tour, the indoor equivalent of the Golden Four summer grand prix. The women's triple jump is one of six events chosen for the tour this winter and Hansen is ready for a share of the spotlight with the big names on view, such as Sally Gunnell, Sandra Farmer-Patrick, Maria Mutola and Moses Kiptanui.
Hansen has never beaten Kravets, who broke the record at the world athletics championships in Gothenburg last summer, but is confident she can today. "She has got to the stage where she believes in herself," Frank Attoh, her coach, said.
Hansen's self-belief has been bolstered by three weeks in South Africa where she not only jumped to within two centimetres of her British outdoor record but also managed to wipe away some of the mystique surrounding her strongest competitors.
She watched Anna Biryukova, the European champion, in training. "Before, she was overawed by the name Biryukova," Attoh said, "but she saw the kind of training she did and Ashia trains just as hard."
Hansen's sessions include two-footed bunny jumps over 3ft 6in hurdles; sets of six, several times over, designed to improve her rebound through each phase. "She trains almost like a man," Attoh said.
"My strength is my speed and I can hop a long way," Hansen said. The step was her weakness, but, after giving that phase attention in South Africa, "it has definitely come on". Her jumping has improved, too. In South Africa, Hansen beat her previous best long jump three times in one competition.
The outdoor world record is 15.50 metres, the indoor mark 15.03 metres. Hansen's outdoor British record is 14.66 metres, ranking her world No7 in 1995; her indoor record is 14.29 metres. According to Attoh, 14.66 metres "could go this weekend".
Hansen has improved with every season since Attoh began coaching her three years ago and he expects that to continue. This year he wants 14.80 metres indoors and 15 metres outdoors, which would put her in contention for a medal in the first Olympic women's triple jump.
"I am not thinking about the Olympics, even though I should be," Hansen said. She is preoccupied, for now, with winning a medal at the European indoor championships in Stockholm next month. None of the world top ten come from outside Europe, so a medal in Stockholm would underline her international credentials.
An Olympic medal, though, is a must for when she returns to South Africa. Coachloads of children from Soweto and Davidsonville chanted her name when they went to see her compete after she and Attoh had been into the townships to demonstrate jump techniques. She became an instant sporting heroine.
"It left me sad because they have no facilities and jump barefoot," Hansen said. "I will always be thinking about them. All they have got is a playing field and a cut-out pit filled with sawdust instead of sand."
Today, Hansen returns to the comfort of sand "the sawdust was hard" but she will not have the chanting to lift her. The competition should do it, though. Kravets and Prandzheva beware.
High time we had a tale of Corinthian beauty in this space and so here is one, from Italy, no less. There was Gigi Casiraghi, the Italy and Lazio centre-forward, and there was Alberto Fontana, the goalie from Bari.
Fontana came haring out of his area to play the ball and the referee, Signor Bolini, was not impressed. He decided at once to send Fontana off for handball.
Casiraghi went to the ref and explained that the goalie had played the ball with his chest. The ref believed him and Fontana stayed on.
I suppose that Fontana should then have won the match by saving a Casiraghi penalty, but in fact, Lazio won 4-3. "I learnt my ancient values from my father," Casiraghi said.
Faithful readers of this column will recall the footballer of a couple of weeks back who scored eight goals and then had them all cancelled. The match was abandoned due to a shortage of players among the opposition.
Tony Booth, a referee from Middlesex, writes to tell me of a tie that was abandoned when Havant, 1-0 down against Basingstoke with four players sent off, lost another player through injury. This timely loss prompted the ref to call the game off.
The FA said later that the ref need not have abandoned the game. It is generally accepted that you need seven at the start. If you lose any more along the way, that's football, son.
Truly faithful readers of this column will recall the rugby league player Barry Ashall, who broke his leg playing for Swinton against Keighley and played on. After that, he declared himself fit for the next game against Batley.
Well, Craig Randall, of Salford, has gone a bit further. He has been ruled out of tomorrow's match with Wigan after playing four games with a broken ankle. "I've been told I'll be out for six weeks," he said. "It's a blow, but at least the lads now know I wasn't faking injury."
Seattle rumbled
It is often supposed that the American sports industry is the most advanced in the world. Well, so it is, but advancement need not mean improvement. You don't often hear that, say, Manchester United are moving to Leeds in a fit of pique.
Yet the Seattle Seahawks, whose home support was so frenzied it was known as "the twelfth man", have sneaked out of Seattle, performing nothing less than a moonlight flit. Their moving vans came in at dead of night to avoid any possible demonstration by supporters.
The reason they left? Well money, obviously, but the reason given was that their home, the Kingdome, required $90 million to be spent on "protection against a major earthquake". Where have the Seahawks moved to? Southern California, where else?
As the Coca-Cola Olympics lurch toward us with ever increasing speed, it is time to ask ourselves the following question: what is it that truly embodies the Olympic spirit?
There can only be one answer, of course an American bank. This is because a certain bank is giving away a million bucks. No, not to impoverished athletes from the Third World. Just to punters, as a promotion for ... well, the bank.
NationsBank is the official bank of the 1996 Olympic Games and it is offering customers the chance to win a Southern Living Dream Home. It also offers 50 trips to the Games, ten cars the Olympic Gold Regal from Buick, since you ask and 100 IBM computers. The dream home will be built anywhere in the United States that the customer wants and the bank will contribute $100,000 [about £65,000] towards land purchase and tax.
"On behalf of the Atlanta committee for the Olympic Games, I congratulate NationsBank, Southern Living, Buick and IBM for working together to offer consumers these outstanding prizes," Billy Payne, president of the above committee, said. "Our sponsors have been working side by side with us to stage the 1996 Olympic Games. Many are also working together to benefit fans of the Olympic Games. They truly embody the Olympic spirit."
And there was this column thinking it was just a sleazy promotion. But then I'm very naive, you know.
Diego is not having the happiest of times as he plays for Boca Juniors. The other week, at the end of the match, he flung his shirt into a crowd: a generous donation of a precious souvenir from a great, great man. A fan caught it and chucked it straight back.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants listing of successful candidates in Final Examination held December, 1995 appears in The Times today in alphabetical order. This listing is not available on the database.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants' list of referrals appears in The Times today in alphabetical order. This listing is not available on the database.
DENNIS ANDRIES continues to defy time. The former world light-heavyweight champion from Hackney is still trying to get back to the top and, at the age of 42, he is making a second attempt to lift the British cruiserweight championship. He meets Terry Dunstan, of Vauxhall, again, at the London Arena tonight.
When the two last met, many believed Andries won. The bout was a close one and Andries thought his greater aggression swung the contest his way. The decision still rankles. He dislikes Dunstan and refers to him as "a girl". They almost came to blows at a press conference recently.
While Andries, at times, looked tired and ring-worn in that bout in Glasgow last May and Dunstan, being 15 years younger, should have improved enough to win clearly this time, the old man's chances should not be ruled out. He is perhaps the fittest and toughest British boxer today and it should not surprise anyone if he outlasts the younger man.
So often in his career of 63 contests, he has proved the experts wrong. He was written off in 1978 when he was beaten by Bunny Johnson in a British light-heavyweight championship at Stoke, but Andries came back and lifted the title four years later and went on to win the European and world championships.
Dunstan is the hit-and-run type, the opposite of Andries, who does not like to take a backward step. Much will depend on who takes control first. If Andries manages to land a solid blow early, Dunstan could lose heart; after all, he has had only 11 contests against ordinary opposition, while Andries has met some of the toughest in the game, including Thomas Hearns and Jeff Harding. However, if Dunstan, who is 6ft 3in, can use his height advantage of four inches and speed to keep Andries off in the early rounds, he could frustrate the old man and cause him to lose concentration.
From Air Commodore G. L. McRobbie
Sir, Contrary to your report ("Rethink on RAF swaps after crash", February 5), we would like to make clear that the RAF is not reviewing its exchange posting scheme.
The Tornado which crashed near Munster in Germany last month did not suffer a "minor instrument failure", nor did its Italian pilot order or initiate the ejection sequence.
The RAF respects the ability of our Italian aircrew colleagues every bit as much as we respect the abilities of our other Nato partners. All allied air forces strive hard to achieve good flight safety standards.
Yours sincerely,
GORDON McROBBIE
(Director of Public Relations (RAF)),
Ministry of Defence,
Main Building,
Whitehall, SW1.
February 6.
From Mr M. B. Warburton
Sir, The little steam engine in your front-page cartoon (February 5) need not worry: new Great Western trains don't go anywhere near Yeovil.
Even if it had been a South West train it would still be two miles from the town at Yeovil Junction.
Yours faithfully,
MARK B. WARBURTON,
10 Brayne Court,
Longwell Green,
Bristol, Avon.
February 5.
From Mr David Hawker
Sir, Mr Bruns (letter, February 1) expresses a common misconception about the results of national school tests.
He rightly points out that the tests are based on what an average 11-year-old should be able to achieve, but wrongly draws the conclusion that only 50 per cent should be expected to meet the standard for Level 4 in the national curriculum.
Level 4 is an expectation of achievement, not an average. In fact, if children are performing up to expectations we should see a substantial majority of 11-year-olds performing at this level or above.
Since the standard for Level 4 is fixed, the test results in future years will show the extent to which children's levels of attainment are improving. The tests at seven are already doing this.
Far from being too easy, they show simply that children's performance has improved in certain areas since the tests were introduced in 1991.
Yours faithfully,
DAVID HAWKER
(Assistant Chief Executive,
Statutory Assessment, 5-14),
School Curriculum and
Assessment Authority,
Newcombe House,
45 Notting Hill Gate, W11.
February 7.
From Mr Alan Beith, MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Liberal Democrat)
Sir, Lord Mackay of Clashfern ("A house devolved against itself", February 7) persists in believing that the constitution could not survive the possibility of Scottish MPs being able to ask questions at Westminster about matters in England which, in Scotland, would be devolved.
I do not recall any word of objection from him when the Prime Minister put forward the possibility of a Northern Ireland Assembly with devolved powers, which would leave Northern Ireland MPs at Westminster in exactly the same position. Nor, indeed, do I recall any word of objection from Conservatives and Unionists when this situation existed prior to the abolition of the Northern Ireland Parliament.
Yours faithfully,
ALAN BEITH,
House of Commons.
February 7.
From the Secretary of the Campaign for a Scottish Parliament
Sir, Your leader of February 8, "Blair's constitutional", makes much of the so-called "West Lothian question" whereby in certain circumstances, if Scotland had democratic control over legislation for its own health, education and legal system, 72 Scottish MPs could still vote in Westminster on Bills connected with English health, education and law.
The occasions when the handful of Scottish votes could make a difference are obviously confined to those on which the English themselves are fairly evenly divided on a matter relating to England but not Scotland. Moreover, the Scots do have an interest, since it is the state of affairs in England which always seems to drive Cabinet policy decisions, often with knock-on effects upon the whole UK.
On the other hand, week by week, and year by year the Scottish MPs, even if all 72 of them are in agreement, are regularly outvoted on matters applying only to Scotland by 500 English MPs, most of whom have little or no knowledge of Scottish law, health, education, or the values and attitudes of the Scots. They have no conceivable mandate from their English constituencies to interfere with our systems. What sort of "democracy" is this? It is not the "West Lothian question" which is a democratic scandal, but the "Westminster question".
The Conservative "defence of the Union" looks more likely to drive the Scots into opting for full independence than persuading them to accept the unsatisfactory status quo.
If English voters want to support a continuing United Kingdom they should support the parties promoting a Scottish parliament, as proposed by the Scottish Constitutional Convention, the Liberal Democrats and the new Labour Party.
Yours sincerely,
MARION RALLS, Secretary,
Campaign for a Scottish Parliament,
22 Royal Circus,
The New Town, Edinburgh.
February 8.
From Mr J. E. Richardson
Sir, The death of Fleur Lombard at Leo's supermarket, near Bristol, was tragic, but perhaps avoidable. In this, as with recent fires in other retail buildings at Chichester, Dover, Humberside and Southampton, part or all of the roof collapsed.
Smoke-control design evolved from horrendous fires experienced in the automotive industry during the 1950s and 1960s. These established that large, undivided buildings can contain heat until structural collapse occurs. Effective smoke-control systems reduce roof temperature and clearer visibility at floor level enables firefighters to do their job in less punishing conditions, minimising the risk of roof collapse or explosion.
Yours faithfully,
JIM RICHARDSON
(General Manager),
International Fire Technology, Ltd,
New Lane, Havant, Hampshire.
February 5.
From the President of the Chief and Assistant Chief Fire Officers' Association
Sir, The deaths of four firefighters and a young boy who had been rescued (reports, December 29; February 2, 5) have stunned the fire service and reminds us all of the terrible toll exacted by fire every year. Most of those tragedies, when they affect the public, are in the home.
Anyone who has read the Book of Remembrance in the Fire Service Chapel at Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, cannot but feel pride in the dedication to duty shown by every person named and a desire to ensure that those who risk all are well supported. This is especially true of our retained (part-time) firefighters, who provide cover and willingly give up their often limited leisure time to serve their communities. They also fought many of the fires during last year's long, dry summer alongside their whole-time colleagues.
Some, like Fleur Lombard, the first woman firefighter to die, whose funeral takes place on Tuesday, test themselves and explore the possibility of a full-time career through their retained service. Her enthusiasm again shows that merit and achievement are the real standards to be measured by and that colour or sex are irrelevant.
Others, like Michael Mee, who lost his life when he fell through ice last December while trying to rescue a child in West Yorkshire, show their dedication even when off duty.
We must all attempt to achieve greater safety in our homes and in the design of buildings so as to ensure that any lessons learnt are translated into safety programmes.
In mourning Michael Mee, Kevin Lane, Stephen Griffin and Fleur Lombard we believe their courage and determination should be seen as a shining example of committed public service.
Yours faithfully,
DENNIS DAVIS, President,
The Chief and Assistant Chief
Fire Officers' Association,
10-11 Pebble Close,
Amington, Tamworth, Staffordshire.
February 9.
From Mr Hugo Griffin-Jorgensen
Sir, "Dull month increases accidents" is the gist of your report (February 1) on January's weather. This shows that it would be appropriate for Britain to adopt the Nordic idea, that all vehicles use daylight driving lights (min. 21 watt) and in the absence of these use headlights at all times.
This has been law in Scandinavia and Finland for several years now and has led to a cut in the daytime accident rate of up to 4 per cent.
Yours sincerely,
HUGO GRIFFIN-JORGENSEN,
19 Harrow Road,
Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire.
February 4.
From Mr Peter Stonebridge
Sir, I read with great interest your report (February 6) on drivers with high-tech alarms being locked out of their cars by up to 100 watts of radio frequency power from some unsuspecting radio amateur.
I can do better than that. I can set off my high-tech car intruder alarm simply by using my satellite TV controller.
You are correct in reporting little interest in this matter in the motor trade. I am struggling to get anyone interested apart, that is, from my suffering neighbours, who know precisely when I tire of terrestrial TV programmes.
Yours faithfully,
PETER STONEBRIDGE,
Bridge House,
207 Henley Road, Ipswich, Suffolk.
From Sir Kit McMahon
Sir, It may be that, as Thomas Stuttaford suggests (Medical briefing, February 9), the laxative properties which apples were widely perceived to possess inclined Cezanne to paint them so often (though this explanation would leave open the question why all other 19th-century still-lifes were not also filled with apples).
As it happens, however, the painter himself gave another explanation, saying with a smile, late in life, "You know Cezanne's apples have their origin in a very distant past".
When he was at school in Aix, Emile Zola was also a pupil. Although the same age as Cezanne, he was placed two classes lower, and for this, together with his shyness, shortsightedness, bad accent, poverty and fatherlessness, was unmercifully bullied.
Cezanne took his part, befriending him, and as a result, was on one occasion himself beaten by the other boys. Emile was touched by this and the next day brought his friend Paul a large basket of apples (Henri Perruchot; Cezanne, translated by Humphrey Hare, Perpetua Books, 1961).
Yours faithfully,
KIT McMAHON,
The Old House,
Burleigh Lane, Minchinhampton,
Nr Stroud, Gloucestershire.
February 9.
From Mr Nick McDowell
Sir, The Cezanne show which I visited yesterday was ruined for me by what seems like a logistical absurdity.
Cezanne painted figures, still-lifes, bathers, views of Mont Sainte-Victoire throughout his life. The chief interest for me in seeing a body of his work is in assessing the ways in which his treatment of these subjects changed during his life.
Due, doubtless, to the constraints imposed by the ubiquitous personal stereos which provide a spoken tour through the exhibition by strict chronology, any opportunity of viewing, contiguously, bathing scenes (for example) from the early, middle and late periods has been sacrificed. Only by sprinting from room to room, endangering the hordes of students sitting on the floor sketching and myself, was I able to make comparisons between the bathers of each period.
What we need is a bathers room, a Mont Sainte-Victoire room, a still-lifes room and two rooms of portraits. Then Cezanne's modernism will be clear to students, sprinters and stereo-carriers alike. Take the pictures down, I say, and try again.
I am, Sir, your faithfully,
NICK McDOWELL,
The White Lodge, 55 Grove Park, SE5.
February 8.
From Sir Hugh Leggatt
Sir, The attention being given to the Cezanne exhibition at the Tate (reports and leading article, February 8) should remind us that up and down the country there are many local authority and university museums which, more often than not, are unable to afford a special loan exhibition of works of art.
For a modest outlay of £5 million a year, perhaps funded from the proceeds of the National Lottery, an important number of such exhibitions could be held throughout the UK.
The scheme could possibly be administered by the Museums and Galleries Commission and the annual subvention to any one institution limited to say £50,000.
Yours faithfully,
HUGH LEGGATT,
Flat 1, 10 Bury Street,
St James's, SW1.
February 9.
From Mr E. W. Houghton
Sir, Good news for those reportedly unfortunate people of Maidstone, Kent, who, according to your report (January 31, early editions), feel aggrieved that they live within earshot of the bells of All Saints. They can count their blessings.
If they really had to listen to every possible change on the bells (described in your report as "rings"), the 3,628,800 changes theoretically available on this ring of ten bells would take 720 times as long as the 31/2 hours your reporter tells us is needed to complete the set, which, using the same basis of calculation, would be roughly 105 days.
Yours faithfully,
E. W. HOUGHTON,
42 Chesterfield Crescent, Wing,
Nr Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire.
February 1.
From Mr David G. Davies
Sir, The Prime Minister frequently professes his admiration for our national summer game.
I hope therefore that he would regard the behaviour of a side batting first for eight days, then giving the opposition six hours in which to reply (leading article, "Great Scott", February 7), to be "not cricket".
Yours faithfully,
D. G. DAVIES,
41 Park Crescent,
Elstree, Hertfordshire.
February 9.
From Mrs Marina Atwater di Caporiacco
Sir, Yes, our opera house, La Fenice, will be rebuilt just as it was (leading article, January 31; also letters, February 1 and 3). We want it, the world wants it.
The cost of rebuilding will not be £200 million as you suggest. It will be not more than £50 million, of which £12 million has already been pledged by Assicurazioni Generali the same company as provided 296,000 Austrian lire for the first reconstruction of La Fenice in 1836 if the fire turns out to have been accidental.
My family house shares the walls over the royal staircase on the west side of the theatre with La Fenice. We were evacuated from it, and although we shall not be able to return for at least three weeks while the remaining walls of the theatre are strengthened, we can only praise the courage and skill of the firemen in saving all the surrounding buildings.
The destruction could have been much worse. On the night of the fire, the wind seemed to blow the cinders upwards and dropped them on the islands of Giudecca and S.Giorgio.
We Venetians were lucky in our misfortune, and are treating it as the greatest challenge. There will be no interminable hearings or committee meetings or the usual compromises. This time, with the mayor of Venice, Massimo Cacciari, as a wise and benevolent dictator and supported by a presidential decree, we shall do things the way of the Habsburgs, who knew a thing or two about getting things done. In 1836 it took one year to rebuild La Fenice, although it is true that on that occasion the atrium and the Sale Apollinee had not been touched by fire. In 1577 the Palazzo Ducale took 25 years to rebuild; and over 60 years went by before the stone bridge at the Rialto was built at the end of the 16th century, after the last wooden bridge had collapsed.
But for us the reconstruction has begun, and already the scaffolding is now going up.
Sincerely,
M. ATWATER di CAPORIACCO,
Palazzo Molin,
S.Marco 1981, Venice.
February 6.
Cezanne was a self-publicist who would have delighted in the attention and recognition being paid to his work by the public who have queued for hours to see it
The question is: can Cezanne beat Picasso? Matisse did. But then Matisse worldwide beat Monet, who beat Picasso, who beat Manet. Vermeer is coming through strong, though he will suffer from being in The Hague. None of them beats King Tut.
The Cezanne show that moved from Paris to open this week at the Tate is a sensation. Says the ticket agent: "It's comparable with a major rock act like Bruce Springsteen." The hyperbole begins with attendance figures and goes on to money. The entrance charge is £7 and the booking office is perpetually engaged. Queues stretch round the block and up into Pimlico. Visitors by the thousand will crawl into Cezanne, and crawl out again exhausted, apparently purged to face the world.
The art blockbuster seems to leave everyone better off. It takes paintings, which cost little to create, and adds huge value to them. Among the cognoscenti, the critics praise the art and sneer at the masses in the queue. Conservatives sneer at the art and sneer at the queues as well. Artists keep their counsel, but they too sneer at the queues.
The public disregards them all and enjoys Cezanne. It not only looks at the paintings but buys Cezanne videos, Cezanne cookbooks, Cezanne mugs, Cezanne diaries and Cezanne CD-Roms. People can paint their own Cezanne by computer. They can sign up for Cezanne tours of Aix. On television they can watch poets and painters trotting up Mont Ste-Victoire to handle Cezanne's sacred rocks. The catalogue is so vast as to be unusable in the exhibition and unreadable in bed. It splits the bottom of its Cezanne plastic bag. Like an illuminated missal it is best kept chained to a lectern. (But then it is a modern illuminated missal.)
At the opening banquet, guests met real-life Cezanne descendants. They pretended they were at Le Tholonet and ate aubergine with goat's cheese and tapenade, followed by lamb with ragout of fennel, red pepper and olives. They sipped Cotes de Provence, marvelled at the Cezanne table settings and praised Ernst & Young for its sponsorship. The less fortunate could eat "Cezannewiches" at Pret A Manger and buy Cezanne scarves at Harvey Nichols. The Cezanne family contrives to take a cut by endorsing the souvenirs.
Critics like to ask what Cezanne would have made of it all. A paradox is declared between the grandeur of the blockbuster and the historic struggle of its poor, neglected instigator. From this paradox a judgment is engineered, that there is something obscene about the rich wining and dining, wheeling and dealing over the grave of a humble artist. His name should not be associated with retail products nor the public induced to part with £7 at his door. We should all stand before him in hairshirts. A BBC radio discussion this week declared collective horror at the commercialising of Cezanne. A man from the ICA registered a formal protest. A writer in The Independent concluded that, had he known of the Tate success, Cezanne would have stayed at home.
I don't believe it. Cezanne was famously eager for recognition. A tetchy misanthrope who inherited family money and was never poor, he longed to hang in a museum and be appreciated by many. His life was uneventful and uninteresting and his reclusive nature left others to interpret his work. His 20 artistic principles, set out for the artist Emile Bernard (who thought him divine), are mostly banalities about nature and colour. From what little we know of him, had he heard that thousands were lining the streets of Paris, London and Philadelphia in his honour, he would have been amazed, delighted and rather smug.
The modern blockbuster is wholly justified. It offers the museum the opportunity to throw open its doors and admit the public to its cultural sanctuary. By exploiting the media's love of a personality and an event, the Tate Gallery can transmit its message to a new audience. That Cezanne, an aloof and not easily accessible talent, should be the artist to break records is astonishing. Perhaps there is hope that contemporary art might return to its professed roots in his work, and start the 20th century over again.
Such shows encourage us to concentrate on one message, to learn and to enjoy. At the Tate, the message is that "painting after nature is not copying the objective, it is realising our sensations". To this end, wrote Cezanne, "there are no lines, no modelling, there are only contrasts produced by colour". A one-man show is like a difficult symphony, the more attention we pay it the more we are likely to appreciate. Nor does the hyperbole get in the way. The fragment of Cezanne I glimpsed on the side of a shopping bag brought his art to life more than a dozen pictures. The movement of a television lens across a canvas captured the quality of his brushwork better than the naked eye. Cezanne might have been shocked at the distortion of his colours in ceramic, fabric and plastic reproduction, but even these help to attune the vision and draw us back to the original.
My one quarrel with the Tate show is its lighting. I saw the exhibition in Paris, where the light was different. In London the pictures are hung on bright walls, as if on a bleached Provencal hill. The light battles with the colours and can make them dull. Many of the pictures seem to shrink into their frames as if suffering agoraphobia amid the dazzle. The nudes look peculiarly naked. This may suit the greens and browns of the landscapes and the shifting shades of Mont Ste-Victoire.
These pictures look better in London. In Paris the walls were darker, some very dark indeed. Light was concentrated on the canvases and here the colours glowed from within, like stained glass. The effect was wholly different. This particularly transformed the portraits. Spotlit in shadow, sad, introspective, often sombre, they drew the viewer into a private conversation between Cezanne and his subject. The central octagon in the Paris show, containing the Woman with the Rosary, the Man with Crossed Arms and the portrait of Ambroise Vollard, gave Cezanne's faces the intensity of Rembrandt.
Visiting these vast shows, I realise that the modern museum has become a secular cathedral. Its special exhibitions are sacramental rituals, festivals of joy in art but also pilgrimages of grace. Art galleries are magnets not just of nations but of whole continents. Like medieval shrines, they are huge economic generators. A survey of the 1992 Matisse show in New York found that 70 per cent of out-of-town visitors came specifically to see it, spending an average of £300 in the city. The Metropolitan Museum is now New York's biggest tourist attraction.
Cezanne's art might seem introverted and his subject matter distant, repetitive and even dull. But then so was the teaching of the mystics and the rituals of the medieval Church. Millions travelled to Vezelay, Canterbury and Santiago from all over Europe enduring worse conditions than the Victoria Line southbound. Cezanne's paintings are removed from their contexts, miles from Provence, pinned to blank walls in lofty rooms. They are detached icons, mostly glimpsed beyond a silhouette of moving heads and shoulders. For many of the crowds that flock to them they must seem unreal.
Yet half a million people will visit Cezanne by the end of April. The power of the exhibition, the power of pilgrimage and congregation, cannot be denied. I must assume that these exhibitions offer us absolution for our aesthetic sins. The blockbuster has become the leading cultural ceremony of the age.
Lord Irvine defends Labour's proposed Scottish parliament
My opponent on the Woolsack, the Lord Chancellor, has made a rare intervention (in an article in The Times on February 7) in the party political debate, with his attempt to take Labour to task over its proposals for constitutional change in general and devolution to Scotland in particular. But his attack is riddled with contradictions.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern rightly extols the virtues of the Union. As a Scot who practises law in England, I too value the bonds of friendship, common history and common interest which keep our two countries together. But Lord Mackay conflates the desire for reform of the Union and renewal of the friendship between Scotland and England through devolution with the breaking of the Union.
Devolution will establish a Scottish parliament firmly within the Union. It has, at one time or another, been supported by all the main political parties, including the Conservatives. In the Declaration of Perth in 1968, Ted Heath said: "This then is our desire: to keep the United Kingdom united, but at the same time to see power more widely diffused within the framework of a united country."
Those sentiments were held by many Conservatives during the 1970s, though few dare speak them today.
The Union is a partnership of the nations which would be strengthened if Westminster decides to respond to a deep sense of grievance in Scotland. The danger to the Union is to refuse to listen to the people, or to say, as the Conservatives do, "you may vote for separation if you wish, but it is not legitimate to vote for a reformed Union".
Lord Mackay is confident that a Scottish parliament could not improve policy in such areas as the Scottish educational or legal systems. How can this assertion be justified when the whole point of devolution is to bring decision-making closer to the people and to pursue policies which command popular support? It is precisely the feeling that central government ignores Scottish opinion that has given rise to the strong support for devolution.
Lord Mackay should remember how Scotland's sense of grievance was fanned to an unprecedented level of bitterness when his Government used Scotland as a laboratory for the poll tax a year before England and against the wishes of practically every Scot. And does he for a moment believe that a Scottish parliament would have taken Scotland's water services out of local control and placed them in the hands of unelected quangos?
The great flaw in Lord Mackay's argument is his inconsistency in saying both that the Edinburgh parliament would be a sop and that "break-up of the United Kingdom would then be but a step away". The Tories cannot make up their minds whether or not devolution is a meaningless or a substantial reform, and in their confusion they are left arguing that meaningful change is impossible. If Lord Mackay believes devolution is a sop, then why would it undermine the Union?
The truth is that Conservative rhetoric on this matter has lost touch with the reality. Devolution is a sensible, practical policy for the decentralisation of government within the United Kingdom. This is acknowledged by the Government in its plans for a legislative assembly for Northern Ireland as part of a package designed to keep that part of the United Kingdom in the Union. It simply will not wash to advocate such policies but at the same time to argue that devolution proposed for anywhere else would be a constitutional catastrophe.
Scotland already enjoys a substantial degree of administrative devolution. The problem is that there is no direct accountability to the Scottish people. Labour proposes to make this extensive administrative devolution, and distinct law-making, properly accountable to the people while preserving the immense value of the Union.
Lord Mackay raises the so-called West Lothian Question, which in truth is not a question, but a consequence of preserving the Union. The British constitution grows pragmatically, not by abstract theory. What Labour proposes is a constitutional settlement which will strengthen the Union, not imperil it.
Aclear distribution of functions between a Scottish parliament and the United Kingdom Parliament should prevent disputes arising but if, over time, any should arise they would be dealt with either by the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords or the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which amounts to much the same thing.
On taxation, there is no constitutional reason why a law-making body should not have some room for flexibility over its budget. After all, this is a power which is granted to every local authority in the land and one many Conservatives in the 1970s thought the Scottish assembly should have. Nobody in Scotland should pay a penny more or less in tax unless parties have placed such a plan before the electors. And as George Robertson has said, we have no plans to raise taxes.
To try to polarise the debate between the unhappy status quo or separatism is absurd, as is the charge that devolution and separatism are blood relations. Many countries have devolved power successfully, and have unleashed the talents and diversity of the nations within them. In Britain there is great potential in following a similar path.
The Union has served us well, and it must be preserved for the future. Conservatives do it no service by arguing that reform is impossible in the face of the clamour for change from Scotland. Reform is both possible and desirable, and will be carried through by Labour. And when it happens, Lord Mackay and I, as Scots who spend our working lives in England, can be sure that we will have a Union better equipped to face the challenges of the future.
Lord Irvine of Lairg, QC, is Shadow Lord Chancellor.
A Russian waxwing writes home from his English holiday
Thousands of bird-watchers are flocking to the Robinswood Hill Country Park in Gloucester, twitchy for the first glimpse of the Siberian waxwing, Bombycilla garrulus, driven southwest from its usual habitat by the cold snap. A waxwing writes:
In recent man-watching, nothing has been more remarkable than the evolution of the Twitcher, Homo avicollector, from a solitary human to one that swarms. Even its plumage has changed with its habits. Once identifiable by its shabby camouflage anorak and woolly hat, its socialisation has reclothed it in designer waterproofs in many colours. But its feet remain wellies, usually green. And although they have grown larger, its eye-markings by high-power camera telescopes and binoculars are unmistakable. The female is still less sociable and more sombrely clad than the male.
Identification: 66" (168cm). Plumage mainly tanktops in greens and dull browns. Travelling outline action recalls the antique Trainspotter, Homo nerdissimus, though it is more volatile. Feeding habits (sandwiches in Tupperware, Thermos) suggesting the Boy Scout or the Rambler. Voice: Trilling of mobile phone, Come quick, come quick. Habitat: Parks and other public spaces whence rumours of rare birds spread. I envy my friend Ivan, who along with 10,000 other waxwings has been driven by the cold to parts of Britain unvisited by Twitchers.
Twitchers are enthusiasts who will hire helicopters to travel hundreds of miles in order to collect sightings of rare birds, as though they were stamps. Like out-of-context philatelists, they become so lost in twitching that they refuse to snap any creature other than shipwrecked birds. As such, they can be as destructive as pigeons. A five-alarm twitch for a Houbara bustard in East Anglia devastated a farmer's crops into bankruptcy. Twitchers pursued an American Thrasher into a lavatory in the Isles of Scilly, where it drowned. Twitchers stared solemnly for 24 hours at a night heron on a Midlands marsh. It turned out to be a taxidermist's heron stuck up the tree by a rogue. Too often Twitchers have stood by as audience while their rara avis has been eaten by a less sexy hawk or owl.
Gilbert White, twitching curate of Selborne, started the Twitcher habit of feeding the pigeons otherwise than to the cat. When the first field guides were published a generation ago, the membership of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds was 7,000. Since then it has increased by a hundredfold, and is now larger than the membership of the Conservative Party. Britain's champion Twitcher has more than 502 species logged in his notebook, and is confident of adding to the number today.
As a northern waxwing in these cold days, I should prefer a less zealous habitat than this weekend convocation of Twitchers. I should rather be with Ivan and Serge. But at least Twitchers do not shoot us birds, except with their camcorders. As the careful biologists say, Twitchers may not be a good thing, but they are not bad either.
Europe prefers tall tales to straight-talking
Rational debate about the future of the European Union is bedevilled by the small print and the big idea. The European Commission may produce acres of close-printed paper: but, amid all the detail, fact and myth sit uneasily side by side.
Some of those myths make it easy to caricature Brussels as a bureaucratic monster. But others threaten Europe's very peace and security. Sceptics are often attacked for reducing the future of Europe to a straight banana or a dirty oyster. But the case for co-operation among the nation states of Europe is in greater danger from the folly of pocket statesmen than the ridicule of over-eager sceptics. The myths that do real damage to Europe are the dreams of its over-ambitious politicians. In an occasional series of leading articles which starts today The Times sets out to skewer the most pernicious.
Supporters of the Commission have some right to feel aggrieved at the speed with which the most tendentious interpretation of a tentatively-tabled directive is presented as an imminent threat to the British way of life. The willingness of the British press and public to believe that trawlermen could not put to sea without a case of contraceptives on board or exhausted oysters needed regular showers on their way to the shops has infuriated apologists for integration. By the time officials had clarified matters the damage was done and another myth had taken root.
Yet the myths would not have flourished unless there had been fertile soil. The tendency of the Commission to intrude, in Douglas Hurd's words "into the nooks and crannies of national life", with regulations on everything from abattoirs to metrication, creates a climate where the public are willing to believe the latest myth. The press and politicians would not be believed if they invented scare stories that did not chime with experience. The fictional condoms and flagging oysters are really the Commission's allies, a warning not to overreach oneself.
The myths that matter more are the false assumptions and shallow arguments that underpin the drive to integration. Europe's institutions are being shaped by politicians whose rhetoric makes the case for douching shellfish seem reasonable. There are three main families of myths deployed in place of reason when Europe's future is explored.
The first are the "slow slide" fallacies, which hold that co-operation should lead eventually to convergence and then to conformity. It is the rationale for the myth that a single market needs a single currency, and the "social dimension" in Europe should see labour costs harmonised between Stockholm and Salonika.
The second are the trivial travel metaphors, used to drive an argument to a conclusion before a consensus can be reached. We are told Europe is like a bicycle, which must move forward or fall. It is also like a train, and Britain must be in the driving seat or risk relegation to the second tier. As Peter Lilley remarked, the only thing the EU has in common with a train is that once you're in, food suddenly becomes much more expensive. At its most outrageous, the move-or-perish case finds expression in those who prophesy war unless momentum is maintained towards the pre-determined goal.
The third are the mandarin pieties used by those who prefer diplomacy to democracy. Sovereignty, it is suggested, is an outdated concept. In the next breath we are told it should be traded for influence. If it is out-of-date how much influence can it buy a country? Additionally, it is argued, greater clout will be wielded by the EU acting together than any nation acting alone. The advocates of that case might examine with profit the record of EU action in the former Yugoslavia. The EU has proved itself a eunuch abroad. It looks impressive but the increase in size has been bought by losing punch.
There is an intellectually coherent and under-stated case to be made for closer European co-operation. Its merits are obscured by the myth-makers. Over the coming days we will look at examples of their more egregious products.
Blood on the streets: a blow to hopes of peace
The Northern Irish peace process, on which the hopes of millions rested, is now in serious jeopardy. If it collapses, terrorism could quickly regain its grip on the Province. Some time will elapse before the full implications of this end of the IRA's ceasefire become clear. But it is already possible to hazard some guesses at the political calculations which have brought about this return to violence.
A fatal train of events led from the Mitchell commission's proposals which undermined London's insistence on prior decommissioning of weapons to this atrocity. All along, John Major's perilous gamble depended on playing for time: only with time would the people of Ulster become so attached to peace that any return to terrorism would become unthinkable. Having relaxed its stance on decommissioning, the British Government offered elections in the Province. Such democratic legitimation of delegates to a peace conference was predictably rejected by Sinn Fein, which fears the exposure of its narrow popular base, but also unnecessarily and regrettably by the constitutional nationalists and by Dublin.
At such a time, Bill Clinton's reception of Gerry Adams at the White House sent a clear signal that the President saw no reason to help John Major a signal duly noted by republican hardliners. President Clinton must now look back again at the photographs of his embrace with the terrorists. Dublin mounted a wild demarche this week, in which the Irish Foreign Minister Dick Spring demanded an all-party summit in America on the model of Bosnia's Dayton peace conference. This was a panic measure, designed to head off a resumption of republican violence. Instead, by inviting comparisons between Bosnia and Ulster, it apparently strengthened the hands of those inside the IRA's army council who have long believed that a spectacular act of violence would isolate the British Government.
Were the Irish Government now to react by denouncing the British for procrastination, the IRA would indeed have dealt the peace process a possibly mortal blow. John Bruton, the Taoiseach, must know this. Even if he cannot restrain Mr Spring, he should make it clear to all that the blame for the Canary Wharf bomb lies squarely with the IRA. John Hume and the SDLP should do likewise; it is imperative that they dissociate themselves from any attempt by Sinn Fein to justify a crime which could have caused even greater carnage than it did.
The Prime Minister, whose Northern Irish policy had seemed his greatest achievement, now stares into the abyss. He cannot weaken his resolve to demand a democratic route to a lasting settlement. He can only reiterate his message that terrorism will not be appeased. If Dublin and Washington were to join him in demanding that Mr Adams now declare his repugnance for his friends in the IRA, then some benefit could yet emerge from the smoke over Canary Wharf. Meanwhile war is again the cry: and the price of war is once more paid by the bleeding of innocents passing by.
Michael Gove on the tension within the republican movement which led to the horror of Canary Wharf
The Canary Wharf bomb is not the first attempt by Irish republicans to break the ceasefire. Only last Friday, 57 shots from an AK47, the IRA's weapon of choice, raked the home of an officer of the Royal Ulster Constabulary while he slept. That attack was interpreted as a show of restlessness from hard-line republicans impatient with the peace process. The explosion last night suggests that if there are elements within republican ranks who wish to return to war they are not isolated individuals harbouring a grudge but a significant section of the movement, implementing a strategy.
Since the ceasefire was declared, government security sources have always counselled caution. It was alleged that many republican activists had opposed the ceasefire and were suspicious of Gerry Adams's wish to suspend the armed struggle and pursue Irish unity through politics. Adams, although a former republican prisoner, required the support of Martin McGuinness and others in good standing with the IRA's volunteers in the field. Adams and McGuinness had themselves come to power after a ceasefire which had split, and weakened their movement. They were determined that whatever path was taken the IRA and Sinn Fein should never again be divided.
The decision to call a ceasefire and enter the political arena was not taken by a movement sickened by slaughter nor one which lacked the stomach or resources to go on. Hardened IRA volunteers and a network of arms dumps across the whole island of Ireland could, and can, sustain years of violence. Adams persuaded republicans to abandon violence because he thought they could achieve their ends by other means. He detected a war-weariness at the heart of the British Establishment.
A bombing campaign directed at the City had placed financial pressures on a Government which had to pick up the costs. It also created an atmosphere of fear in the financial community and the prospect of a flight of capital. The IRA may have miscalculated the resilience of its victims but it believed British overtures had been inspired by a desire to sue for peace and, eventually, withdraw from Ulster.
Because the ceasefire is a product of calculation and not a change of heart there was always a danger the IRA would return to violence if it felt it was not getting its way. Since the ceasefire much had been conceded by the British Government and the greater number of Northern Ireland's people, who wish to stay in the United Kingdom. The prospect of talks without a single ounce of Semtex being surrendered was offered: only a commitment to democracy was asked.
Prisoners were released, former terrorist leaders feted and a framework document published that did much to embrace nationalist aspirations. But, for Irish republicans, everything was subordinated to ending the Union. If they suspected they were not getting to that goal fast enough and war would hasten things along they would, without sentiment, return to violence.
More than that, even if the republican leadership felt that progress, however slow, was being made, it would be prepared to return to war rather than see the movement split. It would always be a delicate calculation but those acquainted with the IRA's thinking are in no doubt that it would rather risk the opprobrium of the rest of the world that see its unity, and effectiveness, shattered.
The threat of a split has been used by Adams and others as a negotiating technique. It is almost impossible for any outsider to know the precise state of opinion within a movement built on intimidation. Adams could exaggerate internal opposition to the ceasefire to suggest he needed concessions from the Government to keep the peace. But although Adams has used the threat of a split to strengthen his hand in negotiations there has, nevertheless, been real evidence of tensions within Sinn Fein.
Mitchel McLaughlin, Northern chairman of Sinn Fein and one of those within the party whose commitment to the political strategy has always been strongest, used a speech over Christmas to warn the Government of the difficulties he felt in keeping his supporters solid for the peace process.
In South Armagh and Tyrone, where the culture of violence is deeper than Belfast or Londonderry, and the IRA activists less sophisticated, there have been loud murmurs of restlessness. IRA volunteers grown accustomed to warfare have not been kept satisfied by manoeuvres and dummy runs. There were rumours of some IRA members putting out feelers to the INLA, a tiny republican terrorist grouping which observed the ceasefire but had never signed up to it.
There is evidence that senior elements within Sinn Fein's political leadership seem to have been taken by surprise by the bombing. It is certainly clear that there will be those within the party who hoped to achieve more through politics. Last night's bomb in Canary Wharf appears to mean the end of their hopes for the foreseeable future.
Gerry Adams's decision to blame the Government for the outrage suggests the man who rose to prominence in the Maze may now be in danger of becoming the prisoner of those within republican ranks who wish to see war.
Rising stars in the arts firmament
BELINDA HATLEY
Age: 25
Profession: Soloist with Royal Ballet
How it all began: Started dance lessons in a church hall in Sussex, got into the Royal Ballet School at 13. "I almost didn't get there. Just before my audition I was struck down with appendicitis. Luckily they didn't have to take it out or I would have missed my audition." Joined Covent Garden in 1988.
A bite of the cherry: Last season she got her first Aurora, thanks to the indisposition of the leading ballerinas. "It made me so hungry for more. It gave me a surge of confidence. I want to build on that now. I am desperate for more shows." Still waiting for the chance to do another full-length role. In the meantime, she is busy starring in Matthew Hart's new ballet, Dances with Death, in which she plays a woman fighting the Aids virus.
But she cannot fight the hierarchy of a large ballet company: "It is difficult not being able to choose your own roles. It gives you a dreadful sense of paranoia and self-doubt; it's constantly like auditioning. The hopes and then the disappointments when the cast sheet goes up."
There is a lot of competition: "When I stand behind Sylvie Guillem in class, I think to myself, ‘Why did I ever start?' But you can't compare yourself to someone else; that's the beginning of the end."
More than a passing resemblance to Ian Botham? "I think I am a good all-rounder. I don't shine in any one area but I can lend myself to very classical work or Balanchine or Ashton." Add humility to her list of virtues: she's a really lovely dancer with true musical heart.
The worst part of the job: "The long hours, especially on those days when I am in at 8am to put on my make-up, then spend all day in class and rehearsal. Then having to get ready for a performance, then the performance, and the curtain comes down at 10.30pm. I had a day like that yesterday."
What happens in 1997 when Covent Garden closes? "I think we're all worried about the future. We'll probably be touring a lot, but what people are concerned about is how much repertoire we will be able to sustain on the road. They see a long line of Swan Lakes and Sleeping Beauties looming. But the Opera House needs to be redeveloped. There are holes on the stage very dangerous in our pointe shoes and when it rains during a performance, you have to dance around the puddles."
From Mr N. McDonald
Sir, Our post yesterday contained two letters from our two bankers, noting audit fee charges for necessary information requested by our accountants for our annual audit. Girobank very apologetically explained that they will have to charge £20 plus VAT, which will be taken along with next month's bank charges. National Westminster, stated on a standard form that they had debited our account with £32.31.
Yours sincerely,
NEIL McDONALD,
McDonald Fishselling Ltd,
7 Beeching Park Estate,
Wainwright Road,
Bexhill-on-Sea,
East Sussex.
From Mr A. Verdin
Sir, The creation of a substantial surplus in a mutual building society is a result of poor, rather than good, management.
Keeping expenses low is important, and a society has a duty to keep a prudent reserve, but the only way in which large surpluses can be built up is by borrowers paying too much and savers getting too small a return.
This at last seems to be recognised by the Bradford and Bingley, who will be returning some of this surplus to all participating members.
It is not at all clear that the larger societies have been run in the interests of their members. The achievement of a substantial surplus makes the society attractive to other financial institutions and gives added value to shares in a floated company. It can also buy the votes of sufficient members to achieve the board's aim.
While some may selectively reap considerable benefits from the change, it is clearly not in the long-term interest of all of a society's members, and even these benefits pale in comparison to those won by the key board members. Nevertheless, if it is the will of the members to change, then the distribution must be fair. If necessary, the Building Societies Commission should be empowered to ensure this.
The fairest way would be for the society to pay out to both borrowers and investing members on a formula based on the product of duration and amount of investment or loan. This is a rough approximation of the contribution a member has made to that surplus, and it would avoid completely the necessity for artificial cut-off dates and exclusion of speculators.
Societies giving shares appear to be moving some way in this direction. The CAG offer was, of course, at the other end of the spectrum: as unfair as it was possible to be, excluding not only all borrowers but also many deserving long-term investors.
Needless to say, I shall move my own mortgage as soon as I can without penalty from the CAG to a sound mutual society, and I do not think I will be alone.
Yours sincerely,
ANTHONY VERDIN,
Dry Leys, Frilford,
Abingdon,
Oxfordshire.
From Mr I.M. Baird
Sir, You may have thought that all men who paid Class 1 National Insurance contributions during their working life qualified for a state pension on their 65th birthday. But you would have been mistaken.
Due to an unforeseen miscalculation by my late mother 65 years ago, my 65th birthday fell on Tuesday, January 9, 1996. This meant that my entitlement to a state pension did not begin until Monday, January 15, 1996. Apparently, the latest regulations say that unless your 65th birthday falls on a Monday the pension does not begin until the first Monday thereafter.
Is this due to government penny-pinching at the expense of pensioners, or has some mandarin in Whitehall declared it too inconvenient to press a few buttons on a computer to pay pensioners their rightful entitlement?
It is manifestly unjust that despite having paid the same contributions, one man can lose almost a week's pension compared with others whose 65th birthday falls on a Monday. The same anomaly applies to women.
It is not hard to imagine the reaction of Parliament or financial editors if private pension schemes adopted this swindle.
Yours sincerely,
IAN M. BAIRD,
6 Park Lane,
Haddington,
East Lothian.
From Mr D.N. Lincoln
Sir, I am a little surprised at the recent spate of letters from building society investors who claim to have received a raw deal because they will not qualify for merger or bank conversion bonuses.
As a self-confessed "carpetbagger" who keeps abreast of the financial press, I cannot understand how any informed investor can knowingly reduce their balance to below £100 in the financial climate of the last 12 months and then complain that they expect perks or bonuses.
At the time of opening their building society account they agreed to accept the variable rate of interest current at that particular time and I know that in every case the society concerned has honoured that agreement. Conditions concerning merger bonuses, etc, never ever arose, and the old saying, "what you've never had, you'll never miss", springs to mind. I consider it little more than sour grapes that has occasioned this present bout of whingeing and whining.
Yours faithfully,
DEREK N. LINCOLN,
237 Victoria Drive,
Eastbourne,
East Sussex.
Marianne Curphey seeks the next likely windfall
Merger and flotation fever, which has changed for ever the way people view the humble building society account, is now sweeping through UK life offices.
Just as millions of hopefuls put £100 in a share account in each of the larger building societies, anticipating a payout of cash or shares when they merged or became plcs instead of being mutuals owned by their members, so sophisticated investors are now looking to the life offices.
At stake are the potential sweeteners which policyholders could be paid if and when mutuals change status. So great is the perceived interest in stocking up on second-hand life and endowment policies that a new investment trust is being launched next week to invest exclusively in such products.
Run by Scottish Value Managers the Edinburgh investment company in partnership with Beale Dobie, traders in second-hand life and endowment policies the Life Offices Opportunity Trust is being marketed mainly to institutional investors. Its shares will be available to private individuals via brokers.
Colin McLean, managing director of Scottish Value Managers, said the trust places an emphasis on policies in companies "which could benefit from restructuring". He added: "This does not just mean demutualising, which might involve the company paying out special bonuses, but also the flotation of investment arms or cost-cutting measures," he said.
"Bonuses may be bigger or smaller than those which building societies have been paying out, but they are likely to be spread over a longer period. For example, a special final payment might be made when the policy eventually matures."
Mr McLean says the trust is designed as a long-term investment, which is expected to make a return of 9-12 per cent.
One analyst gave warning, however, that investors should look carefully at the costs of the Life Offices Trust before buying in. "If you think a mutual is going to float, why not just buy a second-hand policy yourself instead of paying an annual management charge?" he said. "Kleinwort Benson and BZW already run such trusts which have only just kept pace with the FTSE-100 index."
Meanwhile, Beale Dobie has seen a huge increase in demand for second-hand policies in mutuals ever since Norwich Union signalled it was interested in becoming a listed company.
Top of the shopping list is Clerical Medical, the mutual life insurer which has invited bids from potential purchasers: Friends Provident, NPI and Scottish Provident. In addition, analysts say Scottish Life, Scottish Widows, Scottish Amicable and Standard Life all might change their status.
If a mutual converts or merges, will your life or endowment policy be safe? Mike Wadsworth, of the actuaries Watson Wyatt, believes it will.
"There may be a sweetener if the mutual converts, but I would not expect it to be more than a bonus of a few percentage points on the total fund return," he said. "Overall, costs are likely to be lower, and if the fund is part of a larger company it will be more financially secure."
However, he added that some companies may close an existing fund for new business, with little incentive to achieve outstanding performance.
Once upon a time, cost was the principal factor in your choice of household and contents cover. Now the decision should also be governed by taste do you like the goods offered by the retailer which will supply the replacements for your cherished valuables?
Norwich Union this week signed a contract linking itself with the Goldsmiths Group a jewellery chain which already has a similar link with Direct Line. When Norwich Union policyholders lose, damage or have their jewellery or watches stolen, Goldsmiths which describes itself as a catering for the "upper/middle market" will replace the items.
It is claimed that everyone stands to benefit from the deal, including the policyholder. The agreement is a valuable contract for Goldsmiths, a stock market-quoted company which now gains a steady stream of business. Even before the formal deal was struck, the chain was handling £56,000 worth of replacements for Norwich Union in a single month.
Norwich Union obtains a significant discount, keeping down its costs a piece of news that should be welcome to potential shareholders. Norwich Union, currently a mutual business owned by its policyholders, has announced its intention to seek a stock market flotation next year.
The company said that its ability to negotiate a 20 per cent discount had prompted the move to link with Goldsmiths. Previously, local branches had negotiated individuals deals with jewellers in their neighbourhoods. The company felt that the Goldsmiths link would also provide a better service for policyholders, who would not need to provide invoices to make claims. In areas the appointed suppliers do not cover, Norwich Union will link-up with a local provider.
Norwich Union is also anxious to deter fraudulent claims, which usually involve a preference for cash rather than replacement. However, a company spokesman said that policyholders would not be forced to take Goldsmiths goods.
Other similar contracts are now planned, swelling the list of Norwich Union approved suppliers. Brown and white goods are, for example, already replaced by Miller Brothers and ScottishPower; and DIY, garden and power tools by Buck A Hickman. Pilkingtons handles household glass, and the RAC has the motor recovery contract.
This type of deal looks set to become more common. Connections, the direct insurance subsidiary of Sun Alliance, has informal links with, among others, the Signet jewellery chain, owner of H Samuel and Halfords (for bicycles).
Having seen their options restricted to allow their insurer to make savings, Norwich Union policyholders will expect to see premiums fall.
Karen Zagor cuts through the confusion over trading in shares of the National Grid
Although shares in the National Grid have been trading for nearly two months, confusion is rife among the shareholders of regional electricity companies (Recs) who received Grid shares as part of the flotation.
Until December, the Grid was owned by the 12 Recs, which had been privatised in 1990. As part of the divestment process, eight Recs have distributed new Grid shares to existing shareholders.
Unfortunately for private shareholders, the distribution was not a simple process; each Rec distributed a different proportion of Grid shares and the sector was hit by a flurry of takeovers at the time of the Grid flotation. At the same time, several Recs consolidated their shares or announced stock splits, further muddying the waters for shareholders trying to measure their holdings. As Shiraz Allidina, UBS utilities analyst, said: "One hundred shares then would not be 100 shares now."
Unfortunately, companies do not always explain their manoeuvres to shareholders. Francis Cummins, a reader from Basingstoke, received little enlightenment from Southern Electric when he rang its helpline. "The share helpline number was unobtainable," he said. "I was particularly interested in why my shares had fallen from 150 to 139. I feel that I've lost a valuable asset."
In theory, shareholders should not have lost out. London Electricity, which paid shareholders a special dividend when it consolidated its shares on January 17, said: "The combination of the dividend and new shares should be equivalent to a shareholder's old stake, but obviously that fluctuates because the price of shares fluctuates."
So what should you be left with if you were a Rec shareholder with 100 shares at the time of the Grid flotation?
EAST MIDLANDS
Shareholders should have received 71.3 Grid shares for every East Midlands share held at the time of flotation.
LONDON
Shareholders should have received 85.28 Grid shares for every 100 old London Electricity shares. Their London Electricity stake will also have changed. Investors with 100 old shares should have had a special dividend payment of £100 (£1 per share) plus 85 new London Electricity shares (six new for seven old).
MIDLANDS
Shareholders should have 80.9 Grid shares for every 100 shares held in December. The company has since had a 2-for-1 stock split, so holders of 100 old Midlands shares should have 200 new shares.
NORTHERN
Shareholders should have received 107 Grid shares for every 100 Northern shares.
SEEBOARD
Shareholders should have had 48 Grid shares for every 100 Seeboard shares.
SOUTHERN
Shareholders should have had 66 Grid shares for every 100 old Southern shares. The distribution was made in January. After consolidation, they should have received £50 for every 100 old Southern shares (50p per share). They should now hold 93 new shares for every 100 old.
SOUTH WALES
Shareholders should have 91.28 Grid shares for every 100 shares held in December.
YORKSHIRE
Shareholders should have 75.66 Grid shares for every 100 old Yorkshire shares. After consolidation, shareholders should have received £100 in special dividend payments for every 100 old Yorkshire shares (£1 per share) and should now hold 83 new Yorkshire shares (five new for six old).
NON-DISTRIBUTORS
Norweb, Manweb, Eastern and South Western have not distributed their Grid holdings to shareholders.
CONSOLIDATION
Norweb has been taken over by North West Water, Eastern was acquired by Hanson, Manweb was taken over by Scottish Power, Swalec by Welsh Water, South Western by Southern of the US and Seeboard by Central and South West. PowerGen's bid for Midlands Electricity and National Power's for Southern Electricity are being investigated by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.
NATIONAL GRID
National Grid shares opened at 208p per share on December 11. At mid-session yesterday they were 1941/2p.
TAX
Grid shares issued to Rec shareholders are treated as dividends for tax purposes. Basic-rate taxpayers will already have had the new 20 per cent savings tax taken directly from their shares. Higher-rate taxpayers owe the Revenue 20 per cent.
Hilary Finch talks to a nonagenarian Russian conductor on the eve of his London debut
When Ilya Alexandrovich Musin makes his London conducting debut with the Royal Philharmonic at the Barbican next Saturday, he will be in his ninety-third or ninety-fourth year: it all depends on your historical viewpoint. He was born on Christmas Eve, 1903, by the old Russian calendar; and his birthday changed to January 7, 1904, when the Western calendar was later adopted.
St Petersburg, of course, got through three name changes between the day when he and Shostakovich enrolled together as students and the evening a year ago when Musin conducted the St Petersburg Philharmonic in the programme of Mozart, Rimsky-Korsakov and Prokofiev which he will be bringing to London.
Musin has been the single most important influence in forging the so-called Leningrad school of conducting, and with it a legacy of conductor-pupils such as Valery Gergiev, Yakov Kreizberg, Semyon Bychkov and Mariss Jansons who are now shaping the musical fortunes of both Eastern and Western Europe. But Musin himself was caught in the wheel of time. The more visible fame and influence now enjoyed by his pupils was firmly denied him by history.
He was one of the very few conductors who refused to join the "Creative Union of Musicians and Composers" in the years of Stalin. Consequently, he did not exist. "In order to be recognised as a musician, one had to be constantly praising Stalin. I kept independent of any union, any party. Of course, it halted my career. But what I hate most is to be dependent on someone else."
His musical fulfilment was to come entirely through teaching. And he is as passionate about it today as he was when he worked with his first students at the St Petersburg Conservatoire. His philosophy is simply that "music must be made visible with the hands".
Just how this was to be done, he had to find out for himself, first learning from Nikolai Malko, the pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov who introduced Shostakovich's First Symphony to London in 1935, and, above all, following closely every rehearsal of the conductors from the West who flooded into Leningrad in the early 1920s.
The first move, it seems, is to throw away the baton. "Yes, since the baton is the artificial part of our conducting, something we add on to the arm. It is difficult, after all, to be expressive while clenching the fist. So much easier when you can touch the sound with the tips of your fingers."
At a Royal Academy master-class recently, where the dreaded stick was much in evidence, Musin, a lean, dapper figure in tweed jacket and polished brogues, quietly tells his students to "relate to the baton as an artist relates to the brush. Not from the shoulder, but with the very tip. And, as a pianist takes the sound from the piano, so you must ‘take' the sound from your players. Feel how many sounds there are within each beat."
As for the beat itself, "the first thing is to create an underlying rhythm for the players, and this is done with the wrist. Many other gestures are used to break that rhythm. But whatever you do with the arm, throw your wrist at the rhythm. Show the last beat in the bar by lowering the wrist and hitting the beat. Now, one, two, three, one, two."
There will sadly be no Shostakovich in the Barbican programme: after suffering three heart attacks, Musin feels "spiritually and emotionally more than eager to conduct Shostakovich but my body will not have it". What remains, though, are his memories. Of that first day when they stood on the steps of the St Petersburg Conservatoire together: he 16, Shostakovich 13. Of the day when he and a group of friends sat in the apartment of Rimsky-Korsakov's nephew and listened to Shostakovich playing the first two movements of his First Symphony at the piano. Of the day when the two of them sat together at the piano and hammered their way through four-hand transcriptions of all of Wagner's overtures ...
Musin has a particularly strong personal view on the still-vexed subject of the Fifth Symphony. Was it an apology to Stalin for previous anti-Soviet works? The Times obituary, after all, declared that Shostakovich was a "committed believer in Communism and Soviet power". Was it, as Testimony, the famous memoirs related to Solomon Volkov, would have it, rather the voice of Shostakovich as yurodivy, or wise fool, revealing the lashes of the whip which cried: "You must rejoice, you must rejoice"?
"I have never read Volkov's book. It wasn't available to me. But I feel it is probably closer to the truth than anyone could ever expect. For me, the Fifth Symphony is Shostakovich's only self-portrait. Through the conspiracy of music he showed his true self.
"As my student Semyon Bychkov once put it, the ending is emphatically not about rejoicing. What it says is: ‘Beat me harder! Beat me harder! Beat me harder!' The audience at the premiere wept. They knew well what the work meant."
Ilya Musin conducts the RPO at the Barbican next Saturday at 7.30pm (0171-638 8891)
Morag Preston and Sarah Jones assess the latest deals for savers
Abewildering array of schemes is on offer for savers. Weekend Money reviews the current offers, including building society accounts, National Savings schemes, guaranteed bonds and tracker funds, and selects some best buys.
BUILDING SOCIETIES
For savers seeking the best rates of interest, postal accounts are always good buys. At present, 18 of 80 building societies offer postal accounts. On average, postal accounts provide 1.5 per cent higher interest than their branch-based alternatives, which explains why they fast become oversubscribed.
Donna O'Shea, of Chase De Vere, the independent financial adviser, picks West Bromwich Direct, launched last week. It offers 6 per cent interest on a minimum deposit of £2,000 and an additional 2 per cent bonus until April 30. Mrs O'Shea also recommends Northern Rock's 120 Day account at 7.2 per cent on a minimum deposit of £25,000, but says the notice is a "bit steep" at 120 days. Mark Bolland, of Chamberlain De Broe, another independent adviser, recommends sticking with household names such as Northern Rock and Bradford A Bingley.NATIONAL SAVINGS
Government-backed National Savings offer a safe home and a good return. The recent fall in interest rates offered by banks, building societies and insurance companies, pushed the Treasury into cutting rates on National Savings too. However, Mr Bolland says that they still represent good value.
National Savings has a variety of accounts.
The age for holding Pensioners Bonds has dropped to 60. In December alone, the bonds brought in £423 million. The minimum investment is £500, and the maximum £20,000. The current issue earns a guaranteed 7 per cent, paid gross every month.
First Option Bonds pay a fixed annual interest rate after basic rate tax has been deducted at source. The guaranteed rate for a year is 6.25 per cent gross for investments of up to £20,000.
Children's Bonus Bonds can be bought for anyone under the age of 16, at a minimum investment of £25. They are for five years, pay a tax-free guaranteed 6.75 per cent, and can be reinvested. Fixed rate National Savings Certificates are also guaranteed if held for five years and pay 5.35 per cent tax free. Index linked certificates pay 2.5 per cent above inflation if held for five years.
BONDS
Guaranteed bonds are proving popular at the moment. The guarantee can be a rate of interest or a rate of growth over a fixed period. A popular version pays you a certain rate of interest over five years and guarantees to refund capital if the FTSE-100 index grows by a certain amount. Sun Alliance's Rose Bond, for example, guarantees your initial investment with a return of at least 17 per cent, plus the equivalent of the growth in the FT-SE. With income bonds, you receive a relatively high rate of income, but you may not get back all your capital. For example, NatWest this month launches its High Income Bond, which provides a fixed monthly income of 6 per cent a year and the "prospect" of a return of the original investment at the end of the five-and-a-half-year term. The exact amount of capital payable at the end of the term is linked to the performance of the FTSE-100. If it rises, you will get up to 105 per cent of the initial outlay. If it falls, you will receive at least 85 per cent of your original investment.
As with most bonds, the rise or fall of the FTSE-100 is based on the average daily value of the index over the past 12 months of the policy.
NatWest says the High Income Bond complements its Guaranteed Growth Plus Bond, which provides investors seeking capital growth rather than income, with a return of between 125 and 170 per cent of your original investment over five-and-a-half years depending on the performance of the FTSE-100. Both bonds have a minimum investment of £5,000.
Guaranteed growth and income bonds are not perfect. You may not earn the full value of any market rise. In addition, bonds do not pay the underlying share dividends, which do much to boost the returns of a unit trust.
They are inflexible, so if you need your capital, or the market falls, you can surrender your policy only at a harsh penalty. The return from bonds at the end of their term is paid after deduction of basic rate income tax, which cannot be reclaimed by non-taxpayers. Higher-rate taxpayers face an extra tax charge.
But fund managers are realising that the promise of any measure of return is tempting for investors. Foreign A Colonial has launched a new growth unit trust, the Target Index Fund. It aims to offer a return equivalent to either the capital growth in the FTSE-100 index, or the increase in the Retail Price Index, whichever is the greater after six years.
FAC says that since the FTSE-100 and the RPI have achieved capital growth under different economic and political conditions, the fund effectively offers a hedge against political uncertainty. Tracker funds have been popular because investors believe there is less risk. But the performance of tracker funds is not guaranteed.
For guarantees, you have to look elsewhere. The latest issue of Johnson, Fry's Secured Corporate Bond PEP pays a fixed and tax-free return of 6.3 per cent a year. The return is lower because of the guarantee. Capital is secured after five years. Investors can choose an income or growth option. The minimum investment is £3,000.
THE splitting in two of British Gas is an attempt to resolve the problem of a huge liability facing the group in the shape of the loss-making take-or-pay contracts with North Sea gas producers. These were entered into by British Gas in the late Eighties and early Nineties, when it still had a monopoly.
As the gas market began to be opened up to competition, under the influence of Sir James McKinnon of Ofgas, the gas regulator, BG lost market share and was left with more gas than it could sell unwanted, expensive fuel for which it must pay. The average contract price is around 20p per therm. The current spot price is around 10p.
British Gas aims to ring-fence these contracts within the first of two new companies, British Gas Energy. This business will assume liability for the contracts and for any provisions arising from their renegotiation. BGE will also be charged with the supply of gas to homes and businesses.
As a consolation prize, it will be given the £2.5 billion of assets of the Morecambe gasfield in the Irish Sea. Morecambe is capable of providing no less than 15 per cent of peak daily gas demand.
The second company, TransCo International, will take on British Gas's debt but will have assets of about £18 billion, against about £2.6 billion for BGE. TransCo will have responsibility for exploration and for the gas pipeline network.
Caroline Merrell examines the implications for shareholders of the British Gas demerger
Alas, poor Sid. British Gas, the company which once welcomed the archetypal small shareholder with open arms, has now turned distinctly chilly.
When Richard Giordano, the chairman of British Gas, unveiled the company's plans to split up into two constituent parts British Gas Energy and Transco International he also announced that it would be inappropriate for the demerged, smaller gas supply company to have a share register of 1.8 million names.
Private shareholders now hold about 15 per cent of the shares in British Gas, down from the 62 per cent peak when the company was privatised in 1986. Many investors have sold their gas shares on the back of the company's dismal performance the shares have fallen from more than 300p a year ago to their current price of about 243p.
Mr Giordano intends to shrink the BGE share register by making it easy for Sid to sell. One option being considered by British Gas is to allow private shareholders to sell their new, free shares in BGE on a no-fee basis or with a very low commission. The company broker would then sell the shares to institutional investors.
British Gas is not the only company to have recently announced plans to demerge. Hanson, another favourite with the small shareholder because of its high yield, is also planning to split into four companies by the end of this year.
The companies will comprise Hanson's energy interests, its tobacco company, Imperial Tobacco, its chemical division and its building materials interests.
Many analysts believe that the trend for conglomerates to demerge will continue. Others that could follow are BTR and BAT.
For private investors and their stockbrokers, though, demergers are something of a nightmare, especially if the shares are held through a single company Pep.
Here, Weekend Money answers some of the questions about what action private investors should consider if a company in which they hold shares announces plans to demerge.
Is it necessary to sell the shares, as Mr Giordano is suggesting small shareholders should do?
No. When a company is demerged, private investors are simply issued shares in the unbundled companies. Hanson shareholders, for instance, will be allocated four sets of shares in four different companies, rather than just holding Hanson shares. British Gas shareholders will hold shares in Transco and BGE. It is not necessary to sell either holding.
What are the problems for small shareholders with demerged companies?
If you are a small investor with, for example, a £1,000 holding of Hanson shares, after the demerger you will end up holding shares in four companies worth £1,000 in total. Dealing in shareholdings of this size can prove very expensive. Increasing the number of companies also increases the number of dividends which need to be collected. Some stockbrokers charge a dividend collection fee, and quadrupling the number of companies increases the costs considerably.
What do stockbrokers advise small shareholders to do about demerged shares?
Your broker may advise you to sell off one holding and increase the shareholding in the remaining company. Which shares to sell and which to keep depends on your view of how the demerged companies are going to perform.
Under the Hanson demerger, for instance, it is unclear how the group's £4.7 billion debt is going to treated, and which company it may fall on. Until this is made clear, investors will not be able decide which demerged company shares to sell, if any, and which to hold onto.
Similarly, demerging British Gas turns a poor-performing high-dividend stock into two different types of shares with very different characteristics from the shares sold to the public 10 years ago. One of the companies, BGE, has the potential for good capital growth, although it pays no dividend and could be volatile. The other, Transco, will be more of a dividend-generating share.
What happens if the original share is held in a single company Pep?
It is impossible to hold the shares of more than one company in a single company Pep, which means that investors must decide which share to allocate to their Pep before the demerger goes ahead.
The shares that are "dematerialised" from the Pep become liable for capital gains tax and for income tax from the moment of demerger.
The choice of share to keep in the Pep depends on how the different companies are expected to perform after demerger. It may be worth Pepping a high dividend-paying share in favour of one which has potential for capital growth because individuals can make £6,000 a year in capital gains free of tax.
Anyone who holds a single company Pep in Hanson shares may be limited on which of the companies' shares they can hold in a Pep after the demerger. At least one of the companies, possibly two, are going to be American and, therefore, outside the rules on single company Peps.
Is it necessary to take any action now?
Brokers say that private investors should hold on to their shares and see what happens. In the case of Hanson, other companies have already been reported to be interested in taking over parts of the demerged conglomerate, an action which would considerably boost the share price.
Getting started: You do not need much more than a standard personal computer and a modem to get on to the Internet.
Modem: A modem is a device that lets your computer hook into the phone system, using an ordinary phone line. These days, most PCs have built-in modems. If you have to buy your own, look for one with speed. The faster the modem can transmit data down the line to your PC, the lower your phone bill. Modem speed is measured in bits per second. Look for a baud, or bps, rate of at least 14,400.
Access: There are two ways on to the Net. The easiest is to subscribe to an online information service, which will have its own electronic information sources, as well as providing access to the Net. If you are computer illiterate, seek a provider with good customer support. Outfits such as CompuServe, are designed for techno-phobes and will essentially hold your hand as you negotiate the information highway.
Remember that you pay for every phone call that gets you online, so make sure there is a local access number, or your phone bills will leap. Subscription costs are coming down as competition increases, but the charging structure varies enormously between different providers. Among the better online servers are UK Online, Pipex and CompuServe. America On-Line is coming to Britain later this year.If you are reasonably computer literate, you can invest in web-browsing software and hook up through one of the direct Net servers, such as Demon. You will not get any of the little extras to make your electronic life more comfortable, but you will pay far less. This is the best option for anyone planning to spend hours on end surfing the Net. All access providers will give you the basics: an electronic identification, a password and mail box (for e-mail).
Software: To surf the Net without a doctorate in computer sciences, you need special software. Netscape has dominated the field with its Navigator software, but Microsoft is challenging with Internet Explorer. Both are very easy to use. If you belong to CompuServe or other online groups, you may be able to download the software directly.
Gossip: You no longer have to be on the trading floor to pick up market gossip. Many online servers have their own discussion forums for investors, or you can join discussions on the Net. These include misc.invest, misc.invest.stocks, misc.invest.funds, and misc.invest.technical.
Karen Zagor on computer services available to the private investor at home
Not long ago, real-time stock information and company news were the domain of stockbrokers and rich individuals who could afford a Reuters or Bloomberg terminal. Then came the Internet. Now, anyone with a computer and a modem should be able to get all the information they need to trade from home. However, the UK lags the US in information available electronically to private investors.
Investors interested in US stocks or bonds have access to a wealth of information, with real-time quotes at sites on the World Wide Web, including InterQuote (http://www. interquote.com), which charges a monthly subscription. If a 15-minute delay is acceptable, most online services, such as CompuServe and America On Line, offer quotes for free. A subscription to Zacks Analyst Watch brings analysts' earnings predictions, daily news stories and price updates on companies in a portfolio. Zacks has its own Web site (http://aw.zacks.com) or can be reached via Quote.Com (http:// www.quote.com), while Value Line's quarterly analysts' reports are available through CompuServe. Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo
.com) offers news from Reuters, and there is special software to help with technical analysis, such as MarketArts's Windows on Wall Street and Equis International's MetaStock.
Most of these sources are available to UK investors interested in the US, but information on UK markets is harder to find. If there are Web sites dedicated to UK equities, they are too obscure for the ordinary computer buff to find. On the software front, Windowline, the retailer, says there is "nothing available off the shelf" to aid analysis.
The conditions for UK investors, however, are not as bleak as they might seem. MetaStock (01707 644874), Indexia and Synergy (01582 424282) software can now be ordered by telephone. A feed service, such as that offered by New Prestel (0171 591-9000), can pipe up-to-date equity and gilt prices into your pc, to be used with the software. Prestel's CitiFeed daily price service is free, while its CitiService Premium real-time prices service costs £299.99 plus VAT a year.
ESI (http://www.esi.co.uk) also has a real-time share price service for £19.90 a month, plus VAT. Its less expensive option gives eight updates a day of the FT-SE 100 index and 300 individual stocks. Charges are £100 to join and £10 plus VAT a month. It also offers price histories and comparisons and a tool that automatically revalues your portfolio as prices move.
ESI Service is linked to ShareLink's MarketMaster service. Investors can buy and sell shares, gilts and unit trusts electronically once they have set up a ShareLink MarketMaster account. Shares are bought and sold electronically, using a PIN number to verify the deal. Payment is by cheque or over the phone by debit card. Emma Kane, of ShareLink, says: "No money goes on to the Net and the PIN makes the service totally secure." ShareLink (0121-200 7790).
CompuServe offers a number of facilities including newswires and a clippings service that investors can customise to pull out stories from various sources. Users can get financial newsletters, investment and analysts' reports online. They also have Internet access.
CompuServe does have a stock quote service, but, at present, prices are 24 hours old. Jodi Turner, CompuServe content development group manager, says: "In the US, you can get real-time quotes on CompuServe for the whole market. In Germany it's a 12-hour delay." CompuServe does not know when it will have more up-to-date share prices for UK subscribers, but expects to offer 24-hour sharedealing by the second quarter of this year.
Trevor Neil, who runs the UK MetaStock User Group (01892 863476), says: "Things are just starting to change in the UK. Until the end of last year, you had to pay quite a lot for data. Now prices are starting to come down."
The strict UK regulatory environment is one reason there is less accessible information here than in the US. CompuServe's Ms Turner says: "Before we launch any new products, we need to make sure they comply with regulations. Rules in the US are less stringent about what is a financial advertisement."
In constrast, the US regulators are now online. The Securities and Exchange Commission, the financial watchdog, has its own Web site (http://www.sec.gov) which offers daily newsletters, speeches, annual reports, proxy registration statements and tender offer filings.
Investment houses, however, are not exactly leaping at the opportunity to disseminate research through the Net. One of the bigger houses said: "We have been looking at a number of ways of spreading information on the Net, but people feel that if everyone can get it electronically then why should our customers pay."
This may be why Barclays Stockbrokers (http://www.
Barclays.co.uk) offers a good range of general information on different financial vehicles on its Internet site, but gives stock opinions only on its phone service.
Philip Bungey of Barclays Stockbrokers says: "Security is still our greatest fear. But we are looking very seriously at what to do with the Net in the future. We want to give investors enough information to make the right decisions."
The Times is on line at http://www.the-times.co.uk
Europay International, the payment product provider, has a new Internet page giving details on language, currency and cash machines, including whether the national airport has one (http://www.
europay.com).
Richard Cork continues his guide to the Tate's Cezanne retrospective
Nobody knows who this woman is, nor precisely when Cezanne painted her. But she has become one of the most unforgettable, iconic figures in Western art.
The blue-robed sitter could hardly be more imposing. She gazes towards us, her frowning solemnity offset by the hint of a smile. The thin hair flattened on her crown enables Cezanne to emphasise her head's essential, sculptural form. He stiffens the deep folds running through the dress, so that her body takes on an almost metallic strength. Two rough hands rest on the ample expanse of her lap, but they seem ready for action. Indeed, the woman's entire body is erect and alert.
No doubt she welcomes the chance to savour her coffee, and take stock of the duties ahead. But even the coffeepot seems stern and vigilant, while the white cup rises from its luminous saucer with extraordinary forcefulness. Cezanne softens the mood on the left edge, where hazy flowers seem to detach themselves from the wallpaper and float in space. On the whole, though, he asserts a resolute sense of order throughout this magisterial painting.
Cezanne is at the Tate Gallery until April 28, sponsored by Ernst & Young. For advance booking, which is advised, telephone 0171-420 0000
On Monday: Richard Cork discusses Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from Bibemus, c.1897
As those visiting the Tate Gallery show can attest, Cezanne constantly depicted a Provencal beauty spot, the Mont Sainte-Victoire. Rarely happy with his efforts, the painter would return to the scene, again and again, to make one more attempt to get it right.
A mile away from the Tate, at the Department of Social Security in Whitehall, ministers have a mountain they wish to tackle, in the shape of the pension problem.
They are eager to ensure that the nation saves for its retirement, an entirely laudable aim. But, like Cezanne, their efforts have not always matched their aspirations. Sometimes, the results have been disastrous.
The £4 billion personal pension scandal is a case in point. Responsible for this debacle were the life insurance companies who encouraged employees to leave company schemes for personal pensions with inferior benefits.
In an earlier government pensions initiative, five million employees, encouraged by National Insurance rebates, left the state earnings related pension scheme (Serps), also for personal pensions.
Unfortunately, about 50 per cent are making no contributions of their own. The NI rebates, meanwhile, are being eaten away by life insurers' charges.
The latest pensions big idea, as outlined this week in a speech by Peter Lilley, Secretary of State for Social Security, shows that the Government continues to believe that life companies know how to behave honourably. This is in spite of the continuing delays in payment of compensation to the victims of their past misdemeanours.
In Mr Lilley's vision, group personal pensions would cover workers at smaller companies, giving each employee his own personal, portable fund. In his speech, however, Mr Lilley made no mention of how such pensions would be managed and invested, leaving open another glorious selling opportunity for the life industry.
The sales talk of its representatives would drown out the voices pointing out that group personal pension schemes can be operated cheaply and efficiently. Watson Wyatt, the actuary, for example, suggests that the cash could be invested in low cost index-tracker funds.
Mr Lilley is right to concern himself with the pensions cause. But, unlike Cezanne, he should not always find himself having to return to the same task. This time he should ensure that his idea is executed properly.
Karen Zagor on the rewards for staying at one society
The Britannia has finally revealed details of its cash payment loyalty scheme for members, nearly eight months after first suggesting the plan. Qualifying members can expect to recieve £10 to £500 a year, starting in 1997.
After speculating about what they would receive from the scheme, which was shrouded in secrecy for many months, members are unlikely to be ecstatic about the Britannia's predictions of average £40 payments in the first year.
In the wake of the recent wave of mergers and converstions in the industry, and the large one-off payments received by hundreds of thousands of building society members, those societies intent on maintaining their mutuality have been forced to pass part of their profits on to members. Rob Thomas, building societies analyst at UBS, believes societies could part with two-thirds of their profits without harming their business.
The Britannia is the first society to announce a cash-based plan. To compete with the societies that are rewarding customers with reduced mortgage rates, the Britannia is cutting its variable rate by 0.25 percentage points for anyone who has held a mortgage for five years or more. The discount will start on April 1.
The society is using a points method to calculate how much members will get. To earn points, borrowers must make monthly residential mortgage payments of at least £50; savers must have at least £500 in a Britannia investment account. Savers and borrowers must also have been members of the society for at least one year.
Savers will get one point per £100 invested, to a maximum of £20,000. Borrowers will get one point per £1 paid each month, to a maximum of £500. Pep, pension and general insurance customers will receive a flat 50 points. Members will get at least £10 and no more than £500. Deposit and current account holders will get nothing. Members who joined after December 31 last year will not qualify for a bonus in the first year of the scheme.
Members will also be rewarded for longevity. Those of five to nine years standing will have their points multiplied by 1.5; from the tenth year, points will be doubled.
Points start accruing this year and the first payments will be in early 1997. The amount to be distributed will depend on the society's profits. The Britannia will announce a value per point at the end of each year.
The National & Provincial was the first to announce a membership loyalty scheme, touting the benefits of mutuality, shortly before the society was snapped up by the Abbey National bank.
In November, the Yorkshire said it would lift its minimum savings rate from 0.7 per cent to 2.75 per cent. Its mortgage rate was first cut from 7.99 per cent to 7.84, and then to 7.39 per cent. The Yorkshire also updated the rates on its obsolete accounts. In the same month, Northern Rock cut 0.25 percentage points from its variable lending rate to apply after seven years. It also consolidated savings accounts, eliminating obsolete accounts. A second phase of benefits will be introduced in April.
Bradford & Bingley followed in January with plans to cut standard variable rates by 0.25 percentage points to 7.24 per cent from March 1. The gap between saving and borrowing rates will narrow, with savers receiving, on average, rates that are 0.25 percentage points better than those of competitors.
The Nationwide has said it will unveil its plans to reward long-term savers and borrowers in April.
The Skipton has not announced a loyalty incentive scheme as such. Instead, it is narrowing the gap between the interest rates for savers and borrowers. It has also brought in free unemployment insurance for all borrowers.
Mr Thomas of UBS believes that every society except the Birmingham Midshires will come out with some form of reward scheme. "I expect the Nationwide will opt for a scheme which reduces mortgage rates. If there's one thing that will hurt the plcs hard it is a cut in mortgage rates because that is very hard to compete with," he said.
In one of the more peculiar moves, Alliance & Leicester, which is in the throes of converting to a bank, has said it will announce a scheme to reward long-standing customers at the end of March. Details are not yet available but borrowers will be among those who benefit.
Britannia helpline 0990 168516.
PARLOPHONE'S marketing men are hoping that Valentine's Day will spur yet another rush of love for "new" Beatles songs. The second new Beatles single, Real Love, which is released next Wednesday, is an enhanced version of a demo written and sung by John Lennon to his own piano accompaniment. Available on vinyl, cassette and CD, it also carries new versions of Baby's In Black, Yellow Submarine and Here, There And Everywhere.
ADD Mother Courage to the list of National Theatre shows heading for America. Jonathan Kent's production, starring Dame Diana Rigg, is being wooed for a tour starting in San Francisco later this year that would end up on Broadway, where Rigg won a Tony Award for her Medea two years ago. "If ever there was something I feel elated about doing, it's this," says the San Francisco-based producer Carole Shorenstein Hays.
ALTHOUGH newly ensconced at the Barbican as music director of the London Symphony Orchestra, the British conductor Sir Colin Davis is also spreading his wings across the Atlantic. The New York Philharmonic has announced that Davis is to be its principal guest conductor from the 1998-99 season. Only one other conductor William Steinberg in 1967-68 has held this title with the Philharmonic in its 154-year history. Davis has had a long relationship with the New York orchestra: since 1968 he has conducted 43 concerts of its concerts.
THE original Cinematographe show presented by the Lumiere brothers in the Great Hall of the Regent Street Polytechnic on February 21 1896 is to be recreated on the same site exactly a hundred years later. The central London site, now part of the University of Westminster, will be used for a four-day Lumiere Festival (Feb 19-22) organised by the university to mark the centenary of the British cinema. Members of the public will pay the original one-shilling (5p) admission price to see the programme, some of which will be shown on the original projector.
What will Sir Simon Rattle do with the rest of his life? I have thought of little else since Tuesday, when our curly-mopped maestro made the "shock announcement" that the musical world had been expecting for at least ten years. He is quitting his City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. When his contract expires, in 1998, he will have served a stupendous 18 years. Time for a fresh challenge. At 41, he can't have more than another six decades of conducting left.
Where now? A depressing question, as Rattle surely realises. Naturally, there will be dozens of offers, loaded with dosh and larded with sycophancy. Not so much from the great European orchestras, perhaps. Rattle blew his chances with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in one dreadful night ten years ago. The Berlin Phil is wedded to Claudio Abbado, and the Vienna Phil has not had a principal conductor in 153 years.
But America: that's different. Of the "Big Five" orchestras, only one has a conductor under 60. Any of them could come wooing Rattle; Boston has been mentioned most often. Or our boy could stay in Britain. He wouldn't touch the London orchestras, of course. Who would? But he might take on the Royal Opera if he can reconcile the task of amusing the £120-a-ticket crowd with his carefully-nurtured "caring liberal" persona.
It's fun playing the fantasy-league conducting game, is it not? There's just one problem. The whole notion of the "conductor superstar" might soon be irrelevent. Rattle is an astute chap: he must see how close the classical music world is to extinction. He may well have the stamina to sustain a career into the mid-21st century, but will there will be any orchestras left to conduct by then?
Consider the evidence. First, nobody has yet come near to cracking the "modern music problem". There is good music being written, but concertgoers have been conned too often into listening to meretricious note-spinning: now they are wary of paying to hear anything new.
Sir John Drummond may attack them (as he did on these pages last September) for being "intellectually lazy". But the real intellectual sloths are the conductors, composers and impresarios who have ducked or botched the job of promoting the best new music to a wide public. They have condemned the conductors of the future to being nothing more than museum curators offering guided tours of Brahms to ever-dwindling audiences. No sort of job for a zestful character like Rattle.
That is one reason for depression. There are more. For most of this century the record industry has been the motor of the classical music world. It has kept hundreds of orchestras in business; made thousands of soloists and conductors rich; turned a few into household names. Now the old motor is grinding to a halt. Everything that can be recorded has been, many times. Who needs another new Beethoven cycle? There are dozens in the vaults, just waiting to be snipped into lots of Wonderful World of Beethoven compilation CDs and retailed in supermarkets for £3.99.
That is bad luck for Rattle and the other gifted conductors now slipping gracefully into late boyhood. Esa-Pekka Salonen, Mariss Jansons, Mark Elder, Riccardo Chailly: they are all victims of technological history. The record industry doesn't need them any more.
The question is, does anybody need them? In a spiritual sense, I mean. A gripping new book Charisma in Politics, Religion and the Media, by David Aberbach (published by Macmillan) draws fascinating parallels between the traumatic early lives of leaders such as Churchill, Hitler and Roosevelt and those of entertainers like Chaplin, Lennon and Monroe who also exerted a quasi-mystical hold on mass audiences. Having "struggled for inner wholeness", these charismatic stars can better embody the fractured mood of their nation.
Aberbach doesn't mention conductors, but he easily might have done. Mahler, Klemperer, Karajan, Bernstein, Tennstedt, Giulini figures who are central to the notion of "the maestro" fit his definition very well.
The problem with the Rattle generation is that they don't measure up in this charismatic sense. They are successful businessmen who lead comfortable lives. Their interpretations are often clever, but not wrenched from the black hole of trauma. How could they be? Yet if conductors are again to inspire the public, they must reclaim their mythic dimension.
Rattle could do that. It would be easy for him to settle for super-rich comfort now. But that would betray all he stood for in Birmingham. There, he gave classical music a new social and civic purpose, a new audience and the makings of a new repertoire. Now he should attempt to do the same in the international arena.
I don't know how or even whether it is possible at all. Henry Wood achieved it when he started the Proms, and Bernstein intermittently did so in the 1950s. But the world is a more fragmented place now. I just know that the mission to save classical music is urgent and that Rattle is possibly the only person capable of leading it.
FREDERICK LOCK, above, had been banking with NatWest for 45 years when they decided to shut his local sub-branch in South Ockenden, Essex. As a 65-year-old pensioner, upset by the way his bank has treated him, Mr Lock is switching his account to another bank.
A couple of years ago, NatWest wrote to Mr Lock to inform him that his branch was being renamed as part of a consolidation programme. Last month, NatWest phoned him to ask whether he wanted to renew his Tessa.
The following week, his sister-in-law went to open a new account and was assured that NatWest in South Ockenden had renewed its lease for a further five years. The week after that, Mr Lock's wife returned from their bank with news that it is closing in March.
"The nearest branch is in Grays, five miles away, and the journey will cost £2.10 by bus," says Mr Lock. "It will take half a day to get there and back, then I'll need a cup of tea when I get into town. Everyone we know is old they can't stand outside waiting for a bus in this weather, and in the summer it's too hot.
"Services are being chipped away. They are grasping my money with one hand, and they are locking the key of our bank door with the other."
The Post Office is the only remaining financial institution in South Ockenden, so wherever he moves his bank account, Mr Lock will be forced to travel into Grays. "Rates are important, but we'll pick the bank closest to the bus stop," he says.
Morag Preston examines the personal cost as banks seek to economise on their networks
Nearly 3,000 branches of high street banks have closed in the last five years, and after the Lloyds takeover of TSB, analysts are forecasting more closures.
A private Bill to merge Lloyds and TSB enabling customer accounts to be transferred into the new bank is expected to reach Parliament within the next 18 months. This could mean that where branches of TSB and Lloyds sit side by side one may have to close. "Over time, there will be some amalgamation of branches," said TSB.
Ed Sweeney, general secretary of the Banking Insurance and Finance Union (Bifu), which has more than 130,000 members, said: "We will be lobbying MPs hard to oppose this Bill if it means more job losses and a worse choice for customers."
Bifu added: "It's a moral judgment. It might be okay to close a branch commercially, but it's not very sensible socially. What does it mean to the community and the staff? It also affects the economy as a whole."
Customer complaints reached their peak in the early 1990s when the leading banks were accused of chopping branches, cutting staff, removing managers and pushing up charges. Customers were hit hardest in rural areas, where often there was only one bank. When that bank closed, villagers were forced to switch to the Post Office's Girobank or to incur the cost of travelling into town.
"Banks make profits from local communities and their customers yet they're deserting them," said Bifu. "They tend to be the non-profitable branches in remote areas that close those that elderly people tend to use. It becomes a vicious circle. That branch might not make a profit, but the company as a whole does.
"It's particularly hard for small businesses cashing up at the end of the week, forced to take large sums of money on a longer journey."
Lloyds and TSB have about 2,850 branches. Lloyds said: "Last October, before the merger, we hadn't had a large-scale closure for a year or two, and were where we wanted to be. The merger has clouded the issue a little bit."
Appropriately, Lloyds is strongest in the South and South West, while TSB is traditionally a northern bank. "We look to see if there are enough customers using the branch, and that it isn't losing money. Otherwise, it means customers from other branches having to subsidise it," said Lloyds. "There's a reason why people aren't using sub-branches so much. Presumably, more people are travelling into work, or they're drawing cash at large supermarkets."
Lloyds added: "There's always a lot of resistance to people closing a small rural branch. It's bad news for people in the village, and for local business. It's a chicken and egg situation maybe people in the village aren't using the bank enough. It's a thorny question what moral obligations banks have."
More than 500 branches of Barclays Bank have closed since 1990, leaving about 2,040. "We've virtually reached the end of our programme," said Barclays. "Where we do make closures, it's always after considerable consideration. They're usually sub-branches in suburbia that weren't open for the full day, that weren't being used enough to justify them staying open."
Barclays added: "The key thing is we offer services where it's most convenient for the majority of customers. Where they live isn't always the most convenient place if the shopping centre has moved down the road."
Where Barclays closes a branch, it is normally replaced with an automated teller machine. "We're aware of the concern in rural communities where branches have been closed, but it's for us to educate customers and to make them more aware of alternative services available," it said.
There are currently 2,300 branches of NatWest across the UK, giving it the second-largest market after Lloyds-TSB. NatWest, the first bank to remain open on a Sunday at a shopping centre in Essex, said: "Our branch network is smaller than it was five years ago. We have to make a decision from time to time, and a balance has to be struck."
Midland describes itself as "peculiar", because of its commitment to "community banking". Last year, Midland cut 1,745 jobs and moved its senior managers into high street branches. Midland said: "Our current strategy is to provide a senior level of service at community level. Our customers want someone in their own community who can make a decision, without going to area or regional level."
LLOYDS and Citibank have launched software packages for use with a Psion, the hand-held computer, Caroline Merrell and Morag Preston write.
The software will give the banks' customers access to the latest information on their accounts and allow transactions to be carried out via telephone lines.
The Citibank software allows customers to transfer money between accounts and gives details of transactions. The Lloyds software enables customers to send electronic cheques to any UK account.
The Lloyds scheme began as a pilot in the Thames Valley and Eastern area, and involved 30 people. This has now been extended nationwide and abroad, involving another 70 customers. John Leather, product manager emerging technology, said: "Small businesses like the portability and security. Other people like the idea of being able to carry out home banking whenever they want. But I think chequebooks are going to be here for a long time yet. It's not for wandering into the local shop with."
Mike Dennehy, Citibank marketing director, said: "No matter where customers are, they can access their account easily and with complete security." The Citibank software costs £49 including VAT. No price has yet been set for the Lloyds package.
Could the shape of things to come be a bank without branches? In just four years, as many as 10 million people could be conducting their financial affairs over the telephone, according to forecasts.
Datamonitor, the market research company, believes telephone banking is so popular with young people that it will grow by up to 30 per cent by the year 2000.
Well-heeled and clutching a brace of credit cards, the typical customer is a male homeowner, aged between 24 and 54. He earns at least £20,000 a year, and there is only a one-in-ten chance he is over 50. Telephone banking is designed for people who prefer to sort out their financial affairs in the evenings or at weekends.
The banks like it because once they have invested in the necessary technology, the service is relatively cheap to run. At present, more than two million banking transactions are made by telephone, with the number expected to rise to 9.6 million in four years. At the same time, traditional high street banking transactions are expected to fall from just under 30 million to around 22.4 million.
The Banking, Insurance and Finance Union (Bifu) says that as centralised telephone services grow, smaller high street branches will close down. It says 20,000 more banking jobs are expected to disappear within the next few years, and says that the industry, which employed 445,000 people in 1989, now has jobs for only 370,000.
As demand grows, a two-tier system has developed. There is the personalised service, which allows you to call up an operator 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to pay bills, arrange overdrafts and check balances by phone.
National Westminster Bank and First Direct run such services. NatWest's is called PrimeLine. It has 20,000 customers and went nationwide last month. It is open only to people who earn more than £20,000 a year, and charges are the same as for ordinary NatWest services. First Direct, launched by Midland Bank in 1989, has around 500,000 customers, who make half of their calls outside office hours.
The other option is the "keypad" service, by which all transactions are controlled by pressing the numbers on a telephone keypad. This is a very basic operation and you do not speak to anyone
in the process. NatWest's ActionLine, launched in December 1989, is a 24-hour keypad operation.
However, the major player in the telephone banking industry is the Co-Operative Bank, which claims to have 750,000 customers and takes about six million calls every year. It has just opened a telephone centre in Skelmersdale, Lancashire, to complement its existing operation in Stockport, Cheshire.
"By 2000 we expect to be receiving 12 million calls a week, based on the fact that our customers are increasing by 1,000 a week," says Terry Thomas, the Co-Op's managing director. "Telephone banking is the face of the future, and it is here to stay."
Other players in the market include Abbey National, which has set up a telephone service open to any of its 1.6 million customers. Barclaycall, meanwhile, is open every day of the year between 7am and 11pm on weekdays and 9 am to 5pm at weekends. More than 500,000 people have signed up for Direct Banking, the Royal Bank of Scotland's telephone service.
John Russell Taylor goes in search of the inner life of Lord Leighton on the centenary of his death
Frederic, Baron Leighton was the very image of the Victorian artist as public figure. This meant, of course, something very different from our own conception of a life led in public. Nowadays we have endless documentation which tells us more, sometimes, than we might care to know about the emotional life and sexual preferences of, say, Jeff Koons or David Hockney. Not so in the 19th century. It is not that we are left in ignorance of the exterior facts, but what made them tick is often a very different matter.
With Leighton we have the image, all right; and an extremely imposing one it is, as the plethora of exhibitions marking the centenary of his death on January 25 amply confirm. The achievements roll past in majestic array: his first major public success with Cimabue finding Giotto in the Fields of Florence before he had turned 20; elected an Associate RA in 1864, when he was 34; full RA in 1868; president of the RA in 1878 and knighted for good measure; made a baronet in 1885 and finally created a baron (the first artist to achieve such recognition) in the New Year Honours of 1896, less than a month before his death. His funeral was held at St Paul's.
We also know that he was regarded as one of the handsomest men of his day, much commemorated in paint, sculpture and photography. He was surrounded by a bevy of adoring and fiercely protective society ladies, but never married. There was never, Mrs Barrington, his first biographer, assures us, any hint of impropriety with any of his models, even though some of them were professionals, which normally meant that they were no better than they ought to be.
If she does not also insist that no scandal attached to his host of young male proteges and his frequent painting of males in the nude, that was because any hint of such goings-on was unthinkable of him, even in the immediate aftermath of the Wilde trial. He was either unimaginably circumspect or totally celibate.
Does it matter which? Well, yes and no. To mark the centenary of his death, Leighton House is putting on a show which aims to recreate life there in Leighton's heyday. It must have been pretty luxurious, and the aesthetic splendour of the house's Arab Hall somehow suggests harems, exotic perfumes and strange sins. But in cold fact the tone seems to have been all too high-minded.
But what or whom did he love, what or whom did he passionately desire? Or was he a great artistic technician but a sadly cold fish?
Leighton was the leader of what William Gaunt dubbed the "Victorian Olympians" and lived up to the label in his demeanour and his work. His subject matter is mainly from classical myth. There are occasional incursions into the Bible, but even in a nominally Old Testament image such as Jonathan's Token to David his visual world is firmly classical.
At worst we might quote at him Arthur Hallam's warning to the young Tennyson: "Alfred, we cannot live in art." Leighton might reasonably answer that he did not: his life was full of teaching, working for the Royal Academy, helping the young and good works of all kinds. But essentially he did.
Most likely all we shall ever know, and all we need to know, about his inner life is in his art. It is not so much an art of escapism as the creation of a parallel world where all are beautiful, all movements are graceful, all colours are clear-cut. But nothing in it is ever left vague, is not minutely observed.
Leighton was one of the most brilliant draughtsmen in an age of deep concern with the art of drawing. His major paintings were preceded by endless studies, as may be seen both at the Academy and at the Victoria and Albert, where his great murals of The Arts of Industry Applied to War and to Peace have been cleaned and made the centre of displays which show every stage of their elaboration.
Though he produced only three major sculptures, Leighton was disproportionately influential in sculpture, mainly because of this skill in rendering physical action (the point is well taken in the sculptural show organised by Joanna Barnes at the Mattheisen Gallery); but he also often worked out ideas for painting in sculptural form, and a number of these three-dimensional sketches appear in the Academy show. Clearly his art was his reality, and its hard finish holds in check, but perhaps only just, a volcanic intensity of feeling. He is, more than anything else, the English Ingres.
Leighton Centennial Exhibition, sponsored by Christie's, Royal Academy, London W1 (0171-439 7439), until April 21
The Leighton Frescoes and Leighton as a Book Illustrator, V&A, London SW7 (0171-938 8441) until Sept 8 and May 6 respectively
Leighton and his Sculptural Legacy, presented by Joanna Barnes, Matthiesen Gallery, London SW1 (0171-930 4215), until Mar 22
Relentless Perfection: At Home with Lord Leighton, Leighton House, London W14 (0171-602 3316) until April 21
Sara McConnell on the need for greater protection from powerful landlords
Elderly people who have bought flats in private retirement homes are among thousands of leaseholders whose right to buy their freehold is being ignored by their landlords. Many of these landlords are household name companies who buy and sell freeholds as part of large commercial property portfolios.
Leaseholders often discover the freehold has been sold behind their backs, giving them no chance to buy. Some new landlords then raise service charges and adopt bullying tactics to force people to pay. In some cases, they ignore specialist services people have paid for, such as resident wardens.
Ministers are under increasing pressure to stop abuse of legislation intended to give leaseholders first refusal if their freehold is up for sale. Revelations in The Times and elsewhere of such abuses have forced John Gummer, the Environment Secretary, to include a last-minute draft of amendments to the Housing Bill going through Parliament. But the government-funded Leasehold Enfranchisement Advisory Service (LEAS) will tell him next week that the amendments do not go far enough.
Campaigners say that without far-reaching reforms leasehold properties will become increasingly difficult to sell, with consequent dire effects on the housing market. Joan South of the Leasehold Enfranchisement Association (LEA) says: "Who is going to buy into a situation where so-called homeowners can be sold from one landlord to another, or come under control of the nightmare landlords whose service charge excesses are chronicled daily in the press?"
Advisers on leasehold rights are particularly concerned about the plight of elderly leaseholders, many of whom have sunk their life savings into retirement homes.
Rudi Reeves of the Advice, Information and Mediation Service for Retirement Housing (AIMS), said: "Breaches of the law have happened in retirement homes on a number of occasions. Leaseholders are realising that the only way out of it is to buy the freehold. But many older leaseholders have made a big financial investment...and they are wary of the extra cost of buying the freehold."
Under Section 5 of the Landlord & Tenant Act, 1987, leaseholders have an absolute right to first refusal when the freehold is up for sale, but landlords have been flouting the rule with impunity because there are no sanctions against doing so. Leaseholders can demand that a new landlord sell them the freehold for the same price he paid. But they have to act within two months, which is not long enough for many people to realise the freehold has changed hands.
The amendments to the Housing Bill would make it a criminal offence for a landlord selling a freehold to fail to offer first refusal to leaseholders. The leaseholders will also have longer to exercise their rights if they discover their freehold has been sold: four months from when they discover the sale to demand information, and then six months to serve a purchase order.
But the LEAS believes that it should be also mandatory for local authorities to prosecute selling landlords who ignore the law and the proposed maximum £2,500 fine should be raised. Third parties who buy in spite of the sanction, should have to prove what price they paid.
CONTACTS
The Leasehold Enfranchisement Advisory Service (LEAS) 0171 493 3116. Advice Information and Mediation Service for Retirement Housing (AIMS) 0171 383 2006.
Leasehold Enfranchisement Association 0171 937 0866 and Campaign Against Residential Leasehold Abuse (Carla) 01787 462787.
The trustees of Henry Smith's Charity were this week forced to defend themselves in the Court of Appeal against one of the tenants fighting the charity's sale of its South Kensington estate to the Wellcome Trust.
Smith's Charity angered leaseholders when it sold the estate to Wellcome last summer without offering tenants first refusal to buy. Every day leaseholders across the country are discovering that their freeholds have been sold to others before they realise it. They then have to take expensive legal action to buy the freehold from the new landlord.
Many large commercial property owners, including Smith's, argue that the selling landlord does not have to offer first refusal to leaseholders. Instead, the seller can leave it to the purchaser to ask the leaseholders if they are interested in the freehold. If enough of the qualifying tenants show interest, they can negotiate to buy.
Sellers usually claim they have chosen the latter route for "commercial" reasons because they can get a quicker sale. Leaseholders offered the freehold by the purchaser have less time to indicate their interest. They have only 28 days to act instead of two months, as they would if offered the freehold by the seller. John Gummer, the environment secretary, has now conceded that 28 days is too short, and he proposes to extend the period to two months in an amendment to the Housing Bill.
But it is not yet clear if a landlord selling a property can legally choose to leave his purchaser to negotiate with the leaseholders. Zipporah Mainwaring, a Smith's leaseholder, argued in the Court of Appeal that Smith's Charity had been wrong to sell the estate without giving them first refusal, and that leaving Wellcome, as purchasers, to contact leaseholders was not an alternative.
The appeal court reserved judgment, but its ruling will be eagerly awaited by the 30 tenants of Hylda Court, a 1930s block of flats in North London.
Hylda Court was owned by the Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society until 1993, when it sold the block to Frogmore Estates, a property company.
Liverpool Victoria wrote in a confidential selling brochure issued by its agents that it "did not propose to serve any notices under Section 5 of the Act [requiring the seller to give leaseholders first refusal], once terms are agreed for a sale. Further, it will be a condition of the contract that the purchaser will not serve any notices under the Act until after completion has occurred".
Liverpool Victoria said it had been a condition of the sale that Frogmore, as purchaser, should offer the freehold. It said: "We believe we haven't eroded tenants' rights and we have obeyed the law".
It had been keen to make a quick sale because it had too much residential property in its portfolio and had been told that it would be quicker not to negotiate with the leaseholders.
Cedric Brown's undignified exit from the executive suite should worry any hard-working salaryman. Even at the end, the scapegoat is under attack for being allowed to receive his lately boosted company pension when British Gas is doing so badly. It hardly bodes well for an era of expanding private pensions if rights built up over 43 years service are still seen as corporate largesse for higher orders to dole out at their discretion.
Mr Brown has been reinvented as the managerial version of Sid, the common man dreamt up by posh adfolk 10 years ago as a condescending put-down for millions of small investors. Sid was ushered by City smoothies into a safe but exciting new world of privatised enterprise, and offered a handful of used fivers by way of "incentives", as a foretaste of rewards ahead. Ignoring those used fivers, £100 invested in British Gas at its 1986 launch would now be worth about £160. If Sid had put the money in a respectable unit trust, it should be worth at least £225.
Much the same fate eventually befell the gasman. Under Sir Denis Rooke, who created the successful company sold to us in 1986, there were no "fat cats" on the board. Sir Denis saw privatisation as a mere change of owner. After Mr Brown became boss, City influence brought in Richard Giordano to change that culture. Mr Giordano first brought "fat cat" salaries from America to Britain 17 years ago. His new salary structure neatly fitted his £450,000 as part-time chairman.
Aside from the salary debacle, however, the troubles now afflicting British Gas shareholders and customers stem entirely from massive and indecently hasty government intervention. Having abjured picking winners, ministers decided to pick losers, destroying successful private companies by live dissection in the name of ideology. Tim Eggar, the cut-and-run Industry Minister, accelerated the onslaught on British Gas after insisting on the most painful option of immediate mass closure for the coal industry. He represents a perverse mentality that values policies higher, the more unpopular they are. For Gas investors, that has brought the heavy losses that tend to go with forced sequestration of one's business.
Symbolically, both Mr Eggar and Mr Brown will finally quit the scene at much the same time as private investors are encouraged to sell their devalued stock in the smaller, superficially riskier, part of a split British Gas. That is for City convenience rather than shareholders' interests, which may prove quite different once details emerge.
There is a more urgent warning. As a glance at the chart will show, our BT shares have fallen almost as steeply as British Gas over the past year, for the same reason. Regulation set up to guard against abuse of monopoly power is being perverted into a drive to destroy the privatised company, through a two-way plan to slash profits and shrink custom. As the information superhighway farce illustrates, investors should not rely on more sense from Labour. British Gas foolishly angered its 1.8 million shareholders instead of harnessing their political power.
BT may be smarter but there are few signs yet. Utility shares are often most depressed ahead of regulatory reviews. In the long run, however, the 2.5 million holders of BT would do best either to sell their shares or to lobby their nearest Tory MP while there is still time.
Leaseholders in ten retirement flats this week won a victory over the Co-operative Bank, after the intervention of The Times. The bank admitted it had been wrong to sell the freehold of the flats without giving the leaseholders right of first refusal and has now promised to pay the extra costs of the tenants in exercising their right to buy back the freehold from the new landlord.
In a statement, the bank said that solicitors acting for it had taken a "commercial decision" not to give tenants first refusal. The solicitors had concluded that "tenants' rights were adequately protected and no losses would accrue". The bank now concedes this was wrong.
Alvin Dytch of Liefman Rose, solicitors, who is acting for a majority of the leaseholders, welcomed the Co-op's decision. Goldhawk Properties, the new landlord, this week agreed to sell the freehold to the leaseholders.
The leaseholders, including Rene and Eric Tauber, own the retirement flats in Tower Grange, Salford, near Manchester. The first they learnt of the impending sale of their block was last October, when Northern Counties Housing Association, the then managing agents, told them that the Co-operative Bank had repossessed the block when the original developer went into receivership in 1993 and wanted to sell the freehold.
They then discovered the Co-op had sold the block to Goldhawk Properties, of Golders Green, north London. Under Section 5 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987, the Co-op should have given leaseholders first refusal.
Sara McConnell
VERNON & SHAKESPEARE, a Birmingham firm of solicitors, is claiming to be able to help aggrieved Cheltenham & Gloucester customers, who feel they missed out on bonuses in the Lloyds takeover.
But its help comes at a price about £100 per case, just to find out whether those who failed to be eligible for the pay out have any case in law. The solicitor is writing to 2,000 members of C&G Alternatives an action group set up at the time of the takeover to demand alternatives. If all members of C&G Alternatives take up the offer, Vernon & Shakespeare could make £200,000 just to consider whether action is possible.
The C&G says about half a dozen people have contacted it to complain about the mailshot. Some were C&G customers who had received the payout, and who had originally been members of C&G Alternatives for reasons other than being excluded from the bonus.
C&G says anyone with a grievance against the society because they felt they had been excluded from the payout could go to the Building Societies Ombudsman, which is free. He has considered many complaints about the C&G takeover and has found that it has acted within the law. The ombudsman still has some cases to consider.
Tony Powles, a Vernon & Shakespeare partner, said: "C&G Alternatives sent me through a list of names to see whether we could take the matter any further. If we can get enough people together, then we can see if we can get a group action going. "
Paul Rivlin, head of C&G Alternatives, questions Vernon & Shakespeare's view. "Our advice said any legal action would be pretty speculative. There was not enough certainty of a legal action being successful," he said.
Caroline Merrell
WHO would want to be in Wimpey's boots? Unmitigated exposure to housebuilding does not sound like a recipe for easy sleep. Yesterday Wimpey sealed its takeover of Tarmac's housebuilding division, becoming the UK's largest housebuilder.
Tarmac appeared to get the short straw in the asset swap, taking over minerals and construction, two operations on which Wimpey had struggled to put a shine. Tarmac's housebuilding operation will take Wimpey up to 12,000 units a year a level that will leave the builder with a financial burden each year in replacing stock. Wimpey is confident that the market is on the turn, reporting a 10 per cent increase in business so far this year. But with such mixed signals coming out of housing the company's fingers must be firmly crossed. It was, it admits, similarly confident about prospects this time last year.
Wimpey's advantage is short-term rewards. If volume returns then it will see immediate benefits from greater exposure. The down side, however, is large and the company will have little bargaining position in its role as a hostage to the economy.
NOT a week goes by without a profit warning. Last autumn it was the chemicals sector, followed by textile companies and more recently gloom from builders and consumer product manufacturers. Only last summer, however, analysts were forecasting market earnings growth of 15 per cent or more in 1995 and double-digit growth in 1996.
The warm feeling from a good spring reporting season persuaded forecasters to ignore economists who gave warning of an adjustment. Earnings estimates later plummeted and the general consensus for 1995 is growth of 12 per cent followed by 8-9 per cent in the current year.
Having been burnt by too much good news last year, the worry in the current reporting season is that investors will dwell on bad news in the forthcoming results season. But the numbers will be historic and the real question is whether growth will pick up later.
That seems likely; there is an unusual consensus among the financial community, government and voters that the economy needs a kick, suggesting lower interest rates to stimulate spending. Despite a boost to liquidity from bids and buy-backs, the big funds have not been buyers of UK equities, preferring America, emerging markets and bonds. A multiple of 13.9 times December 1996 earnings makes UK plc look inexpensive, compared with Wall Street's 17.5 times. However, staying out of shares could prove costly.
UNILEVER ought to be the investment of choice this year. In a slowing world economy, the defensive merits of a big manufacturer of branded consumer goods should become apparent. Sadly, however, the Anglo-Dutch company is unable to claim the mantle of favoured share while it chips away at expectations with periodic restructuring charges.
Hence, the City's negative reaction to news of a £225 million charge for the final quarter of 1995. The decision to close down fabric powder production at a US plant is unsurprising and should produce benefits. Competition is eroding Unilever's market share in soap powders and recent efforts to streamline the liquid detergents business in the US generated solid gains.
What worries investors is the never-ending drip of exceptional charges which have probably reached a total of £1 billion since 1990. After the US restructuring Unilever is focusing attention on cost-cutting in Europe with action expected in the margarine business. But the City was led to believe that a continuing £200 million annual cost would be absorbed in operational expenses. This year, Unilever is expected to produce 8-9 per cent earnings growth, a respectable performance in a market where forecasts are being cut daily. But if Unilever continues to deliver puddings in the fourth-quarter, earnings forecasts may be trimmed.
TRANSCO, the proposed British Gas upstream and pipeline business, is paying a high price for being allowed to shuffle off its problematic take-or-pay contracts into British Energy, the trading business. Needing to create a financially plausible company, British Gas was required to spin off Energy with no debt but, more important, the company will be supported by the Morecambe Bay gasfield.
Morecambe Bay accounts for 70 per cent of British Gas's gas production and, excluding the pipeline network, is the largest British Gas assets, worth £3 billion. Without the benefit of Morecambe Bay's £500 million of cashflow it is difficult to see how the disabled British Energy could survive. Unfortunately for British Gas investors, Energy's gain is Transco's loss.
Morecambe Bay was the cornerstone of British Gas's upstream strategy, before the proposed carve-up. The cashflow helped to fund more exploration and gas from Morecambe, flowing well into the next century gave British Gas comfort that it could put money into long-horizon projects such as the Karachaganak gasfield in Kazakhstan.
Burdened with £600 million of pipeline investment and the British Gas dividend which (assuming it is maintained) costs £630 million per year, Transco will have little cash to invest upstream. Transco's borrowing costs will rise after the demerger and having seen the company do the splits, its future partners in exploration may demand more financial guarantees than they ever requested from British Gas. For investors, there is no escaping the conclusion that Transco's upstream potential has been severely curtailed by the loss of Morecambe and its rating will suffer accordingly.
Burmah Castrol surged 51p to £10.39 after a strong buy recommendation from Merrill Lynch Smith New Court, the broker, which says the shares are undervalued and may be worth £12.14 to £14.66. It says the lubricants business alone is worth £3 billion and pitches the company's break-up value at about £20 a share.
David Sims saw Nurdin & Peacock shares slip 10p
ANOTHER spate of profit warnings and downgradings weighed heavily on investors with share prices dipping below 3,700 at one stage.
Nurdin & Peacock, the cash and carry operator, fell 10p to 148p after warning that profits for the year just ended will fall short of expectations. David Sims, chief executive, blamed the continuous erosion of margins. Brokers had been looking for up to £28 million but he said the figure is likely to be pitched somewhere between £19 million and £20 million. Last year the group made £16.9 million. The warning was accompanied by the abrupt departure of Nigel Hall, finance director. The group has promised to maintain the final dividend.
A profit warning also sent William Baird tumbling 13p to 168p, after touching 159p. The clothing group said pre-tax profits, achieved before restructuring costs of almost £10 million, will fall short of last year's £25.1 million, although the total dividend would be maintained at 9.5p.
The mild weather was blamed for the setback, which had put margins under pressure. Improved clothing sales during December had failed to offset the earlier problems.
Tarmac and George Wimpey signalled that their £600 million asset swap was to go-ahead. But Tarmac rocked the market with news that profits during 1995 would be hit by a £30 million provision. It relates to a power station contract which has yet to be signed off. As a result, profits were expected to drop from £107 million to £65 million. Brokers had been looking for profits of £95 million. Tarmac still rose 21/2p to 1201/2p.
Wimpey fell 5p to 135p after giving warning that profits would fall sharply in the second half resulting a full year outcome of only £15.5 million compared with £45.1 million last time. It blamed a downturn in house sales.
Unilever, the Anglo Dutch food group, says the cost of closing businesses in the US and restructuring its European operations will be £235 million. The figure will be included in the year-end results. The shares responded with a fall of 16p to £12.89.
Alpha Airports slipped 1p to 108p as brokers began downgrading their forecasts following a profits warning. Following some gloomy comments accompanying the interim figures, the group now says that pre-tax profits will be lower than the £21.4 million achieved in 1994. Greig Middleton, the broker, has trimmed its forecast for 1996 by £1 million to £26 million and has cut its estimate for 1995 by £2 million to £20 million.
End of the week bear closing and the start of the fifth consecutive record-breaking run on Wall Street enabled the rest of the equity market to end the week in positive territory. The index had opened 12-points higher reflecting New York's overnight performance before dipping back below 3,700 on renewed political worries and uncertainty about the timing of the next cut in German interest rates. It rallied before the close to finish 7.9 up at 3,716.3. There was, however, no disguising what has been a difficult time for investors, with the index falling 65-points on the week.
Once again turnover left a lot to be desired and by the close of business a total of 806 million shares had changed hands.
Profit-taking left MAI 13p lower at 435p in the wake of this week's proposed £2.9 billion merger with United News & Media, publisher of the Daily Express. United News lost 7p at 645p. The speculators are still talking of a possible bid for MAI.
Takeover favourite Pearson, publisher of the Financial Times and owner of Lazards merchant bank, left most City speculators disillusioned with the news that it is to pay £377 million for HarperCollins Educational Publishing from The News Corporation, parent company of The Times. Brokers said it was a step in the right direction for Pearson, but the shares finished 7p lower at 683p, after briefly touching 667p. Pearson share price has been scaling new highs recently on suggestions that it is a potential bid target. Last week Pearson's name was being linked with Viacom, the US media group.
Credit Lyonnais Laing, the broker, continues to take a cautious view of J. Sainsbury following a meeting with the company earlier this week. Laing has chosen to reiterate the view that clients should switch into Tesco, unchanged at 2821/2p. Sainsbury also finished all-square at 387p.
There was further heavy turnover recorded in Smith & Nephew as the price rose a further 5p to 1921/2p. Several brokers have had a change of heart about prospects for the group. Harmony Property returned from suspension 11/4p lower at 31/2p after the breakdown of reverse takeover talks with Galliard Homes. As if to rub salt in investors' wounds, the group announced write-offs totalling £1 million.
Games Workshop fell from a record high of 309p to finished 6p lower at 303pafter Tom Kirby, chairman, sold 1.15 million shares at 290p reducing his remaining holding to 2.59 million.
Cortecs International, the pharmaceutical group, jumped 24p to 241p after the company spoke to fund managers at a presentation arranged by Nomura, the Japanese broking house.
Gilt-Edged: Investors had to endure another volatile session reflecting uncertainty in overseas bond markets. In the futures pit, the March series of the long gilt touched a low for the day of £108 1/2 before rallying to close £1/16 firmer at £109 5/16. The number of contracts completed grew to 71,000. Among conventional issues, Treasury 8 per cent 2013 rose one tick to £100 19/32, while at the shorter end Treasury 8 per cent 2000 was down one tick at £104.
NEW YORK: Shares on Wall Street had to endure a roller-coaster ride on programme buying and selling. At the high point the Dow Jones industrial average was up more than 40 points and at the low point down 20 points before closing modestly 2.17 points higher at 5,541.62.
Chancery Division. Johnson v Blackpool General Commissioners and Another. Johnson and Another v Same
Before Mr Justice Robert Walker
[Judgment February 6]
To comply with a precept issued by general commissioners to produce books, accounts and other documents for inspection by a tax inspector, a taxpayer must make them available at a time and place that was reasonable.
To offer them for inspection at his home at one minute before midnight was so inconvenient as to be unreasonable.
Mr Justice Robert Walker so held in the Chancery Division when dismissing appeals by the taxpayers, Mr and Mrs W. J. Johnson, against the imposition of two penalties of £200 each by Blackpool General Commissioners for failure to comply with precepts served on them under regulation 10(1)(b) of The General Commissioners (Jurisdiction and Procedure) Regulations (SI 1994 No 1812).
Mr Johnson in person; Mr Timothy Brennan for the Crown.
MR JUSTICE ROBERT WALKER said that the notices served on the taxpayers required them to make various documents available for inspection by a tax inspector by February 25, 1995, so as to enable the general commissioners to determine their appeals against tax assessments for the years from 1989-90 to 1993-94.
On February 18 Mr Johnson wrote to the inspector that "our books and records will be available at exactly 23.59 hours" on February 25.
That gesture by Mr Johnson towards complying with the notices was unreasonable. In Campbell v Rochdale General Commissioners ([1975] STC 311, 313) Mr Justice Templeman had said that "when the commissioners have asked for certain documents ... and when the Act says the taxpayer is to ‘make available', that puts on him a positive duty either to bring them along or, if they are too bulky, to make them available by sending to the tax inspector an invitation saying ‘if you come along to' a designated place ‘they will be available there for your inspection'."
It was a clear and necessary implication that any such inspection offered by a taxpayer must be at a reasonable time and place.
It was highly inconvenient and thoroughly unreasonable for the inspector to be asked by Mr Johnson to turn up at one minute before midnight.
Solicitors: Solicitor of Inland Revenue.
Queen's Bench Divisional Court. Regina v Secretary of State for the Home Department, Ex parte National Association of Probation Officers and Another
[Judgment February 9]
Before Lord Justice Kennedy and Mr Justice Forbes
In removing without replacement the minimum approved qualifications for probation officers when making the Probation (Amendment) Rules (SI 1995 No 2622), which revoked rule 26 of the Probation Rules (SI 1984 No 647), the Home Secretary acted within the discretionary power conferred by section 25(1)(c) of the Probation Service Act 1993 to regulate the qualifications of probation officers.
The Queen's Bench Divisional Court so held in a reserved judgment, dismissing an application for judicial review by the applicants, the National Association of Probation Officers and Helen Mary Schofield, for a declaration that the 1995 Rules were unlawful and void, and for an order quashing them, on the ground that section 25 of the 1993 Act required the secretary of state to make rules specifying qualifications required for service as a probation officer.
Mr Edward Fitzgerald, QC and Mr Gavin Millar for the applicants; Mr Kenneth Parker, QC, for the secretary of state.
LORD JUSTICE KENNEDY said that the 1995 Rules, which came into force on December 4, 1995, deleted rule 26 of the Probation Rules 1984 and thereby abrogated the requirement that newly appointed probation officers should have a certificate of qualification in social work as a pre-requisite for appointment.
The 1995 Rules were made under section 25(1)(c) of the 1993 Act which provided: "(1) The secretary of state may make rules ... (c) regulating the qualifications, manner of appointment and duties of probation officers."
It was submitted for the applicants that although the statute appeared to grant to the secretary of state an unfettered discretion, when read in its statutory and historical context the failure to specify any qualifications would frustrate the intentions of Parliament.
For the secretary of state it was submitted that section 25(1)(c) granted him a discretion whether or not to prescribe qualifications, and that if he decided not to prescribe qualifications his discretion could only be challenged on the ground of perversity.
There was no challenge on that ground in the instant case.
In the light of the legislative history Mr Fitzgerald submitted that ever since 1926 the secretary of state had prescribed the qualifications of probation officers.
At first he did no more than require probation committees to consider educational qualifications, but since 1965 candidates were normally expected to complete a course of training approved by the secretary of state.
Furthermore, when re-enacting the permissive words of section 25(1)(c), Parliament could not have expected the secretary of state to leave it entirely to local probation committees to decide, without any guidance, what educational qualifications new probation officers should have.
Mr Parker pointed to sections in the 1993 Act where the language clearly imposed a duty, so that when permissive words had been chosen they should be taken to mean what they say.
Section 2(1) and (2) illustrated the ability of the parliamentary draftsman to use appropriate words to mark the distinction between a discretion and an obligation.
His Lordship accepted that the use of permissive words in a statute was not necessarily decisive.
There might in the circumstances be a duty to act, especially if the statute itself offered a remedy which could not be effective unless subsidiary legislation was put in place. But that did not help the applicants in the present case.
Since 1925 the responsibility for appointing probation officers had been vested in probation committees with supervision by the secretary of state.
He had power to make rules to "prescribe the qualification" or to "regulate the qualifications" and to a limited extent he had exercised that power.
The act of revoking rule 26 of the 1984 Rules was itself a regulation of the qualifications of potential appointees. That was why it fell within the discretionary power given to the secretary of state by section 25(1)(c).
It removed the potential obstacle to appointment, namely the lack of a social work qualification. The other qualifications considered to be appropriate were left, as they had always been left, to probation committees to determine.
The secretary of state had not therefore, as the applicants submitted, acted to create a void, except in so far as he no longer prescribed a particular educational qualification as an essential pre-requisite.
He had not done so until 1984, and his Lordship could not read into the permissive statutory words any duty, as opposed to a power, to do so.
Mr Justice Forbes agreed.
Solicitors: Hodge Jones & Allen; Treasury Solicitor.
Court of Appeal. Cavity Trays Ltd v RMC Panel Products Ltd.
Before Lord Justice Neill, Lord Justice Aldous and Sir John Balcombe
[Judgment February 6]
The holder of a patent could make a threat against a person that he would be sued for manufacturing products for disposal but could not threaten proceedings for the disposal of the product when manufactured.
Section 70(4) of the Patents Act 1977, which contained an exception to an aggrieved person's right under section 70(1) to bring an action against the patentee for a groundless threat, defined the acts of alleged infringements which were excluded and not the type of persons who might be threatened.
It was not an abuse of process for a person to start an action alleging unlawful threats of patent infringement and to seek to recover as damages the costs which had been incurred after receiving a threat of proceedings.
The Court of Appeal held allowing an appeal by the plaintiff, Cavity Trays Ltd, from a decision of Judge Peter Ford sitting in the Patents County Court on May 9, 1994, whereby he struck out its writ and statement of claim on the ground that the pleadings did not disclose a cause of action and amounted to an abuse of process.
On November 13, 1991 the defendant, RMC Panel Products Ltd, became aware that the plaintiff was intending to launch at an exhibition on November 24, 1991 a new type of cavity wall closer to be called "Type H Cavicloser". The defendant contacted its patent agent who advised that the Cavicloser infringed a patent of which the defendant was an exclusive licensee and therefore had rights under section 67 of the 1977 Act.
Pursuant to that advice the defendant's patent agents, on instructions, wrote a letter to the plaintiff threatening proceedings. The defendant decided to commence proceedings for infringement of patent and to seek an interlocutory injunction to restrain the launch of the Cavicloser.
The plaintiff's lawyers were instructed to resist the application for an interlocutory injunction. Shortly before the hearing was due to take place counsel for the plaintiff was informed that the application would not proceed.
The reason was that the defendant's solicitor discovered on the morning of the hearing that the defendant had transferred all its assets and liabilities to an associated company and it became apparent that the defendant might not have the necessary exclusive licence enabling the action to be started.
Furthermore, he learnt that the defendant was not in a position to provide a satisfactory cross-undertaking in damages. He tried, unsuccessfully, to obtain instruction from the associated company so that it could be joined as a plaintiff. Later he informed counsel and the court that the application could not proceed. The plaintiff then issued a writ and statement of claim claiming damages.
On the striking out application the defendant submitted that the only cause of action pleaded was an action for threats of proceedings for patent infringement under section 70 of the 1977 Act and that such an action could not succeed because the threats pleaded were not actionable having regard to section 70(4); further, the action was only a vehicle to recover costs expended by the plaintiff and was an abuse of process. The judge upheld both those submissions.
Section 70 of the 1977 Act provides: "(1) Where a person ... threatens another person with proceedings for any infringement of a patent, a person aggrieved by the threats ... may, subject to subsection (4) below, bring proceedings in the court against the person making the threats, claiming any relief mentioned in subsection (3) below...
"(4) Proceedings may not be brought under this section for a threat to bring proceedings for an infringement alleged to consist of making or importing a product for disposal or of using a process..."
Miss Mary Vitoria for the plaintiff; Mr Christopher Van Hagen for the defendant.
LORD JUSTICE ALDOUS said that the decision on the issue whether the statement of claim contained a good cause of action depended on whether it contained an arguable case of an unlawful threat of patent infringement proceedings. The defendant's case was that there was no actionable threat as the plaintiff was the manufacturer for disposal of the Cavicloser.
The defendant submitted that the purpose of section 70(4) was to enable a person to warn off the "primary infringer", that is, the manufacturer, importer, or user without fear of being sued for threats. That, his Lordship believed, to be correct.
However, the defendant went on to submit that the subsection should not be construed as being limited to threats directed at any particular act of infringement because it would be absurd to allow threats to bring proceedings for infringement by way of manufacture for disposal and not in respect of disposal when manufactured.
The plaintiff submitted that the words of the subsection were clear. They prevented proceedings being brought for threats alleged to consist of certain acts, namely making or importing a product for disposal or using a process.
His Lordship believed the plaintiff was right. The subsection prevented proceedings being brought for threats which were alleged to consist of certain acts. The word "consist" confined the the types of alleged threats to the specified acts set out in the subsection.
The ambit of the words specifying those acts was not open to doubt. There was no ambiguity in the meaning of the subsection which only prevented proceedings being brought for threats of making or importing a product for disposal or using a process. Other threats of proceedings against manufacturers or importers, for example, threats of proceedings alleging disposal or use, did not fall within the subsection.
In accordance with the meaning his Lordship had placed on the words in section 70(4), a patentee could make a threat against a person that he would be sued for manufacturing products for disposal, but could not threaten proceedings for the disposal of the product when manufactured.
Section 70 provided relief against abuse of monopoly. Subsection (4) was an exception added in the 1977 Act to allow warnings to be given in certain circumstances. It defined the acts of alleged infringement that were excluded and not the type of persons who might be threatened.
The division between the type of acts for which warnings were allowed without risk of suit and those that were not could be said to be arbitrary but was sufficient to enable a patentee to give the appropriate warning.
A patentee could give an adequate warning of intended proceedings by alleging that the manufacture of a product for disposal would infringe the patent. On receipt of that letter, correspondence could ensue between the parties which would enable them to resolve their differences.
It was not necessary for a patentee to go further, when contacting a primary infringer, and make an allegation that proceedings would be taken in respect of the sale of the product when manufactured.
Before the judge, the defendant submitted that the action was an abuse of the process of the court in that it was only a vehicle to recover costs which should have been sought by order of the judge at the conclusion of the aborted hearing or thereafter.
Mr Van Hagen drew the court's attention to Order 13, rule 1 of the County Court Rules 1981 which permitted applications to be made ex parte and submitted that the plaintiff had made an application and therefore proceedings were in being at that time and that the court had had power to make an order for costs.
That submission could not be accepted. Applications in the county court had to be in writing unless leave was obtained from the court. No such application was made and no leave obtained. It followed that no application was made under the County Court Rules.
As there were no proceedings before the court, the plaintiff could not recover any costs without starting proceedings itself. It was not an abuse of process to start an action alleging unlawful threats and seeking to recover as damages the costs which had been incurred after it had received a threat of proceedings.
The judge was wrong to strike out the action and his order would be set aside.
Lord Justice Neill and Sir John Balcombe agreed.
Solicitors: Reynolds Porter Chamberlain for Porter Bartlett & Mayo, Yeovil; Eaton Smith & Downey, Huddersfield.
Correction: Headline: Cavity Trays v RMC Panel Products;Law report;Correction Is sue Date: Friday February 23, 1996 Page: 34 In Cavity Trays v RMC Panel Produc ts (The Times February 10) counsel for the defendant respondent was Mr Mark Vanhegan.
Joanna Pitman unearths treasures among the archives at Drummonds Some of the rare menu cards housed at Drummonds Prime party venues have been snapped up all over Britain four years in advance for New Year's Eve 1999 to celebrate the millennium. Messrs Drummond, the bankers, who were bought by Royal Bank of Scotland in 1924, will no doubt already be working on the menu to rival the 1900 annual partnership dinner at its Charing Cross premises on the eve of the last turn of the century.
A colourful collection of decorative menu cards forms just a part of the rich archives of the bank, a collection of documents, records, letters, scrolls, pictures and ledgers which provides an unusual social history of London going back more than 250 years.
Andrew Drummond was 29 when he opened his first banking ledger in 1717 as a young Scottish goldsmith recently moved south from Edinburgh to set up shop "at the sign of the golden eagle" in Charing Cross, an area where Scots had settled since Elizabethan times.
Scottish names predominate in the early accounts but as a tenant of Northumberland House, the last of the riverside palaces on the Strand, Drummond and his fledgeling business benefited from the lavish entertainments laid on by the Duke of Northumberland, to which ministers and members of the nobility were invited.
But he also had early connections with men of the arts and craftsmen who congregated in the 18th century around St Martin's Lane and the Strand. James Gibbs, architect of the new St Martin-in-the-Fields of which Drummond was a warden, opened an account, as did Alexander Pope, the poet, and John Zoffany, the painter. The last years of Drummond's life were prosperous ones. Britain's economic stability at home and colonial expansion abroad meant London had become Europe's largest city. New clients included Sir William Chambers and Henry Holland, the architects, Lancelot Capability Brown, the landscape gardener, and Thomas Gainsborough, the painter.
When Drummond died at the age of 81 in 1769, a contemporary remembered his boast that "I have done great things, and have almost everything I could desire. My son is married into a noble family, and I have planted a colony of Drummonds round Charing Cross which appears to thrive."
The business was indeed thriving, so much so that the bank's premises on the west side of Whitehall, bought in 1760, were improved with ceilings and mantelpieces designed by Robert and James Adam, the fashionable architects of the day.
Despite near-bankruptcy, the firm again flourished and by 1775 there were nine dukes and 82 peers among the 2,850 account-holders as well as industrialists and entrepreneurs, including Josiah Wedgwood and Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
But the bank was most proud of its royal patronage and letters in the archive show the extent of it, beginning in 1764 when Samuel Martin opened an account as treasurer to the widowed Princess of Wales. The Duke of Gloucester began to bank there in 1775 and in 1784 George III, "chusing to deal with a Gentlemen rather than addressing myself through others to the Common sort of moneyed Men", approached Henry Drummond for £24,000.
In the 19th century, customers included several prime ministers, Sir John Fredrick Herschel, the astronomer, and Sir Humphry Davy, the chemist. Today Drummonds keeps its history books open and maintains a number of accounts that date back to the 18th century. Social historians will continue to delight for many years in the riches of its archives.
Sarah Bagnall meets one of the founders of Pret A Manger who has no diary and gives all employees his home telephone number ‘A lot of people monitor their failure and do nothing about it'
HE HAS all the hallmarks of an evangelical preacher. But all Julian Metcalfe's nervous energy, and there is a lot of it, is focused on feeding the body, not the spirit. Metcalfe, 36, is half of the partnership that set up Pret A Manger, the chain of sandwich shops that has revolutionised the concept of sandwich-making and eating.
No more limp lettuces or slimy, plastic ham nestling in gently curling bread. No more painstakingly scraping margarine off baguettes that bear an uncanny resemblance to rubber. Now, sandwich munchers have Prets, as the chain is fondly called by its 800-odd staff.
Prets is no ordinary sandwich shop. Its stores are sparkling clean with a distinctive metal decor, offering a range of high-quality sushi, salads, cakes and vamped-up sandwiches at a brisk pace. It has also won the unusual distinction for a sandwich stall of an Egon Ronay star and, in 1994, was crowned king of the sandwich by the British Sandwich Association.
But Pret's success was not won easily. Driven by pure frustration about the lack of ability to grab a quality sandwich at lunchtime, Metcalfe and Sinclair Beecham, his partner, set up Prets in 1986 with a £17,000 bank loan.
To begin with, it was an abject failure. "We started in London with one shop in Victoria Street. We worked at trying to get it right for three years. It was COMPLETELY wrong for three years. It was really bad. EVERYTHING about it was bad. The concept didn't work. We couldn't get the right food. It was AWFUL," says Metcalfe, who speaks in outsized letters to emphasise a point.
But Metcalfe and Beecham, 37, had a clear idea of their intentions and a fastidiousness that ultimately carried them through. "Our aim was to try to take on these wretched fast-food operators. No one really sold natural normal healthy food as a fast-food retailer. I suppose that's our fault as customers because we are impatient.
"That's why these places are so unbelievably successful. They operate marvellous businesses. Just look at the way people flock to them," he says.
The Pret mission is to emulate the fast-food chains in serving customers equally as efficiently and equally as quickly, but to offer completely naturally made products at affordable prices.
The balance between value and quality has proved a winner, and the number of stores has swollen to about 40, generating annual sales in excess of £30 million. The chain continues to expand and last week saw the opening of an outlet in Oxford Pret's farthest-flung outpost.
Metcalfe has a rather peculiar approach to running a business. Unlike his brethren in corporate boardrooms around the country, he doesn't know what he will be doing that morning, let alone the next day. This comes down to the basic fact that he doesn't have a diary. "My partner is completely different and very structured. But I don't have a diary personally, so I don't have any idea what I'm doing from one day to the next. I don't really need one as I don't like having lots of meetings. They're a waste of time."
This complete lack of structure gives Metcalfe immense flexibility during the week to respond immediately to ideas and events. When a semblance of an idea bubbles into his consciousness, Metcalfe doesn't need to jot it down and place it in his "to do" tray for attention at a later date. "I don't see how you get things done if you are tied down," he says.
However, Metcalfe is not left to freewheel through the week. Lisa, his personal assistant, does keep a diary and each morning grabs him when he arrives at about 9am from his home in Battersea, south London, where he lives in a converted school with Melanie, his wife, and three children.
"Lisa comes in and says this is what you are doing today. Sign this, sign this, sign this, read this and then I'm probably half way through and I leap up and run out to do something else. I drive her mad."
However, as Lisa's diary last week of Metcalfe's movements reveals, little is planned. The sole, regular feature of his week is the Tuesday morning senior management meeting. The three-hour meeting involves a brief discussion on the group's trading but mainly focuses on the major issues challenging the business.
Of the remaining hours in the week, Metcalfe says he spends 95 per cent of his time listening to customers and listening to employees. "My week is totally driven by the employees and the customers," he says.
Given Prets is a high-volume, low-margin business, the key to its success is ensuring that the business has a loyal customer base.
"You have to get your customers to come back. Thousands and thousands and thousands of them. The only way you do that is trying to satisfy them TIME and TIME again, and the way to do that is through the price of the product, the quality of the product and the attitude of the employees who work there," says Metcalfe.
Reflecting this attitude, Metcalfe's name and number are emblazoned across all Pret bags, encouraging customers to call if they want to talk. And they do. "I speak to every customer that calls. Quite a lot of people call just to test it and then when they get through they are so surprised," he says.
And every customer who writes in gets a letter back something that Metcalfe feels fervently about. "I spent £4,000 on something the other day through an airline. I won't say who, but it was a nightmare, but I haven't even had a letter back. That's three-and-a-half weeks ago. If someone has a problem with a £2 sandwich I write back the same day," he says.
Metcalfe's openness and availability extends to the group's employees all of them have his home telephone number. He spends large tracts of time trying to bring the best out of the "crew", as he calls the employees.
"I really do believe that coming to work is a real pain. I really do and always have. I must be a really lazy person. So you must make work challenging and rewarding," he argues. And while his attitude may not be that unusual, his approach most certainly is.
One way Prets tries to build team spirit is through a "shooting star" scheme, whereby everybody who finishes a course or gets promoted is awarded some money. But the individual is not allowed to keep the money. He or she has to give it to the people who helped to train them. Metcalfe explains: "If you have become a team manager then probably ten people went out of their way to show you how to do things. You're fine. You've got promoted. Your pay has gone up, but what about the people who helped you?"
Another expample of his maverick approach was when last week he visited a shop and spotted the manager and assistant manager with their top buttons undone. Instead of leaping down their throats, he took the operational manager shopping in Jermyn Street, promptly bought two £60 shirts and £40 ties and gave them to the button abusers. "At first they couldn't understand why, and then they realised and blushed. I said ‘don't do it because it makes the customer think you are sloppy and you are not sloppy' and then I left. Neither of them has had their top button undone since."
He is equally as manic about quality. Last week Nelly, who plays a major part in the food side of the business, flew to Spain to check out the environment in which the chickens used by Prets live.
"It's taken us MONTHS to ensure all our eggs are properly free-range, not bullshit free-range, not a stupid marketing campaign. Our supplier's chickens DO roam around the field and are NOT debeaked and DON'T have antibiotics. The same applies to all our food. Our cakes, bread, everything. We don't put chemicals in them."
All the group's sandwiches are made on site each morning. "You can't make thousands of sandwiches in a factory in the North and then sell them the following day. You wouldn't do that at home. Imagine you, this afternoon, made a sandwich at home and then put it in the fridge and then took it out of the fridge tomorrow. It's INCONCEIVABLE. You wouldn't do that."
Metcalfe's spontaneity and dedication to quality revealed itself in a recent trip to the group's Kensington store. "We sell a brand of crisps that I was deeply unhappy about. I was so fed up seeing these huge trolleys of crisps that I ended up wheeling one out of the shop, down the arcade, through Boots and out on to the pavement and just got rid of them. I couldn't BEAR to see them any more." Prets appears to have struck on the right recipe for success, but Metcalfe believes that to stay successful Prets must offer high quality and good service at the right price, while keeping a close check on the competition and taking the appropriate action.
"Looking at what other people are doing is very important. The trouble is that everyone does this, but the fact of the matter is what do they DO about it? the great thing is that Pret accepts that action is required. A lot of people seem to monitor their own failure and do nothing about it. It's EXTRAORDINARY."
It is known as the Law of Unintended Consequences. Your tropical paradise is perfect in all but one respect. There are too many damned mosquitoes.
You introduce a small freshwater fish to eat the larvae, but that fish also takes a fancy to the snails that are the only thing keeping your waterways clear.
A large species of tropical frog makes short work of the imported fish, so saving the snails, but it also snaps up the tadpoles of the native frogs. These, in their grown form, are the only natural check to the mosquitoes.
By the same process, privatisation, and various hairpin turns of policy required over the past decade, have made an ecological wasteland of at least two important industrial sectors, all through the Law of Unintended Consequences. I think we may now be heading down the tracks for a third.
Consider power generation. In the late 1980s, the decision was taken to create a duopoly in England and Wales because the companies had to be big enough to include and support unprofitable nuclear stations.
Duopolies do not encourage competition. Better from the start would have been to create four or five different companies that cut each other's throats in proper capitalist fashion.
When the now-defunct Energy Department lost its nerve and decided the City would not buy the nukes, it was too late to adapt that duopoly structure. Within a couple of years, it became clear that the two players were using their market clout to the full.
Prices jumped on odd days to extraordinary and unexplained highs. But the Government was already introducing some new predators into the system, in the form of independent generators that burnt gas. Unfortunately, these plants were cheaper to run than much of the two generators' older plant, which could therefore regularly be pulled off the system, or even closed. The Law of Unintended Consequences decreed that when that plant was finally needed, during last month's cold snap, the country nearly ran out of power.
Consider British Gas. Last week showed the Law operating at its most devilish. Gas was privatised a decade ago as the ultimate monolithic corporation, just as the intellectual tide was turning against such monopolies. The structure, again, was already wrong from the start.
The next few years saw that monopoly being unpicked, at first slowly, and then quite suddenly with the 1994 decision to open up the entire domestic market. But the company had already contracted in its heyday to take pretty well all the gas the North Sea could supply, which at that time was precisely what it needed.
The Unintended Consequence we are heading for is not a free gas market where happy shoppers take their pick from a variety of suppliers, but a wasteland where the dominant force has to split into two to limit potential liabilities let's be blunt, to evade the creditors.
Now consider the railways. If you or I were asked to flog off a state rail system, and I personally don't do that sort of thing for a living, we might propose two layers. One company owns and is responsible for the track, the signal boxes and the stations. The different routes and the trains can be parcelled up among any number of operators. They do not actually compete with each other any more than the 2.15 to Penzance competes with the 1.30 to Edinburgh.
But the track company receives revenues from the operators. If the track is not available for use, its revenues fall. If the trains do not run but the track is open, the operators lose fares but have to pay for the use of the track anyway.
A half-way decent regulator rides shotgun over the whole set-up ideally a tough businessman like John Bridgeman who is making such waves at the Office of Fair Trading, rather than some ivory-tower academic.
But the rail industry is not being sold in two layers, but at least three. The track owner, Railtrack, exists; the train operators are coming gradually on board, disasters like last week's alleged fraud on the Misery Line allowing. But the third force is a troika of utilities that own the rolling stock and rent it to the operators. It is rather as if one firm owned the power plant and another went in each day to run it.
The system was designed this way because well, no one can quite remember why, but it probably had something to do with allowing enough operators into the market who did not need to have huge amounts of capital tied up in rolling stock.
The problem is that on current evidence, there are not going to be hundreds of train fanatics each running their own few miles of track. There may be a dozen or more companies. The pattern of the bus market, increasingly dominated by a few names, suggests further consolidation a few years down the line even unto a Big Four like that which dominated the system in 1945. The Law of Unintended Consequences comes in because the existence of just three utilities owning and leasing the trains could act as a real brake on investment in new stock. The rate you can get for that stock is subject, like anything else, to the laws of supply and demand.
Order and build more stock, and that rate falls, while you have to pay the interest on the cash raised to pay for the trains. It remains to be seen if three companies constitute a sufficiently open market and whether they will compete, rushing new products on to the market to replace their rivals' trains. The experience of the generators rather suggests not.
Investment on the track itself may be held back by the different vested interests of the operators that use it. Fastco wants a super new line on which to run its 120mph intercity stock, but Slowco, whose clapped-out kit trundles from one rural whistle-stop to another down the shared track, cannot even begin to afford it on the government subsidies that are its main source of income. So who pays for any of it?
PEARSON, the media group, yesterday purchased HarperCollins Educational Publishing from The News Corporation for $580 million and said it would seek additional acquisitions in the educational publishing market.
Pearson will combine the company with the American operations of Addison Wesley Longman, its educational publishing subsidiary. After the merger, Pearson will rank third in college textbooks in the US and fourth in schoolbooks.
News Corp, parent company of The Times, put HarperCollins Educational on the market in the autumn so it could concentrate on the broader consumer markets. It is retaining the larger divisions of HarperCollins, including HarperPaperbacks.
Frank Barlow, managing director of Pearson, said educational publishing was one of the company's main areas of growth.
Pearson expects consolidation in the US book market to present it with further expansion opportunities. "We want to get bigger in the States," he said.
HarperCollins Educational consists of ScottForesman of Illinois, the publisher of textbooks for elementary, middle and high schools, and HarperCollins College of New York, whose titles are aimed at the university and higher education markets.
The two divisions had turnover of $316 million and operating profits of £51 million in the year to June 30. The purchase price represents a multiple of 11.3 times operating profits and will push Pearson's debt-to-equity ratio from 5 per cent to 22 per cent.
Some analysts think the additional debt will make Pearson less vulnerable to a takeover. Speculation that a bid, likely from an American media company, will emerge has been pushing up the shares in recent weeks.
Mr Barlow, however, said the debt-to-equity ratio was still low enough that "it wouldn't make much difference" in deterring a hostile bid. He said no potential bidder had been in contact with him.
Pearson shares nonetheless slipped, from 690p to 683p, on the belief that the HarperCollins Educational purchase makes Pearson a less likely takeover target.
CHINA is poised to end its year-long moratorium on buying new airliners by ordering up to 40 from Airbus Industrie, the European consortium, in a $2 billion-plus deal.
The order would be a breakthrough for British Aerospace and its French, German and Spanish partners, who have to date sold only 35 aircraft to China, against 240 bought from Boeing of America.
Li Peng, the Chinese Prime Minister, told French businessmen in Peking that Chinese airlines were interested in buying 30-40 Airbus A310 widebody jets and six sub-jumbo A340s.
An Airbus spokesman confirmed that talks are progressing well. But the consortium is expecting an early order for its smaller A320 aircraft, which it says are particularly attractive to China because of their ease of maintenance and low operating costs.
In spite of passenger numbers soaring by 10 per cent a year, Casc, the Chinese central aircraft purchasing agency, halted new aircraft purchases to allow airlines to improve maintenance regimes after a spate of accidents.
To support its sales campaign in the world's most promising aircraft market, Airbus is spending £50 million on a joint venture maintenance centre and cockpit simulator in Peking.
Airbus estimates that Chinese airlines will buy 1,320 aircraft worth $100 billion over 20 years.
As part of the sales effort, it is already sourcing parts from Chinese manufacturers, and plans to invite China to participate in developing a new super-jumbo.
Aero International Regional, the regional aircraft consortium in which BAe has a one-third share, is also negotiating to partner China, Singapore and South Korea in developing a 100-seat jet.
Singapore Power and National Power have signed an agreement to bid jointly for power projects in the Asia-Pacific region.
Regal Hotels Group agreed yesterday to give Granada another two weeks to decide whether to sell the White Hart hotels. Regal agreed to buy 67 of the hotels from Forte on January 22, the day before Forte's purchase by Granada for £3.8 billion. Granada would give no indication which way it was leaning.
Laporte, the chemicals company, saw another departure from its top ranks as David Wilbraham, chief operating officer, resigned to join Hickson, a rival company, as chief executive. Bill Hoskins, Laporte's finance director, left last month, just after Ken Minton, chairman. Dr Wilbraham, 57, was due to retire later this year.
The company said it expected to announce a full complement of executive officers by the middle of the year. Laporte's shares ended 2p down yesterday at 632p.
MARR HOLDINGS, an operator of public houses in southern England, is reversing into United Breweries, creating a group with 277 pubs. United is paying £19.75 million for Marr, partly funded through a placing and open offer of new shares to raise £8.95 million. The enlarged company will be known as Inn Business. United Breweries reported a pre-tax profit of £304,000 for the year to November 24 (£1.01 million loss). There is again no dividend.
SHIRE Pharmaceuticals Group, which specialises in the marketing, licensing and development of prescription medicines, will be valued at £106.6 million when its shares begin trading on the stock market on Thursday. The company is raising £20.7 million through a placing at 175p a share. Schroder Ventures will retain its 15.5 per cent interest, while Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation, an existing shareholder, will invest a further £1 million.
TOM KIRBY, the chief executive of Games Workshop, has raised almost £3.35 million through the sale of 1.16 million shares in the company, which is a retailer of fantasy war games. Mr Kirby, a founder of Games Workshop, retains 2.59 million shares, representing 8.35 per cent of the equity, with a current value of £7.8 million.
Mr Kirby's disposal, at 290p a share, took place as the shares rose to a record high of 309p on Thursday, valuing the business at almost £96 million. Shares in Games Workshop were floated on the stock market in October 1994 at 115p each. The shares fell 6p to 303p yesterday. Last month, the company, which has stores in Britain, mainland Europe and Australia, reported a 28 per cent increase in pre-tax profits to £3.17 million.
CREST NICHOLSON, the housebuilder, is holding the total dividend at 2p a share after suffering a decline in profits to £6.2 million from £11.1 million in the year to October 31. Profits from the residential division fell to £9.1 million from £15.2 million. Crest said house reservations in the first three months of the current year were ahead of 1995 and on budget. The final dividend, unchanged at 1.4p, will be paid April 19 from earnings of 3.02p (7.15p).
Russell Black, chief executive, left, with Jim Painter, a director, of Nightfreight, the parcels group, where pre-tax profits were £4.62 million (£4.51 million) in the year to November 30. The total dividend is held at 3.38p a share, with an unchanged 2.25p final.
NURDIN & PEACOCK, the cash-and-carry company, issued a profit warning yesterday and announced the departure of Nigel Hall, finance director, saying he had "lost the confidence of the board".
The company said it expects pre-tax profits for the year ended December 29 to be about £19-20 million compared to City expectations of £24-£25 million. The warning sent its shares, which have been edging down since October, skidding a further 10p to 148p. Pre-tax profit was £16.5 million in 1994.
The company said competition had affected it badly. Trading for January shows like-for-like sales 4 per cent up on 1995, ahead of expectations.
David Sims, chief executive, said the bulk of the sales shortfall was in the fourth quarter. He said Mr Hall, who was with the company 11 years and was paid £124,000 on a three-year rolling contract, would be entitled to some compensation, not yet worked out.
The 1995 results estimate does not include a profit of about £7 million on the disposal of Cargo Club, the US-style warehouse business sold to JSainsbury last year, but does include losses from it of £2.5 million.
WILLIAM BAIRD, the clothing manufacturer, has given a warning that pre-tax profits will be below current market expectations and below those of the previous year.
City analysts immediately cut their pre-tax profit forecasts by about £3 million to £20 million for 1995 before exceptionals.
For 1996, forecasts were trimmed by about the same amount to £25 million-£26 million. The company's pre-tax profit in 1994 was £25 million. The shares fell 13p to close at 168p yesterday.
The group, which is a leading supplier to Marks & Spencer, said that exceptional charges for the restructuring of its textiles operations, which it began in November, and the loss of about 600 jobs amounted to £9.8 million.
Baird expects to maintain its 1995 final dividend, "reflecting its underlying confidence in the group's future performance".
Julia Blake, an analyst with BZW, said that she was not surprised by the profit warning. She added: "It is very retrospective. Everyone has come out with a trading statement demonstrating that the trend in the second half was for lower sales and tricky margins."
The company said that it had experienced margin pressure in textiles, especially for its own-label products, following weak demand because of the unusually mild weather until late in November. Clothing sales improved significantly in December, but that was not enough to compensate for slack business earlier in the second half of the year. Baird's small engineering business posted a profit just above break-even as it too was hit by difficult trading conditions.
SMITHKLINE BEECHAM has agreed to a proposed settlement on part of the litigation brought against it and other drugs companies by retail pharmacists under US antitrust laws. The company said it would pay the pharmacists $30 million and would provide them with $20 million of the generic form of Tagamet, its anti-ulcer drug. Pharmacists objected to drug companies' offering discounts to bulk buyers. SmithKline denied it conspired to set prices, and agreed to the settlement to end litigation.
BRITANNIA Building Society has unveiled details of its cash reward scheme, but members will have to wait to find out how much they will get.
Members, including those making mortgage payments of more than £50 a month or with investments above £500, will be alloted points based on the size of their account and the amount of time they have been with the society. A flat 50 points will be allocated to extra Britannia products such as Peps and pensions. The value of the points will be announced at the end of the year. The first payments will be made in early 1997.
The society is also cutting 0.25 percentage points from its variable mortgage rates, starting April 1.
EUROTUNNEL directors will write to shareholders next week on the progress the company has made in refinancing negotiations with its 225 banks. The board met yesterday to discuss the statement and to decide whether to ask a French commercial court to appoint a mediator to handle negotiations with its banks.
The decision may be largely out of the control of the board since its auditors have given warning that the company is in danger of becoming technically insolvent. Under French law, this is the first stage of pre-insolvency proceedings and could put the matter in the hands of the French commercial court.
It would also limit the role of the Bank of England, which has, in the past, acted as mediator in difficult negotiations between a troubled company and its bankers.
Eurotunnel has been attempting to refinance its £8 billion debt since it suspended interest payments in September.
Neville Davis, chairman and chief executive of Compel, said the computer services company had made a strong start to the second half. In the six months ended December 31 profits rose to £1.44 million from £1.19 million. Earnings were 6.06p (5.56p). The interim dividend is 1.54p (1.43p)
TARMAC and Wimpey, two of Britain's biggest building companies, increased fears of a deepening recession in the construction industry with gloomy trading statements yesterday.
The warning came as the companies concluded the £600 million asset swap first outlined two months ago.
Wimpey, which is taking on all of Tarmac's housebuilding operations and becomes the UK's largest housebuilder, gave warning that its pre-tax profit for 1995 would be much less than half that achieved in the previous year. It expects the figure to be about £15.5 million against £45.1 million in 1994.
The company, which is transferring to Tarmac its construction and minerals divisions, saw house sales slide in the second half of last year and said that incentive packages, worth up to £4,500 a house, have eroded margins.
Tarmac said its housebuilding had suffered from both margin pressure and tougher prices and that it expected operating profits to be significantly lower in spite of a slight increase in sales. The company also revealed that it was making a £30 million provision relating to the building of a power station for Elm Energy which is the subject of litigation.
In spite of last year's experience, Wimpey maintained a bullish stance on housebuilding, to which it is now wholly exposed, and said the company had seen a 10 per cent increase in business for the first few weeks of this year. Joe Dwyer, chairman, said: "We are beginning to see the return of the first-time buyer."
Mr Dwyer, whose company is now represented in both the first-time market where it has been a traditional player and the larger house sector in which Tarmac has been predominantly interested, added that incentives were starting to fall. At the level of £4,500 on a house, the average selling price of which is £60,000, the incentives shave 1 percentage point off margins.
Wimpey said it expected to make cost savings of about £5 million on the integration of its expanded housebuilding interests with the streamlining of service operations.
The company will pay Tarmac £22 million in goodwill to balance the asset swap and is also paying £54 million as part of the transference of the construction operation dependent on the finalisation of which contracts Tarmac will take on. The payment is to take the net assets, which are negative in construction operations, to zero.
Tarmac, which has far more scope for cost saving through the asset exchange than Wimpey, said that it intends that the inclusion of minerals and construction will not dilute earnings. To achieve that it will have to make savings of about £15 million to £20 million. It said more sweeping savings will be possible within two years. Neville Simms, chief executive, said: "Over a two-year period we will be more aggressive in cost savings." He said Tarmac expected to draft its restructuring over the next few months, and forecast that there would be several hundred job losses which would fall largely in the construction division.
Tarmac's benefits will develop more over the long term, with a growing globalisation and consolidation of its minerals division being one of the most significant changes to the company. Mr Simms said that Tarmac would also gain advantages of increased purchasing power from its enlarged businesses.
Wimpey is looking for buyers for the businesses that it was unable to interest Tarmac in, such as its landfill, property trading, mining, environmental and energy operations. In total those interests are valued at about £20 million.
MORE than 60,000 families in the South West have signed up to ditch British Gas and buy fuel from rival suppliers when a pilot project for opening up the household gas market begins later this year. With more than three months to go before the pilot scheme, British Gas is set to lose at least 12 per cent of its customers in the region.
The pace of market share loss bodes ill for British Gas Energy, the supply business that is to be floated off by its parent in 1997. Cast adrift by its parent, which will earn most of its revenues through fees from gas carried in its £18 billion pipeline system, BGE will be left to fight a rearguard action against aggressive competition from rivals with access to cheaper gas supplies.
Only 500,000 families in Devon, Cornwall and Somerset will be allowed a choice of supplier in the pilot scheme. But from April 1997 competition will be extended to a further 1.5 million householders in southern England. Under the Gas Act passed last year, nationwide competition is required by January 1, 1999.
Customers in the South West are being lured by discounts. Sweb Gas, owned by Sweb, the electricity company, claims that 32,000 customers have signed up to buy its gas at a price 23 per cent below the British Gas rate, offering savings of £80 a year on the average household bill of £350.
Amerada Hess and Total Gas are understood to have signed up a further 28,000 would-be customers between them. Six other suppliers are also competing for the custom of families in the region.
British Gas is to sell its property support business, British Gas Properties Facilities Management, to Chesterton International, the property management company, for £7.5 million.
THE village of Whiteparish in Wiltshire has one shop, a church and four pubs, but its amateur investment club beat the FT-SE 100 index last year by a remarkable 32 per cent.
Its 18 members, of all ages and incomes, made a total paper profit of 49.08 per cent between March and December, while the index rose 16.7 per cent.
Drawn together through an advertisement in the parish magazine, most are novice investors. They include a violinist at the Royal Opera House, an oilrig worker, a hospital administrator, three housewives, a computer programmer, and a couple of company directors.
Only 2,000 people live in the village, seven miles from Salisbury, but the group's combined efforts have won them the accolade of the most successful investment club of the year from ProShare, which promotes share ownership.
The pick of their stock included SkyPharma, Unipalm, Memory Corp, Pelican and Stagecoach. Their biggest mistake was BT.
John Morris, Whiteparish Share Club chairman, described the group's investment strategy as a bit of common sense, research, and luck. "Members research sectors like breweries, technology or health and come up with their own ideas.
"Each investor pays £20 monthly into a pooled fund and we employ a stop-loss of between 15 and 30 per cent."
Their £1,500 prize has been spent on Amstrad, Orbis, the security business, Verity, the loudspeaker maker, and Trocadero, the London leisure company.
The award for best new investment club went to Sirens, a group of professional women who invest ethically. Their investments, which rose 26 per cent, included Celltech, British Biotech and Laura Ashley. They sold Merrydown when it distributed alcoholic lemonade, and their disappointment was Care UK, the nursing homes business. Their prize money was spent on Trocadero and Pilkington Glass. Investment clubs are popular in the US, the best known being the Beardstown Ladies Investment Club of Illinois.
TWO German smugglers have become the first men to be tried and convicted in a Western court for attempting to sell the skin of a Siberian tiger.
The verdict in which one brother was sentenced to eight months in jail and the other to a year marks an important milestone in the battle to save one of the world's most endangered species. There are only about 200 of the tigers left in the Russian Far East, prowling the Taiga between Vladivostok and Khabarovsk.
The two were arrested at a motorway cafe outside Bonn, where they were supposed to hand over the skin of the illegally killed tiger for about £25,000. The men were ethnic Germans, born in Russia, and were acting for a Russian mafia boss. Police searching their flat found a tiger head in the deep freeze, a polar bear skin and several other rare furs.
Every part of the tiger can yield a profit. Asians, in particular, are willing to pay high sums for parts of the Siberian tiger. The skull kept near a pillow is supposed to scare away evil spirits there was an ancient Asian tiger-god called Amba. Tiger bones are supposed to help against rheumatism, the fat from the animal is used to cure haemorrhoids and vomiting. Tiger teeth, according to some Asian superstitions, guard against asthma and rabies. The tiger brain, administered in the correct dosage, is an antidote for spots and laziness.
A tiger processed into pills, creams, balms, compresses and powders can be worth about £450,000. In Korea, for example, tiger penis soup can cost up to £200 a serving. The reason is that male diners hope to increase their potency the Siberian tiger is capable of copulation every 20 minutes.
The skins are in a way a mere footnote to the business, the West showing the greatest interest. Pressure from the World Wide Fund for Nature among others has led to hunting laws being tightened, but this week's sentences are the first time that a jail term has been enforced.
MOST Italian men will not have been surprised by the news that women wield more than half the power in high places: the same is true in low places.
The magazine Oggi this week gave the Italian male ego a further battering with a photo-montage showing an elegant female hand dumping a despondent male figure in a dustbin, with the caption, "Poor boy, what a nasty end." The accompanying opinion poll showed that men are boss in only 7 per cent of households. In 69 per cent, there is joint control.
There were similar figures for who controls the family budget husband and wife in 57 per cent of households and who decides where the family goes on holiday joint decision in 69.5 per cent of homes. In only 15 per cent of households does the man make the big financial decisions. Some attribute this to women's growing independence.
Spouse will wield power behind the scenes as curtain goes up on yet another Government
"EXIT the brunette, enter the blonde," observed the normally staid Corriere della Sera this week. This was not a reference to the apparently endless succession of busty and long-legged female presenters on Italian television, but a political point: every time Italy gets another "revolving door" government, a new First Lady comes in with the new Prime Minister.
Marina Maccanico, wife of Antonio, the Prime Minister-designate, has hardly had time to change the wallpaper at the Palazzo Chigi, the Italian equivalent of 10 Downing Street. Signor Maccanico does not formally take over until he puts together a broad coalition to complete Italy's political and constitutional reforms. In the meantime, Lamberto Dini remains caretaker Prime Minister, sharing the limelight with his wife, Donatella.
In the public mind, however, power has already shifted, and attention is focusing on "Lady M", as the Italian press calls her. Although the Italian man likes to project a macho image, his wife (or mistress) is often the power behind the throne. A leader's wife, Il Messaggero remarked this week, wields "more than half the power" by supporting him, providing him with a refuge and putting up with his female admirers.
Italy's First Ladies have certainly been striking figures. Veronica Berlusconi, second wife of the media tycoon who was briefly Prime Minister, is a former model who claims that the hyperactive Silvio still finds time to "whisper sweet nothings in my ear". Signora Dini is a powerful and wealthy businesswoman, with interests in Latin America she has Costa Rican citizenship from her first husband. Signora Maccanico, by contrast, has devoted herself to bringing up her son, now 23, playing tennis with her husband, and running their home. Rather like her husband, she has operated behind the scenes, with only occasional forays into the business world, including a brief stint in public relations.
The Maccanicos' understated style and discreet social network may prove to be an asset. Signor Maccanico has been Italy's shadowy "Mr Fixit" for decades, rising through the upper echelons of the civil service to be the right hand man of successive Presidents and Prime Ministers. Their third floor flat on the Via della Scrofa, just round the corner from the Parliament and the Prime Minister's office in Rome's old city, is also the headquarters of the Alleanza Nazionale, the "post-Fascist" party led by Gianfranco Fini, whose support for the Maccanico reforms is crucial.
The Maccanicos have for years entertained Italy's most powerful businessmen, bankers and politicians, both at the Via della Scrofa and at a tennis club frequented by the elite. Their intimate friends include Gianni Agnelli of Fiat, Enrico Cuccia of Mediobanca and Carlo De Benedetti of Olivetti three men who between them own most of Italy.
As Italy's party leaders pondered Signor Maccanico's reform programme this week, Signor Agnelli told them bluntly: "I know Maccanico, he's a first-class man."
Signora Maccanico would seem the ideal woman to charm the Left and the Right, as well as the Agnellis and Cuccias. She is a statuesque blonde with piercing blue eyes who combines a striking presence with political acumen she has a law degree and a diverting passion for the cinema.
A YEAR after it first wept blood, the miracle-working Madonna of Civitavecchia is still drawing the crowds at the rate of 5,000 a week.
The controversial statuette, brought from Medjugorje in Herzegovina and seen to cry tears of blood in February last year by an electrician's five-year-old daughter, now stands in the parish church, where it has allegedly cured 23 seriously ill patients, including two who woke up from "irreversible comas". Cynics point out that the results of tests on the Madonna by a Vatican committee have yet to be revealed, and that Civitavecchia is a run-down port 50 miles from Rome badly in need of income from pilgrims. The Mayor, a former Communist, is going ahead with plans for a new church, five new hotels and a business centre.
Madrid: A judge has ruled that the Spanish secret service, Cesid, has the right to listen to mobile telephone conversations . Last year two ministers and the head of Cesid resigned in a scandal over calls taped by agents, including some involving King Juan Carlos.
THE Nato commander in Sarajevo issued a warning yesterday that the withdrawal of co-operation by the Bosnian Serbs in protest at the arrest of eight Serbs suspected of war crimes was looking ominous for the peace process.
Lieutenant-General Sir Michael Walker, who commands the 60,000 troops of the Nato-led Implementation Force, said: "It does have a prospect of turning bad."
His fears were echoed in London in a meeting between John Major and Javier Solana, the Nato Secretary-General. Foreign Office sources said that both men expressed concern at the impasse with the Serbs.
General Walker said the Serbs were wilfully breaching the Dayton agreement. General Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb army commander and himself an indicted war criminal, has stopped contact with Ifor until the Serbs are released. Two senior Serb officers, General Djordje Djukic and Colonel Aleksa Krsmanovic, were among those held by Bosnian Government police.
Last night Rajko Kasagic, the Serb Prime Minister, said that despite General Mladic's orders banning contact with Ifor, talks could continue with Nato commanders. However, contact with the Muslim-Croat Federation "cannot continue until our officers and detainees are freed".
In Belgrade, Pavel Grachev, the Russian Defence Minister, said General Djukic and Colonel Krsmanovic were involved in peace negotiations. The arrests could render the peace talks more difficult, he said.
A hundred kilos (220lb) of British beef has been confiscated in a swoop by health inspectors in North Rhine-Westphalia. The state, with Rhineland Palatinate and Bavaria, has imposed a total ban on the import of British beef because of a fear of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, the so-called "mad cow" disease.
THE German parliament yesterday gave the go-ahead to a law aimed at ending the kind of black-market building site work that inspired the television series Auf Wiedersehen Pet.
The move will hit British labourers, who have often been hired by Dutch agencies and then subcontracted to German building companies. According to German estimates, more than 40 per cent of some 80,000 Britons working on German sites have been drawing social security at home while earning about £10 an hour in Germany.
The new law, which will come into force on March 1 and which will be valid until 1999, orders that European Union builders, handymen and dockers must be paid the German minimum wage as well as social security benefits. That will make them less attractive to German building companies; the German minimum wage is between £11 and £13 an hour. British workers were competitive, partly because they were as skilled as the Germans, and partly because the contractor did not have to pay the hefty social security and insurance benefits. Taking into account social security, a German building worker cost his employer about £30 an hour. A British worker, even after the contractor pays off the Dutch agency, costs at most £20 an hour.
The new law is supposed to be enforced by the labour exchanges and the Customs service. Spot checks are already being made on building sites by German police. Employers breaking the law will be fined up to £45,000 and could be banned from bidding for public-sector contracts. This has been a political cause of both the Government and the opposition Social Democrats, who believe that it will help to persuade German contractors to employ more Germans. Some 90,000 German building workers are expected to lose their jobs this year and the whole construction sector has been flagging badly.
But the more important story is told in the bankruptcy courts. More than 5,000 German building companies collapsed last year and more than 6,000 are expected to go in 1996. In these circumstances many builders are willing to bend or break the law to stay competitive. The most basic work on sites even those close to the German parliament which yesterday passed the law is being carried out by Russians, Ukrainians and Bulgarians working for little more than £2 an hour.
More skilled work is being completed by EU citizens the British, Irish and Spanish for higher rates. It is assumed that many British workers will find a way around the new law.
THE leaders of a doomsday cult, who caused pandemonium when they called out their supporters on the streets of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, to witness Armageddon, were jailed yesterday.
Bringing to an end the five-year saga of the White Brotherhood cult, Marina Krivonogova, a self-styled "living goddess", was sentenced to four years for endangering the health of her followers and causing criminal damage. Yuri Krivonogov, her former husband and the "chief prophet", and Vitali Kovalchuk, the "archbishop", were jailed for seven and six years respectively. They were ordered to pay £200 for damage caused when they stormed the cathedral of St Sophia, the country's holiest church, where the apocalypse was to begin.
Krivonogova, 36, dressed in her familiar white gown and turban, sat impassively as the sentences were read out, but a dozen diehard cult supporters, the last remaining followers in a movement which once claimed 7,000, wept hysterically. "She is not guilty, why is this happening?" said a tearful old woman as the cult leaders were led away, giving a defiant final "blessing" to the public gallery.
The cult leaders once had a powerful following across the former Soviet Union where teenageers in particular flocked to their movement. Like similar religious cults in the West, the White Brotherhood forced its members to fast, deprived them of contact with the outside world and convinced them that they would have to sacrifice their lives for the leader.
Krivonogova, a former Communist from the coalmining town of Donetsk, predicted the end of the world at noon on November 14, 1993. This caused uproar in Kiev, where parents who had lost children to the movement flocked to find their sons and daughters. The authorities, fearing a mass suicide, scoured the city for the group's leaders, who were arrested in a scuffle with police inside St Sophia's medieval walls.
Moscow: Three people were killed in an explosion at a demonstration in the Chechen capital, Grozny, as President Yeltsin tried to find a solution to the conflict . Mr Yeltsin has said that he will unveil a peace plan for the breakaway republic next week.
WHITE House officials may have tried improperly to influence statements by a potential Whitewater witness, according to intriguing new documents. The White House denied the charge.
The notes, seized upon by Senate Republicans, certainly convey increasing panic about awkward questions among the Clintons' inner circle shortly before a Whitewater special prosecutor was appointed two years ago. The handwritten notes were made by Mark Gearan, then White House Director of Communications, during a meeting chaired by Harold Ickes, Deputy Chief of Staff.
Mr Ickes was worried about what Beverly Bassett Schaffer would say. She was the former securities commissioner for Arkansas who, four months after her appointment by Bill Clinton, then state Governor, approved an unusual stock offering submitted by Mrs Clinton, a lawyer for Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan, to keep the financial institution afloat. Madison, owned by the Clintons' Whitewater partner, subsequently collapsed at a cost to taxpayers of $60 million (£39 million).
Mrs Schaffer has consistently denied that she had been under pressure to approve Mrs Clinton's idea because she owed her job to Mr Clinton. But Mr Ickes wanted to ensure she would continue to support the Clintons' account that they had not sought special treatment. He proposed dispatching insiders to review her account "item by item".
He reportedly said: "Beverly Bassett is so important, if we this up, we're done. Let's not talk it to death, let's just get it done."
Yesterday Mrs Schaffer said she resisted efforts by three men with close ties to the Clinton Administration to persuade her to make public statements supporting the President and First Lady. She said she told them: "No way. I don't want to be drawn into the political response."
This is the second time that documents previously demanded by the committee have belatedly turned up, only to raise new questions. Senator Alfonse D'Amato, the committee's chairman, said the notes confirmed a continuing White House pattern of directing witnesses about their recollections in the hope of avoiding problems.
Mr D'Amato said he needed more time to call new witnesses, including Mr Ickes and Mr Gearan, and will ask the Senate to extend his committee's life beyond the end of February. This will ensure that Whitewater disclosures can continue deep into the election season.
A CHESS computer that can consider 50 billion positions in three minutes will take on the world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, today in the first multigame regulation match between machine and man.
The IBM computer, Deep Blue, is the fastest chess-playing machine made, but experts expect Mr Kasparov to win. The champion has sometimes been compared to a computer, such is his ability to plan moves.
The six-game, eight-day match in Philadelphia carries a purse of $500,000 (£326,000), of which $400,000 will go to the winner. Should victory be Deep Blue's, it is not clear if the money will go to IBM or to the boffins who developed the mainframe computer.
The event will be Deep Blue's first taste of match conditions. When preparing for the encounter, Mr Kasparov asked to see examples of the computer's previous games, only to be told, to his anger, that it had played none. The lack of a pattern of combat will make it harder for the champion to predict how Deep Blue will play.
Champions have played machines before, but normally in speed or one-off games. Mr Kasparov does not have a 100 per cent record against computers, but in 1989 he played Deep Blue's predecessor, Deep Thought, and gave it a thrashing.
The champion has admitted that computers can be tricky to play because one cannot intimidate them. "Psychological pressure doesn't work," he said. The customary gamesmanship should therefore be absent from the Philadelphia Convention Centre, where the match begins this afternoon.
Mr Kasparov said: "This is a defence of the whole human race. Computers play such a huge role in society, but they must not cross into the area of human creativity."
THE Roman Catholic Church has urged parents to reclaim the right to give sex education. In a Vatican document to be published next week, the Church urges parents to reject "secularised" sex education . It condemns organisations which "try to arouse the fear of the threat of over-population to promote the contraceptive mentality".
The paper, by the Pontifical Council for the Family, is critical of attempts by schools to educate children in sexuality and says youngsters are being inadequately prepared for adult life.
Blessing of ‘satanic' jail and cost of tour questioned. IN WHAT is turning into the most controversial stop on the Pope's latest four-country tour, Venezuelans are asking why he has come to bless one of the most infernal jails in Latin America.
"That place is a hell on earth," said Miguel Longa, 35, a passer-by on the road outside the Catia jail where the Pope made a brief stop yesterday. "The mafia in there only know Satan's rules."
The Pope's visit to Venezuela has aroused deeply mixed reactions in this nation of 22million people where an estimated 55 per cent of the population are practising Roman Catholics.
Many, including some priests, have questioned the cost and timing of the visit and what some see as an extravagant attempt by the Government to distract public attention from a deepening economic crisis.
The Pope gave his blessing from a motorway flyover, with a commanding view of the jail about 200 yards away. He did so without leaving his bullet-proof Pope-mobile, for security reasons.
Unable to communicate directly with the Pope, the prisoners sent him a letter asking for greater church involvement in running the nation's jails in order to eliminate their corrupt management. "The house you see before your eyes, whitewashed for your visit, is a centre for scum," they wrote, accusing guards and the prison management of running a drugs business within the jail, with everything from food to guns and knives available in return for bribes.
The Pope's safety precautions are well understood by Venezuelans familiar with the jail's history of violence, drug abuse and squalor. Built in 1966 to house 700 men, Catia prison now holds 3,200 inmates. Last year alone, about a hundred murders were reported within its walls.
Critics accuse the Government of hypocrisy, saying the Pope's three-day tour has been turned into a commercial circus, with attempts to cover up Caracas's urban misery with a few brushes of paint.
Venezuela's prisons have long drawn criticism from international human rights organisations, which have condemned their extreme overcrowding, inadequate diet and physical abuse by guards.
Corruption inside Catia is rampant, according to a former inmate, Edicto Ortega, 50, who spent 23 years in jails across the country. "It is a factory that creates an army of animals," he said. He recalled several occasions when he killed other inmates to protect his own life. "I have seen inmates take a machete and cut off someone's head and put it in a plastic bag and throw it out of the window," he said.
Local human rights advocates blame the corrupt and inefficient judicial system. Two-thirds of the country's 25,000 prisoners are awaiting trial, the Justice Ministry said.
AS CEZANNE fever hits London, Vermeer mania is reaching a climax in Washington.
The National Gallery's exhibition of 21 of the 17th-century Dutch master's 35 known works moves to Europe next week. Yesterday a queue of hundreds encircled the building in freezing temperatures in a last attempt to see the display. At the front of the queue was Kevin Sudeith, a 30-year-old artist from New York, who had arrived on an overnight bus at 4.30am for the 10am opening.
Behind him were two drama students from North Carolina who had finished rehearsals at 11pm, driven 500 miles overnight and were going to have to head straight back after just two hours viewing Vermeer's work.
Allen Goldberg, a Washington estate agent, had been paid $100 (£65) by his employers to queue for four hours for tickets. A middle-aged New Yorker, her teeth chattering in the cold, said she had lied to her boss to get the day off.
Not since a private collection of Vermeer's works was sold in Amsterdam in 1696 have so many been brought together in one place. The exhibition was a huge hit from the moment it opened on November 12, but achieved cult status thanks to two government shutdowns caused by budget disputes.
The media seized on the closure to illustrate the impact of the row, with politicians interviewed outside the gallery's locked doors. "We became the poster child of the shutdowns," said Deborah Ziska, the gallery's spokesman. It reopened using private funds.
Sixteen of the exhibition's 90 days were lost, plus another four due to blizzards. The gallery responded by extending opening hours and is pushing more than 400 people an hour through the seven small rooms.
"People who have worked here for decades have never experienced this kind of pressure," said Ms Ziska, who says she receives desperate calls from people claiming to have terminal illnesses or frail parents in cars outside.
By the time the exhibition closes tomorrow more than 300,000 people from all 50 states and across the world will have seen it.
Buchanan's conservatism has struck a chord in rural backwater made famous by Hollywood
THE yellow cornfields are bare and the rust-coloured Roseman Bridge is coated with snow, but even in winter Madison County holds a certain lustre for the incurably romantic.
They come in their droves, dreamers obsessed by the simple tale of Francesca Johnson and Robert Kincaid, a brief encounter which has brought fame and fortune to this otherwise neglected enclave.
Since Robert James Waller first published the Bridges of Madison County in 1992 and the release of its Hollywood offshoot last year starring Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep, the timber-covered constructions and the hamlet of Winterset have become meccas to the cult of passion.
Today three love letters are pinned to the trelliswork of the Roseman Bridge, suggestive notes in English, French and Japanese hoping to emulate the famous invitation to dinner which led to that fictional affair between an Iowan farmer's wife and a National Geographic photographer.
In April, Paul and Bridget Keerney, a separated couple from Essex, will stand on the bridge to renew their wedding vows before a local Justice of the Peace, part of a growing number of visitors who have fallen under the romantic spell of Madison County.
The attractions are perhaps obvious. Apart from its importance in the election of the next President, a process which reaches its climax in the traditional voting caucuses on Monday, Iowa offers rolling rural farmland, pure air, clean water, the highest literacy levels in the country and, above all, the American experience free of crime and racial divide. More than 96 per cent of the population is white.
But the glare of Hollywood has muddied the tranquil waters of Madison County and highlighted the most burning divide between the moderate and right wings of the Republican Party as it faces the first real test of the 1996 presidential campaign.
Before the emergence of Mr Waller, an unknown professor from the University of Northern Iowa, Winterset had prided itself on a more conservative cinematic image as the birthplace of Marion Robert Morrison, the American legend of True Grit himself, John Wayne.
The small white cottage on South Second Street had always served as a hideaway from the problems confronting the United States in the 1990s. Bedecked with American flags and film memorabilia, the Wayne house testified to a physically safe, demographically white and morally certain nation. A close friend of former President Reagan, Wayne had achieved a rare stature among political leaders and remains the dominant teenage icon for both Newt Gingrich, the House Speaker, and President Clinton.
The "Duke" still hovers over the town like the ghost of a tough, but benevolent, sheriff. His face adorns the street signs, more than 200 films are available for free viewing at the public library and a child who lives on John Wayne Drive achieves certain status among his or her peers.
More religious members of the community, however, believe his posthumous influence as Madison County's moral mentor is under threat from the more popular and less conservative doctrine espoused in the antics of Kincaid and Johnson.
Marcia Gibson, a farmer's wife and secretary of the Word of Life Christian Centre, is one of many who have discarded the Bridges of Madison County in disgust. "Society does not even raise an eyebrow when it comes to infidelity. Do you think if my husband, Bill, left for the weekend, I would invite a complete stranger to my house for dinner?" she demanded. "This is meant to be a beautiful love story but it is nothing more than a tale of adultery. I don't remember seeing anything like that in a John Wayne movie. He represented morality. He was a patriot."
Increasingly, it is views such as these which are resonating among the electorate in Iowa as prospective candidates do battle for the top three places and the momentum to carry them through to the critical New Hampshire primary in ten days' time. While no Republican has been tempted by the free publicity of a visit to Madison County, each has been eager to court the dominance of the religious Right. Already there is a sense that the evangelical vote may be consolidating behind Pat Buchanan, the radical conservative commentator.
Mr Buchanan was considered an outsider in Iowa. But he is rising steadily in the polls on a message of moral rectitude, anti-abortion and support for the little man. Surveys yesterday placed the commentator third behind an embattled Senator Robert Dole, the front-runner, and Steve Forbes, the millionaire publisher.
There was growing confidence in the Buchanan camp yesterday and among such staunch supporters as Bill and Marcia Gibson. "He represents the right to life and the sort of family values we had 50 years ago," said Mr Gibson, "Pat Buchanan reflects beliefs that John Wayne stood for. That's good enough for me."
WITH President Mandela's Government approaching its second anniversary in office, the euphoria of transition has given way to a feeling that it is time for him to deliver on election promises.
Mr Mandela yesterday inaugurated the new session of parliament, in which ministers are planning to present more than 230 Bills covering every aspect of the nation's life. It is far from clear, however, that they will dispel the misgivings.
Black voters want more jobs, more houses, better schools and better healthcare. Results on all these fronts are poor. The economy is growing at 3.5 per cent, but the number of jobs is static at best, thanks to lay-offs in the gold mines and in the civil services of the former homelands.
A recent poll indicates that while Mr Mandela has a 77 per cent approval rating, only 58 per cent are satisfied with the Government, 53 per cent with parliament, and 41 per cent with the way democracy is working.
The Government's housing programme has been a disaster. H.F. Verwoerd remains the only South African leader to build a million houses for blacks, while the African National Congress-led Government looks likely to build fewer than 25,000 in its first two years.
The Health Ministry has also achieved little, and has seen an increased emigration rate among skilled white doctors, producing a large shortfall to be met by importing Cuban doctors.
The ministry has just given away a fifth of its Aids publicity budget to finance a play by one of the ANC's favourite playwrights. Meanwhile, in rural KwaZulu, more than 22 per cent of the population is now HIV-positive, and hospitals are being overwhelmed. The rest of the country is moving towards similar infection levels.
It is, however, education that looks like providing the key political battleground of the session. The Government has just announced that it will take over without compensation all the previously white state schools into which white parents have put a good deal of private money. There is likely to be a further exodus towards private schools. White parents' fears are hardly assuaged by the fact many ANC leaders have placed their children in such schools. In land reform too, the ANC's radicalism is beginning to bite. Legislation to redistribute white-owned land by forcing farmers to sell plots to labour tenants has been pushed through parliament against strong farming opposition.
These struggles are taking place in the context of the debate over the new constitution, which is to be finalised in this session. The ANC needs a two-thirds majority in the assembly, but could hold a referendum which might pass the plans by a simple majority. Once the constitution is passed, the ANC will no longer need its coalition partners, Inkatha and the National Party, as much as now. Only 7 per cent of ANC MPs want to continue with the Government of National Unity once that stage is reached, and are looking forward eagerly to a single party government.
Polls indicate, however, that a majority of voters prefer the current form of government, for it is strongly identified with the mood of reconciliation and goodwill, which is Mr Mandela's overwhelming achievement to date.
Whether this mood will survive the battles ahead is the main question looming over the new session.
THE Thai monk sentenced to death for the murder of the British backpacker Johanne Masheder appealed again yesterday to her parents to forgive him.
From his prison cell, Yodchart Suaphoo, 23, a drug addict, said: "I beg you to forgive me for my terrible crime."
The former monk was manacled hand and foot in his cell, which he shares with five other inmates on death row in Bangkok's Bangkhwang Prison.
During an unprecedented, guided tour of the jail by the Interior Ministry, Yodchart acknowledged that murdering Masheder had brought shame on Thailand and Buddhism. "I deeply regret what I did. I deserve to die for my sins."
It is more than likely that he will. Two weeks ago, Thailand resumed executing prisoners after a nine-year hiatus. Unlike other inmates in his cell block, Yodchart will probably not benefit from a royal amnesty to coincide with the golden jubilee of King Bhumibol Adulyadej's reign on June 9.
"Thais hate him," said Wiwit Jatuparisut, the Deputy Director-General of the Corrections Department. "He hurt our country. We are ashamed." Few Thais think Yodchart, who killed Masheder for £15 in her money-belt and threw her body into a cave, should be shown mercy. The amnesty is expected to benefit as many as 26,000 inmates. Those who will also benefit are the 3,769 foreign inmates, among whom are 72 Britons.
Sandra Gregory, of Yorkshire, who pleaded guilty to heroin trafficking three years ago, is due to be sentenced at the end of the month and may qualify for a reduced sentence. Robert Locke, arrested with her, but pleaded not guilty, may not be so lucky.
One Briton on death row is Allan Davies, 54, from Poole, Dorset. Yesterday, in his dimly lit cell he was still protesting his innocence; he was sentenced for heroin trafficking.
Hong Kong: China has threatened a strong response if Taiwan officials attend the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta .
Wu Shaozhu, the Sports Minister who also heads the Chinese Olympic Committee, said yesterday that while China does not object to athletes from Taiwan competing in the Atlanta games, "we are against senior Taiwan officials trying to use the games for political purposes. If the American Government allows top Taiwan officials to go to the Atlanta games, China will make a strong response."
Phil Coles, of the International Olympic Committee, said: "I am against this sort of action." All heads of states competing in the games attend the gathering, he added.
Peking's warning comes amid Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, where the first presidential elections will be held next month.
SOUTH Africans were asked by President Mandela yesterday to unite behind a "new patriotism" and join hands in creating his vision of a prosperous "winning nation".
Opening the third democratic parliamentary session, which will see through the new constitution, Mr Mandela called on his countrymen to follow the lead of their victorious national sports teams in uniting the nation. He said to loud applause: "All of us must take the national project of accelerated and fundamental transformation seriously. The achievement of equity, non-racialism and non-sexism constitutes the very essence of the new society."
Mr Mandela reflected the positive mood engendered by recent sporting triumphs to promote his theme of a new patriotism, noting how millions across the country are successfully transforming South Africa into "a country of dreams." He spoke of the achievements since democratic elections including water and electrification projects, free healthcare and education but said there was a long road ahead. The former ruling National Party praised the speech, but the right-wing Freedom Front said that his call for new patriotism was ill-timed.
THE National Lottery is succeeding where generations of feminists have failed in persuading golf clubs to give equal rights to women. Two of Scotland's more traditional clubs have been told they will lose awards unless they change their rules.
The male members of Crail Golfing Society will vote next week on ending a 200-year-old tradition and allowing women full voting rights and a say in the running of the club at Balcomie Links, on the shores of the Firth of Forth. If they do not change their constitution, the members risk losing a £442,000 award from the Scottish Sports Council's Lottery Sports Fund.
The £340-a-year Deeside Golf Club in Aberdeen is facing a similar ultimatum. To obtain a £185,000 lottery grant it will have to give equal rights to women. The requirement came as a surprise to the Deeside club but Crail Golfing Society said that it had been considering giving women full voting rights for the past three years.
THE decision to allow home leave to a convicted rapist who is now wanted for murder was criticised by a Tory MP yesterday.
John Greenway, a member of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, said: "This calls into question what assessments were made of this man's suitability for home leave and his categorisation as someone who could be put in an open prison. These kinds of decision encourage distrust in the minds of the public about the people making the assessment for home leave."
The police hunt for Victor Farrant, suspected of murdering his girlfriend and attempting to kill another woman, switched to London last night. Detectives found the missing white Ford Escort Cabriolet belonging to Glenda Hoskins, the accountant suffocated in the loft of her £115,000 waterside home in Portsmouth, dumped in a street in Plaistow, east London. It emerged last night that Mrs Hoskins, 45, met Farrant while he was on home leave from an open prison, where he served the last months of a 12-year sentence for rape. The car was undergoing tests last night at the Aldermaston forensic science laboratory.
Police, who are keeping a watch on all ports and airports, are also investigating two sightings of Farrant in Brighton and Portsmouth on Wednesday, the day of the murder. Detectives say he is adept at disguises.
Farrant, 45, is described by police as "extremely dangerous" and has been named as Britain's most wanted man. He was discharged from Ashwell jail at Oakham in Rutland on November 7 after serving just under seven years of a 12-year sentence imposed at Lewes Crown Court on November 25, 1988, for rape and grievous bodily harm. The jail is a category C prison and was the last of several jails in which Farrant had been held since his conviction.
Under the rules then operating Farrant was automatically and unconditionally released from jail after serving two thirds of his sentence, which included the time he spent on remand before conviction.
Once out of jail, he was under no supervision. If he had been convicted after 1992, Farrant would have been under supervision from his release until the date his 12-year sentence ended. Other conditions could include a ban on visiting the area where his victim lived and an instruction that he live in a probation hostel or at a particular address.
Under Michael Howard's plans to toughen sentences, Farrant would only be eligible for early release as a result of good behaviour while in jail. The maximum taken off a sentence for good behaviour is expected to be 15 per cent.
Friends of Mrs Hoskins last night blamed jealousy for her killing, saying the mother of three was about to end the relationship. Farrant has also been linked to the near-fatal beating and stabbing of Ann Fidler, an escort agency manageress, in Eastleigh, Hampshire, on December 27.
Christians who are concerned that moral anarchy might break out, now that the Church of England says Hell no longer exists as a physical place of everlasting torment, can take comfort from the Jewish experience of never having that spectre in the first place.
There is a belief in a world to come, which the soul will inhabit after the death of the body, but its exact nature lies undefined. The Bible itself provides no clear picture. The references to the horrors of Gehinnon (Gehenna in the New Testament) were not warnings of a netherworld, but a description of an actual site south of Jerusalem that was used by pagan cults for child sacrifice and which later became the city rubbish dump, with perpetual fires trying to clear the stinking refuse.
The spirit of Samuel was called up by the Witch of Endor from Sheol, which appears to have been considered the resting place of all souls, both good and bad alike. It is not until the very end of the Hebrew Bible (Daniel xii, 2) that reference is made to a distinction between those enjoying everlasting life and those experiencing everlasting abhorrence.
For the rabbis of the Talmud, which codified the beliefs and practices of Judaism in the fifth century, it was inconceivable that a God of love could condemn miscreants to perpetual darkness. To counterbalance Daniel, they quoted David: "I was brought low and He saved me" (Psalm 116, 6) and declared that God would never turn his back on anyone forever. If the wicked did suffer some punishment after death, it was for a maximum of 12 months.
There was another reason for this decision. The rabbis wished to place the theological emphasis firmly on this world and concentrate on immediate behaviour rather than everlasting salvation.
Hell was relegated to an occasional preaching device. Hence the story of the rabbi who wished to see Hell and was taken to a room full of people wailing. They were sitting around a pot of soup, but were starving because their spoons were so long that they could not eat.
The rabbi was then shown Heaven. It was exactly the same scene, people with long spoons around a pot of soup. Here, however, everyone was well-fed and happy because they used the spoons to feed each other.
This earth-bound concept of the homiletical Hell was developed by later sermons into the notion that individuals create their own bliss or bitterness through their deeds and relationships. This also suggests that those in the depths of despair can change their condition through determined effort and holds out the hope that earthly Heaven is around the corner for those who seek it.
The absence of a real and permanent Hell did not mean that the rabbis lacked sanctions. A wrongdoer could be threatened with the herem "social excommunication" in which he was ostracised by the Jewish community and banned from the synagogue.
In a pre-modern society in which individuals were identified by the group to which they belonged, such isolation could have a devastating effect and proved an effective tool for centuries.
The institution of the herem has disappeared today, and rabbis now rely on preaching another variation of a personalised Heaven and Hell: that which comes with age when reviewing the course of one's life and the feeling of completeness or hollowness one has.
There is no greater Hell than ending life knowing one has failed it, and no greater Heaven than leaving behind a legacy of love, warm memories and positive achievement.
Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain is minister of Maidenhead Synagogue.
SUPPORT for Joan Collins in her New York court action has arrived from one of the field marshals of feminism. Erica Jong, novelist and agitator for women's rights, accused the chief prosecutor in the case of misogyny and said that the British actress was the victim of sexism.
Miss Collins, her scarlet lips drawn into a distinctly unfeminist bee sting, sat through the fourth day of her case with Random House, her publisher, yesterday. It is suing for the return of its $1.2million advance after she delivered what it says was a "gothic, dull and cliched" manuscript for a novel.
Ms Jong, herself a Random House author and married to Miss Collins's lawyer, Edward Burrows, watched proceedings from the public benches and said: "Women in life are treated in such a sexist fashion. I ought to know." She claimed that Thursday's cross-examination of Miss Collins by the Random House lawyer, Robert Callagy, was "misogynistic". Miss Collins had wept afterwards.
Yesterday Rosemary Cheetham, head of Orion and formerly Miss Collins's line editor, disclosed that the "page by page" help sought by Miss Collins was not unusual for a celebrity author.
Bitter former wife told police of indebted peer's £4.5m insurance swindle
LORD BROCKET, the polo-playing friend of the Prince of Wales, was jailed for five years yesterday after admitting a £4.5million insurance fraud involving four classic Italian sports cars.
The 3rd Baron Brocket swayed slightly in the dock at Luton Crown Court as the sentence was pronounced. Earlier, he had hung his head as Judge Rodwell told him that his conduct in compelling two employees to take part in the botched swindle was quite disgraceful.
Also in the dock were Mark Caswell, 39, Brocket's chauffeur, and Stephen Gwyther, 40, a handyman on his employer's estate. They were both sentenced to 21 months' imprisonment, suspended for two years. The judge said that they had been suborned by Brocket into abetting him.
It was Brocket's love affair with expensive classic cars, coupled with an overwhelming passion to cling to the stately home he inherited as a 15-year-old pupil at Eton, that were the instruments of his decline and fall.
Always a lavish spender, he was eventually to realise that the twin obsessions were bleeding his estate white. His solution was to attempt the clumsy and inept insurance fraud which deprived him of his freedom, his estate and what little reputation he had left.
In the 1980s, when the market in classic cars was at its peak, he had managed to balance the books while borrowing substantially to transform Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire into a sumptuous conference centre with exclusive golf course. When recession saw the market plunge, Brocket found himself close to ruin with the banks calling for their money.
The car collection, once valued at £20 million, was worth less than half that amount; buyers were few and far between, and the debts were mounting steadily. By late 1990, when a deal to sell three Ferraris and a Maserati to a Japanese client fell through, the "dashing and handsome aristocrat", as Brocket had long been described in the gossip columns, was £16million in the red.
He decided that crime offered the only way out and a plan was hatched over dinner at the family home. The four cars that were to have been sold to Japan would instead be "stolen" in a bogus raid on Brocket Hall.
In May 1991, Brocket reported a burglary, claiming that a 1952 Ferrari 340 America, a 1955 Ferrari Europe, a Ferrari 195 Sport and a 1960 Maserati Tipo Bird Cage had been stolen from his showroom in a converted stable block.
Hertfordshire police contacted Interpol, fearing that the cars had been stolen to order and taken abroad. In fact they had been stripped down. The General Accident insurance company and a linked Lloyd's syndicate were not convinced and refused to pay. Brocket, 43, had recently reinsured his car collection and the sum he claimed under these new policies almost matched the £5 million overdraft facing his company, Brocket Hall Ltd. The insurance companies' suspicions were confirmed when Lady Brocket, his former wife, told police of the conspiracy when she was arrested for attempting to obtain heroin on a forged prescription.
Brocket denied the fraud charges against him until last December, when he expressed remorse over his own foolishness and the smear he had left on the family's reputation. "What I regret most of all about everything is that, between my arrest and pleading guilty, I told a lot of dear friends, fellow peers and even my mother that I was not guilty. I had to look these people in the eye and lie to them. That is difficult to live with. Most of all, of course, the terrible price for all of us will be the loss of the family heritage."
A possession claim for Brocket Hall was brought late last year by the company he set up and once chaired. Brocket Hall Ltd now runs the conference centre and golf course.
The hall, a fine Georgian house with 5,000 acres of parkland, may be sold to an American group, Rosewood Hotels and Resorts, which owns The Lanesborough on Hyde Park Corner, London. It confirmed yesterday that it was interested in buying the house, which was acquired by the 1st baron, Brocket's grandfather. He had bought the baronetcy in 1921.
Brocket's former wife, Isabell Lorenzo, an international model and New York society beauty who married Brocket in 1982, can have shed few tears as her husband began his sentence. She said during their divorce last year that she could no longer bear to be near him.
The former Lady Brocket claims that her husband transformed her from a carefree and vivacious socialite into a lonely and depressed woman. Yet after their wedding in Las Vegas the Brockets became society's golden couple the dashing aristocrat and the beautiful heiress.
But as the marriage soured Lady Brocket attempted suicide twice. She spoke in a 1994 interview of her dependency on pethidine and other painkillers. In February 1995 she was conditionally discharged at St Albans Crown Court for forging a prescription to obtain drugs.
TORY MPs are currently chirpy and Labour members deflated. It could all turn round again after next Thursday and the publication of the Scott report. But a distinct change in the morale of the Tories has occurred over the past three weeks, thanks to a combination of the opinion polls and some strong performances by John Major at Prime Minister's Questions.
Both can, and have been, exaggerated. It is premature to talk of a turning point which alters the odds of the next election. But, as the MORI poll for The Times showed two weeks ago, Tory support had already begun to pick up even before the Harriet Harman row blew up, possibly reflecting an improvement in economic confidence.
This trend has been confirmed by this week's two polls from ICM and Gallup, even though the latter probably exaggerated the underlying change since comparison was with an unusually low rating for the Tories at the beginnging of January. Labour's previous big lead has narrowed a little, but is still huge by past standards.
Tory spirits have also been boosted by events in Parliament. This is currently operating on two different levels. The most familiar is the campaigning: highly partisan exchanges which dominate Prime Minister's Questions. The other is routine Commons business, scrutinising the executive and legislating, which carries on as before, largely out of the limelight.
A few dozen MPs have spent many hours this week debating the details of the Bills implementing the Budget tax cuts, tightening asylum and immigration rules and on housing. There has always been a tension between these two aspects of politics, but it has got much worse since the new year as the Tories have moved to a pre-election footing. Prime Minister's Questions has been turned by the Tories into an extended series of attacks on Labour.
On Thursday, only one of five questions asked by a Tory MP was even remotely about the responsibilities of the Prime Minister himself, and the exception, about a National Lottery grant to a Milton Keynes theatre, was turned by Mr Major into a Labour bash.
This is not unusual. Labour has calculated that three quarters of Tory questions to Mr Major are about Labour, and about two fifths of other questions to ministers from Tory backbenchers focus on Labour rather than the Government's conduct.
It is all point-scoring politics at its worst. A Tory MP gets up and says isn't it good that the Government does not favour giving in to the unions, breaking up the United Kingdom or being hypocritical, and Mr Major agrees, giving a quote from a Labour MP to embarrass the Opposition.
However dreadful it is to endure, there is no reason why Tory MPs should not raise questions about alleged contrasts between Mr Blair's new Labour aspirations and continuing "old" Labour practices. But, so long before an election, this has distorted Prime Minister's Questions. As Mr Blair claims, it has almost inverted the roles of Government and Opposition.
The Harman row allowed the Tories to go on the offensive. Armed with some sharp one-liners, Mr Major has turned in several strong performances, to the gleeful cheers of his own side, even though the raucous jousting has not always played so well on television news bulletins. These successes have done wonders for his morale and that of Tory backbenchers.
This matters, since an improvement in the spirits of MPs can extend in a ripple out to Conservative supporters in the country. And, under the party chairman Brian Mawhinney and his new research and communications team, Conservative Central Office has become much sharper in responding to Labour and going on the attack.
At present these are merely skirmishes, not decisive engagements. The Tories still have a long, long way to recover and they have no shortage of headaches, current and imminent, on railways and Scott.
‘The wettest, most liberal judge they could find'? Sir Richard merely smiles
Sir Richard Scott likens his situation this week to the rainy summers of his boyhood in Natal, when the waters of the River Mooi were in flood. You could jump in and just let the current carry you along. "I'm now in the stream, I don't even need to swim," he says. After three years of circumspect silence, he is now swept along by events.
"Angry Scott lashes back at critics": headline soundbites pre-hyping next Thursday's publication of his report are vividly at odds with Scott's equable demeanour. "By next week they will have exhausted their epithets. Perhaps there will be a stunned silence."
To see him you climb a spiral staircase, past the long room where the Scott inquiry took place, to an upper floor of the Department of Trade and Industry, a converted hotel between Buckingham Palace and Victoria Station.
His mind is quick, his intellect keen, his tone clipped, his manner mild and affable. His favourite reading is Wodehouse. He is of medium height, spry for 61, and weighed in at 13st 7lb at the last Bar point-to-point. Let Sir Bernard Ingham huff about "dredging up the wettest, most liberal judge they could find"; Sir Richard merely smiles his blue-eyed smile. As he said of such critics as Lord Howe of Aberavon and Douglas Hurd, "they were not on my Christmas card list anyway".
As a judge, he says, he is bound to be part of the Establishment. But his "outsider" status, and his individualistic pursuits, make him more interesting than that. Characteristically, he went (unnoticed) to see the Tricycle Theatre's dramatisation of the Scott inquiry, and enjoyed seeing himself impersonated on stage.
He was born in India and raised in South Africa. At Cambridge he took a First, was a rugby Blue (wing forward) and bridge player, but not a Union debater. From there he went to the University of Chicago as a Bigelow Fellow and spent the year courting his New York-born Panamanian wife, who was reading Christian culture. They married in Panama that summer. He spent the last of his $5,000 stipend on their honeymoon trip in two single cabins back to Europe via the Caribbean on a German banana-boat captained by a former U-boat commander.
"My wife wishes me to correct the fallacy that she was a flamenco dancer, as if I picked her up in some Cuban bar," he says. "But there is a substratum of fact. My mother-in-law was a professional Spanish dancer who opened a dancing school which became the Panamanian national dance institute, so my wife was always involved in dancing."
All their children speak Spanish a daughter, who edits Spanish children's books, lives in Madrid but Scott has no facility for languages; he failed his Afrikaans examination at school. Two of his children have converted to Islam (a daughter who did a PhD in Islamic theology at Oxford, and a son who makes furniture in Manchester) and his eldest son, a mathematician, works in computer software programming in the United States.
The attempts to define Scott as eccentric, barmy etc are very wide of the mark. The bicycle on which he has been photographed so often is
merely the most "efficient, independent" way to get round London. He is not a class traitor for daring to clean out the Augean stables, but impatient of pomp or pretence; so he was neither awed by Thatcher nor cowed by Howe.
To Lord Howe's complaints that Scott failed to observe the six Salmon principles, he responds that there should be only one principle: "to devise procedures that are (a) fair and (b) efficient. I slightly bridle at the idea that there should be rules. I don't think there is any argument to support the ‘unfairness' charge." He rejects the view that his inquisition was aggressive; aggression is not his style.
He decided not to allow television cameras into the inquiry because of their intrusiveness (a correct decision, he adds in a footnote, after the O.J.Simpson trial) and the possibiliy of unbalanced editing.
But he says: "I do not under-estimate the pressure felt by public figures of having to appear in public to explain their actions. If there was any element of unfairness in the procedure I used, it would have been found there. I don't discount the considerable pressure of appearing in open hearings in front of sceptical journalists to defend what one has done as a minister or civil servant. While recognising that pressure, I think the decision to have the hearings in public whenever practicable was correct; where public figures are being questioned about the manner in which they discharge their duties, and where allegations of misdemeanour have been made, the public is entitled to see them examined."
He is a libertarian: his 1987 Spycatcher judgment ("The reasons put forward explaining the Government's inaction are shallow and unconvincing ... The facts surrounding the decision not to attempt to restrain publication are, as they emerged in the evidence given before me, very curious") was an indication of his attitude to unnecessary secrecy.
Of the leaks of his report, he says that Mark Higson, late of the Iraqi desk at the Foreign Office, has identified himself as the source of one leak; "and I think I know who was responsible for the second leak last summer".
After years in the Chancery Division fascinating, but rarely dramatic he has enjoyed his three years "working with a small, highly motivated and efficient team" among whom Presiley Baxendale, QC, quickly established herself as a star.
Sir Richard lists no gentlemen's clubs in Who's Who. He has no need of clubs; he prefers to go home. He ponders: should he feel slighted not to have been put up for the Garrick? "Perhaps I'm like King John ‘and sometimes no one spoke to him for days and days and days'." He does list Vanderbilt Racquet Club the tennis club where William Waldegrave plays. But they have never bumped into each other on that sort of court.
Asked if he was a wiser man after his inquiry, he adapted F.E.Smith's reply: "I'm a better informed man." And will his five-volume, 1,800-page report be as riveting as Denning? "Nobody writes like Denning or speaks like Denning," he replies. "It would be cruel to compare us."
It was not his idea to give ministers their week-long preview of his report; he was "persuaded" to allow it. But Scott will hold his own press conference that afternoon (ready to respond to any criticisms: "Criticisms of a judge's judgments are a fact of life") and will promptly depart for Ireland to hunt for a week. Then he resumes his role as Vice-Chancellor of the Supreme Court, and takes on his new one as Head of Civil Justice.
John Major correctly divined that Scott was neither one of us, nor one of them: the ideal choice. After seeing him I applied a test. Would I entrust a crucial question regarding my own life to Scott's judgment and probity? Yes, I would. But being imperfect, I would feel, as Lord Howe put it, outbursts of anxiety.
ADVERTISING campaigns for cars are stuck in a 1950s time warp that patronises women and ignores their growing purchasing power, according to a survey published yesterday.
Renault's commercial for its Clio small car, featuring Papa and Nicole, was singled out for criticism by researchers, who said that many women found it insulting that Nicole is portrayed as a spoilt child who drives a car bought by her indulgent father.
Some women objected to an advertisement showing a woman with her hair blowing through the sun roof of a Ford Fiesta, which was described as "your 16-valve hair-drier". They also disliked commercials that showed macho images of cars speeding or going over cliffs because they contained little practical information about safety features or prices.
Julia Dunn, media research director with the magazine company Conde Naste, which conducted the survey, said more than half the women polled felt they were patronised by the car industry. The idea that women wanted a powder-blue coupe with a vanity mirror persisted with some manufacturers, whereas most women said that safety, service contracts and power were their criteria in choosing a car.
The survey of more than 700 women showed that 98 per cent of respondents possessed their own car. Some 84 per cent of women car owners bought their vehicle with their own money and 60 per cent made the choice on their own. Ten per cent of women drivers had a company car and in 1995 women bought 48 per cent of new cars sold for private use. More than half of women with cars drove to work.
Nicholas Coleridge, managing director of Conde Naste, publishers of Vogue, Tatler and Vanity Fair, said: "Advertisers are still stuck in the mid-1950s when it comes to selling cars."
JOHN MAJOR struggled to limit the political damage caused by the disastrous launch of rail privatisation as the search began yesterday for a fresh buyer for the Southend "misery line" franchise.
The Prime Minister insisted that the timetable for the sale of British Rail services would be unaffected by allegations of ticket fraud at the London Tilbury & Southend (LTS) commuter franchise.
"Someone misbehaved. That happens. It happens in the public sector, it happens in the private sector," Mr Major said on a school visit in his Huntingdon constituency. "It has not thrown the timetable into chaos. It is tiresome that we will have to refranchise the LTS line, but that's all."
Labour seized on the word "misbehaved" which it saw as as a gaffe by Mr Major. John Prescott, Labour's deputy leader, said: "This isn't misbehaviour. These are serious allegations of fraud involving thousands of pounds."
LTS had been chosen as one of the first three franchises to be sold because it was regarded as one of the simplest to privatise. However, rail experts said the problems at LTS were unlikely to hold up privatisation significantly as the Government was committed to selling the vast bulk of the 25 passenger franchises, 23 of which are still owned by BR, before May next year.
The management buyout for the LTS franchise was abandoned on Thursday after the two senior managers, Chris Kinchin-Smith, the managing director, and Roger Turner, the finance director, were removed from their jobs by British Rail.
An investigation into ticket sale irregularities found no evidence that they were involved, but John Welsby, the British Rail chairman, decided that senior management changes were necessary at the franchise. They will be given new jobs at BR's headquarters in London.
The sale of the LTS franchise will start again, virtually from scratch. Shortlisted bidders beaten by the management buyout team are being invited by Roger Salmon, the rail franchise director, to reapply, a process that is likely to take several months. The shortlisted companies are Prism, a consortium of bus companies, GB Railways, a management buy-in team, and Stagecoach, the bus company that has already won the South West Trains franchise.
In the Commons, Labour MPs demanded an emergency statement from Sir George Young, the Transport Secretary. Donald Anderson, Labour MP for Swansea East, said: "Given the seriousness of the situation and the shambolic nature of the Government's programme, surely Sir George should be here to make a statement to the House."
David Chidgey, the Liberal Democrats' transport spokesman, said: "This proves conclusively that the government system of franchising is a total fiasco."
THE Prime Minister has admitted that the status of one of the main tests for a 1998 go-ahead for a single European currency is unclear.
John Major's comment came in a letter to the former Labour Cabinet minister Peter Shore, who has been pressing the Government to concede that the effective collapse of the European exchange-rate mechanism has wrecked the legal basis for economic and monetary union.
Last night Mr Shore said the British and other European governments were in a "mess and a muddle" over a single currency. His exchanges with Mr Major and Jacques Santer, President of the European Commission, had shown that Britain could veto a move to a single currency.
Any future government should not hesitate to use that weapon and halt the "damaging and misconceived" plan for economic and monetary union, he said.
The Prime Minister said in his letter to Mr Shore this week that the "exact status" of the exchange-rate mechanism test was unclear, given
the upheavals since the signing of the Maastricht
treaty.
Police are appealing for witnesses after a 16-year-old boy was stabbed to death in a McDonald's restaurant. Daniel Westmacott, of Edmonton, north London, was attacked by a group of youths on Thursday after an altercation at the restaurant in Edmonton between him and three teenagers. Daniel was stabbed in the back with a seven-inch carving knife.
Rupert Joslin, 86, is considering legal action against Wycombe General Hospital, Buckinghamshire, after it admitted responsibility for the death of his wife, Violet, 85. Mr Joslin, of Marlow, gave his wife twice the recommended dose of the drug warfarin on a hospital technician's instruction. A verdict of accidental death was recorded at an inquest yesterday.
THE vice-chancellors of former polytechnics are beating their colleagues at traditional universities into the ranks of big earners, according to the first full comparison of top pay in higher education.
Among the heads of conventional universities, Derek Roberts, the Provost of University College London, earned the highest salary, at £129,162. But three of the four best-paid vice-chancellors were from new universities: Leeds Metropolitan, Manchester Metropolitan and Glasgow Caledonian.
Heads of medical schools, who boost their salaries with NHS payments, earn most, according to the survey in The Times Higher Education Supplement yesterday. Cyril Chandler, of the United Medical and Dental School in London, headed the pay league with £139,000 in 1994-95.
More than 40 heads of higher-education institutions broke the £100,000 barrier, excluding pensions but including other perks. Some had rises of 10 per cent, against less than 3 per cent for lecturers.
MICHAEL HOWARD is expected to reject a Parole Board recommendation that Myra Hindley be moved to an open prison and given the hope of eventual freedom. The Home Secretary will give his verdict on the proposal that Hindley be transferred to easier jail conditions within the next few weeks.
Hindley, 54, yesterday refused to comment on the proposed move, disclosed in The Times, during a telephone conversation from Durham prison with a member of her legal team. She is understood to want a move to the more relaxed regime offered by the three open jails for women in England and Wales and hopes for her freedom.
But she accepts the practical and political difficulties involved in a move to a prison without perimeter fences.
Mr Howard said that no decision had been made on the recommendation, which was made after a review of her case last month. He said: "I am conscious this is a very important decision, as are many of my decisions."
The Home Secretary is unlikely to risk the public outcry that moving Hindley to an open jail would cause. He is also likely to take into account the fears for her safety if she were sent to a prison without a perimeter fence, where it would be easy for members of the public to gain access. One prison source said: "Ironically, Hindley probably needs protection from the public rather than the other way round."
Mr Howard is under no obligation to accept the Parole Board's recommendation and can take into account wider considerations than whether Hindley represents a risk to the public. One factor he will consider is "maintaining public confidence in the criminal justice system".
The Parole Board suggestion provoked fury from the parents of children who were killed by Hindley and her lover, Ian Brady. They were jailed for life in 1966 for the murders of Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans. In 1987 Hindley confessed to her role in the killings of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett.
It was this confession which caused Lord Waddington, when Home Secretary in 1990, to increase Hindley's 30-year sentence and order that she be kept in prison for the rest of her life.
Yesterday Ann West, the mother of Lesley Anne, said she was disgusted by the Parole Board's recommendation. "I was satisfied with her imprisonment in Durham but this new recommendation is devastating.
"Hindley has tortured me for the last 31 years and she should stay behind bars under lock and key. She is an evil and calculating woman and I'm sure she will try to escape from an open prison.
"If she is moved I will track her down and go after her. The Parole Board should have considered the victims and the victims' families before making a recommendation like this."
Winnie Johnson, the mother of Keith Bennett, who went missing in June 1964 when he was aged 12 and whose body was never found, said she believed that Hindley would attempt to escape from an open prison is she were moved there. "She will do her best to escape and when she does I will follow her and torture her like she tortured the children she killed.
"Anyone who can believe she would not kill again if she got the chance must be an idiot."
Mrs Johnson still goes up to Saddleworth moor to search for her son's body.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats were angered last night to learn they would have only three and a half hours to study the Scott report. Ministers have eight days to study the arms-to-Iraq investigation when it is published on Thursday at 3.30pm. Ian Lang, the Trade President, said the 1,800 pages will be made available to opposition parties at noon.
The room rate for the Hotel Terminus Nord, Paris (Weekend, page 18), is from Fr985. The rate for those travelling by Eurostar at weekends is Fr700, with breakfast.
A photograph yesterday of Mrs Ann Fidler was incorrectly captioned in some editions. We apologise for the error.
The High Court has backed the Home Secretary's move to scrap the need for trainee probation officers to have a social work qualification. The probation officers' trade union had claimed that Michael Howard had abused his powers by ending the requirement.
But two judges ruled that he had acted within his discretion when he decided that a social work diploma or similar qualification was no longer appropriate and instead recruits should train "on the job". Mr Howard will now push ahead with attempts to recruit more mature entrants, including retired members of the Forces, into the Probation Service.
Leave to appeal was refused, and the union was ordered to pay Mr Howard's costs.
INJURIES. AT LEAST five people were seriously injured in last night's explosion but police feared there may be further casualties buried in the rubble.
Two of the injured were on the critical list at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, east London, which declared a major emergency and called in all available medical staff.
Police said 36 people would stay in hospital overnight. Up to 100 others were described as "walking wounded". Many casualties, including three police officers, were treated at the scene by teams of paramedics. Jackie Cardiff, the hospital's general manager, said that one man had had surgery for head and chest injuries.
Two teams of emergency clinicians went to the site of the blast, but gas leaks and a second bomb scare made it impossible for many of the casualties to be moved. The injured were eventually ferried away by police cars and London Ambulance Service. A hospital spokesman said: "Fifty-three extra staff have been called including nurses, doctors and blood transfusion specialists."
One witness, Farid Berrezag, described a blinding blue flash as he sat in a car with his father just 50 yards away from the blast. Mr Berrezag, 17, jumped from the vehicle and ran with blood pouring from his neck. But as he sat in a wheelchair with dried blood caked on his face he said: "I have seen a lot of terrible injuries tonight. There were people's faces that were unbearable to even look at. I am lucky to be like this.
"All I can say is the people who did this are wrong. If they have to do anything at least take out a building when there is no one in it."
Last night firemen were still picking their way through rubble in a search for other casualties.
Police have issued a telephone number for the public to call if they were worried about relatives who may have been near the blast: 0171-834 7777.
CHARLIE BIRD, a reporter for RTE, the Irish broadcasting company, said last night that the IRA contacted him in his newsroom shortly after 5.30pm to tell him it was resuming military operations.
An hour later an unnamed source, known to Mr Bird as a member of the IRA, reinforced the message with another call to his mobile telephone. "Charlie, you better go with this statement," he said. "This is for real."
"Once I spoke to the person, I knew who I was dealing with," Mr Bird said. "I believed the message to be from somebody I have dealt with in the past, who has handed me statements, who has given me information."
THE TACTICS. INTELLIGENCE services on both sides of the Irish Sea were last night facing up to the uncomfortable truth that they had been caught unawares by the sudden resumption of violence.
The Royal Ulster Constabulary and MI5, which have warned the Goverment in recent weeks that there was a long-term risk of a return to the bomb, had ruled out any short-term risk.
One security source in Ulster said last night: "We were taken completely by surprise. It is frantic at the moment." Analysts in the two organisations believed that the IRA would wait at least until the end of the month before deciding whether to resume its campaign.
The IRA unit that shattered this expectation by planting the Docklands bomb was the England Department. Members of the elite unit, known as "sleepers", come from the top ranks of the IRA and are controlled by the general headquarters staff in Dublin.
They are sent over to England, often for years at a time, and encouraged to blend with the local community to lessen the chance of detection. However, in the final years of the IRA campaign in the run-up to the 1994 ceasefire MI5 managed to foil a number of IRA operations on the mainland. One of the last was an attempt to blow up Canary Wharf.
Britain and Ireland agreed last November to set a target date to hold all-party talks by the end of February. While this prospect looked increasingly remote, there were hopes in security circles that the IRA might wait to see if Britain would made concessions as the date approached.
The confidence of the RUC was underlined when it emerged last week that Sir Hugh Annesley, the Chief Constable of the RUC, had decided to remove close protection from leading figures in Northern Ireland apart from Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Northern Ireland Secretary, Sir John Wheeler, the security minister, and judges.
The RUC believed there was no immediate threat to people such as the Rev Ian Paisley, who has had an armed guard for years. This protection was to be removed at the beginning of next month. This will undoubtedly be shelved.
In London the security services weekly meetings to assess the risks from the IRA were scaled down to one a month. Last weekend Sir Hugh warned that the mainland would bear the brunt of any return to violence. But he thought that an early breakdown of the ceasefire was unlikely.
The choice of such a prominent target as Docklands suggests that the leadership of the Republican movement, including Sinn Fein, decided to end the ceasefire because of Britain's refusal to hold all-party talks.
The IRA ended their 17 month ceasefire because events convinced them that the unarmed strategy had no prospects of success. John Major's decision to lay aside the Mitchell arms report and to propose elections in Northern Ireland appeared to be the final factor in persuading the IRA to resume its campaign.
It appears that the IRA's hawks have won the day and that the army council of the IRA decided to end the campaign.
The army council may be hoping that a series of devastating bomb attacks in Britain will force the Government to engage in serious negotiations. But Britain is likely to crack down harshly on the movement.
THE IRA'S STATEMENT
"IT IS with great reluctance that the leadership of Oglaigh na hEireann [IRA] announces that the complete cessation of military operations will end at 6pm on February 9, this evening.
As we stated on August 31, 1994, the basis for the cessation was to enhance the democratic peace process and to underline our definitive commitment to its success. We also made clear that we believed that an opportunity to create a just and lasting settlement had been created. The cessation presented an historic challenge for everyone and Oglaigh na hEireann commends the leadership of nationalist Ireland at home and abroad. They rose to the challenge.
The British Prime Minister did not. Instead of embracing the peace process the British Government acted in bad faith, with Mr Major and the Unionist leadership squandering this unprecedented opportunity to resolve the conflict. Time and again over the last 18 months selfish party political and sectional interests in the London Parliament have been placed before the rights of the people of Ireland.
We take this opportunity to reiterate our total commitment to our republican objectives. The resolution of this conflict in our country demands justice. It demands an inclusive negotiated settlement. That is not possible unless and until the British Government faces up to its responsibilities. The blame for the failure thus far of the Irish peace process lies squarely with John Major and his Government."
THE TARGET. THE Canary Wharf complex in London's Docklands meets all the requirements of a prime terrorist target . It is an internationally renowned development on which an attack is certain to attract maximum publicity. It also offers the IRA the chance of hitting Britain economically.
The terrorists would see the multibillion-pound development as a fitting backdrop for a return to violence on the mainland. It has been the target of at least two earlier IRA bomb attempts.
The value of attacks on commercial targets was highlighted by the City lorry bomb attacks in 1992 and 1993, on the Baltic Exchange and Bishopsgate. The cost of the first was £350 million and the second £500 million. The bombings also claimed four lives. They prompted demands from City institutions for tougher security measures and the City of London Police restricted access to the Square Mile. The security clampdown drove the IRA to look to Docklands. In November 1992, security men at Canary Wharf halted an attempt to set off a lorry bomb near the tower. In July 1994, police intercepted a lorry carrying explosives in Lancashire. They believe it was destined for Canary Wharf.
The production of a number of newspapers was disrupted by the blast. The Canary Wharf offices of The Independent, the Daily Mirror and The Daily Telegraph were evacuated. The Guardian and the Daily Express, printed on the Isle of Dogs, also experienced difficulties.
POLITICAL REACTION. TONY BLAIR last night led a chorus of condemnation from politicians who expressed their determination to keep the peace process alive. "I utterly condemn this sickening outrage. There can be no justification whatsoever for a return to terrorism," the Labour leader said.
"I call on everyone including Sinn Fein to condemn this appalling act. All parties must at once return to the peace process and resume the ceasefire. An outrage of this kind simply makes it harder for the Government to continue the peace process, so it is not only callous and unacceptable but counterproductive."
Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Northern Ireland Secretary, said: "Here were the republicans offered a path through to the talks which they claim they have wanted to join for a very long time. That path was by way of elections. Rather than face elections, they appear to have gone back to the bomb."
Michael Mates, the former Northern Ireland Minister, said that a resumption of terrorism would rebound badly on the IRA but he insisted that the peace process could be saved. "It is a very sad day for everyone who has been trying to keep the peace process on the rails. It is an enormous tactical mistake by the IRA. The Americans will understand after the experience of Oklahoma."
Andrew Hunter, chairman of the Conservative backbench committee on Northern Ireland, said he understood that the bombing had been carried by the mainstream IRA rather than a splinter group. Reacting to the IRA's statement that it had been forced into action, Mr Hunter said: "What happened this evening is that people made the cool, calculated decision to initiate an operation that, in all probability, would kill people and destroy. That was their decision alone. In no way were they forced to do it and it is, of course, monstrous to pretend in any way that they were forced to do it."
Unionists in Northern Ireland reacted with fury but some said that they had expected such a move by republican terrorists.
David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionists, said that the bomb had been designed to prevent elections taking place in Northern Ireland. "It is incredible that the people who have been telling us that they want to enter the democratic process should be trying to stop elections."
The Rev Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionists, said of the IRA's ceasefire statement: "We must cut through the lying and the deceit in a statement like this. They say they are trying to enhance the democratic peace process. But this statement is a hellish lie."
Ken Maginnis, the Ulster Unionist security spokesman, said: "The IRA/Sinn Fein stand alone determined to hold people to ransom by the use of violence. People will now understand why we wanted decommissioning before talks began. It was to a degree predictable that they would pick up where they had left off. It proves the ceasefire was a ploy to gain some sort of a political advantage."
Joe Hendron, a Social Democratic and Labour Party MP, criticised the British Government for "pussyfooting around" with the peace process. "The Government has been playing with fire and playing with the lives of people."
Marjorie Mowlam, the Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, said: "It is an appalling act of terrorism, a tragic night not just for the people in Britain but for
those in Northern Ireland who have enjoyed the peace so much.
"Tonight is not a time to start apportioning blame but to see what has happened, to think about the families of the injured and to see how both Major and Bruton continue the search for peace. It is important is to look to the future."
Lord Holme of Cheltenham, Liberal Democrat spokesman on Northern Ireland, said: "This may be the result of a dangerous power struggle within the militant republican movement. Sinn Fein must move quickly to disown these terrible developments. If they align themselves with men of violence once again they will forfeit any right to be heard not only by the people of Northern Ireland but by the whole civilised world."
"Gusty" Spence, the man who announced the Protestants' truce in October 1994, pleaded with loyalist gunmen not to retaliate. "My message to the loyalist paramilitaries at this moment is for heaven's sake, and for the sake of the people of the whole of Northern Ireland, hold anything that you may anticipate doing until such times as the situation becomes clear. I am down on my knees begging."
WASHINGTON. THE White House launched an intensive drive to try to salvage the peace process in the wake of last night's bombing.
President Clinton telephoned John Major and top White House officials contacted every party in Northern Ireland to beg them to continue their search for peace.
A senior White House official also disclosed that Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, had telephoned Anthony Lake, Mr Clinton's National Security Adviser, shortly before the explosion to tell him the IRA had issued a statement saying the ceasefire was over. Asked if there was going to be a bombing, Mr Adams replied only that he was hearing some very disturbing news and would call back. He later pledged his "absolute commitment" to putting the peace process back on track.
Mr Clinton issued a statement after the bombing condemning "in the strongest possible terms this cowardly action" and insisting that the terrorists responsible "cannot be allowed to derail the effort to bring peace to the people of Northern Ireland".
He was "deeply concerned" by reports that the IRA was ending its ceasefire. His visit to the Province last December had shown the population's overwhelming desire for peace and "no one and no organisation has the right to deny them that wish".
Mr Clinton has invested huge personal and political capital in promoting peace in Northern Ireland. He had been touting Northern Ireland as a foreign policy success as he embarked on his campaign for re-election, and officials said the apparent collapse of the 17-month ceasefire had "shocked and saddened" the White House.
Irish-American congressmen deplored the return to violence but criticised the Government for not having done more to convene all-party talks. Peter King, a New York Republican, said the bomb was morally wrong and politically disastrous, "because I don't think the IRA has realised the high ground the republican movement held in recent months". But he also said the Government "must have known it was bound to happen if it didn't move the process along. Gerry Adams has been saying this for months."
The White House had seemed aware of the danger of the ceasefire collapsing. In recent days a string of British and Irish officials had arrived in Washington to lobby Mr Clinton to back their conflicting solutions for moving the process forward. They included Michael Ancram, the Northern Ireland Minister, Mr Adams and Dick Spring, the Irish Foreign Minister. David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, was due in Washington on Monday.
BREAKDOWN. THE peace process became bogged down five months ago as ancient divisions and suspicions came to the surface. At the forefront was the decommissioning of some of the pararamilitaries' weapons.
The British and Irish Governments, which had worked hand in hand to keep the peace process alive, began to argue. Ministers in London said some arms must be decommissioned before substantive negotiations could begin: without such a handover, the Unionists would not come to the table. Dublin believed this precondition was in danger of testing Gerry Adams and the republican movement to the point of destruction.
A summit scheduled for September was postponed amid acrimony. To the outsider, the peace process appeared to have ground to a halt.
Hours before President Clinton arrived in Britain in December, a late night Anglo-Irish summit fudged decommissioning by setting up an international body to finesse the disagreement.
The commission, together with a promise of preparatory talks about talks, provided a breathing space for both sides. The republican movement had little choice but to accept the commission as the next phase of the peace process. They were not in a position to stay out of the talks and they were not in a position to boycott an international body on arms decomissioning headed by the former US Senator George Mitchell.
Unfortunately, the summit did not resolve the decommissioning issue, only postponed it, and it retained the capacity to derail the whole process.
"The history of Northern Ireland has been written in the blood of its children. The ceasefire turned the page on that history"
President Clinton, November 30, 1995
"The nightmare is over. When the IRA say they are going to do something, they will do it and stick to it"
Albert Reynolds on August 31, 1994, first day of the ceasefire "It is an historic day. John Major and the leaders of Unionism should seize the moment" Gerry Adams, August 31, 1994
"The IRA has declared a complete cessation of violence. I am greatly encouraged by this, but we need to be clear that this is intended to be permanent" John Major, August 31, 1994
"It is a ray of light, on a par with events in South Africa and the Middle East" Jacques Delors, August 31, 1994
"I hope the authors of the [IRA] statement mean what they say that it is a permanent, total, complete cessation of terrorism"
James Molyneaux, August 31, 1994
"I am sharing in the rejoicing and relief which are surely being felt all over Ireland" Cardinal Cahal Daly, August 31, 1994
"Members of both traditions may be less far apart on the resolution of their difficulties than they believe" Mitchell Commission report, January 24, 1995
OFFICE workers caught up in the explosion told last night how people ran screaming into the streets dodging flying glass and debris. Pub and wine bar customers dived to the floor and scrambled underneath tables as windows were blown out.
Anthony Garvey, 21, who works in Canary Wharf, said: "It was terrifying. All the lifts stopped. The building swayed. Chunks of plaster fell from the ceiling. There was dust everywhere." Vanessa Fennell, who was in Chile's, a wine bar, said: "The ground shook beneath us. We ran screaming into the street." John Wilding, another office worker, said: "It was like an earthquake. The ground shook, everything rumbled."
Graham Pain, sales manager for Baltic International Marine Communications, said: "The shelves came off the wall. The windows caved in." Mr Pain said that his company had had a telephone call from a man. "We asked: ‘Can I take your order.' A man with a heavy Irish accent said: ‘I have already placed it.' I put the phone down and the bomb went off 60 seconds later."
DARIUS GUPPY, the society fraudster who was released from jail earlier this week, is suing the Mirror Group for failing to honour a £75,000 contract to buy his life story.
His solicitors issued the writ in the High Court yesterday, claiming that the Daily Mirror's Editor, Piers Morgan, and Martin Cruddace, the company's solicitor, had reneged on an agreement to publish his story because their chief executive, David Montgomery, had vetoed the deal.
Mr Montgomery "considered £75,000 to be an excessive fee", the writ said. The Daily Mirror said last night that it would strenuously defend itself against the writ.
The action is bound to reopen the controversy about media payments to convicted criminals. Guppy, a declared bankrupt who was convicted of £1.8 million insurance fraud, served only three years of a five-year sentence.
The writ said that Guppy's deal with the paper gave it exclusive rights for a "full account" of his relationship with his wife and others, of "offences" and his time in jail.
THE HUNT for the convicted rapist Victor Farrant wanted for the murder of his girlfriend and attempting to kill another woman switched to London last night.
Detectives found the missing white Ford Escort Cabriolet belonging to Glenda Hoskins, the accountant suffocated in the loft of her £115,000 waterside home in Portsmouth in a street in Plaistow, Essex. The car was last night was undergoing tests at the Aldermaston forensic science laboratory.
Police, who are keeping a watch on all ports and airports, are also investigating two sightings in Brighton and Portsmouth on Wednesday, the day of the murder.
Farrant, 45, is described by police as "extremely dangerous" and is Britain's most wanted man. He was discharged from Ashwell jail at Oakham in Rutland on November 7 after serving just under seven years of a 12-year sentence imposed at Lewes Crown Court on November 25, 1988, for rape.
Angry Major deplores ‘appalling outrage' and pledges to continue fight for peace deal
Rush-hour blast at Docklands railway station
THE IRA ceasefire appeared to be in tatters last night after a 500lb bomb exploded on London's Isle of Dogs as thousands of office workers were making their way home.
Paramedics treated more than a hundred "walking wounded" after the blast in an underground car park near Canary Wharf tower, while 36 people were taken to hospital. Two were critically wounded, three seriously injured, and there were fears that some victims may have died.
Warnings had been telephoned to the police, a newspaper and to the Irish national broadcasting network RTE, and the station was being cleared when the bomb went off at the South Quay Docklands Light Railway station at 6.57pm. Police had already sealed the area and stopped all trains.
The explosion shook the 800ft Canary Wharf tower, which was later evacuated, and could be heard eight miles away. One worker in the office block said: "The tower shook from top to toe."
Political shockwaves from the blast were felt in Belfast, Dublin and Washington, leading to a hectic round of telephone calls between John Major, President Clinton and the Irish Prime Minister, John Bruton, in the hope of salvaging the peace process.
The first sign of a return to violence came at 6pm when RTE received a coded message from the IRA saying that "with great reluctance" it was calling off the ceasefire that began on August 31, 1994. The statement added that blame for the failure of the peace process lay "squarely with John Major and his Government". The ceasefire had presented an historic challenge, but the British Government had acted in bad faith.
There was early speculation that the attack might have been the work of a breakaway group, but the Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams effectively confirmed that it had been authorised by the IRA high command when he issued his own statement echoing the IRA's language.
He spoke of his "sadness" at news of the bombing, but added: "I regret that this unprecedented opportunity for peace has floundered on the refusal of the British Government and the Unionist leaders to enter into dialogue and substantive negotiations. I appeal for calm. Sinn Fein's peace strategy remains the main function of our party. It is my personal priority."
Mr Adams had telephoned Anthony Lake, the American National Security Adviser, before the bombing to say that the IRA was calling off the ceasefire but that he was absolutely committed to the peace process. He also contacted Mr Bruton, promising that Sinn Fein would use whatever influence it had with the IRA. He refused, however, to condemn the bombing.
The Sinn Fein leadership had expressed surprise immediately after the attack and Mitchell McLaughlin, the party chairman, even gave a television interview reaffirming his commitment to the ceasefire. That reaction led to fears that the party had "managed" a split to allow the IRA to resume violence while Sinn Fein tried to keep its place in the peace process by stressing its commitment to the search for a political solution.
The Prime Minister made clear last year that such a manoeuvre would fail when he described as laughable Republican claims that the IRA and Sinn Fein were separate, and last night he urged Sinn Fein to join in his condemnation of the bombing. He nevertheless drew back from acknowledging that it meant an end to the ceasefire, apparently hoping that it was a one-off attack.
Mr Major said: "This is an appalling outrage. My first thoughts are with the casualties, their families and the emergency services. We will pursue relentlessly those responsible for this disgraceful attack.
"It would be a tragedy if the hopes of the people of Britain and Northern Ireland for a lasting peace were dashed again by the men of violence. This atrocity confirms again the urgent need to remove illegal arms from the equation. For my part, I remain committed to the search for peace in Northern Ireland and will not be distracted by terrorism."
As armoured cars returned to the streets of Belfast and soldiers forsook their soft caps for helmets and flak jackets, Mr Bruton also denounced the violence but without linking it to the IRA. He said: "This resumption of violence, by whomsoever organised, is entirely unjustified. I condemn it without reservation."
News of the bombing was received with alarm and dismay in Washington, where President Clinton has invested so much political capital in promoting the peace process. Mr Clinton, who telephoned Mr Major to express his deep concern, said: "I condemn in the strongest possible terms this cowardly action and hope those responsible are brought swiftly to justice."
The Vulture picks over the bones of contemporary culture.
The Stone Roses (1989).
AS THE EIGHTIES wound to a close, Manchester's Stone Roses made a late but convincing claim for debut album of the decade with this heady mixture of genre-hopping, era-defining sound. Guitarist John Squire was largely responsible for the melodies, while frontman Ian Brown provided the mop-top haircut, boyish looks, occasional lyrics and luxuriant vocals.
The album began with the narcissistic I Wanna Be Adored and closed with the eight-minute proclamation I Am the Resurrection. In between, there were musical comparisons aplenty: Byrds-style guitars (She Bangs the Drums), Beatles-style vocals (Waterfall), traditional folk (Scarborough Fair revamped as Elizabeth My Dear) and mind-bending psychedelia (Don't Stop). Mellow love songs collided with snatches of misogynistic spite, relayed through warehouse-party rhythms, two-part harmony and playful phrasing. Critical approbation was pandemic, with the group championed as high priests of Ecstasy culture and undisputed leaders of an indie dance crossover that would unite a generation divided by guitars and dance beats. Alas, the saviours were undone by murky litigation, record- company largesse, innate indolence and the longest holiday in rock history. Five years in the creative wilderness followed, while a new crop of hungrier hopefuls provided their own mixture of arrogance, guitars and drugs to redefine the Britpop kingdom.
A Matter Of Life And Death (1946).
WHO, HAVING SEEN THEM, can forget the first minutes of this film? David Niven, piloting a doomed bomber, romances an American WAC over the radio as he plummets to what everyone - the Heavenly Powers included - imagines will be his death.
Written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the film is an incredible crystallisation of the immediate postwar mood, still riddled with nightmares about the chaotic torment of war. "Politics?" Niven asks rhetorically as he plunges to Earth. "Conservative by instinct, Labour by experience" - a remarkably political throwaway line, yet 1946 Britain in a nutshell. However, as a good part of the film is set in a monochrome heaven ("one is so starved for Technicolor up there"), this is hardly socialist realism.
The film's genre, if it could be said to belong to one at all, is the lucid dream, but one that explores, too, the mutually uneasy gratitude between America and Britain. As the heavenly inquisitor, berating the malign influence of the mother country, eventually concedes - after being presented with the evidence: a single tear frozen upon a rose - that what is the most important thing of all (what, in Larkin's words, will survive of us) is love.
The State We're In (1995).
WILL HUTTON'S full structural survey of the British economy is fast becoming like Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. Most readers of this surprise best-seller could never test the validity of his numerous assertions, but are left feeling that they have glimpsed some order in the great universal chaos. (There is, however, a higher chance that they have finished the book.) Few books on economics have been greeted with such passionate enthusiasm or such annoyed hostility. Hutton's achievement is to knit into a coherent argument the strands of discontent and anxiety which have worried the centre left of British life during 16 years of marginalisation, and to place the responsibility for our woes at the door of the City.
It certainly isn't, as Tory critics have claimed, a nostalgic lefty whinge for the days of closed shops and compulsory school milk. If anything, it is the social democratic manifesto that was never written, and ends in a flurry of optimistic kite-flying. If John Major bags the Conservatives a fifth term, it will doubtless fade into obscurity, another failed makeover for the moribund Left. If he doesn't, Hutton could prove as influential for a generation or two as a Keynes or a Hayek.
Anna Blundy on the ins and outs of contemporary living.
I KNOW IT'S PATHETIC. I know it's irrational. I know crossing the road is more dangerous (Pah!). I am terrified of flying.
It's not all bad. I do quite enjoy being trapped in a space where all there is to do is drink, and I always feel exhilarated when I see a sunset above the clouds - a rosy eiderdown over the world. Also, my otherwise absent patriotism leaps into gear when it comes to leaving the floor - I only really like flying British Airways. There is something about the way they so chirpily play pseudo-African music above the menacing roar of the engines that is so endearing.
But one day I realised in a flash, after a life of flying, that I was in a metal coffin 35,000ft above Tunisia (that's seven miles), about to plummet to my doom. Of course, everything was fine and an angelic air hostess with cool hands and a sympathetic smile looked after me. But things haven't been the same since.
I was once on a flight to America and I had finally talked myself into tranquillity. The statistics are on my side, I thought. It's a beautiful clear day. It's BA. It's fine. I was also sitting next to a rather handsome concert pianist, who was so ethereal and calm I couldn't believe his number was up. "Ladies and gentlemen," said the captain nonchalantly (always a bad sign), "some of you sitting on the right-hand side of the plane may have noticed that we are jettisoning fuel and have turned back to Heathrow."
Well, you've had a decent innings, my Dad used to say. By the time we got back to London, I was so convinced I was cashing my chips in, and didn't want to do it sober, that I had drunk most of the champagne they had in First Class. (The crew were so terrified I might start screaming that they had brought a crate back to the slime section to appease me.) At Heathrow five people left in tears. Four had elected to take the next flight, but one old man in Business Class said he would never fly again. I was standing at the door whimpering and asking to get off, but they insisted they were taking my bags to New York and I would have to pay to get them flown home. "I don't care!" I squealed, but I did. I was just not as rich as the other sad cases who had succeeded in disembarking. The pilot was summoned.
A gorgeous twinkly-eyed gentleman with shining brass buttons and proud gleaming wings on his lapels descended to see me, smiling understandingly. Blake Carrington would have wished to be as charming. "Miss," he said with a mild incline of his silvery head. "I have a wife and children. If I didn't think it was safe to fly, I wouldn't be aboard this plane." I snivelled meekly. "I am going to New York this afternoon," he continued. "And I would be very happy for you to accompany me." What lunatic wouldn't go if he's in the cockpit, I thought.
Although, by this point, I was so drunk I probably wouldn't have noticed if the engine had fallen off. That's the problem with terror - it involves a lot of alcohol, but it is impossible to get off the plane still drunk. There is something about swooping out of the sky that brings on an immediate hangover. If you are meeting a lover at the other side, this is particularly unfortunate. I once had an awful transatlantic relationship, which, I suspect, fell apart because of the bloodshot eyes with which I greeted the scumbag.
Disaster. I am writing this on a 20-seater propeller-driven excuse for an aircraft on the way back from Jersey. If a wasp gets into the engine, you've had it. Here's hoping it's too cold for wasps out there today.
Alan Stocker was once an armed bank robber and a heroin addict, but a prison sentence gave him the freedom to find a life in art.
WHEN YOU LOOK at certain Alan Stocker paintings, something frightful happens. The tiny acrylic figures that boil on the canvas begin to conspire. Darkness stirs in the heart of all this raging colour, the whole perspective shifts, and a single image of human pain starts from the surface.
When you look at Stocker's life, reversing this perspective as well so that you go from 1996 back into the late Forties, something even more frightful happens. The present end of the chronology is bright with attainment, culminating in a one-man show at a London gallery next Friday. But before that, a life of crime and punishment opens up, or rather closes down, with a drug addiction that was dominating the picture before he had reached his teens.
When critics look at Stocker's work they are moved to superlatives. The singer and writer George Melly, one of his first collectors, sensed the arrival of "an exceptionally important artist, a Serengeti of the imagination. His vision is so strong that it worried me, and I had to buy one. I follow Andre Breton in believing that a work of art should give one the same feeling as a cold wind brushing the forehead. Stocker's work has this quality in abundance."
The late Lawrence Gowing, principal of the Slade School of Fine Art in the Eighties and Stocker's most crucial supporter, said he resisted the awful beauty of the paintings until he was no longer able to. He described Stocker's life as both terrible and remarkable, and told him: "You are certainly doing some thunder things that were in you to do, and you can't ask any more of an artist."
Today he lives in a council flat in Euston, north London, which he shares with Jean Mathee, a fine art lecturer at Goldsmiths' College. The main room is as compact as a study and unfussy as a cell. On one wall is a Madonna and Child that he painted some ten years ago. Already evident is the tension of a figure declaring its shape from a violent background while using the available detail to escape sharper detection. It lives somewhere in the hazy ground between coming out and staying in, and for all these reasons bears a strong autobiographical print.
Stocker speaks densely and intensely of his art, with a soft, educated voice and with graceful referential arcs that embrace Lacan, Matisse, Freud and Bacon. It is a fine, aesthetic face and a slight, rather retiring presence.
People are apt to ask him where he lectures. This goes some way towards explaining why, when he discusses his early professional life, a wild comedy comes kicking and screaming into the frame. This comedy is part surreal and part Ealing, which happens to be one of his old stamping grounds.
"My big friend would be on the sledge [14lb sledge hammer], and he would smash down the communicating door into the back of the bank. I was a minder, and I would generally put one [a shot] into the ceiling. We used to work at lunchtime, when there were a lot of people about. We would shout,‘Down! Lay down!', and everyone would do that. It was very quick. We always used to pull on [tackle] a bank in a van, and mask up in the back of it, but we would have a Just-in-Caser [another vehicle] parked somewhere else for the escape. Once we'd scooped the money from the tills and the pick-ups, we'd be straight back out again, and drive off to a flop [safe house] with the guns and the money.
"Someone in the bank would set off the bandit alarm immediately we entered, and there were times when we could hear the police sirens before we had got away. Once, there was an alarm going before we even got in. I was upstairs in the wages office, and blew the locks off with a shotgun. A friend of mine came up and said Old Bill's downstairs. They'd blocked us off with a Rover. So we climbed out the back and over a fence and out on to a huge main road, and hijacked a car. By this time there was a roadblock up, and we tried to drive round it, but we hit a tree. We climbed out, pointed our guns at the police and took one of their cars. We had a good driver and got a bit of a start. We made it over the Jacob's Ladder [footbridge over a railway line], where we had a car waiting."
There is plenty more where this came from. It is told not triumphantly, but in a rather flat and matter-of-fact way, with here and there enormous sighs of relief that he no longer lives this nightmare life, ducking and diving like the not-quite-human shapes in his own later creations. He is not sure how many robberies he took part in, but concedes that he was "very active" in the late Sixties and early Seventies. "More than a dozen, but less than dozens, I'd say."
He got in with a well-known criminal family in west London, and was nothing if not professional. He managed to raise a mortgage on a house, refrained from drinking on the job, and even parted company with a pair of much older safe-cutters because the technology had moved on so far while they had been elsewhere.
If you are so tough on crime and its causes that you find even talk of these exploits distasteful, there are a few consoling details. Stocker was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment for armed robbery in 1973 at the Old Bailey - for one that he happened not to commit. He agrees that what he got up to in his criminal days was "a terrible transgression". And if he is WX ever tempted to touch up his past with a patina of romance, it does not show. He had no sooner left school than he was heading for a detention centre and then borstal. He has lost contact with his west London associates from those times, and supposes that most are inside or dead.
If he had not gone inside, the chances are that he too would be dead. When I mention to him that some of the paintings have the crawling and mutilated visions associated with delirium tremens, he nods vigorously. By the time he was imprisoned, his heroin addiction and alcoholism were so acute that a liver specialist had given him six months to live unless he kicked both habits. He was 25 at the time, and in the course of the previous 13 years had graduated from speed to heroin, just as he had graduated from dispensaries to banks.
So what is going on in these extraordinary pieces of work, in which bits of animal and bits of person collide in mutual revulsion, and where portraits assemble in spite of their components, like Bacon under the influence of Bosch? Are they simply representations of a drug-made hell, and if so does not abstinence carry the fear that he will outgrow the source of his inspiration?
As the critic Gary Peters notes in an essay on Stocker entitled Art and Separation: "a war rages through the paintings, and yet he speaks of his work as offering a moment of peace... While seeking peace [it] is powerful in its refusal to be resolved."
So the prospect of this "peace" is to be savoured all the more by keeping the conflict going. Is that it? "Let me put it this way," says Stocker. "My notion of beauty is not ideal. It is closer to evil than good, and it is not a very traditional notion. The process of painting allows for an emptying out of everything; it is a matter of reaching a place where identity is made destitute. This is a non-verbal place, and it is not a pleasurable one, and it has to do with the terror of uncertain meaning."
Meaning, in turn, that when he embarks on the process, often as long as two years for each canvas, he has no idea what will happen in the course of the execution. In such a climate ambiguities burgeon like phantoms. They begin right at the beginning. The first mark on a pristine canvas, he says, is itself a sort of desecration. To paint is to enjoy the liberty of infinite possibilities, and yet the end result is a fixing of shapes within a rigid frame.
Stocker achieved this notional freedom at the cost of his own actual one. Yet even Maidstone Prison, where he did seven years before his very singular release, was nothing like the incarceration of the self by heroin. And when he cold-turkeyed his way off drugs while on remand, he regained his sense of colour only to find himself contained in the greys of Brixton. The paradoxes chase one another as much around his life as his work.
Forgive the pun, but had he been framed? His answer makes it clear that it would hardly matter if he had been. "After a while, there came a point when you knew you were going to go. It is as well I went when I did. I was finished and exhausted, I had been partying for years and I couldn't stop. You couldn't live a life, you couldn't go to work, you couldn't sleep properly. Whenever you drove out you had three police cars following you. Maybe there was a sort of bond between the criminals and the robbery squad. Maybe we needed each other, but the downside was too much. Far too much."
It was the governor of Maidstone Prison, the Reverend Peter Timms, who gave Stocker his break, first by allowing him to paint full-time as part of his education programme, and second by petitioning the Home Office on his behalf in 1979. He also persuaded Lawrence Gowing to come and assess the work. Gowing was so impressed that he offered him a place at the Slade on the spot. That very year Stocker was paroled.
Prison had been good to him in all manner of eccentric ways. At the start of his term he had wanted to divorce his wife, and was eventually able to do so through having lived apart from her for the statutory time. At the end of it he found he qualified for a county education grant because he had had a Kent address for all those years.
Four years later he won the 1983 Rodney Burn Prize for the best figurative painting at the Slade. Twenty years earlier, as the worst pupil in the lowest class of his school in Greenford, he had been so unteachable that they gave him a shovel and told him to clear the yard.
Today he paints because he has to. He has only sold a handful of canvases, and those on display at the Flowers East Gallery are expected to sell for about £4,000 each. It is not a financial necessity, but an absolute compulsion. Like drugs and drink once were? "Perhaps it's as strong, but it's very very different."
And crime? Was there not also something addictive about his branch of the banking business? "I suppose there must have been. Certainly there was a tremendous rush of adrenalin. And none of us really did it for the money, I don't think. Because whenever we had any, we would all just fritter it away or even give it to others."
How much used he to make? "Ooh, sometimes the take might be as much as £17,000. Divided by four or five. About £4,000."
The same as a painting. Of course the robberies would not take two years to complete, but then they did carry risk, and a very real isolation angst. You also had to budget for the long unproductive spells. One way and another, Alan Stocker's must be one of the great career shifts of our time, not to mention a timely endorsement of prison education.
For some, a Mediterranean holiday offers more than a quick fix of sun and sand.
Robert Crampton meets three Shirley Valentines who abandoned British new-manhood for a Greek old man of their own.
SHIRLEY VALENTINE was 42 when she came to Greece. She was a bored working-class housewife who talked to her kitchen wall and had never been abroad. In Greece, she revived her youthful zest for life, her sexuality and, eventually, her marriage. She had a fling with Tom Conti but, by the end of the film, she was back with Bernard Hill, and it may or may not have worked out. The film, which came out in 1989, was supposed to be about the redemptive power of travel, a redemption that became available to the British masses in Greece in the Eighties, as it had in Spain in the Seventies, as it has in America in the Nineties. But it was ultimately a conservative story: Shirley did not pursue the Greek; she judged that it would not work - and indeed, most Anglo-Greek marriages do fail.
The women in this story, who went to Greece unmarried, in their twenties and looking for a change of skin tone rather than a change of life, are not like Shirley Valentine. Suzy, Kim and Dia had all been abroad before. The first two had begun careers in publishing in London, and in Essex Dia had a handicapped child whose care was her career. They all lived lives with which they say they were more or less content. They didn't feel in need of any Hellenic insight into the meaning of their existence.
But they must have been missing something. Because when Suzy, Kim and Dia met their Tom Contis here in Zakinthos, they did something more unusual, more courageous, more rebellious than Shirley Valentine did: they pursued them, married them, and each now has two children by them. Their stories have been filmed, too, and they will be told on the television over the next three Mondays. W XWhat was it that these Greek men provided Suzy, Kim and Dia that British men could not? You could snigger and answer "sex", and it is partly that - two out of three of them said it was fabulous. But that is not enough. You could say "a father figure" - Kim and Dia's parents both divorced when they were young - and you'd be getting closer. The answer seems to be that Denis, Yorgo and Nicos offered them something less tangible, but which they had nonetheless looked for and found absent at home: traditional masculinity and the certainties of blood and of soil that it provides.
THE EROSION OF certainty in Britain is no longer bemoaned just in the privacy of our homes, but publicly too, by most politicians and most commentators. On all sorts of issues - divorce, work, child-rearing - there is a feeling that we have got it wrong in this country. This feeling is but a short step from a hankering for an age when men were men and women were women, a hankering now very much in vogue in Britain.
Well, in Zakinthos, men are men and women are women. Certainty is all around: marriages last forever, an extended family is on tap, men work outside the home and women work within it. People stay put, their loyalty is to their family, their community, their land. Sound nice? If we want to choose that again, it's worth listening to Suzy, Kim and Dia, because they already have.
Zakinthos - known in British brochures as Zante - is a small island in the Ionian chain, south of its famous neighbour, Corfu. The winter population is only 47,000, although the numbers expand in the heat. Of these 47,000 inhabitants, 3,000 are Brits. One Zakinthian told me that of the men of his generation - he was 29 and was including 25 to 35-year-olds - well over half were married to British women.
The first direct flights from Britain touched down from Gatwick in May of 1982. Suzy Vitsos, as she was to become, was on one of them, with her girlfriend Penny. Suzy was 28, engaged to Ian, living with him in Shepperton. She was a secretary at Carlton publishing, he worked at Courage Breweries. She had a "nice house, nice job, a nice life". The holiday was a gift from her employer. Ian wasn't on it. In a taverna in Argasi, Denis, 22 and just out of the army, was waiting. "He was muscular then. He'd been in the Paras," she says. "He conned me completely." Bit of a slob now is he? "Well, you all are anyway, aren't you, after a few years?" These days you find Suzy in the hills behind Argasi. Get on the road and ask someone for Neragoules, she says on the phone. "Never‘eard of it, mate," says the sunburnt man mending the road, in a Yorkshire accent. But house-to-house inquiries lead to a track, and the track leads, through the ubiquitous olive grove, to a farmhouse that belongs to her in-laws, and Suzy is in it. Call at a house in England mid-morning and you will generally find it empty. In Zakinthos, you'll find a woman with her hands full.
The kitchen isn't Suzy's, but she's used to it now, after 13 years with her mother-in-law, Marika. "We are poles apart. I don't say much now. I don't say anything. Any two women living under the same roof deserve a medal. I don't know how I've done it. I won't give up. Some days, I think I don't want to live like this." She gestures around at the basic amenities. Suzy had her own house at 19, with her first fiance. She was used to being in charge, used to privacy. "It's open house here. There's always Greek men having coffee at seven in the morning, talking about hunting. It's difficult for me, still difficult...my sister says it's wonderful, it's so warm, not like the English."
Until they married six years ago, Suzy thought Denis would come to England, "do six months here and six there, everyone's dream." Now she knows he will never leave the island. He was always honest, she says. That was part of the attraction. "He never said we would live any other way than how we've lived. He said, this is what I am, if you want it, I'm a farmer, I'll be nothing else." The rest of the attraction was "maybe that scent, that smell of masculinity. Ian was a lovely man, a gentleman. Whereas the Greeks aren't. I was engaged to two very soft men and probably I did walk over them, through them. Maybe I was looking for a strong man, someone who would say,‘No, you can't go out.'" And does he? "Oh yes, they all say that."
Later, from the back of his cousin's Lada, on the way to prune a brother-in-law's olive trees, I ask Denis why he would not allow Suzy to meet a friend in a bar for a drink. "It's a small place, people talk. I would lose respect. I have an old name in this village." I ask Denis if he thinks men are stronger in Greece than they are in England. "Sure. I don't think that, I know that. I have seen couples in England, the way they live. They do everything together. They wash the plates together, they fix the bed together. I never do that. For me it's funny. I am manager in my house. I like to have things my own way." Why? Denis half turns to get a proper look at the moron in the back. "It's my personality." Because you're a man? "Yes." Ever washed a plate? "No." Ever cooked? "No." Ever fed the babies? "No." And is this a good state of affairs, Denis? Denis turns fully and stares at me, giving his best is-feta-cheese-white-and-crumbly look: "For me, yes." And we both laugh.
Our shared sniggering makes Denis expansive. "My job is outside of the house. I don't expect to work in the house." What does Suzy say? "She try, everyone try. She knows me." What attracted him to her? "I met lots of different girls. Happened to meet Suzy. I know that she come out here for two weeks, go back to England. Just happened that she come back." Was he surprised? "Yes, lots of time you never see them again. She come back, she come back again, she stay forever." Did he prefer English girls? "It was more comfortable for me. With Greek girls, you had to be careful with their families if they were young. Some of them expect to marry." What did Suzy see in him, did he think? "I don't know."
We pull up at the olive grove. Denis warms up his chainsaw and fills the time by running down my country, complaining that tourists expect too much, you English can't hang on to your women, you are arrogant, "I say go away, you are like my dog, you are like my pussycat", a man can't get a Greek coffee anywhere any more, and so on.
I remember my guidebook history: the English, inevitably, have steamed in here before. In 1809, three frigates, at the request of the islanders, arrived with 3,000 marines to free Zakinthos from some tyrant's shackles. After a few years, as usual, the locals wanted rid, and spent 50 years trying to kick us out. Now, they've taken our money, nicked a load of women and are starting to moan again. The Balkans are no stranger to ethnic hatreds, and I'm having to damp down the flames of my own now, what with him holding the chainsaw. I think: this guy is 36, he's lecturing me about masculinity, and he's still living with his mother.
"What a life those two lads have got," says Suzy, back at the house. "Life of Riley, the men here. Go off with your knife and chainsaw, come home and your wife's having a nervous breakdown because she's had the kids all day, but she's done nothing because that's not real work." I think of Denis and Stephanos, swarming up their trees. I think of Stephanos, 40 plus, jumping down from his tree, stumbling slightly like Olga Korbut off the vault - although he wouldn't appreciate the analogy - and shooting a quick look at me, his judge, to make sure I hadn't marked him down on machismal merit.
I THINK BACK to being 12 years old, playing out in hot weather, and the mysterious process by which tea was on the table when I got home. Just to make doubly sure that it will always be there, forever and ever, the Zakinthians have equipped themselves with two mothers. Maybe, because they can still do all the hunting, shooting and fishing, all the trad, fun, macho stuff, they don't feel the need, as we do, to wrench themselves away from their mothers to prove their masculinity.
"Mothers," says Kim Voutos, smoothing down Yorgo's jacket collar, "that's what they want." It's a not entirely serious remark, nor fair, because, unlike Denis, Yorgo wanted to leave his family home, didn't want to be a farmer, wanted to get into the tourist trade. "They used to interfere," says Kim of her in-laws. "They don't bother me now. You have to be strong, but your husband has to be strong too." Kim and Yorgo run a restaurant and apartment block, and live there too. His parents live up the hill.
Yorgo hasn't done a great deal of washing up, either. Yes, he is the head of the family. Meaning? "I know where everyone is." He's seen "a lot of English women making idiots of their husbands, disrespecting them." Does equality count as disrespect? "In England, it's not 50-50, it's 80-20. Men are downtrodden. Most of them prefer to drink rather than look after women." Are women inferior or just different? "Some work is women's work and some is men's." Do women have qualities that men lack? "Men can't wash. Is that a quality?" I was thinking more of emotional qualities. "Housework is women's work." Are women inferior or different? "It's the way I've been brought up." "He says he doesn't think he's using me," says Kim, translating.
KIM CAME TO Alikes in June of 1983, when she was 23. She walked into a bar for an ice-cream and thought, "Oh, I fancy him. He was running round with all the other tourists. I was just another fling. They used to have a competition with each other. He came out with all this crap -‘Come and stay, I'll look after you' - and I believed him. Called his bluff." Kim laughs. She came back a week later, walked back into the bar. "He'd been chatting up various girls. Another one came back that summer. Got rid of her, though."
Kim is a Scot. She was a production assistant at Heinemann when she came to Alikes, took compassionate leave, came back, then told them to chuck it. "I threw a lot away, but I was so blown over by this Greek. I was in love. He was macho and I quite like that. It sounds terrible because I fight for my independence, but it's all 50-50 in England now. You feel more protected here, but it gets on your nerves in other ways. For example, it would be nice to have a cup of coffee with your pals without the whole of Greece talking about it.
"I had his family on my back. They didn't want a bloody Scottish girl for their eldest son. They tried to drive me out, being totally obnoxious, blanking me. His father was always putting me down, saying to Yorgo,‘She's got nothing.'" Kim got so fed up that in 1984 she took Haralambos, her prospective father-in-law, to Edinburgh. Her parents had divorced when she was young and she had had a working-class upbringing in Leith with her mother, but her father had a huge house in Morningside. "I thought, that'll shut them up."
It helped, as did two other things. Kim was an asset to the family restaurant - "They didn't know one end of an egg from another" - and she began to change her own attitude. "I started to like them, to do things to please them." And that involved giving up some personal freedoms? "Yeah, but I'm not downtrodden. Greek women are not downtrodden - they're actually quite naughty - but yeah, I've missed 13 years of getting drunk in bars, which was my favourite thing. We argue about it. I say to Yorgo:‘I'm 35 years old, I'm fed up with forbidden zones.' There's a strip club opened up in Argasi, table dancing, three English strippers. It's run by a friend of ours, and I told Yorgo I wanted to go. He said you're not going, so I said, I'll take you to Scotland and we'll go to a bar where there's men taking their clothes off. It's completely childish, but there's nothing else to talk about in the winter."
Nor, indeed, is there much to do. So later that night, in the newly opened strip club in Argasi, I interview Sara, Jane and Michelle before they do their stuff. They work in the Fantasy Bar in Manchester and are over here on a contract for the winter. "Men are definitely more timid in Manchester," says Jane. "There's less manners here, less respect, even though they're paying almost three times as much for a dance." Around midnight, the club fills up with 40 or more Greek men. The next three hours - and no disrespect to Sara, Jane and Michelle, all fine-looking women - are a bit boring, and not in any way worth £50 for a few Cokes and whiskies. Not especially degrading, nor exploitative - Sara, Jane and Michelle are making £100 plus a night. Just dull and a little strange. Some fat fellow holding up his lighter, the better to illuminate the three minutes of palpably fraudulent lesbian loveplay he can afford, does nothing for me, trouser-wise. I must have mislaid my masculinity, along with all other Englishmen.
A Zakinthian who knows told me that younger men, those getting hitched now, or thinking about it, were choosing Greek women again, that marriages across borders were becoming rarer. This is because of the modernisation of Greek mores, brought about by communications technology, by joining the European Union, by tourism. A Greek man can date a Greek woman now without her father coming after him with a shotgun. So, in telling the story of Suzy and Denis, Kim and Yorgo, and Dia and Nicos, we are looking at a ten-year phenomenon that may be coming to an end.
If Suzy and Kim were in at the beginning, Dia came in late. We are away to Athens now, and Dia and Nicos's flat. Dia is a card. She is 30, from Basildon, came to Zakinthos for a rest in 1992, spent all week taking photos of the waiter's bum and eventually had a drink with him and hit it off. "I thought that was it. I saw these suntanned girls, all crying, being put on the bus by waiters and I thought,‘Silly bitches.'" She judged that "a nice arse and a decent vegetarian moussaka" was not a good enough basis for a relationship.
But Nicos pursued her on the telephone, and she came back and fell in love. She had the hardest call. She'd had a severely handicapped son, Thomas, when she was 21, and she didn't want to move out of Essex, let alone to Greece. But her friends and family encouraged her to make a life for herself, she became pregnant by Nicos, and she decided to put Thomas into long-term foster care. She lived with Nicos, and his parents, until a job came up in Athens and they moved there.
Nicos's mother, Sophia, is visiting. Sophia looks like she's had a hard life. On the television film, shot more than a year ago, Dia is critical of Sophia's interference. After her wedding, she says: "Nicos is not going to be mothered any more." Now, she thinks Sophia is "brilliant, love her". She has adjusted, an adjustment made possible by moving away, by learning some Greek, by her acceptance that she has to share Nicos with Sophia, by her overriding desire for a quiet, peaceful, conventional family life, a life not available to her in Basildon.
"All I want is for everyone here to say she's a good woman, she works for her husband and her children, she stays in the house, you never hear anything about her." And do people say that? "Starting to, yes. A good housewife, a good mother. Have nothing heard about you, that's the thing." But she wants her hair dyed - blonde on top, dark underneath, like the woman in Star Trek. And when Nico said no, she said: "Don't you tell me no!"
Island of Dreams starts on Channel 4 on Monday at 9pm
Prices are approximate, for a three-course meal for two, including modest wine and aperitif. Dishes are mentioned as an indication and are subject to frequent change. Reviews are distilled from articles previously published in the main column.
The Warehouse Brasserie The Quay, Poole, Dorset (01202 677238).
The view of the fishing port and the ferry port is attractive. The menu takes note of the former. Fish, simply cooked, is good. Fans of potato fried with cured pig are well served here - there is nowhere in England that does speckkartoffeln better. A lot of the stuff is ur-English - steak and kidney pie, treacle tart, etc. Lamb is slow-cooked and excellent. Wild fowl are done in an ace sauce of sweetish muscat wine. The best place in greater Bournemouth. Lunch and dinner Mon to Sat. £50 plus.
The Langton Arms Tarrant Monkton, Blandford Forum, Dorset (01258 830225) Long, low pub beneath Crichel Down. It gets packed out - a reflection of the lack of local competition, no doubt. Good ingredients are not well served by approximate cooking: pheasant is desiccated, though still well flavoured; crab is mugged by cheese, though still nicely fresh. Good beers include the pub's "own" brew from Smiles of Bristol and others from Batemans, Fullers, etc. Treacle tart is a treat. Lunch and dinner every day. £30.
The Castle Castle Green, Taunton, Somerset (01823 272671) The bastion of top-notch, intelligent English cooking; although it must be said that Phil Vickery's cooking is less emphatically English than that of his now-celebrated predecessor, Gary Rhodes. Vickery has an unfailingly light touch and eschews the rustic in favour of a novel sort of haute cuisine. Potted duck has kinship with both rillettes and liver pate; it is served with spiced pears. Crab tart is excellent: moist meat, thin pastry, a gratinated sabayon on top. Braised lamb is sweet and succulent. Now and again "old", peculiarly English flavours can be detected - mace, cloves, allspice, etc. The puddings are more straightforward than what precedes them: egg custard tart, hot chocolate sponge, etc. Great wines and many old ones. A very fine outfit indeed. Lunch and dinner every day. £70 plus, set lunch £45 plus.
IT'S MORE THAN a generation ago that the bullfight poster became the naffest item on a coffee bar's wall. But bullfight posters, like everything else, are cyclical.
And so, I suppose, is extra-Iberia's attitude towards the primitive spectacle they advertise. (I'm keenly agnostic on this one, as on hunting: I'm happy to eat the bull, but lack the figure for a suit of lights, and the only person I know who's eaten a fox said it tasted like dog.) But, despite the veal-crate lobby and despite the vegan lobby, I suspect that abhorrence of tauromachy in this (very) post- puritanical island has actually declined: popular familiarity with Spain will have seen to that, in a way that Hemingway's posturing and Tynan's machismo never did. They have nothing to do with it. As we rediscover our innate bents towards belligerence, brutality and criminality, we will no doubt demand more cockfighting, greater excesses in dog-baiting and liberation for badger-slaughterers.
Cambio De Tercio is named for the pre-penultimate stage in a bullfight - or bull "fight". It is fitted out with a toreador's cape and a display of banderillas, the picadors' daggers whose hilts are nationalistically coloured red and yellow.
It is unhappily sited a few doors away from where the novelist Brigid Brophy, an animal liberationist, used to live. It is also decorated with multiple conjunctions of the letters C and T in a gothic script akin to that decreed by another animal liberationist, Adolf Hitler. It is, of course, probable that these own goals will be overlooked by passing punters - of whom there weren't any the lunchtime I attended the fest of Rodriguez on tape and bogus log fire. The place was empty save for a table of friends of the management, who are veterans of the kindred but grander Albero & Grana in Sloane Avenue.
The personnel are all natives of north-eastern Spain. They come from Zaragoza, Rioja, San Sebastian. The chef is from the last. She is Elixabete Segurado, and given that city's unreconstructed masculism and its men-only culinary cofridias (Rotarians at the stove), she's nothing if not determined. She has adulterated her autochthonous nous by working in restaurants with Michelin stars, a dodgy CV outside France, although perhaps not all that dodgy in a city as near to the French border as London is to Woking - quite how Woking cooking fits into this, I'm not sure.
THE LAST TIME a Basque restaurant opened in London it closed. It was decorated - no, it was filled - with tutus and wedding-dress remnants, a symphony in organza, no doubt. Cambio De Tercio is otherwise remarkably similar, but in with the chance of a longer life because a) it's on a better street, b) it's staffed by human beings, c) it's a restaurant before it's an Eta embassy, d) it belongs more to London than to where it comes from - the triumph of destination over provenance.
Which means that Segurado is not obliged to go in for purity. If she wants to do suckling pig - a Segovian, ie, northern Castillian dish - she can. Actually, she can't. Not on today. The proselytising might of the great veggie-thinking Joanna Lumley and her pig and the film Babe have combined, for the moment, to see off this delicacy which, had it not been reared in the first place... etc. It's hardly necessary to repeat that if you like an animal, the best way of showing you like it is to eat it.
So it is with croquettes, limbless bomb-shaped cuties: they, too, would have had no life without human intercession. The Spanish and the Belgian croquette may or may not share a common parentage in Spanish colonialism, but they do make you wonder what would have happened to English cooking had this country held on to Aquitaine a few centuries longer.
This croquette - there are, generously, four of them - is close to the sort served at Belgo Centraal: no shrimps, but ham instead, with a thick cooked cream bound by hard-boiled eggs. The problem with this dish is that, however well made it is, it ends up as a superior version of an M&S takeaway. Maybe the solution, a traducement of craft, is to make the things less perfect. These croquettes are, by the way, rather bland. The idea that subtlety is occasioned by blandness is a wrong‘un.
Grilled squid is properly timed and certainly not rubber, but the parsley and garlic dressing is a mite too reticent. Marinated salmon does not match that done at the last Spanish restaurant I wrote about, The Star Inn at Lidgate, near Newmarket: there, the raw fish is lightly dressed with garlic and olive oil. Here, there are red onions and chives and (perhaps?) lemon juice: there is some component, anyway, which, while it may be there to cut the fish's richness, ends up by making it so tart that it is more akin to a cebiche.
Monkfish is reasonably well cooked, but served with a stew of unskinned peppers. Hake is not merely a Basque but a Spanish obsession, an incomprehensible obsession unless cooked by Stephen Markwick in the Spanish city of Bristol: Markwick roasts it until rare, treats it, in fact, like meat. Segurado cooks it, then cooks it more, until it is hot cotton wool. It is served with peas and with quartered hard-boiled eggs - the latter proof that authenticity should never stand in the way of improvement by omission.
However, there is no other kind of restaurant that would use, or would even have heard of, the vanilla-flavoured liqueur called 43. It's not a dumb idea to pour it over vanilla ice-cream. The deliciously weird-sounding "deep-fried milk" is junket with a crust smothered in cinnamon. An interesting oddity. And that stands for the whole.
Cambio De Tercio
163 Old Brompton Road, London SW5 (0171-244 8970).
Lunch and dinner every day. £68.
Jose Carreras can make anything sing, from Donizetti to classical schmaltz. But what he's really good at is selling himself. Joanna Pitman meets the mighty voice of the music industry.
THE MAN IN THE sober suit arrives dead on time in an immaculate silver Range Rover. He steps quickly out of the car and takes a few seconds to smooth himself down. The trouser creases are sharp as razor blades. The tie is precision-knotted and the hair slicked back. A spruce jacket slides on over the crisp blue shirt and, with a swift last-minute check for signs of lapel curl, he walks assertively into the hotel lobby to meet an attendant posse of his business managers.
Hands are shaken and discreet let's-get-down-to-business nods exchanged. A cool and precise man, he could easily pass for a mergers-and-acquisitions merchant on an asset-stripping raid from Wall Street. But, while few of Wall Street's corporate raiders are recognisable beyond their own little scavenging territories, this man's features are currently being pasted up once again on billboards and buses from Barcelona to Beijing and back via Brazil.
Preliminary greetings dispensed with, the boss gives an almost imperceptible click of the heels and rolls briskly into action. For let us dissemble no longer - our slick Gordon Gekko hero is Jose Carreras, owner of the silken Spanish tenor voice famed for ravishing the souls of mankind the world over.
Although he is perhaps most widely known for a joint venture, The Three Tenors, Jose Carreras plc is today launching a new, wholly owned venture designed with an equally shrewd eye on the bottom line. This latest bid for takeover of our collective hearts, minds and wallets is a new album called Passion. A plain and simple commercial title for a neat and tidy commercial man. And a resounding seven-figure sales success Passion will no doubt be, for it is an exceedingly carefully designed, market researched and musically calibrated product.
If anything should be classified an FMCG ("fast moving consumer good", for those of us unfamiliar with marketing terminology), then Passion should. Like new brands of ice-cream, or innovative political policies destined for aspiring American presidential candidates, the tracks have been taste-tested, as it were, by a marketing machine at Warner Classics known for its hard and thorough approach to the business. It once wired up a group of middle-aged women with what is known in the trade as tearometers - humidity detectors in cotton-wool pads taped beneath the eyes - to monitor the response to different songs for a planned compilation CD called Classic Weepies. Likewise, no stone has been left unturned in the creation of Passion.
The CD kicks off with a salvo of yeasty song, an orgy of rondels and lyrical tremolos designed to help you adjust your emotional sights. This is Rodrigo's Concerto de Aranjuez for guitar (most will know it as a favourite of the guild of Spanish-restaurant musicians, the one invariably delivered with your main course by a man in a moustache, a rose clamped between his teeth and one foot on the rung of your chair). The difference in the Carreras version is that the guitar lies obligingly dormant for a hundred bars or so, affording our hero an opportunity to indulge in some tenorial pyrotechnics, before popping back to deliver an occasional supporting strum.
Then there is the third movement of the Brahms Symphony No 3 - but for tenor voice, you understand; a Chopin piano etude - for tenor voice; the Adagio from the Mozart Clarinet Concerto - for tenor voice, and so on; not forgetting, of course, the Largo from Dvor k's New World Symphony (all right, it's the Hovis commercial tune, if we're going to be so label-conscious), where the cor anglais conveniently bows out to make way for the tenor voice. And the great sobbing lyrics you hear set to the music are poems of forbidden love, the ardent flaming volcanic dramas of life where the blood runs hot and the heart is free... all in neatly rhyming poetry.
From start to finish, the enchanter slinks in and out, reaching over to caress our ears with that unearthly voice - as always the effortless seducer. And according to design, the listener's heartbeat is quickened to a gallop and then intermittently lulled and slowed down to the rate of a turtle's. For Passion is an invitation to wallow in an extravagant musical fantasy unconstrained by whalebone, chaperone or censor. And as the finale arrives, the listener is swept up on a mountainous peak, boiling with allusions to Botticelli, Pallas Athena and the old surefire thunder of centaur hooves, and is finally washed up at the end, weak as a kitten, as the CD player clicks to a stop.
This is music arranged unashamedly for the bourgeois audience of today's rampantly commercial society. It offers immediate gratification. It is showy and overtly romantic, but only, of course, in the most reassuring way. And it is precisely the kind of thing that will set the pulses drumming through Carreras fans the world over, prompting the woman from Nebraska or from Notting Hill, who by now nurses a violent and unreciprocated passion for the man, to rush out and buy a copy.
But you can be fairly sure that the collective wonders of Passion will rile and embarrass the purists and the sophisticates for whom trundling the word "popular" in front of the noble old word "classic" is not unlike placing "processed" right next to "cheese". Our heritage of classical music, unlike that of buildings, may not be Grade I-listed, but it is tampered with only at the risk of igniting a hellbrew of moral and musical denunciations.
James Jolly, editor of Gramophone magazine, is saddened by the whole thing and has declined to review it. "It is not a classical recording. Carreras has stepped too far and we cannot stretch our boundaries to review this sort of thing." Others, including Stephen Pettitt of The Sunday Times, believe that Carreras has lost his elegance and his artistry in descending to such mass-market levels. "It all sounds horribly tasteless. Of course, it is designed for a specific popular appeal, but the danger is that this is what people will think classical music is."
SENOR CARRERAS, as humble footsoldiers of the press are invited to call him, seems to have overcome that snobbery, that assumption that pop classics are the tinned rice pudding of the classical music heritage. A highly professional businessman down to his neat fingertips, he has evidently long ago squared with himself these sorties into the musical lollipop business on emotional, intellectual and, much the easiest, economic levels, and has every justification rehearsed and ready.
"I am merely humbly following in the noble tradition established by the great tenors of the past: [Mario] Lanza, [Benjamino] Gigli, [John] McCormack. All of them sang popular contemporary songs as well as the classical greats." But McCormack, the Irish tenor who died in 1945, was not quite as at home in the pop world as Carreras appears to be, judging by the description of him by Ernest Newman, the doyen of music critics of the time, as "a patrician artist... with a respect for his art that is rarely met with among tenors".
Carreras is unmoved. "And - forgive me if I sound boastful - but I think we have been successful in adapting the tunes to the tenor voice without offending the composers. I find these pieces of music so extraordinarily beautiful that I have always wanted to sing along. I think we have succeeded with lyrics and arrangements that catch the tone and the passion of the music... I know that my musical roots are still in opera and recitals, but to do this other type of music now and then makes me happy and gives me some refreshment."
Carreras also declares himself to be thrilled that Passion might get him into the homes of millions of potential new fans around the world. And to add weight to his assault on China, the newest and most promising frontier for Jose Carreras plc, he has even learnt a smattering of phonetic Mandarin to enable him to sing a Chinese love poem on the Asian version of the CD, set to the music of China's answer to the Hovis theme tune. "I have always received such a wonderfully warm and enthusiastic welcome in China that I decided to try to give them something small back by learning a song in their language. If I can reach out and touch even just one person with my music, then that is my true reward."
Such instincts have their democratic as well as their economic justifications. For Carreras is engaged in making his musical epiphany available to the common man - especially the common man - who may not be able to articulate it, but who finds that the musical forms speak for him. The dream that Carreras had as a boy of reaching people with his music has remained throughout his life, as real as the tongue in his mouth.
Throughout our interview in his hometown of Barcelona, Carreras sits unblinking and immensely polite, smoother than smooth and utterly charming. At times he betrays a certain feline smugness, as if someone were stroking his tummy, and occasionally turns and elevates his chin to display a profile that blends the best features of Pericles, Voltaire and Lord Byron. But mostly he keeps his handsome face locked into the direct eyes-forward negotiating position. The occasional hoisting of one eyebrow in flirtatious fun is somehow not enough to dissemble the deadly earnest intentions of a man who manifestly knows the iconic significance of his position and is wasting no time putting it to profitable use.
Of course, I am meeting him devoid of his romantic hero rags, without the trapping of tenderness and ardour that he brings to the role of Alfredo in La Traviata, for example, and without the benefit of hearing at five paces the unearthly beauty of his singing voice. And that voice, with its enchanting, almost narcotic silvery tone, its rich phrasing and muscular power, still puts Carreras high up in the candidacy for musical sovereignty. But today, in the struggle between the emotionally artistic giant on the one hand and the pragmatic salesman - almost closet accountant - on the other, the latter appears to be in the ascendancy.
If you can imagine an X-ray of the elements that make up Jose Carreras, you would see a man made of intelligence, sensitivity and enormous artistic passion, ability and success, wanting and waiting for something more important to happen. As a tenor, he has been a king of opera for more than 20 years. Now he has become a king of commerce and of compromise, too. And he seems to be quite willing to admit it. "Yes, the Three Tenors are, well, I hope you won't think me arrogant, but we are probably the most popular singers in the world. That is what we have become. But that does not mean at all that we are the best singers in the world. Certainly not."
Sound technicians at the last Three Tenors concert in Los Angeles in July 1994 would no doubt heartily agree, having been up all night after the performance using all the digital alchemy at their command to try to lift Luciano Pavarotti's unflattering intonation up to its target levels for the recorded version, destined for 10 million homes around the world. And Natalie Cole, who performed in last year's Christmas Eve concert in Vienna with Carreras and Placido Domingo, would probably agree, too, having been forced to lean over to Carreras's score and point out where they had got to when he lost his place during the one rehearsal he almost refused to attend.
It has not always been thus. Jose Carreras was born in Barcelona in 1948, the youngest of three, his mother a hairdresser and his father a traffic policeman. It was a humble household in a backwoods quarter of Barcelona, no particular emphasis on music, much on a shared family passion for football. The boy Carreras was preternaturally bright and quite astonishingly determined. At the age of six, he chivvied and begged and pleaded with his parents to take him to see Mario Lanza starring in the film The Great Caruso. And in the end he got his way. "That film had a tremendous impact on me and the same evening I began singing the tunes I had heard." The music never left him. Indeed, he could never quite get it out of his head and for years its cadences rolled and swooshed around in it like tidal waves.
"I just kept on singing and singing and I decided at the age of six or seven that I wanted to be a professional singer. My parents saw that I had some intuition or instinct for music and they sent me to study at a music college." God or St Cecilia had clearly destined the youngster for the business end of a microphone, for the boy flourished, and before he turned ten had made a series of the - now standard - infantile debut appearances in the renowned opera houses of his country.
Like all those struggling to get a toe on to the international operatic stage, Carreras found himself among hundreds of other talented singers, ever ready to cut a competitor's throat or to lick a conductor's boot, ever eager to conform their opinions to those in authority, ever alert to sell out wife, child and principle to attain the higher bracket, the fleecier coat or the more amorous concubine. But Carreras's determination held strong and he got his big break in London in 1971, when he was invited to step in at short notice for another tenor who had fallen ill and was unable to perform at the premiere of Donizetti's Caterina Cornaro.
Thereafter, he moved on to woo Covent Garden audiences and to strike up a long-standing relationship with Herbert von Karajan, which took him all over the world in high-profile roles. For 15 years he lived among the glamorous opera colonies of the world, displacing every matinee idol from the hearts of millions, trailed by admirers and sycophants and tormented under the whiplash of celebrity necessity that is month after month of international travel and glossy hotel rooms. W "I was thinking only of my career, in a rather egotistic way. Everything was going in a certain direction which concerned nothing but my career and my success as a singer, and I think I took the other things a bit for granted." He nods and repeats himself, eyes unblinking under a dark, protruding cliff of eyebrow.
All of that changed suddenly in 1987 when Carreras was told he had leukaemia and a one-in-ten chance of survival. He was yanked instantly from his world of operatic stardom and underwent chemotherapy, shedding his hair and his fingernails as (mainly female) fans queued up in Barcelona to offer their bone marrow for transplant. In the end, he did endure a bone-marrow transplant, but only under partial anaesthetic, in order to avoid using the surgical breathing tubes that might have damaged his throat.
Unquenchable self-will and something else - "God, faith, I don't know, whatever it is that one believes in" - helped him to pull through and he made a triumphant return in July 1988, giving a highly charged recital in Barcelona to an audience of 150,000 weeping fans.
But the wrecking and the mending of the man was also the making of the singer. "I have a green light from my doctor, so I have totally recovered from the illness and I am now back to leading a perfectly normal life. I have set up the Jose Carreras International Leukaemia Foundation, which has a capital of $10 million and donates $1 million to scientific research every year. I am very impressed by the wonderful generosity of people to that cause. And I think that, since my own illness, when I came face to face with death, my priorities in life have changed. I am more mature as a human being, and when I sing it is perhaps with more conviction, with more enthusiasm and true feeling. I was born to sing. My voice is a gift from God. It is a very delicate instrument and now I am looking after it with all my life."
Everything must be useful, nothing wasted in this count-your-change bookkeeping approach of Jose Carreras plc. The health of the voice is paramount and this means that Carreras must have lots of sleep, no talking on a performance day, a regulation type of Jaguar to ferry him around London, a certain grade of hotel when abroad, and some very particular dietary requirements. If his conditions are met, and he is in the mood, he manages to belt out 20 to 25 operas and 30 to 35 concerts a year, as well as three or four recordings.
There seems to be no letting up in his ostentatious bids for world applause and his will to woo new fans. The Three Tenors circus comes together in London this summer (they are presumably no longer prepared to wait for the next World Cup final in 1998), when they will sing at Wembley with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. A rank and file string player will get £70 for his efforts and will have to turn up to all rehearsals. The tenors, on the other hand, given their record with preparation in the past, may not bother with rehearsals, and will each earn several hundred-thousand pounds for their part in the show - which may again have to undergo sympathetic computer treatment to redress any inappropriate balance or intonation for the recorded version.
Carreras will by then only just be convalescing from the results of the tumultuous financial bounty pouring in from the sales of Passion. But the determinatinon of the small boy enthralled at the age of six by the singing of Mario Lanza has clearly never left the man. The seemingly endless quest for more global acclaim and mass-market sales has already taken him to two football World Cup finals with the Three Tenors. And his next sporting fixture involves singing at a gala before a boxing match tonight, giving the German aspiring champions an endorsement in the way that Mike Tyson thrashed his opponents to the Rocky theme tune.
Even if Carreras thinks boxing is a disgracefully uncivilised sport, it will all, no doubt, contribute to his cumulative fame and sales. I will be surprised, though, if Passion does not achieve its sales target of "several million" copies. Personally, it is not quite my idea of quality listening - for 24 hours, after completing my audio study of the oeuvre, I experienced intermittent queasiness, a tendency to howl "Ave Maria" and a revulsion for Hovis bread. But, then again, you might just love it.
"ANYBODY WHO HAS lived in Africa," says the author Justin Cartwright, "has a sense that the landscape they were brought up in is more real. It's stronger, more impressive, more vital. You have an incredible climate, incredible sunsets, clear winter days, highly vociferous insect life. There is a vibrance that you can't really ignore."
These are typical expatriate sentiments, but powerfully felt, and perhaps surprising to him. When Cartwright came to Britain, to Oxford, 25 years ago, he had a notion of coming to a wider and more real world. Yet still, somehow, South Africa is his reality. Even when he writes of London, as in his Booker-shortlisted novel In Every Face I Meet, it is with the keen vision of the insider-outsider. "Maybe by not having been brought up here," he suggests, "one brings a sharper perception to what's going on."
Cartwright was born in Cape Town, but his mental landscape is Johannesburg, where he grew up in the Sixties and where his father was editor of the Rand Daily Mail. The living in those days, for white residents of the lush suburbs, was very easy, centred on the tennis court, the barbecue, the table. Gardens were well tended by hired hands. "There are two sounds I associate with South Africa: one is that of the hand-pushed mower; the other is the Kreepy-Krauly that chugs around all day cleaning the pool."
It was all very fine if you didn't think too hard about it. "But I was aware from a very early age that something was missing. You really had to think it was OK to have servants on £10 a month, and that the woman who came to do the cleaning must have had to get up at 3.30 to arrive by seven.
"As a boy, I used to play with a friend in the river and we'd see the police swoop on people who didn't have passes, who were doing no harm, just hanging about by the river. They'd throw them in the vans, beat them. It was terrible."
The Cartwrights moved several times, to homes rather less opulent than most of their neighbours'. "Everybody seemed much richer than us," he recalls. "They seemed seriously rich. They were seriously rich, I think is the truth."
For a time the family rented a house just down the hill from both Nadine Gordimer and Helen Suzman. "We had two of the great icons of South African life right there, within a few miles. I've been to Nadine Gordimer's house recently to talk to her, and seeing our little house down below was quite amusing."
As an aspiring writer, he felt he was faced with a choice: "You could either say,‘There is plenty here, I shall stay and make sense of it', or you could get out and rid yourself of that oppressive feeling that you had to be a local." Gordimer chose the former; Cartwright the latter - without hesitation, but with a few lingering regrets.
In many ways, he says, the city is a stimulating and edgy one. "It has the atmosphere you get in some American cities: it's very busy, things are happening, people move at high speed."
The edginess has intensified in recent, changeful years. "After six o'clock, it used to be an all-whites city; black people were forced to leave. But that has gradually broken down, and now it is an almost entirely black city at night. The whites have retreated to the suburbs. There used to be restaurants, but they've closed. No restaurant can survive at the centre of town, except in the big hotels. It's too dangerous. There's an enormous amount of mugging, and carjacking. You don't stop at traffic lights after dark."
Geographically, Jo'burg is a kind of aberration. "It's in the middle of a high plateau, bare veld for miles. It's teeming with insects, snakes and birds, although there's no other wildlife left. And it has no reason for existing, apart from gold.
Most cities are a kind of accretion of history and myth, but Johannesburg doesn't have that. It has had no time. It's just been there to make money and to dig things out of the ground. It's all very naked. There's the city centre; there are the mine dumps still visible; and there are the townships, where the labour was brought in to work the mines."
There has grown up, in consequence, a kind of alternative Johannesburg: Soweto. "I have been there three or four times. It's huge. And people do love it, although it's damned hard to know why. It's just miles of shacks and little houses, all sited at a safe distance from the white suburbs. But it's the landscape again, and it's under the skin. It acts as an irritant or an emollient. It depends how you want to use it."
N A PRETTY Edwardian house in Donisthorpe, near the Leicestershire-Derbyshire border, a team of bright countryside managers - they are far more interesting than the bureaucratic handle implies - are plotting. This is the headquarters of the National Forest, an adventure in landscape-making on a scale not seen since the Enclosures Acts of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries made many of the fields and hedges we now love. This time, Parliament has ordained tree-planting, and, unlike the Enclosures and almost every other big landscape-building in history, the idea has no obvious enemies.
It couldn't happen in a more deserving area. Every bit of Britain has its fan club, and the love people feel for their locality is not something one should mess with lightly. I hope it is not merely the prejudice of an ex-Londoner who now lives in Herefordshire that makes me say that this is the sort of region most of us find hard to put our finger on. Ashby-de-la-Zouch, the geographical centre of the National Forest, is in Leicestershire, but sits close to Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Nottinghamshire as well - and I'm not sure that helps to place it, either.
More even than its anonymity, the area faces what a local politician frankly admits is a "negative image". It is in the heart of what was, until the past couple of decades, a great coalfield. This has had two effects: there are power stations, especially lining the river Trent, connected to the world by the marching pylons of the National Grid, and there are abandoned coal mines, with their legacy of unemployment and slag heaps. For good measure, one should add large-scale opencast mining for coal, not to mention clay and gravel mining. The area is replete with "brown" land.
The region is being offered what the National Forest strategists describe as "a major conversion of land use that will transform the area". Five hundred square kilometres (200sq miles) are to be turned into "working, multi-use forest". It is a scheme far bigger than anything attempted before. When William the Conqueror privatised 144sq miles of what is now Hampshire and called it the New Forest he was expropriating a place rich in existing woodlands (and much else): but he probably planted no trees. The deaths of two of the Conqueror's sons in the New Forest were regarded as just retribution for the cruelty of expelling people from its hamlets.
The National Forest is an altogether different affair. It is being created with small bribes and lots of persuasion, and premised on lots of access: it will be the first "people's landscape". Susan Bell, who heads the National Forest team, is a forceful operator. She wants to shout from the rooftops that this is a large scheme. "Our plans have got the grandeur, the importance and the geographical centrality which deserve the name‘national'," she says.
She does not overstate: in the designated area, about 6 per cent is presently under trees. Eventually, perhaps within 50 years, it is intended that around 30 per cent should be so. Part of Bell's difficulty is that, by definition, it will be some time before the saplings now being planted will look magnificent. It takes imagination to undertake the National Forest, and even more to visualise its eventual flourishing.
BUT THINGS HAVE moved fast. In 1990 the Government's environment White Paper, "This Common Inheritance" (its title echoing Shakespeare's "This sceptred isle"), announced Whitehall's support for the Countryside Commission's scheme to find a site for a national forest. Then, it was stated only that the Midlands should host it. "The Countryside Commission looked at five potential sites, and settled on this one, which was announced in late 1990," says Bell, who joined the scheme in 1991. The winning area had the right mixture of dereliction, typical lowland mixed farming and ready accessibility to large numbers of "green tourists".
It was clear from the start that the Government wanted a flagship project with glittering prospects, luminous mission statements, a very small budget and no coercive powers. The grandness of Bell's ambition must be counterbalanced not just by the Government's unwillingness to give her sweeping authority, but by landowners' reluctance ever to be pushed about.
Nonetheless, by 1992 the team had produced a business plan and by 1993 the Government had persuaded itself that the team was on the right track. The vehicle of the new enterprise was to be the National Forest Company, wholly owned by the Government and set up in April this year.
The company has an annual budget of £2 million, but it can unlock much bigger resources by harnessing existing forestry grants which support landowners who want to afforest their land. According to Simon Evans, who wrote the company's strategy document: "We're not going to be major landowners ourselves. We do have the right to own land if it's strategically necessary, but that's not our main job." So no compulsory purchase powers, nor even the right to bully planners into designating this or that patch of land as potential forest. The company's grants have to be bid for by landowners. The idea is that the company's money should flush out schemes which would not have come forward without it.
The first tranche of winning bids was announced last October: 16 schemes ranging from three to 40 hectares. They include farmers willing to afforest working land; ARC, the mineral company, offering to plant on ten hectares at a disused quarry outside Whitwick; Leicestershire County Council willing to put in 19 hectares at an abandoned colliery tip at Donisthorpe.
It sounds, and is, piecemeal. Yet it is possible to believe that the grand vision of the National Forest is more than bluster. Aside from farmers anxiously casting about for diversification, there are obvious advantages to local authorities and private developers, let alone mining firms anxious to restore their reputations, in taking land which has been ruined by industrial activity and prettifying it. With dozens of areas competing for new businesses, any blighted place has to look for selling features. Trees are the ideal way of hiding old scars, but also of conferring distinction on what might otherwise be just a new green-field or, in these cases often a brown-field, industrial park. And the National Forest has the merit of conferring a mark of recognition all its own.
The logic has already struck local enterprise and authorities. For instance, at the old mining village of Measham, now calling itself "The Gateway to the Forest", a small area of mining subsidence has been turned into a reed-fringed lake whose slopes are bristling with proto-forest. It's no more than a few acres and its gravel paths among the burgeoning shrubs and trees make it a little bijou. It will never strike one as a mighty wilderness. But it is pretty now and will be lovely soon. It is just the kind of seed project that makes a nearby housing development a notch or two easier to sell.
Hardly surprising, then, that up the hill a housing developer, Wilson Homes, has started to build Oak Village. Within a couple of decades the area will hold few memories of a shattered old industrial scene, but will be a softly wooded one instead.
Something was badly needed to restore confidence in the small towns wounded by mass redundancies, and the forest appears already to be helping to do it. "People are putting money into derelict buildings and bidding for forestry grants," says Andrew Moseley, the company's grants and land management officer.
The National Forest may work, not because it's got huge amounts of new money, but because its patch is simply littered with places that will have to be restored somehow and might as well become wooded.
Commercial developers can take the same view. British Coal, a major local landowner, has 58 hectares of problem site at Rawdon. At the moment it's derelict, but it's capable of becoming charming and has already been listed as "a potential National Forest business park" in the booklets which flesh out the gleams in the strategist's eye.
THIS IS THE modern age and Theme Park Britain cannot be kept at bay. At Coalville, a Mining Heritage Centre attracts 100,000 visitors a year. It will soon be surrounded by slag heaps supporting fine trees. Since Sir Walter Scott set Ivanhoe at the ruined castle of the La Zouch family (it was rebuilt in 1840 by Sir William Hastings), it was inevitable that when an old goods railway line which links Nottingham and Leicestershire was turned over to passengers, it would be renamed the Ivanhoe Line. The European Union is being asked to fund a station at a 120-hectare instant wood at the first of two nearby mining sites targeted by the forest strategists. Already part of one has been planted and named Sarah's Wood after a local girl with cerebral palsy.
But the forest will need more than these to make any claim to solidness. Larger tracts of land have already been found. By Drakelow power station, Rosliston Farm Forest is beginning to bristle into life. In time there will be hundreds of hectares of working forest, a portion of it unashamedly to be 70 per cent conifer for a fast (30 to 40-year) return on capital. Out of seemingly nowhere a "Friends" group has established itself, to take care of some of the planting and informal wardening.
At a Redlands sand and gravel working, at Croxall in the Trent Valley, the World Memorial Fund for Disaster Relief (an idea of the late Leonard Cheshire VC) wants to establish a memorial arboretum to the dead of the World Wars. This will amount to 40 hectares of tree-cover on land which is wearisomely flat and could do with something dramatic.
At Willesley Wood, the Woodland Trust has bought a large stretch of erstwhile farmland, where mine subsidence has formed a good-looking lake: within a couple of decades its saplings will make a substantial addition to woodland already standing on the brow of the next hill. It is a scheme made possible by grant-aid from the National Forest Company. "We have already seen the planting of 800,000 trees on 600 hectares of land," says Evans. That amounts to a 1 percentage point increase in wooded area: 23 still to go, then. Evans catches the doubt in my questions: "Everything so far has happened without our tender money coming on stream," he says. "We're looking forward to a big rise in planting." Already there are 654 hectares of National Forest, more than half of which is open to the public, with 10km of trails.
One is bound to try to seek out the negative side. Some of the new trees will be on existing farmland: that's landscape we already like, so why change it? The main reason is that the Forest needs to be large: it must make a big statement if it is to make an impact on the national imagination. It must, in other words, insinuate itself as completely as possible everywhere in the area. Besides, we are taking farmland out of production anyway and some of it might as well go down to trees. If succeeding generations decide we have made a mistake, we can change our minds.
Many of the trees - perhaps 40 per cent in all - will be conifers, which are disliked. The National Forest team is unabashed. Evans says: "This is a multi-purpose forest. It's going to have lots of access, lots of glades, open spaces and trails. But it's got to earn its keep as well. It's got to be a working forest."
Indeed, that will be part of its charm. It may be heresy with the purer sort of Green, but there is a growing understanding that the worst thing for a large area of trees is to lock it into a single age range for ever. A forest left untouched by man would be subject to constant sporadic demolition, partly by gales, but also by fires. By eventually harvesting trees in the National Forest, its keepers will be helping to redress the country's hopeless dependence on foreign timber.
The National Forest planners also hope to revive the sort of woodworking skills and trades that made use of smaller timber in our forests, so creating coppices in which animals are able to graze in the open spaces around tall, straight timber trees. These might include hurdle-makers (producing chic garden fences) and charcoal burners (producing ecologically sound barbecue fuel).
While there is at the moment no evidence of a Center Parcs-type operator beating a path to the National Forest (Center Parcs, please note), there is every likelihood the new woodlands will be popular. Moseley says that tens of thousands already traipse through the remaining shards of the ancient Charnwood Forest, in the southeast corner of the site. When they are offered something even more obviously aimed at tourism, it is entirely possible that the National Forest will become a mixture of Kew Gardens and the Bois de Boulogne, with just a dash of a rural Alton Towers thrown in.
It may one day even acquire the national status of its near neighbour, Sherwood Forest, just up the road, north of Nottingham. There is, of course, one fundamental difference: Sherwood is famous way beyond its own boundaries but is very small on the ground, while the National Forest is growing fast but is as yet largely unknown.
If Ashby-de-la-Zouch and its woody environs become celebrated, it will not be the first time that visitors have found recreation hereabouts. The National Forest is building its headquarters and main interpretation centre at Bath Yard, a derelict British Coal tip where once a mineral spa hotel stood. Indeed, these waters were the main attraction of Thomas Cook's first excursion parties, by train, in 1841. In 2001, the 160th anniversary of mass tourism may well be celebrated, in its new, greener form, just where it all started.
From Robert Walters.
That Jonathan Meades, top award restaurant critic so-called (January 27),‘as called our village a "boondocks". Now I looks it up in me Chambers and it says "wild or remote country; dull provincial place". Well, which does‘e mean? It sure ain't wild and remote;‘s only just below the Downs and right next to Old Sneed Avenue. And it certainly ain't dull. We even‘ad a knife attack in Glen Drive a month ago.
Anyways, what is this man? A restaurant critic or a village critic? Does‘e have to be rude about where us peasants live? I suppose‘e lives in Buckingham Palace‘isself!
What we‘umble poor want to know is whether it's worth spending 95 quid of our‘ard earned money (we doan't eat on expenses like‘im) on walking round the corner to eat our bit o' lunch at Lettonies - and does he tell us? Does‘e hell! I never read such equivoca'ing in me life.
Yours truly, ROBERT WALTERS, 5 Glen Drive, Stoke Bishop, Bristol.
From David C.C. Watson
Valerie Boyle's solution (cannibalism) to the animal rights "problem" (Letters, January 27) is a brilliant reductio ad absurdum of current vegetarian propaganda. But the problem exists only for believers in the myth of evolution. If Darwin's theory be correct, of course we should allow Cousin Cockroach to foul our food, the mosquito to kill her millions and cattle to roam our streets until they die of natural causes (as in India).
The logical alternative is to accept the Bible's account: that Homo sapiens is a totally difference species from all other creatures, and that we are permitted to eat any animal (Genesis 9, Acts 10). Jesus certainly ate fish and roast lamb.
Yours sincerely, DAVID WATSON, 31 Harold Heading Close, Chatteris, Cambridgeshire.
From Laurence Carter.
Once again someone has to point out that Nancy Astor, although the first woman to sit in the House of Commons, was not the first woman to be elected to it. That honour goes to the Countess Markiewicz, elected for the working-class constituency of Dublin St Patrick's in the Khaki Election of 1918. She was one of the 73 Sinn Fein candidates elected who refused to take their seats in the Commons and set up instead the clandestine republican Government of Ireland, Dail Eireann. Countess Markiewicz served in this government as Minister for Labour.
Yours faithfully, LAURENCE CARTER, 7 Wykeham Road, Farnham, Surrey.
From John Kentleton
Rather than waste space commemorating that insufferable termagant Nancy Astor (Woman About the House, January 27), you might have celebrated pre-war politicians of real achievement and integrity such as Margaret Bondfield or Ellen Wilkinson. Even her vote against Chamberlain in 1940 was suspected to have been motivated by embarrassment at the reputation of the Cliveden set, whose malign policies she had enthusiastically espoused and which had greater consistency than John Grigg allows.
Later she was disgracefully to suggest that because the Allied advance in Italy was slower than expected, due largely to unfortunate geography, adverse weather and fierce German resistance, the miserable daily pittance of British soldiers should be halved. She was not a nice woman.
Notwithstanding her rudeness, self-centred behaviour and ill-informed opinions, she survived due to her husband's wealth, the fact that few took her seriously and the good-mannered forbearance of her male colleagues. Even this had its limits. Once when she had the temerity to suggest to Churchill (whose chivalry towards women was exceptional) that were he her husband she would put poison in his coffee, he replied, "Nancy, if you were my wife I'd drink it."
Yours faithfully, JOHN KENTLETON, Department of History, The University of Liverpool, 8 Abercromby Square, Liverpool.
PART OF THE DECADENCE of coming to Paris as a tourist is gasping "Five pounds for a cup of coffee!" in shocked tones. The same pleasure is not to be had living here. The French do not flinch at such drinks prices - they merely compensate by going hungry until after dark, thus remaining slim. No wonder our neighbours went on holiday to Italy to buy their new Renault, and are considering Spain next year for their new television.
But there are some necessities you cannot avoid. I had two spare keys cut - for £30. Baby milk costs £15 a can. The other Friday afternoon, when we had company coming for the weekend, I asked for some daffodils in our local flower shop. The florist demanded FFr150. Automatically, I handed it over and then thought: "That's 21 quid." They may be called jonquils in French, and wrapped in paper tied with a minimalist strand of raffia - but 21 quid? That would feed a family for a month at McDonald's. "Surely Holland, where these things are grown, is on the same landmass as France?" I nearly asked the florist. "Did these daffodils come individually by taxi?" Instead, I leant, shaken, on the wall outside, and found myself paraphrasing a remark Gertrude Stein once made in Paris - a daff is a daff is a daff.
THIS WEEK WE INAUGURATED the Eurostar Memorial Sofabed, in recognition of our attempt, singlehandedly as a family, to bring the Chunnel trains out of the red. Since moving to Paris four months ago, our apartment in the Rue du Bac has provided pleasant weekend quarters for more than 20 of our friends - and, indeed, acquaintances - from the British Isles. We are already taking bookings for May. I calculate that this will mean business of 80 tickets a year for Eurostar - a good £7,000.
Just as I was thinking that a small donation from Eurostar towards new sofabed springs would be most acceptable, I saw this advertisment in January's Sunday Times: "French journalist with hedonistic tastes who enjoys Eurostar and long weekends in London seeks lady 35-45 with style and sparkles." I have since discovered that it has had the largest response of any classifed ad placed at the Paris office in years. Eurostar's prospects are looking up: the man will need a season ticket.
WITHOUT BEING TOO SICKENINGLY Toujours Provence about it, every Paris diarist has a duty to discuss cheese.
Indeed, this is the only thing I have in common with President Chirac - I use the same cheese shop, Barthelemy, on the Rue de Grenelle. On my virginal visit, I innocently said: "Half a camembert, please." The serving ladies, in white coats and wellingtons, looked aghast. They were appalled not only that a) I wanted a half, but b) I had not specified a particular camembert, and c) I had not informed them of the time of consumption. "Is it for lunch, this evening or tomorrow?" asked one lady. "Tonight," I said, embarrassed, and she presented me with a cheese primed, like a gooey bomb, to go off at precisely 8.30pm.
As my intimacy with Barthelemy progressed over the weeks, I thought I could venture a question about the French President's cheese preferences. I have some training in this area - I once had to go into President Bush's drive-in video shop in Houston and ask the clerk to show me a list of his rentals - all dull family comedies. But I got nowhere on M Chirac. They just smiled enigmatically.
Despite the overpowering pong inside the shop, it is packed daily with Parisians following the advice of Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, the first French foodie, who published Physiology of Taste in 1825, when you could still say things like: "Dessert without cheese is like a pretty girl with only one eye."
THINKING SUCH SUSPICIOUS thoughts, I walked over to the nursery school to pick up my son. As I greeted him, a delicious warm, fruity smell rose from his hair and cheeks.
Since he normally smells of old carrot, I presumed one of the kind, highly perfumed nursery teachers had given him a hug, and forgot about it. A few days later, I was shopping for some exquisite little French garment to send to a friend's new baby in England, when the same smell assaulted me. I sniffed my way to counters bearing various perfumes (or perhaps aftershaves?) for children. There were scents from Tartine et Chocolat, Baby Dior and Petit Bateau. It is bad enough that people coat their toddlers in false odours, but it is worse still that my one-year-old son is following French tradition by secretly consorting with That Sort of Girl during school hours.
ON FINE WINTER AFTERNOONS I practise my French comprehension in the Jardin du Luxembourg: I lurk on benches and eavesdrop.
My best snoop so far was when I came upon a man and a woman - she in fur, he in cashmere - of an indeterminate age. They were holding hands, so they were obviously not married, but both wore wedding rings. Her voice rose a little, as did my radar from behind an English magazine: "He read the bill from France Telecom, showing the first four numbers of every single call. Yours was there - every day. Do you think he noticed?" The man made reassuring noises and anxiously lit a cigarette. "What about the credit-card print-out? And the hire car?" More reassurance. "And I heard a terrible thing..." Other bench-occupants began to listen in, too. "That hotels automatically send out Christmas cards to their guests from that year. What if one arrives?" Thereafter, she began to mumble darkly, but the problem was clear: a French man or woman's inalienable right to take a lover was under a threat - from new technology. The traditional cinq a sept, the two-hour tryst after work, the secret weekends away, might be no more. As computers print out every purchase, every detail of private life, with a time and a date, and plastic cards replace the discretion of cash, a grand French tradition is being menaced - by electronic lipstick on the collar.
LAST WEEK I had this oddly memorable dream in which a senior figure at the BBC had been sacked, and the reason I refer to her only as "a senior figure at the BBC" is because she happens not to be one of the handful of senior figures at the BBC on whose freshly delivered UB40 I would cheerfully dance with swords.
Or, as it might be, and purely for anonymity's sake, he.
I surfaced from the dream believing briefly, as you do, that I had witnessed a real event rather than a series of random nocturnal free associations and went back to sleep again. Whereupon I had another dream, equally memorable, which involved my tell-ing all sorts of dreamishly unlikely people - my mother, my daughter, Jeremy Paxman and a girl I was dumped by in 1967 after a bit of a fracas about a bikini top at the Lordship Lane swimming-pool in Tottenham - that this person had been sacked. And one of the people I told pointed a terrible finger at me and said what was I doing spreading gossip like that, because - the logic of such dreamy confrontations being what it is, or rather isn't - that's the way people got sacked.
And I woke up a second time feeling oddly guilty, not about dreaming somebody into unwanted unemployment, but about gossiping about it.
Then - and you tell me there aren't ley lines joining all the corn circles to Glastonbury High Street and that Mystic Meg doesn't have next week's lottery numbers already stuffed under her turban - the next night I was sitting down to dinner and we were talking about chat-up lines that we had known. And I started telling this story about how one fully married man I know had chatted up an entirely partnered woman I also know by trying to persuade her that the English translation of the front page lead of Die Welt was "Scientists Prove Monogamy Bad For Health".
But I only got as far as "There was this couple I once knew..." because everyone refused to listen any further until I named names, none refusing more fiercely than the friend who that same evening had started a story with "This is probably entirely libellous, but..." Given they were names that they knew - and which you probably do, too - I was loath to tell them even when they all said they promised they wouldn't tell anybody, because that's precisely what I said when I heard the story.
It must have been the dream, I suppose, because I'm not normally so coy about passing on names and dates and, when applicable, hat sizes and inside- leg measurements. I'm not just talking about that stock of maybe-true stories which have been circulating the newsdesks of Fleet Street for years now - the gay Cabinet ministers, the HIV-positive royal, the paedophile TV star, all the rest of them - and which are all about to make the front pages but never quite do. It's the day-to-day gossip, the stuff which turns the most soigne West End bar into the youth-club canteen, which has usually found me a willing enough conduit.
One kids oneself that it's legal currency, that because the information reached me via a third party then it's not gossip at all but news; that as long as the facts are dragged from me, protesting, then I've not been too wanton in passing them on. Occasionally I even find myself falling for the tabloid defence which insists that all information, however private, however destructive, is part of the commonwealth of knowledge and that I am failing in my human duty if I keep it from those who want to know it, even if they didn't know they wanted to know it until I told them.
But it's still all just power play, boastful insider trading on knowledge stocks, juvenile I-know-something-you-don't-ism. And I suppose it was simply because of the taste of the dream, which stayed in my mouth for longer than the precise memory of it, that I realised as I closed down the monog-amy-is-bad-for-you story that for too long I've allowed those fake defences to hang around with me as if they were burningly held and sincere beliefs.
Will it stop me gossiping? Probably not. What it may do is to stop me gossiping about people I like in the belief that gossip exists in a stratum above ordinary personal interaction. Or at the very least it will make me feel guiltier when I do it, which can't be that bad a thing.
AS YOU STEP through the door of Richard and Rosie Gledhill's Queen Anne-style house, built in 1840 in Surrey, you are surrounded by a kaleidoscope of colours and shapes.
Both Richard and Rosie enjoy modern design but had been used to fairly traditional interiors. They decided to use this, their first family home (they have two small children), as a chance for a radical change: a showcase for the work of contemporary artists and designers, backed up by a generous scattering of family hand-me-down furniture and accessories.
The colours in the house change from bright turquoise and a vivid violet blue to muted brown and a heavy oatmeal shade - but the bold selection of colours was not Richard's first choice.
"In the flat I had when I was a bachelor, all the walls were white," he says. "When we moved here Rosie persuaded me to try some colour, but I was nervous of how it might look. After the kitchen and the hall were completed I got to grips with it and now wholeheartedly approve."
The couple did, however, "roadtest" their colours first. "For many months we had a small square of bright paint on the plaster in the first-floor cloakroom. The colour grew on us and we finally opted for a vibrant shade of "pansy blue". One wall on the cloakroom is hung with a collection of old family photographs, while pebbles, shells and a papier mache statue of a cheeky cherub add to the decoration.
Rosie says that her ambition to create a colourful home came from a holiday in France. "On a visit to Monet's house in Giverny I was so taken with the bright yellow kitchen and vivid blue morning room that I vowed to use bright colours next time I decorated."
The colourful walls provide a backdrop for paintings - Rosie's own collection of contemporary pictures, sculpture and pottery - as well as pieces of modern furniture, including several by architect Charles Rutherfoord, who designed the Gledhills' kitchen.
For his bachelor flat Richard had bought a plain wooden extending dining table and upholstered chairs by Rutherfoord. He liked them so much that when he needed more storage space he asked the designer to build a piece of furniture to solve the problem. Rutherfoord made a cabinet, now known as the "Tardis", which stands in the first-floor dining room along with the original table and chairs. The Tardis cupboard doors are gently curved and each is a different shade of stained MDF.
The dining-room walls are painted a mysterious colour which appears to be a soft chocolate brown in daylight, but has a distinct purple hue when lit by artificial light. Another unexpected feature in the dining room, which also appears in the kitchen, is a dumbwaiter cupboard: a converted wheelchair lift hoists the three-shelved unit up and down from the basement kitchen.
When the couple moved to their current house and decided to embark on some radical remodelling, starting with the kitchen, they asked Rutherfoord for ideas. "Working with our own designer we really got what we wanted, not what is dictated by the shape and size of the standard units. I like the uncluttered and streamlined look of the scheme and find the shapes and use of different materials such as steel, laminates and wood interesting," Rosie says.
In the original layout of the house the kitchen was a small, dark cellar room. The Gledhills knocked through a wall and made french windows opening out on to a small courtyard at the front of the house. To the back, what had been a rather fancy yellow fitted-kitchen became a playroom for the children and a way out to the back garden. The playroom has vibrant turquoise walls and yellow, white and turquoise curtains.
Rosie has ensured that although there is an overall contemporary feel, the whole house is family friendly. "My ideal combination for furnishing is 70 per cent contemporary and 30 per cent old," Rosie says. "We've got old bits and pieces such as armchairs from my in-laws' home, re-upholstered in fabric from Thomas Dare, sofas from previous flats, and old jelly-moulds, books, prints, pictures and Richard's mother's old kitchen scales - it's a mix that we find comfortable to live with."
And not all the modern furniture is exclusive designer style: there are pieces from Habitat, Ikea and John Lewis, aswell as curtain poles made by the local blacksmith.
Charles Rutherfoord, 0171-627 0182; Thomas Dare, 0171-351 7991. A number of the unusual paint colours were mixed from the "Ready to use" range by Dulux, 01753 550555
"IT GOES BACK to all those Hollywood films I used to watch when I was young, with actresses like Bette Davis who had a certain sophisticated sexiness." Designer Bruce Oldfield likes women to look sexy, so naturally women like Oldfield. "I don't see the point in making women look silly. I have quite conservative taste," he says.
Oldfield could certainly never be accused of playing to the gallery. He has never designed dresses just to grab headlines; rather, he makes clothes to be worn day to day. And so they are, by women such as Susan Sangster, Jemima Goldsmith and Charlotte Rampling.
Six years ago Oldfield discontinued his ready-to-wear line to concentrate on made-to-measure clothes. This year he is reverting back, and in early March will open up a new shop with a new collection in Brook Street, central London.
Oldfield is not apologetic that his designs carry hefty price tags. "In England there is this idea that the only way to make money is to pile‘em high and sell‘em cheap, but I'm not going to make huge compromises on fabric so I can sell another dozen. By not selling wholesale I am in total control. My involvement is there all the way through."
As if that were not enough to keep him busy, Oldfield is showing his latest haute couture collection in London next week. "The mood is androgynous," he says. "I love the idea of using men's cloth and making a masculine look with feminine accents, using devices such as bows and flowers."
It's bound to earn him even more bouquets. 6
AT TIMES YOU could be forgiven for thinking that the only reds Australia ever produces are big, bold cabernet and shiraz bottles. But there is life after these eucalyptus-scented blockbusters - and plenty of it was on view at the Australian Wine Bureau's annual three-day tasting at Lord's.
I tasted more than 100 wines, most of them red, and cabernet was not the star turn. Instead, that honour went to tasty bordeaux-style merlot-cabernet sauvignons, cabernet franc blends and a host of other refined new-wave Australian reds.
Blood-guts-and-thunder shiraz wines were also less prevalent than in previous years - although, surprisingly, several Hunter Valley wineries are still producing leathery examples reminiscent of the "sweaty-saddle" wines of yore. But, on the whole, the rather more elegantly styled Nineties Australian shiraz wines, all rich, seductive, purple-black peppery fruit have taken their place.
The hottest new red wine style to emerge is, in fact, not new at all, but the sticky fortified grape, grenache, making a comeback under a new guise as a table wine. Back in the Dark Ages of the Australian wine industry in the Sixties, when fortified wines were gradually being replaced by dry table wines, much of what the Australians labelled cabernet was shiraz and much of what was labelled shiraz was grenache.
Today grenache and shiraz still support each other in plenty of blends - indeed, by law Australian winemakers can add as much as 15 per cent of another grape into a single-varietal wine without announcing it on the label - and most big, beefy, deep purple shiraz wines are much improved by the addition of paler, sweeter, more alcoholic grenache. The same applies when grenache is the dominant grape: a little full-blooded shiraz underpinning is ideal.
The best of the new-era grenache reds come from South Australia's Barossa Valley. This is the prime Australian source of untrellised, tiny yielding, old-bush grenache vines - some of them up to 140 years old - which provide a far sweeter, more silky and more concentrated wine style than modern trellised, high-yielding grenache. Until recently, these old-block, old-vine grenache wines, as they are now known, were dumped into the Barossa's dwindling fortified vats and mostly ended up as port. But gradually the taste and reputation of Barossa's bush vines spread, at last vindicating the opinion of the staunchly traditional local growers, descendants of the early German settlers from Silesia who planted the first vines in the valley, and who, despite opposition, refused to grub up their oldest vines.
Other rhone-inspired reds are also having an impact. Mourv dre, known in Australia as mataro, makes as hefty a red as I have ever tasted, but blended with shiraz and grenache it becomes perfectly palatable - as does the lighter, scented, but still angular cinsault.
Expect to taste plenty of these rhone-stable Australian reds over the next few years and look out, too, for even more recent oddballs such as Italy's sangiovese - better known as the chianti grape - and dolcetto, Italy's answer to beaujolais. I have yet to taste a great example of either, but next year, who knows?
So which of these reds are worth drinking in the middle of a British winter? At the cheaper end my vote goes to the bright, curranty fruit of Hardys 1995 Stamps of Australia Grenache Shiraz (available from June at Asda, £3.99). Finer still is Geoff Merrill's delicious 1994 Breakaway Grenache Shiraz blend, with its sweet, ripe cassis spice (Safeway, £4.99). Peter Lehmann's rich, burnt, peppery 1993 Shiraz (Oddbins, £4.99) is a good buy, too.
Look out especially for the newly arrived Miranda wines from the Barossa: their 1992 Rovalley Ridge Shiraz is full of wonderfully concentrated and intense blackberry and cassis fruit (Fullers, £7.99). No doubt, their finer Old Vine Shiraz is more superlative still. If you want a complete rhone blend, try the 1993 Mitchelton III Shiraz-Mourv dre-Grenache, which is full of black, creamy spice (Fullers, £7.49).
Of the many cabernet-merlot mixes, I still think Tim Knappstein's velvety, plummy 1992 edition is one of the best (Sainsbury's, £6.75). 6
STAR BUYS.
Los Fundos Chilean White Wine, Fullers, £2.99.
As with many cheap New World duos, this white, made predominantly from the sauvignon grape with a dash of torrontes, is better than its red partner. Its floral perfume is layered with tangy lime, lemon and grapefruit spice, making it a refreshing mid-winter aperitif.
Los Fundos Chilean, Red Wine, Fullers, £2.99.
This new arrival from Chile is from the same Lontue valley winery as the white, but is made entirely from one grape: cabernet sauvignon. It is an uncomplicated, non-vintage bottle full of easy, inky berry fruit and makes a good gluggable winter red which is at its best with meats and cheeses.
BEST OF THE REST.
There are plenty of Valentine's Day specials around. Safeway's excellent own-label Cava fizz from Spain is down £1 (£3.99). Offer closes on February 17. Lovers should note that Lanson's rose-tinted champagne is reduced from £23.99 to £17.49 at Thresher, Wine Rack and Bottoms Up shops, and from £22.49 to £16.99 at Greenall's Wine Cellars (from February 12-17 only). Unwins's 10 per cent discount on all single bottles of champagne is worth attention. Try the fruity Veuve Clicquot Brut (down £2.20 to £19.79) or honeyed Roederer Brut Premier (down £2.18 to £19.57). Offer closes February 14. If nothing but vintage champagne will woo your true love, then either of Oddbins's vintage deals should surely do: 1988 Veuve Clicquot (down from £27.75 to £20.99) or 1989 Perrier-Jou t (down £3 to £16.99). From February 12 to February 14 only. Louis Roederer's delicious Rich is a give-away at £17.49 instead of £21.99 when you buy two from Majestic Wine Warehouses (offer valid February 13 to March 25). I wouldn't say no to their own Oeil de Perdrix champagne (buy two and save £5 - that's £12.49 each). This offer closes on February 19. If your heart's in the right place but your finances are not, try Australia's delicious raspberry-scented Killawarra Rose Brut (down 50p to £4.99 until March 3 at Davisons).
Q.
I thought that British car exports were thriving. Why has Jaguar laid off a third of its workforce?
A.
The motor industry is subject to some strange variations at the moment. British factories sent 744,608 cars to export markets last year, a 20 per cent increase on the previous year and more than 48 per cent of total production. More than 1.5 million cars were made here, the best figure for 21 years.
Q.
And I thought I'd read about Jaguars outselling Ferraris in Italy.
Jaguar sales throughout Europe last year were nearly 60 per cent higher than in 1994 at 7,230 against 4,633. In Italy the company sold 1,075 cars twice as many as Ferrari sold.
Q.
So why has the company told 2,200 workers to go home for a week?
A.
While Europe is important, Jaguar's biggest export market is in the United States. Sales there were up 18 per cent last year, but last month they showed a severe slow-down. It seems that much talked about "feel-good" factor is taking even longer to show in the US than here.
Q.
But I thought that after August, when the registration letter changes, January was the best month for car sales.
Correct again, but on that basis 1996 doesn't look very promising. New registrations here in January were up just 0.3 per cent at 191,761. Imports took a 60.87 per cent share of the market.
So is the outlook for Jaguar gloomy?
Not entirely. The real moment of truth will come at the Geneva Motor Show in March when Jaguar unveils its new XK8 sports car, grandchild of the E-type. If it succeeds like its predecessors, the Big Cat will be Top Cat again.
When Volvo's dynamic duo, the S40 saloon and its hatchback-cum-estate car the V40, roll into British showrooms on May 28 the company will be moving into territory largely unexplored by the marque.
After a five-year gestation period, the Dutch-built twins are the product of a unique Euro-Japanese relationship between Volvo and Mitsubishi which also spawned the "other half's" Carisma model, within the NedCar incubator.
But the good news is that the S40 and V40 are not clones of their Japanese half-cousin, even if parallel production facilities and crucial economies of scale from shared development were central to the project.
The saloon and wagon look like Volvos, in a fresh way, feel like Volvos, and they protect their occupants both actively and passively in time-honoured fashion. Because most rivals have stolen Volvo's safety clothing the S and V40 are being pitched heavily on a combination of lifestyle and driving dynamics.
They are aimed at the upper medium car sector in Europe (everything from the Ford Mondeo to Audi A4 and BMW 3 Series) boasting 3 million potential buyers. In reality, Volvo's British clientele will be restricted to 7,000 this year because of right-hand drive production restrictions at the Born factory in Holland.
Although sharing the same outline platform with the Carisma, Volvo's life preserving approach means the S and V40 have chassis strengthening and extra weight to match the structural strength of the larger 850 saloon and estate. The stiffer body shell should make for less noise and rattles, but pre-production V40s were afflicted by a squeak in the rear seatbelt mechanism. A senior engineer claimed WD40 on the line would solve the problem.
Mounted in the now de rigeur transverse front-wheel- drive format, the petrol-powered cars use four-cylinder 1.8 and 2-litre engines producing 115 bhp and 137bhp respectively with manual five-speed and automatic gearbox alternatives. A 1.9-litre 90bhp diesel option will arrive next January. Sharp and responsive handling and roadholding characteristics place them at least on a par with Audi and BMW rivals.
Underplayed at the launch was a standard "dynamic stability system" which electronically senses adhesion through the front-driven wheels and retards the power if they lose grip or spin. In layman's terms, it shuts off one cylinder in the engine, rendering the car a three-cylinder machine until normal service is resumed via the tarmac. Combining this with across the range anti-lock brakes emphasises accident avoidance as much as crash damage limitation.
Attention to detail includes improved dipped headlamp effectiveness for the crucial vision range up to 75 metres in front of the car.
These Volvos are the first in class to incorporate side mounted airbags. Happily, these protective devices do not produce a siege environment, and although the grey-trimmed interior lacks distinction it is a major improvement on previous Volvos. Sportiness, youth appeal and vitality pepper the press blurb and testify to Volvo's avowed aim of bringing its ownership age profile down. Singles and young families are particular S and V40 target groups.
Volvo is playing for big stakes in the toughest high-volume sales arena. Englishman Peter Horbury, Volvo's resident styling guru, has elevated the chunky S40 and svelte V40 above most rivals.
The Dutch-based Mitsubishi-Volvo link is likely to nurture an increasingly meaningful automotive relationship, which promises an expanding and varied family for both partners.
VOLVO S40/V40Body styles: S40 4-door saloon, V40 5-door sports estate.
Engines: 1.8 (115bhp) and 2-litre (137bhp) aluminium 16-valve petrol units.
Performance:
0-62mph 10.8 seconds (1.8-litre manual). Max speed 121mph (130mph for 2-litre)
Economy: S40 1.8-litre manual: urban cycle, 27.4mpg; constant 56mph, 47.9mpg; constant 75mph, 39.2mpg. V40 2-litre auto: 23.5mpg; 40.4mpg; 33.2mpg.
Price: £14,000-£20,000.
It resembles a lemon drop on wheels and driving it is like being in an RAF Phantom. Kevin Eason reports
My mind was focused on the curves, the gearchange and the split-second decision that would be the difference between braking in time and a visit to the gravel trap.
There I was, dressed like a cross between an Eskimo and Michael Schumacher, ready to confront Renault's new Sport Spider, a 135mph open two-seater of such radical design that it will drop jaws all over Europe this year.
But I had other things on my mind. I mean, there are all these clever design chappies working away on a mega-budget and they come up with a car that looks like a lemon drop on wheels and there's still nowhere to stick the tax disc. As well as no roof, there isn't a windscreen either.
Renault launched its Sport Spider this week at the Paul Ricard circuit, near Marseille. The French company has one of the most flamboyant and interesting design teams in Europe and, apparently, a management prepared to produce vehicles which push the boundaries of taste to a seldom explored limit.
The Spider should, by all conventions, never have been built. Carmakers show concept models like it all the time at motor shows claiming they are the future then go off and make something that looks as interesting as a milk float. Renault actually did it with the Spider, making a car quite unlike anything else.
Squat and low, the road-going version has the same 2-litre, 150 brake horse power engine that goes into the Renault Clio Williams, mounted behind two deeply uncomfortable bucket seats. The doors spring up and pull down like beetle wings to enclose the most Spartan interior in world motoring: the cabin is little more than an aluminium and composite box.
The driver faces a dashboard with stainless steel dials, showing engine revs, oil pressure and engine temperature; speedo, clock and fuel guage are all shown separately on a digital screen. The seat moves forward but the steel drilled pedals move up to meet the driver if needs be. There is no heater and forget radio; with no side windows either, you could never get near hearing it even if it used the speakers from a Blur concert.
The Spider has cleverly positioned slats, which apparently deflect the air up and over the driver and passenger. Great theory, but requiring a great act of faith from your faithful test driver. I accepted the argument, but why was there an array of helmets ready to pick up before I was sent out on to public roads?
Do I really need a helmet? I asked innocently. "Ha, non, monsieur," said the engineer, "but I would not know when ze gravel hits you in ze face."
Oh, fine, I'll take the helmet then. And, Heavens to Betsy, it was needed because any speed above 60mph felt like sticking your head out of the open window of an RAF Phantom on a low level pass over Wales.
But there was more to this fearless test: a spin around the Paul Ricard circuit in the competition version of the Spider. Renault plans its own races for Sport Spider owners, the little cars uprated by another 30bhp to blast around Europe's circuits.
Renault dressed me head to foot in baggy racing overalls and helmet, driving gloves and a modicum of hope, and set me off. Now this was a motor that blasted off the grid like a rocket, had a non-syncromesh racing gearbox and unassisted brakes and it was being guided by a motorist with more in common with Willie Schumacher than Michael. But even I couldn't make enough high-speed mistakes to wrong-foot the car. The slicks clung to the tarmac, I clung to the steering wheel and the men from Renault clung to their mobile phones in case everything went wrong.
At least, there was no flying gravel, but I expect that the 75 Britons who have put a £5,000 deposit on their new Spider this year will confine their motoring to sunnier days, quieter roads ... or simply polishing one of the most remarkable shapes to come out of any car factory. It is almost worth risking a fine for failing to display a tax disc.
RENAULT SPORT SPIDER.
Body: Open two-seater, aluminium strengthened with composite materials.
Engine: 4-cylinder, 2-litre, 16-valve, as used in Renault's Clio Williams, set amidships for balance. Delivers 150bhp at 6000rpm (180bhp racing version).
Transmission: Five-speed manual (6-speed racing version).
Performance: 0 to 62mph in 6.9 seconds (6.2 racing version). Top speed 135mph. Not as fast as some, but it feels hair-raising literally from driver's position inches above the ground.
Economy: Don't ask.
Equipment: Hand adjusted wing mirrors. That's it, no radio, no heater bring your own helmet and thermals.
Price: est £25,000.
It began when I found a hole in the exhaust; one arm and one leg (plus VAT) later, I was reporting to the station
If life from time to time imitates art, my latest escapade imitated the modern televisual art of Victor Mildrew. Indeed the phrase "I don't believe it" was passing from my larynx across my tongue when it turned into a resigned laugh, for the ability to see the funny side is becoming part of the standard-issue motoring kit.
What I needed was a new exhaust. So I went to an industrial estate where people with new exhausts tend to locate themselves. I knew the front section had a hole in it, but exhaust-types can always find two more holes, each of which is in a different section.
So I needed all three bits, but the exhaust type only had bits one and three. I decided to go elsewhere. I drove away ... and was pulled over by the police.
"I've stopped you for having a noisy exhaust," said the officer.
"I don't bel ..." I started. "Yes I know, I've just been down to get one but they didn't have all the parts, so now I'm going to ..."
Pause to give the officer some credit. He will have heard this explanation a thousand times, but his face betrayed not a hint of world-weariness. In fact he looked as if he believed me, perhaps on the basis that the truth is stranger than fiction.
He then came out with the dread words "routine check". Lights, brake lights, tyres and so on. Now, when you write a column like this, which is often about the ludicrious behaviour of other people you get letters accusing you of pomposity. The people who send those letters will enjoy the next bit.
"Your front tyres are illegal, sir".
I didn't believe it. It appears that while my back was turned the authorities decreed that you had to have 1.6mm of tread as opposed to 1mm. My front tyres would have passed the old measure, but not the new one. The police in Wiltshire have an enlightened policy. Instead of prosecuting you for having dodgy tyres, which is no guarantee that you will get them replaced, they issue a form which has to be stamped by an MoT station to confirm the work has been done. You send it off to the police within 14 days and no more is said.
So I drove straight back to the exhaust type he is also a tyre type and after a bit of joshing about him ringing up the police whenever people with noisy exhausts disdain his services he fitted two tyres. Later I had the exhaust replaced, paid the bill which came to one arm and one leg, plus VAT got the form stamped by an MoT station and sent it off. So that was all right.
What was not all right was the other part of the routine check: one's documents. I carry a driving licence, but not the insurance and registration document. Incidentally, people who carry photocopies of these in their cars are wasting their time: the police won't accept them.
So I had to produce the documents within seven days and discovered when I did so that the police station I nominated in a small market town has to deal with this procedure 3,000 times a year. I am all for people having the right documents, but police stations are pressed enough without having this tedious procedure added to their duties.
Several police officers I have spoken to would like to see the American system introduced. Over there, cars carry a disc on the windscreen which has all the relevant information: owner's name, registration document number, insurance details and so on. Thus the driver only has to carry his or her licence and in America (fly-drive tourists please note) you will certainly be prosecuted for not doing so.
As my campaign to have road tax abolished shows no sign of bearing fruit, perhaps the DoT would at least amend the disc to carry more information, thus saving motorists time and the police paperwork.
MORE than 50 insurance companies are now offering discounts of up to 20 per cent to motorists who fit their cars with Securicor TrakBak, the advanced protection, tracking and recovery system, which features a sophisticated immobiliser and an automatic tell-tale signal if a thief defeats it.
THE new BMW 5-series, to be launched in Britain in April, will be fitted with energy-saving tyres developed by Continental. The German company claims that the ContiEcoContact tyre offers 25 per cent less rolling resistance than its previous range, paving the way for major savings in fuel consumption.
JOHN BARNARD, technical director of Ferrari, who has also designed for McLaren, Lola and Benetton in a career spanning more than 25 years in motor sport, has been made a Royal Designer for Industry (RDI), a rare honour awarded by the Royal Society.
His designs included the first all-carbon fibre chassis for McLaren and pioneering use of the electronic shifting gearbox by Ferrari.
MOTORISTS should be told exactly how much of what they pay for fuel is going into the Chancellor's pocket, say the AA and RAC.
Less than one-third of the £24 billion raised in tax at the petrol pump is spent on transport. A joint campaign to highlight the facts was launched during a debate on transport policy with Jonathon Porritt, former director of Friends of the Earth, at the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu yesterday. Neil Johnson, the RAC's chief executive officer, said: "Despite the fact that the majority of motorists consider the car a necessity, the Treasury continues to tax it as if it is a luxury."
Sue Baker joins the thousands of motorists asked to bring their cars back because something's wrong
The garage service receptionist was cheerfully candid. "This is all becoming a bit of a silly nightmare for us. It has been going on for months. We keep booking cars in, but some of them need parts that we're still waiting to arrive from Germany."
I had telephoned to book in my Golf for a safety inspection, as urged by Volkswagen last week. Their letter alerted me to my car being subject to a recall, although that word was not used. VW called it a "safety action".
My car had been identified as one which, if operated over a prolonged period with an overheating cooling system, might suffer a ruptured heat exchanger. In other words, if the car had not been looked after and was consistently run with the engine too hot, the heater might one day split and cascade scalding water over my feet.
The work to avoid this alarming prospect would be carried out "without charge" but apparently not without inconvenience. The first available appointment was two weeks away, the chatty receptionist informed me. "We're snowed under with all this."
Checking would take about an hour and a half, during which time a safety valve would be installed in the heater. But further work might be needed. Some recalled cars were found to need a new heater matrix, requiring a second, longer visit.
Because of the numbers involved more than 200,000 cars in the UK VW has been conducting this recall in waves, over nine months. Even so, it is not the biggest recall of the past year. That is credited to Vauxhall, with more than 600,000 Astras called in to check on a potential fire risk, caused by possible static sparking during refuelling, as well as another problem which could cause the airbag to fail to operate.
Recalls are an irksome thorn in the side of the motor industry. They are costly, time-consuming and common. Last year there were 91 vehicle recalls, 53 of them involving cars, with buses and commercial vehicles accounting for the rest; that is a 50 per cent increase since 1980. The total number of vehicles involved in 1995 recalls was 1,190,611.
Notoriously, a small percentage of owners never respond to recall notices, even after several reminders. Although some of those vehicles may no longer be in use perhaps long since scrapped or exported it still leaves worryingly high numbers of cars on the roads with potentially hazardous faults.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders takes pride in the response to recalls in Britain, which it claims is among the best in the world. Under a Code of Practice established in 1979, manufacturers regularly meet a target of 90 per cent recall response. But that still leaves a significant shortfall. Based on last year's figures, it means there were potentially nearly 120,000 owners who neglected to react to manufacturers' pleas to have their vehicles checked for known safety hazards.
Sean Wadmore, the SMMT's consumer affairs manager, says Britain's record compares well with the United States, where recall response is nearer 55 per cent, but he is not complacent. "Manufacturers aim to achieve a 100 per cent response, but some vehicles will always slip through the net.
"A major problem is the failure of people to notify the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency when a car changes hands. The details of ownership that manufacturers obtain from the DVLA are only a snapshot, and some are inevitably wrong."
Even the most prestigious marques do not escape having to recall cars. Rolls-Royce had two instances last year. The first affected the steering linkage of just one car, the second was to check front seatblets on 154 Bentleys.
Ford scored the highest number of recalls over the past year, with nine, ranging from a wheel nut fault on 176 Mavericks to a vacuum pump problem on 17,799 Fiestas, Escorts and Mondeos.
Vauxhall, which announced its first recall of this year last weekend, topped the list for the overall number of cars affected during 1995: more than 640,000. Brian Setchell who, as product quality aftersales manager, is Vauxhall's man in the recall hot seat says it is the result of becoming more proactive in identifying potential problems which could arise during a car's lifespan.
"You cannot say it is a failure to have to recall a car," he adds. "We are consistently building better vehicles, but inevitably human problems can still creep in. If a man working on 50 or 60 cars an hour starts putting a nut and bolt on the wrong way round, it very quickly affects a lot of vehicles."
The SMMT operates a recalls hotline. Ask for Consumer Affairs Department 0171 235 7000. Top 1995 recalls were:
Vauxhall Astra: (601,131 cars) fuel pipe/airbag.
VW Golf/Jetta: (237,000) heater matrix.
Nissan Primera: (75,000) front brake hoses.
Land Rover: (55,993) seat belts.
Peugeot 306: (32,067) accelerator cable.
VW Passat/Golf: (28,128) headlamps.
Ford Escort: (23,000) rear brake cylinder.
Mercedes E-class: (22,824) passenger footrest.
Vauxhall Frontera: (18,565) Bonnet catch.
Ford Fiesta/Escort/Mondeo: (17,799) vacuum pump.
Ford Mondeo: (15,755) fuel pipe.
Vauxhall Astra: (14,649) wiring harness.
Vauxhall Omega: (12,607) fuel pipe.
Ford Fiesta: (11,760) brake light.
LONDON
A40 Western Avenue, Acton. Major roadworks with a contraflow between Hilary Road in Acton and the Northern roundabout in White City.
A406 North Circular Road, Upper Edmonton. Major roadworks continue over the Lea Valley viaduct.
A406 North Circular Road, Finchley. Major roadworks continue with various restrictions between the A1 and A1000 junctions.
A12 Eastern Avenue, Wanstead. Construction of the M11 link road continues, with eastbound reduced to a single lane between the Redbridge roundabout and High Street.
A4 Great West Road, Chiswick. Between 9pm and 6am Monday-Thursday nights reduced to one lane each way for repairs to elevated section of the M4 above.
SOUTH-EAST
M4 Berkshire. Major roadworks and a contraflow between junctions 6 and 8/9 cause lengthy tailbacks daily.
M25 Surrey. Two sections of widening work, with lane closures and contraflows between junctions 6/8 and 9/10.
A247 Surrey. Roadworks on street between Clandon Station and Clandon Park. Long delays expected during peak times.
A509 Buckinghamshire. Major roadworks on Wellingborough Road in Olney, at junction with Lavendon Road.
A27 East Sussex. Major roadworks at Firle, between Selmeston and Lewes, with temporary lights.
A249 Kent. Major works at the Stockbury roundabout west of Sittingbourne often cause lengthy hold-ups between the M2 and Kingsferry Bridge.
A36 Hampshire. Bridge repairs at Wellow, north-west of Southampton.
SOUTH-WEST
M4/M5 Avon. Work on the new second Severn crossing continues, with restrictions around the Almondsbury & Aust interchanges, and also on the M5 around junction 18.
M32 Avon. Contraflow for major roadworks between junctions 1 and 2. Southbound entry slip at junction 1 also closed off-peak.
A4 Avon. Lane restrictions and temporary lights over the Newbridge Bridge, Bath.
M5 Somerset. Bridge repairs with lane closures both ways between junctions 21 and 22.
A30 Cornwall. Roadworks and a contraflow near Bolventor.
M5 Devon. Lane closures northbound between junctions 29 and 28.
A377 Devon. Roadworks continue around Eggesford, between Exeter and Barnstaple, with temporary lights.
MIDLANDS AND
EAST ANGLIA
M6 West Midlands. Major roadworks continue between junctions 5 and 6 with lane restrictions in both directions.
A6 Leicestershire. Major roadworks and contraflow at Lockington, between junction 24 of the M1 and Sawley Island.
A563 Leicestershire. Roadworks and contraflow on Lubbersthorpe Way, Leicester between the Dumbell Island and the A47 Hinckley Road junction.
A1 Nottinghamshire. Roadworks on Apley Head roundabout near Worksop cause regular peak-time delays.
A47 Norfolk. Two sets of major roadworks: at Terrington St John, and at Swaffham.
A11 Norfolk. Construction of the new Wymondham bypass continues, with lane and speed restrictions between Hethersett and Attleborough.
NORTH
M1 West Yorkshire. Roadworks and ontraflow at end of the motorway at junction 47.
M6 Cheshire. Widening work continues between junctions 20 and 21.
M6 Greater Manchester. Roadworks and lane closures between junctions 24 and 26.
M6 Lancashire. Lane closures in both directions between junctions 28 and 31 for work on the J65 extension.
A5063 Greater Manchester. Major roadworks and lane closures on Trafford Road, near the junction with Pomona Strand.
A630 South Yorkshire. Major roadworks and contraflow on the Rotherway at Canklow, between junction 33 of the M1 and Rotherham.
A167M Tyneside. Northbound lane closures on the Newcastle Central Motorway near the Jesmond Road interchange for bridge repairs.
WALES
M4 Gwent. Widening work continues in connection with second Severn crossing between junctions 22 and 24.
A48 West Glamorgan. Construction work with lane closures on all approaches to the Wychtree roundabout at Morriston.
A483 West Glamorgan. Major roadworks and contraflow on Fabian Way, Swansea between Elba Crescent and Earlswood traffic lights.
A4229 Mid Glamorgan. Roadworks and temporary lights between Cornelly and Porthcawl.
A547 Gwynedd. Bridge repairs with temporary lights near A55 junction at Llandudno Junction.
SCOTLAND
M8 Strathclyde. Roadworks with lane closures in both directions between junctions 26 and 27.
A749 Strathclyde. Dalmarnock Bridge in Glasgow is closed southbound for repairs.
M90 Tayside. Major roadworks at junction 10 with lane closures in both directions.
NORTHERN IRELAND
County Tyrone. Roadworks on the Omagh Bypass at the junction with Derry Road.
Vaughan Freeman enters a fertile area
High-mileage male drivers have been given "stop, get out, shake‘em all about" advice by fertility experts in an effort to help prevent them developing problems they may experience in becoming a dad.
Sitting for hours every day at the overheated wheel of a company car or as a service engineer, or cooking gently in a lorry cab, legs clamped together, has been shown to reduce the chances of would-be fathers.
Research in France shows that the partners of men who spend hours at the wheel take up to 10 per cent longer to conceive. The Paris research concludes that this is because the testicles of drivers become unnaturally warm as they sit at the steering wheel, which can have the effect of lowering the sperm count.
Peter Bromwich of the Midland Fertility Services says high mileage driving can reduce sperm count by a few per cent: "At the margins, having semen problems is a difficulty where driving too much makes semen less good. Wives of such men, instead of getting pregnant in four months, might get pregnant in five or six months."
For drivers who are concerned, he advises them to restructure their day, and plan journeys so that they spend less time at the wheel: "If they are having to drive a lot, then every couple of hours stop the car, get out, walk around, shake their testes up and let some cool air in.
"It was first noticed when people looked at the Teamsters' Union in the United States and found that truck drivers who did more than 25,000 miles in a year were less fertile than those who drove fewer than 25,000 miles a year."
Mr Bromwich explained that the testes work better when they are cooler and men are designed so that they "hang outside the body. Blokes are designed not to wear anything in that area, and for the testes to hang free away from the body and to keep cool."
However, Mr Bromwich stresses that alcohol and cigarettes are far more likely to reduce the efficacy of sperm, and new fertility techniques mean that even the highest-mileage drivers have a chance of fathering.
Vaughan Freeman reports on a scheme to take the pain out of being an inner-city car owner
Playing hunt-the-parking-space is the bane of the inner-city motorist. But the answer could lie in two "Street Fleet" pilot projects currently being tested in Bremen, Germany in which small fleets of cars will be on hand for rent by those taking part.
Local authorities will ensure that the cars have guaranteed parking spaces in inner-city areas of London's Haringey, and also in Edinburgh, where it is hoped the pilot schemes will be launched. Those taking part will be able to book the cars, provided by a rental firm, such as Hertz, and with routine servicing carried out on the spot by RAC patrols.
Gordon Stewart, Hertz Rental UK marketing manager, sees such schemes as a natural extension of existing Hertz pilots in Paris, Amsterdam and Rome, where drivers who are fed up with trying to park their own cars, instead buy booklets of vouchers entitling them to rent as and when they wish.
Transport expert John Adams, of University College London, said: "The idea is based on the fact that if you drive fewer than 10,000 kilometres a year you are probably better off renting a car when you need one than owning your own. The average car spends 95 per cent of its time parked. All that time owners are paying insurance and road tax, and incurring depreciation.
"In Germany the Stadt-Auto Street Fleet scheme is quite ‘low tech'. In Bremen the cars are parked in local streets, and near them is a wall safe with the keys inside. Members of the project have keys to the safe, and make their bookings via a local 24-hour taxi despatcher's office."
Supporters of the schemes point out also that they reduce overall car use. Most car owners use their vechiles for even the shortest journeys based only on the cost of the fuel, ignoring the whole-life costs of running a vehicle. Adams says: "If each time one was faced with the average cost per mile when renting a vehicle, that makes the cost of the pubic transport option more competitive."
The Bremen experiment now has almost 1,000 participants who have access to 48 vehicles and pay a monthly club membership charge of £10 for two people, with use of the car priced at £1.40 per hour plus 17p per kilometre to cover fuel and servicing costs.
Haringey Council transport engineer Chris Bainbridge said it was hoped that funding for their pilot could be raised from the European Community, adding: "Such a scheme is a particularly attractive idea for a borough like ours where there is a great deal of pressure on street parking."
RAC spokesman Ed King, who has been active in promoting the Street Fleet idea, added: "Street Fleet is aimed at urban areas where there is already a good public transport infrastructure, where cars are hardly used at all during the week, but where people want a car at weekends to visit relatives, go mountain-biking in the country or get their weekly shopping."
Typical cars in a Street Fleet might include a Mini-sized town car, a family saloon, and a larger people mover such as a Renault Espace.
King added: "We would be the first to accept that this idea is not going to change the world, but it might free up parking in towns and reduce congestion, and make people think twice about whether or not they need a car."
At Hertz Rental, Stewart said they would be delighted to work with any partners in an effort to make such projects work in the UK. But he sounded a note of caution, pointing out that their own research showed motorists in the UK were far more reluctant to give up their own cars and to seek alternatives than their counterparts in Holland, France or Italy.
"We get the impression that people in the UK appreciate having their own car," he said. "The willingness to car-share, evident on the Continent, doesn't seem to have arrived here yet and motorists here don't seem comfortable with the idea of public transport."
He added though that such schemes would become more appealing if inner-city parking became even more difficult, and if motorists took a close and clear-eyed look at the true cost, per mile and per journey, of using their car.
READERS of Caravan Life have voted the diesel-powered Land Rover Discovery Tdi their best towcar for the second year running.
With the V8 Discovery and the 4-litre V8 Range Rover also in the top ten, the company was clear winner in the vote for "favourite towcar manufacturer". The runner-up was Volvo and others in the top ten, in descending order, were: Vauxhall, Ford, Citroen, Rover, Mitsubishi, Toyota, Peugeot and Jeep.
Runner-up for the best towcar was the Mitsubishi Shogun 2.8 TD, followed by the Discovery V8, Vauxhall Senator 3-litre, Citroen Xantia 1.9TD and 4-litre Jeep Cherokee, Range Rover and Toyota Land Cruiser.
Peter Wyhinny, Land Rover's commercial director, said: "We are delighted to be among the winners for the second year running, and it is all the more rewarding that in this case the judges are the buying public. We listen hard to our customers when they suggest improvements."
THE British taste for red, which accounts for more than a quarter of all cars on the road, is shared by most other European countries.
Surprisingly for such a popular shade, an analysis last year by a leading insurance company concluded that red signifies an ambitious driver who dislikes routine. In the Far East white is more popular, especially in Japan where it is a symbol of purity.
But when it comes to status, Henry Ford was right: black is the colour to be seen in if you want to appear successful or, of course, if you can afford a chauffeur. There is a price to pay, however, because it also carries a higher risk of theft.
Blue is the second most popular colour. Said to indicate a conventional attitude to life, it is much favoured by current Ford drivers.
Silver is another shade favoured by the successful who want to be less discreet than those who favour black.
Striking recent additions to the colour range include orange and purple which are proving popular for the MGF and a wonderful mustard for the Fiat Punto. But if you really want to be noticed then yellow is for you. The perfect shade for the show-off.
Helen Mound checks the forecasts of the millennium's trendy shades.
Superstitious motorists should steer clear of the new car market in 1999. According to predictions at last week's 1999 Colour Show, green once considered as unlucky as a broken mirror or the number 13 will be the year's trendiest car colour.
Automotive colour styling consultant, Mike Mudge said: "Despite being traditionally thought of as unlucky, green cars have rocketed into third place in the popularity stakes, after red and blue."
The percentage of green cars in the UK has risen from 4.2 per cent in 1990 to 17 per cent. Red accounts for 25.4 per cent and blue 23.7 per cent. Even fleet buyers, who have traditionally bought white cars in bulk, are not immune to the new trend. "For years the top three car colours have been red, blue and white, but the popularity of white has been propped up by the company car market and environmentally-friendly fleet managers are now looking to green," said Mudge.
The PPG Industries Colour Show, held annually in Europe, North America and the Far East, predicts car trends three years ahead and launches new colours. Chances are high that you wwill not have heard of PPG (Pittsburgh Plate Glass Industries), but you'll find its products on your own car. Two-thirds of the vehicles in the Western world use PPG Industries' automotive coatings; it is the largest supplier of car paint in the world.
At the 1999 Colour Show more than 100 new colours were on display for manufacturers from all over the world to consider using on the new cars they have planned for the next millennium. The colours on offer in the UK, US and the Far East vary because of different tastes; motorists in the Far East prefer shades of silver and grey, while most European countries have reds at the top of their list. Weather conditions also affect the choice; colours that look good in the UK can look grubby in Californian sunshine.
The show gives manufacturers a chance to plan the colour palette for their new cars, so that carpets, seat trim and interior plastics can be designed to suit predicted fashionable colours. In Italy the PPG range is so successful that Lancia has picked 112 colours for its Y10 hatchback. But manufacturers sometimes make hasty choices, like the "Sahara Desert" Land Rover chose to add a high profile to the launch of its new Range Rover. The lurid gold is complex and very costly for PPG Refinish to produce in small quantities for individual paint repairs.
As well as predicting green as the colour for 1999, 44 new UK colours were launched this year, including 15 shades of green, ranging from olive to bright apple. There are also several new browns and violets on offer, but not many blues, greys and yellows. Two new paint effects were also announced, micro mica and coloured aluminium (a metallic paint with coloured flecks in the paint).
Launching a new colour is a tricky business; Mudge, alongside European and American colleagues Rainer Becher and Janis Brennen shows the colours off using giant jelly moulds known as "speeding images" shapes designed to accentuate the curves of a car. Other colours are on panels similar to car doors and each is displayed among photographs of the influences that helped to create them, such as women's fashion, travel destinations, plants and food.
Mudge explains how the research for each show takes more than a year: "We're already looking at the colour trends for 2000. The majority of our influences come from women's fashion, we look at magazines and fashion shows, but also interior design."
The traditional notion of space age silver fashions and grey cars is proving out-dated for the year 2000: "Currently we're seeing a move towards more natural earthy colours. Greens and browns are in fashion for women's clothes, and as these colours tend to translate into the car industry over three or four years, we expect to see more green and brown cars in the next millennium."
In the six years Mudge has presented the Colour Show, he believes the major breakthrough has been mica paint: "It involves three-dimensional spheres which are translucent, so not only can they reflect a certain amount of light, they also let light through, allowing for much brighter colours to be developed. The micro micas will improve on that brightness.
Ultimately we're interested in developing new effects, as they allow for new colours. In the late Eighties the split between solid colours and micas or metallics was 60/40, now it's more like 40/60, because the choice of mica metallic colours is so much wider. With the use of micro mica, we expect to see even more exciting colours being developed."
Standing out of the bright lights and general hubbub of the show, Gary Picken, UK Business Development Manager for PPG Automotive Refinish, is a little solicitous: "Once these colours and effects have been invented, the difficult part is making sure we can make them in small quantities for car dealership bodyshops. They have to be easy and affordable to repair."
No surprise, then, that under PPG's advice, Land Rover has left the Sahara Desert.
Perry Cleveland-Peck joins our Drive in Luxury competition winner as his Fiat Tipo is transformed
What with the occasional light aircraft, one or two small sports cars and the occasional motorhome, the vehicle interior craftsmen at Stratstone get some odd requests. Nevertheless, a complete leather refit to an F-registered Fiat Tipo was a challenge that they had yet to tackle.
As the winner of The Times Drive in Luxury competition, Roland Roberts, 40, a piano tuner technician and motoring enthusiast from Stamford, Lincolnshire was entitled to a complete leather refit of a style and cut of his choice approximately £1,500 worth of leather craftsmanship. The Times spent the day with him and his car as he toured the Stratstone Showrooms in search of his dream interior.
Stratstone of Wilmslow, Cheshire, established in 1909 as Stratstone of Mayfair and now part of the giant Pendragon group, is one of five franchises making up one of the largest Porsche, Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, Mazda and Bentley dealerships outside London. The company's interior division specialises in a bespoke leather upholstery service. Seven fitters and one apprentice can take a wide selection of hides and craft them into original handmade leather interiors to exact requirements. As the brochure states: "The options are limited only by your imagination."
Imagination was in great demand when Mr Roberts, wearing a stylish Rolls-Royce tie, arrived at the Stratstone workshop with his 1989 Fiat Tipo 1.9 Tds. Greeted by Steve Gough, the customer sales manager, who suggested a look at some of the completed Stratstone interiors before making any decisions, Mr Roberts was chauffeured to the Ferrari, Porsche and Rolls-Royce showroom in a Silver Shadow to study some of the leather upholstery.
On route, Steve Gough explained a little about the company's policy. "We use the finest leathers from Connolly or Bridge of Weir, we don't compromise on quality. It has taken us a long time to get our team together and they now have over 90 years of experience."
Did this experience stretch to Fiat Tipos? "No, we haven't done one of those before," Steve confessed. "Usually we get Mercedes-Benz, Jaguars or BMWs whose owners want a leather interior put into their new cars the new Rover MGFs are proving to be quite popular."
At the showroom, the Times prizewinner was momentarily silenced by a collection of some of the finest thoroughbred driving machines available; a gleaming Ferrari 512 M, an F-registered Testarossa worth £60,000, a 911 turbo and £63,000 worth of brand new Porsche 911 Targa, with glass sliding roof clearly, there was no shortage of inspiration for Mr Roberts's interior.
Deciding that a pragmatic approach was the only suitable method for discerning the needs of the posterior, Mr Roberts positioned himself behind the wheel of a recently registered black Bentley Brooklands, complete with white-walled tyres. Looking replete, he volunteered that the Bentley was "quite comfortable really", to which the Stratstone team, appreciating that they were not miracle workers, appeared worried.
Still, either unsatisfied, or perhaps relishing this new-found indulgence, Mr Roberts took up the driving seat of a brand new Ferrari 456 GT, a car he describes himself as passionate about. Worth £157,000 and delivering a performance which takes it to 60mph in 5.2 seconds, the four-seater Ferrari demonstrated an example of superior motoring luxury.
Back at the workshop, a long, low, rectangular room, smelling strongly of leather and resin and home for a while to a Porsche 911, a Mercedes-Benz 220 and now Mr Roberts's Tipo, headcraftsman Evan Pugh took stock of the metallic green/grey Fiat (with a Ferrari badge on the passenger wing and Mercedes C-class wheel trims) as he explained details of how the installation procedure is carried out.
First we remove the seats, door-panels, headlining and dashboard," he explained. "Then we unstitch the seat covers and sew on the selected hides. We use a nylon-bonded thread and a variety of stitches mostly a saddle or face stitch for a strong, doubled-lined seam.
"Gearsticks and steering wheels are hand-sewn with a cross-stitch. On average it takes one person a week to complete the interior of a vehicle. Door panels go on last and, if necessary, incorporate a stitched pattern in order to break up the bulk. Similarly with the headrests."
The choice of hide is down to the individual. Connolly leathers tend to be softer and are of the type usually found in Jaguars, Aston Martins, Rolls-Royces and Ferraris. Bridge of Weir hides have a slightly more defined grain and are found in Saabs, Volvos and, at one time, Lotus vehicles.
Outside the hide-room, the Stratsone team waited to hear Mr Roberts's final decision. Discussing the metallic green colour of his car with tongue in cheek, he inquired into the quantity and shades of purple hides available, which raised a few eyebrows around the workshop and provoked a distant muttered response of "must be a mate of Stevie Wonder."
In the end, Mr Roberts selected a set of bottle green Bridge of Weir hides with ruffled seat centres, flat borders and black piping. Stitching around the armrests broke up the door panels. Green headrests with black piping finished the job. And when everything was completed, an extremely satisfied Mr Roberts said that his Fiat Tipo, which he bought three years ago and now has 104,000 miles on the clock, looked "better than I ever imagined it would be". Before its makeover it was worth about £2,600.
He added: "The standard of workmanship is amazing they have done a really good job. My car is unique and, at the very least, it smells like a Rolls-Royce."
Stratstone Of Wilmslow, 01625 532678.
Drive-ski means choosing the best route from the UK to the slopes, plus where to stay and knowing the rules of Continental roads, writes John Samuel. Here are some pointers from my journey to Kitzbuehel with the British ski team for the downhill and slalom races:-
Ferries: We missed the 10.15pm Stena-Sealink Dover-Calais by a few minutes and the next, at 12.15am, took an hour and a half. The Shuttle is notably quicker and more frequent, but drivers from Scotland and the North relish a decent break. The team prefers the Rheims-Strasbourg-Stuttgart-Munich route to Austria's East Tyrol. The discount on French diesel roughly cancels out autoroute costs. The 1,200-mile round trip from Dover to the nearer high-level French resorts (La Plagne, Les Arcs, Val d'Isere) averages £90 in tolls, but it's fast.
Two or more by car in cost terms will equal or better separate ski holidays by air. Deals from Stena Sealink, P&O, Sally and Shuttle are worth a close look. Car flexibility means you can seek out hidden valleys (the Montafon in the Vorarlberg, for example, can be notably less expensive).
Accommodation: Mike Jardine, East Lothian-based chief executive of the team, often drives the 500 miles to Dover and a further 800 to Austria stopping at a Formula One budget hotel. "Perfect for a short break in clean, practical rooms," he says.
En route to Kitzbuehel we arrived at the hotel in Bethune, Northern France, at 3.30am, inserted a Visa in a hole-in-the-wall giving instructions in different languages and were debited 129 francs (less than £19). The screen gave us a six-digit pass code for the main entrance and bedroom doors. Inside, we found a double bed and bunk, basin, table and hanging rail. Douche and WC were in the outside corridor. A help-yourself breakfast at 7am cost 22 francs each.
On the road: Near Innsbruck we were nabbed by police at 150kph where Austria's limit is 130kph (81mph). It's not difficult to do, especially coming from a limit-free stretch of German autobahn such as Munich to Kufstein (Stuttgart-Munich has many restricted sections).
"Three thousand schillings," said the green-uniformed chap. That's £18. He let us off £180 for failing to carry a registration document.
Our return via Zurich meant a section of Swiss motorway normally requiring a £15 window sticker (they have year-long validity, but can't readily be unstuck) from a customs post. We entered Switzerland by a side road so it cost us nothing, but stickers are available from the Swiss National Tourist Office (0171-734 1921).
How do you avoid the skids when driving to the ski slopes? The principles are the same, says John Samuel
Ski-Drive this year has assumed a whole new meaning, with around 140,000 Britons taking advantage of cross-Channel price wars to motor to and from the Alps.
But there is more to ski-drive than a 1,400-mile round trip to Val d'Isere or Kitzbuehel. Top instructors such as Roger Crathorne of Land Rover, himself a skier, say many of the driving techniques and drills you may use en route can prepare you for the pistes. Put another way, BSM and Benzeeknees instructors can borrow from each other.
Val d'Isere attracts more British skiers than any other resort. It is here that Raphael Audhoui has seen the annual International 4x4 and Off-Road Vehicle Show grow to Europe's biggest. "Skiers and off-roaders are blood brothers," he says. "The suspension of a car is the same as the suspension of your legs. In France we have a word for gliding glissant. Your knees are giving in the same way as the springs of your car." But isn't sliding on a 60-degree slope the last thing you want to do in a 2.7-ton off-roader?
"You have to stay in control," Audhoui insists. "Come off your throttle and avoid hard braking in the vehicle. Get your weight well forward if you are a skier. The dynamics are the same."
Val d'Isere in August is not so very different from Val d'Isere in February when Crathorne is demonstrating four-wheel-drive Discovery and Range Rover techniques on gritty Red and Black slopes where skiers will subsequently skid and carve. "The similarities are in the way you look ahead for undulations in the ground and the best lines to take," he says.
Crathorne is never better at demonstrating his skills and theories than when he leads a Land Rover column in his dun-coloured Camel Trophy Defender over the Hannibal Trail. Land Rover's biennial event, coinciding with the Off-Road Show, celebrates the 4x4's ability to follow in the steps of the legendary Carthaginian General.
Starting out from New Carthage in eastern Spain, Hannibal in 218BC led 40,000 men, plus elephants and horses, to attack Rome's mighty army from behind. The 130 miles of Alpine trail, 2,770 metres at its highest, were the worst, and only 20,000 men and one elephant survived. Hannibal eventually triumphed, but how he could have wished for a few Land Rovers and a Jaeger regiment on skis.
Crathorne's view is endorsed in the heart of Kentish woodlands by Sweden's veteran rally ace, Gunnar Palm. "Why do we have so many good rally drivers in Scandinavia? Hot competition, OK. You will never get a big head over there. But most of us are skiers, used to looking 50 to 100 metres ahead, picking up every little bump and fold at speed."
He demonstrates what he means in the souped-up Ford Escort which 25 years ago won him the World Soccer Cup Mexico Rally. Not since the St Moritz bobsleigh run have I seen a wall come up at such speed, this time a green-fringed dirt wall. Palm coolly exploits it to bounce off it, much as Tony Nash in his bobbing heyday.
Jean-Claude Killy, Franz Klammer, Phil and Steve Mahre and British champions such as Divina Galica and Konrad Bartelski are among top ski racers who have excelled as drivers. "It's the speed," says Klammer. "You train yourself to respond quickly."
Galica has driven Formula One and achieved top-ten placings in World Cup and Olympics skiing. At 49 she broke the British women's speed ski record with 124.62mph, and at 50 has still not given up hope for success in the Indy 500. Both skiing and motor racing require the fundamentals of balance, precision and guts. She pinpoints it with a giant slalom race.
"It's almost exactly the same length as a motor racing lap, and, in the same way you have to look ahead to a ski gate beyond the next beyond the next, you have to see round the next corner in motor racing. I have an instinct for it. You know I believe in reincarnation. I'm not afraid of death. I'm not afraid of speed. I actually believe I know what is around a corner."
That is not, perhaps, what examiners are looking for vis-a-vis the new theoretical driving test. In their grainy fashion, America's Mahre twins, who finished first and second in the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics, offer advice that the Corsa learner driver might readily absorb.
"In skiing, every left-hand turn is done on the right ski," says Steve. "In a car, every left-hand turn is done on the right tyres. A car driver thus shifts weight to the outside tyre just as a skier is advised to commit weight firmly to the outside ski."
Fore and aft shifts are similar; fearful skiers lean back too far. "Get out of the back seat," Phil advises. By leaning forward a skier slows down and gains command of his skis; if he leans back, he will tend to lose control. A car nosedives when it slows down from braking or backing off the throttle; when it speeds up, its weight shifts to the back and its nose angles upwards. "The idea," adds Steve, "is to keep all the mass moving, but never exceed the grip of the tyres or the ski edges."
So the technique for a corner is slow down, steer, then accelerate out. Drivers and skiers should equally try to avoid skidding. A slalom skier will have completed most of his turn before passing the pole which is the apex of it. By using the width of his road, a good driver will do much the same, unwinding the wheel on the apex of the turn. This improves visibility and prepares him for the next feature of the road. He shouldn't, like a bad skier, drive full tilt for the corner then wrench the wheel around.
On skis, turning and braking are not so separated as with a car. Turning across a hill amounts to braking, so to accelerate you turn back down the fall line, in other words the steepest line down the mountain. It is important not to get too technical. For the winter motorist, the Mahre twins have simple rules. Slow it down, then smooth it out.
"Race drivers compare the latter to driving with an egg underfoot," says Phil, World Cup champion for three successive years. "A good driver won't jump off the throttle and climb all over the brakes. He comes off easy, and applies them that way, too. Everything is subtle, like the moves of a good skier."
Which avoids the problem of a British ski team race trainer who caught his ski boot under a throttle pedal. His vehicle finished upside down in an Alpine stream. Moral: don't mix the skiing and the driving boots.
HOW TO KEEP CONTROL WHEN IT'S DEEP AND CRISP AND EVEN.
Graham Bell, Britain's top downhiller, has needed chains only twice in 12 years, relying on winter tyres: you can hire of buy clip-ons chains. With new snow they will be compulsory on, say, the road to Val d'Isere from Bourg St Maurice.
Bell checks surfaces for suspected black ice by lightly touching his brakes. Faced with regular overnight parking at attitude, ski team drivers adhere strictly to recommended anti freeze mixtures. Wipers are pulled away from windscreens, or paper shields inserted.
Deserted unswept side-roads are good places to practise ABS braking and steering, also skid control. If the rear end is swinging left, turn the wheel left. At the same time, an expert touches the accelerator for a rearward weight transfer. That unloads the front and helps safe realignment.
Paul Frere is one of the sages of motor sport. He won Le Mans in 1960 in a Ferrari with fellow-Belgian Olivier Gendebien.
After competing in sports and Formula One racing for Ferrar, Aston Martin, Porshe and Cooper he wrote one of the first text books on competition driving.
He has been in the business of writing about cars ever since, his enthusiasm undimmed at the age of 79. As Formula One circus prepares for a new season that starts in Melbourne on March 10, he talks to Peter Miller about World Champion Michael Schumacher's move to Ferrari, Damon Hill's driving style and other topics. His tip for the driver's champioship: Schumacher again.
Q: Can Schumacher do a hat-trick in 1996?
A: There might be reliability problems early on with a brand new Ferrari and engine. But by mid-season in Canada I expect the car to be fully raceworthy. He will have to win several races after Montreal to clinch the title.
Q: Will you compare Schumacher with Ayrton Senna?
A: Entirely different characters, but both very professional and with their lives utterly concentrated on motor racing. That combination produces world champions.
Q: How will Eddie Irvine relate with Schumacher at Ferrari?
A: Again, two opposing personalities the dedicated champion paired with a more relaxed Ulsterman with numerous interests outside racing. Irvine will learn from Schumacher's ability to analyse the car's performance accurately and provide the specific information needed to set up his car for maximum efficiency.
Q: Is Damon Hill an artisan-type driver like his father, Graham?
A: Yes, Graham and Damon are identical drivers. Damon is not as naturally gifted as Michael, but, thanks to his concentration and will to win he is a top class driver. I don't think he got the same help from his team as Schumacher. Benetton trusted Schumacher's judgment utterly. If he pitted in practice, they listened to his suggestions. In my opinion, the Williams people didn't have the same faith in Damon.
Q: Hill sometimes misjudges his overtaking and puts himself in a compromising situation. Is this a flaw?
A: Yes, definitely. Overtaking has become more difficult and drivers who can overtake at the right time and place have a distinct advantage.
Q: What about Jean Alesi? Is he too much of a charger?
A: He certainly is a charger an acrobat at the wheel but so was Tazio Nuvolari. Nuvolari, however, was an exception and most world champions are smooth drivers. I think Alesi can expect fierce opposition from his Benetton team-mate, Berger, who is very experienced and can be very fast if he thinks he has a race-winning car.
Q: Is sponsorship ruining Formula One? Are the top teams too rich?
A: Sponsorship could be a good thing, but unfortunately only the top teams get big money. They also get about 70 engines per season free. The "also-rans of pit-alley", who struggle for sponsorship and must buy their own engines, never get a chance. This year, Ferrari could be the dark horse. It all depends on how quickly the new car can be sorted. Incidentally, Ferrari is no longer as Italian as most people think. The overall project is in the hands of an Englishman, John Barnard; the engine designer is Osamo Goto, a Japanese formerly with Honda, and team manager is a Frenchman, Jean Todt.Q: Can the average continental still afford to watch expensive Formula One?
A: I don't think that Foca the Formula One Constructor's Association cares enough about encouraging race fans. Motor racing cannot survive through television audiences alone. It needs a live, enthusiastic crowd watching thrilling racing because then it becomes real show business.
Q.: Are some drivers contributing sponsorship money and not being chosen on merit?
A.: Yes, this is a major problem. Formula One has two types of driver those who are paid huge money for driving a car and those who inject considerable sums of money into the team kitty, just to get a drive. Their money often only lasts for a few grands prix, when they are replaced by another driver with sponsorship. So, when considering the also-rans, it doesn't follow that the better driver gets chosen.
Q: But didn't Colin Chapman of Team Lotus often enter a third car for a "national" driver 30 years ago? Weren't they "rent-a-drives"?
A: Not exactly. In those days, the automobile club organising the grand prix would often pay considerable starting money for a local driver to attract the crowds. Today, it is all in the hands of Foca and a "super" licence is needed before any driver may enter Formula One.
Q: Are drivers like Schumacher really worth $25 million for 17 races?
A: It is entirely proportionate. If the sponsor considers the publicity from having its name on a winning car is worth the money the driver gets to achieve it, then that driver is worth the money paid. It might be argued that a research scientist who discovers a miracle cure for Aids, for example, is a pauper in comparison to Mr Schumacher or Mr Hill but that is the harsh irony of life.
Q: Are data acquisition systems [telemetry] preventing good test drivers emerging?
A: No, both are vital. On-board computers constantly read every aspect of a car's performance and relay it back to another computer in the pits. When a driver comes in to the pits and reports personally, his engineer can quickly see where performance may be improved. It is also a vital safety factor, as a driver on the track can be given advance warning of a deflating tyre before a possible accident.
Q: Foca has made pit-stops mandatory. Are too many crews at risk?
A: Definitely! In the 1950s, only two mechanics were allowed on the track and they did everything at a pit-stop refuelling, oil, change tyres while the team manager briefed his driver. If more than two mechanics worked on the car, it was immediately disqualified. Now the wealthy teams have at least 20 track personnel at every stop. This causes severe overcrowding in the pit-road with the real risk of crew members being run over or trapped in an inferno of blazing fuel.
Q: Who were your favourite drivers?
A: Without doubt, my top three would be Stirling Moss, Juan Manuel Fangio and Alberto Ascari.
Department of Transport tells thousands of centres to suspend ‘cat' checks. Vaughan Freeman reports
The new MoT test introduced last month to target emissions on three-year-old cars fitted with catalytic converters is degenerating into a chaotic mess as drivers and motoring organisations report widespread discrepancies in test results.
This week the Department of Transport contacted 18,000 MoT testing stations telling them to temporarily suspend the emissions aspect of the test on thousands of K-registered cars. The moratorium will last from six to eight weeks while limits for the emissions test are revised after fresh talks with manufacturers.
The problem says the department is that information supplied originally by manufacturers as to the minimum emissions limits that regularly serviced cars would pass proved hopelessly optimistic. As a result thousands of cars registered for the first time on or after August 1 1992, are unexpectedly failing, even if their catalysts are in perfect order.
A spokesman said: "It is vital that motorists with K-registered cars know that their cars must have an MoT. To drive without one is illegal and will almost certainly invalidate their insurance." He added though that cars that go through the £27 MOT and are passed without having their emissions tested will nevertheless be road legal until their next MoT next year.
The test discrepancies mean that emissions element of the MoT has been suspended for all K-reg catalyst-fitted Daihatsu, Ford, HMS Sports cars, Isuzu, Mazda RX7, Porsche, Proton, Rover, Subaru and TVR models, and for some Alfa Romeo, Aston Martin, Caterham, Fiat, Lada, Lancia and Mercedes-Benz models.
AA head of research and materials testing, John Stubbs, said: "We need this moratorium since clearly it would be unfortunate to take vehicles off the road. That is not the solution."
The AA is also concerned that the confusion over the emissions element of the MoT could undermine confidence in the whole test procedure, of which exhaust emissions are only a small part. And that is not the only problem facing the new MoT, which introduced tough new emissions standards for catalyst-fitted cars individually tailored to each model and make according to manufacturer's data. There are already cases of the same car failing the test on emissions at one MoT centre only to pass it at another.
Businessman Frank Benzin was stunned when his 1.4 litre Renault 19, first registered exactly three years ago, failed its first MoT at his local Renault dealership because of poor emissions. He instantly sought a second opinion and, half an hour later, without anyone having touched the car's engine, it passed at another garage without any difficulties.
The car, with 72,000 miles on the clock, has been regularly serviced and Mr Benzin, manager of the Conifers Printing Press company in South Devon, said that when he took it for an MoT he was totally confident it would pass. For it to fail, and then pass elsewhere he said, showed that the new emissions element of the examination was in total disarray.
"I was sure the car would pass the MoT and couldn't believe it when it failed," he said. "So I went round the corner to another garage within half an hour and it passed with a completely different readout.
"Nationally a lot of people are going through the same problem, going to a garage where the emissions from their cars are being incorrectly measured, and as a result could be facing bills for a new catalytic converter of £200 to £500 and be really out of pocket.
"If motorists, like me, seek a second opinion, they could save themselves that money. The system, which is being introduced nationally, is clearly not 100 per cent accurate.
The trouble is that you have a computer telling the mechanic that the car has failed and he or she has to go on that, but computers cannot be 100 per cent accurate unless every detail of the procedure is followed precisely, and every garage must use the same technology. I am afraid that is not the case.
"I think it is outrageous, and enough is enough. It doesn't look as if those in office have done their homework on this. I am all for clean air, but my experience shows the system isn't working."
This year around 1.5 million K-registered catalyst-fitted cars registered on or after August 1 1992 will go through the new MoT, and initial estimates were that up to 20 per cent as many as 300,000 would fail because their catalytic converter is broken, damaged, or is otherwise not working properly. Bills would average £200-£400, but with a Rolls-Royce it could cost as much as £1,700 for a replacement catalyst unit.
The Retail Motor Industry Federation's own estimation is that the failure rate because of emissions for cat-fitted cars will be between 16 and 20 per cent, and that 150,000 motorists will need replacement converters and another 150,000 will need remedial work.
Catalysts remove approximately 90 per cent of the three worst exhaust fume pollutants carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, which are major contributors to acid rain and smog.
YOU'RE NEVER alone in a Formula One car. Every move made by the driver and every effect on the car is monitored by sensors and stored in an onboard computer, writes Alan Copps.
During a race, this "telemetry" is transmitted live to the pit engineers. The graph on the left is an extract from the data for Tony Dodgins's last lap and shows what happened when he momentarily lost control. Harvey Postlethwaite, Tyrell's technical director, gave the explanation.
On the top border, green denotes the curve, white the straight. The scale at the bottom is the lap distance; our story starts at 4.280 kilometres. It spans the distance marked on the circuit map below. The top black line shows the throttle position. It is trailing close to zero as the car comes out of the corner at about 125kph (77mph), a speed denoted by the second black line.
At point A, Dodgins puts his foot down. The effect is seen on the blue line which shows the G forces on the driver; a reading below zero is a force to the right, above to the left. From a steady level close to 1G to the right in the corner, there is a quick shift to the left.
The green line indicates wheelspin. The kph scale on the left shows the difference between the speed of rotation of the rear powered wheels and that of the front wheels. That first prod on the throttle sets the rear wheels spinning 7kph faster.
The throttle then bounces as Dodgins tries to let the car settle and a moment later, at point B, he presses the throttle to the floor. With 700bhp blasting through the rear wheels, but little adhesion, the wheelspin goes off the graph. The speed rises to a peak close to 180kph (112mph) and the blue line indicates a further shift to the left.
At point C, Dodgins lifts his foot, the right thing to do, but so violently that the wheels lock. The throttle responds instantly and the wheelspin line shows the front wheels turning faster. But the red line for brake pressure then shows him doing, in Postlethwaite's words "absolutely the wrong thing". A stab on the brake sends the car's rear end slewing to the left, then to the right. The snap is repeated before he takes his foot off everything and gingerly resumes progress along the straight. In Postlethwaite's words: "The conditions were infernal. It was a good effort to get that car back."
Tony Dodgins, Grand Prix editor of F1 Racing, discovers what F1 reality is like behind the wheel
Tyrell's regular driver, Mika Salo, paced about like some expectant father. He was worried about "his baby" having all its limbs.
The Finnish Formula One ace had been smart enough to negotiate one of the 1995 cars for keeps at the end of its useful life a moment that was seemingly fast approaching. The car was out there on a drenched Barcelona track in the hands of a journalist whose racing experience amounted to a season of endurance Pro Karting.
Now, Pros weigh around 100 kilos and are powered by two 5.5bhp Honda generator motors; a Tyrrell-Yamaha 023 weighs 500 kilos and has a monstrous 700bhp. A power-to-weight ratio roughly 13 times as great.
Crass, mindless stupidity or simply extreme folly? Could a mere mortal handle it? A man more used to climbing into a Sierra 4x4. A man whose painstaking preparation amounted to five laps of Barcelona in a Citroen Xantia Turbo Diesel the day before ... in the dark?
Ken Tyrrell will be 72 on May 3. It is 27 years since his team won the first of three world championships with Jackie Stewart. He's seen it all. Still, he wanted to see this. When I pointed out we shared a birthday, a broad grin lit up the craggy features. "I just hope you're going to see a few more ..."
My previous record was not good. I'd piled up a Formula Ford and destroyed someone else's Lotus Cortina at Silverstone. "Have you any idea what you are letting yourself in for?" Tyrrell wanted to know. "The deal is this: we will insure the car and you will insure yourself. If a tyre goes down and you kill yourself tough. We are not responsible."
"You've got him worried already," laughed managing director and technical boffin Harvey Postlethwaite as he scribbled in huge letters on a sticky memo pad which was then slapped on to my Filofax. RH=UP; LH=DOWN. It referred to gear shifting with the Tyrrell's steering mounted paddles up the box with the right hand and down with the left. "Look at that every day between now and the time you drive our car."
The day arrived. I might be roughly the same height as Salo, but there it ended. Long body and short legs meant another 4cms on the crutch straps. Long indulgence and short exercise spelled another 6cms on the lap strap. But the pedal positions felt near perfect. I would only use the clutch to leave the pits, then forget its existence. However ... What you don't need with 700bhp is rain but it was
tipping down. Tough. The track time was non-negotiable. It was now or never.
Cocooned low in the cockpit, I flick down the ignition switch and the Yamaha engineers fire it up from behind my shoulders. The external starter motor is plugged in and an air bottle is used to charge the pneumatic valves as an extra safety measure. There is none of the gut-wrenching vibrations you expect. The Yamaha, in fact, feels quite removed.
Time to go. I arm the gearbox electronics via a three-position switch on the right of the cockpit, depress the clutch and flick the right-hand gear paddle to select first. You need 3000rpm plus to prevent a stall and the pit apron glistens. Avoiding potential embarrassment, the mechanics push the car out and point it in the right direction. I determine not to jerk to an embarrassing standstill, discover there is more clutch travel than I imagine, find the biting point and lurch away down the lane. I'm driving a Formula One car!
PLUMES of spray fan from the front tyres. The steering is direct, kart-like, but not heavy. That, though, is probably because I'm not going quickly enough to load it up. Down the hill into the slowest hairpin, my head is jolted by bumps, which in the road car hadn't even existed. Even on the over-run, with no throttle, the engine tries to push the tail out.
The run down into the Wurth chicane provides the first opportunity to get hard on the throttle. Trouble is, as the road kinks left a stream of standing water runs across the track. Even the likes of Senna and Prost have spun in a straight line in such conditions, so I back off, turn into Wurth with practically no speed ... and the thing swaps ends instantly.
Time to radio in: "Don't worry, I haven't hit anything." I sit there on the grass feeling foolish while they come out with the air bottle and fire it up again. Then it's my first hill start in an F1 car. Back to the pits for a check over.
Out again, and this time I tickle it around before coming through on to Barcelona's mile-long straight for the first time. I get on to the throttle and wait for the earth-shattering explosion of power. But it's not as dramatic as I'd thought. That's because they've programmed the electronic throttle for delayed response and somewhat less than full power. But the brakes: they are simply phenomenal, hauling the speed down as I go on them at the 200 metre board from 150mph plus. Real drivers leave it later than 100 metres from 190mph!
The Wurth chicane catches me out again, this time on the exit. Another spin. Another stall. Air bottle needed again and back to the pits. I ask for a more instant throttle and systems engineer Chris Hills flicks forward the throttle mode switch on the right of the cockpit. They also give me full power. With the scheduled hour fast evaporating, it's time for my last run.
Leaving the pitlane, I instantly feel the difference. Now the shifts from the pneumatic six-speed gearbox feel even more stunning. Flick, flick. I go from cog to cog in milliseconds, up and down. I come out on to the straight and give it 85 per cent throttle. How do I know that? Because the ensuing "moment" amuses the team so much that they expand it on the computer telemetry which monitors everything the car does. It's the ultimate spy in the cab.
Instantly there is wheelspin, so I back off, figuring the car must not have been straight. Convinced it now is, I give it full throttle. Suddenly I'm in a 1.5g tail-slapper as the car snaps left-right-left-right as quickly as you can blink. The Tyrrell crew run for cover.
"THE steering inputs looked mighty interesting and the wheelspin was off the graph!" Postlethwaite explained later. "I don't know whether you knew much about it, but you did bloody well to get that back. It's not a nice feeling to lose an F1 car in the wet at 180kph. Ken had already sent for the ambulance ..."
Chastened, I carry on with a suitably progressive and respectful application of right boot. Three-quarters of the way round the next lap, I spin once more, thankfully without contact again, and I'm out of time. I've done two complete laps with a time for the three-mile circuit that is 30 seconds away from Tyrrell's Ukyo Katayama, when he goes out in slightly drier conditions.
So, can the man in the street do it? On the basis of my efforts, not a chance. A spectating Martin Brundle summed it up: "You weren't going to heat the tyres or brakes, or go quickly enough to generate downforce. You can spin these things at the most pathetically slow speeds and, given the conditions, you were on a hiding to nothing. Having the confidence to drive it quickly means knowing it. And how do you get to know it? It's the chicken and egg situation."
From an article in ‘F1 Racing', a new monthly devoted to Grand Prix racing to be published in English and German. The first issue will be available this Friday, February 16 price £2.95.
... Neil Maclean explores the chewing-gum island of Chios.
The first pupil to be scolded for chewing gum in class and I am almost completely sure of my facts here was one of Homer's lads, sitting on the rocky outcrop above the village of Vrontados on the island of Chios.
The old blind poet, perched on what is now known as Homer's Seat, on hearing sounds of mastication, uttered the immortal lines: "What are you chewing boy? Spit it out," which has since became a refrain of teachers throughout the ages, only recently superseded, in the late 20th century, by: "What are you smoking boy? Get off the ceiling."
It is tempting to assume an island which is famous for little more than Homer and chewing gum must be a dull place but Chios hides a bright light under a modest bushel. Few tourists even know of the island's existence, although it is the fifth largest island in the Greek collection. Even some of my most enthusiastic Greek-island-hopping friends failed to locate it on their usually detailed mental maps.
You find it between Lesbos and Samos, so close to Turkey that the castle of Cesme can be clearly seen across the water on a sunny day. It is an affluent place, thanks to maritime money: 15 per cent of the world's commercial shipping is said to be owned by Chiot families and, until recently, they have felt little motivation to enter the tourist market. Besides, Chios has few really good beaches to attract the tourist crowds; a holiday here is more cerebral than that.
For me, the highlight of the island was a visit to the monastery of Nea Moni. Founded in 1045 and inspired by a trio of monks who spotted a miraculous icon on the site, it is an atmospheric place, pungent with incense, and has the best views of the island. A bearded priest ushered me through an entrance way covered in ancient, smudged frescoes to another chamber, this time alive with an astonishing array of mosaics, celebrated for the vibrancy of their colours. Sombre-looking saints glared at me from the ceiling. "During the midnight masses," said the priest, "these faces shimmering in the candle light seem to come alive."
In the katholikon next door a clock struck eight six hours adrift stuck on ancient Byzantine time. The priest paused to show me a cupboard full of human skulls, a reminder of the infamous Turkish massacre of 1822.
The mastic-producing villages in the south of Chios, collectively known as the Masticora, were treated less-harshly by the Turks at that time, thanks to their valuable crop. It seems the women in the sultan's harem were particularly fond of their chewing gum, although mastic has 101 other uses.
For some reason, Chios is one of the very few places in the world where trees produce mastic. Some people say it is because of a combination of the island's volcanic terrain, soil and climate; villagers believe it is thanks to the tears of Saint Issidor, murdered in AD 250 by the Romans for embracing Christianity.
The most interesting of the Masticora is the village of Mesta, a classic example of fortified architecture with all the houses facing inwards, inter-connected by arches from roof to roof, assisting the villagers to flee attacking pirates and these days, I was told, useful for young lovers hiding from parents.
Behind one perfectly ordinary-looking white-washed facade I found the little vaulted church of Taxiarchis and, at the far end, a massive reredos carved in the 12th century from a single chestnut tree, featuring delicately traced scenes from the old and new testaments, an intricate braille Bible, each little section worth a thousand words.
"The man who carved that drank a bottle of ouzo every day to keep him in good humour," the old caretaker told me.
Chios has had more than its fair share of invaders over the centuries including the Genoese, who ruled the island for 500 or so years from the 14th century, and who, more than anyone, exploited the mastic business. Columbus complained of high prices when he arrived in 1491 to pick up crew, maps and mastic trees to plant should he reach India. The explorer stayed in the Villa Homerica in the Campos area, a fertile valley close to Chora, the capital, which became home to the ruling Genoese elite and wealthy Chiots.
Many of the old villas still stand behind high, honey-coloured stone walls, including the Villa Argentikon. It is run as a sort of house party by the current marchese, a soft-spoken aristocrat from one of the old ruling Genoese families.
There are four villas within the two and a half acres of flower beds, orchards, herb gardens and secluded corners. At dinner you are served a Homeric feast by smart, white-gloved waiters at a candlelit table covered in roses and set with the family silver under a spreading plane tree.
It seems very far away from most people's idea of a Greek island holiday; but then few people even know Chios is a Greek island.
Chios fact file
The author was a guest of the Greek Islands Club, 66 High Street, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey KT12 1BU (01932 220477) and stayed at the Villa Argentikon, featured by the club. Prices range from £893 for a week in May to £1,180 a week in August. The prices are per person for four people sharing a villa, and include return flights from Heathrow to Athens, domestic flights to Chios and breakfast.
Mike Gerrard samples Greek food.
You'll hate Athens. Lots of people say so, and they all give the same reasons: smog, traffic, crowds and few attractions beyond the obvious ones. Worst of all, it is said, you can't get a decent meal there, particularly in the tourist rip-off area known as the Plaka. Here, among the many restaurants, there is only one safe place to eat, they assure you. The trouble is, they all recommend somewhere different.
First, food. In the past couple of years I've spent several weeks in Athens, and eaten well for little more than the price of a visit to a burger bar in Britain. Take Socrates' Prison, for example, where I would gladly be imprisoned for a week in order to eat my way through the menu and sip the draught Guinness. Only a marble's throw from the Acropolis, the inside has a cosy, bar-like atmosphere, with pre-Raphaelite prints on the walls. Outside, there is an attractive walled garden. For £4 I had a delicious beef roll stuffed with parsley, green pepper and aubergine, and, afterwards (for £1.50) a oven-baked apple bursting with raisins, sultanas and walnuts, and drowning in cream.
The Salamandra has only Greek menus, so take your phrase book or take a chance on specials, which include saganaka (fried cheese) and spetsofai (a spicy sausage and pepper stew from the Pelion peninsula). And, if you think Greek salad means only one thing, how about one of its creamy Roquefort salads?
In the Plaka, there are any number of good eating places, as well as a few of the fast-turnover, poor-quality kind. Follow a few simple rules when eating in Greece, and you will not go far wrong. Never eat anywhere which employs someone to coax you inside. Ask to see the kitchen not to look at the food but to check out the chef. If he looks as if he has just escaped from prison, with the blood of his crimes still on his apron, and he has a cigarette dangling from his lips, you're safe. The food will probably be excellent.
For Plaka atmosphere, eat in one of the three basement tavernas along Kidhathineon. To eat outdoors, go to Xynos
or O Platanos. Vegetarians should head for the Eden and its spinach or mushroom pies, meat-free moussaka and the best brown bread this side of the Bosphorus.
So what do you do for the rest of the day, to pass the time between meals? See the Acropolis, of course, and the National Archaeological Museum, and try not to miss the old classical site of Agora.
The Acropolis Study Centre has a fascinating display on how the Parthenon was built, including computer graphics showing how the stone was hauled from nearby quarries.
Among the many smaller museums of Athens, my favourite is the Museum of Greek Musical Instruments, in a 19th-century Plaka mansion. Here you can listen to the exhibits. These range from the urban blues of rembetika to shepherd's pipes and even a display on how to make music from a combination of worry beads and a wine glass. If you thought Greek music was a load of bouzouki, think again.
The Goulandris Museum of Cycladic Art is another treat, the central items being the artefacts of the Cycladic civilisation of 3000-2000BC.
Finally, go beyond the Plaka's souvenir shops into the flea market west of Monastiraki Square, particularly on Sunday mornings, when the market extends for miles, and the noise is enough to wake the dead in the Kerameikos Cemetery alongside. Want to buy a religious icon, a stuffed stork, a car engine, second-hand camera, bootleg music tapes? Then come to Athens on a Sunday morning.
In fact, go to Athens at anytime. I love the place. So might you.
Mike Gerrard is the author of Essential Athens (published by
the AA, £4.99).
Athens fact file
British Airways (0181-759 5511), Olympic Airways (0171-409 3400) and Virgin Atlantic Airways (01293 562345) fly daily to Athens, from around £300 return, but all are at present doing special offers ranging from from about £119 to £140.
Among the many tour operators offering packages to Athens are: Abroad Holidays (0181-767 3030), Eurobreak Inghams (0181-780 7700), Citybreaks (0141-951 8411) and Simple Simon (0171-373 1933).
For futher details, contact the Greek National Tourist Office,
4 Conduit Street, London W1 00J (0171-734 5997.
GREECE:Matthew Bond takes his choice between solitude and socialising in the northern Sporades...
On day one I tangled with a jellyfish. On day two I trod on a sea urchin. On day three... It was time to strike a deal with whichever Greek god it is that protects Alonnisos, the least known and least developed of the northern Sporades. "Enough, enough," I cried: "You start looking after me properly and I promise to write only nice things about your island."
At that precise moment, however, I was in no position to negotiate. I was treading the crystal clear waters of the Aegean, some 15m off the beautiful beach of Megalo Mourtia, staring desperately into the blue, blue depths which had just claimed my wedding ring.
One moment of energetic, showing-off front crawl it was there, the next gone. Miserably I turned towards the beach not waving, nor indeed drowning, but certainly heading towards divorce.
But fair's fair, the old god made good. Less than five minutes later a passing Norwegian snorkeller surfaced, spluttering the Norwegian for "is this it?"
And from that moment on, Alonnisos and I got on... well, swimmingly is not the right word, but certainly very well. For it, too, has known serial misfortune. In 1950 its vines were devastated by disease; in 1965 its main village was destroyed by an earthquake and in recent years large tracts of its exquisite pine forests have been laid waste by fire. But houses can be rebuilt, mainland wines bought in and enough trees survive to make Alonnisos a relaxing stop-off point on a tour of the sometimes-hectic Sporades.
For the first week we stayed in a hillside villa on the outskirts of Old Alonnisos, with spectacular 180-degree views towards the uninhabited island of Peristera in one direction and the distant, purple hills of Evvia in the other. And yes, old Alonnisos is the town that was destroyed by the earthquake.
One man's disaster is another man's opportunity and while the original inhabitants were quickly rehoused in the island's main port, Patitiri, the shells of their once-beautiful houses in old Alonnisos were snapped up by bargain-seeking foreigners. And beautiful many of them are once again, although now they are owned by English, Germans, Italians and even the odd American. The beautifying process, by the way, continues apace and during the day the air can echo to the sound of electric saws and power drills. It's not a problem, you just go the beach.
The end results of all this relatively recent toil can come as a pleasant surprise to those whose idea of an island holiday home is simply white-washed walls and a stone floor. Ours, for instance, kept with tradition outside but inside the boundary wall boasted four glorious sun terraces and a well-equipped kitchen that made eating in a real possibility. When you're facing the third chicken souvlaki in as many days, that can be a comforting thought.
Not to be outdone by the in-comers, the local authority has also embarked on a programme of improvements and is setting quite a pace. In the week we were resident about half the island's dirt roads were tarred for the first time. Such progress is probably anathema to those who have been driven to Alonnisos first from Skiathos and then from neighbouring Skopelos by the search for peace and quiet. But it makes life a lot easier for the casual visitor.
The tracks that descend from the main road running along the island's mountainous spine are very steep in places and not ideally suited to mopeds. Although you can reach most of the beaches by caique from Patitiri, further exploration really does require a car. Ours came with the villa and allowed us to explore several of the beaches along the island's eastern coastline. Although they don't quite measure up to Skopelos and Skiathos (you don't really find sand on Alonnisos) the water is very clean and there are far fewer people about. But again the pace of change means you should be prepared for surprises. Driving north to Ayos Dimitrios, in search of what the latest edition of the Rough Guide described as "real solitude", we found a strip of perfect white shingle, a line of perfectly arranged beach umbrellas and a bar playing contemporary dance music. We loved it much more fun than solitude. In search of more of the same we spent our second week on Skopelos, less than an hour away by Flying Dolphin hydrofoil. The change was instantly apparent more restaurants, more beaches and a lot more people. It took getting used to. As did some of the prices the early evening views from the fishing village of Agnodas are wonderful but it is the moment you work out that the fish you have just ordered has cost £30 that lingers in the memory.
However, there are ways of escaping the crowds. First, you can rent one of the growing number of superior villas, which give you the opportunity to create your own private enclave. Ours an exquisite building with a high-ceilinged main room resembling an artist's studio was in the middle of its own olive grove, an oasis of tranquillity just five minutes moped ride from Skopelos Town. A tranquil oasis that is, as long as you didn't mind the sound of dogs, cockerels and an unhappy mule.
An alternative route to peace and quiet is to hire a boat at Panormos and motor slowly northwards along the coastline. Just past the vast pebble beach of Milia, you reach Hovolo, where a succession of inlets not accessible by land just about guarantees you a private beach. The only problem is that when you find paradise, you want to stay there. So remember to take a picnic. We didn't, so headed north to Loutraki and lunch.
The island's well-maintained road network offers another means of escape, particularly if you don't mind bumping the last couple of miles to the wilder, rockier northeast coast. But there is escape and escape and, when the street theatre of the harbour-side promenade got too much, we headed up the steep, narrow streets towards the Castro, a ruined Venetian fortress. History was not our aim. Happiness, we had discovered, was a cafe called Vrahos, a barman who knew his cocktails and a waiter who liked modern jazz. And probably the best view on the island.
Getting there
The author was a guest of the Greek Islands Club (01932 220477). On Alonnisos he stayed at Evros House, which sleeps up to four but for two people costs from £905 per person a week in low season to £1,224 in high season, including flights, transfers, maid service and car hire. On Skopelos he stayed at Jennie's House, which can sleep up to six but for two people costs from £943 per person per week in low season to £1,348 in high season.
Greek Islands Club's spring "Private Collection" brochure has villas and hotels priced from £1,000 per person per week.
... and once there, Ginny Dougary sees her spouse in a pleasing new light; plus where to find fine food
It did not start well. I had been anticipating the short, sharp thrill of romance, not the bug-eyed haul of a flight to New York. It had been more than a year since my husband and I last had a break from the rollercoaster demands of family life. A cupidinous recharge was long overdue. For months we had been looking forward to our midweek break in Paris, now only three hours away from London by Eurostar. In theory.
Half an hour out of Waterloo our zippy, new, high-speed train stopped in its tracks. As the minutes, and then the hours creaked by, it became increasingly clear that the minor technical hitch was a major electrical blow-out: we seemed destined to spend our romantic break in south Croydon. Our dinner could not be served because there was no power to heat it. The dinky pink pseudo-Deco lamps were the first to go, followed by the neon strip above them, then the emergency lights dimmed and faded, one by one, until we were plunged into darkness.
As the next train for Paris whizzed by, ours limped back to London past those names which resonate with romance: Bromley South, Beckenham Junction, Penge East and Brixton. At ten o'clock, we drew into Waterloo. It had taken us four hours to get back to where we had started.
When we finally arrived in Paris, it was three in the morning. As we filed down to the taxi rank, it was painfully evident that the Gallic cabbies had not been warned about our late arrival. There was not a taxi in sight. My husband took charge, leading the troops into the deserted streets around the Gare du Nord. Had he not done so, we might have stood there, dazed and befuddled, until dawn. My hubby, the Euro-hero. This, at least, was good for romance.
The Hotel de Vigny, whose staff greeted us sympathetically at 4am, proved equally restorative, and after six hours' sleep, the world seemed a much better place.
You can keep Paris in the springtime. As far as I am concerned, autumn is the business. We hit the Bois de Boulogne, where lovers walk as the russet leaves tumble out of the sky. Across the Champs-Elysees and a promenade down the grand Avenue Foch, where the poorest countries boast the most opulent, honey-coloured embassies, and everywhere there is something to please the eye. The scalloped roads, the trees sprouting out of their filigree doilies, the wrought-iron fences.
The park itself was in full autumnal bloom. The smokey-green depths of the lake emerging from the amber foliage; the purple-leaved trees with their bright orange berries like Christmas lights. A handsome man rowing past gave a wicked smile. All of which is rather good for the senses, if not the soul.
Best of all was lunch. It is a tremendous feeling to stumble on somewhere uniquely Parisian without the aid of a guide book. This was an unpromising kiosk with an extraordinary clientele of dog owners. At one table there were leather-jacketed bikers. Their neighbours were a pair of genteel and exquisitely dressed elderly ladies. There was a family group of mothers, babies and grannies, all wearing hairbands. And a sprawling circle of low-lifers: a navy-blazered drunk who performed an operatic duet with Mustafa, the kiosk-owner ("Oh merde, j'ai soif" ... "Attends. J'arrive"), a huge man with an aubergine face, cowboy hat and anorak; a very old man, his grizzled head swaddled in a Breton sweater; and a Josephine Baker lookalike who nibbled her chicken leg with an air of detached refinement.
It was a delicious but noisy experience, tucking into sauteed potatoes flecked with herbs, a salad and omelette, red wine served in Fanta beakers, under the clear blue skies; the members of the dog club yelling at their pekes, poodles and labradors.
On to the Empire-style mansion of the Musee Marmottan on rue Louis-Bouilly, a short walk from Mustafa's kiosk. There is something particularly beguiling about a small museum. The Musee Rodin, the Dulwich Picture Gallery, the Marmottan are all gracious buildings in lovely grounds, with just enough great art to leave you feeling nourished but not overfed. At the Marmottan there is a room full of wondrous medieval illuminations, all blues and pinks and golds worked in meticulous detail. And, downstairs, a collection of some of the best-known Impressionist works, including Water Lilies and, the painting which gave a name to the movement, Impression: Sunrise. Beautiful paintings should be enough to transport the true romantic into a state of dreamy intoxication. But my husband and I are a pair of shameless voluptuaries. We need the real thing. We return to our bedroom for a glass of champagne and a duo of religieuses: two sumptuous balls of coffee-iced pastry.
Emerging several hours later, we were refreshed, invigorated and ready for more food. The Hotel de Vigny, like the Musee Marmottan, is small in size and huge in its pleasures. This sort of discreet opulence is perfect for engendering the sense of a dangerous liaison. The antique chandeliers, the mirrors, the salle de bain in cinnamon marble, the plump ranks of snowy pillows in the boudoir off the little living room lined with old books by illustrious authors, all seductively conspire to make one feel mistressy and illicit.
Sadly, this sense of langorous well-being was not to last. We had asked the charming hotel manager to suggest a "hot" new restaurant for dinner. She chose Yvan, off the Champs-Elysees; a big hit apparently with the fashion crowd. You might think that this, in itself, would be
an inherently dubious recommendation for a couple who like to eat. And you would be right. But it was late and we were still recovering from Eurostar, so off we went for our 10.30pm sitting.
It is a pretty restaurant. Rather too pretty. Yvan is so full of extravagantly perfumed displays of flowers and eye-dazzling paintings of fruit and marble busts that one's senses are overloaded. You feel exhausted before you start.
Before you start. We waited for half an hour before we were seated, by which time the queue was snaking out of the front door. The food, when it arrived, was cold; the sauce had congealed during the long hiatus. The service was sloppy and imperious. Mustafa's kiosk, at a fraction of the price, won hands down.
Graveyards may not be most people's idea of a romantic outing, but they are mine. A moss-covered morgue brings out the moochy adolescent in me, which was the last time my heart was broken. And as all romantics know, it is always more lyrical to be love's victim than her victor.
Pere Lachaise Cimetiere, where we spent the next morning tramping, was a disappointment. Too many American tourists and bolshy guards and not enough overgrown ruins. We searched, in vain, for the monuments to Heloise and Abelard (the amants celebres). The directions to the graves of Simone Signoret and Oscar Wilde had been obliterated by the tracing of millions of fingers over the years. There was a gratifyingly macabre monolith with a frieze of laughing skulls and a touching display of fresh flowers in front of Rossini's resting place. We did find ourselves in front of the tomb of James Douglas Morrison (1943-1971), which now requires the presence of two fulltime guards "parce que les gens ne respectent pas". One of the tributes was a scrap of paper with the words "Hello, I Love You A poem." I toyed with the idea of leaving my poem, Light My Fire, but thought better of it.
We had our last meal in
a wonderfully old-fashioned
restaurant, in what is becoming the mega-trendy new quartier of Paris. The Bastille is now being stormed by 1960s design shops and off-the-wall galleries. Frankly, I am beginning to worry about my husband. He chose to eat calves brains for lunch. And on our slow meander back to the station he was captivated by the displays of offal in the charcuteries. "Will you look at that?" he said in front of one spectacular array of pigs' heads, "What a beautiful sight."
Well, they do say Paris brings out the romantic in you.
Paris: fact file
The author was a guest of Relais & Chateaux and Eurostar.
Hotel de Vigny, 9-11 rue Balzac, 75008 Paris. There are 26 rooms and 11 suites. Rates per night for a double/twin room are Fr 2,200 (£290) to Fr 2,600 (£345). Rates per night for suite are Fr 2,600 (£345) to Fr 4,500 (£600). Breakfast is Fr 90 (£12) per person. Reservations: contact the Hotel Vigny: (00331 40750439; fax 00331 40750581) or Relais & Chateaux.
EUROSTAR.
There are up to 13 Eurostar trains a day tetween London and Paris starting at 6.19am from London and 6.37 from Paris(7.10 on Saturdays, 8.07am on Sundays) The journey takes just over three hours. The last train from Paris leaves at 20.07 and from London at 18.53 (17.53 on Saturdays, 19.23 on Sundays).
Some stop at Ashford, Calais, Frethun, and Lille. Return fares start form £59, Standard returns are 155. The first-class fare is £220.
For availability and bookings call (Lo-call) 0345 881881 or contact travel agents and some stations.
THERE are more than 1,400 hotels to choose from in Paris. Many are delightful, others morbid. Here is a list of tried-and-tested favourites, and not too expensive. The emphasis is on charm and comfort, and the hotels include some of the most romantic nooks the city has to offer, though the cheapest are necessarily rather basic. Now is a good time to go, because many hotels are offering discounts.
Prices, given in francs, are per room per night based on two people sharing. As Weekend goes to press, the exchange rate is Fr7.57 = £1.
PRIZE COLLECTION
If a single reservations number can suit almost any Paris hotel needs, it is Compagnie Generale Imobilier et de Service's toll-free central reservations number, 0800 895 950, for their 28 hotels (from two to four stars). Their excellence and charm are exceptions to the customary rule that company-run hotels lack personality and flair.
At the top of the range is the superbly manorial Parc Victor Hugo, Avenue Raymond-Poincare, 16e: five stately buildings around a courtyard near the Trocadero, renovated in a "British" style under the direction of Nina Campbell. It is the workplace of Joel Robuchon, France's most sought-after and admired chef. From Fr2,300.
The beautifully decorated Baltimore, between the Etoile and Trocadero on Avenue Kleber, 16e, is handily poised above the Boissiere Metro station. It must appeal even to Euro-sceptics: its restaurant, Bertie's, offers only British food. From Fr1,990.
The Castille in Rue Cambon, 1er, has an Italian flavour and offers access to the Ritz's health centre. From Fr2,300. CGIS's 18 Libertel establishments two or three-star hotels are similarly brilliant at their own level. They include the Bellechasse (from Fr910), near the Orsay museum, the Grand Turenne (from Fr840) in the Marais, the Moulin (from Fr810) in Pigalle and the chintzily Victorianised Terminus Nord, which offers huge rooms at relatively small prices (Fr500-Fr675), right beside Eurostar's Paris terminal.
IDIOSYNCRATIC CHARM
The Hotel du Jeu de Paume: 5 Rue St Louis-en-l'Ile (43 26 14 18; fax 40 46 02 76). A stunning discovery in what was the royal tennis court on the Isle St Louis: a miracle of glass, timbers and hanging galleries. The rooms (from Fr795) are light, airy and delightful.
Saint-Merry: 78, Rue de la Verrerie, 4e (42 78 14 15; fax 40 29 06 82). A gothic riot, installed in the presbytery of the Eglise St-Merri and fitted out in darkly ecclesiastical style. Fr400-Fr950.
Vieux Paris: 9 Rue Git-le-Coeur, 6e (43 54 41 66; 43 26 00 15). Louis XI Left Bank building in a quiet alley near the Seine. Fr990-Fr1470.
Terrass' Hotel: 12-14 Rue Joseph de Maistre, 18e (46 06 72 85). Overlooking Montmartre cemetery. The roof-terrace restaurant has a terrific view over Paris. Fr930-Fr1,230.
Saint-Gregoire: 43 Rue de l'Abbe-Gregoire, 6e (45 48 23 23). Near Montparnasse, it has a yellow and pink decor, nice old furniture, with breakfasts in a vaulted cellar. Fr760-Fr890.
Grands Hommes: 17 Place du Pantheon, 5e (46 34 19 60). The birthplace of Surrealism, comfortable and friendly. Opposite the Pantheon. Fr635-Fr760.
Hotel de la Bretonnerie: 27 Rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, 4e (48 87 77 63; fax 42 77 26 78). Enthusiastically run in a 17th-century building between the Pompidou Centre and the Marais. Most rooms big, some with beams. Fr620-Fr730.
CHEAP BUT CHEERFUL
Esmeralda: 4 Rue St-Julien-le-Pauvre, 5e (43 54 19 20). The owner of this quaint little 16th-century place is a painter, sculptor and writer. Some rooms have views of Notre Dame. Fr450-Fr490.
Prima Lepic: 29 Rue Lepic, 18e (46 06 44 64). Welcoming family-run hotel in the market street of Montmartre. Breakfast in a trompe-l'oeil orangery. Fr350-Fr400.
Nesle: 7 Rue de Nesle, 6e (43 54 62 41). Exotic decor, and urban farmyard. Cash only up front. Fr260-Fr320.
BASIC BARGAINS
Hotel des Arts: 7 Cite Bergere, 9e. Well-run and friendly, in a quiet alley with other good cheap hotels. Fr325-Fr380.
Pratic Hotel: 20, Rue de l'Ingenieur Keller, 15e. Clean, friendly hotel near the Eiffel Tower. Fr225-430.
Ideal: 3 Rue des Trois-Freres, 18e (46 06 63 63). Clean bargain close to the Sacre-Coeur funicular. Fr125-Fr250.
Correction: Headline: Hotel Terminus Nord, Paris;Weekend;Correction Issue Date: Saturday February 10, 1996 Page: 4 The room rate for the Hotel Terminus Nord, Paris (Weekend, page 18), is from Fr985. The rate for those travelling by Eurostar at weekends is Fr700, with breakfast.
I seldom reveal domestic intimacies but all that follows has a direct relevance. A short time ago my partner, Mary, turned 40. Albeit fresh and frolicsome, there was no denying a personality in trauma. By way of antidote, I planned a wild, romantic extravaganza, a blissful memory to comfort her on the slide to senility.
I chose Paris as a city of happy associations, superb food (culinary delights take precedence after a certain age) and with a new high-speed rail link to invoke the age of civilised travel.
We made a good start. Almost. The gleaming symbol of Anglo-French technology pulled out of Waterloo on time stopped, and pulled back in again. A power failure, apparently. We finally got under way half an hour later. It was then that the "purser" (very posh, these trains) came on the Tannoy to announce an industrial dispute in Paris which, for reasons that were never entirely clear, prevented first-class passengers from enjoying a full breakfast menu. Instead, we were served with a selection of what tasted like cardboard cutouts of the food we might have enjoyed if the caterers had been working normally.
However, the journey itself was an unqualified success. A smooth and speedy excursion across the fields of southern England and northern France with a 25-minute bit in the middle which has passengers staring out into a subterranean blackness. The Channel Tunnel has nothing to show but you can't help looking at it in wonderment.
A taxi from the Gard du Nord took us to the Hotel de Crillon on the Place de la Concorde. For the uninitiated, this is no ordinary lodging house. Other hotels may match the Crillon for sheer luxury but few, if any, can aspire to its style. The only first-class hotel in Paris still under family control, it extols imperial splendour with its palatial 18th-century facade and high-ceilinged rooms stuffed with gold-painted, twiddly furniture. Modesty forbids me to specify the dimensions of our suite; suffice to say the grand piano in the corner did not look out of place.
The front view of the hotel, over the Place de la Concorde, has to be one of the finest cityscapes in Europe. The far side of the square is bordered by the Seine and beyond is the National Assembly. Far to the left is the Pantheon, Notre Dame and the Louvre. To the right, the gold dome of Les Invalides shines like a beacon, while a little further on the same trajectory is the Eiffel Tower. At night the scene breaks up into a riot of illumination with vehicles racing all ways across the square, the pleasure boats passing sedately along the Seine and the famous landmarks picked out in incandescent glory.
With supper booked for Les Ambassadeurs, the grandest of the Hotel de Crillon's two restaurants, we settled for a light lunch (if such a thing is to be had in Paris) at the Bofinger on the rue de la Bastille. We took the pretty route, a half-hour walk through little streets lined with galleries selling pictures at affordable prices. It was a reminder that Paris is still the natural home for artists. They have here a market for paintings that is not restricted to chocolate-box cliches.
Parading as the oldest brasserie in Paris, the Bofinger can be a tourist trap. But the bubbling atmosphere overcomes the confusion of accents, and fruits de mer or choucroute, the two favourite dishes, taste all the better for serving under a splendid Art Deco glass dome.
The afternoon was handed over to culture. With time at a premium we avoided the big museums in favour of the easily manageable Musee National Picasso on the rue de Thorigny. While not the most outstanding of galleries devoted to a single artist (the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam takes some beating) the pictures, many from Picasso's collection, reflect the full range of his imagination. The gallery is a beautifully covered 17th-century town mansion, as impressive in its own way as the treasures it contains.
And so back to the Hotel de Crillon and the feast of Les Ambassadeurs.
While Mary fixed on the foie gras (served warm), a sensitive digestion led me to the lobster salad. We both followed with lapin, as soft and delectable as the accompanying mustard sauce. The wine was a problem. I looked towards a vintage of Mary's year of birth but the 1955 Chateau Cheval Blanc St Emilion cost more than £600. There had to be a limit and this was it. Another stab at the wine list produced a 1989 Margaux at a figure some way short of a remortgage.
The ambience was formal but not inhibiting. Among the other bill-payers were several sleek, grey-haired men, who looked as if they had done well out of business or politics, dining with elegant women half their age. The price of wine did not figure in their conversations.
The memory of a superb meal remained strong well into the next day when we tried to rebuild the appetite with a brisk walk along the Champs-Elysees. It is always a joy but particularly on a Sunday morning when the traffic is light and there is more opportunity to stand and stare. A truly diverting sight was the gloriously politically incorrect poster for the movie, Pret-a-Porter: six naked women marching purposely towards the camera. Not seen in London, who would dare say that London is poorer as a result? Me, for one.
Culinary progress continued with lunch at the Restaurant Paul, on the Place Dauphine, a small family concern, cosy in its simplicity. We ate well but not so well as to regret having to bypass the Eurostar meal on the return journey. This was because the Eurostar meal was inedible, though the champagne aperitif was welcome. We were left with the feeling that second class without free meals was better value.
Back at Waterloo, we walked out into the drizzle. There was a long queue at the taxi rank and no taxis. Happy birthday, Mary, and welcome home.
Paris: fact file
The author was assisted by Relais & Chateaux (0171-287 0987; fax 0171-437 0241).
Hotel de Crillon, 10 place de la Concorde, 75008 Paris. There are 120 rooms and 43 suites. Rates per night for double/twin room: Fr3,200 (£426) to Fr4,100 (£546). Rates per night for suite: Fr4,900 (£653) to Fr32,500 (£4,330). Breakfast is from Fr155 (£20) to Fr230 (£30). For reservations contact the Hotel Crillon (00 331 44 71 15 01; fax: 00 331 44 71 15 03), or Relais & Chateaux on the number above.
WHERE once air travel was sophisticated, it is now uncivilised. Delays and stress come with the plane ticket. Thus, when travelling to Paris, its seems sensible to leave the roaring, drinking, toy donkey-buying populace trapped in a holding pattern above Heathrow, and take the train instead.
The Eurostar train is psychologically far less damaging than dealing with airports and ferries. There are no queues, since passports are usually checked on the train. A weekend in Paris or Brussels has suddenly become no different, in terms of travel, from one in Yorkshire or Cornwall. The British now slip under the Channel to see major exhibitions before they come to London, or enjoy lower-priced Paris opera tickets.
The Eurostar takes three hours to Paris, and the plane 45 minutes. But if you add an hour to Heathrow by Tube, checking in, the hassle of retrieving luggage and escaping the satellites at Charles de Gaulle airport, as well as the trip in to central Paris, it is more like four.
The cheapest weekend Eurostar ticket is £59 return, £69 if you travel on a Friday, and there is no requirement to book a fortnight ahead. This compares with £69 on British Airways if you book ahead, plus an airport tax of £7, plus £20 for a taxi from Charles de Gaulle.
When you rise from the scrum beneath Waterloo station into the Eurostar terminal, it is a different world. The shark-nosed TGV trains are grey, with a yellow livery stripe. Staff in yellow and blue suits greet you in your preferred language, and help to put your bags on the train. There is a French-style cafe, a bureau de change and trolleys which fit on the escalators.
In its initial stages, the service was shaky, but now 85 per cent of trains run on time. The Eurostar had its busiest weekend so far during the France-Scotland rugby international, with 17,500 passengers. Normally, many of the trains are half empty, giving one a feeling of value for money.
The food is the only let-down. In first class, at £220 return, you get a fine meal on real china featuring salmon and Belgian chocolates but those in standard class are sadly disappointed. Fantasies of a warm tarte aux poireaux (leek quiche) or even steak frites and a nice glass of Burgundy are crushed. The efforts of Gardner Merchant, the mass-catering company, are no better than British Rail's. The croque monsieur, ordered with great anticipation, is rather dull and soggy. The wine comes in those teeny bottles, and it seems rude to order three at once.
The journey through the Tunnel itself takes 20 minutes and then the train manager announces: "We are now in France. The train is about to reach its full speed of 300kmph." The slight to the laggardly British is clear.
IF HUGGY-BUN really loves Pooh-Bear and wants to demonstrate the fact on Valentine's Day, that loving message in the classified ads ought to be backed up with a weekend somewhere romantic. Romantic locations are plentiful and a phone call to one of the following places could provide a bonus hugs and kisses-wise in the weeks to come. Prices are the lowest available for a weekend (two nights)bed and breakfast, per person, unless otherwise stated.
The Cotswolds have many romantic corners, and candlelit dinners are just one feature of a romantic weekend at the Lygon Arms in Broadway (01386 852255, £225 with dinner and a bottle of champagne). Other attractions include a country club with pool and solarium.
The north Norfolk coast is full of romantic locations, from splendid towns such as King's Lynn, to pretty villages such as Wells-next-the-Sea and historic Walsingham. It can be breezy, so wrap up well and book in at the warm and hospitable Congham Hall (01485 600250, £170 with dinner), an elegant Georgian house in Hillington now converted into a first-class hotel.
MOVING north, the Gulf Stream warms Portpatrick in Wigtownshire, on the west coast of Scotland, where the small but perfect Knockinaam Lodge (01776 810471, £125 with dinner) has sub-tropical gardens, a Michelin-rosetted restaurant, and a programme of champagne tastings.
All right for some, but what about people with children? No problem if you book in for a romantic weekend at Calcot Manor (01666 890391, £130 with dinner), a charming manor-house hotel near Tetbury in Gloucester. This hotel will look after the children while you and the Flopsy Bunny relax in one of two fine restaurants.
Other hotels offering child care include Woolley Grange (01225 864705, £97), close to ever-romantic Bath, and Ockenden Manor (01444 416111, £138 with dinner), in the ancient village of Cuckfield in West Sussex, from where adventurous lovers can take their partners ballooning, just to give the weekend a lift.
Romantic weekends require romantic locations, so cities such as York should do well, especially for those who stay at Middlethorpe Hall (01904 641241, £188 with dinner) a splendid hotel set in a William and Mary mansion.
London has plenty of corners and can be explored at leisure from small, centrally located hotels such as the Athenaeum (0800 964470, £180) anyone who proposes while dining in the restaurant on Valentine's Day and then marries that person can have a free honeymoon stay or Dukes Hotel in St James's (0171-491 4840, £180), close to the splendours of Royal London ... and the Knightsbridge shopping area.
Finally, try one of the following: Llangoed Hall (01874 754525, £170 with dinner; Feb 14, £60 double room B&B) near Hay on Wye; the Maes y Neuadd Hotel (01766 780200, £130 with dinner) near Harlech in Snowdonia; the Well House (01579 342001, £144) at St Keyne, near Liskard in Cornwall; Johnstounburn House (01875 833696, £130) at Humbie in East Lothian; and the Manor Hotel (01308 897616, £100 with dinner) at West Bexington on the Dorset coast. All these places offer a warm welcome, good food, attentive staff and a romantic atmosphere. After that it is up to you; most lovers would prefer it that way.
... a second honeymoon in a north Devon hotel; and the smart way to score romantic Brownie points
We first saw the Highbullen Hotel in 1976 through a haze of champagne and confetti. Our memories are of a warm, red room, acres of wood panelling, a big, brass bed and feeling slightly miffed at being asked not to smoke in the restaurant. Wrapped up in the brand-new sensation of being married, we delighted in good food and wine, scarcely noticed the sporting facilities on offer, and felt pleasantly marooned by the floods that beset north Devon that year.
It was raining again when we revisited the hotel in Chittlehamholt last summer, this time with children in tow. It is always a little nerve-racking returning to a place you remember with affection. Perhaps our recollections were distorted by honeymoon happiness. Perhaps this was not the right place to bring children; after all the hotel does stipulate "No children under eight".
We need not have worried on either count. If anything, Highbullen has improved. A Victorian Gothic mansion full of turrets and towers, it stands in a parkland estate dotted with cottages, farms and lodges, most of which have been converted into additional guest bedrooms. Just over a year ago Highbullen acquired 85 acres of ancient woodland inhabited by wild red and roe deer, foxes and badgers. Another recent addition is an 18-mile stretch of fishing rights along the banks of the River Mole. A second restaurant added in the 1980s juts out over a wooded valley and the views, especially at sunset, are magnificent. Pious former-smokers, we now wholeheartedly endorse the restaurant's no-smoking policy.
As soon as we saw the abundance of other families with adolescent and teenage children, we relaxed. Highbullen is an informal, family-run hotel. Hugh and Pam Neil first came across the house in 1963 "a ridiculous place full of bats and broken windows, no water and a decrepit generator" and moved in with their two small children, both of whom are now closely involved with the running of the hotel.
Mrs Neil, a devotee of auctions since the 1940s, has furnished many rooms at Highbullen with her "finds". The vast, ornate Victorian mahogany bed in our room cost £13 in the 1950s and the pale green, tasselled velvet curtains were a mere £3. Mrs Neil uses antique textiles she has collected to make curtains and lampshades for the bedrooms. She dries her own flowers, and every nook and cranny of the hotel is filled with dried arrangements and, in season, vases of fresh sweet peas and roses from the garden.
On our honeymoon we rarely emerged from our comfortable cocoon. A bracing ten-mile walk in pouring rain to Barnstaple (and the return trip in the back of a haystrewn pickup van) was our only foray into the outside world. The sporting facilities we had ignored then as a couple were now a boon for a family. We had hardly unpacked before our son and daughter had ferreted out the indoor putting green and table tennis room. Later, Helen swam like a dolphin in the deserted, kidney-shaped indoor pool while I had my toe nails painted bright red in the leisure complex and Paul finally managed to achieve his ambition to thrash his father on the tennis court. Croquet on the lawn, such a genteel game when played by other families, proved a great hit with our offspring who revelled in sending opponents's balls plummeting down the hillside.
Rain did not deter the more intrepid guests from taking full advantage of Highbullen's offer of unlimited free golf on the nine-hole course (18 holes from this spring). Although a professional is available for lessons, the attitude towards golf at Highbullen is pleasantly laid-back. The Neils were happy for Helen to try to hit a ball around a few holes, an idea that would cause apoplexy at most Home Counties golf clubs. One elderly pair of ladies only plays golf during their annual visit to the hotel because they feel it's the one course where they will not be sneered at or patronised.
This relaxed attitude permeates the atmosphere at Highbullen. When the sun shines guests can eat the very good, inexpensive bar snacks (salads, sandwiches, lasagne etc) in a pretty, flower-filled courtyard. Dinner is an informal affair, so a tie and jacket are not essential. The food is pleasant (Delia Smith once worked in the kitchen), and our son declared the meringue filled with clotted cream one of the best dishes he has tasted in months but the menu is not aimed at anyone counting calories or cholesterol. Many of the main courses are served in rich sauces, vegetables come smothered in butter and the dessert list is sinful. If asked, the staff were always willing to leave out the butter or sauces and to produce fruit salads and low-fat milk, but I did wonder if I was the only person among so many sporting types who was worried about healthy eating.
The emphasis at Highbullen is on comfort rather than frills. It is full of unexpected pleasures such as the well-stocked library, the bubbling spa bath and a room devoted to billiards. Although the bathrooms had few of the small luxuries normally associated with four or five-star hotels, the overall effect is of a large, rambling, pleasant and comfortable country house.
If we were not able to recapture fully the delightful self-indulgence and contentment we had enjoyed as newly weds, this was due to family demands, not the hotel. We are currently hatching plans to farm the children out for a weekend so we can return to Highbullen on our own. Perhaps in time for our 20 th anniversary.
Highbullen Hotel, Chittlehamholt, Umberleigh, North Devon EX37 9HD (01769 540561).
The Driver family were guests of Crystal Premier Britain (0181-390 8513) which offers breaks at the hotel from £47.50 per person per night for dinner, bed and breakfast.
BRITAIN: The haunting landscape of the Fens; ideas for entertaining children at half term ...
LONDON
Masque in Action: Members of the Seventeenth Century Heritage Centre re-enact the masque from the days of the Stuart court.
The Banqueting House, Whitehall (0171-930 4179).
Feb 21-24, 10am-4pm. Adults £3, children £2.
Brer Rabbit Visits Africa: More classic tales using marionettes.
Puppet Theatre Barge, Little Venice, Blomfield Road, W9 (0171-249 6876). Daily, Feb 17-25, 3pm. Adults £5.50, children £5.
Eighteenth Century London Workshop: Explore how people lived and try crafts used to make objects in the home.
Geffrye Museum, Kingsland Road, E2 (0171-739 9893).
Feb 20-23 10.30am-12.45pm and 2-4pm. Free but donations requested for materials. +
The Minibeasts: What happens when a little girl is shrunk to the size of an insect? Also Thumbelina's puppet show for three to five-year-olds.
Polka Theatre for Children, 240 The Broadway, SW19 (0181-543 4888). Feb 8 to Apr 6. Times vary. Adults and children £6.50. + Thumbelina: Feb 20-24. Times vary. Adults and children £3.90.
Meet A Roman Actor and his lady who will tell you about life in Roman times.
Museum of London, London Wall, EC2 (0171-600 3699).
Feb 20-23, 10.30am-3pm. Adults £3.50, children £1.75. +
Cinema Club: Cartoons and other children's favourites on half-term Saturday and every weekend.
The Barbican, Silk Street, EC2 (0171-638 8891). Every Saturday, 2.30. Adults £3, children £2.50, membership £4. +
Drama And Crafts Workshop: Run by Stop the Clock Theatre. Includes movement, music and drama for five to seven-year-olds. Myths, Monsters and Masks for eight to ten-year-olds.
BAC, Lavender Hill, Battersea, SW11 (0171-223 2223). Feb 19-23. Mornings for the younger age group, afternoons for the older. £25.50 for whole week, concessions for children of unemployed/students. +
AVON
Budding Snappers: Introduction to Black and White Photography and Printing, a two-day, non-residential workshop by the Royal Photographic Society in different venues around Bristol from February 19-20 for 11 to 16-year-olds. Price £26. Contact the RPS on 01225 462841. Not suitable for the disabled. See also Wiltshire for similar event.
BEDFORDSHIRE
Fantastic Fun: Arts and crafts, racket games, bouncing castles and prizes suitable for seven to 14-year-olds.
Bunyan Sports Centre, Mile Road, Bedford (01234 364481). Feb 19-23, 9.15am to 4.15pm. Half-day sessions £1.60, day £3. Bring a packed lunch.
+ (but telephone first)
BERKSHIRE
More Adventures Of Noddy: Whatever will Enid Blyton's hero get up to next?
The Hexagon, Queenswalk, Civic Centre, Reading (01734 591591). Feb 21-24 at varying times. Adults and children from £5.50. +
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE
Kids Time: A three-day programme for five to 12-year-olds with drama, arts, crafts, parachute games, unihoc and video filming. Stoke Mandeville Community Hall, Stoke Mandeville (01296 625993). Feb 21-23, 8.15am-3.30pm. £10 a day or £6 half day. + (but ring first).
Make Totem Poles using waste material. Eight-year-olds upwards. The workshop will tour villages in the north of the county.
Details of times and places (01296 555210). Feb 19-23 from 10am-3pm. £4. +
Youth Dance Project: Learn to dance with the Aletta Collins Dance Company whatever your ability, for 12-year-olds upwards.
Aylesbury Grammar, Walton Street (01296 555210). Feb 19-23, 10am-4pm. £20 for the four-day course. +
DERBYSHIRE
Children's Week: Steam trains and farm park.
Midland Railway Centre, Butterley Station, Ripley, Derby (01773 747674). Feb 19-23, daily 11.15am-4.15pm. Adults £7.95. Two children free with each adult. + (but ring first).
DORSET
Keep Busy: Roller-skating rink, dry ski slope, crazy golf, mountain bikes and more.
Parkdean Holidays, Warmwell Leisure Resort, near Weymouth (0191 224 0500). £150 for seven nights in one-bedroom lodges, sleeping up to four. + (but ring first).
GLOUCESTERSHIRE
Mr Men In Music Land: Musical show for two to eight-year-olds.
Everyman Theatre, Regents Street, Cheltenham (01242 572573). Feb 20, 1pm and 3.30pm. Adults £6.50, children £4.50.+
Tropical Delights Varied programme about birds.
Wild Fowl and Wetlands Trust, Slimbridge, Gloucestershire (01453 890333). Feb 17-25. Different events on different days so ring first. Adults £4.70, children £2.35, under-fives free, family ticket (two adults and two children) £11. +
HAMPSHIRE
Beyond The North Wind: Puppet and story-telling show.
Storybox Theatre, The Tower, Romsey Road, Winchester (01962 867986). Feb 11, 2 pm. Adults £4, children £3. +
Spread Your Wings: Four-day drama workshop culminating in a show for friends and family.
The Tower, Romsey Road, Winchester (01962 867986). Feb 19-22, 2pm for 7-11 year olds. £16. + (but ring first).
KENT
Half-term Activities: Story-telling, dressing-up and nature trails.
Leeds Castle, Maidstone (01622 765400). February 17-25, 10am to 3pm. Adults £7.50, children £5. Family ticket £21 (two adults and two children). +
NORTHERN IRELAND
Rocky Road Show: Learn about rocks, crystals and fossils.
Ulster Museum, Botanic Gardens, Stranmillis Road, Belfast. (01232 381251). Feb 18 2-4pm, Feb 19 10am-noon and 2-4pm. Free. +
Something To Do On A Wet Sunday Afternoon: Children's show featuring circus skills. The Courtyard Theatre, Doagh Road, Newtownabbey, near Belfast (01232 848287). Feb 18, 2.30pm. Adults and children £3. +OXFORDSHIRE
Curioxity: Hands-on science gallery specialising in light, colour and sound. Freeze your shadow on the shadow screen, walk into a camera and use your fingers to paint on a computer.
The Old Fire Station, George Street, Oxford (01865 794490). Open daily, 10 am-4pm. Adults £1.75, children £1.50. Family £6. Pinocchio: Traditional family pantomime.
The Playhouse, Beaumont, Oxford (01865 798600). Feb 20-24. Various times. Adults from £5.50, children from £4.50. +
Myths and Legends Drama Workshop: Explore the world of fantasy on stage for five to 18-year-olds.
The Theatre, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire (01608 642350). Feb 19-23 from 10 am. Prices vary from £1.50 for an hour to £10 for a day. Booking advisable. + (but ring first).
SCOTLAND
Pirates Ahoy! at the Deep
Sea World Pirate Exhibition with an underwater safari walkways, pirate boat and rock pools.
Deep Sea World, North Queensferry, Fife (01383 411880). Open Monday-Friday from 10am-4pm. Saturday and Sunday from 10am-6pm. Adults £5.50, children £3.50. Family ticket at £15.95 (for up to four children). +
The Official Loch Ness Monster: Exhibition with a walk-through set and giant videos of Nessie.
The Lochness Centre, Drummadrochit, Invernesshire (01456 450573). Open daily 10 am-3.30pm. Adults £4, children £2.50. Under-sevens free. Family ticket (two adults and up to three children) £10.30. +
Walk The Deck of Captain Scott's ship, The Discovery, and find out more about his remarkable exploits at the turn of this century.
Discovery Point, Discovery Quay, Dundee (01382 201245). Open daily from 10 am-4pm. Adults £4, children £2.90. + SURREY
Fantastic Mr Fox: Roald Dahl's tale about three nasty farmers out to get poor Mr Fox (See also Sussex below.)
Harlequin Theatre, Warwick Quadrant, Redhill (01737 765547). Feb 13-17. Times vary. Adults and children £6.50; some children's seats are £5.50, depending on the time. +
SUSSEX
Festival of Trees: Learn how to spot the different types, discover what trees are used for and watch how trugs (old-fashioned garden baskets) are made. Papermaking workshops and quizzes for five-year-olds upwards.
Drusillas Park, Alfriston, East Sussex (01323 870656). Feb 17-25 from 10 am-5pm. Adults £4.25, children £3. + (accompanying helpers are free).
Plait and Groom Horses: Clean tack and muck out, feed the geese, pigs and chickens at these "working with animals children's workshops". Also drop-in workshops in textiles, tapestry, felt and weaving for all ages.
The Weald and Downland Open Air Museum, Singleton, Chichester (01243 811348). Children's animal workshops will be held on Feb 22-23 from 11am to 3pm. £10 per child or £8 for two or more children from the same family. Please book. Admission free. + (but ring first).
Fantastic Mr Fox: Roald Dahl's "Fox versus the Farmers" children's tale.
Horsham Arts Centre, North Street, Horsham (01403 268689). Feb 20-24 at 1pm and 4.30pm. Adults and children £5.75. +
WALES
Artshop: Learn how to make candles, masks, puppets, or join the "alternative orchestra" for budding musicians. Suitable for five to eight-year-olds.
Wyeside Arts Centre, Builth Wells, Powys (01982 552555). Feb 19-23. Prices vary according to classes but the average morning session is £3. +
The Snow Queen: A family play with puppets.
Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Aberystwyth (01970 623232). February 17 at 2.30pm. Adults and children £2.99. +
Mechanical Mayhem: A hands-on science exhibition. Learn how cogs work and how to weigh sand.
Maritime and Industrial Museum, Swansea (01792 650351). Feb 2-April 28. Admission free. +
The Owl and the Pussycat: Play based on the traditional story and adventures in Lear's enchanting poem.
St David's Hall, The Hayes, Cardiff (01222 878444). Feb 22 at 11am. Adults £5, children £3.50. +
The Michael Faraday All-Electric Show: Learn about science with tricks from the stage.
St David's Hall (as above). Feb 15 at 10am and 1.30pm. Children £3. +
WEST MIDLANDS
Rugby Day Camp Coaching: For eight to 16-year-olds. Non-residential. Held at Sutton Coldfield Rugby Football Club.
Organised by Sportsclass, 130a Oxford Road, Macclesfield (01625 618700). Feb 19-23. £69. Not suitable for the disabled.
WILTSHIRE
Introduction to Black and White Photography and Printing: Non-residential two-day course for 11 to 16-year-olds on location in Bradford-on-Avon from February 13-14 (see also Avon, above).
Contact the Royal Photographic Society, The Octagon, Milsom Street, Bath (01225 462841). Price £20. Course is not suitable for the disabled.
YORKSHIRE
Jorvic Viking Festival: Learn how the Vikings made their jewellery and watch a longship regatta and ritual boat-burning ceremony.
Events taking place in different parts of York. Details: 01904 643211. Feb 10-17.
Most events free apart from craft gallery where jewellery is made. Adults 70 p, children 30p.
+ (Some events)
Identify fossils: Learn to use a microscope; play computer zoology games and more.
Natural History Centre exhibition at Sheffield City Museum, Weston Park, Sheffield. Suitable for seven-year-olds upwards (0114276 8588). Adults £1.50, children £1.
BRITAIN: The haunting landscape of the Fens; ideas for entertaining children at half term ...
Imagine a landscape so flat and featureless that even the hedges stand out. Picture the setting sun hanging in an endless sky. Then look towards the horizon to see an 11th-century cathedral seemingly floating above the fields.
This is the scene as you approach Ely across the Fens. Medieval travellers met an even more dramatic sight Ely Cathedral, the "ship of the Fens", rising out of the reeds on its island fortress.
Nowadays Ely (eel island) is an isle no more and the waters that have shaped East Anglia are temporarily tamed by science. But the flat Fen landscape, with a windmill here, a church there, can still exercise a powerful hold on the imagination.
Anyone who has read Graham Swift's Waterland will feel echoes of it on a winter morning as the mist rises from the sodden soil.
Fenlanders once lived their lives on the water they shot wildfowl, caught eels, dug peat and cut down reeds to build stilt houses. All that changed in the 17th century when drainage schemes rescued the Fens from the sea, creating England's richest area of farmland and altering the landscape for ever. But still there is a sense that nature will have the last word.
To see the Fens as they once were visit Wicken Fen, south of Ely, England's oldest nature reserve and a rare area of undrained fenland.
Ten miles of boggy footpaths lead you alongside lodes (canals which were once the area's main transport routes) and past the Fens' sole remaining wind pump to a group of "bog oaks", entombed in peat for 4,000 years until they turned up in 1980 in a nearby field. The National Trust continues traditional Fenland practices here, cutting sedge, reed and peat and using them wherever possible. Walk around the reserve, then into the surrounding farmland to see how the area has changed since drainage.
Wicken Fen attracts a good variety of wildlife but serious bird-watchers must visit the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust's centre at Welney. A third of Europe's wild swans winter here on the Ouse Washes beside the Hundred Foot Drain, one of two parallel canals cut out in the 17th century to divert the course of the Ouse. Most are Whooper and Bewick's swans, migrants from Iceland and Russia.
From November to February you can see the swans under floodlight. At the height of winter you might see 3,000 of them. Go at dusk to watch them in flight, returning to their night-time resting-place.
But wherever you go in the Fens you are always drawn back to Ely. The city was founded in 673AD by St Etheldreda, daughter of the East Anglian king, who received the island as a dowry. Her first husband died, her second marriage failed, and she retired to a hilltop retreat to establish an abbey on the site of today's cathedral.
Hereward the Wake used Ely as his last line of defence against William the Conqueror. But the Normans won, took the town, and in 1081 began building the cathedral the main reason for visiting Ely today.
The highlight is the 14th-century octagonal lantern, 400 tons of lead and wood, providing a night-time beacon visible for miles. But I have a soft spot for the Lady Chapel, England's largest, completed by Alan of Walsingham in 1322. Beheaded saints, defaced during the Reformation, line the walls; childish images of Adam and Eve adorn the ceiling.
The cathedral contains an excellent stained glass museum, its exhibits from 1240 (the oldest glass in England) to whimsical modern pieces, all well-lit, carefully explained and in a lovely setting.
Tony Kelly
Where to stay: Lamb Hotel, Ely (01353 663574) double B&B, £70.
Black Hostelry medieval monks' inn in grounds of Ely Cathedral (01353 662612). Double B&B, £49.
Where to eat: Dominiques, St Mary's Street, Ely (01353 665011) good snack lunches plus three-course evening meals, Wed-Sat 7-9pm, £16.50. No smoking/credit cards.
Old Fire Engine House, Palace Green, Ely (01353 662582) traditional English restaurant with art gallery. Three-course meal approx £23.
I must say some more about the waxwing, for the irruption of these birds into the British Isles this winter has proved to be quite spectacular. Flocks of 100 or more have been recorded in many parts of Britain, besides numerous smaller flocks and single birds. They have been driven down from Scandinavia and northern Russia by the weather, and the shortage of berries to feed on.
Most of them have been seen in town gardens or in hawthorn hedges on surburbam waste ground. The reports of them on the Birdline telephone service (see below) have been quite comic "behind Safeway", "in the garden of No.79", "near the Little Chef". This is no doubt because the hawthorn berries have already been largely stripped from the bushes by blackbirds and thrushes in the countryside, whereas in towns many cotoneaters and privet berries are still to be had.
I saw a flock of six at Ware in Hertfordshire last week, and it might be useful if I indicate what to look out for. They are tame, but they do lurk in the middle of hawthorns, rather than display themselves on the outside branches, so do peer into any berry-bearing tree. If you get so much as a glimpse of one, you will recognise it immediately. They are about as big as starlings, and their head-crest is unmistakable. Sometimes, I noticed, it is sleeked back like a wedge, but at other times it looks quite fluffy.
They are pinkish birds, though they can seem quite dull in poor light. The head and crest often have a red glow, and the black eyestripe and bib are conspicuous. The yellow and white marks on the wing are small, and the red blob like sealing wax on the wing is quite hard to see. But the yellow tip to the tail looks quite gold when the sun shines through it.
All the members of the flock sit quietly together in the bushes; then there is a flurry of berry snatching, after which they all subside again. I saw a pair sitting side by side like doves, even touching bills once. Their thin trill is distinctive, but not ear-catching.
They eat snow, and have even been seen flying out to pick up a falling snowflake in the air.
In flight, their grey rumps are conspicuous. They are said to fly like starlings, but their undulations reminded me more of great spotted woodpeckers. They are still around everywhere, but on the move. Good hunting this weekend!
What's about: Birders Watch for Twitchers, Details from Birdline 0891 700222. Calls cost 40p a minute cheap rate, 50p at all other times.
SAILING: If you don't know an injector from an impeller, engine lessons may save your life.
If, like me, you go to sea to sail, to use the power of the wind and the tide, you probably regard the engine on your boat with a mixture of awe and trepidation.
Without it you can't get in and out of marinas; picking up moorings, especially in a tideway, can be challenging; and when the wind dies on you on a Sunday night and you are trying to get to work on Monday, you might just be facing one of those embarrassing calls to the office. And, crucially, engines can help to get us out of trouble.
Despite the degree to which we depend on engines, many sailors experienced ones at that know little about them.
You only have to ask the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). Its statistics for lifeboat call-outs reveal that 34 per cent of all launchings to sail and powered pleasure-craft result from simple mechanical failure; and the proportion of those call-outs is increasing every year.
As long as we pay our dues to the AA or RAC, we can get away with almost total ignorance of what is going on under our car Bonnet. But in the middle of the North Sea, it's just you, your spares and your engine.
As a former dinghy sailor with a distaste for mechanical matters, I needed an introduction to the diesel on my boat, Nutcracker. Having spent £5,000 on a new Yanmar three-cylinder during her refit last year, and a pile more having it put in, I had no desire to wreck it through ignorance.
The Essex Sailing School in Maylandsea, on the southern shores of the Blackwater estuary, is among many schools offering Royal Yachting Association-recognised one-day diesel courses for recreational sailors. The school runs around six courses a year, usually for about six students at a time, at £56 a head.
Mike Tyrrell, the school's principal and an engineer, believes the course is imperative for anyone embarking on the RYA's navigation and general seamanship programmes, such as the Day Skipper certificate. The aim is to give people an idea of their engine system, to avoid faults that they themselves have caused, to show which spare parts to carry and how to solve simple problems at sea so avoiding the need to go to a workshop or to call out a lifeboat. On my day at the school there were two other "students", Anne and Malcolm Gilding, who have owned boats for years but, like so many of us, had found a long list of reasons to put off getting to know their heat exchanger from their manifold.
It was an incident near their holiday home at Puerto Andratx in Majorca, where they keep their Llaud a 21ft, double-ended traditional Spanish fishing boat that finally persuaded them to go back to school. A young couple in a speedboat suffered engine failure within sight of land but, unable to mend it themselves, were blown offshore and spent three days at sea, suffering severe dehydration, before they were picked up by a fishing boat.
"I've always put it off," said Mr Gilding as he settled down to examine the school's demonstration engine block, complete with cut-away sections for ease of access and viewing. "But I'm glad we've got round to it. All our friends laughed when I said I was taking my wife on a diesel-engine course, but I could be ill or have an accident on the boat. I think the more Anne knows, the better."
Under Mr Tyrrell's tutelage, we spent a surprisingly interesting day getting to grips with the "suck, squeeze, bang, blow" cycle of the diesel engine, the mysteries of direct or indirect injection, the vital role of oil in the engine, the fuel system and how to bleed it, the cooling system and the general dos and don'ts of marine engines.
Did you know, for example, (I didn't) that diesels are best put to work immediately they are turned on, and that warming them up in neutral for 20 minutes before you leave your mooring does them more harm than good? It's when you return after sailing that it should be left to tick over for a while before you turn it off.
By the end of the day we were talking about fine filters, injectors, the gallery, impellers and the governor. We even had tricky test questions such as: "If the thermostat is stuck in the closed position, what part of the engine would overheat first?" Answer: the cylinder head.
Mrs Gilding admitted that it was a lot more fun and easier to understand than she had expected. She also found it very useful. "I've always been a little wary about the engine. I used to think in the back of my mind that if it stopped, I wouldn't really know what to do. This has given me more confidence. Serious things can go wrong, but if it's just a hose going or something simple, then we should be able to cope."
The RYA hopes that more and more people will attend the courses, not only to cut down the number of lifeboat call-outs to boats with often minor mechanical failure but to improve general standards of seamanship.
Unfortunately, though, it seems only the more conscientious types are doing the course. As John Hart, for 15 years coxswain of the Barry Lifeboat, who helped to devise the course, put it: "The most irresponsible people who need instruction are the ones who don't do the course. There's no allowing for the lunatic few whatever courses you put together or legislation you bring to bear." .
For information about RYA-recognised engine courses, contact Jane Keohane at the RYA on 01703 627454. Similar courses are also provided by leading engine manufacturers, including Volvo Penta (01923 228544); Perkins (01733 582408); and Sabre (01202 893720).
Oliver Gillie on millennium plans to establish green havens all over Britain
Elizabeth Soulsby came to Stanford in the Vale, an Oxfordshire village, by chance and immediately fell in love. Sheep were grazing on a field in front of the church and the old manor house. It was the English rural idyll she had been searching for after spending years in Africa.
"I was struck by the beauty of the scene," says Mrs Soulsby, "and immediately felt that nothing must ever be allowed to spoil it."
She bought a house in the village, was elected to the parish council, and found that one of the first items on the agenda was how the parish could buy the field in front of the church. The asking price, then £35,000, was beyond the resources of the parish. Mrs Soulsby sought help and was referred to the Countryside Commission, which is hoping to set up a scheme with the Millennium Fund to establish 1,000 new greens in villages, towns and cities throughout the country.
Stanford in the Vale is a picture-book village with a 12th-century church and houses built of local stone some of them thatched, others using local slate. It overlooks the Vale of White Horse, with the Downs and the ancient Ridge Way road to the south. The area is steeped in history. According to the Wessex Chronicles, King Alfred rode his horse in the "Western valley" probably the valley of the White Horse. But Stanford in the Vale is not a community of retired people wanting to preserve the old at the expense of the new. As well as traditional stone houses, there are several hundred other dwellings built by the council before and after the war, many of which are now owner-occupied. The village owns a leisure field which is used primarily by the local football club, but there is no cricket pitch.
"We are in the middle of the most beautiful countryside but there is nowhere for children to play or for old people to sit and enjoy the sunshine on a summer day," Mrs Soulsby says.
But now it looks as if the field beside the church will soon belong to the village residents. It is one of 23 "millennium greens" established by the Countryside Commission as a pilot project. The Commission hopes to obtain support from the Millennium Fund to finance 1,000 before the year 2000. The Commission is providing half of the money and looks to other sources to provide the rest. A legal agreement will be made to protect the land for future generations. If the land were to be taken over for any other purpose, such as roads or housing, equivalent land would have to be provided elsewhere in the village.
The owner of the field, Hubert Howse, has brought down his price to £27,500, and the Countryside Commission has agreed to provide half the cost of buying and developing the field. It will be improved by the planting of trees and a hedge. Seating will be installed at one end, where parents can wait before collecting their children from the primary school next door, and at the other end, next to the ancient manor wall, there is a raised area which might be used as a stage for plays or prize-givings.
Millennium greens will be small havens for birds, trees and hedgerow creatures, but most of all they will be havens for human beings. They are conceived as spaces where people will enjoy informal leisure pursuits, such as kicking a ball around with their children, playing cricket, throwing frisbees or flying kites.
Many of the millennium greens will be in densely populated city areas some dominated by industry. Areas such as Dormanstown, near Redcar, Cleveland, which is situated midway between the former Dorman Long's steelworks (now British Steel) and ICI's Wilton works. Dormanstown was built in the 1920s as a garden city a brave attempt to make the area attractive. But either the planners lost confidence, or ran out of money, because many of the trees that were supposed to line the wide avenue roads were never planted.
Now Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council is planning to create a millennium green on a space where old houses have been cleared. The site will be landscaped and planted with native trees, shrubs and wild flowers, which will defy the maze of pipework and chemical storage tanks a few hundred yards away. The green will provide a safe play area for children and a gateway to the proposed Cleveland community forest.
Walking south from the green at Dormanstown, a hiker crosses farmland soon to be forest and can follow an old bridle track past Lazenby bank up to the Exton Hills, where there are views of the North Sea to the east. To the south there is open country leading to the North Yorkshire Moors an area of wilderness stretching 25 miles to the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey in the south and Robin Hood's Bay in the east.
Whether or not millennium greens will become village greens in the legal sense will, it seems, be a matter for local people to decide. The law allows the greens to be used for agricultural shows for up to 12 days a year and, if the town or village has a right to have a market, they might also be used for stalls selling crafts.
The land for several of the millennium greens has been donated by local authorities. However, these authorities sometimes don't want areas which they may intend to develop for housing to be tied up as village greens. It took Jim Briggs and his friends in Aldwick, near Bognor Regis, West Sussex, eight years to get a piece of land owned by Arun District Council registered as a village green. The land at Aldwick was a meadow left open when surrounding land was developed for private housing in 1967. As required by the Town and Country Planning Act, the meadow was destined to become the property of the local authority.
Following administrative delays, however, it was not taken over by the council until 1987, by which time it had been used by residents for leisure purposes for 20 years. Local people applied for the land to be recognised as a village green but were opposed by Arun Council, which wished to retain it as a realisable asset. After the first application failed, local people took advice from the Open Spaces Society and, in a second application four years later, evidence of 20 years leisure use of the meadow was accepted and it was registered as a village green.
The advantage of registration is that it confers certain rights of use for recreation which do not alter with a change of ownership, and it reduces the chances of the land being used for building development. Some 33 new greens throughout England have been registered since 1990, when it became easier because a 20-year period had elapsed since the Commons Registration Act. Although most of the planned new greens will be only a few acres in
size, it reverses the trend of the past 200-300 years, which has seen common land steadily enclosed by private owners.
The Countryside Commission has an information pack for anyone interested in applying for funds for a millennium green. Write to: Millennium Greens, The Countryside Commission, 71 Kingsway, London WC2 B6ST.
Getting Greens Registered a guide to law and procedure, £9 inc p&p, is available from the Open Spaces Society, 25a Bell Street, Henley-on-Thames, Oxon RG9 2BA.
NEW ON CD: Sparkling Cosi; Rachmaninov as nature intended; Hounslow's Bluetones take wing; Ben Webster swings with strings
MOZART, Cosi fan tutte, Fleming/von Otter/Scarabelli/Lopardo/Bar/Pertusi/Chamber Orchestra, of Europe/Solti
Decca 444 174-2 (3 CDs)***
WEARY, perhaps, of the demands of stage directors, Sir Georg Solti has recently turned to concert opera. In the spring of 1994, he took the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and six wisely chosen soloists on a brief tour of Cosi fan tutte through France and Germany before ending with two nights at the Festival Hall. On arrival in London, the team was sparking together so well that 90 per cent of this Decca recording is taken from the first of that pair of performances.
Here is sunlit Solti. Except during Fiordiligi's Act II aria, Per pieta, he adopts quicksilver tempos, using the lightest of touches with his small and expert band of players. Solti steers well clear of the current habit of peering into the darker corners of Cosi and prefers to see the Mozart-da Ponte wager of constancy as a comedy of youthful indiscretion. Everyone concerned will learn to live and love another day. The score is complete, but with the verbal exchanges taken at staccato speed the opera is over in under three hours, including some Festival Hall applause. In the theatre, even with cuts, it has all too often seemed much, much longer.
Solti's previous Cosi for Decca was not one of his best recordings and suffered from an unduly staid Fiordiligi (Lorengar). He makes no such mistakes this time round. Renee Fleming begins a bit cautiously in the role but quickly warms up. Per pieta is quite outstanding. Frank Lopardo's Ferrando is easily his best performance on disc to date: the honeyed mezza voce of Un aura amorosa, with each note carefully suspended in position, can turn to affronted male rage in Act II. Ferrando and Fiordiligi are always the stormy petrels of the love game, while Anne Sofie von Otter and Olaf Bar stay ready to play the complaisant couple. She teases and surrenders; he persuades and conquers.
The beginning of Act II is filled with the ripple of feminine laughter as Despina tells her mistresses about the real world. Adelina Scarabelli has a bit of edge to her tone, but this contrasts well with the sisters trilling away like a couple of lovebirds. Michele Pertusi casts tradition aside to offer a young and forceful Don Alfonso. Next month he reopens the old Paris Opera in the title role of Don Giovanni, a concert performance with Solti conducting. Giovanni, with some cast changes, comes to the Festival Hall with Solti in the autumn and the recording engineers will be there. On the evidence of this witty and dashing Cosi, we should stay tuned.
FORGET PARIS, Columbia TriStar, 12, 1995
CAN Billy Crystal and Debra Winger make their love affair stick? Do we care? Not much, partly because the stars never seem to be two hearts beating as one. Why would Winger, an airline executive, ever contemplate bliss with Crystal's smug, selfish basketball referee? The Paris we see is the movie creation: tourist traps, locals in berets. On the brighter side, the script's portrayal of urban angst brings Woody Allen pleasurably to mind. A rental release.
FARAWAY, SO CLOSE!, Connoisseur, 15, 1994
WIM WENDERS'S sequel to Wings of Desire. Some stretches are captivating, though you still need the patience of Job to survive two and a half hours of extreme whimsy, pastiche thriller and visits from the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev, Peter Falk and Lou Reed. Otto Sander's angel casts a kindly eye around the unified city and takes on mortal form; but the deeper he delves into human life, the more cumbersome Wenders's conceits grow. Ravishing photography helps.
I LOVE A MAN IN UNIFORM, Tartan, 18, 1993
MILD bank clerk and part-time actor becomes a television cop and takes his uniform home. Out on the streets in black leather, he finds the power life otherwise denied him. Canadian director David Wellington plays clever games with our fascination with television violence and sneaks plenty of dark humour into the edgy scenes. Stage actor Tom McCamus is riveting as the hero led off the rails by his lust for order. No masterpiece, but a striking film with a tart disposition and a mind of its own.
ROMAN HOLIDAY, CIC, U, 1953
GREGORY PECK'S American newspaperman falls for a princess in disguise: a slim, whimsical story once earmarked for Frank Capra and fattened up by director William Wyler, who insisted on shooting in Rome and never lets us forget it. But it is an admirable showcase for young Audrey Hepburn. In one bound she leapt from British bit-parts to Hollywood stardom and an Oscar.
THE SLINGSHOT, Connoisseur, 12, 1993
AKE SANDGREN'S oddball Swedish film whisks us to Stockholm in the 1920s, where a sensitive but resilient child suffers school persecution, family strife, and peers up his first female skirt. The film, from an autobiographical novel, is never boring, but Sandgren's staid brand of image-making rubs away some of the characters' sharp edges, and it never matches its obvious forerunner, My Life as a Dog. The title comes from a contraption the hero makes from a little bent wire and two condoms.
THE USUAL SUSPECTS, PolyGram, 18, 1995
JOIN Special Agent Chazz Palminetri as he tries to disentangle the threads that bind five criminals and lead to a dockside fire and 27 dead bodies. The plot is complex but director Bryan Singer keeps it moving with an authority and bold style worlds removed from the static cleverness of his only other film, Public Access. The action at times burns the screen but there is room for careful characterisations, and the strong cast including Kevin Spacey, Gabriel Byrne and Stephen Baldwin relish their opportunities. One of the top American films of last year. Available to rent.
TCHAIKOVSKY, Symphony No4, RIMSKY-KORSAKOV, Capriccio espagnol, Saito Kinen Orchestra/Ozawa, Philips 446 102-2 ***
ALTHOUGH active for only two months of the year, the Saito Kinen Orchestra has carved a considerable reputation for itself in the 12 years of its existence. Founded by Seiji Ozawa and Kazuyoshi Akiyama in memory of the great Japanese teacher Hideo Saito, the orchestra draws on prominent soloists, teachers and other players. This is its fourth recording under Ozawa for Philips.
The orchestra's defining characteristic is discipline. When combined with Ozawa's meticulous ear for detail evident too in his recording of Tchaikovsky's Fifth with the Berlin Philharmonic last year the result is the last word in precision. Ozawa's reading of Tchaikovsky is less demonic than that of, say, Kurt Sanderling, whose Fourth was reissued in the DG Originals series last year. Nor, for better or worse, does the Saito Kinen Orchestra have the raw, elemental quality of Sanderling's Leningrad Philharmonic of the 1950s. But there is no lack of electricity here, nor of feeling for the appropriate style and idiom. The flowing lines of the first movement are sculpted with a sensitivity for their emotional content, while the brass rings out with an incisive edge, the Fate motif scything thrillingly through the texture.
The phrasing of the Andantino is similarly trim and neat, almost to a fault: the effect is slightly prettified, where the folk-tune contours call for something a touch more earthy. Yet there is a genuine heart-tugging quality here too. In the Finale, again, precision is the watchword: every one of those rushing, frenzied semiquavers is in place, clearly articulated. Ozawa's pacing is also admirable, leaving himself scope to sweep the coda away to an exhilarating finish.
The coupling is Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol, in which orchestra and conductor do full justice to the brilliant colours and lively Spanish rhythms for which the piece is famous.
* Worth hearing
** Worth considering
*** Worth buying
OCEAN COLOUR, SCENE, The Riverboat Song, MCA MCSTD 40021 ***
A BAND that most observers assumed were destined for the scrapheap after their first album flopped in 1992, Ocean Colour Scene have mounted a remarkable comeback.
Guitarist Steve Cradock continues to hold down his day job in Paul Weller's band, and the revitalised Scene have made the most of the connection, securing the services of both Brendan Lynch, producer of Weller's Wild Wood and Stanley Road albums, and Weller himself in a cameo role, playing the organ.
But the lion's share of the credit for this great single belongs to the group itself. Tooled up with an authentic 1960s rock sound, The Riverboat Song boasts an insistent, hustling rhythm whipped along by splashes of wah-wah guitar and a hyperactive pair of maracas.
"I see trouble up the road," Simon Fowler sings in his high, throaty voice, as neurotic squalls of rattle and hum nip at the heels of the tune. Packed with energy, it is a song that will surely set them back on the road to greater things.
* Worth hearing
** Worth considering
*** Worth buying
RACHMANINOV, Sonata No2, etc, Zoltan Kocsis, Philips 446 220-2 ***
JUST as, in the case of Bartok, Zoltan Kocsis has been pitting his own imagination and intelligence to thrilling effect against the composer's own from manuscript and piano roll, so now he turns to Rachmaninov. Both in his playing and in his own accompanying notes, Kocsis makes a strong case for this original 1913 version of the Sonata No2. Rachmaninov's 1931 revision, with its numerous cuts and awkward transitions, reduced the work to little more than an outline. Here is the piece in its full rhapsodic glory, and Kocsis has both the technique and the intellect to bring it off.
So deeply thought out is his performance that he has the freedom to unfold the music as if it were an improvisation. This is so vital in Rachmaninov where, as Kocsis himself puts it, "the work and its interpretation are all of a piece". Kocsis fills out this recital with enthralling performances of six Preludes, three Etude-Tableaux and two Morceaux de fantaisie.
RACHMANINOV, Compete Songs Vol1, Leiferkus/Rodgers/Shelley, etc Chandos CHAN 9405 **
CHANDOS has assembled some of Rachmaninov's finest interpreters for a complete song series whose first volume promises much. Just as Rachmaninov himself chose his poets with great care, so here each singer is sensitively cast and responds with real conviction to each of the songs as they unfold in chronological order.
Sergei Leiferkus takes charge of the very first song, Rachmaninov's sombre Lermontov setting, At the gates of the holy cloister. Then, as the recital moves on through the early Op4 songs, Maria Popescu's mezzo-soprano warms to the half-lights of Morning. The six songs of Op8, with their settings of Ukrainian and German poetry, bring an elusive Dream from Alexandre Naomenko's mordant, slightly nasal tenor; while Joan Rodgers offers an anguished Prayer. Pianist Howard Shelley comes into his own in the challenging accompaniments of the Op14 songs, painting a pulsating backdrop for Naoumenko's Summer Nights and Rodgers's Spring Torrents.
* Worth hearing
** Worth considering
*** Worth buying
THE BLUETONES, Expecting to Fly, Superior Quality, Recordings/A&M, BLUE 004 ***
DESPITE the scramble by the latest wave of groups to dissociate themselves from the dog-eared Britpop tag, the charabanc rolls on. And if the Bluetones are not an example of a new British band playing fine pop music, then it is hard to think who is.
Four earnest young men from Hounslow who have already been declared the great pale hopes of 1996 on the basis of a handful of singles, they offer plenty of passion, though nothing in the way of innovation. Sticking primarily to a retro formula of guitars, drums and voices, their debut album, Expecting to Fly, has a comfortingly familiar sound.
On songs such as Things Change and Time & Again, Adam Devlin's guitar playing encompasses the chiming grace of Johnny Marr and the choppy aggression of Pete Townshend, while singer Mark Morriss plies his tales of romantic whimsy with a clean-cut voice, making a pleasing virtue out of his long, southern-English vowels.
Disillusionment is a recurring theme "I'm not the same person I was a year ago/You cut me deeply and the scars still show" but, typically, it is music that turns a downcast mood into something uplifting.
Their fondness for pop melody, and the care with which the songs are written and arranged, means that they stray, at times, a little too close to the bland tunesmithery of the Beautiful South. But on harder numbers, such as the ambitious Talking to Clarry and Cut Some Rug (imagine the Stone Roses with a proper singer), there is a rare brilliance at work.
3 T, Brotherhood, MJJ Music/Epic 481694*
TAJ (22), Taryll (20) and TJ Jackson (17) are the three Ts in 3T. Their Dad is Tito Jackson, formerly of the Jackson Five/Jacksons, which means that their uncle is none other than the King of Pop himself. Membership of a showbusiness dynasty undoubtedly has its advantages. Not only are the boys none of whom looks a day over 15 signed to Michael Jackson's MJJ label, but he has also contributed a new song, Why, to their album, Brotherhood.
However, the intensity of the grooming process, which effectively began at birth, and the burden of expectation on their slender shoulders is such that any spark of youthful innocence or spontaneity has been rigorously excised from this debut.
The result is a sophisticated but rather stodgy collection of mature soul ballads and mellow swingbeat grooves that have been polished to dull perfection. Uncle Michael sings with the boys on Why, an insipid, orchestrated ballad that addresses such big questions as "Why does Wednesday come after Tuesday?", and his involvement alone will guarantee that this album will sell. But their tendency to play safe means that, despite their obvious talent, the Ts sound as if they have been catapulted into an early middle-age.
* Worth hearing
** Worth considering
*** Worth buying
BEN WEBSTER, Music For Loving, Verve 527774 (2 CDs)**
DOES an improviser as lush and melodic as Ben Webster require any help from an orchestral arranger? In an ideal world, he would be left to explore Chelsea Bridge or Early Autumn in the company of an unadorned rhythm section with, say, Harry Edison blowing a wry obbligato.
Most writing for strings resolutely refuses to do anything so indecorous as swing, so it would be natural to assume that draping Webster's saxophone in violins would have unhappy consequences. It ain't necessarily so, as this assortment of mid-1950s sessions makes plain.
If an orchestra must be drafted in, then Ralph Burns and Billy Strayhorn's arrangements are probably the most tasteful anyone could hope for. Seldom obtrusive or syrupy, they furnish subtle rhythmic tics and figures behind Webster's billowing tenor. That said, it still comes as a relief to reach the handful of tracks where he is matched with just Teddy Wilson, Ray Brown and Jo Jones. This decidedly off-beat double album concludes with a suave orchestral selection composed for that other distinguished Ellingtonian, Harry Carney.
FOURTH WORLD, Encounters of the Fourth, World, B+W Music BW045**
WHEN they first came to Ronnie Scott's, many moons ago, Airto Moreira's band of percussion-driven fusioneers seemed on the verge of inventing a whole new Latin jazz vocabulary. As the years went by the tone grew more bombastic, the lyrical Jose Neto slowly turning into a big bad axe-hero. By the time this live recording was made in Amsterdam, almost exactly a year ago, the hyperactivity quotient was still extremely high, but on the rare occasions when Neto throttles back, you still feel yourself in the presence of a remarkable talent.
* Worth hearing
** Worth considering
*** Worth buying
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO WOMAN, By Karen Armstrong, Fount, £8.99
ARMSTRONG, one-time nun-turned-teacher and full-time writer, is also the author of the best-selling A History of God. This work, first published in 1986, is a strongly worded and fascinating exploration of Christian neuroses and the origins of Western misogyny.
While never elevating other cultures at the expense of the West, one of her main points is that while Judaism and Islam are in many ways chauvinistic and repressive towards women, they do not preach sexual disgust the way Christianity does. In the first centuries after Christ, the Christian message was mostly egalitarian. Gradually it was reinterpreted until the high-handed pronouncements on the status of women by St Paul became hysterical denunciations of female sexuality by the likes of St Jerome. The latter so revels in his own disgust that he seems a forerunner of the Victorians: the let's take another look at this just to remind ourselves how disgusting it really is! school of hypocrisy.
Armstrong examines the witch, the virgin, the martyr and the mystic: the different ways women are pigeonholed in order to be controlled, all the time relating her theories to the way we behave today, both consciously and unconsciously. An extremely enlightening if depressing read.
LOUIS MACNEICE, By Jon Stallworthy, Faber, £12.99
IN A LETTER to an Oxford friend in 1929 MacNeice described himself as "in some strange way hollow": a statement of unhappiness that echoed the Zeitgeist. It is hard to think of him now without the other members of that 1930s triumvirate, Auden and Spender, or to free him from nostalgic associations with the wartime BBC. Jon Stallworthy does justice to MacNeice's originality and brings the charismatic Irishman alive clever, ironic, "totally, irredeemably heterosexual" (as Anthony Blunt called him) and ultimately sad.
GOOD BENITO, By Alan Lightman, Sceptre, £5.99
LIGHTMAN, besides being a professor of science, is a fine writer of fiction. His delicate second novel tenderly charts the life of Dr Bennett Lang, a physicist. The story interweaves memories of Lang's childhood, a world of fantastical yet functional inventions, with his professional arrival at a Baltimore University where the Dean rapidly enlists him to prise years of unpublished theorems out of the department's reclusive genius. Lightman gives exhilarating insights into the scientific mind. His prose, in observing the phenomena of daily existence, is sensitive and dusted with magic realism.
EGG DANCING, By Liz Jensen, Bloomsbury, £5.99
THE NARRATOR of this engaging first novel is Hazel, wife of chilly gynaecologist Greg, whose mission in life is to produce the Perfect Baby through the development of a drug called Genetic Choice. Meanwhile at the Manxheath Institute of Challenged Stability Hazel's widowed mother is living out other fantasies. Or are they fantasies? This extravagant black comedy dances hilariously around questions of delusion and reality, ending with an orgy of female revenge. Jensen has a fine comic ear and her send-ups of psychotherapy, tele-evangelism, drug marketing and genetic engineering are deliciously spot-on.
LET THE DEAD BURY THEIR DEAD, By Randall Kenan, Abacus, £6.99
SET in the close-knit, superstitious North Carolina farming community of Tims Creek, these 12 interwoven stories conjure up an elemental world in which the stark realities of poverty, racial tension and sexual betrayal are shot through with visions and fantasies. A place of golden cornfields and rocking chairs, Tims Creek is also the haunt of ghosts and angels the spectres of lost loves, past crimes and disappointed dreams. Kenan writes with infinite compassion and lays bare the hearts and minds of his characters.
EMPTY CRADLES, Margaret Humphreys, Corgi, £6.99
IF SOMEONE told you she was put on a boat to Australia, alone, at the age of four, you too might not believe it. For Margaret Humphreys, future founder of the Child Migrants Trust, this was only the first in a tidal wave of testimonies through which she came to understand and reveal the anguish of children many told their parents were dead who were shipped off to the British colonies, often to face physical and sexual abuse. A shocking tale of social engineering gone wrong, this is also an inspiring account of tireless commitment in the face of sloth and vested interest and of unlimited compassion for its pawns.
THE WIG MY, FATHER WORE, By Anne Enright, Minerva, £6.99
GRACE works on The LoveQuiz an Irish TV show that is like Blind Date but not in nearly such good taste. She lives alone, having left home to escape her father's mild insanity and absurd wig, until into her frenzied, loveless world floats Stephen, a very unethereal angel. Grace fancies him like mad, but can't persuade him to make love to her, though he's wonderfully handy around the house. Stephen wants to appear on The LoveQuiz, so Grace fixes it, little guessing the havoc his angelic emanations will wreak. A witty, anarchic novel with a very original voice.
LITTLE BROTHER, By David Mason, Bloomsbury, £15.99. WALKING BACK THE CAT, By Robert Littell, Faber, £14.99
The new post-Cold War villains are renegade communists, says Peter Millar.
RELATING the make-believe world of the thriller to reality is a risky business. One route, mapped by Frederick Forsyth in The Day of the Jackal, is to set the action in the past, then reveal the "secret" story of how history almost crashed off the rails.
David Mason dealt in his first book Shadow over Babylon with a former SAS squad's assassination attempt on Saddam Hussein. In Little Brother, he reassembles some of that team in an effort to stop an assassination. The villains are the former East German secret police, the Stasi, now cast as hit-men-for-hire hanging out in North Korea.
This is rip-roaring macho stuff in the best Wilbur Smith tradition that bizarrely includes a plug for John Major that the No10 PR boys would have killed for and enough
SAS myth-making to keep the Hereford hard men happy.
The book is sadly marred by a few factual inaccuracies, and Mason's protagonists have too much of Hogan's Heroes about them. But he gives us just enough hints to guess the assassination target and then pulls off a last page double bluff to tie in tightly with the history books.
Robert Littell has chosen an altogether more exotic post-Cold War vein to mine. His villains are not the Stasi but the KGB themselves, or at least an American-based network, cut off and left in limbo by the fruits of perestroika. That is, until Moscow Centre resurrects itself in the shadowy form of a new "rezident" codenamed Prince Igor and begins ordering their "wetwork" expert, codenamed Parsifal, to murder Apaches.
Enter Finn, a Gulf War veteran with a horror of war and empathy with the Apaches, who make their living from a gambling casino in the New Mexico desert. When Finn finds out that the casino is being taken to the cleaners and Parsifal wonders why Moscow is interested in dead Indians, their interests collide.
They begin "walking back the cat", CIA slang for what John le Carre would call "taking the backbearings". But tracing the chain of command from the bottom up reveals disturbing parallels between the reactivated Russian network and the mafia-style casino shakedown. Not just the bad guys go off the rails, they discover.
This is an extraordinary thriller: challenging, brutal yet curiously optimistic, an offbeat epic about offbeat humanity.
SPERM WARS: Infidelity, sexual conflict and other bedroom battles, By Robin Baker, Fourth Estate, £7.99
The real war of the sexes is fought on a microscopic scale, Ginny Dougary finds
BEFORE I rush off to have sex with my husband's boss, my best friend's boyfriend, the window cleaner, a gardener or two and myself, I would just like to say that all this concupiscent activity is not only entirely natural but is for the benefit of mankind. Furthermore, the spree will really have very little to do with me. The girl can't help it, you see. And neither can the boy. Our bodies have a mind of their own.
It is not the author's fault that he is an evolutionary biologist, any more than it is the reader's fault that she is not. But when a book has been so obviously targeted for a wide readership, the gulf between our conflicting visions of human relations is important. Perhaps this is what is meant by making science sexy. For what could
be sexier, in theory, than sex itself? But Sperm Wars, like the pornography the author is so eager to distance himself from, not only takes the poetry out of love, it even takes the lyricism out of lust.
This book seeks to popularise the biological research conducted by Dr Robin Baker, the author, and Dr Mark Bellis, a former colleague of Baker at Manchester University. Like its scarcely less spicy-sounding scientific precursor, Human Sperm Competition: copulation, masturbation and infidelity, Sperm Wars aims to tell you everything you need to know about sperm. And much more.
There is nothing startling about its thesis that men are genetically programmed to conquer and women to breed. What is new is the quality and quantity of information on sperm (shape, size, character, motive, purpose), cervical mucus and the mysteries of the damp patch; all of which is intended to show that every sexual act from masturbation to rape is predicated on the male's unconscious desire to knock his rival's more weedy sperm for six, and the female's complementary desire to collect the finest grade sperm available.
Much of the information in the first section of the book is riveting. (I had no idea that my cervix was quite so crafty or ingenious.) And the author certainly has a talent for making the mechanics of reproduction accessible; his image of the penis as a thrusting vacuum cleaner is quite unforgettable. But there is only so much one can absorb about egg-getting conquerors versus kamikaze troops without feeling like an old man in a grubby mac wanting to flick the pages to the dirty bits.
There is another problem, which the author seems to address in the section on rape. Darwinian science when applied to human beings can smack of a clinical, rather Hitlerian detachment. The woman who allows the stepfather of her children to violate her daughter and beat up her son, is "successful" because she also allows him to impregnate her with vigorous sperm. I have rarely found sex so depressing. But my body, of course, might think otherwise.
ANGELS ALONE, By Kate Hatfield, Corgi, £5.99
I SHALL get my grumble over with. I am bored with reading about characters who have silly, boarding-school names (Caro, Nicko, Sasha, Flavia) and bored with all that their names imply (large, cold, crumbling houses and a tendency to pour large whiskies when the going gets tough). But my irritation is really with the unspoken assumption of writers and publishers that the moneyed classes make endlessly fascinating literary material for popular fiction. They do not, especially when they come with the same old cliched relationships and attitudes.
That said, Angels Alone is not bad. Lavinia is married to a junior minister, Tom Medworth, who, as a keen hunter, has become a target for animal rights activists. Tom has a horrible, horsy family with a particularly overbearing mother. Lavinia's marriage to him is tired and strained. He is charming and works too hard: she feels dowdy, inadequate and angry, and hates the children being away at school. There is plenty to keep them apart and seemingly not much to keep them together. Then Tom disappears, shedding light on the darker aspects of their life together.
As an example of the green-wellie genre, Angels Alone is perfectly readable, well-constructed and mercifully unpredictable. In fact, I guessed the ending half-way through and I was wrong, which was much more fun than being right and is testimony to Kate Hatfield's abilities as a storyteller.
I found most of her characters indistinguishable from one another but I quite liked her authorial voice. Though she lacks the spark of true originality, Hatfield has true compassion for her characters, and that, at least, is more than can be said of this reader.
BUFFETT: The Making of an American Capitalist, By Roger Lowenstein, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20
John Naughton on America's wealthiest ordinary Joe
OUTSIDE the City of London, most people in this country have probably never heard of Warren Buffett. In America, however, he has the status of a folk hero. This is because, despite being fabulously rich (second only to Bill Gates at current stock-market prices), he is also fantastically unpretentious. He dresses scruffily and lives in Omaha, which is closer to Deadsville than even Des Moines. He still resides in the house he bought in 1958 for $31,500, drives his own car and drinks only Cherry Cola. The annual report of his company, Berkshire Hathaway, reads like something by Will Rogers out of J.P. Morgan. Indeed people buy a single Berkshire share (currently priced at more than $16,000) simply to get a copy.
Buffett runs one of the biggest conglomerates in America from a modest office suite with a tiny staff and spends most of his day talking on the telephone or reading in an office which boasts neither a calculator nor a computer. His only concession to executive hubris is a (second-hand) private jet and even that was justified by claiming that scheduled flights had become difficult because of being pestered by fellow passengers seeking stock-market tips.
For Buffett is a genius at picking shares the smartest punter in the history of the stock market. It is one thing to make a million bucks from an astute share deal or two, quite another to outperform the Dow index year in, year out. But Buffett has being doing this for more than 40 years, during which time he has never lost money for himself or his investors. For four decades he has been spotting stocks in public companies which were underpriced rela-
tive to the "real" values of those companies, buying them cheap and watching them rise. In the process he has not only enriched himself but also those investors who spotted his potential early and stuck with him. And therein lies the secret of the Buffett legend, for he is the ultimate embodiment of the American dream a combination of Forrest Gump and Midas.
Roger Lowenstein's admiring biography of this legendary figure tells a story that is almost too good to be true about how an earnest, quiet schoolboy with a prodigious aptitude for numbers, an astonishing confidence in his own judgment and an obsession with accumulating money grew to become an investor with an unparalleled capacity for backing long-term winners. And the strangest aspect of the story is the sheer mundanity of Buffett's formula, which is based on the idea that share price is generally a poor measure of the "underlying value" of a stock.
His trick was to ignore the day-to-day frothing of the markets and to scrutinise companies in order to identify which were properly-run businesses with growth potential; and then to buy the stock and wait for stock-market valuation to catch up with the reality. The theory is simple, but practising it has evidently been beyond the reach of Wall Street's finest. What was needed, it seems, was the discipline, patience and invincible self-confidence which still defines Middle America and its finest son, the inimitable Warren Buffett.
CATCH THE WIND, By Frances Donnelly, Corgi, £5.99
THE 1960s are high fashion again. Perhaps that explosion of youth and confidence looks even brighter now against the backdrop of recession. Nostalgia sells, the Beatles are back, and so are skinny clothes for malnourished models. But Frances Donnelly's new novel takes on the darker side of the 1960s.
The evil star of Catch the Wind is Kit Carson, a rock musician shooting from success to terrifying fame. His fans would like to eat him alive and on one occasion they nearly do. The portrait of Kit is vivid, believable and the best thing in a book which tells rather than shows. Kit cannot handle what his talent and charisma bring him, and his self-destructiveness is only exceeded by his ability to destroy those around him.
Catch the Wind follows three young women whose mothers were the main characters in Donnelly's first novel, Shake Down the Stars. Daisy, fresh from the glamour of Haight Ashbury, preaches total sexual liberation. In fact, she is deeply depressed by orgies with unappealing men and menaced by a drug scene turned sour and violent. This is a novel of survival through self-discovery and a return to certain basic values. Daisy shakes off photographers and television personalities who
see her as a symbol of swinging London and falls in love.
Annie, who is a talented dress designer but has no confidence, slowly learns to trust herself. Alexia, Kit's lover, eventually flees his violence. Donnelly touches on the mixture of fear and shattered confidence that makes women stay with violent men. It takes a scene in which Kit smashes his newborn daughter's cradle and punches Alexia while she is holding the baby before Alexia can emerge from her numb passivity.
But although the events are dramatic, the writing is low-key and so Catch the Wind remains readable rather than absorbing. Donnelly has not yet achieved that difficult combination of strong story, tension, sparkle and pace that turns a good popular novel into a magnetic bestseller.
NEVER FAR FROM NOWHERE, By Andrea Levy, Headline Review, £12.99
THIS is the story of two sisters, born in London in the 1960s, the children of Jamaican immigrants. The elder, Olive, has a much darker skin than her sister Vivien. They narrate alternate chapters.
Vivien represents assimilation through education and the social mobility it brings. She is not fooling herself, she says. "When I was young, I used to look at my parents ... and think how lucky this country was to have them ... but even when I was young, I knew that English people hated us" but she chooses to keep her head down, and thus escapes some of the traps of race, class and gender, exchanging the naked
racism of her council estate for the genteel racism of art college.
Olive's is a different tale. She is rebellious. She becomes trapped by poverty, sex and prejudice. She says: "My mother didn't believe in black people. She tried to believe that she was not black. I tried to explain that, now I was a grown-up, I liked being black. Being black was something to be proud of." But Olive only discovers this racial pride from a position of weakness, and its discovery does not do her much good.
The blurb says that this book "will shake you with its raw energy". Novels about race and class that promise to do that are probably best avoided. This one, however, is much longer on intelligent restraint than it is on "raw energy". The story is well told, does not dodge complexity and rings true as an account of the fear and confusion felt by first-generation black English people 20 years ago. Above all Andrea Levy succeeds in showing how people respond to an identity imposed on them by others.
LOOK THE DEMON IN THE EYE:The Challenge of Mid-Life, By Angela Neustatter, Michael Joseph, £17.99
IT IS said that the fashion designer Calvin Klein, when playing a word-association game and hearing the word "young" immediately snapped "forever". This would not endear him to Angela Neustatter, who believes in accepting the loss of youth without demur.
Do not be put off her book by its subtitle, which contains two of the most off-putting words in the English language: challenge and mid-life. Neustatter is a mite earnest but she writes engagingly and you end up feeling better about middle age, as I insist on calling it, than you did before.
Neustatter sees the time when children have grown up, partnerships have faded into the humdrum and career prospects are dwindling as a period when kicking over the traces might be permissible. Among her 150 interviewees are several who walked out on their commitments. A few of them now feel regret but, what the hell, it added to their personal growth. And most of them are happy that they listened to their body clock and were brave enough to make enormous changes at almost the last minute.
Neustatter does not underestimate the problems of the middle years the possible loss of love, libido and looks as well as a hurtful invisibility in the eyes of the world that comes with the first grey hair. But she gleefully sniffs out signs of the changing times: more job opportunities for the middle-aged, because there are fewer young people; more notice taken of them by advertisers, not because they have suddenly fallen for mature allure but because of the dizzying statistic that the over-fifties "probably own about 80 per cent of all the wealth in Britain". An example of this changed approach is that the supermarket chain that hired Lesley Joseph in her role of Dorien (the nymphomaniac of a certain age in the television sit-com Birds of a Feather) to star in its commercials saw sales zip through the roof.
Neustatter has sensible things to say about preparing for retirement although some of them sound alarmingly hearty. She does not try to convince fiftysomethings that the best is yet to come but suggests the possibility of growing old without feeling that even one toe is already in the grave.
RUDE GIRLS, By Vanessa Walters, Pan, £3.50
VANESSA WALTERS is a sassy-looking, black, 18-year-old author from north London who is already at work on her second novel. To judge from her debut, Rude Girls, it too will be tightly plotted, with a good ear for dialogue, a slightly enervating propensity to list every item of clothing her heroines are wearing and a moral-happy denouement five pages from the end.
Things move along with enough bounce and vigour to satisfy the teenage readers this is aimed at Yardie's daughter Shree, single mum Paula and upwardly-mobile Janice have been best friends "since the beginning of time" and look for relief from the white-out oven of London summer in all-day festivals and endless mutual hair-dressing sessions. Things start to go pear-shaped when Shree's dad shoots a business associate in the middle of a drug deal and the three girls are bound up in a revenge attack.
Further pressure is put on the friendship by Shree's lust for a dodgy Yardie who always turns up at the most inopportune times in a large black Mercedes and "accidentally" snogs her just as the plot needs a fight or an argument. Meanwhile, Paula forges more independence from her domineering mother and Janice has a run-in with a smarmy yuppie in the throes of denying his blackness.
While Walters displays unnerving enthusiasm and a healthy disrespect for her male characters, her failings are all too apparent by the third chapter: stolid storytelling unrelieved by those bursts of imagination and prose that mark out the truly gifted from the merely talented. Still, should her career as a novelist fail to take off, she has some interesting ideas about coiffure and should do well as a hairdresser.
EVERYMAN GUIDE TO, PARIS, Everyman, £16.99
Jan Morris is captivated by a new, definitive guide to the City of Light that is good enough to eat
WE LIVE in the heyday of the guidebook just as we live in the heyday of travel. True, the guidebook as a work of literature seems to be a dead notion: no Richard Fords are telling us what to expect of Valencians ("perfidious, vindictive and empty of all good"); no E.M. Forsters are advising us how best to look at Alexandria ("wander aimlessly around the city").
In every other kind, though, the genre flourishes as never before. We have guides for the rich and guides for the indigent, for the cruise buff and the backpacker, for gays and for senior citizens. We have architectural guides more brilliant and informative than ever, and we even have solid, old-fashioned academic guidebooks, not perhaps as pithy as the old Murrays and Baedekers, but still written by scholars for serious travellers.
This week sees the publication of what one might call the flagship of this immense and wildly assorted fleet. A few years ago Gallimard, the venerable Paris publisher, launched yet another new kind of guide, intended to be more permanent, more sumptuous and more seductive than any. In England the series was adopted and adapted by Everyman Books. French in style and inspiration the series remains, nevertheless, and so it is proper that it reaches a climax now in the publication of the Everyman Guide to Paris, one of the most alluring guidebooks ever published.
As a souvenir of a visit somewhere, or as a book to read in bed at the end of the long day's tourism, the Everymans are unbeatable. They
look lovely. They are elegantly printed on rich, shiny paper. They are virtuous examples of the designer's and cartographer's craft, and they assume an adult interest in every aspect of a place.
Not all the Everymans concern cities some are about countries or regions, and there is one about Parisian restaurants but they are best suited to the discussion of a metropolis, and though Paris is by no means my favourite city, the Everyman Paris is as good an example of the series as any. It feels and smells so good that, rather than spend a small fortune on some hyped-up entree in a conceited Paris restaurant, I would eat it.
The range of the book is astonishing. I am not surprised that more than 200 advisers, authors, researchers, illustrators, designers and photographers are acknowledged at the front. It contains hundreds of architectural drawings and cutaways, from Roman Lutetia to La Defense. It discusses and illustrates street furniture, haute couture, gardens, wildlife, museums, women, department stores, the Seine and, of course, cuisine. There is a lovely portfolio of paintings by the great painters of the city. There is an anthology of quotations from writers as varied as Boswell, Joyce, Alice B. Toklas and Evelyn Waugh.
And there are also, though less satisfactorily, the conventional registers of a city guidebook: city walks delineated monument by monument, lists of shops, hotels, restaurants ("not the place for a casual tourist, but for people who really understand food, such as the sophisticated Parisians who ... came to taste the carpaccio of langoustines with caviare" (ugh!)). The whole work is strewn with maps and glorious illustrations, and would make old Mr Baedeker, or John Murray, Esquire, turn in their graves with envy or embarrassment.
For there is something a little embarrassing about these marvellous examples of biblio-technique. They are a little over-marvellous. They never let up. Intended as the very latest thing, they end up by being rather fin-de-siecle dix-neuvieme siecle like langoustines with caviare.
But these are the quibbles of a Welsh ascetic. If you love Paris, you will doubtless love this book, not as a transient aid to sightseeing or gourmandism, but as a reference book of great beauty and lasting fascination.
I am collecting all the Everyman city books, against the time when I can travel no more, and they will come and sit with me beside the fire and be my memory's guide.
THIS week, Peter Hoeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow notches up one year in the paperback chart.
Briefly nudged out by the the Penguin and Phoenix 60p volumes, it has now clocked up the full 52 weeks. Good going for a novel whose success owes much to word of mouth but whose author's name is unpronounceable to all but his fellow Danes. The nearest contender is Sebastian Faulks's elegant war novel, Birdsong, with 45 weeks.
Meanwhile, Irvine Welsh-mania continues, with both Trainspotting and Acid House showing strongly.
The end of the festive season is firmly signalled by the arrival of Rosemary Conley's Complete Flat Stomach Plan at No17, and the end of the festive hangover by the reappearance, at No16, of Malcolm Gluck's Superplonk 96.
A member of the NCR Book Award panel, Andrew Roberts is confident of avoiding the acrimony that has dogged other prizes
When my car was stolen last December, driven to Stoke Newington and completely stripped, the thieves left only three articles: my green wellies, my wife's classical tapes and The Architecture of Southern England by John Julius Norwich. Perhaps they already had a copy.
If so, may I recommend to them another of Lord Norwich's works, Byzantium: The Decline and Fall, the third and final part of his great trilogy. It has been submitted, along with 144 other works of history, biography, travel and non-fiction for the NCR Book Award, of which I am one of the five judges.
When the judges met for the first time at AT&T's headquarters on the Marylebone Road in London just before Christmas, Jeremy Paxman, our chairman, set out a few, very welcome, ground rules. We were not expected to read all 145 books but should each take away the 20 or so which most interested us. The prospect of being forced, for the first time since Eng Lit A level, to read all of a book I did not necessarily like therefore receded. Next month we will read each other's three or four favourites to create a shortlist. Our last meeting, to choose the winner, takes place in the hour or so before a huge dinner at the Dorchester on May 22.
The other ground rules that we would not take into account how rich the winner is before awarding the £25,000 tax-free cheque, or consider what other awards he or she might have won or narrowly missed were also agreed on quickly. My whispered question about the ethics of taking away some books to give as presents to family and friends was answered by a magisterial wave of Paxman's hand. "Treat it like Christmas shopping without the money."
Under the aegis of the formidable Dotti Irving, who has run the prize (formerly and henceforth called the NCR Book Award) for a decade, we finished quickly and left.
Whatever advertising executives may say to the contrary, I do not believe we remember advertisements in newspapers. So literary awards do work in bringing the name of a company to public attention. For the price of two or three full-page advertisements in the national newspapers, AT&T can organise and pay for an award which will get its name into the all-important editorial as opposed to just the advertising pages.
The winner gets a large cheque, the runners-up receive £3,000 each, the judges also receive a modest fee for their half-year readathon, the company gets free advertising into diary stories and columns like this, the public gets the fruit of our deliberations and the literary world gets fed at a grand dinner. Book awards are thus proof that sometimes capitalism can benefit everyone.
Having met the other judges Cristina Odone, Nick Hornby and Sue Butterworth I suspect I shall soon be feeling like the shrivelled and embarrassed little man in the Bateman cartoon at whom everyone in the cocktail party is staring and pointing. The caption shall read: "The man who served on an uncontroversial book award." I simply cannot see the five of us yelling or intriguing or playing the martyr when it comes to making our choices.
The Booker and Whitbread seem almost designed for these rows, with Julian Critchley and Rachel Cusk dashing off into print the moment the choice is made. Geordie Greig, books editor of The Sunday Times, has recently called into question the entire basis of the Whitbread selection process. Last year's AT&T, chaired by Alan Clark, which controversially plumped for a dismal autobiography rather than Juliet Barker's much-tipped and brilliant life of the Bronte family, was no exception. I predict this year the NCR award will be professional, dignified, serious, harmonious if not unanimous, and therefore instantly forgettable in the great saga of book-prize rows.
Andrew Roberts's novel The Aachen Memorandum is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Devon, Rambler Cottage, inner Hope, Hope Cove, Semi-detached thatched cottage in the square at inner Hope, with sea views. Three bedrooms, bathroom, lounge, kitchen/breakfast room (with exposed beams and inglenook fireplace).
About £114,500 (fulfords, 01548 843731).
London (below).
5 Essex Villas, W8, Victorian semi-detached house with garden on the Phillimore Estate, close to Kensington High Street, Six bedrooms, two bathrooms (one en suite), dressing room, child's study, en suite shower-room, kitchen, utility room and kitchenette. About £1,675,000 for a 69-year lease.
(John D. Wood, 0171-727 0705).
Gloucestershire (above) 38 Priory Street, Cheltenham, Semi-detached Regency house with garden. Five bedrooms, two bathrooms, two shower-rooms, two cloakrooms, two reception rooms, billard room, kitchen and storage vault.
About £150,000 (Hamptons, 01242 222909).
The estate agents' description "ambassadorial residence" is becoming to London what "baronial hall" was to the country. Many substantial houses for sale in the capital are being deemed suitable dwellings for diplomats in the same way that rural piles were elevated to aristocratic status. But what constitutes an ambassadorial residence?
A fine place to start would be in Courtenay Avenue in Highgate, north London. The road runs parallel to what is said to be London's most expensive residential street, The Bishop's Avenue, the domain of the very rich, who occasionally rest their jet-lagged heads there.
Courtenay Avenue has the benefit of being a cul-de-sac; no through traffic to the North Circular need ever disturb sleep or intrude on privacy. Admittedly, the avenue is second best, but it is not without its chandeliers.
Our example (above) is
No 7, which is for sale at £1,450,000 through the agents Keith Cardale Groves. The house has five reception rooms, a Gothic chapel, extensive gardens, four bedrooms, a guest suite, games room, staff flat and a large driveway. Impressive, but why does the the agent describe it as being "ambassadorial"?
Chris Underhill, the manager of KCG's Highgate office, says: "For a start, there are six or seven ambassadors' residences in the road." The house is presently occupied by a diplomat and the road is a low-profile and secure environment. Should there be an official function, temporary barriers can be erected to control access. And, of much importance to diplomats, it has an in-and-out driveway.
"The house is large enough to entertain at least 200 people. It's also near the centre of London, yet far enough north of Whitehall to hear the birds tweeting in the morning," says Mr Underhill.
There are many aspects, then, for a diplomat to consider. Ambassadors have to have parties in properties that bring kudos, for which an ordinary semi or a public room in a hotel will not suffice.
But there are houses elsewhere that seem uncomfortable with their new role.
Last November, The Times Diary reported that residents in Kensington Court Gardens, southwest London, were miffed because the Belorussians had been granted planning permission to convert a house into an embassy, with an ambassadorial flat over the shop. Opposition came from, among others, Sir Ronald Arculus, a former British ambassador to Italy. Wishing to keep his part of Kensington as residential as possible, he complained that the embassy and residence would cause traffic congestion, a shortage of parking spaces, queues for visas, and the occasional noisy demonstration. He lost his battle.
Holland Park, west London, is the latest to experience a new diplomatic invasion. The Uzbekis, Belarians and Ukrainians are opening embassies and residences there, and some of their reluctant neighbours are displaying signs of nimbyism.
Others are less convinced that diplomatic neighbours are a problem. Willy Gething, who runs Property Vision, which buys houses in central London, says that such complaints "don't hold much sway". He speaks from personal experience. "I was near a number of residences and embassies when I was living in Holland Park," he says, "and I suspect that the local police patrolled our roads more than they would if the diplomats hadn't been there. It was a boon. I even used to leave my briefcase in the back of my car at night. As far as I'm concerned, God bless the diplomats and anybody complaining needs their head examined."
But pity the poor ambassador. He or she is obliged to find a property that suits their country's needs without raising the national debt. A typical budget for a suitable London residence would need to be between £1.5 million for a relatively low-key diplomatic presence, to £5 million for creating a big splash.
Ideally, the residence should be within the existing watch of the Diplomatic Protection Group (DPG) concentrated mainly in Holland Park, Kensington, Mayfair and Belgravia. However, the South Korean ambassador is rather fond of his Wimbledon residence, and the protection group is obliged to provide protection wherever the residence is located.
According to Richard Crosthwaite, of the agents Knight Frank, gardens and in-and-out driveways are features that the ambassador must have. "Such attributes are particularly useful for really big functions," he says, "especially on the country's national day of celebration." But there are few properties of this sort within Mayfair and Belgravia that haven't already been snapped up by diplomats, and this is why so many official residences are starting to appear in areas such as St John's Wood and Highgate.
In St John's Wood, Knight Frank is offering a three-storey house in tree-lined Hamilton Terrace at £3.95 million with an 89-year unexpired lease. The white stucco-fronted, detached, eight-bedroom house has a large, landscaped rear garden and plant room, separate staff flat, driveway, video entry and security system, but does lack spacious reception rooms.
For ambassadors on a more limited budget, Knight Frank is offering a freehold house in Highgate with seven bedrooms, an in-and-out driveway and a 124ft garden at £1.4 million.
Those with a large house to sell in central London may be tempted to believe that theirs could be described as "ambassadorial". And they could be right. Brian D'Arcy Clark, of the agents Chesterfield, stipulates that: "Much of the accommodation can be modest, but the reception rooms have to be large. The space can vary from 3,000sqft to 10,000sqft. Freehold is preferred, and the property has to be in good condition, or requiring only a few minor alterations."
Failing that, if you have a little place tucked away in the Home Counties, why not put it up for sale as a "consular cottage"? Even diplomats need weekends away.
Keith Cardale Groves, 0181-341 6666. Property Vision, 0171-823 8388. Knight Frank, north London, 0171-431 8686; Mayfair, 0171-629 8171. Chesterfield, 0171-581 5234.
Next time you're in Paris for le weekend, follow in the footsteps of Alicia Drake for a successful buying spree.
Parisians are Europe's shopping professionals. While others torture themselves with pre and post-purchase guilt, Parisians view buying as a pleasant pastime. They limit each outing to one arrondissement that they can cover on foot, punctuating the trip with stops for espresso and kir before striking with a serious purchase, which will be beautifully gift-wrapped. So, when spending a weekend in Paris, adopt the locals' attitude and be selective about shopping. Rather than attempting an assault on every bou
tique, department store and flea market, choose one area and walk it. The quartier around St Sulpice and St-Germain des Pres on the Left Bank is ideal. The streets are full of shops selling everything from chandeliers to foie gras, and the area has many attractive squares and cafes.
Start around the church of St Sulpice, built about 1700. If you want a kickstart, there is the great little Cafe de la Mairie, which faces on to the place St Sulpice. The north side of the square used to be lined with shops selling surplices and rosaries, but these have been replaced gradually by boutiques and the couturiers Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Lacroix.
The suggested shops on my route have been chosen for products that are not widely available in Britain. Just off the square at 1 rue du Vieux Colombier is Herve Chapelier (00 331 440 70650), which sells smart nylon weekend bags and backpacks. In Paris, adults buy Chapelier's cashmere sweaters and students buy his bags, but these are far too good to be kept for lectures. All bags are lightweight, machine-washable and in duo colour combinations, such as chocolate brown and pale pink, or navy and deep crimson. Prices start at Fr135 (£18) for a bath bag, Fr190 (£25.35) for a vanity case, and Fr300 (£40) for a weekend bag.
Diagonally opposite at No 12 place St Sulpice is the perfumerie Annick Goutal (463 30315). You are now heading into Parisian "luxe" country. A former concert pianist, Goutal started making scents in 1981. Her perfumes are stylish and discreet and their exclusivity gives them the edge on most commercial scents. Madonna wears Passion, the Prince of Wales uses eau d'Hadrien, and when Prince William was born the late President Mitterrand sent him a gift of the baby scent.
This tiny branch at St Sulpice stocks scented candles in glasses, which the Parisians are mad about, refillable and priced at Fr290 (£38.70). Bars of bath soap are Fr79 (£10.55) and there is a range of fragrances in eau de toilette, from Fr220 (£30), or eau de parfum, from Fr296 (£40).
Then turn left and wander along the rue St Sulpice for window shopping or real shopping depending on your budget, with the Catherine Memmi boutique (440 72226) at No 34 for cool cream and beige table linen and Beaute Divine (432 62531) at No 40 for antique objets for the dressing table.
At No 23 is the milliner Marie Mercie (432 64583). Self-taught, and a former Editor of the socialist magazine Latitude, Mme Mercie says that, when designing, she imagines "a beautiful woman with panache, who would have fought in the Resistance". Her hats are often quirky, always stylish and are lapped up by Parisians, and by French and American actresses.
For daywear, Mme Mercie offers funky felts, such as a handmade crenellated hat costing Fr1,400 (£186). For evening and weddings she has more extravagant creations, which start at about Fr1,800 (£240) and are often made to measure. If you are in Paris just for the weekend and have a coup de foudre (love at first sight) for one of her made-to-measure hats, she can take measurements and send you the hat in about three weeks.
Turn left up the rue de Seine and then left again on to the boulevard St Germain and head for the Cafe Flore at No 172, an ideal spot for lunch. Less touristy than Les Deux Magots next door, it's one of those Left Bank philosophe cafes from the 1910s, now turned Paris glamour.
A glass or so of bordeaux later, you can step out along boulevard St Germain to rue des Saints Peres, turn right, and down the road at No 30 is the chocolatier Debauve & Gallais (454 85467). Established in 1800, the firm made chocolates for Charles X and Louis XVIII, and still makes a dental-defying selection of luxury chocolates at Fr440 (£59) per kilo. If you still have the francs and energy, cross back over the boulevard St Germain and follow rue des Saints Peres until you meet the Carrefour de la Croix Rouge. Here is the Comtesse du Barry shop (454 83204), perfect for stocking up on jars of foie gras or boudin (an unspeakable piece of offal rather like black pudding which Parisians love), from Fr61 (£8.15) and Fr44 (£5.90) respectively.
Just along the rue du Cherche Midi at No 4 is the swimming costume store Eres (454 49554). If you have ever wondered where those Cote d'Azur sophisticates get their slick bathing suits, this is the place. The costumes, one-piece or two, are simple, flattering and well cut, with prices at Fr555 (£73) for a basic bikini and Fr750 (£100) for a one-piece. You can buy bikini tops and bottoms separately to mix and match to suit your shape.
Back at the crossroads and off to your left at Sevres Babylone is the department store Le Bon Marche (426 03345), which is small, slightly old-fashioned and the preferred department store of Parisians. The ground floor has a big new menswear department, Balthazar, which stocks Givenchy, Hermes, Kenzo and Celine.
This may now be the time to gather up all your bags and follow another Parisian custom slip off to a bar and sit watching the world go by.
Jill Parkin tests a selection of Valentine presents to see if they succeed in setting your beloved's pulse racing.
The Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia is just days away and there's not a wolfskin thong to be had anywhere. Not for love or money. First the sacrificing of dogs was outlawed, then wolves became extinct in Britain, which made running about in their skins tricky. Finally, public thonging of women lost some of its political correctness. Eventually Valentine's Day took over and it's all about love and money.
Instead of enjoying a good old fertility festival, we send an out-of-season red rose with a weak neck that breaks after a day or two. Who was St Valentine anyway? He has been omitted from the calendar of saints' days as probably non-existent. He has survived only because his alleged martyrdom day falls a day before Lupercalia.
Be conventional on the 14th if you wish, but purists should reclaim their day with something Roman. Examining the entrails of a dog for omens may be going a bit far, but there's no reason why you shouldn't shuck an oyster or 12 and examine their innards with a loved one. Half a dozen of the aphrodisiac bivalves will cost £13.50 at Wheelers in London and Brighton or £3.95 at the Magpie Cafe in Whitby.
Today's Antonys might fancy giving asses milk to their Cleopatras, but will probably have to settle for a bathful of goat or sheep milk instead. That could be pricey: Harrods charges £1.10 and £1.30 a pint.
If you'd die for your love, send him a CD of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and hope he arrives with several gallons of sheep's milk to douse your funeral pyre before it gets too warm.
If your sweetheart is literary-minded, remember the Romans were good on erotica. Whatever your sexual preference, Catullus (Poems, Penguin Classics, £6.99), and Ovid (The Erotic Poems, Penguin Classics, £8.99) will have done it and commemorated it in verse.
I've always wanted a man to buy me packets of seeds of all Shakespeare's flowers. He could plant them in a Bard border, and I could trip among them muttering about rosemary for remembrance and pansies for thoughts. If you like the idea, but not the digging, go for the book Shakespeare's Flowers, Royal Shakespeare Company, £4.99 telephone orders 01789 296860.
Underwear is a tricky one. The shops I rang all said: "Something red for Valentine's Day." I think red is tarty, but men call it passionate. Only to be embarked on if you know your love really well.
For a cheeky variation on the chocolate theme, try Chocolate Body Paint (BhS, £3.50). It's for spreading on ice-cream, bread or bodies. Not to be mixed with expensive underwear.
You could actually use the line "Come up and see my etchings" if you had one of the heart designs by Jenny Tapping waiting for your sweetheart. The tiny, hand-coloured etchings range from £11.50 to £19.50. Ring 01787 247865 for details.
If you have the money to shop at Cartier (0171-493 6962) and yet would like to keep tabs on your investment, their gold love bangle (from £2,600) may be for you. It has to be put on by the giver and comes complete with screwdriver.
Lupercalia was still on my mind when I asked our Valentine testing panel to check out a few of this year's gifts. "Send me a young man in a wolfskin," I cried. Instead, I got Perry Cleveland-Peck, an editorial assistant at The Times, in a silk shirt.
Our panel consisted of Perry, 25, my husband, 53, my stepdaughter, 16, and me, 37. In all cases, our judgment may have been distorted by consumption of too many chocolates.
.MOSS TEDDY BEAR
Fitzroy's, £35 (0171-722 1066). Next-day delivery in London. Allow up to a week for the rest of the UK. With regular watering the bear could last three years.
JP: When I first saw him I wasn't sure, but he's growing on me ...
Husband: He's very good, but I'd be rather worried if someone gave him to me. Who was that chap in Brideshead? I'd only give it to someone who was mad about bears. And I don't think I'd want to be involved with a woman who was mad about them.
PC-P: He's fantastic. I'd definitely buy him for my girlfriend. I'd be pleased to be given him too. (Perry and Teddy left the testing together.)
Sweet 16: He's fun. He doesn't scream "commitment" at you. Non-threatening.
Heart rate 5 out of 5. But only for the young ones. And isn't three years of watering a commitment?
.HEART-SHAPED
CALCULATOR
Fenwicks, £13.50. Available by mail order on 0171-629 9161. With jewel-coloured keys.
JP: I haven't got the self-confidence to like something that vulgar.
Husband: Does it play a tune?
PC-P: For teenagers but it's tacky.
Sweet 16: I actually know someone with one of these. Not for me. I suppose if you put in on your desk it tells the world you've had a Valentine.
Heart rate 1. My three-year-old fell for it but her idea of a Valentine is Thomas the Tank Engine.
.FLOWERS FOR A MAN
Interflora, £30 freephone number is 0500 43 43 43. Our florist came up with a burst of red and yellow sunflowers, amaryllis and carnations, backed up with eucalyptus and willow. It was the hit of the testing, even with my husband, who had complained about the smell of some hyacinth flowers the day before.
JP: Just right for a man. Nothing droopy or Victorian about this. No ribbons, no scent. Given to a woman, it wouldn't be romantic, but this would knock a chap over without being cloying.
Husband: Almost shockingly good. It's in a water-bag, so you don't have the fuss of having to arrange it. I'd just plonk the whole thing in the salad bowl. If you had this in your flat and a mate came round, you wouldn't be embarrassed. Just the job. Not smelly, either.
PC-P: I'd be really flattered if a woman sent me flowers. No problem with that at all. These make a good splash.
Sweet 16: I'm not really into flowers. It's quite a heavy thing to send someone.
Heart rate 5. Ask your florist for "a good splash".
.LOVE ME, LOVE ME NOT
CUFFLINKS
White enamel cufflinks with small red hearts, one broken. Sackville and Jones from Fenwicks, £14.95. Available by mail order on 0171-629 9161.
JP: I've never bought a man cufflinks. These are quite jolly. Small and not flashy.
Husband: They're witty. I'd wear them.
PC-P: I'd be quite thrilled with these. Cufflinks are a great idea.
Sweet 16: Pass.
Heart rate 4.
.AMOR VINCIT OMNIA
PICTURE FRAME
Metal gilt-embossed frame 4inx3in with small heart-shaped cut-out for photograph. Modulus from Fenwicks, £23.95. Available by mail order on 0171-629 9161.
JP: It's good and heavy but it doesn't improve with time.
Husband: Hideous.
PC-P: It's OK, nice and weighty. I like it more than when I first saw it.
Sweet 16: Not at all.
Heart rate 2.
.HEART AND BIRDS
WALL HANGING
Red plaster heart, 6in high, with two lovebirds perched on top. Liberty, £9.95. Mail order: 0171-734 1234.
JP: I like this. It may be heart-shaped but it looks a bit rough-hewn, almost distressed, which stops it being naff.
Husband: I like it more than I did at first. In the right place it would be fine: there aren't many right places.
PC-P: I've been to houses full of things like this. It's good.
Sweet 16: It's worse than the picture frame. It looks like a decoration from a house in Neighbours.
Heart rate 3.
.CHARBONNEL ET
WALKER CHOCOLATES
Heart-shaped box with I Love You or other message in gold-wrapped chocs, £34 for 28oz; or heart-shaped chocolates in hand-made fabric
box, £20 for a quarter of a
pound. Available by mail order on 0171-491 0939.
JP: The little hand-made box is lovely. If it's an established relationship, this is the one.
Husband: No. Go for quantity. The big box is the one. The I Love You message is irrelevant. The heart-shaped box registers with you and you can't wait to tear into the chocs.
PC-P: The small box would be better for someone you want to woo. It's subtle. The big one is for an established relationship. You expect to share those on the sofa. The little box is just enough for one.
Sweet 16: Love the chocs. It's a schmaltzy idea, but who's going to complain?
Heart rate 4. .BED CUSHIONS
Heavily embroidered cushions, 14inx14in, with Shakespearean quotes from Midsummer Night's Dream or Romeo and Juliet. Royal Shakespeare Company, 01789 296860. Titania, £15.99; Romeo and Juliet, £16.99.
JP: They're beautiful and sexy. I'd prefer these to underwear any time.
Husband: A bit different. Quite a strong message not for someone you've just met at the bus-stop.
PC-P: A lovely romantic gesture.
Sweet 16: Almost as good as the chocs.
Heart rate 4.
.HAND-MADE CARDS
FROM THE RSC
Royal Shakespeare Company, 01789 296860. Printed with hearts and a romantic quotation from Shakespeare, £2.85 or £10 for four; also from Liberty, £3.95.
JP: I think these are adorable. Mass-produced cards can be dreadful unless you get those "blank for your own message" ones.
Husband: They're almost a present in themselves. Though it's rather playing the field to buy four in a pack, isn't it?
PC-P: I like this idea. It shows you've given the person some thought.
Sweet 16: Exactly. It's much nicer than just grabbing something off the shelf.
Heart rate 5.
Costumiers: Angels & Bermans (0171-836 5678).
Flowers: Paula Pryke
(0171-837-7373) for Interflora.
Shot at The Peacock House, Addison Road, Holland Park, London, with thanks to the Richmond Fellowship.
Garden historian Sylvia Landsberg explains how she created a medieval-style garden
The beautiful 15th-century French manuscript shown above is one of the sources that I used to design a garden that would soften the austere Great Hall in Winchester, the only remaining building of Henry III's 13th-century castle.
The original idea came from the Hampshire Gardens Trust, which proposed that a royal pleasure garden of around the same period as the castle be re-created. In 1986 Hampshire County Council built the garden, and today it is open to the public.
The garden is named after the queens of Henry III and his son Edward I Eleanor of Provence and Eleanor of Castille respectively. They were the first queens in this country to have a recorded interest in gardens. Eleanor of Castille even arranged to pay for her Moorish gardeners to return to Aragon on her death, in 1290. It may have been through the queen's continental background that the brightest stars of the medieval herbaceous border, such as pot marigolds, wallflowers, lavender and the hollyhock, were introduced to England.
Queen Eleanor's Garden as a whole as opposed to the bower garden illustrated above is a narrow triangle, some 10ydx30yd, typical in size and shape of the tiny castle gardens of the time, which were wedged between buildings. It is similar in size and position to many private London gardens and, like many small, modern ones, it is packed with flowers and ornament in the upright as well as the horizontal plane. A bronze falcon perches atop a hand-carved, stone fountain, a water channel trickles through the garden, and there are stone and wooden benches, with decorations copied from local contemporary garden features. A rose and vine-covered arbour leads towards the enclosed flowery bower where a medieval queen might have retired to play chess or sew.
This is the part of the garden illustrated above, and it is typical of the period. At all levels of medieval society there would be some corner in a garden in which to sit and perhaps eat or drink. The style would range from rough banks and a crude trestle table in a peasant garden, to a high level of carpentry in a royal or aristocratic garden.
The medieval painting shows a turf bench surrounding a turf "carpet", the whole probably enclosed by a low brick wall. Planted in a bed built into the top of one wall is a border luxuriant with red and white pinks, taller single carnations and probably marjoram. In the larger surrounding garden, not shown, other scented plants, such as lavender and stocks, complete the olfactory picture. On three sides of the bower garden the backs of the turf seats are planted with red and white roses, Rosa gallica officinalis and Rosa alba now known as the roses of Lancaster and York. Although the method is not visible, these roses are either interwoven into, or tied back onto, the trellises. The back of the enclosure is completed by the vines on the side of the tunnel arbour.
Elaborately carved posts support diagonal and square-patterned trellis. At the top of the arched entrance there is a heraldic crest, confirming a wealthy owner. The picture illustrates Boccaccio's Emilia, ("weaving a subtle garland for her head" in Chaucer's translation in "The Knight's Tale"), sitting here in the shade of two hawthorn trees.
In Queen Eleanor's Garden this French medieval illustration has been re-created to a size of 4ydx5yd. The turf seats were constructed from stacks of turves to a height of about 20in, infilled with soil behind, in which to grow the plants. All this is contained within a low wall of limestone blocks. The seats were originally newly fronted each autumn with pegged-on turves. It has been difficult to prevent these from drying out, and one wonders if they were created for short visits only a Chelsea flower show effect.
The garden trelliswork is made from 3inx3in square oak posts, onto which a square trellis of conifer poles is nailed. The archway is topped by a gold-leafed ball and heraldic shield displaying the quartered devices of Eleanor's father, King of Leon and Castille, which she was entitled to use gold castle on red, purple lion on white. These were copied from her gilded tomb in Westminster Abbey.
The garden has the same species of rose Lancaster and York as in the illustration. Careful pruning prevents the onset of rust.
Pinks and carnations cannot be grown since these did not reach England until the end of the 15th century. Instead, yellow wallflowers and native cowslips for spring are alternated in the summer with single pot marigolds Calendula officinalis and the little native pansy, Viola tricolor, with winter savory for scent.
This planting scheme panders to the greater visual demands made by visitors rather than the priority given to scented plants in medieval times. The roses flower for only two to three weeks in late June or early July. A painting, deceptively, flowers all year. The little "herber" is finally carpeted with wild flowers, in particular ground ivy and germander speedwell, giving a fleeting sheet of blue in May. A table on which to play chess completes the scene.
There are many reasons why one would not wish to transform a present-day private garden into a medievally-styled one. Short flowering periods, floppy plants, proneness to rust and mildew, late opening of vine buds, to name a few. However, some features described here can look well in a modern garden, and, for those who want to try, a chapter in my book (details left), explain some of the construction techniques.
Based on The Medieval Garden, by Sylvia Landsberg, British Museum Press, £12.99. Available February 12, 1996.
Queen Eleanor's Garden is open daily from 10am-5pm but is best visited from April to early July.
(Queen Eleanor's Garden, Great Hall, the Castle, Winchester, Hants.) Admission free.
The author is a garden historian, designer and lecturer who specialises in 12 th to 17th century-style gardens, 118 Highfield Lane, Southampton, SO17 1 NP.
Stephen Anderton replies to readers' letters
I have a large yew hedge. Can you tell me if cuttings can be used in a medicinal way and who to approach about collecting them? Ms E. Wallis, Crossways, Dorset.
Yew clippings can be used in cancer research and there are several companies that collect them. There is even a small payment per kilogram for the clippings. Companies are interested in relatively small amounts, even a couple of large bin-liners full.
There are certain things you need to know before collection. For instance, clippings must be kept cool. Small amounts can be spread out in a shady place but large heaps will heat up like compost, so some firms supply special sacks, complete with a fan to push air into the centre of the sack. Collection should follow quickly after cutting.
Some firms offer different prices according to the quality of the clippings, ranging from clean, feathery clippings to twiggier stuff. Most are not interested in anything of more than pencil thickness.
Large quantities can fetch 50p per kilogram. For collection, contact: Friendship Estates, Old House Farm, Stubbs Walden, Doncaster DN6 9BU (01302 700220); Philippe Wanty, PO Box 118, Chichester, W Sussex, PO18 0EL (01243 545455); Yew Clippings Ltd, Milton Mill, West Milton, Bridport, Dorset DT6 3 SN (01308 485693).
Q Our problem plant is Yucca gloriosa, Adam's needle, which blooms too late in the year, at Christmas. Can you suggest a way to cure this? Mr J. Norman, Lincoln.
A With leaves as sharp as a yucca's around, who can blame Adam for wanting to stitch together a loincloth? Yuccas are fabulous in bloom, but that 6ft white candle is always late. In a cold garden, it pays to plant it against a south wall to speed nature along, or to plant the smaller but earlier Yucca filamentosa.
Q Some years ago we took over a garden in which somebody had planted grape hyacinths. The things are spreading like a plague, and thrive on weedkillers such as Roundup and Tumbleweed, and, when they have spread into gravel paths, shrug off PathClear and even sodium chlorate. Any ideas? Dr M.D. Begley, Frome, Somerset.
A A pretty blue, but insidious, aren't they? Muscari grow from a small white bulb, producing lots of bulblets every year as well as seedlings. They spread like mad, by fork and hoe and mouse and mole. Think hard before introducing them into an area of close gardening, however pretty they may look as an edging.
Growing them on a grassy bank solves the problem. Removing them from a border is difficult because, like celandines, their bulblets are so numerous that it is almost impossible to dig them up. Attempts at serious digging usually let some bulbs drop even lower into the soil, making them harder still to eradicate. Heavy shade stops them flowering but will not kill them except over many, many years. However, you might smother them into insignificance with a heavy herbaceous ground cover.
Where the bulbs are in empty soil, you might try removing and sterilising the soil. What a job! Where they are among the roots of shrubs, persevere with the Roundup (glyphosate) but be sure to bruise the leaves first and to add washing-up liquid to the spray to make sure it does not run off the shiny leaves. There are many things which glyphosate takes several applications to kill, and bulbs are one of them. In gravel, sodium chlorate will work, even if the bulbs have sufficient energy reserves to produce several death throes.
Readers wishing to have their gardening problems answered should write to: Garden Answers, Weekend, The Times, 1 Pennington St, London E1 9XN. We regret that few personal answers can be given and that it may not be possible to deal with every request. Advice is offered without legal responsibility. The Times also regrets that enclosures accompanying letters cannot be returned.
Prune large-flowered clematis, tidying back early-summer flowerers, and cutting down to 2ft the late-summer ones.
Dress the soil below established hedges with bonemeal, and apply residual granular herbicides if needed.
Sow early salad crops, such as lettuce and radish, under glass, or even in a frame or cloche.
Resist the temptation to cut back winter-damaged grey and Mediterranean plants until April.
Complete the removal of dead stalks and leaves from herbaceous plants to compost heap.
Stephen Anderton lightly prunes, as a start, a 12ft multistem yew that is crying out to be topiarised. To the left is a skeletal, badly pruned old apple tree that "will have to go"
The thing to do with a new garden is nothing. Just look and plan, says Stephen Anderton
The best thing you can do for a new garden, and sometimes the hardest thing, is simply to look at it. Not to rush out and start doing things, but just to look, and think.
When I moved into my new house near Saffron Walden in Essex in December it snowed a little and then, without a breath of wind, froze for a week. All I could do was look.
Then the birds arrived. The children had hung peanuts in an old apple tree outside the kitchen window and the word got around that there was a free meal. Numbers were few at first, perhaps because the garden has been inhabited previously by a couple of rough-and-tumble dogs, but soon there was all the usual cast of garden birds, plus greenfinches and treecreepers. Below them, a posse of pheasants patrolled the lawn, as if with arms behind their backs, and pretended not to be eating the fallen peanut skins.
But waiting gets you down. After the thaw, I started to spend half hours standing about in the garden, hatching plots and plans. Mine is not a huge garden, but quite big enough. Most of the plot lies to the back of the house, on the east side, in a rectangle 80ft by 110ft. Beyond my boundary is a neighbour's field, and then a row of tall pines along the edge of a stream. If these were thinned now, a few would stand a chance of becoming grand old pines with broad heads.
In my garden there is a good matrix of trees around open lawn, and on these might hang the future garden design. Two big, mature, flowering cherries flank the south side. They will be a powerful sight when in flower, and there is no point planning much else nearby until spring shows what colours they will be. Will they be white? Will they be bilious pink? (Of course they will.) Will the birds take all the buds every year and the trees never flower? If so, they will go, because cherries are greedy, shallow-rooted trees and worthwhile only in a small garden if they perform.
Dead ahead centre, against the bottom fence, is a 20ft horse chestnut, which I take to be the ordinary white one. If it were the pink form, there would be a circular scar around the trunk, where the pink scion was grafted on to the plain stock. I would prefer it to be the white form or, better still, the late-flowering Indian horse chestnut, Aesculus indica, which has beautiful glossy leaves.
In time, the horse chestnut will make a good tree and a powerful focus for the bottom of the garden. But if you plant a large, greedy tree as a focus in a small garden, there is always the problem of how to handle the dry, rooty space underneath, where nothing wants to grow. On the other hand, you can encourage horse chestnuts to hold their branches right down to ground level.
My tree is planted hard against the fence and, by the time it is a big tree, half of it will be hanging over my neighbour's land. It will be in his way. Perhaps it should go now. It is, after all, the most important place in the whole garden, and getting this right quickly would be most valuable. But no, give it a year and see what the tree does for the garden in summer. (Suddenly, a nasty thought: if this is a conservation area I may not be allowed to take it down. I must check with the local authority planning department.)
Anyway, have I not always railed against people who move into new houses and immediately start cutting down trees before they have had chance to see what purpose they serve? I must see it all in summer first.
Down the left flank of the garden, to the north, is my business park. Pride of place goes to the oh-so-necessary garden shed, a splendid Wendy house, rotary washing line, compost heap, another big cherry and three 30ft Leyland cypresses, which are quietly smothering a deodar (Himalayan cedar) and a Lawson cypress. If the Leylands do not get the deodar, the cherry will in another couple of years.
The Leylands really ought to go although, just now, they make a fine screen and a splash of February greenery. But soon they will be 40ft high, and then 50 ft and impossibly dominating. My neighbour to the north will be able to grow mushrooms in the gloom of his south-facing greenhouse.
Tucked at the back the Leylands is a surprise. A 15ft dawn redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides, sits by the fence, and at its foot a collection of handleless Edwardian garden rollers (they did so love to roll in those days). On close inspection, someone has "rolled" the redwood, and there is a sizeable patch of bark missing at ground level. The chances are that, as a result, it will never make a good, mature tree. Damn those rollers.
Out on the lawn, however, is a real promise: a 12ft multistem yew of loosely cottage-loaf configuration and crying out to be topiarised and pulled into the greater scheme of the new garden. I could relent and do that now, but should I wait? No. That I shall begin. Then it can start thickening up this year.
In general, this year should be for planning: for getting to know the soil, to see how clayey it is, to see where bulbs spring up, to clobber serious weeds, to see where the warm, sunny corners are, and the cold ones, to see if we will use the garden door in summer, and to see if the frost really does have me in its pocket.
Meanwhile, the pheasants think the Leyland cypresses are wonderful, and in the dustbowl under their canopy the birds wallow in ecstasy.
SAY WHAT you like about the giving of cut flowers, the principle of the thing is safe enough. Even if the beloved cannot stand chincherinchees, the flowers will at least die within a couple of weeks. Not so with plants for the garden. Giving these is a much trickier proposition.
I would hesitate to ask someone to put up with my taste in plants for ever ... "And how is Yucca ‘Vittorio Emmanuel II'? Doing well for you?" In fact, YVEII was probably given away at the first possible opportunity.
But it is these outrageous names which make the gift of plants stick in the mind of the present givers, and which keep them wondering how Rosa ‘Golden Wedding' and your marriage are doing.
So popular is R. ‘Golden Wedding' with prospective donors and, particularly, with the nursery trade that, when the first, 1938 RGW disappeared from cultivation, a new one was bred to replace it. There is now a stack of golden opportunities on the wedding list, including ‘Golden Celebration', ‘Golden Anniversary', ‘Golden Days, ‘Golden Moments' and, of course, ‘Golden Years'.
Find That Rose, a booklet published by the British Rose Growers' Association, lists 26 ‘Golden' roses.
The rose is one of those plants, along with violas, irises, rhododendrons, fuchsias and dahlias, that has attracted a huge range of first-name titles. And there is no doubt that this helps to sell them to an eponymous market.
Last year a little booklet, The Directory of First Name Plants, was produced, so if you want to give your Desiree a ‘Desiree' for her birthday or as a Valentine present, you know where to look. And, if she doesn't like the plant, it will be that much harder for her to dispose of than a plant with just a Latin name. Binning one's namesake is like cutting one's toenails in public; difficult for semi-superstitious reasons.
Looking through this booklet of names, it is striking how many more of the names listed are female than male. The plants were bred, I suppose, largely by men, and named after their lighter loves. The male names are mostly serious and old-fashioned, in the manner of ‘Arthur' and ‘Arnold'. There is no Rosa ‘Clint' or ‘Brent', although there is the locker-room rose ‘Sexy Rexy', a mid-pink 30in-tall floribunda rose. But, thorns or no, roses surely must be essentially female things, soft, perfumed and gorgeous.
People, they say, become in time like their pets, but do plants share the characteristics of their namesakes? Plants with such conspicuously human names ought to be christened with great care, so that plant and name can live comfortably together.
I could never imagine a hosta, with all that bold foliage and stiff flower, to be anything but male. No one even someone who talks to their plants could go out in the morning and address a hosta as ‘Marian'. But ‘Harrison' the hosta is altogether more appropriate. More chunky. "Hiya, Harrison!" That sounds more like it.
Curiously, houseleeks (sempervivums) have been a favourite target among plant breeders for receiving the names of mothers, wives and daughters. Curious, because it would be hard to think of a less dumpy, earthbound little plant. ‘Ronnie', on the other hand, is a good name for a houseleek. Neat, cheerful and completely reliable.
Would we remember Daphne now, or the daughters named after her, if she, when being chased round Antioch by a randy old Apollo, had had the lack of good fortune to be metamorphosed by Mother Earth into a houseleek? Or a pebble plant?
THE TROUBLE with buying a plant for its name alone is that a familiar handle does not guarantee its quality or character. Names carry such different messages to different generations. Salvia ‘Madonna' might mean the plant is black and spiky, or virginal white or celestial blue. Association is entirely in the mind of the beholder.
When it comes to it, most of us are capable of buying plants for others that we do not want for ourselves and without any help in the choosing from other people. Who can honestly say that at some time they have not bought a shirt with the wrong-sized collar, or an appealing plant for which one has neither real use nor space? On the other hand, how flattering it is when someone brings a plant which shows just how much they have considered your tastes and needs.
Perhaps, if I have a house-warming party, I might acquire four dozen 3 ft-tall container-grown yew trees for my hedge?
The Directory of First Name Plants costs £2 from D. and P. Hartshorn, Nonesuch Cottage, Badby, Northants NN11 3AW. Find That Rose a Guide to Who Grows What is compiled by the British Rose Growers' Association, c/o The Editor, 303 Mile End Road, Colchester, Essex CO4 5EA.
MARI WILSON In those far-off, easy-living days of the early 1980s, Mari Wilson's beehive hair-do and her tribute to Julie London on Cry Me a River earned her cult status in the clubs of London. What dazzling insights could that post-modern guru Peter York have conjured from her kitsch frocks and gravity-defying coiffure? In her latest guise Wilson is going for mainstream jazz respectability, and she has been helped along the way by guest appearances from such luminaries as saxophonist Chico Freeman. Her current band includes Duncan MacKay on trumpet and Simon Hale at the keyboard.
Ronnie Scott's, Broad St, Birmingham (0121-643 4525), Mon 12 to Sat 17, 9pm. JOHN ABERCROMBIE/PEE WEE ELLIS John Abercrombie's name graces a shelf-full of albums on the ECM label. His consistency and his ability to slip into just about any genre from bop to fusion has almost counted against him; a talent like his is too easily taken for granted. He appears this week with his group Baseline, featuring Hein Van Der Geyn, the bass player who has been working wonders with singer Dee Dee Bridgewater. More elemental tastes are catered for later in the week with the arrival at the Rhythmic of the bristling funk saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis, the legendary James Brown sideman who also played on Van Morrison's recently-released R&B disc, How Long Has This Been Going On?
The Rhythmic, Chapel Market, London N1 (0171-713 5859), Abercrombie: Mon 12 to Wed 14; Ellis: Fri 16 to Sun 18.
THE SILVER OF SAN LORENZO Of all materials, silver has tended to be most inextricably harnessed to the past, and traditional ideas of how it should be used in design.
The Italians, naturally, have other ideas. The studio of San Lorenzo was set up in 1970 specifically to pitchfork sterling silver design into the late 20th century, in line with new Italian design in plastics and more basic metals. The show at the Victoria and Albert Museum gives a very fair idea of the results. A number of leading Italian designers in other spheres were recruited, and so here we have cutlery by Afra and Tobia Scarpa, tableware by Franco Albini and Franca Helg, and an "endless bracelet" by Leila and Massimo Vignelli. All impeccably clean-lined, direct, stylish and usable. Where else but in Italy?
Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 (0171-938 8441), Mon 12, noon-5.50pm; Tues-Sun, 10am-5.50pm, until April 30. +
WHITEFRIARS GLASS The glass factory of James Powell & Sons first opened in 1834. During the first century of its existence it was associated primarily with the nascent Arts and Crafts movement and worked with William Morris, selling through Liberty and Tiffany among other outlets. In 1923 the company went through a revolution and embraced modernism wholeheartedly. The best-known product was a series of streaky, cloudy, richly coloured pieces. Postwar, the company tended more towards the crisp simplicities of Scandinavian modern. The factory closed in 1980, and its work has since been neglected. This show, and an authoritative book, edited by Lesley Jackson, the curator, should help to redress the balance.
City Art Galleries, Mosley Street, Manchester (0161-236 5244), Mon, 11 am-5.30pm; Tues-Sat, 10am-5.30pm; Sun, 2-5.30pm, until June 30, then at the Museum of London in a reduced form.
A LITTLE PRINCESS (U): A gorgeous family film that even improves on The Secret Garden, another Frances Hodgson Burnett novel recently remade for the screen.
The powers of imagination are central to the tale of the "little princess", an English officer's daughter left in a New York boarding school while he fights in the First World War. They also sustain the director, Alfonso Cuaron. This relatively untried Mexican shows uncommon mastery of the Hollywood machine; and his players, none starry names, never succumb to saccharine sweetness or heavy caricature. Liesel Matthews is the girl plunged from riches to rags, and Eleanor Bron the malevolent headmistress who tries to outlaw make-believe.
MGMs: Chelsea (0171-352 5096); Tottenham Court Road (0171-636 6148); Trocadero + (0171-434 0031); UCI Whiteleys + (0171-792 3332); Warner + (0171-437 4343); Watermans (0181-568 1176).
WITHNAIL & I (15): Bruce Robinson's cult comedy about two would-be actors at the end of the 1960s, enduring a miserable break in the Lake District, returns to the screen on its tenth anniversary. The film casts a beady eye on 1960s follies, and observes its characters with loving care. Paul McGann takes the role of "I", the bemused innocent struggling to escape from the advances of Withnail's uncle (Richard Griffiths). But this is Richard E. Grant's show. His Withnail is outrageously self-centred, an endless fountain of caustic remarks; and his black bile keeps the film alive.
MGMs: Fulham Road (0171-370 2636), Shaftesbury Avenue (0171-836 6279); Ritzy (0171-737 2121).
SCOTTISH DANCE THEATRE Neville Campbell, who formerly ran the Phoenix Dance Company, might seem an appropriate director for this new group arising from the ashes of the Dundee Rep Dance Company. Six dancers in four works make up their opening programme, to which Campbell gives the title Human Tales as an indication of where his interests lie. They begin in Edinburgh before a two month tour.
St Brides Centre, Edinburgh (0131-346 1405), Thur 15 to Sat 17, 7.30pm; Dundee Rep Theatre (01382 223530), Feb 19-20; Dovecot Arts Centre, Stockton-on-Tees (01642 611625) Mar 1; The Place Theatre, London (0171-387 0031), Mar 8, 9. Also Liverpool, Bury, Inverness, Kircaldy, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Stirling, Cumbernauld and Paisley (details 01382 229500).
CINDERELLA Michael Corder has created a new Cinderella to Prokofiev's music for English National Ballet. David Walker is the designer. Corder, who began his dancing and choreographic career at Covent Garden, has worked abroad lately; this is his first full evening work to be seen in Britain.
The Mayflower, Southampton (01703 711811), Wed 14 to Sat 17, 7.30pm; matinees: Thur 15, Sat 17, 2.30pm; Palace Theatre, Manchester + (0161-242 2503), Feb 19 to 24; Bristol Hippodrome + (0117 929 9444), Feb 26 to Mar 2; London Coliseum + (0171-632 8300), Mar 25 to 27.
BRIDGET RILEY A double helping of recent work by one of our most rigorous and enlivening painters. At Waddington Galleries large paintings fill the space with a remarkable sense of energy.
Hints of sunlight falling through a wood give way, finally, to the realisation that Riley is above all else an abstract artist. She revels in visual complexity, and never lets us come to rest as we tussle with her teasing ambiguities. In the gouaches shown at Karsten Schubert a paler and more airy side of her work is revealed. At 65, Riley may well be entering a more expansive and hedonistic phase without, of course, sacrificing her formidable lucidity and structural control.
Waddington Galleries, Cork Street, London W1 (0171-437 8611) and Karsten Schubert, 41-42 Foley Street, London W1 (0171-631 0031), until March 2.
PAUL CEZANNE For the first time in decades, the totality of Cezanne's awesome achievement is revealed in a great exhibition. Arriving at the Tate Gallery after his triumphant season at the Grand Palais in Paris, the Master of Aix looks magnificent. His early paintings are turbulent, erratic and often violent. But they are already charged with enormous vitality, and after 1880 Cezanne learns how to channel all that fervent emotion into an art of overwhelming grandeur. He turns from Romantic excess to Classical discipline. But there is nothing dry or excessively calculated about his later work. The firmness with which he structures his figures, landscapes and still lives is seasoned with sensual power. An unmissable show, filled with awesome and delectable work which amply repays hard, concentrated looking.
Tate Gallery, Millbank, London SW1 (0171-887 8000), until April 28 (for tickets ring First Call on 0990 661 010). +
STANLEY Stanley Spencer's first wife sacrificed herself totally for him, his second grabbed what she could get from an "oik" she openly despised, while he floundered between the two, like a sticky-fingered child baffled by the grown-ups. Antony Sher, a bedraggled gnome in corduroy bags and ill-fitting specs, gives a meticulous, funny and moving performance in Pam Gems's play, which is both an intelligent portrait of the peculiar loves of an important modern painter and a study of female archetypes in action.
Cottesloe, National, South Bank, London SE1 (0171-928 2252). Evenings: Mon 12 to Thur 15, 7.30pm; matinee: Tues 13, 2.30pm. Continues in repertoire. +
VALLEY SONG The joy of Athol Fugard's first post-apartheid play is that the author himself is onstage, a tiny, bearded figure playing both a writer seeking sanctuary from the urban hubbub and an old farmer afraid of eviction. Social and political change puzzles and worries both men, but for the other character, a 17-year-old Cape Coloured, it represents the chance of escaping the rural outback and fulfilling her dreams in the big city. Out of all this comes a ruminative, questioning piece which gently suggests that South Africa's future may not be altogether easy.
Royal Court, Sloane Square, London SW1 (0171-730 1745). Evenings: Mon to Sat, 7.30pm; matinees: Thur 15, 3pm, Sat 17, 3.30pm.
ETERNAL Comfortably lodged in the Top 30 with their second album, Power of a Woman, and nominated for Best British Dance Act in next week's Brit Awards, Eternal step out for their first dates here since slimming down to a trio.
Although their music is modelled on the American sound and style, they are a formidable homegrown talent in a field that has traditionally lacked a strong British presence. A "spectacular" new show is promised, incorporating a full live band, backing singers and dancers.
Guildhall, Portsmouth (01705 824355), Feb 15; Bournemouth International Centre + (01902 297297), Feb 16; St David's Hall, Cardiff + (01222 878444), Feb 17. Also Wolverhampton, York, Nottingham, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Manchester, Sheffield, Cambridge, Bristol, Croydon, Wembley, Belfast and Dublin.
BABYLON ZOO A musical amalgamation of David Bowie and Suede adapted for the post-grunge era, Spaceman has become one of the fastest-selling British singles ever. But the band's identity conceals the fact that Babylon Zoo's debut album was played and recorded in its entirety by singer and songwriter Jas Mann. He clearly has a lot of theatrical flair, but will the boy with the X-ray eyes and his henchmen now be able to cut the mustard as a live act?
London Astoria 2, London WC2 (0171-434 0403), Feb 16.
BIRMINGHAM PREMIERE Nothing less than an "introduction to the world" is attempted in a new piece by Sally Beamish.
The piece, A Book of Seasons is dedicated to the composer's new-born daughter, and will be premiered by the ever-enterprising Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and the evocatively named BEAST (Birmingham Electro Acoustic Sound Theatre) next Friday, in a concert that also includes music by Oliver Knussen, Judith Weir, Jonathan Harvey, Boulez and Stravinsky. "Ever heard anyone argue that all modern music sounds the same?" asks Weir. "This is the concert that argues back."
Adrian Boult Hall, Paradise Place, Birmingham (0121-605 6666), Fri 16, 7.30pm. +
PIANISTS' WORK Plenty of twinkling fingers at the keyboard this week. Jack Gibbons gives only the second performance in history of Alkan's stupendously difficult 12 Etudes, Op 39 (Queen Elizabeth Hall, Thur 15, 7pm). Andras Schiff opens his Bartok and Haydn series at the Wigmore Hall (Mon 12, Wed 14, next Sat 17, 7.30pm). And tomorrow, at the Barbican, sparks will fly as Nikolai Demidenko tackles a Chopin and Schumann programme. Lucky the city that can boast such an array of pianistic riches in the same week. Let's hope they all get the audiences they deserve.
Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank, London SE1 + (0171-960 4242); Wigmore Hall, Wigmore St, London W1 + (0171-935 2141); Barbican, Silk St, London EC2 + (0171-638 8891).
Planning to see a show or a film, an exhibition or a concert? The Times critics select the best entertainment.
TRISTAN AND ISOLDE Wagner is no longer as central to the operatic repertory in London as once he was a combination, perhaps, of changing tastes and managements unable to afford overtime payments so Wagnerites will leap upon the English National Opera's new staging of his obsessional love-equals-death drama, sung in Andrew Porter's English translation. David Alden, a dab hand at operatic obsession, directs, with designs by Ian (An Inspector Calls) MacNeil, and the cast is led by Elizabeth Connell and George Gray, singing their roles on stage for the first time. Mark Elder conducts: a guarantee of top musical quality.
Coliseum, St Martin's Lane, London WC2 (0171-632 8000), today, 4pm; Wed 14, 5 pm. +
SAMSON ET DALILA Another, more succinct glance at erotic obsession, though Saint-Saens wrong-foots you for the first 20 minutes by pretending it is an oratorio. There is nothing oratorio-like about Jacques Delacote's brazen conducting when the juices start to flow, and there is shamelessly grand-operatic singing from Markella Hatziano and Jose Cura in the latest Covent Garden revival. The Bacchanale is just the job for tired businessmen, too.
Royal Opera House, Bow St, London WC2 (0171-304 4000), tonight, 7pm; Thur 15, 7.30pm. +
John Selwyn Gummer joins a small, lunchtime congregation in London. THE CHURCH of St Mary-le-Strand in London sits in the middle of the road where the one-way system forces the traffic to choose between crossing Waterloo Bridge or continuing down to Trafalgar Square. When St Thomas a Becket was its rector, it stood on the sandy edge of the Thames but that church was demolished in 1549 to make way for the palace of the Lord Protector, the Duke of Somerset.
It was not until 1724 that the parish had its own church again when James Gibb completed his first important work in the Italian Baroque style, which he had learnt when studying under Carlo Fontana, the Vatican architect. There is something very un-English about this baroque box, St Mary's. So much so that the royal arms of George I above the apse seem oddly out of place in this exuberantly foreign setting.
We are not a large congregation for the lunchtime service, perhaps a dozen spread about the church. Yet we are given the full Sung Eucharist with four hymns no half-measures here. Indeed that sums up the church. The ornate ceiling may have been the work of English craftsmen but it is certainly not reticent. Its Italianate plasterwork grabs the attention up above the plain walls and high windows which are suprisingly effective in keeping the noise of the traffic out. Six candles flank the tabernacle, and there are two more on the altar, while votive lights twinkle before the fittingly ornate statue of the Virgin patron of the church.
The rector finishes tolling the bell and walks down to put on his chasuble in the tiny vestry beside the altar. The first hymn is announced, and we are led impressively by two ladies in the front helped by the strongly rhythmic playing of the electric organ. We join in with a will and when the celebrant begins the Kyries everyone is ready to respond and the service gets under way with a swing. There are so few of us, so dispersed, and yet so congregational a feeling. Anglican services at lunchtime are normally an effective illustration of the biblical concept of the faithful remnant; this is altogether more encouraging. We are even able to sing Fight the Good Fight without seeming ridiculous.
The rector has a good strong voice and sings the service effectively. We use rite B from the Church of England's Alternative Service Book and the continuing appeal of the traditional language contributes to that feeling of solidarity. It is not only those present who are not presuming to come to the Lord's Table we are joined in that by the whole company of so many generations past. Yet within this traditional form we are left in no doubt about the relevance of our faith to the world of today. As befits the Bishop of London's chaplain to the homeless, Father Derek White prays with clarity and directness for the needs of those outside. His language is simple and immensely effective.
As we pray for those caught up in war and disaster, for the addicts and the alcoholics, for the sick and the departed, he creates a sense of real concern for each as he remembers them. It is the anniversary of the Queen's accession and in a sentence he communicates her sense of duty to the nation and her very present need for our prayers. This is no ritual listing, but real intercession.
Indeed, here is a praying congregation. During the notices the rector reminds us of the coming of Lent. The parish has a full programme of services for every day, save Mondays. It has produced a special Lenten book with a reading, meditation and something specific to do on every day of the penitential season. Clearly there is an expectation that we will want to make a good Lent. There is only a single rail-full of communicants in a church which could hold three hundred, but the sense of a worshipping community impresses itself forcibly upon the visitor. The nearest person may be three or four pews away, but there is no feeling of isolation. Instead of being a lonely upholder of an ancient faith, you know you are part of the blessed company of faithful people.
St-Mary-le-Strand, Strand, London WC2R 2LS. Tel: 0171-836 3205. Lunchtime services are held on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1pm.
* A five star guide *
ARCHITECTURE:A really good first try from the man who built Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, and the Cambridge Senate House. ****
MUSIC:Two stars well earned. **
LITURGY:Good, average Anglican High Church. **
SPIRITUAL HIGH:You can get the strength of a praying congregation. ***
AFTER-SERVICE CARE:What! In the middle of the traffic in the Strand!!
Four million bucks for two books!" exclaimed an elderly man in a corridor outside the Manhattan court where Joan Collins this week entered a legal battle with her publisher. The old New Yorker whistled in wonder: "Who does she think she is? Shakespeare?"
The case of Random House (UK) & Random House Inc v. Gemini Star Productions Ltd & Joan Collins has blown the Bonnet off the publishing world. Book commissioning and editing, once seen as cardigan-and-cocoa occupations, have been unveiled as complex, brutal, zappy affairs. Thanks to Joan Collins we have seen the big-cigar decisions modern publishers take, the highly complex discussions which must take place before a word of a novel is written.
Miss Collins, less acclaimed as a writer than her sister Jackie, was offered $4 million (about £2.6 million) not because she could turn a pretty sub-clause but because she is a movie star. People know her. Aged 62, she still exudes that ineffable fragrance of eau de grandeur, perfected over decades in showbusiness. Her arrival on Tuesday morning at the drab courthouse just south of Manhattan's Chinatown was an event in itself. When she alighted from her car she flashed her teeth and let her earrings glint under the flashbulbs of the paparazzi. Summoning her thespian powers she declared that Random House had been a swallow for dramatic effect had been, well, "cruel". She claimed to be speaking up "for many other authors" and voiced her confident expectation of victory.
It was superstar stuff but little else would do. Random House, one of the great powers of publishing, is peeved to a high degree. It is dissatisfied with the manuscript Miss Collins delivered for one of the books, A Ruling Passion, she agreed to write for $4 million, and it wants the return of $1.2 million it paid as an advance. The court heard the Collins prose described as "very primitive, dated, dull, cliched". She is countersuing for the balance of the $4 million, arguing that it is no matter whether the work was dreadful or not. What matters is that it was a "complete" manuscript, as demanded in her contract.
Despite the vast sums she was receiving, Miss Collins expected detailed attention from her editors. Her lawyer, Kenneth Burrows, said that she was accustomed to intensive "face-to-face, line-by-line, page-by-page" editorial help. It was not given.
This sort of assistance is the norm for celebrity authors. Lord Archer takes close advice from experienced book editors when composing his commercial masterpieces. The routine is exhausting. Editors suggest alterations, help the author to improve descriptive passages, make dialogue more convincing,
and delete cliches, excessive adjectives and duff characters. Joni Evans, the perma-tanned Random House editor who gave evidence against Joan Collins this week, said she Evans and a line editor had gone through "16 drafts" of a book with Lord Archer at his house in the Bahamas. Once that was done, she had jetted off to London to work with Michael Caine.
This is publishing in the mould of international trouble-shooting. We have come a long way from the donnish figure of popular imagination who reaches into his in-tray in Bloomsbury and discovers a brilliant manuscript which needs little more than a few typographical tweaks before it can be sent to the printer.
The turbines of modern publishing turn in places such as the midtown Manhattan skyscraper offices of the William Morris agency, a mighty concern which represents politicians, sportsmen, tycoons and, lest one forgets, authors. The decor as you enter the impressive atrium is space-age and muted corridors stretch in all directions. By the outer walls, in high-tech box offices, sit the executive agents, talking urgently, breathily, into state-of-the-art telephones. In the inner core of this giant monument to modern publishing, meanwhile, sit the assistants, runners and clerks, handsome youths with designer haircuts and a sharp view of the world.
Dan Strone, a William Morris agent who specialises in marrying celebrity clients to hungry publishers, surveyed global publishing this week from his high office window and said: "A person's celebrity status creates an expectation of high sales, which in turn creates an expectation of big advances. Some people in publishing just do not know how to handle stars. I package a book before taking it to the publisher. Once you have a ghost writer or collaborator and you know what the celebrity is prepared to talk about, there are few problems."
Strone concedes that prima donna behaviour can be a problem, but that comes with the territory. "You have to treat these people like stars. You have to expect that they will want to travel first class, in limousines. Most arguments are about hotels, stretch limousines and the number of staff people want to take when travelling. If you try to nickel-and-dime people, they are not going to be co-operative."
When Amy Tan's publishers, HarperCollins, wanted their much-loved star author to come to Britain to promote her The Hundred Secret Senses, she was worried about leaving her 20-month-old dog, Babba. The publishers promised to provide daily doggie fixes with animals borrowed from friends so Tan was never lonely. She came.
Stan Soocher, the editor-in-chief of Entertainment Law & Finance, a monthly New York newsletter, said: "Publishing is going the way of the rock‘n' roll business. Just as one rock star likes to demand that the M&Ms in his dressing room are separated into different colours, celebrity authors have started to behave in a way many people might consider outrageous. As book publishing has become a mega business, more companies are accepting these demands. They are recognising the star qualities of authors.
"Celebrity book deals are a high risk for publishers," Soocher said. "When the hit comes, it can be big, but many times they simply do not pay off and you see some celebrity books which are quickly offered at cut price in bookshops." Random House paid Marlon Brando $5 million for his memoirs, Songs My Mother Taught Me, but they were a critical and commercial disappointment, not helped by the slim amount of promotional activity the reclusive Brando agreed to do.
Hilary Rubinstein, a veteran London literary agent, says there have been some "gross and preposterous advances" paid to certain stars in recent years. He feels that Random House must have known, when going into the Collins book, that some fairly serious editorial roadworks would be needed. The size of the Collins deal is a credit to her late agent, the legendary Irving "Swifty" Lazar, whose shade has hovered over the week's court proceedings. "This is Swifty's last hurrah," said his former assistant, Alan Nevins.
Much of the gossip among London publishers last year centred on the £100,000 paid to Naomi Campbell for a novel, Swan, that she had clearly done little to write. There was also Sweet Life, a woeful effort by Britt Ekland; Martina Navratilova's lacklustre The Total Zone; and a dizzy volume from Ivana Trump, written with more than a little help from a former Dynasty scriptwriter called Camille Marchetta. Campbell's book was largely the work of Caroline Upcher, who is now building a literary name for herself.
In the political world, Baroness Thatcher had a whole team of assistants for her memoirs. At one point during composition the work was considered so dry that the team had to attend an anecdote summit when they sought desperately for jokes to insert. Still, Lady T's substantial advance proved a fair investment. Edwina Currie, thanks to her high profile and an eye for a good story, has attracted great commercial interest in the book trade but her novel was completed only after discreet tweaking. Sebastian Coe, the Tory MP and former star runner, is currently working on a novel to coincide with the Olympics. He has an assistant. And Michael Heseltine's political books were composed with the sort of help a minister becomes used to, although, as a dyslexic, the Deputy Prime Minister has a better excuse than many authors.
It is not only celebrity authors who take close editing. Such acclaimed "masters" of the pen as Clive Cussler and Jack Higgins receive scrutiny at the editing stage. What they may lack in technical perfection they balance with an intuitive sense of what readers want. Few authors, in truth, present really "clean" copy.
Richard Cohen, one of London's most respected publishers, used to edit Alistair MacLean. The thriller writer was literate but languid. "With one of his novels I read the manuscript and told him that he had too many heroines," recalls Cohen. "He replied: ‘Och well, Richard, just kill one of them off."' The next time they met, MacLean told Cohen: "You killed off the wrong one, Richard but nae matter."
Sources at the Manhattan offices of Random House, domain of the wizard Harold Evans, suggest that patience with celebrity authors may have been exhausted, but Evans has only to think of the success he had with General Colin Powell's memoirs last year to know that his company can scarce afford to give up on them. What the Collins case does illustrate, perhaps, is the growing determination of publishers to be more assiduous about retrieving advances they feel have not been earned. This is confirmed by Stuart Proffitt, the publisher of trade publishing at HarperCollins. "It is part of the general tightening-up in the book business," he said.
Proffitt believes there is no way that readers can be fooled by "books that have been cooked up. Artifically manufactured books generally have a shelf life of about three and a half minutes," said Proffitt, who has just finished three months working on the next Lord Archer novel.
Is publishing really so much worse nowadays? Hilary Rubinstein worked on the publication of Muhammad Ali's autobiography. He recalls the book's launch party at which the champion boxer was asked by a reporter: "Did you write the book yourself?" Ali looked to the ghost writer at his side, pointed at the man, and said: "No. He wrote the thing. But I told him WHAT to write."
Joseph Conrad derived much benefit from the editorial efforts of Ford Maddox Ford. And ghost-writing was taken to literal levels by Thomas Hardy. After Hardy's death in 1928 his widow produced a biography of her husband. It was a good 25 years before people realised that the book not a critical volume, let us say had been written by Hardy himself.
IT'S TOUGH AT THE TOP
ONE CELEBRITY author demanded that any limousines provided to her during her promotional tour of Britain must be a certain shade of blue to match her eyes. There must also be three suites at the Ritz: one for her, one for her manager and one for her hairdresser. Different demands arrived by the day and eventually her London publisher despaired of her antics and scrapped the tour, to cheers from his office colleagues.
A New York agent insisted that his client be greeted with champagne at every new location. Unless sufficiently chilled there would be "trouble".
Authors stipulate that the publisher must provide a glitzy launch party for instance, in New York's skyscraper Rainbow Room restaurant with its magnificent views.
"Only five-star hotels will be tolerated on tour," ran one contract. "The public would think anything else improper." Another touring author insisted: "My manager and personal assistant will need their own limousines, to be available 24 hours a day."
Celebrity authors can stipulate the right to refuse to go on certain chat shows, perhaps because they are too tough or because a show's host has in the past said bad things about the author.
ALAN NEVINS, a former assistant to "Swifty" Lazar (Joan Collins's late, legendary agent), counsels his Hollywood clients against silly demands. "Some celebrity authors will expect, say, a party for their book at the American Booksellers' Association," he says. "Launch parties are effectively for the author and friends. They do not tend to help the book financially."
PARTICK THISTLE 0 KILMARNOCK 1
FOR the second week in succession a controversial refereeing decision left Thistle fans enraged. However, Mr Pocock's refusal to give a penalty when Lekovic fouled Smith in 72 minutes merely denied the home side a point they didn't deserve.
Anyone expecting Thistle to have been fired up in response to last week's defeat by Rangers could only have been disappointed by their tame and uncertain opening to this match.
In their first attack of any consequence, Kilmarnock took control of the proceedings. After a long ball into the penalty box, Brown jumped with Welsh and Dinnie and the ball struck the Thistle captain on the arm. Black powered home the penalty to put the visitors ahead after five minutes. Kilmarnock stuck admirably to Alex Totten's short passing game which centred around the vision of Henry and the pace of McKee.
Three minutes after taking the lead, Kilmarnock had the ball in the net again, but Brown's finish was disallowed after McKee, spurning his own chance to score, passed to Brown in an offside position. Thistle's sole first-half chance fell to Cameron but his crisp 20-yard volley was excellently parried by Lekovic.
His opposing keeper, Walker, looked less secure when he mis-kicked a backpass high into the air, and McKee's well-controlled lob bounced over the bar.
The introduction of Turner and Henderson at half-time gave Thistle additional impetus but Kilmarnock held out with a combination of good defending and good luck.
On the hour, Black cleared Henderson's effort off the line with Lekovic stranded. Lekovic again looked at fault when he misjudged a spinning ball and fouled Smith in the box, but Mr Pocock was unimpressed with Thistle's penalty claim.
HEARTS 1 ABERDEEN 3
ABERDEEN outmanoeuvred and outmuscled Hearts in a powder-keg of a match that produced six bookings, a sending-off for Bruno, Hearts' Italian, and, almost incidentally, four goals.
It was the Pittodrie side's fourth win in five games and brought Hearts' recent good run to a crude halt. It also leaves them with plenty to ponder as they face the final run-in.
Not only will they meet Kilmarnock in the Scottish Cup without the influential Bruno, sent off for elbowing Windass in the 33rd minute, but the Hearts defender also faces a lengthy suspension after going over the disciplinary points limit.
The kick-off was delayed by ten minutes to allow the capacity crowd time to take their seats. It was the calm before the storm.
In a breathtaking first half which produced three goals as well as the sending-off, referee Kenny Clark left the field at the break to a chorus of disapproval from the Hearts supporters.
He had struggled to keep two eager teams at bay in a confrontation that inevitably yielded bookings. Yet there was also a lot of good football played by both teams. The attendance had been swelled by Hearts fans eager to see the current revival for themselves. Within 20 minutes, they had been brought back down to earth as Aberdeen scored twice.
Windass, the chunky Aberdeen striker, was to play the role of rogue to the Hearts fans. And it is unlikely after this match that a fan club will be set up for him down Gorgie Road.
He formed a battering ram with Shearer up front for Aberdeen but it would be unkind to suggest he is all brawn and no brain. He can also be subtle and perceptive.
His diagonal runs off the ball behind the Hearts defensive line were a constant thorn in the home side's flesh.
Ritchie and McManus have been forced to grow up quickly in the Hearts defence this season but they were made to look like callow youths by Windass. Indeed, McManus was replaced after only half an hour as Hearts restructured themselves in defence, with Bruno going back.
His presence, however, was to last only a further three minutes after he was sent packing for elbowing Windass.
The incident sparked mayhem, with players crowding round referee Clark and Aberdeen substitutes also entering the field from behind the goal. But the outcome was always going to be obvious.
Windass contributed the first goal after only two minutes when his diving header evaded the clutches of Rousset, though the goalkeeper managed to get a hand to the ball before it entered the net.
Aberdeen's second came when McManus was outfoxed by a clever Windass turn which resulted in a penalty when the Aberdeen striker fell.
He took the kick himself, Rousset managed to keep it out, but Shearer followed up to stroke the ball past the French goalkeeper.
Hearts' response was a goal which Robertson will claim for himself after he met a Locke crossbut the ball clearly bounced off Irvine before entering the net. Earlier, Pointon had forced a glorious save from Watt with a raging 25-yard volley and, before the break, McKimmie was lucky not to follow Bruno up the tunnel.
He brought down Robertson at the edge of the box as the striker beavered towards goal, but the challenge only resulted in a yellow card.
Hearts, having already had to change the make-up of their defence twice already were presented with a different set of problems in the second half.
Windass dropped back into the Aberdeen midfield and Jess joined Shearer in attack before being replaced midway through the half by the returning Booth. Thus Aberdeen kept Hearts guessing as to where the threat would come from next.
Johnston, however, almost brought an equaliser for Hearts with a viciously dipping shot from the far touchline which Watt did well to cope with but a third Aberdeen goal almost seem inevitable.
It came when Irvine missed his kick from 12 yards but the ball broke to Glass who scored with a lusty right-foot shot.
After that, all that was left was another remarkable save from Rousset to keep out another Glass piledriver in the final minute. But by then it was all academic.
IT was ironic that the victors of last weekend's Scottish Cup indoor hockey final should be sponsored by David Murray, the Rangers chairman. Insights Menzieshill, who were defeated by MIM, have the greater claim to be the Rangers of indoor hockey, such has been their supremacy over the last five years.
This week, Menzieshill travel to Vienna in the European Cup a long way, both geographically and symbolically, from their community centre home in Dundee. It is not the first time and unlikely to be the last that they have flown the Scottish flag among the cream of Europe.
Each time they have done so, the name of John Christie, floats to the top. As a goalscorer, you might expect it; as an outspoken goalscorer, with an eye for publicity, you have little choice.
In 1991, at a tournament at the Kelvin Hall against equally prestigious opposition, Christie entered the arena with the name of the side's sponsors, NMP, etched into his crewcut. A few days ago, he hurled a verbal cluster bomb at the organisers of an Under-18 competition, claiming it to be a shambles.
"I knew we would lose against MIM," said Christie. "We had no intentions of peaking for the match when we had a fortnight still to go before playing in the European Cup.
"This week we will be concentrating on our speed work and preparing ourselves psychologically by getting winning thoughts into our minds. When we played MIM, we had done a lot of work on our legs for stamina purposes, but we weren't sharp enough. Soon we will be."
After exposing the secret life of the festival city, cult novel Trainspotting is about to hit the cinemas. Allan Brown kicks off a four page analysis of the phenomenon
THAT Irvine Welsh dude must be minted, man. His pus is aw ower the shop. No that ah huv a proablem wi him likesay writing aboot the schemes n the skag n aw ma mates, then countin up the poppy n hinging oot at thae gala luncheons wi loadsa ither showbiz radges. It's jist that sumtimes it seems like he's the only dude in Scotland wie a typewriter, ken. Ye dinnae want tae hog aw the hireys fur yurself, catboy, that's ma advice tae you. An anuther thing, how come...
Many apologies. Lost my mind for a moment there. That should have read: Irvine Welsh is now officially a phenomenon, a ubiquitous, mushrooming literary supernova the like of which Scotland has never seen. Trainspotting, his debut novel, has now sold upwards of 150,000 copies; big potatoes when the average literary paperback manages sales of around 7,000. Its successors The Acid House and Marabou Stork Nightmares have respectively sold 90,000 and 50,000.
All three have been, or will be, adapted for the screen. Trainspotting the play, meanwhile, has transferred to the West End of London after selling out every Scottish venue it played. The facts of his rise are incredible enough; that it has all happened in the space of two years gives his story an added Faustian edge. It could be the title of the inevitable Welsh biography: The Devil Came Down to Muirhouse.
For Muirhouse is where the whole thing began. A grey mosaic of modern flats and scrubby wasteland, Muirhouse became home in the post-war years to thousands of Edinburgh residents displaced by the city centre's gradual gentrification. Today 50% of its households survive on less than £5,000 a year, 79% on less than £10,000. In the early 1980s, however, a menace even bigger than poverty arrived. Heroin, previously a ‘prestige' drug with prices to match, began to be imported from Pakistan at bargain rates. The schemes of Edinburgh were targeted by opportunistic dealers. With little to lose, the residents quickly turned Edinburgh into the injecting capital of Europe.
Welsh had moved to Muirhouse from Leith as a child but relocated to London in his 20s. At the height of the punk boom, he lived a reckless, itinerant life. He returned to a Muirhouse blighted by addiction and its two corollaries, petty crime and HIV infection, the latter disseminated by the sharing of needles in the area's many shooting galleries. Welsh enrolled at Heriot-Watt university for an MBA course in Business Management. To kill the boredom during lectures he wrote the fragmented narratives that would later comprise Trainspotting.
Trainspotting, however, did not comprise Welsh's literary debut. That was an altogether more humble affair. There it is on the letters page of The Scotsman dated October 18, 1991, under the headline Whingers. "Last Saturday," it huffs "I attended a matinee performance of the Trevor Griffiths play, Comedians.Unfortunately, my enjoyment of this production was marred by the constant whingeing of other members of the audience, a large number of whom created further disturbance by leaving during the play. While I accept that some narrow-minded types will be upset by explicit language, it is unfortunate that such people cannot suspend their prejudices for a few hours."
Given the carbolic vehemence of his characters' language, it's fitting that Welsh should be first spotted mouthing off about swearing, although it's curious to hear this supposed literary bad boy fulminating over the lack of common courtesy. In fact, the letter gives some kind of lie to one of the most persistent of Welsh canards: that he has no interest whatsoever in literature, preferring to draw inspiration from comic books and football writing, from pub patois and rock lyrics.
AS the writing of Trainspotting progressed, Kevin Williamson, Welsh's friend and founder of the amateur literary magazine Rebel Inc., began to marvel at the force and precision of Welsh's prose. A flavour of the author's passion for revisionist clarification comes from the passage, one of the few unladen with expletives, in which central character Mark Renton explains heroin's appeal to his drug-free friend Tommy.
"It kinday makes things seem mair real tae us. Life's boring and futile. We start oaf wi high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we're aw gaunnae die, withoot really findin oot the big answers. Basically, we live a short, disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up oor lives wi shite, things like careers and relationships tae delude oorselves that it isnae aw totally pointless. Smack's an honest drug, because it strips away these delusions."
Williamson published several extracts and set about helping Welsh find a major backer. Secker and Warburg quickly signed him up. Trainspotting was scheduled to be unleashed during July 1993.
After all that's happened, Welsh's first mentions in the broadsheets now seen as quaint and naive as a Victorian marriage announcement. "Look out for Irvine Welsh, an unknown youngster from Leith." said one. His first review appeared in The Herald at the end of July: "Critics, prize-giving juries, and readers alike are hereby served notice: Trainspotting marks the arrival of a major new talent. Major major major major."
Welsh and Williamson, conscious that metropolitan critics still bridled at Scottish low life novels, doubted their baby would make much impact. Then, just as they considered sending outraged, pseudonymous letters to newspapers complaining about the novel's explicit content in the hope of sparking some controversy, Welsh's novel left the platform like a bullet train.
The media quickly held him to account. Trainspotting, Welsh argued, neither condoned nor glamourised heroin use, merely depicted a time and a place. He didn't consider himself a writer, just "someboby who had written something". He defended the novel's abstruse vernacular prose as impenetrable to oldsters as Burns is to their children and argued that the standardisation of literary language was an Orwellian mechanism of social control. Most strenuously, he supported the socially marginalised the schemies, the neds, the breadline-budget hoardes and their right to literary expression.
THROUGHOUT 1994, Welsh gradually became the chattering point among students, ravers, critics and booksellers. The publication of The Acid House and Marabou Stark Nightmares redoubled the buzz. On August 18, 1995, Welsh finally gave up the day job, training manager with Lothian District Council. "We are genuinely sorry to lose him," said councillor Frank Murray "He was good at his job and well-liked." Three months later his novels occupied positions 1, 2 and 3 in the Scottish best-seller list. Welsh, so the rumours went, was now a millionaire.
However, some remained less than euphoric. Soon after Trainspotting Welsh and Williamson published an alternative Edinburgh tourist guide that told the best spots at which to take Ecstasy and where to stock up on weapons. Moira Knox, a Lothian councillor, wigged out. "What a cheek. Absolute cheek," she fumed "He should be writing to the council to congratulate them on keeping this magnificent city clean. There will always be an element who bring certain areas down, but Irvine Welsh is most unfair. I am delighted for Edinburgh that he is no longer here."
The metropolitan press, meanwhile, struggled to accomodate this harshly-accented voice from the margins. When the Independent on Sunday visited Welsh in his new home in Amsterdam, they were staggered to find him not in a tartan bunnet with fake orange hair. "He appears, even after repeated inspections, to be the damndest thing: a pure writer, an enfant sauvage, a literary Kasper Hauser, raised in darkness, schooled in depravity, unlettered and unlearned."
Welsh's popularity, however, has long since ceased to be an entirely Caledonian phenomenon, a process the forthcoming film of the book is bound to consolidate. John Hodge and Andrew Macdonald writer and producer of Shallow Grave, the stylish psychothriller which made 20 times its original £1m budget in profit had been among the first wave of the novel's admirers. The pair were so impressed, in fact, that they began adapting the book as a labour of love, before the success of Shallow Grave and without having acquired the rights.
It's ironic that the marriage of Scotland's two hottest creative forces almost did not happen. Welsh had flogged the film rights to the London-based Noel Gay organisation soon after publication. After much frantic lobbying from Macdonald, Hodge and director Danny Boyle, Noel Gay took pity and sold the property on. It brought to mind the Trainspotting passage in which Renton complains that, yes, the English are self-abusers but the Scots are worse; they allow themselves to be colonised by self-abusers.
Faced with the novel's structural difficulties, the trio elected to boil things down into a skewed sort of gang movie. Welsh's book is hardly a novel at all, more a collection of short stories that share a floating coalition of characters. Foregrounding Mark Renton, the university drop-out whose intellect allows him to rationalise drug use into a human rights issue, the film pares the jumble of incidents and rambling internal monologues of Welsh into a narrative rollercoaster.
Channel 4, who have since optioned two stories from The Acid House, felt sufficiently confident of the team's pedigree to wholly fund the production, the first time it has ever done so. But Macdonald, Hodge and Boyle remained convinced that small was beautiful, working 18-hour days on a budget of just £1.5m. Before filming began, the team decided to do most of the location shooting in Glasgow, partly through partisan preference, partly because financal restrictions prevented frequent trips across country. Producers Polygram have allocated the movie an £800,000 promotion budget more than half what the film cost to make and five times what a comparable production would receive.
They believe Trainspotting, like Pulp Fiction, will be a "cross-over" hit, a film that will move from art houses to High Street cinemas. But there are always conditions. Despite having toned down the Edinburgh dialects in the transition from page to screen, producer Andrew Macdonald is allegedly in discussions with his backers over whether the movie will be subtitled in the US.
What fans of the book will make of the celluloid version remains to be seen. It is debatable whether the film glamorises drugs but it certainly glamorises its stars, an artfully wasted bunch who bear little resemblance to Welsh's scabbed, ulcerous underclass. Where the book was relentlessly realistic, the film is stylised and surreal: when Renton inadvertently voids two opium suppositories into an overflowing toilet bowl he chases them head-first, is swallowed by the bowl and retrieves them from the floor of a clear blue ocean.
But most surreal of all is a cameo appearance by Welsh himself as Mikey Forrester, a malicious, smirking Muirhouse dealer, described in the novel as "the man of the moment". He sure is, catboy, he sure is.
Trainspotting opens on Friday, February 23
Tracking down the hot spots
West Granton: Home of Tommy, the keep-fit fanatic who succumbs to smack
Pennywell Road: Site of the bookies in which Renton fishes for drugs in an overflowing toilet bowl
Muirhouse: Heroin HQ where Renton was brought up
South Gyle: Home of Diane, Renton's 15-year-old paramour
Tynecastle: Home ground of the hated Hearts FC, aka the ‘Jambos'
Tollcross: Drug dealer Mother Superior, named for the length of his habit, runs a shooting gallery from here
Deacon Brodies: Famed pub on the tourist trail patronised by Renton and his cronies
The Tourist Traps: From The Bridges down to Rose Street
Sheriff Court: Renton and Spud are sentenced here following an abruptly-terminated shoplifting spree
Easter Road: Where the gang's beloved Hibs FC play. Welsh himself was a regular contributor to the club's fanzine
Leith Links: Renton borrows a flat here and barricades himself indoors with a week's worth of supplies in a desperate bid to come off smack
The ‘Fit' of the Walk: Notorious hang-out spot on the border of Edinburgh proper and the badlands of Leith
The Monument: Much-derided tribute to the Queen who introduced the monarchy to Scotland
Tommy Youngers: Whenever Begbie finished his pint and fancied throwing the glass, he did it here
Bostons: Purveyor of weapons to the cogniscenti
Waterworld: Site of the former Leith Station, where Renton imagines festival Edinburgh as a ghost train, hurtling past the surrounding dereliction
JIM TELFER, Scotland's director of rugby, outlined the case for the retention of an eight-team Premier League after another "ideal" international squad preparation in St Andrews for the next Five Nations game.
"It makes a huge difference to have the Saturday before a major international free," he said. "The only players who maybe suffer a bit are the substitutes.
"I was originally in favour of 10-team leagues, but having gone through this season there are two clear advantages to eight-team leagues. Obviously, the first thing is that it frees Saturdays for the national side, but it also means there is no comfort zone for clubs.
"From the point of view of the national side, I am concerned this weekend about Eric Peters and Dave Hilton coming through their club match for Bath. If you don't have space in your domestic structure then you can multiply that concern by 21."
As well as Peters and Hilton, three of the replacements Scott Murray, Paul Burnell and Kenny Logan all of whom had been asked to play over the weekend, were not with the squad as Telfer took the opportunity to take the rest of the group to the Fife coast for a change of atmosphere in the middle of the international championship.
Peter Wright was confined to his hotel bedroom yesterday with a niggling stomach bug, from which his wife and daughter have already suffered, but he is expected to be fit for this morning's training and coaching session.
WAS your journey absolutely necessary? For National Hunt enthusiasts who braved their way to Ayr from the snow-bound outposts of Scotland and northern England, the answer was a resounding yes as Major Bell, Golden Fiddle and Fiveleigh Builds literally stopped the show in the featured Mellerays Bell Handicap Chase.
It took the judge almost 15 minutes to decide that Major Bell had held off Golden Fiddle by a short head with Fiveleigh Builds just a head further back in third.
All three are trained in Scotland, the winner by Alistair Whillans at Hawick. Major Belle was having only his second outing over fences and has a bright future (he has a race at Aintree as his main target in the spring), but it would be fair to say that most neutrals were hoping that the photo finish would go Golden Fiddle's Way.
Golden Fiddle would have been the first winner of the season for Whillans' famous neighbour, Ken Oliverat 82 the oldest trainer in the game.
Oliver accepting defeat with his usual good grace, inevitably has one eye on the Scottish National, a race he has won five times already. He describes Golden Fiddle as the equine equivalent of golfer Ernie Els"he's so laid back, he spends most of his life asleep".
A feature of recent Champion Hurdles has been the major part played by horses thought to be Flat specialists. Kribensis, Royal Gait and Alderbrook have all made the transition with spectacular results and an increasing number of their type are now jumping on the bandwagon.
Right Win, Dato Star and Celestial Choir were entered for this year's Champion Hurdle without jumping a flight in public. The first two are serious contenders following successful hurdling introductions and Celestial Choir also chalked up a win on her winter debut in the First Division of the Maiden Hurdle.
She beat some moderate rivals easily enough, but her jumping left a little to be desired and Les Eyre, her trainer, wants to give her another outing before deciding whether she should go for the Champion Hurdle, for which she has been given a 50-1 quote by William Hill.
"Whatever happens, she has now won about £40,000 in her career, so she doesn't owe anybody anything," said Eyre. "It cost just £300 to enter her for the Champion and if you aren't in it, you can't win it."
You can't win if you can't jump, either, as the unfortunate Juke Box Billy demonstrated.
At the last Ayr meeting Juke Box Billy and Rocket Run came to the last together only to fall independently. They met again in the Novices' Chase and this time the formerwas a dozen lengths clear when tumbling.
Lucinda Russell, who trains Rocket Run at Kinross, is more than happy to take the good luck with the bad. She has certainly made an impact in her first seasonthis was her eighth winner.
Rocket Run is entered for the Sun Alliance Chase at Cheltenham, but Russell, more realistically, is looking at an amateur rider's chase at Aintree on Grand National Day.
Peter Monteith, luckless with Juke Box Billy, strengthened his position as leading Scottish trainer when Aragon Ayr wore down Nodform Wonder to win the Claiming Hurdle.
Aragon Ayr jockey Gary Cahill had a mixed day. He was on Executive Design and Bark'n'bite to complete a treble, but then picked up a five-day ban on two counts of whip offences.
Jon Freeman is a correspondent for the Sporting Life
AIRDRIE 1 DUNFERMLINE ATHLETIC 2
THIS WAS a crucial victory for a determined Dunfermline side emerging after a three-week lay-off and finishing the game with only 10 men. Dundee United are now very much in their sights and they still possess the advantage of three games in hand over their Tayside promotion rivals.
Their enforced hibernation showed in their early play and they almost fell behind after only three minutes when Cooper sent a well-directed header into the path of Davies. Quite how the slightly built midfielder managed to miss the target from a few yards out is a mystery only he himself can answer, in the meantime perhaps he should arrange for another one of those appointments at the opticians for which Airdrie are renowned.
In recent years, matches between these clubs have tended to attract battlefield metaphors with physical skirmishes prevailing over ball-playing skills. Yesterday was no exception and the most notable casualty was Dunfermline's Millar who was booked twice within the space of five minutes for injudicious challenges. Campbell, the visitors' assistant manager, was also ordered to the stand for protesting over-vehemently on the player's behalf.
Airdrie added substance to their ascendancy by taking the lead in the 59th minute, when Davies atoned for his earlier miss by flicking in a cross from Tony Smith. At last a pulse of animation rippled through the Dunfermline ranks and the 10 men mounted a creditable salvage operation which gained its rewards when, firstly, Petrie struck a glorious shot from all of 25 yards beyond the helpless Rhodes and then five minutes from time substitute Bingham scored the winner courtesy of a close-range header.
CAMPBELL OGILVIE confirmed yesterday that the transfer of Jardel to Ibrox is dead. He said the transfer foundered on the twin rocks of the Brazilian's failure to obtain a Portugese passport and the unavailability of a work permit.
SCOTLAND have arranged two A international matches as part of their preparations for Euro‘96. Australia will come to Hampden on Wednesday, 27 March and Scotland will play the USA in the New York area on Sunday, 26 May.
DEREK McINNES, Rangers midfielder, faces a lengthy lay-off after being told that he requires operations for a double hernia and a cartilage problem.
TOMMY BURNS may be forced to sit out Mike Galloway's testimonial match, involving Celtic players past and present at Celtic Park next month, because of red tape. Kilmarnock still hold Burns' registration as a player and Celtic have asked the SFA to clarify the situation.
ST MIRREN followed up last week's impressive destruction of Dumbarton with a 2-1 win at Clydebank. Fenwick, their Canadian defender, headed them into an 11th minute lead but just before half-time two bad tackles inside a minute from Baker saw him sent off.
Gillies gave St Mirren the cushion of a second goal early in the second half and it proved to be vital, as Bowman pulled a goal back before Dick collected his second booking to join team-mate Baker in the bath.
WITH Stirling Albion kept indoors by the weather, East Fife failed to reclaim leadership of the Second Division at Stranraer. Alex McAnespie's side are the stalemate specialists of Scottish football and yesterday's 0-0 was their 14th draw in 24 league games.
RAITH ROVERS 1 HIBERNIAN 0
AS Falkirk showed last week there's nothing quite like the sweet smell of victory to dispel talk of rebellion, but while Raith copied their Brockville protocol of refusing the press access to the main stand, there was nothing to compare with the fury that flowed from the terraces yesterday.
At Brockville last week, the game was prefaced with silent resolve; Stark's Park, however, found it harder to contain its anger over the untimely and acrimonious departure of manager Jimmy Nicholl to Millwall, hurling the full repertoire of abuse upon Alex Penman, the chairman, who cut short a holiday in Bermuda to come home and face the music.
If the press was one of the variables the chairman thought he could control, he was victim of some unfortunate timing in the programme, which, having gone to print before the manager's exit, chose to carry not only a two-page profile of Nicholl but headline an article about 1950s hero, Willie Penman (no relation): Penman's finest hour.
On a day short on kindness, the chairman could at least pin some hope on the fact that the opposition had already succumbed twice to Raith this season and who had fallen into their well-rehearsed routine of letting early-season promise evaporate before winter peters out.
Injury has been a mitigating factor and nobody has been more missed than Willie Miller, who returned against Celtic last Saturday after an absence of five months. Yesterday, he underlined his importance to the team by flighting in some tantalising crosses from the right.
Within a few seconds of the start, he and Jackson cleverly constructed a sweeping move up that flank, only for Jackson to miss the final pass by mere inches. And on the half hour another telling cross from Miller found McAllister with space and time to advance on Geddes, only for the midfielder to let the ball squirm from his control. A similar golden opportunity was squandered by Wright two minutes later when he was gifted the ball by Sinclair, who failed to head cleanly out of defence.
If there was a hint of conspiracy in the air, football suddenly grabbed centre stage, courtesy of a 25-yard strike by Kirkwood and a breathtaking, one-handed stop by Geddes from Jackson.
Kirkwood's was truly a goal out of nothing, the defender picking up the ball in the middle of the Hibs half before quickening his pulse and blasting a shot that squeezed in at the base of Leighton's right-hand post. It was a moment of rare beauty from a player scoring his first league goal of the season.
By contrast, Darren Jackson is always a goal threat, his predator's eye alive to any moment of weakness. When he controlled a loose ball on the edge of the Raith box, it looked for all the world as if his volley was destined for the net and then, from nowhere, a palm was stuck out. The rapidity of Geddes' reaction was such that the rest of his body seemed detached from the limb that pulled off the brilliant parry.
The task facing Hibs was obvious but what unfolded in the second half proved no more than a depressing repetition of the first, namely long periods of drab labour pierced by occasional moments of creativity.
After the bawl: Dixon yells instructions as Weir crashes into Chalmers at the Scotland training session Picture: Peter Kemp
IT'S a bizarre tale of one promising young rugby player and his two homelands. Keith Stewart, the 24-year-old Arbroath-born lock forward who plays for Cardiff, woke up a confused man this morning. Today, he plays for the Scottish Development side against New South Wales. On Saturday, bizarrely, he is due to play against Scotland for Wales A. He has spent most of his life in Wales, but he still considers himself a Scot. Stewart is in turmoil as to who to declare for in the long term.
Unlike playing for the Development team, which carries no commitment, if Stewart plays for Wales A on Friday that will be the end of the matter. He would be officially Welsh. The player, however, is confused."This Saturday I'll be supporting Scotland because they're the ones going for a Grand Slam," he said.
"I would like to think I'm Scottish because I was born there, but I lived in Wales longer. I've found it impossible to choose one country ahead of another. The only person who can decide it is whoever asks me first. I will play my guts out for whichever that country is."
If Stewart confirms his potential with a good performance this afternoon then there will a fascinating, football-like, competition for the player's services. Roger Baird, the Development XV manager, has already fired the first salvo. "Just because he's named in a Welsh squad does not prejudice our thinking about him," he said. "Wales can pick who they like, but he's here with us now. It just so happens he's lived in Cardiff for a few years."
Stewart, on the bench when Cardiff missed out on glory in the final of the European Cup against Toulouse, is genuinely struggling to decide where his loyalties lie and is putting the onus back on the management of the national squads.
The waters have been muddied by professionalism, though, because he has made it clear that, with substantial money available either way, he is not prepared to commit himself until there is a clear-cut offer. Torn between the emotional ties that bond him to two countries is one thing; hard cash would seem to be another, however.
The pressure is, therefore, well and truly on. Stewart has little time to make a decision which will determine his career. Scotland or Wales? The country of his birth or his adopted home? The choice will have to be made this week.
From fiction to harsh reality: Marcello Mega examines the fight against heroin in Scotland
KEVIN WILLIAMSON, the Edinburgh publisher who guided Trainspotting into the light of public acclaim, has a supplementary reason to feel encouraged by the current media hoopla. "More than anything, the film will instigate debate about how to deal with the drug issue," he said, adding the locomotivally-flavoured coda "It's long overdue".
In the 1980s, Edinburgh witnessed an epidemic of heroin injecting. Large numbers of addicts shared needles in "shooting galleries", a bizarre display of camaraderie. Escalating drug deaths, fears about the spread of HIV and the realisation by the authorities that confiscation led only to more sharing prompted initiatives such as needle exchanges. In the end, insurmountable odds forced a radical step. The Community Drugs Problem Service (CDPS) was born, not to prevent people using opiates but to break down the seedy sub-culture of injecting as featured in Welsh's novel. Heroin addicts, many of them feeding expensive habits through crime, prostitution or both, were invited to swap their habit for free methadone.
It worked, after a fashion. Drug-related crime is said to have fallen by 50% and recent HIV figures show that drug users are no longer the largest-growth group. Such results prompted the programme's eventual adoption in Glasgow. But it has its critics.
The Calton Athletic Recovery Group began as an amateur football team founded by ex-addicts in Glasgow at about the same time as the CDPS emerged in the capital. It also wished to free addicts ensnared by heroin but its methods were different: it would support only those who pledged to be completely free of drugs. There would be no maintenance, simply a cut-off point, withdrawal, then freedom.
David Bryce, 46, Calton Athletic's project leader and a former addict, says: "Maintenance sounds excellent but it is not effective in practice. How can you keep giving people drugs and tell them they control their futures? Many of the people who have died from overdoses in recent years have been on harm-minimalisation projects. As their tolerance to prescription drugs grows, they take more risks and people are paying for it with their lives."
It clearly irks Bryce that so much statutory funding has gone into the methadone programmes while his group owes its survival to organisations such as the Gateway Trust and the Robertson Trust. "Kids are still sharing equipment, people are still stealing and prostituting themselves. If you really want help to break a drug habit, the authorities turn their backs."
Calton Athletic requires a GP's letter confirming that applicants are not using prescription drugs. About half fall at that hurdle, but those who agree to the terms have a 75% chance of success. While support for maintenance programmes continues to grow, Calton Athletic is finally winning the battle for recognition. Strathclyde's education authorities have now given approval for workshops to visit any or all of its schools; previously it was left to individual schools to invite the group.
The Scottish Office has begun to take a more active interest in the club, though Bryce blames the expert advisers, not the politicians, for its failure to embrace Calton Athletic before. "This is the most successful project in the country. We have ex-users, ex-abusers, people who have tried everything to come off drugs. We have years of experience and we know what works."
John McLeod, a 33-year-old GP employed by the CDPS, believes that the Calton Athletic approach will work only for the small group determined to stop. "Most addicts don't want to cut themselves off from drugs immediately. Methadone is about harm reduction. It's about stopping the spread of HIV, reducing injecting, reducing the temptation to turn to crime to pay for a habit. Methadone is a useful tool." He concedes, however, that, despite 1,400 registered users in Lothian alone, it is not perfect. Many continue to use other drugs and it has its own black market.
Kevin Williamson also voices criticisms of the Calton Athletic philosophy, ironic considering that the team acted as extras and techical advisors on the Trainspotting movie. He believes harm reduction programmes are the only realistic way to deal with addiction in the short term. "The Calton regime suits those who are determined to go cold turkey. And that is a very small percentage of addicts. The only way of getting people to forsake drugs is to change the social conditions that provoked the use."
To counteract what he considers a rising tide of misguided moralising, Williamson has established Scotland Against Drugs Hypocrisy, a pressure group which hopes to address the debate in all its complexity. One aim is to clarify the distinction between ‘hard' drugs like heroin and less damaging ones like cannabis and ecstasy. "There are initiatives supposedly doing the same thing, like the Scotland Against Drugs campaign," says Williamson "but their policies are thinly disguised Just Say No propoganda."
The bad news for all concerned is that the drug is making a comeback. Huge opium crops in Asia have brought more heroin to our shores, so the price seems destined to drop. Customs and Excise had record seizures last year; no doubt a record amount slipped through.
The fall in prices means there is a danger that addicts will revert to old ways. Worse still, adolescents keen to earn credibility among their peers may find that they can now afford heroin.
The fight against drugs is already complicated by divisions over the best approach. Trainspotting has been criticised by such as the BBC's Barry Norman for not condemning heroin use, a criticism rejected by the film's makers; film-goers will make their own assessment.
Kevin McCarra on the tragic story of Tony Mowbray, the former Celtic man
now at Ipswich TONY MOWBRAY in Suffolk is about as probable as a towering crane in a meadow. While at Middlesbrough on Teesside or with Celtic in Glasgow, he toned in with the steel and grime of the urban backdrop, even if playing centre-half is one of the last heavy industries that still survive there. Ipswich, on the other hand, feels incongruous to the defender, yet this club too needs the might that can grab hold of a team and lift it high.
George Burley, the manager at Portman Road who signed Mowbray in October, calls him "inspirational", but is only stating the sober truth. Although the side was attempting to defend an unbeaten run of 10 League games at Stoke yesterday, the real euphoria flooded in after Ipswich knocked Blackburn Rovers out of the FA Cup, winning a replay at Ewood Park 1-0 after extra time.
Over the two matches Alan Shearer spent 31/2 hours rebounding from Mowbray and could not score at all. It normally takes an England shirt to render him so powerless. The matches he has played of late do constitute a resurgence for Mowbray, who even scored the winner against West Bromwich Albion last Saturday, but his story can never be recounted through games and goals.
On New Year's Day 1995 Bernadette, Mowbray's wife, died of cancer. In Ipswich he has to deal with all the days that lie beyond the immediate grief. The muscle and the features tell lies about Mowbray, for this is a thoughtful, spiritual man. As time passes and, perhaps, we start to lose grandparents or those who were closer still, everyone finds they have the dead for company in their minds and hearts, but for Mowbray the experience is, of course, far more acute.
His is a marriage that cannot be over. "I had put down roots in Glasgow," he said, "and choosing to leave was a huge decision that took a lot of soul-searching, but I have faith and I speak daily to my wife. She is everything in my life and I know she wants me to be happy.
"After she died and I wasn't in the Celtic team it was as if there were two massive voids in me. Until then I had probably only played about a dozen reserve games in my career. There was no way I could cope easily because I felt I had too much to offer. I needed something to focus on.
"If my faith hadn't got stronger, though, I couldn't have left Glasgow. From the time Bernadette died I had visited the grave every day and I had to come to terms with the fact that I couldn't go on doing that. I finally realised that I didn't need to be standing on a windy hill to be beside her."
Mowbray had reached his conclusion, but there was still its aftermath to be encountered. "Down here, it's rare for anyone to stop and shout at you in the street. I suppose they are just getting on with their own lives," he remarked. Such behaviour may be mature and proper, but, after Middlesbrough and Celtic, it is also bound to disconcert
Mowbray.
"This is not a football town," he said. "At a game the fans will only get excited by a goal or a near-miss and you don't find the passion to get behind a team that you would in Glasgow or the north-east. There isn't the same working-class background. I think that's true of the south in general and not just Ipswich."
Football cannot enrich days and weeks as it might in Scotland. There is no despair or self-pity in Mowbray's remarks; it is just that the free time compels him to reflect on his circumstances. There are few obvious escape routes from himself. Likeable and warm though he is, his conviviality does not lead him to pubs and clubs. Mowbray, still governed by good habits acquired in youth, is teetotal.
At least the boon of the £58 return flight to Stansted ensures that he and Bernadette's family constantly visit one another, but loneliness cannot be kept at bay so easily. "I'm back home from training each day by 2.30 and then I wonder ‘what does the rest of the day hold'? I'll be sitting here with the dog at my feet and the news on television. It's not a lot.
"I want to prove myself as a manager although everyone has told me that it can't compare to playing. Sometimes I'm in danger of wishing my life away. I'm 32, but if I was 35 or 36, I could be a manager and have a job that filled 24 hours a day. There would be videos to look at and opponents to watch or I'd be at my desk."
The wistfulness, however, has not undermined Mowbray's dedication to his work as a player. There is no delusion about his actual style and when people tell him that his brother Darren, a member of Middlesbrough's youth team, moves in the same way, Mowbray always replies: "Poor sod." Despite that, the centre-half prides himself on understanding the game, on taking care of business.
Given Celtic's progress under Tommy Burns, there are no recriminations from Mowbray over the manager's decision to buy John Hughes and sell him for £300,000. The defender, however, does still wonder on what basis the decision was made.
He suspects that managers might regard his appearance as a breach of the Trades Description Act. "When Tommy came to Celtic," Mowbray recalled, "He did say that he had expected me to be an angry monster, but it's not me all. I think I'm more of a man-manager on the pitch."
It is an opinion shared by teammates. In his first seven games for Ipswich he was paired with six different players at centre-back before forming a sound partnership with Claus Thomsen, an international midfielder for Denmark who is content to view himself as Mowbray's apprentice. This is a club eager for advice on defence.
"Ipswich lost almost 100 goals in the Premier League last year," said Mowbray. "When another goes in players can think ‘it's just one more', but it really should annoy you." With Walsall in the FA Cup this week and the prospect of Aston Villa visiting Portman Road in the next round should Ipswich get through, he appears to have added some necessary cantankerousness to the back four.
While such improvement brings Mowbray a degree of professional satisfaction it cannot spare him from facing the reality of his life. Football is all he has, and it is not enough.
RANGERS 3 MOTHERWELL 2
AS they reach for another Premier Division title Rangers, who wrenched a victory with Ally McCoist's late penalty here and so established a three-point lead over Celtic, can evidently still draw on a great store of resourcefulness. It was sorely needed, since Motherwell appeared for a spell to have completed a great trek across space and time to defy Walter Smith's team.
The entire league table separates the sides and none of the Lanarkshire club's players had scored for 976 minutes before Martin hit the first of their two equalisers. Disentangling themselves from Motherwell was arduous work, but Rangers had the flexibility to achieve it.
In the days when industrial action existed, their behaviour would have prompted a demarcation dispute, since their first two goals were scored by a man who normally plays in midfield and a defender. There was not even a decent delay before they gloried in the versatility.
Arnott lost possession to Gascoigne in the second minute and he advanced to draw the defence before slipping the ball to Ferguson, operating in attack, who angled a drive into the corner of the net. An equaliser in the 53rd minute, though, demanded yet more flexibility from them.
Martin had loped forward, as a Rangers defence lacking Gough retreated, to send a majestic 30-yarder past Goram. The defender, however, was to inadvertently assist in the restoration of Rangers' lead after 65 minutes. Miller's shot broke from him and left the centre-back McLaren to blooter home.
Motherwell drew level once more when McKinnon, in the 69th minute, squeezed over a low cross that Falconer struck sweetly into the corner of the net for his first goal for the club. Rangers finally escaped the visitors' grasp, though, when, eight minutes later, McCart sent Gascoigne crashing.
It was a penalty, but the midfielder was still booked, presumably for a remark. The furore did not unnerve McCoist, a substitute who had only been on the pitch for five minutes, and he converted from the spot. While Motherwell will be frustrated, the quality of their display was impressive.
There were moments, when the match seemed to dissolve, as in a movie, and present us with a flashback. Surely some of the visitors' rippling moves really belonged to last season when Motherwell were runners-up. Whatever the precise year, however, the outcome tends to remain the same. Opportunities are defied by Goram's mastery.
So it was here, after 12 minutes, when McKinnon made a piercing advance on the left, after taking a return pass from Falconer, to enter the area, but instead of an equaliser there was only the familiar sight of a drive cannoning back from the expertly positioned Rangers goalkeeper.
Goram was able to keep many of his arts in storage as Motherwell failed to demand a performance of the full repertoire. Seven minutes from the interval, for example, the industrious Falconer broke away from McCall's tackle and pulled back a cross that was ineptly headed off-target by Hendry, who had replaced the injured Arnott.
Rangers could not, for all that, be regarded as beleaguered. With the lead in their possession they could afford to be languid, compensating for a lack of established forwards in the line-up by exploiting the space to be found on the counter-attack. Only numbness of touch with the final pass delayed a second goal before the interval.
That fallibility allowed Motherwell to become menacing, but Rangers' capacity for quelling rebellion is still intact.
EUROPE'S top rugby clubs may refuse to play against Scottish district sides in next season's European Rugby Cup. The warning comes from a leading English official in the wake of the landslide defeat dished out to Scotland's top clubs at a special general meeting of the SRU at Murrayfield on Friday evening.
That meetingof all Scottish clubsbacked by 178 votes to 24 the SRU proposal that districts, not clubs, should represent Scotland in Europe next season.
But Peter Wheeler, the former England hooker and Leicester president, last night predicted that moves would be made elsewhere to block the SRU plan, even to the extent that European club sides would refuse to participate in a competition that included area representative sides.
The Five Nations committee charged with organising the European Cup permitted individual unions to decide what sides would enter.
However, Wheeler claimed that SRU and Irish RFU plans for district and provincial participation were against the spirit of the competition.
"I feel this is a club competition," he said. "If unions want a provincial tournament, fine, but this is not it." Wheeler, the driving force behind the recently-formed European Rugby Clubs Association said ERCA would almost certainly oppose the SRU plan.
He said: "How far we are prepared to go depends on whether we are sure we can put together an alternative club competition.
"But even within the existing tournament, it is certainly possible that clubs will refuse to play against district sides."
Wheeler also predicted that Friday's vote would accelerate the drain of Scottish players towards English clubs. Echoing remarks made by Keith Robertson, the Melrose director of rugby, after the meeting, he said: "Players in Scotland will now be attracted south. The income from Europe means we can put more money on the table for better players."
Officials of the loose affiliation of Scotland's top 10 clubs, who called Friday's meeting, will meet later this week to form a strategy that incorporates their organisation on a formal basis.
Ronnie Smith, the Boroughmuir vice-president, openly questioned the SRU voting structure which effectively gives minor clubs power over their senior counterparts. Asked if the the top 10 clubs should have a seat on the SRU's general committee, he said: "Yes, that would be appropriate now."
Lineout
WALES: at 6ft 10in and 6ft 6in respectively Derwyn Jones and Gareth Llewellyn are a formidable combination in the lineout. Llewellyn is a vastly experienced campaigner, but Jones is very much an old-fashioned lock who rumbles from set piece to set piece. To limit his impact Scotland must repeat the high octane performance against France, keeping the Welsh No8 on the move.
SCOTLAND: Stewart Campbell looks increasingly comfortable in this area. That said, Llewellyn represents a different calibre of rival from Ireland's Fulcher and the unsophisticated Merle from France. In the middle of the line Doddie Weir won some choice ball against France without looking at his best. Rob Wainwright's ability at the tail may consequently be an important option.
Back row
WALES: this is a very different proposition from the big men Scotland faced against Ireland and France. Hemi Taylor is a typically abrasive New Zealander, while the bull-like Emyr Lewis has caused Scotland distinct problems in the past with his powerful and aggressive running. It's a case of meeting fire with fire since as a unit they are comparable with Scotland small by modern standards, but quick.
SCOTLAND: these are the men who have created this season's success. Never better exemplified than in the build-up to Mike Dods' try in Dublin when Wainwright won lineout ball, Eric Peters set things up rapidly in midfield and Ian Smith's speed and vision released the wing in the corner. They may be the best Scottish blend since Calder, Jeffrey and White.
Back three
WALES: despite last season's severe injury problems, Ieuan Evans' instincts ensure that Scotland must not give him any scope. Wayne Proctor may not possess electric pace but he has an eye for the line. However, there is a real question mark over their defensive solidity which Wainwright's men must look to expose.
SCOTLAND: if Craig Joiner having gained confidence against France after one memorable break and some excellent defensive play can see enough of the ball then this could be his day. Can Dods sustain his amazing try-scoring run? He may well do so. With Rowen Shepherd solid in defence and eager to take the ball back to the opposition, plenty of opportunities should be created.
BY tradition, there are only two ways to experience the fervour of a Five Nations crowd. The first is to be picked for your country, while the second involves whipping off your clothes and streaking across the park. I am hugely grateful that I managed to qualify on the first score before sheer curiosity forced me to attempt the second.
Yet at the risk of inciting hordes of naked Scots to stream over the advertising boards during our next home game, the sensation of appearing before tens of thousands at Murrayfield is a uniquely intense privilege. When Scotland play well, the stadium generates a cacophony of noise and the crescendo effect where the team encourages the crowd and the crowd, in turn, encourages the team can be a massive boost. Last weekend's win over France was a perfect example.
Of course, noise can also work against you when you are trying to relay lineout codes to your team-mates, but it is a nice problem to have. And just as the Murrayfield roar is one of the sweetest sounds in the world, the silence of an away crowd has a melodious charm as well. When Kevin McKenzie hushed the Lansdowne Road crowd with his first try against Ireland recently, I rather liked the sound of it.
Sadly, the Twickenham crowd, with that dreadful anthem about a low-slung chariot, show no musical sense whatsoever. Swing Low is a decent spiritual, but in the larynxes of England supporters it is a tuneless and meaningless dirge. It sounds worst, incidentally, when you're gathered behind the posts waiting for an England kick at goal.
Paris is simply bizarre, French scores being greeted by a discordant racket of brass, with tubas and trumpets blasting from the stands. For obvious reasons, it is not my favourite sound. I wish, though, that I had been in Ireland a few years ago to witness the moment when the marching band diverted from its official programme and belted out an Elvis Presley number following a request from the crowd.
Happily, Scottish supporters have a knack of drowning out the locals wherever they go. Their performance when we won in Paris last year was incredible, bettered a few months later when 6,000 of them turned up in Pretoria and formed the Gav-mobile to cart a certain full-back off the pitch. Come to think of it, if a few of them do whip off their kilts when we play England at Murrayfield next month, the effect on the opposition could be interesting.
THE week starts in fine form with Princess Di's mum revealing that she too has been the victim of not one stalker but three, "although I don't think we called them stalkers in those days." She calls for stiffer penalties. In the Highlands the Assynt Crofters twig what the lairds have known all along that there is a heap of money out there in Euro grants and obscure subsidies and set up a hydro-electric scheme which will earn £20,000 a year: it will be subsidised by other electricity users.
Scots secretary Michael Forsyth announces plans to improve mobile phone reception in the highlands: Vodaphone and Cellnet shares rise. Oliver Reed, who has consumed just about everything else in his lifetime, signs up to play a 13th century Scottish cannibal in his next film.
Kirsty Graham, nine-year-old star of Loch Ness, arrives for the World Premiere at La Scala; Ted Danson and Mary Steenberg hold hands and cuddle in the back row. And Brodrick Haldane, the original paparazzo, dies. The Edinburgh socialite and determined bachelor once took a photo in St Moritz of the Aga Khan and his new bit of fluff with a Box Brownie hidden behind a pile of books. Those were the days. The new Stornoway lifeboat (made in England, of course) falls off the top of a wave and has to be recalled for modifications. A survey reveals that Scots have yet to understand that credit cards mean you can buy now and pay later: eight out of 10 still prefer to pay cash.
Lottery news: winner Neil Gilroy from Ruchill, Glasgow, reveals that he dropped his £1.6m winning ticket down the lavatory while checking his numbers: does he have a television in the loo, people ask? Aberdeen's exclusive Deeside Golf Club picks up £185,000 in Lottery cash although it has a 25-mile exclusion zone to keep out the riff-raff who buy tickets. And Robert Whiting from West Lothian gets 100 hours community service for torching his home after watching the jackpot draw.
Three Turriff schoolboys are suspended for sniffing amyl nitrate poppers, but may be allowed back next week. Thousands queue for tickets to Trainspotting premier. Midlothian farmer Gordon Craig reveals French rugby fans nicked 11 of his chickens, while he was about to catch a cock for them to release at Murrayfield.
Scottish Widows announces it is to shed 700 jobs as deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine reveals he never used to pay his bills on time. The Government's "flagship" Trust, Aberdeen Royal Hospital, announces cuts in beds, jobs and drugs. Lossiemouth Football Club relents and allows banned 61-year-old football hooligan, fishing skipper John Wilson, back into its ground. "He's a harmless chap," said the club chairman. Scottish Natural Heritage maintains its objection to a funicular railway on Cairn Gorm, worried that thousands will trample the tundra in high heels and trainers. Despite defence cuts, the RAF turns down a request from a worried father to rescue his daughter off a snowbound train: he offers to pay with American Express. Nurse Frances Jackson from Hollywood, Dumfries, stranded for three days by snow drifts, is relieved by The Daily Record which gives her a...newspaper. Exclusive photos of the nursery in Paul Gascoigne's new £400,000 home reveal it is tricked out in blue and white, his team's colours. Glory be. But why are the pillows a tasteful Celtic green?
Reporting Scotland presenter Alan Douglas quits, insisting he has other fish to fry and has not been ousted: the BBC agrees but nobody believes them. A Perth sheriff calls for a DNA test to prove ownership of a Persian pussy, Jack or is it Clyde? The Bell family from Inverkip, Renfrewshire, say he's theirs. But the Somers family from Perth say they found him as a stray. Case adjourned for tests.
Scotland's new fluid playing style in this season's Five Nations is already the talk of the championship and Ian Smith has been at its heart.
eIGHT months ago, Ian Smith stood with his son, Sam, in the tunnel of Loftus Versfeld Stadium in Pretoria, waiting for a party to begin. In the final, deciding, match of Group D of the Rugby World Cup, Scotland led France 19-15 and, as the game ticked into injury time, victory looked as assured as it would have been deserved. Then, however, France moved the ball left in a last, desperate, sweep, Ntamack took it at speed, crashing over for the try that consigned Scotland to a quarter-final against New Zealand and an early flight home.
The long game of international rugby, its hours, its commitment, its effort and self-sacrifice, is mocked in moments of murderous brevity and pitiful reward. For Smith, not even a replacement against France, it was the cruellest twist imaginable. As he flew home from South Africa 10 days later, he could reflect on the fact that a decade of work, more than 300 games for Gloucester and countless trips north to establish himself as a Scottish international squad member had been rewarded with only one World Cup appearance: a less than taxing runaround against the Ivory Coast in Scotland's first game.
"It was a disappointment. The World Cup was a great occasion, but like anything at that level it's about playing, really. I came back disappointed and deflated from the fact that I hadn't played many games. I go to play. That's the only way I feel part of it. I came back feeling a bit of a fraud."
Recalling Ntamack's try last week as he sat in the clubhouse at Gloucester's Kingsholm ground, the hurt of it was still obvious. "It was terrible stuff," he said. "Terrible. I had gone into the crowd to get my son and was waiting to go to the changing room for a massive celebration with him. I thought it would be a fantastic experience for him and I just couldn't believe it, I didn't know what to do. I stood in the tunnel with him, shell-shocked."
Yet if the memory of France's predatorial win has been painful in the intervening time, it has also been a spur. Scotland's collective sense of under-achievement in South Africa was felt most bitterly, and most positively, by Smith, in the form of a festering desire for revenge. "I couldn't finish on that, I couldn't live with myself," he said last week. Eight days ago, having endured a video replay of the last few minutes of the Pretoria match by way of preparation, he delivered a spectacular payback.
In a match of rattling fury, Smith was at the driving heart of a thunderous Scottish victory over France. The Murrayfield scoreboard modestly put the margin at 19-14 its coy reproach matched afterwards by the mood of Jim Telfer, Scotland's manager, who berated his side's incautious tactics but by every other measure it was a drubbing. If France had come expecting the game to be a breeze, they were visibly shaken when Scotland released a
typhoon.
Smith's performance was a revelation. In Dublin, three weeks ago, he had turned in a busy, if largely unspectacular display, setting this year's annual Irish revival in the cement of his solid tackling. Against France, however, he added layers to his game, steaming forward to support the ball-carrier in classic and tireless fashion. It was textbook open-side play (except that most of the textbooks suggest the occasional pause for breath) in which Smith shaded Cabannes, his illustrious opposite number, by the same spectacular distance that Dods, the Scotland wing, gained on the Frenchman in the act of scoring the first try.
As happened last year, when Scotland won in Paris, the result was a shuddering counter to the claim that the Five Nations could ever be a predictable tournament. But having taken his dues in the after-match celebrations in Edinburgh "I think it's very important to savour the moment" he was in more pensive, and even self-critical, mood as he sat in the Kingsholm bar a few nights later, chewing over the implications of victory in languid Gloucestershire tones.
"It's a credit to the team that all the hard work we did paid off, that's the most satisfying thing. It's tremendous to win and see the plans fall into place when the things you actually practise pay off. Having said that, I did at times think it got too loose. I thought we were pushing it a little bit too far. We had a bad spell when basic errors were being made and people were taking chances that didn't need to be taken. We had a chat amongst ourselves and reverted to plan A and it seemed to pay off.
"The front five are tremendous at the moment. They're going from strength to strength. That's the platform that the rest of the team are playing on. Up front it was great psychologically because the boys in the side were really up for it. You could actually see them looking for the scrums, looking to take the French on with not too much respect.
"We've shown what we can do now. As you continue to win, though, more and more pressure falls on the side to continue to perform. Every match gets harder and harder. When we play Wales it will be another massive game for us. I don't know if it's a matter of pulling some tactical masterstroke. We'll look at the opposition and see what we can come up with."
Clearly, Wales will be studying the opposition, too. Yet even if they can find the means to quell the storm that blew against France, Scotland's style in the first two games of this year's Five Nations is already the talk of the championship. It is, moreover, an emphatic rebuttal of the orthodoxies of European, and particularly English, forward play that have come to demand lumbering giants in the back row, one-paced in both thought and action.
The continuity and mobility that has characterised Scotland's play is also a huge change from the eight-man ruck platform that was once the national style. Yet even though he has always been renowned for those aspects of his play, Smith still refuses to accept the suggestion that Scotland have come round to his way of thinking.
"I don't know about that. I think it's just the modern game, just the way it's going. When I first started playing I may also have made the mistake of taking contact and going to ground too easily, but you live and learn. The English league at the moment is very much a mauling, upright, static game but Gloucester have changed that and are playing with continuity, mini-rucking and taking it on.
"The more open game has got to come out. The way that the All Blacks and, to a certain extent, South Africa, played in the World Cup paved the way as usual. You've got to aspire to that if you can."
So long as Scottish aspirations match those they showed against France, Smith will be in his element. The last time he played against Wales was four years ago, when Scotland suffered a 15-12 defeat in Cardiff, a match he remembers now with something less than fondness. Sounds promising, you know. Sounds like Sam Smith's old man might just have another score to settle.
Gene Kelly's forthcoming funeral reminds George Rosie of the time he was chosen to bring life to the dancer's dream of a musical about Robert Burns
GENE KELLY was not looking his best when I met him. It was the end of November 1991 and the old-song-and-dance man was getting over a bout of‘flu. He was in his pyjamas and dressing gown and looked pale, tired and drawn. Without the silver toupee he wore to face the world, he looked every one of his 80 years. But his dark eyes were bright, his voice was firm, and there was nothing confused about his thinking.
"I'm gonna call you Professor," he said, waving me into an armchair. "Because that's what we always used to call the guys who wrote the scripts: The Professor. I guess it's an old Hollywood joke. That okay by you?" Assured that it was, he went on to ask me about myself, the (two) plays I had written, the state of Britain in general and Scotland in particular. Then he began to wax lyrical about the poems and songs of Robert Burns.
Kelly's enthusiasm for Burns took me aback. It was not encyclopaedic, but it was genuine. It transpired that his father was a Canadian and, though "as Irish as Paddy's pig" (Kelly's words), he had grown up among Scots. Through them, Kelly Senior had absorbed a fondness for Burns which he had passed on to young Gene. It had stayed with him through his long showbiz career.
It was an odd experience to sit in a large, comfortable house in Beverly Hills while this venerable American film star, in dressing gown and pyjamas, reminisced about Scotland, chatting knowledgeably about Charles Edward Stuart and reciting chunks of Robert Burns at me. Appropriately, perhaps, it was Saturday, November 30, St Andrew's Day.
I was there to discuss with Kelly the prospect of an upmarket Les Miserables-type stage musical to be constructed around the life of Robert Burns. A little consortium of Hollywood players had been formed to push the idea: Kelly; Anthony Perkins, the actor; David Gest, showbiz impressario and Paul Johnson, a Los Angeles composer/arranger. My job was to write the "book" (or what my wife describes as the boring bits between the songs).
What happened was this; Gest had seen my play Carlucco and the Queen of Hearts at the Hampstead Theatre, London, and invited me to confer with him in Claridges about a "musical venture" he had in mind. As he was happy to supply the airline ticket (plus expenses), I was happy to oblige.
I heard him out, explained that the last musical I had seen was the Boy Scout Gang Show of 1954 and suggested that he hire someone who knew what they were doing. But Gest insisted he wanted the kind of dialogue that was in Carlucco and said he would fix me up with tickets to see a couple of West End shows. He suggested Les Miserables and the Phantom of the Opera.
Later, a pair of Glasgow to Los Angeles first class tickets arrived. The trip was luxury from sea to shining sea. But no matter how they lay it on, the airlines can do nothing about jet lag. Time and geography are "chiels that winna ding". I arrived at Los Angeles International airport with my head buzzing and ready for nothing.
My cultural dislocation was severe. It became total when I learned that my driver's name was Harvey, that he hailed from South Yorkshire, and that he regarded Arthur Scargill as one step down from God. I found myself gliding through the streets of Hollywood being regaled with tales from the miners' strike of 1984-85. By the time Harvey deposited me at the Beverly Hilton (having accepted, without socialist demur, a substantial tip), I was not sure whether I was in North Los Angeles or Orgreave colliery.
The first of my new workmates that I met was the composer Paul Johnson. A more unlikely interpreter of "Rob o' Mossgiel" it is hard to imagine. He was pure LA showbiz. His tan was deep and his teeth were bright. His hair was glossy and his nails were buffed. He was effusive and chatty. The more he gushed, the more my heart sank. What the hell, I asked myself, am I doing here?
But few people are what they seem. Johnson came from Seattle, disliked Los Angeles and longed for the rain of the Pacific northwest. We spent an amicable hour or two driving around north Los Angeles discussing 18th century protestanism in America and the disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843.
The real business began when I was picked up at the Beverley Hilton by Gest and Perkins. Perkins was a watchful, intense, slightly intimidating man. As we drove through Beverley Hills, he kept asking me sudden questions. Had I seen Peter Schaffer's play Amadeus? Had I ever seen anything by David Mamet? What about the plays of Christopher Hampton? Not being much of a theatre-goer I had to answer no to everything. I think Perkins found it hard to believe that such a philistine could have written anything.
Gene Kelly's house on North Rodeo Drive was another surprise. It was a biggish but modest-looking bungalow separated from the street by a few yards of unfenced grass. The security was no more elaborate than the bells and whistles which now adorn much of Morningside. Apart from the exotic looking trees and shrubs, it would not have looked out of place in Corstorphine or Bearsden.
WE were met by Kelly's wife Pat, a cheerful, handsome dark-haired woman in her early 30s with a pronounced Colorado accent. From the outset, she was a generous and considerate hostess. But she guarded her husband's health zealously. If Kelly had begun to look strained or over-tired, she would fidget and shoot frowns and anxious looks.
The first evening was spent getting to know one another. Being dyed-in-the-wool showbiz folk, Gest, Perkins and Johnson were more in awe of Kelly than I was. It was some time before I realised that he was Hollywood royalty. He was a class act, I was told, a Hollywood legend. But I also noticed that their excessive politeness seemed to faintly irritate the old man.We soon devised a pattern of working. Gest and Perkins dropped out of the picture while Kelly, Johnson and I would meet at Kelly's house in the afternoon and evening to work out the storyline.
I would then go away to write up what we had agreed which would be collected from the Beverly Hilton by Pat Kelly who would type it up on her Apple Mac.
It all sounds fairly relaxed, but it was hard work. Kelly was a stern taskmaster. As we churned over the life, career and amours of the bard, Kelly would worry at an idea until he had shaped it to his liking. Every evening for a week, the living room of the Kelly house rattled to the names of Souter Johnny, Daddy Auld, Lady Jean Gordon, Holy Willie Fisher, Jean Armour, Anna Park and, of course, Robert Burns.
The epic Tam o' Shanter intrigued Kelly. He felt that the musical and dramatic potential of the poem had never been explored. He urged Paul Johnson to get the music right, to make it the big production number in the show. Kelly told him to make the young witch's erotic caperings ("A souple jade she was an strang") in front of auld Nick into the "sexiest thing since Salome and the Dance of the Seven Veils".
Now and again, Kelly took me aback. I was all for making something of Burns's life as an exciseman, particularly the time when he (supposedly) led a squad of armed dragoons over the side of an English smuggling ship stranded on the Solway Firth. "You mean like Burt Lancaster in The Crimson Pirate," Kelly said scathingly. "I don't think so."
But the more time I spent with Kelly, the more he impressed me. This was no ordinary song-and-dance-man. Over the dinner table, the conversation ranged far and wide; Burns and his politics, Simon Schama's book on the French Revolution, the prospect of California splitting in two with the north becoming the 51st state, the careers of his three offspring (two in showbiz and one in acadaemia), and Princess Margaret who he had once squired to a Hollywood dinner and who he disliked intensely.
Nor, he told me, was he a man of great wealth. Entertainers of his generation were paid good salaries, he said, but that was all. "We had nothing like the clout and the money that the guys today have," he said. "Robert Redfords we were not."
Inevitably, I suppose, the talk turned to Brigadoon and the version of Scotland therein. Kelly was unapologetic. The movie was a piece of whimsy, sheer entertainment. If the Scots found it embarrassing, that was their problem.
"We did try to shoot the thing in Scotland," he told me. "Lugged a whole crew over from LA to somewhere near Perth, I think.
"Then we spent weeks sitting around, waiting for the rain to stop. In the end, we gave up and went back to California and sunshine."
Kelly ran a tight schedule. I managed only one afternoon off to prowl the streets of Beverly Hills. On the glitzy Rodeo Drive, I ran into the local version of Rab C Nesbitt. I was looking to buy a book, so I stopped this grisled old party to ask where one might be bought. I was not ready for the explosion that followed.
"Bookstore," he yelled. "Don't talk to me about bookstore. There used to be plenty of bookstores around here. Now all we got is bew-teeks that sell jeans to Ay-rabs for a thousand bucks a pair or skirts to rich old broads for ten thousand. So don't talk to me about book stores."
"I would say that old timer was about right," Kelly said when I related the tale. "Beverly Hills wasn't always like this.
"I've lived around here since the 1940s and it used to be full of ordinary, middle-class folks, bringing up their families. Now it is all just millionaires. It's a shame."
The last time I saw Kelly was the evening before I was due to fly back to Scotland. "I really enjoyed working with you Professor," he said, shaking my hand on the doorstep. "I sure hope we can do it again. Give my regards to Scotland. And let's hope we can get this show on the road."
We never did. I finished the book, Johnson finished the music, actors and musicians were wheeled in and a couple of "backers' previews" were organised (in Hollywood and New York). But somehow, it never happened. Gest went on to other projects. Perkins was killed by Aids. Kelly grew more and more frail before he succumbed to a series of strokes and died earlier this month. ‘The best laid schemes o' mice an' men, Gang aft a-gley.'
Transforming Trainspotting from book to film script was a writer's nightmare. John Hodge tells Eddie Gibb how the deed was done
SOME books are regarded as unfilmable. Naked Lunch, William S Burroughs' cult junkie novel, is the perfect example; it kicked around as a movie idea for more than 30 years before David Cronenberg plucked up the courage to shoot it as a kind of comedy horror featuring talking cockroaches and a sexually aware typewriter.
It was only partially successful in its attempt to show the turmoil of the heroin-addled mind but when John Hodge started writing the screen version of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting, he remembered how mission impossible had been tackled before.
Hodge had read the book a few months after it was published in 1993 but categorised it as unfilmable. Like Naked Lunch, it is a series of unconnected episodes with no real narrative while the difficulties of portraying drug-taking convincingly just added to the problems.
Then came a call from Andrew Macdonald, the film producer with whom Hodge had collaborated on Shallow Grave, the 1994 cult hit, who suggested the same team should try its hand at Trainspotting. Despite his misgivings, Hodge agreed to do the screenplay. "I thought Trainspotting was a great book but it would be difficult to make into a film or, if we did, it wouldn't do it justice," he says. "Naked Lunch was an example and also a caution. I don't think Cronenberg was ruthless."
Hodge had been writing since 1991 when he took it up while working as a hospital locum doctor. His first effort was a low-budget thriller based loosely on his flatsharing experiences as a medical student in Edinburgh: Shallow Grave. Surfing on a wave of interest in literate thrillers, spawned by Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, it hit the big time and Hodge found himself regarded as a full-time member of the scriptwriting club with a neat line in black humour not that he sees himself in that light. In his own mind, Hodge is a doctor taking a career break.
True, as a teenager in Glasgow, he had dreamed of becoming a writer but when he took up medicine, his ambition was buried under an avalanche of lecture notes. After graduating in 1987, he worked in a number of Scottish hospitals until Shallow Grave went from a few jumbled ideas into a fully-fledged script. "It was the usual thing of not wanting to regret never having tried it when I was 70," he says.
His connection with Macdonald started shortly after that. Macdonald, a friend of Hodge's sister, had just made a short film which had been shown at the Edinburgh Film Festival when he ran into Hodge brandishing a handwritten draft of Shallow Grave. The following year, they had a polished script and two years after that, the film was showing at Cannes.
Hodge, 31, now lives in London, where his girlfriend works in a hospital, and he is writing a romantic adventure set in America called A Life Less Ordinary. "It would be difficult to make another film in Scotland straight after Trainspotting because it would be under so much scrutiny," he says.
IT had taken the pressure of having to send Macdonald the first draft of Trainspotting to concentrate Hodge's mind on how to turn the sprawling novel into a tight, 90-minute film. He decided the first task was to find the central character missing from the book, selecting Mark Renton, the most articulate of Welsh's cast of Edinburgh lowlifes. The rest, says Hodge, then fell into place with Welsh's tacked-on ending about a drugs deal turning into the main plot line.
"There was a surfeit of good dialogue," he says. "The biggest problem was the fact that I could capture only a fraction of what was on offer. I chose Renton because I felt he had the strongest voice and had so much insight into the world around him. By having a central character, it also meant we could use a voice-over by Renton which was a way of getting access to some of the great writing in the book."
Where possible, Hodge has lifted Welsh's original prose, much of which was already in dialogue form. The only problem with that was the language barrier; not only is the book peppered with swearing but it is also full of slang, most of which would be a mystery to anybody outside its home community. It is a fair bet that calling somebody "biscuit-ersed" is not a compliment, but what does it mean?
It meant softening the language and facing the accusation from Welsh that he has produced a middle-class version of the tale. He accepts the film relates less specifically to one part of Edinburgh. "A novel is not as expensive to produce as a film. If word got out that it was incomprehensible, nobody would go to see it. Any film was bound to be a compromise," he says.
That does not mean the film shys away from the harsh reality of heroin use. Anybody with an aversion to hypodermic needles will find themselves cringing at several points but Hodge believes it is important to get the details right, even if that means glamorising drug taking early on.
"I felt it was important to be honest about drugs," Hodge says, "and honest about why people take them. I hope it isn't seen as promoting the use of drugs, but the first part has to be believable if the second is to have any impact. But it would have been equally dishonest if it didn't show that people can die." By freeing themselves of Trainspotting's lack of structure, while remaining true to its irreverent, freewheeling spirit, the Shallow Grave team has succeeded in filming the unfilmable.
Even so, Dr Hodge still says he wants to return to the day job.
EWEN BREMNER
Plays Spud, a genial drug hoover who is the closest Renton has to a pal. Sings Two Little Boys at a friend's funeral. Calls everybody ‘catboy' for reasons known only to himself.
ROBERT CARLYLE
Plays Begbie. Bad points: a psychopath, control freak and regular initiator of beerglass-face conjunctions. Fondness for using pool cues in non-sporting contexts. Good points: none.
KELLY MACDONALD
Plays Diane, the Lothian Lolita who traps Renton into a relationship by threatening to report him if he leaves. Fond of soft drugs. Has strangely understanding parents.
JONNY LEE MILLER
Plays Sick Boy, who is absholutely obsheshed with Shean Connery. Deeply malicious but in demand. Comes off heroin at same time as Renton just to prove how easy it is.
EWAN McGREGOR
Stars as Mark Renton, aka Rent Boy, who, after a failed attempt to go cold turkey, makes an "informed, conscious, healthy" decision to return to drugs. He ODs immediately.
Archie MacGregor on the manager who is cajoling success at Stenhousemuir
WHEN Terry Christie took over as manager of Stenhousemuir in 1992 they were, in his own words, "the worst professional team in Scotland". They even found themselves singled out for ridicule in a television commercial for a major insurance company. Now the sneering has been brought to an emphatic halt in places from Perth, Dundee and Aberdeen to Falkirk and Stirling.
The last 12 months have seen them play 15 Cup ties and lose only two, both to Hibernian. At last a trophy of some significance has been added to the role of honour, in the form of the Challenge Cup, and dreams of promotion are still being
nurtured.
If one of the pupils at Musselburgh Grammar school, where Christie is headmaster, had demonstrated similar aptitude for making the most of meagre resources, one imagines the entry in the report card would read "consistent over-achiever". Indeed, those who continue to express surprise at his accomplishments at Stenhousemuir are surely guilty of neglecting their history lessons.
He took Meadowbank Thistle, a club that had rarely ventured out of the dark recesses of the bottom four of the Second Division since its election to the Scottish League, to promotion on two occasions and a League Cup semi-final against Rangers in 1984. This fruitful 14-year relationship came to an acrimonious conclusion, with Christie the victim of a boardroom schism.
In his times with both Meadowbank and Stenhousemuir, Christie has regularly plotted the downfall of full-time opposition through meticulous organisation of playing squads assembled from the usual eclectic cross-sections of manual and professional vocations. While upsetting the odds may have become habitual, it does not diminish the scale of the task.
"Full-time players have a huge advantage," Christie insisted. "It's as much about the quality of rest as the quality of training they enjoy. A lot of people underestimate what playing in midweek can take out of part-timers; they've been running around for two hours and then they're usually straight back at work the following morning. I honestly believe that part-time footballers work as hard as almost anybody in the country".
Coaxing the best out of tired limbs and fatigued minds requires an appreciation of the subtleties of man-management a skill which should come naturally to a headmaster.
"The experience of being a teacher does help, although by nature you've got to be far more autocratic in football. If you've got a problem in a game you can't suddenly convene a consultative meeting. Overall, the two complement each other fairly well, but I admit it can get a little embarrassing at the school if I've been in trouble with the referee on a Saturday."
Such incidents wield a chastening influence, for Christie is resolutely modest about ambitions for his club and his own career. "I don't set any great targets. At Stenhousemuir I think the important thing is that we keep improving. We're still hopeful of promotion, while off the field we are putting up a £450,000 new stand, which is a big commitment for a club like ours.
"I would never discourage anybody who approached me about a full-time managerial post, but we'll just have to see what happens." Somehow one senses that this particular teacher's graduation to a higher seat of learning cannot be delayed indefinitely.
WHY is such a fuss being made about the tax-raising powers of a Scottish parliament? What would be the point to such a body if it couldn't provide the decent standards of public services our nation so badly needs? The Tory cry of "Tartan Tax" is a smokescreen to hide the age-old Conservatism which stands for cutting levels of public- and social service provision across the board.
Labour should show up the Tories as being hoist on their own petard.
In planning for a Scottish parliament, Labour should also be bold and imaginative. Who knows what economies of scale might be forthcoming.
Surely we will have a single police force, a unified fire service and a truly national health provision. Rather than the present fragmentation of services, there should be rationalisation of the care and development of all aspects of our infrastructure. All this is crying out for a Scottish dimension once we have got rid of all the trusts, quangos, and other non-democratic juntas.
It may be that we would also benefit from the national control and expansion of education (at all levels), social work and housing. Certainly, strategic planning, flood prevention, coast protection, valuation, registration of electors and births etc, public transport, burial and cremation would be the better for Scottish parliamentary organisation.
Let Labour sweep away the traces of past and recent administrative reforms. Let a Labour Scottish parliament use our taxes for the good of the whole nation.
Jim Brunton
Edinburgh
THE headline to your article on pig organs for transplant (Pig organ farm horrifies animal activists, Section one, January 28) is eyecatching but is it balanced or fair? A little more research would have presented your readers with more even-handed coverage.
Animal Concern, Glasgow, might like to make their campaign two-pronged against research and for donor cards although they would be hard pressed to improve on the Department of Health's promotion of the donor option.
Kidney patients make up the majority of patients waiting for a transplant. Do these fellow citizens deserve no compassion or consideration?
The problems associated with dialysis can severely restrict a patient's lifestyle. Holding down a job, never mind aiming for promotion, is exceedingly difficult.
Kidney failure is no respecter of age. Toddlers to teenagers can suffer. Young married people can suddenly find their world crumbling. All patients so diagnosed, are in need of considerable support. If you had checked with a Kidney Patient Group or renal unit, you might have got a better overall picture which could have provided you with worthy headlines. Do animal rights' groups really want to deny individuals and their families an improved quality of life?
As a layman, I cannot discuss the problems of genetic engineering; in any event, it is too complex to go into here. If you want to discuss xenotransplantation (transplants between species) in any meaningful way, you would do the subject a great service by considering it in an even-handed, balanced and non-sensational way.
We trust the medical profession with diagnosis and treatment. Let us give them the chance to debate with all interested parties the medical and ethical problems surrounding this possible advance.
It is to be hoped that Salomon Brothers' forecast of increased numbers of transplants is correct. If xenotransplantation is eventually proved to be safe, sensible and satisfactory, consider the transformation it will bring to so many individuals and their families.
Sandoz Pharmaceuticals may indeed benefit from its investment and some may say they deserve to. I should declare an interest, however tenuous, in the success of Sandoz's business. I support the company by using one of its products: I have a transplant.
Harry Hagart
Edinburgh
There will presumably come a time when we can get through a week without having to mention Trainspotting, the film of the book about Edinburgh smack heads. It premieres simultaneously in several venues in both Glasgow and Edinburgh. The one to get to, featuring all the really important people, is the one in Glasgow where the £15 ticket (proceeds to Calton Athletic, the drug re-hab football team) gets you into the party afterwards and thus offers a chance to hear Damon Albarn of Blur perform his party piece. Tickets are like good junk: hard to get hold off and changing hands for up to £50.
Strathclyde Police are viewing the affair with a certain amount of alarm and are expecting queues of ticketless Trainspotting aficionados desperate to get into either the film or the party or both. On the otherhand it seems a prime opportunity to round up every dope dealer in town.
The choice of St Michael and All Saints for photographer Brodrick Haldane's funeral service in Edinburgh on Friday was particularly appropriate. It transpired the church was built by his grandmother, an Irish heiress married to a Bishop of Argyll. She sold a tiara to finance the project. In the meantime, while everybody is in a twitter about what will happen to his photographic archives of the great and occasionally good, has anybody considered what will happen to his family of finches and budgies which fluttered about his New Town flat? Haldane had birds all his life.
He was given his first ones by his nanny, one Mabel Dodge. Fortunately he had many friends and helpers in his latter years and one or other is likely to take care of the birds if he has not made a direction in his will. Their only drawback is that they are used to more freedom than many people would normally give their pets. On one occasion the budgies hatched a brood in his drawing room curtain rail.
There are cynical folk who believe our local councillors spend all their time drinking tea and blowing their more-than-ample attendance allowances. This is far from the truth. Councillor Alexander MacLean of Inverness has taken up the cudgels on behalf of his electors in Glendoe Terrace who complain that pigeons have taken to perching on television aerials which the council has re-sited above their front doors. The birds are covering both humans and doorsteps in fresh guano at every possible opportunity.
He has drawn the matter to the attention of the housing committee, but the simple answer is to shoot the wretches (the pigeons, not the tenants ... although...) and distribute the healthy low-fat carcasses among the poor and needy of the parish. Or else change the name to Glendoo Terrace.
Investigating the flooded basement of Glasgow University's Boyd Orr Building in the wake of yet another leak, superintendent Tom Young's torch picked out the unmistakable shape of a body floating face down in the water. A tremulous investigation revealed it to be the cold and lifeless form of Rususo Anne ... the building department's full-sized mouth-to-mouth resuscitation training doll.
Just to confuse us all, two books with remarkably similar titles are to be published within weeks of one another by rival Edinburgh publishers. Canongate is bringing out Who Owns Scotland in April; next week Mainstream hits the bookshelves with Who Owns Scotland Now. They will both be priced at £14.99. Apparently determined to mop up the land ownership issue once and for all the The Herald has bought the serial rights to both books.
Suggestions that somebody in the serialisation department forgot to tell the left hand what the right hand was up to and they bought both by mistake are naturally wide of the mark. Canongate's offering, by environmental campaigner Andy Wightman, is a much expanded version of the original Who Owns Scotland, a ground-breaking work of its time which sought, not entirely successfully, to unravel land ownership. The new work is said to be encyclopaedic, including detailed maps and the names of almost 8,000 landowners. Who Owns Scotland Now by journalist Auslan Cramb takes a detailed look at 19 major Scottish estates including Blair Atholl and Letterewe, owned by Dutchman Peter Van Vlissingen who insists tenants on the Little Gruinard fish with barbless flies. Mainstream's publicity department says there was no question of nicking a well known title off Canongate and sticking "now" on the end. "It was not premeditated." Of course not. It just sort of drifted out of the ether and onto the cover. A miracle. The canonistation of Mainstream supremo Bill Campbell is surely nigh.
A nation emerging from their wilderness years has a new star. Alasdair Reid meets Rob Howley, the pride of Bridgend
HAVING fractured with indecision the careers of almost every Welsh scrum-half for 15 years, Wales may finally have realised the error of their ways. When they name their side to meet Scotland early this week, Rob Howley will be a certain starter.
It could hardly be otherwise after Howley's mesmerising debut against England last weekend. There may have been hollow irony in Welsh celebrations of an honorable 21-15 defeat, but Howley made it less galling. His try near the end, something between a blast and a scamper, was richly deserved.
Nothing has measured the depth of Welsh misery in their wilderness years as their angst over half-back selection. On their aimless journey from glory to despond, they unearthed, and promptly buried, a succession of promising players. If Howley is given an extended lease on the No9 jersey, they can at least claim that one desperate circle has been broken.
On Wednesday, sitting in the Bridgend offices of Ogwr Borough Council where he works as a sports development officer, Howley was cautious about claiming tenure, but with officials of the Welsh Rugby Union simultaneously constructing a package that would allow him to work for them on a part-time basis as well, he had certain reasons for confidence. Not that the modest and affable Howley would wear them on his sleeve, but he knew the signs were good.
That said, he was anxious to place Wales' performance against England in a realistic context. "It was nice being praised in defeat, but we now need a win against Scotland. It is slightly worrying that the Welsh public were happy that we only lost by six points when they expected 20 or 30, but the players themselves were absolutely gutted. Within ourselves we knew we could have won."
Howley, more than anyone, would have deserved that victory for his flawless and versatile game of many parts. His lack of an obvious weakness may have helped him in a rugby culture where players have come to be defined by what they cannot do, rather than what they can, but he has no particular model for the style that has attracted attention recently from Saracens.
"I like to think I'm in the Rob Howley mould. I'm not Gareth Edwards, flattering as comparisons are. You need a balance between skills. Every player has his own kind of game."
Yet if the pressure of wearing the No9 shirt in Wales is intense Howley is grateful that he does not have to carry the national aspirations that have landed on Arwel Thomas, the wunderkind who has been given the sacred No10. "There are huge expectations on the outside half and that can obviously influence the way he plays. Sometimes it is too much. Still, it does take pressure off the players."
At 25, he has come late to international rugby, although the clamour for his inclusion has lasted almost five years. Two years ago he moved to Cardiff from Bridgend to advance his cap hopes but, failing to settle, he was back home six weeks later.
"The move didn't help me at all. It set my international career back two years. I never lost the ambition to play for Wales, though, and defensive neglect made it more powerful."
Ironically, Wales' strength at scrum-half and their reluctance to allow players to settle drove him along, too: "There are three or four other scrum-halves knocking on the door. The competition for the place is intense. It gives a bite to training. On the dark cold night it helps to have that incentive."
A new hospital means Glasgow will become a world leader in natural healing reports Julie Smyth
DESPITE its best efforts to present a healthier face, Glasgow is still seen as the heart-disease capital of the world: the one place where deep-fried pizza is considered fine cuisine.
But away from the limelight, the city has been quietly leading a revolution, promoting natural cures and healthy living. Last week it was all laid before the public as plans were unveiled to erect the National Health Service's first purpose-built homeopathic hospital in the city. It will be built in the grounds of Gartnavel General Hospital, and will replace the Victorian structure which houses the existing Glasgow Homoeopathic Hospital. The project is so startlingly different it has already attracted the interest of doctors in America.
The secret is in the way it will try to blend health care with an environment as relaxed and natural as it is possible to create. Out will go the impersonal corridors and in will come cosy rooms with murals incorporating themes of natural medicine. Patients will be able to stroll through courtyard gardens to soothing music.
The £2.2m, 15-bed hospital, should be ready next year. A second phase, cash permitting, will incorporate a library and international centre of research and teaching.
Even the way the money was raised was out of the ordinary: the backing came from an endowment set up to use pennies collected over 60 years in jars and bottles.
Treatment, which will be available to everybody under the NHS, is expected to attract patients from across Britain.
Not only is the project leading the way in medicine but it is also a flagship development for Glasgow's UK city of architecture and design festival in 1999. Maclachlan Monaghan Architects, a city firm, beat 68 rivals to the design contract.
Glasgow's roots as a centre of homeopathy date to 1840 though, as a science, it was known to the Greeks with records going as far back as the 5th century BC.
The theory is based on the concept of taking "the hair of the dog that bit you" with small, carefully controlled, doses of natural remedies that cause symptoms being used to treat them. The rationale is that the symptoms are part of the body's own fight against illness and so they should be reinforced, not subdued. It claims to be non-addictive and free of side-effects.
Where it really steps out of line with conventional wisdom, however, is in insisting on treating the whole person. That means that two people suffering from the same condition can be prescribed widely different remedies.
Dr David Reilly, consultant physician for the Glasgow Homoeopathic Hospital, insists the new centre will be more than capable of blending orthodox medicine with alternative therapies, including homeopathy, acupuncture and massage therapy. He is a leading advocate of the integrated approach to medicine, one which still makes some traditional-minded doctors uncomfortable. "We are trying to get away from the either/or mentality. It is not about staking out your corner, whether it is orthodox or complementary. We are interested in finding out from patients how their inner world is affecting their illness, and how their illness is affecting their inner world."
He said the purpose-built unit will be a "centre of healing". One of the problems with traditional hospitals is that they have often been unfriendly, even "frightening" places for patients. With research having shown how much difference the atmosphere can make a 10-year study into patients having gall bladder treatment showed that those near a window had markedly fewer complications, less pain and shorter stays he sees this as a winning formula.
"We believe we are developing a model of care and we want the building to be a haven and an inspiration. Who do you know who does not have a story to tell about mechanical treatment at a hospital? But when you walk into a place of beauty like a cathedral you know you are in a special place."
Roy Maclachlan, of Maclachlan Monaghan Architects, said the building will make the best use possible of natural lighting and ventilation, saving energy and producing a more sympathetic atmosphere. The design and details, to be incorporated in the coming months after consultation with patients, staff and members of the Glasgow School of Art, will focus on "creating a healing environment". He anticipates there may be sculptures, as well as drawings and paintings throughout the hospital. Every room used by a patient will look out onto a landscaped courtyard.
Glasgow, one of five cities with NHS homeopathic hospitals, has already proved itself to be an important centre for natural treatment, thanks to the old hospital. It treats 3,000 out-patients a year as well as 600 in-patients, two-thirds of whom have previously sought orthodox hospital treatment. It has also been a main centre of homeopathic research: the first placebo-controlled trials in the UK took place in Glasgow in 1970.
The natural treatment, which has been boosted by the endorsement of members of the royal family, such as Prince Charles, is now practised by 25% of GPs in Scotland, with two-year waiting lists for the training course at Glasgow.
ACROSS the Atlantic, the developments in Glasgow are being closely watched. "It will be one of the leading hospitals," said Dr David Riley, vice president of the American Institute of Homoeopathy. Riley, who runs a clinic in Santa Fe, New Mexico, said homeopathy reached its high point in America between 1900 and 1925, but with the introduction of modern medicines, less than 1% of the 500,000 physicians in the US now practice the treatment. Now, experts from Glasgow's homeopathic hospital are about to start providing training for American doctors. Riley predicted that, with rising consumer demand, most insurance companies in the US will cover alternative medicine within 12 to 24 months.
Jan de Vries, a leading naturopath in Scotland who claims to have treated film stars, sports celebrities and a Kuwaiti prince, said the new hospital will be a "step forward" in placing Glasgow at the forefront of homeopathy.
Anybody who doubts whether the natural method works, need only talk to Christine Wolter, 51, a retired teacher. She has ME and suffered from double vision for 12 years. But after a year of homeopathic care at the hospital in Glasgow, the problem is under control, she said. "It is quite remarkable. I got to the point where I thought I would not be able to see properly again. Now I am driving." She will be part of the consultation process for the new hospital. "It is important that it has a sense of healing and a gentle atmosphere. It should feel like a home, rather than a hospital."
The new hospital in Glasgow may also spark a UK trend. The Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital, Great Ormond Street, is hoping to build a similar unit.
FOR the second time in four years, British Midland has won The Sunday Times Scotland/Caithness Glass air punctuality award for flights serving Anglo-Scottish routes.
Air UK, which has also won the competition twice, pipped British Airways to second spot in the final month of 1995.
Alistair Mair, chairman of Caithness, presented the engraved glass trophy to Austin Reid, the managing director of British Midland, at a ceremony at the Balmoral Hotel, Edinburgh and announced to guests from the travel trade that the company would sponsor the event again this year.
Reid said the award was a recognition of the way in which British Midland staff had responded positively to the company's "right on time" campaign.
For those who cannot face the thought of queuing with hundreds of others outside The Tate in London for a brief glimpse of the Cezanne exhibition, The Diary is pleased to offer a considerably cheaper alternative with no queues. The National Gallery in Edinburgh has two Cezannes and so does Glasgow Art Gallery. This of course rather begs the sniffy question: So what's wrong with our Cezannes then? Not good enough, eh? Well, comes the answer, yes and no.
Michael Clarke, Keeper of the National Gallery confesses that he was a bit "miffed" when nobody asked to borrow the Edinburgh works. One is of Mont St Victoire which is very nice but Cezanne seems to have had a fixation about the mountain and painted dozens of Mont St Victoires. So fair enough. As for the unfinished Le Grand Arbre; that is a bit special. But Clarke, who saw the exhibition in Paris concedes that it is probably not quite right for the current show. Doesn't fit the theme, and all that. Glasgow's brace are also pretty enough and well worth a look. Needless to say, the Scottish Cezanne which has been packed up and sent south to grace the Tate is Chateau de Medan, the house which once belonged to Emile Zola, from The Burrell Collection. Sir William had a bit of an eye for French art and was not plagued by councillors and committees telling him what he could, or could not, buy. The picture would have gone to the Paris exhibition and, indeed, Philadelphia but Sir William, a shipowner, knew too much about sailing and the sea. He stipulated that the picture should never cross water. Hence it is being shown only at The Tate.
A FIERCE bid battle to keep Dunedin Fund Managers under Scottish control should be concluded within the next week to 10 days. Scots firms Edinburgh Fund Managers and Ivory & Sime are locked in a fight to the finish with Murray Johnstone, the Glasgow-based subsidiary of US-based United Asset Management.
EFM and I&S each have £3.5 billion of funds under management and each knows that the victor will gain a significant advantage over the loser. The winner will pick up £5 billion of business from Dunedin, half of it in the United States.
The intensity of the bidding process has helped force up the price to beyond £100m and other serious bidders, including Generale Bank of Belgium, are understood to have withdrawn unless the negotiating team fails to pull together a suitable package and invites other interested parties to rejoin the fray.
It has also emerged that CastleRock, the fund management company created by a breakaway team from Dunedin, is handing the administration of its anticipated investment portfolio to the WM Company.
A deal will be announced later this month and follows last week's decision by Scottish Widows to transfer administration of its £22 billion fund to WM and the earlier contracting out of back office operations to WM by Edinburgh Fund Managers.
WM is in negotiations with six companies to handle their investment administration, all but one believed to be outside Scotland. CastleRock, operating out of Edinburgh and Chicago, is headed by Gordon Anderson and Doug Waggoner, two former Dunedin directors whose departures last year sparked the crisis at the company.
If WM wins all the business under discussion, the funds it administers will increase from £52 billion to more than £80 billion. The current total includes £10 billion of overseas client business.
Stewart Crawford, managing director of WM, said the company was not having to seek out business as there was a growing trend among those in the fund management sector to hand over administration to a third party.
"They can concentrate on their core business and it is cost-effective. It is win-win for them," he said.
Scottish Widows, which last week announced 700 job cuts, including 600 in Edinburgh, is transferring the administration of its investment portfolio to WM. It will help Widows reach its overall aim of reducing costs by 30%.
It is the first outsourcing decision of this type by a UK life assurance company, following a trend which started in the US where some companies have no back-office staff.
Scottish Widows will continue to manage its portfolio and place funds. Some of the 71 investment administration staff are likely to join WM which is based in Edinburgh and is controlled by Bankers Trust, the US bank.
WM has been talking to Scottish Widows for nearly a year. It already handles administration for Edinburgh Fund Managers; the financial services arm of Marks & Spencer; and the British Rail Pension Fund.
In spite of the scale of the job losses announced last week, other life companies continue to say they will not follow suit although some have been shedding jobs quietly. Scottish Life cut 7% of its workforce. Scottish Amicable shed 150 jobs south of the border.
The Dunedin saga, which has been running for several months, has implications for the 140 Edinburgh-based employees and 60 at Dundee. The Dundee office, which provides a back-office operation, would be most vulnerable from a takeover from Edinburgh Fund Managers, which has outsourced its administration to the WM company.
Dunedin's problems stem from the resignations of several staff last autumn and a lack of confidence, leading to the lost pension clients believed to be US West, Washington State and State of Rhode Island. Dunedin's investment trusts urged the Bank of Scotland which owns 50.5% of the company to put the company on the market.
The various potential buyers are thought to have had different interests in the group with some only wanting the trusts. There has been intense interest in the sale from North America and Europe.
I HAVE been chortling all week about my discovery that the nudist clubs of Britain wish to convene a naked Olympiad to match the celebrated clothed games. They seek Scotland as the regular location for this memorable event. Convening the nude Olympics at Murrayfield, Powderhall and the Commonwealth Pool would enhance Scotland's reputation no end. The fig leaf could replace the thistle. Imagine the fun if the event were tied to the General Assembly's annual moo-ing on The Mound. Starkers, the nudist's magazine, says it lacks the resources to make it happen. Scottish Enterprise should offer sponsorship.
MYSTERY of the week: why is there a headline on the front page of the February issue of Scottish Chartered Surveyor which says Stonehenge Disappears! above a routine story about the launch of new careers literature?
DANUSIA BRZEZICKA (pronounced Brezitsca, it says here), a "top retail strategist" has joined ScotRail's marketing team. Danusia, whose name is due to being part Polish, part Portugese, worked at Burton, House of Fraser and What Everyone Wants. What your correspondent wanted on Thursday was a first class compartment on the 18.30 from Edinburgh to Glasgow. "We've run out of trains so we had to use this old one," said a helpful-looking BR-type. Obviously there is a need for more strategic appointments.
THE Lanarkshire Development Agency begins a two-week round of interviews this week to replace Archie Bethell as the £63,000-a-year chief executive. There is a short list of eight from just over 100 applications.
NOW that Tony Blair has announced a review of the House of Lords and has already declared himself the businessman's best friend, perhaps he might consider giving the businessman a greater role in running the country. It was Peter Dunn, during his high-profile and short-lived term as acting director general of the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, who said there should be business representatives in government.
Dunn did not dismiss the idea that they might be elected by other businessmen. He argues that it is not right that business groups such as the chambers and the CBI should have to lobby the decision-makers from outwith. They should be at the centre of power, he says. The benefits would appear obvious: a chance to develop clear transport and energy policies, to weed out red tape and other needless regulation. Of course, put two businessmen in the same room and they would probably fail to agree. That would make them politicians.
THE departure of former Allied Provincial personnel from the newly-merged stockbroking group with Greig Middleton, has moved apace; in some cases more quickly than expected. Jamie Cumming and Jamie Matheson have just joined the new Brewin Dolphin Bell Lawrie finance house in Glasgow after negotiations between lawyers for both sides had been successfully concluded and a leaving date agreed. But in the case of Bob Ploughman, the head dealer, there was a sooner-than-expected departure. Allied had to let him go, pronto, and not keep him working to contract, as with others. His contract could not be found. It had been mislaid, or misfiled, apparently.
YOU get to a certain stage in life when it really isn't easy to adapt new ideas into your mental perspective. One of my established items of mental furniture is that businessmen are mostly time serving duffers. Only rarely have I encountered a man in a suit who says anything diverting. Their insights, such as they may be, are expressed in the dead language of executive flannel. The business pages of bereft of poetry, let alone wit.
My impression of capitalists is merely a variation on the universal theme, of which Mr Cedric Brown, retiring chief executive of British Gas, is merely the most opulent version. For these reasons, my heart did not soar when Harvard University Business Press sent me a copy of a new study on the reasons why corporations prosper.
It would be the usual guff about containing costs, total quality management and efficiency, I thought. Useful only if you cannot sleep at night.
Yet Value Migration (the report under discussion) has reconverted me to the private enterprise cause. This tease of a text tells a hair-raising story of sizeable corporations that evaporate in a few years and others that flourish from tiny resources over the same time span.
The author, Adrian Slywotsky, is rather more than yet another management guru. He has achieved a reversal of Adam Smith's useful dictum that we do not appeal to the benevolence of the butcher and baker for our supper, but to their self interest. Butchers and bakers must listen ever more attentively to the customer's self interest, he argues.
The only areas where the flux of events is not accelerating are those trades that enjoy a collusion with government, protected by regulation or charter or by other barriers to competition.
Slywotsky's insights sound ovious. Listen to your customers. Quiz them on what they really want, now and in the future. The answers will be much more interesting than "the same as before but cheaper, thanks." Few companies rehearse the future with their customers.
The element that most engaged me is the notion that success is the fruit of humility. So much executive rhubarb is built on the pretence of power, rank or bluff. Professor Slywotsky's central point amounts to no more than applied good manners.
Most arguments on capitalist themes are conducted in the bleak language of balance sheets and commercial jargon. Professor Slywotsky is engagingly subversive in detailing how enormous corporations such as IBM tripped up by not eavesdropping on what its customers wanted.
Claiming the market is a mechanism that rewards success is so familiar it need not be done, but claiming it as a mechanism that puts consumers in command implies many future reforms. His assertion that complaints be treated as a primary corporate asset jolted me. I am sure most of our native companies regard complaints as irritants to be ignored or dismissed as cranky.
It would be wonderful to report that Mr Blair and his colleagues had read and understood the collaborative message of this compelling book. I cannot believe they have. The core assumption of the public sector is that customers are nuisances.
If I had a criticism of this bracing text, it is that he is too gentle to lift the veil of sloth hanging over the public sector. I have never before read a book that argued so cogently that the virtues we all nominally support ever greater prosperity and ever better goods and services are fostered by wider competition and a freer market.
There is a sense that nothing new can be said about firms, that they are made up of the same flawed material they have always been, muddled people, but the adaptability and risk-seeking of those involved in a venture are becoming more important than capital. An evangelist for capitalism who acknowledges money is of secondary importance to people changes my appreciation of the landscape.
We must deregulate and privatise whenever we can, dismantling socialism which is built on restrictions of trade. I would urge the more inventive civil servants to place Value Migration on their reading lists.
AT the start of Scotland's North Sea oil adventure some 25 years ago, a group of young investors with more institutional money at their disposal than was maybe good for them sat in Edinburgh's Charlotte Square and tried to guess where the exploration companies might land the mass of oil that was then still only rumoured to lie somewhere off Shetland.
If they could predict the pipeline landfalls they could quietly buy the shoreline sites and make a killing when the oil developers went hunting for terminal and tank-farm facilities. But the guessing game proved impossible. There were too many uncertainties. Eventually, one of the hucksters hammered a frustrated fist on the table and announced: "Shetland is not that big. Let us go up there and just buy the whole bloody place." They very nearly did, too. But if they had, they would still have lost.
Shetland anticipated the land-grab and persuaded parliament to give it special powers to control the use of its on-shore sites. That was the birth of Sullom Voe. It is still surprising, though, that the North Sea oil adventure has not spawned a bigger breed of high-profile commercial gambler in Scotland. It is a swashbuckling industry that attracts the all-or-nothing players.
You might have expected that, underneath the deep layer of corporate and institutional risk-takers, we would by now have produced more of our own individual desperados. There are some, however, and precisely because they are so few, we should treasure them. One is Steve Remp, the Californian adventurer whose off-shore service company Ramco is based in Aberdeen. He has made a mint by backing the hunch he had half-a-dozen years ago about the oil-boom in the precarious former Soviet province of Azerbaijan.
Another is sitting right now watching the share price of his little company take its second major hike in three weeks as news comes in of an increasingly promising gas-field prospect in Bangladesh. He is Bill Gammell, former Scotland rugby internationalist. In 15 years, he has transformed the Edinburgh-based Cairn Energy company he heads from the tiny management house it used to be into one of Scotland's most aggressive energy investors in its own right, with a market capitalisation the last time he looked more than £180m. Gammell is a driver. "Grow or go" is his brutally simple instruction to his people at Cairn, though he pretties it up by explaining as well that all he is really doing is looking for things the market thinks are ugly, and making them attractive.
One of those things was the Dutch company, Holland Sea Search, which Gammell confesses looked horrible in the short-term but promising in the long, with gas production from one North Sea field and, more to the point, some intriguing-looking shares in a Bangladeshi off-shore exploration stake in which Cairn itself was also an investor.
Using funds from the previous summer's sale of Cairn's American interests, and a successful £16m rights issue, Gammell bought out the Dutch for £18m and sank another £8m in wildcat drilling. He says himself the risks have been considered (by others) to be outrageous. But he is looking at the rewards which he counts "enormous" if the well is wet. And it looks as though it is. News of what appears a substantial gas find three days ago have set the analysts chattering, the share price rising to nearly £2 (it was 27p in 1992). Gammell's gamble may be about to pay off. Then all he will have to worry about is the predators the sort of worry most people dream about having.
Chris Baur is editorial director of Scottish Business Insider
The St Johnstone forward is proving his worth, says Kevin McCarra
FOR defenders, George O'Boyle, leading scorer in the First Division, is a severe case of bad luck. The laws of probability should have extinguished his danger years ago, leaving the St Johnstone forward with only brittle old cuttings from newspapers as tokens of his career. Injuries engulfed two and a half years of his five seasons with Dunfermline and the opinions of two specialists were shunned on the entirely non-medical grounds that he could not bear to believe them.
When he was given hope, it still took the bleakest form. "The third specialist told me he was willing to operate on my cruciate ligament," said O'Boyle, "but that I would only have a 10% chance of playing again. I said that I was willing to do anything to come back, no matter how many hours a day were required."
With the reprieve his body was forced to concede him came a sense of urgency and the Northern Ireland international has begun to compel respect from an initially disdainful crowd. "I still think there are supporters," he observed, "who can't get over the fact that I came to take the place of heroes."
When O'Boyle joined St Johnstone for £200,000 in 1994, he was succeeding Billy Dodds, who had moved to Aberdeen. Worse still, he walked straight into a comparison with Paul Wright, who was still at the club but, as a result of injury, would play infrequently before leaving for Kilmarnock.
"Wright did cast a long shadow," said Paul Sturrock, the St Johnstone manager, "because he had scored 50 goals in two seasons while the club was in the Premier Division. The fact that George missed more than he scored here at first made it even more difficult."
Goals do spring from skills O'Boyle has acquired rather than instincts he was born with. He found the net infrequently at Dunfermline, where he was primarily valued as a striker who could set up Ross Jack. At St Johnstone he has redefined himself, but this has brought other frustrations.
Deciding what O'Boyle is can create problems. "At the beginning of the season," said Sturrock, "I was emphasising the need to link up, but I think he took me at my word and stopped scoring." An urgent discussion followed. "The manager told me he wanted the goals back," said O'Boyle.
The orders were followed assiduously, and the greedy side of the striker's nature has been on the loose of late. His double in the 3-1 victory at Dundee United last weekend took his total to 14. Despite that haul, tucking the ball away can still be a perplexing matter for player and manager. "He's not the most clinical finisher, and I sometimes think he's more likely to score with the half chance" remarked
Sturrock.
"Most of my goals," reflected O'Boyle, "come when there's a knock-on or the goalkeeper doesn't come and I squeeze the ball in." His own revival has coincided with an improvement in the team following Sturrock's decision to introduce afternoon training to supplement the morning
routine.
O'Boyle confesses that, just like the rest of us, footballers have grave misgivings about hard work, but acknowledges its merits: "You could say it was a bad thing if it left us leg-weary, but in the last 20 minutes at Tannadice we were running over the top of
United."
Bryan Hamilton, the Northern Ireland manager, will watch O'Boyle soon but the restoration of his international career may be difficult. "The First Division isn't a stylish place to be," said Sturrock succinctly.
Sturrock is still concerned that O'Boyle should keep his weight down and maintain the special exercises for his rebuilt knee. "He's got a bubbly personality, but you need to watch him." Maintaining surveillance of the forward however, is proving too much for most defenders.
Scotland's life companies are entering a maze of uncertainty, but they should emerge stronger.
APART from the usual diet of devolution, drugs and disasters, Monday morning listeners to BBC Radio Scotland were forced to swallow some pretty dire warnings about imminent Armageddon in the financial sector. The man from the Manufacturing, Science, Finance Union was in high orbit over the 600 jobs that Scottish Widows was shedding in Edinburgh. It was the beginning of the end.
If 25% of Widows jobs were going, then 25% across the sector was inevitable, or 6,000 jobs in all. Furthermore, he wanted to know what Michael Forsyth, the Scottish secretary, was going to do about it. "What can he do?" the interviewer innocently asked him. "Well, we were told by Margaret Thatcher that services would provide the jobs of the future," came the reply. Mmmm.
Edinburgh has been a financial centre for at least 300 years, pre-dating Maggie by a good few, and is likely to remain so for a good while yet. Once the dust began to settle on last week's news it was clear that the leading players are too switched on to the need for change including downsizing where necessary to allow themselves to sink altogether. Change is inevitable, and more jobs will probably go, but some will be created and the will to survive will prevail.
The announcement from Scottish Widows was not an overnight decision; it had been on the cards since at least last May when the 2,300 Edinburgh staff were first told that a review of activities was under way and there was a need for a 30% saving in costs.
Michael Forsyth was claiming on Friday night he would do all he could to help. "You cannot be too laissez faire about this," he said when it was suggested that the job losses were a casualty of a free market. Forsyth appeared genuinely touched by the size of the cuts, but then he was in the company of financial leaders as guest speaker at the Securities Institute dinner.
Mike Ross, group chief executive of Scottish Widows, now finds himself in the line of fire and he is stung by critics who have said the company ought to have seen it coming, that shedding 25% of staff in one round suggests serious over-manning.
Ross rejects the charge, saying the jobs are being lost to anticipate future demand for business. He cannot, however, say which jobs are being axed. It may take until May, a year after the initial announcement, before individuals for the chop are identified.
He revealed that the job cuts will have a significant effect on the move to Port Hamilton where a £60m headquarters building is due for completion in the autumn of 1997. Though planned for 1,500 people, it is likely to house less than half that number and half the floorspace will be sub-let.
Understandably, Ross prefers to talk about the benefits of the changes announced: "Of course it is terrible for those one in four losing jobs but for the three in four who will remain there is a good future ahead." The company, like others, has introduced new products and it is one of the first mutuals to have a banking licence. He sees growth returning to pensions and huge business potential in care policies. It will be welcome relief when it comes.
For two decades there was unprecedented growth. "In one period in the eighties we were doing as much new business in three weeks as we had previously taken in two years," said Ross. The gloom of the early 1990s, precipitated by the collapse of the residential property sector, has been replaced by a more optimistic mood for 1997 and 1998.
But the sector has been optimistic before and faced downturns. Unpublished figures from the Association of British Insurers, obtained by The Sunday Times, show a further 15% fall in life and pensions business last year, after a 20% shrink in 1994. On the bright side, five of the top seven performers are Scottish firms. Ross anticipates a flattening out this year.
Technological changes have had an impact, as has the scandal of pensions being sold inappropriately. A big threat continues to be the competition from those companies like Virgin, Marks & Spencer, Kwik-Fit and the clearing banks, moving in to the life and pensions territory. Ross believes the challenge from these sources is yet to peak.
There will also be continuing pressures for mutuals to float and for companies to merge to protect their business. Scottish Life last week launched an offshore fund, following a pattern of international expansion which ultimately strengthens Edinburgh's position. But Jim Gilchrist, general manager (sales and marketing) for Scottish Life, believes some companies have been slow to respond to change.
"There are those who saw the writing on the wall and decided to do something. Those that have been slow have been pressed into draconian action. Many missed the opportunity to move into Europe because life was too easy here." He shares Mike Ross's view that survival is not just about cutting costs but finding ways to boost income. "That is the real intellectual and commercial challenge," he said.
Let's eat, Perth
THE Ancient Romans knew Perth as Bertha; what a pity the name did not stick. Bertha on the banks of the Silvr'y Tay. The Fair City of Bertha. "We now go over live to the Scottish Conservative Party conference in Bertha." Would John Knox have kick-started the Reformation in a place called Bertha?
I wonder what difference the name might have made to the general ambience of the place now.
People would smile all the time, exchange jokes in the street, decorate their houses with bunting, twin their city with Fat Gladys in Australia and Greater Ethyl in the United States.
The crime rate would come down, St Johnstone (Bertha's Boys) would win the cup, and I am sure it would be a whole lot easier to get a parking place in a big, broad city called Bertha.
Instead, I noticed, people still drive round Perth in hopeless little circles on a Saturday afternoon looking for a spot. I took the nearest parking space I could think of: Glasgow, and caught the train instead. One poor hopeless individual was cruising the streets unaware he was pushing a no-parking cone ahead of him, destined to be booked for parking wherever he stopped.
It was a really miserable day, the effects of driving snow and deepening slush were reflected in people's faces. Everybody looked depressed; but then there has been a tangible sense of mourning about the centre of Perth ever since Timothy's Resaurant passed away and there has been nowhere like it to cheer them up on Saturday lunchtimes. Timothy's was a real institution in the city; not my favourite sort of institution but, when I had the temerity to say so, I was buried under such an avalanche of letters the postman was off with backache for a week.
Inexplicably, a similar number of protest letters descended on the desks of the city fathers last year when a plan was lodged to transform the old antique shop in Kinnoull Street into a smart new restaurant. The local press followed the story and petitions were drawn up.
If it had been me, I would have been hanging out the bunting and posting welcome notices on all the lamp posts although, as things turned out, I might also have been tempted to sneak down late at night to paint over the sign above the door.
Let's Eat is a terrible name for a restaurant. There is a chef who appears occasionally on lunchtime Scotland Today who takes us back to basics, leads us through the recipes as if we were simpletons, and then produces food which more often than not looks like the stuff my sisters brought home from school in a Tupperware box. His exhortation to us at the beginning of every slot is "l-e-e-e-et's cook!" with a cheery wave of his fist, and there is nothing in this whole world which makes me feel more like sticking my 12-inch frying pan through the television.
Let's Eat is to me almost as irritating a motto for a project. Although I suppose, to be fair, that the name is meant to represent the same classless call to knife and fork without restricting itself to any one sort of cuisine.
The restaurant, in what was once the Theatre Royal and later a billiard hall, is the brainchild of Tony Heath and Shona Drysdale who brightened up the culinary scene in Aberdeen no end when they opened the Courtyard Restaurant; before that they were respectively manager and head of the wine side of operations at Murrayshall Hotel near Scone in the days when Bruce Sangster's star was shining brightly over Perth.
Heath himself is no mean cook but, rather than dazzling us with dextrous foodie embellishments, the menu he put together that dreadful Saturday lunchtime was full of the sort of simply executed comfort food calculated to make people forget their parking problems and the miserable weather.
Brushing the snow off my coat, I was ushered into a cozy seating area in front of a cast-iron stove in a corner of the restaurant and given a drink. The fire felt good and I was not surprised to hear customers often fall asleep in front of it before they have even ordered their meal.
It is a large room, painted in a sort of burnt ochre, with green chair coverings and napery and a sort of coir flooring; my only criticism would be that some of the tables seem a bit small, square and desk-like. The daily specials are written up on the blackboards; otherwise the menu read like my idea of the perfect winter lunch.
THERE was a thick yellow chowder made with smoked haddock, bacon, tomatoes and sweetcorn which was rich but not too salty and came with excellent chewy wholemeal bread; and a little tower of chargrilled Mediterranean vegetables, served warm, perhaps warmer than warm, sandwiched with slices of mozzarella and drenched in a sweet tomato and balsamic vinaigrette.
There was also a wild mushroom risotto which had lost a little of its bite (had it been reheated?) but was dark and creamy and scored high marks for intensity of flavour, possibly thanks to some dried mushrooms or a home-made mushroom ketchup. Parking problems? What parking problems?
Any of these things could have been ordered in a larger size for vegetarians, but the main courses proper included an enormous mussel and onion stew which the woman at the next table said was great, and a very good, moist, chargrilled chicken breast which had been marinaded in olive oil, ginger and either lime or lemon, before being served with a proper saffron rice.
The coriander encrusted cod I vaguely remember seeing in a similar guise in the Courtyard in Aberdeen. Here it appeared on a fat bed of very rich creamed potatoes topped with a big blob of garlic-filled aioli, under a dod of salty tapenade the whole thing dressed with extra virgin olive oil. My arteries still solidify at the very thought but, taken with a glass of well-aged Torres Gran Coronas, it would be hard to imagine a dish more comforting.
Unless perhaps it was the puddings which followed; a warm chocolate brownie with chocolate fudge sauce and a brandy basket of ice cream, or the exemplary little sweet and sticky toffee pudding with hot butterscotch sauce. Forget the Scottish winter. If I lived in Bertha, I would hibernate at 77 Kinnoull Street, beside the fire, four months of the year, but within easy reach of the menu.
Let's Eat, 77-79 Kinnoull Street, Perth PH1 5EZ (tel: 01738 643377).
Shares in Scottish Television rose strongly over the week amid continuing reports of a takeover. There were denials mid-week after a Times report suggested Flextech was putting the Glasgow-based station into play by offering its 20% stake for sale. But with HTV and Carlton rumoured to be discussing a merger, interest in Scottish, which has 20% of HTV, would not go away. The price rose dramatically over the week, opening on Monday at 530p and closing on Friday at a year high of 615p, the highest since February 1994 when it peaked at 574p. Scottish shares outperformed the market by 22%. No Scottish companies report next week.
There are annual meetings for Scottish Radio Holdings (Thur) and Watson & Philip (Fri).
BRITISH MIDLAND may be forced to use smaller and slower planes on some Anglo-Scottish routes because of delays in the delivery of new aircraft from the troubled Fokker group.
The last two from an order for nine Fokker 70s and 100s from the Dutch manufacturer may not be completed. They were due for delivery in April but at best they will be delayed.
BM has sold two of its aircraft to ValuJet in the United States in preparation for acquiring the new 75-seater Fokker 70s and is now drawing up contingency plans to find replacements in case they are not delivered.
It is possible that in the short term BM will use two turbo-prop planes operated by its Manx Airways subsidiary. They are slower than the jets on order and have 60 seats.
Austin Reid, BM's managing director, said that it would make journey times longer, adding for instance 10 minutes to an East Midlands to Edinburgh flight, but he is confident that disruption to the normal service will be minimal. He conceded that the situation was "not ideal" and that he was looking for an early solution.
"The current situation is a cause for concern but we are actively pursuing arrangements to make sure there is no disruption of service," he said.
"Obviously we would like to operate the type of aircraft that we choose and which we need but we may have to find short term alternatives."
The search for replacements is set against a worldwide shortage of aircraft with too many manufacturers chasing too few orders.
BM leases all but three of its 35-strong fleet used on domestic and continental flights. The order for four 105-seater Fokker 100s and five Fokker 70s is worth more than $150m and was placed two years ago through a financing company which will own them. Seven of the original order are now in service. BM is acquiring the Fokkers to replace ageing DC-9s.
The problems at Fokker, caused by its high costs and severe financial problems, prompted Sir Michael Bishop, chairman of BM, last month to hope that other manufacturers would save the company. He said UK companies were unconstrained by what he saw as Fokker's two most severe problems: an overvalued currency and over-restrictive labour laws.
Fokker says it has a shortlist of five potential partners. Drastic cost-cutting is likely whoever it should join.
TWO men behind successful free newspapers in England are to launch a new title in Aberdeen, which will threaten an advertising price war with the existing free paper and the Evening Express.
Keith Barwell, chairman, and Bill Alder, chief executive, who launched award-winning titles in Luton and Milton Keynes respectively, will launch the Aberdeen Independent in early March. Barwell is investing a seven-figure sum in the paper.
Alan Scott, managing director of Aberdeen Journals, publisher of the Press and Journal, Evening Express and free distribution Herald & Post, which is about to change ownership, said only that "there is no monopoly on anyone publishing whatever they wish to publish."
Northcliffe Newspapers is expected to receive Department of Trade and Industry clearance soon for its £82m acquisition of Aberdeen Journals from the Thomson Organisation.
In 1972 millionaire Barwell launched the Luton Herald which spawned the nationwide Herald & Post empire. He bought back some of the titles in the early 1990s and sold them again last October.
HEAT, 170 mins, 15
In Michael Mann's handsome and moody new movie, a master-criminal and his gang of thieves commit a series of highly stylish heists in and around Los Angeles, while trying to avoid the clutches of an obsessive cop who is on their tail. So far, so what. Do we really need another criminal mastermind? Yet another obsessive cop? Well, yes, if the cop is played by Al Pacino and the criminal by Robert De Niro; and if this, their first film together, is directed by Mann. Running at almost three hours, Mann brings to a simple story of cops and robbers an epic sprawl and a high seriousness that couldn't be further removed from the tightly coiled comic carnage that dominates today's crime movies.
A LITTLE PRINCESS, 97 mins, U
From the unpromising, saccharine source of Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel comes a beguiling movie. Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron casts a magical spell over the tale of a girl, Sara, brought up by her widowed father on a diet of imagination. When he is thought killed in the first world war trenches, Sara is dropped into a world of drudgery. Naturally she seeks escape in a world of fantasy, but Cuaron has, by now, utterly captivated the audience. Adept, old-fashioned filmmaking destined to become a children's classic.
LOCH NESS, 100 mins, PG
This gentle romantic comedy has been given an undeserved pre-release kicking. But do we really care how authentic the accents are, how improbable the script, or how many scenes were actually shot on Loch Ness? Ted Danson as the cynical monster hunter is cool, Californian and elegantly wasted. Joely Richardson as the landlady he falls in love with is demurely sexy in Scottish woollens. Kirsty Graham as her wee daughter steals the show, along with JurassicLoch monsters. Good family entertainment leave your hang-ups at the door and enjoy.
LEAVING LAS VEGAS, 110 mins, 18
Leaving Las Vegas leaves most movies about the issue of alcohol propping up the bar like old bores, repeating the same slurred cliches to one another. The source of its strength is simple: it is not about the issue of alcoholism at all; it is about alcoholism, the thing itself. Its hero, Ben (Nicolas Cage), has a frightening purity of purpose. After burning most of his possessions and leaving what remains of his life in 10 bin-liners on the street, Ben gets in a car and drives straight to Las Vegas, where he plans to drink himself to death. Then he bumps into a hooker called Sera (Elisabeth Shue), and the two move in together almost immediately. Shue is the audience's way into this film there isn't a single moment when you don't register Sera's pain at what Ben is doing to himself, nor a single moment when you don't understand her need to let him do it but it is Cage's performance, pure and powerful, that is the greater marvel.
CLOCKERS, 128 mins, 18
Spike Lee's new film, adapted from the novel by Richard Price, is his best in what is now a decade of film-making, and it still hangs heavy with all the bad habits he has picked up along the way. It starts with a single dead body, belonging to a local scumbag shot down in Brooklyn's housing projects no more than a news clipping, really. First on the crime scene is homicide detective Rocco Klein, a man whose long career on the streets has left his cynicism so sharpened and his soul so shrivelled that there is only one thing for it: he's played by Harvey Keitel, brilliant as ever. The blistering, bolshie film that follows confirms Lee as the cinema's great surgeon-general, alternately taking the pulse of America and probing its open wounds.
JOHNNY MNEMONIC, 96 mins, 15
Keanu Reeves is Johnny Mnemonic, a man who has emptied his head in order to rent it out for others to use as a sort of information storage depot. The year is 2021 and the future looks much as it has done ever since 1982, when Blade Runner came out. The streets are littered with showroom dummies and burning cars, women have abandoned all restraint when it comes to silver eye shadow, and everyone wanders around suffering from "the black shakes, DAS, that's Data Attention Syndrome: information sickness". To get the best impression of what it is to watch this film, plug your younger brother into the mains and ask him to impersonate his newest video game. Johnny Mnemonic is one long gibber of ideas, helplessly shunting into one another, unguided by a single train of thought.
DR FAUSTUS, Tron Theatre, Glasgow
Though Compass Theatre company are unlikely to match the best known coup linked to this play the appearance 30 years ago, to the month, of Elizabeth Taylor in an Oxford Playhouse production however, they will still be on strong ground with this Christopher Marlowe tragedy. The company specialise in theatrical classics such as this 16th-century tale of a man so eager for intellectual and carnal experiences that he was prepared to sell his soul in return for 24 years of hedonism. Dr Faustus, said to be based on a true story, is also one of the earliest examples of the soliloquy being used to explain character and motivation.
JOHN SHUTTLEWORTH AND OWEN O'NEILL, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
The known-name comedy season gets off the ground again with two gigs in a week at the Traverse. First up, on February 15 and 16, is John Shuttleworth, the downbeat alter ego of actor Graham Fellows (who older readers will remember as Jilted John, the post-punk novelty act who turned "Gordon is a Moron" into a playground catch-phrase). Complete with trusty electric organ, he provides an extended satire on mediocre tastes and mundane suburban pursuits. Owen O'Neill (February 17) is at home in Scotland, being an Irish exponent of that meandering style of Celtic comedy that prefers story-telling to a barrage of gags.
FEBFEST, Bedlam Theatre and Netherbow Theatre, Edinburgh
Since the demise of the Scottish Student Drama Festival there have been few opportunities for the next generation of theatremakers in Scotland to show off their talents. Febfest, now in its third year, is an attempt to address that problem, being an open festival of new plays by unknown writers, organised by students at Edinburgh University. There will be 20 productions, each staged on a shoestring but performed with adventure and enthusiasm. Topics include a study of President Lincoln's killer, John Wilkes Booth; an imaginative speculation about the fate of the 250,000 women living in religious orders before the Reformation of the English Church and a fantasy about a fatal computer virus that threatens mankind. The best will go forward for a special show at the Traverse Theatre in April.
OF MICE AND MEN, Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh
Tom McGovern returns to the Royal Lyceum earlier than expected after doing Hamlet there late last year. He has stepped in as an 11th-hour replacement for Jimmy Chisholm, whose back complaint got the better of him a week into rehearsals, to take on the role of George in John Steinbeck's own stage adaptation of his classic novel. Of Mice and Men tells the tragic tale of the paternal George and the simple-minded Lennie (Bob Barrett) in rural America during the depression years. Sold on the American dream George and Lennie search for work, only to come a cropper when Lennie doesn't realise the murderous consequences of his strength. Joining McGovern and Barrett are Thane Bettany and Andrew Barr.
OLD WORLD, Perth Theatre
Andrew McKinnon, artistic director, marks the end of his three-year stint at Perth with a two-hander of work by Aleksei Arbusov, perhaps the most successful Russian playwright of the post-Stalin era. The Moscow-born author, actor, stage manager and director, who died in 1986, was a founder of the Moscow Studio Theatre and wrote more than 25 works. Old World was first performed in 1975. It charts the blossoming relationship between the head of a medical sanatorium and one of his patients.
Janet Michael and Martyn James, both Perth regulars, star in this poignant drama about the passage of time and the transience of youth, as they gradually reveal personal secrets and hidden anxieties.
THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI, Paisley Arts Centre
A bold initiative from Birds of Paradise, an offshoot of Glasgow's Fablevision, a company primarily made up of actors, crew and administrators with physical disabilities. Always game for a challenge, the company is tackling Bertolt Brecht's tragi-comic parable, a thinly disguised reworking of the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Set in a gangster-ridden Chicago, the play charts Arturo Ui's progress from protection rackets in the greengrocery trade to taking over the city.
Using a theatrical mix of music, movement and video, the production will emphasise the contrast between the extravagant power-mongers and their victims.
ST ANDREWS CASTLE AND CATHEDRAL. POLITICAL intrigue, corruption, persecution, death and destruction were the order of the day in 16th century St Andrews. The cathedral was a powerful political and religious centre, a focus for the fierce animosities between Protestants and Catholics during the Reformation.
The bishops tried to protect themselves in the town's castle, which had been turned into more of a fortified palace, but this backfired in 1546 when a group of Protestants sneaked in, disguised as stonemasons. They took control and murdered Cardinal David Beaton in revenge for his burning of George Wishart, a Protestant preacher, three months earlier. The ousted Catholics besieged the castle and attempted to regain it by undermining the walls. The Protestants, including John Knox, started work on their own tunnel and, guided by the sounds of the invaders' digging, broke through to the enemy tunnel and fought them off.
The mine and the twisting, sloping countermine are undoubtedly the highlight of a visit to the historic castle at St Andrews; both are in excellent condition, unlike the rest of the casle which is pretty much a ruin. Despite that, with their imaginations fired by the tale of the tunnel, it is a great place for children to explore, with the bottle dungeon and the "hole-in-the-wall" latrine waiting to be discovered.
There are lots of memorable things in the cathedral as well, particularly the stone coffins carved to fit around the bodies and equipped with drainage holes to aid decomposition.
More recent graves include those of a couple of notable golfers Tommy Morris and Alan Robertson while my children enjoyed searching for the resting place of one of the victims of the Tay Bridge disaster.
Be prepared to spend some time in the museum. It is full of old, intricately carved headstones covered in fascinating symbols. An effigy of a master mason depicts him with his feet on a mallet, while a butcher is shown with his knives and a pair of crossed gloves to demonstrate that he made a good living from the hides as well. Grave diggers' tools, skeletons wielding the sting of death, and skulls and crossed bones are also to be found but do not be misled into thinking that the place is filled with pirates; buccaneers adopted the skull and cross bones to put the fear of death into other sailors.
In its heyday, the cathedral was the largest and richest in Scotland, so the nearby St Rule's Tower, almost all that remains of the 12th century church, made a superb lookout post. Despite the slog, it is still worth climbing to the top for the views across the town, over its beaches and out to sea.
Verdict: A good historical outing, especially if you go to both the castle and cathedral. Allow a couple of hours, or make a day of it by checking out the town, its beaches and the Sealife Centre.
Contact: St Andrews Castle, The Scores, St Andrews Tel: 01334 477196. Cathedral, east end of both North Street and South Street, St Andrews. Tel: 01334 472563. Both open: November to March, Monday, Saturday 9.30am-4pm, Sunday 2-4pm; April to October, Monday to Saturday 9.30am-6pm, Sunday 2-6pm.
Cost and facilities: Castle £2, children 75p. Cathedral £1.50, children 75p. Joint ticket £3, children £1. Some metered street parking near to both. Shops at both. Toilets at castle, including facilities for disabled, baby changing facilities. Disabled access to museums, partial access to castle and cathedral. Picnicking allowed in grounds.
AS the former communist states of eastern Europe assert their rights to indulge in such Western freedoms as ram-raiding, protection rackets and widespread prostitution, I fear I have unearthed worrying evidence that their enthusiasm for capitalism has gone too far. It comes from Budapest, where Zoltan Magyar, administrator of the Hungarian Under-21 football team, recently decided to buy a few shares.
Being new to the game, Magyar had to take advice from someone in the know. Sadly, however, he picked Donald McBain, a Partick Thistle supporter whom he had met in 1972 when the Maryhill side met Honved in a European game. Here the details of the tale become a little sketchy, but the upshot of it was that the unfortunate Magyar's first foray into the equity market resulted in his becoming a share-holder in Partick Thistle FC.
With poignant naivety, the hapless Magyar revealed this newly-enfranchised status when he was a guest of the Hibs board at their recent match with Celtic. On the basis that the camel-coated Hibees have not been without their own troubles in recent years, the Hungarian's admission may have been the funniest thing they had heard since Wallace Mercer emigrated.
Leaving aside the possibility of an audacious take-over attempt to turn the Maryhill Magyars into, er, Magyar's Magyars, this column feels obliged to warn that the value of investments can go down as well as up. On the north side of Glasgow, of course, this may only be a statement of the obvious.
RECENT attempts to keep Scottish lawyers out of football have failed dismally. The Mundi Avocat aka the lawyers' World Cup is likely to include a team from Edinburgh's Faculty of Advocates when it kicks off in Limerick in June.
Playing in the Faculty colours of red and yellow yes, I thought it should have been black and grey, too the Faculty Phantoms will be upholding the pride of Scotland against the cultured feet of learned counsels from all over the world. "We know very little about the opposition at the moment," said Siggi Bennett, the Faculty team boss. "I expect that there should be some good players among the Italian and Argentinian lawyers."
Aside from the possibility of our boys getting gubbed by the fleet-footed briefs of Milan and Buenos Aires, the tournament gives rise to a couple of other worries. With 32 teams involved, the tiniest dispute could easily see the competition going on until the middle of next year. And if the Phantoms come back victorious, will Scottish hairdressers be inundated with requests for the powdered wig look before the start of the new season?
PIERRE VAN HOOIJDONK'S recent interview with Ajax captain Danny Blind in the Dutch magazine World Voetbal received heavy coverage in the Scottish press. Strangely, nobody has passed comment on big Pierre's most enigmatic comment: "When I go into the city centre, nine times out of 10 I'll wear a big jacket and a cap so people don't recognise me."
This column is too high-minded to indulge in innuendo about the protective qualities of a Dutch cap. Instead, we can only marvel at the ease with which a 6ft 5in dark-skinned Dutchman can merge into the city centre crowds with such a simple disguise. And wonder, of course, how he deals with all the autograph hunters who now mistake him for Fergus McCann.
I WAS shocked and outraged last weekend when I overheard an English colleague at the Scotland vs France match say that one of the French forwards had kicked a journo. "Shocking!" I declared. "A disgrace!" I blustered. "He should have been banned for life."
The moral of this tale does not concern cynical attacks on members of the press. Rather, it is that facts and ears should always be checked before launching a tirade. As it turned out, it was not a journo who had been kicked, but Ojomoh, the English flanker. Not that I could ever approve, but it does place the act in a somewhat different ethical light.
ONCE they would have been given the "belt" for speaking out of turn in class. After that was outlawed, many Scottish children were taught to fear the verbal wrath of a teacher.
But a school in Grampian has done away with traditional punishment. Instead, disruptive pupils at Forres Academy fill in questionnaires on their behaviour, have "time-outs" for misconduct and take part in case conferences with their parents and teachers.
The scheme, the most advanced of its kind in Scotland, is being monitored by educationists and other schools have expressed an interest in learning from the experiment. Discipline in schools has risen to the top of the Scottish education agenda after complaints from teachers' unions that they face an increasingly violent and disruptive minority in the classroom.
At Forres Academy, a secondary school, the rules governing behaviour are devised by teachers after detailed discussions with their classes. The system then involves a series of warnings for pupils who break the agreed guidelines. After warnings they are sent to spend the rest of the lesson in Time Out, a classroom supervised full-time by a member of the teaching staff.
Crucially, they carry on working but must complete a questionnaire which asks them to reflect on their misconduct and explain why they misbehaved. They then take the document home to complete a second section with a parent present.
If they are referred to Time Out three times, the school calls a case conference, in which parents, teachers and the head produce a plan for action in consultation with the disruptive pupil. It is only after nine sessions in Time Out that the head teacher decides the pupil is a lost cause who deserves to be expelled.
Alistair Maclachlan, the head at Forres, says established punishments used by many Scottish schools, including after-school detentions and punishment exercises such as lines, have failed.
"If punishment worked then schools wouldn't continue to have problems. Why not find a more sensible way out that is better for everybody's nerves, both pupil and teacher? The idea is that we can help the disruptive children rather than just giving them lines and forgetting about them."
Maclachlan introduced the system last August, after studying academic work from America and Australia. The debate on how to deal with bad behaviour in schools has been fuelled in America by a series of studies in the past decade claiming punishment and strict discipline do not succeed in changing a child's habits.
Alternative methods advocated by schools in Washington DC have found favour with some schools in England. Last year Holloway School in Islington, north London, introduced closed-circuit television cameras to monitor conduct and a "three strikes and you're out" approach which penalises truants.
Maclachlan claims his approach has reduced confrontation between pupils and teachers. He says it has also encouraged pupils to tell the truth about misconduct because they have "nothing to fear".
He will complete a report on its effects on discipline at Forres in September for study by educationists and, in particular, the Scottish Consultative Council on the Curriculum. The organisation has given a cautious welcome to the Forres scheme and says other education authorities are already attempting to tackle the problem of poor discipline. Strathclyde region has published two documents for use by staff detailing how teachers can build a less confrontational relationship with their pupils.
Last week the government met union representatives and heard demands from the Head Teachers' Association of Scotland for a hardline approach to disruptive pupils. Its leaders demanded they be given powers to make parents of unruly children appear in schools to discuss their child's behaviour.
At the meeting with Raymond Robertson, the Scottish Office education minister, the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) also unveiled details of its plan for a survey into pupil discipline and the number of children excluded from school after serious misdemeanours.
The survey will ask more than 3,000 teachers to complete a questionnaire in an attempt to provide data on how serious the problem has become.
Ronnie Smith, general secretary of the EIS, said last week: "Pupil discipline is now an issue of growing concern. Our own evidence suggests that reported cases are just the tip of the iceberg."
WHEN Trainspotting, the controversial heroin-fuelled film by the makers of last year's cult hit Shallow Grave, has its premiere this week the event will have all the glitz of a Hollywood occasion.
But as the celebrities quaff champagne at parties afterwards and discuss the film's depiction of an era they believe has long gone, a grim irony will be played out a few miles away by a new generation of junkies.
The film is based on Irvine Welsh's graphic novel which details life on a depressed housing estate against a backdrop of the city's heroin epidemic in the early 1980s. The drug then was cheap and plentiful so thousands of addicts would inject, sharing needles in so-called shooting galleries. The practice led to a rapid spread of the HIV virus, contributing to Edinburgh's reputation as the Aids capital of Europe.
Drug counselling agencies and police united in a pioneering scheme which saw the setting up of clean needle exchange centres and the prescription of methadone, the heroin substitute. By the time Welsh's book was published in 1993, the incidence of injecting had dropped to virtually zero, the spread of Aids was stemmed and crime committed to fund drug habits had been halved.
But a new supply of cheap heroin is threatening to wreck the initiative. Customs and Excise sources say that Afghanistan has doubled its output of the drug since 1990 to 1,000 tonnes a year. Other countries are now also cultivating poppy fields on an industrial scale.
Authorities in Edinburgh say the price per gram has fallen from £90 to £40, while a "deal bag", enough for one or two "hits", can change hands for £20. "Addicts in Edinburgh receive a glut of prescription drugs and some of them have overdosed on a combination of those and what they have bought on the black market," said a senior police officer last week. "If that black market drug becomes heroin we could have serious problems."
Trainspotting could not have been made at a more sensitive time. Many have castigated its apparently neutral message about the dangers of addiction. "Critics are falling over themselves to lavish praise on Trainspotting," wrote the Daily Mail's Edward Verity. "[It] isn't the best film of the month, never mind the year, but having sat through 90 harrowing minutes, I can certainly say it is the most odious. The chief selling point is that ... it takes ‘no moral attitude' to heroin abuse."
John Hodge, who wrote the script, said: "I felt it was important to be honest about drugs and honest about why people take them. I hope it isn't seen as promoting the use of drugs, but the first part has to be believable if the second is to have any impact."
The makers sought advice on the depiction of drug taking from a group which actually rejects the work of mainstream counsellors in Edinburgh who advocate prescribing substitutes.
"Those on maintenance programmes who use other drugs with their methadone start on temazepam or valium, but that stops being effective as they become more tolerant. At that stage, if there is affordable heroin on the market, the addict will buy it," said David Bryce, project leader of the Glasgow-based Calton Athletic Recovery Group, which insists people seeking help should be completely drug-free. "If large quantities of heroin return to Edinburgh, it will cost lives."
HE was the original society paparazzo, snapping the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson in exile, Charlie Chaplin, and a youthful JohnF Kennedy. So well connected was Brodrick Haldane that when he was in hospital in the late 1930s having his appendix removed Rose Kennedy, mother to a future American political dynasty, sat at his bedside.
But this weekend there is a question mark over whether the priceless archive of the Scottish photographer, who died last Saturday aged 83, will be left to the nation. Despite behind-the-scenes lobbying it will not become clear until later this week, when Haldane's will is disclosed, as to whether his huge collection will remain intact and on public view.
Timothy Clifford, director of the National Galleries of Scotland, had negotiations with Haldane (a mentor to Lichfield, Snowdon and Beaton) shortly before he died. Haldane is thought to have indicated he wanted to leave the archive to the nation.
Last week family members were unwilling to comment. Martin Haldane, who became 26th Laird of Gleneagles in 1994 on the death of Brodrick's elder brother Alexander, said it would be "quite improper" to discuss it before executors have examined the will. Haldane's funeral was held in Edinburgh on Friday.
Yesterday a leading photographer said it would be a tragedy if the archive was sold off piecemeal. Trevor Yerbury, of the noted Edinburgh family of photographers, said: "Haldane is a major figure and his collection of images from the 20th century particularly his work from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s is important."
Haldane's career began after he worked as an extra at Elstree studios, appearing in a film featuring Errol Flynn. He would pass on bits of gossip to London magazines, and a picture editor suggested he buy a camera. Early subjects included George Bernard Shaw.
As a social butterfly in the chic resorts of Europe he photographed many stars including Charlie Chaplin. He snapped Noel Coward with Marlene Dietrich and struck up a friendship with JohnF Kennedy. Other subjects included Somerset Maugham and EM Forster.
His links with European royal families were formidable and it was at a ball in Monte Carlo that he photographed the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The Queen Mother was a friend and an admirer of his work.
On his return to Scotland in 1964 he became a mainstay of Scottish society parties. He even produced portraits of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, when she was in disgrace after the mysterious "headless man" pictures embroiled her in a sex scandal.
In 1984 he opened his Georgian flat in Edinburgh to the public, showing off his photographs and heirlooms such as a chair owned by Sir Walter Scott.
LABOUR has considered a plan to hold elections for a Scottish parliament within a year of a general election, writes Ken Symon.
"Shadow" Scottish MPs would be elected and detailed legislation outlining the shape and powers of the parliament would then be put through the Commons.
This would mean elections could be held before a Labour government's mid-term when its popularity might have declined and the existence of shadow SMPs would make it more difficult for north of England Labour MPs to block the legislation.
One senior Labour source said this weekend: "We have looked at the option, but it is by no means what we have decided on."
A Labour counter-attack supporting devolution, in the face of a campaign by senior Tories, will begin tomorrow with the first of a series of speeches by Labour politicians aimed at selling a Scottish parliament to the English.
It will follow the appearance of Michael Forsyth, the Scottish secretary, on BBC Scotland's Scottish Lobby programme to be broadcast this afternoon. He will ask why Labour has not provided for a referendum on a Scottish parliament if it wins a general election, when it has said it would hold one before setting up regional assemblies.
FOR the Cullens, this weekend's thaw in southern Scotland could not have come soon enough. Jacqui and Paul, who live in a remote cottage in the hills near Dumfries, have been snowbound since Monday. Things got so desperate yesterday that they had to call in the navy.
Nine-foot snow drifts prevented the Cullens from leaving their home, a former shepherd's lodge, or getting to the nearest village eight miles away. With one day of supplies left, they called police at Sanquhar for help. A Sea King helicopter from HMS Gannett at Prestwick flew in some provisions.
"We have been snowed in for 13 days before, but we were not expecting the storms last week. It has been absolutely atrocious," said Jacqui Cullen. The Cullens, and other families who live in hilly regions across Scotland, may experience more snow today.
However, the deep-freeze conditions facing Dumfries and other parts of Scotland last week have eased and a thaw is in progress. At the beginning of this week, temperatures may dip below freezing by one or two degrees, with a further thaw later in the week.
While that may bring joy to the Cullens, others will be bracing themselves for flooding. Dumfries and Aberdeen, which experienced severe snow storms and then milder temperatures and rain, are at risk today. A forecaster for the Glasgow Weather Centre said temperatures were about 6C in Dumfries and 5C in Aberdeen yesterday. More than an inch of rain fell by midday in both areas.
In Dumfries, roads have reopened after the severe storms that left hundreds of motorists stranded last week for up to 48 hours. Schools are also expected to reopen tomorrow. However, police, the coastguard and shop owners are now keeping a close eye on the River Nith, which runs through the town.
Yesterday motorists were warned that surface water was affecting conditions and they should only drive if necessary.
There was some flooding on rural roads near Aberdeen yesterday, with surface water also affecting the A96 between Inverness and Aberdeen. Most roads were reopened but police were still warning drivers to be careful.
Last week's blizzards caused havoc in northern Scotland. More than 10,000 homes, mostly in Grampian, were still without power yesterday afternoon as Hydro-Electric employed five helicopters and large teams of workers to restore electricity.
The government is delighted with a High Court decision founded on a presumption that it is incompetent.
The decision came in the case taken by Des Hanafin to have the November divorce referendum result declared invalid because of the expenditure of £500,000 on the part of the government in favour of the yes campaign. A week before the referendum the Supreme Court had found that the use of public funds in such a partisan manner was unconstitutional.
The decisions of the three judges in rejecting the case were founded on the proposition either that the government advertising campaign was entirely ineffective or that whatever minor effect it had on the electorate could not be determined. In the November poll, a mere 4,558 votes divided the sides.
Mr Justice Murphy, the president of the court, clearly was greatly influenced in his judgment by Jack Jones, the chairman of the Market Research Bureau of Ireland (MRBI) and the key witness in the case. Murphy observed in his ruling that Jones had been "invited to agree and did agree with the proposition, which may at first appear disturbing and, perhaps to advertising agents, alarming, that the government press [advertising] campaign was essentially ineffective as an influence".
Murphy accepted uncritically the evidence of Jones about the advertising campaign having no effect. Jones had pointed to the fact that the slide in the yes vote, as measured by the opinion polls, halted when the Supreme Court stopped the press advertising campaign. But, immediately on observing this, he went on to point out that once this happened, government ministers went on the offensive on radio and television.
It is difficult to see how this argument supports the proposition that the advertising campaign had no effect. More plausible is the suggestion that the ministerial offensive merely counteracted both the progressive decline of the yes vote and the absence of the advertising campaign.
Murphy discounted the evidence of other expert witnesses on the grounds that they were unable to quantify in exact terms the effect of the campaign. But surely all that needed to be shown was that an advertising campaign costing £500,000, devised by an agency of such claimed excellence as Quinn McDonnell Pattison, would at least have had the effect of influencing 4,558 people who otherwise would have voted no.
The fact that nobody could quantify exactly what effect the campaign had was no reason to hold that it would not have had this effect the financial equivalent, incidentally, of £110 per vote.
Mr Justice Lynch argued: "It would be a wholly improper interference with the democratic process of legislating for the amendment of the constitution if this court were to set aside the votes of 1,628,570 citizens who did no wrong ... on the grounds that some third person [the government] ... acted in an unconstitutional manner ... and especially when: (1) such unconstitutional conduct stopped prior to the referendum; (2) the unconstitutional nature of the conduct was publicised prior to the referendum; (3) the advertising campaign, if financed otherwise than by public funds was in itself unobjectionable; and (4) when newspaper advertisements were stopped ... leading [politicians] ... favouring a yes vote lawfully undertook a much more vigorous campaign."
All of this begs several interesting questions.
Why should the courts not set aside the verdict of the people if a "third party" did some wrong which materially affected the outcome? What is the relevance of the unconstitutional conduct being stopped and publicised prior to the referendum if the unconstitutional conduct materially affected the outcome? What is the relevance of the advertising campaign being unobjectionable had it not been unconstitutional? Surely it was objectionable by virtue of the fact that it was, as the Supreme Court ruled, unconstitutional.
And why is it assumed that the more offensive activity of leading politicians would not have taken place anyway, especially given the drift in the polls?
Mr Justice Barr argued that it was impossible to extract from the web of pro-divorce and anti-divorce propaganda what effect the unconstitutional advertising campaign had. One, he said, could only theorise about it and this fell far short of the standard of proof required to overturn the verdict of the people.
But one does not have to be able to quantify it exactly to be able to say that the scale of the advertising campaign had at least the minimum effect that would have been required to change the result.
However dubious one may view the arguments of the three judges, it remains the case that they have found as fact that the government's unconstitutional advertising campaign had no material effect on the outcome.
Even, therefore, if the Supreme Court does hear an appeal and whether it will do so will be argued on February 27 it is unlikely that it will reconsider issues of fact. So that, then, would appear to be that.
WHAT IS to be done? That is what the Irish government is wondering this weekend. The answer to the conundrum posed by the Docklands bomb will not be found in Iveagh House. The answer will be found at the Gate Theatre.
Phaedra is playing. It has been playing somewhere for the past 2,000 years. That is because Greek tragedy tells us something true. It tells us that if we tolerate a breach of the moral order, we end up with a stage covered in bodies.
Anybody who thinks for two minutes about human history must agree that the Greeks got it right. Nuremberg cannot shoe the shoeless dead of Auschwitz, make good the battered body of a raped Bosnian girl, or wipe away the tears of a murdered UDR man.
But if Greek tragedy is bleak, it is also bracing. The Greeks believed that human beings have a profound sense of order. Crime infringes on that sense of order. We cannot be consoled until order is restored. To restore order is a bloody business, but we feel the better for it.
The first step towards restoring order is to acknowledge that order has been disrupted. Nuremberg was not about punishing a crime; hanging a handful did not make up for the Holocaust. Nuremberg was about publishing that the moral order had been badly breached. Recording that breach, naming the guilty men, was essential if Europe was to return to the moral universe.
For the past 17 months, the media in the republic have been doing it differently. Those who breached the moral order the Provisional IRA were not brought to book. Those who started the small holocaust in the North were hailed as heroes. Those who held peace over our heads like a sword were sold to us as statesmen.
The Greeks would not have been surprised; it is human nature to believe what we want to be true. In saying this, I am not saying "I told you so". John Hume and Albert Reynolds, who sold us the Sinn Fein peace package, cannot be blamed for taking a risk. But they can be blamed for selling Sinn Fein as if it were seriously intent on putting its past behind it. They can be blamed for not forcing Sinn Fein to change by making it clear that most of our people perceive the provisionals as the primary cause of the Northern problem. They can be blamed for not preparing us for the possibility that Friday's bomb was part of a cynical plan: to put us in a pan-nationalist coalition and, while not giving up a gun themselves, to paint the British government as the baddies, and cause the ceasefire to collapse under cover of one of the frequent bouts of Anglophobia which are part of RTE's repertoire.
In these three respects, Reynolds and Hume misled us. First, there was never any serious sign that the IRA had put its past behind it. Second, Sinn Fein was given no incentive to change its position because most of our media spared us the full knowledge of how much Sinn Fein is hated by the majority of our people. Third, the IRA let us in for a crisis like the Docklands bomb.
Now it does not matter much whether the London bomb was the product of a coup or part of a cynical plan controlled from the centre. What matters now is whether the Dublin government is going to go on talking to Gerry Adams. If it does, it will disrupt the moral order beyond repair.
In deciding this, it makes no difference whether Adams is still in control or not. What matters is whether the Irish government will let Sinn Fein make use of murder to make its way in the world.
In short, can John Bruton break with the past? From the founding of Fianna Fail, Irish governments have played footsie with the IRA. It always ended in tears.
Now we find ourselves playing parts in a play written by Hume. We all wanted parts at the start. But now it is turning into a Greek tragedy. The only way to avoid a stage covered in bodies is to restore order. The work should start this weekend. The government could do worse than go down to the Gate and get some tips.
MICHAEL SMURFIT, the Irish multi-millionaire who paid record prices to assemble one of the most valuable private art collections in the country, has been accused by experts of neglecting art treasures in a mansion he has left unoccupied for the past six years.
At the centre of the claim is a series of six frescos which adorn the drawing room of Lyons House in Celbridge, Co Kildare. The large Georgian residence is decorated with antique ox-head friezes, marble fireplaces and antique columns of red Egyptian granite, and is linked to a 22-acre man-made lake by a formal garden, laid out in the Roman style.
Smurfit paid £3m for the demesne in 1990, but his plans to convert it into an exclusive country club have not yet materialised.
Instead, the gardens are trimmed by grazing sheep, paint peels from the bay windows and the enormous wall paintings believed to be the last surviving decorative work of Italian artist Gaspare Gabrielli are scratched and cracked.
"These frescos are very much part of Ireland's heritage," said Adrian Le Harivel, curator of the National Gallery of Ireland's permanent collection. "They are the only example of Gabrielli's decorative work anywhere. He did watercolours and oil paintings, but nothing else like this. We would be concerned if they were not being looked after."
Gabrielli was commissioned by the 2nd Lord of Cloncurry, a keen patron of the arts, to decorate his home. The artist travelled from Italy to Ireland at the turn of the last century, and spent a number of years working at the manor.
According to experts, the wall paintings would be of particular interest to wealthy American buyers. A pair of paintings by Gabrielli were offered for sale at a guide price of £30,000-£40,000 recently, but were withdrawn when they failed to reach the reserve.
"Gabrielli is comparatively minor but he is an interesting artist," said James White, former director of the National Gallery of Ireland. "From the point of view of architectural preservation the frescos at Lyons House are important.
"There is not a lot of work by Gabrielli anywhere, and very little survives of Irish decorative work. These should be preserved. If anyone is trying to damage or destroy them it would be completely wrong and it couldn't be allowed."
Two years ago Smurfit set an Irish sales record for an Irish painting when he paid £505,000 for the JackBYeats picture, The Tinker's Encampment The Blood of Abel.
He was travelling yesterday and could not be contacted for comment about the Gabrielli frescos.
Peace can be regained if the political will is there - lines of communication must be kept open to republicans and Unionists, says Vincent Browne
THE IRA ceasefire can be re-instated and at a price that would not involve compromise of core policy. But the political will may not be there to achieve it.
In salvaging the process, four measures need to be undertaken: lines of communication need to be kept open to Sinn Fein, even though it will not condemn the IRA's return to violence; the London and Dublin governments must reaffirm the commitment to all-party talks involving Sinn Fein by the end of February; Senator George Mitchell or some other credible mediator must be re-engaged to assist in the restoration of peace and an overall settlement; and private pressure must be exerted on David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist party, to persuade him to agree to talks involving Sinn Fein without any preconditions other than restoration of the ceasefire.
Given the state of the parties this weekend, this latter requirement may be by far the most difficult. The arguments for a start to decommissioning prior to talks have been hugely strengthened by the resumption of violence and the injuries inflicted on so many innocent people. Trimble will also be fortified in his conviction that attempts to draw republicans into the political process are fundamentally misguided. He believes the republican threat can be defused only by the military defeat of the IRA, in the same way that terrorist groups were defeated in France, Germany and Italy.
He must now be persuaded, however, not just that the analogy with France, Germany and Italy is entirely false, but that nothing fundamental to Unionism is jeopardised by engaging in talks involving Sinn Fein without preconditions of any sort. He must also be persuaded that the alternative to such talks is probably a resumption of the conflict and violence Northern Ireland knew for 25 years prior to August 31, 1994.
Yes, this would be a concession to political violence, but a concession involving no fundamental interests.
Both Dublin and London carefully avoided ostracising Sinn Fein in the 24 hours after the London bombing. But the widespread demands for Gerry Adams to condemn the bombing were dangerous because were Adams to comply, he would lose whatever remaining influence he has with the IRA and, if he is not to comply, he will be seen by Unionists as implicitly condoning the action.
However, if the British and Irish governments were to reaffirm their commitment to all-party talks by the end of February on the sole proviso that there was no IRA violence in the meantime, then it is possible that the ceasefire would be reinstated if only in the short term. This prospect is unappealing but it is surely preferable to a full-scale resumption of the campaign now, and there would at least be the possibility of the ceasefire lasting indefinitely.
The immediate involvement of an outside mediator may be essential if events are not to slide hopelessly and quickly out of control. Mitchell is the obvious candidate, even though his commission's report was disappointing. Among its proposals the Mitchell commission suggested that decommissioning take place during all-party negotiations. It knew Sinn Fein could not deliver this, so there seemed little point in including it.
The bitter stand-off between Mitchell and Adams during the course of the discussions between Sinn Fein and the commission was ominous but clearly Mitchell did not appreciate this sufficiently. Nevertheless, Mitchell's status is credible with all the parties and interests and he has a good grasp of the issues. The same can be said for the former Finnish prime minister, Harri Holkeri, also a member of the commission.
The ceasefire has broken down for a simple reason: Adams promised the IRA in the summer of 1994 that an "unarmed struggle" would achieve more politically than a continuance of the armed struggle. From the IRA's perspective, that promise has not been delivered.
Those who believed the co-option of President Bill Clinton to the peace process and the recognition afforded Adams in Dublin and Washington were important gains missed the point. The IRA perceived these gestures merely as cosmetic they yielded no tangible results in terms of involvement in substantive negotiations on a settlement.
Frustration was caused not just by the failure to institute all-party talks, but by regression from such a prospect. One of the targets of such frustrations may well be Adams himself. Clearly he had no prior knowledge of the IRA statement of Friday evening certainly not of its timing. His influence within the republican movement may now be fatally undermined. The peace initiative was his and in IRA eyes it has failed. If Adams is discredited within the republican movement the prospects for peace are very poor.
It has been obvious since early December that the ceasefire was in trouble. Adams, Pat Doherty, Martin McGuinness and Mitchell McLaughlin have been sending signals to that effect and two were particularly ominous. The first was a speech made by McLaughlin to prisoners on parole over Christmas. He indicated clearly that the ceasefire was in danger. The second was the comment on radio by McGuinness that he could not repeat the statement he made in the immediate aftermath of August 31, 1994: that the ceasefire would hold "in all circumstances".
I wrote in this newspaper on December 24, 1995: "We had better steel ourselves for a return to the bad times of violence and atrocity in 1996." And I argued that "the most urgent option will be to seek ways of reinstating the ceasefire". Unhappily, that has now come to pass.
POLICE believe a teenager who is seriously ill may have been given a drink spiked with ecstasy or LSD because he was opposed to drug-taking. James Fountain, 16, a pupil at Yarm, an independent school in Cleveland, attended a party in Sedgefield, Co Durham, last Saturday. He is now semi-conscious in a psychiatric unit in Middlesbrough.
THE BODY of a man was found in rubble last night by police investigating Friday night's bomb blast in London's Docklands. There were fears that a second missing man is also dead.
The discovery on the ground floor of South Quay Plaza came as Scotland Yard revealed it had made a significant early breakthrough in the hunt for the IRA gang that planted the bomb. Officers called to the area after the IRA had telephoned warnings managed to identify the van containing the explosives just minutes before it blew up.
PC Roger de Graff spotted the suspicious vehicle parked in a square by South Quay railway station. He was about to inspect it but backed away for fear it might explode. However, he is believed to have reported its description and registration number to his control room just moments before the device went off.
De Graff was 30 yards away from the van when it exploded and was injured in the blast. "He didn't even hear it," said a colleague yesterday.
The disclosure came as senior MI5 and police officers braced themselves for a full-scale resumption of the IRA's terror campaign on the British mainland. A security operation was launched in London as anti-terrorist officials began a post-mortem into how the IRA was able to smuggle the bomb, said to comprise half a ton of home-made explosives, into the area.
Security sources in Northern Ireland suspect that the bombing took place to prevent a damaging split by hardliners increasingly impatient at the pace of the peace process. They say a decision, in principle, to resume violence might have been discussed by the IRA's army council last November.
Sir Paul Condon, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said the blast which also injured more than 100 people and caused up to £100m of damage was "completely unexpected". Thirty-nine people needed hospital treatment, including three policemen and a 55-year-old man whose condition was "critical" last night.
The two missing men were identified by relatives yesterday as Inam Bashir, 29, who ran a Docklands newsagent's and John Jeffries, 31, an assistant, who have not been heard of since the bomb. Both men left the shop early when the alarm was raised.
Ihsan Bashir, brother of one of the missing men, said: "I am desperately worried. We don't know what has happened." His brother has a parking space close to where the bomb exploded.
The bomb, believed to have been made from fertiliser, was thought to have been driven into the area by one or two IRA members. MI5 officials believe the bombers might have entered Britain several days ago. Their van was left under a bridge 30 yards from South Quay station, part of the Docklands Light Railway (DLR). Police say a series of warnings that the bomb was in the South Quay area were received at 5.40pm. The device exploded as police were trying to evacuate the area.
Yesterday there were immediate signs of increased security on both sides of the Irish Sea. In Northern Ireland, the army was back on the streets and the so-called ring of steel was reinforced in the City of London.
At a press conference Condon said police had launched a security operation across London. He added that police had learnt of six warnings made by the IRA in Northern Ireland, the republic and England.
A team of officers under Commander John Grieve, head of the Yard's anti-terrorist squad SO13, spent yesterday searching for the remains of the van that contained the bomb. They are also examining video cameras covering the area around Canary Wharf for film recordings of suspicious vehicles seen near the scene of the blast.
The DLR said: "The cameras all went off when the bomb exploded but we have comprehensive footage of the South Quay area until that moment. The tapes have all been passed to the police."
Britain's most senior anti-terrorism officials were summoned to an emergency meeting at New Scotland Yard yesterday morning to discuss the bombing and its implications for security on the mainland. MI5 officials from the security services' Irish counter-terrorism branch were also present.
The bombing represents an embarrassing intelligence failure for those charged with monitoring IRA "active service units" in Britain.
Intelligence sources fear a new campaign concentrated on the mainland. Only last weekend Sir Hugh Annesley, the RUC chief constable, warned: "One bomb in the mainland is worth 10 over here in terms of public reaction."
The IRA is known to have kept its war machine "oiled" in Britain, and Friday's blast proves it has at least one cell in its "English department" capable of inflicting carnage. An intelligence source said it was likely the team responsible had come to the mainland specially for the attack, returning after the explosion.
Additional reporting: Adrian Levy, Jason Burke and Jonathan Leake
The Irish government issued a statement yesterday after a four-hour cabinet meeting.
It said: "The government notes with profound regret the statement announcing the ending of the IRA's complete cessation of hostilities.
"They unreservedly condemn [Friday's] bombing in London and express their deep sympathy, on behalf of the Irish people, to the victims of that violence and to their families.
"On 1 November 1982, the taoiseach of that day said: ‘It is not possible to adopt the pretence of being democratic while simultaneously striking at the right to life and freedom which are at the very basis of democracy'.
"Violence ... has no place in democratic negotiation. Nothing can justify a resort to violence in an attempt to override the democratic political process.
"The government's search for an inclusive process of negotiation was based on a clear commitment by the IRA to a total cessation of violence. The fact that that commitment has been revoked alters the situation fundamentally.
"The government believes that democratic negotiation is the only method by which the division in Northern Ireland can be healed and permanent peace restored.
"Only those who take no part in violence, and the threat of violence, or in the support of violence, can take part in democratic negotiation.
"The great majority of the people of this island, the broad sweep of nationalist opinion in Northern Ireland and Irish America, all have invested in the peace that resulted from the IRA cessation of violence.
"The ending of that cessation shatters the hopes of all those who invested in peace and worked for democratic political progress.
"The ceasefire of August 1994 was the key enabling event which permitted a whole range of top-level politicial contacts and developments to take place.
"The government has noted Mr Adams's request for a meeting. The government wants the IRA ceasefire to be restored immediately.
"The basis for previous government meetings with Sinn Fein was that a total cessation of IRA violence was already in place. That policy enjoyed support because it showed that violence was not an acceptable method of promoting a political programme. We are concerned to ensure that any meeting with Sinn Fein should be consistent with that long-standing policy."
The bombers are back. After a 17-month ceasefire the IRA is once again maiming civilians on mainland Britain. Have all our hopes of lasting peace died in the Doclands blast?
It was a Friday afternoon of improbable optimism. For the first time in a Northern Ireland television studio, an Ulster Unionist and a Sinn Fein man had sat down at the same table.
At 2.30pm, Ken Maginnis, MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone and security spokesman for the Ulster Unionists, was in a BBC studio facing Mitchell McLaughlin, the mastermind of Derry Sinn Fein and Gerry Adams's chief political strategist. They were recording a debate for a programme called Hearts and Minds, due to be broadcast that evening. It was a historic moment. "The ground," a Sinn Fein spokesman observed, "has been broken."
David Trimble, leader of Maginnis's party, was unhappy at his colleague's participation and he reportedly complained that the Dungannon man had not sought clearance.
The programme was supposed to go out at 7.30pm. Instead, a music programme was substituted, entitled Sounds of the 80s. The black irony was unintentional: the blast that had rocked London's Docklands 30 minutes earlier had exploded a dream; the wail of ambulance sirens was a cruel echo of a terror thought past. Politicians were floundering and blustering, accusations and recriminations were flying. But brutally and unmistakably, the blood had again started flowing. It came without warning. Almost.
FOR once in his life, Charlie Bird, chief reporter for RTE, the Irish broadcasting company, left the office early on Friday afternoon. A man with a big voice and not averse to using it in the office, he was suffering from a sore throat.
As a result he was at home in Bray, 10 miles south of Dublin when, at about 5.30pm, his phone rang at RTE. Fellow reporter John Murray took the call. The voice on the line said he wanted to talk to Charlie. Told he wasn't there, the caller gave an IRA code word and dictated a lengthy statement. It was couched in all the familiar terms of the republican movement's lexicon, larded with the usual self-justification and blame, but the message was unmistakable: "It is with great reluctance that the leadership announces that the complete cessation of military operations will end at 6pm on February 9." The IRA killing machine was back on the road.
For the next hour, RTE reporters burned telephone lines to Sinn Fein, government offices and police, in an attempt to verify the statement. Bird himself was by now in his car on his way, on the car phone, unaware that the IRA was trying to telephone him.
Shortly after RTE's main evening news began at 6.01pm, without leading on the story, the phone in the office rang again. The same IRA man wanted to know what was wrong. Bird, meanwhile, was talking to apparently incredulous Sinn Fein officials. One of these telephoned Adams to see if he could authenticate the message. It was clear from the official's demeanour that the party president had denied any knowledge of the statement.
Just after 6.30pm, Bird's mobile rang: "Charlie, you know who this is," the voice said. "You know it's for real. You'd better go with it."
In London, security forces had already come to that conclusion. IRA watches in London and Dublin had been synchronised. The first of at least six warnings that there was a bomb in the South Quay area of Docklands had come through to Scotland Yard's control room at about 5.30pm. The warning included a recognised IRA code word but police were cautious about its authenticity. "They use so many code words, it doesn't always mean a lot, they also play games with us," a spokesman said. A second warning went to the administrative section of the London fire brigade, not through the emergency 999 system.
Docklands was a painfully obvious target. Dominated by Canary Wharf, the tallest office tower in Europe, it had once before, in November 1992, been an IRA target. That attack had been foiled when two alert security guards checked a suspect van and found it filled with explosives. Since the IRA "spectaculars" against the City of London in 1992 and 1993, a "ring of steel" had been set up around the capital's financial district. Although these had been relaxed since the ceasefire, the Docklands development with its expanding office population and the headquarters of the Independent, Telegraph and Mirror newspaper groups, presented an equally appealing prestige target.
BACK in Dublin John Bruton, the taoiseach, was in a meeting with junior minister Pat Rabitte when Shane Kenny, his press secretary, came into the office and laid out a typed-up version of the statement. Bruton seemed stunned. "It seems credible," he told Kenny. Then, numbed, he left the office for a 6.30pm engagement at the RHA art gallery near his office while Paddy Teahan, his departmental secretary and the government's point man in contacts with republicans, talked urgently to Sinn Fein. He then called Bruton to advise him the warning was genuine. The taoiseach cut short his engagement and returned to his office at 6.50pm filled with dread.
Dick Spring, the foreign minister, was in the government jet passing over Nova Scotia on the way back from Washington when Dan Mulhall, his press secretary, took a call from Dublin. Spring, who more than anyone had invested political capital in bringing pariah Sinn Fein in from the wilderness to be everyday visitors to Government Buildings, sat back shocked and gasped: "Is this really true?"
From 6.30pm London's Metropolitan police had arrived in force at South Quay and were preventing workers leaving their offices. The Docklands Light Railway, the district's driverless computer-controlled overhead commuter service, had been closed down to prevent people arriving at the scene; power was shut off. It was a wise precaution; the bomb turned out to be in a vehicle parked underneath the station.
One woman who had tried to board a train said: "Police were ushering us away from the railway but would not say why. I jumped into a taxi instead and as I was heading down Commercial Road I heard this enormous bang. It could have been me." Terrorism's terrible lottery had begun again.
Detective Chief Inspector Ron Williams, the man initially put in charge, said: "The warnings were fairly specific as far as the area was concerned but did not give us exact details of where we could find it. They just said it was at South Quay. Our men were searching the area when the bomb went off."
A junior police officer had spotted the suspicious vehicle parked in a square by South Quay railway station. He backed away from the van, but radioed its full description and registration number to control moments before the device exploded.
At 7.01pm all hell let loose. Samantha Herbert, a seven months' pregnant teenager, was walking along Marsh Wall with Neil Parker, her fiance: "We were on our way home after an afternoon's shopping when I felt this blast behind us. A split second later we were both thrown into the air. I tried to grab Samantha but she fell, screaming ‘My baby, my baby,"' said Parker.
Overlooking the scene, in the offices of a joint venture company nearby George Sparks, 28, from Washington DC, was finishing a project: "We were just working late, tapping away at our terminals, when there was a tremendous flash and a huge boom and we were all just knocked down onto the floor. The water pipes exploded, shards of glass went everywhere and the office filled with dust and smoke. We were shouting to each other and staggered out and tried to account for everyone."
Others were relaxing after the day's work, winding down for the weekend. Anna Brandon, 29, a secretary in Canary Wharf tower, was enjoying a glass of wine in the Waterfront pub and restaurant in South Quay plaza: "There was this huge bang and the entire building seemed to shudder. We all fell on the floor. Then there was this awful moment of total silence while people realised what was happening. Then there was the sound of glass smashing and alarms ringing everywhere. There were bits falling off buildings and I tried to look out of the window but there was too much smoke and dust and I just thought it was safer to get away as quickly as possible."
Graeme Brown, an advertising designer, had just visited a friend in the Plaza: "I was walking out of the plaza, and a couple of minutes later woke up surrounded by water I think a mains had burst and bleeding from by arm. I banged my head and could not decide which way was up. It was, frankly bizarre. I knew it wasn't a bomb, because we don't get them in London any more, do we?"
John Major had thought the same thing. He was at home in Huntingdon when his officials rang through with the news of the end of the ceasefire at 6.30pm.
Adams, apparently alerted only by RTE, called the White House where less then two weeks previously, he had been a visitor, honoured by a photographed handshake with Bill Clinton, the president who has made peace in Ireland part of his re-election strategy. There might be trouble ahead, he warned, promising to call back when he had more news.
Adams put in calls to key friends and advisers, even as the clock ran down on the bomb left by his IRA allies. He was, said a key associate, stunned. On the day he visited the White House, he had appeared to believe that his IRA hardmen were happy. Maybe they were, but not because they were satisfied with peace but because a determination had been made to return to war.
Shortly before 7pm Downing Street took a call from Tony Lake, Clinton's national security adviser, and his aide Nancy Soderberg: was it true that the Irish media had been told the ceasefire was over?
As they talked on a conference line with John Holmes, Major's foreign affairs adviser, an aide rushed into the room and declared: "A bomb has gone off in Docklands."
For Lake and Soderberg, formerly an aide to Irish-American Senator Ted Kennedy, the news was a personal and political disaster. She told friends: "Sick, I feel sick."
At the scene of the atrocity, Scotland Yard's Commander John Grieve, who had only taken over control of the anti-terrorist branch a month ago, was uttering assurances that London's vigil against terror had not been relaxed.
They were brave words, but hollow in the circumstances. More than 100 people had been feared wounded, most by flying glass. In the end 39 of them, including three policemen, were admitted to hospital. Six were seriously hurt. A gas main explosion following the main blast, however, had added to the injury toll; police searched for rumoured incendiary devices but found nothing. The roadblocks were back in the City. The capital's confidence had been sapped. Mainland Britain was back on war footing.
By early Saturday London's Docklands looked as they had not done since Hitler's blitz. The streets around South Quay glittered with shards of glass. East London's modernist architectural extravagances stood ripped and gutted. The railway platform was a twisted wreck above a great crater in the concrete. Across the road a Midland Bank branch was devastated; silver insulation curtains inside flapping through shattered windows in the wet wind. In Belfast, RUC officers were back in flak jackets, once again toting their sub-machineguns as they closed the barricades around shopping centres.Ulster was battening down the hatches in shocked disbelief.
SUGGESTIONS that an IRA splinter group might have been involved were blown away when the organisation itself claimed full responsibility yesterday.
There had never really been any doubt, not even in the mind of Adams, though in an interview on RTE news, he was less than his usual word-perfect assured self: "That is not to say that the IRA if it be the IRA that were involved tonight, it does appear that it is the IRA that they don't have to take responsibilities for their own actions. Of course they do. I just presume that it is the IRA ...
"My whole life has been consumed in recent years by the need to build the peace process. We must redouble our efforts."
The stark reality perhaps now recognised only by the IRA is that for the past 17 months there has been peace, but there has never been a process. Process implies movement towards a goal, but the fire and water realities of Ulster's division has always meant that the superficial social goal peace can be maintained as long as everyone is prepared to ignore the incompatibility of each side's political goals.
Northern Ireland cannot continue to remain part of the United Kingdom and at the same time become part of the republic of Ireland. At least, not under any formula yet devised; the potential for a "hybrid" is something that could only have been hammered out in the conditions of hard-tack compromise which would have come about only after months of talks.
All the indications are that in any case the IRA was never interested in compromise. Since last August, Sinn Fein has held up a draft document from the Irish government-sponsored forum for peace and reconciliation entitled Pathways to Peace.
While the Alliance party had gone to the forum at Dublin Castle, the Unionists did not. Nevertheless, the forum was seen as an important part of the pan-nationalist front. Nine days ago the document was issued, signed by all the other parties. Sinn Fein, however, refused to put its name to a section which specified that the North would have to agree to a change in its constitutional status.
In this context, there was never any real probability that the IRA would agree to decommissioning weapons before all-party talks. That would have amounted to surrendering the means that had brought them this far.
BRITISH intelligence sources believe that the final decision to bomb Canary Wharf was taken by the IRA's Dublin-based Southern Command aided by the south Armagh brigade, just across the border but acting under the authority of the army council of the secret organisation. Gardai were aware of grumblings in hardline circles in the border towns of Monaghan and Dundalk but believed they would still toe the line.
A senior garda source said they had no prior intelligence that the IRA was planning a return to violence. In fact, intelligence reports compiled since the ceasefire increasingly suggested the opposite.
Top-level garda investigators, including the commissioner himself, learnt of the ceasefire through television news. British intelligence sources now believe the IRA Northerners were only told that an operation was imminent during an IRA meeting in Dublin on Friday afternoon. The same sources are also convinced that a decision to return to violence if no all-party talks were held in February was taken at least a month ago.
The crucial point in understanding the decision to resume violence is the directness of links between Sinn Fein and the army council. Sinn Fein members although they may acknowledge past membership always deny current direct links.
The double vision of politics dictates that the top men must practise fairly open hypocrisy: they are the figures the British government must deal with yet they must deny their links in order to maintain the veneer of political respectability.
The same applies to Washington. At a recent meeting between Adams and Tony Lake, Clinton's national security adviser, a Sinn Fein spokesman went through the PR protocol of saying: "You understand, Mr Adams cannot speak for the IRA." To which an undiplomatically straightforward Lake aide retorted: "Well, in that case, you understand, Mr Lake is a very busy man."
Inevitably, this world of lies and shadows breeds confusion. Gerry Kelly, a member of the Sinn Fein talks team believed to sit also on the IRA's army council, would have been aware that IRA resources were being directed to Britain. The other key man is Martin McGuinness, leader of the Sinn Fein team. His "unofficially publicised" decision to leave the IRA army council last month, may have been an effort to distance the political wing before a resumption of violence.
Republican sources suggest the resumption of the bombing campaign may have been forced by the determination to avoid a split. But if Adams and company were taken as unawares or as little consulted as appears, then there are clear signs of a serious disagreement.
Twice before the republican movement has run aground on the democratic dilemma.
In 1970 the decision of the old, Marxist "Official" IRA under Cathal Goulding, to pursue political means led to the split which created the Provisional wing. A year later, they were shooting each other in Belfast's Falls Road. But the "Provos" became the vanguard of the "armed struggle" while the officials disintegrated.
This time the chance of peace appears to have gone wrong at the very moment when there was a glimmer of a breakthrough.
After months in which London and Dublin remained bogged down over the lack of progress towards all-party peace talks, the two governments agreed to call in outside help.
Senator George Mitchell, a confidant of Clinton, was appointed last December to head a three-man commission on how the terrorist armies could disarm.
Though John Major denied it at the time, the secret understanding was that Mitchell would cast his net much farther than merely looking at practical questions about how the IRA and their loyalist peers could destroy or hand in their weapons.
Mitchell took a broad range of evidence and his report on January 24 stated bluntly that "despite London's insistence" there was no hope of the IRA starting to decommission weapons before joining all-party talks. (This assessment has been repeated by the Irish government since last March. Privately, British sources concur with it.)
"After discussions with the governments, the political parties, religious leaders, the security forces and many others, we have concluded that the paramilitary organisations will not decommission any arms prior to all-party negotiations," his report said.
Mitchell suggested a way out. Instead of the IRA and the loyalists having to hand over weapons before talks took place, he recommended allowing arms decommissioning during all-party talks so long as all participants first signed up to six terms before being admitted to the talks.
The six conditions were commitments:
To democratic and exclusively peaceful means of resolving political issues.
To the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations.
To agree that such disarmament must be verifiable to the satisfaction of an independent commission.
To renounce for themselves, and to oppose any effort by others, to use force, or threaten to use force, to influence the course or the outcome of all-party negotiations.
To agree to abide by the terms of any agreement reached in cross-party negotiations and to resort to democratic and exclusively peaceful methods in trying to alter any aspect of that outcome with which they may disagree.
To urge that "punishment" killings and beatings stop and to take effective steps to prevent such actions.
Sinn Fein expressed reservations privately about details of decommissioning and, more pertinently as far as any long-term hope of a Northern Ireland settlement goes, about the chances of getting IRA agreement to abide by a democratic decision with which they might disagree.
Bleakly, if obliquely, Sinn Fein was hinting what to most close observers in Northern Ireland had always been obvious: it could not guarantee the IRA would be bound by any outcome it did not agree with.
In other words, Mitchell had at last set out the best parameters the republican cause could hope for and they were unacceptable. The IRA wanted a no-lose clause.
Rather than challenge Sinn Fein to accept the Mitchell plans, Major made a calculated leap into the dark: he announced that the British government backed elections for a new assembly in Northern Ireland.
Those who achieved mandates would be accepted at all-party talks.
It could have been a clever face-saver, sidestepping the stated commitment to arms decommissioning in advance. It appeared to be a harmless appeal to the democratic principle.
But it ignored the fact that in the Irish context, the lack of agreement on democratic principles is part of the problem.
In the House of Commons, John Hume, the SDLP leader, erupted. Hume had made the crucial move of beginning talks with Adams and building the so-called "pan-nationalist front" that incorporated his own moderate nationalist following, the Catholic Church, the Dublin government and the men of violence in the hope that they could be contained by demonstrating a political path to victory. The idea that he could be forced back onto the hustings competing against Sinn Fein for a share of the nationalist vote was anathema. Signally, he also had rumours of rumbling within the hard ranks of the IRA.
"We are dealing with the lives of innocent men, women and children in Northern Ireland. Does he [Major] agree that it would be utterly irresponsible for any party to play politics with the lives of those people? It would be particularly irresponsible for a government to try to buy votes to keep themselves in power. Does he agree that the Mitchell commission recommends no form of election. Will he now fix a date for all-party talks rather than waste time as he has for the past 17 months?"
Hume claimed Major's prime concern was ensuring Unionist support in the Commons as his own Tory majority dwindled (it currently stands at four). At the time, Hume's angry outburst was seen as an intemperate misreading of the mood of the British parliament, a mistaken attack on democracy. Today, it looks like a dire forewarning.
THERE was never any real probability that the IRA would agree to decommissioning weapons before all-party talks. That would have amounted to surrendering the means that had brought them this far.
Until the publication of the Mitchell report, the only people who appeared to have understood and accepted that there was never any real possibility of disarmament, were the loyalist paramilitaries.
David Ervine, who is to the Ulster Volunteer Force what Adams is to the IRA the politically acceptable face had made clear the loyalists even shared the IRA's doubts about the Mitchell compromise of a decommissioning process running parallel to talks. But even he doubted Major's wisdom in upstaging Mitchell with the announcement of elections.
The crucial difference between the loyalist/Unionist and IRA/republican camps is that the former is content with the status quo. That is why even now the loyalist paramilitaries will hold their fire, at least until one of their own number is targeted.
Peace without political change is all the loyalists were ever after. Stalling was therefore a sound tactic.
Whether Major was prepared to play the Unionists' game because of his party political need for their support to stay in power in Westminster, or because of his own moral commitment to honouring his responsibilities to the majority pro-Union population's rights as United Kingdom citizens, it was not hard for the IRA to see no future in a waiting game.
To nationalist ears, the very concept of "elections" in Northern Ireland smacked of a return to Stormont government.
Rule 4 of the IRA's general army orders explicitly states that no member might subscribe to a party "which recognises the partition institutions".
Statements by Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Northern Ireland secretary, to the effect that the elections were intended purely to produce a mandate for negotiators did little to appease fears that taking part would be signing up to a talking shop designed specifically as an alternative to action.
For better or worse, the bomb has ended the inertia.
The big question for Britain now is not just whether it is politically and morally acceptable for ministers to meet the likes of McGuinness, Kelly or Adams, but whether it is worthwhile.
If Sinn Fein has lost its ability to keep the lid on the hard men, then it may also have lost any point in its presence at talks.
On RTE, Adams himself inadvertently raised the question on everyone"s minds: "Be assured that Sinn Fein will use whatever political influence we have. We still remain wedded to our peace strategy."
But just how much influence is that? And has the IRA unilaterally sued for divorce? Or is Adams a willing co-respondent? In today's cold light, he appears either a pawn or a liar.
If he and the IRA were actually to part company, history suggests that Adams could find himself relegated to irrelevance.
Which is why he will not allow that to happen. Last year in Belfast he told a republican crowd ominously: "They haven't gone away." Now they are back, with a vengeance.
What is hard to see is how it can do them any good. The Downing Street declaration of December 1993 did away once and for all with the myth that the IRA's enemy in achieving a united Ireland was the British government. Those they must convince are the 1m Ulstermen whom Adams patronisingly calls "my people, too", but who angrily reject him.
As of today, their anger will be all the more implacable.
THE IRISH government turned away yesterday from its policy of appeasing Sinn Fein. John Bruton, the taoiseach, emerged from a four-hour crisis meeting to declare he would not meet again with republicans until there was "a total cessation of violence" (see full statement on page 2).
However, Dublin stood back from demanding a "permanent" end to the killing. Reliable sources indicated that some government ministers wanted such an assurance before further contact with Sinn Fein and the IRA.
John Major also took a robust line and vowed that the IRA "will not be allowed to prevail" after its bombing attack in London's Docklands. Major called on the IRA and Sinn Fein to stop their campaign of violence and say "they will never resume it again".
Major made his "no surrender" declaration as armed British soldiers returned to Northern Ireland's streets and security was tightened in Britain and the republic.
White House officials raised the pressure further by telling Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, there must be no more bombings if the peace process is to have a chance. Tony Lake, the US national security adviser, said the cease-fire must be restored and called on Adams to distance himself from violence if he wanted to retain credibility.
Both Dublin and London said low-level contact with Sinn Fein would be maintained. For example, two Sinn Fein councillors will be in a party of local politicians invited to Downing Street this week.
However, there will be no substantive talks. Dublin sources said that without a ceasefire Sinn Fein's request for an urgent high-level meeting would be put on hold. "Our primary objective is to ensure nobody else gets killed," said a government source.
Proinsias de Rossa, one of the coalition leaders, said the possibility that Adams was outmanoeuvred by the IRA's army council when he visited the United States two weeks ago could not be ruled out.
De Rossa said the attitude at the government meeting was determined. "We want to find a way for the process to proceed," he said. "The Downing Street declaration is still there and it is our intention, and the British intention, to proceed to finding democratic means of taking it forward."
A hard-hitting statement was released after the meeting in which the government demanded: "The government have noted Mr Adams's request for a meeting. The government want the IRA ceasefire to be restored immediately." It was drafted after consultations that included contact with British officials.
Bruton later said the government still wanted to speak to Adams but that depended on an immediate end to the IRA campaign. "Sinn Fein and the republican movement as a whole must be committed to a completely unarmed strategy," he said. "This attack is part of an armed strategy. They must help us. The way they can do that, the way to help us to help their people to be heard is by stopping killing other people."
Informal contacts with Sinn Fein, however, have not been ruled out. "A meeting between Adams and the government depends on the conditions being right for it. I don't think the government would necessarily rule out a meeting if it felt that such a meeting was essential to the restoration of the ceasefire," said a government source.
The meeting of the cabinet sub-committee on Northern Ireland was attended by Bruton, Dick Spring, the tanaiste, de Rossa, Nora Owen, the justice minister, Dermot Gleeson, the attorney-general, and senior officials. Sources said the government felt outraged and utterly betrayed by the IRA and, indirectly, by Adams.
Relations between Sinn Fein and the government were painstakingly built up during the ceasefire and involved intensive meetings. One source said: "The whole thing is in tatters but we will have to start again."
Government and security officials were trying this weekend to establish the sequence of events that led to the bombing. They are satisfied that security forces in Ireland and Britain had no prior intelligence of it.
Sources were dismissive of reports that British police knew of increased activity among IRA members in Britain. A special branch source in Dublin said the planning of the bombing could have taken place in the republic but there was nothing to indicate an attack was being prepared. "We were all caught out and that includes the British," he said.
David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, flew from London yesterday to meet President Bill Clinton in Washington tomorrow. He called for a complete reassessment of the situation.
Those most affected, he believed, were John Hume's constitutional nationalist SDLP, the Irish government and Sinn Fein's Irish-American supporters. "And I think the president himself might like to reassess the quality of advice he's been receiving," he said.
Additional reporting: Ciaran Byrne, Valerie Hanley and Jan Battles
Last night's winning national lottery numbers:
4 11 14 15 28 42
Bonus number: 6
Last night's winning Irish lottery numbers;
4 21 23 34 36 42
Bonus number: 8
MIDDLESBROUGH 1 (Beresford og 37) NEWCASTLE UTD 2.
FAUSTINO ASPRILLA was the catalyst of an amazing turnaround in the big northeast derby as Newcastle, seemingly beaten, came from behind to score twice in four minutes. The Colombian, who cost £7.5m, created the equaliser for Watson after coming on as substitute and Ferdinand hit the winner, courtesy of a bad error by the goalkeeper Walsh.
Asprilla arrived by private jet from Milan just four hours before the kick-off, but he went straight from Teesside airport to the substitutes' bench. It was even more surprising when Kevin Keegan, the Newcastle manager, chose to put him in the fray. He emerged after 67 minutes, a loose-limbed, feline figure wearing black gloves, though it was far from freezing.
What followed suggested that Keegan knew exactly what he was doing as he has pursued the 26-year-old Colombian, despite allegations concerning Asprilla's injuries, his party-loving lifestyle and even his pistol-packing past.
Asprilla set up the equaliser, something that had seemed beyond a Newcastle team lacking inspiration, battling against a sturdy red Boro wall. There seemed no especial danger when Asprilla caressed the ball near the byline but, with a clever sleight of foot, he turned Vickers inside-out and centred accurately. Watson was left with a close-range header.
That happened in the 74th minute. Four minutes later it was 2-1, but this time the central character was not Asprilla, but Walsh. Ferdinand had lacked penetration all game and when Albert found him at the edge of the area, his shot had no great power. Alas for poor Walsh, he dived over the ball and Boro were doomed.
Asprilla was not finished. When Beardsley crossed he headed at Walsh when it would have been easier to head past him. Then he beat Morris with the same ease with which he had confounded the hapless Vickers, before going off at the final whistle to be met by an excited gaggle of TV people. Asprilla had been pure theatre but the outcome was hard on Boro, who were condemned to their seventh successive Premier League defeat. Keegan volunteered that a draw would have been a fair result.
At least Boro had the consolation of recapturing the early-season form that took them to fourth place so soon after promotion. And in seven hectic minutes after half-time Barmby, struggling to recapture the glister of last autumn, had three chances to make it 2-0, but failed to take any of them.
Juninho, however, showed real quality, collecting the ball at his feet way out as he loves to do, and setting off on those inimitable scampering runs. Too often the little Brazilian has not produced, and the media would have roasted him had he played for, say, Arsenal or Liverpool. Here, it was different.
A pity, therefore, that Boro's goal some 10 minutes before half-time has to go down against Beresford's name, and not credited to Juninho. It came when Juninho crossed well from the byline. The ball sped in low and Wilkinson hustled for it. Sadly for Beresford, he got there first and prodded in an own goal.
Such were the fortunes of two South Americans. A third, Branco, was back home in warmer climes. He watched Boro's goalless draw against Wimbledon in the week (surely there can be no greater test of loyalty), and he will return to bolster their defence. Once he has a work permit, of course.
Branco was on the front of the match programme, wearing that famous yellow Brazilian shirt, and holding the World Cup aloft. The skies over Teesside were less sunny but there was heat enough in the atmosphere for this, the first derby at Riverside Stadium.
Newcastle had not won at Ayresome Park since Boxing Day, 1964. They had quietly won four League matches on the trot in between their exits from both domestic cups. Three away points here would be valuable indeed. They began well, with their flankmen Watson and Gillespie prominent. Conversely, Boro have no wingers, no natural width and, as Keegan admitted, this meant that Newcastle were never quite sure where their opponents were going to attack next.
Gillespie had the first clear chance on 26 minutes but he shot into the side-netting. Next, Gillespie broke and Walsh palmed alertly in a one-on-one.
Yet Boro re-asserted themselves, with young Stamp to the fore. Had Barmby not lost his goal sense just after half-time Boro must surely have won. As it was Asprilla, not Barmby, became the headline story.
Keegan said that Newcastle received Asprilla's work permit on Friday afternoon and that he had intended to play him from the kick-off, even though he had been inactive for two and a half months. Then he learned that Asprilla had taken a knock in training with Parma, and put him on the subs' bench.
"He gave us a spark, didn't he?" Keegan said. "He got others going. That is what great players do. Peter Beardsley loved it." And, as Keegan said, Asprilla was clean through on goal the second referee Dunn blew his whistle.
It could have been 3-1. But that would have been cruel indeed on Middlesbrough.
(Watson 74, Ferdinand 78)
Walsh; Cox, Pearson, Vickers, Whelan, Morris; Juninho (Hignett 79min), Stamp (Liddle 46min), Pollock, Barmby; Wilkinson.
Srnicek; Barton, Peacock, Albert, Beresford; Gillespie (Asprilla 67min), Lee, Clark, Watson; Beardsley, Ferdinand.
Weather: fine. Ground: firm. Referee: S Dunn (Bristol).
AUSTRALIA and the West Indies last night appeared to have won the agreement of the World Cup organisers to forfeit their qualifying games in strife-torn Colombo. However, after five hours of heated talks in Calcutta, Sri Lanka's interests were sacrificed to save the tournament.
The junior partner in the triumvirate who are staging the tournament India and Pakistan are the others will miss out twice over. They will lose the two money-spinning prestige matches, and they will be awarded only one point, rather than two, from each of the matches which Australia and West Indies have refused to play.
The International Cricket Council are insisting that Sri Lanka win at least one of their remaining matches, against Zimbabwe, Kenya and India, to ensure progress to the quarter-finals.
The only compensation offered to the Sri Lankans for a situation brought about by the suicide bombing in Colombo on January 31 is that the organisers, Pilcom, are considering shifting two other matches to the island.
During further talks today, officials will consider switching the games between India and Kenya (previously scheduled for Cuttack on February 18) and Pakistan against the United Arab Emirates (Gujranwala, February 24) to the Sri Lankan capital.
Both Kenya and the Emirates have provisionally agreed to the move but last night requested further time to consider the logistics involved.
Final confirmation of the revised schedule is expected this morning just hours before the World Cup's opening ceremony at Eden Gardens, Calcutta.
Last night Pilcom officials were breathing more easily after a debate involving all 12 competing countries in which the World Cup was taken to the brink of chaos. Malcolm Gray, the Australian board representative, insisted that his players would not go against their own foreign office advice and play in Colombo.
He rejected out of hand offers to fly the team in from either southern India or the Maldive Islands on the day of their match against Sri Lanka. And with the West Indies following the Australian line at every turn, Gray balked at the penalties Pilcom, who would not agree to reschedule the fixture on the mainland, proposed to inflict.
He did not object to forfeiting the two points, but opposed awarding them to the Sri Lankans, who would have then automatically qualified for the knock-out stages.
The Australians also objected to an order that they should pay a fine by way of compensation to Sri Lanka and Pilcom for expenses and lost revenue. The issue is set to go to arbitration, with both Australia and West Indies facing claims that could run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.
When the three countries were first awarded the World Cup four years ago only Pakistan and India were guaranteed a share of the tournament's profits, which are expected to be in the region of £25m.
Sri Lanka were told they could simply keep the profits from the four matches they were staging. The substitution of a game between Pakistan and the Emirates is unlikely to attract the sell-out crowd that was expected for Sri Lanka against Australia on February 17.
Gray's tough stance on security appeared to be warranted last night as news broke of a riot during a practice match in Lahore on Friday. Pakistan's warm-up game with the Pakistan Airways side in the city's Bagh-e-Jinnah stadium was called off after fewer than 20 overs when a large section of the 4,000 crowd staged a protest on the field.
Several players, including Javed Miandad, who was batting at the time, were jostled as the fans complained about the lack of seating for the game.
Organisers were desperate to play down the incident yesterday. One said: "The game was originally due to be played at Aichison college, but England were practising there. It was switched at short notice and security arrangements could not be put in hand in time."
What will concern the visiting teams is that, if a small crowd cannot be controlled during a warm-up match, what chance would they have against a Tamil terrorist turning himself into a human bomb?
That was one of the specific death threats made against Australian players after the recent acrimonious Test series against Sri Lanka, which was marked by allegations of ball-tampering and throwing.
A letter received by the Australian leg-spinner, Shane Warne, threatened that the team would be blown up in the baggage hall upon their arrival at Colombo airport.
Security will remain a headache for the World Cup organisers, who are also struggling to get many of the grounds ready on time. Work on Delhi's Feroz Shah Kotla stadium and Calcutta's Eden Gardens have been badly hit by labour disputes.
Any rearrangement of travel facilities will further stretch a tourist infrastructure in India and Pakistan which is close to breaking point.
On Friday England, South Africa and the Emirates took 12 hours to travel from Pakistan to Calcutta after being forced to make an unscheduled stopover in Delhi. "It was simply not acceptable," said Ray Illingworth, the England manager, who did not get to bed until 2.30 yesterday morning. He will now ask Pilcom to make alternative arrangements for England's journey to Ahmedabad to play New Zealand on Wednesday avoiding the seven-hour stopover in Delhi.
EVERTON 2 MAN CITY 0.
ANY latecomers to Goodison Park may have been forgiven for thinking they had stumbled across a display in yellow card technique, such was the number distributed during this match. The seven cards and dismissal of City's Frontzeck aside, Everton were worthy winners, continuing an unbeaten run that stretches to 10 matches.
Alan Ball, the Manchester City manager, could have little argument with the result. But he certainly did with the Hinchcliffe penalty, awarded for an alleged Symons handball under pressure from Horne, that sealed the points for Everton. He said: "That was an absolutely bizarre decision.
"It was finished as a contest from that point. It was as blatant a foul from Horne as you'll ever see. It's difficult for professional men to take these decisions in."
Everton were missing the thrust of Kanchelskis, the Russian international having been drafted by his country for duties in Malta. It was left to Limpar and Stuart to busy themselves with a series of clever combinations in an attempt to fill the void. At the end of one such move a glorious chip from Limpar was bound for the onrushing Ferguson, only for Symons to intervene. On another foray, Stuart just failed to connect. That set the tone.
Somewhere inside the City formation is a skilful side struggling with its conscience, the desire to play a sweeping move wrestling with the need not to get caught out of position. Their newcomers were an integral part of that struggle.
In Frontzeck they have, they claim, a full-back with poise. The German international can read the game at the turn of a heel and commit a tackle without ruffling the line of his socks. But he was, on too many occasions, facing the Limpar-Stuart roadshow alone. Frontzeck, frequently frustrated, began to lose that poise and was booked on 30 minutes when Ferguson muscled in on the party down City's left. Clough too, may have nipped into a tackle here and clipped a measured pass there, but too often wandered away from the skirmishing in the middle.
Something had to give and you had the feeling as we passed the half hour mark that the effervescent Ferguson would be involved. Cue a Jackson cross from the right to the far post, where Ferguson was lurking. He headed the ball across the six-yard box and Parkinson gleefully nipped through the centre to nab his second goal of the season.
Limpar and Jackson continued to pepper the City penalty area with a series of crosses from the right flank but Symons, determined not to let Ferguson have things all his own way, rose to the occasion to clear his lines.
Apart from Brown ballooning a neat Clough through ball over the crossbar, City looked lacklustre, prompting their manager to introduce Quinn and Creaney for the second half.
It was a courageous move but one that was punished before most half-time cups of tea had settled in the stomach. Symons, up to now the one sure-footed City man, buckled under pressure from Horne. Did he fall or was he pushed? Whatever, his hand struck the ball and a penalty was awarded. Hinchcliffe gratefully accepted the opportunity.
The barrage now became an onslaught. Everton doubled their quota of corners during one 10-minute period and Ferguson looked on bemused after one header corkscrewed off the foot of a prostrate Immel.
As Everton crafted and created, City chased and harried but the resultant clipping of heels and prods in the back brought a spate of free kicks, several being punished with a yellow card.
Frontzeck created a rare chance for City but Creaney, then Quinn, failed to connect. It was not long before the German found his services terminated by the referee's red card for a tackle on Limpar.
For Everton it was business as usual. For City, the light is a little dimmer.
Everton: Southall; Jackson, Short, Watson, Unsworth; Limpar, Horne, Parkinson, Hinchcliffe; Stuart, Ferguson.
Manchester City: Immel; Summerbee, Symons, Curle, Frontzeck, Lomas, Phillips (Creaney 45min); Brown (Quinn 45min), Flitcroft, Clough; Rosler.
Referee: P Alcock (Redhill).
NOTTINGHAM FOREST 0 ARSENAL 1.
"TO SAY that these men paid their shillings to watch 22 hirelings kick a ball," JB Priestley once mused, "is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink. For a shilling, Bruddersford United offered you Conflict and Art."
For £18 those unfortunates in the box seats here found art confined to the quasi-Kandinsky design on Mark Crossley's jersey, and conflict to Jason Lee's dismissal for vigorous use of the elbow 13 minutes after coming on as substitute. Frank Clark, the Nottingham Forest manager, refused to defend him at least we had honesty.
Bergkamp's classy opportunism consigned Forest to their first home League defeat for 13 months, but it was hard to avoid the impression that both teams were willing 4.45pm to arrive as soon as possible.
Forest seemed more concerned with the impending task of saving face at Oxford in the FA Cup, Arsenal with the first leg of their League Cup semi-final against Aston Villa. Stylish as the passing was, the first serious attempt on goal was 27 minutes in arriving. "Ere John," barked one snoozing spectator, "give me an alarm call".
There were, of course, other preoccupations. While Forest, England's sole survivors in Europe, might be starting to wonder whether beating the likes of Malmo and Lyon was really worth the bother, the proposed expansion of the European competitions is just the ticket for Highbury's slumming aristocrats.
Much as they were the more incisive side yesterday, Bruce Rioch's charges have had a fitful season, but when tradition counts for more than achievement, so what?
When accepted as, in some form or other, it inevitably will be the blueprint for a European League devised by Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein, can only further devalue the domestic shilling. Odd how these ideas tend to crop up whenever the privileged start feeling hard done by.
Losing last season's Champions' Cup final after a lousy Serie A campaign cost Milan their seat at the top table; Nayim's glorious up-and-under in the Cup Winners' Cup final meant Arsenal, poor dears, weren't even invited to dinner.
"We've got to win this one," asserted one anxious Highbury regular as he boarded the 10.45am from St Pancras. "Otherwise, unless we win the League Cup that will be two seasons in a row without Europe."
Poor, poor dears. Roll on the era of the Super League, a world where the past will always be present, the natural order forever preserved. Maybe Dein and his plotters can persuade Status Quo to play the national anthems? Just so long as they promise not to play Down Down.
The Forest faithful, meanwhile, were doubtless sidetracked by their manager's belief that running the national squad might not be as batty a career move as the rest of us imagine.
Clark insists he has had no formal approach from Lancaster Gate, but he has become the first candidate to express something other than fear or loathing.
"I would not insult the FA," he said last week, "by saying I would turn it down." In the present climate, that almost counts as enthusiasm.
Clark is adamant that a decision must be made before Euro 96. "It's a nuisance for the people involved. Chelsea beat Middlesbrough so Glenn Hoddle has jumped ahead of Bryan Robson. If Spurs keep doing well Gerry Francis will be back in the race. And if Bryan gets Boro going again he'll jump back to the top of the list. If Frank Bruno beats Tyson he could be the favourite," he said.
While Clark welcomed back Stone with a degree of relief usually associated with patients awaiting a heart donor, Rioch will have thought long and hard about giving Hillier his first start in 10 months.
The transfer-listed midfielder has certainly been suffering, but his first touch a timely tackle on a speeding Gemmill will have soothed his manager's nerves.
With Helder putting in some penetrating runs, and Wright easily the sharpest presence in front of goal, Arsenal looked far more likely to break the impasse, and so it proved.
On the hour, Bergkamp collected Chettle's miskick, flicked the ball over his head, then poked Wright's return pass beyond the advancing Crossley.
For all their industry and skill, Roy and Stone invariably lacked a target, and it was Wright, with a header against the bar, who came closest to another breakthrough. "You can't shoot," wailed one despairing voice in the stand as Wright burst through near the end. "It's cheating." Dear old JB would have demanded his shilling.
Nottingham Forest: Crossley; Lyttle, Phillips, Cooper, Chettle; Bart-Williams, Gemmill (McGregor 64min), Stone; Roy, Campbell, Black (Lee 72min).
Arsenal: Seaman; Dixon, Keown, Linighan, Winterburn; Merson, Hillier, Jensen, Helder; Bergkamp, Wright.
Referee: R Hart (Darlington).
SHEFF WED 2 WIMBLEDON 1.
THE MOST illuminating moment of an excruciating game came six minutes from the end when Wednesday introduced Michael Platts, a 16-year-old, for his first appearance. With three Wednesday youngsters following him into the England Schoolboys team, Wednesday at least are showing that not all their eggs are in the foreign basket, and David Pleat, the manager, is keen to give his home-bred players their opportunity.
New blood, from whatever source, is badly needed, as this tragi-comedy of errors proved; rarely an accurate pass and a reckless squandering of gilt-edged chances.
Kovacevic, Degryse and Whittingham were all at fault when put clear through the heart of a Wimbledon defence that was too easily split. Kovacevic, a former Red Star Belgrade player, had some excuse when he was felled from behind by Kimble, as clear a penalty as possible but ignored by the referee. Degryse then beat the ground in frustration after rolling the ball wide.
Wednesday, who defend by retreating, sometimes overdo it and Castledine and Gayle were given space and time for shots which they wasted, and the game seemed destined to be goalless.
Wimbledon brought on Ekoku who, returning from suspension, like Earle, gave them flexibility and pace on the right flank in the second half. But it was Wednesday who finally managed to convert a chance just when Joe Kinnear, the Wimbledon manager, must have thought his luck was in.
A Waddle cross from the right found its way to the opposite flank and when Kovacevic returned it, Degryse hit an unstoppable volley to atone for earlier errors. "I told them all at half-time to stop worrying about the ones they had missed and concentrate on the ones that might come their way," Pleat said. "You get a bit worried when you have controlled 70% of the game and have nothing to show for it."
Wednesday led for 10 minutes and then lost their shape when Gayle, at the far post, rammed in a diagonal ball from Holdsworth, but Watts, one of the substitutes, scored his first goal for the club when he headed home Waddle's free kick to leave Wimbledon deep in trouble and still without a win outside the capital.
A table produced last week showed that in five seasons in the Premier League only four clubs, Manchester United, Leeds, Liverpool and Arsenal, have better records than Wimbledon, but this is a quite different sort of team and lacks the spirit and morale of those earlier formidable sides.
Kinnear had them locked in the dressing-room for an hour after the match, apparently incensed at their attitude and performance, and then fled without comment.
It has been 10 wonderful years for the one-time Southern League club Pleat remembers from his non-League days at Nuneaton Borough. Without a dramatic improvement, this could be the end of the fairy-tale for them, with only goal difference now keeping them out of the bottom three.
Sheffield Wednesday: Pressman; Nolan, Atherton, Nicol, Walker, Stefanovic (Watts 80min); Waddle (Platts 84min), Degryse (Bright 80min), Hyde; Kovacevic, Whittingham.
Wimbledon: Sullivan; Cunningham, Perry, Pearce, Kimble; Leonhardsen, Earle, Castledine (Euell 51min), Harford (Ekoku 45min); Gayle, Holdsworth (Thorn 87min).
Referee: M Bodenham (Cornwall).
BOLTON 0 ASTON VILLA 2.
FOR THE first half of this match, while Bolton Wanderers did not exactly outplay Aston Villa, they certainly had the majority of possession. They caused them the odd fright, too. However, once Yorke, against the run of play, scored the first of his two goals, their performance befitted a team stuck at the bottom of the table.
The breaks Bolton unleashed on Villa were, at least until his teammates joined in with him, led by Stubbs. In one attack, he followed the action from one side of the pitch to the other until, just at the point it seemed to be faltering, he appeared to put a colleague through to win a corner.
Seconds later, from his slot in front of the back four, he led a charge himself. If De Freitas had delivered a better cross from behind the Villa defence not many get that chance Stubbs's run would have ended with more than another corner.
Stubbs is one of the few Bolton players of Premier League quality. His ability to read play, his positional sense and his common-sense passing are exceptional.
When Stubbs wasn't involved, it mattered not. While Villa's distribution was never poor, it was nervy. For example, the angled balls Staunton aimed into his strikers were, to say the least, wayward.
For a period of about two minutes shortly before Villa scored, Bolton had their opponents pressed back and chasing shadows. The interchanging of positions Curcic must have covered every blade of grass in the last third of the field was something the visiting side normally do so well themselves.
Still, the best attempts on goal by both sides came from long shots, which was no surprise considering there were a lot of them. Johnson's curler hit the post, and Curcic's free kick was tipped over. The difference between those two efforts was that Johnson's was isolated while Curcic's was one of many.
Then, out of the blue, Yorke bulleted in a header from a cross. It was the only chance of the first half that came his way. With virtually his first opportunity of the second half, he headed past Branagan again after Johnson had spooned the ball up on the edge of the six-yard box. Bolton were stunned.
Thereafter Villa turned it on almost at will. They also took it in turns to practise their shooting, some of which was very good indeed. On the occasions Bolton actually managed to get the ball into the danger area, there was never anybody there to apply the crucial finishing touch to it.
If the truth be told, a foreboding air of resignation hung around the ground immediately after Yorke had scored his first.
Bolton Wanderers: Branagan; Green, Fairclough, Stubbs, Phillips; Bergsson (Thompson 59min), Sneekes, Sellars (McGinlay 69min); Curcic; Blake, De Freitas.
Aston Villa: Bosnich; Charles, Southgate, Ehiogu, Staunton, Wright; Draper, Townsend, Johnson; Yorke, Milosevic.
Referee: G Ashby (Worcester).
MANCHESTER UTD 1 (Sharpe 14) BLACKBURN ROVERS 0.
LONG before thousands of transistor radios relayed yesterday's bad news from Middlesbrough, the mood in Manchester proved strangely subdued.
For a heavyweight collision between last season's champions and the runners-up not to mention a pride-filled Lancashire derby this was an unusually patchy, almost passionless affair.
True, there were moments of panache, moments of petulance, but such peaks and troughs were generally exceptions in a flat match which Alex Ferguson described as a: "seven out of ten sort of afternoon".
If the manager rightly felt his side merited their victory, Newcastle's triumph at Riverside Stadium leaves United nine points behind the leaders and looking increasingly unlikely to celebrate imminent championship success.
Not that the theatre of dreams will be lacking its share of joyous moments this spring. It is, however, to be hoped that those happy couples who will shortly be getting married on the Old Trafford pitch enjoy a rather stronger chemistry than that evident between Cole and Cantona these past few months.
That said, United's 14th minute goal originated with the pair, suggesting that just maybe a certain rapport is slowly growing after all.
Here they played a cute one-two, and Cole surged through Blackburn's blue and white barracides before eluding Hendry and attempting to chip Flowers. Unfortunately, this effort struck the far post but Sharpe was available to control the rebound and steer a left-footed volley beyond Blackburn's goalkeeper. Such skill on Sharpe's part has been sadly lacking of late but this rare strike celebrated by an Elvis style gyration of the pelvis appeared to justify his selection ahead of Scholes.
Scorn was also initially at least poured on suggestions that perhaps Cole should have stepped down for Scholes as he connected with Cantona's raking pass only to be denied an excellent scoring opportunity by Hendry's saving tackle.
Not so long ago there were two blond heads at the heart of Blackburn's defence but nowadays May is a United reserve, his re-emergence yesterday being dictated by the absence of Gary Neville and Bruce.
Alongside May, Pallister, recently recovered from injury, trod a little gingerly after an early collision with Schmeichel but revived sufficiently to generally supress Shearer successfully. Only once, following an ill-advised backpass, did Blackburn's No.9 wrong-foot and round Pallister, but Schmeichel redeemed himself, narrowing the angle impressively before making a brave, smothering save.
That stop was, however, eclipsed by Flowers' one-handed diversion of Irwin's long-range effort on the stroke of half-time. Deployed out of position at right-back, Irwin, along with Keane and Cantona, enjoyed a very good game.
Of that trio Keane probably ranked as a kingpin, ruthlessly exploiting a lightweight Blackburn midfield missing Bohinen and Ripley.
If Keane went from strength to strength, Wilcox, back patrolling Rovers' left wing after almost a year on the sidelines, understandably proved a progressively weaker link.
Beckham highlighted the visitors' vulnerability down that side with an incisive cross early in the second half which Cole inexplicably failed to control. Had Blackburn claimed an unlikely equaliser and Gudmundsson's swerving, bar-skimmimg shot sailed mighty close near the death United's centre-forward would have borne a large measure of responsibility.
Although Cole's combination of hesitancy and right-footed reliance allowed Hendry to mop up in situations where he should have been overshadowed, United's £6 million man was not the sole home offender.
Goal apart, Sharpe contributed precious little of significance. Ditto Giggs who, until late on when he hit an inspired patch, experienced a disappointingly quiet time in central midfield. Presumably Ferguson's justification for selecting Sharpe was to afford Giggs a free, roving role but any system excluding Scholes, who invariably threatens goals, seems flawed.
Ultimately, you suspect, United's 1995-96 championship challenge will be judged to have been floored by chances missed. Small wonder Tynesiders continue to hold Cole in such high esteem.
Schmeichel; Irwin, May, Pallister, P Neville; Beckham, Keane, Giggs, Sharpe; Cantona, Cole.
Flowers; Berg, Hendry, Coleman (Marker 83min), Kenna; Gallacher, Sherwood, McKinlay, Wilcox (Gudmundsson 73min); Newell (Fenton 66), Shearer.
Booked: Newell (17min), Keane (30min), Shearer (56min), (Fenton 69min).
Weather: mild. Ground: good. Referee: K Burge (Tonypandy).
Maurice Watkins defends Uefa's new proposals against charges of elitism.
MAURICE WATKINS was the man shadowing Eric Cantona when the Frenchman marched free from a Croydon courtroom last year after his jail sentence was quashed on appeal. As Manchester United's solicitor, he was also partly responsible for that quote, supplying the defendant with the key words "seagulls", "trawler" and "sardines".
Since then, Watkins has spent more time worrying about the European Court's Bosman ruling than the European Union's fisheries policy. As a key member of the Premier League's legal working party, he has helped redraft the League's rules and regulations and played an overseeing role when the League have got involved in litigation. With the Office of Fair Trading threatening to blow the Premier League's TV deal out of the water, and another row looming over work permits for foreign players, Watkins's in-tray won't be empty for a while yet. Whoever said football was a simple game?
Last week, Watkins went to Uefa's Geneva "summit" with representatives of 32 other top European clubs and discovered he was sitting on a winning hand. However Uefa choose to select their eight "lucky loser" wild cards for the European Cup on clubs' domestic League record or on their recent performances in Europe Manchester United know they are holding an ace-two-three in spades.
Some will see this whole business as a desecration of Busby's holy trinity Best, Law and Charlton but Watkins disagrees. In Manchester on Friday, as he grappled with the demands of his real job as a partner in a law firm, Watkins denied that Geneva represented an attempt by the big clubs to pull up the drawbridge to deny smaller clubs entry to the castle.
"Nobody has the God-given right to qualify," he said, "and Lennart Johansson [president of Uefa] stressed that qualification must be based on achievements in one's national competitions. Together with the extra places in the Cup Winners' Cup and Uefa Cup, the changes will create more opportunities for everyone to play in Europe.
"And remember that the eight extra teams will only get into the Champions League if they win that preliminary round. If they don't they will go down into the Uefa Cup. That's a good idea; the repechage has a long history in sport. It keeps interest going."
Quite whether Sam Hammam and others will see it like that at Thursday's meeting of Premier League chairmen is a moot point. The Wimbledon boss's reaction to Geneva was to come out fighting. "Football in this country as we have known it is over," he said. "The game here has gone power and money crazy. Before long the big boys will be hanging a chilling message outside their stadiums directed at the rest. It will read, ‘Close down. We do not want you'."
Rick Parry, the League's chief executive, expects "interesting views" to be expressed, but believes there will be acceptance of the principle that more clubs should be able to play in Europe. But he and Watkins admit that, whatever the objections put up by the Premier League, Uefa will not be deflected off course, driven as they are by the need to head off threats of a breakaway European Super League.
With the Premier League now negotiating on a myriad fronts on the future of the game, and Watkins frequently riding shotgun with Parry on his forays to Brussels and Geneva, might United's legal eagle be persuaded at the age of 54 to go full-time with the League? Watkins hesitates, fearful of upsetting his firm. He is not, he explains, an archetypal football man. Though born into a Reds family: "I'm a supporter rather than a fan I don't lose sleep if we lose." His involvement with the club was cemented by chance in 1980, when a senior partner died suddenly and he was forced into the breach.
Football man or not, he was certain of one thing. The claim that Sir Matt would be writhing in his grave at the goings-on in Geneva was wrong: "Matt was very open-minded. He would understand that the game cannot stand still."
Wheeler, dealer, joker, survivor. Now Barry Fry and Birmingham can scent Wembley.
THE first thing you notice in Barry Fry's eyrie of an office is a framed oil painting of George Best. Cynics may be tempted to suggest that he is the one player Birmingham's magpie of a manager never signed, but they would be wrong. Best not only played with Fry at Manchester United, he also played for him at three clubs.
The portrait is not the only surprise to be found among the usual paraphernalia of management (Rothmans yearbooks, cartoons of self and staff and videos of two Slovak mercenaries). On the top of a filing tray marked Today's Work sits the Holy Bible.
The man whose personal motto is the old slogan Players Please, has probably been rooting through the Old Testament, wondering if Leviticus and Deuteronomy were going for a psalm.
Fry collects footballers like punters collect programmes, and with 43 professionals on his staff at the last count, St Andrew's on a weekday resembles not so much a terminus as a termites' nest. Such is the premium on accommodation that on Wednesday there was a full-blown training game going on in the club car park in three inches of snow.
Inside, it was a typical day in the life of a gag-a-minute wheeler-dealer who would make an ideal replacement when Mike Reid leaves EastEnders. Frank Butcher without the angst. Fry, who had just given Mark Ward a free transfer, nipped out to the Siberia that was the pitch to pose for pictures with a sledge and huskies. He returned for some tea and sympathy before arranging to borrow John Sheridan from Sheffield Wednesday and doing a double deal for Peterborough's Gary Breen and Gary Martindale, who will become his 46th and 47th signings in two years sometime this week.
Fry says he is finding it difficult to raise a team for today's home leg of the League Cup semi-final with Leeds United, and bridles at the suggestion that the problem must be who to leave out. With three regulars suspended and a "horrendous" list of injuries, Birmingham would be well below strength. Amid all the bull and banter, he had a serious point to make. The disciplinary system was flawed, he said, hampering the more successful teams.
"We've played 46 games already this season. Other clubs who have played only 30 games won't have as many points, or suspensions. The numbers of matches played should be taken into account."
It is a good, logical idea, typical of the man. Behind the carefully cultivated muddled image Harry Bassett meets Harry Worth he is an accomplished manager whose ability to spot an uncut diamond took Barnet into the League and Southend to third in the First Division.
He was at Barnet 14 years and was sacked on average once a season by their discredited tyrant of a chairman, Stan Flashman. "I've survived two heart attacks and Fat Stan," he said. "Stan was the worst of the three."
Southend was like a holiday by comparison and almost as brief. Fry took over an impoverished club in danger of relegation and left them third in the table, better off than they had ever been, in every sense, after selling Stan Collymore in a complicated deal which eventually brought more than £4m.
Leaving Roots Hall had been a wrench, but at 50 Fry was ambitious, and time was running out. When the Blues, in their endless quest for rebirth, called him at the end of 1993, he interviewed them.
Birmingham have never won the League or the FA Cup, which makes a mockery of their followers' pretensions. "They tell me it's a big club," Fry said. "It's not. Birmingham have the potential to be a big club, that's all. When I came to talk about the job, they had lost their last six games on the trot, without scoring a goal, and of course I had reservations. The place was decaying, it hadn't had a coat of paint for 40 years, but David Sullivan convinced me that he had these great plans, and to be fair he's spent £12m on the ground, apart from what he has given me for players. The commitment is there all right. You don't put £15m into a club as a gimmick."
Having worked hard to get his man, Sullivan must have wondered why. "Things started to go wrong almost immediately," Fry said. "I went three months without a win, had five players sent off and Kidderminster beat us in the FA Cup. I racked my brains to get it right, and when I did it was just too late. We went down, level on points with West Brom, because we'd scored fewer goals."
Inevitably, there was discontent, which spread when Birmingham lost two of their first four games in the Second Division: "There was a lot of pressure. My mistake was buying players for the future when I nearly didn't have one. After we lost at home to Wycombe, everybody wrote us off, and they [the directors] panicked. They told me if I wasn't in the top three by Christmas, it was ta-ta and all that."
Birmingham thrashed Crewe 5-0 that November 1, and Fry made it with more than a month to spare: "It turned out to be a tremendous season. Our average gate was nearly 17,000 [better than six Premier League teams], we were champions by four points, we drew with Blackburn and Liverpool in the Cups and we won the Auto Windscreen Trophy at Wembley. All this despite 21 major operations."
Those casualties, as much as his own restless nature, were behind the remarkable turnover 82 deals in and out since Fry's appointment in December 1993: "You only read about those I buy, not those I sell. I've spent about £5m, and I've got £4m back, which is not bad."
And so to the present. There is encouragement in the way Birmingham saw off Middlesbrough, home and away, in the fifth round, but this afternoon they will be without Ian Bennett, the goalkeeper Fry rates the best outside the Premier League, and three first-choice defenders.
"There's no doubt it will be our most difficult game yet," Fry acknowledged. "I've a lot of respect for Howard Wilkinson. He's very professional, unlike me. I'm a bit willy-nilly, throw it all together and see what happens. The dream final here, of course, is Villa and us Birmingham takes over Wembley. That would be fantastic."
Too fantastic? Fry would be happier with a couple of wingers to service his talismanic totem pole, Kevin Francis. "Perhaps I should call George," he said, nodding at the picture behind him. "He played for me at Dunstable, Maidstone and Barnet. Always turned up and filled the place." Now there's a story: Blues sign Dorian Gray.
David Hunn sees a player defying the years in the world of rackets
FORTIFYING the over-40s was never much of a problem to Stanley Matthews or Brian Close, but even they could have done with a drop of whatever it is Willie Boone keeps in his glands. If this is not the most vigorously successful middle-aged sportsman in Britain, then who is?
At 45, he remains one of the best three rackets players in the world. As this is a game enjoyed almost exclusively by a brigade of over-privileged young men, it is easy to dismiss it; but before you do that you should know that there is no other sport in the world that demands a fiercer expenditure of effort and a more relentless application of technical brilliance.
For 20 years Boone has been terrifying the rest of his little world. Indeed, he has played in the last 21 amateur singles finals, winning nine of them. World champion in 1984, he won the Open singles championship last year, dismissing the handicap of his years with such absurd ease that the world's best professional, Neil Smith, could not take even one game off him.
They played again in the semi-final of this year's Open at the Queen's Club in west London. After half an hour, Boone was all but dead and buried. When Smith reaches his heights there is no better looking player in the world and, despite having barely survived his quarter-final against David Makey, the Tonbridge School professional was in majestic form.
There are times when the ease with which Smith displays his talent could be misinterpreted even called casual and there were certainly times in this match when he seemed reluctant to reach for the hammer and dispatch the final nail; none the less, he was devastating. He took the first three of the seven possible games 15-3 15-3 15-1 in no more than 10 minutes each.
We were reaching in our minds for the phrases with which we would write off the old fellow who was unfortunate enough to be on court with him on such a day. Leaden-footed, Boone clearly had come to the end of his time. Poor old Willie.
Smith is a mysterious player a mystery even to himself, one suspects. Dejection descends on him like a suffocating fog and he can find no way out. From three games down Boone, who is never beaten, extinguished the young man's light with a succession of services that would have penetrated the armour of a tank. He went 9-0 ahead, won that game 15-8, the next 17-14 and levelled the match with such a sustained and blistering attack that Smith won not a single point in the sixth game.
When the adrenalin is pumping, few men of any age have much chance of stopping Boone. Smith needed a miraculous return to do so and he produced it. His sun shone, the cloud lifted and suddenly he was stroking the ball with effortless elegance again, firing it down the side walls close enough to shave them.
Boone battered and banged and puffed and boiled and lost the vital game by 15-10, frustrated, exasperated and magnificent. He was not without some pride as he came off court, but he was furious with himself. "I should have done it. I had it there and I let it go," he said, fists clenched.
Today, Smith meets James Male, the world champion, in the final. Male, inelegant, awesome and ambidextrous, (all the other semi-finalists, incidentally, were left-handed) is a killer on the court which Smith may never be.
Though he was way off his best in the semi-final, Male eliminated his young opponent, Mark Hue-Williams, in four straight games. Whether he does the same to Smith, whom he has beaten in the past two world-championship challenges, will depend largely on Smith's internal weather system.
Hue-Williams is a lad of great flair with a marvellous eye and a sweet wrist, and could be on the brink of excellence. His father, Charles, was a fine player who sent his son to Eton, which was Boone's school. It is no surprise that, 27 years later, Boone still turns out, now with young Mark, to win the old boys' trophy for them. We could all do with his spirit, and trust he is leaving his body to medical research.
STEPHEN HENDRY, five times the world and Masters champion, beat his fellow Scot, Alan McManus, 6-4 in an engrossing second semi-final at the Wembley Arena. In today's final he will meet Ronnie O'Sullivan, who beat Andy Hicks 6-1.
Hendry recovered from a 0-2 deficit with breaks of 121 and 86 and also snatched the fifth frame on the black with a 59 clearance. But he trailed 4-3 before a run of three hard-fought frames saw him through.
"Alan seems to relish the battle and he's a class player," Hendry said. "There were a couple of times in the match when it was looking dodgy."
"I can't believe I'm in the final because this place is the business," O'Sullivan said. "Thursday night was unbearable and I couldn't concentrate, but today I didn't feel pain."
O'Sullivan removed a two-piece plaster cast from his right foot on his arrival yesterday, called for an ice bucket and placed his injured right foot in it for 10-minute spells before resuming normal footwear for his match with Hicks.
The 20-year-old world No3 had injured himself by kicking a concrete-mounted potted plant in circumstances as yet unexplained.
"It's a long story, mate," was all he would say about the circumstances. It was a cruel setback just when worries about court cases involving his family had been lifted from his mind and cleared the way for a return to his best form.
This season, his meagre return from the first five ranking events has been three exits in the first round, one in the second round and one place in the quarter-finals. His best performance has been victory in an invitation tournament, in Birmingham last month.
O'Sullivan beat Nigel Bond, last spring's world championship runner-up, 6-5 in an amazing 1hr54min on Tuesday night, making the game look preposterously easy in scoring 392 unanswered points in a 28-minute, four-frame winning burst from 1-4 to 5-4. On Thursday evening after his injury, however, he was limping, and he tottered to a 6-4 win over the world No8, Darren Morgan, and had to be helped from the building. Yesterday, he could not move around the table at his usual breakneck speed, but this did not work entirely to his disadvantage his game did not fail through either haste or carelessness.
He conceded later: "It might even have been a blessing in disguise because it's making my game more solid, more cautious."
His potential late clearance in the third frame foundered through missing the brown ball when playing it left-handed, but he did not encounter much more resistance. Hicks, who made several hideous unforced errors, lost his composure, as he has done in two previous semi-finals.
O'Sullivan completed his victory with minimum fuss so that he could "stay on a settee with my feet up" before today's final.
COVENTRY CITY 1 (Whelan 43) CHELSEA 0.
COVENTRY grew in poise by the minute to take three much-needed and well-deserved points. It was a measure of their achievement that they inflicted only the second defeat Chelsea had suffered in 16 games.
A match that began with Chelsea oozing confidence ended with them growing ever more desperate. Glenn Hoddle's team flattered to deceive. Ruud Gullit showed his full repertoire yet sparked little response from his colleagues. Chelsea's defence was surprisingly leaky and disjointed. After a sluggish start Coventry began to pour through the gaps.
"The pitch was difficult to pass on but no excuses," said Hoddle. "Coventry had the opportunities to go in two or three up. We just did not create enough chances."
Chelsea have Furlong to give them an aerial option but Hoddle likes the ball knocked around to free small, nippy attackers like Spencer and Peacock, who destroyed Middlesbrough last weekend. Here their influence waned after a stylish opening.
Three games in a week proved too stiff a prospect for Ron Atkinson's assistant, Gordon Strachan. The 39-year-old needed a rest after starting against Arsenal and Manchester City. So in came Ndlovu to support Dublin and Whelan, who have formed such a dangerous partnership since Whelan arrived from Leeds in December. Dublin is the focal point for crosses and clearances. Whelan complements him with pace and aggression. And when Ndlovu buzzes, so do Coventry.
Coventry's problem has not been scoring goals, it has been stopping them. The signing of the versatile Shaw from Palace has tightened their porous defence, and Atkinson was delighted with a rare clean sheet.
Coventry tried to combat Gullit by detailing Richardson to mark him, but Gullit escaped early, flicking a through-ball which slid inches behind Spencer's run. Chelsea's three centre-backs had to decide who was marking and who was spare. Their organisation fell down when Salako's free kick reached the far post and Shaw failed to connect with a free header.
Despite the close attention, Gullit's technique and touch was sure. Another deft pass sent Spencer through for a shot that was blocked.
A dead-ball kick looked a shrewd bet for Coventry. Shaw did manage a header from a corner but it flew straight at Hitchcock.
Chelsea were working a simple ploy give the ball to Gullit. Another through-ball bisected Busst and Shaw but Spencer failed to control it.
Dublin and Whelan ran as energetically as ever. But Coventry were not picking them out in open play. Ndlovu was spending more time chasing Petrescu than attacking.
Sinclair, building attacks with neat passes, showed the constructive style Hoddle demands from his defenders. It was their defending that caused anxiety. Then Ndlovu uncoiled, cutting inside and unleashing a shot that cannoned off a post. Coventry's spirits lifted.
Chelsea's centre-backs were still sorting themselves out. Twice in the same move, Whelan found space behind them before finishing with a hurried cross. Coventry were still vulnerable. Telfer lost the ball to Peacock. He fed Furlong, Busst dived in and missed and Ogrizovic had to come to the rescue.
Coventry profited from the let-off, exploiting the space behind Chelsea's attacking full-backs. Pickering crossed on the overlap and Petrescu cleared desperately.
Chelsea were still building smartly with Gullit sweeping passes to the flanks. Then their crossing let them down. Gullit showed his frustration by up-ending Whelan. Chelsea were growing frustrated, too. Richardson exploited another gap and Whelan slid his shot past Hitchcock for his seventh goal in 11 games.
Hitchcock saved Chelsea when Ndlovu struck from inside the penalty area as the second half started. Chelsea in defence were clearly missing their find of the season, the suspended Duberry.
Early on, it seemed Coventry lacked the belief to compete with Chelsea's passing game. Now even their defenders were pinging the ball about. Chelsea were looking rattled. Gullit, drifting to the right wing, conjured a majestic pass for Petrescu but Furlong headed the centre over.
Hoddle sent on Wise for the hamstring victim Spencer and his first pass sent Petrescu away for another cross that failed to find its target.
Then once more Chelsea allowed Dublin freedom in the box. His overhead kick bounced up and Busst headed over.
Gullit edged forward to play just behind Furlong. So did Peacock. But the menace still came from Coventry. Borrows skipped down the line and created another chance, which ended with the jolting challenge of Ndlovu. That was the end of the Zimbabwean's match. Atkinson opted for Williams to replace him.
Wise finally found his passing range and Gullit, but for once the Dutchman's final ball was inaccurate.
For all Chelsea's neat approach work, Ogrizovic's biggest problems had arisen from his own defenders blocking him at crosses. When Gullit did guide a cushioned header into Peacock's path, Ogrizovic saved at the near post.
There was still time for Williams to blast over as Coventry finished on top. No wonder their supporters were singing.
Ogrizovic; Pickering, Busst, Shaw, Borrows; Salako, Richardson, Telfer, Ndlovu (Williams 77min); Dublin, Whelan.
Hitchcock; Clarke, Sinclair (Johnson 75min), Lee; Petrescu, Gullit, Newton, Peacock, Phelan; Furlong, Spencer (Wise 60min).
Booked: Peacock (70min).
Weather: mild. Ground: well sanded. Referee: L R Dilkes (Mossley) Replaced by B Coddington (Huddersfield) after 61min.
DERBY 0 WOLVES 0.
HERE IS an interesting fact: Mark McGhee is ambitious. The Wolves manager has set his side a play-off target of 68 points. They notched one of them in this intermittently exciting but ultimately disappointing stalemate, but the tactics used showed that, on occasion, there is a limit even to McGhee's rampant ambitions.
He used the normally creative talent of Osborn in an unfamiliar defensive role, designed to shackle the storming midfield thrusts of Willems. It worked quite nicely, for apart from a few flashes, Willems was quiet.
Wolves were under pressure for long periods but Derby's only clear chance was snuffed out by a brilliant save from Stowell after Gabbiadini had pierced the defence. Wolves did not force a meaningful save out of Hoult until late on, when Ferguson was through only to be foiled by a brave, flailing block. Goodman had a late header cleared off the line.
"There wasn't much inspiration," said Jim Smith, the Derby manager. The man who came closest to providing some was the County striker Sturridge. His pace and trickery were a constant threat, but at times his final ball let him down, or Gabbiadini, the receiver, shot straight at the keeper.
The match was summed up by one second-half moment. Sturridge thrillingly left Emblen behind as he sped goalwards, but alas, a few strides later, he also left the ball behind on the bobbly pitch.
If inspiration was in short supply, at least Derby's Croatian defender, Stimac, provided the occasional touch of class. He was cool and detached amid all the helter-skelter, blood and thunder, as he put his foot calmly on the ball in the area during a Wolves attack, and played it safe.
One of the day's loudest cheers came when the referee, Mr Heilbron, rather entertainingly fell over in the 11th minute. Bless him.
Derby County: Hoult; Yates, Stimac, Rowett, C Powell; Carsley, Willems, Van der Laan, D Powell; Sturridge, Gabbiadini.
Wolverhampton Wanderers: Stowell; De Wolf, Young, Emblen; Thompson, Osborn, Ferguson, Atkins, Venus; Goodman, Bull.
Referee: T Heilbron (Durham).
WARRINGTON 10 LEEDS 30.
LEEDS, who have appeared in the last two Challenge Cup finals, scored six tries to ease into this season's last eight. It marked the end of a miserable season for Warrington, and their new management duo of Alex Murphy and John Dorahy, who could justifiably feel a little aggrieved at a couple of decisions which went against them at crucial times.
Warrington twice they clawed their way back into contention only to concede dubious tries which effectively knocked the heart out of their challenge.
Leeds established early superiority by exploiting an obvious defensive weakness down the home side's right flank. First, Innes was put over in the left-hand corner, followed two minutes later by his fellow centre Hall.
Warrington were unable to build up any kind of momentum, losing possession far too often. But they finally broke through when Shelford scored from Ford's neat grubber kick.
With Leeds having lost their influential stand-off Kemp, Warrington had every reason to feel more confident trailing by just four points as half-time approached. But they conceded a crucial score just before the break when Holroyd chipped ahead and Hall raced in to beat the cover. Although it appeared that the centre had failed to get downward pressure on the ball, the officials ruled otherwise.
Trailing 14-4, Warrington got off to the worst possible start after the interval when Howard powered over. But they hit back when Finau scored from a high kick by Ford to make it 18-10 with half an hour left. Then, however, they suffered from another questionable decision when Morley took out a Warrington defender for Holroyd to touch down. But what appeared a clear case of obstruction was not given and Leeds followed up with a converted try from Cummins to seal the game.
Warrington: L Penny; M Forster, C Rudd, S Finau, A Currier; I Harris, M Ford; M Jones (M Wainwright 52 min), J Hough, M Hilton (M Jones 69 min), P Cullen, P Sculthorpe, K Shelford.
Leeds: F Cummins; J Fallon, C Innes, C Hall, P Hassan (A Gibbons 54min); T Kemp (M Schultz 23min), G Holroyd; N Harmon, M Shaw, H Howard, G Mann, A Morley, M Forshaw.
Scorers: Warrington: Tries: Shelford, Finau. Con: Harris.
Leeds: Tries: Hall (2), Innes, Howard, Holroyd, Cummins. Cons: Holroyd (3).
Referee: C Morris (Huddersfield).
Jim Telfer, Scotland's coach and manager, is a legend as a man of steel and more.
MURRAYFIELD'S undersoil heating system, now well into its fourth heroic decade of struggle against Scotland's elements, was simmering gently on Thursday; the pitch was a vivid emerald rectangle when the rest of Britain was a quilt of white patchwork. Simmering, too, were the hopes of Scotland's rugby team and followers, after Saturday's passionate and daring victory over France.
And throughout the last seven days, wherever fond dreams of Grand Slam were dreamed, wherever even first flames of optimism began to flicker, there would be Jim Telfer, like some peripatetic fireman in dry grass, gruffly hosing down expectation with the icy water of his own realism: "People started talking about a Grand Slam in the press conference after the match. We haven't even played Wales yet."
He was dismayed, he said, that Scotland meandered tactically midway through the match, implicitly criticising the control of Rob Wainwright, causing a frisson between the two men at the post-match conference; he disliked the high-risk backhand flip passes with which some Scots had indulged themselves. "It was a circus out there: Rowan Shepherd's was okay because it was instinctive. Rob Wainwright's was just stupid. Not even Campese would have risked that." So Scotland celebrated riotously without him.
No wonder that one of Scotland's heroes called Telfer, with a mixture of warmth, awe and terror, "a dour bastard", with the terror rising in heart-rending entreaty to keep the comment unattributed. Legends of Telfer's bawling at players on the coaching pitch and the team room, with a technique described once as "withering, expletive-laden tirades", still grow.
Escape is not possible, for Telfer is around every corner. Three years ago, a few days after a Scottish defeat against New Zealand when they conceded 50 and hardly competed, Telfer was appointed director of rugby, in charge of the development and structure of the game throughout Scotland. He was 52, and gave up his headmastership of Hawick High School to become a professional administrator. He is now Scotland's team manager and chairman of selectors, and he acts as overall grey eminence to Scotland's coaches, Richie Dixon and David Johnston. So much of the credit for the revival must be his. Most other countries have four people to do the jobs that Telfer does alone. It is not so much that Telfer has been empire-building. It just seemed natural, when the jobs became vacant, that Telfer should fill them.
Yet even before 1993 he was long established as one of Scottish rugby's core figures a fierce flanker with 25 caps, a brave British Lion, Scotland's coach for many seasons, including the 1984 Grand Slam campaign. He was coach of the 1983 Lions when, crippled by poor management and selection and by injuries, had to take on New Zealand with Telfer's hands tied, and lost 4-0.
And even in the times when he held no official post, the sheer force of his character always seemed to underpin Scotland. Even when he was not officially the coach, he would be brought in before the big matches to fire and inspire.
Seated in his office at the palatial new Murrayfield, steel-grey hair, steely of expression, blue in blazer and heart, he reflected on his many roles: "I never realised it would be so demanding. It's not that I don't like the jobs, but it's too much. I never have a moment to sit down and think about what we are trying to do." Yet he could give no date for leaving any of his posts.
But how can we describe him? Dour? Frightening? Surely at heart he was delighted that Scotland had beaten France, surely his cold water was simply a ploy to bring the young Scots to earth: "It was a bit of psychology. I am longer in the tooth than the coaches and the players. They may find that if they get ahead of themselves, the harsh realities of life will hit them hard."
And there is always a method in Telfer's fierceness. Roy Laidlaw, that fine scrum-half, once sat in a hotel room before a match in Cardiff as Telfer spoke. Telfer told the team to imagine they were an SAS detachment preparing to raid Cardiff Arms Park. Laidlaw found the speech so vivid he could feel the black mask on his face.
Motivational speeches are frowned upon in high-tech dressing rooms these days, as some throwback to the era where to build-up properly was to brain yourself by butting the dressing-room door.
Telfer believes that there is still a place for a little winding-up of the inner man: "International rugby is a passionate environment. In Scotland we need to be more than the sum our parts, we need to build the will and desire. We sat down on the morning of the French match to build it." And who was the man responsible for the winding-up speech? "It fell to myself," said Telfer, straight-faced.
What of his reputation for outbursts? Again, Telfer is in control: "I like to have players at arm's length, physically as well as metaphorically. I have always liked to give orders since I was about 11 and I suppose I am a prisoner of my own nature."
Ultimately, he is selfless for Scotland, and his sympathy for players is complete. It is that sympathy which sustains his passion through his incredibly demanding working life: "At my age, I find it difficult to relate to young players except through rugby. I have nothing else in common with them. But if you get too wrapped up in what the new players are doing, you are driven along with them. If they are keen to learn from you on the technical side, it gives you tremendous satisfaction."
Richie Dixon has called him "the father of the modern game in Scotland". Telfer's protests can be ignored. There is no defence to the claim. Jim Telfer may be unique in all the world, but every rugby country aspiring to greatness should have one.
IRELAND have made five changes to their team to play France in Paris on Saturday. Most notable is the decision to drop both half-backs with Niall Hogan coming in at scrum-half and David Humphreys winning his first cap at fly-half.
The management believe that Humphreys, Oxford's catalyst in the last Varsity match, can play a similarly dynamic game to Gregor Townsend of Scotland. Scrum-half was a less straightforward selection. Pat Whelan, the Ireland manager, said of the deposed Christian Saverimutto: "Of all the players who lost out, he is probably the most unlucky."
Elsewhere, Niall Woods eases out Wallace on the wing, while Neil Francis is dropped, with Paddy Johns moving to lock and Victor Costello coming in at No8.
TIME ran out on the unfancied clubs in the English Cup, but it took rather too long to do so. At one stage Nottingham led Gloucester, Coventry led West Hartlepool and Saracens led Leicester, but all were overwhelmed in the final quarter.
SCOTLAND will be represented by districts rather than clubs in next season's European Cup. The clubs called a special general meeting of the SRU to put forward their case, but lost in a vote by a resounding 178 to 24.
MORE selfless was the response of Neil Jenkins, Wales's record points scorer, who has been unavailable since playing against Fiji in November.
Having returned at fly-half in Pontypridd's victory over Aberavon Jenkins said, "I don't expect to be recalled to the international side after this. Arwel Thomas is playing well."
ENGLAND'S leading clubs are to set up as English Professional Rugby Clubs Ltd. The First Division clubs resigned from the National Clubs Association to form an independent company a month ago, but feel a new company is necessary to incorporate the other higher divisions.
Representatives of the First and Second Division clubs are scheduled to meet on Tuesday to form the basis of a shareholders' agreement before returning to their clubs to have it ratified. Peter Wheeler, the chief executive of Leicester, said last night: "This is merely the professional son of the National Clubs Association. The RFU know all about it. They have encouraged us to be in one body to make future negotiations easier."
WHEN Cliff Brittle was proposed as chairman of the RFU executive, the executive officers held a meeting to the suitability of the new candidate. They concluded: "The executive wished to record their unanimous view that should Mr Brittle continue to stand and subsequently be elected they would have no on confidence in him assuming the chairmanship." According to Brittle, now that he is chairman, everyone is more serene.
NEWCASTLE 22 HARLEQUINS 44.
IF SIR JOHN HALL and Rob Andrew have their way, this will be the first of a series of significant occasions for rugby at Newcastle as part of a process that catapults them to the top stratum of the sport in Europe. Unfortunately, while, on this evidence, they are unquestionably making progress, they still have a long road to travel.
They played with such splendid spirit and energy, and were so beautifully marshalled by the artful Andrew, that they led this fifth-round Cup tie 16-10 as half-time approached, but, having had the advantage of the wind and slope, it was never going to be enough.
Indeed, the second half was something of a festival for O'Leary, on the Harlequins right wing. He scored a try just before the break to bring Harlequins within a point, then added four more.
It was a breathtaking display of finishing. With England's wing cupboard almost bare, he did himself no harm. His five tries were a record for any match in the competition and he ensured that Harlequins went home in excellent heart, even though they face an awkward trip to Leicester in the quarter-finals.
Harlequins were quick and committed. Some of their play was excellent, yet there were occasions in the first half when they blundered from defence. However, they managed to overcome their lack of height in the lineout, where Russell and Watson were pushed into service as locks, by supporting and lifting in such a way that even the monstrous Metcalfe could make no impression.
With their first-choice locks injured and Pears again afflicted by injury, it is likely that Harlequins will struggle to maintain their elevated position, but they do have the look of a club moving forward.
Newcastle's game hinged on Andrew, who has apparently lost none of the excellence of his kicking and generalship.
Fletcher was lively in the centre, they scrummaged competently and Walton and Arnold were powerful at close quarters. Yet Newcastle were nothing like physical enough defending in the centre or around the fringes, and McLennan was roasted down the wing by O'Leary.
This was the first competitive appearance for the club by Andrew, Popplewell and Walton, the Scotland flanker. Weir and Armstrong, of Scotland, and Tony Underwood and Ryan, of England, are still to become available.
Anyone who thinks that money and money alone create an outstanding club rugby team should think again. As well as blending in new players and new styles, Newcastle have to blend players who are earning big money with those still playing for the love of it; they have to put together a committee of the paid and the unpaid side by side; and they have to derive, in their incoming players, a passion for the club and for success that usually rises only in those who have grown up with the club.
It will be a fascinating exercise, and, even with all the money in Newcastle, it will be a fiendish task. Yet it is also vital that rugby has a powerful and loud voice in the North East and it was good to see Kingston Park well filled.
Dreams of early glory surfaced when Newcastle put in a splendid second quarter. They fell 10-0 behind after only seven minutes, but Staples made a hash of a bouncing ball from a kick ahead by Cramb and McLennan seized it to score. Andrew drilled over some beautiful kicks, including a penalty goal from 51 metres, to take Newcastle away to 16-10. It could have been more, but Arnold was tackled into touch-in-goal as he wound himself up for a scoring dive.
The rest of the match, though, belonged to O'Leary. His first try came when Kitchin attacked the blind side of a scrum and O'Leary left Belgian for dead to score down the right. Mensah interrupted O'Leary's parade to score when excellent handling in the backs and forwards made space. Then, O'Leary brought Harlequins home with three tries in the last seven minutes.
He scored when a pass from Kitchin dragged McLennan off his wing to leave the channel clear. He scored his fourth after a superb Harlequins counter-attack, which moved the ball left, then right, after Newcastle lost the ball from a tap penalty. Finally, to complete his hand, he again finished with electric precision down the right. Finally, Andrew. The possibility of a return to England colours has been raised and certainly, in an era when England have lost their focus, a player of Andrew's authority is not to be sneezed at.
You can do nothing but admire a man who, in a highly paid and therefore pressurised position, can maintain the running of a rugby club alongside an occasional media career and yet still come out looking fit, with his kicking boots firing and with his appetite for the struggle undiminished.
Newcastle
P Belgian; M Wilson, J Fletcher, R Cramb, I McLennan; R Andrew, G Robson; N Popplewell, M Frankland, P Vanzandvliet, F Mitchell, R Metcalfe, P Walton, R Arnold, S Cassidy.
Harlequins
J Staples; D O'Leary, W Greenwood, P Mensah, S Bromley; P Challinor, R Kitchin; J Lennard, S Mitchell, A Mullins, M Russell, M Watson, G Allison, C Sheasby, R Jenkins.
Scorers: Greenwood (T) & Challinor (C 5min) 0-7; Challinor (P 7min) 0-10; McLennan (T) & Andrew (C 12min) 7-10; Andrew (P 18min) 10-10; Andrew (P 20 min) 13-10; Andrew (P 22min) 16-10; O'Leary (T 40min) 16-15; O'Leary (T) & Challinor (C 52min) 16-22; Andrew (P 55min) 19-22; Mensah (T) & Challinor (C 56min) 19-29; Andrew (P 58min) 22-29; O'Leary (T 72min) 22-34; O'Leary (T 78min) 22-39; O'Leary (T 79min) 22-44.
Weather: chilly. Ground: good. Referee: E Morrison (Bristol).
WAKEFIELD 12 BATH 16.
BUT for a try by Butland in the last minute of this fifth-round Cup tie, Bath were on their way to a defeat every bit as earth-shattering as their loss at Waterloo four years ago.
Butland, a late replacement for Catt, was set up by Haag on the blind side after a piercing run by Callard, and saved Bath's blushes as he twisted out of two tackles to touch down and take Bath to victory after an error-riddled performance. They face a trip to Bristol in the quarter-finals.
Their main tormentor was Scully, the Yorkshire terrier who captured the imagination with his nuggety performances in England's World Cup Sevens triumph at Murrayfield three years ago. Scully, a former England A scrum-half, said before the match: "I want to show that I'm still around." Memo to selectors: Scully is still around and how.
From the start, Scully kept Wakefield's tail wagging. With Jackson, his captain and the record-breaking Second Division scorer last season, proving a useful accomplice, Wakefield snapped at Bath's heels for most of the first half.
No sooner had Jackson given Wakefield the lead with a penalty goal after two minutes, than one of a series of raking touch-finders from Scully pegged Bath back in their 22.
Bath, admittedly, were the more ring-rusty of the sides, and it was not until midway through the first half, with the scores tied at 6-6, that they slipped into gear.
It was a classic Bath try, and owed much to the razor-sharp reactions of Sleightholme, himself a former Wakefield man. Zipping on to loose ball from a midfield ruck, he whipped a pass to Clarke, who fed Guscott. When Guscott cut inside, Sleightholme and Clarke were in support and Guscott, with panther-like speed, doubled round to score.
Wakefield, trailing 11-6, were in no mood to bow the knee. Opting for a quick, rucking game, their pack gave Bath's star-studded forwards the hurry-up. With Petyt, at fly-half, finding his kicking boots to keep Wakefield in the territorial battle, they forced Bath into conceding another penalty 10 minutes from the break, and Jackson duly narrowed the deficit to two points.
After the interval, Wakefield were unrelenting and shook Bath rigid. Scully (who else?) typified their never-say-die approach with a magnificent grass-cutting cover tackle to foil Adebayo a couple of yards from the line with the second half in its infancy.
With the crowd howling and Wakefield camped in the Bath half for much of the third quarter, Bath indiscipline most of it for offside or killing the ball cost them dear again. With 15 minutes remaining, Jackson coolly kicked the penalty goal that put Wakefield
12-11 ahead. However, though Wakefield tackled manfully to repel a Bath side that made a barrel-load of errors, Butland's Houdini act allowed the holders to fight another day.
Wakefield: M Jackson (capt); P White, P Maynard, A Metcalfe, R Thompson; R Petyt, D Scully; G Baldwin, T Garnett, R Latham, S Croft, P Stewart, C Rushworth, J Griffiths, M Green.
Bath: J Callard; J Sleightholme, J Guscott, P de Glanville (capt), A Adebayo; R Butland, I Sanders; D Hilton, G Dawe, J Mallett, M Haag, N Redman, A Robinson, E Peters, B Clarke.
Scorers: Wakefield: Pens: Jackson (4).
Bath: Tries: Guscott, Butland. Pens: Callard (2).
Referee: A Rowden (Berkshire).
BEDFORD 0 BRISTOL 37.
SO IT'S A West Country quarter-final. Bristol v Bath at the Memorial Ground, Hull against Callard or Catt in a match sure to be a closer contest than this one-sided encounter against Division Two opposition.
Bracken, the Bristol scrum-half, scored the first two of his side's five tries, but there was not an England selector in sight. "I was criticised against South Africa for not varying my game," Bracken said. "Today I passed, kicked and ran and I can do that."
Regan, lurking on the wing, sold two dummies to nobody in particular before going to ground to set up Bracken's first in the third minute. Rollitt drove on from the ruck to make a big enough dent in the home defence for the rest of the forwards to help Bracken over.
Bedford were under pressure from the first scrum, and resorted to handling the ball back. Only a punch by Sharp, spotted by the touch judge, let them off the hook. No such reprieve in the 20th minute when Bracken darted over from a five-metre scrum.
Archer was next on the score sheet, diving under the posts from a straightforward tap-penalty move to put Bristol 27-0 ahead at the interval.
Both sides came out fighting in the second half, literally. If it had been a boxing match, Roberts, the Bedford prop, would have scored enough points to win the game. At least it put belated fire in Bedford bellies and they kept Bristol out for the next 26 minutes. That spell was broken when Regan, criticised for his throwing-in at Twickenham last week, connected perfectly with Archer in the middle of the lineout, then appeared smiling from a pile of muddy bodies to claim the touchdown as brave Bedford finally succumbed.
Then Breeze, who came on for Denney, went over in the corner as Bristol continued to spin the ball wide.
Arwel Thomas will be back for the next round and the whole of Bristol will be up for the Cup.
Bedford: M Cook (A Goldsmith 7-13min); G Witheat, B Whetstone (A Goldsmith 28min), M Oliver, P Allen; F Clough, R Stone; L Mansell, M Roach, C Roberts, M Upex, K Simpson, M Deans, M Wright, A Mortimore.
Bristol: P Hull; J Keyter, S Martin, K Maggs, M Denney (B Breeze 50min); M Tainton, K Bracken; A Sharp, M Regan, D Hinkins, P Adams, G Archer, M Corry (B Armstrong 53min), E Rollitt, I Dixon.
Scorers: Bristol: Tries: Bracken (2), Archer, Regan, Breeze. Cons: Tainton (3). Pens: Tainton (2).
Referee: A Spreadbury (RFU).
LEEDS 13 LONDON IRISH 29.
THE scoreline might not suggest it but London Irish breathlessly scrambled past Leeds, who had their lock Richard McCartney sent off after 64 minutes for illegal use of the boot. Corcoran won the match with two penalty goals in the next seven minutes before Henderson and Flood added late Irish tries.
In league terms, 27 places separated these clubs, with London Irish in the Second Division promotion zone, but ambitious Leeds have visions of narrowing the gap if they can avoid relegation this season.
With a former Wales fly-half, Colin Stephens, installed as development officer, these are exciting times for Leeds, especially with a move to the city's rugby league headquarters in the near future.
The high stakes of a quarter-final place were evident when Kellam, of London Irish, and Machell were both shown the yellow card after three minutes. Stephens, playing his first competitive match for Leeds, missed two angled penalty attempts before Corcoran landed one from 40 metres.
Even if Corcoran's boot was infallible, Irish hands were not. They frittered away several chances through forward passes and missed a golden opportunity when Corcoran and O'Shea had a bout of the fumbles with the line open.
Ominous gaps, for Leeds, appeared in midfield and Ewington scored a try for Irish that was based on energetic support play. Corcoran's conversion made it 10-0.
Hartley scuttled over for a solo try as Leeds revived and the home side were on level terms first at 10-10, then 13-13, with Stephens landing the conversion and matching Corcoran's penalty tally.
After McCartney's dismissal Corcoran guided the Irish ahead and brave Leeds had their spirit broken at last with another 13 points in the final nine minutes.
Leeds: S Langley; J Eagle, G Cassidy, W Hartley, C Thornton; C Stephens, R Morgan; M Whitcombe, S Gibbs, A Machell, R McCartney, C Radacanu, L Denham, P Curtis (I Dale 35min), P Griffin (capt).
London Irish: C O'Shea; M Corcoran, R Henderson, P Flood, J Bishop; O Cobbe, T Ewington; J Fitzpatrick, R Kellam, G Halpin (capt), C Hall, D Peters, P Irons, B Walsh, A Dougan.
Scorers: Leeds: Try: Hartley Con: Stephens Pens: Stephens (2)
London Irish: Tries: Ewington, Henderson, Flood Con: Corcoran Pens: Corcoran (4)
Referee: N Cousins (London).
Stephen Jones argues Jack Rowell is only partly to blame for England's failings but that he must quickly sort out the confusion
JACK ROWELL is the most impressive man I have met in rugby. No qualification. No temptation to change to the past tense, to say that he was the most impressive, a revision which others have made to take into account the bewilderingly poor performances of the England rugby team, one World Cup quarter-final apart, in the past year. Or a revision which people make, as in soccer, so that bad results equal bad coaching, no matter how inadequate the team. Of England and Jack Rowell, who is ruining who?
Rowell is still in credit, still a man to be honoured for all his achievements in sport and business, for the part he played in the rise of Bath, the best club the game has seen; for the endless refreshment of himself, his knowledge and philosophy, and of his team, the cunning he used to motivate individuals, the priceless ability to formulate a playing strategy for each game, and to impart it to his men. He is singular, difficult, impenetrable, but who is to say that those are weaknesses? And you can surely be drained neither of talent or intellect within 18 months, the time he has been England's manager-coach.
Yet under him, England are now almost white-faced with anxiety, lacking momentum and anything approaching spontaniety; and at the moment, struggling painfully through a Five Nations of mediocrity.
Rowell has been criticised more often and with more severity in the past six weeks than in the whole of his 17 years with Bath. He is infuriated by the experience. He has been attacked in newspaper columns; last week he was taken to task by his oldest ally, Stuart Barnes. Later in the week, he was also attacked, in diplomatic language but with real force, by Geoff Cooke, his predecessor as manager. Cooke, exasperated by insinuations by Rowell that the Cooke era is a millstone, rather than a foundation stone, decided to break cover to defend himself: "What irritates those of us involved during that time is everything we built up appears to be being frittered away."
Inevitably, rumours of unrest in the squad itself are surfacing. Rowell has never been an easy man to work alongside; he lacks Cooke's fiercely methodical nature, is happier with the cerebral side of his coaching duties than with the grind of management. I have no doubt that his lieutenants Les Cusworth and Mike Slemen, assistant coach and selector, and Colin Herridge, the press liason officer, often have to fight back exasperation at Rowell's unpredictability, his mercurial nature just as men of Bath did.
Will Carling and other players have put a brave face on their relationship with Rowell. Some people interpreted Carling's comments last week in praise of Cooke as an attack on Rowell but they were not. An international rugby squad traditionally keeps its counsel. Togetherness is everything. But privately, some players have spoken about feeling confused by Rowell's methods, have not taken the field confident in themselves that they fully appreciate and can carry out Rowell's grand strategy. To talk of unrest, or mutiny, is preposterous. But there is confusion. Just as England had set up Wales for the kill last week, they became stuck in a tactical fog. At least under Cooke, England knew exactly what they were on the field to do.
And there, in a nutshell, is the problem for Rowell, for the perception of his role in England's demise. It seems to me that Rowell is more a victim of circumstances, less that England are a victim of Rowell. Cooke and his lieutenants had the luxury of sending England out heavily pre-programmed, with Rob Andrew to lead them around the field by the nose, with the likes of Wade Dooley and Jeff Probyn to strong-arm the ball, slowly and carefully, in England's grasp. The dramatic law changes which arrived at the end of the Cooke era partly aimed by other nations to stop England no longer give England and Rowell, or any team, the luxury of planning the match to that extent. The ball is now recycled endlessly, your team has dramatically more choices to make. You either drum into the minds of your key players about 70 different plays for every eventuality, or you have to rely on their own instincts.
Instincts? I do not believe that England have them. The joy for Rowell at Bath was that, with so many hard-headed decision makers and natural footballers heaped together, he could hand them an outline and they would add glorious technicolour. England's current squad simply lack that natural instinct, are infinitely happier with a structured game. The result has been tactical fragmentation and severe lack of focus.
Rowell's comments, picked up by the sound boom in the tunnel last week, that he could not believe what he was seeing, were instructive. He is loyal to his men in public but privately staggered by the lack of footballing nous to add to basic abilities of his players.
He has definitely made mistakes, been unkind to people, become rather inconsistent in selection. His challenge now is to become more urbane about proceedings, more approachable to his men; to clear English heads of confusion and bridge the gap between the crying need of his team for a tactical puppeteer, and the demands of the modern game that rugby be played off the cuff.
SAM SMITH, the top seed from Essex, lost the final of the LTA satellite event in Sunderland 4-6 7-5 6-4 to Raluca Sandu, of Romania.
AFTER lasting for more than two decades, the world indoor record for 50 metres fell in Nevada when Donovan Bailey crossed the line in 5.56sec, 0.05 of a second faster than Manifred Kokot's mark set in 1973.
TELFORD TIGERS and Blackburn Hawks have locked horns over who owns Russ Plant.
Plant was registered with Blackburn, but left to play for Telford. Trouble flared when the Tigers arrived at Blackburn Arena for a game and Plant was barred from the ice for breaching his contract with the Hawks.
Therein lies the problem. Plant claims he never signed a contract with the Hawks and alleges he has not been paid by them since mid-December. Blackburn, though, are demanding a £7,000 transfer fee and are threatening legal action. The players' union, who have described the situation as "farcical", are also considering taking the case to court. Telford, without Plant, lost 9-7. They are demanding a replay.
A GRUELLING opening win over Croatia's top pair was enough to win Lisa Lomas and Andrea Holt, the English doubles partnership, a place at this year's Olympics.
Despite losing their second game in the Nantes qualifying tournament, the pair's opening victory proved sufficient to earn them seats on the plane to Atlanta.
PHILIP WALTON was disqualified from the Sun City pro-am after officials judged that a shot he played under penalty was placed in the wrong position during Friday's second round.
Walton played his amateur partner's ball on the fourth fairway. Realising his error, he hit another shot under a two-stroke penalty, but was disqualified for signing for an incorrect score.
With the final round to be played today, Mark McNulty leads the field on 209 after a third round of 73.
JULIO CESAR CHAVEZ and Oscar De La Hoya recorded convincing wins in Las Vegas in the run-up to their WBC light-welterweight title fight in June.
Chavez recorded a second-round stoppage of Scott Walker while De La Hoya took nine seconds less to dispose of Darryl Tyson.
THE disruption caused by Friday's IRA bomb forced the postponement of last night's bill at London Arena.The fights, including the clash between Dennis Andries and Terry Dunstan, will instead take place in Bethnal Green on Tuesday.
ENGLAND will decide tomorrow whether to replace the injured Robin Smith in their World Cup squad. At the moment it seems likely that they will persevere with the Hampshire batsman in the hope he makes a rapid recovery.
Smith suffered a groin strain as he dived for a catch during a warm-up game in Lahore on Wednesday. Since then, he has been undergoing constant treatment.
Ray Illingworth, the England manager, said: "We'll give it until Monday night and then make a decision. The general medical opinion is that he should be fit in another week to 10 days and, if that's the case, it is good enough as far as I'm concerned."
Should Smith not recover in time, he is likely to be replaced by Mark Ramprakash or Nasser Hussain.
Nicola Fairbrother, in Paris, on a setback in her attempt to qualify for the Olympics
GREAT BRITAIN still have no representative in women's lightweight judo at the Olympic Games. And I should know, it's my division.
I came to Paris with visions of a very different opening line for this article. A gold here would have guaranteed me a place at Atlanta. But it didn't happen. Instead I lost to Sweden's Perni Anderson in the second round, so I will have to go chasing points round Europe for a little longer yet.
To qualify for the Olympics in judo, you had to finish in the top eight at the world championships last October, and I came ninth. Failing that you had to be placed in the top five (for women) or top nine (for men), earning points at 11 A-class tournaments between December and May. The best three results count. I won the first two of these, so Paris would have been my third gold and my plane ticket to Georgia.
Losing is not a bad thing in itself. My coach, Don Werner, has always told me: "You learn more from losing than you ever do in winning", because you question yourself far more. You see the flaws in your preparation and the mistakes in your performance. Then you go about putting it right.
When you lose, you end up a little angry and more motivated, while winning can make you complacent. With only five months to the Games, this is the better attitude to hold.
So far, British fighters have qualified in just five divisions, the men's 71kg and 95kg and the women's 52kg, 61kg and 72kg not many when you consider that Britain won four judo medals in Barcelona. But by May another five fighters should have qualified. On Friday, Julian Davies went a long way towards making sure of the 65kg spot, winning a bronze to add to his earlier gold in Switzerland, and in most of the remaining divisions the points are slowly adding up.
The battle for selection in the 52kg division will be at the forefront of Sharon Rendle's mind as she goes into action today. She qualified the division last October with a bronze medal at the Tokyo world championships after replacing the injured Debbie Allen, who was then ranked British No1. Many people now regard Rendle as No1.
But there is very little between the two and Rendle will be trying desperately hard to widen the gap today. The 29-year-old Allen is just as keen to regain the prime position, together with her Olympic selection.
If a leader does not become apparent soon, the European Judo Union may resort to pulling names out of a hat. That is their chosen method of selection if there is a dead heat for the last positions. It could be the most important raffle of their lives.
MARIA MUTOLA delivered an early wake-up call to her Olympic middle-distance rivals when she smashed the venerable world indoor 1,000m record at the Birmingham international invitation meeting at the National Indoor Arena.
The Mozambique wonder, who is set to double up at 800m and 1500m in Atlanta, always looked likely to remove the admittedly soft-looking mark of 2min34.8sec set 18 years ago by Brigitte Kraus in this rarely run event. She did so with remorseless inevitability, and hardly tired as she powered home alone in 2min32.08sec.
Apart from that disqualification blip in Gothenburg, Mutola gives a fair impression of invincibility and her Atlanta intentions will give the hibernating Kelly Holmes food for thought. Some Britons were busy outlining their Olympic credentials, though, particularly Ashia Hansen, producing the finest indoor triple jump series ever witnessed in Britain, defeating a distinguished field headed by world champion, Inessa Kravets, and recording a Commonwealth and UK all-comers record of 14.58m.
Tony Jarrett surged late to account for another world champion, Allen Johnson, in the 60m hurdles (7.62sec to 7.66), while Steve Smith made a last-attempt clearance of 2.36m, the best in the world this year, to win the high jump.
For Sally Gunnell, though, there was just amused irritation. In the 400m, she finished third in a bruising encounter with her old hurdles duellists, Sandra Farmer-Patrick and Deon Hemmings, the winner in 53.16sec.
However, after the blanket finish, she and Farmer-Patrick were disqualified for breaking from their lanes too early. "That's a new one," Gunnell said, unimpressed at the verdict. In 16 years of competition, she had never before received a red card; more important, though, it was another illustration of her fitness to tackle bigger challenges.
Athlete Jonathan Edwards turns to blind physiotherapist Norman Anderson for inspiration. Ian Chadband reports
AMID the hurly burly of the spartan little weights room at Gateshead Stadium, they cut an unlikely couple: the skinny world athletics champion, and at his side, a diminutive, stocky powerlifter who cannot see a yard in front of him.
One has a serenity and steeliness of mind which belies his angelic exterior, the other a hearty demeanour which hides the fact that he suffers from depression. One is God-fearing, the other an atheist; one a vicar's son from Devon, the other old enough to be his dad and from a harsh working-class background in Newcastle where "if you had your own teeth, you were a cissy".
Jonathan Edwards and his physiotherapist Norman Anderson start from poles apart, yet have forged a unique bond on a professional and personal level which has become a key component in Edwards's bound towards Olympic glory.
What Anderson gives our friend in the north is what he has provided for successive generations of world-beaters there. "Some people say to me, ‘How can a blind bugger like you teach an Olympic athlete anything?"' he said. Well, just ask Brendan Foster, Steve Cram, Mike McLeod or Charlie Spedding, Olympic medallists all. "He touched your legs with his hands," said Foster, one of his first proteges, "but all the time he was really fixing your mind. An amazing man."
From the humblest club runners to world champions, the received wisdom is that this 58-year-old has always done more than heal; in turns, he has been friend, confidant, philosopher, psychologist and inspiration. Cram adores the bloke, Foster swears he only broke the world two-mile record because Anderson talked him into racing through the pain barrier at Crystal Palace.
Searching for the X factor which transformed him from good to great triple jumper in one season, Edwards points to technical advances made under coaches Peter Stanley and Carl Johnson, yet cites "the single biggest influence on my athletics" the man who makes him tick as Anderson.
"He's the one I talk to about my feelings, about my physical and mental state," Edwards said. "With all the new challenges since last June, we've worked them through together. He seems to understand what is going through my head. I know why Bren used to visit him even when his legs weren't hurting; he just had to hear what Norman had to say."
During their weights sessions, Anderson, registered blind since he was 12, when he first began to suffer macular dystrophy, a progressive wasting disease of the eyes, cannot see Edwards at all if he stands directly a few feet in front of him. He relies on his peripheral vision to catch the outline of movements and body language. For all that, Anderson seems to see inside his mind.
Yet this is no one-way exercise; what Anderson gets in return is a form of therapy. In 1984 he broke his back in a head-on car crash and though his physical recovery was so remarkable that he now powerlifts at world-class level, the mental scars have never healed, triggering severe bouts of depression that for three desperate years even rendered him unable to leave his house in Newcastle. He is okay at the moment but it always remains there, darkly under the surface. Apart from the therapist who treats him regularly and his family, he has never opened up to anyone the way he has to Edwards.
In the living room where Anderson would once just sit and cry, refusing visitors, the pair have talked for hours about the problem; athletics is rarely on the agenda. "Jonathan has a very sympathetic ear, but is not one of those who says what they think you want to hear. A good therapist doesn't just agree with you, he challenges you. It is a conscious help to me, but I've not to over-burden him or presume on our friendship because this is a big year for him. I'm not embarrassed about my illness but if I became incredibly depressed again, I would quit. I wouldn't want to load him with my problems." Ironically, for years before his accident, Anderson's athletes loaded their problems on him. "I took too much on my shoulders, perhaps cared for my patients more than was really healthy. My favourite saying to Crammy was ‘You do the running, let me do the worrying'. After breaking down with depression I thought ‘Perhaps I shouldn't have said that'. I certainly don't say it to Jonathan."
His traumas effectively ended Anderson's physio business. Instead, after the accident, he resumed powerlifting at the Gateshead Stadium gym for a psychological boost. There he met Edwards in 1990 and the rapport developed. Since last year, they have worked three or more times a week together on what Anderson calls his unpaid "special project".
Their workplace is populated by a tough crew of lifters who do not stand on ceremony. "I'm a canny jumper too, y'know," one regular once told Edwards. "Is that right?" said the new boy politely. "Aye, over the walls to get away from the coppers." He wasn't joking, either. They affectionately take the mick out of their celebrity one calls him "sparrow legs" but are fiercely protective towards him.
This room is the training ground for all the disciplines of competition, physical and mental. When Edwards makes that final lift, Anderson convinces him it is his last do-or-die jump in Atlanta. When Edwards takes his eye off the ball in his pressurised new world, Anderson helps maintain his focus. "Norman gets rid of what he calls the rat in my head."
They love Anderson at Gateshead; his non-stop chatter, his philosophical one-liners, his terrible jokes. It is hard to imagine that such a popular, worldly-wise figure who can fix minds has had such traumas with his own. He chuckles at the irony that he can actually help Edwards, someone who he sees as far more mentally sturdy than himself. "I know it's a paradox, but there it is," he shrugged.
"British athletics owes Norman a massive debt," Foster said. "While giving athletes this priceless confidence, he has stayed in the background, never asking nor expecting anything in return." It is the same with Edwards. "If Jonathan were to win in Atlanta," Anderson said, "it would give me the most genuine pleasure you can feel, not a selfish pleasure but the same inner glow as if my two sons achieved something." For once, though, the remarkable man who has never stopped caring finds himself getting back from a remarkable champion as much as he has always given.
Graham Otway elicits the views of three master tacticians who changed the one -day game: Dexter, Bond and Reeve
ONE-DAY cricket has evolved almost beyond recognition since the Gillette Cup was first introduced in England in 1963. Crowd-pleasing gimmicks such as coloured clothing, white balls and fielding circles were still nearly 20 years away. Tactics, too, have changed.
Ted Dexter
Captain of Sussex when they won the first Gillette Cup in 1963 and again in 1964:
"My basic tactics were really quite simple and I am not convinced they wouldn't stand up today. I told my bowlers to bowl a fuller length and straight any ball that wasn't going to hit the stumps was a bad ball.
"The same could be said of a short ball which was likely to pass over the top of the stumps. The only way that might get a batsman out was with an edge to the wicketkeeper and there are too many scoring opportunities from nudges through the area of the slips.
"With the bowlers aiming at the stumps it was my job to set the field according to the batsman. But I felt if you bowled the ball in the same place all the time it was the best way to stop batsmen scoring because you could set a field accordingly.
"In the first year the matches lasted 65 overs a side and players had time to build an innings so we never really considered changing our normal batting order. It's different nowadays because you have 40, 55 and 60-over games, all of which require batsmen to learn to alter the pace of their innings."
Jack Bond
Captain of Lancashire when they won the inaugural Sunday League in 1969. He repeated the feat in 1970 and won three successive Gillette Cups in 1970, 1971 and 1972:
"More than anything I worked on our fitness and we became one of the best fielding sides in the country, if not the world.
"In the early days, players only had to be fit four times a year to be able to compete in the Gillette Cup. But when the Sunday League started they had to be fit once a week.
"In pre-season training we brought in Jack Crompton, the Manchester United goalkeeper, to help us and all the squad got into better shape. Even Jack Simmons eventually became fitter, though because we didn't have special diets we didn't have to ask him to cut down on his legendary eating.
"There was a benefit beyond the one-day games. As they got fitter our batsmen found it easier to play longer innings and the bowlers to bowl longer spells in the championship. Tactically I think we depended more on spin than most of the other sides. We had Simmons and David Hughes and I asked them to bowl quicker and flatter than they did in three-day games.
"I suppose we still had traditional field settings but we developed the theme of bowling a much fuller length at the end of an innings, as bowlers still do today."
Dermot Reeve
Captain of Warwickshire since 1993, winning the NatWest Trophy (1993 and 1995) the Benson and Hedges Cup (1994) and the Sunday League (1994).
"The key to success is having depth in batting and there the allrounders are important. Because they have a second string they will not be so afraid of failure.
"We like to send in one or two high up the order, like Neil Smith to open, or Dougie Brown at four, to give it a go and not worry about getting out. Also, our batsmen are encouraged to practise all the shots in the book. Playing to the strengths of four or five limited shots is okay to build an impressive career and average in county cricket, but in one-day cricket batsmen have got to be able to find the gaps in the field wherever they are.
"In the nets batsmen don't just go in for a knock, they are given specific tasks told to play 50 lofted drives followed by 50 reverse sweeps, just like a golfer might go out and hit 500 balls with one club.
‘We study the opposition closely before every game and have team discussions at every interval so we can monitor our progress. One thing the bowlers are told is to try to cut down wides and no-balls. They give the opposition extra overs. When Glamorgan won the Sunday League they conceded fewer extras than anyone that's the sort of detail we look at."
Spinners could hold the key. Ray Illingworth assesses the most dangerous purveyors of the turning art. Interview by Graham Otway
AS A PLAYER, Ray Illingworth never toured India or Pakistan, but he learned enough from his time there as a TV commentator during the 1987 World Cup to know that spinners are going to be crucial in the competition.
In a 32-year career which included 61 Test caps, the England manager's canny off-spin earned him 2,072 wickets. But as he watched the snow fall at his Pudsey home while resting after the tour to South Africa there was just a hint of jealousy as he considered the ideal conditions that will be presented to his modern counterparts in the weeks ahead.
"It is good out there for slow bowlers," Illingworth said. "On the hard outfields the ball gets roughed up very quickly, and in that climate the fingers are always warm. It not always easy to hold the ball on a cold day in England.
"Not all the wickets will turn a lot, but the ball tends to grip anyway and hold up on the pitch, which makes it harder for batsmen to go through with their shots. There is always going to be a little bit of help for the spinner."
Illingworth tips South Africa's spin contortionist, Paul Adams, as the surprise package in the World Cup. Initial astonishment at his unique action turned to horror as Adams, playing for South Africa A in only his third first-class game, sent England plunging to defeat in the fixture immediately before the first Test in Pretoria.
Now that Adams has coped almost disdainfully with his rocket-like elevation into two Tests and the one-day series against England, Illingworth has joined a fan club that has millions of members in South Africa.
"After all, he is totally unkown to everyone apart from us," said Illingworth, when asked to run his rule over the spinners gathering on the sub-continent. "None of the other teams will have seen him in action before and they will only see him once unless they happen to meet South Africa again in the final.‘'
"He's become a bit like Shane Warne; he doesn't bowl that many bad balls that you can get after him, and the South Africans have not over-exposed him. Graeme Hick thumped him for a four over mid-wicket in one game and I was surprised that he was then immediately taken off. We do not know how he will react when batsmen have a go but he has handled everything well so far."
Illingworth has also backtracked on his original prediction that Adams "wouldn't last". While Warne has a low arm at the point of delivery, necessitating a big roll of the wrists, Adams keeps his almost vertical. "It's a funny action and is still open to debate," Illingworth said. "It's not so much his shoulder that could cause problems. To get his arm into a high position he puts all the strain on his back, so perhaps that will go."
It will be Adams's presence in the World Cup along with the off-spinner Pat Symcox that, according to Illingworth, will make the South Africans such strong contenders over the coming weeks.
"They no longer just have good fast bowlers like Donald, De Villiers and Pollock. Symcox is a good off-spinner, experienced and with a good loop, and he and Adams give the South Africans the balance to cope with any conditions. They also have batsmen like Cronje and Kallis who can bowl their medium pace in one-day cricket. If they want to play both spinners, they can afford to leave out one of their quicker bowlers and still have a balanced and varied attack."
With that prognosis it would seem only natural for Australia, who lifted the trophy in Calcutta in 1987, to be ranked as highly as the South Africans in Illingworth's book, given the presence of Warne.
However, the Australians have left out their off-spinner Tim May, who works so well in tandem with Warne, and Illingworth has his doubts: "I rate Warne highly. He's hard to get away and obviously has a lot more experience than Adams: his record speaks for itself. But the Australians will be relying mainly on pace, and overall the South Africans have a much stronger fast-bowling attack."
Of the three home sides, Sri Lanka are the form horses, having recently qualified for the World Series Cup finals in Australia ahead of the West Indies, though there has been much controversy surrounding the no-balling for throwing of Muttiah Muralitharan, the off-spinner.
Pakistan's leg-spinner, Mushtaq Ahmed, was the second highest wicket-taker in county cricket last summer, with 95 victims for Somerset. "He's a much-improved bowler, but with the Pakistan team you never know how they are going to perform," Illingworth said. "On their day, they can be brilliant, and they tend to play well at home."
The only bowler to take more wickets than Mushtaq in England last summer was Anil Kumble. Before England's tour of India in the winter of 1992 he was dismissed as ineffective by the tourists' coach at the time, Keith Fletcher, who claimed he never turned a ball. But England were whitewashed in the Test series, with the leg-spinner claiming 21 scalps. Last season he had an astonishing strike-rate for Northamptonshire, taking 105 wickets in only 17 first-class games.
"The Indian spinners will be a danger because, with the slow left-armer Venkat Raju, they have lots of variety. But Kumble is the outstanding bowler. He mainly bowls top-spinners and is very economical in any form of cricket. Batsmen find him very hard to get away because the ball fizzes on to them from just short of a length and tends to keep low."
Of the rest, Illingworth has been impressed by Zimbabwe's Paul Strang, who took four wickets when England suffered a shock World Series Cup defeat in Sydney 14 months ago. He also believes New Zealand's Dipak Patel will offer something different if he takes the new ball.
"We know about Dipak from his time with Worcestershire. He should not pose a great threat unless he bowls at the start. Opening batsmen are not as comfortable playing against spin right from the word go."
With the withdrawal, through illness, of Carl Hooper likely to weaken the West Indies, Illingworth had just one task left: to look at England's two spinners, his namesake Richard Illingworth, of Worcestershire, and Warwickshire's Neil Smith.
Neither made outstanding contributions in England's 6-1 series defeat at the hands of the South Africans, but the manager remains unperturbed: "Illingworth had a side strain at the start of the series and then found it difficult to find his one-day rhythm after playing in the Tests. But he was starting to get it right at the end.
"And, because of other injuries, we were not able to to give Smith more than two games when he needed the experience, but at least he has bowled in a lot of big one-day games for Warwickshire."
Besieged by politics, undermined by injury and decline, Pakistan seem ill -equipped to retain the trophy. Peter Roebuck disagrees
PAKISTAN'S recent trip to Australia started with pathetic defeat in Brisbane and ended with compelling victory in Sydney. Somewhere in between lies their true merit. Wasim Akram's team is brilliant and haphazard, gifted and flawed, irritating and entertaining, mighty and petty; it is reliable only in its inconstency. Sometimes the players soar, sometimes they fall in a querulous heap. They cannot be favoured and they cannot be forgotten.
Akram's men will need to be at their best if they are to retain the cup they won four years ago with a typically wayward performance, an early bath avoided only by a sudden storm in the usually arid city of Adelaide and then, somehow, a tumultuous finale in Melbourne as their shimmering individuals overcame England's stout resistance.
Between them, Mushtaq's googly, Akram's sizzling spell and a thumping contribution from Inzamam secured the spoils whereupon, to a man, the Pakistanis lay upon the turf and gave thanks to their God. They reach beyond our notions of straight backs.
Pakistan's strengths are obvious. Akram and Waqar use the new ball, or even the old ball, with deadly effect. Akram has been captain ever since Ramiz fell in the wake of defeat by Sri Lanka Akram did not bowl in the vital innings or play in the deciding match, leaving those of machiavellian persuasion to draw their own conclusions. He is revelling in his position and believes it to be his destiny to hold the cup aloft. Those seeking to deny him must counter his superb bowling, audacious batting and fierce determination.
Waqar was a shadow of his former self in Australia but cannot be discounted. Aggression bursts through his shirt and hurls itself at batsmen. Convinced he can recover the greatness lost by the twanging of his back, he will be either lethal or a liability. For him, it will be Lahore or bust.
Mushtaq was loved in Australia and bowled with his heart on his sleeve, trying and trying again and dancing a jig as at last the wickets began to fall. Restored after a period in the twilight reserved for those who backed the wrong candidate, he bowled magnificently and was Warne's superior. Not that Warne is bowling quite so well these days. To add Aqib Javed, still to recover from the misfortune of a spoilt childhood, Mohammad Akram, tall and swift, and Saqlain, an innocent off-spinner with a mystery ball, is to form a varied attack.
Batting is less secure. Sohail is a forthright left-hander and his opening partner, Nawar, has only just returned to cricket after illness prevented him touring Australia. Ijaz, a close friend of Malik's and apparently lost for ever, hits hard off the back foot and although Javed has been among the runs in domestic cricket, he is unlikely to collar the bowling. Only Inzamam seeks to dominate. And Pakistan are inclined to leave too much to him.
Rashid Latif has kept wicket for Pakistan since Moin Khan was dumped by the selectors after dropping too many sitters. Some deplorable things have happened in the name of Pakistan cricket these last two years. Latif, Basit Ali, Waqar and maybe Mushtaq and Sohail impress as characters upon whom Pakistan's fervent supporters can depend. Whether their faction is in charge behind the scenes is another matter.
Pakistan's fielding is lamentable and their running between wickets is desultory. Nor can their mood be gauged. Despite all the hullabaloo, they improved considerably in Australia. They were too strong for New Zealand, and these performances prove there is potential and spirit still within the team.
Everything will depend upon the moral and the unity of the Pakistanis as they begin their campaign in front of their dedicated and sometimes betrayed supporters.
Considering their flaws and their patchy form, it is surprising that Pakistan are regarded as serious contenders. But there is a wildness within, a willingness to reach for that something extra, a notion of the extreme that separate them from those obsessed by averages and percentages.
No team has won the World Cup at home. Pakistan's recent record bestows upon them the luxury of being dismissed as outsiders. No one, though, will fancy playing them in a semi-final. Akram's team could fail entirely or succeed gloriously. They weren't supposed to win the final Test in Sydney, or in the final at Melbourne four years ago.
They answer to an uncommon deity. There is a certain magic about them, so that something special seems forever possible, or something terrible.
Nine hundred million home supporters are pinning their hopes of victory on the genius of Sachin Tendulkar.
GENIUS has been reluctant to declare itself for this World Cup. They feared Brian Lara would not be there and Shane Warne feared even worse for himself should he venture unguarded into Sri Lanka or Pakistan. As many questions surround world cricket's other genuine great. Nine hundred million people want India to win their home World Cup and about the same number believe that possible only if Sachin Tendulkar finds form.
Tendulkar, now 22, has been India's diamond for seven years, maybe more. Perhaps since he shared in a partnership of 664 at school with his colleague Vinod Kambli; certainly since the hundred on his first-class debut for Bombay, and since he first played for his country a year later. But this tournament will shine the spotlight on him as never before.
Indian cricket is built heavily around him commercially and strategically but his batting this winter has fluctuated. At best his strokeplay will mix prescient placement with brutal timing and his bowling may decide a match or two. At worst, Tendulkar will be put too much at risk as an opener and India would struggle to catch up from his early departure.
That is not so likely. As a batting side they are as well equipped as any in the tournament, Jadeja having blossomed and Tendulkar being supported by the likes of Azharuddin, Kambli, Sidhu and Manjrekar. In Kumble they have a studious limited-overs spinner and in Srinath one who ought to make good use of the new ball as well as the one that is approaching 50 overs old. Prabakhar still has the resource to turn an innings with bat or ball, though India want still for a cricketer as protean as Kapil Dev. "The search for the number six all-rounder is still on," says Azharuddin, the captain. "We're badly lacking in good all-rounders."
Comparisons with the world champion team of 1983 shadow India and they go beyond the talismanic Kapil Dev. Their strength then, emerging from 66-1 outsiders to beat the dominant West Indies in the final at Lord's, was built around the all-round talents of Amaranath and Binny. And Srikkanth was as fine a man to take first strike in a one-day innings as there has ever been.
The impact of Kapil Dev lifting the world championship was immense for cricket at home. The one-day game took off explosively in India and though their sides have progressed in the shorter game since, the distance between the best and the worst in the world over 50 overs has slimmed too. Before they came to England for the third World Cup 13 years ago, India had won only one such fixture. And after the title, the inevitable hangover: England defeated them in the semi-finals in their home tournament four years later to widespread popular discontent and their Australasian World Cup was disappointing.
In the nineties, however, India have built a fine record in one-day cricket at home: unbeaten in limited-overs series for five years and holders of the Asia Cup, the annual Sharjah tournament in which the sub-continent takes considerable pride, particularly as Pakistan had so dominated it.
When India won the 1993 Hero Cup, repeating their World Cup victory over the West Indies of a decade earlier, expectation of another world title towered. But a mere 3-2 series win against New Zealand this winter has tempered optimism a little. Their support, always vivacious, can be a mixed blessing. "The pressure on the home team to perform well will prove advantageous," insisted the captain.
Azharuddin's main concerns surround his team's fielding, a key aspect of the one-day game in which Africa has stolen a march on the sub-continent. The crowds on the sub-continent lauded the Zimbabweans of 1987 for their safe hands and strong arms and feted Jonty Rhodes at the Hero Cup. The theory goes that the dry and stony nursery surfaces on which Indians learn their game discourage the spectacular dive, and their fielding suffers from there upwards.
Famously, India's cities, even parts of her slums, are a patchwork of such surfaces. Cricket is played anyway, sometimes everywhere, and in few countries is the national game so short on competition from another sport. Indian cricket's favourite son, however, learned his cricket in gentler territory than most. Tendulkar, later a mould-breaker at Yorkshire, was a child of the professional classes, the son of an academic and, from early in his career, the protege of that other Bombay artist, Sunil Gavaskar.
Tendulkar and Gavaskar have been compared frequently but are children of a different India and an altered game. In just over a decade, one-day cricket has consumed India, financed the game and made millionaires of its players. At the same time the country has changed, discarding many of its protectionist instincts and cautiously embracing the multi-national marketplace. Tendulkar has profited more than anyone and now his fortunes are tied up with the business of this World Cup as a whole.
Not simply do Tendulkar's soft features peer out from more billboards, more magazines than any of his peers, but last year he made himself the wealthiest cricketer in the world. The endorsement deal he signed with US-based WorldTel will earn him an estimated $7.5m over the next five years; it was the same organisation which bought the global television rights for the tournament for a similar sum.
That investment has been fraught and a dispute with the Indian state television company was resolved only on Wednesday. The stakes in India are always highest because no event is so popular, no market so big. There, the World Cup is as large as the Olympics, the expectation of home victory immense. From Tendulkar, they expect the pay-off.
PLAYERS TO WATCH
Paul Adams
Probably the best thing to happen to the grand old game since the invention of wood. How easy it would have been for him to be a mere batsman. Where was it written that he might be a spinner, or that he could be this good? For one so unorthodox, the accuracy is as remarkable as the guile, yet not half as remarkable as the maturity.
Aravinda de Silva
At the end of a torrid tour of Australia, he shed the customary guise of Good Loser. A clue, perhaps, to his country's arrival as an international force? For all the furore over chucking and ball-tampering, Sri Lanka still ran off with the 1995 form-improvement prize; if de Silva's liquid bat was erratic, he remains the star pupil.
Richie Richardson
Nobody, not even Lara, will encounter such ceaseless pressure. Regarded as a weak, unimaginative captain whose days are numbered, even that once sonorous bat has sounded tinny since the stress began to sap his health and zest. On his ability to unite those internal critics hangs the destiny of a dynasty.
Roger Twose
Imagine the angst should he and Dipak Patel plot victory over the old country on Wednesday. Frill-free displays as opener and seamer have already made the Devonian a fixture in a New Zealand side with a habit of spending World Cups hoodwinking their superiors. Not the least of his virtues is that Edgbaston superiority complex.
Jack Russell
Captaincy has been the making of him, externalising the introvert. Disparaged for too long, his batting is an extension of self: spirited, creative, eccentric, effective. As deft as any against spin, his keeping, moreover, is an asset England can ill-afford to ignore. Entrusting him with the gloves might even allow the real Alec Stewart to stand up.
Azharuddin
Now the longest-serving of all international captains, this stroke-player of distinctly modest stock started out as a bank clerk, needing a whip-round from three Hyderabad traders to buy the scooter that took him to nets. If grace and elegance are seldom part of the biff-bang scene, meet the man who is the glorious exception.
Neil Fairbrother is England's undisputed one-day champion. Rob Steen says he deserves much more
ANY MARTIANS on a recce in India over the next fortnight will be forgiven a sense of confusion. How, they might reasonably wonder, can a team's likeliest match-winner go into battle knowing that, no matter what wonders he performs, he will be jettisoned by June? But then no career personifies the schizophrenic existence of the late-20th-century cricketer quite so vividly as that of Neil Fairbrother.
Mr Hyde is the Fairbrother with 10 Test caps spanning six years, an intermittent, inglorious affair encompassing a solitary fifty and nine scores in single digits. In 51 one-day internationals, conversely, Dr Jekyll's average borders on 40, a terrain occupied only by the elite. While Lara may be about to make a few innocent bowlers pay for his recent miseries, Fairbrother's disdain for orthodoxy will get up just as many noses. Probably more.
The character explains the enigma. David Hughes, the former Lancashire captain, believes Fairbrother inherited his volatility and aggression from his mother. "He's intense," avers David Lloyd, the Lancashire coach, the tone a blend of mystification and awe. "Tenacious, very busy, always on a flippin' high, eyeballs always spinning round his head."
Few activities tickle an Englishman's fancy as much as pigeon-holing, and Fairbrother was consigned to his hole long ago. Flighty yet flinty left-hander, long on talent, short on concentration, ingenious with open face and slice, but stock the slips and watch virtue turn to vice. His canvases, none the less, are certainly more worthy of a spot at the Tate than any of Damien Hirst's dubious creations. An effervescent fusion of instinct and intent, daring and imagination, clarity of thought and speed of execution. Here, moreover, is infectiousness, the capacity to raise spirits as well as tempo.
Those attributes were in ample evidence during the last World Cup final, a lone, nerveless 62 almost denying Imran Khan his cancer hospital. The circumstances were not dissimilar at the Wanderers last month. Donald and Pollock were snarling, the ball swinging, the crowd baying. As usual, HMS England was sinking. Send for the elf with the oversized bat and the over-roomy helmet.
Lips pursed, chin jutting, brain whirring, Fairbrother was in his element. Full of nerve and verve, a master of angle and touch. One moment he was threading a cut through a five-yard gap between backward point and short third man, the next sliding head-long to complete a second that was barely a first. Neither was that the end of his derring-do. When Snell fired a shell towards cover, he misjudged the trajectory, staggered backwards yet still contrived to pull the blurring projectile down in his right, ie wrong, hand.
Call him a one-day specialist, though, and, such is the snobbery of his trade, he feels he is being disparaged. The typecasting, not unnaturally, annoys and frustrates. He is a professional cricketer, end of story. So he happens to have more good days with one skill than another. So what? In all, the lions have adorned his chest on 61 occasions nearly twice as many as Washbrook. His 366 against Surrey in 1990 makes him joint 11th on the first page of the Wisden records section ahead of Grace, Hobbs and Hutton, and both Richardses. Not bad for an alleged under-achiever.
At the same time, he has suffered more than most from the whims of superiors with as much grasp of human psychology as Freud's right knee. There he was in the Texaco Trophy at Lord's in 1991, scuttling to a match-winning century, driving Marshall, Ambrose and Walsh completely potty. Now, surely, was the moment for an extended audition as a "proper" cricketer, to test his mettle while the heady taste of self-affirmation was still fresh. Come the first Test, he made way for the fading Lamb. As strategy, short-term or long, it was not so much blind as dumb.
Fairbrother's Test debut against Pakistan in 1987 was similarly marred. Out he marched into the Manchester murk, 20 minutes before stumps, a time when every good nightwatchman deserves favour. Back he trudged five balls later, leg-before for nought, whereupon scores of three, one and one saw him shelved. Bone-headedness on the bridge never did do much for the confidence of the crew.
Lloyd prefers to dwell on the attributes that have enabled Fairbrother to claim centre stage by an alternative route: "He's very brainy. He improvises, manoeuvres the strike, plays in areas that are hard to protect. He kick-starts the innings, takes the game away from the opposition, annoys the hell out of them. And he's a flamin' winner."
All of which makes rather a mockery of England's insistence on sending him in at No6. As manager of the England Under-19s, Lloyd may be destined for higher things, hence the cloak of diplomacy: "At Lancashire, Neil's best position is probably four. That way, he can come in behind a solid platform but still have plenty of overs at his disposal."
Fairbrother's occasional wilfulness may jar with Lloyd the coach, but Lloyd the fan would pay to watch him, any time, any place: "It's unfortunate he's got this tag as a one-day player. If they'd put in a nightwatchman on his Test debut, it could have been the making of him. He keeps his counsel about that, and at 32, would regard a recall now as a bonus. But he's played some wonderful, sustained knocks for us in the championship. There was a double hundred against Middlesex on a supposedly unfit pitch that cost us 25 points. Is that a temperament unsuited to Test cricket?"
The question, surely, is whether Test cricket, with its emphasis on self-denial at the expense of self-expression, suits Fairbrother. If those eyeballs are spinning in the Lahore finalnext month, who cares?
World Cup Squads
AUSTRALIA
M A Taylor (capt), I A Healy (vice-capt, wkt), M G Bevan, D W Fleming, S G Law, S Lee, C J McDermott, G D McGrath, R T Ponting, P R Reiffel, M J Slater, S K Warne, M E Waugh, S R Waugh.
ENGLAND
M Atherton (Lancs, capt), A J Stewart (Surrey, vice-capt), D G Cork, P J DeFreitas (both Derbys), N H Fairbrother (Lancs), D Gough (Yorks), G A Hick, R K Illingworth (both Worcs), P J Martin (Lancs), R C Russell (Gloucs, wkt), N M K Smith (Warwicks), R A Smith (Hants), G P Thorpe (Surrey), C White (Yorks).
HOLLAND
S W Lubbers (capt), R H Scholte (vice-captain, wkt), F Aponso, P-J Bakker, P E Cantrell, N E Clarke, E Gouka, F Jansen, T B M De Leede, R P Lefebvre, K J van Noortwijk, R F van Oosterom, M Schewe, B Zuiderent.
INDIA
M Azharuddin (capt), S A Ankola, A D Jadeja, V G Kambli, A R Kapoor, A Kumble, S V Manjrekar, N R Mongia (wkt), M Prabhakar, B K V Prasad, S L V Raju, N S Sidhu, J Srinath, S R Tendulkar.
KENYA
M O Odumbe (capt), R Ali, D Dukanwala, Tariq Iqbal (wkt), A Karim, H Modi, E Odumbe, T Odoyo, L Onyango, K Otieno, M Owiti, B Patel, D Tikolo, S Tikolo.
NEW ZEALAND
L K Germon (capt, wkt), N J Astle, C L Cairns, S P Fleming, R A Kennedy, G R Larsen, D K Morrison, D J Nash, A C Parore, D N Patel, C J Spearman, S A Thomson, R G Twose, C Z Harris.
PAKISTAN
Wasim Akram (capt), Aamir Sohail, Aquib Javed, Ata-ur-Rehman, Ijaz Ahmed, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Javed Miandad, Mushtaq Ahmed, Ramiz Raja, Rashid Latif (wkt), Saeed Anwar, Salim Malik, Saqlain Mushtaq, Waqar Younis.
SOUTH AFRICA
H Cronje (capt), C R Matthews (vice-capt), P R Adams, D J Cullinan, F De Villiers, A A Donald, A C Hudson, J H Kallis, G Kirsten, B M McMillan, S J Palframan (wkt), S M Pollock, J N Rhodes, P L Symcox.
SRI LANKA
A S Ranatunga (capt), P A De Silva (vice-capt), M S Atapattu, U Chandana, H D P K Dharmasena, A P Gurusinha, S T Jayasuriya, R S Kaluwitherana (wkt), R S Mahanama, M Muralitharan, R Pushpakumara, H P Tillekeratne, C Vaas, G P Wickremasinghe.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Sultan Zarawani (capt), Arshad Laiq, S Azhar Saeed, S Dukanwala, Imtiaz Abbasi (wkt), Mazhar Hussain, V Mehra, Mohammad Aslam, Mohammad Ishaq, G Mylvaganam, Saeed Al Saffar, Salim Raza, J A Samarasekara, Shahzad Altaf.
WEST INDIES
R B Richardson (capt), J C Adams, C E L Ambrose, K L T Arthurton, I R Bishop, C O Browne, S L Campbell, S Chanderpaul, C E Cuffy, O D Gibson, R A Harper, R I C Holder, B C Lara, C A Walsh.
ZIMBABWE
A Flower (capt, wkt), E A Brandes, A D R Campbell, S G Davies, C Evans, G W Flower, C Lock, S G Peall, H R Olonga, H H Streak, B Strang, P A Strang, A C Waller, G J Whittall.
50 overs a side to be bowled inside three and a half hours.
One 45-minute interval, reduced in rain-affected matches.
Fielding restrictions in place for first 15 overs: only two men outside 30-yard circle. Must be two stationary fielders within 15 yards of the bat. Only five men allowed on leg side throughout. Must be five men outside circle for last 35 overs.
A team failing to bowl 50 overs in the allotted time will have their innings cut back, eg, if England bowl only 47 overs by cut-off time, the innings will continue for the full 50 overs but England lose three off their allotment when they bat.
Third umpire to be available to adjudicate on boundary calls, run-outs, hit wicket and stumpings, and to advise the on-field umpires by two-way radio of rule violations.
Each side must face at least 25 overs for the game to be declared official.
A new match can start on a reserve day but play cannot be carried over.
New formula for interrupted matches after the fiasco in Australia during the last tournament. A table, drawn up using a database of one-day matches, will be used to calculate new targets, eg, side A score 188 from 50 overs and side B have their innings reduced to, say, 37 overs. Using the table, the required rate is worked out by multiplying 188 by 86.7%, giving a target score of 163.
Two points for a win, one for a tie or no result. If teams finish level, the one with most wins goes through. If level on victories, the winner of the group game between them qualifies; if that match was tied or there was no result, net run-rate is the deciding factor. That is calculated by deducting from the average runs per over scored by that team throughout the competition the average runs per over scored against that team throughout the competition.
Strict interpretation of wides and waist-high full tosses outlawed.
In day-night matches, lights can be switched on early to prevent stoppages.
Play to be stopped for bad light only if there is physical risk of injury to batsman.
Australia may be the most likely winners, but there is no shortage of contenders, as well as dangerous outsiders.
IF CRICKET prevails and the tournament is played, Australia should win the sixth World Cup. Their batting is forthright and sustained, their fielding athletic, their bowling varied, and, in Mark Taylor, they are led by an imaginative and respected captain. Boon, Jones and Blewett have been omitted but no one batted an eyelid. Slater might not play either.
Most of all, Australia have the Waugh brothers, two of cricket's most intuitive and intelligent players. According to the computer rankings, Steve is the best batsman in the world; he is certainly the most clinical. No contemporary, not even Mike Atherton, has such control of his own fate. No one has influenced the outcome of more matches than this calculating cricketer. He had not bowled much this winter he has not been the same since groins and hamstrings were discovered until he rolled an arm in the critical hour of the third Test against Sri Lanka, whereupon he cut through a stubborn batting order and settled the issue.
Mark is hardly less effective. Suffering from a sore back, he has taken to bowling off-spinners called "nude spinners" hereabouts because there is nothing on them. He is weighty of thought and deed these days, and could be the batsman of the tournament.
If the Waughs play well, Australia will be formidable. But the gum-chewing men from Down Under, whose feet crunch loud upon the concrete and whose mouths send forth remarks as salty as any Warne leg-break, can take nothing for granted. Indeed, the odds offered by the accountants of the Turf (3-1) are unattractive. Knock-out competitions are not solemn struggles so much as raging arguments; they are as much about emotion as reason. Test matches draw teams apart, 50-over games bring them together.
South Africa, through whose performances echo the Calvinism of their background and the harshness of the veld, will be hard to beat. De Villiers is back, Donald is dangerous and in Kallis and Pollock they field two youngsters full of character. South Africa will fear no one and nothing, though their batting may lack the brilliance needed to force pursuing teams to pin back their ears.
Nor can volatile Pakistan be taken lightly. They are capable of beating anybody, including themselves. Saeed Anwar is fit and joins Aamir Sohail, an impassioned opener, at the top of the order. Inzamam, among the hardest of hitters, can take an attack to pieces in an hour, and Salim Malik brings grace to the middle order, though Javed Miandad's reappearance confirms doubts about the younger batsmen. Pakistan's bowling, however, depends too much on Wasim Akram, while morale cannot entirely have recovered from the recent shenanigans.
The Indians are pessimistic. They have been awed by the quality produced by teams in Australia this winter (everything is on television now). Dismayed by their poor fielding, Azharuddin has encouraged his players to specialise in particular positions and practise diving, an approach usually disdained by discerning youths because the grounds of their rearing are rough.
He is less perturbed by his team's want of preparation, believing they were stale last time. Tendulkar's bad trot is not a concern; he will surely rise once the bugles blow for his country, though allowing him to open may weaken the team. The bowling is strong; Kumble and Srinath can be relied upon to force opponents to fight for their runs. The pessimism may also help, easing pressure on the team.
Who else? Lara, within whom immaturity and greatness struggle for supremacy, is back to strengthen the West Indies. Chanderpaul has improved, and Gibson is emerging as an allrounder. Hooper's absence does not signify much because, like Simmons and the Benjamins, he has fallen shy of expectation. Walsh and Ambrose were sharp in Australia, and the fielding improved somewhat. Much depends upon Richardson's form and his ability to lift his team.
Sri Lanka have promoted Kaluwitharana, whose buccaneering batting shook the Australians until they learned to subdue him with inswingers pitched to a full length. The team had a hard time of it in Australia and devotees detected a plot behind their various misfortunes. It was nonsense. Only Vaas, a left-armer of rhythm and accuracy who leads their attack, could hope to secure a place in the Australian team. They were unlucky; they were also outplayed.
Nevertheless, the Sri Lankans were furious, and opponents will face not so much a cricket team as an entire nation. Ranatunga's side is buoyant and dangerous and, at the odds, may be the best bet in the field.
And what of England? So highly is Cork regarded on the subcontinent that Sunil Gavaskar included him in his World XI, while Gough, having recaptured his inswinger, is emerging from his trough. Thorpe, Hick, Fairbrother and Atherton give the batting a certain ring but it was alarming to find White and DeFreitas opening in South Africa.
Only New Zealand, Holland, Kenya, Zimbabwe and UAE can be discounted, and they could yet spring a surprise or two. Years ago, minnows could be swept aside. Now the demands of 50-over cricket are widely understood. Occasionally, a team will try something new, opening with a swiper or a spinner, but it rarely lasts long because such manoeuvres depend on surprise. Usually there is a pattern known to everybody and teams differ chiefly in the skill with which tactics are applied. Underdogs have a chance because risks must be taken.
Truth to tell, the World Cup is wide open. Even England can win it.
Hoop dreams: Michael Jordan is primed for the NBA All Star game (today, 11.15am and 11.20pm, Ch4)
ON THE afternoon the smile returned to Andy Turnell's careworn features with the victory of Squire Silk in Newbury's Tote Gold Trophy, agony was etched on Norman Williamson's face as he crashed out of this afternoon's Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup in Ireland just two days after returning from a four-month absence with a broken femur.
Following a nasty-looking fall from Eskimo Nel four flights from home in Newbury's big race, Williamson was taken to hospital writhing in pain with a suspected dislocated shoulder. Having proved his fitness when he made a satisfactory comeback at Clonmel on Thursday, Williamson will now miss the ride on last year's Cheltenham Gold Cup winner in the Hennessy and could be out of action for two weeks, which would mean he still has time to return for Cheltenham.
Kim Bailey has booked Jamie Osborne to replace Williamson in the valuable Leopardstown chase. Osborne rode Master Oats when the 10-year-old made a dismal return to action at Chepstow in December, a performance that remains a mystery to all concerned.
There was very little mystery attached to Squire Silk's storming triumph in the Tote Gold Trophy. Having been close up in several valuable races, notably the Ladbroke Hurdle in Ireland last month, there was a high degree of confidence behind him as he went to post a heavily backed 13-2 chance.
The only protesters were the bookies as young Paul Carberry carried out a Newbury bypass of his own, bringing Squire Silk through with a devastating challenge between the last two flights to outrun the pace-setting Romancer and NonVintage.
Squire Silk was the medium of a substantial ante-post gamble with at least two of the big three bookmakers. Mike Dillon, of Ladbrokes, said: "He was the last card played in the betting. He was 10-1 with us on Friday, but we had to cut him after a flurry of activity from the village."
Dillon was referring to the Oxfordshire village of East Hendred, where Turnell trains, and you can be sure there will have been some party in The Plough opposite his stables last night after a victory that ended a relatively miserable couple of years for Turnell.
The loss of several good horses owned by Pell Mell Partners, notably his Hennessy Gold Cup winner, Cogent, was compounded by a period of personal stress through a divorce, but Squire Silk's win should dispel any lingering gloom.
"We'll go for the Champion Hurdle with him now," Turnell said. "There will be worse horses in the race and he's still got plenty of improvement in him." Turnell never rode the winner of this race as a jockey, but he recalled: "I was expected to trot up on Birds Nest, trained by my father. We thought he was the handicap certainty of all time, but he was brought down at the second. Father cried for a week."
Bookmakers quoted Squire Silk at between 25-1 and 33-1 for the Champion, for which yesterday's Ayr winner, Celestial Choir, is a possible contender.
The warmest reception of the afternoon was reserved for Viking Flagship, who bounded back from a spell in the doldrums to gallop off with the Game Spirit Chase and put himself firmly in line for a third successive win in the Queen Mother Champion Chase at Cheltenham. Reunited with Adrian Maguire, Viking Flagship lookked a champion again as he surged clear of Travado.
"He always takes a race or two to reach his best and he definitely needed the run today," a beaming David Nicholson said. A tasty 10-1 voucher for the Queen Mother from Ladbrokes might have had a little to do with his elation, too.
Lord Howell, the former minister for sport, took on the Broadcasting Bill last Tuesday. It was an unequal contest.
AT EVERY turn of the Westminster maze came congratulations from the denizens of the Lords. Viscounts and barons, left and right, they spoke of making history and most of them have seen a bit of that. Not least their sprightly hero, Lord once plain Denis Howell. He had mobilised them, returned politics to sport via the endangered upper house. Theirs had been an Olympian performance and he had made a champion's comeback.
In the bar, they praised his tactics and he drew on a cigar. There had been bubbly after the vote, but he was never really the champagne sort. "A famous victory," said Lord Howell over wine. It had been his initiative on Tuesday that led to the Lords voting to protect public access to key televised sport, via the Broadcasting Bill; which, in turn, would now press the government to revise policy. Howell was like the underdog manager pulling off a Cup surprise; he felt his strategy had been the key.
"I knew that in order to summon the maximum vote from the peers, I had to be able to tell them the exact time this debate would come on," he reflected. His troops were not the easiest to gather and the weather that week had not been kind. "We lost a few from the West Country and Scotland it could have been even more spectacular. But we had to get it over early. We therefore devised the strategy of having new clauses, which have to come on before the rest of the bill, so we could tell everybody with certainty, ‘This matter will be debated at three o'clock on Tuesday', so we could get our maximum vote out."
And so they assembled, the bishops and judges, peers by birth and peers by reward, ranking behind the 77-year-old ex-minister for sport from every wing. Tories, Liberals and Labour old and new. Advice came from within his ranks, notably from Lord Williams, a former Essex cricketer. "I've had people in this place who have held very high office in some of the sports affected, and they've shaken my hand more warmly than anyone else," beamed Howell. "I don't think the sports bodies always carry everybody in their sport with them."
Touche. Howell had begun his speech with the brusque theatre of his old days in the Commons. There was a sermon "I have a profound belief in the social purpose of sport, the ethics and the spirit of sport" and then a Chamberlain flourish, waving the contract signed by BSkyB last year for the live rights to the Ryder Cup. "I have in my hand the licence agreement," Howell announced. "It states in stark terms, ‘There will be no BBC transmission of the Ryder Cup'. Why prevent the nation, in its millions, from seeing anything of that great sporting triumph?"
The answer is beyond sport, the Ryder Cup beyond the Lords, but what Howell's mustering of a 117-strong majority on the issue has achieved is the ring-fencing of eight events considered central to national heritage. The FA Cup final, the Scottish Cup final, the football World Cup, home cricket Tests, the Wimbledon finals weekend, the Olympic Games, the Derby and the Grand National had previously been protected only from being exclusively broadcast live on pay-per-view television; now they cannot go out live and exclusive on subscription stations, such as Sky. The wording of the bill remains less than watertight, puts the burden of policing it on the Independent Television Commission, but Howell has engineered a victory that meets broad public opinion and has led to widespread consternation among the administrators of British sport.
"The sap is rising on this issue," said Howell. "And they never gave their Lordships credit for their intelligence. There is a generalising of concern over the direction in which monopoly television is going and it is accelerating at great pace. Sky money has gone into inflating wages and, even worse, sending transfer fees into the stratosphere. The public don't like that.
"And how do you intend to provide for the 30 million who can't see Sky, particularly the elderly and infirm, people who've supported sport all their lives and can't get out? You're removing from those people access to good sport which is absolutely necessary to inspire young people to have a go. Nick Faldo said he took up golf because he saw Jack Nicklaus playing on television. There's nothing wrong with youngsters having idols provided they have the right sort of idols."
The arguments ring old-fashioned and homely, and they have not died with Tuesday's hefty majority in the Lords. Howell has further amendments he wishes to propose to the bill, notably one pressing for the "unbundling" of broadcast rights, under which highlights packages of events live on satellite or cable would be made available to terrestrial television. The government are understood to be more sympathetic here, although by Friday Downing Street was crowded with a jittery gaggle of British sport's leading blazers.
They ought not to have been surprised, ought to have known the first minister for sport better than that. As Labour's last man in that office, Howell always was more interventionist than his successors, more combative and more willing to tread where sports ministers since have not dared. There's still a belief that he patented the position and that no successor has measured up to. Thirty years ago he was winkling out £500,000 of government money for the World Cup, a shrewd investment for his then prime minister, Harold Wilson. Later, Howell was Wilson's minister for drought, with whose appointment, in 1976, suddenly there came rain. Then he was the loyalist head of Birmingham's Olympic bid. And Howell, remember, had been the man in office for the signing of the Gleneagles Agreement, for the Packer affair and a fair number of skirmishes in between.
A triple heart-bypass, diabetes, but still he has the stomach for a fight, for the politics of sport, "and the sport of politics". Retirement from the Commons left him in an "impossible" six months of retirement before he took his place in the Lords. They talk a great deal about sport in its clubby corridors but they rarely act as decisively on it as they did on Tuesday. Howell, a champion talker, can turn from purity to policy in a moment: "Talking of role models, I can remember seeing Learie Constantine at Edgbaston as if it was now, as he raced around the boundary, swooped up the ball and threw it back, absolutely to the wicket, in one movement. Such agility and such art. Breathtaking. So I put him on the Sports Council when I set it up in 1965."
He has enjoyed Aston Villa this season, and celebrated Warwickshire, though he'll take them on, too: "I wasn't happy with the way they dealt with Brian Lara. I spoke to his agent when Brian arrived and said, ‘Your main duty is to keep Brian Lara's feet on the ground and not to try and exploit him over-much.
"What's happening in sport is the marketing men are taking over. I'm all for the marketing men doing their job effectively, but they are one arm of the government of sport. The majority of those involved in the government of sport have got to hold a balanced view. Where does our duty lie? How do we balance our need to get money against the general interest of our followers and our former and future followers?"
The preserve, if you please, of administrators not parliamentarians, his opponents will argue. They fear that a return to the ITV-BBC duopoly on sports broadcasting will reduce their income. The Central Council for Physical Recreation, the umbrella body for sports organisations, have already responded to Tuesday's turnaround with a 16-page document outlining the development benefits of BSkyB's investment in sport.
"They've got very little case at all," said Howell. "The only thing that interests them is the material rewards available to their members. I want their members to have good prices and get what they're entitled to. But not at the expense of the rest of the nation. It's now become a jungle in sport."
Into which its best-remembered policeman has dramatically returned. "I'd been working on this constantly for a fortnight," Howell said, "and I felt quite faint after the debate." Famous victory indeed. Browse the history of the Lords setting itself against the Commons and Tuesday's majority of 117 sits up proud; alongside issues such as the poll tax and the death penalty.
"It was comparable to the Moscow Olympics," said Howell. "When we defeated Mrs Thatcher in 1980 and took the British team to Russia it was also on the basis of an all-party campaign. That tells us something. When we're all united in the cause of sport, we're unstoppable."
Lauren St John on the unsung coach from Yorkshire who's helped Ian Woosnam resurrect his career
BILL FERGUSON'S thoughts on the entire game of golf can be summed up in one sentence. "It's the old Arnold Palmer adage," Ferguson said. "If you can see it, you can hit it, and if you can hit it, you can hole it. Seve's proved that to us for years." His simple philosophy has had much to do with Woosnam's dramatic comeback in the last fortnight and Colin Montgomerie's brilliant career.
Woosnam was suffering paralysis through analysis and had not won for over a year when he added Ferguson to a long list of advisers shortly before the US Open in June. Almost at once, the coach established that Woosnam's ball and address positions were the root cause of his trials. "If you have a proper grip and set-up, to me you're 75% of the way towards hitting a good shot; if you don't, you're 75% of the way to hitting a bad shot."
He sent Woosnam away to hit a three-quarter eight-iron with his feet together. By the time the former Masters champion reached Valderrama in October, his game was transformed. Ferguson had helped him regain his old, fluid technique.
"It's like watching a fish swimming," Ferguson remarked after Woosnam, winless for 16 months, triumphed in Singapore and Perth in consecutive weeks. "There's a backward movement and a forward movement and the ball gets in the way."
Ferguson is a man of few words. A former professional at Ilkley, West Yorkshire, now attached to Harrogate, his whole being spells dourness and a rigid sense of purpose. He comes to the range unencumbered with the paraphernalia of modern teaching the video cameras, putting aids and beach balls and yet the sheer minimalism of his approach is the reason for its effectiveness. "The best practice for golf is hitting golf balls," he said.
The best advertisement for Ferguson is Montgomerie, whom he has taught since he was a "chubby young lad of nine". Certainly there is nothing scientific about Montgomerie's swing. It is idiosyncratic and, at times, almost unconscionably relaxed, but, combined with an uncluttered mind, it has made him Europe's No1 player for the past three years, helped him finish better than third in three US majors since 1992.
"His short game has improved a lot over the last four or five years," said Ferguson, who works with Montgomerie for a week or more 15 to 20 times a season. "He's an extremely good putter. His great strength, though, is his driving. With a wood off the fairway, he's the best in the world; absolutely magnificent. Plus he's got the bottle to go with it. It's what is deep down inside you that counts." Asked why Montgomerie had never experienced the slumps in form that other players do, Ferguson said flatly: "Other players haven't got his coach."
His theory is that it is only when doubt sets in through mishit shots that the game becomes psychological. Much more important is faith and understanding. To him, books and videos teach people to swing the way their authors do, not the way they should. Although he believes that the swing is like a car ("Why fix it if it works"), he claims that there have been occasions when he has changed Montgomerie's grip half an hour before he stepped on the first tee of a tournament: "He does it because he has the confidence to know if I say it, it's fact."
This arrogance was part of Ferguson's success as a player. Mickey Walker, the Solheim Cup captain, first went to him as a shy young professional and credits him with instilling in her some of his own competitive fire. Partnering him in the Sunningdale Foursomes, she remembers him being approached shortly before they teed-off by Patrick Lee, one of their opponents. Lee was having problems with his swing and wondered if Ferguson would help. Sure, he answered amiably, and went off to the range. A little later, he returned. "That's sorted him out," he told Walker. "He won't be able to hit another shot."
As for sorting out Woosnam, Montgomerie is not surprised. In the 22 years they have worked together, Montgomerie has only ever needed to hit three shots for Ferguson to know immediately what he was doing wrong. Woosnam and he might be at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to size, psychology and swing, but they are both natural players and Montgomerie felt that Ferguson's method, ungarnished and unfussy, worked for them equally: "The simpler the game is kept, the easier it is."
Michael Heseltine's quip about having kept his creditors waiting is no joke for small business, writes Claire Oldfield
UNTIL last year Hilary Mitchell had good reason to be proud of the floor and wall-tiling business she and her husband started two decades ago in the northeast. Today, the firm's survival hangs in the balance, and she stares in disbelief at a mountain of paperwork on her desk that she claims proves the company is owed £80,000 by one of the country's largest building firms.
Like thousands of other small firms, TAMitchell is struggling with late payment. A recent Confederation of British Industry survey shows she is not alone one in every five small firms says late payment threatens its survival.
Last week was the final straw for Mitchell: "That was absolutely crazy, wasn't it? A totally ludicrous statement," she said.
For once in her eight-month struggle to recover the debt she was not talking about the debtor. Her wrath was directed against a remark Michael Heseltine, deputy prime minister, made at a private dinner.
Heseltine said: "When I was a small businessman I was quite skilful at stringing along the creditors. There were three categories: those who sent solicitor's letters, those who issued writs and those whose writs were about to expire. You can guess which of the three we paid."
It should have been a fairly unremarkable comment, but Heseltine's boast has once again focused attention on a debate that has split Britain's small-business community.
On one side are those who believe tough legislation is the only way to fight late payment. On the other are those who think it would be counterproductive and say small firms are unlikely to chase larger companies for money because big customers will take their business elsewhere. Many, like Richard Page, the small-business minister, believe that small businesses should take a tougher stance with customers.
Figures due next Monday, from the 1996 Grant Thornton European Business Survey, are expected to show a marked deterioration in average payment times in Britain. Last year's survey indicated the average time of payment was 48 days; and just 14% of small and medium-sized businesses had their invoices paid within 30 days. One expert says £50billion is owed to Britain's small firms, while they in turn owe £30billion to larger companies.
TAMitchell is a survivor. In a sector notorious for late payment because so much work is subcontracted, the firm has so far managed largely to weather difficulties. Turnover last year was about £1.6m, and Mitchell says the good relationship she enjoys with her bank has had a positive effect.
But the present outstanding sum is a thorn in the side. Mitchell says: "Late payment has always been a problem, but it has become increasingly apparent over the past two years. The company has been waiting for this payment since June 1995."
She believes much of the responsibility for late payment lies with larger, public companies whose survival does not depend on a few thousand pounds of income.
"No one is happy with payment terms, but you have to realise how contractors work. The odd one pays in a month, but most take six to eight weeks."
Mitchell is determined to recover the debt, and even more determined that her company, which now employs 25 people, will not go under. She says: "There is a chain effect. If I go down, then it is not just me, is it?"
This is a crucial month: in its 1994 competition white paper, the government promised to review the case for statutory interest if figures on late payment had not improved within the next two years. By the end of February this DTI consultation period on statutory interest ends. The following day there will be a second reading of a private member's bill sponsored by Jon Owen Jones, a Labour MP seeking to introduce a statutory right to interest on commercial debt. It commands all-party support.
But David Baber at the Credit Protection Association (CPA), a credit-management agency, argues against the proposed legislation. Baber sees the result of thousands of cases of late payment when his company goes in to recover debt for its clients.
He says: "Waiting for any payment should not be acceptable. Businesses have to chase up debt. The people asking for legislation are the ones who are not running their businesses properly. They are effectively asking for the government to do their own work."
Research carried out by CPA among more than 1,000 small businesses revealed that 25% of firms did not chase up invoices because they did not want to upset people.
Baber says: "There is no such thing as a goodwill factor when you deal with other businesses. People earn respect by running their businesses properly, and that means asking for the money they are owed."
In the meantime the debate rages on. Small-business leaders are demanding an apology from Heseltine, saying that some companies face financial ruin because of overdue bills.
David Harrop, of the Forum of Private Business, says: "We are appalled that Heseltine has been so brazen about this. It is shocking when late payment is condoned by the former president of the board of trade, who blocked moves for a statutory right to interest in 1994."
If an eccentric American fund manager refuses to sign up to a $4billion rescue package, the Irish aircraft-leasing giant and its fleet of 230 planes may fly into administration, writes Matthew Lynn
FEW companies have spent as long on the edge of the precipice as GPA, the Irish aircraft-leasing giant. Since its $3.5billion (£2.2billion) flotation was aborted in 1992, GPA has struggled with a savage airline recession, and with its debts, which at their peak were $5.6billion (£3.6billion). But this weekend it is as close to the edge of the cliff as at any time in the last four years.
For the past few months the management team, led by Patrick Blaney, chief executive, with the help of Morgan Stanley, has been carefully piecing together a securitisation of 230 of GPA's fleet of aircraft. Structured as a bond issue, the deal would raise $4.7billion, and effectively put what remains of the company back on a sound financial footing. So far, 140 banks and other lenders around the world have agreed the terms of the deal. But one lone voice is holding out. The Public School Employees' Retirement System (PSERS), a Pennsylvania pension fund, refuses to sign up to the deal as owner of $39.5m of secured notes. The fund wants to force GPA to offer it a better deal on its holding of $100m of second preference shares, which are not included in the restructuring. If a deal with PSERS is not struck this week, the company goes into the Irish equivalent of administration.
Dennis Stevenson, non-executive chairman of GPA, says: "As a result of the brilliant young Irish management team we have cleared away all the obstacles that existed in 1993 to a proper financial reconstruction. It would be a tragedy if this fell apart because of just one interest."
PSERS is led by its chief investment officer, John Lane, who, despite managing a pension fund running into tens of billions of dollars, has earned himself a reputation for eccentricity in American financial circles. A fierce state chauvinist, at meetings with GPA he has been known to put a Pennsylvania flag on the table before opening negotiations. In other American financial reconstructions the fund is thought to have been obstructive.
PSERS bought its stake in GPA at the peak of the market, and its anger with the company is understandable; it has been a spectacularly poor investment that is unlikely ever to earn an adequate return. But by holding out against the restructuring deal, it risks shooting itself in the foot. Under the financial package it would receive complete repayment of its secured notes, and would have at least the hope of eventual repayment of the second preference shares.
The outcome, should it block the deal, is likely to be a lot worse. John Tierney, GPA's finance director, says: "One of the alternatives if the deal fails will be examinership [the Irish version of administration]." Since the value of GPA's aircraft and leases could not be secured in a fire sale, the fund managers would risk losing everything.
PSERS is effectively holding a gun to GPA's head, hoping to extract some form of payout on its second preference shares. But for the Irish company, that is likely to prove impossible. The preference shares are junior in status to $1.1billion of unsecured debt, and any payout on those shares would either involve a payout on the unsecured debt or GPA facing a barrage of legal actions. So far, the two sides have reached an impasse.
Time is now becoming tight. The refinancing package has to be agreed in the next few days, and urgent meetings are being held with PSERS over the weekend to attempt to cajole the fund manager into signing the deal.
Phone calls are also understood to be going into the office of the governor of Pennsylvania from other debt holders to try to persuade him to lean on the fund manager.
Even so, GPA officials are far from certain that agreement can be reached. Tierney says: "It defies economic logic for them to take this stance. I am hopeful that some sort of solution can be found."
The irony is that if the restructuring is completed, GPA might at last have removed the sword that has been dangling over its head an outcome that few would have believed possible three years ago.
In the past two years the company has sold assets worth $900m, resolved litigation that could have cost it $600m, extended $1.2billion of bank debt by another year to buy extra time, sold a series of loss-making associates, and renegotiated its new-equipment orders down to just $400m.
All of those deals have helped to stabilise its financial position. At the same time, the recession in the airline market finally seems to be lifting. Orders for aircraft have picked up sharply in the past six months, and only last week Boeing announced that it was taking on an additional 7,000 workers to cope with its booming order book.
For GPA, that upsurge has already been reflected in a steadying of leasing rates, which in the past had been sliding year on year, and in a reduction in the number of airlines returning planes that they could no longer afford.
If the upturn continues, as it is now expected to do over the next four years, leasing rates should gradually start shifting upwards again. That would have a big impact on GPA's financial position.
According to the company, if the restructuring is completed, it will once again be in a position to start building a new business. But it promises to rebuild cautiously. It has no desire to return to the frantic expansion of the late 1980s and early 1990s a period that saw it become one of the world's biggest leasing companies.
In the background, GE Capital is lurking. In 1993, GE paid $1.3billion for 35 planes, a move that saved GPA from bankruptcy. It also took over the marketing of the leases on its planes. In return it received an option to buy a majority stake in the company until 1998. That has now been extended until 2001, when GE could buy the business for $65m. As the debts are paid down, new value is created and the market continues to improve, insiders believe it is increasingly likely GE will eventually exercise its option. Indeed, by 2001 $65m for GPA may look like a bargain.
The European airliner consortium may become a limited company to compete effectively, reports Randeep Ramesh
JUST a year after matching its rivals' order intakes, Airbus Industrie, the European aircraft manufacturer, is poised to restructure itself to attempt to take the top spot.
Boeing, the American planemaker, stole a march on the European consortium France's Aerospatiale, Germany's Daimler-Benz, British Aerospace and Casa of Spain last year with an aggressive sales campaign spearheaded by the 747, for which Airbus has yet to develop a competitor.
The slump in orders has pushed the Europeans into hastening moves to build a jumbo jet to challenge the 747. One Airbus director last week said it was now "imperative" to produce a jumbo, adding that the impetus was the loss of orders worth nearly $17billion (£11billion) in Asia to Boeing in the past three months.
But with start-up costs of the new plane, codenamed the 3XX, estimated at up to $8billion, Airbus needs partners to inject cash into the venture. The consortium has been asking potential "risk-sharing" partners in China, Korea and Singapore to put up several billion dollars to join the project. The new plane will also benefit from launch aid from its member governments, but some executives are pressing for more radical change. They want to create a proper company with an asset base enabling "New Airbus" to borrow money.
The consortium members may even sign up new investors to Airbus to help with 3XX start-up costs. At present, Airbus is merely a marketing operation, with only 2,700 staff, for planes made by the four partners.
Jurgen Schrempp, Daimler-Benz's chairman, said Airbus needed a "common identity" and a "management team with bottom-line responsibility". In the current structure, he said, "managers have no role".
A manufacturing base for the new group could be woven from the civil-aviation arms of each of the partners. Industry experts say BAe could simply parcel off its Chester factory which makes Airbus wings into a new limited company and then remain as a shareholder.
The new mood has been signalled by consortium members who feel Airbus needs to become a limited company to raise funds on the capital markets rather than relying on its partners for cash. They say European countries face budget squeezes, so new funding sources must be found. Under Gatt, state launch aid is limited to one third of the cost of aircraft projects.
But Airbus executives claim Aerospatiale is refusing to play ball. "British Aeropace has its defence work and the Germans build expensive cars so they can carry on with that. All the French really do is civil aircraft. The French think of Airbus as their own; it is difficult to see how they would give that up," said one manager.
The consortium operates as a groupement d'interet economique, or GIE, an arrangement cooked up by winegrowers seeking to pool some operations while maintaining independence.
One crucial problem with the GIE structure is that it limits Airbus's ability to compete on costs with American rivals. Any profits from improved production efficiency are retained by the partners rather than benefiting the consortium. The result is that Airbus has difficulty unlike Boeing in using lower manufacturing costs to cut aircraft prices.
Airbus's cost problem is compounded by the limitations of its product line. Despite technical innovations, including the much-copied fly-by-wire technology, the Europeans have lost their lead because of the Boeing 747's monopoly of the 400-seater market. Armed with the 300-seater 777, Boeing has squeezed out Airbus's 260 to 335-seater A330s and A340s. A top-level committee known as the four wise men will deliver a report this summer outlining options for Jean Pierson, Airbus's rumbustious chief executive. Headed by a former Daimler chairman, it is expected to recommend Airbus converts into a limited company to compete more effectively.
But analysts see more pressing problems than restructuring. "The first stage is psychological and requires changes in French and German thinking," said one analyst. "They are going to have to go through the same blood-letting as British Aerospace did five years ago to be competitive."
BAe would not publicly agree with this. But, as one British executive said: "If they split up the ownership of who owns Airbus by profits, BAe would bag 100%."
TV has brought unimagined prosperity to sport, but bosses fear it will be undermined by a change in the broadcasting rules.
IT WAS always said that sport and business do not mix. Football, beset by hooliganism, was seen as unfashionable and uncommercial, while rugby union and cricket were considered too elitist and amateurish to attract big money.
But there has been a fundamental change in attitudes in the 1990s. Sport today is big business. The increase in television coverage has triggered an earnings explosion, and many British sports have become multi-million-pound enterprises.
Sponsors are falling over themselves to get involved. Television and commercial rights are attracting competition, lifting prices and creating windfalls for sport. Football's TV-coverage revenue jumped from £2m a year in 1985 to £60m last year, while cricket's revenue has risen 10-fold to £15m a year since 1989.
But many sporting bodies fear that this run of prosperity could be threatened by decisions made last Tuesday in the House of Lords and by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).
The Lords voted to keep trophy sporting events such as the Derby and FA Cup on terrestrial TV, inflicting a defeat on the government, which wants the rules governing sporting rights relaxed. It was also seen as a blow to the aspirations of subscription broadcasters such as British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) the satellite group 40%-owned by News International, parent company of The Sunday Times.
The OFT confused the issue further by referring exclusive sports agreements involving BSkyB and football's Premier League to the Restrictive Practices Court. It claimed the Premier League had operated as a cartel when negotiating its deal, preventing clubs from selling rights without its permission.
Both decisions have widespread ramifications and have caused consternation within many of sport's ruling bodies. They feel the Lords' decision to preserve sports' "crown jewels" on terrestrial TV and the OFT move will limit earnings generated from rights just as the introduction of digital TV could create hundreds of channels and lucrative deals. Most see the Lords' move as a way of safeguarding BBC and ITV's sports coverage.
Since 1992, BSkyB has built its subscription TV business through a number of high-profile sporting deals. Exclusive coverage of top live football, big boxing bouts, cricket's World Cup and the Ryder Cup has triggered a surge in satellite dish sales and won a growing fee-paying audience.
Last week BSkyB revealed a 93% interim profits jump to £106m on the back of rising subscriber numbers and lower interest charges.
Without legislation, opponents say BSkyB will extend its grip on the sporting calendar, restricting the audience to those who can pay its charges and preventing most people from watching big events.
But BSkyB denies this. It has not yet bid for one of the government's listed events and claims it is not interested in the big one-off trophy events.
Instead it has focused on rights to long-running events such as the Premier League, rugby union's club championship and rugby league's Premiership. These sporting "soap operas" can be shown several times a week, repeated and reformatted to produce many hours of programming.
BSkyB has targeted events for which BBC or ITV does not have the airtime or resources to screen live. The Cricket World Cup and overseas cricket tours are not easily accommodated on traditional TV's tight schedules.
One executive says: "The BBC and ITV used to offer portion control and a fixed menu. BSkyB has the capacity to offer an a la carte menu."
Sports bosses say the Lords have overreacted and there is no need for legislation to cover rights. Terry Lamb of the Test and County Cricket Board says: "The sporting bodies know what is best for their sports. They do not just sell to the highest bidder but look to balance revenue and exposure."
The cricket authorities have split the rights between the BBC and BSkyB, guaranteeing bigger revenues, doubling the hours covered and maintaining a wide audience. The Premier League arranged its deal with BSkyB and the BBC to maximise income but also to preserve highlights and encourage live audiences. Since its 1992 start, live attendances are up 30%. But the OFT's decision to brand the Premier League a cartel could threaten the way rights are negotiated.
Rick Parry of the Premier League fears the OFT's move could create chaos. He says: "It is madness to think different selling arrangements for TV rights would benefit clubs or the public. It would not bring prices down but would concentrate fees and coverage on a small number of clubs."
Parry fears the OFT will restrict his talks with broadcasters on the next Premier League contract. The top clubs feel the new contract could be worth £100m a year and point to Germany's Bundesliga, which last week sold its rights for three years for £270m.
Parry says: "The OFT does not seem to have grasped the changing relationship of sport and TV. In the past we were restricted by the BBC and ITV duopoly, which kept contracts artificially low. Now there is competition to set a market price we are being penalised by what can only be called the Office of Fairyland Trading."
SUDDENLY a bit of a chill has descended on the economy. Factory output is falling, there has been a clutch of lay-offs and job cuts, and consumers, although willing to splash out over the Christmas and new-year period, may not yet have emerged decisively from their shells.
So what is happening and how worried should we be? The evidence splits into three bundles:
Away from home, always a tricky fixture for the British economy, things look grim.
Stocks, which businesses learned to keep low relative to demand in the 1980s, are too high and need to be reduced.
At home, in spite of a much-heralded economic stimulus from tax cuts, low interest rates and various windfall gains, the demand outlook is uncertain.
But before getting into the evidence, I detect a question in readers' minds: whatever happened to the strong broad money-supply growth about which I wrote two weeks ago? Surely that signalled a danger, not of recession or stagnation, but of over-heating?
Well it might, but not for some time. Even Tim Congdon, who is more concerned about broad money than many, does not expect its rise to give us strong growth until the end of the year. Before then, progress might be more akin to walking through treacle, and to illustrate this, I now introduce my evidence, starting with item one.
We have got used to regarding the problems of Germany and France as a spectator sport. As for America, why worry about its weak economic data, when Wall Street is saying better times lie ahead?
But the world economy is slowing, to the point where there is a possibility of no overall growth in the Group of Seven (G7) industrial economies during the first half of this year. And economic stagnation over there is hitting us here.
Jaguar, announcing a week's lay-off for most of its 2,200 production workers, blamed weakness in America. Last week's US trade figures showed an import drop and a narrowing trade deficit.
In Germany, where unemployment rose to 3.85m on an adjusted basis (and 4.16m unadjusted), the storm clouds are gathering. In France, the central bank cut money-market rates to less than 4% in response to economic weakness.
Though the picture is patchy between industries and regions, weak export markets are having an effect. Last week's Confederation of British Industry/ Business Strategies quarterly regional-trends survey showed that falling overseas demand was having a big impact in some areas. In the East Midlands, the home patch of Kenneth Clarke, the chancellor, "demand, in particular for exports, slowed". In Yorkshire and Humberside, "weak export orders led to a sharp fall in total orders". Exports were also a problem in the north and northwest. In the West Midlands and the southeast, export problems hit output.
Two things may be coming together at once as far as exports are concerned. The first is that overseas markets are slowing. The second, with unit labour costs rising and sterling gaining ground against other European currencies, is that the competitive gains arising from the pound's post-exchange-rate-mechanism (ERM) devaluation are wearing off.
Sterling's 1992 fall was followed by a sharp acceleration in world trade growth. In retrospect the year 1994 looks a vintage one for Britain, when the holy grail of export-led growth, fuelled by devaluation and 10% world trade growth, was grasped. Now, while sterling still looks undervalued, that holy grail has been snatched away. Britain's world trade share has slipped as the growth in that trade has declined. It does not look good.
Item two, stocks, has been touched upon here before. For manufacturers, the evidence is persuasive. Output dropped 0.2% in the final quarter of 1995 the first quarterly fall since 1992 because of the twin effects of export weakness and destocking (firms meet demand from existing stocks rather than increased output). The destocking effect was probably big, and is unlikely to have run its course. The longer leading economic indicator, which predicts turning points about 13 months ahead, is still firmly in recession territory, mainly because of declining business confidence.
For non-manufacturing, the picture is harder to read. We know economy-wide stocks rose sharply in the third quarter of 1995, and that without that rise there would have been no gross domestic product rise. Destocking will contribute to weaker economic growth, at least for the current quarter, possibly longer.
This leaves item three, and the $64,000 question about the economy: will the consumer ride to the rescue? The CBI's January distributive-trades survey, out last week, was upbeat, though it contained a note of caution about this month's prospects.
The official retail sales figures for January, out on February 21, will, I suspect, show a subdued picture, because they take more note of small shops' experiences.
New-car registrations last month were a paltry 0.3% up on a year earlier, denting motor-trade hopes that interest-rate cuts and the prospect of lower taxes would spark a decent recovery. The housing market is still capable of throwing up the gloomiest signals; housing starts in the final quarter of 1995 were 20% down on a year earlier. Growth in services, which propped up the economy for much of 1995, is by no means assured. Last week Scottish Widows announced up to 700 job cuts in response to tough competition.
For some, all this gloom adds up to the prospect of recession, or something close to it. Robert Fleming's Peter Warburton, never one to view the economy through rose-coloured spectacles, mentions, in addition, consumer reluctance to take on debt, slow growth in wages and social-security benefits, and individuals' financial-asset sales, which probably supported consumer spending last year.
"The dominant thesis among ‘establishment' economists is that there is no cause for concern," he writes. "In such circles, there is never any cause for concern every day and in every way the economy is getting better and better. In the real world, however, there is ample cause for concern that the UK is among a small group of industrialised nations leading the pack into recession."
There is concern that the world growth slowdown could be self-feeding, exacerbated by political uncertainty in Britain and America, doubts over Europe's direction and efforts to cut budget deficits to meet the Maastricht criteria.
There is a danger too, that the pause in activity due to destocking and weak overseas markets will have knock-on effects. This week the January unemployment figures are published. In December, the total fell by just 7,900. In the second half of 1995 unemployment fell 70,700, compared with 197,400 in the same period of 1994. With construction recruitment hit by bad weather, and manufacturers wary about taking on staff until the demand picture clears, we could be close to an unemployment rise, reinforcing perceptions of job insecurity.
On the distant horizon of the second half of the year, there is the prospect of a decent growth pick-up led by consumer spending. But, not for the first time, getting from here to there will not be easy.
THIS is the time in America when politics trumps economics, and myth trumps reality. The 1996 presidential campaign is in full swing, with a gaggle of Republican wannabes fighting for their party's nomination, and President Clinton positioning himself to take on whoever emerges as his opponent. Start with trade policy. The Department of Commerce said last week America's trade deficit fell in November for the fifth consecutive month to its lowest level in nearly two years. Exports are up, imports are down and US trade representative Mickey Kantor says: "Obviously, we're going in the correct direction".
This may be obvious to him, perhaps, but not to Republican candidates scrounging for votes, especially not to Pat Buchanan, riding high since capturing the Alaska and Louisiana primaries. The former Nixon speech writer contends that three out of four Americans think the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and other trade deals hurt American workers, and tells lurid tales of factories fleeing to Mexico to hire workers at $1 a day to make shirts for export to the US.
Not to be outflanked on trade, Senate majority leader Bob Dole, normally to be counted among free-traders, has decided to attack the new World Trade Organisation (WTO) as a potential assault on American sovereignty, and to espouse review mechanisms that would permit the US to veto WTO decisions. In short, in the face of a falling trade deficit, we have the myth of an America bled of jobs by low-wage rivals. And free trade's clear advantages are forgotten in the electioneering.
So, too, with the much-reported battle of the budget. The myth is that America is living far beyond its means, with a budget deficit out of control and likely to bankrupt the nation. Consider the reality. America's federal deficits are falling, both in absolute terms and relative to the nation's ability to carry its debt. In 1995 the government spent $164billion (£107billion) more than it took in, the shortfall being 2.3% of gross domestic product. This compares with a deficit of $290billion, or 4.9% of GDP in 1992, and $203billion, or 3.1% of GDP in 1994. Germany, France and other Europhile nations unable to meet Maastricht's 3% criterion must envy America its low and declining deficit.
That's the economic reality not something that is allowed, in this silly season, to interfere with the political myth of a soon-to-be-bust America, a myth that suits both parties, eager to get credit for saving the country from a non-existent crisis.
Still another myth that both parties perpetuate is that the American dream is dead, that for the first time in the nation's history the next generation will be worse off than the one before, and that the middle class is being ground between the upper stone of a technologically proficient upper class and the nether stone of an international market dominated by coolie labour. This tale, feeding the anxieties generated by large-scale lay-offs at firms such as AT&T, suits both parties. Clinton uses it to attack Republican cuts in job training and other programmes, the Republicans to attack Democratic policies they say have stifled entrepreneurship, productivity and income growth.
Once again, the convenient myth is belied by reality. Though real incomes are not growing as rapidly as they once did, average real family income has risen steadily since the mid-1970s and real spendable income per capita has risen by almost 50% since 1970.
The American Enterprise magazine writes: "... today's baby boomers are, on average, about two-thirds better off than their parents were at the same age". And that is without taking account of the doubling in the portion of their incomes accounted for by health insurance, pension contributions and other tax-free cash benefits.
Finally, there is the politically convenient myth that the economy could grow faster if voters had the sense to elect the candidate with the right nostrum. Clinton wants to invest more in education to stimulate productivity; Steve Forbes, the millionaire heir who has upset old-line politicians by soaring in the polls, wants to replace income tax with a flat 17% tax on incomes other than interest, dividends and capital gains; Phil Gramm would force people off the dole into work, thereby increasing the nation's output; and Bob Dole would ... actually, no one is quite sure what the frontrunner would do. No matter: the reality is that the economy probably cannot sustain growth much in excess of its 2.5% average without triggering inflation. Paul Krugman, the Stanford professor, says that for the last 20 years every point of growth beyond 2.5% has caused unemployment to fall a half-percentage point. Since the unemployment rate, 5.6%, is now at or close to its irreducible minimum, a growth acceleration would add only to inflation, not to real wealth.
There is a lesson in this, says Krugman, namely that some of our most influential economic commentators are not doing much homework before issuing pronouncements. Krugman is too kind. The politicians do homework. But they prefer to study opinion polls rather than the hard numbers of economic reality.
SHAREHOLDERS at Eurocamp, the holiday company, should be on red alert after the recent share sales by Martin Harman, the former finance director now a non-executive, and Gordon Leppard, a departing director.
A year ago, after reporting a surge in annual profits, Richard Atkinson, chief executive, and Harman both sold large holdings at 268p. Two months later the group issued a bleak trading statement. It was later followed by a profits warning.
This time round Leppard and Harman have sold 150,000 shares apiece at 223p, just above the 220p issue price when the group came to market in 1991. But the outlook remains tough and other investors may want to follow suit.
Tom Neville, chairman, has warned that bookings for the year are down 20%. Leppard and Harman still retain sizeable stakes in Eurocamp.
FIRST dealings in Clubhaus, Britain's first quoted golf operator, start on Wednesday. The placing price of 71/2p puts it on an attractive discount to net assets of 9p and analysts expect the price to go to a premium. The group has a number of acquisitions in line and aims to capitalise on the fall in golf-club prices. Buy.
THE former snooker group BCE is attracting a growing following among multimedia enthusiasts in the City. In the past 18 months it has become a leading computer-games developer with the acquisitions of Rage and Software Creations. It is expected to push profits to £3.1m this year. The shares at 201/4p are on a p/e of 20, but the market is growing fast and BCE is one of the few pure plays in the sector.
SHARES in the leisure giant Rank have been chased up ahead of the arrival of Andrew Teare, new chief executive. Analysts believe his presence will trigger a shake-up of Rank's empire to release hidden value. They expect Rank will report 1994-95 profits of £390m and £442m this year. The shares at 465p should have further to go.
BROKERS are turning positive on Johnson Matthey after a detailed presentation to City investors last week. Analysts are impressed by the benefits of the $40m (£26m) acquisition of Cray Research's printed-circuit-board manufacturing arm. The group is now one of the few British companies to have exposure to the semiconductor industry one of the world's fastest-growing areas, with annual growth rates of between 15% and 20%. Henderson Crosthwaite says buy at 563p.
SHARE ratings at television stocks like Yorkshire-Tyne Tees, 900p, and HTV, 354p, look sky-high. But last week's proposed merger between United News & Media, owner of the Daily and Sunday Express, and MAI should trigger a wave of other takeovers in the sector. On fundamentals, shareholders should take profits, yet both remain attractive targets and there is still upside left for the brave who want to stay.
THE housebuilder will add to the sector gloom when it reports interim figures this week. The group has been hit by falling volumes and weak selling prices on its upmarket homes. Pre-tax profits are expected to more than halve to just under £10m. A series of rival builders issued profit warnings last week and analysts expect consolidation in the sector. Bryant shares have underperformed and, at 106p, take into account most of the bad news. Hold.
SHARES in the specialist insurer Oriel shot up from 110p to 145p last week on news it was in bid talks, with Aon, the Chicago insurer, believed to be the potential buyer. Aon may covet Warranty Holdings, Oriel's car-warranty business, which appears to be booming. It increased policies from 600,000 in 1994 to about 1m last year.
REUTERS is expected to continue the steady progress that has made it one of the most successful British companies over the past decade when it reports full-year figures on Tuesday. Analysts are forecasting pre-tax profits of £589m, compared with the £510m it made last year. A deal last week to bring in partners to its London radio stations will reassure investors it is abandoning efforts to move into retail media, and will stick to the provision of specialist electronic information that has been the foundation of its success. The shares, which closed at 631p on Friday, are still a long-term buy despite their recent strength.
VISUAL ACTION, the film- and television-equipment-hire company formerly known as Samuelson, will this week publish its pathfinder document for a planned £75m flotation next month. The company, headed by Bob Ellis, right, is also expected to reveal a 14% rise in profits to £7.9m. The float will allow Eagle Trust, Visual Action's owner, to repay most of the £67m it owes its banks, which have kept it afloat since 1989. Eagle Trust is expected to sell at least 75% of its stake. Ellis plans to raise money in the float to complete investment and fund acquisitions.
Visual Action gains most of its cachet from film work but derives most of its revenue from commercials. It has operations in Britain, the United States, France and Australia. It also develops equipment, and has pioneered a cableless camera for outside broadcasts. The company has few rivals internationally and should get a premium rating.
HE was busted for financial scams and used to wear a toupee. But even Michael Milken, former junk-bond king, can be rehabilitated. Next month he will address the Chief Executive of the Year dinner staged by Financial World magazine in New York. Previous speakers include Henry Kissinger and Ronald Reagan. Eminent men, but lacking Milken's inside knowledge of jail and $1.1billion fines...
THE hardline socialist attitude of the Labour party towards the City and its profiteers may have changed more than one suspects. Tomorrow Alastair Darling, shadow spokesman on City affairs, will hold forth on Labour's plans for reforming the City and its practices. Where will he do this? At the National Liberal Club.
THE Financial Times is currently running a regular competition on "mastering management". The winner announced last week was a Mr N Leeson. No relation to the Barings expert, I assume.
A MYSTERY bidder is offering almost £40m to buy it as a home, the Saatchis nearly took it as their new agency headquarters, and numerous companies are interested in it as an investment.
It is a grand listed building at 74 St James's, in the heart of London, now causing a stir in the otherwise stagnant property market. Owned by a joint venture gone bust, the building has been mooted as suitable for turning into the most expensive house in Britain. A palace with indoor gardens, waterfalls, and banqueting hall was envisaged, at a total cost of perhaps £60m.
Unbelievable? An unnamed individual has now offered £38.5m for the leasehold, says Howard Mallinson, the receiver acting for one party in the joint venture. A further £30m would go on rebuilding.
But not everyone is overwhelmed, least of all Patrick Waddsted, the receiver acting for the other, dominant party in the joint venture. Dream on, is his reaction. He says a corporate buyer is far more likely, and 20 companies have already viewed the building.
While the receivers wrangle, even wackier rumours persist. The wildest is for the freeholder, the Crown Estate, to buy the leasehold and give the building to Princess Diana as a divorce settlement.
More certainly, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber looked over the building last year, and may still be toying with it as somewhere to hang his Canaletto.
Anyone else interested in the country's most expensive house? "Oh yes," says Waddsted caustically, "so is the White Rabbit."
RAISE a pint to Major John Bartholomew, who has stepped down as chairman of the brewer Wadworth. When he took up the post there were no lagers in pubs and virtually no women were seen in the bar. That was 1952. After 43 years, he has handed over to his son, Charles.
The major is proof that change need not be constant in business. His company uses some of the original 19th-century brewing equipment and still employs a cooper to build wooden barrels. The flavours they impart are vital to Wadworth's superb 6X ale. It was a close-run thing, however. When the dreaded keg beer became a fad, the major ordered modern brewing equipment from Germany. Luckily, sterling fell against the D-mark, and the major (a prisoner during the war) refused to pay the Germans the extra. End of keg-beer plan. Along came the real-ale revival and Wadworth's 6X never looked back.
And the major? At 75, he is still a fixture, remaining a director, working a few hours a day.
THIS should paralyse many business lunchers with fear: a leading executive has shown that big companies can be run without fat expense accounts.
Tomorrow Claes Hultman, chief executive of Eurotherm, will fly to America. Economy class. Even more astoundingly, Eurotherm paid about £300 in total for entertainment expenses among its headquarters staff last year. (Hultman ordered an investigation to find the culprit, which turned out to have been him.)
Traditionally top executives risk dementia if they spend too long outside business class or the Savoy Grill. But Hultman is made of sterner stuff, declaring: "We are employed to create shareholder value, not to spend other people's money, so we watch expenses very closely."
His economy ticket costs £2,000 less than business class and £4,000 less than first class, saving shareholders large sums. Eurotherm's share price, incidentally, has roared up 50% in the past year.
Nor does Hultman have any truck with flash company cars, driving instead "a nine-year-old Saab clonker".
Not that Hultman's aversion to executive luxuries is entirely altruistic: "The girls are more beautiful in economy," he jokes.
AS a miner's son from Yorkshire, Paul Sykes is blunt about his new Internet business: "We're not messing about with two cans and a piece of string here; we're throwing some right dosh at it."
Right dosh means the £7m Sykes has invested in Planet Online, which simplifies access to the Internet for businesses. Any Webhead with a modem can dial up the Net but only a digital ISDN connection provides the speed suitable for frequent business use. And Planet Online, in Leeds, is one of only a handful of ISDN service providers. The necessary wiring costs about £400, and the service costs upwards of £175 a month, but Sykes believes such connections will become indispensable marketing and research tools.
He is a man who has seen the future before: he made his £160m fortune from developing property in rundown areas, including the Meadowhall shopping centre. Last Friday, he held the formal launch of Planet Online with the help of John Redwood MP. Nothing like a Vulcan to boldly go into the new electronic world.
The Sunday Telegraph: Buy Vardon, Gibbon Group, Wessex Trust, Perilya.
The Mail on Sunday: Buy Intrum Justitia, Wyndeham Press.
THE agreed bid by Farnell Electronics for the much bigger Premier Industrial risks defeat on Wednesday, as Norwich Union looks set to join rebel shareholders planning to vote against, reports the Independent on Sunday.
BTR, the industrial group, is to announce the $100m (£65m) purchase of an American car-parts manufacturer, writes The Sunday Telegraph. The group, where Ian Strachan recently took over as chief executive, is said to be in talks with Gencorp, the American industrial group, to buy its vibration -controls business.
BRITISH GAS may sacrifice large numbers of customers to big gas producers, such as BP, reports The Mail on Sunday. In return it wants to end some of its £40billion take-or-pay contracts.
Cedric Brown's pension obscured the upheaval at British Gas, writes Kirstie Hamilton
TO THE casual observer it looked like Cedric mania. First came Cedric Brown, British Gas's chief executive, being pilloried again as a fat cat for announcing plans to retire with a £240,000-a-year pension.
Next came Cedric the pig, famed for appearing with angry investors at British Gas's annual meeting last year as a symbol of bosses' greed. The pig was said to be heading for the slaughterhouse when GMB, British Gas's largest union, realised its publicity value and promised to save its bacon.
Sympathy flowed for Cedric the pig during its hour of need, but Brown, announcing his exit after 40 years of service, received no such kindness.
The media blitz was as vociferous as when his 75% basic-pay rise first emerged, sparking a big row over executive pay. But beneath the fracas over one man's pension, lies a far more important issue. Along with Brown's retirement, British Gas announced last week that it planned to split itself in two, the biggest upheaval to date in the privatised company.
To many, it was a long-awaited signal that British Gas, chaired by Richard Giordano, was tackling the problems that have turned it from a solid, reliable utility into a pile of trouble.
Under the split planned by Giordano and his board, there will be two independent quoted companies. Transco International, by far the bigger of the two with a market value of about £8billion, will take in the gas-transport and storage business, exploration and production, and the overseas business. British Gas Energy will include the domestic supply arm and its 19m customers, the Morecambe Bay gas fields, the service and retail businesses and about £41billion of "take-or-pay" contracts to buy North Sea gas.
Giordano says the demerger will enable managers to focus on their own businesses. He says: "British Gas was like a fire station the bell would ring and all the talented managers would rush off to solve a problem."
Executives concede they took their eyes of the basic businesses during the radical cost-cutting exercise that has dominated their thinking over the past two years. "Customer service has eroded and we have lost a lot of customer goodwill, which we will have to recapture," says Giordano.
Outside the company, the demerger is seen as a way of separating British Gas's main gas-supply business from painful take-or-pay contracts that could cost it billions of pounds to unwind.
Both new companies will have some complex problems. TransCo faces a new regulatory regime imposed by Ofgas, the industry regulator. This is expected to be so tough that British Gas will appeal to the Monopolies Commission for relief. But within British Gas Energy is where the really nasty problem lies. Over the last decade British Gas has taken out take-or-pay contracts with energy companies to buy gas at specific prices.
When it was a monopoly supplier of gas, these contracts were necessary and prudent. But two things have happened to change all that: gas prices have fallen, making the contracts more expensive than buying gas on the open market, and British Gas will soon lose its monopoly on consumer gas supply, reducing its need for gas supplies.
Critics say British Gas failed to face up to its contract problems early enough and it continued to write contracts at high prices long after warning bells rang.
But British Gas insists this is not the case, and that it had stopped writing any new take-or-pay contracts before December 1993, when Michael Heseltine, then board of trade president, announced that competition would be introduced into the market beginning in 1996 instead of next century.
No matter where the blame lies, take-or-pay contracts have turned into an expensive liability. Estimates of just how much they could cost the company vary widely from £1.5billion up to £4.5billion.
British Gas wants to renegotiate with the oil companies, arguing it should not bear the full cost of unwinding arrangements made when conditions, and government policy on competition, were so different.
It tried to persuade the government this year to make consumers bear some of the cost through a levy, but Tim Eggar, energy secretary, rejected the idea. Now Roy Gardner, a recently appointed director, is visiting the oil companies to seek help.
He is unlikely to receive a warm welcome, although the oil companies know they will face growing pressure to relent.
The pressure started with the 1995 Gas Act, which allowed the contracts to be transferred into a new British Gas subsidiary along with assets including the valuable Morecambe Bay gas field. Under company law, this subsidiary operates independently of British Gas as a whole, and, should its assets prove inadequate to support the costs of the contracts, it could go under without affecting the rest of British Gas.
But in reality, nobody believed a company the size of British Gas would allow a subsidiary to go under and not honour its commitments.
By demerging, British Gas is taking the separation a step further and analysts believe the move could help persuade the oil companies into negotiations. And if all else fails, the whole of British Gas will not be at risk. Only the £2.6billion of assets in British Gas Energy could be lost.
Thus many analysts are convinced that this reasoning is behind the demerger. One says: "I believe the one and only reason for the demerger is to ring-fence the take-or-pay problem." British Gas Energy will begin life as a high-risk company because of the uncertainty of the take-or-pay contracts. Dividends are unlikely initially, and brokers expect to recommend that private investors looking for low-risk investments should steer clear.
Paul Spedding, a Kleinwort Benson analyst, says: "The best description of British Energy is that it is an option on solving the contract renegotiation. If there is no progress on renegotiating you will be talking about a company joining the smaller-companies sector, not the Footsie."
Both British Gas and the government have made it clear that they believe the new company's assets are enough to bear the weight of the contract problem. If, when the prospectus comes out at the end of this year, the oil companies believe British Gas is wrong, they will almost certainly try to stop the demerger or have extra assets brought into the company.
British Gas's shareholders, having watched this nightmare unfold, will now be hoping for some good news. Their shares have underperformed the market badly for more than a year. They gained 31/2p last week to 2411/2p. But analysts warn that, no matter how well British Gas's management faces up to its challenges, the future depends more on outside factors.
Clare Spottiswoode, head of Ofgas, is due to produce her new pricing formula for TransCo in the next few months. Indications so far are that there is a huge gulf between her views on how much British Gas should be allowed to charge and the company's view of a fair deal. Unless the two can agree, a Monopolies Commission reference seems inevitable. Even without Cedric Brown, British Gas seems set to remain in the limelight.
Lord Stevens, United News & Media's chairman, enjoys playing the newspaper tycoon. His control of the Daily Express, the Sunday Express and Daily Star have brought him amusement, influence and a peerage. In return, he has repaid the Tory party with unwavering support for a decade.
It is not unusual for him to speak with the prime minister, but the subject of last week's conversation was out of the ordinary. Instead of talking politics, they spoke of his company's future. It had become too small to compete with its expanding media rivals.
United, Stevens told John Major, was planning a merger. Though it was the kind of deal encouraged by the broadcasting bill now before parliament, it would shock the Tory establishment. As a partner, Stevens has chosen Lord Hollick, managing director of MAI, the money-broking and media group, and the business world's best-known Labour supporter. Stevens says: "I called the PM beforehand as a matter of courtesy. He said: ‘You must do what is in your best commercial interests. I think it sounds like a good deal'."
If the deal goes ahead it will create a £3billion empire spanning advertising periodicals, market research, money broking and exhibitions, as well as television and newspapers. It will become one of the world's top 20 media groups.
Stevens assured Major the Express titles would continue to back the Tories it is in their commercial interests to do so and he, not Hollick, would retain editorial control. But it soon became clear that the enlarged media group would be run on a day-to-day basis by Hollick, a sharp financial operator and Labour party member since grammar school.
When the plan was announced on Thursday it was greeted with surprise and disbelief. Of all the speculation the rumour mill had thrown out in the run-up to media deregulation, none had suggested a coupling of the thin, bearded socialist and the bespectacled Puck-like Tory.
"The two men could not be more different," says one who knowns both of them. But they share a financial background and are now apparently united by their vision in a rapidly changing media landscape.
They expect the government's new broadcasting legislation which for the first time will allow newspaper groups to buy TV companies and vice versa will create a takeover wave. Hollick says: "There will be a series of announcements over the next year or so. We just happen to be the first."
Even before the as-yet-unnamed media group has come into being, there are questions about whether a predator may emerge. On Thursday, the market interpreted the announcement as a "defensive merger" and the shares in both companies rose on the assumption that their coupling could provoke a rival bid from another media group, such as Carlton Communications. MAI rose 56p to 435p; United jumped 21p to 645p. Hollick remains unflustered by talk of counter-bids. Almost as if he has pencilled out a defence document, he runs through the obstacles that would present themselves (the high prices, compliance with the broadcasting bill and compliance with the Fair Trading Act) and returns to the subject of creating a "global media group".
He will not easily be thrown off course. "The challenge of a merger is to sort out the detail beforehand and to make sure one doesn't marry in haste and repents at leisure," he says.
STEVENS and Hollick began preparing the ground last summer after being introduced last July by Nicholas Cobbold, a stockbroker turned headhunter, and began to sense a mutuality of interest. "I liked his personality," says Stevens. "I said this is a man I can do business with." By the end of the summer they had met several times and had begun to discuss the logic of putting the two companies together. "It is partly about size," says Hollick. "You need the financial and management muscle to be pre-eminent in your market."
Stevens could offer Hollick an entrance into national newspapers, but, more important, a magazine and exhibitions business, trading under the name Miller Freeman, with a strong foothold in America and increasingly in the Far East and continental Europe. United has an international network that could be useful to MAI. It also provides critical mass, with a market value of £1.5billion, which would make MAI a far more imposing target for a potential predator.
United's problem was its underperforming assets and exclusion from the fast-growing broadcasting and electronic media worlds. The poor performance of the Express, with the largest circulation fall in the paper's history, has created an image of managerial mediocrity at United, even though profits have been improving.
As Hollick and Stevens sounded out their directors and advisers, the more sense the plan to combine forces began to make. On December 17 they put the plan to their boards and decided to go ahead.
Meeting in various anonymous locations, the two men identified which directors would have places in the combined group, how to ring-fence the Express in a "deadlocked company" until media deregulation becomes law in the summer, and how they planned to split their duties.
One friend of Hollick's says the formula is simple: "Stevens will have the newspapers as his playground and Hollick will concentrate on the other 93% of the business."
Stevens is unlikely to see it that way and for the time being they are operating as a partnership. They say they will cut some of the 19,000 staff the market expects cost savings of at least £27m, or 10% of the combined operating profits of £269.5m.
"But this is not really a cost story," says Stevens. "It is a business where we think we can drive the revenues more."
The synergies between the two groups are not obvious to many analysts. But Hollick and Stevens say MAI's market research business will complement United's exhibitions and trade magazine activities. Both men are also excited by prospects of cross-promotion. The newspapers, according to Stevens, will promote the TV stations and any new ventures such as theme parks.
At the start, the duo will concentrate on deciding where to focus their efforts and which parts of the group to sell.
Over the next week Stevens says they will decide whether to locate the head office in his sumptuous wood-panelled headquarters by Blackfriars Bridge or in Hollick's spartan building around the corner. "It is irrelevant," says Stevens. None the less, it is difficult to imagine him sacrificing his majestic view over London.
Hollick took a long time to get into media. But with MAI's winning Meridian ITV franchise bid in 1991 he won a seat at the table. Over the past five years he has established MAI as one of the most powerful ITV network players alongside Michael Green's Carlton and Gerry Robinson's Granada.
At the same time he has managed to avoid the acrimony and uncertainty of hostile bids. While Robinson was winning his battle for London Weekend Television (LWT), Hollick in January 1994 pulled off a £292m deal to buy Anglia Television with characteristic stealth, secrecy and painstaking attention to detail. Late last year he added to his empire a stake in the winning Channel 5 consortium that will create a new commercial TV network next year.
AFTER the United merger, Hollick could have the firepower to further his British broadcasting empire with a bid for HTV or even Yorkshire Tyne Tees Television if he re-shuffles United's portfolio of regional papers. Alternatively he could look abroad.
His vision is to create something more broadly-based than a TV empire. He is keen to build a global media group, distributing not only television programmes, but specialist and financial information.
He denies any defensive motives for the merger. But by striking this deal, he and Stevens have declared that the open season has begun in media before the legislation has even gone through parliament.
The ripple effect is already being felt. On Friday NatWest Securities, the broker, fuelled expectations that the United and MAI merger was merely a prelude to a bidding war. Neill Junor, the media analyst, wrote: "We are not convinced this deal will go ahead. MAI is a critical franchise within the ITV network and we believe Carlton will be prompted to make a counter-bid."
Carlton's Green cut short his holiday in Barbados on hearing about Hollick's move and called up his advisers.
But Hollick, who has done his homework, claims the hurdles for Green would be too great for him to countenance a bid for MAI.
"My belief is that Michael has rather more exciting plans than that," he says.
THORN SECURITY, the fire-detection equipment and security-alarm maker, is in talks with competitors about a possible £130m trade sale. The company, sold to a management buyout by Thorn EMI in 1994, had been expected to float this year, but observers say a trade sale is now more likely. The company appointed BZW last year to float it but news of its planned listing has triggered interest from rivals keen to expand in the growing security and fire-protection markets.
Advisers also believe institutions may be put off by Thorn Security's short trading record. In the past two years a number of high-profile venture capital-backed flotations have flopped soon after listing and investors are wary of MBO floats.
Chubb is said to be the frontrunner and has been holding talks with Thorn for some time. It was said to have walked away over price last year, but industry executives said it was back in the frame.
Thorn, which makes environment-control systems and has a manned-guard business, would be an attractive acquisition for Chubb. Sir Ernest Harrison, chairman, and David Peacock, chief executive, are keen on expanding its operations and adding new products to its range.
In December it reported a 13% interim profits rise to £44m and said it was looking for acquisitions. A £130m sale or float of Thorn Security would complete a remarkable turnround for the business in two years. In 1994, when Thorn EMI put the security arm up for sale, it struggled to find a buyer for the business, which lost £3.5m that year.
In the end, Thorn EMI sold to management in a £38m buyout backed by Hambros European Ventures. It took a £16m exceptional loss to cover the sale but retained a 43% stake. Since the buyout, John Nixon, chief executive, has revived the business. Last year it made a £9.17m profit. Its backers had planned a three-year programme before seeking a listing, but the strong results and trade interest has speeded up their plans.
A sale would create fortunes for the top managers, who invested £500,000 for a 20% stake at the time of the buyout. This could now be worth about £25m.
THE "F" word, focus, becomes ever more fashionable in everything from books to bricks. On Friday Pearson paid $580m (£377m) for the educational-books division of HarperCollins, part of News Corporation, The Sunday Times's ultimate holding company. Pearson wants to become the world's top educational publisher, while NewsCorp is abandoning a peripheral activity.
Meanwhile Redland last week confirmed our story that its brick business is to be sold and that it wants to restructure its roof-tiles division, in particular its 50.8%-owned German subsidiary, Braas. Once again focus is the theme in an increasingly competitive globalising market and focus is what Redland needs. As the chart shows, it has underperformed the FT-SE 100 index by 58% since 1991.
Braas is a great story. In the early 1950s a Herr Braas turned up on Redland's doorstep with a plan to reroof post-war Germany using the British company's technology. So Redland built him a plant and invested £50,000. Since then Redland has not put another penny into a business that in its last reported year made £195m. It is the finest investment made by a British company in post-war Germany.
But the relationship needs to change. Redland/Braas's rivals are now pan-European and, to compete, it needs a common management, an end to conflicts of interest and a simpler ownership structure. As one tile man says: "The man in the moon would not have designed the current structure." The way forward would be for Redland to inject its European tile businesses into Braas for shares and cash. Braas would then be the expansion powerhouse in Europe and Redland, after its brick sale, would have the firepower for Far East growth.
The problem will be agreeing valuations. Braas, where the founding family still has a big stake, did brilliantly in Germany's post-reunification boom. But profits are now sliding while Redland's British tile business is set for growth.
WHEN it comes to British Gas, as in most other instances, the instincts of Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson were sounder than the corporatism of their damper cabinet colleagues. Before British Gas was privatised in 1986, Thatcher and Lawson argued for a break-up. But Lord Walker, then energy secretary, persuaded them otherwise and British Gas was born as a private monopoly. It looked great at the time. The Sids made big early gains but it has been downhill ever since. Monopolies, where avoidable, are bad and competition is good. That is what the government decided when it privatised electricity. Now, finally, competition is coming into domestic gas supply.
Last week British Gas accepted the reality by announcing plans to split itself in two, as Kirstie Hamilton describes on page 4. The conflicts of interest in being a pipeline operator and a competitive supplier will go a big step forward. But is there hope for the Sids? There are big problems. British Gas Energy, the domestic supplier, has its "take-or-pay" contracts crisis and TransCo International faces a tough Ofgas pricing review. But the top managers can at last focus on those problems rather than simply being firefighters dashing from one crisis to another.
OF COURSE, paying a premium can cause problems for a board making a big move as Farnell, the electronics-distribution company bidding £1.8billion for America's Premier Industrial group, has found. Two big investors, Legal & General and Standard Life, have announced plans to vote against the deal at this week's Farnell shareholders' meeting. There is little dispute over logic but some think the price too high. But such vocal opposition does not mean the bid is dead. Farnell, a real British success story, has been lobbying hard to persuade investors it has the skills to run the enlarged group and can seize opportunities in America, Europe and the Far East.
Its supporters say Premier would not have been available at a lower price, pointing to the premium rating of Farnell's nearest rival, Electrocomponents, and some earnings dilution was inevitable with such a big move forward. Judging by the feedback so far, a majority of investors have confidence in Farnell's board but it needs 75% support to go through. There are risks in the bid but the board should win the day provided it can overcome investor voting inertia.
A KISS without a moustache, a girl once told me, is like an egg without salt. That is how the City feels about mergers. When one company takes over or merges with another, investors want more for their shares. Control carries a premium.
There are exceptions: investors loved the 1982 International Timber/Montague Meyer merger. Like two drunks in a storm, the pair propped each other up, sobered up, weathered the turmoil, hacked costs and blossomed when the sun came out. Six years later Travis & Arnold merged with Sandell Perkins in the face of a hostile bid, ironically from the merged Meyer International, but only because Travis's founding family had a 38% stake.
Generally the spoils go to the premium provider. When Charterhouse Petroleum and Saxon Oil served up their 1985 merger it looked good on paper. There was only one problem: Enterprise bid more in cash for Saxon and it was not long before Charterhouse was bought by Belgium's Petrofina.
Such thoughts will preoccupy Lords Hollick and Stevens as they lobby for the £3billion merger of MAI and United News & Media, described by Rufus Olins opposite. The rationale has two elements. One is succession: Hollick and Stevens were brought together by Nicholas Cobbold, a headhunting mutual friend (one might say the deal was Cobbold together); now, instead of a team seen as poor, Stevens will have a well-regarded chief executive. Another is size: resources are vital in taking opportunities in a deregulating media world.
But the City is rife with talk that this merger will not go through, with Michael Green's Carlton tipped as a party pooper through a bid for MAI. The attitude of MAI investors, led by Mercury Asset Management, Schroder and Capital Group, will be critical. They own MAI shares because they like its broadcasting arm and its money-broking cashflow. You will not find them heavy on the register at United, whose interests are more traditional. How happy will they be to take paper in a broader combine lacking fashionable focus? Much depends on Hollick moving quickly to sell poor-performing assets.
But one thing is clear: this is not a done deal, and both sides have effectively put themselves in play. Their supporters reckon Green cannot get over the regulatory hurdles involved in an MAI bid, but I am not so sure. Since Carlton's flotation it has been run cautiously and conservatively. But Green wants to build a bigger media business and will make his move if it benefits Carlton investors and if he senses the City would welcome it.
LIZA BRUCE, the fashion designer who made the front pages last year with her "copy-cat" legal action against Marks & Spencer, has put her company into voluntary liquidation.
Bruce, dubbed the "queen of cling" in the fashion industry for her figure-hugging creations, accused M&S of pirating her £120 swimming costumes, even down to the fabric. The M&S costumes sold at a fraction of the price.
Bruce and her husband, Nicholas Barker, decided on voluntary liquidation after the company, Liza Bruce Ltd, ran up debts of £250,000 to 50 creditors. But Barker said yesterday they had not given up their M&S fight, which has already cost them £30,000 in legal fees, and would seek legal aid. Last July, Bruce hired models wearing hers and lookalike costumes to picket the M&S annual meeting. M&S is contesting the action. Barker blamed the collapse on the legal battle. He said orders had fallen by a half because the company had been forced to find a new fabric supplier. "It has all been incredibly counter-productive," he said. Creditors agree. "They took their eye off the ball," said one.
The couple had hoped to float their company on the Alternative Investment Market (Aim). Despite the collapse, they are now in talks with an Italian company to back a new venture.
The company's financial affairs have not been clear cut. On a number of occasions since the launch 10 years ago, the accounts have been qualified by auditors, many of whom stayed only one year. In 1993, Touche Ross signed off the accounts on a going-concern basis, due to the "uncertainty as to the continuation" of a £125,000 bank-overdraft facility. A similar qualification was given by a different auditor in the 1992 financial report.
Among company assets was a Facel Vega, a classic French sports coupe, worth £20,000.
CLIVE CARR, the multimillionaire chairman of London's deluxe Park Lane Hotel, faces an investor rebellion and an accusation that he is running it as a "private fiefdom".
John Hanson, a Yorkshire businessman and leader of the rebel action group, sent a fiery four-page letter to the hotel's shareholders yesterday. In it he expresses "deep concern" about the hotel management, slams Carr's treatment of investors and calls for him to be removed from the board.
Hanson claims to speak for owners of more than 10% of the shares. He believes investors have been kept in the dark over bid talks and believes the hotel will be sold too cheaply.
Chelsfield, the property company, has offered £50m to buy the 70 -year old establishment overlooking Green Park. Others, including ITT Sheraton, are also said to be interested.
Six years ago All Nippon Airways offered £113m for the hotel, though the bid was never put to shareholders. Hanson says in the letter: "Poor management and inadequate investment have allowed the hotel to fall into decline. The responsibility ... must fall firmly on the shoulders of Clive Carr who has been chairman for over 19 years, for most of that time the only executive director." Carr, who is a director and big investor at Arsenal football club, is believed to be hurt by the criticism and his advisers say the personal attack is misplaced. The Carr family has suffered embarrassment after the disclosure of the investor rebellion over the takeover talks. It has developed into a war between descendants of the hotel founder and other investors.
It was built by Sir George Bracewell-Smith, one of Britain's wealthiest hoteliers. After the first world war he saw a steel-girder skeleton in Piccadilly known as the birdcage because of its half-finished state. Backed by seven other Yorkshire businessmen he completed the building. The shares, which can be traded over the counter, have since been passed down the generations but are still tightly held by 230 investors. Hanson's family was one of the original backers.
Carr is a descendant of the Bracewell-Smith family. His management contract expires next year. He was paid £504,000 last year, including pension contributions, when the group made a £1.4m profit. This year it is expected to make between £2.5m to £2.7m.
THREE companies are entering the final week of a fierce battle for control of troubled Edinburgh firm Dunedin Fund Managers. Ivory & Sime and Edinburgh Fund Managers are locked in a £100m auction with Murray Johnstone, Glasgow subsidiary of the American company United Asset Management. Other contenders have withdrawn as the price has soared on the back of a determined effort by the Scottish firms to keep control of Dunedin north of the border.
Dunedin, with £5billion of funds under management, was put on the market last month by Bank of Scotland, its majority shareholder, after sackings and resignations last year led to the loss of three American pension funds.
LLOYD'S, the besieged insurance market, will offer £2.1billion to settle litigation that threatens its survival.
Tomorrow it will announce how it has decided to divide the £2.8billion reconstruction and renewal package devised last year. The lion's share of £2.1billion will be spread among the 13,000 or so names suing the market. This will be more than double an earlier, unsuccessful offer to appease investors hit by massive losses. The rest will be used to help names cap their liabilities.
The remaining £700m of the package will be used to help names finally cap their losses by reinsuring them into a new entity called Equitas.
AVOCET VENTURES, the Vancouver-listed gold and tungsten miner, will this week announce plans to float on the London Stock Exchange. It plans to raise £10m which could see the group valued at about £80m.
Founded by Nigel McNair Scott and Jocelyn Waller, former Charter Consolidated executives, Avocet already has Met Life and Minorco as big shareholders as well as a strong group of wealthy private backers. Avocet is the biggest producer of tungsten, the hard metal used in industrial drilling as well as the arms industry.
LORD PARKINSON, former Conservative party chairman and cabinet minister, is considering whether to take up a position with Winchester, the commodities and derivatives trading group that is the subject of an inquiry by the Securities and Futures Authority (SFA).
Parkinson, who ran the trade and industry, energy and transport departments, is an old friend of Charles Vincent, who controls Winchester and whose lucrative dealings in the copper markets have earned him the nickname "Copperfingers". Those close to the company say Parkinson will probably take up a non-executive directorship or a consultancy.
But he is likely to await the outcome of the SFA inquiry. Asked about a possible job with the company, he said last week: "That would be something for the future. I have known Charles for a very long time, but have never had a commercial relationship with his company. I am an old family friend, that is all."
Winchester has promised to respond soon to "concerns" expressed by the SFA about its dealings.
Parkinson is believed to have already contacted the SFA to discuss the Winchester situation.
An SFA spokesman said: "We are not going to confirm or deny that Lord Parkinson contacted the SFA in connection with Winchester."
The SFA is looking at seven trades in January 1994 executed by Winchester on behalf of Codelco, the Chilean copper trading company. Codelco is suing at least two London metal brokers not Winchester over £132m of losses incurred in the early 1990s in speculative trading.
Since his full-time political career ended in 1983, Parkinson has concentrated on business, with a clutch of directorships in private and public companies, some reflecting his experience at the transport department. Last summer he stepped down as chairman of Eurorail, one of the consortia bidding for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.
THE government is facing a potential liability of up to £60m after the collapse of Coal Investments (CI), the mining group that called in administrators last week. A payment is likely if Arthur Andersen, the administrator, fails to find a buyer for all six mines.
Last Friday, the administrator and the Coal Authority, the government body set up to oversee British Coal's remaining assets and liabilities, were locked in negotiations. The authority, which granted the mining licence, is now responsible for the mines.
Experts estimate the cost of "capping" filling the mines with concrete and limestone to stop gases escaping could be anywhere between £40m to £60m. But administrators are confident that either a financial reconstruction, involving a voluntary arrangement with creditors, or an outright sale can be achieved.
Attempts by Malcolm Edwards, Coal Investments chairman, to stave off administration failed on Tuesday, as foreshadowed in last week's Sunday Times. An approach to National Power, its biggest customer, to bail it out with a £5m loan was rebuffed.
There was also a split among CI's three lending banks, NatWest, UBS and Banque Indosuez. UBS was not prepared to help out with an £8m rescue loan. CI had already drawn down its £30m bank facility and needed extra finance to tide it over before asking shareholders to support a £20m rights issue. CI's trade creditors are thought to be owed as much as £25m. They include Trafalgar House, CI's tunnelling contractor, which is owed up to £4m.
Meanwhile administrators are continuing to operate the six mines five in the Midlands and Yorkshire, one in South Wales which have a total workforce of 1,500.
The Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM) is threatening legal action against CI. Neil Greatrex, the UDM president, wants to trace £100,000 set aside under CI's staff share-ownership plan. The shares are part of weekly bonus payments, averaging £50 a week since May. He estimates that miners are owed £700 each.
He says: "Nothing has been forthcoming from the company so it looks like I will have to take court action."
CI's collapse comes only days after the breakdown of negotiations to sell British Coal's pension-fund management company, CINMan, to Friends Provident for £70m. This puts a question mark over the future of Barry Southcott, who runs the £17billion fund.
Mick Clapham, Labour MP for Barnsley West, plans to raise the issue in parliament this Wednesday.
He said yesterday: "I've heard reports that attempts have been made to unseat Southcott. I've heard rumours that Neil Clarke, chairman of British Coal, wants his swift departure as the price for failing to reach the deal. This all sounds very acrimonious for one of the best-managed funds in Europe."
ALLIANCE & LEICESTER, Britain's fourth-biggest building society, is preparing to jettison its estate-agency operation in the run-up to its approaching £2.5billion flotation, writes John Waples.
Alliance, which is seeking to convert to bank status, is expected to make a one-off charge in its year-end figures, due within the next 10 weeks.
Analysts are expecting record profits approaching £330m, before exceptional items, but the pre-tax figure will still be well above last year's profit of £284m. Peter White, chief executive, is keen to clean up the balance sheet before flotation.
Alliance is the latest of a number of societies to withdraw from estate-agency. It has a network of 70 branches, based in the east Midlands, East Anglia and the southeast.
Meanwhile industry executives say Sun Alliance, the insurer, has made approaches to several parties to sell its estate agents. The move has been triggered by disappointment with the slow pick-up in demand in the housing market, and the belief they have become too costly to run as a distribution arm for selling financial-service products. Nationwide building society has already dumped its 304-strong network for a nominal £1.
But there are buyers for unwanted networks. Both Hambro Countrywide and Halifax, Britain's two biggest estate-agency owners, are still keen to expand. Woolwich building society, which is planning a stock-market float, is also believed to be retaining its operation.
During the 1980s housing boom, banks, building societies and insurers spent £2billion to build national chains of estate agencies. It proved to be a costly error.
BRITISH GAS is to ask the government to give up its golden share when the company splits in two next year.
Under last week's demerger plan the government will have a golden share in TransCo, the gas-pipeline owner, while the golden share will disappear from British Gas Energy, the supply business and owner of the Morecambe Bay gas fields.
But British Gas executives also want TransCo's golden share to go. They believe a government veto over bids is outdated and TransCo should be subject to the same takeover threat as other companies. Richard Giordano, British Gas chairman, last week told analysts: "We would want the golden share lifted on both companies." If TransCo's management was not successful, he added, it would not deserve golden-share protection.
While the City would welcome golden-share cancellation, it could cause a political furore, with critics saying such a crucial part of Britain's infrastructure should stay protected from bids. The recently floated National Grid, which runs the electricity network, has a golden share.
In the short term, analysts believe that an end to the golden share would not make TransCo vulnerable to takeover because it faces uncertainty over its regulatory regime for some time yet. Clare Spottiswoode, the gas regulator, is in the middle of a pricing review and is likely to present a tough set of proposals soon.
British Gas has warned it will appeal to the Monopolies Commission if it believes the new regime is too harsh. "Until things are clearer on the regulatory front it would take a lunatic to bid for TransCo," said an analyst. But once the new regime is implemented, predators may take a different line. American utilities have been keen buyers of British regional electricity companies. Meanwhile, Giordano said he was not trying to warn off small investors with his comments last week that it would "have to find a way to ease Aunt Maude out without any pain". He said: "What I said was if the trading subsidiary appears too risky for Aunt Maude we would look for ways to make it easy for her to get out." One option is free dealing; another is a free switch into TransCo shares.
Analysts agree the trading subsidiary, British Gas Energy, will be a high-risk venture, and is unlikely to pay dividends in the short term.
Liza Bruce, the fashion designer suing Marks & Spencer over alleged pirating of her swimming costumes, has put her firm into voluntary liquidation with £250,000 debts. Picture: Martin Beddall Full story, page 2
THE Bank of England will warn this week that inflation exceeding the government's target of 2.5% remains a serious risk.
Although its central projection, in its quarterly inflation report, will be of a rate close to 2.5% within two years, it will say there is a significant probability of inflation coming in above the target.
The Bank, for the first time, is set to put numerical probabilities on the chances of inflation exceeding the official target. Before preparing its latest report, it asked independent economic forecasters to put probabilities on their predictions.The report, out on Wednesday, will be seen as reinforcing the objections of Eddie George, the governor, to further base-rate cuts. He opposed the chancellor's cut from 6.5% to 6.25% in January.
The market impact of the Bank's caution will be tempered by expected good inflation figures this week. The headline Retail Prices Index is expected to drop from 3.2% to about 2.8%, while the underlying rate, excluding mortgages, is set to drop from 3% to 2.7%, close to the target. According to a survey of analysts by Idea, the financial-research consultancy, there will be a final cut in base rates from 6.25% to 6% next month.
But other news will add to doubts about the recovery. The 28-month decline in unemployment may be coming to an end, government officials fear, as thousands of British building workers return from recession-hit Germany.
January jobless figures, out on Wednesday, are set to show a rise of more than 100,000 in the unadjusted, or headline, total. But with construction recruitment hit by bad weather and manufacturing industry cutting output, the more important adjusted total, which has been falling continuously since 1993, could also rise.
Richard Brown, the British Chambers of Commerce's deputy director-general, said job prospects among member companies were at their gloomiest for three years.
Over the past month there has been a spate of lay-off announcements. In retailing, Powerhouse announced 200 shop closures and 2,300 job losses and Sears said it would shed 300 at British Shoe Corporation. Coventry-based Suter announced 400 redundancies in its car-parts business, while Jaguar laid off most of its 2,000 production workers for a week. Scottish Widows announced 700 job cuts, Yarrow 650 and Amstrad 150.
But the most serious threat lies in building. On Friday, the Bonn parliament passed a law requiring foreign workers to be paid as much as their German counterparts from March 1, putting the jobs of 60,000-80,000 British workers in Germany at risk. At home, Wimpey and Tarmac last week signalled a new round of job cuts.
Graham Watts, the Construction Industry Council's chief executive, said: "I think we shall see 70,000-80,000 job cuts this year, possibly more. Many areas of the industry will be very badly hit this year, and probably next year as well. The vast majority of British workers in Germany will have to come back."An article in the Bank's quarterly bulletin, released ahead of publication, says that countries with the best inflation records have independent central banks. The Bank of England, it says, has a low level of independence and a high level of accountability.
CRAIG JOHNSTON, the Australian-born former Liverpool footballer, has been touring the City to raise venture capital for a new outdoor six-a-side soccer league, which he aims to launch this summer.
Johnston, who played for Liverpool in the 1980s, wants to attract professional footbal stars near the end of their careers to play the game he has branded "Soccer Sixes".
He plans to use Soccer Sixes as the centrepiece for a satellite and cable-television channel dedicated to football. It would show the games plus a diet of news, music and soccer-based entertainment and cartoons.
Plans for the channel are at an early stage, but Johnston is said to have had talks with Nike, Coca-Cola and record companies about the venture.
Johnston, who is developing an Internet site for Fifa, football's world governing body, has its backing for the new venture and has also had talks with Britain's football authorities about running a tournament alongside the FA Carling Premiership.
Soccer Sixes is a combination of indoor football and the training games played by professionals. It will be played on grass but the pitches, to be surrounded by see-through walls to keep the ball in pay, will be smaller and the goals bigger.
Johnston reckons matches could be played on a pitch the size of Wimbledon's Centre Court. He claims the speed of the game and the increased number of goals will generate big TV interest. He intends to use cameras running above the pitch to screen the games from unusual angles.
This summer, Johnston plans to stage a trial tournament to promote his plans. He would like to set up national leagues and eventually intends to establish a Soccer Sixes World Cup. Star players, including Maradona and Jurgen Klinsmann, are said to be interested.
Johnston has found much success in sporting business ventures. Two years ago he developed a new football boot, called Predator, which had a series of rubber ridges or fins across the top, enabling players to exert more control over the ball. According to Johnston it gripped the ball like the tread of a tyre on the road.
The boot was endorsed by top soccer players such as Paul Ince and Glenn Hoddle, and by Rob Andrew, the England rugby star. Adidas, the German sportswear group, took on Johnston's idea and started mass production in 1994. Despite the boots' £120 launch price, Adidas struggled to keep pace with demand.
Johnston has also developed a soccer-based game show called the Main Event, which he has sold worldwide.
MICHAEL GREEN'S Carlton Communications is being encouraged by investors and analysts to intervene in the planned £3billion MAI/United News & Media merger. On Thursday, Green interrupted a Caribbean holiday when news of the merger broke, and is now pondering how to respond. Some analysts believe he should bid for MAI, the media and money-broking group chaired by Lord Hollick. Carlton is valued at £2.4billion, MAI at £1.4billion.
On Friday NatWest Securities, the stockbroker, poured scorn on the United deal saying it was "defensive", lacked "strategic logic" and "will not happen". NatWest said Carlton could bid at 500p for MAI, valuing it at £1.6billion, and face minimal earnings dilution.
It wrote: "For Carlton this strategic move would be critical. If investors are offered a higher price, particularly with a cash element, then we believe Carlton would secure MAI, not United News & Media."
Under the United/MAI deal, investors swap 100 MAI shares for 64 United shares. This values MAI shares at 413p with United at 645p. Market expectation that the announcement would flush out a bid caused a 69p jump in MAI's shares on Thursday. On Friday they slipped 13p to 435p, still 22p above the terms.
Hollick, who becomes chief executive with Lord Stevens as chairman, said he did not think Green would bid. "My belief is Michael has rather more exciting plans than that," he said. "He is not going to be blown off course by us merging."
There are two regulatory obstacles. The broadcasting bill proposes that no group should have more than 15% of viewing, and the fair trading act could prompt a referral over Carlton's advertising share.
Carlton owns two ITV licences, in London and the Midlands, which account for 9.5% of viewing. An MAI purchase would bring two more licences, Meridian and Anglia, which command 5.6% of viewing, bringing the total to about 15%. MAI also owns a stake in the forthcoming Channel5 network. A Carlton takeover would create a company with about half of ITV advertising. Green has to judge whether that would comply with the government's competition policies.
Green is thought to believe the United/MAI bid lacks industrial logic but he is unlikely to intervene without confidence that the regulatory obstacles can be overcome and that investors will go his way.
Hollick, 50, would be a tough adversary. The Labour peer, who will head the first British media group to own both national newspapers and ITV licences, will not stop at the United deal.
Stevens will retain editorial control of the Express titles. But Hollick will take responsibility for budgets.
Stevens, 59, has been winding down his activities. Until recently he chaired four companies United, Alexander Proudfoot, the consultancy, Mid-States, a car-parts distributor, and Oak Industries, a components maker.
If Carlton does not move on MAI, analysts forecast a takeover of HTV. It is valued at £310m. There have been informal contacts sparked by Carlton's interest in HTV's film, TV rights and cable interests.
BRITAIN's banks are facing a potential bad-debt nightmare from struggling professional partnerships.
NatWest has brought in Deloitte & Touche, the accountant, to advise it and devise ways of pre-empting big bad-debt bills. Other banks have also sought help.
During the 1980s the banks targeted professional firms, believing they provided low-risk, prestige business. Dealing with partnerships had lucrative side benefits, such as holding client money and carrying out deals for the firm's clients.
But many professional firms, including lawyers, accountants and chartered surveyors, are facing growing financial difficulties. Bank loans to partnerships run to billions, and other associated debts, including loans to partners, increase the sums involved.
One consultant said: "There is no doubt that in general terms all of the clearing banks have a significant number of loans to partnerships that are in financial difficulty. They are all facing the problem and are
all concerned about what used to be regarded as blue-chip lending."
Dominic Egan, editor of Legal Business magazine, said many law firms were in crisis despite the recovery. He said: "The middle tier of firms is being squeezed."
As a result, the legal sector is awash with rumours of firms struggling under high levels of debt.
In some cases, small firms have merged with larger firms to find sanctuary. Last year Nabarro Nathanson, the 13th-largest firm, absorbed Turner Kenneth & Brown, a smaller rival.
The banks are increasingly keen to encourage mergers or other defensive measures, because they face big losses if partnerships go bust.
Egan said: "The banks have their hands tied. They cannot go into these firms and sell off assets there aren't any."
Often a bank will have three tiers of debt: one to the partnership, another to the partners to fund their partnership capital commitment and a third loan, often a mortgage on the partner's house.
Partnerships have unlimited liability so banks can pursue partners for personal assets if their firms go under. But the rates of return tend to be low 25p in the pound according to one banker and the hostility caused by chasing personal assets is considerable.
"In the end, a huge amount of debt is reliant on one thing the fee income from the firm," said the consultant.
Though big City law firms are pulling in fees from the bid boom, the climate is more frosty for smaller firms.
For those who signed leases on smart offices during the late 1980s, the combination of lower income and a high cost base is causing the banks great concern.
Last night's winning
national lottery numbers:
4 11 14 15 28 42
Bonus number: 6
SIX ticket-holders split last night's £9.2m jackpot, winning £1,549,049 each. Thirty others with five numbers plus the bonus each claim £95,326, while 1,745 with five balls win £1,024.
A PERFORMANCE of Romeo and Juliet in Birmingham was abandoned after 40 minutes after one actor broke another's nose in a staged fight.
A MASKED gunman killed a father and his son in their Manchester shop and then attempted to shoot the man's wife and their eight-year-old daughter. Police believe the incident may be linked to a dispute between two families. The dead men were named as Mohammed Sardar, 59, and Mohammed Ahmed Sardar, 17.
THE Royal College of Nursing, which represents 300,000 staff, has called for a 6% pay rise and condemned the 2% basic offered. Christine Hancock, the general secretary, said the reaction of nurses was one of "shock, anger and disbelief".
Police launched a murder inquiry last night after a woman died and three young boys were injured, one critically, in a house fire at Corby, Northamptonshire. The names of the woman and the children were not disclosed.
MARTIN CODY, a security guard, appeared in court at Bristol yesterday accused of the manslaughter of Fleur Lombard, 21, the first female firefighter to die on duty in Britain. Cody, 20, who was remanded in custody until February 28, also faces two arson charges.
POLICE hunting a convicted rapist wanted for the murder of a blonde accountant and the attempted killing of another woman said yesterday he may have fled abroad.
Detectives leading the search for Victor Farrant, 45, have extended their inquiries to Belgium, where he once lived, but say he may still be "holed up" somewhere in Britain, sheltered by friends.
The police want to question Farrant about the murder of Glenda Hoskins, 45, whose body was found wrapped in a carpet in the attic of her £100,000 apartment in Port Solent, Hampshire, and a vicious knife and bottle attack on Ann Fidler, 43, who ran an escort agency in Eastleigh. Fidler suffered brain damage and has no recollection of the assault.
According to detectives, Farrant is a charmer who spent many nights drinking and meeting women in seaside towns on the south coast. Their inquiries have concentrated on a seafront nightclub called Pyramids in Southsea, described as his favourite haunt.
It was there, just before Christmas, that Farrant first met Hoskins, who was estranged from her husband. She was unaware he had been released from prison a month earlier after serving half his 12-year term for two brutal attacks.
Friends of Hoskins say romance blossomed between the glamorous businesswoman and the well-dressed Farrant. Later, however, Hoskins made it clear she wanted to end the affair. Police said she put up a desperate struggle for her life and her body was heavily bruised.
Farrant may also have used his charms to trick an unsuspecting woman into helping him evade a police dragnet. He has convinced friends, and women in particular, that he is a big spender with a professional background.
However, police say his previous employment was as a building site worker and he had been claiming social security since his release from prison. During his trial at Lewes crown court in 1988, a jury heard he had pretended to be a pilot when he met a woman at Brighton's Grand hotel.
Farrant persuaded his 32-year-old victim to return to his flat and subjected her to an appalling five-hour battering. He was convicted of rape, assault and false imprisonment.
Officers are sifting through 600 potential sightings of Farrant in Britain.
A SENIOR Conservative MP has been accused of accepting free hospitality worth thousands of pounds from an American tobacco giant without declaring it. Neil Hamilton, the former corporate affairs minister, is to be reported this week to the parliamentary watchdog on MPs' standards.
Hamilton, MP for Tatton, was forced to resign his ministerial post two years ago after the "cash-for-questions" affair, in which he was alleged to have taken money from Mohamed al-Fayed, owner of Harrods an accusation Hamilton denies and enjoyed a free visit to the Ritz in Paris.
Alex Carlile QC, Liberal Democrat MP for Montgomery, confirmed this weekend that he was preparing a complaint to Sir Gordon Downey, parliamentary commissioner for standards in public life, after allegations that Hamilton also failed to declare corporate gifts provided by US Tobacco.
"It is not for me to make a judgment on any allegations," said Carlile. "The allegations of themselves, however, raise very important issues going to the root of conduct of MPs. They require the immediate attention of the parliamentary commissioner."
According to a former business associate who says he was involved in making the arrangements, Hamilton accepted free accommodation in luxurious hotels in New York and London at US Tobacco's expense.
On one occasion, several months after his free stay at the Ritz in 1987, Hamilton stayed in the Essex House, one of Manhattan's finest hotels, which overlooks Central Park, while on a visit with his wife Christine.
US Tobacco put up the couple in the company's private hotel apartment, which is valued at about £1m. To lease an equivalent flat today would cost about £8,000 a month. The best rooms in the hotel cost £1,300 a night. A friend of Hamilton said last week: "I spoke to him just after he got back and he couldn't stop talking about the time he had had."
Hamilton's former business associate also claimed that he stayed at the exclusive St James's Court hotel in London at US Tobacco's expense to attend a meeting with the company. At no time has Hamilton declared any gift from US Tobacco.
Ted Kratovil, senior vice-president of US Tobacco in charge of government relations, confirmed last week that Hamilton had "taken action as a member of the House on our behalf". He said Hamilton had been "extended whatever hospitality we could to facilitate his travels. It was a very friendly situation".
The business associate, who asked not to be identified, worked with Hamilton on a campaign to overturn a proposed government ban on Skoal Bandits, a chewing tobacco manufactured by US Tobacco during the late 1980s and linked with cancer. US Tobacco feared a British ban would cause the product to be outlawed elsewhere in Europe.
Ian Greer Associates (IGA), a Westminster-based lobbying firm, had been retained by the manufacturer to mastermind its campaign. Hamilton is understood to have been involved in introducing the company to IGA. Senior IGA executives discussed paying him a finder's fee of about £5,000, but it is not known whether any payment was made. Hamilton has never declared any such payment. Last week Ian Greer, founder of the company, would neither confirm nor deny paying a fee.
Hamilton was not a member of the government at the time of his involvement with US Tobacco but actively pursued ministers in an effort to press the company's case. He contacted several, including Lord Howe, then foreign secretary. None was prepared to support the campaign. "He was willing to press buttons with ministers, which was very useful," said a former IGA executive.
The lobbying was ultimately unsuccessful but a British ban on the product was delayed for nearly two years until 1990.
Carlile's complaint to the parliamentary commissioner follows an investigation by the Commons select committee on members' interests into allegations that Hamilton had enjoyed free hospitality at the Ritz in Paris worth £3,600.
The committee ruled last year that Hamilton had been "imprudent" in failing to declare the trip but did not discipline him. It has yet to adjudicate on a second formal complaint against Hamilton concerning allegations that he received cash from al-Fayed via Greer in return for tabling parliamentary questions.
Both Hamilton and Greer have denied this claim and have attempted to sue newspapers reporting it. The High Court, however, ruled last year that they could not pursue such an action because it contravened parliamentary privilege.
Hamilton said: "I am presently engaged in legal proceedings and it would be inappropriate for me to make any comment."
Virginia Bottomley, the national heritage secretary, plays a Scandinavian lur yesterday, with a costumed Viking in attendance, to mark the launch of the Jorvik Festival on the River Ouse in York. She inspected a fleet of wooden ships from Norway, rowed by modern-day Vikings in a longships regatta Picture: Asadour Guzelian
THE meeting was brief but poignant. In the chill of an autumn morning in a small square on the Left Bank, President Francois Mitterrand casually met Jean-Edern Hallier. It was the climax of a hidden duel that lasted for 14 years between the dying president obsessed by secrecy and the tall, slim writer who knew too much.
As the two men stood talking on that day last September they finally reached an uneasy truce. But the extent of their private battle has only now emerged with the revelation that Mitterrand constructed an entire secret security operation at the Elysee Palace dedicated to bugging every phone call made by Hallier over many years.
The operation had only one goal to keep the existence of Mazarine, Mitterrand's illegitimate daughter, a secret.
The lurid details of this private battle were finally revealed last week with the publication of a book by Hallier called L'Honneur Perdu de Francois Mitterrand (The Lost Honour of Mitterrand), which the flamboyant French writer had struggled for 12 years to have published.
Hallier believes that had his book been published 10 years earlier, Mitterrand would never have been re-elected in 1988. "Mitterrand dreamt of his place in history, but he constructed it out of a mountain of lies. My book was aimed at revealing the truth about this man," he said.
"As a result the police constructed this gigantic spider's web around me. I was so frightened that at one point I thought I would end up under several feet of cement."
The battle that led Mitterrand to take such steps to silence Hallier started when the president was first elected in 1981. Before that the two men had been close friends.
However, once Mitterrand was in power Hallier feared he had betrayed his left-wing principles and started work on his explosive manuscript. This chronicled the birth of the president's illegitimate daughter and also the more dubious details of Mitterrand's wartime record.
Hallier, a habitue of Left Bank cafes, might have been written off as an eccentric. But Mitterrand clearly felt so threatened by him and his unpublished manuscript that from then on the man Mitterrand once described as a "great writer" became his bete noire.
Mitterrand developed an obsessive loathing of Hallier. The former president saw the writer as a loose cannon who knew too much and threatened his very existence in the Elysee. So the bugging, known as Operation Mazarine, began.
The existence of the Elysee's secret bugging cell was described in another book published since Mitterrand's death called Les Oreilles du President (The President's Ears). It reads like a Kafka novel, conjuring up images of dozens of secret policemen hidden away in the Elysee recording the often banal conversations of writers, journalists and members of the Mitterrand entourage. But it is now clear that Hallier was the focus of this whole operation. Every time the names of Mitterrand's mistress or daughter cropped up in the writer's conversations with his friends, the conversations were transcribed and handed to the president.
The telephones were bugged at Hallier's favourite restaurants and even his housekeeper's conversations were not exempt. Hundreds of police hours and vast amounts of state funds were given over to an operation dedicated to keeping the president's secrets. In all, 2,000 people were put under surveillance. Many of them were journalists who never dared allow into print what they knew about the president and his mistress.
"Rarely have the police in a democratic country accumulated so much precise information on one individual," said authors Jean-Marie Pontaut and Jerome Dupuis. "All this because an unpredictable writer who was once a close friend decided to divulge the truth."
In France the president is virtually untouchable. But Mitterrand was clearly not taking any risks. Hallier approached 17 publishers in an attempt to get his book into print. But none would touch it while the president was alive. Still the unpublished manuscript circulated around Paris in a pirated version for many years and set off a rumour mill that would eventually break the president's wall of secrecy.
In 1994 Pierre Pean, a journalist, revealed the extent to which Mitterrand had been involved in right-wing groups in the 1930s. He also exposed the part Mitterrand had played in the Vichy government of Marshal Petain.
Then at the end of 1994, when Mitterrand believed he was nearing death, he was forced to utter out loud the secret that all of Paris had gossiped about for so long: the existence of Mazarine.
Hallier often accused of suffering delusions of grandeur compares his relationship with Mitterrand to that between Victor Hugo and Napoleon III. "We both fell out with our leaders over matters of principle," he said at the launch of his book last week.
He is equally immodest about his final chance meeting with Mitterrand when both men were taking a walk on the Left Bank last autumn. "I was walking in a park not far from here when I saw him," Hallier remembers. "We talked for about half an hour and he said, ‘it was because of you that I was obliged publicly to recognise Mazarine' ... So I did him a favour really."
Hallier was not surprised that the dying president should want finally to confront the man he hated so much. "You must understand that this was a passionate relationship," said Hallier, waving his cigar dismissively. "A duel between the king and the writer".
NOTES written by a Norwegian actor shortly before he was brutally murdered in Kashmir last year reveal that he had attempted to escape from the Islamic militants who were holding him and four other westerners hostage and was expecting to be killed.
Scrawled on bits of bark and paper, the diaries of 26-year-old Hans Ostro give a chilling insight into the conditions endured by the hostages, including two Britons, since their capture last July.
The notes were discovered in Ostro's trousers after his decapitated body was dumped in a village south of Srinagar, the Kashmir capital, last August with the words Al Faran the name of the rebel group that kidnapped him carved into his chest. Among the fragments, copies of which were seen last week, were messages to his family saying he was not afraid to die and wished them to leave his body to science.
Written during the five weeks he was held captive, most of the notes are in Norwegian. The ones in English appear to be addressed to his fellow hostages and hint at discussions among the captives about their plight. "Escape part 2," he wrote. "I have changed a bit since I wrote the first note and I hope your chances are good. I can't personally put my faith in these people only."
He explained that he was planning a second escape attempt. "I'm doing it now because I still have some strength left. I am slowly vanishing ... good luck to you all. If I should die I am wearing a message to my family in my balls (inside my underwear) ... God bless you in the fight." Ostro, an actor with an alternative theatre group in Oslo, was among six western tourists taken hostage by Islamic militants in Kashmir while trekking in the foothills of the Himalayas last July.
John Childs, an American, escaped shortly after being captured. Keith Mangan, 34, an electrician from Middlesbrough, Paul Wells, 23, a student from Blackburn, Donald Hutchings, 42, another American, and Dirk Hasert 25, from Germany, were said last week by a source close to the militants to be "fine" and "exercising". They are believed to be moving around the south Kashmir valley, staying in isolated shepherds' huts and guarded by 20 armed militants who are fighting for an end to Indian rule in Kashmir.
Ostro describes them as "primitive killers". He alternates between embracing death as an escape from his ordeal and voicing hope that he can stay alive. "If I should die I would not be satisfied, it would be a lot of time wasted, a lot of suffering, both for me and my family and friends, without meaning," he wrote. In another note he says: "Close your eyes, feel safe and become a friend of death."
The diary supports eyewitness reports of Ostro as a man unwilling to endure the ordeal of captivity without putting up a struggle. A guide hired by Al Faran soon after the kidnapping said Ostro was separated from the other captives after repeatedly trying to attract the attention of helicopters by running into the open and waving clothing. On one occasion, the guide said, Ostro was pushed back into his hut and beaten by the kidnappers. After that he remained tied up while the others were allowed to move around freely.
A shepherd has told police about Ostro's final hours. He said four armed men brought the Norwegian to his house and asked for food. The militants ate a meal of rice and meat but Ostro refused food, drinking only a glass of milk. The militants asked the shepherd for a length of rope and took Ostro away. His body was found in a nearby village the next day bound by rope.
There has been no contact for two months between the militants and the governments involved in negotiations. Western diplomats have asked civilian militant leaders to try to meet the kidnappers. The American, British and German governments have pressed Pakistan to use its influence to secure the hostages' release.
It is too late for Ostro, however. One of the last entries in his diary appeared to anticipate his fate. "Then it was all over," he wrote. "Allah and God Almighty, a gun. I was not afraid. The end."
THE matrons of Austin, Texas, were all a-flutter. It is not every day they are graced with a visit from a monarch. With his mellifluous "French-sounding accent", white robes and royal entourage, His Majesty King Ge Fiovi Francois Ayi 1 of the Kingdom of Guin in Togo was as exotic a guest for the city's hostesses as any romantic hero of fiction.
King Ayi had come to speak up for the poor of Togo. Elaborate plans were made to make the royal guest feel at home. The telephone lines buzzed as the beacons of Austin's social and political world begged each other for introductions and tips on how to behave in the royal presence.
When it was all over, however, some were asking why they had bothered. Was Ayi really an African royal or a bold imposter? Some went as far as to suggest that Ayi was cashing in on America's fascination for royals the more exotic the better as reflected by the Hollywood film Coming to America, in which a prince played by Eddie Murphy heads for Manhattan in search of a bride.
Ayi certainly looked the part. In his two-week, all-expenses-paid sojourn, he was put on television and radio. A $50-a-plate fund-raising dinner was held in his honour. He went on tours, gave speeches and met the chamber of commerce. He patted children on the head.
"Any place he could he reached out to young people," gushed Annette Glass, an aide to Senator Warren Chisum who helped sponsor the trip. "He talked about unity and how we need to appreciate one another's culture."
But an embarrassing storm was brewing. According to Lorampo Landjergue, of the Togolese embassy in Washington, the "king" was an imposter. "Togo is a republic, it has never been a kingdom and we don't have kings," he stated. "It's very embarrassing and he's confusing the Americans who think he's our equivalent of Prince Charles."
Ayi, who runs the Royal Foli Bebe Foundation in Virginia, was adamant about his royal lineage. "My people keep demanding me back, but I'm more useful here," said the dapper, soft-spoken "monarch". The job of his organisation, he said, was to promote Togolese culture, hire missionaries to work in his homeland and secure medical supplies, food and water-purifying equipment for the poor. "I am doing what our embassy should be doing," he said.
Ayi says he is ruler of a kingdom of 5m Guin (pronounced Gay) or Ayigbe people, spread across Togo, Benin and Ghana. The kingdom, he says, was established with its centre in Glidji in 1663. "My great-great-grandfather and Queen Victoria worked very closely to end slavery," he claimed. "If you come to my palace you can see the sceptre she presented us with in 1852."
Ayi said he was crowned monarch on October 29, 1994, after the death of his grandfather Foli-Bebe XIV. Because of political turmoil in Togo, the coronation took place at Washington's Omni Shoreham hotel, he explained. But those contacted at the palace of Glidji said Foli-Bebe XIV is still alive. He is not a king, however, but chief of Glidji, a village of some 3,500 people. Foli-Bebe was impossible to contact last week: his telephone had been disconnected.
Nobody in Togo, from the receptionist at the Hotel Oasis just outside Glidji to the secretary-general of the local chamber of commerce, seems to have heard of Ayi. Nor did the Togolese central bank have any record of donations from Ayi's charity.
Teko Foli, news editor at Radio Togo, went further: "The whole credibility of the country is at stake. We can't have just anyone going round the world saying he's president, prime minister or king of Togo. It makes us look silly."
Ayi insisted last week that he is being unfairly maligned: "I've taken nothing for me, I'm not doing drugs or living in luxury, in fact I'm giving my life for my country. It's very sad that the people at our embassy cannot see that." He warned: "I'm working at having them removed."
America's State Department was not impressed, however. "This guy is very, very good at spinning stories," said Rich Appleton, the Togo desk officer. "There is no kingdom and there's no king."
As far as Austin was concerned, however, the "king" had impeccable credentials. Laudatory articles had been written about him in such august organs as The Washington Post and the Washington Times; letters from the chaplain of the United States Senate and other pillars of the community provided apparently impeccable testament to the value of his charitable work.
"He was well received," said Cornell Jones, principal of Norman elementary school, where Ayi addressed 200 students, some of whom performed a song in one of his native tongues. "He gave them a positive message: ‘You can be somebody. Education is hard work. Stay in school'."
Ayi also spoke to 50 delinquent teenagers at a juvenile detention centre. "He gave a motivational speech about the need for self-respect, and that they should make sure they never came back here. The kids were very attentive to his message," said Margaret Owens, volunteer co-ordinator at the centre.
"I was very pleased with their response to him."
However, even as the royal tour was in full progress, the rumours about Ayi began casting a shadow over his red carpet reception. The Texan attorney-general, looking into allegations of fraud, is insisting Ayi provides documentation proving his and his charity's credentials.
Ayi will not give up. Attempting to prove his credentials last week, he introduced a colleague to vouch for him who described himself as King Kigele V of Rwanda. "He is my friend," said King Kigele. "I know the king very well. He is a good man."
While some in Texas are angry at what they perceive as deception, others do not believe it matters a bit whether their exotic winter visitor from the north was a royal or not. "We can call ourselves whatever we want and we can be whatever we are," said Owens. "He gave the kids here respect and they gave it back to him."
A French company is to be awarded a £10m contract to clean and maintain all of English Heritage's 400 historic properties, says the Sunday Mirror.
It is part of a privatisation programme ordered by Virginia Bottomley, the heritage secretary. The contract begins on April 1.
John Major has picked three possible dates for the next election, says the News of the World.
They are November 14 and 21 and April 10, 1997, revealed by the timing of conference bookings made by the Tories in Westminster for an election campaign. An election must be called before May 1997.
Lawyers for the Princess of Wales say she will not agree to a divorce unless she can keep her existing title of Her Royal Highness, says The Sunday Telegraph. Despite the Queen's request for a quick divorce, Mishcon de Reya, the princess's solicitor, has asked the Prince of Wales's lawyers to clarify the issue of titles first.
Imran Khan, the former playboy and international cricketer, is setting up a political party in his native Pakistan, writes the Sunday Express.
Khan says he is happy with his quiet married life, but has been forced to take political action to prevent the government closing a hospital which he funds.
Patients who have recovered after suffering for years in supposedly irreversible comas say they can remember what was happening, reports The Sunday Telegraph.
One woman who recovered consciousness told doctors that she could recall the six years she had spent in a nursing home.
Conservative-run local authorities will be raising their council tax bills in the run-up to the council elections in May, claims The Mail on Sunday.
Many traditional rural Tory areas are claiming they have exhausted their reserves and have to pass the bills on. Berkshire, where the highest rise is forecast, faces a hike of 9.6%; Buckinghamshire, the only county in England still under Conservative control, will be 9%.
A BAR near the Bundestag in Bonn displays an advertisement showing the broad-beamed figure of Helmut Kohl sitting alone on the parliamentary benches, biting his lip and looking sorry for himself. The caption reads, "Everybody else has gone to the pub". These days it looks more and more appropriate, for Kohl is an increasingly lonely figure.
The man who has led Germany through its best 13 years of the century now finds himself losing friends and unable to influence events. Kohl was privately said to be horrified, if unsurprised, at the British reaction to his Louvain speech, which was interpreted as suggesting war was the only alternative to European monetary union.
Even in Germany Kohl is witnessing a rising tide of Euroscepticism. Doubts about giving up the mighty D-mark have engulfed even his own committed pro-European Christian Democrat party.
Oskar Lafontaine, the opposition Social Democrat leader, pays only lip service to the European ideal and is openly critical of the social effects of striving to meet the tight economic criteria laid down as entry conditions for European monetary union. He is supported by Klaus Zwickel who heads the powerful and militant IG Metall trades union. The union has threatened strike action if its proposal for a negotiated trade-off between wage restraint and job creation is rejected.
More worrying for Kohl are the doubts about the rush towards monetary union in such depressed economic conditions as expressed by Hans Tietmeyer, chairman of the Bundesbank. Tietmeyer is a Kohl protege who used to act as his "sherpa" in laying groundwork for international summits.
There have also been dark mutterings from the arch-conservative Edmund Stoiber, Bavarian premier and a vital coalition ally. In the Bundestag last week even Wolfgang Schauble, the man many would like to succeed Kohl possibly even ahead of the 1998 general election admitted that he could see problems with the timetable.
The main problem is the economy and, paradoxically, the very strength of the mark. Yet it could become even worse if monetary union were abandoned. The mark's high value means, for example, that car workers in Germany earn more than twice as much as their British counterparts, making exports more expensive even though German workers remain more efficient.
Fears about productivity have forced an efficiency drive which led to a 20% improvement over the past two years. But much of this was achieved at the cost of increased redundancies. National unemployment now stands at a post-war record of 4.1m or 10.8%. Yet that figure masks even higher levels of unemployment in the east where it stands at 16.8%.
Kohl has, however, added 17m poor people to the national population, taken on a bankrupt, inefficient industrial sector and a ruined housing stock without the country collapsing into anarchy.
But unification has created a "feelbad factor". Westerners have become upset at the inevitable "solidarity" rise in their taxation to subsidise reconstruction in the east while former East Germans quickly found the euphoria of freedom replaced by the depression of losing their jobs as unviable factories were closed.
The government fixed an "escalator" to bring the cost of eastern rents, services and wages into line with the west. But consumer goods prices could only be controlled within limits in a free market. Inevitably, the man on the Leipzig street has perceived his wages lagging behind costs.
The government's response has been to begin dismantling the very totem that was held up on the road to unification in 1990 the social market economy which was Germany's particular breed of capitalist welfare state. Faced with a mounting federal budget deficit and a reluctance on the part of the Lander to cough up more cash, Bonn has had to make economies on social security payments and tax perks.
Unification has also brought other financial strains, notably the mounting cost of moving the seat of government to Berlin. The move is deemed to be essential to give an impetus to the sluggish eastern economy.
Despite a deep emotional pride in his nationality and his enormous delight in being the chancellor of reunification, Kohl still sees it as Germany's "duty" to lay down its currency for Europe. Far from being the mastermind behind a plot to take control of Europe, Kohl sees risking the D-mark in a merger of currencies as a way in which Germany can atone for the past and escape the enduring stigma of the Third Reich by laying the foundations for a prosperous, stable future.
There are fears that a delay to monetary union would weaken speculators' confidence in other European currencies and encourage a rush into D-marks. This would then push the value of the D-mark through the roof and damage exports and employment proportionally. Gunter Rexrodt, the economic minister, has vowed to reduce unemployment by half by the end of the century.
The gloomy statistic at the back of Kohl's mind is that the number of unemployed in Germany now stands at only 1m short of the total in 1933, when Hitler came to power. At the same time election results are showing a disturbing level of voter disillusionment with mainstream parties.
While there is no suggestion that Germany risks any poverty-driven rush into extremism, things are not as good as they used to be. For want of another scapegoat, "Europe" is getting the blame.
As a result, Kohl is increasingly perceived as a general in charge of a one-man army. The polyglot German press, playing on the name of the controversial joint European warplane project, has labelled him "Eurofighter". The only doubt is whether he can keep flying in increasingly heavy weather.
ALONG the South Skunk river, they are voting with heavy hearts. In Hastings and Hiawatha they feel battered and confused. As the eyes of America turn tomorrow to Iowa's presidential caucuses the first serious test for President Bill Clinton's aspiring rivals a probable victory for Senator Bob Dole looks unlikely to restore morale in a divided Republican party struggling to recapture the White House after four years of Democratic ascendancy.
After a long series of muddled and venemous skirmishes across the rolling farmlands of this pious American state, Dole emerged in opinion polls published yesterday as the clear favourite in a small but significant caucus vote that is traditionally seen as the starting gun of the presidential race.
With 28% of the vote in a new Des Moines newspaper poll, Dole was comfortably ahead of his millionaire publisher rival, Steve Forbes, with 16%. But one voter in five was undecided, reflecting a mood of foreboding as Republicans ponder the task of unseating a skilful Democratic president who has retained widespread popularity despite a series of brushes with scandal.
Clinton wafted serenely into Iowa yesterday in a coolly-planned attempt to steal his rivals' spotlight. As Dole and Forbes scoured the state in search of last-minute backs to slap and tractors to admire, thousands of tickets for Clinton's speech at Iowa University were snapped up in a matter of hours. "The excitement kind of reminded me of the U2 concert," said a stadium official.
A new national poll last week gave the president a 10-point lead over Dole, 72, whose former grip on the Republican nomination has steadily been weakened by doubts about his age and his dangerously unfashionable image as a terminal Washington warrior. A clear victory tomorrow would help quieten his critics, but the carping seems certain to continue.
Clinton's buoyancy and the dismal feudings of his rivals have left a sour taste in the mouths of the nine Republican contenders who for months have been battling across the state, from Paris to Pocahontas and from Walnut to Waterloo.
The Iowa caucuses, which attract no more than 130,000 party faithful, traditionally offer benefits in excess of their size. They can electrify a flagging or anonymous campaign with political momentum considered a vital advantage for next week's pace-setting primary in New Hampshire.
Yet not even Dole could claim serious momentum in Iowa, where overwhelmingly the most significant group of voters were either undecided about any of the contenders, or appalled by the shortcomings of all of them.
"In 25 years of studying these caucuses, I've never seen Iowan voters so confused," said Professor Steffen Schmidt of Iowa State University. "It's as though the undecided have turned their backs on the real candidates and are waiting for a guy on a white horse to ride into town and sweep them away."
The heart of the problem is that voters are looking ahead to next October, when whoever wins the Republican nomination must meet Clinton in a televised debate. With his easy smile, relaxed manner and a carefully honed populist appeal aimed at the middle ground where presidential elections are won, Clinton is likely to prove a daunting opponent provided, of course, that no new scandal erupts.
At a boisterous meeting with 300 students in Iowa City last week, Lamar Alexander, the upbeat former governor of Tennessee who has been picking up support and who may pull off a surprise tomorrow, addressed the Clinton problem.
"I want you to imagine the presidential debate, with 40m people watching," said Alexander, a nifty amateur pianist whose campaign tune is Alexander's Ragtime Band. "Someone will ask Bill Clinton a tough question, and he'll look the questioner straight in the eye and say sincerely, ‘I feel your pain,' and everyone in America will sigh."
As for the Republican response, Alexander went on: "If our guy starts talking about CBOs and HMBs and getting this bill through committee and all that Washington nonsense, Clinton's going to win. We need someone who can stand up with him next October and paint a picture of the future."
Alexander is a former secretary of education whose informal campaign manner includes a checked open-necked shirt one critic suggested was "not fit to wear at a possum-skinning". Whether he is the man to out-sincere Clinton remains to be seen, but many Republicans agree with his implicit suggestion that Dole, the archetypal deal-maker of the jargon-filled Washington world of committees, is likely to perform as poorly in debate as he did in his response to Clinton's State of the Union address last month.
Other candidates for "guy on the white horse" used to include Forbes, the man who came from nowhere, with the help of $20m of aggressive television advertising, to place his tax-cutting message at the heart of the primary debate. Forbes's proposal to scrap a fiendishly complex federal tax system in favour of a simple flat rate of 17% has caught the voters' imagination in a way none of his rivals have with their reams of waffle about a "rising, shining America".
Yet there was evidence last week that Forbes's peak is past, and that his barrage of "attack" advertisements aimed at his Republican rivals may boomerang against him. At his Iowa City meeting last week, Alexander held up a pair of rubber waders and announced to student cheers: "I don't have a few zillion dollars to spend on negative ads. So I went over to LL Bean and bought these here mud boots so I can keep campaigning and stay clean."
Senator Phil Gramm, an abrasive Texan who once harboured high hopes of an accelerated finish in Iowa, said an unprecedented outbreak of personal attacks had produced "in many ways the most negative campaign of the modern era". Bob Kennedy, the state Republican chairman, referred to an outbreak of subversive telephone canvassing as "absolutely the sleaziest type of campaigning I've ever seen".
Forbes stoutly defended his ads on the grounds that most of them were true. But his carping approach, robotic manner and goofy looks may prevent him from capitalising on the attention his tax proposals earned.
He was scarcely helped when his wife Sabina appeared between ads for soil insecticide and Long John Silver's crispy golden shrimp to say she supported her husband. Lecturing sternly at the camera from behind dragon-like spectacles and caked TV make-up, she left many Iowans in shock.
If the Forbes bubble bursts, the likeliest beneficiary may be Pat Buchanan, the roguish right-wing political commentator who up-ended Gramm in a Louisiana face-off last week, which most Republican contenders boycotted to preserve Iowa's traditional role as first to vote.
Buchanan is now fighting to unite the conservative, anti-abortion, Bible-belt vote behind him. Gramm, who was fishing the same waters, returned to Iowa last week looking "boiled and peeled like a Louisiana crayfish", one Republican official noted. The chastened Texan senator bravely likened his endangered campaign to a wrestling match and promised he would win if only they would let him "wrassle" long enough. But a weak showing in Iowa, which is what most polls predict, may knock Gramm out of the race.
With disenchantment widespread and no clear favourite emerging from the Republican pack, several Iowan commentators forecast yesterday that Dole's experience would assure him a victory. "He's like a comfortable old pair of shoes that you try to discard but keep coming back to," one Des Moines editor observed.
The results of past Iowan votes suggest only the first three finishers stand any chance of eventual glory. With Dole seemingly assured of a respectable showing, Forbes, Buchanan, Alexander and Gramm all face a nerve-wracking wait for tomorrow night's results. Yet whoever triumphs in this prairie punch-up, the real winner may be someone who never set foot in Iowa throughout the caucus campaign.
With every primary that fails to produce a candidate capable of defeating Clinton, Republican eyes will turn to the man who declined to run, but who may yet be stirred into changing his formidable mind.
Dole is certainly credible, yet in recent weeks the Kansan senator has appeared far from convincing. The white horse may be waiting for General Colin Powell.
Karadzic defiant as four Serbs are freed
AS THE Bosnian peace accord threatened to unravel this weekend over the detention of Serbian soldiers suspected of atrocities, the man at the top of the war criminals wanted list hissed defiance at efforts to try him for genocide.
Radovan Karadzic, the bombastic leader of the Bosnian Serbs, is showing as much staying power as Saddam Hussein after the Gulf war: he dismisses provisos of the Dayton peace accord that call for him to step down and laughs at the idea of being put in the dock as a "Balkan butcher".
In his headquarters in Pale last week, Karadzic, a former psychiatrist, said his pre-eminence on the Hague tribunal's list of war criminals was ridiculous. Karadzic, who has been accused of authorising massacres of thousands of Bosnian Muslims after the capture of the safe haven of Srebrenica last year, insisted he had done nothing wrong.
"We don't recognise the rights of the Hague to try our people," he said in an interview with The Sunday Times. "If they've got any evidence they can send it to us. We will judge our men in our Republica Srpska."
The issue of how to bring suspected war criminals to justice was at the heart last week of the first serious crisis to have arisen in Bosnia since Nato dispatched a multinational force to implement the American-brokered peace plan signed in Dayton, Ohio, late last year.
Eight Bosnian Serb soldiers, including General Djorje Dyukic, said to be number three in the Bosnian Serb military hierarchy, were arrested by Muslim forces and held in a Sarajevo prison.
General Ratko Mladic, military leader of the Bosnian Serbs, announced he was severing contacts with the Nato peace implementation force (Ifor) and the Bosnian Muslim government, a decision described by Lieutenant-General Sir Michael Walker, the Ifor commander, as ominous. He tried to secure the release of the men but then desisted after the Hague tribunal endorsed the arrests, saying it wanted to question the detainees about war crimes. One Ifor official saw this as "throwing fuel on the fire".
The crisis appeared to recede last night, after four of the prisoners were released and the Bosnian-Serb administration resumed co-operation with Nato and western mediators. Contact with the Bosnian federation, however, will not be re-established until all the prisoners are released.
Karadzic, nibbling nuts and raisins from a silver plate on a table, said that he and Mladic, another suspected war criminal, had been approached by Bosnian Serb lawyers wanting to defend them on war crime charges. But he dismissed the idea of a trial.
"In the very early weeks of the war, when the supreme command of the Serbian army was just initiated, I already then issued a very clear-cut order to all forces to strictly observe all charges and international covenants of human rights," said Karadzic, wearing a dark suit, braces and tie featuring a miniature pistol motif in gold.
For a man supposed to have been pushed to the political fringes under the Dayton accord, Karadzic continues to enjoy the perks of power, surrounding himself with all the trappings of statehood. He recently swapped the old motel that was his headquarters for a new office complex with stark, high-technology furniture trimmed in gold. His secretary, Milliana, in a red and black miniskirt, would have looked more at home on the Champs Elysees than in Pale.
Karadzic, who has been described by western diplomats in Belgrade as paranoid and displaying all the signs of being on the verge of a nervous breakdown, kept tugging at his braces as though to check they were still there, occasionally running a finger gingerly across a graze on his right cheek, apparently the result of a shaving accident.
Karadzic is deeply offended that he should have ended up at the top of the Hague's "wanted" list. He prefers to remind the world that he wrote poetry for children before the war, worked as a psychological adviser for a Sarajevo football team and is a devoted family man expected in three months' time to become a grandfather for the first time.
"There were no mass executions," he said. "Had there been I would have known about it. At the most there were personal acts of revenge but nothing else, and yes, we are interested in opening up those mass graves. But remember that in and around Srbenica there are many mass graves of Serbs from earlier periods of this war."
What causes him most indignation is the future of Sarajevo, where Bosnian Serbs are being encouraged by Pale to vacate the suburbs rather than live with their former neighbours, as envisaged by the Dayton accord. "Sarajevo will become the Iran of Europe," said Karadzic, painting an apocalyptic picture of the city becoming a haven for Islamic extremism associated more with the Middle East. "When the West figures it out, it will be too late," he said, with relish.
As Sam Goldwyn wisely remarked long ago: "A verbal agreement is not worth the paper it's written on." Old Sam's usage of the English language may not have been perfect, but nobody disputed the wisdom of his "Goldwynisms".
The Duchess of York, so it is said, now faces legal action by former lover John Bryan, who the newspapers say is claiming a huge share of the multi-millions she is about to rake in from the worldwide marketing of her cartoon character, Budgie.
Let's take it from the top. While the tabloids were busy speculating over the amounts Fergie may or may not turn over to Bryan, Atticus got on the telephone to the former business partner of Fergie's soi-disant benefactor. A respected businessman, a multi-millionaire and former cabinet officer, he told me that although he had not been in touch with his former partner, he doubted that a bail-out was taking place.
Perhaps Ray Chambers bought some assets to alleviate the York financial burden, but took on no personal liability. Meaning, Fergie's mounting debts and they are less than £2m were not about to be paid by the American, nor was an open credit line established. This was all pie-in-the-sky made up by the tabloid bloodhounds who lost the scent somewhere over the Atlantic. The deal will be done through good lawyers who, incidentally, do not speak to the tabloids.
Which brings me to my old friend Bryan. He was, is and always will be a good salesman. Ten years ago I invested a large sum of money in a satellite company he was starting in Atlanta, Georgia, and lost every penny of it. Bryan did not cheat, he tried his best. But he was up against giant companies that were not about to allow an upstart to take any business away. This was the reality. When Bryan was raising money to start, however, it was presented differently. Suffice it to say that I signed my cheque and left his "office" it was over lunch at Mortimer's in New York thanking him profusely for allowing me to buy two blocks of stock, rather than one. "This will make you $3m in six months," was the way he put it.
As I said, Bryan did try hard. He may even have believed his own sales pitch. The fault, of course, was entirely mine. Taking on the big boys was, if not suicidal, certainly quixotic, but I listened to the Circe-like sales talk of Bryan the brave.
When I spoke to him on Friday he denied having any intention of litigating against the duchess: "Taki, she was my girlfriend, one doesn't sue one's ex-girlfriend."
"I am very happy to hear it," I replied, "but why were you quoted by a tabloid of doing things to that effect?" I did not get a straight answer, but speaking to a member of his family and Bryan has a nice family I was further enlightened. "John simply cannot resist talking to members of the press, and pays the price every time."
Be that as it may, once again it is a tempest in the you-know-what. The way I see it is that Bryan's business partner in Germany, Allan Starkie, who unsuccessfully tried to kill himself when his business collapsed eight months ago, read the headlines about Fergie being bailed out by an American zillionaire and remembered he had "witnessed" the duchess telling Bryan he would receive a slice of her future income. Then came the headlines.
What is a fact is that Bryan will not write a kiss-and-tell book. First of all, his family would not stand for it. His father is a gent and knows that it would be the end of his son if he did. Second, Bryan is at present trying to do a deal in America, and the last thing he needs is bad publicity. Third, I was present when a gossip columnist offered him a hell of a deal for "Fergie between the sheets", and he refused. (Bryan wanted to sell a book about the palace dirty tricks against Fergie, and the gossip columnist refused.)
To recapitulate: Bryan unwisely talked to the press, which created a non-story. He told the reporter it was he who had introduced Fergie to Bill Simon and Ray Chambers, which he had. Fergie has not been bailed out yet, it is being negotiated. When Bryan's former partner read the tabloids, he began making noises about verbal agreements. That is when Fergie panicked she has since had all Bryan's clothes packed and shipped out to his sister's house and issued silly statements.
Gerry Adams has run out of credibility on both sides of the Atlantic, writes Liam Clarke
Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, is already planning a second IRA ceasefire and hopes to secure a second tranche of concessions from the international community. That is what he means when he says: "Sinn Fein's peace strategy remains the main function of our party. It is my personal priority."
The trick worked once but this time he will have a credibility problem. Adams has failed to deliver what he promised to the IRA, failed to make good his promises to the American and Irish governments and to John Hume, leader of the Catholic nationalist SDLP. However Adams plays it, and he will play it smart, there will be a question mark over the value of speaking to him.
Adams promised the IRA that if it ended its campaign, he would build a powerful pan-nationalist alliance with the SDLP, the Irish government and the Irish-American lobby which would steamroller the Unionists and the British. Instead, he has led it into a political quagmire. To its dismay, the Americans and their nationalist "allies" are now demanding the IRA drop its maximalist demands as the price of progress. Rather than face the tough choices ahead, the IRA has gone back to war.
To Bill Clinton, Adams promised peace in Ireland in the run-up to the presidential election in November. Instead, he has soaked up all the handshakes Clinton could throw his way, collected millions of dollars across the Atlantic and delivered an embarrassment to the president. The result? The influence of the Irish-American lobby will be diminished; Hume has been humiliated; the Irish government has been sold a pup.
Adams will attempt to disguise his failure in appeals for a renewal of trust from those he has disillusioned. But his flawed personality has been exposed. He lacks political gravitas; he is a courtier, not a leader.
Adams had decided that by 1986 the campaign of terror could not secure its objectives: the withdrawal of the British from Northern Ireland. As he put it, "there was no military solution". The IRA's support base was too small and the killing was doing little more than keeping its name in the headlines.
Instead of arguing for a halt to the violence, Adams embarked on an eight-year "peace process". Hundreds continued to die.
The ceasefire was eventually achieved 17 months ago, not by convincing the IRA that it could not win, but by Adams promising that the British government would be forced to deliver concessions. The effort was doomed from the outset. However, all is not lost. Adams has avoided what he sees as the greatest evil: a split in the IRA which could threaten his life just as previous splits led before to the killing of many a republican leader by his former colleagues.
He has also made gains during the ceasefire. He can now visit America and raise funds, he can appear on British as well as Irish television and he can meet ministers.
His age, 48, is one at which men begin to question their achievements. When he looks back over 25 years of violence and 3,000 deaths he must ask himself whether the killing, even on his terms, was at all necessary.
A time for courage
A GLEAMING command centre hums inside a hollowed-out mountain. Miles of bomb-proof tunnels, underground bunkers and munitions depots honeycomb the island. Soldiers glare from pillboxes along the beach at their communist enemies a mile away.
This is Kinmen, one of the world's last cold war frontiers and the place where a single miscalculation could trigger a third world war. As relations between Taipei and Peking sink to their lowest point in two decades, the 35,000 Taiwanese troops occupying the island were being deployed last week to man defences in rehearsal for battle.
Across a narrow strip of water, soldiers of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) were also busy. They have been preparing for a full-scale military exercise due to take place after the Chinese new year holidays later this month.
Washington has warned that the exercise could accidentally spark serious conflict and has appealed to Peking to stop taunting its rival. An American warship has been patrolling the region in a show of military might.
The cause of the renewed tension is Taiwan's forthcoming presidential election on March 23 the latest in a series of democratic reforms which Peking fears could result in formal moves by the Taiwanese to declare independence from the mainland.
If that happens, the PLA may seize control of Kinmen and Matsu, another island close to the coast, as a warning to Taipei, which it regards as the capital of a renegade province that should bow to Peking's rule.
The idea of a "limited invasion" of Taiwanese outposts such as Kinmen was put forward last year by the Peking Military Academy of Science as a way of forcing Taiwan to accept reunification on Peking's terms. But western military analysts believe this would erupt into a bigger battle, since Taiwan sees the islands as crucial to its defence.
What Taiwan lacks in troop strength it makes up for in weaponry, much of it bought from America. This year it is set to receive 150 American-made F-16 fighters and 500 French missiles.
"We are well prepared and we believe we would win," said Lieutenant-Colonel Teddy Chang, a defence ministry official in Kinmen last week. His confidence is supported by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. "Not only would the chances of a military success by the PLA be slim," said the IISS, "but an invasion force would suffer massive casualties and probably considerable loss of face."
Others say Taiwan could not hope to win with 3m troops the PLA is the world's largest army unless America came to its aid. "We would give them a bloody nose, that is the basis of our defence policy," said Parris Chang, a spokesman for the Democratic Progressive party, Taiwan's main opposition group.
When Kinmen was last invaded in 1949, 10,000 communist troops crossed in junks, only to be beaten back by the forces of Chiang Kai-shek in the last big battle of the civil war. But if there were a next time the invasion force would be likely to consist of an armada of landing craft and hundreds of war planes.
China carried out a dry run last year when it "captured" a nearby deserted island with 40 naval vessels, 100 aircraft and 20,000 troops.
"History is full of cases like the invasion of the Falkland Islands and Kuwait where the world has dismissed the obvious signs that a powerful country is about to attack a smaller one," said a defence analyst in Hong Kong.
The Republic of China, as Taiwan calls itself, is secretive about its defences on Kinmen. But locals say that fir trees and camouflage netting conceal missile silos and that petrol held in undersea pipes would set coastal waters ablaze in the event of an amphibious assault.
Hostility between the two sides has led to sporadic clashes. In 1958, Kinmen was hit by half a million shells over 44 days. Shelling continued until the 1970s, but it became so ritualised that both sides agreed to confine bombardments to alternate days of the week to minimise casualties. They also agreed to fill howitzers with propaganda leaflets instead of explosives.
Political inertia and a disastrous lack of resources could scupper the Balkan peace plan, writes William Shawcross
RICHARD HOLBROOKE, the rumbustious, tough-talking American assistant secretary of state who bullied the Dayton peace plan into life, returns to Sarajevo today to try to deal with the growing crisis over its implementation.
Seeing his peace plan under its first serious threat, Holbrooke is impatient with the parties in Bosnia, impatient with the American Congress for its niggardliness in funding the vital civilian aspects of the peace plan, and impatient with the high representative, Carl Bildt, for what he sees as his excessive reasonableness and tardiness. Holbrooke believes that Balkan thuggery has to be countered with the sort of rough tactics he employs.
But he is impatient, above all, with the Europeans. Not just over what he sees as their pusillanimity over Bosnia, but also over Cyprus and a host of other issues.
At the World Economic Conference in Davos last week, he asked repeatedly: "What is it with the Europeans? Why can't they get their act together on anything?" He was reminded that it had taken two years for the Clinton administration to do the same. Holbrooke complained that 10 days ago Europe literally slept while America defused a potentially disastrous confrontation between Greece and Turkey.
He is furious at the European plan to recognise Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia, which he says is too much, too soon. The photo opportunity with Warren Christopher was reward enough for the co-operation Milosevic had given to Dayton so far.
At the beginning of last week Holbrooke thought he was out of the Balkans and on his way back to Wall Street. The military implementation of Dayton, he said, had proceeded far better than anybody had expected. He arrived straight from a meeting with Milosevic in Belgrade, at which the Serbian leader had agreed to allow the war crime tribunal in the Hague to open a Belgrade office and to allow the senior American human rights official to visit suspected mass graves at Omarksa. Prosecution of war crimes was, said Holbrooke, non-negotiable as far as the Americans were concerned.
But Nato forces have been reluctant to get involved in pursuing indicted war criminals such as General Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic. Instead, the Nato implementation force (Ifor) is mandated to arrest indicted war criminals only "if encountered in the performance of their duties".
Dayton allows local courts to indict suspected war criminals, as well as the Hague. Holbrooke will encourage the Bosnian government to pursue that route rather than to arrest arbitrarily. The whole purpose of the tribunal is to establish individual, not collective, guilt.
Behind all the problems on the ground is the reluctance of America and Europe to finance the entire operation. Bildt is starved of resources. America and Europe want each other to contribute the lion's share. Neither has yet provided enough. "Congress has given us a measly $200m," said Holbrooke; the World Bank's initial reconstruction budget is for $5 billion.
Holbrooke said that Congress's meanness was "a disaster"; lack of resources could destroy the Dayton plan. All the people of Bosnia have to be convinced quickly that there really is a peace dividend.
According to Sadako Ogata, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, half of Bosnia's capital has been destroyed. About 80% of the population still depend on food aid and the GDP is at 5% of the pre-war level. Repair costs of housing alone are estimated at $2.5 billion. Ogata fears that unless rebuilding and assistance is assured, few of the 2.1m refugees scattered abroad will want to return. Even then, return will often be impossible. Homes that have not been destroyed are almost certainly occupied by families from another side. Around Banja Luka, Serbs expelled from Krajina are living in houses once belonging to Muslims and Croats. Those Serbs have nowhere else to go.
Muslim refugees who recently volunteered to return from Sarajevo to their home town of Stolac were rewarded by having the Croats destroy their old homes so there would be nothing to come back to.
Another disaster area is the UN police force. Holbrooke says that America sought a strong police commitment at Dayton, but the Europeans watered it down and he knew the American Congress would be reluctant to provide money.
Dayton called for 1,721 police officers. America has offered 200 and delivered none. Germany has offered 200 and delivered none. Only France has delivered policemen. Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Switzerland and Norway have all promised a handful. Fewer than 50 international policemen have arrived.
Police are desperately needed in Sarajevo as the government prepares to take over the Serbian side of the city. There is nobody to stop the looting of factories in the suburbs. Ifor says it is not its problem. If and when the Serbs start burning their homes as they are encouraged to flee by their leadership, that will have to change.
Disputes between neighbours are always the worst and I should not have got involved. But, having ridden to the defence of the lady in the flat below the Nicaraguan ambassador, chivalry now calls on me to put the other side of the story. I gather Veronica de Gomez, the ambassador, does not have "servants", only one housekeeper of 18 years' standing, that her sons do not "rollerblade day and night", that the water problems have been dealt with, and that she has never claimed diplomatic immunity. I accept this and offer my apologies.
I was happy to read the profile of my friend John Aspinall in last week's Sunday Times. The grey, faceless bureaucrats who tried to prohibit him and his keepers going in and bonding with the tigers also tried to give me a lesson in history. Some lesson. They wrote to say that the days when Christians and lions fought for the amusement of the Romans were over. The faceless ones also mentioned the word gladiators. I was not aware that Christians and gladiators volunteered to appear in the Colosseum.
Aspers has had a bad press throughout his life because like his friend Alan Clark he is outspoken, brave and does not give a damn what the goody-goodies think of him.
Given his record as a conservationist and breeder of endangered species, he should have long ago been sent to the House of Lords. If he had done for horses or corgis what he has done for gorillas, tigers and other animals, I am certain the Queen would have made him a duke. The idea that a divorce lawyer such as Mishcon is a lord and a hero such as Aspers is not is typical of our times. Let's send him to the Upper House before Tony Blair does away with it, or a tiger does away with Aspers.
So, Tony Blair wants to return power to the people by doing away with the vote of hereditary peers. The trouble is, one way of taking even more power away from the people is by getting rid of those lords.
The hereditary peerage, unlike life peers and politicians, owes nothing to those who nowadays control our lives, the faceless bureaucrats and European federalists. The little power we have is being drained away each day from Westminster to Brussels, yet Tony boy is worried about hereditary peers.
In its present form, the House of Lords is the perfect second chamber. It advises without needing to consent. So what is Tony boy banging on about? Prejudice against the upper classes, that's what. There are a lot of things wrong with the upper classes, but the House of Lords is not one of them.
Yet doing away with the hereditary peer vote satisfies those fringes of society that want everyone and everything to be equal the envious who prefer equality to freedom.
While it would be wrong to deny the presence throughout history of class warfare, I believe civilisation has remained stable only when the reins of government have been in the hands of aristocrats. In this century, the great monsters Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler have all been plebs. Further back, in 19th-century France, Talleyrand went to Vienna in the role of the vanquished, but negotiated with his fellow peers as an equal. Metternich, Talleyrand, Hardenberg and Castlereagh had much in common. They had all been brought up the same way. Their political differences did not affect their personal relations.
Eden was called a "perfumed lackey" by Hitler, as was Halifax
by Goering. I am not surprised. A proletarian background makes it hard to sit down with one's social superiors. Blair is trying to appease those who feel inferior, but doing away with the lords is not the answer.
He keeps using the word democracy. The very term is a lie. It implies the promise of self-government. Democracy today has rendered our individual votes meaningless: we vote in blocks.
Our life is tightly monitored and controlled by a central government which decides for us. We hand over the cash and it decides what to do with it. The more central the power, the less say we have. Local bodies are to central government what garlic is to vampires, so they are being slowly done away with while the Brussels giant is fed more and more of our cash and blood.
I thought Blair was a good guy. In fact, he is nothing but a professional politician, a scoundrel who would take away the expertise and wisdom of those far better qualified than hustlers like himself to run our lives.
The government has thrown in its big guns against Sir Richard Scott even before his report is published. But on Thursday they will almost certainly find they have not deflected his fire. The government machine will go into top gear in an attempt to limit the damage when Sir Richard Scott's long-awaited report into the arms-to-Iraq affair is finally published on Thursday. Ministers are resigned to criticism from the opposition parties and the media; their real fear this weekend is a rebellion on their own back benches.
With military-style precision, ministers and former ministers will take to the airwaves to put the government's gloss on what will inevitably be a highly critical report. The Tory establishment's message will be that no ministers need to resign. In the past two weeks the Tories, helped by friendly journalists, have got their retaliation in first by rubbishing Scott's methods.
The government's decision to tough out Scott whatever he finds was reaffirmed after senior ministers and officials read the Scott report when 24 advance copies were delivered to the government last Wednesday. "We will not blink," one senior minister said yesterday. "We have nothing to apologise for. There will not be a scapegoat or a sacrificial lamb."
On Thursday John Major's allies will argue that William Waldegrave, the former Foreign Office minister, did not intentionally mislead parliament when he said the guidelines on arms exports to Saddam Hussein's regime had not changed even though they were relaxed.
Meanwhile, a gaggle of senior judges will be wheeled out to defend Sir Nicholas Lyell, the attorney-general, over his handling of the Matrix Churchill case, in which three businessmen who exported machine tools to Iraq could have been sent to prison. Lyell's champions will argue that, under the law, he had no alternative but to advise ministers to sign so-called "gagging orders" withholding vital information from the defence.
Waldegrave and Lyell, frustrated by the self-denying ordinance they have had to observe during the inquiry, will be let off the leash as they try to save their skins. Friends say they are glad the long wait is over and are relishing the chance to answer Scott.
At Westminster, respected senior Tories will prowl the corridors and tearooms to tell backbenchers that no ministerial heads should roll. Government whips will be less subtle: Tory rebels tempted to demand sackings will be warned they would jeopardise the party's general election prospects at a time when Labour is on the defensive.
Some Tory MPs are uneasy; a handful may be prepared to vote against the government if they believe ministers should quit. Government whips, though, are ready to deploy their "nuclear weapon": the threat of an immediate general election. If the government loses the Commons vote on Scott which takes place two weeks tomorrow, John Major will table a confidence motion the following day. If he were to lose the vote, there would be an election.
The scale of any Tory revolt will depend on the precise wording of the Scott report. Some loyalists fear a "killer phrase" condemning one or more ministers to political death. But Scott will not demand resignations; his colleagues say it will be up to others to act on his report.
THE battle to massage and interpret his findings in the most favourable light will be crucial. "There will be four Scott reports his own words, and the other versions provided by the government, Labour and the media," said a senior Labour figure. Ian Lang, president of the board of trade, will put the government's gloss on the report when he makes a Commons statement at 3.30pm on Thursday. The opposition is convinced he will "fillet" the 2,000-page report and ignore some of Scott's damning criticisms. Lang will be backed up by the government's news machine and Tory party "spin doctors" who seek to influence media coverage.
The prototype for Thursday's operation is the successful "spinning" operation by Major's allies after he defeated John Redwood in the Tory leadership contest last July. Although a third of Major's MPs refused to vote for him and he was privately disappointed by the result, his team managed to present it as a vote of confidence.
Whether the Tories will be able to turn bad news into good this week is another matter. On the arms-to-Iraq affair, the media may be less gullible and will scent blood. And while Redwood conceded defeat gracefully last summer, Major's adversary will not lie down and die this time. Scott will hold his own news conference after Lang's statement and will highlight any key points dodged by Lang. Scott will then depart for a holiday, but will return to haunt the government. He will give a series of lectures on his inquiry and would he happy to appear before a Commons select committee.
Lord Howe, the former foreign secretary who has led the campaign to discredit Scott, has argued that no minister's future should be decided by the report. He has criticised as unprecedented Scott's refusal to allow lawyers to speak for witnesses at the inquiry's hearings. His criticism has been echoed by Douglas Hurd, another former foreign secretary, and Sir Bernard Ingham, Lady Thatcher's former press secretary.
The pre-emptive strike is surprising since the government approved the inquiry's procedures. Major rejected a Labour demand to allow legal representation and cross-examination ironically, the nub of Howe's complaint. Major judged that the inquiry would drag on too long; ministers hoped it would be over in a year and are appalled that, even under the quicker system chosen, Scott allowed it to take three.
Scott, though, was not going to be rushed. "I followed the paper trail and built a list of witnesses from that trail. The more witnesses, the more paper," he told The Sunday Times last week. There was written evidence from more than 200 people; over 60 gave oral evidence in public sessions lasting 430 hours, which generated 4m words and 20,000 pages of text.
Scott became exasperated by the erratic supply of important documents from Whitehall. But he sensed no deliberate obstruction and said there was co-operation from civil servants and ministers. "They did not like doing that, but they have done it."
He dismissed another criticism that, in the words of one minister, he was "an innocent abroad" who knew nothing about the workings of government. "I have undergone an educative process for three years," he said. "It's been stressful. It's required very hard work for an extended period. I'm lucky enough not to be too stressful by nature. I don't work at weekends. I put stuff in my briefcase but it comes back unopened."
Scott decided to close the inquiry last year when he concluded that it would be possible to go on for ever. "You have to cut the Gordian knot."
He rejected as "untrue" the claims that his inquiry was unfair and was "surprised" by Howe's attack. "I thought the points were bad ones," he said. Allowing legal representatives to speak would have been impracticable.
Some Tories believe rubbishing Scott could backfire. "This is the most serious pre-publication smear campaign ever seen," said one. "I think this will blow up in their faces."
Scott's report on the arms-to-Iraq affair may be eagerly awaited by MPs and the media, but costing about £45 and running to five volumes, it is unlikely to become a bestseller.
Ministers hope public apathy will make the report a "48-hour wonder". One said: "This is a rather esoteric issue which excites only the media and the chattering classes. It is old meat for people in the Dog and Duck."
Labour, however, says its private polls show people are well aware of the Scott inquiry, and, without knowing the details of the complex affair, they sense a grubby government cover-up. Howe's criticism has reinforced the suspicion.
Some senior Tories doubt the storm will blow over quickly. The worst of all worlds, they say, would be for Major to stand firm behind threatened ministers, only for them to be forced out eventually which is what happened to David Mellor and Michael Mates. The maxim is: if you are going to resign, go quickly or you damage the prime minister, too.
Privately, some ministers believe it would be better to offer an immediate sacrificial lamb. Major, however, has rejected such advice and is determined to ride out the storm. Many Tory MPs are convinced it is one of the government's own making. One said: "If John Major comes unstuck on this, it will be the third time an inquiry set up by him has turned sour. He gave us Nolan (on standards in public life) and Greenbury (on executive pay) and now we have Scott. Lady Thatcher would never have done it." Ministers regret appointing Scott. In 1992 Major needed an inquiry to buy time after the Matrix Churchill trial collapsed; picking an independent-minded judge seemed a good idea. Now, however, senior Tories are blaming Lord Mackay, the lord chancellor, and Sir Robin Butler, the cabinet secretary, for proposing Scott. There is even speculation in ministerial circles that Mackay will leave the cabinet in a reshuffle this spring or summer and be replaced by Douglas Hogg, the agriculture minister.
Scott is undaunted by the flak. "I go back to being a judge but if I was asked to do another inquiry, I would say yes again," he said. He is unlikely to be asked. Nor is anyone else. Whitehall has not enjoyed such an unwelcome spotlight on its secret world. As we await Scott's verdict, one thing is certain this weekend: there will never be another inquiry like it.
The bombers are back. After a 17-month ceasefire the IRA is once again maiming civilians on mainland Britain and spitting in the face of reason. Have all our hopes of lasting peace died in the Docklands blast?
It was a Friday afternoon of improbable optimism. For the first time, an Ulster Unionist and a Sinn Fein man were sitting down at the same table.
At 2.30pm, Ken Maginnis, MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone and security spokesman for the Ulster Unionists, was in a BBC studio facing Mitchell McLaughlin, the mastermind of Londonderry Sinn Fein and Gerry Adams's chief strategist. They were recording a debate for a programme called Hearts and Minds, due to be broadcast that evening. It was a historic moment. "The ground," a Sinn Fein spokesman observed, "has been broken."
The programme was supposed to go out at 7.30pm. Instead, a music programme was substituted, entitled "Sounds of the 80s". The black irony was unintentional: the blast that had rocked London's Docklands 30 minutes earlier had exploded a dream; the wail of ambulance sirens was a cruel echo of a terror thought past. Politicians were floundering and blustering, accusations and recriminations were flying. But brutally and unmistakably, the blood had again started flowing. It came without warning. Almost.
FOR once in his life, Charlie Bird, chief reporter for RTE, the Irish broadcasting company, had taken Friday afternoon off. A man with a big voice and not averse to using it in the office, he was suffering from a sore throat.
As a result he was at home in Bray, 10 miles south of Dublin when, around 5.30pm, his phone rang at RTE. Fellow reporter John Murray took the call. The voice on the line said he wanted to talk to Charlie. Told he wasn't there, the caller gave an IRA codeword and dictated a lengthy statement. It was couched in all the familiar terms of the Republican movement's lexicon, larded with the usual self-justification and blame, but the message was unmistakable: "It is with great reluctance that the leadership announces that the complete cessation of military operations will end at 6pm on February 9." The IRA killing machine was back on the road.
For the next hour, RTE reporters burned telephone lines to Sinn Fein, government offices and police, in an attempt to verify the statement. Bird himself, summoned to the office, was by now in his car, on his mobile telephone, unaware that the IRA was trying to call him.
Shortly after RTE's main evening news began at 6.01pm, without leading on the story, the phone in the office rang again. The same IRA man wanted to know what was wrong. Bird, meanwhile, was talking to apparently incredulous Sinn Fein officials. Just after 6.30pm his mobile rang: "Charlie, you know who this is," the voice said. "You know it's for real. You'd better go with it."
In London, security forces had already come to that conclusion. IRA watches in London and Dublin had been synchronised. The first of at least six warnings that there was a bomb in the South Quay area of Docklands had come through to Scotland Yard's control room at about 5.40pm. The warning included a recognised IRA code word but police were cautious about its authenticity. "They use so many code words, it doesn't always mean a lot. They also play games with us," a spokesman said. A second warning went to the administrative section of the London Fire brigade, not through the emergency 999 system.
Docklands was a painfully obvious target. Dominated by Canary Wharf, the second tallest office tower in Europe, it had been an IRA target once before, in November 1992. That attack had been foiled when two alert security guards checked a suspect van and found it to be filled with explosives. Since the IRA "spectaculars" against the City of London in 1992 and 1993, a "ring of steel" had been set up around the capital's financial district. Although this had been relaxed since the ceasefire, the growing Docklands development, with its expanding office population and the headquarters of the Telegraph and Mirror newspaper groups, presented an equally appealing and easier prestige target.
Back in Dublin, John Bruton, the taoiseach, had been numbed when he heard the news that the IRA had declared the ceasefire over. He went ahead with a 6.30pm engagement at an art gallery near his office while his political adviser, Sean Donlon, the government's point man in contacts with republicans, talked urgently to Sinn Fein. He then called Bruton to advise him the warning was genuine. The taoiseach cut short his engagement and returned to his office at 6.50pm, filled with dread.
His foreign minister, Dick Spring, was in the government jet passing over Nova Scotia on the way back from Washington when his press secretary, Dan Mulhall, took a call from Dublin. Spring, who more than anybody had invested political capital in bringing pariah Sinn Fein in from the wilderness to be everyday visitors to Government Buildings, sat back shocked and gasped: "Is this really true?"
From 6.30pm, London's Metropolitan Police had arrived in force at South Quay and were preventing workers leaving their offices. The Docklands Light Railway, the district's driverless commuter service, had been shut down to prevent people arriving at the scene. It was a wise precaution; the bomb turned out to be in a vehicle parked near the station.
One woman who had tried to board a train said: "Police were ushering us away from the railway but would not say why. I jumped into a taxi instead and as I was heading down Commercial Road I heard this enormous bang. It could have been me." Terrorism's terrible lottery was rolling again.
Ron Williams, the chief inspector initially put in charge, said: "The warnings were fairly specific but did not give us exact details of where we could find it. They just said it was at South Quay. Our men were searching the area when the bomb went off."
A junior officer had spotted a suspicious van parked in a square by South Quay railway station. He backed away and radioed its description and registration number to control moments before the device exploded.
At 7.01pm all hell broke loose. Samantha Herbert, a seven-months-pregnant teenager, was walking along Marsh Wall with Neil Parker, her fiance: "We were on our way home after an afternoon's shopping when I felt this blast behind us. A split second later we were both thrown into the air. I tried to grab Samantha but she fell, screaming ‘My baby, my baby'," said Parker.
Overlooking the scene, in the offices of a joint venture company nearby, George Sparks, 28, from Washington, DC, was finishing a project: "We were just working late, tapping away at our terminals, when there was a tremendous flash and a huge boom and we were all just knocked down on to the floor. The water pipes exploded, shards of glass went everywhere and the office filled with dust and smoke. We were shouting to each other and staggered out and tried to account for everyone."
Others were relaxing after the day's work, winding down for the weekend. Anna Brandon, 29, a secretary in the Canary Wharf tower, was enjoying a glass of wine in the Waterfront pub and restaurant in South Quay plaza: "There was this huge bang and the entire building seemed to shudder. We all fell on the floor. Then there was this awful moment of total silence while people realised what was happening. Then there was the sound of glass smashing and alarms ringing everywhere. There were bits falling off buildings and I tried to look out of the window but there was too much smoke and dust and I just thought it was safer to get away as quickly as possible."
Graeme Brown, an advertising designer, had just visited a friend in the Plaza: "I was walking out of the plaza, and a couple of minutes later woke up surrounded by water I think a mains had burst and bleeding from my arm. I banged my head and could not decide which way was up. It was bizarre. I knew it wasn't a bomb, because we don't get them in London any more, do we?"
John Major had thought the same thing; he was at home in Huntingdon when his officials rang through with the news of the end of the ceasefire at 6.30pm.
The Americans, it seems, were ahead of the game. Adams telephoned the White House just after 6pm saying "he was hearing some very disturbing news" and would call back. Within minutes Tony Lake, President Clinton's National Security Adviser, and his aide Nancy Soderberg were asking Downing Street: was it true that the Irish media had been told the ceasefire was over?
As they talked on a conference line with John Holmes, Major's foreign affairs adviser, an aide rushed into the Downing Street room and declared: "A bomb has gone off in Docklands."
A key question now is how much did Adams know when he telephoned Washington? Whitehall officials hold divided views about his complicity. Some believe he knew an hour or so in advance, others that he knew weeks ago.
At the scene of the atrocity, Commander John Grieve, the new head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, was uttering assurances that London's vigil against terror had not been relaxed.
They were brave words, but hollow in the circumstances. At least two people had been killed, more than 100 people feared wounded, most by flying glass. In the end, 39 of them, including three policemen, were admitted to hospital. Six were seriously hurt. A gas main explosion following the main blast, however, had added to the injury toll; police searched for rumoured incendiary devices but found nothing. The roadblocks were back in the City. The capital's confidence had been sapped. Mainland Britain was back on a war footing.
By early yesterday, Docklands looked as it had not done since Hitler's blitz. The streets around South Quay glittered with shards of glass. East London's modernist architectural extravagances stood ripped and gutted. The railway platform was a twisted wreck above a great crater in the concrete. Across the road, a Midland Bank branch was devastated. In Belfast the RUC were back in flak jackets, once again toting their sub-machineguns as they closed the barricades around town shopping centres. Ulster was battening down the hatches in shocked disbelief.
SUGGESTIONS that an IRA splinter group might have been involved were blown away when the organisation claimed full responsibility yesterday.
There had never really been any doubt, not even in the mind of Gerry Adams, though in an interview on RTE news on Friday evening, he was less than his usual assured self: "That is not to say that the IRA if it be the IRA that were involved tonight, it does appear that it is the IRA that they don't have to take responsibilities for their own actions. Of course they do. I just presume that it is the IRA ...
"My whole life has been consumed in recent years by the need to build the peace process. We must redouble our efforts."
Yesterday Adams had regained some composure and said he wanted urgent talks with the British and Irish governments but refused to condemn the bombing, saying only that he was "very sad" about what had happened and all sides "must strive to make last night's incident a thing of the past".
As for his call to the White House before the explosion, he denied any knowledge of the bombing, saying: "I was very disturbed and concerned by the reports which I heard, I did my duty, I did the right thing ..."
British ministers say the door remains open to Sinn Fein despite the bombing, but "time is running out". Major will review the situation tonight with Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Northern Ireland secretary, Michael Howard, the home secretary, Michael Ancram, the minister responsible for negotiating with the Ulster parties, and Sir Paul Condon, the Metropolitan police commissioner.
Adams is now under pressure as never before. Speaking to reporters in Boston, Joseph Kennedy, the US congressman and a past critic of Britain's role in Ireland, condemned the IRA. Absolving the British government of responsibility for the breakdown of the IRA ceasefire, he said that only those who triggered the blast were to blame.
The stark reality perhaps now recognised only by the IRA is that for the past 17 months there has been peace, but there has never been a process. Process implies movement towards a goal, but the fire and water reality of Ulster's division has always meant that the superficial social goal peace can be maintained as long as everybody is prepared to ignore the incompatibility of each side's political goals.
Northern Ireland cannot continue to remain part of the United Kingdom and at the same time become part of the Republic of Ireland. At least, not under any formula yet devised; the potential for a "hybrid" is something that could only have been hammered out in the conditions of hard-tack compromise which would have come about only after months of talks.
All the indications are that in any case the IRA was never interested in compromise. Since last August, Sinn Fein has held up a draft document from the Irish government-sponsored Forum for Peace and Reconciliation entitled Pathways to Peace. The Unionists had never taken part, but the forum was seen as an important part of the pan-nationalist front. Nine days ago the document was issued, signed by all the other parties. Sinn Fein, however, refused to put its name to a section which specified that the North would have to agree to a change in its constitutional status.
In this context, there was never any real probability that the IRA would agree to decommissioning weapons before all-party talks, the British sticking point throughout the ceasefire. That would have amounted to surrendering the means that had brought them this far. British intelligence sources believe that the decision to bomb Docklands now was taken by the IRA's Dublin-based Southern Command, aided by the South Armagh brigade, just across the border. Irish Gardai officers were aware of grumblings in hardline circles in the border towns of Monaghan and Dundalk but believed they would still toe the line.
The intelligence sources claim the IRA northerners were only told that an operation was imminent during an IRA meeting in Dublin on Friday afternoon. The same sources are also convinced a decision to return to violence if no all-party talks were held in February was taken at least a month ago. One sign of impending crisis was that the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis (annual conference) scheduled for February had been postponed until April, for reasons which were not explained fully.
The end of February deadline had been mentioned publicly by Sinn Fein spokesmen and the British government was aware of it. However, a number of previous deadlines had been passed before, so there was no panic about this one. The British government was hopeful that if there was at least the prospect of talks by the end of February, all would be well.
The only dark hint was at a secret meeting in a Belfast church shortly before Christmas, when a British government representative met one of Sinn Fein's leading spokesmen. The talks failed and a gulf separated their positions. "From what you're telling me, we'll be killing one another again by Easter," said the London man. The reply: "I don't think you'll have to wait that long."
Sinn Fein and the northerners would have been aware that there was a danger of a resumption. However, they might have expected the cessation to last until at least the end of February, and may have thought it could be extended further if there was some political movement. The date and precise plan would have to be restricted on a need-to-know basis within the IRA to prevent leakage through informers.
Republican sources suggest the resumption of the bombing campaign may have been forced by the determination to avoid a split. Twice before the republican movement has run aground on the bullets-or-ballot-box dilemma. In 1970, the decision of the old, Marxist "Official" IRA under Cathal Goulding to pursue political means led to the split which created the Provisional wing. A year later, they were shooting each other in Belfast's Falls Road. But the "Provos" became the vanguard of the "armed struggle" while the officials disintegrated.
It is possible that Adams had no choice but to go along with a new bombing campaign if he was to avoid yet another fragmentation.
THIS time the chance of peace appears to have gone wrong at the very moment when there was a glimmer of a breakthrough.
After months in which London and Dublin remained bogged down over how the lack of progress towards all-party peace talks, the two governments agreed to call in outside help. Senator George Mitchell, a confidant of Clinton, was appointed last December to head a three-man commission on how Ulster's terrorists could disarm.
Though John Major denied it at the time, the secret understanding was that Mitchell would cast his net much farther than merely looking at practical questions about how terrorists could destroy or hand in their weapons. Mitchell took a broad range of evidence and his report on January 24 stated bluntly that "despite London's insistence" there was no hope of the IRA starting to decommission weapons before joining all party talks.
Mitchell suggested a way out. Instead of the IRA and the loyalists having to hand over weapons before talks took place, he recommended allowing arms decommissioning during all party talks so long as all participants first signed up to six terms before being admitted to the talks.
The six conditions were commitments:
To democratic and exclusively peaceful means of resolving political issues.
To the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations. To agree that such disarmament must be verifiable to the satisfaction of an independent commission.
To renounce for themselves, and to oppose any effort by others, to use force, or threaten to use force, to influence the course or the outcome of all-party negotiations.
To agree to abide by the terms of any agreement reached in cross-party negotiations and to resort to democratic and exclusively peaceful methods in trying to alter any aspect of that outcome with which they may disagree.
To urge that ‘punishment' killings and beatings stop and to take effective steps to prevent such actions.
Sinn Fein expressed reservations privately about details of decommissioning and, more pertinently as far as any long term hope of an Ulster settlement goes, about the chances of getting IRA agreement to abide by a democratic decision with which they might disagree.
Rather than challenge Sinn Fein to accept the Mitchell plans, John Major made a calculated leap into the dark: he announced that his government backed elections for a new assembly in Northern Ireland. Those who achieved mandates would be accepted at all-party talks. It could have been a clever face-saver, side-stepping the commitment to arms decommissioning in advance. It appeared to be a harmless appeal to the democratic principle. But it ignored the fact that in the Irish context, the lack of agreement on democratic principles is part of the problem.
In the House of Commons, John Hume, the Social Democratic and Labour Party leader erupted. Hume had made the crucial move of beginning talks with Adams and building the so-called "pan-nationalist front" that incorporated his own moderate nationalist following, the Catholic church, the Dublin government and the men of violence.
The idea that he could be forced back onto the hustings competing against Sinn Fein for a share of the nationalist vote was anathema. Signally, he also had rumours of rumbling within the hard ranks of the IRA. "We are dealing with the lives of innocent men, women and children in Northern Ireland. Does he (Major) agree that it would be utterly irresponsible for any party to play politics with the lives of those people?"
Hume claimed Major's prime concern was ensuring Unionist support in the Commons as his own Tory majority dwindled (it currently stands at four). At the time, Hume's angry outburst was seen as an intemperate misreading of the mood of the British parliament, a mistaken attack on democracy. Today, it looks like a dire forewarning.
Until the publication of the Mitchell report, the only people who appeared to have understood and accepted that there was never any real possibility of disarmament, were the loyalist paramilitaries.
The crucial difference between the loyalist/Unionist and IRA/Republican camps is that the former are content with the status quo. That is why even now the loyalist paramilitaries will hold their fire, at least until one of their own number is targetted. Peace without political change is all the loyalists were ever after. Stalling was therefore a sound tactic.
To nationalist ears, the very concept of "elections" in Northern Ireland smacked of a return to Stormont government.
Rule Four of the IRA's General Army Orders explicitly states that no member might subscribe to a party "which recognises the partition institutions". Statements by Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Northern Ireland Secretary, to the effect that the elections were intended purely to produce a mandate for negotiators did little to appease fears that taking part would be signing up to a talking shop designed specifically as an alternative to action. For better or worse, the bomb has ended the inertia.
AFTER 17 months of peace, security was dramatically stepped up on the British mainland and in Northern Ireland within minutes of the explosion in east London.
The "ring of steel" around the City of London, a focal point for IRA bomb attacks in the past four years, was reinforced. Roadblocks on the 12 main routes into the Square Mile were in place within half an hour of the blast and there was a significant increase in the number of officers on the streets. In Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary announced it had taken steps to reintroduce security measures relaxed after the ceasefire. RUC officers were wearing flak jackets for the first time in months and the army, mainly in Land Rovers, returned to the streets after being confined to barracks in most areas.
The big question for Britain now is not just whether it is politically and morally acceptable for ministers to meet the likes of Adams or Martin McGuinness, but whether it is worthwhile. If Sinn Fein has lost its ability to keep the lid on the hard men, then it may also have lost any point in its presence at talks.
On RTE, Adams himself inadvertently raised the question on everyone's minds: "Be assured that Sinn Fein will use whatever political influence we have. We still remain wedded to our peace strategy." But just how much influence is that? And has the IRA unilaterally sued for divorce? Or is Adams a willing co-respondent? In today's cold light, he appears either a pawn or a liar.
If he and the IRA were actually to part company, history suggests that Adams could find himself relegated to irrelevance. Which is why he will not allow that to happen. Last year in Belfast he told a Republican crowd ominously: "They haven't gone away." Now they are back, with a vengeance. What is hard to see is how it can do them any good.
The Downing Street Declaration of December 1993 did away once and for all with the myth that the IRA's enemy in achieving a united Ireland was the British government. Those they must convince are the 1m Ulstermen whom Adams patronisingly calls "my people too", but who angrily reject him. As of today, their anger will be all the more implacable.
CHRONICLE OF AN UNEASY TRUCE
1993
December 13: John Major and Albert Reynolds announce Downing Street declaration. Reynolds acknowledges right of the Northern Ireland people to remain in United Kingdom for as long as most of its people wish. Major says Britain will not stand in the way of a united Ireland.
December 30: IRA army council warns its campaign will continue.
1994
January 3: Sinn Fein calls on British government to "clarify" the declaration. Warns only a united Ireland will satisfy republicans.
March 11: IRA launches two mortar attacks on Heathrow airport. Gerry Adams says attacks will "accelerate the peace process".
March 31: IRA calls 72-hour Easter ceasefire.
July 1: British government announces IRA prisoners on mainland Britain will be sent to prisons in Ulster a key Sinn Fein demand.
August 4: Adams "guardedly optimistic" about peace prospects following talks with IRA leadership. The conflict, he says, is in its final stages.
August 25: American delegation sent by President Bill Clinton arrives in Dublin for talks with government, then meets Adams in Belfast.
August 29: Adams says "essential ingredients" for peace might be in place.
August 31: IRA announces "complete cessation of military operations".
September 2: John Major will not start 90-day countdown to peace he has sought unless he can be sure the ceasefire is permanent.
September 17: British government lifts broadcasting ban on Sinn Fein.
October 13: The UDA and the UVF announce a ceasefire.
October 21: Major says he is willing to begin countdown to exploratory talks with Sinn Fein.
October 22: Major lifts exclusion orders on Adams and Martin McGuinness, which had prevented them visiting mainland Britain.
November 23: Army announces Northern Ireland troop reductions.
December 9: Exploratory talks held at Stormont between government officials and Sinn Fein.
1995
January 15: Army announces end of daytime patrols in Belfast.
February 22: Framework document confirms Britain has no "selfish or
economic interest" in Northern Ireland. London and Dublin insist IRA and loyalist paramilitaries must decommission weapons. Adams rejects this.
April 21: Further 400 troops withdrawn. Disquiet over punishment beatings.
August 12: Adams tells republican rally: "The IRA haven't gone away."
November 17: 88 republican and loyalist prisoners released early.
November 28: London and Dublin announce "twin-track" approach to peace process under which all-party talks and decommissioning will be separately explored.
November 30: Clinton visits Ulster and gives details of Mitchell commission on arms.
1996
January 24: Mitchell commission concedes IRA
is not ready to give up arms but suggests an opening of all-party talks might be accompanied by a beginning of decommissioning. Possible alternative is elections before talks. Major opts for elections to a consultative convention.
January 28: Ulster judges and politicians told they are to lose police protection. February 2: Gunmen fire 57 shots at an RUC officer in Moy, Co Tyrone. The chairman of the Dublin government-sponsored forum for peace and reconciliation denies the forum is "dead in the water" after Sinn Fein says it cannot accept that a Northern Ireland majority should determine Ulster's future.
February 3: Mitchell warns IRA is in danger of splitting, with a risk of breakaway members resuming violence. The
RUC chief constable warns of an IRA campaign in Britain if the ceasefire breaks down.
February 5: David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, again rejects all-party talks without arms decommissioning.
February 7: John Bruton, the Irish prime minister, and Dick Spring, his foreign minister, call for Dayton-style talks. Unionists reject the idea.
February 8: Sinn Fein accuses Britain of continuing to erect obstacles to all-party talks by rejecting the Dublin's idea of two days of talks.
February 9: Adams tells a local radio station in Ulster in the afternoon that the IRA's ceasefire is "total and permanent". Just before 6pm RTE in Dublin is told in coded warning that ceasefire is at an end. At 7.01pm a bomb explodes in London's Docklands.
LABOUR in-fighting is staging a comeback in Liverpool. Almost 10 years after Derek Hatton and the Militant Tendency were removed from power on Merseyside, hardline leftwingers are again plotting to take control of the city.
Six members of the former Militant-dominated regime that once led the city to the brink of bankruptcy have regained their council seats, having served a five-year ban from public office imposed when they set an illegal council budget. Several more are expected to win back seats at the local elections in May.
They are part of a left-wing group accused of conspiring to replace Harry Rimmer, 68, the city council leader, with Gideon Ben-Tovim, 52, a former communist.
Ben-Tovim's chance could come in May, when the 50-strong Labour group is almost certain to elect a new leader in succession to Rimmer, a "moderate" who played a key role in expelling the Militant Tendency.
Feuding intensified last week after Rimmer threatened to resign following a revolt in his Dovecot ward. Two weeks ago he was unceremoniously deselected by his constituents.
Although regional party officials have ruled that the Dovecot ballot be rerun because of a procedural error, opposition to Rimmer is so intense that he is unlikely to retain the nomination.
"He has been knifed in the back by hardliners fed up with a leader who hobnobs with Tory ministers. This deselection heralds the return of old-style Labour," said Mike Storey, leader of the council's Liberal Democrat opposition.
Rimmer is one of several moderate Labour councillors who face losing their seats. "This is going to develop into the worst dogfight since the days of Hatton. The left and right differ fundamentally about what direction Liverpool should take," said one senior councillor.
Frances Kidd, a Rimmer supporter, who has also been deselected, said there was a split within the group. "The anti-leadership group is putting its people in place and is getting ready for a leadership battle," she added.
While moderates struggle to find seats, leftwingers are forging ahead. The successful candidate in the safe Anfield seat this May is expected to be Andy Walker, who stood for the Workers' Revolutionary party against Labour in 1979. John Hamilton, leader of Liverpool council when Hatton was deputy, is another prospective candidate.
Leftwingers backing Ben-Tovim claim they have no wish to return to the Hatton era, but are hoping that the sociology lecturer at the University of Liverpool will end staff cuts and reductions in capital spending which the present Labour administration has imposed in an attempt to reduce an £800m debt, much of it caused by the excesses of previous left-wing extremism.
Ben-Tovim insisted last week he was a long-standing supporter of Rimmer and hoped he would remain as leader, but significantly did not rule himself out as a replacement.
Critics, however, describe him as a "Gucci socialist" obsessed with political correctness. "He is far to the left of Tony Blair on issues such as education," one council colleague said. "He believes Britain should only have comprehensives."
Ben-Tovim dismisses the criticism: "The labels of ‘left' and ‘right' in today's Labour party mean nothing. The far-left are well outside our group."
SCIENTISTS have discovered evidence that men "burn out" faster than women. They lose brain cells more rapidly by burning up extra fuel in the tissues where thought processes take place.
As a result, women have greater mental stamina. According to the new research, they gradually become more articulate, imaginative and intellectually agile than their male counterparts because their brains remain intact for longer as they get older.
The findings, from a study involving brain scans and psychological tests on 300 people aged between 18 and 80, suggest that middle-aged women may be better able than men to cope with demanding jobs that require formidable powers of concentration.
The study may also help to explain why men are at greater risk of developing dementia in later life, and why they age faster, living for an average of 73.2 years in Britain compared with a woman's 78.7 years.
The research, which points to fundamental differences in the mental abilities of men and women, were published yesterday at a conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Baltimore. Using the latest scanning techniques, scientists monitored brain activity and found that older men burnt energy there as fast as they did when they were young. Women, by contrast, slowed down the rate at which they burnt up glucose in the brain.
Ruben Gur, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who led the study, drew an analogy with cars. "If you insist on driving your old car at the same speeds that you drove it when it was new, it is not going to last very long. Women are better able to pace themselves."
Gur suggested that by continuing to drive themselves mentally as hard as they had when they were younger, men destroyed tissue in the frontal lobes, which are associated with attentiveness and concentration. This might also explain why men are at higher risk of strokes caused by obstructions in the blood vessels of the brain.
The capacity of men to perform a variety of mental tasks deteriorated significantly faster than that of women from teenage years onward, said Gur. "This is particularly pronounced with attention. We see a fairly dramatic decline in attentional capacities of men between the ages of 18 and 44, whereas in women we see not a hint of decline."
One possible factor identified in the study was that men at rest made more use of the parts of the brain on which they relied in the office, suggesting that they found it harder to switch off from work. A male accountant, for example, would still be using the regions linked with mathematical calculation; a female accountant would not.
Gur said: "Men may need to learn to relax their brain in the same way they relax their muscles. An accountant should spend some time doing some spatial activities, like painting or drawing for instance, or playing with Rubik's cube.
"If men do not learn to relax their brains, they could find they lose their ability to plan, to pay attention and be flexible in their thinking, which could jeopardise their ability to continue doing certain jobs as they get older. You may find that women are more sustainable in such positions."
Earlier research established that many women make more use of the left side of the brain, associated with verbal skills, while many men rely more on the right side, linked to spatial awareness. The latest study indicates that the contrast between male and female brains is far more marked than had been thought.
Its conclusions were greeted cautiously by some scientists working in the field. John Gruzelier, professor of psychology at Charing Cross hospital in London, said differences between more masculine and more feminine members of the same sex were sometimes even more marked than those between men and women. Other experts believe that upbringing and environment are as important as biology in determining such differences.
Several men and women in public life said this weekend that the findings announced in America confirmed their own perception of the sexes. Melvyn Bragg, the broadcaster, said he had "never doubted" that women had more mental stamina.
Laura Cox QC, a crown court recorder, attributed such stamina to the demands made on women as well as their physiology. "We need to be calm under pressure more so than a man because there are more challenges thrown in front of women," she said. "We develop organisational skills a lot more and don't get as flustered."
Jilly Cooper, the novelist, said that by driving themselves too hard in the way described by Gur, men build up frustration, making themselves susceptible to outbursts of rage and violence.
However, David Thomas, who wrote a book in defence of the modern man, said: "I've worked for male and female employers and they can both be as incompetent as each other. Sex doesn't come into it."
Additional reporting: Chris Dodd
THE return of the bombers to the streets of Britain confirms what has been apparent for many months the IRA and its political apologists have never accepted the principle of consent as the basis of a lasting settlement in Northern Ireland. Instead, the terrorists and their weasel-mouthed spokesmen, led by Gerry Adams, have reverted to type.
The Provisional IRA claims to have restarted its terrorist campaign "with great reluctance", while Adams refuses to condemn the bombing and tries to deflect responsibility to John Major and the Ulster Unionists. We should reject this and realise that the ceasefire may be over for the foreseeable future at least on the British mainland. But it does not end a perfect peace. While it lasted, the ceasefire was marked by persistent outrages against people in Northern Ireland, a refusal to guarantee the permanence of peace and a failure to assure the world that the republican leadership was willing to embrace democracy.
John Hume, the betrayed nationalist leader of the SDLP, urged us to accept that Sinn Fein's obscurantism was just a historical hangover and that its commitment to peace was real. He knows better now. The IRA's hardliners spat in his face when they exploded their bomb in London's Docklands. Tired of a dialogue that has denied it victory, the IRA has fallen back on traditional methods. It evidently believes that a return to violence will restore its ability to strike fear into ordinary people and shake the resolve of governments. It failed before and it will fail again. That does not deter it, however, because it is bound as much by terrorist instinct as republican sentiment.
Accusations that Mr Major has reaped the whirlwind of his call for elections in Northern Ireland deserve only contempt. The latest London blast was proof positive of the loathing the IRA has for the ballot box. Republicans who view Northern Ireland through a distorted prism as a subjugated British colony should explain why they fear elections to prepare the way for a negotiated settlement. The answer is doubly clear they fear both the result of an election and the consequences of a settlement.
Yesterday's talk of Dublin's leaders shocked into disbelief at the latest outrage testifies more to their optimism than their realism. President Bill Clinton and his Irish lobby must also re-evaluate their simplistic belief that glad-handing Adams has contributed to lasting peace in Ireland. Dublin and Washington must now see Adams for what he is a jetsetting sham and a glib-tongued frontman for murderers.
The way is now clear for resolute action by the British government, which bears ultimate responsibility for Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom. This need not be, and must not be, the end of the peace process. It can restart on a new and sounder foundation, based on the support of the overwhelming majority who truly want peace. Ulster's people deserve a new start. They have suffered the brunt of the IRA's terror campaign and have much to lose from its resumption. The welcome for the ceasefire across the sectarian divide and the consequent horror at its collapse must be harnessed while the chasm between civilised people and killers is clear.
First, the IRA, and Sinn Fein if it does not recant, must be given pariah status. Decent nationalists must reject them at the ballot box. There should be no hiding place for those who have rejected a chance to join civilised society.
Second, the proposed elections for a peace-making assembly should proceed as planned. Sinn Fein can take part if it accepts the core principles of democracy. If it does not, its members should be branded as terrorist fellow-travellers. It is time for Mr Hume and the SDLP to seize the mantle of Irish nationalism on behalf of decent people and turn their backs on Adams and his cronies.
Third, the British and Irish governments must increase security co-operation against the IRA. This time, those in the nationalist community who once turned a blind eye to IRA activities must help root out the terrorists before killings and casualties again become the daily norm. Nobody should forget the grieving little girl who touched everyone's heart when she greeted President Clinton in Belfast.
Fourth, the US administration should reassess the IRA as a ruthless, cunning, dedicated terrorist force. Washington must tell Adams that anyone who is not an enemy of the IRA is not welcome across the Atlantic and that the Americans will put all their strength behind the British and Irish governments.
The next few weeks will be critical for the peace process. Mr Major and John Bruton, the Irish prime minister, must not abandon hope. More than ever it now requires courage and determination by people of goodwill. That is the only way to defeat terrorism and bring permanent peace to the British Isles.
AFTER years of being implored to let the train take the strain, thousands of travellers are opting for a cheaper and quicker way of getting to their destinations: the minicab.
The choice of road rather than rail has been made more attractive by a fall in motoring costs, attributed mainly to lower bills for servicing and car repairs.
By contrast, many British Rail fares have risen sharply. The new year heralded fare rises of up to 8% more than double the rate of inflation. For some train operators, it was the second time in a year that they had put up ticket prices.
Many of Britain's 100,000 minicab drivers can now beat rail fares. Fleetways, a cab firm in York, will carry a couple 265 miles to the cathedral city of Canterbury in one of its fleet of Rovers for £213, compared with BR's peak return fare of £248 for two people.
Peter Monument, who runs a family taxi firm in Taunton, Somerset, marginally undercuts BR's peak return fare to Bournemouth for two of £95.20 and promises that his customers will complete the 90-mile journey two hours before passengers travelling by rail.
In a survey of 50 train journeys, The Sunday Times found more than 20% of BR fares for a couple travelling at peak times could be bettered by a local taxi firm.
Cars increasingly cater for the business customer too. A number of "club class" vehicles have appeared on the streets of London, offering luxuries such as a table on which to work, connections for laptop computers and soundproofing.
The Sunday Times hired a cab from Bristol for two students to race their friends on the train to Bedford. The train pulled out of Bristol Temple Meads station at 10.15am, carrying Harriet Crosse, 18, and her classmate, Tom Cross.
They travelled to Paddington station in west London and then took an Underground line to Farringdon, where they boarded another train to their destination. The journey took three hours and cost £92 for the pair. "We had a lot of trouble on the Underground. In the end we used three trains to get across London and nearly ended up missing our train to Bedford," said Crosse. "If I was doing it again I would certainly take the taxi."
Rachel Raulston and her friend Will Stein arrived an hour earlier, having hired a car from 1A Premier Cabs in Bristol for £85. "It was much more comfortable than taking the train. We really flew and had to end up waiting for ages for the others to catch up," said Raulston.
Many journeys across Britain are difficult by rail. The 15-mile run across Hertfordshire from Stevenage to Luton can be made for £48 return in a minicab. But a rail user would have to take a train southwards from Stevenage to King's Cross and then catch another train north to Luton a journey which takes half an hour longer and costs £17 more at peak times.
Some rail experts claim that BR has adopted the wrong strategy to persuade people to use trains. Barry Doe, a railway consultant, said: "During peak times when BR has a captive market and more people than they know what to do with, the railways should be dropping their fares. Instead they try to dampen demand by charging these high prices."
Robert Key, Conservative MP for Salisbury and a former roads minister, believes there should be a "level playing field" in transport. "We have not learnt the lesson of the past," he said. "We pay a very high level of subsidy into the railways and will continue to pay for them. We should be subsidising the taxi to see if people use them instead."
BR said the comparison with taxis should also have considered the reductions which can be made with "supersaver" tickets. "The vast majority of rail passengers do not pay the full peak fare. With the railways you are also getting restaurant facilities, a bar, seats you can sleep in and a toilet, should you need it."
Additional reporting: Miranda Cook
THEIR first encounter was explosive. He was a member of the Special Air Service (SAS), secretly engaged to help storm a jet hijacked by Middle Eastern fanatics. She was a Palestinian terrorist, brandishing hand grenades at terrified passengers aboard a Lufthansa plane stranded on the Tarmac at Mogadishu airport.
Now, 18 years after Barry Davies watched Souhaila Andrawes being carried from the jet after his team had overwhelmed the Palestinian hijackers in a bloody gun battle, the pair have forged a remarkable friendship. They are collaborating on a lucrative book and film deal to prove the bad blood has been forgotten.
The reintroductions ahead of the book deal last year were painful. Andrawes, crippled by the 27 bullets that tore into her legs when the SAS-led operation got under way, burst into tears when she opened the door of her apartment and saw Davies again.
Davies, for his part, was stunned. "It was strange seeing Souhaila again," he said. "Last time we met she was being carried off the plane in Mogadishu, shouting, ‘Kill me! Kill me!"' His team had already shot her three accomplices; she was not expected to survive her injuries.
Davies, now a security adviser, discovered about 18 months ago that the terrorist had survived. A friend told him Andrawes was living in Norway, happily married with a young daughter, having decided to turn her back on violence.
He tracked her to an Oslo apartment after deciding to write a book detailing his experiences in the SAS. The Mogadishu siege, which made headlines around the world, had been the high point of his career. He wanted to hear Andrawes's version of events.
They became friends, meeting a number of times and chatting about how they could capitalise on their link with the past. Davies, who had already written one book about the SAS, knew there was a growing demand for more bestsellers about the regiment. It would be a riveting new angle for a book if a terrorist and soldier could put their past differences aside.
Both, however, were also curious about meeting. Davies, hailed as a hero for his role in ending the siege, had become reflective since first joining the elite regiment more than 20 years before.
"He has mellowed," said a friend. "Barry no longer believes there is a simple way to deal with terrorism. He believes it is vital to talk about issues and try to understand both sides better. Shoot-outs don't really solve the problem."
Davies had no such uncertainties in October 1977. He had been ordered by James Callaghan, then prime minister, to help resolve a hijacking that had left the world in shock. Lufthansa flight 181 was carrying 87 passengers, including eight beauty contestants, from Palma to Frankfurt when the terrorists produced concealed weapons and seized control of the aircraft.
After six days' shuttling between international airports, the terrorists had been allowed to land in the Somali capital. The plane had become a hellhole, its occupants stifling under the blazing African sun.
Andrawes, a 22-year-old who had joined the Palestinian cause after growing up in Beirut, was controlling the passengers at the back of the plane, threatening to pull the pins from her grenades if there was any disobedience. The terrorists' leader, who was demanding the release of Arab prisoners, had already shot the captain. The situation was worsening as the hijackers became more erratic.
The shoot-out was over quickly. Andrawes was sentenced to 20 years in a Mogadishu prison. She was beaten and abused by the guards. Few people felt much sympathy for her circumstances. But the Somali government feared she would die in its jail, releasing her in 1980. She fled to eastern Europe before settling in Norway six years ago.
She has since discussed with Davies how their lives were so different. He told her about Yvonne, his wife, his sports car and his job with a security firm. She told him about her daughter and how she was no longer involved in the Palestinian struggle, although she recalled how she had once been close to Carlos the Jackal, the world's most wanted terrorist.
The deal to collaborate on a book, to be published by Bloomsbury later this year, was struck as they grew more at ease. They are convinced their story will be dynamite.
A perplexing postscript, however, may now have to be added. Andrawes was arrested by police as the pair finalised the book. She is in a German prison this weekend facing another jail sentence for the hijacking. The details of her release by the Somalis have been lost and the German authorities want her to stand trial again.
Additional reporting: Mark Franchetti, Berlin
PRINCE EDWARD, the most unassuming member of the royal family, has fallen under the spell of a German grand prix car that became the obsession of countless collectors and two of the world's most savage dictators.
Built in 1938 with the personal backing of Hitler to symbolise Nazi supremacy, it later became the plaything of Nicolae Ceausescu, the former communist leader of Romania.
Now the prince has joined the hunt for the lost Nazi treasure in an odyssey which has led from Transylvania, the fictional home of Dracula, to the Manhattan offices of Ralph Lauren, the couturier; the dashed hopes, injuries and financial ruin endured by those who have come into contact with the car have fuelled the legend that it is jinxed.
The car's remarkable history it was once even offered to a collector in exchange for groceries by a Romanian who had fallen on hard times has cast a spell over all those who have entered the chase. But jubilance of enthusiasts who believed the holy grail of the auto world was within their grasp has often turned to tears of despair when the car has vanished without trace.
Ardent, the prince's television production company, has spent the past 18 months working on a documentary about the car which is due to be broadcast on BBC2's Top Gear programme later this year.
In the course of its extraordinary history, the pre-war Mercedes 154, one of 10 legendary Mercedes-Benz Silver Arrow racing cars, has been wrecked or dismantled at least three times, yet is still worth in excess of £5m.
"It is the crown jewels," said Tony Merrick, one of Britain's leading car restorers. Karl Ludvigsen, a Mercedes expert, added: "It is possibly the last opportunity to purchase one of the most exciting and exotic racing cars ever built."
The story begins in 1933 when Hitler ordered a challenge to the Italian domination of grand prix racing. Mastery of the race circuits became a glittering symbol of German prowess. However, it was not long before the W154/5 began to acquire a reputation for being jinxed. At the Belgian Grand Prix it spun off the track, killing its driver.
Since then many others have longed to sit behind the wheel of Hitler's dream car. Lauren has had to content himself with just the steering wheel, which hangs in his office.
Investigations have established that during the second world war all 10 of the Silver Arrows were hidden by Mercedes to protect the secrets of its V12 engines, which also powered Messerschmitt fighters. But two of the cars W154/5 and W154/7 fell into Soviet hands and were shipped east for examination.
They never got further than Romania. Discovered lying at the docks of Constanza on the Black Sea, they were entrusted to Ioska Roman, a dedicated motor racer and a man with his own private obsession.
Near his home town of Cluj was a hill which had long been the scene of fiercely contested races. Roman was determined to capture the record for the 7.2km climb from a German, who in 1936 had completed the course in 2min 56sec.
Hitler's car gave him his chance. But then the curse struck again. In 1953 he was competing in the hill race when the car veered off the course and hit a large marker stone. Roman broke his back and almost wrecked the car.
Roman never raced again. But he did rebuild the car.Tyres from a truck were pressed into service to replace those burst in the accident, and pieces of the chassis and bodywork were cannibalised from the second car that had been on its way east.
The cars attracted attention in the town and the Securitate, the Romanian secret police, began to take an interest.
Roman's friends say he received three brand new saloon cars a Mercedes, a BMW and a Volkswagen Beetle in return for the sale of the undamaged car, W1547, in 1971, but that Ceausescu exacted a large cash sum from a buyer for allowing the vehicle to leave the country.
Although it was later sold for more than £5m, Roman's reward was worth no more than £50,000 at today's prices. The car is now owned by a Mexican millionaire and displayed in a Californian museum.
Depressed by hardship and desperate to leave Romania, Roman offered the remaining car to westerners in exchange for groceries. In the mid-1970s he pledged to give it to Count Hubertus von Doernhoff, a Bavarian collector, in return for two trucks of marmalade.
In the mid-1980s Lauren entered negotiations but was eventually deterred by the corruption of Ceausescu's officials, apart from acquiring the steering wheel.
When Roman died 10 years ago, aged 78, the Ceausescu regime redoubled its efforts to cash in on the remaining car. Several British dealers were offered it by a front company which secured substantial "deposits". These, it is claimed, were never returned.
Terry Cohn, a wealthy Sussex collector, visited Cluj in 1987 and was convinced that he had an agreement. He is still conducting a long-running legal campaign to establish his ownership.
But by the summer of 1988 the car had vanished. One British dealer who declined to be named said: "We had a meeting at the Continental hotel in Cluj but we didn't see the car or the title documents."
It turned out that Roman's son, Tibor, believing the car to be his, had smuggled the car across the border to Hungary. "Tibor must have bribed a lot of people to get it out of the country," said Romus Campeanu, director of the Romanian Automobile Club's office in Cluj.
"I have heard several stories: one that it was taken across the border on a cart, the other that it was in the back of a truck packed with clothes."
The Ceausescus, apparently infuriated by the deception, ordered a witch-hunt. The Securitate rounded up every motor racing enthusiast in Cluj for interrogation.
But this did not stop the car being sold to Andrei Bilciurescu, a German orthodontist, just as the market in rare cars began to collapse at the end of the 1980s. The price was a modest £270,000. Bilciurescu is reluctant to expand on the deal or whether he had any connections with the former communist regime.
However, it is believed that Mercedes has given him extensive technical assistance and although the car is not yet roadworthy, its restoration is almost complete.
"I am just a collector who bought a car," he said at his home, an unremarkable second-floor apartment near the main railway station in Bonn. "I don't want to get involved with all those crazies who are disputing it. What is in it for me?"
It is a sentiment with which Edward would not agree. During the hunt for the vintage Mercedes he became a classic car enthusiast and has even lent his name to a group which wants to race in Park Lane.
So far his loss-making company has had to trade heavily on his royal connections to win programme commissions. His next appearance on television will be to present a documentary on Edward VIII, his great-uncle. The car saga could secure his professional reputation. "There will be Bafta awards in this," said one insider.
HONG KONG universities have confirmed what many British academics have long suspected: A-level standards in the United Kingdom are not what they used to be.
Indeed, the Hong Kong academics look down on a British A-level to such an extent that in some subjects particularly mathematics and science they reckon a B-grade pass is equivalent to a C or D in their version of the exams.
Hong Kong has been setting its own A-levels for more than 30 years, modelled on the British system. However, about 1,000 students there also sit British A-levels every year.
Guidelines used by Hong Kong's six universities to assess applicants reveal that mathematics and science students who take British A-levels need to know significantly less to achieve what are nominally the same results and grades as those in the local exams.
The difference has been officially recognised by the colony's examiners for five years but has been kept secret until now. The disclosure highlights the worrying gap between what is expected of Britain's young scientists and those from Pacific rim countries.
The most recent analysis based on results from students who sat both the British and Hong Kong A-levels reveals that 80% of pupils studying pure mathematics received higher grades in the British version of the exam.
Choi Chee-cheong, secretary of the colony's examinations authority, said: "Hong Kong mathematics questions are harder and our syllabus is more sophisticated. If we set a paper similar to that in the United Kingdom, probably everybody would pass."
Dr Chan Kai-yuen, head of the mathematics department at Hong Kong University, said sixth-formers who had completed a British A-level instead of a Hong Kong one often struggled when they started their university course.
This is a view shared by academics in Britain, who are worried that standards have dropped sharply over the past decade, especially in science and engineering subjects.
"It is alarming," said Professor Glyn James, who chaired a recent inquiry into mathematics. "To accommodate more and more students in higher education, the level of difficulty in our A-level has gone down. The brightest students are not pushed as hard as they used to be."
Students from countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong are almost twice as likely as British undergraduates to achieve first-class honours degrees, according to university statistics. One examiner said last week that 11 of the 12 first-class degrees on a university's engineering course went to overseas undergraduates; the British student was 12th.
EROS, the symbol of lovers, will be the target of an "arrow" this St Valentine's week. On Friday America's National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) launches a satellite to travel 1.3billion miles to an asteroid named after the god of love whose orbit takes it around Mars.
The potato-shaped lump of rock is roughly the size of central London and will be the first asteroid explored by a spacecraft in one of the most ambitious projects of the decade.
The mission, which will take four years, could herald an era in which robots are sent to mine mineral-rich distant asteroids or alter their course to prevent a collision with Earth.
Nasa is sending instruments to measure the composition, topography and magnetic fields of Eros from a distance of about 20 miles. They will be on board a craft satellite built for the American space agency by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore at a cost of £113m.
The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) craft will compile the first detailed picture, including precise dimensions and mass, of one of the many thousands of so-called "minor planets" that are adrift in the solar system. Most of them orbit the sun in an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Andrew Cheng, the mission scientist for the satellite at Johns Hopkins University, said the visit to Eros should solve the mystery of whether asteroids are the "builders' rubble" left by the creation of planets five billion years ago, or miniature "planetessimals" formed directly from the sun.
"There is another possibility that Eros was once part of a planet that broke up when another planet smashed into it," he said.
The satellite's spectrometers instruments that monitor colours and radiation are also expected to provide information about whether it might be feasible to tap the resources of other asteroids near Earth.
Cheng said some were thought to be rich in metals such as extremely pure forms of iron ore. "If so, they would contain almost a cubic mile of iron, which is phenomenal. If found on Earth that would be worth hundreds of billions of dollars," he said.
Other asteroids are understood to be rich in hydrocarbons, which could be used as fuel for long-distance space travel or for building space stations. Cheng said: "The primary aim is to orbit the asteroid but landing is something we're considering at the end of the mission."
Many scientists believe it is only a matter of time before a large asteroid moves on to a collision course with Earth, threatening widespread destruction. One estimate of the risk of this puts it on a par with an individual's lifetime risk of being killed in an aircraft accident.
The Earth has experienced several such collisions. A small asteroid, just 330ft across, exploded over Siberia in 1908, destroying about half a million acres of forest. A larger asteroid was thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65m years ago. In 1989 a 50m-ton asteroid travelling at 46,000mph came within six hours of hurtling into the surface of the planet.
The mission to Eros should help scientists decide whether it would be possible to nudge such asteroids into a safer orbit with explosive charges. This would be easier to achieve if asteroids are found to be of solid material rather than a loose aggregation of rocks.
THE life of a 55-year-old man who sustained severe head wounds in the blast was in the balance yesterday after two operations to remove glass and metal from his brain and reconstruct his face.
Relatives named him as Zaoui Berrezag, a Moroccan-born office cleaner from the Isle of Dogs, whose 17-year-old son Farid, a computer studies student, also underwent surgery yesterday to remove glass from the back of his neck. Layla, his 14-year-old sister, was treated for minor injuries on Friday night.
Berrezag's wife, Jamma, was at the hospital yesterday as he lay unconscious in intensive care. "The family is in shock," said Benoy Sen, 34, a cousin.
The men were caught in the blast as they sat in their car. They had just finished a cleaning shift at the Midland Bank building. Layla was filling in for her mother, who was at home with the family's youngest daughter.
"We were just 50 yards away, sitting in the car waiting for my sister when there was a massive explosion," said Farid. "My father would have been thrown out through the windscreen, but he was wearing a seatbelt." Farid said the explosion came with a blue flash. "I was out of the car, blood was gushing from my neck and I was screaming I thought I was dreaming," he said. "I've seen a lot of terrible injuries; I've seen people whose faces are too terrible to look at."
The surgeon who operated on Farid's father said his condition was giving great concern. "His skull suffered a significant blow it was a horrendous injury," said Austen Smith, senior surgical registrar for the maxillofacial surgery unit at the Royal London hospital.
Most casualties were victims of flying glass, suffering cuts to their faces and throats. Among the worst was a 23-year-old woman who required hours of painstaking surgery to try to rebuild her face after what doctors described as horrific injuries. "There is a significant possibility that she will lose her sight," said Smith.
Last night she was recovering from surgery on a pierced eyeball, having been transferred to St Bartholomew's hospital. In all, 39 casualties were treated in hospital, with five still there last night.
Among those originally detained was Samantha Herbert, 17, who is seven months pregnant and was blown off her feet by the bomb. An ultrasound scan later confirmed that the baby was unharmed and she was allowed home.
John Carter, a consultant surgeon in the hospital's mouth, jaw and face unit, said two office workers, men aged 34 and 31, had suffered multiple lacerations of the face and torso. Last night one of the men was still awaiting surgery, but both were said to be stable.
Michael Howard, the home secretary, went to the Royal London during the afternoon to visit two of the casualties. He appealed for the public's help in catching the terrorists responsible, and said the bombing was a despicable act which deserved universal condemnation. "This outrage will not deflect the government from searching for peace, nor intimidate us into doing what's wrong," he said. "It will have no purpose."
Earlier, Howard visited the scene of the blast. At first light yesterday, a thick carpet of glass below the twisted and mangled remains of the towering offices by South Quay station testified to the force of the explosion the night before.
DAVID IRVING, the right-wing historian, and two British far-right extremists have been called to give evidence in the Oklahoma City bombing case, it was confirmed yesterday, writes Tim Kelsey.
Lawyers for Timothy McVeigh, 27, who has been charged with the bombing in which 169 people died, have issued subpoenas demanding that the three provide information on their contacts with American neo-Nazis.
The Sunday Times reported last week that the defence and the FBI were investigating allegations that European neo-Nazis were involved in a conspiracy with McVeigh to bomb the federal office building in Oklahoma last April.
The subpoenas, which were filed on Friday, require Irving, John Tyndall, leader of the extreme right-wing British National party, and Charles Sergeant, a member of the skinhead neo-Nazi organisation Combat 18, to describe conversations and meetings they may have had with two leading American extremists. Both had connections with McVeigh, it is alleged.
The subpoenas, which will be forwarded to the High Court in Britain, want the three Britons to describe "the extent of their conversations as it may relate to their activities in the United States to advance their political agenda". There is no suggestion that any of the three were in any way involved in the bombing.
Tyndall said yesterday: "I've had conversations with one of the Americans named but there has never been any discussion of any action against the federal government." Neither Sergeant nor Irving, who is in Florida, was available for comment.
Correction: Headline: Tragedy;Points;Letter Issue Date: Sunday February 25, 1996 Page: 3/8 Your headline Oklahoma to hear Iving's evidence (News, February 11), with all its innuendos, will have lit a little candle in the hearts of the pe ople who support Timothy McVeigh. They are floating their fund-raising campai gns in the United States on the tears of a tragedy which tore at the hearts of everybody. David Irving, London W1.
DAILY life for millions changed at 7.01pm on Friday. After 17 months of peace, security was dramatically stepped up on the British mainland and in Northern Ireland within minutes of the explosion in east London.
The "ring of steel" around the City of London, a focal point for IRA bomb attacks in the past four years, was reinforced. Roadblocks on the 12 main routes into the Square Mile were in place within half an hour of the blast and there was a significant increase in the number of officers on the streets.
A police spokesman said: "We are up to full alert. There are always armed police on the streets, but we are up to strength." Hundreds of motorists were stopped at random for questioning by armed officers. Once again City police were openly wearing bulletproof vests. But their Heckler & Koch sub-machineguns were, for the most part, discreetly out of sight. City institutions are regarded as prestige targets for terrorists because of the economic damage that can be caused.
Security was tightened in many other British cities and sea ports yesterday. Detective Chief Superintendent David Booth, head of Greater Manchester police Special Branch, reinstated measures to counter any IRA attack. "We have always worked in the knowledge this could happen. Nothing has been dismantled and our security measures are back in place," a police spokesman said.
In Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary announced it had taken steps to reintroduce security relaxed after the ceasefire. RUC officers were wearing flak jackets for the first time in months and the army, mainly in Land Rovers, returned to the streets after being confined to barracks in most areas. With the exception of republican strongholds such as south Armagh and east Tyrone, troops have been invisible for the past year. Berets introduced after the ceasefire will now be replaced by helmets.
More than 1,600 troops have left Northern Ireland since March last year, cutting the total of British Army forces deployed there by 10%. Security was stepped up on border roads yesterday, where patrols have been reduced in recent months.
Blair Wallace, RUC deputy chief constable, said: "Steps have now been taken to reintroduce such security measures as we consider prudent. Where necessary, this will involve military support."
Many rail services were suspended after reports of a bomb on the main Belfast to Dublin line near Newry, Co Down. No decision was taken yesterday on whether to reintroduce city-centre security gates and checkpoints in Belfast and other large towns in the province.
Belfast has blossomed in the past 17 months, with shoppers flocking to high streets and businesses booming. Now the end of the ceasefire has endangered all the progress.
Personal security for politicians, relaxed during the ceasefire, will again be stepped up. Only key figures including Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Northern Ireland secretary, and judges had kept bodyguards.
Earlier estimates yesterday put the damage caused by Friday night's bomb at more than £50m. However, Michael Pickard, chairman of the London Docklands Development Corporation, said the figure may rise considerably, adding that £50m "sounds quite modest to me". Insurance assessors put the figure at up to £100m. London businesses are also likely to face a significant increase in insurance premiums, while travel agents warned that tourism to Britain could also be harmed. Five buildings were damaged, including offices used by the Docklands Light Railway, the Midland Bank, Building magazine, and a new unoccupied complex belonging to the Franklin Mint American mail order group.
The South Quay arcade of shops was badly hit and many businesses could be shut for several weeks.
Last month Britain's retailers celebrated the reaping of a huge dividend from the peace process. The British Retail Consortium's retail crime costs survey showed that the price of terrorism had fallen by £226m in 1994-95 to £4.9m.
Those who live in the Square Mile welcomed the extra security yesterday, but were saddened by the necessity for it. The relaxed atmosphere which has prevailed in City pubs, restaurants and wine bars during the ceasefire is over.
At the New Moon pub in Leadenhall Market, which during the week is packed at lunchtime with brokers from Lloyd's, John Hall, the landlord, was depressed. "We've obviously got to be alert. We've been lulled into a false sense of security," he said.
Additional reporting: Susan Clarke and Jason Burke
TORY MPs warned yesterday that they will stage a Commons rebellion if John Major refuses to sack any ministers censured by Sir Richard Scott's arms-to-Iraq inquiry.
But Major is ready to threaten an immediate general election in an attempt to head off a backbench revolt when MPs vote on the Scott report two weeks tomorrow.
Senior government sources said yesterday that if Major were defeated, he would call a vote of confidence the following day to force the rebels back into line. If he lost that vote, too, there would be an election.
Scott's report, to be published on Thursday, is expected to include strong criticism of William Waldegrave, the Treasury chief secretary, who allegedly relaxed the guidelines on arms exports to Iraq without telling parliament while he was a Foreign Office minister.
Also in the firing line is Sir Nicholas Lyell, the attorney-general, who advised ministers to sign "gagging orders" to withhold information from the defence in the case of three Matrix Churchill executives prosecuted for exporting machine tools to Iraq.
Despite Major's determination to avoid resignations, three Tory MPs broke ranks this weekend by warning that any minister who had misled parliament should resign.
Richard Shepherd, MP for Aldridge Brownhills, said: "If it is a hardline report I hope there is no possibility of anyone having to call for them to go because they themselves will have taken that course of action. If Scott says, ‘There is no doubt in my mind that Waldegrave knowingly misled the Commons,' I really do not know what he could do. What would he be brazening out then? Misleading MPs is clearly an offence."
Bill Cash, MP for Stafford, agreed "in principle" that a minister who misled parliament should resign, but would reserve final judgment until after reading the report.
Rupert Allason, MP for Torbay, believed some ministers should lose their jobs because hundreds of people lost theirs when Matrix Churchill collapsed. "I feel very strongly about the long hand of secret government reaching into the courtroom," he said.
Other Tory MPs privately share the view that ministerial heads should roll. One senior figure said: "If a minister is shown to have misled parliament, he should resign. People say John Major must stand by his ministers because Tony Blair stood by Harriet Harman, but the two cases are not comparable."
In theory, it would take only three MPs to vote with Labour to inflict a humiliating defeat on the government. Ministers admit they cannot rely on support from the Ulster Unionists, whose leader, David Trimble, has taken a strong line on the arms-to-Iraq affair.
Ministers have drawn up plans to steady Tory nerves. They will argue that Waldegrave did not intentionally mislead parliament, while senior legal figures will back Lyell's claim that he acted fully within the law.
The government may announce early legislation to reform the public interest immunity certificates, or "gagging orders", to which Scott is likely to recommend sweeping changes.
Meanwhile, ministers intend to seize on one finding by Scott, who is expected to rule that Matrix Churchill deceived the government over the sale of military equipment to Iraq. Scott has provisionally concluded that Paul Henderson, former managing director of the Coventry machine-tool firm, deceived Lord Trefgarne, then trade minister, about the intended use of the tools to make artillery fuses for an arms factory near Baghdad.
Henderson has accepted in reply to Scott that he "did not tell the entire truth", but he is adamant that he never intended to deceive.
Henderson still hopes to sue the government for £1m for wrongful prosecution. "Scott does say that I deceived Lord Trefgarne in connection with the export licence applications. But I have received a letter from Scott in which he defends the reasons," he said.
The government's damage-limitation exercise over Scott will receive a setback tonight when a former intelligence chief will accuse ministers of not being truthful when they told the inquiry they were not shown all the relevant intelligence about exports to Iraq.
Sir Derek Boorman, former chief of intelligence at the Ministry of Defence, will say on a BBC2 programme, Government on Trial: the Scott Report: "It is a very good defensive tactic, isn't it, to say I wasn't told? I think, in general, it doesn't have the ring of truth."
Dublin turns its back on Adams
MI5, the counter-intelligence service, fears that Friday's bomb attack in London's Docklands, which killed two shop workers, is the start of a long and bloody terror campaign in England to force the government to make concessions to republican demands.
The bodies of the victims were recovered last night from under tons of rubble, all that remained of the newsagent's where they were working.
The IRA is now expected to concentrate on prestige targets such as senior government officials, members of the armed forces and buildings to create the maximum political and economic damage.
Since the ceasefire, MI5 has detected surveillance by IRA reconnaissance units of likely English targets. Intelligence sources say six new active service units have been set up on the mainland in addition to the two already in place. This gives a total strength of about 40 terrorists.
MI5 sent a circular to selected police stations in Britain last November warning of a possible resumption of hostilities. It said that the IRA was beset by "growing impatience amongst hardliners" and predicted that if violence were to resume the British mainland would be "a key focus of terrorist activity".
The hardliners on the IRA army council believe that if they can continue attacks in England for several months, the government will be forced into concessions. If that fails, the campaign is expected to expand to Northern Ireland.
It is the prospect of a renewed campaign that is driving the governments in London, Dublin and Washington to force Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, to bring his troops back into line. However, there is serious doubt that he still has enough influence to restore the ceasefire. According to a source close to the IRA, the decision to resume violence was effectively a coup plotted by hardliners while Adams was in the United States two weeks ago ironically to assure President Bill Clinton that the hardliners were under control.
As armed British soldiers returned to Northern Ireland's streets and security was tightened on the mainland, a defiant John Major vowed that the IRA "will not be allowed to prevail". He demanded that it stop its campaign of violence and promise it "will never resume it again".
The Irish cabinet and White House closed the ring on the IRA and Sinn Fein with similar demands that they renounce violence and honour the ceasefire. The Dublin government said the immediate restoration of the ceasefire was a precondition for further talks, while the basis for any meetings with Sinn Fein was "a total cessation of violence".
Adams, who refused to condemn the attack, saying that it would undermine his credibility with the IRA, responded last night by accusing the Irish government of being intent "on retreating into the sterile and failed policies of exclusion and marginalisation".
However, White House officials also raised the pressure on Adams by telling him there must be no more bombings if the peace process is to have a chance. Tony Lake, American national security adviser, called on Adams to distance himself from violence if he wanted to retain any credibility.
Clinton was especially forthright in expressing outrage at "this cowardly action". He said: "No organisation has the right to deny the people of Northern Ireland a peaceful future. I am determined to do all I can to see the enemies of peace do not succeed."
The two bomb victims were identified last night as Inan Ul-Haq Bashir, 29, of Streatham, south London, who ran the newsagent's on behalf of his brother, and John Jefferies, 31, from Bromley, Kent, who was helping in the shop. Both were single and lived with parents.
Ihsan Bashir, who owns a chain of shops, said last night: "Inan telephoned me at about 6.30pm to say there was a bomb scare and could they go home early. I told them to get out."
Inan Bashir kept his car in an underground car park nearby but it is believed both men were still inside the shop when the blast happened at 7.01pm. The shop was destroyed. One of a 20-strong police search team described the scene as "utter carnage".
He added: "There was so much debris that it took us hours to shift it. Both men had massive injuries. I should think they died instantly."
Officers called to the area after the IRA had telephoned warnings managed to identify the van containing the explosives minutes before it blew up. PC Roger DeGraaf spotted the suspicious vehicle parked in a square by South Quay railway station. He was about to inspect it but backed away for fear it would explode. However, he is believed to have reported its description and registration number to his control room just moments before the device went off.
DeGraaf was 30 yards away from the van when it exploded, and suffered an eye injury.
Sir Paul Condon, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said the blast which also injured more than 100 people and caused up to £100m of damage was "completely unexpected". Thirty-nine people needed hospital treatment, including three policemen and a 55-year-old man, whose condition was "critical" last night.
The bomb, believed to have been made from fertiliser, was thought to have been driven into the area by one or two IRA members. MI5 officials believe the bombers might have entered Britain several days ago. Their van was left under a bridge 30 yards from South Quay station, part of the Docklands Light Railway (DLR). Police say a series of warnings that the bomb was in the South Quay area were received at 5.40pm. The device exploded as police were evacuating the area.
Yesterday there were immediate signs of increased security on both sides of the Irish Sea and the so-called ring of steel was reinforced in the City of London. A team of officers under Commander John Grieve, head of the Yard's SO13 anti-terrorist squad, spent yesterday searching for the remains of the van that contained the bomb. They are also examining tapes from video cameras that covered the area for film recordings of suspicious vehicles.
British ministers and officials yesterday sought to establish how much Adams knew about the IRA's plan to attack Docklands. He telephoned Washington shortly before the explosion to warn of "something dreadful".
A source close to Adams said the critical meeting of the IRA army council was not attended by key Adams aides and its decision was not communicated to the leading members of the Belfast command structure. Adams, he said, left for America two weeks ago confident that, despite the fallout from the Mitchell report, the IRA's hard men were under control.
British, Irish and American leaders are furious that Adams has not condemned the bombing. Major said the IRA had callously threatened the peace process and that too many lives had been saved by the ceasefire to allow that to happen. "We will assess carefully and coolly this challenge to the peace process and the way ahead. The prize of peace is too precious to be squandered," he said.
Adams said he wanted urgent talks with the British and Irish governments. He said he was "very sad" about what had happened and all sides "must strive to make last night's incident a thing of the past".
Describing the situation as "very grave", he said the peace process had foundered on Britain's "high-risk strategy" on Northern Ireland and the refusal of Ulster Unionists to engage in all-party talks.
But Dick Spring, the Irish deputy prime minister, said the London attack was "an outrage without justification" and that Adams's authority as a republican spokesman "will now be questioned". The Irish government cancelled the release of nine IRA prisoners from the top-security Portlaoise jail. Among them was Tommy McMahon, Lord Mountbatten's killer.
British ministers say the door remains open to Sinn Fein despite the bombing, but "time is running out". Major will review the situation tonight with Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Northern Ireland secretary, Michael Howard, the home secretary, Michael Ancram, the minister responsible for negotiating with the Ulster parties, and Sir Paul Condon. Major will make a statement to the House of Commons tomorrow.
Mayhew emphasised the government's determination to take a "steady" view. Although the bombing represented a serious setback, he did not believe it was the end of the peace process. He was prepared to talk to Adams but wanted him to condemn outright the IRA's return to violence. "The key to this process is confidence," he said. The government was not prepared to sit down with people who represented the threat of violence.
The Queen yesterday sent a strongly worded message to Major condemning the "sickening act of violence" and offering her sympathy to the victims.
THE Rolling Stones have ground to a halt. The Voodoo Lounge tour, the biggest and most lucrative promotion in the history of rock'n'roll, has been abandoned amid rows about overpriced tickets and disappointing sales.
Last-minute talks between Prince Rupert Lowenstein, the secretive financial adviser behind Britain's most venerated rock act, and promoters in the Far East and South America have failed to salvage the tour that Mick Jagger dubbed his "pension scheme".
Voodoo Lounge broke box-office records in the United States but received a mixed reception when it reached Britain last summer. It was due to resume in Bombay next month, playing stadiums in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore before moving to South America.
The band has made £200m from corporate sponsorship and ticket and merchandising sales since the tour started 15 months ago; Jagger and Lowenstein were hoping the band would generate a final £50m from the last string of dates before the huge stage set was broken up.
Leading promoters say that not only is the 34-year-old band unlikely ever to attempt such an ambitious tour again, but it marks the end of the ever-more expensive extravaganzas that have characterised stadium rock.
Future shows are not only likely to be shorter, simpler affairs, but also to be dominated by a new generation of British bands, such as Oasis and Bush, which are breaking into the American charts. Although both bands have made it clear they want to play stadiums, they poured scorn on the 70ft mannequins and firework displays that pushed up the price of Rolling Stones tickets to £25.
Critics have said that the £4m Voodoo Lounge set, which consisted of a 250ft-wide stage and 1,500 lights in the shape of a coiled snake, often overshadowed the music. It cost £1.3m a week to transport between cities.
Harvey Goldsmith, who has organised tours for almost every leading British rock band since the 1960s, said the Voodoo Lounge tour crashed under its own weight. "They built such a massive show it became almost impossible to move. It was financially fragile: one venue drops out of the itinerary and the whole tour falls apart."
Barry Marshall, who organises Paul McCartney and Tina Turner shows, said Voodoo Lounge was an exercise in excess. "Future rock tours will avoid such massive convoys, confining themselves to cheaper high-tech displays."
The band appeared at Wembley for three nights last July. While newspapers proclaimed that the shows were sold out, sources at the venue this weekend confirmed a trade secret that, unlike Rod Stewart the week before, there were at least 4,000 unsold seats in the 70,000-seat stadium each night.
The venue that broke the prospective tour chain was the Hong Kong sports stadium, which is managed by Wembley. "We noticed the London sales patterns," said a local manager. "They wanted to charge silly ticket prices, which would have left us with the risk of unsold seats."
This weekend Jagger, 52, who announced the first Stones "farewell" tour in 1972, seemed philosophical. A spokesman said: "He is obviously disappointed, but the boys may get around to those countries one day. This does not mean that the band is going to retire. Or, yes, fade away."
Additional reporting: Andrew Smith
THE DUCHESS OF YORK is prepared to obtain a High Court injunction to prevent John Bryan, her former lover, from disclosing details of their four-year relationship and secrets about the royal family.
Senior sources close to the duchess revealed this weekend that she is determined to enforce a confidentiality clause signed by Bryan when he became her financial adviser five years ago. According to the sources, Bryan signed a worldwide "gagging" agreement which, in theory, prevents him from divulging details of his professional and personal dealings with the duchess.
It is understood the agreement contains a catch-all phrase banning disclosure of "any incident, conversation or other information whatsoever concerning HRH (the duchess) or any member of the royal family or any other person connected with HRH by birth, marriage or otherwise".
Friends of the duchess said this weekend that she remains hopeful that Bryan, 40, will not "kiss and tell" despite reports last week that he is preparing to give a sensational account of their relationship. Dr Achim Groepper, Bryan's Frankfurt-based lawyer, is due to meet his client in Paris this week to discuss the book project and other business deals.
If Bryan, who is facing an investigation into an alleged fraud in Germany over the collapse last year of Oceonics Deutschland, his construction company, decides to write a book, the duchess would opt for action similar to that taken by the Prince of Wales against Wendy Berry, his former housekeeper.
This would involve seeking an injunction to prevent disclosure of confidential information and to force Bryan to hand over all documents relating to the breach of confidentiality.
After Berry ignored a worldwide "gagging" order and published a book in America, Prince Charles won a further High Court judgment ordering her to hand over all profits from her revelations. However, Berry has never been traced and such an order is difficult and costly to enforce once someone has gone abroad. The duchess could face similar problems if Bryan, like Berry, chose to publish a book in America.
Sources close to the duchess have rejected Bryan's claims that he supported her with "millions of dollars". They said that the flow of money was the other way round; even when the duchess's debts reached £2m last year, she gave him money because his business was in trouble. However, she rejected an approach from Bryan for her to act as a guarantor for bank loans.
Bryan obtained a £900,000 loan from a German bank after producing a contract which he claimed proved he was entitled to future profits from a deal to market Budgie the Little Helicopter, the cartoon character invented by the duchess. None of the money has been repaid since the collapse of Oceonics.
However, Job Tillmann, of the public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt, said there would be no need to interview the duchess as part of the inquiry into the alleged fraud.
Senior royal sources have revealed that one of the reasons the Queen halted "generous provisions over a number of years" to the duchess was because of her daughter-in-law's dealings with Bryan. There was concern from the Queen that some money intended to help her granddaughters and daughter-in-law was being squandered by Bryan.
Dublin
The Irish government said yesterday:
"Violence, and the threat of violence, have no place in democratic negotiation. Nothing can justify a resort to violence in an attempt to override the democratic political process. The government's search for an inclusive process of negotiation was based on a clear commitment by the IRA to a total cessation of violence. The fact that that commitment has been revoked alters the situation fundamentally. Only those who take no part in violence, the threat of violence, or in the support of violence, can take part in democratic negotiation. The great majority of the people of this island, the broad sweep of nationalist opinion in Northern Ireland and Irish America all have invested in the peace that resulted from the IRA cessation of violence. The ending of that cessation shatters the hopes of all those who invested in peace."
London
John Major said:
"The evil act struck at the heart of 17 months of peace. Innocent people had their lives shattered in a most violent and shocking way. My heart goes out to them and their families. Where there was optimism, a dark shadow of doubt has now been cast. The IRA once again callously threaten the desire for peace. They will not be allowed to prevail. Too many lives have already been saved, too much good has come out of the ceasefire. I intend to carry on the search for peace with the Irish government and the democratic political parties. The IRA and Sinn Fein must say now that their campaign of violence has stopped, and they will never resume it again. We will be vigilant about security both on the mainland and in Northern Ireland. We will assess carefully and coolly this challenge ... and the way ahead. The prize of peace is too precious to be squandered. I have visited Northern Ireland many times. I have seen the changes the ceasefire has brought; the lightness of mood ... the increasing prosperity ... the freedom to walk without fear. I am determined to entrench their freedom as a permanent part of peace in Northern Ireland. Nothing less will do."
Washington
President Clinton said:
"I condemn in the strongest possible terms this cowardly action and hope those responsible are brought swiftly to justice. Nobody and no organisation has the right to deny the people of Northern Ireland a peaceful future. The action underscores the urgent need for all sides to join in the fight against terrorism and to press forward in that search. The people of Northern Ireland ... do not deserve to have a small group choose bloodshed and violence and wreck the peaceful life they long for. And the people of Great Britain do not deserve to have this violence wreaked upon them. I am determined to do all that I can to see the enemies of peace do not succeed. We will not stop in our efforts until peace has been secured."
THE FIRST public sign of a Tory split over the Northern Ireland peace process emerged last night.
The Tory left suggested that John Major's failure to allow Sinn Fein into all-party talks earlier may have contributed to the renewed IRA violence. The right replied that the bombing proved Sinn Fein did not represent the IRA and it pronounced the peace process dead.
Speaking on BBC2's Newsnight, Peter Temple-Morris, MP for Leominster and a leader of the left-wing Macleod Group of Tory MPs, said: "The cause of the failure is undoubtedly the delay. We had terrorists coming down from the hills saying, ‘We do not surrender', but saying, ‘Talk to us, we will not shoot you'. That was the essence of the whole thing. We had therefore implicitly ... to talk to them."
However, Nicholas Budgen, right-wing MP for Wolverhampton South-West, said: "Negotiations with Sinn Fein were based on the idea that Sinn Fein could control the IRA. It is now clear it disassociates itself from the IRA and therefore the whole basis for negotiations with Sinn Fein has gone."
COMMANDER John Grieve, the new head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, is a Renaissance man: a philosophy and psychology graduate, watercolourist, devotee of Confucius and Dostoevsky and a passionate football fan, writes Margarette Driscoll.
Grieve, 49, was not due to take up his post as commander of SO13 until tomorrow, but assumed the role immediately after the bomb exploded.
The IRA is now up against a man who is liked and respected throughout the force. Colleagues at SO11, the Yard's intelligence unit, said he was "that rare breed of policeman: one who combines a graduate brain with the intuition of an old-time street cop".
He will need every ounce of those talents if his 97-strong unit is to combat a renewed onslaught from the IRA. He has prepared well for the task: most of his 30 years with the force have been spent carrying out or running undercover intelligence operations, and the art of amassing secret information is an obsession.
As a detective superintendent in the East End of London, Grieve investigated murders, drug trafficking and organised crime and served with the Flying Squad, having special responsibility for informers. While commanding at Bethnal Green, he became an expert on Jack the Ripper.
He became head of the criminal intelligence branch in March 1993. Much decorated, he holds awards for outstanding courage with the Flying Squad, and medals for long service and good conduct.
He recently described his new post as "the ultimate detective's job" a fitting one for Scotland Yard's very own Inspector Morse.
A SPERM bank has been set up for members of Mensa who wish to help create a master breed of super-intellectuals, writes Lois Rogers.
Two prominent figures in the 110,000-strong group for people with high IQs are seeking sperm donations for women who wish to give birth to genetically superior babies.
Robert Graham, 89, a wealthy businessman, and Willard Hoyt, who runs a Mensa eugenics group which has attracted 60 members, have advertised for donors in the group's magazine.
The California-based sperm bank, called the Repository for Germinal Choice, has already solicited sperm donations from Nobel prize winners, although it is not known how many co-operated.
Prospective donors have to fill in a 19-page application form which includes questions such as: "How often do you lose your temper?" and "Have you ever had delusions of greatness or omnipotence?"
Members of Mensa, which includes Jeremy Hanley, the former Tory party chairman, Carol Vorderman, the television presenter, and Sir Jimmy Savile, the fund-raiser, among its number, are divided over the merits of the sperm bank.
Some fear the growing controversy will overshadow this summer's celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of Mensa in London.
Kevin Jacklin, spokesman for a "special interest group" for single people in Mensa, which has several thousand members, said: "I'm not in favour of sperm donation. I'm in favour of letting things take their course."
But Sir Clive Sinclair, the inventor of the C5 electric car and the Zike electric scooter, said he was not opposed to attempts at gene selection. "If women want to have particular sperm, that's not a bad way to get it. After all they are manipulating the gene pool when they choose husbands," he said.
Richard Milton, the official spokesman, said Mensa did not have a policy on gene selection. "Mensa's primary function is to provide a social organisation for people with high IQs to meet similar people," he said.
It is not clear how many British Mensa members have been contributors to the sperm bank, but staff claim that a number of children have been born in the United Kingdom following artificial insemination. All are said to have IQs 20% higher than average.
"WORKING in recruitment," I was once told, "would be all right if it wasn't for the three Cs clients, consultants and candidates." Yet each is a key element in the executive recruitment mix and each is dependent on the other if assignments are to be successful. But awareness isn't always that evident between them. "Too often recruitment consultants and come to that clients will underestimate the degree of disappointment candidates go through when being turned down for a job," comments Richard Goldie, chief executive of the consultant Macmillan Davies.
"Look at the typical process candidates go through," he says. "They read the advertisement and decide they fit the spec. They spend time preparing their application which, if they're lucky, will be acknowledged. More likely than not the next contact is a reject letter surprising, as it seemed the requirements listed in the advert had been met."
Goldie's point is that the advert can never contain the whole brief, and you should not get despondent by rejection at this stage. "Only if you met every single aspect of the spec should you consider approaching the consultant for feedback. Otherwise any offered at this stage would be of dubious value."
It is when the individual has invested time being interviewed that Goldie believes there is increased responsibility on the consultant to offer feedback. "The more a candidate has invested in the process, the greater the obligation on the consultant to explain selection decisions.
"It's almost an issue of consumer rights. Candidates invest not just time but emotional commitment too. So it is only right they come away with constructive advice which enables them to be better equipped next time.
"Finding out why you were not offered the job will inevitably feel like failure, so don't be on the defensive. Take advice openly and exploit the opportunity to find out how you can be more skilful next time and perhaps a little bit more selective in what you apply for."
His final advice sums up his approach. "You must judge harshly those consultancies that won't respond to your need for feedback above all, don't put up with being treated as fodder."
Solo and distance workers suffer high levels of stress and isolation away from the social office environment, writes Margaret Coles
UNIONS are taking on an increasing number of legal cases for white-collar workers suffering from stress and repetitive strain injury. This was announced on Monday by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), when it published its report Winning for Our Members.
Owen Tudor, the TUC's senior health and safety officer, says: "Some of the workers at greatest risk of stress-related disease are people who work on their own and managers expected to do more and more with less and less."
The lone "teleworker" runs the risk of becoming isolated, says the TUC: and this warning is echoed by Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.
Cooper points out that the working environment meets important social needs. "It's a place to share problems, discuss our perceptions of work situations and bounce ideas off one another," he says.
The homebound worker must cope without such support and try to stop work encroaching on his private life, says Cooper. "When they're at home, people tend to work longer hours. Sometimes it's because of interference during the day and the feeling that they should make the time up, and sometimes because they don't have a clear-cut period of the day assigned to work.
"There is also the problem of how people are managed when working alone. The relationship with the manager back at base tends to be more difficult when communication is mainly over the telephone."
And there are the extra pressures of insecurity that come with being away from the centre of operations. "Relocation research has shown even those in a senior role feel very vulnerable away from the corporate HQ," says Cooper.
"The first homeworkers chose that way of working, because it suited them, and that makes a lot of difference," says Cooper. "The major problems of stress come when it's forced on people, because employers decide to outsource an activity. This will cause real problems for those who don't like being alone, who are not good time managers, who need others to bounce decisions off, and can't clearly separate home and work life."
Cooper adds: "People who are alone all day, interfacing with a machine, miss out on developing social skills, and can become withdrawn and depressed, and also develop bad health habits, such as overeating and smoking.
"In a work environment, depression will be noticed, but when you're alone you have to make an effort to go out and get help," he says.
Cooper predicts that stress levels will go up dramatically unless people are trained in the new way of working: "If you are a freelance, and sell your skills on a short-term basis, you have to market yourself, keep up to date on new technology and training, ensure that you network with real human beings, and that you have good social relationships.
"Organisations mouth their commitment to training and human-resources development, but when cuts come, training is the first thing to go," he says. It is very expensive for a home worker to attend courses in all the necessary skills. He would like to see the training and enterprise councils (Tecs) providing training courses, offering the whole package of skills that lone workers need, at a reasonable cost.
Murray Watts, co-author with Cooper of Relax: Dealing With Stress, is also a playwright who works from his home in Cardiff. He says: "It's important to learn two things: how to take control, and how to let go. Taking control means you stop seeing yourself as a victim of circumstances."
Early in his career, he says, he made the mistake of putting all his time and energy into one key project, "only to see the whole thing collapse when the company running it went bust". Watts says: "I learnt not to become too dependent on any individual or any one company, but to have a lot of little things going, maybe not all terribly important and glamorous, but enough so that I could readily change focus if need be." The next time a big project collapsed, he was sustained by other work on the go.
He also stresses the value of having a "bolthole" to retain sanity. "Just going into a hotel lounge and taking tea can give you mental space. I have formalised that over the years, and rent a room in a house half an hour outside Cardiff, and that has been a critical ingredient in my survival," says Watts.
"My office has no telephone, it's just a room with a lovely view. But the rent is very low, and often I don't appear for a couple of months and then just turn up," he says.
When working on a new play or screenplay, Watts, who has young children, never tries to write at home because the conflict is too great. Another recent rule is not opening bills or official letters on Saturdays.
Watts adds: "Most of our lives are lived to unnatural rhythms. Certainly in TV, there are lots of artificial deadlines. Companies want everything yesterday.
"But the natural world has a different rhythm and it's important to be in touch with that. When you look at the trees or stop to follow the flight of a bird, it regenerates you. I make sure that every day, if only for one minute, I spend some time in that world. My sanity has depended on such moments."
ON THE MOVE
ALAN MORRIS, finance director, has been elected by the Simmons & Simmons partnership to become managing director from January 1997. This is the first time one of the top 10 City law firms looked for nominations from its directors as well as its partners. Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, the most senior woman in the Foreign Office, is leaving to become managing director of NatWest Markets. Rosalind Gilmore, a former chairman of of the Building Societies Commission and chief registrar of friendly societies, is to be the chairman
of the Homeowners Friendly Society.
Charles Matthews is moving from Vickers's Rolls-Royce cars to be managing director of Cosworth, its engineering company best known for racing-car engines.
IF WE are to compete successfully in the world markets of the 21st century, we must have a more highly skilled workforce. It is, therefore, vital that we have a strong system of vocational qualifications, respected and supported by both employers and individuals wishing to raise their skill levels.
Dr John Marks (The Sunday Times, January 7) has said that we need to start again; that our entire system is wrongly conceived. He argues that there should be clear syllabuses and defined course structures with unseen external examinations. Employers, on the other hand, say that the national vocational qualification (NVQ) system fundamentally meets their needs, but that we must improve and build on it and importantly get more people acquiring NVQs.
So who is right? Ultimately it will be employers who will judge whether the system is working but Dr Marks confuses a qualification with a training course. An NVQ is not a course. It provides a test of competence. NVQs measure whether an individual can carry out a range of tasks to a set standard in different circumstances and whether they have the knowledge necessary to carry out the tasks. The standards themselves are laid down by employers' groups to ensure they truly reflect their needs.
NVQs are for people of different ages, and many different starting points in terms of what they can already do. There cannot be a specific syllabus or course structure which will apply to everyone and the appropriate training will vary with the needs of the individual. This is not to say that the nature of a course is unimportant far from it. But to lay down centrally a set course of study for everyone who aspires to an NVQ would deny opportunity rather than extend it.
This central notion of vocational qualifications as a test of competence in meeting employers' standards is powerfully endorsed by Gordon Beaumont's recent independent report on the 100 most used NVQs and Scottish Vocational Qualifications.
He states that there is "widespread support" for the concept of NVQs and that 85% of employers questioned had confidence that individuals with NVQs are truly competent in their jobs. This level of satisfaction is backed by separate research. The report does, however, suggest ways in which delivery and take-up of the qualification could be improved and it pulls no punches about the things which are getting in the way of greater success.
The report recommends reducing the jargon associated with NVQs and making the system more user-friendly. It offers some sensible suggestions about external assessment. The report will help us to build further on the work we have already carried out to improve vocational qualifications.
We have seen the take-up of NVQs expand enormously. Awards have more than doubled in the past three years, and more than 1m have now been made. Of our medium and large firms, 40% now offer NVQs to employees on a steadily rising trend. More widely, the number of 16- to 18-year-olds in full-time education or training has substantially risen from less than 60% in 1984 to 77% last year. A third of this age group are in higher education and the United Kingdom has a higher graduation rate than in Germany. Now, along with Modern Apprenticeships, the government's new-style, job-relevant training option, and school-based general NVQs, we have even more opportunities for young people to develop their skills and contribute to our international competitiveness.
However, we are not complacent. Of course there is scope for further improvement in our education and training as well as in the design and delivery of vocational qualifications. Last year, in our second white paper on competitiveness, the government endorsed new more challenging national targets for education and training which are necessary if we are to keep pace with our leading international competitors. We are continuing to work to raise expectations and standards in education and training and we have encouraged all schools, colleges and universities to contribute by setting their own targets.
We have taken the Beaumont report very seriously, and will be drawing up an action plan for taking his recommendations forward in a structured way. But it is clear our system of vocational qualifications is what employers want and need. To ditch it now would do no service to industry, to those who want to develop their talents at work, or to our international competitiveness.
James Paice is an undersecretary of state for education and employment
Susan calls for the creation of a national body to spread wider the many benefits private-sector money brings to state schools
PRIVATE-SECTOR sponsors have quietly become a force to be reckoned with in education. At one end of the scale are the 15 city technology colleges (CTCs) into which more than £50m of "private" money has been invested since the late 1980s. At the other extreme is, say, a small primary school whose concert is sponsored by a local one-man business. Nobody knows exactly how much sponsorship money goes into British schools and colleges but it could be as much as £200m per year.
A significant and growing example of sponsorship in practice is the cluster of 127 designated technology colleges and 16 language colleges. Since the government launched the technology colleges initiative in 1993 the language colleges programme was launched in the autumn of 1994 the number of designated schools has grown steadily. A new batch is announced twice or thrice yearly. The newest 26 technology colleges and 10 language colleges were told their bids had succeeded in December. Another lot are due to be announced next month. The goal is that there should be 300 technology and language colleges by 1997.
Each school seeking this change of status must be able to show it has sponsorship offers totalling £100,000. If the application is successful, and it is highly competitive, the Department for Education and Employment grants the school an additional Pounds l00,000, thereby providing a total development fund of £200,000. More than Pounds l0m has been made available to technology and language colleges by private enterprise in the past two years.
Sponsorship improves schools. Extra money means the building of the new blocks and suites which the best modern teaching and learning methods require. Chatham grammar school for girls, in Kent, was sponsored to become a technology college by Marconi, among others, and now has a magnificent new technology block. Dartford grammar school, also in Kent, with support from sponsors, is forging ahead as a designated international language college. St George's College at Sleaford in Lincolnshire has its architect-designed Brealey Centre, a computerised learning facility, named after sponsor Reg Brealey. Such projects are mushrooming all over the country. Elsewhere schools use sponsorship money to enhance their staffing or to bring in specialists on a contract basis.
At a time when we hear so much about failing schools it is encouraging to find that many are improving continuously and dramatically. In my experience, after visiting schools, whenever you find one that is really succeeding there is almost always a sponsor at the back of it.
Politically, however, sponsorship is a tricky issue. Membranes which separate public- and private-sector activities and responsibilities are more permeable today than ever before. And to some that is anathema. What are new Labour's feelings about sponsorship in education?
The trouble is that, at present, the ad hoc nature of sponsorship means that largess is bound to be inequitably distributed. Whether a school is successful in attracting sponsors often comes down to whom they happen to know and how skilled they are at marketing themselves. The local economic climate is a big factor, too. Surely there is a case for putting the core of education sponsorship on some sort of nationally organised basis?
The next government of whatever political hue should set up or at least encourage the creation of an independent organisation called, say, British Association of Sponsorship in Education (Base). There is already an Institute of Sports Sponsorship and an Association for Business Sponsorship in the Arts. The former has the Duke of Edinburgh as its patron and raises about £250m in sponsorship a year. The latter, with the Prince of Wales as patron, musters about £70m per year.
The main function of Base which would need a royal patron to confer status would be that of an introductions agency. Potential sponsors could be provisionally teamed up with sponsorship seekers. Of course, the sponsor would still have plenty of opportunity to see the school and get to know the people and projects involved before any agreement was reached. At present the CTC Trust does some of this. Some local training and enterprise councils and education business partnerships do a bit of "blind dating", too, but it is all rather piecemeal.
Base would be a way of ensuring that more schools would stand more chance of getting a slice of the sponsorship cake. It would also provide a let-out for any future government which might feel politically squeamish about allowing large sums of private money to be lavished on some schools while others dwindle for lack of competitive marketing skills or wealthy friends.
Sponsorship is actively enabling schools to do a better job. That is why it must be retained and developed.
Susan Elkin's report, Sponsorship in Practice, is published this month by the CTC Trust, price £7.50. It is available from: CTC Trust, 9 Whitehall, London SW1A 2DD
Renault's new Spider Sport is the last word in automotive frivolity - and it works like a charm, reports Ray Hutton
TO THE year-round residents of Bandol, a southern French resort a few miles along the coast from Marseilles, we must have looked like creatures from another planet. They had never seen anything like this before: an invasion of golden yellow, flat-to-the ground vehicles driven by mysterious beings in matching helmets.
"Qu'est-ce que, cette chose la?" asked a wizened old boy on a street corner.
"Renault," said a voice from inside the helmet. A look of incredulity came across the man's face: "Renault? C'est une Renault? Impossible mais magnifique!"
He got it: impossible but terrific, that is the Renault Sport Spider. It is a measure of the new confidence within the state car company of France Europe's third biggest that it can indulge in such a frivolous project. The Spider is a four-wheeled motorcycle for a blast on a sunny day or racing at the weekends.
It was born to race. Renault Sport, a subsidiary of the mainstream car maker, devised this lightweight mid-engined two-seater for a racing series the first round of which will be at Donington Park on Easter Sunday. For racing or road use (not both with the same car), the price is the same £27,000. That may seem a lot but you can pay more for much less fun.
If anyone was going to make a car like this you would expect it to be a specialist sports car company such as Lotus. Indeed, Lotus has a model, the Elise, ready for production that is of similar design to the Spider and uses the same kind of aluminium chassis construction. But even Lotus will include a windscreen.
It is overgenerous to describe the Renault Sport Spider as spartan. The racing-style seats are thinly padded but ideally shaped to hold you in place. Behind the leather-rimmed steering wheel are three small instruments, the most prominent of which is the rev counter. The speedometer is a hard-to-read digital display at the centre of a completely plain dashboard. There are no switches and controls apart from the lights, horn and indicators on the steering column.
Most of the inside is unpainted aluminium, the chassis exposed, uneven welds and all, and the floor is covered with what looks like low-grade linoleum. The doors flip forward like a Lamborghini's but are only a few inches high. Out ahead, there is nothing. A patented two-tier air deflector does a good job of diverting the air rush that the car creates over your head but does nothing to protect against nature. Last Monday in Provence, attacks from the mistral and gravel chippings confirmed the need for those helmets.
Like me, Renault Sport's engineers were surprised to find that in these safety-conscious times a car could be sold without a windscreen. "There are a lot of regulations about windscreens," said one, "but nothing to say that you have to provide one."
Actually, when the first batch of Spiders has been sold to the die-hards, Renault expects to offer a conventional screen. But that will not be until after the first right-hand-drive cars have been delivered in September.
The engineers are careful to point out that, minimalist as it may be, the aluminium and glass-fibre Spider is strong and performed exceptionally well in crash testing. It weighs about the same as a Fiesta but has a 150bhp 2 litre 16-valve four-cylinder engine as used in the sporty version of the forthcoming Megane Coupe. The gearbox has five speeds (six in the racing version). The suspension is specially made and its layout follows racing practice.
With stiff springs and no power assistance for the brakes or the steering, the Spider has sharp responses and precise handling, a very "pure" driving experience, akin to mid-engined racing sports cars of a few years' back. The road version is fast but not exceptionally so 130mph and 0-60mph in six seconds but driving it, sticking out in the breeze, it feels twice as quick.
Originally, Renault was going to call it the Speeder but the company's bosses thought that sounded antisocial. Oddly enough the limit to its usable performance may not be the engine or the roadholding but its size. Though very short, the Spider is wider than a Jaguar a bit much for the average British country lane.
Seventy-five people in this country have put down deposits for the first right-hand-drive Spiders. They will not, really could not, use them on an everyday basis but rather keep them for that pleasure drive on a summer Sunday.
Michel Gigou, the car-mad managing director of Renault UK, knows his customers: "This is the first Renault I have been able to sell to my neighbours. They all have Jaguars and Mercedes with chauffeurs but several keep an Austin-Healey or an old MG in the garage. Now three of them are going to have Spiders just for fun."
AS WE are governed by parish councils, town councils, county councils, the Commons, the Lords and a Queen, it is hard really to understand why we need the EC as well.
If it were run from a little hut by a couple of people in cheap suits keeping an eye on trade barriers and fishing rights, then I suppose there might be a case for its continued existence.
But no. There are thousands of people in massive trans-continental offices who, to justify their existence, do not just ensure old rules are obeyed. They sit around dreaming up new ones.
And the latest is to make all new cars quieter.
Well now, look. As there is no viable alternative to the internal combustion engine just yet, we would all do well to remember that when you apply a spark to a volatile fuel/air mixture, there is bound to be some noise.
Even if, by some miracle, someone were to invent "the silent explosion", you cannot expect a ton of metal to slice through the air silently. Then there are the tyres. Next time you are at the top of a hill, turn off the motor and see if you can get to the bottom quietly. You can't, because rubber rolling over Tarmac makes a din. That is a fact.
I would not mind so much, but generally speaking cars are no big deal these days. After 100 years of living alongside them, most of us do not even notice when one tears past the end of the drive doing 100mph. When I lived in London, I was oblivious to the sound of jets, too, as they grazed the chimney pots on their way to Heathrow.
An empty lorry bumping down a potholed village street, clanging and roaring and pumping diesel fumes into a primary school, is a nuisance, yes, but what should we do? Ban lorries? Make them have petrol engines? Force them to use bypasses? Oh wait, we can't do that because of all the poor trees. Won't the meddlers understand that in a world propelled by competition, manufacturers of jets, buses, trains, lorries and cars are constantly striving for the outer edge of what is possible in order to win more sales.
And besides, some people do not want quieter cars. Me, for instance.
I get a funny tingling feeling around the back of my neck every time the rev counter on a Ferrari edges past 6,500. The roar has become a howl and it is as intoxicating as a cocktail made from rum, gin, vodka and Paraquat.
Sure, as I whizz past your house, you are inconvenienced for a second or two, but come on. Shouldn't you really be more concerned about war and famine and mobile-phone scanning?
Then there is TVR. There are any number of sports cars on the market these days, but the main reason people choose to buy these plastic bombshells from Blackpool is that they have exhausts like the turrets on Chieftain tanks. They are loud, and loud is fun.
I have seen the Who in concert five times and I am glad they were pumping it out at 150 decibels. It would have been a shame if I'd come away wondering why Roger Daltry had sung "Hope I die before I get cold". I don't much care for quiet concerts, and I sure as hell don't care for quiet cars.
A few years ago, I was horrified to hear that Lotus was working on an anti-noise system that exactly mirrored the sound waves coming from an engine. In theory, one wave cancelled the other out, resulting in silence. It never really caught on, but that is probably because Toyota has now shown the world it is not necessary.
This week I have had a Lexus to play with, and if you think your AEG dishwasher is quiet enough to attract grazing deer, let me tell you something. You ain't heard nothing.
At first, I thought there was something wrong with the big 4.0 litre V8 engine because there was no aural accompaniment to forward progress. At 120mph, the Lexus is quieter than a mouse tiptoeing out of his hole wearing cotton wool slippers so he does not wake his children.
Spies tell me that Jaguar has a Lexus in for evaluation and that it has chopped it into a million pieces to see how Toyota has made it so quiet.
Well listen here guys, if and when you find out, do nothing, because while the Lexus may keep the idiots at the EC happy, I found it a bit spooky. Cars are supposed to make a sound it is one of the ways you know how fast you are going and whether it is time to change gear but the Lexus is a sort of automotive Bob Harris.
For years children have been told to look and listen before crossing the road, but if the Lexus is the way we are going, the rules will need to be rewritten.
Maybe they can find someone at the EC to do it. "Hey kids, when you want to cross the road, look hard because you can't hear cars these days. And don't eat sausages either, they're dangerous. And buy Spanish fish."
Why do car makers offer optional extras?
Because they are profitable. Salesmen like selling them because they can claw back the profit they gave away on the sale of the car.
Why do customers like them?
Because by the time they come to choose them they are "high" on buying the car. Spending a further £500 or £1,000 on extras seems small potatoes and is, in any case, rather enjoyable.
What sorts of options are there?
Two: the essential and the "no reason really it was in the brochure".
What are the essential options?
Those that complement, for example an automatic gearbox and leather trim on a luxury car, and those that add value quality alloy wheels, for instance.
And the "no reason really" options?
Anything that detracts from the car or is simply inappropriate; for example, a body styling kit or cruise control on an urban supermini.
Do options boost the value of a used car?
Mostly, no. New-car buyers are hung up on fashion and image, while used-car buyers are simply counting the pennies. The new-car buyer's top-range stereo with RDS, TA (traffic announcement), MSS (music search sense) and Dolby C is the used-car buyer's radio plain and simple. It is worth no more than the standard item.
Are safety extras a good investment?
Used-car buyers dislike paying for things they cannot see. Still, the tide is turning and optional extras such as anti-lock brakes and a driver's airbag are gaining favour.
Some car makers allow you to specify your new car with whatever options you like. Is this a good idea?
You are thinking of Rover Discus and Volvo CDi, and no, it isn't. Specifying high-value options on a low-value, entry-level car is financial suicide. Trouble is, no salesman will tell you that.
What are the best extras?
According to Autocar's used-car expert John Coates, air-conditioning (after last summer this is fast gaining friends), a factory-fitted electric sunroof, metallic paint, alloy wheels, anti-lock brakes, passenger's airbag and remote central locking.
And the worst?
Pop-up sunroofs, electric windows/seats/mirrors, fancy music system, cruise control, leather trim on a modest car and tasteless body kits.
So most optional extras are completely pointless?
On the contrary, they are often given away by salesmen in lieu of a discount. You have nothing to lose by requesting a free set of mats, a stereo upgrade or a sunroof.
Do optional extras on a company car attract personal tax?
Yes, although anything up to £100 does not. You could have the extras fitted after you have taken delivery, though it is likely the invoice would come to the attention of the taxman sooner or later. Alternatively, you could make a contribution to the cost of the extras yourself and reduce your total tax bill.
The S40 and V40 are Volvo's attempt to mix it with the BMWs and Audis of this world. Their success is only partial, says Ray Hutton.
THE Swedes, Dutch and Japanese are an unlikely combination to run a car company. The quaintly named NedCar, in Born, Holland, is where they used to make the upright Volvo 300s much favoured by pensioners. Four years ago, Volvo and the Dutch government joined forces with Mitsubishi and started to re-equip the factory and develop new models for both car companies that could be made on a common production line.
Those models are the Volvo S40 saloon, the V40 estate car and the Mitsubishi Carisma hatchback. They are made by the same people with the same machinery but share few essential parts and are remarkably different in the way they look and perform.
The Carisma Mitsubishi's first European-built car is now on sale, priced from £11,000. The Volvos will be here at the end of May and will start where the Carisma ends at about £13,500, rising close to £20,000 for the most luxurious version.
We have already tested the Carisma and judged it competent if unexciting, but good value for money against the Mondeos and Vectras. Last week was the first opportunity to find out if the more expensive Volvo achieves its objective as a rival for higher-class cars such as the BMW 3-series, Audi A4 and Rover 600.
The answer is ... only in part. Volvo is desperately trying to change its image from the company which provides that middle-class icon, the safe, solid and boring family estate car. The 850, and particularly its wheel-spinning T5 and R versions, have given Volvo a younger and more sporting appeal.
The S40 and V40 are a final departure from the boxy Volvo of old. Their curved lines are interesting, and there is a new lightness about the interior. But although they are well built and nicely presented they do not have the pleasing blend of performance and handling of the larger 850. I cannot see many BMW-driving fans making the switch.
Since both are front-wheel drive, the Audi A4 may be the new Volvo's closest competitor. In its standard form, the Volvo does not feel as good on the road as the Audi, but little things can make a big difference to car handling, and the optional sports pack, which provides slightly stiffer springs and dampers and wider, lower-profile tyres, sharpens the S40's steering response. You do not have to be an enthusiast to notice the improvement.
Even with the right options, the S40 does not have the combination of poise, comfort and refinement of the new Peugeot 406 a cheaper car with a similar engine choice and performance.
The Volvo's engines are 115bhp 1.8 and 137bhp 2 litre, four-cylinder 16-valve versions of the 850's five-cylinder. Next year the S40 and the Carisma will also offer a 1.9 litre turbocharged diesel engine imported from Renault.
Keen as it is to be seen as young and hip, Volvo is determined to maintain its reputation for building safe cars. The S40 is the only car of this size to include airbags built into the seats to cushion the occupants in a side impact. A driver's front airbag is also standard, but the passenger one is an option because Volvo believes that the front passenger space is the best position for a rear-facing baby seat, which is not compatible with an airbag. For older children, rear seats with retractable booster cushions built in are available as an option.
Volvo claims some advances in lighting, both to see and be seen. A new design of headlamp is said to give a much-improved dipped beam and an LED high-mounted central brake light shines its warning 250 times more quickly than a conventional bulb. As well as the daytime running lights that are the Volvo norm, the S40 has small market lamps on its sides.
Officially, Volvo says that the V40 is not an estate car, as it sacrifices ultimate load space for style. The curving roofline and tailgate make it, to many, even more attractive than the saloon. In size and space, the Volvo "sports hatch" is comparable with the new Audi A4 Avant and the BMW 3-series Touring.
The names and numbers of these cosmopolitan Volvos are as confusing as their origins. It was announced last summer that they would be called S4 and F4, S for saloon and F for five-door flexibility. Audi objected, as it has title to the S4, so Volvo agreed to change to S40 and F40. But there is a famous Ferrari called F40, so that had to become V40, with the V, we are told, indicating versatility.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/evans/trumpgo.htm
NOSTALGIC children's TV fans can get the inside story on Trumpton, Camberwick Green and Chigley. There are profiles of all the main characters with the words to their various songs, episode listings and the chance to download famous audio files such as the rhythmic turnings of Windy Miller's windmill sails. You can even e-mail the BBC your recollections.
http://www.erack.com/EMPIRE/
THE country's biggest film magazine has just launched this site, offering reviews, news and features. The former are disappointing, giving nothing more than background details about current releases. The news section is handy for keeping up with what the stars are doing. A chat service offers the chance to find out if anybody fancies going to see a movie with you.
http://www.fly.virgin.com/
IF YOUR sweetheart has access to the Internet, here's the chance to post a Valentine card. They cannot be sent to an e-mail address, but are paraded on the Virgin site. It offers a choice of cards and borders with a space for a romantic message. Senders have to fill in details about their flying habits there's no such thing as a free Valentine card and the message is posted.
MORE than 85,000 people have registered on The Sunday Times Web site for free access to the paper's unrivalled coverage. The site, launched last month, also offers comprehensive daily coverage from our sister paper The Times and access to our innovative "Interactive Times" pages, where users can set up reader profiles to create their own Personal Times. In the past week both papers have created new contents sections.
The Sunday Times can be found at http://www.sunday-times.co.uk
THE ultimate gift for Valentine's Day has been unveiled by scientists the biggest diamond in the world. It measures 11in in diameter and represents a staggering 1,600 carats. The synthetic diamond was grown at the University of Florida by a process called enhanced chemical vapour deposition.
The researchers enhance the diamond's growth by adding atoms from a carbon -rich source, such as coal or even whisky. They have also used this process to deposit diamond particles on surfaces at temperatures as low as 930F, much lower than previously obtained. These man-made diamonds are used in laser devices, semiconductors and engineering.
PLANET INTERNET will provide "free call" access when its Internet service is launched across Britain in May. The company, set up last year by the Dutch post office, says it has struck a deal with a third-party telephone company holder not BT to provide access via the 0800 network.
The company is the only Internet provider so far to offer free local calls (up to a maximum of five hours a month) for BT customers. Some cable franchises have similar deals with service providers, but these are limited to cable-telephone subscribers.
INVENTIONS from all over the world are being entered in The Sunday Times "Invention of the Year Competition" to be held from March 7-10 at The Great British Innovation & Inventions fair in the Barbican Exhibition Centre, London.
One entry from Russia's higher-education institute is a dentist's drill with a brushless motor to reduce noise and vibration levels. From the Infini Research and Development Corporation in Wisconsin comes a device that creates energy from artificial tides.
Inventors who exhibit at the fair will automatically be entered for the competition. Stands can be booked at a special rate for Sunday Times readers of £432 plus Vat by calling 01202 762252 (8am-8pm every day) or by writing to The Inventions Fair, 12 Sandbourne Road, Bournemouth BH4 8JH. The Web address for updates is http://www.wdi.co.uk/invent96
OFFICES
A Sussex firm is turning traditional wooden desks into workstations of the future, writes Christopher Lloyd
IT IS GOOD to see the art of furniture making embracing the world of business computing.
A small company from Ringmer in Sussex, called Future Electronic Furniture (FEF), has created an innovative range of traditionally crafted desks that incorporate a personal computer into their basic design.
The keyboard pulls out of a central drawer, while CD-Rom, diskette drive and speakers are built into a side drawer.
The screen sits on the desktop, a 12.1 TFT flatscreen, leaving the surface as little cluttered as possible, and the system uses a cordless mouse to avoid any tangled wires.
David Gilbert, chairman of FEF, already has a traditional furniture business, but has redirected his workforce into making the new range of computer desks, aptly called Powerdesk.
The computers are assembled by the firm from various computer-component suppliers, and include Intel Pentium chips, 16 megabytes of Ram, a 1Gb hard disk and a built-in 16-bit sound system.
Powerdesks have no loose cables, are ready to run without manual configuration, and feature a lockable hardwood desktop, providing what Gilbert claims is a system almost impossible to steal or tamper with.
Gilbert says he is already working on further Powerdesk designs and can custom build for particular requirements.
"For more than 15 years the fundamental design of the personal computer has remained unchanged," he says. "This innovation gives computer users back their desks, and with it an ability to work."
Prices start from £2,500 for a "pine student desk" and rise to £4,500 for the "twin-pedestal walnut partner's desk".
SOUNDING OFF
The revolution transforming TV makes a nonsense of the licence fee. The BBC should join us on the same planet, writes David Hewson
IF YOU want to amaze an American, explain the British television-licence fee. You know, the poll tax we pay, on pain of criminal prosecution, for nothing more than parking a cathode-ray tube in the living room and attaching it to an aerial. The one we have to stump up for even if we never watch a minute of the BBC that is nominally supposed to be the beneficiary of this bizarre institution.
Happily, it is an institution that is on its last legs, and last week's news that the Beeb is planning to launch its own pay-television services seems to show that someone inside Broadcasting House has woken up to that.
It will probably take the best part of a decade to achieve, but at some stage in the next millennium we will start to pay for TV on the basis of what we actually watch.
Technology and freedom of choice go hand in hand. The future isn't Orwell's Big Brother, an all-powerful, monolithic central entity that dictates to us what we want and when we want it. The reality will be more like some vast, largely uncontrolled electronic souk, where the only entry barriers to owning a stall and flogging to the throng are the minimal cost of being connected to the world network, provided you have something the public wants to buy, at a price they are willing to pay. Here, the customer truly is king. And in that sense, the TV industry then finds itself in much the same boat as the banking business or anyone else who wants to reach the masses. What sets the British TV sector apart is the grotesque financing system that has supported the BBC and ITV for the best part of 50 years, one half through the licence fee, the other through a guaranteed state monopoly on the sale of advertising.
How do these stumbling giants shift from such a feather-bedded situation on to the planet the rest of us inhabit a world of competition and consumer choice? On past experience, the expectation must be that they will make the transition as grudgingly and with as much sloth as possible. Let nobody be under any illusions if the newly competitive world is one in which the old broadcasters flounder, they will only have themselves to blame. Even this early in the game, it is easy to see what the great missing ingredient in the world network will be. Fast cable systems and fancy technology will, one day, be everywhere. The stuff that is already exceedingly thin on the ground is quality content.
What the market will need, and willingly pay for, will be the variety and calibre of programming we are supposed to be famed for producing. The archives of Auntie BBC and, to a lesser extent ITV, would make any American software company drool with envy at the notion of transferring them to the digital medium.
New international markets, products and channels of delivery will one day offer more opportunity for broadcasters than a flat tax on TV sets. But only if they have the wit and courage to start to attack them, and there they have an appalling record.
Think on it. The BBC is the primary producer of educational TV in Britain and has a brand equity in this market no commercial company can hope to match for years, and a library of recyclable material going back decades. And who's the leader in the booming British market for educational and reference multimedia CD-Roms? Microsoft. If they can do that from Seattle, the Beeb really ought to be able to get a little more out of Shepherd's Bush than a new set of Fawlty Towers videos. If it can't, perhaps it should ask Microsoft to do the job.
BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY
The government is launching a drive to press business to embrace online technology to stay competitive, writes Sean Hargrave
THE government is to start talking up the superhighway in a scheme to be launched on Tuesday by Ian Taylor, science and technology minister.
Taylor, who took up the technology brief last July, is the driving force behind a new programme, called the Information Society Initiative (ISI), that will comprise a travelling road-show demonstrating new communications technology to convince businesses that they must embrace online technologies, such as the Internet, if they are to remain competitive.
The minister will also be "switching on" a World Wide Web site and DTI helpline dedicated to the new ISI programme. These have been set up so companies can be directed to firms that may offer communication or computer systems that suit their requirements. Unlike the DTI's previous foray on to the Internet with an advisory service called Business Links the new Web page will be available to all browsers and not just subscribers to the Microsoft Network (MSN). The scheme will also encourage large companies to use university research departments to develop new technology. It embodies Taylor's conviction that the future of science and technology is inextricably linked to building closer ties with industry.
The initiative is bound to raise concern, however, among a research community that has been vocally opposed to the government's science policy, particularly after the portfolio moved last July to the DTI where it no longer holds its own cabinet seat.
Taylor, however, is unapologetic about the initiative's focus on industry. "It's designed to show companies the huge disadvantage they put themselves at if they do not utilise technology that their competitors can use against them," he says.
"It's particularly aimed at the small and medium-sized concerns who know that they should be investing in modern communication and computing systems, but don't know how to find out what's available and what they might need. For example, the scheme will try to convince companies that if they are not already using the Internet as a marketing tool, they are allowing themselves to be undermined by the competition," he says.
Though no scientist would claim that getting industry interested in his or her work is a bad thing, there is a growing feeling of resentment among some top members of the country's seven research councils. They claim that the government's drive to encourage projects that are co-funded by industry leads to many good unsponsored ideas failing to receive grants.
This, they claim, is because money allocated to research councils is increasingly being earmarked for Realising Our Potential Awards (Ropas) that require a company to provide half a project's costs.
Dai Rees, the Medical Research Council's chief executive, said last year that 70% of the best ideas to be considered by the body had to be rejected because sponsored projects had swallowed the majority of the council's budget.
Taylor is adamant, however, that the government's push to encourage scientists to look to industry for funding is a positive step that generally works well. "There have been a couple of scientists that have been very vocal in their opposition," he admits. "But when I look at the whole scene I find that the majority of academics realise Ropas is not a threat to basic research.
"It only deals with long-term ‘blue sky' projects that the government was concerned would not be funded by companies that weren't thinking long-term enough and were hoping in the future to buy solutions off the shelf."
The research-funding issue has been exacerbated by the science community's disappointment that the science and technology ministry was effectively used as a political pawn last July when it was moved to the DTI to bolster Michael Heseltine's portfolio of ministries, after his public show of loyalty to John Major in the leadership election.
"A few scientists were very noisily upset at the change," admits Taylor. "Part of my job has been to reassure them that the move to the DTI is not about short-term problem solving, but ensuring there is a better understanding of science in industry. Science still has a voice at cabinet level."
Labour pre-empted any government funding cuts by claiming last October that scientific research and development spending was 7% lower than it had been in 1985. The research councils joined in, warning the government that budget cuts would be to the detriment of scientific progress.
Facing such criticism, Taylor was relieved that Lang secured an increase in science's budget from £1.33billion to £1.35billion. Much of this was made possible by limiting Britain's space programme through pulling out of the European Space Agency's Integral gamma-ray observatory, due for launch in 2001, and securing a deal in which the agency has agreed to aim for a 15% cut by the year 2000. Taylor will announce that if ISI succeeds, technology will be "demystified" and "available and understable to all".
BALLISTICS
A computerised system for matching bullets promises to speed up the fight against crime, writes Michael McCormack
‘Ibis can compare 1,000 bullets a lifetime's work for a police lab in under an hour'ADVANCES in bullet matching are helping police track down terrorists and serial killers. A new computerised bullet-scanner system is being installed in police laboratories around the world, and has already cleared up more than 30 investigations in America.
The Integrated Bullet Identification System (Ibis) is the brainchild of a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police forensics technician and a Montreal automation specialist.
Ibis can compare 1,000 bullets a lifetime's work for a police lab in less than an hour. France, Italy, Greece and South Africa are considering installing the system.
Until now, matching bullets has been a slow, low-tech process. A recovered gun would be test-fired and the bullet compared under a microscope with any other bullets found at a crime scene.
Determining if the gun had ever been used in another crime meant pulling out every bullet of the same calibre in storage and checking each one under the microscope. For a city such as New York, where up to 100 bullets are recovered each day, it was an impossible job.
According to Bob Walsh, whose Quebec company, Forensic Technology, is marketing Ibis, the low-tech approach to bullet matching meant many criminals were getting away with murder. "The visual inspection method isn't just limited by the time it takes, it's limited by the size of your bullet library," he says.
"Just after we installed Ibis in WashingtonDC, a driver was stopped for a motoring offence and found to have an unregistered weapon in his car. We test fired it and found it had been used in four murders in four cities none of which had been connected by the investigating officers. You couldn't have discovered that unless you had compared bullets from all over the country, or all over the world."
Using a computer-controlled microscope and image digitiser, Ibis scans the tiny pattern of striations imprinted on the bullet during its passage along the weapon's barrel. The pattern is almost as distinct as a fingerprint, but much more difficult to detect. The system can then compare that pattern with the thousands of bullet scans stored in its database to determine if the weapon has been used in any other crimes.
Police in New York, Boston, Miami and Houston have already bought versions of the system, as has America's Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). Patrick Hynes, ATF special agent in charge, says: "When we bought Ibis, crime-fighting in America took a giant leap into the 21st century. The system allows us to match previously unmatchable bullets from open case files and link them to crimes in a way that was never before possible. In the year we've had it, it has found more than 30 links between crimes."
The ATF's order is a blow to the FBI, which has been developing a similar system since 1992 with limited success. Thailand and Russia are installing their systems, and France, Italy and Greece are testing it. Walsh spent last week discussing Ibis with police in South Africa.
He says: "The amount of killing here is almost unbelievable. There were eight murders in the first hour after we got off the plane. The mind boggles at how much work the police labs have to do.
"Obviously countries like Britain don't need bullet-matching technology for the same reasons as South Africa. But the technology can be of valuable assistance where terrorism is a threat."
The system could also be used as part of the firearms registration process. In future, governments may insist that a gun is test-fired when bought and its bullet scanned into a national database.
Canada, Greece and Brazil are considering such legislation. Having bullet scans from all new guns would give police an enormous head start in tracing stolen weapons used in crimes.
Walsh says: "Here in South Africa, many of the murders are done with assault weapons. You don't get a lot of bullet samples from those guns so we've developed a parallel system that matches cartridges instead." In Britain and western Europe, shootings are more likely to be done by hunting weapons shotguns and rifles because gun control is so much stricter than in America.
Walsh says: "A bullet's still a bullet and you've got to find some way of identifying it. The manual process hasn't changed much since it was invented in the 1920s and used to prove the police hadn't committed the St Valentine's Day massacre. After 70 years, it needed updating."
TRANSPORT
The CyberTran could be the solution for high-speed, cheap urban transport of the future, writes Max Glaskin
AMERICAN engineers are testing a high-speed form of transport that can move thousands of people directly to their destination at low cost.
The CyberTran promises to eliminate the gridlock that paralyses many American cities and reduce the air pollution caused by cars.
John Dearien, of Lockheed Idaho Technologies, which is developing the system, says: "We wanted a low-cost system that has maximum appeal to passengers."
The solution is a hybrid a cross between the modern light railways like those that run in London's Docklands and the French TGV supertrains.
The key to passenger satisfaction is that every journey will be non-stop. The stations will be just off the main line so that through-vehicles can pass by unimpeded.
The CyberTrans wait at the stations in a series of bays. Passengers indicate their destination when they buy their ticket at the station and the central computer will direct them to the right vehicle bay to board a CyberTran going direct to their destination.
Timetables and rigid schedules will not exist CyberTran is intended to get as close to providing transport-on-demand as is possible with a fixed-track system.
For the CyberTran to cost as little as a tram system, but have the speed appeal of the TGV, the engineers have taken the only route available a large mass-produced fleet of light vehicles. These will be monitored and controlled completely by computers in response to passenger demand. The CyberTran system has hundreds of small vehicles, each 38ft long and weighing less than 10,000lb, operating on elevated tracks and under complete computer control. The interiors of the vehicles can be changed so they can seat 32 people on bench seats for standard-class travel or as few as six people on aircraft-style seats for luxury class. Externally they look like streamlined woodlice.
The vehicles are powered by two electric motors providing all-wheel drive and drawing their power from a third rail. They are designed to operate at speeds from 30mph to 150mph and have already completed preliminary safety runs at 55mph.
When the fleet is running, it will be able to carry more than 9,000 people an hour, which compares well with the interstate highway traffic they are intended to replace.
The first 30-mile network is planned for Treasure Valley, Idaho, to link four urban areas. As the CyberTran vehicles are so narrow, the elevated tracks can be laid down in the central reservation of the existing highways. Work on the first phase of the system is due to start before the end of this year. Dearien believes that the lightweight and simple track-construction technology will make CyberTran financially attractive to investors.
"The cost per seat of an advanced light rail vehicle is $12,500 (£8,117) but for a CyberTran it is $7,000," he says.
"And where light rail costs £2.5m per mile in capital outlay, a CyberTran would cost only $560,000 (£364,000) to satisfy the same demand."
COMPUTERS
TOMORROW'S personal computer (PC) will be radically different from today's and Windows 95 has been no great success. These are the outspoken comments of Joe McNally, chief executive of Compaq in Britain, and vice-president of the American firm, the world's largest PC maker.
"I think Bill Gates must be relatively disappointed with sales of Windows95, and certainly, from our perspective, corporates are waiting, rather than buying," says McNally in an interview with The Sunday Times. McNally, also says Packard Bell's new cash injection from NEC last week would present a "challenging" period in the battle to win market share in consumer computing.
"Currently our research indicates that the consumer market for PCs is growing at 53% a year. The business market is growing by only 10%-12%.
"Our aim is to tackle Packard Bell head-on and provide products that make us the No1 brand for home computing," he adds. But the advent of Windows 95 is causing problems with making sure that machines can be sold cheaply enough, indicates McNally. He says: "It will probably be another 12 months before we can hit a price of about £999 for a top-spec all-in-one home system. At that price we believe we will really stimulate volume sales."All-in-one machines will feature integrated modems, PC/TV, answerphone/fax, Pentium-grade processor and 16 megabyte of Ram as standard. "It is our belief Windows 95 realy needs 16Mb of Ram to run properly," says McNally. "It will struggle along on 8Mb, but that's not ideal." And paying top prices for high-spec multimedia PCs in the home may not be in the consumer's best interest, he says.
"At the moment, having Windows95 and a Pentium-grade processor is a must in the consumer market. Most people could probably get away with a 486," he says.
But in the next 18 months to two years, PCs will change dramatically, he predicts.
"Whether there will be a cut-down ‘Network PC' as Larry Ellison of Oracle suggests, we don't know. The industry is about to go through a total transformation," he says, refusing to divulge any details about what is happening in Compaq's research labs.
McNally's comments come as Compaq prepares to launch an innovative £275 computer keyboard that is the first to incorporate a desktop scanner.
The "Scanner Keyboard", to be launched tomorrow, is the first in a new range of Compaq peripherals designed to work with any industry-standard PC.
BANKING
BANKS are falling over themselves to offer electronic home-banking products, partly to win customers by offering innovative services but also to slash costs by closing surplus branches, writes Christopher Lloyd. The most immediate technology platform for home-banking is becoming the Psion electronic organiser, a handheld personal computer that has had enormous success in the past three years, selling nearly 1m units worldwide. Lloyds and Citibank last week launched home-banking services using the Psion organisers that can link up to a standard telephone line using a proprietary modem called 3fax.
While Lloyds announced a consumer electronic-banking trial that will extend until June, Citibank launched a fully fledged service it claims it has been developing for the past 15 months.
Both services allow users to see bank-balances and statements, transfer funds, and make and adjust standing orders and direct debits from anywhere in the world using a Psion organiser, which typically retails at between £200 and £350.
Only the Lloyds trial allows customers to pay bills online, using an "electronic cheque book". Mike Denehy, consumer-banking marketing director for Citibank, says this will shortly be added to Citibank's service. Additionally, Barclays and The Royal Bank of Scotland are understood to be negotiating with Psion to bring similar home-banking products to market soon.
David Potter, chairman of Psion, says that home-banking is a key application for the electronic-organiser market, ideally suited to small, easy-to-use handheld devices such as the Psion. However, banks have an underlying agenda in the launch of such new services, he adds, which they see as a central cost-cutting component.
He says: "Certainly banks now see this as a way of offering better customer services and using a Psion means they are not restricted to just personal computer users. But it is also an ideal way to reduce costs and, although it sounds bizarre, banks want to get people out of their retail outlets to cut costs and this is a highly effective way of achieving that." Potter, who has seen Psion's share price leap from 182p in December 1993 to 763p last week, believes it will not be long before consumers can use mobile-phone and data networks that interface with electronic organisers to conduct their home-banking services. "This is something that will make the whole application extremely compelling," he says.
The Lloyds and Citibank systems work in an offline and online mode. Banking transactions can be made offline and sent to an out-tray, in a similar way to an office e-mail system. Once connected to a bank's dial-up telephone network, the out-tray is automatically sent to the bank and the transactions are executed.
Citibank and Lloyds say they are "entirely confident" of the in-built security on the Psion software to prevent fraudulent transactions.
Barclays has already announced a PC home-banking trial for launch this year, although a potential tie-up with Psion offers a new twist.
NatWest is involved with an interactive TV banking trial with BT in Colchester and Ipswich, but has not yet revealed plans to move into mainstream consumer electronic banking.
NEUROLOGY
Scientists could harness brain signals to power machines that improve life for disabled people, writes Sean Hargrave
BRITISH researchers are working on a new technology that will harness the power of brain waves so that the severely disabled can control wheelchairs and computers just by thinking.
A team from Imperial College in London is working with a group of Austrian scientists from Graz University to investigate how the brain waves that precede all human movement can be read by sensors on the skull and fed to a laptop PC. The processed signals could then be used to move a computer cursor or steer a wheelchair.
Brain waves are measured by four electrodes placed about a subject's head to read signals from the motor cortex a thin strip on the roof of the brain that processes movement instructions.
The British team last month won £130,000 funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council after demonstrating that the brain waves caused by attempting to lift the left and right index fingers, the tongue and toes are sufficiently distinguishable to function as up, down, left and right instructions.
At present, the four motions can be detected accurately four out of five times. A three-year research programme will attempt to improve on this success rate.
The research will attempt to disprove the prevalent scientific theory that a person who no longer has control over a part of his or her body cannot produce the necessary brain wave to ask it to move.
Stephen Roberts, who heads the Imperial team, believes that although in severely disabled people brain waves are never "sent", they are still produced and hence detectable.
"We're working with the waves that are created a second or so before the brain tells a part of the body to move, rather than the signal that is actually sent," says Roberts. "The Austrian team had a man in the lab last week who had a spinal injury that meant he couldn't move his toes. But he still managed to create the initial impulse to move them."
At first, Roberts intends to limit his work to able-bodied subjects to ensure he can detect the four necessary brain waves. At the end of the year, he hopes to extend this to quadriplegics at London's Royal Hospital for Neuro Disability.
By the beginning of 1997, the joint team hope to have a "trial device".
As a failsafe, the British team will also look at sensors next to the subject's eyes or a video camera pointed at the face so that eye movements could reinforce brain-wave instructions. In emergencies, a worried grimace could apply a wheelchair's brakes.
TELECOMMUNICATIONS
The giants of communications are creating a standard format to enable mobile phones to receive images, reports Max Glaskin
GIANT communications companies are getting together to create a standard technology that will allow mobile phones to receive TV pictures. They are also setting standards that will allow users to phone their office PC and tell it what to do just by speaking.
Scientists from around the world have been meeting in Germany to create a new standard that will slim video images so completely that they could be sent over wireless gadgets, such as cellular phones.
It would also speed the transmission of video over conventional telephone lines, opening the door to teleconferencing, video phones and interactive television.
Dozens of members of the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) are evaluating the proposals, which come from companies such as Microsoft, AT&T and Texas Instruments, as well as universities.
There are 25 core experiments, which the MPEG group has decided to pursue as it pieces together a video standard to be known as MPEG-4. This is expected to be completed by 1998.
Industry has already set a few standards, including MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, to govern the technologies that compress and run video images off hard drives, CDs and other devices with massive amounts of storage space. Those video images typically are compressed and then transmitted at several megabits per second. Now the industry is setting the standard for MPEG-4. This will compress video images dramatically, and could mean face-to-face conversations from anywhere a mobile phone can reach. Then, say, emergency personnel could transmit images of ill patients to hospital personnel while still in the field. Soldiers might choose to beam images of the front lines, in such places as Bosnia, back to commanders miles away.
The standard will also help clear the log-jam of traffic on the Internet by slimming routine video transmissions and making movies and images flow more sleekly and quickly.
MPEG-4 is also being designed to make wireless communications more reliable and to make interactivity for video games, home shopping and other applications easier.
Meanwhile companies, including Alcatel, IBM, Nokia, Nortel and Siemens, are working on a standard that will allow users to speak to computers over the phone. Simple dictation to spreadsheet manipulation and database searching will all become possible away from the office.
The joint initiative by the industry, called the Aurora Project, will set up a global standard for distributed speech recognition. The likely solution could be to move the already well-developed speech-recognition technology to the handset, before the message is transmitted to the receiving computer. The extra hardware in the mobile phone, or in any wired phone, will be cheap compared to trying to eliminate noise and error from transmitted speech. If the speech is processed before transmission, noise on the line will not corrupt it but will simply slow down the transmission time, leaving the message intact.
SECURITY
A British firm leads the fight against transaction fraud, writes Sean Hargrave
A HIGH-TECH security system developed by a British start-up firm is set to usher in an era of unmanned petrol-station forecourts and bank machines that record digital images of suspicious withdrawals.
IES, a computer-security firm based in West Malling, Kent, claims its system can record and store pictures of every person that moves within range of its digital cameras.
These images can then be used to prove the identity of criminals using stolen credit cards or not paying for goods.
IES began three years ago with virtually no investment capital. It is now worth an estimated £36m and will be listed on the Alternative Investment Market (Aim) in London next week.
The company began a pilot test two weeks ago with Q8, the petrol retailer, at an unmanned forecourt system in Ely, Cambridgeshire. The scheme is expected to be implemented across Britain this year.
In the trial, closed-circuit television cameras are trained on petrol pumps and the credit-card machines customers use to pay for fuel. Special cameras record digitally compressed moving images on to a computer hard disk. When it runs out of capacity, the images are downloaded on to a digital tape recorder.
Both storage devices can be accessed via modems, so remote security guards can monitor premises 24 hours a day. The petrol stations can thus be totally unmanned, although for the trial a site has been picked where a manned Q8 station is on the other side of the road.
The stored images can be retrieved by tapping time and date details into a computer. Police can use them to obtain firm evidence that a villain was driving a stolen car or had attempted to use a stolen credit card.
IES signed a deal last year with the world's largest producer of cash-dispenser machines, Diebold of America, to incorporate its digital-imaging technology. It will take a picture of every person using a machine to withdraw money.
In Britain, Abbey National is now trying out the system and is due to begin updating its cashpoints across the country later this year.
Roy Ricks, managing director of IES, claims the image-capture system is also to be piloted soon by several more oil companies and banks.
"Any business that currently uses CCTV can use the system, it just requires us to fit new backs to their existing cameras," he says. "For about £10,000 we can enable businesses to monitor premises without them needing guards."
Success has not gone to the head of hairdresser John Mifsud who makes careful provision for retirement
THE production line at Ford is not the usual training ground for becoming a top hairdresser.
But a career switch at the grand old age of 27 launched John Mifsud on a road that has taken him from the car plant in Dagenham, Essex, to London's Covent Garden, and a list of celebrity clients that includes Joanna Lumley, Grace Jones and Rupert Graves.
MacMillan Hairdressing doesn't exactly trip off the tongue. And it may not spring to mind alongside big names in the world of hair, such as Trevor Sorbie, Nicky Clarke and John Frieda.
But since Mifsud together with partners Damien Carney and Kene Franklyn set up the salon just over six years ago, MacMillan has forged a sizeable niche in the highly competitive upmarket hairdressing business.
Mifsud, 43, who came to Britain from Malta at the age of 15, says: "I had lots of jobs. I worked on a building site, as a mini-cab driver, and then Ford's you name it and I had done it. Then I looked at what my wife, Sharon, was doing and decided I wanted to be a hairdresser like her.
"So I saved money and went on a six-month course to learn how to style and cut hair. I started late in life, so I don't think I have taken success for granted."
And MacMillan is successful. Despite having only one salon, it is fast becoming known across the Atlantic. There, Carney and Franklyn have appeared as stylists on the Ricki Lake Show, one of the top-rated chat shows in the US.
All three were working at Sorbie's salon when they decided it was time to move on. Mifsud, who was a partner there, says: "I was earning so much money as a hairdresser they made me a director."
The move from the relative security of working for someone else was a big personal gamble. Mifsud agrees that his attitude to cash is reflected in this one action: "I couldn't ever take a bigger gamble than the one I took then."
The trio was forced to tip most of its personal savings into the deposit for the salon in 1989. "We had to pay a price the owners were not just going to let it go," he says.
For the first couple of years, business went fairly well, which was good news considering their personal investment was at stake if it failed. Mifsud believes the three had done their homework thoroughly in terms of planning the business.
"Then, like everyone else, we got caught in the recession," he says.
But, as Mifsud is quick to point out, MacMillan is still in business, having weathered the downturn while other salons failed to cut the mustard. Today the salon, helped by sales using its brand name, is not far off its first million-pound turnover. Of course, this is good news for the bank accounts of the three. And it is not a bad achievement in a profession which is notoriously badly rewarded: for even at the better-paid salons, juniors will be lucky to take home about £80 a week.
The trio's success is even more surprising considering the competitive environment MacMillan entered, where people like Clarke charge as much as £200 for a cut and consultation.
Much of the business income is supplemented by Carney and Franklyn who travel the world giving seminars and hair-care demonstrations.
Of course Mifsud is aware that there are pitfalls in running any business, and that these can affect his personal finances, but he has made provision for a rainy day: "I still have shares in Sorbie; in fact I own about 29% of the company." He reckons that the money is a good investment, and better to stay as shares than be cashed in: "After all, Sorbie is probably always going to do well."
And if hairdressing fails, Mifsud is certain he is about to win the national lottery. "I buy £20 worth of tickets each week. I am going to win," he says determinedly.
As he saunters through the busy salon, dressed in a smart suit, Mifsud is the epitome of the successful entrepreneur. But he insists that the smart clothes and the business go hand in hand because it is good for the image of the company.
"Clothes create the right image," he says. "But I wait for the sales and then get the right thing. None of us goes around driving Porsches, but then I will buy the odd Issey Miyake outfit." That will set him back at least £1,500.
While the other two are the creative members of the partnership, Mifsud is the self-confessed practical one. And this is reflected in the provision he has made for retirement.
"People make mistakes and don't allow for pensions," he says. "They get to 40 or 50 and have nothing. It is important to have a pension scheme. I build mine up slowly so that I have something to fall back on, if it all goes wrong."
LIFE for teddy bears is not always a picnic. Their promotion from oblivion down in the woods to fame as the most expensive of old toys is no longer a big surprise.
Nevertheless, they are seldom out of the news, as recent events show:
In a new book, Sue Pearson, a leading expert, deplores the increasing activities of forgers in the bullish market for bears. Beware of bears with dirty faces, she warns, they could be fakes. And she offers an essential checklist which she compiled as a "bear detective".
In another collector scare, owners of bears are told: "Don't give your teddy a machine wash; you could knock thousands off its value."
A recent study by university psychologists has found some surprising insights into children's teddy-bear preferences.
The collectors' market for old bears has made huge strides in the past 10 years, with the top auction price standing at £110,000 for a "teddy girl" sold in 1994 at Christie's.
Much of the saleroom action has been in German Steiff bears, a firm that was quick to seize the publicity initiative for stuffed bears when Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt, the American president, lent his name to the species in 1902. Rare Steiff animals often on record in old catalogues and other documentation, if not always in the finest condition have led the bidding on the superb quality of their workanship and their staying power through generations of heavy cuddling.
German toys dominate the middle range with prices from £500 to £5,000. British bears, such as Chad Valley of the 1930s, sell for £50 to £300 each. Bears appear frequently in sales of dolls at the lead
ing London and provincial showrooms. Highly priced Steiffs have naturally been the main targets of the forgers. However, Pearson, Brighton-based dealer, collector and proprietor of a "teddy-bear hospital", embraces all types and nationalities when she presents her checklist in her book, Bears (De Agostini Editions, £14.99).
She says: "It can be very disappointing for a collector to find that the dirty old bear bought at an antique fair for a high price is a fake, and unfortunately, without a receipt, nothing can be done.
"Luckily, fakes are quite distinctive, deliberately incorporating many of the elements associated with old bears (long arms, hump, straw stuffing), although not usually in the right combinations, and once you've seen one, hopefully you should be able to identify them all. "Perhaps one of the most distinguishing characteristics of fakes is that they are often suspiciously dirty and may be deliberately worn on the snout and around the squeaker to make them look even more authentic."
Her checklist is closely detailed, as are all sections of her admirable guide through the teddy-bear world. For example, here is Pearson on the teddy-bear nose, often a giveaway for an imposter: "Has the nose stitching been replaced, and if it has, is it close to the original?
"This is very important, as each manufacturer tended to have its own distinct nose stitching, making this a good way to identify a bear. Often noses have been replaced with black wool, which is not correct as noses were usually woven from silk thread (though in the 1950s and 1960s rubber and plastic noses were introduced)." Obviously, this book is a must for every arctophile (arctos, Greek for bear).
Handing out advice on teddy-bear care seems to be in fashion. A recent issue of the weekly Antiques Bulletin, read by collectors and dealers, got into a lather on behalf of "the world's favourite toy".
Its quarrel was with Persil over a television commercial which showed a little boy's grubby teddy bear being cleaned in a washing machine.
A gentle detergent (not washing-up liquid too soapy) was recommended: "Simply brush your bear with a toothbrush dipped in a solution. By all means, work up a lather, but don't let your bear become too wet or you might just as well go back to the washing machine."
Allowing also for the reality that a machine wash might seriously damage the bear's value, the magazine concluded: "Since arctophiles are often among the most sentimental of collectors, perhaps a helpful rule of thumb would be to treat your bear as if it were alive.
"Would you put an animal in the washing machine? Of course not, so don't do it to your teddy."
Had the question been put, however, to the young subjects of the teddy-bear study conducted by the department of psychology at Portsmouth University, the answer might have been different.
The psychologists discovered that the evolution of the teddy bear has been determined by the survival of the cutest. From a long-snouted, mean bear, with fierce teeth, it has been transformed by degrees into the cute, baby-like creature we all know and love.
Down the generations, the cuddly teddy has been the choice of parents who buy the toys. Four-year-olds tested in the survey revealed strong preference for the long-snouts.
Is that washing machine turned off?
WEST BROMWICH building society has introduced a postal and telephone-based instant-access account. The account requires a minimum deposit of £2,000, with interest ranging from 6% to a top rate of 6.75% gross on a balance of £100,000 and over. Call: 0345 374121.
A FREE guide to year-end tax planning has been produced by Hill Samuel Asset Management. It covers tax issues in income and pension planning, Peps, capital gains and company cars. Call: 0800 336600.
A NEW three-year, fixed-rate bond from Woolwich building society will pay tiered rates of interest. On balances between £1,000 and £24,999, annual interest of 6.4% gross will be paid (or 6.22% if monthly payments are chosen). For sums of £25,000 and over, an annual rate of 6.65% gross applies (6.46% monthly). The bond is a limited issue. Call: 0800 222200.
NATIONWIDE LIFE, a subsidiary of the building society, has launched a bond with performance linked to rises and falls in the stock market. The guaranteed equity bond requires a minimum investment of £2,000, to be held for five years. At the end of the term, investors will get the original sum back, plus 100% of any FT-SE 100 index rise. Applications must be in by March 1. Early withdrawal is not permitted. Call: 0345 030300.BARCLAYS has introduced one- and two-year capped-rate mortgages. The one-year option has a maximum interest rate of 3.75%, leading to a typical APR of 7.4%. The two-year option works out at a maximum of 5.49% (typical 7.5% APR). After the one- or two-year initial period, the interest rises to the bank's standard variable rate.
THE offer period for the new Schroders Pep based on its company's UK growth fund ends on February 29. The new-issue shares in the investment trust come with warrants attached. Both qualify for inclusion in a Pep. Call: 0800 002000.
IF YOU are looking to move house, 1996 could be the year to do it, according to a national survey by the estate agent Black Horse Agencies.
Its Home Report shows it now takes less time to sell your house, and that more people are viewing properties and agreeing sales. David Wood, managing director, says: "The most recent 1,500 property transactions across 100 key branches show that properties are moving faster."
He says the first few weeks of 1996 have seen an increase of 15% in the number of people viewing properties and agreeing sales compared with the same period last year. Nationally, the time taken to sell a house, from putting it on the market to agreeing a sale, is shortening. Last August the average time was 22 weeks; that has been cut by one week.
But there are some big regional variations. The northwest lags behind the rest of the country at 30 weeks while in the southeast, properties move in a brisk 13 weeks. The report highlights the effect of price on selling time. Wood says: "If a house is priced unrealistically, it will take longer to sell. Sensible pricing means being realistic, and pricing houses appropriately for the region and the current market."
Nationally, properties are selling at 91% of the original asking price, down only 1% from last August. Again there are regional variations. Houses in the northwest and Midlands sell at 88% of their asking price while in the southeast and southwest, homeowners can expect to sell for 93% of the asking price.
Joseph Nellis, of Cranfield School of Management, says the time is right for a recovery in the housing market: "The impact of falling interest rates and increased competition among mortgage lenders will be reinforced by the forthcoming Tessa bonanza payout."
When the 1980s spending boom ended, Bill Mott ditched consumer stocks and invested in technology firms
ASK Bill Mott, head of UK equities at Credit Suisse Investment Management winner of The Sunday Times 1995 Unit Trust Awards how he chooses shares.
He answers that up until 1988 it was easy: he loaded his portfolio with producers of consumer goods and retailers.
But after that date, the world changed.
Up until 1988 "consumption went off the Richter scale", Mott says; a time when people's greed dictated economic policy. It was the era of "me too" products, and consumer goods boomed.
"It didn't matter whether you loaded your portfolio with income funds, smaller companies or whatever," he says, "as long as you were close to the consumer."
After 1988, the bottom fell out of the sector, and the canniest Western investors turned their minds to high technology and pharmaceuticals.
Mott was among them. At the end of 1988 he virtually rejected all consumer-related stocks and replaced them with shares tuned into the technological age.
British companies cannot compete any more with the developing economies for the consumables, he explains. Now, most "me too" products come from emerging markets. "There's no point in Leicestershire clothing companies competing with their Bangladeshi counterparts," he says.
Mott is now resolutely high-tech. In particular, he recommends Oxford Instruments, a world-class company specialising in magnetic technology; Domino Printing Sciences, an inkjet and laserprinter manufacturer; and Cortecs, a pharmaceutical share with an unproven method of detecting and treating ulcers, which has yet to come online.
When Mott talks of high-tech companies he is not talking about computers, nor the high-profile software producers which are, in fact, consumer stocks. He is looking for companies with vast research-and-development sums to spend on innovation and with the potential to hit the jackpot with a world-beating product.
But are there enough of these in Britain which is not known for effectively nurturing scientific expertise, he says.
Oxford and Domino appear to conform to his demands, having the proven technology, export earnings and profitability to fund R&D.
Cortecs, however, poses another question. About 5% of Mott's portfolio has been in biotechnology stocks, which performed well last year. But there are risks big risks.
Last week, Celltech, a favourite share in many portfolios, took a 25% dive. Celltech, like Cortecs, has yet to produce a profit, but saw its share price double in the past 12 months. No wonder many people say the British biotech sector needs an injection of realism. The "wonder" shares have in most cases far outstripped progress in the laboratory. In fact, most biotech companies are expected on the whole to fail.
Mott is one of the few investment managers who live up to the description "rocket scientist". He has a PhD in quantum physics, which should mean that he is ahead of his rivals in evaluating shares.
Cortecs is an Australian company listed in London, making kits that test for a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori, which is believed to be the main cause of ulcers and gastric cancers.
In the recent past, most ulcers would have been treated with the drug Zantac, which kills off excess acid to let the ulcer heal. Cortecs's solution combines antibiotics and traditional ulcer treatments designed to search and destroy the bug. It should be a bestseller, but big risks remain.
Mott is undaunted. "Zantac was the drug that made Glaxo the big company that it is today. The ulcer business is a big business and the potential for a company like Cortecs is enormous." Domino Printing manufactures inkjet printers and inks that are used to put sell-by dates on perishable products. It leads the world in making the machines to mark goods, but has performed dismally lately.
Domino had problems when the ink it produced was degrading inside the machines, which affected profits and hammered the share price. "But the balance sheet is very strong and in the past it has shown growth significantly above the market," Mott says.
He believes the problems are a short-term hiccup that will allow investors to get into the share cheaply, which has historically outperformed. Domino is now trading on a p/e of 12.5 times to October 1996. In the past year, the share price has moved from 563p to 430p.
Oxford Instruments is Mott's third choice; a sound business with the potential to hit the jackpot.
Oxford is now testing the world's smallest Synchotron, an instrument used for the production of semiconductors. Usually these machines are huge, taking up an area the size of a football field. Oxford has managed to make a compact prototype, now under test by IBM. "These things cost several million dollars to make," says Mott. "If this becomes the production standard then it is only Oxford which can make them."
The company makes a range of magnetic instruments such as body scanners, foetal monitors and magnets for telescopes. There is, says Mott, a constant demand for its scientific instruments that will keep profits turning over.
"Every now and then an outstanding technology may produce a jackpot product and you get that for nothing," says Mott. He argues that scientific expertise is a biotech firm's greatest asset: "The value of the accumulated knowledge within Oxford is worth a lot more than the share price."
Fiji is unlikely to make millions for investors as the Pacific's next boom nation, and may be best left to the locals
ON MY TRAVELS around the world I hope to find a Sleeping Beauty stock market: one that appears to be asleep until an investment prince comes along, gives it the kiss of publicity and the market booms into life.
The American investment guru Jim Rogers described in his book, Investment Biker, how he acted as the prince to the Austrian stock market. In 1984, believing that Austria had considerable investment potential, Rogers contacted the New York office of a leading Austrian bank and was told that the Alpine nation did not have a stock market. Rogers was amazed because he knew that such a market did exist; perhaps widespread ignorance of it indicated an overlooked bargain.
In November 1984, Rogers visited Austria. He went to the stock exchange. "Nobody was there," he wrote. "It was dead, open only a few hours a week." Before the first world war there had been 4,000 members of the Austro-Hungarian stock exchange by 1984 there were fewer than 20 members and 30 listed companies.
Rogers discovered that changes were afoot in the tax system to encourage people to invest in shares. Rogers sniffed an opportunity and "bought shares in everything that had a solid balance sheet".
Soon after, back in the United States, Rogers outlined in a leading financial newspaper his reasons for investing in Austria. This awakened interest in the market and share prices started to rise. This rise attracted more attention and more investors so the market rose still further, going up by 125% in a year. By the spring of 1987, the market had risen by over 400% since Rogers had first taken an interest.
On my continuing tour of the southern hemisphere, I visited one country that seemed to be similarly overlooked Fiji. Despite several firms of British stockbrokers and an international bank telling me that Fiji did not have a stock market, I knew that it did. But there the comparison with Rogers's experience in Austria ends.
With a population of less than 750,000 it might seem surprising that a stock exchange exists at all. But Fiji has had an exchange, based in Suva, the capital, since June 1979. Currently, there are only four companies listed on the exchange: BPT (South Sea) Company, which markets a variety of Japanese vehicles in Fiji and the Pacific islands; South Pacific Distilleries, producer and bottler of liquors for local and export markets; The Flour Mills of Fiji; and Fiji Sugar Corporation. After some initial confusion as to exactly what was meant by market capitalisation, the exchange produced figures that indicated the combined market value of these four companies was about F$78.6m, or £36.7m.
Looking at their dividend yields, and Fiji's prospects, I think the companies are fully valued and would not invest in them. In any event, it is not easy. The exchange states that "as there are no stockbrokers in Fiji, buyers and sellers deal direct with the Suva Stock Exchange which attempts to match, buy and sell orders to conclude a transaction". Foreigners can buy shares, but clearance has to be obtained from the Reserve Bank of Fiji before money can be transferred out of Fiji. Then there are fluctuations in the foreign-exchange rate to note.
I think the Fiji market is best left to the locals, especially as it is so small that even modest buying (or selling) could easily distort the market.
Travelling all round Fiji I refused to succumb to the blandishments of people who told me it was "the next Hawaii" and that buying land and/or property would be like buying cheaply in Hawaii 20 or 30 years ago and then profiting from a subsequent boom.
Apart from the heat, Fiji is nothing like Hawaii. The population comprises almost equal numbers of Indians and Melanesian Fijians, plus 5% "other races", including Chinese.
Although there are a number of excellent hotels, most of the country somehow looks rather shabby. I was especially struck by the number of pawnshops in Suva, where the pawned items seemed to be just mundane items like hammers and household goods. The most expensive-looking building under construction in the capital is not a place of entertainment or leisure (or even industry) but administrative offices for Suva city council.
Parts of Fiji are just derelict, overgrown land which had been bought by foreigners as an investment. Some had bought "cleared" land as a result of advertisements in their home countries, believing prices would soar. When they actually visited Fiji and realised the costs (and hassle) involved of putting in basic facilities like water and electricity and coping with bureaucracy and the rather laid-back approach of some of the people, they simply abandoned their plans.
This is why it always pays to visit a place and investigate properly before parting with any money.
Fiji benefits from being one of the main "aerial crossroads" in the Pacific with a number of airlines allowing passengers to break their journey with a stay in Fiji when travelling across that ocean. When Korea Air recently started a "stopover" facility for passengers flying between South Korea and New Zealand, the number of Koreans visiting Fiji increased by over 24% with more than 750 visiting in just one month. There is scope for further growth in tourist traffic from the Orient but only if facilities are greatly improved.
Fiji has a number of attractive products such as coconut creme soap, which is exported all over the world. But that is produced by a private company. Other exports include gold, sugar, ginger and copra. Less well known are the products of its pine forests, with considerable exports of wood chips to Japan.
Fiji does have potential for investors but these are likely to be shrewd, hardened, patient business people. I prefer to invest elsewhere.
A SURVEY for Barclays Life has revealed widespread ignorance of state-pension benefits and the need for retirement planning.
Of more than 1,000 adults interviewed by the pollster NOP, 75% could not even hazard a guess at the current level of state pension for a single person. Approximately one in three had not made any form of pension provision and of those who had, 58% did not know what their savings would yield at retirement. In response to the survey, Barclays Life has published a free guide to pension planning that aims to address some of the key issues of provision for old age.
Nigel Waite, director of Barclays Life, says: "We believe that saving for retirement is going to become increasingly important, particularly as the real value of state benefits reduces. It is, therefore, vital that people plan well in advance for this eventuality to ensure a reasonable standard of living for what is the longest holiday of a lifetime."
The guide considers the outlook for future state-pension provision in the light of demographic and lifestyle changes and different attitudes to work. It also covers employers' pension schemes, personal pensions, pensions for the self-employed and women and pensions.
For a free guide, call Barclays Life on 0800 400100
THEY are an insurance company's dream: law-abiding, risk-averse and unpopular with burglars. The curtain-twitchers that make up Neighbourhood Watch schemes are half as likely to make a household insurance claim as the ordinary policyholder.
In recognition of the low demands they make on their insurers, the 6m households in Watch schemes now have a direct-insurance package aimed at them.
Neighbourhood Watch Direct Insurance, backed by Cornhill Direct, offers discounts of at least 15% off standard cover, with further reductions for fitting approved alarms and locks. But Watch members will find they already have huge clout in negotiating lower household premiums across the board.
A spokesman for the Association of British Insurers says they can generally claim a discount of 5%-10%. "If you combine that with other security precautions, such as approved locks or an intruder alarm, you could be looking at an overall discount of as much as 25%-30% off the total premium," he says.
"Some companies may also give you a discount if you can show that you are in the property all day." He says this measure, which could deter daytime burglaries, would be useful for pensioners.
Neighbourhood Watch Direct Insurance: 0345 906090
The market is flooding with cheap remortgage deals, so shop around for the best, writes Nick Gardner
‘Existing borrowers may be excluded from their lender's most attractive offers'
THERE has never been a better time to remortgage, and that's official. Interest rates are at their lowest for nearly 30 years and the new ranges of deals on offer contain some of the cheapest fixed and discounted loans ever devised.
The message from the lenders is simple: you may not want to move home but if you want to boost your disposable income by saving money on your mortgage, switch your loan to us now. They are sweetening the pill with cashbacks and "fee-free" deals to take the pain out of switching covering legal and valuation fees themselves and often leaving the homeowner with no expense whatever.
The banks and building societies are offering these great deals often saving thousands of pounds in interest payments because they are desperate to attract new business in today's flat housing market.
Consequently, existing borrowers will usually find they are excluded from their lender's most attractive offers, which are normally reserved for new customers and those switching from other societies.
However, you may be offered a better deal by your current society if you begin the remortgaging process because they do not want to lose your business. Even if they do not, it will probably still pay to move.
A growing trend among lenders is to launch phone-based mortgage services which, because of the minimal overheads, allow them to offer much lower variable rates. Direct Line, Bradford & Bingley, First Direct and Bank of Scotland all offer phone-based services with rates up to 1.25% lower than the high-street average, and most of their business is in the form of switches from rival lenders.
Bradford & Bingley Direct, for example, is currently offering a variable rate of 6.25% the lowest in the country saving borrowers with an £80,000 mortgage about £70 a month compared with the average variable rate of 7.49%. It says more than half its customers are remortgaging from rival lenders. However, B&B Direct will only lend a maximum of 75% of the property value, so remortgagors need substantial equity to qualify.
Direct Line, the insurer that launched a mortgage operation last March, is offering a variable rate of 6.49% from this week. About 75% of its business takes the form of transfers from other lenders, and to make remortgaging even more attractive it is offering to pay borrowers' legal fees usually about £300 if you use one of its panel solicitors. It will lend up to 80% of property value.
First Direct, the direct arm of Midland Bank, is attempting to attract remortgagors by capping the fees at £295 the bank will shoulder the extra costs.
"Remortgaging fees can run up to almost £1,000 and that puts many people off, but as long as you use one of our panel solicitors, then £295 is all you will pay to switch to us," says a spokesman. Its variable rate, at 6.95%, is about half a point lower than the average and will save more than £30 a month on an £80,000 loan.
Other lenders are also offering "fee-free" deals in conjunction with the special low rates, sometimes covering the cost of the mortgage-indemnity-guarantee premium as well, which can be £1,000 or more on a 95% loan.
Bradford & Bingley, for example, is offering a 1% discount for one year off its standard variable rate, taking the rate down to 6.24% from March 1. It will also refund the valuation fee and cover the MIG premium itself.
The mortgage broker John Charcol says its best-selling deal at the moment is a discounted rate of 4.49% for three years together with a cashback offer of 3% of the loan on completion more than enough to cover remortgaging costs. Borrowers then have the option of switching to a five-year fixed rate within one month of the next general election being called, helping to avoid the interest-rate fluctuations that elections usually provoke.
Chase de Vere is offering a two-year discount of 2.5%, taking the rate down to 4.99% with no valuation, legal or application fees to pay.
Abbey National is wooing remortgagors with its offer of cashbacks of 2% to a maximum of £4,000, or £320 towards valuation fees, while the Halifax is offering free valuations and cashbacks of up to 5% on its range of mortgages.
Those specifically looking to remortgage to a fixed rate have picked an excellent time to do it. Bristol & West has just launched its cheapest-ever five-year fixed-rate deal, at 6.99% until February 2001.
But remortgaging is not suitable for everybody. Many borrowers are tied in to societies in the throes of conversion to bank status, and cannot move for fear of losing the bumper cash payout when the society floats.
And those currently locked in to fixed rates or discounted deals may find punitive redemption penalties blocking their path, imposed to stop astute homeowners chasing the best deals, though their severity varies widely between lenders.
The penalty on the John Charcol deal, for example, is three months' interest if the loan is redeemed within the three-year discounted period, but some lenders offer far more punitive regimes.
The Bristol & West fixed rate offer has a six-month interest penalty at its standard variable rate if redeemed within six years.
Likewise, National & Provincial runs its redemption penalties for six years from completion of the loan, though the amount reduces over time, starting at 210 days' interest for redemptions in the first year to 30 days' in the sixth.
Halifax imposes redemption penalties roughly equal to the savings that have been made through the discounted or fixed deal, and this applies for two years after the fixed term has expired, thereby negating all the benefits.
But, despite the penalties, it can sometimes still pay to remortgage: you just have to do your sums very carefully.
The table below shows some of the fixed and variable rates on the market. Whatever rate you are currently paying, you will almost certainly be able to save money by switching. But if you do switch to a fixed or discounted rate, remember that at the end of the term it will revert to that lender's standard variable rate, which can also vary widely.
Make sure the bank or society you switch to offers a competitive variable rate, or any savings you have made will be quickly clawed back.
WHEN Brian and Tracey Jones decided to move house last year they were faced with an impossible situation: in less than five years the value of their £39,000 two-bedroomed house in Plymouth for had plummeted. They became another one of Britain's negative-equity statistics, which, they presumed, meant they had to stay put.
"We knew we were in a negative-equity situation even before we put the house on the market because it was only valued at £35,950," says
Tracey. But they were keen to move to a larger house with a garden for their young son and by chance found a solution in a newspaper advertisement placed by Chase de Vere, the mortgage manager, offering help for people with negative equity.
The Joneses were told their negative equity of just over £3,000 at that time was not so bad and, because both of them were in stable teaching jobs, their combined salaries meant they could easily afford to take on the commitment of a larger mortgage than the one they were paying. Eventually, they sold their house for £34,500, leaving them with a negative equity of almost £6,000, but they were still able to move to a new three-bedroomed house with a garden, worth £75,000. On their original property, the Joneses had taken out an endowment mortgage with The Mortgage Corporation.Chase de Vere shopped around for them and found a new deal with Bank of Scotland, which, unlike most of its high-street competitiors, offered to "take on" their negative equity. They were eligible for the bank's scheme because they had a good credit record, having kept up with payments on the original loan.
To buy the house, clear the negative equity, and pay the stamp duty and moving costs, came to a total of £83,000. "We have 95% of the £75,000 on a normal mortgage, and the extra £8,000 is on a linked loan," explains Brian. They are delighted with the new arrangements. "The package was brilliant," says Tracey.
Help at hand to soothe negative equity fears
More lenders are facing up to the problem of 1.7m borrowers in negative equity, and offering plans to help them, reports Claire Oldfield
AS house prices collapsed in the early 1990s negative equity became the problem that nobody wanted to face.
People found themselves sitting on huge losses as property prices fell below the amount they had borrowed to buy their homes hence their stake in their homes was in deficit, or "negative".
Even people with low equity were stuck because they could not afford to pay the costs of moving. Building societies initially turned a blind eye: after all, why should a high-street lender want to take on board someone else's debt?
But the attitude of many of the leading lenders has undergone a quiet transformation. Homeowners who feared they would be burdened with negative equity indefinitely now have a range of financial packages giving them the opportunity to move house.
The problem appeared to be twofold:
Building societies did not go out of their way to advertise financial packages to help people move out of the negative equity trap.
Customers were equally reluctant to take up a mortgage-debt package.
"If you have negative equity, you are going to think long and hard before taking up any offer because it will crystallise the loss," says Sue Anderson at the Council of Mortgage Lenders. But the tide is gradually turning in the borrowers' favour. Customers with good payment records are now able to obtain further loans to move house, as lenders realise the only way to get the housing market moving again is to encourage house sales.
There are an estimated 1.7m households currently stuck in the negative-equity trap, according to figures released by Nationwide building society at the end of last month, and a further 1m borrowers who own homes with a value that hovers no more than £3,500 above their mortgage.
Added to this is the steady increase in home repossessions, which was almost 50,000 last year.
The figures are frightening. But, as Anderson points out, negative equity is only a problem if people want to move house.
"For most people the problem of negative equity is only that of a few pounds, and in a low-interest-rate environment you can save your way out fairly easily," says Anderson.
"But it is still the case that there are a lot of people out there with insufficient equity."
Woolwich was one of the first lenders to launch a number of formal schemes to help negative-equity sufferers. Its mobility mortgage enables customers to transfer their existing mortgage from one property to another so long as the new property is worth the same as the one being sold. The society's negative-equity mortgage, on the other hand, lets a Woolwich customer borrow more than their existing loan and transfer up to £25,000 negative equity or to a total of 125% of the value of the new property as long as the customer has a good repayment record.
As the table shows, the Woolwich schemes are in line with most of the packages offered by lenders. The technical details, repayment periods and limits placed on the amount that can be borrowed vary. But they all allow borrowers to transfer their negative equity, to pay for it at no more than the basic variable mortgage-interest rate, and to borrow the full amount needed on their new property as well.
None of the lenders will contemplate lending to people with debt problems, or indeed anyone without an immaculate repayment record. And most will not consider lending to anyone who is not an existing customer. But there are financial packages on the market that help with moving costs like stamp duty and solicitor's fees.
Although most lenders will only help existing customers, one relatively new package that is available to all customers comes from Mortgage Express, a specialist lender in the Lloyds TSB group, which is based in New Barnet, north London.
Since it launched its negative-equity package last October, Mortgage Express has received a deluge of calls enquiring about the service. The first few moves under its scheme have just been completed.
"We are smaller than the building societies, but are not limited by their strict regulations and can offer different schemes," says Tim Dawson at Mortgage Express. "We have designed a product which will enable people to move house because we will lend them enough to buy the new home and pay the negative equity on their existing one."
For example, homeowners who want to move to a £90,000 property but have an existing mortgage of £60,000 on a £50,000 house can get a £100,000 loan, as well as help with moving costs.
"Our strategy is to look at areas where the main lenders are not interested," says Dawson. "Negative equity is holding the market back so that is the area we are interested in tackling."
As the case study shows, Bank of Scotland offers a similar financial package which can be taken up by homeowners whose loans are with other lenders.
So far the number of customers taking up negative-equity packages is relatively low: for instance Halifax launched its scheme in October 1993 and to date 3,500 customers have applied for it, of whom some 2,600 have moved house.
When you consider the rising number of homeowners with negative equity, this is a small number but it does represent a small step in the right direction. It means there is a growing awareness among homeowners that there is something they can do to help themselves.
Unless they take advantage of the schemes the threatened increase in repossessions which would take the total over 50,000 is likely to happen. Or, more people may just hand in the keys rather than wait for eviction. In the meantime they are just dead weight on the housing market and the whole economy.
But the last word on how to deal with mortgage debt comes from a mortgage broker:
"If you are in any doubt about whether or not you can move house, approach your own lender first. And if your branch manager won't do anything then go to head office," he says. "There is almost always something they can do."
Budget changes to state aid for nursing home care will come far too late for many worried old folk, writes Adam Jones
FOR an older generation of sensible savers, it was a sign they had not been forgotten in last November's budget.
Alongside a relaxation in inheritance tax, Kenneth Clarke said the state would pay more towards the cost of long-term residential care for pensioners who have a little bit of capital behind them.
For many, it would end the pain of seeing their modest savings eroded by an unfair system that failed to treat the prudent individual better than those who carelessly made no provision for the future.
Under the new regime, pensioners with savings, and sometimes property, worth up to £10,000 would not be required to use any of that capital to pay their nursing-home fees. The previous threshold was just £3,000.
State support would cease for savings greater than £16,000, double the previous figure. People with capital sums between £10,000 and £16,000 would have to dip into it on a sliding-scale basis.
The measures would be implemented in April at the latest, and even sooner if practicable, Clarke announced in the House of Commons. "This will give many elderly people and their families more financial security and greater peace of mind," he concluded. More than two months have now passed since this bugle was sounded. The press cuttings praising the change have yellowed a little with age. The cavalry, however, are yet to make an appearance. The government has now confirmed that there is no way the changes will be in force before April.
Far from being elated at the policy shift, thousands of pensioners already in full-time care are furious at this delay in making the contribution system fairer. Many will lose thousands in the four months it will have taken to implement the changes. Their loss is made all the more galling by the speed revenue increases can be introduced by the government: cigarette-tax rises were in place by 6pm on the evening of the budget.
One man in Essex told The Sunday Times that his 78-year-old mother's savings have been whittled down from about £12,600 to £7,000 since the budget was announced. The outgoings in that period include £230 a week in fees at a favoured rest home nearby, and several thousand pounds on equipment needed to combat a medical condition.
By the time the new capital-assessment regime is in force, her son fears there will be less than £5,000 left.
Another woman in Wales estimates that her 89-year-old mother, a resident of a retirement home, will have to pay £1,400 out of her savings to cover the delayed introduction. The daughter believes there should be an interim payment to make up the money used since the budget. She says: "The savings are a form of security should my mother need a minor operation or specialised equipment or clothing."
Age Concern has been contacted by a number of pensioners anxiously watching their resources dwindle after the announcement. "It's seen as pretty mean to be delaying the introduction," it says.
There are also fears that some pensioners who need full-time care urgently may delay going into nursing homes until April, since their savings will then enjoy greater protection.
Help the Aged has been approached by several pensioners worried about going into care before April.
The charity wrote to John Bowis, junior health minister, on December 8 to push for an interim payment that would smooth out these worrying anomalies. Bowis wrote back seven weeks later, on January 30. He said the delay in implementation was a result of the bureaucratic and funding difficulties involved in preparing local authorities, which handle the provision of social services, for the change.
He added: "Changes to the level of funding to local government cannot be implemented in this financial year, and, therefore, local authorities would not be able to finance these changes in capital limits without jeopardising other services. Additional resources will be made available from the 1996-97 financial year."
Help the Aged is continuing to press for a payment, however. Mervyn Kohler, head of public affairs, believes it would not stretch local government too much to include a backdated assessment.
He adds: "If the government believes that this is the right policy, why on earth didn't it do the job properly and put in an extra £20m this year, allowing the system to operate from the date of its announcement?"
Companies are sitting on a fortune in unclaimed shares - and specialists are trying to trace holders, writes Paul Ham
KENNETH PEARSON, secretary of the tiny Ampton Estate Club in Suffolk, felt just a bit happier than usual last week.
Pearson received a cheque for £17,000 on behalf of the 30 or so members of his club which fills a 7 by 6-metre room in the little village of Ampton, Suffolk. The money represented the proceeds of the sale of unclaimed shares registered in the name of the club's long-deceased trustees.
The Ampton Working Men's Club invested £1,000 or so in a large public company many years ago "possibly before the war ... the second one," says Pearson.
"The money wasn't forgotten. But the trustees died long ago, and for some reason we didn't have the certificates," he adds.
To the rescue came J&L Research Agencies, a firm that traces the holders of unclaimed shares. About six months ago the company came across the names of two elderly men who were said to be the trustees to shares held in the name of the Ampton Working Men's Club.
The problem was, nobody had heard of the club not even the residents of Ampton.
J&L's director, John Stern, approached the Ampton village policeman. The policeman had not heard of the club, but suggested that if it existed, it would have a bar. And if it had a bar, it would have a licence.
It did. Stern found the licence, and that led him to Pearson, who was stunned to receive "out of the blue" a cheque for £17,000.
Last week, the club, whose members, all male, range from 25 to 85 years old, convened to decide what to do with their windfall. Stern, meanwhile, pocketed 20% of the cash in commission for his investigative efforts.
Public companies have millions of pounds worth of unclaimed shares on their books, belonging to thousands of forgetful or errant shareholders.
Stern's is one of several small agencies set up to help large public companies track down the owners of the huge backlog of unclaimed shares.
"I find lost shareholders," explains Stern. What normally happens is that individuals forget to tell a company about their change of address. The company gets taken over, and the link is severed, possibly for ever. The shareholders fail to receive details of takeover offers, future dividends or any new issues. Their dividends can be held on the company's books for decades or even longer.
Mike Dudley, director of Shareholder Investment Research (SIR), the biggest and longest-established unclaimed- share agency, says: "There are masses of unclaimed shares and dividends going back to the beginning of this century."
The share-search agencies do not ask for payment up front. They receive a percentage of the value of the unclaimed shares when they find the beneficiaries. This ranges from 10% to 25% depending on the complexity, size and longevity of the case.
SIR is about to complete a 10-year search for the owner of £1m worth of shares, who emigrated to Britain from Russia before the 1917 revolution. "The investigation has taken a decade and we've ended up going to Russia to trace the beneficiary," says Dudley.
Most unclaimed share searches are less complex, involving sums of about £3,000.
The owners are usually elderly people who lost track of a small sum they invested decades ago.
SIR employs eight full-time people and several "agents" retired City folk who do not mind spending one or two days a week tracking down errant shareholders.
"They love visiting graveyards and digging through local records," observes Dudley.
The problem for shareholders is that not all companies honour payment of unclaimed dividends. Or they subscribe strictly to the letter of a ruling by the Securities and Investments Board, the City watchdog, which states that after 12 years, an investor loses his or her right to unclaimed monies.
That did not apply to the family of Nigel Robert Malcolm Moir of Wyverstone, Suffolk. Unclaimed shares in Hanson worth £22,000 were discovered as registered in the name of Moir's mother, Beatrice, who died in 1988.
The beneficiary, Moir, and his sister, were unaware of the shareholding's existence until SIR intervened.
"We subsequently recovered shares and cash with a value of £22,000 and charged a commission of 15% for our services," says Dudley.
The Moirs were thrilled, and wrote to SIR: "One has heard of London's streets being paved with gold, but to the best of my recollection this is the first occasion that I have encountered a real live fairy godmother therein."
The family added: "We were delighted. The people who moved into her cottage she was 94 when she died must have swept up (the share certificate) and lost all trace of it."
BRIDGET ROSEWELL was among the first employers in Britain to see the benefits of group personal pension schemes. She is founding director of Business Strategies, a top-drawer economic consultancy numbering the Treasury among its clients.
Her firm, set up in 1988, provides economic forecasts to 100 or so companies and organisations. They include a smattering of Britain's bigger corporations and the more influential think-tanks.
Rosewell herself serves as one of the Treasury's "six wise people" offering the chancellor the finest fruits of her economic wisdom.
So staff retention is imperative. Rosewell depends on retaining a team of 20 highly qualified employees economists, in the main, who put their knowledge to practical use. Good pension provision was seen as essential.
When the company started, she and two co-directors, including Charles Burton, opted for individual personal pensions, which had just been launched in Britain in a blaze of publicity. But as Business Strategies grew, and took on more staff, single schemes for each new recruit proved unwork
able: "We started down that route, but it became an administrative nightmare."
A standard occupational pension scheme was not practical for a company of Business Strategies' size. But the directors wanted to contribute something to their staff's pensions.
Rosewell suggested to staff that they join a group personal pension scheme offered by Scottish Amicable.
A financial adviser, Ashley Wilson, the firm of London solicitors, was invited in to explain to employees the benefits of the scheme and the size of contributions necessary to generate a viable retirement fund. The adviser discussed the scheme with the staff as a group, avoiding the time-wasting exercise of interviewing them each individually.
"What we have now is an arrangement whereby each individual employee has their own personal pension with the same pension provider."
Her company contributes an initial 5% of the payments, rising to 10% depending on the length of service. Employees may contribute whatever they like. "The scheme is entirely portable, so staff can take it with them if they leave," Rosewell says.
Small companies are to be given state help to provide pensions for their workforce. Paul Ham reports on a landmark move.
Boost for small firms as government breathes fresh life into group personal pensions
IT MAY not sound electrifying, but a product called a group personal pension (GPP) sent a ripple of static through the pensions industry last week.
Insurers and pension providers are abuzz with talk of new schemes, new markets and, inevitably, "a brave new world" for the small-company pension.
The reason was a promise by Peter Lilley, social security secretary, to help small-company employers offer GPPs to their staff.
Lilley said in a speech on Wednesday: "We are examining whether any further steps are needed to facilitate the growth (of group personal pensions) among employers otherwise making no pension provision for their employees."
Small companies have barely scratched the surface of pension provision. Old-fashioned occupational schemes are impractical or too costly for them to run. So they have simply sat on the sidelines, waiting for someone to notice them.
Their employees have opted to buy often ill-advisedly their own personal pension, paid out of their salary, or relied on the dwindling level of state provision. Enter the group personal pension.
Loved by the government which sees it as the latest way of shifting responsibility for retirement funding to the private sector the GPP is tailored specifically for small companies that lack any pension provision for their staff.
A mere 50,000 GPP schemes exist, covering 500,000 people, compared with 10.7m people in ordinary occupational pensions and 5.7m people with their own personal pension.
GPPs have been so slow to take off because small companies either shun the hassle of running a pension for staff, or fear that in recommending one they will attract scrutiny from financial watchdogs.
Lilley said: "Employers used to be wary of such schemes for fear ... (that they) ... could become liable to the rigours of the Financial Services Act (FSA)." He added: "We have made it crystal clear to employers that there is no need to run any such risk."
GPPs offer each staff member his or her own personal pension, under the umbrella of a single pension provider. The pension is fully transportable from job to job it is simply broken off from the main group scheme like a piece of honeycomb.
GPPs were nominally introduced in 1988, along with ordinary personal pensions. They offered small companies a cheap alternative to occupational pension schemes.
But they took a long time to take off because under the FSA, sellers of personal pensions have to undertake a thorough fact-find on each client. That meant long interviews with employees a tax on the resources of small companies.
There was also the administrative nightmare of running personal pensions offered by dozens of insurance companies, since employees were able to choose from the full range of pension providers.
To get around this, the government introduced recently a "fast-track" service: financial advisers were allowed to sell the concept of a GPP to all staff members in one sitting.
An earlier innovation allowed companies to offer "umbrella" personal pensions administered by a single insurance company. The GPP was born.
But problems remained: the personal-pension mis-selling scandal put the lid on employers' enthusiasm for the new group versions. GPPs were tarnished by association; sales slumped, and remain weak.
Pension providers expect the market to pick up, however, as smaller companies grow and employers realise the tax and staff-retention advantages of providing an employee pension. The Pru is to launch a new GPP scheme in the spring, designed for companies with between 3 and 60 employees. Typically, employers would pay about 5%-8% into the GPP and staff, 3%. The Pru would receive contributions from employers and staff by direct debit, and handle all the administration. Legal & General was one of the first into the GPP market, and offers GPPs for companies of virtually any size.
Ron Spill, pensions consultant, sees the fast-track selling option as a breakthrough for smaller companies: "It means GPPs offer economies of scale. Advisers can stand up in the workplace and say to every member of staff, ‘This is what a GPP can do for you. If you put in 3% of your salary, your employer will do the same'."
Spill, along with most of the pensions industry, expects the government to make GPPs even easier to administer. And given the huge pressure on state-retirement funding, Lilley's promise looks likely to be fulfilled soon.
After a disappointing slump, many experts predict a bumper year ahead for emerging markets, writes Richard Newell
‘Smaller Asian countries are seeing double-digit growth rates'.
WHAT do Shakespeare, Mozart and George Washington have in common? They were all rats. Or rather they were born under the sign of the rat in the Chinese horoscope. Apparently, this made them charming, imaginative, generous and attractive.
It might also have made them rich, as the year of the rat tends to be good for investors, and "rats" themselves are thrifty and hard-working. The Chinese, especially those in Hong Kong, look well-placed to profit in the year of the rat, which begins next week, as attention focuses once again on Asia's dynamic economies.
Emerging markets in Asia, Latin America, east Europe and Africa are being tipped as the best investment prospect for 1996, after two years in the doldrums. Smaller Asian countries, in particular, are seeing double-digit growth rates that are expected to fuel rapidly rising share prices.
As a result, the stock markets in these areas although highly volatile are expected to be the world's best performers for the next few years.
The reason emerging markets will perform especially well this year has as much to do with global money flows as with fundamental value.
The "weight of money" theory means a mere spillage from the vast pool of American pension funds can trigger soaring prices in small, thinly capitalised markets in Asia and Latin America. American investors, who did very well out of their own market in 1995, are starting to look overseas again, just as they did in 1993, the year of the last great emerging-markets boom.
Chase Manhattan's Mark Tennant says: "The combined assets of US pension funds and mutual funds (unit trusts), represents around $7trillion, of which perhaps only 10% is invested overseas and probably only 1% in emerging markets. It does not take Archimedes to work out that if this was only to rise to 2% it would mean a further flow of $70billion (£45.5billion)."
Baring Securities regularly analyses the changes in global liquidity. In 1996, it estimates $60billion will flow to emerging markets, a big jump from the $16billion pledged in 1995. Barings predicts $30billion will go to the Asia Pacific markets, $10billion to Latin America and the remainder to South Africa, India and Europe. In particular, east Europe could have its first big year, with the focus being on the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Russia. Jurgen Kirsch, manager of the new Mercury Eastern European fund, believes the region deserves more attention from international investors. Countries with such low per capita income and low labour costs have obvious potential as fast-developing economies. But Kirsch feels investors may have also failed to notice that east European countries such as Poland are now showing signs of economic stabilisation.
Political and economic turbulence go with many Asian and Latin American markets, causing high volatility. So it is unwise to read too much into the short-term performance of markets such as Venezuela, Colombia and Pakistan.
During December, these markets were the top performers in the MSCI World Index, but each has an uninspiring track record over the past two or three years and that situation is not about to change radically.
Peter Jeffreys, of the analyst Fund Research, urges investors to consider the long-term potential: "Emerging markets have certainly lived up to their reputation for volatility, but in the past four years, the average fund is up 80% compared with 40% for the MSCI and the best fund is up 125%."
However, during this period, some fund managers still turned in negative returns.
The best overall performers in 1995 were Peru and Israel, both of which produced returns well over 20%. Israel will continue to do well. The market is not generally disturbed by political turmoil and the peace process is still on course despite the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in November. Some of the strongest rallies for the year came in the fourth quarter, notably from Argentina (+17%) and South Africa (+9%). South Africa, another top performer for the year (up 20%), is expected to produce further solid results this year.
But the best prospects remain in the Far East. Last month the Asian markets moved sharply upwards, suggesting that international funds had already decided which region is going to do best this year. Gross domestic product growth is at least 8% in many Pacific Rim countries, where earnings per share have been reported to be growing at 30%-50%. That rate may slow now that the weaker yen allows Japanese companies to provide stronger competition, but a rate of growth well into double digits seems sustainable.
Templeton's Mark Mobius advises caution, however, because some Asian markets have been overrated. Hong Kong, on the other hand, could be the star performer, he says.
Hong Kong has been underrated partly due to misplaced fears about China's intentions there: "We have invested as much as we are allowed to in Hong Kong," Mobius says a measure of his confidence in the colony's future.
But one Asian country that continues to disappoint is China itself. Exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen will remain at or near their low points until China moves to improve market conditions and widen foreigners' scope for investment.
It is complicated to keep track of all these exotic markets, which is why it is a good idea to choose a general emerging-markets fund rather than try to make the geographical asset-allocation decisions yourself.
According to Micropal, the top-performing unit trusts over one year include Credit Suisse South Africa (+67.5%), HSBC Hong Kong Growth (64%), Govett Hong Kong (56%) and Old Mutual Hong Kong (53%). Over five years, the best funds include Old Mutual Thailand (372%), Gartmore Hong Kong (361%), Fidelity Asean (336%) and Gartmore American Emerging Growth (296%). The top performers among UK investment trusts include Jardine Fleming Philippine, Templeton Emerging Markets and TR Pacific.
But not all exotic markets perform well; some of the tiniest are best avoided by investors (see page 10).
Estate agents who place too high a price on properties for sale could cost owners dear, writes Adam Walker
ESTATE AGENTS who persuade you to ask too much for your home could end up costing you thousands of pounds.
The worst way to choose an estate agent is to instruct the one that recommends the highest asking price. In practice, however, this is exactly how most people selling their homes choose their agent.
Estate agents are fully aware of this, and, as a result, many deliberately quote inflated asking prices in an attempt to win instructions. As the market recovers, the practice is becoming far more prevalent.
So how do you protect yourself against unrealistic overvaluations that cost you money and time?
The problem works like this. Two firms are asked to value a property worth £100,000. Agent A values the property correctly and recommends an initial asking price of £105,000 to allow for negotiation. Agent B, knowing he is in competition, recommends an asking price of £120,000 and talks confidently of being able to achieve an offer close to this figure. The vendor is impressed and agrees to sign a sole-agency agreement with Agent B. However, as soon as the instruction has been won, the agent will start a carefully planned campaign to persuade the vendor to reduce the asking price.
If he is successful he may well achieve a sale at a figure around £100,000. In this case his subterfuge will have paid off. If he is unsuccessful he will have lost nothing.
While the agent who overvalues has nothing to lose, the consequences for the vendor can be extremely serious. Apart from the wasted time and general inconvenience, there is a real danger that a property that has become stale through overexposure will end up selling for significantly less than it would have done if it had been sold immediately. The agent who persuades you to ask too much for your property really could cost you thousands.
There are three things you can do to protect against the consequences of an overvaluation. The first is to research the value of your property before you arrange for an estate agent to value it. This is not as hard to do as it might seem. The value of any property is influenced by the value of others in the area either those recently sold or those up for sale that will, therefore, be competing with your own home for buyers.
The more comparable evidence you can collect, the more likely it is that your valuation will be accurate. Look through the local newspaper for properties similar to yours. Make due allowance for six key factors: general area, precise location, size, age, style, condition and facilities.
Bear in mind that, allowing for negotiation, the actual selling prices are likely to be on average about 5% lower than the advertised asking prices. Unless your property is very unusual you should be able to arrive at a fairly accurate figure. Your second chance to protect yourself comes during the estate agent's valuation visit. The way agents deal with the issue of price can tell you a great deal about the credibility of his valuation.
Good agents will give you their opinion of value without first asking you what you are hoping to get for the property. They will have the confidence to give you a precise figure rather than quoting a range of prices so wide as to be almost meaningless. Above all, good agents will be able to justify the figure they quote.
However thrilled or disappointed you are by the valuation, your response should always be to ask the agent to explain how he or she arrived at the figure. Good agents will talk fluently about comparable properties that have sold recently and explain how they used these properties to arrive at a valuation.
Exceptional ones will have brought full details of other properties with them so that you may look at the evidence.
Inexperienced agents or ones who have overvalued will find themselves horribly exposed.
The third way to protect yourself against overvaluations is to make a resolution to ignore price altogether when deciding which agent to instruct.
The best way to identify a good agent is to ask him or her: "Why should I instruct your company to sell this property?" The good ones will explain in detail how their company's superior experience, advertising and presentation will help you to achieve a better result. Others will be left floundering.
RODNEY SMITH, 42, and his fiancee, Anne Frost, put their six-bedroom detached house in Dorset on the market in July 1994. They arranged for two agents to value the property. Jon Williams of Palmer Snell and Company, Weymouth, suggested an asking price of £90,000. The second agent, however, said £120,000.
This was a lot more than Smith had expected. Nevertheless, the agent seemed confident of achieving it and was duly instructed.
Nine months later, the house languished unsold. Feeling more than a little aggrieved, Smith asked Palmer Snell to market the property at its original recommended asking price. An offer close to it was made within days and contracts were exchanged eight weeks later. Smith said: "A great deal of our time has been wasted for no good purpose. I wish that there was some action that I could take against the agents that misled us."
A NEW pet-insurance scheme offers pet owners three levels of cover for veterinary fees and kennel or cattery costs, writes Adam Jones.
Premium Search's Pet Shield policy allows cat and dog owners to choose whether they want to pay the first £25, £50 or £75 of a claim. The higher the chosen excess, the lower the premium. Costs range from £19.99 to £38.99 for cats and from £36.99 to £73.99 for dogs.
The policy covers up to £1,000 in veterinary fees each time treatment is required, including alternative treatments such as homeopathy and herbal remedies.
Kennel or cattery costs incurred when the owner goes into hospital for more than 72 hours are covered (if less than £400), as are third-party damages up to £2m.
Up to £100 will also be reimbursed if you have to pay for posters or a reward should your pet go missing. And premiums are not influenced by where the policyholder lives.
Call: 01604 673567
As Ofsted's chief lambasts state schools, Naomi Caine looks at the cost of sending your child to an independent one and ways of funding such a major expense
THE state-school system is failing our children, according to the chief inspector of schools. Last week's report from the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) called for the dismissal of bad teachers and demanded improvement in 4 out of 10 secondary schools.
The damning indictment of Britain's state-run education system panders to parental fears of slipping standards and poor performance.
How many pupils will wangle a place in one of the report's 32 "outstandingly successful" secondary schools? What faces those who have to fall back on the local comprehensive?
Mothers and fathers who naturally want the best for their children are turning to the private sector and are paying for their offspring to be educated in independent schools.
But Ofsted has warned that while many independent schools are very good, a small number are "giving serious cause for concern".
In 1979, 5.8% of all pupils in England sat in an independent schoolroom. In 1994, that percentage had gone up to 7.2% about 600,000 pupils.
But it costs £3,000 to £9,000 per term to send a child to an independent senior school more if it is a boarding school.
As the normal senior school career lasts from age 11 to 16, that adds up to between £45,000 and £135,000, without allowing for inflation. Fees consistently rise above the rate of inflation and in 1992-93 jumped by 8.3%. Parents must also take into account uniforms, extra curricular activities and school trips.
"Private schooling is expensive," says Danby Bloch, an independent financial adviser. "But so are houses, cars and holidays. It's a question of priorities." Assuming most parents put their child's educational needs over a fortnight in the Caribbean, what is the best way to pay for private schooling?
Some state help is available to lower-income families via the Assisted Places Schemes (which Labour is pledged to abolish if it wins power), but it is limited. A number of schools also offer scholarships and bursaries, usually only to very gifted children.
The vast majority of parents have to dig deep into their own pockets to pay fees, and usually rely on income or prudent savings and investments.
"People think there is some mystery to school-fees planning. But funding schooling is no different from funding any other major purchase," says Bloch.
Ordinary savings and investment schemes dressed up as school-fees plans confuse the consumer and cost more too.
Though the practice is largely discredited, Bloch urges parents to look beyond any fancy wrapping and see the product for itself: "Parents can take their pick from the whole range of savings and investment plans on the market. Building-society accounts, Tessas, Peps can all play a part in school-fees planning." The independent adviser School Fees Insurance Agency (SFIA) has recently launched a school-fees Pep. The Pep Education Plan is a straightforward Pep by any other name and offers tax-free investment in a choice of six funds, all from mainstream investment houses.
"The funds range from the ultra-cautious to the slightly bolder," says Anne Feek, managing director of SFIA. "By offering a spread of risk, we are providing an investment for every pocket."
Peps may promise high returns and they may be tax-efficient, but they are also volatile.
Roger Mattocks, director of the school-fees specialists Whitehead and Partners, says: "If a parent wants to cash in a Pep on September 1, 2006, when fees are due, and the stock market crashes that day, then the child's education may be in jeopardy. I always recommend a mixed portfolio so riskier plans are offset by safer schemes."Enter the much-maligned endowment policy. "Over a period of 10 years or more, endowments have a proven track record of quality performance," explains Mattocks. "For parents planning ahead, they can be an attractive proposition."
Scottish Provident pushes an endowment plan for school fees. "The plans are with profits, which means that the benefits are guaranteed and increased each year by the addition of bonuses," says Marianne Cantley, the product marketing manager at Scottish Provident.
Scottish Provident offers a level-premium investment plan over 10 to 20 years and a step-up plan, where premiums increase over the term as family income hopefully rises.
A child born today might enter private education in 2001, aged five, until 2013. Assuming total school fees of £100,336, including inflation, a recommended savings strategy to begin now would cost £324 a month, split between a Tessa (£74), a Pep (£150) and an endowment policy (£100).
A number of companies flaunt educational trusts as a means of funding school fees. The trusts carry some tax advantages, but they also carry heavy penalties if the accumulated fund is used for anything other than education. "We rarely recommend educational trusts because of their inflexibility," says Mattocks.
"Nobody can say with absolute certainty what they or their children will be doing in 5 or 10 years' time. If the parents divorce, change their jobs or if the child does not want to stay in private education, they may not want their money locked into an educational trust."
Changes in circumstances or fortune may force parents to take up the option of last resort in school-fees funding borrowing. Some parents take out a second mortgage on their home to raise extra capital; others choose an unsecured loan from a bank or building society.
SFIA arranges an immediate fees plan through Bank of Scotland. Parents can borrow up to £20,000 at 4.5% interest over base rate and have up to 15 years to repay the loan. But the main advantage is the termly or annual drawdown facility with interest charged only on the amount actually drawn.
However fees are funded, parents should regularly review the plan. School fees change, parents change, children change and so do governments. Parents should also plan as early as possible, preferably when the future university scholar is still no more than a twinkle in his or her parents' eyes.For more details, contact SFIA on 01628 502020 or Whitehead & Partners on 0161-928 2209
School of thought: the Birts are agreed private education is best for son Harry
SARA BIRT and her husband, David, would like their son Harry to go to private school.
Sara, 39, was educated privately while David, 31, a doctor, went through the state system, but they are both troubled by recent reports about standards in education.
The Birts say they are not against the state system, but are attracted by the complete private-education package.
"We would like Harry to have every opportunity, not just in the classroom, but on the sports field and in the arts world," says Sara.
Harry will be two next month and will attend state school until he is seven. "We cannot afford to educate Harry privately from the age of three or five, but we would like him to go to a private prep school," she says.
The Birts, of Tavistock, Devon, need to save about £60,000 to send their son to a prep school between the ages of seven and 13 and they admit it is a "frightening" amount of money.
They sought financial advice from SFIA, which recommended a 10-year with-profits endowment plan with monthly premiums of £200. "We liked the fact that the policy offered us some stability and some flexibility," says Sara. "After all, we don't know what Harry will want when he is older, so there is no point in tying our money up if we don't have to."
SFIA reviews the Birts' policy every year to make sure it keeps pace with the rising cost of fees and any change in their expectations.
The couple have good earning potential and are prepared to put more money aside for Harry's future as he gets older.
SOME tentative good news from insurance companies: the dreadful weather of the past few weeks had not, at least by the end of last week, produced significantly above-average claims for the insurance companies.
The Association of British Insurers reckons that, as long as conditions do not get any worse, the weather should not lead to premium increases for either motor or household policies next year.
A spokeswoman for Sun Alliance even managed to find a silver lining in the snow clouds. "If motorists break down because of the snow, that's not likely to result in a claim, and it means they're probably driving less and so claiming less overall," she says.
AT FIRST sight, it looks as if Pep mortgages have suffered a setback with the news that the Department of Social Security has decreed that money built up in a Pep plan linked to a mortgage will count as "capital" when determining if a potential claimant is eligible for income support.
Anyone with £8,000 or more of capital receives no benefit at all, while those with £3,000 and upwards find government help is whittled down.
With an endowment mortgage, sums built up in this way do not count as far as the DSS is concerned, perhaps because it believes endowment policies are still assigned, which means the lender has first call on the cash. In fact, most lenders stopped insisting on the assigning of such policies years ago.
Whatever the reason, it does look as if Pep mortgages are being treated unfairly compared with endowments, but I do not believe it is an issue that ought to influence borrowers unduly.
As the DSS itself never tires of pointing out, the majority of borrowers who become unemployed do not qualify for support anyway, perhaps because their partners are still working, or because they have other savings.
If borrowers who would otherwise qualify are disbarred by virtue of the Pep savings, they can cash the plan in and use the proceeds to repay a part of the mortgage. Having done so, they are then eligible for income support. The drawback is that planholders may be forced to cash in the Pep at a bad time, when the stock market has fallen. That must be balanced against the disadvantages of an endowment mortgage, which is less tax-efficient and more inflexible. Borrowers running into temporary difficulties might in fact be better off with a Pep mortgage because they can suspend Pep payments without difficulty.
What if the worst does come to the worst and borrowers want to cash in their respective plans?
While borrowers with Peps must run the risk that bad market timing would cut the cash-in value of their savings, those with endowments face the certainty of proceeds diminished by the impact of early-surrender penalties.
In short, if any salesman tries to use the DSS's changes as a reason to buy an endowment rather than a Pep mortgage, you can be fairly certain the motive is commission rather than concern.
In itself, this change, unfair and illogical as it might be, is not sufficient in most cases to alter the choice.
MG writes: I sent a limited-edition model railway engine worth £150 by Parcel Force, paying an extra 70p to improve compensation. But the package arrived crushed and, sadly, the engine can no longer be described as "mint, boxed". Parcel Force is refusing to pay up on the grounds that the loco was a "collectable", not covered under its terms and conditions. But I had told Post Office counter staff what was in the packet and this exclusion was never pointed out to me.
The moral of this tale is "beware Parcel Force exclusions", for while Royal Mail's Registered Plus postage will provide compensation for any goods sent through the post (up to £2,200), Parcel Force seems to take a pride in what it does not cover.
Beware, too, badly informed Post Office Counters staff. You subsequently discovered various Post Offices with no information at all about exclusions, and one that was supplying out-of-date literature that did not exclude collectables. Nevertheless, the up-to-date version of the "Parcel Force at your Service" leaflet has, in fact, added collectables to the three-page list of items which Parcel Force does not want anything to do with. This may come as a rude shock to the many collectors who, you say, routinely rely on Parcel Force to transport their valued Dinky Toys.
Other items excluded from compensation include precious stones, jewellery, antiques and money in other words, almost anything you would want compensation for if it got lost.
On the other hand, Parcel Force gives special mention to the "maggots, leeches and earthworms" it is happy to carry. Presumably the organisation will fall over itself to pay out compensation if these creatures happen to wander off during transit. Back to the real world: the Post Office which still owns Parcel Force says that because of the inconvenience you have suffered, you will be sent your £150 after all. The cheque will, of course, be sent by Royal Mail.
JP writes: About five years ago I bought a flat in a London mansion block and have been renting one of the car-parking spaces at £400 a quarter. In conversation with another resident recently, I discovered that I was paying four times as much as anybody else a total overpayment of £5,400. The managing agent is prepared to put me on to the same basis as other residents from the next quarter, but will not give me a refund and is even insisting I pay this quarter at the old rate.
I'm not surprised you were astounded to find you had been paying so much over the odds. When you rented your parking space you signed a standard agreement that had £400 written in by hand. You were new to London and had no way of knowing what sort of rate you should expect to pay.
It is obvious that when the rental agreement was drawn up by the managing agent (at that time, Goddard & Smith), somebody incorrectly put down the annual rent as the quarterly amount due an understandable mistake to make if, say, some residents were paying annually.
So far, so forgivable but initially Matlodge (the landlord which owns the freehold on your flat) refused to refund any money, so you went to a solicitor to seek advice. He reckoned that, as you had signed a contract, there was nothing to be done.
I must admit I am surprised your solicitor gave up so easily. One avenue he might have suggested was to demand a refund on the grounds of "money paid under a mistake of fact". After all, Matlodge did not intend to charge you more than anybody else, and you believed £400 to be the normal quarterly rate.
Equally important, though, your solicitor seems to have assumed your landlords were unreasonable people who would continue to behave unreasonably. But I found senior management at Matlodge and at Chesterton the firm which has recently taken over as its agent quite prepared to recognise an injustice. I am pleased to say a cheque for the full £5,400 is on its way to you.
When it paysto be paid up. AP writes: I have several with-profits endowment policies in force and no longer need them to pay off a mortgage. Should I cash them in or struggle to keep up the premiums? I could really do with the £100 a month I would save.
You do not mention another option. You could make them "paid up". Life companies often fail to point out to policyholders that, by completing a simple form, it is possible to apply for a policy to become paid up. No more premiums are paid, but bonuses (albeit smaller) will continue to accrue until the normal maturity date.
For example, one of your policies is a Royal Life with-profits endowment. Its current surrender value is almost £3,700, though your premiums so far total more than £4,200 (Royal Life, like other life
insurance companies, imposes swingeing penalties for early surrender). Thus, to cash it in unless you really had to would be a sad waste.
If you made the policy paid up, you could save £50 a month on the premium, and hang on to a more sensible proportion of the policy's current value. The companies all seem to apply different formulae in calculating paid-up values, but in this case, Royal would credit a total of £7,044 to your paid-up policy representing a reduced sum assured of £5,074 along with a £1,970 bonus (this is a proportion of past bonuses although, shamefully, Royal Life refuses to say how the figure was arrived at). You would still get future bonuses but they would obviously be a lot smaller than they have been because of the lower base figure.
I suggest you approach each of your policy providers and ask what the paid-up value of your policy would be. Look for a figure of about twice the cash-in value. Or, of course, you could always try selling your endowments but that's another story. Caught out by budget break. DA writes: On November 8 we gave National Savings notice that we wished to cash in our Income Bonds and buy Pensioners' Bonds with the proceeds. The rate for Pensioners' Bonds has been cut from 7.5% to 7%, yet people who applied to make the same switch between November 29 and January 25 have been told they can have Pensioners' Bonds at the old rate. We applied earlier and yet can only get the bonds at the new, lower rate. This is unfair.
For once I think the Treasury got it right. The November 29 date is relevant because this was when, in his budget, the chancellor reduced the age qualification for Pensioners' Bonds to 60. A lot of pensioners therefore decided to switch from Income Bonds to Pensioners' Bonds, believing that the latter would be paying out 7.5%. When the rate of interest on these bonds was cut, there could have been an outcry that pensioners had been hoodwinked: the "special concession" given by National Savings was a recognition that these people had been prompted to take action by special circumstances. On the other hand, it is true that they just as much as you switched knowing interest rates might change. I am afraid that "special concessions" are seldom fair to those left out in the cold.
Roger Anderson will answer questions in this column on any aspect of personal finance. Write to Questions of Cash, The Sunday Times, 1 Pennington Street, London E1 9XW. We regret no personal replies can be given and point out that it will not be possible to deal with every request. Advice is offered without legal responsibility
FOREIGN & COLONIAL is making a bid for the maturing Tessa market with a new growth unit trust.
The Target Index Fund aims to offer a return equivalent either to the capital growth in the FT-SE 100 index or the rise in the retail prices index (RPI), whichever is the greater after six years. By offering investors two growth benchmarks, Foreign & Colonial (F&C) hopes to cut out some of the risk of a stock-market investment. At the very worst, the capital investment will keep pace with inflation.
Craig Walton, the F&C marketing director, said: "Nobody can predict the future, but from past history, both the FT-SE 100 and the RPI have achieved capital growth under quite different economic and political conditions." An investment of £10,000 in 1989 would have grown to £15,228 against the Footsie by 1995, or to £12,609 against the RPI.
The minimum investment in the fund is £2,000, with an initial charge of 1% or less, depending on the size of the deposit. There is an annual charge of 1.75% and decreasing exit charges from 2% to 0.5% until year five. The fund is open to investors from February 27 until March 19. Foreign & Colonial: 0171-628 8000
BRITANNIA building society's loyalty-bonus scheme, the first to give members a direct share of the lender's profits, has raised fears among rival mutuals that it may be too complex and costly to run.
The scheme will distribute £35m one third of its 1995 profits to 1.6m members, with a maximum payout set at £500 per member.
While other mutuals welcomed the scheme as a strong commitment to mutuality, they were concerned at its complexity. Yorkshire building society said: "We are delighted Britannia has joined the mutuality club, though the costs of running its scheme, and its complexities, do concern us."
Bradford & Bingley said the Britannia scheme was flawed because it delayed payouts: "Some of the Britannia members will not qualify for payouts. Those that do will have to wait until next year before they get it."
Further question marks remain in some minds. Britannia's wholehearted commitment to mutuality may fall flat if it gets its figures wrong, and that may lead to a predator making a bid.
And yet the move is the bravest one yet by a building society to retain its mutual status. Under the scheme, the Britannia promises to distribute a portion of its profits to members every year, in the same way as shareholders receive dividend payments from a listed company. The scheme, first revealed by The Sunday Times last July, awards "points" to members on the basis of the size of their mortgage, qualifying investments and length of membership. Further bonus points are awarded for length of membership and to those who hold Britannia Peps or life policies.
At the end of each year, Britannia will declare a monetary value per point, and pay the sum to members out of its profits. This first distribution represents one third of total profits of £112.7m in the year to December 31, 1995, and will be paid out in early 1997.
An additional £6.5m will be used to take a quarter-point off the variable mortgage rate for borrowers who have been with the society for more than five years.
The scheme works like this: Britannia awards one point per £100 held in a qualifying investment account up to a maximum of £20,000 and one point per £1 paid each month in mortgage payments up to a maximum of £500. Life policies, Peps, unit trusts and pensions earn a flat 50 points each.
Members of five to nine years' standing will have their total points multiplied by 1.5; and those with 10 years-plus will have their points doubled.
The maximum payment per member for 1996 will be £500, the minimum £10, and the average £40. The money will be paid direct into any Britannia account specified by members.
To achieve the maximum payout is not easy. You must have a Britannia mortgage of £80,000, with repayments of at least £500 a month; £200 in monthly investments; six other Britannia products such as Peps and pensions; and you must have been a member for at least 10 years. Britannia conceded that few people fall into that category.
A more typical scenario is that of a young family with two years' membership (no points), a £60,000 mortgage repayabale at £420 per month (420 points), a £5,000 high-interest account (50 points) and a life policy (50 points). The total is 520 points. The payment, assuming each point is worth 25p, is £130.
John Heaps, Britannia's chief executive, said: "The actual amount members receive will depend crucially on the profit that we make during the year. Clearly, the better we do, the more members will get."
Critics say it may cost a great deal to administer the scheme and rival societies have chosen less-complex routes. Yorkshire building society was the first to launch a loyalty scheme last October, which pays out £20m about 25% of its profits in the form of lower mortgage rates. It also introduced a minimum rate for savers.
Nationwide will announce details of its loyalty scheme in early April. It will be worth at least £150m, dwarfing Britannia's, but is more likely to take the form of interest-rate adjustments than cash payouts. Bradford & Bingley unveiled a £50m profit-sharing scheme last month, representing about a third of its profits, payable as better rates for borrowers and savers.
As state schools come in for fresh indictment over low
standards, more parents are searching for ways to raise the substantial amounts needed to provide a private education for their children.Full story, page 3
HOUSEHOLDERS face council-tax rises up to 15% in the spring about five times the rate of inflation. The tax hikes will add an extra £81.45 to the average £543 bill, writes Naomi Caine.
The government has set local-council spending requirements for 1996-97 at £44.93billion, 3.3% more than last year. But state support is down by 2.9%, leaving a shortfall of 6.2% before inflation.
Labour-controlled Slough borough council charges BandD taxpayers £452.86 a year, but predicts a 15.5% jump in April to £523.05.
Hackney in east London is raising its bills by 10.9% to £863 for a BandD taxpayer. Nick Tallentire, leader of the Labour council, blames "savage funding cuts from central government".
Liverpool city council is forecasting a modest 4% rise, but will push the annual BandD taxpayer's bill over the £1,000 mark. Martin Cresswell, of the Labour council's treasury department, blames the government: "It is another example
Continued on page 2
of central government screwing local authorities to the floor."
Residents of Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, which is controlled by Conservatives and independents, enjoy a council tax well below the national norm. But Bob Charles, treasurer, warns of rises of more than6% in the spring. He said: "I have twice asked the government to review the grants given to the council, but in vain. Unless we cut services, we have no choice but to raise the council tax rate."
Even the loyal Conservative councils are struggling to balance the books. Flagship Tory London borough Wandsworth will not reveal its new council tax rate, but Simon Heywood, director of Finance, said the new spending limits were "not terribly good news". "They represent a loss of government support of some £11m, or £17m if you include inflation," he said.
But Wandsworth hopes to buck the trend set by other authorities and cut its council tax in 1996/97 by drawing on council reserves.
BARCLAYS has failed in a legal action to block the launch of a low-cost credit card charging a much lower lending rate than Barclaycard.
A High Court judge threw out Barclays' case against the new card's issuer, RBS Advanta a joint venture between the Royal Bank of Scotland and the US credit-card giant Advanta. The decision clears the way for RBS Advanta to go ahead with a launch party for the RBS Advanta Visa Card on Tuesday. Barclays sued RBS Advanta for using the Barclaycard trademark in an advertising brochure that compares lending rates offered by several top card issuers, including Lloyds, NatWest, Midland and TSB. The ad shows that RBS Advanta's lending rate is at least four percentage points lower than those offered by the main British clearing banks.
Barclays, whose credit card charges a 22.6% rate, sought an emergency injunction to stop RBS Advanta from using the advertising brochure.
Barclays did not directly oppose the rival's use of comparative tables in its advertising. It attempted instead to use a sophisticated argument involving a breach of the Trademark Act to undermine RBS Advanta's launch. Barclays insisted RBS Advanta was "not honest" in its use of the Barclaycard trademark. The bank also claimed RBS Advanta's 15 ad points did not "compare like with like" and were inaccurate. The advert gave RBS Advanta an "unfair advantage".
Mr Justice Laddie, in dismissing Barclays' argument, said: "(Barclays') case is very weak ... Read fairly, the advertisements convey the message that the package of 15 features, taken as a whole, is believed by the defendant to offer the customer a better deal."
RBS Advanta was delighted with the ruling. Tim Lewis, its marketing director, said: "The hearing delayed us a few weeks but, had we given way, other banks like NatWest and Lloyds might have put pressure on us as well."
Barclays said it was "disappointed" by the decision, but would not be pursuing the case. A spokeswoman for the bank said: "We are concerned that consumers are not misled by new entrants many of them from America."
THE insurance industry is warning homeowners to check their buildings-insurance policies amid fears of a wayward Chinese satellite crashing on British rooftops this month.
The satellite, about the size of a car, is orbiting out of control 100 miles above the Earth, and is due to crash-land some time in the next four weeks. It passes over Britain four or five times a day and has been specially constructed to withstand re-entry into the atmosphere, so if it smashes into your house travelling at about 1,000mph it might loosen a few roof tiles.Most people would, naturally, be more concerned about being squished into charcoaled particulates by the one-ton metal meteor, but not the Association of British Insurers. It is warning homeowners that their claims for rebuilding costs will be scaled down if their sum assured is not high enough, and says now is an ideal time to check. A spokesman said: "If you were unfortunate enough to be hit, it would only make a difficult situation much worse if the sum assured was not accurate. Although being hit by an aircraft or aerial device is listed as a specific peril on buildings policies, claims could be downscaled if the sum assured is too low." The threat of the satellite crash-landing in Britain is real enough. The Home Office has contacted local authorities, urging them to prepare "emergency planning measures" in case of a crash.
There have been other cases where satellites have crashed on Earth. Parts of the US Skylab space station landed in the Australian Outback in 1979, and only last month a Russian moon-landing vehicle fell into the Pacific Ocean after 20 years in orbit.
But the insurance industry's worries may be unnecessary: under an international treaty, countries that launch objects into space have agreed to pay for damages if they crash-land. So, assuming you live to tell
the tale, send your invoice for a new home to the Chinese government...
THE mortgage price war is throwing up increasingly bizarre gimmicks as lenders battle for new business, writes Nick Gardner.
National & Provincial (N&P), due to be taken over by Abbey National this summer, is launching a mortgage costing one old penny a month to mark the 25th anniversary of decimalisation on Friday.
It says the deal will be popular with new borrowers wishing to save money in the early stages of the mortgage.
There is a free valuation thrown in so borrowers with a £60,000 loan will save £2,250 in the first six months, after which the interest rate reverts to the society's standard variable rate of 7.54%. The interest will not be rolled up during the discounted period.
N&P said: "We are sending a ‘beat-this-if-you-can' message to all lenders."
However, rivals gave the deal a lukewarm reception. "The N&P deal equates to a 3.77% saving in the first six months," said the broker Chase de Vere, "but the Scarborough is offering a 6.4% discount for the first year, which will save far more."The low offers have created the ideal climate for borrowers to remortgage to save money.See full story, pages 8 and 9
GARTMORE is to plug the gap in its range of investment trusts with a big closed-ended trust investing in the resurgent Japanese stock market.
Gartmore's new Japan fund will aim to attract £100m during an offer period which opens for about six weeks from Easter.
Gartmore, better known as one of Britain's biggest unit-trust and pension-fund managers, sees the move as an attempt to carve out a role as a leading investment trust manager.
The launch also marks the huge shift in sentiment towards Japanese equities, a market in which Gartmore's other international funds have been heavily underweight for the past decade or so.
That is set to change. City analysts agree that the Nikkei has started its long climb out of the deepest trough encountered since the second world war. The downturn was caused by a combination of global recession, a soaring yen and a series of domestic financial scandals.
Michael Wrobel, managing director of Gartmore Investment Trust Management, said: "Now all the scares in Japan are discounted. The authorities have taken the necessary action to sort out the problems."
A falling yen has added to the upbeat note, with Japanese exporters reaping the rewards in foreign markets.
Wrobel said the trust, which will apply standard charges, will invest in a mix of blue-chip exporting companies, banks, and smaller companies active across a range of business. It will be sold to private and institutional investors, an unusual double pitch based on heavy publicity up to the launch.
Mark Fawcett, who heads Gartmore's team of six in Tokyo, will manage the new trust. Fawcett already runs Gartmore's £77.5m Japanese unit trust which achieved a return of 92.7% over the five years to January 1, compared with a rise of 48.8% by the Tokyo stock-exchange index.
The year of the rat, which begins with the Chinese new year next week, has always benefited Japanese shares they traditionally rise 54% in rat years. But Fawcett, an Oxford maths graduate, is unlikely to entertain a belief in the economic healing powers of rodents.
Gartmore Brokerline: 0800 212433
Identify where our writer went and win a theatre break at the Landmark hotel
Sword and sorcery are this place's stock in trade. I walk the streets for 15 minutes but, apart from the odd intriguing old building, I can't sense much in the way of magic. However, references to assumed former glories abound, mainly in the window signs of launderettes and tea rooms, nearly all of which are apostrophe-free zones.
I ignore the signs to the town's principle attraction and carry on down the main thoroughfare until I end up at one of the most hideous hotels I have ever seen, a folly of epic proportions, with an excruciating pun over its bar.
I don't suppose I should be too hard on the place. The blame for all this bandwagon jumping and crass commercialism (which, so it is claimed, included the town changing its name the original hamlet was called Trevena until the turn of the century) is Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who, ultimately must bear the blame for the building of that overbearing hotel.
I tramp the path down to the headland (bought by the National Trust as long ago as 1897, mainly to prevent any further unsuitable construction) below the hotel and, before picking up the coast road east, stand for a few minutes looking back at the town's famous off-shore island (although it only just qualifies as a separate entity once there was a natural causeway, rather than a man-made bridge). It is Sunday morning, the other tourists have not yet arrived, and a watery sun illuminates the, as yet, deserted ruins of the island. Out of sight of the genuine sixth-century car parks, I finally feel a hint of the magic that drew Turner, Dickens and Thackeray to this spot. But I can't linger. I have a three-hour walk ahead of me.
By the time I reach the next town, its car park has already filled, for this is another place that lives for and by tourism. I strike out away from the town up the river valley, two miles through the woods towards a church, and the town's most famous literary association. The man in question came in 1870, charged with restoring the said church and found his first wife as well. His love for the area comes through strongly in his third novel which, a few geographical liberties apart, is recognisably set in these parts.
The church is deserted, possibly because it is not easy to gain access by road. Although the widower designed and installed a memorial plaque to his wife inside, the marriage had not, in the end, been an entirely happy one. She had even tried to have one of his most famous novels suppressed as obscene. Thereafter, he wrote only poems, including some to her memory.
As I head back over the stile, I meet a small group of people who have made the same journey up the valley, Americans on a literary pilgrimage that has taken them to every site associated with this famously heartless writer. "This is the last stop," said one breathlessly, "before Westminster Abbey."
THE QUESTIONS:
1 What is Trevena now called?
2 What is the name of the famous author's church?
THE PRIZES:
This week's first prize from the five-star Landmark London hotel in NW1 is a Show Time theatre break. For two people, it can be taken on any Friday or Saturday night, and includes supper in The Dining Room, a private car to the West End show of the winner's choice (top-price tickets), champagne, desserts and coffee back at the hotel, and English breakfast the next morning. Show Time is one of a series of "Great Escapes" grouped into themes including Capital City, Brief Encounter, Suite Interlude and The Ultimate Escape (the last being £3,500 per night). All include parking and the use of the Landmark's health club. For details, call 0171-631 8000.
The winner and two runners-up will also receive a Cadogan London guide plus another guidebook of their choice.
Entries, on a postcard please, to WHERE WAS I? The Sunday Times, PO Box 6884, London E2 8SS, by first post next Thursday. Normal Times Newspapers rules apply. The winners will be the first selected at random from all the correct entries received by the closing date.
Last week's results: the baronet was Sir Francis Dashwood, and the party venue was Medmenham Abbey. See page 3 for winners
Sir Peter Hall, 65, directs for theatre, opera and TV. He has been artistic director of both the RSC and National Theatre. He has six children, three former wives, and is now married to Nicola Frei, with whom he has a three-year-old daughter. His production of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband is at the Haymarket Theatre, London Photograph by Peter Trievnor. PETER HALL recommends frequent changes of scene.
I'm getting better at holidays nowadays because my wife Nicki is good at making me take them. We often tend to take winter breaks as we love looking at things, and who wants to do that with crowds of people in the heat? We're both keen on art galleries and ancient monuments because they give you a sense of the past. I'm not very good at ruins, which I find a bit sad, although I love Pompeii. We once spent a wonderful Christmas in Florence, which is my favourite city in the world. Florence is a celebration of people on a human scale: the buildings are beautiful and full of surprises. You walk into what you think is an ordinary, rather dark church, and you find a dazzling painting. At Christmas, Florence was empty so you could walk everywhere, although some of the restaurants weren't open, which was a bit of a drawback; we had Christmas dinner in a Chinese restaurant. I once went to Venice in winter, too; I'd got very tired running the RSC and I thought I needed a break. I went on my own, but this you must not do. I came back after three days. At that time of the year, Venice was gothic and gloomy and misty and strange. Fine with the one you love, and I must admit I'm the kind of person who wouldn't want to go on holiday without the one I love. Absolutely wouldn't, and I always need to be doing things.
Greece is terribly important to me, because the Greeks really did civilisation. I think we're still living on what Greece achieved. I love Greek theatres, and Epidaurus is one of my favourite places on earth. We've had a lot of wonderful holidays there with Jules Dassin and Melina Mercouri, who sadly is no more. I haven't been to many places in the world that I regard as holy, but Epidaurus is certainly one of them, and unlike anywhere else. It's set in the hillside, and looks out over 40 miles of completely deserted Greek landscape. The amphitheatre is beautiful, with proportions that look as though it's a geometric pattern and aisles that look straight but are gently curved, so it's very human. It holds about 12,000 people and you can play in it without amplification. I'm directing Sophocles' two Oedipus plays in Epidaurus as the climax to the Athens festival this summer, before we bring them to the National. In Epidaurus we swim and eat late; I especially love the way that in Greece you eat at midnight and go on all night.
As I'm such a restless individual, a long weekend looking at paintings in Amsterdam, or a week in Naples visiting Pompeii are refreshing stimulations. Recently, I took Nicki to Rome for the weekend, because I'm doing an opera there. It's the most wonderful place but, walking from the Vatican City to the Sistine Chapel, we saw some gypsy women and children, and we both felt terribly guilty because we couldn't find enough small change to distribute. They jostled us and, moments later, my wife discovered her wallet and credit cards had been stolen. Before we even had time to report them missing, the credit cards had been used to the tune of £1,500.
We also went to Tokyo for three weeks, which is the most extraordinary, packed modern city, all terribly organised, with a line down the pavement so you keep to the right. As a 6ft 2in Englishman, I felt tall and noticeable, grotesque, in fact. We went round the temples in Kyoto, but I had had this vision of those extraordinary temples set in space with Mount Fuji in the background, surrounded by rice fields and horizontal lines. Sadly, they're not like that any more. If you imagine beautiful Buddhist 11th-century temples set down in Slough, you have a fair idea of what it's like. Awful!
As a boy my holidays were very different we hardly went on any. My parents weren't at all flush; my father was a station-master and we could get privileged rail travel, so we went for a week to Hastings and St Leonards, where we stayed in digs. We never went abroad. When I was an older schoolboy, I went on culture-related holidays with a school friend to Stratford, in 1946 and 1947. We cycled from Cambridge and camped on the municipal camping ground by the Avon. We stood at the back of the Shakespeare Memorial theatre to see Paul Scofield play Hamlet. The first time I ever went to Stratford was with a school party and I saw Love's Labour's Lost, directed by Peter Brook, who was then just 21. I was furious! I couldn't work out how someone could do work of such brilliance and be at Stratford so young. He later became my best friend. I myself was 23 when I arrived at Stratford to direct for the RSC.
I first went to New York in 1956 with Leslie (Caron), shortly after we'd been married, so I could see New York, which she knew and I didn't. It was absolutely incredible; it was the centre of the world's theatre, with Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan. Now, nothing's happening. Of course, those were the days before jet travel, when the flight took about 20 hours and you put down at Shannon and Goose Bay, and you had a bunk where you slept in your pyjamas. Actually, I think it was more civilised in a way than now. The airlines pretend air travel is comfortable and spend more and more on advertising to tell us how wonderful it is but, in fact, it's monstrously uncomfortable. I'm being diverse, because I suppose my fantasy holiday would be diverse. I'd like to wake up on a Greek island, then I'd go and look at Florence, have lunch in a wonderful restaurant just underneath les Beaux in Provence, where I went with Leslie as a young man. Afterwards I'd have a sleep, then I'd spend late afternoon to sunset swimming on a Caribbean beach. Before dinner, I'd go and see a wonderful play directed by Peter Brook or Peter Stein at Epidaurus. I'd have dinner at Aubergine in Chelsea, then I'd sleep on our friends' yacht and see the dawn come up over the Greek islands. These things are celebrations which, for me, is what a holiday should be.
Peter Hall talked to Ann McFerran.
France's popularity may have taken a beating thanks to the savage exchange rate, but, says DAVID WICKERS, a combination of easy, flexible access and franc-stretching strategies will save the day.
This summer's Channel fleet will be bigger, faster, and cheaper than ever beforeThe summer is not looking too hot for France. The heritage of Pacific nuclear tests, fundamentalist bombers, strikes, 7.5 miserable francs to the pound and, to cap it all, the refusal of half of its banks to handle our Eurocheques, are conspiring to keep us away. And the news on Thursday morning was a complete shutdown at Calais, due to industrial action.
The French are certainly worried. Although the government decided to axe the short-lived Ministry of Tourism (it is now back with "Transport and Equipment"), the Tourist Office has committed £3m to promoting the joys of the country. The investment includes, in conjunction with P&O Ferries, £1.25m on its first national television campaign, in which arty shots of la belle France are accompanied by British yobbos chanting: "'Ere We Don't Go."
But perhaps the alarm bells are ringing unneccesarily: this year, France will still be our number one destination, with close to 9m of us going for a holiday (as distinct from a business or day trip). The strength of the franc is also old news the last time that £1 bought Fr10 was in
October 1990.
There will always be Brits who, no matter what the cost, could never do without their annual fix of France. But what of the rest? Can we have France in 1996 without crippling the bank account?
FRENCH CONNECTIONS
The rising strength of the franc is the equivalent to a hike in the price of packages by as much as 10% over last year. But many operators have managed to keep prices down by trimming their profit margins and asking their suppliers to do the same. Crystal (0181-390 3335), for example, maintains that prices of the 500 villas in its portfolio have risen by an average of 2%, while French Life (0113-2390077) has managed to keep its prices in line with last year by forward-buying francs at Fr7.80 to £1.
Published ferry fares show an average rise of about 5% to 6%, but the prices you see in the brochure are likely to come down as competition hots up, particularly on the short sea-crossings, between the ferry companies Le Shuttle and Eurostar.
This summer's Channel fleet will be bigger, faster, more frequent and undoubtedly cheaper than ever before. On July 1, Stena's (0990-707070) 28,000-tonne, 2,300-passenger ship Empereur will become the largest ever to ply the Dover straits. On Tuesday, the world's largest car-carrying, high-speed catamaran, the Stena Lynx II, with room for 600 passengers and 130 cars, will begin services between Dover and Calais, a 45-minute crossing cutting the regular time in half. In June, the even bigger, even faster Stena Lynx III will take over. On the Newhaven-Dieppe route, the Stena Lynx IV, which will halve the crossing to two hours, comes into service at the end of March (it leaves Australia at the end of this month).
Stena's 27 sailings a day from Dover to Calais will be in head-on competition with P&O's (0990-980980) 25 a day; the 15 departures of the newest ferry company, SeaFrance (01304-204204), born from the ashes of the Sealink/SNAT partnership; five from Hoverspeed (01304-240241); in addition to four SeaCat sailings between Folkestone and Boulogne.
The competition has already resulted in some early bargains.
The car and two passenger fare with SeaFrance, until the end of March, is £90 return, and includes a £45 voucher to set against any standard return crossing from April to December. P&O's fare until the end of March for a standard return is £105 for car plus driver, or £149 for the car and up to nine passengers, and is also applicable to sailings from Portsmouth to Le Havre or Cherbourg. A Stena five-day excursion for the same period costs £50 for car and driver, £56 with an additional passenger, or £62 for up to nine. There is also an introductory deal on the new fast ferry, available until April 30, of £49 for a 72-hour excursion for a car and up to five passengers (£59 if travel involves a Saturday). On Sally (0990-595522), sailings from Ramsgate to Dunkerque, the winter-saver five-day return fare for a car and up to five passengers costs £50, a standard return £99, until the end of March.
Despite the naval battle on the short sea-crossings, there is still good reason to consider the western approaches. The key advantage is that your ship can let you off much nearer to where you may want to go. Brittany, one of the most popular destinations in France for the British, is obviously best served by sailings on Brittany Ferries (0990-360360) to St Malo and Roscoff from Portsmouth or Plymouth. But, with motoring prices in France having risen by an average of 15% (Automobile Association figures), the savings of, say, the 250 miles on the distance to Biarritz from Cherbourg rather than Calais, are significant on the pocket as well as the nerves (especially for families travelling with small children).
Vital advice to help you save money on your holiday to France, therefore, is to keep abreast of the ferry deals. And don't forget Eurostar (0345-881881), which, last week, announced a return fare to Paris of £59 for travel Monday to Thursday (weekends £69), with a minimum stay of three nights. Even though the fare is valid only until March 28, with 10m seats to be filled this year there is no way it will be the last of the bargains.
Le Shuttle (0990-353535) has a Monday-to-Thursday round-trip fare of £39 (£49 weekend) for the car and any number of passengers, valid for travel after midday from Folkestone, returning the next day before 4pm. The next best deal is the five-day excursion fare from £70.
Also launched last week to ease the pain of the franc is a brochure from French Rail (head office 0171-491 0356; brochure hotline 0181-880 8160), dedicated to bargain fares to southeast France, based on Eurostar travel to Lille and onward connections by TGV (train a grande vitesse) to Lyon, Dijon, Marseille, Nice and other destinations. Sample fare to Lyon: from £118 round trip, a six-hour city-centre to city-centre journey, with just the one easy change of train and no changing stations in Paris. Tickets need to be booked 30 days in advance for travel before March 28 (eight-day advance purchase: £136.80). From June, when the new high-speed Paris bypass line opens south of Paris, you will be able to get direct TGV services from Lille to Brittany, the Loire valley and southwest France. Journey time to Nantes will be about five and a half hours.
The best of bargains has to be the new CityZap (0800-968504) bus company, which is offering a return fare between London and Paris of £29, travelling through the Tunnel on Le Shuttle, about a seven-hour ride. Book (as many tickets as you like) before the end of this month for travel from March 1; otherwise £55.
Airlines have also been producing some remarkably low fares, especially on the hotly contested route from London to Paris, the busiest international air corridor in the world, with some 60 flights a day in each direction. Best current deal is with Air UK (0345-666777) from Stansted for just £59 return if you buy your ticket this week (before February 17) for travel before April 30. Nice will cost £99 (but you need to travel before March 31). The best package is a two-night weekend break with Air France Holidays (0181 742 3377), Paris Travel Service (01992-456000), Cresta (0161-927 7000) and Travelscene (0181-427 4445) for £99 at the three-star Mercure hotel in Paris (£119 at the Meridien), with Air France flights from Heathrow, a free bus and Metro pass, a free pass to 65 museums and monuments, but based on two travelling together and valid before the end of March. All the above fares are conditional on spending a Saturday night in France and are subject to availability, so the sooner you book, the better the chance of getting the dates you want.
FRANC STRETCHERS
Look for added value and booking incentives, such as the Carte d'Or offered by Just France (0181-780 0303), which entitles clients to a minimum of 10% discounts on golfing green fees throughout France, as well as on wine purchases from vineyards in the wine districts and from the warehouses in the Channel ports; or the free overnight hotel en route to your destination, through Crystal Premier France (0181-390 3335).
Think canvas rather than bricks and mortar. A tent in Brittany for 12 nights, including ferry crossing for car and family of two adults plus up to four children, costs as little as £182 in May with Keycamp (0181-395 4400). The current brochure also reveals midsummer price cuts, with £10-£15 off half of its July holidays, and up to £20 off selected holidays in August. A reassuring piece of recent research from Sunsites (01565-625533) revealed that a shopping basket costing £19.28 in the Tesco at Northwich, Cheshire, cost £14.10 in the Calais Carrefour.
Study the timetables, especially if you are not tied to school holidays. Off peak sailings, early-morning and evening cast offs on the shorter ferry crossings, daytime rather than overnight on the longer western Channel.
Petrol is more expensive in France, so fill up in Dover and leave a cupful in your tank to get you up and off the ferry ramp on the way back.
Get off the beaten track. The less touristed regions of Franche-Comte, Limousin, Midi-Pyrenees and the Auvergne offer traditional rural France for fewer francs than the Dordogne, the Loire, the Cote d'Azur and the coast of Languedoc Roussillon.
Give the autoroutes a wide berth in favour of the lesser roads. From Calais to the South of France and back would mean a saving of £120 on peage payments. Look for the bison, the signs depicting the quieter, scenic routes. Bison Fute maps are available through the French Government Tourist Office, 178 Piccadilly, London W1V OAL (send £1 in stamps); tel 0891-244123 (39p low rate, 49p peak).
Think pression and pichet rather than bottled beers and wines. Ice creams will fatten your belly but considerably slim your wallet. If breakfast is not included in the room rate, go out to a bar for your coffee and croissant and have it on your feet rather than at a table on the pavement.
Despite the poor exchange rates, the two main elements of a holiday, room and food, compare favourably with prices at home. As a rough indication, you can reckon on paying around Fr100 a "star" for three- or four-star accommodation; in other words, a room in a three- star hotel will be in the region of £40. If you want to economise on accommodation, look for the bright yellow signs for chambres d'hotes (B&Bs) rather than hotels (most are classified through Gites de France), or travel with the Logis guide to 4,000 one- and two-star family-run hotels. In restaurants, you can easily find prix fixe menus for less than Fr100, about £13, even in Paris or the Cote d'Azur.
EUROPE SPECIAL
A scheme begun in 1951 might seem a bit vieux chapeau for a 1996 award with "tomorrow" in its title. But its very longevity is the surest indication that the Gites de France concept was both ahead of its time and that it worked.
The idea was this: in the immediate post-war years, rural France was falling apart as people migrated to the cities. And the cities were inhabited by increasing numbers of workers who needed, but often could not afford, the then standard holiday in the countryside.
So, why not give those who remained in the country grants to do up neglected farm buildings? And tie this to certain conditions, of which the most important would be that country dwellers would offer them at an agreed low rent to tourists (which, in those days, meant French city dwellers) for at least 10 years? As an additional incentive, the income from the rents would be taxed at a more benign rate than that exacted from professional landlords.
Et voila, country dwellers got an income and were less inclined to leave; tante Agathe's cottage got a loo and did not fall down; and the fabric of rural life was generally preserved. And, as a bonus, city dwellers got holidays they might not otherwise have been able to afford a concept the French called "social tourism".
The word "gite" was not then in common use, even in French. It had an archaic ring, rather like "abode". And yet it was the British of all people, with their tendency to call them "gits", who were to play a decisive role in rendering the word so international that other countries from Scandinavia to Ireland not only copied the scheme but adopted the name.
The French, frankly, thought they were not the least bit chic: downmarket holidays dispensed by local government offices. That changed in the 1970s when the British (prompted by the efforts of holiday company VFB and media publicity) cottoned on to the idea that gites were not only good value, but a slice of authentic French country living. For these were not properties with anonymous absentee landlords. Owners were required to live nearby and be of assistance.
British enthusiasm was such that, in 1978, Gites de France opened its first overseas office in London. Cultural differences were tackled: the French, who tend to entertain a table, provided plenty of dining chairs but few easy chairs and no kettles, mugs or teapot. Because of the deliberate simplicity of the concept, one was meant to do one's own cleaning and bring household items, such as sheets. Today, things are a touch more sophisticated and a "gite plus" will contain linen and a cleaning kit. But televisions and phones are still conspicuously absent from the detailed specifications.
Social benefits are hard to quantify. Anecdotal evidence for the success of the gites ("they saved our village bakery") is plentiful. Current statistics claim 285,000 beds slept in for 28m nights by 29% of visitors to the French countryside, and a turnover of £104m. Tourism does not come greener than that which handles such numbers without erecting a single new building in half a century.
Further information: Gites de France, 178 Piccadilly, London W1V 9DB (0171-493 3480).
LONG HAUL SPECIAL
THE 20 temples of Khajuraho, a small village in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, are at their most serene in the milky light of an early morning mist, when gods and goddesses carved in sandstone spires gaze at the sky as if entranced by the coming of the day.
As the first shafts of sunlight strike, the fluid contours of the deities are infused with the warmth of living beings, accompanied by musicians, mythical sharduls (horse-lions), and amorous consorts in exuberant tableaux that cover every facade, vestibule and sanctum.The most distinctive feature of the temples is their uninhibited erotica, thought to celebrate Shiva, the Hindu god of procreation. The gentlest sculptures show kissing couples absorbed in each other's eyes; the more vigorous progress through foreplay to scenes of love-making in ambitious yogic positions.
The figures have survived 1,000 years of monsoon rains virtually intact. They have also survived the late-20th-century arrival of thousands of visitors following a sensitive development pioneered by the Delhi-based Orient Express company.
The temples, erected between the 9th and 12th centuries, were "discovered" as a destination in 1953 by Shyam Poddar, the late founder of the company (which is unrelated to Venice Simplon-Orient-Express).
Poddar successfully lobbied the authorities for the airport and infrastructure needed to make the Khajuraho accessible. The company's elegant five-star Hotel Chandela, built by the eldest of Poddar's six sons, Kanti, opened a few days before the first plane load of tourists touched down in 1969.
More than 160,000 visitors a year now find the temples slightly shaken by the takeoff and landing of jets, but meticulously restored by the Archeological Survey of India and maintained with money from the taxes paid by the local tourist industry, which employs 2,000 of the 7,000 people living in and around Khajuraho.
The influx of affluence to a once-poor village is at its peak during Shivrati, a late-winter festival to mark Shiva's wedding, and government investment to secure the water supplies and medical services essential to any tourist spot have transformed facilities for locals.
The proportion of children attending school to learn the English needed for jobs in tourism has risen to 50%. Even the local tigers have benefited from the designation of their forest as the Panna National Park.
Kanti Poddar, chairman of Orient Express, said other gains from tourism included an end to indiscriminate felling of trees for firewood and a programme of reafforestation organised by his wife, Pramila, to "beautify" Khajuraho.
As David Bellamy affirmed, Khajuraho is a demonstration that "environmental tourism management and commercial success can go hand in hand".
Further information: Orient Express Company Ltd, 70 Janpath, New Delhi 110 001 (00 91-11 33 22 142).
AMERICAS
UNTIL he decided to turn his life into a jungle adventure, John Lewis was one of the least endangered species in the Americas: a trial lawyer in Minnesota. These days, however, he defends howling monkeys, macaws and other wildlife in the most threatened landscape on earth, the tropical rainforest.
Six years ago, Lewis and his wife, Karen, a classical musician, quit their jobs, cashed in all their assets and, with $1.3m behind them, embarked on a career change. They bought 1,000 acres of forest on the Osa peninsula of Costa Rica.
Although 20% of the land was secondary forest, regrown after being cleared by campesinos (peasant farmers), the rest was prime rainforest. Lewis, then a recent convert to environmental issues, saw his chance to build Lapa Rios a Nature reserve that could preserve the natural abundance, be a model for eco -tourism and, by working with local inhabitants, be a sustainable development.
Without felling any living trees, the Lewises built an open-sided, thatched dining area, small swimming pool and a collection of thatched lodges. Already barely visible from outside, the buildings will soon be hidden by vegetation.
This is, in American parlance, a small but "upscale" development with modern comforts, conjured, where possible, out of renewable resources. A spring supplies clean water through buried pipes. Septic tanks biodegrade the waste. Solar panels heat water, although a diesel generator is still required for lighting; there are plans for a hydroelectric generator when funds allow. Buildings were sited to catch natural breezes to eliminate the need for air -conditioning. Organic waste is composted, and other rubbish is transported out of the forest to proper disposal facilities.
Despite all that effort, no modern intrusion into the rainforest is without depredation. For example, traffic along the dirt track leading into the reserve has inevitably increased.
Here, the other strand of the project compensates: education of visitors and locals alike. Guests are encouraged to walk a number of trails, learning about the treasures of the forest from guides such as Augusto, a shaman teacher of spiritualism and an expert in the medicinal properties of plants. By employing only local staff in the resort, the Lewises also show how the forest can provide a living other than through its destruction. Slash and burn brings only transitory gains; eco-tourism can provide a lasting income.
As you take the dirt track from the tiny airstrip at Puerto Jimenez out to Lapa Rios, you pass through small farms and pasture land. To many, the scene might appear a tropical idyll. It is only when you enter Lapa Rios, and the uncut forest envelops everything, that you realise how the land should lie. Once, most of the country was forested. Defending that remaining environment and its biodiversity has been a tough project. But, as Lewis says: "It's easy to make a buck, it's hard to make a difference."
Further information: John and Karen Lewis, Lapa Rios, Box 100, Puerto Jimenez, Costa Rica; tel: 00 506 735 5130; fax: 735 5179
SOUTHERN
IAIN Douglas Hamilton, the legendary elephant expert, was finishing breakfast as I arrived at Tortilis Camp. He is researching the migration patterns of Amboseli's elephant population and was staying at Tortilis, just outside the southern perimeter of the National Park, because "it's my favourite place in Amboseli". On a scale of 1 to 10, this endorsement hit 11, and Stefano Cheli, the camp's young owner (Kenyan born and Italian bred his father chose farming over a career as an operatic tenor), struggled a bit to stay cool.
One reason for Douglas-Hamilton's enthusiasm is immediately obvious: the spectacular beauty of the location and the way the camp tucks itself into the scenery. Built into the side of the Ilmbirishari Hills, the main buildings reception, bar and dining room have an open-fronted design from which the land drops away with dramatic suddenness to reveal a 180 panorama of the Amboseli plains and, beyond them, Kilimanjaro. Lower down are dotted 15 luxury tents, which, although Tortilis didn't open until June 1994, are already camouflaged by indigenous trees and shrubs.
Less obvious are the strategies adopted to ensure efficient use of energy and minimum pollution, such as a low-consumption generator, virtually inaudible in its bunker; the low-voltage lighting system, which not only saves energy but also avoids brash dominance of the landscape; the woodburning stoves with water jackets that cook the staff food while heating their shower water.
All these, and more, played their part in Tortilis winning its award, but the most radical feature of its submission concerns an experiment in persuading Kenyans that their wildlife is of more value alive than dead.
Only 7% of the country is set aside for wildlife parks and protected areas; 75% of the animals exist outside these areas and depend on the goodwill of the landowners for survival. David Western, Richard Leakey's successor as director of Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS), says the wildlife faces growing hostility: "The parks are seen as stolen land, with the right to use it taken away from its owners to protect the animals and attract profitable tourism. Inevitably this creates friction; as a result, we have lost between 1/3 and 1/2 of our wildlife since 1977. Cheli is getting to the root of the problem, asking how tourism can help conservation." He believes that tourism must share its profits to give local communities a stake in protecting wildlife. At the moment, money from tourists visiting the national parks goes directly to the KWS. Cheli has uniquely negotiated for half the fee Tortilis clients normally pay to visit Amboseli National Park to be shared with the local community. He also pays a bed-night fee per guest and 70% of his staff are Masai. Cheli's approach to tourism is strongly
influenced by Western, but he is also a professional, with 10 years' experience running luxury tented safaris with his wife, Liz (Cheli and Peacock in Nairobi). Visitors to Tortilis win on both counts: a maximum of 30 guests means no Jeep-jams; a bush walk with James Seki, a Masai, provides insights into his people's culture; the food is unusually good; and guests will relish the hot shower in their tent after sundowners on a nearby hill. If they're lucky, Cheli will sing Nessun Dorma as he drives them back to camp keeping that top note with ease, despite the bumpy terrain.
Further information: Tortilis Camp, PO Box 39806, Nairobi (00 254-154 22551; fax: 22553).
PACIFIC
ONE has to be careful when explaining why Sea Canoe is so good. The Thais are a proud and successful people with the world's fastest growing GNP, a soaraway tourist industry, a record of doing things their way, and a keen resentment of outside criticism.
But they also have a record of trashing the environment while powerful men duck the rules: Bangkok is gridlocked, Pattaya a "how not to" classic, hotels fall down, lorries blow up and tropical hardwood forests get smuggled across borders with distressing regularity.
"Sustainability" is not just a desirable mantra for Thailand's touristic future; it is vital. Princess Sirindhorn, who, for the Thais, is Mother Teresa, the Virgin Mary and the more saintly bits of the Princess of Wales rolled into one, has said it many times. And were there not a picture of her paddling one of his canoes on John "Caveman" Gray's wall, Sea Canoe might not be the success story it is. By his own account, Gray "crawled into the surf at six months", and looks and sounds the product of the Californian 1960s flowering he once was. But beneath the hip talk is a hard-nosed lifelong quest to "prove that, with creativity, economic development and conservation can coexist as long-term partners".
For some years, Gray had had a small sea-kayaking sideline in Honolulu, where he was a lecturer, taking people around Hawaii and the South Pacific. In 1989, he flew to Thailand with the deflated canoes as cargo to investigate rumours of lost worlds in Phang Nga Bay, best known to foreigners as home of "James Bond Island" where The Man with the Golden Gun was filmed off the resort island of Phuket.
One of the virtues of canoes is their ability to get to places no other craft can, including the cave systems (hence Gray's nickname) of limestone karst islands, such as Bond's. What Gray established on that trip was that many of them had
hidden hongs, or lagoons with sheer rock walls inside, reachable only through caves at low tide. It is likely that no human had ever before entered all but the most accessible. The locals certainly knew of some, but regarded them as the preserve of spirits and probably crocodiles.
To enter one is to emerge in a place of awesome resonance, so still that you can hear a leaf fall, no crocs any more, just birds, monkeys, trees and bats. But how to preserve them? Gray was convinced that responsible commercial exploitation was the only answer.
He set up Sea Canoe in 1990. It was environmentally committed (no drinking, eating, littering, talking, smoking or more than 16 visitors a day in hongs) and socially committed (emphasising respect for staff, local culture and family, proper training and good pay).
It has gone much of the way towards achieving eventual local ownership, "though it would be wrong", their entry for this award confessed, "to suggest that this has been a total success".
But it has survived jealousies, bureaucratic obstruction, dubious accountancy and attempted takeovers, to the point where its biggest problem is now what Gray calls "eco pirates", the less scrupulous copycats who make the need for some form of proper resource management in the islands ever more crucial.
Sea Canoe's day trips are usually sellouts, the meals legendary. A three-day trip is a wondrous adventure into the world of sea gypsies, fishermen and birds' nesters, whose harvest is so valuable they guard their caves with automatics. You travel between islands by mother ship, then launch the canoes to explore under your own steam. Nobody else has achieved anything remotely like this in Thailand to my knowledge. May the iconic presence of the princess continue to watch over the enterprise.
Further information: Tourism Authority of Thailand on 0171-499 7679
UK & GLOBAL
FIRST, a few shock-horror facts. The volume of traffic on our roads, the "greatest environmental threat facing the UK" according to a 1994 royal commission on environmental pollution, has doubled over the past two decades. Cyclists on British roads are 10 times more likely to be killed or injured than those in Denmark, where, although it has a higher percentage of car ownership per capita than we do, a far more extensive network of cycle routes is provided.
Enter Sustrans, a civil engineering charity that champions the cause of sustainable transport. Over the past 16 years it has created nearly 500 miles of paths for cyclists, mostly along disused railway lines. Its flagship, the global winner of the Tourism for Tomorrow award, is the Sea to Sea (C2C for short), a 140-mile route right across the neck of England, linking the Irish and North seas.
With the support of 14 local authorities (an achievement worthy of an award in itself) C2C, the country's first national cycleway, was opened two summers ago. The route, which, to date, has been pedalled in its entirety by about 5,000 people and is best tackled west to east to take advantage of prevailing winds and more sympathetic gradients, can be started in either Whitehaven or Workington. It threads across the northern Lake District and the much-
neglected Eden valley, then ascends to the roof of England, crossing the Pennine moorlands, before snaking down the Durham dales and finally taking to recycled railway tracks through the once-thriving industrial heartland of the northeast, finally pedalling to a stop in either Sunderland or Newcastle. Forty-something miles at either end are along traffic-free paths, 20 follow rough tracks and 80 stick to minor roads.
The route means more than glorious scenery. Since their only power is muscle, their
only noxious gases sweat, their only jams those spread on the breakfast toast and their only parking space a garden wall or lamppost, cyclists are the ideal visitors to Britain's "Last Wilderness".
Apart from their low impact on the environment, cyclists stimulate the local economy far more than motorists. Since the opening of the C2C, everyone from wayside grocers, bike hirers and repairers, publicans and cafe owners, restaurateurs and farmers who have opened their gates to bed and breakfasters, have recorded a significant rise in trade.
But sustainable transport is a matter of urgency not just an optional leisure extra. As far as Sustrans is concerned, the C2C is helping to put cycling back on the map of Britain far beyond its own geographical catchment.
The route is intended as an inspiration, to get all of us back in the saddle on our way to work, to school and to the shops without the threat of cars and juggernauts. C2C, in fact, is just one small section of a planned countrywide 5,000-mile network of cycle routes, a macrame of bridleways, rail tracks, minor roads and segregated traffic lanes. The main spine, a 1,000-mile route linking Inverness and Dover, will pass within two miles a 10-minute cycle ride of 20m people.
Wishful thinking? Last year Sustrans was awarded a £43.5m grant from the national lottery's Millennium Fund to help create the first 2,500 miles, planned for completion by Easter 2000. The money, although only a quarter of the sum needed, has completely changed the scale of operation for Sustrans. What has been a fragmented series of local projects has become instead a nationally coherent and geographically continuous endeavour. There are as many bicycles in Britain as motorcars. All we need are places to use them in safety.
Further information: Sustrans, Rockwood House, Barn Hill, Stanley, County Durham DH9 8AN, tel/fax 01207-281259.
Sunday Times writers visited seven projects worldwide that are proving tourism can be a positive force for good
Responsible tourism is more than a holiday spent in the bush rather than the beach, trekking rather than tanning. It has to be carefully audited according to a wide set of criteria, social, economic and environmental.
According to the World Bank, less than 10% of earnings from tourism stay in the host country, and for that paltry reward it is likely to suffer irreparable damage to those natural assets and the cultural distinctiveness that first attracted the tourism.
Now for some good news. The annual British Airways Tourism for Tomorrow awards, first launched six years ago and co-sponsored by the British Tourist Authority, have been one of the key forces in eco-tourism, helping to move the concept of sustainable tourism from the stage of jolly good idea to concrete or, rather, non-concrete practice. The awards are an inspiration as well as a recognition of good projects that contribute to the local community, both economically and environmentally.
Tourism for Tomorrow works like this. The world is carved into five slices: the UK, Europe, the Southern region, Asia Pacific and the Americas. From more than 100 world-wide entries, a shortlist of three from each of the areas are then judged by a panel, chaired by David Bellamy, to find a global winner, five regional winners, and two mass-market projects Europe and long haul respectively that prove sustainability does not come exclusively in small packages.
To understand the spirit of the awards one needs only to look back at some of the previous finalists, each an ambassador to the concept of tourism as a force for the good The 1994 global winner was a Maori community that once hunted whales and now protects them in order to show them to tourists, so generating profit as well as preserving the species. Other past winners have included a charity that preserves the world's second largest coral reef inBelize; the Londolozi reserve in South Africa, where the combination of wildlife preservation and work with the local community has become a model for game park management throughout Africa; a project to clean up the so-called "Andrex" trekkers' trails in the Annapurna region of Nepal; and the caring management of Australia's Bungle Bungle in full co-operation with the local Aboriginal population.
Unlike the judges, who have to rely on written submissions, Sunday Times writers, as guests of British Airways, visited the seven winners, the names of which were announced at a grand black-tie do at Hampton Court, London, on Thursday. Not only did we find them fully deserving of praise for their environmentally sensitive approach to tourism, but they were providers of enormous pleasure for visitors.
THE winner of last week's Where Was I? competition was JB Griffiths of Holmes Chapel, Cheshire. She wins two weeks in Kenya, one week on the beach and another climbing Kilimanjaro, at 19,000ft the highest mountain in Africa, from Inspirations. The company has a detailed programme to Kenya, including beach and safari holidays, as well as the climb. For a copy of an Inspirations Kenya brochure, call 01293-822244. The runners-up were Sue Lucas of Stoke Lyne, Bicester and Amoret Tanner of Reading. They, like the winner, will receive their choice of two of the latest Cadogan guides.
This week's Where Was I? prize is a Show Time theatre break at the Landmark London hotel.
Verbier is one of the most gloriously situated ski resorts in the Alps. It sprawls over a sunny hillside high above the Rhone valley and is especially appealing in springtime, when the long days mean that many balconies and terraces retain the sunshine late into the afternoon. There are spectacular, open views of the surrounding peaks.
Comprising hundreds of small wooden chalets and many larger, but still chalet-shaped, apartment blocks as well as hotels built of concrete but clad in wood, Verbier sometimes looks as though it has existed for centuries. In fact, serious development only began after the second world war, when the first ski lift was erected. The resort is far from compact and many chalets are a long walk from either of the main lift stations and the village centre. On the other hand, most of the chalets have uninterrupted views and spacious private gardens. The use of private cars in Verbier has become impracticable in recent years, but the free, daytime bus service has finally improved. At night, buses run every hour until 1am and cost Sfr4 (£2.30).
Verbier has the exciting buzz of a young resort and it plays host to a young and young-at-heart clientele. The French-speaking Swiss Romande
locals are generally more laid-back than are their German-
speaking counterparts and they foster an agreeable atmosphere of informality in this fashionable, cosmopolitan place.
THE SKIING: Verbier is part of the Four Valleys ski area, which boasts 400km of pistes and 100 lifts. There is plenty here to amuse most grades of skier, but Verbier itself has a special appeal to advanced skiers on account of its many challenging off-piste routes. Those off-piste runs, such as Chassoure-Tortin and Col des Gentianes-Tortin, that are classified as "ski tour" on the piste map are generally safe to ski without a guide, but those marked as "high mountain tour", such as Vallon d'Arbi and Col des Mines, as well as unmarked routes, such as Stairway to Heaven and Hidden Valley, should be skied with a qualified guide.
Verbier's principal lift station is at Medran at the top end of the village. From here, a six-person telecabin runs up to Les Ruinettes (2,200 metres), the start of the brand-new Funispace, a state-of-the-art lift with 30-person stand-up telecabins that runs up to Attelas (2,723 metres). On one side of Attelas there is some gentle cruising skiing around Lac des Vaux, as well as chair-lift access to the notorious Chassoure-Tortin run, which is always steep, often heavily mogulled, but glorious in fresh powder.
Attelas is also the starting point for the small Mont Gele cable car, which is of interest only to off-piste skiers. On the other side of Attelas to Lac des Vaux there are several other chair lifts and runs leading to Les Ruinettes, Carrefour and on back down to resort level. There is also access to the La Chaux sector, which offers a few gentle pistes as well as being the starting point for Le Jumbo, a 150-person cable car that runs up to Col des Gentianes (2,950 metres), from where a further, smaller cable car runs up to the top of Mont Fort (3,330 metres), the highest point of Verbier's ski area.
The first part of the run down from Mont Fort is rated black and is steep and often mogulled. However, from the Col des Gentianes skiers have a choice of a long and scenic, but perhaps too path-orientated, red run back to La Chaux or the ski tour run down to Tortin.
Alas, Tortin remains one of the most notorious queuing blackspots in the Alps and is one of the reasons why some keen skiers spurn Verbier. At the worst times, queues are measured in hours rather than minutes, and they are often equally bad both for the cable car up to Mont Fort and for the telecabin up to Chassoure. Relief may come before the end of the century when the ageing telecabin is likely to be refused an operating licence. It remains to be seen whether Televerbier, the lift-operating company, will be able to afford to replace it immediately. Another problem is that Verbier is reluctant to improve access to its slopes for skiers based in neighbouring Haute Nendaz.
There have been significant improvements in snow-making and piste maintenance in Verbier in recent years and, even in the poor snow conditions that have prevailed this year, it has been possible to ski all the way back to Medran. In really good snow years, it is technically possible to ski all the way from the top of Mont Fort right down to Le Chable (821m) one of the longest lift-served vertical drops in the Alps. It's a fun "been there, done that" thing to do but, as far as I can recall from 10 years or so ago, the last part is tricky and involves negotiating terraces of vines and fruit trees.
Verbier's other main ski area is Savoleyres. A telecabin rises up to 2,354 metres and there are some easy pistes on the south-facing (Verbier) side, as well as runs on the north-facing side down to the village of La Tzoumaz. There is often good powder to be found on the north-facing side, and it is a good place to ski on poor visibility days.
Skiers travelling to the furthest extents of the Four Valleys, such as Thyon and Veysonnaz, need to plan their journeys carefully and allow plenty of time to get home.
Getting stranded in the wrong valley can mean an expensive taxi ride back to Verbier.
Adventurous skiers, especially those with cars, will find it worthwhile to explore separate neighbouring ski areas, such as Bruson and Champex, which are included on the Verbier lift pass. The Super St Bernard lifts are not included, but it is worth paying a supplement to ski down the long, but not too difficult, off-piste run to Etroubles in Italy's Aosta valley.THE SKI SCHOOLS: the Swiss Ski School (00 41 26-314444) is better than many in the country and has a high proportion of youngish, enthusiastic teachers. The Ski School Fantastique (312212) is an independent school that tends to specialise in off-piste skiing and guiding. It has many mountain guides among its instructors. The Kids-Club (314469) has a wonderful new position at the foot of the Moulins nursery slope and is highly regarded.
HOTELS: considering its size, Verbier has surprisingly few hotels. The finest is the four-star Rosalp (316323) run by Roland Pierroz, one of Switzerland's most celebrated chefs. The Montpelier (316131) is another modern, comfortable four-star. Les Rois Mages (316364) is a four-star B&B in a quiet location. Le Mazot (316404) is the best three-star, impeccably managed by Serge Tacchini, an archetypal Swiss owner-patron hotelier.
Other decent three-star properties include the De Verbier (316688), a relaxed place in a central position, run by Patrick Bruchez and his English wife, Lynne, the Grand Combin (316515), the Rhodania (316121), the Catogne (316505) and, for B&B, the Farinet (316626), the Ermitage (316477) and the Mirabeau (316335).
CHALETS: there are plenty of catered chalets available through British tour operators, although most of them score more highly on Alpine charm than en-suite bathrooms. Bladon Lines (0181-780 8800) has 12 properties to choose from and Thomson (0171-707 9000) has five. Simply Ski (0181-995 9323) has Countess Kinski's stunning Chalet Norjeanne and three others. Mark Warner (0171-393 3131) has two chalet-hotels, the Rosablanche and the Mont Fort.
APARTMENTS: there is a good selection of very comfortable, furnished apartments with large balconies and fantastic views for rent by the week. Details from Ski Solutions (0171-602 9900) and Made to Measure (01243-533333).
RESTAURANTS/LUNCH: the vast and ugly building at Les Ruinettes houses an enormous, but efficient, self-service restaurant on the ground floor and a full-service restaurant upstairs. The latter has a comprehensive menu, featuring beef from the local Race d'Herens cows, as well as a good selection of Swiss wines. Both restaurants have large, sunny terraces with panoramic views. Up at Attelas I, L'Olympique is a newish service restaurant with a surprisingly original menu.
La Cabane du Mont Fort is a splendid, proper Swiss mountain hut on the way down from Gentianes. It serves the local specialities very competently. Chez Dany, a wooden chalet in the hamlet of Clambin, is the most charming mountain restaurant in the region. This year, access on skis has been tricky, so the enterprising chef-patron, Dany, has installed an old
military telephone at a corner on the run down to Medran, which rings through to the restaurant. Ring him from here and he will zoom down on his snowmobile and pull you back up the hill. (Chez Dany can be reached on foot from Verbier, and is often also open for dinner.)
On the Savoleyres sector, La Marmotte is another mountain restaurant with plenty of character. BARS: lingering on a terrace watching the sun sinking behind the mountains and simultaneously refracting in your glass is one of Verbier's most special pleasures. Good terraces include those of Carrefour (on the slopes), the Milk Bar, the terminally trendy Offshore (also the place for breakfast, incidentally) and Le Farinet in the main square, which has good live music and a barbecue in fine weather.
The bar of the Hotel de Verbier, with its fine home-made crisps, is a popular early-evening drinking place, as is the bar of the Fer a Cheval pizzeria, one of Verbier's most venerable institutions. The Mont Fort pub is generally packed with young people, many of them Scandinavian, both early and late in the evening. Le Crock Bar No Name is a smallish, fun place that
often features live music.
RESTAURANTS/DINNER: the Rosalp (316323) has a Michelin star and a Gault Millau rating of 19/20 and is priced accordingly, but Roland Pierroz also supervises the more modest La Pinte bistro (316323) in the basement of the hotel. The young chef Thierry Corthay produces both innovative food and classic dishes and grills in the rustic surroundings of La Grange (316431).
Beef lovers should note that Salvatore, the former manager of the now-defunct grill restaurant at La Luge, has transported the brilliant but simple formula to the Toro Negro (313527). His customers have followed him there, including Diana Ross, whom I saw dining there last weekend. L'Ecurie (312760) is a cosy restaurant serving good pasta and other dishes. The best pizzas are in the Fer a Cheval (312669), but decent ones can also be found in Al Capone (316774). Le Phenix (316844) is a hotel with a reasonable Chinese restaurant. Au Vieux Verbier (311668) does excellent perch fillets among other specialities. For a fondue with the locals, go down to Les Touristes (312147) in Verbier village.
There are plenty of good food shops for those staying in apartments, but Le Vivier (311449) offers many prepared dishes to take away, while The Moveable Feast (317733 or 317029) will deliver a variety of different whole menus to your apartment, and even provide the wine.
NIGHTLIFE:Verbier is the home of the Farm Club, the most sophisticated and consistently successful nightclub in the Alps. Brothers Serafino and Giuseppe Berardi have been the presiding geniuses for more than 20 years. The dance floor is often packed, but there are always plenty of tables where you can talk without having to shout. An evening here will never be cheap, but it pays for groups to buy whole bottles of spirits (for much more than £100) and benefit from free mixers. At busy weekends, all the tables are reserved by regulars.
Marshalls is cheaper and attracts a younger crowd, while the Scotch is for the very young on a very tight budget. Jacky's Bar in the Grand Combin hotel is a plush oasis for late-night cocktail drinkers.
FURTHER INFORMATION: Verbier tourist office, tel: 316222/fax: 313272.
Alistair Scott travelled to Geneva as a guest of Swissair (0171-434 7300).
Campus Travel (0171-730 3402) is offering confirmed reservations in low-cost accommodation in Europe and the United States for the first time. Previously only medium- and higher-cost hotels could be booked in advance.
British Airways is introducing a smoking ban on most flights to the United States and the Caribbean from May 1.
Italiatour (0171-371 1114) has announced that it will donate £1 in every £100 spent by clients to the restoration fund for the Teatro La Fenice in Venice.
This theme restaurant business is getting out of hand. Orlando is now home to another burgers-with-knobs-on variation the Race Rock Cafe. As well as power boats, Indy cars and helmets of the rich and famous, the cafe promises a "high-tech video system that flashes scenes from some of racing's most famous finishes and hair-raising crashes". Cries of "On second thoughts, waitress, make that burger well done" will doubtless not be appreciated.
AT Mays (0990- 000888) has a 45% reduction on a nine-day Caribbean cruise, costing £918 and departing November 22. Flightbookers (0171-757 2444) has flights to Johannesburg for £435 in February and March. Trailfinders (0171-938 3444) has New York, flying business class and including seven nights B&B in the Algonquin and a stretch-limo transfer, for £1,749 until March 28.
Heathrow car-park operator Secure Parking (0181-813 8130) has reduced its prices, which means, despite being a 15-minute ride away in a courtesy bus, it is worth considering. It is charging £4.95 per day (a saving of £3 on the airport's long-term car park, and £25 on the short-term). And, after 14 days, parking is free. This means the total bill is £69.30, compared with at least £95.20 at
the terminal.
Visitors have described the view from the Sydney Harbour Bridge as knockout and never has this description been more accurate. Government opponents claim that the bridge, one of Australia's best-known landmarks, is crumbling due to old age. Last month a chunk of rusted metal fell from it, narrowly missing pedestrians using the walkway below. The state government insists the structure is sound, although it is spending more than Aus$12m on maintenance this year.
About 40% of complaints about taxis in New York concern the price of a cab from the airport, usually JFK. To ensure that drivers don't invent fictional surcharges or take "scenic" routes, the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission has introduced a flat fee of $30 for the journey from JFK to Manhattan. The meter will still dictate the charge from the city to the airport, however.
The Swiss authorities are investigating the cause of a hot-air balloon accident last week in which four tourists died. The balloon took off from the resort of Lauterbrunnen, at the foot of the Bernese Oberland Alpine range, bound for the popular Trummelbachfalle waterfall. Witnesses said that the balloon seemed to have hit severe air turbulence and tipped sideways before
it crashed.
In the current debate about the safety and potential side effects of Lariam (mefloquine), a few facts have become obscured.
Lariam is the recommended drug for sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia and South America because the effectiveness of the other anti-malarials (chloroquine, paludrine) is dwindling as the malarial parasite (not the mosquitoes) becomes resistant. But whatever drug your GP or travel clinic recommends should be seen as part of an anti-malarial regime rather than the sole prophylaxis: travellers should use mosquito nets and repellents. In fact, in some parts of the world, such as Kenya and the Thai/Burma border, mefloquine resistance is already up to 40%, so it is little surprise that some experts predict the day will come when our main line of defence is not powerful drugs, but stopping the mosquitoes biting in the
first place.
Egypt plans to open four more pyramids to the public in June. The group includes the "Bent" pyramid, built by Pharaoh Sneferu at Dahshur, which was the prototype design for the move from the step-style pyramid to the smooth-sided one. In the past it has been difficult to visit the monuments at Dahshur because they were in an off-limits military zone in the desert, about 20 miles out of Cairo. The army only gave clearance for tourists to enter the area three months ago. The newly opened monuments also include the Sahu Ra pyramid, which is the most important in the funeral complex of the fifth dynasty (dating from 2,500BC).
EDWARD WELSH on a family break that went wrong
Why was Airtours unable to give a prompt answer to a basic question when my family was confronted by a medical emergency abroad, wonders Lynn Bonser from Manchester?
Eight days into our two-week family holiday in Orlando, my father was admitted to hospital with chest pains. We discovered he would require open-heart surgery and would be unable to fly home for some weeks. Our insurance covered the cost for one relative to
remain abroad in such a
case. My mother wanted to stay in Orlando, but she, unlike my brother, cannot drive, and the hospital was quite a distance from the hotel. We asked our tour operator, Airtours, how much it would cost for my mother to extend her stay and return on a different flight. We were told we might not get an answer until the day before our departure. In the event, Airtours did not respond until our last day. We were told that my mother could stay on but, by that stage, she had already packed, we had booked out of the hotel and the children were waiting in the car for the drive to the airport; it was too late to change our plans.
Because of Airtours' unhelpful attitude, my parents were apart at a time when they needed each other more than ever. The operator sent us £50 and a £200 voucher towards the cost of another Airtours holiday, and still insists that "everything was done to assist you during this period".
We contacted Airtours, which admitted it had failed to respond adequately to the Bonsers and took full responsibility for the breakdown in communications. The operator added that its representative in Orlando who handled the inquiry has left the company. It will review its operations there to ensure customers' questions are promptly answered in similar situations. Airtours' handling of the crisis did not break any contractual provisions, so the company is not liable to pay compensation. Operators insist that holidaymakers take out insurance to cover this sort of
eventuality. None the less, holidaymakers should expect a more efficient and sympathetic response from their operator than the Bonsers received.Readers who feel that their travel complaints have not been adequately dealt with can write to: Edward Welsh,
Rights & Wrongs,
c/o Travel section,
The Sunday Times,
1 Pennington Street,
London E1 9XW
The chalet girl
Ollie Barton, 29, from Chiswick, west London, is spending
her eighth consecutive winter in the Alps. This year, she is working for Ski Scott Dunn in cOURCHEVEL 1850. She has previously worked in Meribel, Verbier, St Anton and Champery
I'm almost invariably glad to see my guests leave on a Saturday morning. The chances are that if they've been a really jolly, exuberant crowd, they'll have exhausted me. If, on the other hand, they've been a pain in the neck, I'm obviously glad to see the back of them.
I tend to form an opinion about each new lot of guests within about five minutes of their arrival, and 90% of the time now I'm right after all, I've had plenty of experience. People are often fairly stressed out from the travelling when they get here, especially if they're late or they find the chalet isn't exactly how they imagined it, so I always make allowances.
I can always spot potential troublemakers. They're the ones who query the price of a weekly lift pass and ask if it wouldn't be cheaper to buy it on a daily basis. When people arrive with their own food, it's often a sign that they've decided in advance they don't trust your cooking. Mothers who march into my kitchen and snoop around all the cupboards are always a bad omen.
Some parties let it be known in advance that they don't want staff to eat with them. People like that don't want to enter into the spirit of a chalet party as I understand it; frankly, I think they'd be better off in a hotel.
Good signs are lots of duty-free bags being carried into the chalet: gin, especially, always makes my eyes light up. However, duty-free champagne can often be a sign that the clients are a bit stuck up.
The best guests start by asking you about yourself, offering you a drink, quizzing you for information about the best bars and insisting you come out with them after dinner. The worst guests I've ever had were two families who crammed 11 people into what was, technically, a chalet for eight. On the first night they had an incredibly trivial argument about whether they should rent a locker at the top or the bottom of the cable car. They then refused to speak to each other for the rest of the week. To make matters worse, it rained most of that week and there was an 50mph fohn, so there wasn't much skiing to be had. Dinner was the worst nightmare: one family sat at one end of the table and the other family sat at the opposite end, with me and the ski guide having to form a kind of wall in the middle.
I enjoy having mixed groups of people who don't all know each other, because that makes me the centre of attention, which I enjoy. The challenge is for me to make sure that they all get on with one another, and often we end up having some great conversations. People tend to be more polite and tidy when they're sharing the chalet with people they don't know. Sometimes when I have whole groups they spend all the time talking about people and places I don't know, which can make me feel quite excluded.
Initially people are pretty formal at dinner, but it just takes one comment to change the atmosphere and for the whole conversation and behaviour to go downhill in the nicest possible sense. That's the sign people are really starting to relax and enjoy their holiday.
The food generally dictates the whole tone of the meal: if it looks good and tastes good then people are happy and behave themselves. My most popular dish is beef wellington with ginger and walnuts, and the favourite starter is basil, mozzarella and parma ham pancakes with a parmesan cream. At the beginning of my very first season, when I worked for a different company, I had never skied or had a cookery lesson in my life. But, in any case, a good cook does not necessarily make a great chalet girl qualities such as flexibility, sense of humour and a genuine interest in and love of people are more important.
I've had the odd disaster in the kitchen. The worst was when I made a hollandaise in what I thought was a Pyrex jug that turned out to be simply glass. It exploded all over the kitchen, throwing glass fragments into all the food. I find the best thing to do on such occasions is to be honest with the guests; it's even more embarrassing if you try to cover up and then get found out. Fortunately, I had some chicken in the fridge, so I just sauteed that and, in the end, dinner was only half an hour late.
If guests are unhappy for any reason, I usually find I can quickly improve their mood by making extra vin chaud and canapes for them before dinner. If there's a more serious problem then a bottle of champagne, for which I have to get clearance from London, will definitely do the trick.
Once I lived in a little room under the stairs in the chalet where I was working. You get to hear whose creeping into whose bedroom and a fair bit of creeping does go on. It's all par for the course in a ski resort. Maybe it's something to do with the altitude.
You do need an awful lot of stamina for this job. Most days you're up at about 7am and you may have to walk to your chalet in a blizzard, then spend four hours cooking and cleaning with a stinking hangover. Then you go skiing for five hours, then back to the chalet to cook dinner and make polite conversation with the guests. Finally you do your bit on the town
until 2am. That's just one day. Imagine doing that almost
every day for four months. It's not for the faint-hearted, but
it's fun.
At about £85 per week, the pay isn't great, but the company looks after its staff well and the guests are normally generous towards us, too. Sometimes guests give me presents usually a sweatshirt I don't want or a pair of oven gloves, which I think is a bit like giving a cleaner a mop. Presents generally go back to the shop to be exchanged for cash. Chalet girls are famously short of cash, so tips go down well.
Ollie Barton talked to Alistair Scott
Of all the sites in Mexico that I should choose to visit again and again, Uxmal is the first. Unlike other great Mayan cities in Yucatan, it was never entirely lost to view; the jungle did not veil it, nor was it abandoned like Palenque.
Its independence was not lost until 1547, after the Spanish invaders had sent two futile expeditions against the Xius, who were its last masters. Frederick Catherwood, that adventurous English traveller and careful colourist, painted the earth-clogged, but still extant, east front of the so-called Governor's Palace in the 1850s. Recent restorations have resurrected the confident serenity of its dominant, but unfortified, position overlooking the wide, scrubby plateau of central Yucatan.
The city was founded at least as early as the 6th century AD (the date of the earliest of its temples) and survived, under a succession of undestructive conquerors, to become one of the glories of Central America, and of the world. Its pinkish, honey-coloured limestone monuments are laid out in a harmonious irregularity worthy of a great university. The Pyramid of the Magician, with its swollen oval bastion, still casts its spell. In its morning shadow, four unassuming, palatial buildings, with their many sets of cells, enclose a great quadrangle, which reminded the Spanish of a nunnery, a name that has stuck, although their exact purpose is not known.
The foundation myth of Uxmal tells of an old woman who lived in neighbouring Kabah, and of her dwarf son who acquired rare powers by playing magic musical instruments that she had kept in her secret possession. The king of Uxmal challenged him to a contest of virtuosity. As a result, the king died (perhaps he blew himself inside out, as mariachi trumpeters threaten to do). The dwarf took his place. As the new monarch-in-a-hurry, he is said to have rivalled the mythical Cyclops who stacked up the ponderous walls of Tiryns, in Greece by erecting the Pyramid of the Magician and other massive buildings, single-handed and in a single night. This account is open to question. However, if the dwarf only initiated the Puuc style of architecture, he contrived something at once gigantic and humane.
Uxmal's buildings are sweetly varied and artfully sited to their
best advantage. The 100-metre-long Governor's Palace rests on a broad man-made plateau that required the amassing of about a billion kilos of earth and rubble. The apparently casual, but carefully organised, relationship of the buildings to their neighbours, and of one group to another, creates an air of asymmetrical cohesion. Alone of the Mexican sites I know, Uxmal seems unstained by sacrificial savagery; despite the blood that was almost certainly spilled there, it appears to be set apart for pious contemplation and measured ceremony. It is as if the place still
echoed with the Apollonian music of the dwarf in the tall story of
its origins.
Even the ball court, which was begun in the 7th century, is more charming than sinister, despite the feathered serpentine stone torus along the base of the interior walls. This was an added embellishment, underlining centuries of regular, evolving use. Here no memorial head-stand racked up the skulls of the decapitated captains of losing teams (Travel, February 4). Perhaps they merely sacked their managers.
Much of the pagan stone of the steep, 30-metre-high Pyramid of the Prophet (or the Magician) was cannibalised, as commonly happened after the Conquest, by the Franciscan friars, for local Christian development. It has now been tactfully restored. Don't-look-down nerve is required to climb to the top temple (the fourth of a steadily mounting series, superimposed on each other over the centuries). I was reminded of a boy-reporter occasion when, in my youth, I climbed the exterior of the incomplete
Festival Hall, on the construction workers' swaying 20-metre ladders. I smoked my last cigarette before starting the downward journey.
On the west side of the pyramid another, steeper, flight of steps is flanked by a series of big-nosed stone heads of the rain-god Chac. One above the other, they accompany you like an inclined totem pole. The whole site supplies a graphic history of the battles, and artistic compromises, between successive tribal gods.
Like Phidias when he worked on the Parthenon, the makers of the Uxmal friezes dared to put human figures in a divine context. In the Anthropological Museum in Mexico City, there is a magnificent limestone statue from Uxmal of the priest with a tattooed (or ritually incised?) face as he is reborn from the jaws of an enormous stylised snake. It probably dates from the 9th century and signals the arrival of the plumed serpent, Quetzalcoatl, lord of the conquering tribes from the central highlands.
Versions of the same snake-god writhe across the palatial stone-
work of the "Nunnery". The quadrangular congestion of imagery immensely intricate and calmly assured recalls the great plaza in Salamanca, in central Spain. However, Uxmal is spared the self-advertising elaborations of the brothers Churriguera. Its anonymous architects could rely on traditional craftsmanship, muscle and engineering skill from a huge and resourceful army of artisans and building workers united in an undifferentiated reverence for art and religion.
The Mayan workers were at least as dedicated as the slaves who served the pharaohs. Their mastery of aesthetic effects and architectonic problems allowed them uncannily to mirror the Egyptians, while their use of the corbelled arch of which classical Greeks always remained incapable gives their most grandiose palaces an alleviating grace. The "Indians" equalled the Greeks in allowing for optical illusion: the extended facade of the Governor's Palace appears level, but is subtly warped upwards in the centre. This allows it to give an unsagging impression when confronted from the altar, below the broad steps, on which a push-
me-pull-you double-headed jaguar crouches in futile guardianship.
The Greek tone recurs in the neat Casa de las Tortugas adjacent to the Governor's Palace, an 8th-century temple in homage to the tortoises who paddle placidly around its roof, as if celebrating a decisive victory over Achilles. From the nearby Great Pyramid (another man-made mountain suitable for Charles Foster Kane's Xanadu), there is a panorama of the still unexcavated expanse of the site. The ruins of one side of another great quadrangle have dilapidated, majestically, into a sequence of seven honeycombed gables, which the Spaniards read as "dovecotes". After warnings that killer bees had recently taken up residence in them, we settled for the long shot.
Uxmal is only 80km from Merida, the provincial capital, which has grown sprawlingly since the 1960s. The colonial centre of
"The White City" is handsomely unspoilt; the many love-seats in the public parks provide an amiable decor. Less amiable, and truer to reality, is the doorway of the Casa de los Montejos in the Plaza Mayor. Francisco de Montejo and a matching macho conquistador are depicted with their stone feet planted on the severed heads of Indians. Merida has an imposing 16th-
century cathedral, dedicated to San Idelfonso, and avenues of pretentious houses, especially along the Paseo de Montejo, where those of Spanish blood still parade their exclusiveness in Beverly Hillsian mansions. The haciendados kept their feet on the heads of the Indians for many centuries. Their vanity peaked during the decades when the world's rope-makers' demand for heneguen (sisal) made them famously rich and ruined the health of generations of underpaid naturales.
The Governor's Palace, in the Plaza Mayor, is a pompous Victorian building, calculated to impress the Indians who, in 1849, during the "caste wars", revolted against their elegantly brutal masters and were defeated only because they had to break off to go home and plant their corn (the greatest, and most demanding, of all Mexican divinities is the god of maize). The struggle of the dispossessed is illustrated in rather charmingly strident murals, by Fernando Castro Pacheco, in the conference room on the first floor of the palace. Who would guess that the central government put down their rebellion? Completed in 1978, the romanticised canvases lack the agit-prop brilliance of Diego Rivera, but their provincial vigour proclaims and denounces the scope and mercilessness of the exploiting Europeans. Even the British "pirates", Raleigh among others, are in the frame for grabbing British Honduras, which is now known as Belize. The Mayan monuments down there, which I have not seen for 20 years, were not notably well preserved by the Crown, but are said now to be being redeemed from the jungle. Merida is an excellent centre from which to visit Uxmal and
Chichen-Itza and also the "lesser" sites of among many others Kabah, Labna and Sayil, for which we did not have time. There are plenty of hotels and at least one excellent restaurant, Los Almendros, a tasty pleasure in a country where, despite improved hygiene, the cooking is often more to be survived than enjoyed.
We flew from Merida to Villahermosa in order to go to Palenque. We have driven there direct, but the road is very long and not all hire cars are reliable; it is wise to have some mechanical competence, which I do not. Palenque, in the state of Chiapas, can normally be reached along a new, straight highway from Villahermosa, but the Zapatistas peasants who follow the lead of the legendary Emilano Zapata in revolting against the corruption and cacicazgo (bossism) of the ruling class were blocking the way. How difficult it is to sympathise with the despair of those who interfere with one's pleasures! We wished the dispossessed good luck and slipped round, by a slow road that had been washed away in several places.
Palenque is in the hills and surrounded by jungle. Buried and forgotten for centuries, until John Lloyd Stephens rediscovered it in the last century, it has been excavated thoroughly only since the war (important new "unpublished" tombs were discovered just over a year ago). Palenque's disappearance was the result of no Vesuvian-style catastrophe; the city was abruptly deserted by the ruling clan of kings who, in particular under Pacal in the 7th century, had made it into a great city. Nothing is more mysterious, in what Octavio Paz called Mexico's "Labyrinth of Solitude", than the way in which the pre-Columbians so often and so utterly forsook their gods, or their gods forsook them. Something of the same thing happened when, as the Spanish sailed in, Montezuma "ate earth" in a gesture that implied a concession of power to Cortes, the new white god, as if the conquistador's advent were that of the great god Quetzalcoatl himself.
In Palenque, they tell us, a sudden announcement was made to a society of considerable complexity, and monumental achievements, that as a result of some divine sign that signalled the end of their dominion its masters were "returning to their villages". The headless monarchy dispersed and the jungle came to live in the city.
Today's Palenque is humid and hot; the forests are lank with lianas. When the rain comes, it is sullen and heavy. The local myths suggest the need for unremitting effort:
the heroes Hunahpu and Ixbalanque are said to have "worked the earth and gone to rest, and when they returned to their fields the next day, the trees had risen once again and all the earth was as if it had never been cultivated". The myth became green reality in the centuries that followed Palenque's abandonment, though it now has a steady crop of tourists (the Japanese roll in in "Rotels" in which they live and sleep).
Because of the Zapatistas, the avoidable modern town was under discreet martial law. It is scarcely somewhere one would choose to linger. The ancient site is a dozen kilometres away. You can get to it easily in a colectivo bus. Its pyramids are no less grand, or astounding, than those of Uxmal, but an air of sullenness disconcerts the visitor. There is no honey in the greyness of the lichened limestone. Once again, you climb (and descend) long flights of vertiginous steps, but not in vain: the Templo de las Inscripciones has been revealed to contain a burial chamber, that of King Pacal, which, in the monumental secrecy of its crypt, is unnervingly like that of the greatest of the pharaohs. The treasures of the tomb have, inevitably, been centralised in the Anthropological Museum in Mexico City, but the gigantic hieroglyphed slab that covered the sarcophagus defied displacement. How was it ever manhandled into position? Despite the intimidating massiveness of Palenque's palaces and pyramids, and the oppressiveness of the jungle, there is evidence even here of a light touch. The stucco reliefs of grandees are at once pious and, if somewhat solemnly, caricatural. The architectural mass of the temples is relieved by the "combs" of functionless, fanciful masonry that crowns them. In the excellent new museum there are some elaborate terracotta censers, which, like three-dimensional polysyllables, spell out the convoluted mystery of Palenquan theology with a sort of sinis-
ter wit.
After three days, it was a shameful relief to head back to Villahermosa, the capital of Tabasco, the state whose violent anticlericalism during the 1920s excited Graham Greene into writing The Power and the Glory. It was convenient to dress a church that has always supported the rich and powerful in the pathetic (and temporary) rags of martyrdom. Diego Rivera's murals in the presidential palace, on the Zocalo in Mexico City, supply a less indulgent picture of Mother Church's contribution to the happiness of the naturales.
It is typical of Mexico's incurable contradictions that the common herd is thoroughly, if politely, screened before being allowed inside the palace where the frescoed and hallowed Karl Marx announces the imminent workers' millennium. (DH Lawrence's is the most astute criticism of Rivera's simplifying genius.) If Mexico has its history of humbug and intolerance, it has often accepted those rejected elsewhere, whether Trotsky, Spanish republicans or victims of Nazi persecution, whom President Lazaro Cardenas welcomed more generously than the great Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Mexico City is an insufferable, seductive cocktail of unbreathable air, poverty, violence, charm and megalomania. The weekend is its best time to get about; there is less traffic but unceasing activity. We taxied to the San Miguel quarter, where opposite the grandest of restaurants, beautifully ensconsed in the old "manor house" Rivera's square-built, functional studio (designed by Juan O'Gorman, a Mexican architect of manifest Hibernian origins) has been turned into a museum that recalls all the enthusiasms of the 1920s and 1930s, from tubular steel furniture to folkloric piety, and thence to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Rivera's mistress/wife, the painter/celebrity Frida Kahlo (a brave and tragic and, perhaps, impossible woman much more worthy of a musical than the fraudulent Evita), lived in a second studio adjacent to the painter, with whom, on good days, she had a very tumultuous relationship. Mexico, too, may be impossible, but its insatiable flamboyance and cruel seductions are not to be resisted.
Frederic Raphael travelled to Mexico as a guest of Cox & Kings
Getting there: Cox & Kings (0171-873 5000) has a 14-day tour, Land of the Maya, that includes Mexico City, Oaxaca, Monte Alban, Palenque, Merida, Uxmal and Chichen-Itza. Prices from £1,695 per person based on two sharing a twin-bedded room. The tour includes British Airways flights, sightseeing, transfers, breakfast and four lunches. Tailor-made itineraries can also be arranged. British Airways (0345-222111) flies direct to Mexico City and then on to Merida with Mexicana (0171-284 2550), prices from £614, until April 6. Mexicana only flies to Mexico from the
United States.
Other airlines flying to Mexico from London include American (0345-789789) via Miami and Cancun; Continental (01293-776464) via Houston; and Delta (0800-414767) via Atlanta. Or you can go with Iberia (0171-830 0011) via Madrid; Air France (0181-742 6600) via Paris; or KLM (0181-750 9000) via Amsterdam. There are also charter services to Cancun;
ask your travel agent for more details.
Other tour operators include Bales Tours (01306-885991), Ecuador Travel (0171-439 7861), Explore Worldwide (01252-319448), Journey Latin America (0181-747 8315), Kuoni Travel (01306-742222), Mexican Tours (Cathy Matos) (0181-440 7830), Steamond Latin American Travel (0171-286 4449), Sunset Travel (0171-498 9922) and Trips Worldwide (01179-872626).
Recommended vaccinations: yellow fever, hepatitis A, typhoid, tetanus, polio. If you are only visiting the main coastal resorts, there is no need for malaria prophylaxis. However, you should consider malaria pills if you are going to rural areas. Mexico City has one of the world's worst pollution problems, which can upset asthma sufferers.
Further information: Mexican Government Tourist Office on 0171-734 1058.
THE International Property Show is being held at the Cumberland hotel, London W1, from February 16-18. The properties for sale are in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Cyprus and Florida, with many linked to golf courses, writes Mary Wilson.
An 18-hole golf course is being built this year at Sotogrande, in southern Spain near Gibraltar, which will be the venue for next year's Ryder Cup. Also on the Costa del Sol, up in the hills at Mijas, is La Cala golf and country club. John Walker, of MMI Properties, said: "This has two 18-hole golf courses and one of the other attractions is the David Leadbetter Academy which is based here."
Other developments with golf courses at the exhibition include Parque de Floresta, on the western Algarve, and Stonebridge country club, in Naples, Florida, which is being built by Taylor Woodrow and sold through the Chesterton agency.
"There will be over 40 exhibitors, from agents to builders and developers, and the point of the show is that people can look at a selection of quality properties in relaxed surroundings all under one roof," said Ian Dougall, the organiser. Admission is free. Call 01483-455 254 for more information.
Elizabeth Noel finds hope for the future in a city technology college that succeeds by defying the dogmas of both left and right. Brooke Weston City Technology College in Corby ought to be a nightmare; a monument to the intellectual bankruptcy of progressive education.
Gareth Newman, its principal, believes in child-centred education, except that he does not call them children but students. The school has no formal disciplinary procedures and no system of punishments. There is no staff room; teachers and students share territory, just as they queue up together for lunch. Every youngster has a personal tutor who must support him or her in a dispute.
In Newman's words: "Many schools are run in the interests of the staff; not this one. This school belongs to the students, not to us."
But Brooke Weston is not a nightmare; it is a vision. The teaching methods transcend the sterilities of the traditionalist/progressive debate; this is the future of British education as it could work.
When the school was set up in 1991, it was in the teeth of opposition from left-wing education experts, including Northamptonshire Labour councillors. Many local primary schools refused to provide Newman with any information about their pupils. At that time the Labour party was committed to abolishing city technology colleges (CTCs), which may have helped the Tories to hold on to the highly marginal Corby constituency at the 1992 election. Since then, Labour party attitudes have changed. There is still no great enthusiasm for the school but there is a reluctant recognition of its achievements.
The school has a number of advantages. As a CTC, it was a new building with additional private-sector capital; there was no baggage from a failed past. But cash is not the crucial factor; Brooke Weston now spends £233 a year less on each pupil than the average opted-out school. Its successes were not bought with money: they were wrought with work.
The working week of Brooke Weston's pupils is more than nine hours longer than the national average and the staff are the hardest-working teachers in the state sector. Unlike many other teachers, however, the staff at Brooke Weston enjoy their work. I ran into a group of them at 5.30. They looked tired after a long, demanding day's work but it was a happy, fulfilled tiredness. In many schools absenteeism because of illness is a regular occurrence among teachers. At Brooke Weston there was a 98.25% attendance rate in 1994-95.
Newman's staff are all on individual contracts and most are paid more than the nationally agreed rates. They earn it. He has sacked one or two teachers who have not matched his standards but his current staff seem keen to do so.
This hard work is not just a matter of hours; it is effort plus method. Newman sets targets for teachers and pupils. At the beginning of each term the pupils are told what will be expected of them. Their progress is monitored. They are regularly reminded that good is not good enough; only their best will do. They are constantly encouraged to excel; asked what they want to do, and then told that they can do it if they try.
The successes are palpable. In terms of exam results, Brooke Weston is already among the top 100 state schools, and unlike most of the rest, it is not selective. Not that Newman wishes to be selective; he is happy that his pupils reflect the national intelligence profile.
Nor is the intake excessively middle class. Until recently, Corby was a steel town. Many inhabitants had come from Scotland; the Scottish Daily Record is still one of the largest-selling newspapers. Corby has deprived areas and tough council estates. Newman welcomes their children. He tries to reflect the social mix, but with a bias in favour of children from poor backgrounds. He has, however, found a number of instances in which middle-class parents have transferred their children to poorer primary schools in the hope of easing their path into Brooke Weston. The school has four applications for every place.
Its relations with parents are excellent; one reason why there are so few disciplinary problems. Not only are there regular parents' evenings: for one week a year all parents are allowed unlimited access to the school. They can arrive without notice in their own child's classroom, or in any other classroom. This means that if difficulties arise, Newman can rely on unstinting parental support. He also accepts pupils expelled from other schools.
As I sat at lunch with Newman he beckoned over a number of pupils. They were normal children, with studied slouches and Byker Grove haircuts. But I was impressed by the clear and confident way in which they expressed themselves, unfazed by the presence of adults.
As they passed out of earshot Newman gave me some case histories. "He arrived with an IQ of 72. He's going to get at least six GCSEs." "He was supposed to have special psychiatric needs for life. Hasn't seen a shrink for two years: he'll get 10 GCSEs, and go on to A-levels and university." "Her family were so poor and so chaotic that she has never had any personal property. Except her brain."
I then set off to explore the school, unescorted. Nobody bristled at the idea that I might be observing their school in order to write a newspaper article.
I overheard some fascinating snippets. "It's the only way you can reach it on the Internet, Stephen." "I am just about to type it up, Miss." "If I can get on to the laser printer, I'll do those bar charts in colour." This is education for the computer age and the pupils' enthusiasm was obvious. This may explain why Newman has few problems with discipline and almost none with vandalism.
All Brooke Weston's pupils spend their first two years in mixed-ability classes. Then they are setted in four groups: basic, standard, extended and advanced. They themselves have the final say over the set that they join, though they are normally happy to be guided by their teachers.
So they proceed towards public examinations, and yet again, Brooke Weston has its own way of doing things. Pupils take GCSE when they are ready, not when they are old enough. Newman is happy to see 14- and 15-year-olds move beyond GCSE:40 fifth-formers are working towards A-level French. But he does not agree with Tony Blair's proposal for "accelerated learning", in which bright pupils are moved up a year. "That would be a deprivation model; children would suffer from the loss of social contact with their own peer group, as well as being resented by their older classmates."
Newman took 35 promising GCSE pupils on a trip to Oxford; he wanted to stimulate their aspirations. Over the next few days he received a stream of phone calls from parents asking why their youngster could not go to Oxford.
"No reason at all," he would reply. "At the moment the work isn't up to it but if that improves I will give them every help. My ambition is to make this one of the top Oxbridge schools in the country."
For a man who cares passionately about academic standards, he is curiously reluctant to use the word academic. He talks about skills, aptitudes, potential and special needs. "I know that special needs is a socially acceptable way of talking about kids with learning difficulties but I have always thought that that missed the point. All my students have special needs, the very bright, the not so bright, the middling bright. They have all special needs, because they are all special."
Elizabeth Noel is the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Sedgefield
Private schools for the poor are the latest attempt to improve American inner city education. An extraordinary cocktail of interests in the American beer-brewing town of Milwaukee, on the shores of Lake Michigan, is proving that school vouchers for the poor can be a potent weapon in the battle for effective education reform.
Conservative politicians have joined with radical social activists, big business interests and poor, mostly black, inner-city parents desperate for their children to learn their way out of poverty, to forge an alliance that has forced the city's educational establishment on the defensive.
Desperate times, say proponents, require desperate measures, and nobody can deny times are desperate in Milwaukee. The downward spiral of the city's public (as in publicly funded) schools is as depressingly familiar across America as it is in Britain, where voucher schemes have become a part of right-wing Tory thinking. Overcrowded classrooms, inadequate control of wayward pupils, a growing culture of drugs and violence, all conspire to offer the least hope to those who need it most.
Fewer than half the 18-year-olds graduating from the state system in Milwaukee achieve the most basic level of competence, and many are virtually unemployable. Vouchers for private school education, accordingly, are to benefit the poorest, mainly black, members of the city's community, not the white middle class.
To qualify, a family must earn no more than 175% of the national poverty level income, about $26,000 (£15,000) per year, and it is estimated that just 15% of the 103,000 public school students in Milwaukee will be affected.
Vouchers by themselves will not meet the full cost of private education. Supporters, however, are convinced that traditional education need not be expensive.
For Parents for School Choice, an organisation backed by more than 70% of inner-city black families, a key virtue of private schooling is the reliance on leadership and discipline, a school uniform and a solid grounding in the three Rs. The fact that more than 90% of 18-year-olds at private schools graduate, compared with 48% of those in public system schools, explains why so many parents support vouchers.
"A lot of opponents of choice in America assert that poor parents won't make good choices," says Susan Mitchell of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. "They claim they are not competent, and don't care about their kids, an argument I find very condescending. Most poor parents are just like parents who have money: they want their kids to succeed."
Voucher supporters start to get uncomfortable at the suggestion that offering choice to a few condemns those who stay behind in the public system to an even more miserable future, as school-board revenues decline and the schools run down.
"Choice, in itself, is not a panacea," says Zakiya Courtney, a leading activist. "It should be part of total education reform. In Milwaukee public schools there are 103,000 kids. The expanded choice programme, which is held up in the courts, would allow 15,000 of those kids to get out, so we'd still have 88,000 or so students in the public school system, and as a city, as a society, as a country, we cannot afford to just turn our backs on them."
Vouchers also play a key role in Governor Tommy Thompson's strategy for reforming welfare. "The people we serve with school choice are probably much the same as those we serve with welfare," says his spokesman, Kevin Keane. "The idea has always been to find ways of helping families escape the generations of dependency on welfare. One of the most obvious ways of doing that is through a good education. If children are succeeding at school, and school choice is helping them to do that, the odds are far greater that that child is not going to be on welfare. The chain is going to be broken."
Most MEPs fall into the "worthy" category and do not employ their wives as secretaries nor milk the system (High price of a well-paid MP, News Review, last week). Sadly the media likes to portray the hard work MEPs do in their constituencies and the travel to the European Parliament as a type of perk.
MEPs do have to disclose outside earnings. The European Parliament is looking at further ways of tightening its rules and overcoming the problems of cultural differences.
Brendan Donnelly MEP
Brussels
I READ Atticus's diatribe on Labour's policies on law and order last week with a mixture of amusement and bewilderment. Indeed, given the vehemence of his attack, some readers may be forgiven for thinking that it had been Labour, not the Tories, who had been in government over the past 17 years.
In fact it is criminals who have done well out of this government. Crime has doubled since 1979 (the worst record of any post-war administration) and, what's more, the number of people convicted or cautioned for those crimes has fallen. More crime and more people getting away with it.
Despite this record of failure, Atticus, with no detectable sense of irony, accuses Labour of being soft on crime. There are some questions he might indeed put to the government.
Why, for example, did the prime minister oppose Labour's tough measures to tackle the menace of criminal anti-social neighbours? Why did ministers oppose Labour's proposals to increase penalties for weapons offences? And why did the home secretary oppose Labour's proposals to ban the sale of knives to under 16s (despite his recent Damascus-like conversion)?
While I wouldn't normally respond to lectures on crime from someone who spent three months in jail for possession of cocaine, I thought it was important to put the record straight.
Jack Straw MP
Shadow Home Secretary
House of Commons
HYPOCRISY pervades all aspects of the intention to regulate restaurant tipping. The staff, some say, should be paid enough to get rid of the "service charge". Restaurateurs hypocritically concur, but would certainly not turn into Lady Bountifuls: wages would not increase except sporadically by a fraction, but it's a godsend excuse to increase prices.
Tight-fisted hypocrites argue: why tip in restaurants but not in supermarkets? This ignores the uniquely personal nature of good service in restaurants. To disregard it coldly after you have benefited from its warmth is bordering on a shameful con-trick.
"Tipping is demeaning" is another view. To whom? To the ungenerous, straight-laced hypocrites, embarrassed to show generosity. As for Lord Bradford, the restaurateur who introduced the Bill in the House of Lords, he cannot be accused of hypocrisy, but some people groundlessly, no doubt suspect him of courting publicity.
Worse than hypocrites, by the way, are those restaurateurs (not a few) who put on the bill "X% service charge" and do not, or not entirely, distribute it to the staff but pocket it as a contribution to their expenditure on "service", for example, wages. This could arguably constitute embezzlement.
The most absurd argument is that the present systems are too diverse; eg prescribed percentages, discretional tipping, inclusion in prices etc.
Worse than the hypocrisy of those who are indolent or too unimaginative to work out a tip, is to force everyone by law to adopt some people's views and practices for no serious reason.
How dare anyone take away my right to reward, and with how much, those who render me a service and to refuse if they don't?
Egon Ronay
London SW3
AS ALWAYS, Jeremy Clarkson's column last week on road rage, was both amusing and thought provoking. However, does his sympathy extend to motorists who are made irate by the driver in front insisting on driving at 30mph, observing stop signs and slowing down prior to turning a corner?
Dr Edmund McFadyen
Kirkmichael, Ayrshire
RAGE:Considering the man's high profile and ability to influence sections of the motoring public, the view expressed by Clarkson on road rage rates as one of the most irresponsible and reprehensible I have encountered on any subject. I shall not be reading him again.
Dr George Coetzee
Cobham, Surrey
RED: Has Clarkson noticed that road rage sufferers are usually men in small red cars?
Pam Young
London, N7
So the anti-quarantine lobby is for upper-class snobs? Has McKee forgotten the ordinary Britons living in Europe who, like myself, will not visit Britain because of the quarantine laws? What about blind people imprisoned on the island? What concerns me are the conditions in some quarantine kennels.
Right now an anti-quarantine petition is circulating among the British community in the Paris area. Indeed, Passport for Pets has a large following not only of top people but also people like me: a teacher.
Dorothy Nitsche
Vaucresson, France
Brian Leonard of the Kennel Club says that veterinary certification in Europe is not on a par with that in the UK. Typical smugness.
In Spain the annual vaccination is an automatic procedure. A few years ago my wife was unable to be present for the annual visit and had the vaccination done by our local vet. Since this is not recorded in the town hall we soon had a visit from the local policeman.
We regularly take our dogs to France and occasionally have to show their passports. Dogs begin at Calais.
Derrick Endicott
Alella, Spain
I AGREE entirely with Victoria McKee (Style, January 28) that the quarantine laws for animals need reappraising. I am supposed to be man's best friend but I cannot go abroad with him or go into shops or restaurants. Is this fair?
Anjakarn Tyroan (aka Brian)
London W1.
Your articles and letters do not emphasise strongly enough that it is primarily the duty of parents, not of the school, to teach their children right from wrong. Such are the demands on teachers nowadays that they cannot reasonably be expected to take on yet more of parental responsiblity. Where, after bringing a child into the world, one might legitimately ask, is parental responsibility to begin if this is to be the new order in the nation's schools? What is to be curtailed in the school curriculum to make room for these lessons in morality? Teaching of the 3Rs perhaps?
Harold Cranswich
Montrose, Angus
AMID all the debate about our schools and teachers the role of parents is forgotten. Unlike teachers, parents are not required to have any qualifications apart, of course, from the necessary sexual development.
Parenthood is perceived as a fundamental civic right. Challenges to this right in the past have been mounted on scientifically unfounded or politically unacceptable eugenic grounds. No serious challenge has been made, however, on the basis of general, as dinstinct from genetic, fitness for the role. It was, I believe, HGWells who suggested at least a minimum age for taking on parental responsibilities.
On the issue of civic rights there is today a growing recognition that for every such right there is a corresponding civic duty and failure to acknowledge and fulfill that duty should automatically negate the right.
What conditions might be applied to the parenthood right? A minimum age, following the Wellsian precept, would seem to be a reasonable start 25 years perhaps, when most would have completed their tertiary education or vocational training equivalent; attendance at an approved course on parenting; demonstrable access to suitable living accommodation; reasonable prospects of being able to support the child through gainful employment; evidence of a general sense of civic responsibility and, in particular, of an understanding of the importance of the lifelong learning habit.
Doubtless these conditions will be judged too difficult to impose short of a millenial revolution. In which case the only real alternative for improving the present declining quality of parenting would be for the right of parenthood to be conditional upon a duty to collaborate actively with the state, probably in the guise of the local authority, in allowing it to take on an increased share of the role through, for example, compulsory infant and child care, compulsory nursery education and a broader and more clearly defined in loco parentis role for schools.
Rearing children is too difficult and too important to be left any longer to amateurs, be they teachers or parents.
Dr Paul Crawford Walker
Bristol
Today: Mary Quant, 62; Burt Reynolds, 60; Patrick Leigh Fermor, 81; Dennis Skinner, 64; John Surtees, 62; the Earl of Rosebery, 67; Sir Vivian Fuchs, 88; EW Swanton, 89.
As your expert on the downside of being drop-dead gorgeous and other inherited inconveniences, Ms Formby is, I have no doubt, every inch as beautiful as she claims. Unfortuntaely we'll have to take her word for that. Because the career-killing picture that accompanied her true confession could never be Nicola's own self-described beautiful self. A grateful nation can only hold its collective breath and wait for more.
Stephen Brady
London SW3
I WAS so sorry to read of Nicola Formby's dilemma (Style, January 28). I can identify with her problems and feel that we are bound together, as sisters, in our quest for fair play. You see, and this isn't conceit, I am a pretty stunning woman myself. I am relieved to know that there are other beautiful women out there who have to deal with randy men and being ignored and hated by obviously seethingly jealous, less attractive women.
Naturally, I try to play down my great beauty: after all, some of us have it and the rest of you don't. I find that sometimes I can get away with wearing no lipstick at all in order to make my appearance less ravishing. Sometimes, a dash of out-of-season eye shadow helps to play down one's features.
Other times, such as when I go to a party, I wear a paper bag over my head in order to reassure those jealous wives that I am not making a play for their husbands; an unglamorous but necessary ploy. One can always find a suitable shade of Chanel to match the bag.
I would have enclosed my favourite brown paper bag for Ms Formby to try out next time she is at a social function. She might find she is more comfortable in the presence of others and will attract plenty of attention to herself without feeling like a predator. However, I am off to a party this evening and, well you can guess.
Perhaps we could form some sort of support group for beautiful women. We could hold regular meetings and exchange stories about the times we have been snubbed by ugly women, or chatted up by obnoxious geeks at bars. Or simply discuss the tactics we adopt to hide our natural attributes.
You can only imagine how worrying all this is for moi. After all, one day my boyfriend might decide he prefers someone with a personality.
Nancy Rogers
London SW11
I do not agree with the concept of quickie degrees. There should be moderation in education as well as in other aspects of life. Faster is not always better. Miroslav Wagenhofer, Marusevec, Croatia.
Writing as a resident of Essex who likes to wander around the county, I find the police advice to stand still if I am in the vicinity of Chelmsford and should happen to cross paths with the mountain lion that has been savaging sheep most helpful (News Digest, January 21). I quite agree that running away may excite the lion but would like to know where I should look while I am standing still (into the lion's eyes?); what form of Short Prayer is recommended for the occasion? and if the lion is still excitable, should I offer corned beef sandwiches from my picnic lunch? John Raybould, Saffron Walden, Essex.
Further to your correspondence that "the Paras are the elite to which other soldiers aspire", may I point out that as a battalion in the Indian Airborne Division, the 2nd Black Watch declined to wear the Red Beret in preference to their own battle-honoured Red Hackle and Balmoral during the second world war. Walter Morrison, Glasgow.
I resent the flippant remark about Malta San Marino will have to speak for itself (Taki, January 28). Malta, since independence, has so far done very well for itself. Excellent social services, no homeless and no unemployment. Few countries today can boast this. Also we do not wash our dirty linen in public. Our newspapers would never print sensational stories about mistresses and lovers. Maria Arrigo, Siggiewi, Malta.
Simon Callow referred to Alan Badel as "an astonishing and much-missed actor" (January 28). Am I the only person who places Alan Badel's Mr Darcy (in the 1960s) above all others? Today's Darcy impersonators have lots of sex appeal but no presence. Snoo Sinclair, Killarney, Co Kerry.
Further to your report that an engineer spending long spells behind the wheel of his car had difficulty fathering a child (News, last week), we've conducted a quick spot check of our own. Within the Institution of Mechanical Engineers 20 professional engineers boast 50 children between them. To use your words: Cobblers indeed! David Ballard, London SW1.
I wish to express my appreciation of your Money section. I read the feature on income tax and the claim that many were over-taxed. I was one of them. I wrote off in December querying my deductions and last week I was the recipient of a four-figure rebate. I am working
on our mortgage next.
Yolande Agble, Greenford, Middlesex.
At Kenneth Clarke's enthralling address last week in the Shaw Library at the London School of Economics, I found my eyes wandered to the bookshelves. What, in this intellectual powerhouse, are students reading? Could it be the likes of Hegel, Wittgenstein, Keynes or Hayek? Nope. The shelves contained Riders by Jilly Cooper, Hold That Dream by Barbara Taylor Bradford and It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet by James Herriot. Presumably the hottest literary discussions among students now are on the finer points of Joan Collins's mastery of the novel form.
Poor old Brian Mawhinney. The Tory party chairman, who has banana skins tied to his shoes, has made yet another faux pas. Attacking Tony Blair's proposal to reform the House of Lords, Mawhinney last Wednesday cited Jonathan Miller, the author and director, as a fellow supporter of the upper chamber. But, unfortunately for the hapless chairman, this month's edition of Prospect magazine features an interview with Miller in which he was asked if he wanted to become a Labour peer. He replied: "I don't think there should be such a thing as the House of Lords." Perhaps it's time Mawhinney himself was sent out to graze in the upper chamber.
The Windsor and Eton Operatic Society is to break with a royal tradition. Usually the pro-am opera group invites the likes of Prince Philip or Princess Margaret to its annual production at Eton College. But the royal family has been left off the guest list for next month's performance of Don Carlos because the organisers fear the Windsors would not be amused.
Verdi's characters include one King Philip, a Queen Elisabeth and the prince, Don Carlos Spanish for Charles. All of them must choose between their public duty and their private desires.
Don Carlos's difficulties are compounded by woman problems: he loves his stepmother Elisabeth, while Princess Eboli mistakenly imagines he fancies her. Prince Carlos also falls out with the king, his father, and bleats: "Sire, it is time I began to live. I am weary of dragging out an idle youth at court."
In Britain, Baroness Thatcher may be considered something of a loose cannon. But in America they still lurve her. Last week, US Senator Paul Coverdell, a rightwinger who makes John Redwood sound like a socialist, presented Maggie with the 1996 Nation's Honor Award in Atlanta, Georgia. "We honour Lady Thatcher for her competence, her graciousness, her eloquence, her humour," he said. "I thank her for humbling us with her presence." Fulsome praise, indeed, but then, Americans still don't understand why Winston Churchill lost in 1945.
A BBC crew was loading equipment onto a Eurostar train leaving Paris for London when the doors closed with only half the expensive clutter on board and the loco began to speed away. Luckily, the team persuaded Eurostar to stop and reverse the train, a first in the service's history. Merci les gars.
Skiing with the royals has become a recipe for disaster. Tim and Lady Helen Taylor (nee Windsor) were at the French ski resort of Meribel two weeks ago when the royal hubby hit a rock on the pistes. Unaware of the extent of his injuries, the art dealer picked himself up, skied down and walked into a doctor's surgery, to discover he had broken a leg.
They bestride the world, colossi of contemporary architecture. But in terms of ranking, who comes first, Sir Norman Foster or Sir Richard Rogers?
Normally, such matters would be of little concern to anyone outside the rarified world of architecture. But the issue has been of burning importance to Tony Blair after a prima donna-style tiff between the two knights. The row erupted after the Labour leader agreed to share a platform in April with Norm and Dick to discuss London's future. Foster thought he'd arrange a dinner afterwards in Blair's honour.
But when Rogers famous for the Lloyd's building found out, he was furious and organised a competing bash.
Blair then had to decide which one to attend, plumping for the more hastily arranged dinner. Questions about architectural primacy aside, as Foster is something of an introvert and Rogers an extrovert, Blair probably chose the more convivial of the two evenings.
‘Call us about rail privatisation," pleaded BBC television's new Breakfast Extra programme on the day privately owned trains ran on Britain's railway network for the first time in nearly 50 years. "We want to hear your fears about the future."
Fears? What fears? That the trains might now run on time? That somebody might have cleaned them before passengers boarded? That there is more to eat on board than a stale sandwich? That the buffet might actually be open? That surly staff might be replaced by people who welcome our custom? That clapped-out rolling stock might be replaced by spanking new carriages? That the railways henceforth might not be run entirely for the benefit and convenience of Jimmy Knapp's members or the jobsworths on the board of British Rail?
It is not just the BBC that seeks fear instead of opportunity; a majority of the public is against rail privatisation and the usual fainthearts on the Tory back benches have even taken to calling it the "poll tax on wheels". But public opinion has been against every previous privatisation of state industries. In that stubborn, dogged, peculiarly British way, we seem determined never to learn.
British Airways was an inefficient, uncompetitive, overmanned behemoth (the way state-owned Iberia, Air France and Alitalia still are), before it was privatised. Travellers avoided it whenever they could; today it is the world's favourite airline. State-owned British Telecom was a monstrous joke: nobody ever answered directory inquiries and you had to wait months for a new line; now it is in the front rank of global telecoms companies.
Electricity and gas prices have fallen since these industries escaped the dead hand of the state and they are set to tumble as competition intensifies. Water prices have risen since privatisation, but that has been necessary to finance the multi-billion-pound investment programme to make up for years of neglect under state ownership. Those who shout loudest for more infrastructure investment, cleaner water and pollution-free rivers and beaches have also bleated most about the price rises, which is high hypocrisy even by today's political standards.
The British cling to the notion that there is something wrong with making profits out of providing electricity, gas, water or trains, even when it means better service and lower prices testimony to the continuing underlying hostility to the market economy embedded deep in the British psyche by years of collectivism and fanned at every opportunity by the anti-capitalist consensus among our chattering-class opinion formers. It has been given a new lease of life by a few fat cats whose greed has threatened to discredit the whole privatisation process in popular sentiment.
Even passengers who for years have been treated little better than cattle by British Rail persist in the delusion that the answer is not private enterprise but more state spending. But the government faces a myriad of insatiable, competing demands on the resources at its command; it will never be able to provide enough capital to modernise the railways. Indeed, whenever they run into trouble because of overtaxing or overborrowing, all governments cut public investment first.
The present government has just taken an axe to the road programme in its efforts to keep public spending under control. In the mid-1970s, Labour slashed investment in renewal of our Victorian sewage system when the International Monetary Fund said it had to stop borrowing 10% of national income or face a massive run on the pound and national bankruptcy. The reason why nobody answered directory inquiries was because the government could not afford to pay for the computerisation of the service. The necessary investment was only forthcoming when water and phones were privatised.
A fundamental reason for welcoming the privatisation of the railways is that it will, as The Economist put it, end the "annual haggling for funds in the public expenditure round"; instead, "the new operators of the network will be able to plan capital investment on a long-term basis".
Labour politicians have been having a field day because allegations of ticket fraud have delayed the privatisation of the London, Tilbury and Southend line. Forget, for a moment, that British Rail has been defrauding the nation of a decent railway service for decades and notice that whoever now ends up with this "misery line" will have to replace all the clapped-out rolling stock as part of the franchise conditions.
Those who gleefully predicted that privatisation would never happen are being proved wrong: if the government runs its full term to May 1997, almost 95% of the railway system will be in private hands a transfer that no Labour government will be able to afford to reverse. That is why the curmudgeonly Clare Short, Labour's transport spokesman, keeps losing her temper with interviewers who push her about her party's promise to restore the railways to public ownership.
Dismembering a dinosaur into 60 separate bits is fraught with danger and there will be plenty of difficulties on the way to provide material for the continued carping of the critics. The government has probably made rail privatisation more complicated than it need be. But the benefits will flow once the new system is in place.
Investment plans have been drawn up to create a rail system fit for the 21st century: not just new trains and track but radio links between every driver and control centre to improve service and safety and even a satellite global positioning system to show where trains are.
Passenger fares are capped at or below inflation for the next seven years (after a 22% increase in real terms over the past decade) to protect the public and encourage efficiency. There will be financial penalties for late arrival (with an inquiry triggered to discover who is to blame every time a train is three minutes or more behind schedule) and a guaranteed system of subsidies for those unprofitable lines the country wants to keep open for social reasons. Rail workers will be given a stake in their business through shareholding.
Investment in public transport. New technology. Passenger protection. Penalties for the poor performance of private enterprise. Social subsidies. Even stakeholding. It reads like a new Labour tract. It is part of the absurdity of our party politics born of the public's phobia about privatisation that the government is likely to get no credit for it, while Labour will continue to win cheap cheers by throwing bricks on the lines in an attempt to derail it.
LORD Justice Scott's report into the double-dealing by ministers, officials and businessmen over the sale of defence equipment to Saddam Hussein's Iraq presents John Major with a decisive test of his premiership. He cannot avoid it by side-stepping the judge's findings or kicking his voluminous report into Whitehall's long grass. Nor can he dismiss the furore parliament awaits by ignoring the judge's conclusions and telling the country that he finds no fault in those the judge finds wanting.
The prime minister has no place to run, no place to hide. He appointed Sir Richard Scott to head an independent inquiry with clear terms of reference after the release in a criminal court of 500 incriminating pages of confidential documents pointing to a Whitehall cover-up of supposedly illegal trading with Iraq. For Mr Major to turn his back on the judge's findings as they relate to senior ministers now, for reasons of political expediency, would be to sully his record and demean the standards of public life he is pledged to uphold.
The omens, however, are not good. The smear campaign unleashed by former cabinet colleagues and a few misguided journalists underlines the determination of the two ministers most directly in the firing line William Waldegrave, the Treasury chief secretary, and Sir Nicholas Lyell, the attorney-general to hang on, come what may. Lord Howe has led the charge against Sir Richard, supported by Douglas Hurd, another member of the former foreign secretaries' club. Their allegations of the inquiry's supposed unfairness to witnesses would be laughable were they not so malevolent.
Sir Richard gave witnesses advance warning of matters he wished to raise with them, allowed them to make a written statement before he decided whether to call them in person, gave them a transcript of their oral evidence if they were called, offered them the opportunity to add further points, and sent them a draft of any criticisms he proposed to make so they might comment on them. Any connection between such an inquiry and the medieval Star Chamber injustice conjured up by Lord Howe is illusory. For Mr Major to refuse to accept the judge's findings on the grounds that the method of his inquiry was unfair would be to breach his own reputation as a man who would never question the umpire's ruling.
A greater danger lies in the briefings by government sources that Mr Major is determined to protect his ministers' scalps on the grounds that anything Tony Blair can do, he can do better. According to this twisted logic, Mr Blair saved Harriet Harman from her critics after she breached Labour policy on selective education, so Mr Major must save Mr Waldegrave and the attorney-general to show he is no pushover either. He was particularly galled by Mr Blair's gibe about buckling under pressure. What are we playing here children's games? Mr Blair did himself no favours in saving Ms Harman, beyond scoring a short-term advantage over his parliamentary party. The penalty for Mr Major of taking a short-term view of his responsibilities in the run-up to the general election could be much more severe. The Tories will only fully recover their lost ground, a process that has gradually begun, by persuading the country that they are prepared to take tough decisions in the national interest and not flinch from the consequences, however difficult. If this week's Scott report repeats the damning draft statements published in The Sunday Times last week, there seems no course but for Mr Waldegrave to resign or for Mr Major to ask him to do so.
Mr Waldegrave may consider himself cruelly treated, but so do many who appear before a judge. Parliament is entitled to expect high standards in its dealings with ministers. If Sir Richard finds that Mr Waldegrave has, no doubt under duress, been knowingly "economical with the actualite", as Alan Clark said, it should assert the rights of the legislature above the powers of the executive. Not to do so would be to encourage the growth of ministerial practices alien to the British tradition and destructive of public confidence in those who hold high positions of state.
The Scott inquiry has shaken the composure of the nabobs in some of the most sensitive areas of British officialdom. No longer can they maintain, although they will try, that outsiders are incapable of understanding the subtleties and complexities involved in administering public policy at the highest levels. Sir Richard has plumbed the superficial depths of Whitehall's outlook on life and unravelled the artificial codes of Whitehall-speak. Against all protestations, his conclusions will rank as a milestone in the government's long march from a culture in which words are held to mean less than what they say and deception is a necessary weapon of survival.
No minister is likely ever again to sign a certificate alerting a judge to the government's sensitivity about documents required by a court without thinking hard. Two clear results of the Scott inquiry are its confirmation that such certificates came to be regarded as "gagging orders" by civil servants and judges and its disclosure that Michael Heseltine's refusal to sign an unconditional order in the aborted Matrix Churchill case, which astonished the attorney-general, was a revolutionary act by a wily statesman.
The obligation of backbench Conservative MPs in the coming weeks will be especially onerous. They can rant and roar in support of "their side" versus "the other side" in the hope that the party holds together under the strain and Robin Cook turns in a dud performance for Labour when the debate takes place on February 26, much as Neil Kinnock did when Margaret Thatcher was on the ropes during the Westland affair. Or the wiser heads can make their views known that nothing is to be gained by flying in the face of a lord justice of appeal and public opinion, and that the best course would be for the prime minister to act decisively in the interests of party and parliament, accept Scott's judgment, give his recommendations a fair wind and close the book on the circumstances surrounding the Matrix Churchill affair.
Its unravelling has taken more than three years, millions of pounds, enormous professional expertise and more than 400 hours of witnesses answering questions in open session. If future inquiries into scandals yet to come are to have any credibility, parliament must ensure that those found culpable by Scott are brought to book. The national interest demands it general election or no.
The 1996 intergovernment conference to put new flesh on the Maastricht treaty a document that instead needs desperately to be slimmed will effectively start at next month's meeting of the 15 heads of European Community government in Turin. We should pray that two main points are grasped by all those gathering there, especially Helmut Kohl.
First point for Kohl in Fiat Motors' Turin: Germany, like Japan, will never again see a successful motor factory started on its territory, even if those two countries continue to lead in auto technology and management. Manufacturing will increasingly be transferred to cheaper-labour Sunderland, or Suzhuo (the town in red China where even local government is to be run by a Singapore multinational), or Vietnam, or the Czech Republic. The BMW car assembly plant in Vietnam pays some workers $1 a day. In Germany a worker costs BMW more than $30 an hour, half of it paid to the Bonn government to fund welfare. Kohl's aim now is to force his EC partners to take up some of his 4m unemployment, by using the EC's social chapter to block their workers from further undercutting German ones.
Second point for Kohl: the main peacemaking need for the EC is to expand (maybe to more than 30 members) by absorbing the ex-communist lands. Kohl's lament at Louvain, that we should fear more European wars unless we press on to full political union among the EC's present 15 members, is fortunately as out of date as his Hitler Jugend uniform at age 15 in 1945. And for the same glad reason because Germany, in free-trade Europe, has developed into too sensible a country to go to war with its neighbours.
If the formerly united Yugoslavia had been in the EC, my guess is it would still have split into Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia but not through civil war, because a nannying EC could early on have said: "The first of you three that even approaches violence will be expelled from the union." The main cause of war was that the three ex-Yugoslav tribes had been locked resentfully in the sort of political and federal union, complete with single currency, that the madmen of Maastricht want to impose on today's diverse 15 members. We need to try to edge the EC umbrella over fragments from the old Soviet Disunion, but not to explode new Chechnyas by ruling that membership must involve them in full political union with Moscow and us.
Instead, members of a new EC should sign up just to the few rules really needed for free trade and a single market, maybe plus the European convention on human rights. Other EC functions should be unbundled into packages, and made voluntary for any country that (dottily?) wants to embrace them. The articles providing a timetable for a compulsory single currency should be written out of the treaties. Any poor country that tries to order its currency to goose step beside the German mark, through each stage of each trade cycle, will suffer dreadful emigration. Any rich country trying this will make full employment an unattainable fantasy.
More than 80% of the EC's budget, to which Britain is the second largest net contributor, goes to the common agricultural policy (CAP), plus structural funds to poor south local governments such as Sicily's (which distort their economies by wrong politicians' investments amid corruption). France wants to placate its violent farmers by a CAP making all Europe pay twice the world market price for some foods, thus turning those foods into surplus mountains which we then have to subsidise to export. I would rather Britain politely opted out and cut our inflation to a minus by importing France's subsidised food exports.
There are a dozen other bundled EC policies: regulatory, transport, environmental, immigrational. I would opt out of most. Before March 29 in Turin, John Major is to produce a white paper on his views. Lobbies crowd in on him. I feel closest to the European Research Group (ERG) from 35 political parties in 24 countries. One ERG publication last week startled those of us who had granted that federal union and a single currency helped America.
In a memo to the ERG, Howard Flight, who raised his Guinness Flight firm to £2billion of assets under management in the past decade, noted events after the 1865 post-civil-war integration of the Confederate dollar into the Yankee economy. It took the South 100 years of depression under a common dollar to catch up, amid huge emigration of the poorest southerners to the North. That explains the many black faces in Detroit which have not been tactfully handled. A Kohl Turin next month will lead to 100 years of such problems in north Europe.
What do the following have in common: Hinton, Crossland, Lyons, Stanier, Mitchell and Cockerell? Not all that easy, unless you live in their world. They are all engineers who have enriched our lives quite as much as all the actors and artists, writers and musicians who are household names. The E-type Jaguar that Bill Lyons gave us, the Spitfire that RJ Mitchell designed, the great Pacific steam locomotives that William Stanier inspired, are among the most beautiful artefacts the human race has devised. All are British. Yet no great industrial nation ignores its engineers quite as shamelessly as we do.
Perhaps it goes with the territory. Engineers don't have private views, first nights or gala premieres. If they have feuds we don't hear about them; if they have triumphs we don't celebrate them. Yet every time we boil a kettle, turn on the television or start the car we are in their debt. They make the world go round, but we take the ride they provide entirely for granted.
This is the problem facing the 77,000 members of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, who last week unwrapped their plans for celebrating their 150th birthday next year. How do they shake our enduring perception of the engineer as a man in oily overalls with a spanner in his hand? Well, they're having a spirited go.
They want us to meet some of their young members who do unexpected jobs. Andrew Knight, for example, is a forensic engineer who gives expert opinion to lawyers when there has been an industrial accident. Mike Neal works in Verona as a medical engineer advising surgeons as they design instruments. Nikki Pomfret hops into a helicopter to make aerial surveys where people may be excavating near a gas pipeline in blissful ignorance of the danger they face.
Nikki is, of course, a girl; one of a growing number of women who now account for 14% of engineering degrees. An outfit called Women into Science and Engineering has four campaign buses which tour the country showing girls in schools and youth clubs that engineering is not just a man's world; that it's a field which is high-tech, clean, highly paid and exciting. Let's face it, though, a mountain of prejudice still remains.
I still relish the retort of Kate Lovett, a brilliant graduate of Birmingham University who went to work on the assembly process for the XJS sports car at Jaguar. Asked by comedians there if she would mend their cars for them, she came back with the unfieldable riposte: ‘No, but if you like I'll design you a new one.' More like Kate please.
The news that Tony Blair is now serious about throwing hereditary peers out of the House of Lords brings back echoes of the bitter battle waged by Asquith in the great constitutional crisis of 1911. He proposed not to chuck the hereditary peers out, but to drown them in a flood of new peers he would create: as many as it took.
His most ardent ally indeed, almost his only one in this heroic plan was his new home secretary, a recent recruit to the Liberal party called Winston Churchill. ‘We are not a bit afraid of creating 500 peers if necessary,' Winston thundered. ‘We should clink the coronets in their scabbards.'
The peers saw sense. They usually do in the end. As aristos go, they are probably a better lot than any other. They have, after all, won the Nobel prize (Bertrand Russell), the VC (Lord De L'Isle and Dudley) and gold for us in the Olympic games (Lord Burghley). It was Lord B who, after beating the world's best in the 400m hurdles in 1928, put on his greatcoat in that era before tracksuits and simply commented: ‘The Americans are frightfully good losers.' We would have missed all that if they had gone to the guillotine.
Many air-gunners and their families write to remonstrate with me for using the term arse-end charlie, which they see as a revolting Americanism. Tail-end charlie, yes; and, of course, there were plenty of air-gunners in other parts of the plane. Still, it was worth the flak, if only for the memory it brought back to Douglas Lowndes, a rear-gunner with Coastal Command in 1941, of a fellow A-G from Dublin who became famous for one remark.
During a debriefing, the intelligence officer asked Brendan if he had seen anything.
‘Yes sir,' came the reply. ‘I seen one of them old Dornier flying boats crossing our tail at about 300 yards.' ‘Did you shoot at him?' asked the IO. ‘Jaysus no' said Brendan. ‘That might have made him hostile.'
Beware of Curse. We have had Spectre and Smersh. Now we have a new assault on the values of liberal democracy: the Campaign to Undermine the Report of the Scott Examination. As with the villains in any James Bond movie, we must contrast the public face of Curse with the grim nature of its unseen operatives. There are Douglas Hurd and Lord Howe, all smiles and sophistication; one does not need too much imagination to see either man stroking a large white cat on their knee as they warn the bicycling judge to be careful. "Personally, I abhor skulduggery, Sir Richard, but my former undersecretary, Odd Job, is less fastidious."
This weekend dozens of Odd Jobs around Whitehall are devising ways to serve Curse and demolish Scott's work. Last Wednesday they received advance copies of his report. They are using their eight-day head start over the rest of us to hunt down mistakes, unmask contradictions, leak selective titbits to favoured journalists and generate the impression that Scott is generally naive, unfair and out of his depth.
Curse may achieve its objectives. Immediate impressions matter most in an age when news editors tend to prefer simple sensations, however trivial, to complex truths, however important. The Scott report will be published at 3.30pm on Thursday. If the government can steer reporters towards the "right" headlines on that evening's television news and in Friday morning's tabloid papers, Curse will have triumphed. Detailed dissections in the broadsheet press over the following days, showing that first impressions were misleading, will cut little ice. The story will be over; the media caravan will have moved on.
Anyone who doubts this should recall the fate of the Franks report after the Falklands war. The brief summary issued by Sir Bernard Ingham, Baroness (then Margaret) Thatcher's press officer, on publication day highlighted the conclusion that said no "criticism or blame" could be attached to her government for Argentina's decision to invade. This generated the "Maggie in clear" headlines that Thatcher craved. After preparing their initial stories from the Ingham summary, some journalists studied the full text of the report and uncovered a raft of serious criticisms of government failure before the invasion. It was too late. The first headlines had set the tone of the post-Franks debate; subsequent attempts to correct the first, false impressions made no impact.
What, then, can be done to counter Curse this week? Perhaps the most useful task, while we wait for the report, is to tackle Curse's central claim: that Scott was unfair to ministers; he should have allowed them to engage lawyers to cross-examine their critics.
I have some sympathy with the Howe/Hurd view on this point, although not for the reasons they cite. Scott says there was no reason to allow cross-examination because none of the witnesses was on trial. Nobody was under oath; people who gave evidence received immunity from prosecution and (in the case of civil servants) demotion. Scott's aim was to uncover the truth, not send criminals to jail.
The underlying reason for this is that the Scott inquiry was not really a legal event at all. It was a political event. It arose out of allegations that government ministers had overstepped the bounds of accepted political behaviour. Scott was asked to find out what really went on.
What happens next will be decided at Westminster. Any punishments that are meted out that is, any resignations that are required will be up to John Major interpreting the political mood, not a judge interpreting a criminal statute.
So Scott is an adjunct to a political process, rather than the arbiter of a legal one. The main reason is that in many ways ministers are above the law. A shopkeeper who misleads a customer may be prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act, but a minister who misleads parliament commits no formal offence. The law deals harshly with an ordinary citizen who conceals evidence from the courts; no law may be invoked against a minister who signs a public interest immunity certificate in order to hide an embarrassing truth.
So Hurd and Howe are right to say that the Scott procedure was in error; but they have detected the wrong error. Political actions should be subject far more tightly to the rule of law. It should be an offence for ministers to mislead parliament or to suppress vital evidence in a criminal trial.
Then we would have had not the Scott inquiry, but, potentially, a full-scale prosecution. In that event it would have been perfectly proper indeed necessary for anyone charged with an offence to have hired a barrister to defend them.
If that is the system that Howe and Hurd want, they should say so. I do not believe for a moment that it is. They have never shown the faintest interest in diminishing the powers of the executive or subjecting ministers to tight, clear and enforceable rules. They prefer ministers to flourish or fall according to the vagaries of the political process.
So be it; but it ill becomes them to complain when that process is informed by the scrutiny of someone as tenacious, fair-minded and meticulous as Sir Richard Scott.
Gus McGrouther, Britain's first professor of plastic surgery, warns that we are in danger of creating a "cosmetic underclass", a lumpen mass of self-loathing, ordinary-looking people who avoid surgical enhancement for fear of the knife, or silicone poisoning, and lose out as a result.
Look at our obsession with appearances, he said last week, at how we prefer svelte, chiselled Diana to big-boned Fergie; at how Winston Churchill and Harold Wilson would today be unelectable because of their pudginess.
It is a depressing scenario, especially in the week that Peter Donald, the model in the Natrel deodorant commercial, killed himself out of desperation at his "ugliness" and thousands more British women signed on for the dream of plastic nubility. (Pamela Anderson, their patron saint, was completely unfazed by Ruby Wax's television interview last week: irony against implants? No chance.)
Slowly Britain is catching up with the American ideal of self-improvement, and who would deny those who are miserable about how they look the chance to feel better? "Disfigurement is the last bastion of discrimination," says McGrouther, making us wonder where imperfection stops and deformity begins. With our chequebooks, probably.
But as millions follow the Pammy route, perhaps a new natural justice will emerge, giving those who remain as nature intended a moral superiority, the virtue of having transcended the Barbies' airhead narcissism.
In Carlton TV's documentary Hollywood Men all walnut tans and penis extensions the voices of wisdom and humour come from a hirsute comedy writer, Chris Penn, Sean's fat brother, and Roseanne Barr, a woman who had the liposuction but clearly stopped short of perfection as a matter of principle, naturally.
The early release from prison last week of Darius Guppy, doubtless amazed that he served as much of his sentence as he did, comes as no surprise. We knew from the start that he would not be gardening in overalls for long, just like the Guinness defendants.
The persistent notion that white-collar crime is a steal from someone who can afford it, and ultimately "victimless", is reflected in how we deal with it. Five years for a burglary, perhaps, but community service for a first-offence embezzlement. In her time running the Serious Fraud Office, Barbara Mills was accused of an over-zealous approach to prosecuting. "The real trouble," she told me recently, "was that we weren't used to people in the City being arrested." Surely we have learnt by now that a fraud is as much a robbery as a house-break or a mugging.
Guppy's crime was less complex than the labyrinthine deceptions of Wall Street anti-heroes, but not for want of self-image in his head he was the bad-ass yuppie, the evil genius with a black Mercedes, a blonde babe and a place in the sun, which turned out to be a place in The Sun on a regular basis.
Actually, all he did was stage some amateur dramatics in a New York hotel room, make a £1.8m insurance claim for "stolen" gems, issue a few threats and get caught. But boys like "Darry" never stay in prison longer than it takes for a well-connected friend to pull some strings in this case, shell out £156,000 of compensation to Lloyd's and put the Bollinger on ice and have them smuggled from the gates of Ford open prison, bankrupt but hopeful of a bright new career.
Deep in our resentful, class-conscious hearts we know this is the way of the world. It was only when Nick Leeson opened his mouth to release a stream of Essex vowels rather than the honed enunciation of high finance that it occurred there might not be anyone to rescue him after all.
But who even blinked when Guppy, best man at Earl Spencer's wedding, Old Etonian and graduate of Magdalen College, Oxford, was freed on Monday? Three years ago he and his business partner Benedict Marsh were fined massively and sentenced to five years by Judge Andrew Brooks with the words: "I want you to know you are both going to prison for a very long time."
They appealed last July and saw the £539,000 fines reduced to compensation orders of £227,000 which Marsh, son of millionaire ad-mogul Peter Marsh, paid and went home; Guppy refused and was given three more years in jail. Despite the failure of his "perfect crime", Guppy's debacle is still being read as a suave and daring accomplishment.
His early release after the "reimbursement" by a friend makes the affair sound like a misunderstanding, but though his pose in life has been Byronic, Guppy was not flung in jail for gambling debts like a 19th-century aristocrat. Indeed, the prefix "gentleman" used to denote social rank in such cases is a barrier to combating the fastest growing modern crime of fraud, buzzword of the moment and for many a 1990s lifestyle.
In January alone our newspapers reported frauds totalling £13.6 billion, not even counting the Maxwell case. They ranged from the organised banking and benefits rip-offs to the casual chancers: a suspected £1.5m of educational-award fraud; £80m-worth of alleged insider trading in two City companies; a reported $42m fraud against the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation under investigation.
There was Lord Brocket's £4.5m vintage car fraud, and PJ Proby's sad little benefit scam of £93 a fortnight; even investigations of compensation claims from Ulster farmers for sheep distressed by low-flying helicopters. And last week came news of the LTS Rail debacle.
Guppy's case is just another example of our national pastime, made no better and no worse by his arrogance and Savile Row wardrobe. He is not a latter-day Raffles, a suggestible youth, a conman with style or any of the appealing but ultimately futile euphemisms we can find for a privileged criminal. He was on the make like all the others, but seems to have been bailed out by his smart connections.
Naturally the Tory back benches are howling at his release, and shareholders of the collapsed Inca Gemstones such as Murray Walker, the motor racing commentator, are rightly claiming they have lost honest fortunes. But the really worrying aspect is the precedent it sets.
As Guppy allegedly remarked when first led to the cells, his time in jail would be worth the rewards of his crime, a bundle he claims he gave to a mysterious Mr X he met in a mosque, but which is thought by many to be stashed in a mattress or a Swiss bank account. As long as that idea persists, as long as we see him as glamorous and clever, the fall of the golden boy will be less of a deterrent and more of a reminder that if a life of crime is to be worth its risks, white-collar options are your best bet. Even better if the collars are from Jermyn Street.
John Harlow berates the professionals who skip jury service
My blood ran cold when I read last week that the Labour party is to target the middle-class social shirkers who bunk off jury service, leaving the civic duty and an unacceptably high rate of acquittals to the working class and unemployed.
At dinner parties I am prepared to die for the 800-year-old principle of trial by one's peers, but last year I spent weeks devising begging letters exaggerating my importance to The Sunday Times in a desperate attempt to avoid service at a regional crown court: I ended up as foreman of a jury on a 10-day trial.
It was only after I rolled up at the foul smoke-filled anteroom of the court that I realised my excuses had not been ambitious or gothic enough.
The teacher in front of me had a corker. The fearsome court matriach, who judged our fates, melted when he claimed that, as an inner-city warrior, he was bound to have taught most of the court's "clients". It might have been true, but as he walked away he was grinning.
The official was not fooled, but she did not have the time to argue. Her job was to make up the numbers, not vet the 12 persons good and true to ensure social balance. But it is the middle classes, horrified at the prospect of a Maxwell-length trial, which could ruin their marriages or blight their promotion prospects, who devise the most imaginative excuses.
Officials at my court told of the businessman who had a life-or-death appointment in Hong Kong, and to prove it an airline ticket, which he was spotted cashing in later that afternoon; a highly colourful pantomime by a "smallpox" victim, a disease declared extinct years ago; and even a bogus death certificate.
All this would be merely silly if the long-term consequences were not so serious. Jack Straw, Labour's home affairs spokesman, believes that anti-police attitudes among the working classes are contributing to a declining rate of convictions, returning some criminals to the streets.
It is arguable whether today's middle classes, who may meet the police only when they are pulled over for a motoring offence, are any less suspicious of the force than others. Low conviction rates may hide many other problems, but there is no doubt the professional classes can bring badly needed skills to the jury box, and justice will be poorer without them.
Michael Green, chairman of Carlton Communications, who last month spent 10 days on a jury, is right behind Jack. "We had a good social mix which provided 12 different viewpoints and opened up deliberations tremendously. The jury system needs this."
I suspect I was elected foreman because, as a bigmouth, I had already shown that I could assimilate and assess contradictory testimonies, an ability honed in my journalist training and common to many middle-class professionals.
In our case, I would guess that nine of the jurors came from a blue-collar background, well out of proportion to the 40% of society which defines itself as middle class.
Intelligence was shared equally among us all and, by the end of the trial, so was weariness, boredom and a stressed-out determination to arrive at a fair decision. But, more worryingly, two jurors admitted they were constantly distracted by the barrister's posh accents, which might be an argument for more working-class lawyers rather than middle-class jurors, and one had been too intimidated to admit she had been unwell throughout most of the hearing. Yet I believe we still came to the right verdict.
At work I put up with jocular comments about my 10-day "holiday". Far nastier was the fate of the glazing company employee. He had pleaded with the court official that after serving eight days on the jury panel waiting to be called he was under pressure to get back to work. Although at this point she was excusing those who claimed family commitments from completing the 10-day stint, with him she was adamant. After returning to work he was immediately fired, supposedly for late timekeeping. So it is not only the professional classes that pay for the jury system.
The judicial process is under siege, accused of incompetence, confusion and complacency, but I left the court feeling a little more optimistic about its prospects. I hope I have served my time, for jury service is a bruising brief, even for £44 a day, but this is no excuse for the middle classes to shun it. But if they do, then they cannot complain if the streets become a little less safe.
WHO has the best ideas for controlling welfare spending?
Chile.
Okay, brutal right-wing dictatorships aside, who?
Chile. It hasn't been brutal, particularly right-wing or a dictatorship for a long time, but it has transformed its welfare system.
How?
Until the early 1980s, it had an expensive but rickety state pension system, characterised by high contributions and widespread evasion. It was scrapped and replaced with a system in which people compulsorily pay a minimum of 10% and a maximum of 20% of their wages into a pension account. These are managed by private companies. Contributors can expect a pension of at least 40% of earnings.
Has it been a good thing?
Yes. Workers can choose their retirement age, and adjust contributions accordingly. Labour costs have fallen sharply because taxes on companies to support the welfare system have been slashed. Average pensions are about half as high again as under the old system.
Why is this relevant for Britain?
Chile was the first country, and remains one of the few, to have moved from a "pay-as-you-go" state pension scheme, like Britain's, to a privately operated system.
What about those who aren't in work, or fall by the wayside?
There is a safety net, social assistance benefit and a guaranteed minimum pension.
Are there any risks?
If the Chilean economy goes belly-up, so do the pension funds. Last year they lost money by investing too much in the electricity industry. But rates of return have, in general, been good.
I thought Tony Blair was praising Singapore's scheme how does that work?
It revolves around a provident fund introduced in 1955. Workers pay in about a third of their earnings but can make withdrawals to fund college fees, hospital care and house purchase. It was created from scratch, not adapted from an existing welfare system. Contribution rates would be regarded as excessive in Britain.
And Australia?
Labour is attracted by Australia's superannuation funds, which if applied to Britain could provide a second-tier pension on top of the basic state payment. But contribution rates would be above those for existing private pensions.
The tories thought they had found a way to fund an ageing population, but there is trouble in store
You could be forgiven for thinking that welfare spending in Britain is, like a wild boar, big, ugly and impossible to control. Since the end of the 1940s, when the welfare state came into being, annual average growth in benefit expenditure, in real terms, has been 4.6% a year. Under John Major, benefit spending, again in real terms, has risen by 35%. The "grand total" of social security spending, £92 billion this year, is scheduled to top £100 billion before the end of the century.
But no. The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development predicts that in the next century, France, Germany and Japan will face a doubling or trebling of their national debt because of the burden of state pensions and other welfare spending. Britain, on present projections, will have repaid the national debt by 2030.
It sounds too good to be true, and it probably is. The biggest welfare change made by the Thatcher government did not involve an assault on single mothers, the unemployed or benefit cheats. It involved taking money from pensioners.
The 1980 decision to raise state pensions in line with prices rather than, as before, in line with average earnings, was highly significant. Since wages tend to rise by one or two percentage points a year faster than prices, the effect is substantial, now equivalent to an annual saving of nearly £7.5 billion in social security spending.
There has, however, been a downside. In 1980, when Patrick Jenkin, then health and social security secretary, broke the link between pensions and earnings, the basic state pension was equivalent to 22% of male average earnings. Now, in relative terms, pensioners have become much poorer; the state pension of £58.85 is worth only 15% of earnings. Projections by the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that, if the process continues, the state pension will be worth only 7% or 8% of earnings within 30-40 years.
The result is that many pensioners require their incomes to be topped up. To compensate for the squeeze on pensions, the government has announced a range of special increases: for the elderly, in income support, housing benefit and council tax benefit.
True, the proportion of people retiring with alternative pension arrangements, particularly company schemes, has increased. More than 60% of retired people have occupational pensions, against 43% in 1979. But on this the future is by no means guaranteed. According to Kenneth Clarke, who also spoke on welfare last week, Britain's flexible, enterprise economy which to many means a greater degree of job insecurity means "people need to be reassured more than ever before that, through thick and thin, their health will be looked after, their children educated and a safety net provided for their old age and periods of involuntary unemployment".
The chancellor may have hit on something bigger than he realises. The flexible economy means the proportion of people in permanent, salaried jobs has fallen. Latest estimates show fewer than 50% of the workforce now fall into this category, with the rest either part-time, or in temporary, contract jobs.
The effects of this flexibility, of fewer people staying in full-time jobs for any length of time, are twofold. The first is that employers can take on people, employ them at well below a living wage, possibly on a part-time basis, and rely on the state to top up their income. "In-work" benefits, which have come increasingly into vogue, embody this process. The net result is the transfer of the responsibility for maintaining the incomes of much of the population from private firms to the public purse.
The other difficulty is that, if the norm is now that many people can expect to spend long periods out of work, or on short-term contracts, or in part-time, low-paid jobs, the conditions that gave rise to the growth of private pensions will no longer be in place. Increasingly, under such circumstances, people may have to fall back on the state. If, on retirement, they have to fall back on a pension worth only 7% or 8% of average earnings, it will be grey riots that hit the streets of Britain.
If job insecurity means a less secure future for private pensions, it will interact with a marked ageing of the population. In the first 10 years of the next century, the number of people of pensionable age will rise by 10%, or 1m. Between 2020 and 2040, the number of pensioners will rise from 12m to 15m. The number of people aged over 75, currently 4m, will double over the next 50 years. Currently, there are 63 dependents (children or the retired) for every 100 people of working age. Even after allowing for an increase in the retirement age for women from 60 to 65, which will take effect around 2015, the dependency ratio will rise towards 80 during the next century.
These pressures are real, and the history of social security spending speaks for itself. In last November's budget, the biggest increase in public spending was not for health or education but social security up £1 billion on previous plans. And the explanation was as worrying as the figure itself; it reflected an increaed take-up of benefits among people entitled to them.
According to one government official, clamping down on social security spending is a bit like trying to squeeze into a girdle: just when you think you have the problem under control it pops out, embarrassingly, somewhere else. Indeed, if the take-up rate for all benefits continues to increase, and with little stigma now attached to claiming benefits there is no reason why not, the effects would be dramatic. Take-up rates for most benefits are between 80% and 90%. A 100% take-up rate could add £10 billion or more to the social security bill.
For Peter Lilley, the fact that the growth in social security spending has been held down to a little over 1% a year is a cause for celebration. But his own departmental projections suggest this will not last; by the end of the century growth in benefits is expected to be above 2% a year, broadly in line with the growth of the economy. The pressures on welfare spending are powerful. To suggest they have been tamed is fanciful.
A farewell to alms? No, the safety net must stay, but spending in all areas has to fall.
The budget must be trimmed and the state slimmed down. Health and education can easily be financed by private money.
President Clinton recently announced that the era of big government is over. Kenneth Clarke echoed him at the LSE last Tuesday: "Big government is out limited government is in." This is not an issue between the Tory right and left; all factions believe the state should be slimmed down, and that this has to involve "welfare", which takes between 60% and 70% of total government spending. The problem is how to do it.
The best, though not the only, measure of the "size of the state" is the share of national income it spends. In Britain last year it was 42.5%. Press comment has concentrated on the difference in emphasis, or perhaps rhetoric, between the chancellor and the prime minister. Clarke aims to reduce the share of public spending to just under 40% of national income by 1997-98, and by some unspecified amount thereafter. John Major has aspired to 35% in the thereafter. Neither has set targets. The great advantage of a target is that it forces the government to plan its fiscal policy to reach it. Neither the PM's aspirations nor Clarke's even vaguer ones impose any such discipline.
The reason is that neither knows how to do it. The graph above shows how resistant the state is to being cut. Nigel Lawson did succeed in reducing the state's share of spending to under 40% of national income at the height of the boom in the late 1980s. By the early 1990s, it was higher than it had been in 1979. Clarke is right to limit his commitments to about 40%. On plausible assumptions, this is about the lowest he can achieve on present policies.
The right wing's claim that "deep spending cuts" are immediately available to finance "deep tax cuts" is distracting. Of course there are cuts available: defence and Foreign Office spending is absurdly ring-fenced, and there are lots of small, useful reforms left in the pipeline. However, the idea that you can make big tax cuts by eliminating waste is fanciful. It frightens off the many who support the welfare state without offering the glimmerings of a sustainable strategy. The only way to get the share of public spending down is to keep its growth lower than the growth of real earnings over a period of five or ten years. This is formidably difficult, given the constant upward pressure on public spending.
Since nobody wants to reduce the share of national income spent on health and education, the brunt of the fight to check public spending falls on Peter Lilley's £92 billion social security budget. Lilley's aim, repeated last week, of keeping "the planned growth of the welfare state budget to a little over 1% a year" depends largely on continuing to cut the growth of his budget. But, in fact, the key decision which has capped its growth so far was taken more than 10 years ago.
This was to raise the basic state pension in line with prices rather than earnings the most far-sighted spending decision taken by a government since the war. How much more is there to be squeezed out? Reducing benefit fraud and running costs will save the odd billion; a fall in the jobless will help; universal child benefit might be phased out. Lilley's policy of bleeding his budget with a thousand cuts is heroic, but there is a limit to how far it can go without provoking "riots in the streets".
Furthermore, checking the growth of the social security budget will not, in itself, reduce the public spending share of national income. It depends on whether the savings go on tax remission or on increased spending in other desirable areas. Clarke plans to use social security savings to cut taxes and to increase public spending on the NHS, schools and the police.
However, his scope for doing so is extraordinarily limited. If the economy grows at its trend rate of just over 2% a year and the growth of the welfare state is to be held to just over 1%, the annual savings on the social security budget will have to be substantially more than 1% if the NHS and education are to be properly financed and taxes cut. There is no strategy for doing this and I doubt whether it can be done within the framework of present policy.
It is at this point that the real difference between the right and left emerges, though both speak in muffled voices. The left would like to raise taxes, if it could see a way of doing this which would not scupper the Labour party's electoral chances. Gordon Brown has talked of a "windfall tax" on public utility profits; Will Hutton would like a higher energy tax; others would raise the marginal tax rate on higher incomes. The common and traditional thrust of these ideas is to hit the "fat cats" while leaving the tax rates of most unchanged. All Conservatives, on the other hand, would like to reduce taxes if they could find a way of doing so which did not endanger the "core" public services health and education.
The Tories should take the tax-cutting route, and win the argument for doing so. There are many excellent economic reasons for reducing the size of the state. It is a fact too little remembered that when developed economies were growing at their fastest in the 1950s and early 1960s, the share of national income spent by western governments was little over 30%, and that the growth slowdown which started in the 1970s was preceded by an upward climb in the government's share.
Recent evidence from around the world summarised in The Economist on January 13 also suggests economic success goes with smaller governments, not bigger ones. But the main argument for slimming down the state is moral: it is wrong that governments should take 40% and more of our earnings and decide how to spend it as they see fit. In a privately prosperous society, the necessary tasks of government (including the provision of a "social safety net") require nothing like this degree of interference with private spending decisions.
The way through the maze is to allow private money into the tax-financed parts of the health and education services. The universities were on the point of imposing a surcharge of £300 per student. Now they hope Gillian Shephard will give them more money, or authorise a tuition loan scheme. She should let the surcharge go forward as a reasonable way of raising extra money. The evidence is overwhelming that people want more spent on health and education. Let them spend it. Allow schools, colleges, universities, hospitals and doctors to charge above and beyond what the taxpayer/government is willing to provide, with special protection for those who cannot pay. This is the only strategy that will enable the government to cut taxes while maintaining and improving the quality of those services of most concern to most people. Once we are used to it, we will wonder why we did not do it ages ago.
Lord Skidelsky is chairman of the Social Market Foundation.
At the heart of Europe serious questions are being asked about monetary union.
Strikes, a flagging economy and a rising tide of economic uncertainty have forced French Eurosceptics out of the closet. Three months ago it would have been heresy to question whether France would meet the Maastricht deadline. Now the corridors of the French parliament are heavy with the hushed conversations of Gaullist MPs worried by mounting public hostility to monetary union.
Next week the "Terrible Twins" of the Gaullist Eurosceptic wing Philippe Seguin and Charles Pasqua will form a political lobby group to challenge the current government orthodoxy. Demain La France (France Tomorrow) will hold its first meeting on Tuesday at the Paris offices of Pasqua.
A watered-down version of the Bruges Group, the association will bring together parliamentarians, academics and party rank and file worried by the direction France is taking. This being France, the group cannot be described as anti-European in the British sense. Seguin has always been clear that he is for European integration but against Maastricht.
Pasqua and Seguin are both men of the people, large, lugubrious characters who look as though they have just rolled out of a cafe in Provence after a few pastis. By contrast the prime minister, Alain Juppe, is cold, angular and technocratic, a man who speaks only of budget cuts. There you have the answer to why Pasqua and Seguin are such a formidable political force.
"The French need dreams, hope and passion. They want to be spoken to of love, not interest rates, deficits and timetables," said Pasqua in a damning assault on government policy at the height of last year's great strikes.
The French have come to associate the single currency with belt tightening and financial sacrifice. Monetary union may be held up like some distant nirvana, but the everyday reality of getting there is painful, and they are asking whether it is all worth it.
Pasqua and Seguin are no longer out in the cold. The current political orthodoxy that the Maastricht timetable is set in stone and cannot be altered is now being challenged from all sides. Last week three MPs from the centre-right majority put their names to an article in Le Monde calling for the fight against unemployment to be put at the top of the political agenda. Tight monetary policy, they argued, was strangling the French economy and leading it into a deflationary cycle.
"The single currency is not an end in itself. It has no justification if it does not lead to a better standard of living for our citizens ... The sacrifices demanded are being challenged, because people are unable to see any positive results," said the article. It also accused the government of accepting monetary union as a political dogma that could not be challenged. Indeed, to hear Juppe and Jacques Chirac repeating over and over again that the Maastricht criteria will be met by 1997, is like listening to some kind of Buddhist mantra. People are asking why the criteria cannot be relaxed and why the deadline cannot be postponed.
This sense of powerlessness is exacerbated by the fact that the answers to these questions lie with the Germans, who are showing no signs of easing up on the criteria. Quite the opposite: Theo Waigel, the German finance minister, recently raised the idea of expelling countries from economic and monetary union if they ceased to fulfil the fiscal targets. Such rigidity is perceived by the French as an expression of German arrogance.
The preservation of the Franco-German alliance is at the heart of this dash towards monetary union. Initially sceptical about monetary union, Chirac now sees it as the only way to combat the imbalance of power between the two countries.
The French public is, however, more concerned by rising unemployment and cuts to its generous welfare. The president's optimism about Maastricht masks a divided country haunted by the recent spectre of marching workers and students. The MPs who have dared raise their heads above the parapet know that if any more bitter medicine is handed out the strikes could start again at any time. If that happens Juppe may fall and Seguin is the favourite to succeed him.
The next US president could be the man who wins the ratings battle.
What does it tell us about the state of American politics that in the Republican primary battle the two leading outside challengers to Bob Dole are former columnists? That one of them, Steve Forbes, owes his emergence primarily to a multi-million-dollar advertising campaign that saturated television and radio? That the other, Patrick Buchanan, owes his popularity in large part to his television talk-show, CNN's Crossfire? And that the main victim of the process so far, Phil Gramm, is a man who looks like a somewhat dyspeptic turtle?
The short answer is that in American politics more than almost anywhere else, the media matter. We've known this since the televised debate between John Kennedy and an unshaven Richard Nixon.
The long answer, though, is a little more complicated. The sheer vastness of the United States is the primary reason for its media-centred politics. In presidential races, particularly, the candidates have to engage more than 200m people in a nation spanning thousands of miles. They have no option but to reach them through television and radio.
The second reason for the saturation of politics by the media is the first amendment, which puts severe limits on the government's ability to restrict the scope and form of political debate. The Supreme Court has held that political advertising is a form of political speech and so is protected by the constitution. A candidate say, a multi-millionaire publisher can therefore spend a limitless amount of his money to promote his candidacy.
Forbes, like Ross Perot before him, has shown the sheer force of this provision. If you can buy the media, you can almost buy the presidency. Unlike in Britain or other western democracies, there is no ultimate regulation of media access. If you run out of money as several Republican candidates look set to do in the next couple of months your advertisements are yanked off the air and you become politically invisible. Only, of course, you can't buy the presidency: ultimately no true plutocratic maverick has tried it without self-destructing.
Money, anyway, doesn't do the trick, it's what you do with it that matters. And with each electoral cycle, the tricks of the trade shift. In a country where markets determine the media and fashion determines markets, the successful political campaign always has to stay one step ahead of the media zeitgeist.
In 1992, Bill Clinton managed this brilliantly. His campaign used two new venues talk radio and television talk shows to make its case. In the New York primary, he appeared on the risque but immensely popular radio show, Imus in the Morning, and stole the race from resurgent Jerry Brown. He appeared on Arsenio Hall's late-night gab-fest playing a saxophone. In the presidential debates, which in 1992 were staged for the first time in an interactive, folksy Oprah-style format, Clinton was masterful in manipulating the audience. George Bush, perched on a stool, looked faintly queasy during the assault on his presidential dignity.
In 1994, the Republicans seized on conservative talk radio to ride their way to a congressional victory. When the media spotlight turned back to television, Newt Gingrich did much more poorly, his pernickety, fat, pasty visage carping on millions of television screens, dooming the Republican agenda.
Two of the most successful media practitioners of the last two decades are the right-wing media professionals Carter Wrenn and Tom Ellis. They managed the reactionary Jesse Helms's race-baiting ads in the South and are the acknowledged experts in negative campaigning.
Who are they working for in 1996? You guessed it: Steve Forbes. That helps explain the brutal attacks on Dole, painting him as a clone of Clinton; and the latest pre-emptive assault on a rising candidate, Lamar Alexander, tainting him with financial sleaze. And people wonder why Forbes is in first place in New Hampshire (the advertisements don't even mention the flat tax).
The impact of C-Span, the congressional media channel, should not be underestimated. C-Span was started in the 1980s as a public service by the cable companies. It broadcasts, unedited, the complete proceedings of both houses of Congress round the clock. It shows campaign meetings in their entirety from the rubber-chicken niceties with the local constituency chairmen to the peroration of the candidate.
In the 1980s, C-Span paved the way for Gingrich's emergence. Isolated in the minority in Congress, the Gingrichites were never taken seriously by the mainstream media. So they used C-Span to ram home certain political messages by constant repetition, to reach people directly in a new way. It worked.
Because it was unedited, C-Span also stood traditional media production values on their head. People got used to seeing their politicians in the raw and they found the traditional slick makeovers, well, slick. This in turn made people such as Forbes possible: nerds with funny mouths and pebble glasses suddenly became cool. The fact that Forbes is so awkward on network television only makes him cooler.
The media also have a nasty habit of turning on their heroes. It keeps the story alive: you build the candidate up only to knock him firmly down. Last week everyone knew that Buchanan was likely to beat Gramm in Louisiana. But the media needed a better story. So they hyped Gramm's chances beforehand, only to claim he was "stunned" by defeat afterwards. They spent last year building up the notion of an invincible Dole candidacy; and spent the last month systematically trying to tear it down, if only to keep the race from being predictable.
The most egregious victim of the media roller coaster is Clinton. The object of fawning press attention in the campaign, as soon as he took office the media hounded him with a tenacity not seen since Nixon.
But Clinton has survived. Behind the professionalised media politics, certain realities endure. The character of certain politicians emerges; fundamental choices tax cuts or deficit reduction? medicare preservation or bankruptcy? have to be made. It is sometimes easy for pundits to be dazzled by the appearance of media-driven campaigns; but it is rarely the media that finally determine the outcome. They merely provide the forum in which the real battle can be joined.
Dole may look like a corpse, but he has the endorsements of scores of governors, the loyalty of a habitually deferential party, and a solid record of more than 30 years. Pitted against a three-week media sensation and even a couple of newspaper columnists he may surprise us yet.
Lovers owe all to a lusty Roman festival.
As the shops empty of love tokens this week, the purveyors of heart-shaped boxes of chocolates and red roses may pause at the tills to offer a prayer of thanks to St Valentine. They should, however, be offering their gratitude not to a Christian martyr but to a powerful woman. For it is in an ancient female-centred cult that our Valentine's Day traditions originate.
Direct traces of this cult survived in rural France until the last century. In a public festival young adults were organised into single-sex groups (to be paired off later) and "with great pomp" they paraded to the village of Bissey. On a cart at the front of the procession rode a guest of great importance: a woman, naked to the waist. When the procession, accompanied by the local abbot and monks, arrived at the village "mass was said", then everybody drank wine and "danced all night".
A clue to the deeper meaning of this custom is that during the evening, childless married people visited the woman, who was still bare-breasted, carrying offerings of flowers, and asked for her blessing for fertility. So who was she, what did she represent, and how was she connected with St Valentine?
The picture becomes clearer in a similar pageant from 1133, in which women played an even more prominent and lusty part. The activities, reported by an indignant monk who seems to have missed nothing, took place in a forest west of Cologne, Germany, where a "ship-like" wheeled vehicle was pulled through the countryside accompanied by "a great procession of women". The cart contained a goddess invisible but with palpable presence, for everywhere it appeared, crowds came out to greet it with "great joyfulness". The celebration went on for more than 12 days.
The good monk was appalled by the "shameless" activities of the women. They "threw off their feminine modesty" and, half-nude, formed a clamourous chorus dancing around the cart, singing "foul and base songs". Then, between dusk and dawn, they slipped away to "some secret place where they could engage in lusty celebrations" with male partners.
Numerous medieval documents reveal the church's attempts to prohibit such women singing "diabolical songs that are both amorous and shameful". One suggested it was grounds for excommunication.
In these ancient festivals, the women were honoured as symbols of fertility, and given licence to do what they liked sexually. Why? To discover the real origins of Valentine's Day, we have to go back even further. The saint may have been a Roman priest martyred by non-Christians in AD269. There was also, however, a Bishop Valentine, from Umbria, Italy, who similarly died in the service of the Lord in AD273. We do not know which was raised to sainthood to have his name associated with February 14. What is clear is that there is no reason for either to be commemorated for any aspect of their lives. Rather, it is their death-date which is crucial: February 14.
In ancient Rome, that was the eve of a pagan festival celebrated all over Europe, which the church was desperate to control by renaming it as a Christian festival. It was called Lupercalia, and was the culmination of a series of winter festivals. At this time the Romans worshipped a late winter goddess called Februa, who gave her name to the month. She was a moon goddess of marriage, childbirth and sexuality, celebrated by married women in family gatherings. But it was the rites of the young people which caused the trouble: for them, February 14 was a lottery for love.
At the height of celebrations for Februa, on the eve of Lupercalia, the young men and women drew lots for sexual partners, ready for sanctioned licence the following day. An early book on the lives of the saints says: "To abolish the heathen, lewd, superstitious custom of boys drawing the names of girls, in honour of their goddess Februata Juno, on the 15th of February, several zealous pastors substituted the names of saints in tickets given on that day ... for them to honour and imitate in a particular manner."
So the church authorities struggled to control the wilder aspects of this pagan festival by changing the gender of the goddess and renaming her St Valentine, after one of the martyrs who died on that date.
The good saint is simply a disguise for a pagan goddess of love and fertility, whom the early church sought to conceal. It is remarkable that her/his spirit continues on February 14 as love tokens are exchanged, even though we have forgotten the day's wilder, secret history. Or perhaps, deep down, we still know what it is all about ...
The Wisdom of the Wyrd: Teachings from Our Ancient Past, by Dr Brian Bates, is published in June by Rider
The roads are so icy that I decide to walk the mile-and-a-half to my hospital. I have not gone very far before I realise the mild adversity caused by the weather has improved people's temper and manners no end. They all smile cheerfully and wish me good morning. The fact that, for once, the adversity is not self-inflicted has a lot to do with its beneficial effects, I suspect.
To the superficial observer there is nothing remarkable or interesting about this mile-and-a-half, but to me it is as full of interest as any such walk in the world. The railings at the crossroads 100 yards from my home, for example, are usually draped by two prostitutes, one white and one black, whose ability to withstand the cold and rain for long periods while dressed in short satin pants I have often admired. They are not there in the snow, but a little farther on I see them digging their beaten-up car out of a snowdrift. I would help them if I were not in a hurry.
A couple of hundred yards to the right is a pleasant little park where we go sometimes to feed the ducks, and where one of my patients was nearly raped by four hooded men who jumped into her car at the traffic lights and forced her to drive there. They did not rape her because they panicked and ran away when her companion, whom they had beaten unconscious, appeared to be dying.
Had they been caught (a most unlikely eventuality) they would probably have admitted, as some of my patients do, that "we was out of order". To kidnap, beat up and rape is perfectly all right, but to kill ... well, that is going a little too far.
Another hundred yards farther on and I pass a consultant colleague's house. It has been burgled three times in the past six months, almost certainly by the same person or persons unknown, who waited patiently for him to replace his electrical equipment before feloniously effecting further entry.
I arrive at the T-junction. One of the houses on the corner has three rusting cars without wheels in the front garden. They have been there for at least five years, under "restoration". The paint peels from the front door of the house and one of the windows is boarded up with plywood.
How well I know the inside of such houses from home visits. There is a dank smell, emanating from piles of unwashed clothes, a hundred fry-ups cooked with the same fat, and urine-soaked upholstery. The rooms are dark and cold, a bitch gives birth to pups on the family sofa, and in the back garden is a cage with two ferrets. Upstairs, the 15-year-old daughter of the householder nurses her newborn baby. In short, an Englishman's home is his pigsty.
Then there is the row of council houses, with mean little windows as though there were still some kind of window tax in force. I would make all municipal architects live in whatever they build. You can tell that most of the tenants are unemployed by the number of satellite dishes. Does unemployment cause people to watch satellite television, I wonder, or does watching satellite television cause unemployment?
I pass the last house in the row. It is inhabited by a paranoid schizophrenic who believes that his neighbour is pumping poison gas into his house via secret ducts. So far he has dealt with the problem by two methods: flood and fire. Neither was effective, of course, and his neighbour must be wondering what is coming next from the cared-for in the community.
I reach the main road, where people no longer say good morning, even in the snow. I walk past the police station, where they have a department devoted to the rescue of Asian girls who are locked in cupboards until they agree to arranged marriages. Then past the sub-post office, all of whose windows have been boarded up and whose elderly Sikh postmaster lived in perpetual terror of black youths. I think of my Indian shopkeeper patient who sold his business for half its value after he was robbed four times at knifepoint. Then past the bus stop where one of my most timid patients had her bag snatched. It contained her invalidity benefit.
I reach the hospital, my cheerfulness dispelled. In the entrance hall a video system has been installed to amuse waiting patients and raise some money for the hospital by the sale of advertising time. A local solicitor, specialising in medical malpractice, offers his services to those who consider they have been ill-treated.
Tony Blair gave a wounding definition last week of the issues he believes rivet the chattering classes but few others. They were the kind of topic newspaper readers find on "the inside pages of the broadsheets", he said. Ouch!
A Midlands MP made the same point to me a few days earlier, accusing political journalists such as me of living in a goldfish bowl. Ordinary folk out there in "the real world" paid no heed to the chatter of SW1 and NW3, said my provincial critic. They had more to fret about than the single currency or constitutional reform or the Scott report like making ends meet and raising a family.
Those in the firing line of Lord Justice Scott's report into the arms-to-Iraq affair must hope this diagnosis of national myopia holds good this week. Blair, driven by his own partisan considerations, retorts that Scott's findings touch the very vitals of the nation. So, surely, do other issues the Americans designate as mattering only "inside the beltway" around Washington DC.
Blair's panoramic reform plan for the British constitution is one. His proposals affect the way the entire United Kingdom works as a union of countries. So when the prime-minister-in-waiting talks of devolving power from the centre on the scale Blair does, we had all better sit up and take notice.
Across the Atlantic, they measure the national relevance of political issues by asking how they will "play in Peoria", a Midwest town supposedly immune from Washington's political virus. A British analogy would be to ask how Scott, constitutional reform and Britain's future in Europe will play in the Tory marginals of Portsmouth, Plymouth and Peterborough. More, I suspect, than wiseacres imagine.
Blair says he detects a stirring of resentment against Whitehall control wherever he goes and he could be right. Civic pride is only now staging a comeback after years of Whitehall's heavy hand. Those who believe they know best will defend their interests, however strong the demand for devolution. I was summoned to the Ministry of Defence during the last Labour government to be told by a horrified official of a plan to move part of his operations to Edinburgh. "Imagine the problem of secure communications," he wailed. Scotland might as well have been Siberia. And so the mandarins dug in, as they always will.
One cabinet minister told me recently that Sir Humphrey is still alive and well in the corridors of power. The only difference between Yes, Minister and real life is that he and his permanent secretary know the television plot inside out and can laugh at themselves when they find they are speaking the lines.
Such humour is rare. Rows can still be caused by the simplest affront to Whitehall's privileges. For example, departments guard their right to inform parliament of ministerial statements with minimum advance notice. Keeping MPs and the media in ignorance until a few hours beforehand is part of the great game. Even the publication plans for government white papers is still cloaked in supposed confidentiality.
Such flummery explains why Scott's independent status has caused ructions. Who, say the conservers of secrecy, does he think he is, usurping the government's right to fix things to suit itself? Had he been willing to turn his inquiry into an endless academic exercise, they would happily have obliged him. Tory MPs are already blaming Lord Mackay, the lord chancellor, and Sir Robin Butler, the cabinet secretary, for appointing such a wayward spirit.
When the Establishment falls out among itself, long-closed doors are pushed ajar and we can peep inside. Cabinet tensions, much denied, over a single European currency are a case in point. Michael Heseltine spoke more realistically to a City audience at London's Guildhall last Tuesday, urging them to prepare for a single currency "whether the UK is in or out".
"You are all hard-headed bankers and businessmen," he said. "You know the real world." Yes, indeed. They deal in its currency every working day, shifting billions of pounds in foreign exchange deals, equity trading, Eurobonds, futures and options. If the deputy prime minister does not think economic and monetary union is a runner, why tell the City to make ready for a single currency? Such preparations cost millions. So, too, may Blair's reforms and the bill for Whitehall's follies if Scott's report is shelved.
My goldfish bowl view is that such issues matter far beyond SW1. If they do not, so much the worse for Britain.
When Clive Hollick was elevated to the peerage in 1991, his choice of a place name was illuminating. Not for him the rural retreat or City landmark usually chosen by ennobled financiers. Instead he chose to become Baron Hollick of Notting Hill, making himself the self-appointed lord of London's fashionable intelligentsia who have long made the bars and cafes of the district their natural home.
It was an aspirational choice. Since the death of Robert Maxwell, the Red Baron, as he is often known, has gradually become the most influential socialist multi-millionaire in Britain a man who straddles the contrasting worlds of the City and Labour party politics with seeming ease.
Until Thursday morning, there had been few serious conflicts between his business and political ambitions. Then Hollick unveiled a merger between his MAI conglomerate, which encompasses money-broking and television stations, with Lord Stevens's United News and Media, the owner of Express Newspapers, which also publishes the Daily Star and regional papers such as the Yorkshire Post, as well as a raft of business publications.
It was the acquisition of the Express titles that caused the most surprise. How could the Baron of Notting Hill hope to inherit the mantle of Lord Beaverbrook, the legendary press baron of the right? And how could an avowed socialist and friend of Tony Blair publish the barrage of Central Office propaganda that fills the pages of the Tory party's most reliable mouthpieces?
The surprise was misplaced. Hollick's is a story of crude ambition rather than ideological principle, the tale of a man addicted to power and wealth who tracks his prey with an unusual ruthlessness. "He is one of the coldest, most dedicated men I have ever met," said one City acquaintance.
Hollick was born in 1945 in Southampton, the son of a French polisher. He went to the local grammar school and, motivated partly by NHS treatment for a bout of tuberculosis, joined the Labour party at the age of 15. He went to Nottingham University, where he read politics, psychology and sociology and immersed himself in student journalism and drama. On leaving, Hollick went into the City; already he was playing for control rather than participation.
At Hambros, one of the most prestigious of the City's merchant banks, he flourished. By 28, he was its youngest director, and a glittering and lucrative career in finance beckoned. Yet the life of a well-paid hired gun was never likely to be enough. In 1974, he helped put together a rescue package for a failing fringe bank, Vavasseur. So impressed was the Bank of England that it put him in charge of the business. Not yet 30, Hollick had a platform for his wider ambitions.
Renaming the company MAI after the initials of one of its subsidiaries, the poster business Mills & Allen International he built up the advertising business and turned MAI into a leading money broker an activity that involves trading vast quantities of cash and bonds on wafer-thin margins. It was enough to make Hollick rich; last year alone he collected £1.15m in salary and share options, while his remaining options are worth several million.
Wealth brings a comfortable lifestyle to Hollick, his wife and three daughters. There is a large house in Notting Hill, plus another in Fordingbridge in the New Forest, where he spends weekends riding and playing tennis. The family take regular skiing trips to the French Alps.
But the comforts offered by money are not enough for Hollick; he craves power and influence and is ready to use his money to buy them. For the past decade he has carefully carved out a niche as a Labour party powerbroker and budding media baron. Through his wife, Susan Woodford, a former producer at ITV's World in Action, he kept in touch with leftish circles.
In 1986 he met Lord Eatwell, an economist close to Neil Kinnock, and together they discussed setting up a left-wing think tank to rival the intellectual powerhouses of the right. The result was the Institute for Public Policy Research, a ticket to the upper echelons of the party. "He was a fully paid-up member of the (Ken) Follett lodge," said one Labour party friend. "That was the reason why Kinnock gave him his peerage."
Think tanks can be transitory, but media were to provide Hollick with a lasting influence. In the last ITV franchise auction, MAI bid successfully for the south of England franchise held by TVS. Early in 1994, as soon as the rules were liberalised, he bid for Anglia, making MAI, alongside Carlton and Granada, one of three forces within ITV. Last year he was part of the consortium that won the franchise for Channel 5.
Inevitably, after the death of Maxwell he was tempted by the Daily Mirror. Cross-media ownership rules prevented MAI from bidding, but Hollick was part of a consortium that offered to buy the paper. That failed, but he linked up with a protege, David Montgomery, and helped to install him as chief executive, taking a seat on the board. It was to prove one of the rare false moves in Hollick's career. Protesting against savage staff cuts imposed by Montgomery, Hollick found himself isolated on the board. Within weeks he had been ousted.
By then, the media bug had bitten deep into Hollick's soul. "When he started, it was just a business," said one person involved in his first television bid. "He wasn't interested in the glamour and the parties. But he has grown to love it."
The love is not reciprocated; Hollick acquires enemies with ease. A colleague once described him as "a weasel-faced little number-cruncher". Within the television industry he is seen as little more than a manic cost-cutter with no love for the product. He attracted hostility during the 1992 election when it was revealed that some MAI staff were paid offshore in gold to avoid tax a trick that smacked of hypocrisy by an avowed socialist.
His joyless demeanour is partly responsible for his downbeat image. "A lot of people find him dour," says one friend. "And he undoubtedly is." Hollick is collected from his house by a chauffeur-driven Rover (he insists on having a British car) at 7am every weekday and spends the next 12 hours in his office, often alone at his desk poring over spreadsheets. This gruelling schedule is lightened only by his commitment to spending weekends with his wife and family.
Before completing the merger, Lord Stevens spoke to John Major, reassuring the prime minister that the socialist would not influence the politics of the Express papers Major's last reliable allies among national newspapers. "I won't be writing editorials," said Hollick this weekend. "It is not my job. And anyway, I would be lousy at it."
Yet he remains a political animal. Although he was closest to Kinnock, and played an advisory role in the 1992 election, he is also friendly with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. "If anything, he is probably slightly to the left of Blair, at least on social issues," says one friend.
There has been speculation that Hollick could have a role in a Labour government, perhaps as chancellor, trade and industry minister or governor of the Bank of England. It is chatter he does nothing to dispel. "In doing this deal, I am obviously committing myself to the company for a long time," he said with a wry smile. "So any political ambitions I might or might not have will have to be deferred until Tony Blair's second term." Deferred, perhaps but clearly far from forgotten.
An old schoolboy comes clean;David Mills concludes his account of the two weeks he spent as a sixth-former
‘I am a journalist with The Sunday Times." Like a nervous actor, I practise the line several times. Having spent two weeks at Wolverhampton grammar school "under cover" as a 17-year-old schoolboy, I am back to confess. I had disappeared after school on Friday and now, the following Wednesday, I am to face all of my recent classmates in a special assembly.
They sit around in the common room, strangely subdued. Already, despite the fact that I am still wearing the same uniform as them for the photographs we are going to take, I sense a distance, a slipping away. There is no talking, no fidgeting.
No point beating about the bush, I deliver my line, and pause dramatically. They look even more uncomfortable, but say nothing. My sense of theatre deflated, I press on. In the last few days of my time there, some of them had decided I was "some sort of writer" anyway, so I suppose it is less of a revelation, more of a confirmation.
I ask them to guess my age. I can see from their faces they are already revising upwards. Still I am flattered by a suggested 22. Then they start plucking figures out of the air, until Alastair comes up with 33 and I say: "Yes, I am 33 and married with two children." This shocks them.
Some look amused, some puzzled, one murmurs "f" and a number seem more disbelieving of that than of my being a sixth-former. Then I, too, am shocked by a desperate sense of losing them: it was only for two weeks, but I feel I am cutting myself off from them. I am disappearing back into being just another anonymous adult.
"Yeah, well, that's about it, I suppose. Anything you want to ask me?"
Nothing apart from when will the article appear and a chorus of "Am I in it?".
Throughout that day as we take photographs in the school there is a stiffening around me, no kissing in the common room as there had been last week and some even blush when I talk to them. I end up talking more to the staff, who had known what I was doing.
JUST a week earlier, in my last three days as a schoolboy, it had all been so different. I had become one of them. And in more ways than I would have thought possible. It was not just that I was able to look and behave reasonably like them; at times I caught myself thinking like a 17-year-old. I could flop down next to them and just talk.
What I wanted to know in the those last few days before "coming out" was what my young classmates want to do with their futures.
"I just want to have a laugh. Live in the south of France, drinking and having a laugh. It won't happen though, unless I win the lottery," said Jemma. So no plans for university? "Yeah, probably; probably music." Then what? "Teaching." I thought she was either being unimaginative, or suspicious, so I adopted the middle-distance-gaze for a while, a vacant expression many of them fall into on occasion.
Will was staring, too, at the queue for the tuck shop. His prefect duty was to ensure orderly behaviour and no litter. "What are you going to do next, Will?" He moved his lolly to the other cheek, ruminated, frowned, then shrugged. "Look at them." He nodded at the first and second years outside. "Boring." He reminisced about the riotous behaviour of his own year when they were younger. As wistful as me, I thought.
"Insurance broking? Capital management?" I suggested. He looked vaguely alarmed.
There is an excellent careers suite at the school; the master in charge hands out leaflets, organises courses, encourages pupils to make use of his office and its computer database, sends them off on work experience schemes and management courses. It is a long way from the odd afternoons of advice from local industry visitors and presentations from the army that we received 15 years ago. Yet nearly all the pupils go straight on to university. Last year, of the 94 sixth-formers taking A-levels, 88 went straight on to university, three deferred entry for a year and the remaining three went out to work (and one of them has now changed his mind and is going to university next year).
Their immediate futures were mapped out and it was not that they were reluctant to talk about what lay beyond that, more that they have not really thought about it yet. And why should they? Seventeen seems a stupidly young age to start limiting your horizons with realistic plans for the rest of your life. It is not the "carefree age" that adults might think. Michael told me the pressure he felt under because of the amount of essays he had to produce each week. These courses are their lives and to fail would screw up their futures in a big way. They know that much.
Michael, who had already astonished me with the list of activities he gets up to, told me he wants to work in television and had done some work at Central TV in Birmingham. He'll do a degree first. He had considered media studies, but is beginning to have doubts about it, so English looks more likely.
I was still gazing off into the distance when Jemma eventually said: "I do some private teaching now" of the clarinet to smaller children. She seemed to mature 10 years in the course of this conversation. "It's great, but I had to tell one girl off to her mother. I've put her in for an exam and she's not doing any work. It's not as if they've got much money either. But if she fails, I'll get the blame. So after the lesson I had to go out to the car and tell her mum. It was terrible. I hate doing that."
The next minute, this "grown-up" was a child again, regaling everyone with how she had eaten a whole packet of raw jelly the night before. A lot of fun was provoked by the thought of what would have happened if she had drunk a pint of warm water.
This bewildering mix of intellectual sophistication and teenage gaucherie seemed to emerge time and time again.
LOOKING for something to read for the rest of lunchtime in the common room, I slipped out of the back gate to buy a New Musical Express and crossed another line of intimacy.
"Are you going for a fag?" said a sixth-former behind me.
"Er, yeah." We twisted through side streets and backstreets, and behind some garages, we smoked, stamping feet and grimacing. It was too cold to talk much, apart from a few details from him on how to spot a teacher patrolling in a car and my likely fate if caught: "Gated". I couldn't really snigger over my predicament; huddled groups of adult smokers outside office buildings are not uncommon these days.
The smokers are easy to spot, though they are always amazed to be discovered. Every morning, as I approached the school gates two boys from the opposite direction walked straight past and disappeared into a side turning. One day I followed them and found four huddled in an alleyway smoking. The local radio station said it was -3C, and it was snowing. I lit a cigarette.
"How did you find this was the place then?" one asked, incredulously.
"I've seen you walk down here every day. It doesn't take a genius." I guess it didn't take a genius in my day either, though crouched behind the band hut we, too, were convinced we had outwitted the masters.
Feeling suitably athletic, I jogged back to school for games. A passing group of kids from a nearby comprehensive jeered at me. Now I laughed; 20 years ago I was terrified by such taunting and twice beaten up as a "grammar puff". The weather was so severe that all outdoor sport, with the exception of the 1st XV rugby match against another school, was cancelled. With four others, I decided to watch the rugby and, to derisive cheers, was forced to run the touchline. I was pleased. The derision was a recognition, an expression of sympathy that I could not sit with them in the little hut out of the wind. Forgetting several crucial rule changes since my playing days, I made a sequence of errors. Nobody seemed to notice that I was playing to the early 1980s code; they just thought I was a tosser.
Ross, the school's shaven-headed hooker, is an aggressive trundler around the pitch with a low centre of gravity. I made the mistake of judging by appearance. Is there a bigger giveaway of approaching middle age and losing touch with youth? In conversation with him later, when I said that I was getting bored with rock music, he gave me an expert rundown on the most accessible bits of Chopin to "get into". He is a pianist himself. "But hooking," I protested, "there couldn't be a more dangerous position for your fingers. Don't you worry?"
"All the time. I've been rubbing a mixture of olive oil and sugar into them since I was six and if I'm playing in a concert on the night of a match, then I'll drop out of the game, but I really love playing rugby; it gets me." His father thinks he ought to train as an accountant, but Ross would like to be a composer. Shortly he will start weighing up the appropriate university courses.
BY MY last day they had still not entirely rumbled me. On the contrary I made another breakthrough: I was asked to play pool after days of being frozen out. Over the table we talked desultorily about the best time to do homework.
In English Mr Benfield split us into pairs to analyse chapters of Brighton Rock together. I decided that this was an opportunity to show off, so I skimmed the chapter, wrote copious notes, then turned to my partner, Michael.
"What have you got? Let's have a look?" I said.
He pushed a sheet of file paper towards me. Every single one of my points was already there.
I underestimated him; I underestimated nearly all of them.
Some of the staff complain about the pupils' anti-intellectual attitudes. But if they had heard some of the discussions I heard, they would think differently. Clearly there is a dichotomy between the pupils in groups and alone.
It was ever thus. I most remember, and romanticise, the riotous behaviour, but my diary reminds me I was more likely to be found in the English room at lunchtime, earnestly reading Proust, or planning clandestine visits to opera and concerts with my best friend, Collins (he still is).
Even in those fabled good old days, it was not done to be seen to be too clever, and in groups we talked about sex, football and pop music.
The charge of philistinism persists yet intellectual life still goes on in private. Mr Lewis, the head of the sixth form, later confirmed this. When the tutors come to check over the university application forms they are always surprised at the level of the pupils' outside interests and achievements. He is frustrated that this is not more directly translated back into the life of the school.
I collected my books for my last lesson. I shouted and joked with the others, and we trailed across the school to English in a big group, arguing about who is the smelliest teacher. My own behaviour seemed to become less reserved and less mature. Last week they were a mass of undifferentiated kids. Now I felt I would miss them.
Michael and I presented our thoughts on part 2 chapter 1 of Brighton Rock. We were rather good, I thought, but the bell went before we finished..
I had two free periods, so my day was over. I waited until the locker area was deserted and collected my bag and coat. Through the school for the last time, I made for the gate.
"Dave! Dave!" I looked around. It was a fifth-former, one I had played football with. He waved. "All right?"
"Yeah." All right.
SO WHAT did I learn in school? That today's sixth-formers work very hard and feel under a lot of pressure to achieve. More so than I remember among my contemporaries. The level of discipline is very good, but different from the way it was. I think we were more straightforwardly "naughtier" in our actions, but more in awe of the teachers' authority. It is not that there is less respect for staff now, but there is less distance between the teachers and the pupils.
The biggest lesson of this experience for me is how much schools are a reflection of society and I much more appreciate how we have changed as a society in the past two decades.
We have all moved on: we are more worldly, more informal, more tolerant. It would be a bad school that did not reflect this, but it allows the hysterical to see the other side of this and call our schoolchildren "cynical, slovenly and morally relativist".
As for me, I had this feeling of achievement: I had done it. I had travelled back in time. I had returned to what tradition tells us are the "best days of our lives".
The passage of time gives your schooldays a rosy glow. Crossing the landing at 3am to deal with a squalling baby, contemplating an eternity of mortgage payments, the roof's slipping slates, the ageing car that's now too small anyway, who would not fondly seek refuge in a time when your biggest worry was a spot on your chin and three sides of paper on Disraeli's foreign policy?
But ask yourself this question, did you think your schooldays were the best time of your life while they were happening? You felt trammelled, harassed for essays, bound by petty rules of dress and behaviour, restricted by lack of money, patronised by grown-ups who refused to take your opinions seriously. Still, you had a good time, just as now when the baby smiles and the roof keeps the rain out, you are happy.
Halfway through my second week I reached a point where I felt so at ease in the life of the school that my day seemed wholly unremarkable. Nothing struck me as odd and it was only as I was slogging the two miles back to my mum's house, just as I did 15 years ago, that I realised the oddest thing of all that a 33-year-old married man had just passed a typical day at school and thought it normal.
The truth, however, is that I could never totally recapture that sense of the enormity of a 17-year-old's problems, just as mine are alien to them.
I am, though, left with a better understanding and an unexpected optimism: my new classmates were great and I really enjoyed being one of them.
David Mills is editor of The Culture section of The Sunday Times
REBECCA TANQUERAY visits the home of jewellery designer Solange Azagury-Partridge, where colours from the fiery end of the spectrum are combined with strikingly contrasted patterns to lift the spirits on grey London winter days.
Understatement is anathema to designer Solange Azagury-Partridge. In her work she fashions precious metals and brilliant stones into knuckleduster-sized pieces of jewellery ("If you are wearing a ring, people should be able to see it"); and, at home, she makes an equally bold statement. Her London flat, a stone's throw from Paddington Sstation, is a mass of patterns and fiery colour.
It wasn't always like this. When she first moved into the flat nine years ago with her husband, Murray, Azagury painted all the walls white, wanting a feeling of space. In fact, there was lots of it already. The ground floor of a large mid-Victorian townhouse, converted in the 1920s, the flat has a vast main room which now accommodates the sitting room and kitchen. "Our criterion was to find somewhere with a living room no smaller than 15ft square," says Azagury. Here, they more than doubled it.
Filling such a huge space was a daunting task. "We had virtually nothing at all when we first moved in," she remembers, but now it is hard to believe her. The sitting room is stuffed with furniture of every description. There
are damask-covered chairs the couple found in a gentleman's club in Bristol; a big squashy armchair unearthed in an antique market; a kilim-covered footstool; a baroque commode; a 1950s-style table, as well as an eclectic
mix of decorative glass and plaster pieces.
Although most of the furniture is second-hand, Azagury also has some high-calibre stuff pieces by leading young designers that raise , which raises the level of the rest. There is a fluid Spine chair by Andre Dubreuil; an elegant gold-legged desk by Mark Brazier Jones and several smaller pieces by Tom Dixon. When it comes to buying such things, Azagury has an advantage over the rest of us all these designers are her friends and let her have their pieces at considerably less than the going rate. Her brother-in-law, sculptor Roger Partridge, also contributed. One of the pieces he made for the couple is the giant gold-leafed sun which that steals the show in the sitting room.
That the disparate collection of objects works together puts paid to the theory that an interior should stick to one style or period. But you have to be careful; Azagury's choice of furniture was not indiscriminate. "I went for pieces with good shapes," she says, and she also went to great lengths to get exactly what she wanted. The kitchen table, spotted in a London gallery, was so expensive she paid for it in £50 installments for "bloody years".
But what really brings this look together is colour. While Azagury wasn't afraid to use lots of it, she was careful to choose shades from the same fiery end of the spectrum to create a sense of unity. The sitting room is bright orange, the kitchen is deep yellow, and the upholstery in colours ranging from rich red to purple. "I wanted somewhere I'd feel warm and comfortable," she says. "When it's so grey outside, it's nice to have happy colours in here to lift the spirits."
Azagury was equally liberal with pattern, but here again she was selective. Graphic, masculine prints, such as fake leopard-skin or kilims are happily layered one on top of the other; fussy florals don't get a look-in.
But it is Azagury's bedroom that is the most dramatic. A tiny space at the end of a corridor (the downside of retaining the ballroom-like dimensions of the main room), she's turned it into the ultimate padded cell. The bed, slotted into a wall of cupboards, has a vivid velvet bedspread (on which she used to display her jewellery) and a headboard of big and brilliant velvet tiles made from MDF, foam and fabric remnants. It's rare for such a small space to make such a big impact.
Such ingenuity is typical of Azagury; the flat is full of clever decorative details that give it the feeling of luxury without the expense. Little gold tassels take the place of cupboard door pulls; a waste-paper basket is spruced up with fake leopard print; and the plaster faces on the sitting room wall are actually terracotta planters, painted white.
But what really gives the flat a feeling of exoticism is Azagury's technique of layering colour on colour and pattern on pattern. "Being minimal takes more courage and more money," she says. "If you just have a few pieces, they have to be good. Here, nothing is incredibly valuable." Although she chides herself for the mass of furniture, the mountains of books, the growing pile of files, her propensity to hoard things is what gives this flat its personality. It's in the blood. "My mother has an incredibly cluttered house," says Azagury. "I always swore I would never do the same thing."
FLICKING through my diary in search of the dates of Shrove Tuesday and Easter Day, I noticed that this next week contains two notable birthdays. Tomorrow we can celebrate the 187th birthday of Abraham Lincoln. Seven days later, on February 19, Americans will be commemorating the 264th anniversary of the birth of George Washington (his actual birthday is on February 22). A sterling month for American presidents. I can claim absolutely no knowledge of these two giants' culinary preferences, but I present instead a few American recipes that hail from a time before the predominance of burgers and milk shakes.
Sour cream cookies
Della Lutes's memoir In a Country Kitchen (published in 1938 in this country and about due for a reprint) tells the story of a year in the lives of a farming family in late 19th-century Michigan, as observed by the six-year-old Della.
The Sunday-school picnic was an important affair for all the neighbourhood. To her mother's horror, her hamper of fried chicken, iced lemonade, ice cream and home-churned butter somehow got left behind. "I had a panful of sour-cream cookies fit to melt in your mouth, if I do say so." At least we get her "rule" for her famous cookies, and extremely good they are, too.
110g butter, softened
110g caster sugar
2 egg yolks
5 tbsp soured cream or creme fraiche
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
250-300g plain flour, sifted caraway seeds a few raisins
Cream the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the yolks. Mix the soured cream with the bicarbonate of soda, then beat into the butter and sugar mixture. Mix in enough flour to make a soft dough, just stiff enough to roll out.
Roll out thinly (about 5mm thick), cut out 7cm circles and lay on baking trays that are non-stick or lined with well-greased parchment. Sprinkle with caraway seeds, and press a raisin into the centre of each one. Bake at 200C/400F/Gas Mark 6 for about 10min until lightly browned around the edges and pale tan in the centre. Cool for a few minutes on the tray until they begin to firm up, then transfer to a wire rack.
Aunt Hanner's apple dowdy
Another "rule" from In a Country Kitchen, this time from Della's Aunt Hanner. Aunt Hanner had disgraced herself in the eyes of her brother, with a soup that was watery and insipid. She saved the day, says Della, by producing an apple dowdy "that drove the blackest clouds from my father's face and in some degree compensated for the fiasco in soup". What makes this pie different is the long cooking time that transforms the filling almost into an apple marmalade. Serve it as Aunt Hanner did, with thick cream slightly sweetened and flavoured with nutmeg.
(Serves 8)
8-10 tart eating apples, peeled and quartered
200g light muscovado sugar
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of salt
2 tbsp butter, cut into slivers
100ml warm water
Pastry
150g plain flour
1 heaped tsp baking powder
generous pinch salt
60g butter
110ml milk
To make the pastry, sift the flour with the baking powder and salt. Rub in the butter, then mix to a soft dough with the milk (you may not need it all). Gather up into a ball and rest it in the fridge while you prepare the apples.
Put the peeled apple quarters into a deep pie dish, snuggling them up closely and packing them in so that they fill the dish completely. Sprinkle over the sugar, then the nutmeg, cinnamon and salt. Lay slivers of butter over the fruit, then pour over the warm water.
Roll out the pastry to a thickness of about 1cm. Brush the edges of the pie dish with water, then lay the pastry over it. Press the edges into place and trim. Make a few small slashes in the pastry and bake at 150C/300F/Gas Mark 2 for 3hr.
Serve hot, warm (nicest of all) or cold.
Salt cod hash
with eggs
At the tip of Cape Cod, Provincetown is a town built on the backs of fish; cod, haddock and mackerel, in particular.
This giant fish cake, served with ample helpings of eggs and bacon, was once a popular breakfast dish in Provincetown, making the best use of local and cheap ingredients. This quantity is supposed to feed four, but I guess that must mean four strapping Cape Cod fishermen. With our more sedentary lifestyle, I reckon it should satisfy six. Increase the number of bacon rashers and eggs to suit appetites. You need a heavy cast-iron frying pan for best results and, to make sure the hash is not too dry, mash the potatoes with a good slurp of milk and a large knob of butter. The recipe comes from Howard Mitcham's Provincetown Seafood Cookbook.
(Serves 6)
675g salt cod
110g salt pork, or slab bacon, diced
8-12 slices streaky bacon
a little lard or oil
750g mashed potato
1 onion, grated
freshly ground black pepper
4-6 poached or fried eggs
Soak the salt cod for 36-48hr in cold water, changing the water at least three times. Drain, rinse and then put into a pan with enough fresh water to cover. Bring up to a simmer and cook gently for about 10-15min, until the cod is just cooked through. Drain, then flake the cod, discarding skin and bones.
Fry the diced salt pork in its own fat, gently at first, then raising the heat as the fat runs. Once it is browned, lift out and add to the salt cod. Now fry the rashers of bacon in the same fat over a high heat until crisp. Reserve. Draw the pan off the heat but don't pour out the bacon fat.
Mix the cod and salt pork with the mashed potato, onion and plenty of black pepper to season. Reheat the frying pan thoroughly, adding a knob of lard or a dash of oil, then press the mixture into the pan, forming a large, thin cake. Fry until the underneath is thoroughly browned (a good 5min), then very carefully slide it on to a plate, invert on to another one and slide back into the pan, adding a little more fat, first, if necessary, to cook the other side. When both sides are browned, cut the cake into quarters and serve with the bacon and fried or poached eggs.
Spinach custard with tomato sauce
The history of Shakerism in America goes back to 1774 when Mother Ann Lee brought eight of her brethren to start a new life in the new world. In the middle of the last century, when Shakerism was at its peak, there were about 6,000 members living in 18 communities. Today only one community remains, but their legacy of clean, elegant, functional design has been passed on to the wider world. The food of the Shakers is every bit as appealing, though less well known.
This spinach custard is a masterly example. The creamy green custard, flavoured with tarragon, would make a perfect main course for an elegant dinner party. This recipe is taken from In a Shaker Kitchen by Norma McMillan (Pavilion £17.99).
(Serves 4)
700g fresh spinach
170g cream cheese
250ml single cream
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp chopped fresh tarragon
salt and pepper
Sauce
700g tomatoes, skinned, deseeded and roughly chopped
30g butter
1 tbsp tomato paste
a little sugar
Tabasco
For the sauce, put the tomatoes and butter in a heavy saucepan and simmer for about 20min, stirring occasionally. Stir in the tomato paste and sugar to taste. Add a dash of Tabasco.
Wash the spinach leaves and discard tough stalks. Cram into a large pan, cover and cook over a medium heat, stirring once or twice, until the spinach has collapsed 5min should do it. Drain and squeeze out excess moisture. Chop coarsely.
Process the cream cheese with the cream, then the eggs and yolk until smooth. Add the spinach, tarragon, salt and pepper. Whiz again, then pour into a lightly buttered 1 litre baking dish. Stand it in a roasting tin and pour in enough hot water to come about halfway up the dish. Bake at 170C/325F/Gas Mark 3 for 35-45min until just set. Just before serving, warm up the tomato sauce.
Few alternative therapies have been welcomed by conventional medicine in the way that acupuncture has. According to Dr Colin Lewis, a Guildford GP and medical acupuncturist, "it is not so much an alternative or even complementary treatment as a growing part of mainstream medicine". Doctors are not only referring patients to acupuncturists, but at least 1,300 British doctors, physiotherapists, anaesthetists and consultants are registered medical acupuncturists themselves. A further 1,500 non-medics are registered with the British Acupuncture Council.
After several thousand successful trials, the medical profession is paying very close attention indeed to acupuncture. But, according to Joseph Goodman, a practitioner and chairman of the British Acupuncture Council, its growth in popularity with the public is mostly due to the fact that acupuncturists deal with people, not just illness. "People welcome it when you show an interest in them as a person rather than as the carrier of a disease."
What is acupuncture? Put bluntly, acupuncture means "needle piercing". Traditionally, fine needles are inserted into the skin to stimulate specific points underneath in order to restore and maintain good health, but lasers, heat and small electrical probes can also be used. Where traditional needles are used, they are inserted and either removed instantly or left for up to 30 minutes under supervision. The sensation is rarely painful, although most people feel something, often a slight tingling. Registered practitioners use only sterile needles and are trained to avoid main blood vessels, nerves and vital organs. An acupuncturist should not draw blood, although it can happen occasionally.
How does it work? Traditional Chinese-trained acupuncturists see body, mind and spirit as one dynamic self-healing whole, fuelled by energy or chi (pronounced chee), which flows through a network of invisible channels called meridians. Good health depends on the energy flowing smoothly through the meridians, but if it becomes blocked, weakened, stagnant or imbalanced in any way, it can lead to illness. Diet, emotional problems, even the weather, can cause energy imbalances, but these can be restored by inserting needles into key points along the meridians. There are 12 main meridians, each of which relates to an important organ, and located along these meridians are 365 principal acupuncture points.
Traditional acupuncturists do not carry out a conventional medical diagnosis. Instead they use the four Chinese examinations of asking, looking, smelling and touching. They ask about your problems and lifestyle, look at your skin, eyes and tongue, and test for up to 28 pulse qualities on both wrists. Most medical acupuncturists, however, practise "western" or "scientific acupuncture", which usually involves using electro-acupuncture to treat specific problems diagnosed by conventional methods. Lewis says the medical fraternity is "getting close" to an acceptable explanation with a couple of western theories known as the endorphin and gate control theories. The first states that putting a needle into the skin triggers the release of endorphins the morphine-like substances that are nature's most powerful painkillers. A neuronal impulse sends a message from the stimulated point to the spinal cord to release endorphins into the nervous system to ease pain. The gate theory proposes that pain impulses can be modulated by a "gate" along the pathways of the nervous system. Certain nerve fibres that are stimulated by acupuncture seem to close the gate and shut out the pain.
What conditions respond best? In the medical profession, acupuncture is used mostly as a form of pain relief in childbirth and in the treatment of arthritis, backache, neckache and conditions such as frozen shoulder and tennis elbow. Goodman acknowledges its analgesic benefits, but says that "pain control is a very small part of the potential of acupuncture; everyone can benefit from it in some way". People who seem to benefit most are those with whom conventional medicine has had little success: arthritis sufferers, asthmatics, people with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), digestive and gynaecological disorders, depression and stress-related problems. In a 1995 Which? survey, 80% of acupuncture patients claimed to be satisfied with their treatments.
Who is not suitable? As with all forms of treatment, there is always a small number of people who do not respond, but there are no groups of unsuitable candidates. The very old and frail, the terminally ill and even small babies can be treated. Very small fine needles or sometimes just finger pressure can be used with babies; needle phobics can be given laser treatment. Pregnant women, however, must be treated with caution as blundering needlework could bring on contractions.
Cost: treatments can cost £25 to £60 a session, depending on where you live. The number of sessions needed varies, but you should see some improvement after the third or fourth visit.
To find a practitioner: acupuncture is not a state-regulated profession. Anyone (including doctors) can do a weekend course and call themselves an acupuncturist. Play safe and choose a therapist registered with one of the organisations below.
Case history: five years ago Kristina Rigby, 27, visited Harley Street acupuncturist Maura Bright with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). "I had all the classic symptoms," says Rigby, "bloating, terrible pains. I had a mixture of constipation and diarrhoea and occasional bleeding. Somebody recommended Maura Bright to me. She asked me a lot about my diet and lifestyle. She took my pulses in both wrists, checked my tongue and felt my abdomen. She used about eight needles, mostly in my feet and wrists, sometimes in my abdomen, back and chest. I felt a tiny sensation like a rush of heat around the area where the needles went in, but it didn't hurt. After the first treatment I felt a bit strange, as if something had changed. After the second session, three weeks later, my symptoms disappeared. During the next year the problem recurred two or three times, but nothing like it had been. When it did, I went back for another treatment. I still have acupuncture occasionally as a preventive measure and to give my energy levels a lift, but my IBS has never come back."
The British Acupuncture Council, 206-208 Latimer Road, London W10 (0181-964 0222) for a list of qualified acupuncturists who are not doctors.
The British Medical Acupuncture Society, Newton House, Newton Lane, Lower Whitley, Warrington, Cheshire WA4 4JA, (01925-730727) for a list of doctors who have trained as acupuncturists.
Maura Bright is a member of the British Acupuncture Council. She practises at The Progressive Health Clinic, 140 Harley Street, London W1N 1AH, (0171-224 3387)
Last week, the parents of a 15-year-old Preston teenager, Stuart Miller, told a Channel 4 documentary of the agonies they endured when their son began suffering from anorexia. At the peak of his disease, his weight had plummeted to a mere five stone. There are currently about 70,000 anorexics in Britain. Although the huge majority more than 90% is female, the number of boys and young men who suffer from anorexia is rising. Because it is comparatively rare in the male population, family, friends and even doctors often do not recognise the condition when it does appear. Jamie, 25, a photographer who lives in south London, has suffered from anorexia for two years. Still struggling to beat the disease, he tells his story...
It started two years ago when I moved away from home, where I had been living with my mother, into a flat with my fiancee. At the same time, I also started my first proper job in an office. I think the whole experience was overwhelming.
The condition came on really slowly. Initially, I began to lose weight partly because I was cycling to work and doing lots of other exercise. Breakfast is actually a meal I've always loved, but gradually it became just a small bowl of All Bran and a couple of drops of milk. Finally, I skipped it altogether. For lunch, I would buy a sandwich with ham, lettuce and tomato on brown bread without butter. Then I'd sit away from the others in the office and, as I was eating, I'd drop bits into the bin and then pull out the ham and throw that away. I was basically eating half a slice of bread and an apple for lunch. Meanwhile, I was walking, cycling or running everywhere. Supper was more difficult because I was in the flat with my fiancee. I'd watch everything she cooked and say: "Don't do that, cook it like this." In the end, I just took over in the kitchen. If a friend ever said: "Let's go and get a pizza or some ice cream," I would panic because I would have been counting my intake of calories all day and that would mess it up.
At work the guy in the office next door noticed that I was always dashing up and down the corridor and I seemed to be getting thinner, so he stopped me and asked why I always ran everywhere. I was, in fact, planning a trip to Pakistan to work as a photographer, so I pretended to him that I was in training for that. It was so easy to lie when I was confronted. I made things up and people believed me, partly, I suppose, because it is so unusual for a man to be anorexic.
I went to Pakistan to do a photo story. I was on my feet all day for three weeks and ate very little. Then I flew on to the Philippines to meet my fiancee for a holiday. When she saw me at the airport she burst into tears because I had lost so much weight. But my whole perception of normality was disturbed and I simply didn't realise what had happened, so I kept saying to her: "No I haven't, no I haven't."
However, when I got back to Britain I had to go into hospital because my left arm went completely dead and I couldn't move it. Almost overnight, all the muscle had simply disappeared because I had become so thin. I'm 6ft 3in and my weight had, by this point, gone down to just under eight stone. This may not sound drastic there are cases of men going to less than five but, for me, this was very serious. I couldn't even lift a spoon. I couldn't get out of the bath on my own or get dressed.
My fiancee kept begging me to do something. In the end, my mother made an appointment for me to see my GP. Again, I tried to lie and pretend there was nothing wrong, blaming my weight loss on something I had caught in Pakistan. I went into hospital that night and spent a week in the infectious diseases ward because the doctors didn't realise what was really wrong with me. I lost another half a stone. I was saying something physically that I couldn't say verbally I wanted to seem perfect, so I couldn't actually tell anyone about my anxieties.
I left hospital, but was so weak that if I sat down on a bus I couldn't stand up again. I collapsed a couple of times in the street during the summer, and people said it must be the heat. I had contemplated suicide a couple of times. Finally, I suppose the pressure of knowing that so many people I loved were so worried about me got to me, so I phoned my mum and asked if my fiancee and I could come and see her.
We went over there and suddenly the floodgates opened and I burst into tears and said: "I'm anorexic." My mother said: "I know, I know." Then she started crying and my fiancee started and all three of us just cried and cried.
My mum had heard about a specialist in the field of eating disorders. When I went to see him he said simply: "You're going to die unless we get you some proper treatment." Even though I couldn't think straight he was very fair and didn't put any pressure on me. He took
me to the clinic and told me that I just had to say the word and I would be admitted. After a moment, I said: "Yes." There were sighs of relief all round and I was taken upstairs immediately.
My fellow patients were all young girls and I felt on a similar mental level to them. I spent my time saying really bad things about my mum and the things she had done to me, whereas, in fact, what I really wanted was to be back under her wing because I was so confused. I split up with my fiancee. We were actually trying to save the relationship because we hoped we might be able to get back together later.
Even now, after eight months of treatment, I have problems with food. The actual eating is okay but after I've eaten, I just want to go for a run to distract myself from what I've done. If I have a full stomach it really bugs me, I can't think straight. I walk down the road to the video shop even if I don't want a video, it's just an excuse for a walk.
It's still lurking there, but I've got it under control. When I can accept invitations from friends to supper without thinking I might eat too much or not be able to do any exercise afterwards, I'll be pleased.
I look thin now, but not particularly skinny. I just want to get rid of my anorexia; I want to be able to eat whatever I want and not worry about it. At the moment I am 11 stone and my target weight is just under 13, so I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
For advice on anorexia or bulimia the Charter Nightingale Hospital has a free, 24-hour helpline: 0171-258 3828
It looks like the streets of London are no longer safe for giant rabbits in bow ties. The star if that's quite the word of the cable station Live TV has been attacked in a Docklands car park.
NEWSY BUNNY
The victim: Newsy Bunny sits behind Live TV's newsreaders giving the thumbs-up sign to good news carrot prices slashed! Bright Eyes re-released on CD! and looking glum when there is bad news myxomatosis sweeps Docklands! Flopsy Bunny axed as Arsenal boss
The incident: Newsy Bunny, called to a photo-shoot in the car park at Canary Wharf headquarters of Live TV was set upon by two pink rabbits. Taking advantage of this diversion, a third rabbit arrived at Live TV reception to announce that he was Newsy's stand-in bunny. Fair enough in the confusion, who would have noticed a 6ft rabbit making its way to reception?
The fatal flaw: "Staff knew immediately that something was up," said Live TV. "For a start, he was the wrong colour"
The confession: the kidnap attempt was a plot hatched at Channel 4 to publicise a new comedy show. To name the comedy show, however, would be submitting to an outrageous act of urban terrorism
Prime suspect: police have now released the lettuce farmer, a Mr MacGregor, who was being held for questioning. He has previous convictions for attacks on rabbits
Where will it all end? A news programme co-presented by a giant rabbit is the thin end of the wedge in television. Mr Blobby has already shown the pulling power of puppets and similar characters while Basil Brush, Nookie Bear and Parker from Thunderbirds have been team managers on BBC2's Fantasy Football League. It can't be long now before we get Good Morning with Bill and Ben, The Amazing Undersea World of Marina from Stingray, and The Reith Lecture with Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
Why stop there? The Scott Tracy Inquiry examines allegations that Thunderbird 2 carried arms to Iraq
All in the best possible taste: Kelvin MacKenzie, the man behind Newsy, has reassured the public about news standards at Live TV. "Obviously,
if the Queen Mother popped her clogs we wouldn't have Newsy giving the thumbs-up," he says
The future: Sir Newsy Bunny, now a distinguished broadcaster but known as Boozie Bunny to his critics, is forced to resign in disgrace after he and Sooty are seen leaving a West End massage parlour. Sooty is also axed from Panorama after squirting water at the chancellor, Kenneth Clarke, and then hitting him with a magic wand.
Getting fit can be bad for your health, says MANDY FRANCIS, unless you take care.
As people all over the country continue to strive to live up to their New Year's resolutions, sports injuries are reaching epidemic proportions. According to Professor Greg Mclatchie of the National Sports Medicine Institute in London, soft-tissue injuries, such as pulled and torn muscles, many of them sustained during exercise or intense physical activity, are currently the most common injury seen in accident and emergency units with an estimated 5,000 sprained ankles being treated in Britain every week. Most experts agree that many of these injuries are not only unnecessary, but that recovery is often delayed, and injuries even exacerbated, by taking the wrong action at the wrong time. The most common mistake is a burst of heavy exercise after years of inactivity. "The classic injury is the twisted ankle or torn calf muscle sustained in the parents' race on a school sports day or during a one-off skiing holiday," says Mclatchie.
Alan Watson, a physiotherapist at London's BiMal Medical & Sports Rehabilitation Clinic, agrees: "It's important to be aware that there is often a yawning gap between how fit we think we are and our physical ability. The brain tends to remember what we were able to achieve in our teens. Unfortunately, even a relatively fit 30-year-old will have difficulty maintaining that level of fitness and flexibility." He believes that most injuries can be avoided if precautions are taken. "It's vital to warm up the muscles, joints and ligaments before any type of exercise. You will never see a professional sportsperson launch straight into a competition or game without stretching, jogging on the spot or doing a few practice kicks, passes or swings with a golf club, for example. Starting off with five minutes of low intensity exercise is great insurance against injury."
Watson recommends picking exercise classes and sports opponents with care. "Don't play squash with someone who is much better and fitter than you or join a high-impact aerobics class when you haven't done anything for six months. Start slowly and work up to your fitness goals gradually give your muscles and ligaments chance to adapt." And do not visit the gym first thing in the morning if you are a novice. "Soft tissue and spinal nerve roots, in particular, are tight and inflexible after sleep. It's much better if you can exercise later in the day when everything is looser and less vulnerable to damage," he says.
But if you are unlucky enough to suffer a mild strain or sprain, there's nothing like a hot bath or a quick blast of deep-heat spray to ease the aches and pains right? Wrong.
"It may feel soothing at first, but applying heat to an injury is often the worst thing you can do," says Susie Steiner, a physiotherapist at Cannons gym in the City. "The best way to treat a strain or sprain is to use what is known in physiotherapy as the RICE method."
"The R stands for rest. You should always give painful muscles or joints plenty of time to recuperate if you want to avoid more serious damage. If it hurts, avoid exercising for a few days until the pain subsides and you can start to ease yourself back into the swing of things. If the injury is less severe you can do what we call active rest, which means gently exercising the area until it's back to its former strength and full range of movement." She suggests letting pain be the guide as to how much movement the joint or muscle can take if the pain is crippling seek medical help immediately.
The I stands for ice applying a cold compress, rather than heat, within 24 hours of suffering the injury is key. "Sprains and strains cause tiny blood capillaries to burst around the affected area and these need to be shut down if swelling and pain are to be controlled," says Steiner. "Heat only serves to increase blood circulation and swelling in the damaged area."
Ice, or a bag of frozen peas, wrapped in a damp towel to prevent an ice "burn", should be applied to the injury for a maximum of 15 minutes at a time, two or three times a day for the first 48 hours. If it does not show signs of improvement within 24 hours, seek medical help.
The C step is to apply compression to the area, particularly if you have sprained a joint such as the elbow, knee or ankle. "A bandage, elasticated sports support or piece of Tubigrip (a cylindrical bandage available from most pharmacies) worn over the injury will help to reduce the swelling," says Steiner. Mclatchie recommends professional advice from a pharmacist on the choice of strapping.‘'It's important that it's not too tight or too loose some of the standard elasticated supports that you can buy may not be the right size or shape for you." A compression bandage should only be worn for a few days certainly no more than a week.
The final step for DIY recovery from a minor injury, particularly in the case of the knee, foot or ankle, is E for elevation. Resting and raising the leg by no more than 20 to 30 degrees above hip level within 24 hours of injury will help inflamation, swelling and pain to subside.
SIAN THOMAS on the research to protect our horses from the fierce climate in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympics.
Scientists investigating how best to acclimatise the horses that will represent Britain at the Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, in the American Deep South, in July have turned up some surprising results, overturning much of the traditional advice. Researchers at the Animal Health Trust's Equine Research Centre in Newmarket have spent three years looking at how to maximise the horses' Olympic performance in a climate where temperatures can soar to 38C. The £40,000 study was prompted after several horses suffered from heat stress as a result of competing in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
The first myth laid to rest is that a horse should never be sponged off with ice-cold water after exercise. In fact, this has proved beneficial to horses competing at any level. Horses that become overheated with a temperature in excess of 41C are prone to dehydration, affecting their performance and, in extreme cases, leading to heat exhaustion, even death. Dr David Marlin, head of physiology at the centre, says: "Horses that have become hot and sweaty should be cooled quickly. This not only reduces the risk of heat stress, but helps the horse recover faster, stops it from becoming too dehydrated and almost certainly improves its subsequent performance."
The cold water, say scientists, should be applied liberally, paying particular attention to the quarters, where the bulk of the overheated muscles lie. The recommended treatment involves applying water for 30 seconds, walking the animal for 30 seconds, then applying water again. This should be repeated until the quarters feel cool to the touch or the horse begins to shiver. "The walking is important because it promotes skin-blood flow and the movement of air over the body helps evaporation," emphasises Marlin.
Dehydration is not only a problem that occurs during exercise. Horses that have travelled in a horsebox risk impaired performance due to dehydration. On average, a horse will lose 2kg for every hour it spends travelling and, while weight lost through exercising is quickly replaced, weight lost during transportation is harder to regain. At least 17 horses will be flown to Atlanta with the British team and, after a 10-hour journey, they will have lost about 25kg, which equates to 5% of their total body weight. It will take about five days to recover this lost weight.
Tests at the centre have shown that horses that travel with feed are less prone to dehydration. For respiratory reasons, it is important to ensure that the hay is dust-free a problem solved by soaking it in water first. Also, the sheer stress of travelling, especially for a horse that is infrequently boxed, may also cause diarrhoea, but this can be remedied using drugs.
Another misconception highlighted by the study is that it is inadvisable to allow the horse to drink either immediately before, during or after exercise. This has now been proved untrue, as it has been discovered that water does not stay in the horse's stomach for long. So, allowing it to drink a small amount, say half a bucket, while exercising, will do it no harm at all, as long as the water is not too cold. Another worthwhile tip is that a competing horse will benefit from a combination of hard feed and hay, as long as it eats at least four hours before it is expected to perform.
The Peach Lady vs David Letterman.
AS Gary Shandling's spoof version, The Larry Sanders Show, demonstrates, American talk-show hosts have plenty to worry about without introducing the rogue factor of the general public. Guests arrive taciturn or drunk, sofa sidekicks stage tantrums, writers go mad and the host himself becomes a fretting neurotic, mirthless as he comes off air.
With the kings of chat preferring to stay secure in their crystal bubbles, meeting only their entourage and fellow celebrities, the public's role is confined to whooping appreciation. In the UK, meanwhile, television hosts have been wary of non-celebs ever since the 1960s, when militant hippies took over David Frost's studio. The sole exception to this rule is David Letterman, until last year the undisputed ruler of US late-night talk. Interspersed between the droll, mocking interviews on his show (originally on NBC, now CBS) are jokey items involving ordinary punters Letterman serving in a burger bar, for instance, or snooping on a nearby office.
One such stunt last autumn centred on images of a largish lady at the US Tennis Open, unable to stop peach juice dribbling down her chin. Endlessly rerunning the clip, Letterman launched a hunt for the Peach Lady, even displaying her face on the giant Times Square television screen.
Jeremy Beadle always finds out in advance whether gag victims are "good sports". But here, that precaution was apparently omitted. As her size is caused by a thyroid condition, Jane Bronstein, 54, aka the Peach Lady, took particular umbrage when Letterman ironically called her a "seductive temptress".
Bronstein, who has also endured polio and spinal problems, has now sued for defamation and invasion of privacy. Worldwide Pants, the star's friskily-titled production company, calls the suit "completely unwarranted".
This is by no means the only recent setback for Letterman. Reviews of his compering of the 1995 Oscars ceremony were lethal. Last spring's sortie to London was a virtual fiasco. Worst of all, his NBC rival, Jay Leno, has begun to challenge his supremacy in the ratings.
Besides suggesting that Letterman has mislaid his once assured sense of how far he can go, the Peach Lady case revives an accusation frequently made in his NBC days: that his wit is cruel and too often targets women.
However the case is settled, being cast as the taunting persecutor of a sick middle-aged lady is best avoided. Especially if, like Letterman, you're earning about $15m a year.
The days when the Waverley pen was advertised as a boon and blessing to men may be over, but a fountain pen remains the most personal of possessions the more you write with it, the more it becomes adapted to your handwriting. Not only an object of beauty, over the years a pen will become as unique to you as your fingerprints. Photographs by David Giles.
1. Tresoro gold-plated fountain pen, £480, from Tiffany & Co, 25 Old Bond Street, London W1; 0171-409 2790.
2. Yard-o-Led solid silver Viceroy engraved with flowers, £300, from Penfriend, 34 Burlington Arcade, London W1; 0171-499 6337. Owned by Filofax,
this is the only British make of fountain pen.
3. Metro fountain pen, £14.95, from The Conran Shop, 81 Fulham Road, London SW3; 0171-589 7401.
4. Parker 51, about £150, from Penfriend, as before. This vintage pen was one of Parker's most popular models, as reflected by its current collector's- item price tag.
5. Blue glass dipping pen, £8.50, from Ordning and Reda, 22 New Row, London WC2; 0171-240 8090.
6. Inoxacrom, £5.99, from Pencraft Ltd, 119 Regent Street, London W1; 0171-734 4928.
7. Red Kenzo fountain pen, £60, from Paperchase, 213 Tottenham Court Road, London W1 and branches; 0171-580 8496.
8. Solo Sport fountain pen with pink resin case, £17.95, from Cross, available in a range of colours.
Call 01582-422793 for stockists. Cross pens carry a lifetime guarantee.
9. Lamy Art Pen, £11, from Ordning and Reda, as before.
10. Limited edition Parker Duofold Mandarin fountain pen, £500. Call 01273-513233 for stockists.
11. Cork grip-pen holder, £4.50, and nib, £2, both from Mr Poole at L Cornelison, 105 Great Russell Street, London WC1; 0171-636 1045.
12. Mont Blanc Meisterstuck 149, £270. Call 0181-560 2181 for stockists.
There was a time when kippers were not dyed bright orange and chemically flavoured. Smoked haddock was not born bright yellow. If you want that old-fashioned taste of well-smoked fish, contact Andy Race Fish Merchants, Mallaig, Highland (01687-462626). Mallaig kippers (£5 for two pairs), right, can be sent anywhere in mainland Britain within 24 hours. Also recommended are the sprats, haddock and monkfish, all traditionally smoked and undyed.
St Valentine's Day and champagne go together like the birds and the bees, so, to make sure you can enjoy a chilled glass at a moment's notice, the Vacu Vin Rapid Ice Champagne, below, can ensure a room-temperature bottle is ready to drink within five minutes and keeps it cool for hours. Store it in the freezer for unexpected presents (or visitors). Available from branches of John Lewis, priced £8.99.
It's not too late to order your St Valentine's Day oysters. For native oysters, contact the Duchy of Cornwall Oyster Farm (01326-340210), one of the Prince of Wales's private business ventures. Natives are far meatier than pacific oysters and have a more distinctive taste. Open them carefully (with an oyster knife or a short, strong-bladed one), so you do not lose any of the heavenly juices. Consume with Guinness or black velvet or, if you absolutely insist, champagne. The mail order is to towns and cities only and costs £20 for 25 oysters.
Awarded a Michelin star for the first time this year Nick Nairn is one of the youngest British chefs to be so honoured. His Aberfoyle restaurant, Braeval, is one of the gastronomic highpoints of Scotland, but his first book, Wild Harvest With Nick Nairn, is not just another chef's book for chefs. (Who else has 2l of veal jus in their fridge?) Nairn's recipes make sense to all cooks, since, as a self-taught chef and cookery teacher, he understands kitchen dimwits. Try his warm salad of duck breast and blueberries or his hot chocolate souffle pudding you'll be smitten.
The book, below, (BBC Books £14.99) is published to coincide with the television series of the same name, starting on Wednesday on BBC2 at 8pm.
Organic chocolate, above, is not cheap, but when you consider that you are enjoying a product that does no harm to the environment, you might just feel free to eat with (even more) gusto. Green & Black's (available in health-food shops and supermarkets, £1.35-£1.85 for 100g), now comes in four flavours: Original Dark (70%); Maya Gold (with orange); Milk Chocolate; and Mint.
"Unlock and savour the sensual pleasure of pure arabica coffee." Yes, you're right, it's French. Carte Noire (subtitled "a coffee named desire" some advertising lines are better left at home) has just been launched in this country. Available in jars of Instant (£2.59), Decaffeinated (£2.89) and Ground (£2.49) from larger supermarkets, it certainly looks chic, and the aroma on opening the jar is alluring, although, for me, the taste is not gutsy enough, lacking more than a little je ne sais quoi.
Pile on pattern and colour for an exotic interior such as Azagury's. Any period of furniture fits, as long as it has an interesting shape, and the richer the upholstery the better. Fiery colours hold the look together; coloured glass and decorative plaster details add the finishing touch.
Although the overtly ethnic look has passed its prime, you don't have to throw out your kilims. Mixed with different fabrics and contemporary furniture, kilims won't look cliched. They often work best as an integral part of the furnishings made into a cushion or used to upholster a chair. This kilim footstool (below), which measures 93x69cm and costs £495, comes from a range of kilim-covered furniture at Liberty, Regent Street, London W1 (0171-734 1234) and branches. For kilim-covered furniture by mail order, try East Lothian-based Clock House Furniture, Call 01620-860968 for a brochure.
You don't need to be signed up to the new age to have a crystal on your mantelpiece. Ben Gaskell of Gaskell Quartz says: "They are extremely beautiful, and that's all there is to it." Though he is now specialising in "flawless" crystal balls, Gaskell does keep a few rough crystals (from about £200) in his collection (above). For more information call 0171-274 8007.
Plain plaster pieces look very effective against brightly coloured walls. The British Museum Collection (0171-323 1234) sells replica busts and panels by mail order. Or emulate Azagury: buy terracotta planters from a garden centre and paint them white.
Decorative coloured glass is fairly easy to find in flea and antique markets. For this look, colour and shape matter more than quality, so even fairly cheap pieces can work well. For more specialist glass, try Glassworks at Unit S002, Alfies Antiques Market, 13-25 Church Street, London NW8 (0171-724 0904). It has a good selection of 1950s Italian pieces (particularly Vernini), including these decorative glass dishes (below) for about £120 each.
Your local bishop may not be the first person you might think of asking for advice on fabric buying, but for richly coloured damasks, ecclesiastical outfitters are hard to beat. Watts & Co, 7 Tufton Street, London SW1 (0171-222 7169), has been dressing up clerics of all orders for more than 100 years, and sells a wide range of damasks in opulent colours, such as deep green, papal purple and golden yellow (left). These high-quality fabrics aren't cheap (from £45 per metre for cotton damask; from £110 per metre for silk), but even a cushion-sized piece will give a sofa an opulent touch. Alternatively, look in antique markets for old damask curtains,
or try department stores such as John Lewis, which usually has a good selection of damasks (call 0171-629 7711 for branches).
To view Azagury's jewellery, pay a visit to her shop at 171 Westbourne Grove, London W11 (0171-792 0197). With its velvet walls and leather floor (above), it is as opulent as her home.You don't need to have solid gold for a glamorous feel a bit of gilt will do the trick. V&A Enterprises, the mail-order wing of the Victoria and Albert Museum, sells a range of gilt-effect frames, including (left) this small Acorn frame (£18.75) and large Rope frame (£35.50). Details: 0171-938 8438.
Sure-footed: a kilim-covered stool
Hot rocks: rough crystals
Italian job: decorative 1950s glass dishes
Taking the cloth: damask Gilt trip: frames
Shock shop: inside outre
Wrap yourself in bright colours and make a splash whatever the weather. The short, sharp fashion mac is back, says KATE CONSTABLE.
This spring, it is going to be hot. I know it's hard to believe, especially if your garden is currently buried under 2ft of snow, but it's true. If the catwalks are anything to go by, however bleak the weather, we'll be braving it out in sunshine colours, mixing banana yellow, lime green and hot
tomato reds with all the carefree optimism of a Doris Day Technicolor movie.
Before we get overexcited and rush out to pick daisies in a downpour, let's remember that the garments featured in these pictures are only a subgenus of the macintosh they owe little to Charles Macintosh, the Scottish chemist who patented a waterproof woollen fabric in 1823 by cementing layers of cloth between rubber. The first macs to be made from such fabric were practical, workaday garments that covered the wearer from head to toe, keeping him dry as he pursued his grouse or rabbit. Nor are the latest exuberant garments inspired by the moody posturing of Garbo or Bogey, so banish any thoughts of running along drenched airstrips in a trench coat.
Indeed, this season's offerings have little to do with anything that might actually keep you dry. They belong to the family of tantalising little articles loosely termed fashion macs. As a waterproof garment, the fashion mac is totally redundant, but it keeps popping up every few seasons because it looks so great. Of course, it should come as no surprise to whom we owe this flaunty little number. The Big Daddy of the fashion mac was Yves Saint Laurent.
First he did it up in black vinyl, giving it a nice little S&M twist. Then he lined
it with Velcro, which made an appealing rrrrrrrrripping sound when it was whipped off. Then he put it on the ice-cool Catherine Deneuve and got Bunuel to film the results in Belle de Jour the classic study of bourgeois repression that enjoyed renewed success on its recent re-release. (Okay, so it may not quite have happened like that, but you get the point.) Suddenly, wet-weather gear became as sexy as a peekaboo nightie, and we've never looked back since.
These bright and breezy little macs for spring are more flighty than drop-dead sexy: they will look perfect teamed with skinny cigarette pants and turtle-neck sweaters. Or maybe worn with a simple shift dress, square-toed shoes and one of those groovy "mummy" handbags that look as if they've been made out of two pieces of cardboard. Oh, and don't forget the sunglasses, because the chances are that when you step out of your taxi in a pristine piece of violet shantung, the sky will be a perfect shade of blue. Not.
The divorcee is an attractive species, says SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE. And, these days, there are plenty of them about - just look at our selection.
‘Give her a kiss, Brigadier," shouted the driver of a passing truck as the dashing 55-year-old officer bashfully led his attractive new wife, a divorcee, also 55, through a scrummage of paparazzi.
"No, no, middle-aged people don't do that," said Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles as he escorted the former Rosemary Pitman out of the registry office last week. Of course, nobody believed him. The whole point of divorcees, such as the one he has just married, is that they are quintessentially kissable. Divorce is a plague that causes a host of miseries. But it has also granted us one bounteous boon. Bravo, Brigadier! I write in praise of the divorcee.
Her attraction lies in her experience and her convenience. She has seen the world and come through it triumphant; her life is organised and established, yet she is also free. There is always romance in a beautiful Rapunzel, alone in her tower, but that attraction is doubled when her tower is ivory and her sorrow is embalmed in solid gold. This is to be the unearned destiny of a prospective divorcee such as the Princess of Wales.
Then there are the children. The lover of a divorcee becomes the patriarch of a family without the bother of bringing them up. Since she has already been married and has a family, she is utterly relaxed. She often does not want to get married again. Her biological time-bomb has ticked and gone off. Hence, the divorcee is the perfect mistress and ideal wife: she has the advantages of an unmarried woman but none of her disadvantages. She offers the warm bourgeois comfort of an earth mother with the sensual freedom of a courtesan.
"My divorce was like entering a sexual playground. Spin the wheel," says a female friend of mine, aged 33, with four children. "I totally made up for lost time. It has been absolutely brilliant since the day I left my husband."
There is nothing as sexy as a divorcee. But the unfair thing is that her male equivalent is not at all sexy. The married man is sexy; the divorced man is yesterday's papers.
The divorcee fascinates because she is newly formed from a fresh cast a libertine reborn out of the humbug routine of bourgeois matrimony. Liberated from the sexual drudgery of marriage to an oafish husband, she is secretly determined to do precisely what she wants sexually.
Much of her mystique is no doubt a legacy of the Victorian "fallen woman". As Mrs Simpson demonstrated, it was only after the second world war that divorce became acceptable. Today's divorcee is far from "fallen".
If anything, she has risen to a new elite of female lone rangers. Even the existence of the ex-husband can be surprisingly alluring, and if a woman has suffered, the memory of her pain will only add to her appreciation of freedom.
I know a couple of jaded middle-aged playboys who are self-declared specialists in divorcees. One, a lawyer, told me about the most erotic moment in his affair with a beautiful 39-year-old divorcee, who was also a brilliant mother to three children: "We were lying there when her mobile phone rang. She picked it up and began talking to her youngest son, eight, homesick at boarding school. To this child she was the untarnished angel of mercy I remember seeing my mother that way while, in fact, she was wantonly naked in my bed. Sacrilege!"
The celebrity divorce has become a sort of sub-industry, especially in America, where Liz Taylor is on her seventh divorce, and both Lisa-Marie Presley and Christie Brinkley are going through the process for the second time.
But vulgar foreigners often simply demonstrate that divorce is something that we British do better than anyone else. In my view, no other nation, however sophisticated, can equal the elegantly tragic, glacially organised and privately lubricious British divorcee for class.
The imminent royal divorce may change all this. Royal lawyers are beginning to appear as the subjects of newspaper and magazine features. This is the celebrity by association that now extends even to Andrew Parker Bowles connected only indirectly to the royal divorce, because his former wife, Camilla, was a lover of the Prince of Wales. His marriage last week received coverage worthy of a summit between the superpowers.
I hope that the agonies of the impending royal divorce will not spoil the good name of the British divorcee. The world's most celebrated divorcee a model to all her kind was Empress Josephine, the jolie-laide Creole adventuress who was Napoleon's great love. She behaved with all the discretion, dignity and sensual chic of the quintessential divorcee when he divorced her to marry a Habsburg. But they always loved one another. On hearing of her death, Napoleon wandered through Malmaison in floods of tears.
Our latter-day equivalent, Princess Diana, is unlikely, judging by her apparently greedy exhibitionism, to show anything like the dignity of a Josephine. She is more likely to be a divorcee of the Oprah Winfrey/scandal -sheet breed a living example of how not to behave.
Perhaps we look at divorce too negatively: after all, in many cases, it is the engine of romance. When a couple fall in love nowadays, they don't get married. They get divorced from their respective spouses, of course. The word should simply be redefined. To me, divorcee is simply a free woman ... in her prime.
I would like to share a Marco Pierre White experience. His London restaurant, the Criterion, is the place to dine if you have eaten prior to your arrival or are on an expensive diet.
I ordered spaghetti to start with, which was good, but after four forkfuls I had finished. For my main course, I chose a cod dish. I asked the waiter if I could have fries as a side order and was told, "No, you can only have french fries with specific dishes. So, mashed or boiled?"
We then spotted a dish with fries being delivered to the next table. There were eight chips stacked on top of each other in a pretty pattern!
As we left, I jokingly said, why don't we go to McDonald's? There was a moment of silence as everyone seriously contemplated it.
Paula Bicknelli
London W11
I was interested to see Mr Winner's comments about the lack of caviar on Concorde.
Like Mr Winner I rarely eat on planes. However, I often travel on long haul, always in first class, and the one thing I do eat is caviar. If there is an alternative carrier on the route with a first-class cabin, I will choose them rather than BA. All other leading airlines that I have flown with offer caviar in first class. If you've just given them £5,000 for your ticket, I suppose they consider £25 for caviar a good investment.
From a source at British Airways, I know that they received a deluge of complaints when they ceased to serve caviar. Can I suggest that all BA first-class passengers who would like caviar should write to Sir Colin Marshall demanding its reinstatement?
Brian F Carroll
Bromley, Kent
There's something I've noticed about men they quite fancy themselves in the marmalade-making department. It's generally around this time of year that, instead of going to a film or sleeping in front of the football of a Saturday afternoon, they are talking about "setting points" and "rind thickness".
Like hanging pictures and wallpapering, making marmalade often ends in tears everyone's grandmother made it better, Delia does it differently, and last year's dark-brown glue is still sticking to the cupboard. If and when you get it right, homemade marmalade is unbeatable.
For those who cannot be bothered heaving bags of sugar, kilos of oranges and worrying about scarring, there is quite a good selection in the supermarkets. It is important to check that the marmalade is made exclusively from seville oranges they are only available for a month from mid-January. (Also known as sour oranges, they were introduced to Spain by the Moors in the 8th century.) They are horribly bitter eaten raw, but when preserved... a piece of toast has never tasted so good.
I tried five "thin cut" types as I don't like chewing a bit of rind when I've swallowed the toasty, buttery, jammy bits. Tesco, Waitrose, Harrods and Frank Cooper's are all a good mixture of rind to jelly and a clear, deep orange colour. Asda's Thin Cut Orange Shred looks like Damien Hirst has shaved goldfish and suspended them in orange Vaseline it tasted like wine gums. Waitrose Seville Orange smelt the strongest, was more fruity and the jelly was a smoother, less rubbery texture than Tesco's, which was too sweet. Harrods's was very sugary and tasted more like run-of-the-mill orange marmalade, although it claimed the highest fruit content (about 10% more). Frank Cooper's Fine Cut Oxford is the least sweet, so the distinctive seville taste is stronger, and with lots of soft peel it spreads well. So, when the boys resume their usual activities and my jars are empty, I'll have Frank on the table for breakfast.
Frank Cooper's Fine Cut Oxford Seville Orange Marmalade (£1.15, 454g)***
Waitrose Seville Orange Marmalade Thin Cut (76p, 454g)**
Harrods Seville Orange Marmalade (£2.95, 340g)**
Tesco Orange Marmalade Fine Cut Seville Oranges (76p, 454g)*
Asda Thin Cut Orange Shred Marmalade with Seville Oranges (72p, 454g).
Sitting on my own waiting for the habitually late Blonde, I eavesdropped on a group of porcine plutocrats at the next table. The boss hog, the one reading the wine list as if it were the minutes of the previous meeting, was ritually, metaphorically mounting a younger, weedier porker who sat below the salt. "Geoff, you're bloody lucky there are worse jobs than working for me."
The three other pinstriped piglets regarded him with a gobsmacked surmise. If there were, they couldn't think of one. There are worse jobs, of course. Being that fat bastard's masseuse would be worse. Being his wife would be far worse.
Whenever I try to comfort myself by imagining those less fortunate the bog cleaner in Kinshasa bus station or an operator for Peking directory inquiries, I always end up with the icy schadenfreude of the worst job in the world. Not, as Derek and Clive had it, picking lobsters out of Jayne Mansfield's nether bits, but the chap who had to clean and cook them afterwards. The worst job in the world is incontestably being a commis chef in a Michelin-style restaurant.
Most of you will never have seen a pukka kitchen working at full steam. It's a medieval nightmare: hotter than hell, more dangerous than a late-night Miami off-licence. A chef stands in the serving station, takes orders from waiters and shouts them above the hubbub, very fast. The cooks responsible for each dish shout back that they have understood. Each then has to go and cook it so it coincides with all the other dishes in the order prepared by other chefs. In a modern expensive restaurant, a starter may have a dozen constituent parts. It may have to be cooked three ways, and it has to look like the photograph in the head chef's book (he's out front, in a spotless apron, having a cocktail with Eric Clapton).
Remember how often you forget what you've ordered as a main course and now imagine what it's like having to remember 30 main courses and the order they have to come in, and the angle of the garnish of the chive on the garnish, and, for Christ's sake, don't forget the mullet in the pan that must be seared for exactly three, not four, not two and a half, but three minutes.
Then try and imagine all that in a room that's far too small, because a bigger kitchen would mean fewer tables, and imagine the hot oil spilled all over the floor, the knives and pans, the flames and noise. And whatever you do, keep listening for the orders that are being shouted like train destinations. If you miss one, you'll cause a log jam that can get you fired or put into casualty.
Oh, and I forgot, just to make it really fun, it's all done in a foreign language. Imagine doing that split-shifts, 11 in the morning to 12 at night, with a four-hour break in the middle, six days a week, Christmas, Easter, bank holidays, for just over £100 a week.
If that weren't bad enough, chefs as a breed are stupid, fearful bullies. They make each other's lives as unpleasant as possible. Like prisoners, they make a horrid place worse. Most chefs believe in the school of hard knocks, deep cuts, suppurating burns, and tearful exhaustion if you can't take the heat. Top chefs are driven by a messianic obsession that borders on madness. They hate the customers, they hate critics, they hate other cooks, their wives hate them, but they adore little bits of boneless fish. Often now, I look at my exquisite, subtle, sophisticated plate and think: this isn't lunch, this is warm neurosis.
"It isn't worth it." Alastair Little sits, leaning on a walking stick, in his pristine, unornamented new restaurant in Notting Hill Gate. We're talking about the latest round of Michelin stars, the paper medals that chefs risk heart attacks, alcoholism and a lonely old age, in themselves and others, to attain. "It's not worth it. Food isn't worth all that misery." He reels off a handful of two-star divas. "I couldn't live like that."
This is something of a revelation. This is a Ccabinet-rank defection. Little is probably responsible for more that's good in the English restaurant revival than any other single cook. His railway-carriage restaurant in Frith Street, London, spawned more meals than were ever cooked there; he was the caring face of the new food. Not a fat, florid Frenchman, but a thin, articulate, clever Englishman. He had a degree, so he could ice cakes with joined-up writing. The whole mix-and-match, bit-of-this, bit-of-that, gentleman-peasant school of cookery grew out of his short menus.
Now he has gone native. Handed the Soho keys to an assistant and headed for the Notting Hills. The new Alastair Little Lancaster Road is an attempt to serve up the sort of stuff that was always closest to his heartburn. Hard-working, Umbrian-moustache and clog dishes. Cheap ingredients prepared without drum rolls. Not just honest food but food without malice, without tears. The place is the sort of restaurant everyone dreams of having at the bottom of their street. A striped awning, simple tables and chairs, buzzing with lots of shiny, un-Brylcreemed hair and pert, will-you-respect-me-after bodies. And three courses of well-made, just-what-I-wanted grub for a fixed £20.
The menu is very short. I started with pappardelle in a coq-au-vin sauce. It came without pretension. Actually it came without presentation. Grey strips of pasta with onions and bacon in a warm wine reduction. Tasty, and as honest as a novice nun, but slightly heavy on the smoky bacon flavour. The Blonde, with her infuriating ability to choose the best thing on a menu, had a salade nicoise made with home-cured tuna. I always wondered what that tasted like before they stuffed the chicken of the sea into tins. The answer is, excellent.
Next, poached tongue, salt beef and capon, with Italian mustard fruit pickle, served in a broth with root vegetables. A dish so trustworthy you could have left your wallet with it. The Blonde slipped up on a pork chop baked in milk, which I loved, but she turned up her nose up at the mad-dog viscous froth that the curds turn into. Pudding was a Bible-waving, unimpeachable prune and almond tart, and a Holy Innocent baked pear with cinnamon ice cream. If you eat out a lot, this is the sort of food and the sort of place at the sort of price you yearn for.
Little has retired to a life of a bit of writing, summers teaching in Italy, offering fundamental food at Ggod-fearing prices and reading bedtime stories to his kids. He has given up on the race for the stars. He hobbles up and down his monastic restaurant, like the one camel who managed to get through the eye of the needle. A smiling picture of humility. But then you notice that the only decoration in the place is a huge, I mean huge, A carved into the wall. That's not A for Allah, for A for Amen, it's A for Alastair, for alpha, for autocrat.
They're all bonkers, chefs. They're all megalomaniacs, even the ones who tell you they're born again. Next time you complain about the cost of your dinner, remember you haven't paid half the price of what it really cost. Not half.
Alastair Little Lancaster Road, 136a Lancaster Road, London W11 (0171-243 2220).
Lunch 12.30pm-2.30pm, dinner 7pm-10.30pm. Closed all day Sunday.
1993 Marques de Grinon Syrah, £7.99
1994 Spanna del Piemonte, £3.49
The syrah, from Dominio de Valdepusa, claims to be Spain's first wine to be made from this grape variety. Judging by this debut performance, others ought to be trying their hand. It has the classic roasted-berries syrah fruit and silky texture, together with the typically Spanish coffee-cum-vanilla note. The spanna proves that Piedmont can make interesting wines that don't need years to soften, don't cost an arm and a leg and yet are delightfully true to type. It is full of dusty plum, prune and raspberry flavours, with a twist of bitter mocha (and there is currently a discount of £2 on a half-case).
Rich, dark colours abound in winter foliage and shrubs. For further details, just look around you, says Dan Pearson.
GARDENERS often fall into a depression at this time of year, when there seems to be hardly any life outside and the landscape is drained of colour. It can seem that the grey and brown of the season has sucked out any vitality in the garden, but close examination will, I assure you, prove otherwise.
In this quiet season I look to the landscape rather than plant catalogues with their promise of brilliant blooms for inspiration. It is a question of training yourself to look again and to re-examine. For example, motorway embankments are strewn with mahogany seedheads of dock and coal-black teasel, highlighted and lifted by dead, bleached grass. Lichen mottles walls with acid yellow and broad-bean green. Moss and emerald green mould on tree trunks will sing out against the sootiness of rotting leaves.
Many winter landscapes will change visibly once the relative flat green of foliage has been cast to the floor. Walking on the South Downs over Christmas, I was stunned by the richness I found. Cream of exposed chalk pushing through faded grass and sanguine hawthorn berries, shrivelled and ready to drop from chestnut brown twigs. I was astonished to find sloe fruit that was almost navy blue, dusted in a silvery bloom. What an inspiration I wanted to take swatches back as reference because, no matter how hard I try, I can never quite remember the richness and vibrancy of colour once I am away from it.
Colours register very differently during winter months. There is less distraction and, with low levels of light, subtlety comes into its own. Delicate colours tend to work best when they are seen together in broad sweeps. The pale washed-out mauve of a single heather becomes a rich drench on moorland hillsides, the grey of ash twigs almost silver at a distance.
Relating this back to the garden is not as difficult as it first seems. To achieve a rich tapestry of colour, it is important to remember that many of the most wonderful winter landscapes are multi-layered, one level being a foil for the next, and so on.
Many gardeners make the mistake of viewing their plants in isolation, alone against bare earth. In nature, the earth is rarely exposed and you should ape this by using ground cover to provide the first layer in the tapestry. Many ground-covering plants are valued both for their dense growth and as a foil for other species. Tellima grandiflora ‘Purpurea' will colonise the soil with round matt leaves that are bronzed in winter a wind will reveal undersides that have traces of violet. It is a marvellous addition to the garden, never invasive and always discreet. Other good ground-cover plants include the coppery Acaena microphylla which forms a close, creeping mat over the soil surface, the entire mass covered in rust-coloured tussocks of seedheads in autumn; and the thymes, in shades of grey and lime green the same shades as those wonderful lichens and ferns which turn cinnamon and dun brown in the winter months.
Once you have established a foil, the next layer could be occupied by perennials and small shrubs. The best plant in our community garden at the moment is the elegant Stipa arundinacea, a grass that turns from orange brown in autumn to rust winter. It would look quite beautiful through the soft tones of heather, or amid the dark chocolate leaves of the black clover, Trifolium repens ‘Quadrifolium'. I have the rich ruby red form from Beth Chatto, Trifolium repens ‘Wheatfen', growing as ground cover beneath sedums which retain their dead flowerheads throughout winter.
Purple sage stands out alone in a winter garden, making it the ideal candidate for the next layer of growth shrubs. Take a closer look at many deciduous shrubs and you will see that each has a quality of its own: Rosa ‘Nevada', a large shrub rose, has shiny smooth stems the colour of chestnuts; Rosa glauca has lilac stems; and, viewed from a distance, my scotch briar could almost be said to be apricot.
From a distance is perhaps the best way of looking at a winter garden. Stand back and you can start to take in the whole multi-layered picture. A few strides back and the copper hazel will be hung in a pink shroud which is, in fact, its developing catkins.
Detail, however, has a role to play, too. Nature has an ingenious hand; just when you become familiar with the broad sweep, it will throw in an intense detail, such as the navy blue sloes, which you can only see close-up. Purple jewel-like Primula ‘Wanda' dotted among the bronzed acaenas or, on a larger scale, the lipstick red hips of Rosa moyesii will add pinpoints of bright colour.
So, step outside and take a closer look. The greyness exists mostly in the mind and, from time to time, the mind needs to be given a kick-start to see what is in front of your eyes.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe that there is any good reason for trying to be subtle on St Valentine's Day. And this year of all years, a leap year, there is precious little hope of anyone, male or female, managing to be subtle about their intentions, honourable or not. That being so, you might as well bite the bullet and be glaringly obvious not to say corny. Step forward, st-amour.
Apart from its singularly apt name, st-amour has several points in its favour. First of all it is beaujolais, one of the easiest red wines to enjoy February 14 is not, after all, an occasion to be deeply reverential about some rare or venerable bottle. But, equally, st-amour is not bog-
standard beaujolais: it is one of the 10 crus, the top 10 villages that are labelled under their own names and which yield wines with more body and character than plain beaujolais or beaujolais-villages. Little risk, therefore, of being condemned as naff or a cheapskate (in fact, st-amour is one of the more expensive of the crus).
There is also a story behind the name, which might come in useful on the night should conversation start to flag. Actually, there are several versions of the story, but two should be enough for one romantic evening. According to one, a Roman centurion called St Amateur founded a monastery on the hilltop that is now the village of St-Amour, having fled persecution for his beliefs. According to the other, a Roman soldier converted to Christianity and established a mission there, after narrowly escaping death in Switzerland, and was subsequently canonised.
Another attraction of st-amour is that, along with chenas, it has the smallest red wine output of the crus (fleurie's is more than three times as big and brouilly's nearly five times), so familiarity is not likely to have bred contempt. The downside of this is that st-amour is rather hard to come by. Nevertheless, two delicious ones, both from the very good 1994 vintage, are Clos du Chapitre, Lamartine (£7.69 from Oddbins) and the darker, fuller-bodied Domaine du Clos du Fief, M Tete (£8.95 from Lay & Wheeler of Colchester, 01206-764446).
In the absence of a st-amour, the charm of the name fleurie might be the next best thing, and at least there is plenty of it: the ubiquitous Georges Duboeuf's classic 1994 is about £7 in selected Tesco, Victoria Wine, Thresher, Wine Rack, Bottoms Up and others; and Lay & Wheeler has a stunning, ripe, aromatic and individual 1994 Clos de la Roulette from Domaine Coudert (£9.49).
A too-clever-by-half alternative to st-amour (but a useful one if the object of your desire only drinks white wine) would be st-veran which, with a certain amount of licence, you could refer to all evening as white st-amour. Quite a lot of st-amour is planted with chardonnay and has the right to the st-veran appellation, but equally, the st-veran boundaries take in vineyards a long way outside st-amour. Asda, Fullers, Oddbins, Thresher, Wine Rack and Bottoms Up all have stylish, buttery st-verans from the exemplary Domaine des Deux Roches (£6.49-£8.49) and these are wines that can be drunk on their own, but which go very well with food, especially fish and chicken.
On firmer, if more cliched, St Valentine's Day ground, there is pink champagne. Among the big names, Laurent-Perrier's rose is a standard-bearer for generous fruit and balance (about £24, widely available) and Billecart-Salmon specialises in particularly elegant roses (£25.99 from Oddbins; or £28.25 for the more complex 1988 vintage Cuvee Elisabeth from Adnams of Southwold, 01502-727220). Among the less famous (and cheaper) brands, Majestic's Oeil de Perdrix is consistently good pale tawny-pink, with soft, supple raspberry fruit and, this week, the usual price of £14.99 drops to £12.49 when you buy two bottles. Oddbins's F Bonnet deeper coloured, fuller and richer is also excellent value (£14.99, or £12.85 for six bottles).
If you plan to drink and eat at the same time, rest assured that the Champenois drink champagne with anything and everything, including rose with game of all kinds (but especially feathered), pink roast lamb and puddings even coffee and chocolate ones. Safer choices would be poached salmon, steamed bass, sauced lobster or langoustines but not oysters. For those intent on trying for the full aphrodisiac effect, oysters are much better partnered by the youthful freshness of a non-vintage white champagne, above all a blanc des blancs: the creamy Pascal Ferat blanc des blancs would be ideal (£16.49 from Bibendum, 0171-722 5577). But if you don't want fizz, chablis with oysters is one of the few other food and wine marriages that seems to have been made in heaven. No, it isn't subtle, but it should work.
I suppose it beats being snubbed at Quaglino's by the paparazzi, or having Rufus Sewell leave before the main course when dining at Le Caprice. In Argentina, though, people are far from ignoring Madonna; in fact, they're crying in anger and shame. The country is apparently resplendent in its hatred, anger and passion. Its walls are covered with graffiti: "Madonna is a whore", and other inscriptions telling her to get out of the country.
She has apparently had death threats, and various luminaries have been pontificating that Madonna is just not good enough to play the shimmering heroine Eva Peron, friend to the poor and the hospitalised.
To many Argentinians, Madonna is unfairly seen as a symbol of prostitution. The "manipulate them before they manipulate you" theme has been a long-term one for her. She has appeared in kinky corsetry and posed for girl-on-girl liquid kisses in an explicit book of glossy degradation, called Sex. As a result, they believe Madonna may demean the sacred image of Evita.
The singer has recently arrived in Buenos Aires pledging, like a prime minister, that she has come to make peace, that it will be a faithful portrayal, a glorious portrayal, that she loves Eva Peron. "I would never insult the memory of Evita," she said. "I am so happy to portray such a great and inspiring woman."
For "happy", read "grateful". Madonna needed this role. It is pivotal to her film career and her psyche, both of which have been at an all-time low of late. Madonna has one of those egos that needs to be flattered and outraged. It is almost as if she requires love and vilification in equal parts. She needs to be exalted and to appal before she knows who she is. But she has been having such a glum time recently. The almost cartoon-like image of a sexual omnivore that she created for herself scares off potential boyfriends such as the aforementioned Rufus Sewell. And, let's face it, a toy boy is what she really wants. That business with girls a while back was just a fad she tapped into to have a bit of fun, to shock, to receive yet more incredulity from the public. So she is lonely and she is bored. Obviously, then, it is time for her to have a new obsession. And this time it's to be wringing her hands, and crying for Evita.
It seems odd to me that the Argentinians have taken so horribly against the filming of the Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice musical. After all Madonna, like Eva Peron before her, is a feisty little blonde control freak with the personality of an avenging angel baroque, Catholic; dramatic manipulators the pair of them. They are, indeed, almost the same person. These days, Madonna even looks like Evita: the blonde bun, the ruby glossed lips sunk into an expression of saintly determination.
For many Argentinians, Eva Peron was a saint. Certainly, a source of inspiration: an illiterate country girl who had a grim, hard early life, but who focused on what she wanted. The young Evita, an actress and singer, somehow managed to bewitch Colonel Juan Peron, who was then preparing himself for the premiership of his country, and married him in 1945. By 1946, he had started the first phase of his long, controversial presidency and, as his first lady, she found herself the most powerful woman in the country.
She was great PR for him, almost Princess of Wales-like in her charity work, and was seen nourishing the poor and the sick and the desperate. The English always hated her; the Argentinians always hated the English. What they don't like is having Evita's image, as they see it, distorted. But the connection between the two women doesn't so much cheapen the name as add an uncomfortable twist to it they would rather forget about. It is easier to worship a saint than a human being. People are afraid of the truth, and the film will portray Peron as an arch-manipulator. "She can now be dealt with as a human," said one rare pro-the-film Argentinian.
Eva Peron was driven by feelings of social resentment. This was the motive for her passion. It kept her awake at night. She wanted to take power to avenge the years of humiliation she had suffered. Madonna, too, you will remember, comes from a humble background, a place from which she had to escape.
Peron also had lots of very nice clothes. Clothes, and knowing how to use them as a symbol of power, are further bonds of empathy between the two women. Dressing up as Evita has given Madonna a convenient way of dignifying her image. Suddenly, she's appearing in nifty little suits and sporting a bun, instead of dressing in her underwear, swearing and smoking cigars: crudery swapped for prudery.
With much the same vicious ambition and self-focus, Madonna, who usually gets what she wants (except when it comes to men), went all gung ho to get the part. The film's director, Alan Parker, originally had Michelle Pfeiffer in mind, so Madonna set to work. There were prayers, there were fortune-tellers, there were candles, amulets, and finally a letter an out-of-control, begging letter.
Oh, what a masochistic thrill that must have given her as she wrote it, all submission. Madonna said: "It was like an inspiration from God. I couldn't control what I was writing. But I sent it all the same. I used all the arguments to convince him I just wanted to do Evita. It's not about money, just fascination." A gripping obsession, more like. All this looking alike is not acting, it's a kind of therapeutic narcissism on Madonna's part a self-validation, an ethereal schizophrenia. It's a comfort to her that she can be so powerful again, even if it is only the power to stir controversy rather than to do something more worthwhile.
Evita's story gives Madonna ultimate hope for salvation. "I, too, came from nothing," she says. "Both Evita and I had our hearts broken at a young age. I felt I'd been abandoned when my mother died. I understand her beginnings. We both achieved our objectives in totally different ways. What Evita did was in the name of Peron and his government. What I did was in the name of liberation."
What a simple way she has of becoming someone else; it's all so easy for her. She has even used the argument that, like Evita, she is helping the poor because the film, which will probably be banned in Argentina, is creating jobs. Extras get about £20 for a seven-hour day.
Eva Peron died of womb cancer when she was 33 and at the peak of her beauty. Her body was preserved, then stolen, then hidden, then an imposter body or so they say was buried so that the real one couldn't be stolen again. Such posthumous mystery is the kind of thing that Madonna would probably have searing fantasies about. She must also relish the near-worship of Evita's memory. The idea of there being such a commotion after one's death must seem to Madonna to be the ultimate salvation. She says, of course, that she is terrified and hurt by all the death threats she is said to have received. But she has probably never felt more alive.
MADONNA's chart is perfect for Madonna. A Leo, the sign that thrives in the limelight, she is not famous merely as a performer; her flamboyant lifestyle and sexual adventures, symbolised by Venus, planet of love near the unconventional Uranus, and the Sun close to the planet of sexuality itself, Pluto, have raised her profile as well. It is no surprise that Argentina is in uproar about Madonna portraying its icon of a first lady, Evita.
Curiously, there are certain similarities between Madonna's chart and Evita's. Although the latter was a Taurus, she had three planets in Leo. And, in the charts of both women, Mars is in Taurus, one of the most persistent possible positions. Which takes us back to Madonna's dilemma. She is determined to play Evita, but the unruly objections of Evita's fans threaten to disrupt filming. Madonna's recent appearances in Evita-style conservative glamour were designed to soothe those concerned that her raunchy style would dishonour Evita's memory. But, so far, Argentina remains unconvinced.
Can Madonna be relaunched? Her difficulties are indicated by the planet of upheaval, Uranus, now opposite Madonna's Venus, and the planet of power struggles and sexuality, Pluto, currently at odds with its birth position. The odds of avoiding power struggles are nil. But Madonna is famous for reinventing herself. If she can get Argentina to believe she has, it will be nothing short of an Academy Award-style performance.
In America, hole-in-the-wall divorce machines are taking the strain out of splitting up. They could be on their way over here, says Sean Langan.
Imagine, if you can, what Jeanie Lynch of the Arizona State Supreme Court describes as: "a soda pop vending machine, crossed with one of those ATM cash dispensers." It's called QuickCourt, a 6ft-high kiosk with a television screen embedded in a Formica wall. Only it doesn't dispense cash, or sodas. QuickCourt dispenses divorces.
The original pilot scheme of three kiosks was introduced by the State of Arizona in 1993, in the hope that it would break the gridlock so endemic in America's court system. But, with so many wannabe divorcees queuing up, the state has had to expand its plans. One hundred and fifty kiosks will be ceremonially unveiled in Arizona this July.
And that, as Lynch says, without a hint of irony, is good news for all those "couples who want a divorce, but don't want to wait in line". And the bad news? Wait until you meet Victor, the video attorney.
"Hello. Welcome to QuickCourt." At the press of a button, the face, and computer-enhanced voice of Stanley GFeldman, Arizona's Chief Justice, greet you from cyberspace, before handing over to Victor. "There are at least six forms you need to file for divorce," begins Victor, the scales of justice floating serenely above his talking head.
"In some cases, there will be more." Nobody said filing for divorce was going to be easy, even in the electronic age. No sir, as Victor makes clear. "It's going to take at least 20 minutes."
Victor then electronically raises his left eyebrow to denote a moment of solemnity. This is where it gets tough. "Has your marriage irretrievably broken down? Are you absolutely certain this marriage can't be saved?" The answer is a simple yes or no. Press the wrong button now and you could stay married for a... well, for a whole 20 minutes more. If it's a yes, then zip the divorce papers are printed out. So, in the same time it takes to order a large pepperoni pizza, your marriage has been terminated.
It is worth mentioning at this point that QuickCourt can't actually grant a divorce. But the majority of cases are what is called "no fault divorces", which merely require a judge to rubber-stamp the decision. At the moment, QuickCourt can only help you with divorce, child support and alimony payments, and small claims. But, with the new improved QC coming out in July, Victor will have a Family Crisis component fitted into his neatly coiffured and computerised head.
It is doubtful whether Victor, who scores high on entropy but low on empathy, could be of any real use in a crisis. Fast and easy he may be, but he is about as understanding as a high-street cash-point machine when it comes to emotions.
"QuickCourt isn't designed to make divorce easy," says Lynch. "It helps people through the complicated process of filing for
divorce. The papers can always be ripped up." And Victor? "Well, he's a kind of warm and friendly person, which helps. People don't want to interact with a cold machine. They want a real person, and Victor's the closest thing to that."
Neither the churches, nor other pressure groups in America, seem concerned by the possible dangers in making divorce as easy as ABC. Paradoxically, while the legal age for marriage is 18 in Arizona, the QuickCourt programme was specifically written with 8- to 10-year-olds in mind. In fact, the only voice of dissent came from Arizona's lawyers, who were more concerned about the loss of business than in any moral debate about the introduction of QuickCourt.
"It's amazing," beamed Lynch. "People often come with their spouses, and go through the process together." Up they come, two by two, only to depart, one suspects, one by one.
By the summer, the kiosks will have spread like a rash through the state of Arizona. Utah already has a pilot scheme up and running, and California, not surprisingly, is about to introduce a similar system. North Communications, who designed the kiosks, are hoping QuickCourt will soon go nationwide. And, before you say, "those crazy, dysfunctional Yanks", be warned. At a recent conference of barristers in London, North Communications received widespread interest in their system from lawyers hoping to clear the growing gridlock over here.
Survival tips for the single person facing a solitary St Valentine's Day.
On the surface, St Valentine's Day might be an innocent, playful and even quite agreeable social ritual designed to celebrate love. With this in mind, experts in emotional life regularly come forward at this time of year with advice on the finest restaurants, chocolates, lingerie and bubble baths. However helpful all this undoubtedly is, it refuses to admit an uncomfortable truth, namely, that St Valentine's Day has very little to do with a celebration of love, and is rather a cruel ritual overwhelmingly designed to humiliate, wound and sadden anyone unfortunate enough not to be in a relationship. If advice is needed, it is for the day's true casualties, the loveless.
What to do if you don't receive any cards on Valentine's morning: you have to remember that it is much easier to write a Valentine card to someone you don't love, as a joke, or to a friend, than to send one to someone you truly desire. As love has a habit of making us tongue-tied and letter-shy, it is impossible to achieve the flip, jolly tone required by a card when we are aching with passion. Therefore, even though the only thing to land on the mat was yet another reminder from the water company, this is not necessarily a sign that nobody loves you. In fact, it is the most important sign yet that an infinite number of people may love you, but that they do so in far too intense a manner to express themselves in anything so kitschy, so trivial as a little Valentine card.
What to reply when a well-meaning colleague asks about your evening's plans, which actually don't stretch beyond an oven-ready meal for one: an option is to say boldly that you "don't believe" in St Valentine's Day, as a person might resist adherence to Buddhism or palmistry. However, believing in St Valentine's Day requires little commitment and so the problem is perhaps best tackled head on. Look your colleague directly in the eye and, with a broad smile, declare: "I'm not doing anything tonight, actually. You see, I'm a really sad, desperate, awful wretch, whom nobody else wants, and I'll be staying in with an oven-ready meal for one, crying my eyes out." The colleague, who had previously suspected you of everything you just told them, will suddenly be forced to conclude that you are, in fact, doing something very glamorous, but are resorting to the modesty of the extremely rich who call themselves half-broke.
What to do on Valentine's evening: hire a video of The Killing Fields. On the way back from work, confronted by happy couples, it is easy to feel that life is rather tragic, but after a few hours of watching real tragedy, you will feel positively cheered that your misfortunes do not stretch beyond an oven-ready meal for one.
What to read in bed on Valentine's evening: great authors, who speak in general terms about the misery of life and love. Proust is perfect, particularly when consumed with a large bar of chocolate. "Love is an incurable disease," he tells us, following this up with the encouraging observation that "in love, there is permanent suffering". Schopenhauer is also reliable and goes down well with ice cream. One wonderfully therapeutic essay, entitled On the Suffering of the World, begins: "If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering, then our existence is the most ill-adapted to its purpose in the world."
Such authors are helpful because they allow us to forget what exactly has made our life unhappy which tends to be quite sordid details such as our incurable shyness or lack of social skills by describing misery as simply part of human experience.
What to do if you're too sad to read: dump the heavy authors and just eat chocolate and ice cream.
What to do if you can't stop thinking of someone in whose arms you'd love to spend St Valentine's evening: cool your ardour with some thoughts about how relationships actually work. Go to the bookshelf and take down Romeo and Juliet to have a look. Go and find your photo albums, look up those whom you fell out of love with. Remind yourself of how tedious they became and how hard it can be to get a proper night's rest when someone is snoring in the bed beside you.
What to do if you're dining alone: remind yourself that the most exciting part of a relationship is anticipation. You may be eating alone now but you are, in fact, potentially closer to the most exciting phase of a relationship, first meeting someone you like, than someone already at a fancy restaurant. Actually being on a date can be nightmarish conversation runs dry, food falls off the table, someone burps...
What to do if you blame yourself for your single status: either you can hate yourself, think you are a dreadful failure, envy others and cry all night, or you can decide that the fact you are single is only a sign of how blind and silly the world is. How could people be capable of appreciating someone as special, as sensitive, as perceptive as you? If you haven't been asked out for dinner, is this not just a symptom of how different, exalted (and worth loving) you truly are?
What to do when you wake up alone: toss aside the empty chocolate wrappers and pat yourself on the back. You've survived.
What to say when your colleague at work asks how you got on last night: swiftly change the subject.
Alain de Botton is the author of The Romantic Movement.
A bluffer's guide to the cult book, sell-out play and must-see film of 1996.
If last year belonged to Quentin Tarantino and Pulp Fiction, this one already looks like being at the questionable mercy of the Scottish writer Irvine Welsh and his novel, Trainspotting.
The film of the book, directed by Danny Boyle and written by John Hodge the team behind last year's highly acclaimed Scottish thriller, Shallow Grave opens on February 23. In the meantime, it is impossible to take a journey by bus or train without seeing at least two of your fellow passengers reading Welsh's work (Trainspotting, of which 3,000 copies were first published in 1993, has now sold about 150,000 copies). And the stage production currently on tour is selling out wherever it goes, and will reopen at a bigger theatre in London, the Whitehall, on March 12.
Are the nation's platforms set to be invaded by plagues of angry young men called Nigel, sporting anoraks and brandishing BR timetables at passers-by? And are these dreaded types suddenly to be considered hip? Er, no. It's worse than that. The film is to drug addiction what Pulp Fiction is to violence; in other words, even ahead of its release, some critics have accused it of glamorising heroin abuse. Perhaps this is why half the world seems to be talking about it. So, if you don't want to get caught out with your lack of knowledge on the subject, simply swot up with the help of our comprehensive guide to Trainspotting.
Who wrote it?
Welsh's rise has been meteoric. Raised on Edinburgh's tough Muirhouse estate, he left school 20 years ago at the age of 16, stumbling aimlessly through a succession of menial jobs before relocating to London, where he spent most of the 1980s as a semi-professional punk and drug addict. Towards the end of the decade, though, Welsh quit that lifestyle and returned home with the aim of getting a haircut and a proper job. This he did, finding employment as a training officer with Edinburgh Council, while also studying for an MBA in computer systems at Heriot-Watt University. In his spare time, he took up writing. Since Trainspotting, there have been two more books, The Acid House and a collection of short stories entitled Marabou Stork Nightmares.
What happens?
Suffice it to say that Welsh's characters tend to echo his own experience though he would never countenance such a happy ending for them. The novel is effectively an interlinked network of grim, and occasionally nightmarish, short stories, most of which are written in a heavy, working-class Leith dialect. There are few expletive-free sentences, and even fewer characters you'd take round to your aunty's for tea. But Welsh's people are emphatically not victims; in fact, Welsh offers us a questionable explanation as to why sane, intelligent people might choose to take drugs (hence the controversy from critics who say that Welsh promotes heroin abuse). Trainspotting's many fans insist that the novel can be frightening, bleakly funny and infinitely sad, all in the space of a few paragraphs. Your mum and dad are unlikely to share this view.
Who's in it?
For the purposes of the film, Welsh's cast of characters has been whittled down to five main ones. They are: Renton, aka Rents or Rent Boy (played by Ewan McGregor): the central character and narrator, he begins as a heroin addict, but kicks his habit and moves to London, only for his past to come back and haunt him. "Part of him believes that he is the most attractive person in the bar," says the novel. "The reason for this being that he can always find something hideous in even the most gorgeous individual."
Sick Boy, aka Simon David Williamson (played by Jonny Lee Miller): the smart, good-looking one who shifts in and out of addiction. Earned his moniker not for reasons of health but because he is "one sick fing individual". He is spectacularly popular with women, and obsessed with Sean Connery.
Spud (played by Ewen Bremner): hapless, awkward, speccy type fallen into bad company. Spud (at a job interview) says of himself: "Ah suppose man, ahm too much ay a perfectionist, ken? It's likesay, if things go a bit dodgy ah jist cannae be bothered, y'know?"
Tommy (played by Kevin McKidd): undergoes the most severe transformation. Starts as squeaky-clean, fell-walking Adonis and ends... badly. Idolises Iggy Pop.
Begbie, aka Franco or the Beggar (played by Robert Carlyle): Despises drugs ("I wouldnae poison my body wih that shte!") but drinks like a fish. A psychopath.
What's the film's soundtrack like?
Cool. Welsh knows his music he said Lou Reed and Iggy Pop were greater influences on his writing than any novelist. The soundtrack features Pulp, Blur, Primal Scream, Elastica, Underworld, New Order, Sleeper, Heaven 17, Brian Eno and, of course, Reed and Pop.
What do the critics say?
The book: "a vernacular spectacular" (Scotland on Sunday); "the voice of punk, grown up, grown wiser and grown eloquent" (The Sunday Times). The play: "Dirt, degradation, coprophilia, brutishness, the lower depths of abusiveness Irvine Welsh is on to a good thing" (The Sunday Telegraph); "Trainspotting remains a grim voice from our times bemoaning the needless waste of young lives" (Financial Times). The film: watch this space.
And what does Welsh say back?
"Coming from another culture has intimidated critics, who don't have the tools to deal with me. Though it sounds crass, my best critics are probably the people in the pubs and clubs."
Once glittering occasions, swamped by Hollywood's finest, premieres have become tacky, tasteless and populated by EastEnders stars. ANNA PASTERNAK on new moves to make them dazzling once more.
Next month, on March 7, 1,330 leading players in the world's film industry will hit Leicester Square for the London premiere of Restoration, a period drama starring Hugh Grant, Meg Ryan and Sam Neill. Ambitiously heralded as the Premiere of the Century, this glitzy event promises to lure serious names, as it is a celebration of 100 years of the cinema. "Everybody is pulling out the stops to get the big stars over," says a Cinema 100 spokesman. "The head of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, is personally inviting the LA stars, while Lord Attenborough is doing the same in Britain. There will be a distinct air of glamour and exclusivity as we are not inviting soap stars, only recognised film stars."
What a relief. For frankly, these days, most premieres have about as much cachet and sheen as the first night of a provincial panto. Where once they flaunted stellar quality, with the prestige and sense of occasion of the Oscars, now all they draw are tired crowds and a tacky trickle of second-rate footballers, weather girls and the ubiquitous Bianca and Cindy from EastEnders.
It used to be MGM's proud boast that they had "more stars than there are in the heavens" and, certainly in the 1940s and 1950s, the presence of actors who actually dressed up like superstars gave premieres not just a touch of class, but of magic. When Gone With the Wind premiered on December 15, 1939, at the Grand Theatre in Atlanta, Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable and Olivia de Havilland attended. All of the theatre's 2,051 seats were sold out at $10 a ticket and a crowd of more than 1m clogged the streets to catch a glimpse of these divine beings. In 1964, when My Fair Lady opened in London, it drew an A list that today's PRs can only dream of; Ingrid Bergman, Graham Greene, the dukes of Argyll and Rutland, the American ambassador, Kenneth More and Dirk Bogarde. At about the same time, a daily newspaper reported that the opening of Gypsy was "as exciting as VE-Day".
Fortunately, in a nostalgic reach for the past, shrewd film companies have woken up to premiere fatigue and realise that if they want to make a splash, for which they need to secure celebrities of status, they have to re-enthuse the blase by pulling off bigger and better stunts. And that costs money. Last weekend, for example, Polygram spent £500,000 on the premiere of Loch Ness, starring Joely Richardson and Ted Danson. Two hundred and fifty guests were flown up to Inverness to watch the film in a tiny, quaint theatre and then bused to a party in the grounds of Aldourie Castle on the banks of Loch Ness, where a marquee with glass sides afforded a spectacular view of £25,000 worth of fireworks exploding over the water.
The atmosphere was certainly electric; a 20,000-strong crowd turned out to see Danson, Richardson, Bob Geldof, Anneka Rice, Frank Skinner and Wet Wet Wet lead a procession through the city, prompting paparazzo Richard Young to comment: "I've never seen anything like it. It was like a big royal occasion, the Coronation or something, and it was only Ted Danson." Pity, then, that Danson did not play up his role by sporting something a little more glossy than a Columbo-style crumpled raincoat. There's still some way to go before we return to the bejewelled premieres of the past.
"The problem is that the A list have such jaded palates," says the top PR Kris Thykier. "Even the A-list stars of films are increasingly difficult to guarantee because it has become exploitative to parade them around Leicester Square. The stars wanted to come to Loch Ness because we weren't saying, ‘Do you want to come to Edinburgh, stay at the Caledonian hotel and then party in a studio where we will replicate a highland moor?' We were saying, ‘Do you want to come to Inverness, go to an intimate party with good vibes and then stay the night at Skibo Castle?"' Which, hardly surprisingly, as Skibo is the epitome of luxury, they did. "The stars all have different demands that can be a big headache," says Jonathan Kennedy, a director of Freud Communications, who last year organised the premieres of Pulp Fiction, The Lion King, Judge Dredd and Assassins, which Sylvester Stallone, Antonio Banderas and Madonna attended. "Danson was undemanding, in that he came with his new wife, Mary Steenburgen, and left Inverness on a chartered flight, but a lot will not come across the Atlantic unless you lay on a private jet.
"Bruce Willis is nice to work with. He just wants a first-class flight and somewhere to stay, but there are many who will not even travel on a scheduled airline. It takes tremendous organisation getting them over and looking after them. They do not expect to be left to their own devices for a second. If they suddenly decide at 12.30pm that they want to eat at Le Gavroche, you have to get a table by 1pm. Every whim has to be catered for. If they ask for a private shopping visit to Harrods, they expect the store to be shut especially for them." One PR, who did not wish to be named, agreed: "I never have megastars or royalty at first nights any more. They screw them up. All that security is a nightmare."
But what, if anything, can be done to stop the rot? Most concede that, in a world where fame is so powerful, the answer is very little. "The problem with premieres today is that there are too many of them," says Young. "It's ridiculous that often they do not even attract the actors starring in the film. Now the stars are telling the film companies what to do, instead of having it written into their contracts, like they used to, that they must appear at the premieres."
So how do celebrities, much sought after to swell the crucial quotient of droppable names, decide which premieres to go to? Koo Stark says: "I only go to premieres if they are special. Frankly, it is such an effort to go and pose for photographers, I'd rather go and see the movie quietly with friends on a Sunday evening." Anneka Rice agrees: "I do not want to go to endless premieres just to be a rent-a-face, so I only go to premieres that friends are in and I have a personal interest in."
Paula Hamilton, the model, who says that as an A-list person she "could go out every night", bemoans the lack of glamour. "For me, it is extremely sad that the prestige has gone and that people don't dress up any more. I would never dream of turning up to a premiere unless I was dressed to the nines, but nowadays you would probably find yourself sitting next to someone in jeans.
"I have to be careful to choose what premieres I attend, as I don't want to saturate my own market, but when friends are in the film, I think: forget the A, B, C lists and go to support them." In other words, celebrities are like sheep: where one appears, others are bound to follow. The film companies and PRs can pull out all the stops they like. But, in the end, only the stars themselves can really put the swagger back into the premiere. We live in hope.
When online dating turns into something more physical, the consequences can be disastrous. MELISSA WELLS reveals how it all went wrong for her.
If love means never having to say you're sorry, e-mail love means never having to say you're sorry in person, which is, of course, the next best thing. Believe me, I know. My first love affair by e-mail has just ended.
I actually knew the man in question although not intimately quite a while before our affair began on the Internet, so it wasn't a case of conjuring up a face to match the prose that was coming into my computer screen. I knew what James looked like. In fact, his looks were one of the reasons I had never had an affair with him. I enjoyed his friendship: he was clever, funny and good company. But he was also fat and sweaty and had one thick eyebrow instead of two thin ones.
One night last October, we were having a drink together, and I noticed that he was sitting just a bit too close to me. Then, at the end of the meeting, he asked me when he could see me again; there was a new note of urgency in his voice. "I don't know," I said, suddenly feeling a bit uncomfortable. "I'm travelling a lot at the moment. E-mail me."
So I gave him my e-mail address. I got home an hour later and went online to check my messages. There was only one, from James. "Do you know," it began, "the effect that you have on me? That you have always had on me? Let me ask you a question. What surprises you more? That I have never made a pass at you or that I am making one now?" My jaw hit the floor! James? Writing to me like this? I couldn't believe it.
It was amazing how confused I felt. If he had said those things to me in person, I would have felt embarrassed and awkward, and fled. But reading it was different. It felt safer, but, at the same time, more intense. I didn't want to have an affair with this guy, I knew that. But I definitely wanted to get another message from him. So I wrote back. "Do you really mean this," I typed, "or is it the drink talking?"
There are three things that I really like about e-mail. The first is that you write absolutely as you talk, so it is just like chatting. The second is the speed with which messages zip back and forth. Third, I like the shorthand and typos involved. It gives e-mail a take-me-as-I-am kind of air. Can't be bothered to use capital letters? Fine. A phonetic speller? Who cares? Above all, though, it is an intimate forum. There is something about e-mail that allows people to express themselves with an honesty and intensity that just doesn't exist in normal conversation.
The next morning I got a message back from James. "I wish I had power over you," he wrote. "You have so much power over me. You don't know how much." Then, in signing off, he wrote: "Whydoncha give me some encouragement?"
My heart stopped. The idea of kissing James still gave me the shudders, and I didn't know if I wanted to encourage him. But something was happening to me. Power? I liked it. "How much power?" I wrote back. "And in what ways?" At the end of the day, I got this: "A lot, although I am fighting it. In what ways? It's so obvious, I'm a bit insulted you asked." I immediately wrote back one line: "Don't fight it."
"I have to fight it," he wrote the next morning, "because it soils my very spirit to let you take advantage of me in any way... In what ways, if any, do I have power over you?"
This was a good question. Barely 24 hours had passed since our correspondence had begun, yet the idea of kissing James seemed like a good one. I was consumed by our new relationship, constantly checking my messages. "I don't know what's going on," I wrote back, "but if you want to be more than friends, then I am prepared to try it." I spent nearly three days in a state of sweet agony. "Sorry it took me so long," he wrote. "Our system has been down. Not since I was a teenager and kissed for the very first time have I felt this mixture of dizziness and adrenaline. You ask me why I have never said anything before. Here goes: because I didn't want to risk the relationship I already have with you. You have an amazing amount of power over me, so if you agree to keep this process going towards its inevitable conclusion, then you have my pledge to do the same."
I'd obviously unleashed something because, suddenly, a torrent of messages flooded on to my screen.
"I don't like to do a gosh darn thing to undermine the deep exhilaration and heart-skipping goodness this whole thing is causing me. On the bright side, I think you're smashing. Was my message as nice as you wanted? I've re-read it several times and I can't decide if it will pass your test of true romance exactitude. And don't think I'm holding back, I simply don't know what would do the trick. Lavish you with praise? Tell you how you're different/better than other people/women? Describe how I long to hold you/touch you? Remind you of the effect that you have on me? Somehow, I don't think any of that is what you were looking for. So my mantra is: you're smashing."
Eventually, we arranged to meet. We hadn't seen each other since that original drink, and I had a nagging feeling that all of this was completely unreal. James seemed less keen than I, but I wrote it off as nerves.
The big evening arrived. We had a drink, and that was fine. We went on to dinner, which was okay, too. Then we went back to my place. This was about to be it. Suddenly everything went wrong strangely, it was James who had frozen. "What?" I asked him. "What is it? Tell me." But he simply muttered: "I can't do this," grabbed his coat, and fled.
Shortly afterwards, I got a final message from James. "I am sorry," it said. "Sorry for thinking only about myself and not about you. You know how I feel about you, but I have a girlfriend and I don't want to do anything to jeopardise my relationship with her for what is an unknown prospect with you. Believe me, I feel terrible and I am sorry. Sorrier than you can ever know." That, I'm sad to say, was that. We haven't communicated even by e-mail since.
A woman is accused of committing adultery on the Internet with a man she has never met. And a new novel about such a relationship is taking America by storm.
They call it Cybersex, a new kind of affair where the lovers do not meet, never see each other in the flesh (even across a crowded room), and can only dream of actually tucking up together. Like illicit partnerships through the ages, there is masses of secrecy, plenty of intimacy, and success depends on whether the sexual chemistry gels. For infidelity, via the Internet, is now a fact of life.
Last week, in an extraordinary case, an American husband started to sue his wife for divorce, claiming she committed adultery during sexually explicit exchanges, courtesy of her online service, with a man named only as Weasel. Meanwhile, a racy new novel entitled E-Mail: A Love Story, featuring a surburban housewife called Katie, is selling like hot cakes from New York to Los Angeles, and will be published here later this year.
Its author, Stephanie DFletcher, who researched her book over 18 months, says there are now hundreds of "virtual love" cheats in operation. Everyone, it seems, is having a cyberfling. Across the Atlantic, radio show call-ins are feasting on the topic, and psychologists are lining up against lawyers in a modern debate on whether an extramarital affair by computer can really be called adultery.
Shirley Glass, a Baltimore psychologist who studies extramarital liaisons, says: "Fellow psychologists have even started consulting me about their clients who are having online relationships. A cyberspace attachment need not include sex but can still be strong enough to be considered an affair." Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey, adds with feeling: "A computer love match can be just as time-consuming and disruptive as a regular adulterous affair. You are very secretive, you hide information and you can and these people do actually reach orgasm."
Katie, the fictional heroine of E-Mail, would understand all that. Cast as the wife of a successful businessman and mother of twins, she finds herself battling against middle age, the menopause, her fading beauty and a rapidly dissolving marriage. Then one day she tries the Adult Topics Bulletin Board on the Net and her world is, as they say, changed for ever.
What starts out as a hobby turns into a full- blown passion as the sober Katherine Simmons, a femme ordinaire, turns into Katie, the adulteress, all without leaving her home. Soon she is enjoying computer affairs with a Californian cardiologist and a Texan cowboy, two diverse relationships that rapidly become far more important to her than her real-life ones. But there is a moral to the tale; eventually Katie discovers that, although her modem-based romances may not be real, the emotional fallout is. One of her women friends even falls into a depression after being rejected by her electronic lover. In what has been described as the weepy of the 1990s, E-Mail is making Middle America haul out its hankies.
Social scientists in the US say this is because Katie has struck a chord with a lot of folk out there. They explain that a computer friendship easily graduates to an emotional affair when (a) it becomes more intimate than your primary relationship, (b) your real-life mate doesn't realise how deeply you have become involved, and (c) there is sexual tension, even if it is never acted upon.
"One wife I know used interactive soft pornography to hold her marriage together. But she had a contract with her husband that she wouldn't actually see the man on the end of the computer link in real life," revealed one expert last week. "Dull marriages are often preserved today by one partner's cruising of the Net for sexual adventure."
Fletcher says she knows 100 married people who have indulged in online affairs. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. "It's a kind of addiction, like compulsive gambling," she says. "It also helps them cope with an unbearable set of real life circumstances. They may not have a proper relationship at home, but suddenly they feel this incredible, physical, chemical response to a complete stranger. These online affairs keep the romance at that electrical, infatuation stage, too. The speed at which you can receive a reply online means that there is instant gratification, it is extremely exciting. Men have told me that they actually get an erection when they rush home to find the computer signalling that an e-mail message is waiting from their lover." Yet Fletcher, an English literature graduate, advice columnist and former nurse, believes that three in every four computer flings end unhappily. "A woman rang me the other day, from a small town an hour away from here. She said she had met her husband through a Golf Bulletin Board on the Net. She was very happy. Then I asked her if they had both been married when their affair started. It turned out both had had to divorce other partners to be free, so two marriages had gone down. In another case, a desperate woman with four daughters told me that her husband had six online lovers. He was using his money on these people and was almost bankrupt. They are facing divorce, too."
While cyberlust may be fuelling visits to marriage therapists, most divorce lawyers are adamant that computer liaisons do not constitute extramarital affairs. In other words, you cannot prove adultery unless there is actual sex. "The law hasn't even got round to cybersex," commented one US attorney. "It's really akin to Jimmy Carter saying he lusted in his heart," added David Levy, chairman of the Illinois State Bar Association's Family Law Section.
Well, not exactly, says John Goydan, who started the historic divorce suit in New Jersey. He caught his wife, Diane, indulging in an "explicit cybersex affair" with the Weasel on the family computer. According to court papers, the couple engaged in sexy online chats and sent each other e-mail love messages, secretly recorded by the cuckolded Mr Goydan on floppy disk. The lovers swapped proxy kisses and erotic fantasies; on Christmas Eve the Weasel, thought to be a soldier based in North Carolina, sent Mrs Goydan a poem starting: "'Twas the night before Christmas/And all did seem right/The Weasel and Diane were planning their night/Her stockings were hung/By the chimney with care/Her bra and his shirt were draped from
a chair."
Heady stuff. Nearly all denied by Diane Goydan, who says that there was absolutely no adultery, only a bit of long-distance romance. But it was still an electronic betrayal, according to Goydan's lawyer Richard Hurley, who will allege adultery, although the Weasel and Diane Goydan never got to meet. "We're breaking completely new ground here. I know how the dictionary defines adultery, but technology has a way of changing definitions," said Hurley last week.
So is adultery in the mind or in the body? Can infidelity really take place if you never even touch? Soon, the answer to that may become yes. For more and more people are becoming dependent on computer affairs, rushing home to see if there's an e-mail love message from a stranger. As an admirer tells Katie in the Fletcher novel: "Sweetheart, when I see the New Mail flashing, I have an automatic physical response. My heart thumps, a lump forms in my throat..." Aaah!
In the Reagan era, glittering black-tie get-togethers bridged the political divide. Now the Clintonistas prefer to stay home, and the Gingrich crusaders are too busy politicking to entertain. JAMES ADAMS on the balkanisation of Washington's social scene.
The Clintons preferred hamburgers and Coke to formal dinners and radically reduced the number of state occasionsIt is rare to attend a dinner that has both senior Republicans and members of the administration as guestsWhen Prince Philip arrives in Washington on March 14 to raise money for the Duke of Edinburgh's Award, he will step straight into the social minefield of America's capital city. Instead of a tasteful party at one of the gracious Georgetown houses that traditionally have welcomed royalty to Washington, Prince Philip will attend a lunch hosted by Arianna Huffington in Wesley Heights, northwest of the city.
The lunch will crown the ascendancy of Huffington, the 45-year-old author and commentator, as the queen of the Washington social scene. But it is a rise that has come to symbolise the end of a social era. The grandes dames from the old families have given way to the arrivistes who have appeared in the city with a powerful political agenda.
While politics has always been the main industry in Washington, it used to have a civilised veneer that allowed Democrat and Republican to get together over martinis or dinner to gossip about the state of the nation and each other. That veneer cracked with the invasion of the youthful Clintonistas, who came to town with the president. They were disdainful of the status quo, and had disliked instinctively the old Washington establishment. At the same time, a new breed of Republicans has come to power, who consider their party's old guard their intellectual inferiors, and yet have none of the social confidence that used to be a hallmark of their party.
The result of these two pressures has been the balkanisation of Washington into warring factions, which rarely meet over crossed canapes. Partisan groups gather at cocktails and over dinner to fortify their own positions rather than to engage in any kind of dialogue with the enemy. "Why dine with scum?" says PJ O'Rourke, the Republican author and humourist. "It's important to understand that not everybody on the other side is scum. But there are enough of them."
It is rare, indeed, to attend a dinner party that has both senior Republicans and members of the administration as guests. Instead, it is a party of Johnny One Notes who sing only the tune of one political group. For example, three weeks ago, Vernon and Ann Jordan, who are close friends of the Clintons, hosted a morale-boosting dinner for Hillary at their home in the Kent section of Washington, north of Georgetown. Several Republicans were invited and all declined. "It was simply more than my political future was worth," said one Republican. "Going to a party where Hillary was the guest of honour? No thanks."
Washington social life has always been unique. "Trophy" guests are essential to the success of any dinner, and guests will have discovered the job, salary and political affiliation of their neighbours within the first few minutes. Women are non-persons if they stay at home to look after the children.
The old Washington began to die when Ronald Reagan left the White House in 1989. Back then, legendary hostesses such as Kay Graham, the owner of the Washington Post, Evangeline Bruce, wife of the former American ambassador in London, and Pamela Harriman, wife of the tycoon Averell Harriman, were in fashion; Nancy Reagan herself hosted glittering black-tie evenings.
Today, Bruce is dead, Harriman is American ambassador in Paris, Nancy Reagan is in California and only Kay Graham continues to hold the fort. But even she finds it difficult to put together the same stylish evenings the new guard either don't know who she is or don't care.
Those of the Washington old guard who do want to take up the social baton find it tough going. Sally Quinn, wife of Ben Bradlee, the former editor of the Washington Post, would like to be in the A-league of hostesses. But she has privately bad-mouthed the administration and so has been given the brushoff.
"The last real social scene was in the Reagan White House," says Gahl Hodges-Burt, who was Nancy Reagan's social secretary. "The Bush team was simply tired after eight years of Republican administration and didn't go out much, and the Clintons don't go out at all."
Before this extinction of the social dinosaurs, the row of embassies on Massachusetts Avenue saw intense social activity with different ambassadors vying for the attention of the current government and the opposition. Predictably, the French had the best food, the British the best company and the Italians were noted for their raffish style.
However, embassies just don't seem to matter any more. When Sir Robin Renwick retired as British ambassador last year, he took with him an embassy guest list that was frequently locked in the halcyon days of the Reagan administration, when officials were always glad of a free meal and an invitation from the British Embassy was coveted by everyone.
Sir John Kerr, Renwick's successor, has none of the baggage of service in a Republican administration, but finds it is difficult to tease senior administration officials out at all. Only Mac McLarty, the White House counsellor, Laura Tyson, the national economic adviser, and the diminutive Donna Shalala, the health and human services secretary, seem to enjoy the social scene. Warren Christopher, the secretary of state, is rarely seen in public and, anyway, is one of the most boring dinner companions in America. Tony Lake, the national security adviser goes out, but only if there is a specific political purpose.
The trend for all this is set in the White House by the Clintons. When they first arrived in Washington, they made clear that they preferred hamburgers and Diet Coke to formal dinners and they radically reduced the number of state occasions. Even when a formal occasion is forced on them, their idea of style almost beggars belief.
Last month, when the French president, Jacques Chirac, came to Washington, the Clintons hosted a formal dinner where the food was put on the plates in the kitchen a social gaffe. The feast was finished off with one of the grossest desserts in the history of American extravagance. It featured a 1ft pyramid of sherbet balls rising from a base of pastry swans and topped by a spun-sugar flare resembling red, white and blue fireworks. Inside nestled applejack-filled sweets.
With the Clintons as an example, it is hardly surprising that most of their followers have little to do with the social scene that existed before they came to town. George Stephanopoulos, who is 35 this weekend and a counsellor to the president, is a hero figure to many of the young Democrats. He lives not in Georgetown but in Dupont Circle, the centre of Washington's bohemian life. His modest apartment is above an Eye Gotcha spectacles shop and next door to a Starbucks coffee shop. In such surroundings, elegant parties are hardly appropriate and, anyway, Stephanopoulos prefers dinner and a movie with friends. Dupont Circle, and the nearby Adams Morgan section that is the centre of the cafe society, has replaced the more formal social scene. The singles can mingle to try to find a partner while the baby-boomers stay at home and look after their young children.
The Republicans have as their hero Newt Gingrich, the leader of the revolution that gave his party control of Congress in the November 1994 elections. The revolutionaries are driven by a fervour that is unusual in the cynical world of American politics and they treat the Democrats with obvious disdain. Not that they can turn to Gingrich, who inhabits the Capitol Hill area when in town, for extracurricular entertainment; he is not known for his parties.
Rowland Evans, the veteran conservative columnist, is one of the few who maintains the traditional social civilities by inviting both Democrats and Republicans to his parties and expecting that both sides will attend.
"Washington is far more partisan than it used to be," he says. "The liberal culture of Roosevelt has been broken up by the strong feelings of the devoted Gingrich revolutionaries that descended on Washington in 1994."
If nature abhors a vacuum, Washington has learned to love Huffington. With her husband Michael's millions behind her (he made a failed bid for election to the American senate in 1994), she has cut a swathe through the city; many Republicans love her, though she is despised by just about everybody who was here before her.
When she first started hosting dinners in Washington, Huffington placed a tape recorder in the middle of the table so that she could play back the comments of her guests at her leisure. The food is reputed to be terrible, but the company is always interesting and Huffington is one of the few who tries to bridge the political divide. "I like to invite people who will discuss the issues I feel closest to," she says. "But I find it best if the Democrats I have to dinner are those who feel the same way we feel about social welfare issues. We like Democrats who see the failure of the Great Society."
However, even Republicans at Huffington's parties sometimes find them tough going. At one recent dinner, a Republican guest denounced Bill Weld, the Republican governor of Massachusetts, as a "murderer" because he is pro-choice.
Exactly why the Duke of Edinburgh should choose to lunch with Huffington is not clear. Perhaps he is following the example of his daughter-in-law, the Princess of Wales. When she comes to Washington, she stays not with the British ambassador but with Lucia Flecha de Lima, wife of the Brazilian ambassador, with whom she has built a close shopping relationship. If British royalty no longer cares to follow the conventions, it is hardly surprising that Washington residents have lost their social compass.
The rubbishing of Joanie's bonkbuster brings the final curtain down on the sex'n'shopping novel. So what's next, asks A A GILL.
‘Don't call me your little cabbage," she said savagely, "I'm nobody's cabbage, not yours, not anyone's." "What is it?" he asked, "This isn't like you. What's wrong, Venetia?"
"You're gay, aren't you, Alain?" she asked calmly. "You are still gay after all these years."
That is an extract from Ruling Passions, by Joan Collins, and we will never know whether Alain has turned his back on Venetia or if Venetia will have to turn her back on Alain. Because Random House, which wants her to return an £800,000 advance, is claiming in court that it is cliche-ridden, dull and just too plain bad to publish. Well, I have a confession to make. Gather round. Let me tell you a story. It's me. He's me. Alain is me. A rather inexpertly camouflaged roman a clef, and it is all rather embarrassing. The double A in the character's name is a bit of a giveaway. I remember the first time I met Collins. It is not something you forget. Will you half-close your eyes and do a slow dissolve, because we are going into flashback.
A couple of years ago I was a contributing editor on Tatler, the glossy magazine for those who can tell the difference between french polish and varnish. We were told that Collins was going to come and sit in on an editorial meeting by way of research for her new book. (You can't accuse her of not taking writing seriously.) The problem was that we had already thought up that month's features, but Collins needed a meeting, so we had one. The editor wanted to put on a good show. It all became a bit of a joke. Conde Nast supremo Nicholas Coleridge brought Joan into the office, looking every inch a municipal alderman showing the Queen around a special-needs junior school. She is very, very regal a proper old-fashioned star. The meeting was, to say the least, bizarre. We put together this imaginary issue. The ideas and the dialogue began to sound like a bad script from Dynasty. It was nature following art. I remember suggesting a feature on mismatched couples. Joan was very polite and sat quietly taking notes.
Now fast-forward to a month ago. I am introduced to Joan again, socially this time. Joan and me on the sofa. Me and Joan. Joan and me. I reminded her about the Tatler meeting. "Oh yes," she said, "it was such a long time ago. All I remember is there was this one really outrageously camp gay man." Gentle reader, there was only one chap in the room. You may laugh, but I feel responsible. Responsible and embarrassed. Perhaps if I had been more butch, Venetia wouldn't be a cabbage and Alain wouldn't be a pansy and the book would have been more up Random House's street.
In passing, I notice that the company's British list for books to be published this season advertises the deathless prose of Leonard Nimoy's I Am Spock, trailed as "required reading time and again". Is that what you humans call a joke, captain? And then there's John, the autobiography of Ozzy Osbourne (perhaps Random House thought Black Sabbath was Satanic Verses II). A bonne bouche of a quote goes: "biting the head off a bat is like biting a Crunchie bar wrapped in chamois leather." You can tell Random House is big on quality and I bet Cadbury's is chuffed by that bit of product placement: "Crunchie, the sweet that tastes like leathery bat."
How is a label-and-libido diva supposed to compete with that? The sex'n'shopping books that Collins wrote were enormously successful (we shouldn't forget she has three bestsellers which is three more than most Booker prize-winners). Now they are a quaint anachronism. The word in publishing circles and they are big on words in publishing circles is that Random is embarrassed by being committed to printing something as old fashioned as a bonkbuster. Their trendier writers don't wish to be associated with all that raised gold lettering.
You can't give away sex'n'shopping now. They all turned into Aga sagas with water-coloured covers. Sally Beaumont became Joanna Trollope. You and I might say, well, why didn't they just turn A Ruling Passion into a "What a lovely organ, vicar" tale, then. A plot is a plot, after all. It is either window boxes or orchids in boxes. A thoughtful editor would have called it Rural Passion.
"Don't call me mangetout," she said wearily, "I am nobody's mangetout, not yours, not anyone's."
"What is it?" he asked. "This isn't like you. What's wrong, Venetia?"
"You're a Rotarian, aren't you, Alain," she said stoically. "You are still a Rotarian after all these years."
Maybe that wouldn't have done, either. The word goes on to say that Aga sagas have had their day, too. We've had as much tea and sympathy, as much honey-coloured stone and grass-stained pyjamas as we can take. The writing is on the wall that the smart advances are all in violence and suspense, preferably with a dark injection of loveless sex. Of last year's top 10 bestsellers, six were thrillers or horror. John Grisham's The Chamber outsold everything with 1,130,533 copies. The biggest seller of the past decade was Thomas Harris's Silence of the Lambs. Yet, still the story is the thing. A good editor might have turned Joan's book round and called it Ritual Passions.
"Don't call me your little liver," she said hysterically. "I am nobody's little liver, not yours, not anyone's."
"What is it?" he hissed. "This isn't like you, what's wrong, Venetia?"
"You're a cannibal, aren't you, Alain," she said numbly. "You are still a cannibal after all these years."
There is nothing cosy, pipe-smoky, wood-panelly or bucolically lunchy about publishing any more. More books are published today than ever, but fewer and fewer, or is it less and less Joan would know people are reading them. Publishing is now mostly marketing, catching a wave of fashion is everything.
Fiction is, by its very nature, made up, but, despite what they say about Jane Austen, it isn't timeless. Novels speak to the hopes and fears of their moment. The sex'n'shopping stories with their wispy plots and cardboard characters in silk underwear were the voice of the early 1980s, when envy and accumulation was everything, and everything had a price. You stretched out on beaches you couldn't afford, curled up in mortgaged beds to read about Armani-clad aspiring stomachs merging with toffee-coloured, interest-accruing inflationary breasts in the back of Lear jets with open fires, and you used your credit card as a bookmark. Then, when depression hit in the late 1980s and redundancy meant that a lot more people had a lot more time to read, you yearned for security, friendship and kitchen suppers with a little wholesome sauce.
The Aga saga found its market in negative equity and self-employment. The stories were all rural, the values solidly middle class. Nothing very bad ever happened. There weren't the gangbangs and machine-gunnings of the bonkbuster. The book-buying bourgeoisie wanted reassuring with the safety of 1950s village life and a sprinkling of 1960s sexual freedom.
What do the new murderous, terrifying bestsellers say about our view of the world? Well, the word again is that it is all down to the millennium. The calendar gets blamed for everything these days. The story goes that, at the turn of the century, there are two prevailing feelings. One of optimism and hope, something starting. And one that is black, nihilistic, fatalistic, something drawing to a close. The optimists tend to be friends of the Prince of Wales and want to build temples. The pessimists write books, the same books. John Grisham et al repeat the formula over and over. The shrinking number of book buyers know that they want to hear and read the same story again and again. We are reverting to childhood to find comfort in familiarity.
Thriller suspense stories are like fairy tales full of darkness, cruelty and horror in a time of uncertainty and change, there is a deep Freudian reassurance in bedtime stories. At the end of the last millennium, the big blockbuster was Beowulf. In 1,000 years we have come from Grendel to Hannibal, which, when you think of it, is not really very far.
A A Gill has just written a novel, a sort of thriller/horror/Aga saga with a bit of shopping and buckets of sex. Sap Rising will be published in the autumn by Doubleday.
I know people in Los Angeles who don't go out to breakfast because they can't handle the stress. And no wonder. Personally, I've never quite managed to get to grips with the baffling LA concept of multiple-choice breakfasting: you know, the decaf cappuccinos with nutmeg and a cinnamon stick on the side, the wholewheat waffles hold the butter.
Deciding on your power-breakfast order in LA makes charming the media megamoguls seem like child's play. After your exhausting Bel Air breakfast, what you really need to do is go home and collapse into bed. Which is where you find me unwell of London SW4.
Yes, I succumbed. I had to give LA a miss. The virus got me. Runny nose, sore throat and all the other manifestations of an immune system on a go-slow. So sorry, but no glamorous parties to report. But did I mind being confined to bed? No, of course not I had the luxury and the unabashed privilege of an uncorrected advance proof of Appassionata, the divine Jilly Cooper's latest and greatest novel. And I tell you, it's worth getting sick for. As Jilly herself might say, when you're under the weather, go to bed with a good book, not someone who's read one.
From my sick bed, I have existed vicariously, feeding off the doings of the other inhabitants of the house. And what doings they were. Tabitha, our 10-year-old, reports dropping in (with a schoolfriend, who is their neighbour) on Dave and Serena Linley in their new Battersea rooftop eyrie. Fascinated, I grilled her as only a mother whose train-set happens to be a glossy magazine would. "It was vast," reported Tabitha, simply. "And what else?" I asked. "Huge," she elaborated. "And is that all?" I inquired. Tabitha gathered all her descriptive powers together for the final, mighty effort. "Enormous," she responded. So there we are then. All one needs to know really. The Linleys' new home is big.
Last weekend, a report in this paper from Bristol University revealed that there was such a thing as a suicide gene. The luck of the draw in life's rich lottery and all that.
Salutory reading for me. In the past 12 months, two of my dearest friends have given in to what we shall now refer to as their DNA-inherited intolerance of life.
So does it make it any better, knowing that there was nothing any of us could have done to help? The hell it does it just takes away another slice of the responsibility pie.
I'm petrified that this kind of information could propel an unstable soul over the edge.
"If I've got it, why fight it?" they may well sob as they grab the bottle of pills.
The scientists say that isolating this gene is the first step towards disarming it, but perhaps they could have kept this nugget of information to themselves until they'd perfected the cure.
I am, of course, well known as a champion of Sarah Ferguson. But aren't the most hardened sceptics among you now beginning to join me in my sympathy for the poor beleaguered Duchess of York? With friends, family and lovers such as Lily Mahtani, Major Ron and Johnny Bryan, who needs enemies?
Jane Procter is the editor of Tatler magazine
A work-experience student in my office rang to report that an Australian magazine had called with a few questions.
"They're doing a feature on women with influence, and they asked me if you had any. I hope it's okay," she continued, "but I thought the answer was so obvious that I could deal with it myself and I would just tell the truth." "Sure," I said, pleased that one of my recent recruits was already showing such initiative. "So what did you say?" "Oh, I told them you could get a table at Le Caprice on the same day and that Nicky Clarke would cut your hair within a week." Ouch, the truth hurts.
So what else do you do in bed? Study the fashion magazines, that's what else, and marvel at their appraisal of spring. It's a united front. This coming season seems destined to go on-lime. The unsuspecting public is about to be swamped by anything and everything in this peculiar shade of green.
The stores have eagerly stocked up. Harrods (home, incidentally, of the venerable green carrier bag) has swamped the store in wearable verdancy. It's spring greens or starve in Knightsbridge.
Caution. Listen to one whose misspent youth was passed as a fashion editor (and one who even now feels pangs of guilt at the sight of a fashion victim). If you are in possession of that so-called-desirable, soggy-English-rose skin, dip in only a toe. A pair of slingbacks in a suitable citrus tone will indicate that you're hip to what's going on. And you won't look like you should have spent the week in bed with me.
It is entirely fitting that the highest-paid woman on television should be the nicest girl next door Anthea Turner. Yes, I have met her and yes, she is WYSIWYG woman (What You See Is What You Get, for those not in on the acronym). And what I got from Miss Turner was the first celebrity thank-you letter in five years of editing Tatler. It was an honour to appear on your February cover, she wrote. No, thank you. It was a pleasure having you.
In the magazine world, the cover is all. The face of the moment at the right moment does wondrous things to circulation.
It is, of course, a two-way trade. Glossy magazines have aided and abetted a thousand careers ask Twiggy, ask the Princess of Wales. Cosmetic houses spend billions on worldwide marketing and, for them, finding the right face is not vanity, it's vital. I was flattered when Leonard Lauder, of American giant Lauder Inc, asked me who I thought they should hire as their new face. "Who sells well for you, Jane?" As the cover of our then bestselling issue featured a dead princess (Grace), I showed him the one destined to outsell even that legendary beauty: with the incandescent smile of Liz Hurley. Leonard and America had never heard of her but the rest, as they say, is history.
Grey Areas and Other Stories by Will Self
Will Self's latest collection of short stories is a mixed bag of futuristic fantasies and contemporary dramas which recast England in a variety of guises: in Chest, he envisions the countryside choked by thick, polluting fog; in Between the Conceits, he casts London as a city run by eight people; and in the title story, Grey Area, he imagines the entire country sunk in stasis. There are themes running throughout the stories notably a gag about the M40 but the collection draws its strength from its diversity. The pace and tone of his writing falters at times, but his stories are always intriguing. They lack emotional substance, but Self's macabre imagination makes good the loss. Funny and unexpected better than the hype would lead you to believe. (Penguin £6.99). EP
Churchill and Roosevelt at War by Keith Sainsbury
In this book, sub-titled The War they fought and the Peace they Hoped to Make, Sainsbury, a former lecturer in international relations, explores the differences between the "liberal internationalist" and the "dyed in the wool Tory imperialist" before examining the ways in which their relationship affected key war-time issues. Even if their rapport was not all it was made out to be, he argues that it was still a "fortunate friendship". Sainsbury describes the book as a work of discussion rather than detailed scholarship. Rather than presenting fresh documentary evidence, it offers a reappraisal of the best-known facts about the two men, an approach which makes it accessible to readers with no specialist knowledge of the period. (Macmillan £12.99). EP
Letters to a Young Politician by Alistair McAlpine
A senior Tory apparatchik, through his wise, incisive and urbane letters, presides over the swift rise of an ambitious nephew to the most exclusive corridors of power. These are corridors that McAlpine knows well, but his triumph as a writer is that he resists the urge to dazzle the reader with the extent of the power he has known. Instead, we find often hilarious descriptions of the lowest forms of political life, suffused with a morality and sense of principle that leave Alan Clark's diaries sounding like Adrian Mole's, and make this novel's conclusion as moving as it is inevitable (Faber £6.99). JO'B
Vamps and Tramps
by Camille Paglia
Camille is at it again. This new collection of essays shows she is as feisty as ever, loud-mouthed, fast-thinking, and spoiling for a fight. The longest piece, No Law in the Arena, is Paglia at her controversial best. The "arena" is the sexual one in which, she insists, "the ultimate law is personal responsibility". She will have no truck with the concept of date rape; she believes that women who stay with abusive partners are "addicted to apology", and thinks that pornography "shows the deepest truth about sexuality". Perceptive and infuriating, she has an ego the size of a bus, but the energy and intellect to go with it (Penguin £8.99). PB
Splash by Val Corbett, Joyce Hopkirk and Eve Pollard
As this story of three bosom buddies who have pulled themselves up by their bra-straps opens, Katya has been made TV Personality of the Year, Liz is desperate to become the first female editor of a British national daily, and Joanna is desperate to have a baby and not lose her job as the editor of a glossy women's mag. Katya, too, is desperate she is in thrall to an adulterous affair, with sensational implications, which the scummier members of the media are beginning to rumble. Should Liz splash the story in her paper, a move which will secure her the coveted job? Or is friendship more important? Joanna thinks it is. So there you have it. How will our female friends resolve this conundrum? There is one nice twist and a few trenchant asides about women vs men in the workplace, but otherwise the tale is, well, paper-thin, overlong and full of rather precious Fleet Street references. Much of it will mean little to those who are not in the business (Headline £5.99). CY
Lions and Liquorice
by Kate Fenton
Kate Fenton has up-dated Pride and Prejudice, removing snippety Jane's caustic comments, sparkly conversation, and interesting characters, and replacing them with caricatures who splutter "I say", and call each other "buddy" or "buster". It's a mish-mash of Austen inversion Elizabeth Bennet becomes an ex-husband and thriller writer called Nicholas Llewellyn Bevan, and Mr Darcy is transformed into Mary Hamilton, hot-shot American director mixed with male-female power balances, Mills & Boon slush, faxes, letters, newspaper columns and dodgy sex scenes. Too wacky for its own good (Sceptre £5.99). EF
The Painted Bird
by Jerzy Kosinski
Kosinski's loosely autobiographical tale of a small boy's attempts to stay out of the Nazi concentration camps retains its shocking power 30 years after its original publication. The boy's wanderings in an unnamed east European country amount to a debased picaresque, a horror-filled odyssey which paints a Hell on earth. There's a fine but necessarily distinct line between fiction and autobiography in Kosinski's work, but his post-war life continued to bear testament to the book's exposure of humanity's black heart: he was once visited by two thugs who took exception to the book; he escaped only by pretending to be his own cousin (Black Swan £6.99). IC
Cavafy's Alexandria
by Edmund Keeley
First published 20 years ago, Keeley's account of the life of the poet Cavafy and the importance of Alexandria in his work played a significant part in establishing Cavafy's reputation as a great 20th-century poet. After a brief biographical summary of Alexandria, Keeley moves to an exploration of the mythic city, which came to encompass, in Cavafy's imagination, the Greek world. The book is a vivid evocation of Cavafy's imagined city, as well as a useful introduction to the poet's life and work. It is laced with lengthy quotations from his poems, which are useful for anyone new to Cavafy's work (Princeton £11.50). EP
A Lazy Eye
by Mary Morrissy
Morrissy has a bleak view of the world, though her eye is not lazy at all, but sharp and piercing, penetrating superficial emotions and polite hypocrisies. She is fascinated by human frailty. Here are sibling strengths and rivalries, faithless men, and women made powerful by their obsessions. A girl bargains with God to save her father's life, another confesses to sins uncommitted, in a bid for attention, and a marriage of convenience is not what it seems. Yet, while these stories are dark, ultimately they are not depressing: there is a great deal of humour, a stubborn belief in love against all the odds, and, while Morrisy clearly believes in retribution, she has hopes of redemption as well. (Vintage £5.99). PB
The Rise and Fall of Popular Music by Donald Clarke
Popular music, says Clarke, the author of The Penguin Encyclopedia of Music, is commercial music. With this definition he gives a broad sweep of its origins, picking out a tune from Tin Pan Alley, big bands and rock to the arrival of synthesisers. In his quest to see how music makes money, and how money makes music, he finds new contexts, comparing, for example, the problems of modern Russians coming to terms with their freedoms and early American black singers, minstrelsy and such hits as All Coons Look Alike To Me. Now the end is in sight: producers and tone-deaf accountants and lawyers have eaten the hands that fed them. Commerce is all; the music is gone. Clarke sounds like a man getting old, but he is all heart and well
worth listening to (Penguin £9.99). RW
The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State by Nicholas Timmins
Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness were "the Five Giants" which William Beveridge, the father of the welfare state (left, in 1944), hoped to see defeated in the post-war reconstruction of Britain. Pitching his style somewhere between Gibbon's Decline and Fall of Roman Empire and 1066 and All That, Nicholas Timmins set out to write a book which would encompass the history of the welfare state in a single volume. It's an ambitious prescription, but one which The Five Giants fulfils well enough: it's scrupulously researched, and leavens the vast amount of information it contains with vivid character sketches and lively anecdotal material. The fact that many doctors originally saw the NHS as the first step towards "National Socialism, as practised in Germany" gives some idea of the range of opinions The Five Giants embraces. Yet the same question has always informed political debate about the welfare state: is Britain an "individualist's society" or one which believes in collective provision? This on-going argument places the welfare state at the centre of public life, and this book provides a telescoped account of post-war politics. Timmins is even-handed in his treatment of politicians, yet his sympathies are plain: he believes the welfare state is worth saving, and as his 519-page history draws to an end, "Michael Portillo and his post-Thatcherite colleagues" are pictured hovering ominously in the wings. Still, one of the themes of the book is that there is nothing new under the sun; it's reassuring to learn that the welfare state has always been on the verge of one crisis or another (Fontana £9.99). EP
TALKING BOOKS
For the Sake of Elena by Elizabeth George, read by Derek Jacobi
The aristocratic Inspector Lynley is drafted in from London to inject discretion and superior brain-power into the investigation of a murder inquiry in a Cambridge college. The victim, briskly dispatched within minutes of the opening moody music, is Elena, the undergraduate daughter of a prominent don who has his eye on a prestigious academic appointment. Lynley sums up the action as he gets into his stride, "The Penfold chair, blighted love, a good dose of jealousy and an evil stepmother all within 16 hours", and there are plenty more tangled twists and nasty turns to come. Inspector Morse would feel at home in this wasps' nest of academe, if he did not get lost in the swirling Fenland fog. Lynley and his female sidekick pick their way through a deftly drawn galere of suspects to a denouement whose psychological complexity puts this a rung above the usual police procedural. Derek Jacobi's clipped, brisk delivery, without a trace of thespian flourish, suits the material perfectly (Corgi Audio £8.99, 3 hrs, abridged). KR
SEAN O'BRIEN welcomes definitive collections from Irish poets.
If Seamus Heaney has been the most acclaimed poet of the past 20 years, his fellow-countryman Derek Mahon has been perhaps the most influential on other poets. Mahon's lyrical rigour and melancholy wit are qualities many of the best poets between 20 and 40 have longed to process. Mahon is, though, an obsessive reviser of his work, and new poems since Antarctica (1985) have been as frequent as Halley's comet. So The Hudson Letter (Gallery Press £12.95) is a real case of rip the package open on the doormat.
The core of the book is a series of 18-verse epistles, a day in the life of the poet as "recovering Ulster Protestant" exiled in New York, composed in dense verse paragraphs, hitherto unusual in this devotee of the stanza. This formal choice seems part of a challenge to himself to balance his powers of evocation against the need to discuss. "O, show me how to recover my nerve!" he asks.
What follows is, in part, the object of dissatisfied authorial scrutiny; and, in part, a series of addresses to, or re-creations of, other artists Auden in New York, Jack Yeats, Sappho in a feminist bookshop. Several times, Mahon reintroduces famous lines or lightly buries passages from his earlier work. He affirms, for example, that, even in a period of erotic expediency, some truths are more than contemporary, if necessarily ironical: "in a star-lit corner of the soul there sings/to an enclosed loved one the intense troubadour/in his quaint language, and his rondeau rings/resiliently on the vineyards, streams and rock-/strewn hillsides of 12th-century Languedoc." The poet may not be at home, but he knows his way around high style and bar-room talk, the classical world and the letters home of an emigrant Irish girl in domestic service. The Hudson Letter is a welcome report back from an exorbitantly gifted poet.
From the earliest work in her Collected Poems (Carcanet £9.95), Eavan Boland is concerned to define what art does. A Chardin painting provokes the following reflection: "I think of what great art removes./Hazard and death. The future and the past./A woman's secret history and her loves‘'. A poet should hardly be nailed for an apprentice-piece such as this, but its habit of mind persists, and the figure of the poet is often to be found in the picture, somehow bestowing gravity to what is already grave. When humour is missing, this evident sincerity can seem precious. When Boland makes details do the work, she can achieve complex and vivid effects for example, in Latin Lesson, which runs together a schoolgirl's study of Virgil's Aeneid with nuns nagging about manners: "these/shadows in their shadow-bodies,/chittering and mobbing on the far/shore, signalling their hunger for/the small usefulness of a life, are/the dead. And how/before the bell/will I hail the black keel and flatter the dark/boatman and cross the river and still/keep a civil tongue/in my head?"
The underworld is featured repeatedly as a mythological resource of a more than academic kind: permanently in the back of Boland's mind is the Irish famine of the 1840s. Her references to the building of famine roads by the starving in the west of Ireland make it sound like the sort of grotesque and hopeless ordeal to which we might suppose myth to be more hospitable than real life. Like several of her Irish contemporaries, Boland uses the classics as a route back into European, as distinct from imperial-
British, tradition. In tandem with these concerns runs her endeavour to establish a female voice in Irish poetry: the best of these poems, such as It's a Woman's World, bristle with a sense of arrested but clearly focused power.
The classics seem much in the poetic mind at the moment. The timing of this development is interesting. Perhaps, within sight of the millennium, it represents a stay against the merely contemporary. Seamus Heaney and Stanislaw Baranczak's translation of Jan Kochanowski's Laments (Faber £6.99) offers English readers a chance to read an important 16th-century work from the Polish Renaissance poems of an Italian-educated courtier-poet's grief for the death of his infant daughter. It is writing both at odds with and fuelled by classical example: as the world of Kochanowski's Christian and stoic understanding threatens to explode under the pressure of loss, it is the task of poetry to make life once more thinkable.
A brief but hearty closing recommendation for two splendid reprints: Paul Durcan's, O Westport in the Light of Asia Minor and The Berlin Wall Cafe (both Harvill £6.99). Durcan's wild humour and satire are famous, but the separate peace his imagination makes with the world is unique. That's the stuff to give the troops.
The Little Book by David Hughes, Hutchinson £9.99 pp186.
David Hughes specialises in slim novels which take, as he says in The Little Book, "a tabloid reader only about an hour to get through...the length of a television docudrama, a stint of digging in a retired Hampshire garden, an afternoon snooze near the Oval on a Sunday, a buffet snack on an inter-city to Carlisle".
As all-day drama was for the Ancient Greeks and three-volume novels were for the Victorians, an hour is perhaps the perfect length for our busy, distracted times, especially when, as in Hughes's The Imperial Dinner Service (1983) and The Pork Butcher (1984), the story is packed tightly around an intriguing, expansive and sharply defined idea. The idea driving The Little Book, however, is vaguer and more subjective, and the packing is correspondingly looser, as it was in Memories of Dying, a novella with a similar theme published 20 years ago.
Hughes wrote The Little Book, so the dust-jacket tells us, when he was recuperating during a family holiday on the Isle of Wight after an operation for the removal of a cancerous kidney stone. Predominantly autobiographical in a gentle, diary-like way sun, sea, food, drink, sightseeing, with partner and children as shadowy presences the book succumbs to the temptation, felt by many novelists at desperate moments, to abandon the whole tiresome apparatus of fiction and go straight for the real content: theme and meaning.
The convalescent Hughes, suffering his own heightened sense of ars longa, vita brevis, imagines a little book written by an unknown author, which would offer every reader the chance to re-create himself: "The text contained, as perhaps no book ever had, the span and trajectory of life, the wilderness of it, its lack of grammar, its ever-present absence, its refusal to be pinned down or fenced in, as well as the painful, unprogrammed amiability of life."
Yet although he claims that "the campfires of the old narrative way were dowsed for ever; the gaudy courts of my mind needed a jester no more", Hughes's chosen method of giving presence to the absent book is its effect on various characters (a literary editor, a publisher's PR girl, an Oxford professor, a Soho drunk, a member of parliament, a baronet and his lady), who represent aspects of himself or his fantasies, with names borrowed more or less at random from his ancestors. And, of course, as in any such short cut to creation, with the author's imagination deliberately reined in, these characters are as unexplored and commonplace as the suspects in a game of Cluedo.
Hughes is a skilled and experienced writer, and could no doubt compose a telephone directory in such a way as to make you turn the pages; so the reader reads on, as the author no doubt wrote on, in the hope that the absent, revelatory little book in the mind will somehow take over and redeem the very ordinary little writer's notebook on the page.
There are one or two promising episodes of surreal mayhem: the Oxford professor, having adversely criticised the book, is murdered by the cast of an open-air production of Julius Caesar, whereupon all the old buildings of the city collapse into dust; the literary editor sets fire to his furniture and then himself; the baronet rapes his maid in the gun-room. However, like the characters involved in them, these violent actions are not what Hughes is after, and he ruthlessly drops them aside after a paragraph or two.
The trouble is that what he is after is not the absent little book itself, whose nature he can no more convey than a vicar can convey the nature of Heaven, but rather the sentimental idea that people's lives might be improved, or at least radically altered, by reading a book. Perhaps they might, but it needs more than merely stating.
Although Hughes insists that the book he imagines does not teach or preach, his book is, in fact, a sermon with the simple message that we could all be good and useful and value life more if only we weren't so bad and useless and wasteful of our brief ration of time. Nathalie Sarraute, in her masterpiece The Golden Fruits (1963), exposed with brilliant and wicked relish the intellectual and emotional deficiencies of the readers of an imaginary book, but only because she went to the trouble of creating the imaginative world in which both book and readers came to life.
In The Little Book, Hughes has got his length right, but his metier sadly wrong. He is neither an autobiographer nor a moralist, but a gifted storyteller, whose imagination, when it is allowed, when the campfires are burning brightly, thrives on personal experience and a passionate sense of moral loss.
Imaginings of Sand by Andre Brink, Secker £15.99 pp354.
‘A big girl now; the stupid phrase careering through my head from the moment the plane took off from Heathrow. The great return. All these years of wondering how it would be...The day I'd left the country I'd sworn it would be for good."
After a decade of exile in London, Kristien is revisiting her native South Africa to see her dying grandmother. By the end of this first paragraph of Andre Brink's new novel, Imaginings of Sand, we can predict with reasonable certainty that Kristien will learn various secrets about her family history, undergo some kind of catharsis and decide that her heart belongs to the Cape after all.
Ideally, this requires an English lover who can be left behind and then told, "I'm not coming back", at the end. He is duly mentioned in the very next paragraph. And for symbolic purposes, of course, the whole thing should be set around the time of South Africa's 1994 elections and the transition to majority rule. Brink takes only a few more pages to admit that this is indeed the case.
Kristien's grandmother, Ouma Kristina, proves remarkably articulate for a heavily sedated centenarian. During the course of a week or so, until she succumbs to the burns she suffered in a petrol-bomb attack on the family mansion, she passes on to Kristien the improbable life-stories of her ancestors, told in long, magical-realist chapters which alternate with the more prosaic episodes of the framing narrative.
"All the stories," Ouma promises. "The whole history."
"Stories or history?" asks Kristien.
"Not much difference, is there?" replies Ouma in orthodox postmodern vein. She tells of women who turned into trees, women who lost their shadows, women who grew too vast to move. Their menfolk were not so varied, being uniformly given to rape, wife-beating, kaffir-killing and incest. Kristien's brother-in-law, Casper, the head of the local farmers' vigilante squad, is from the same mould.
The great, rambling family mansion, its weird mismatch of architectural styles surviving the slight fire-damage, "originally came from a mail-order catalogue" and was imported in sections, but "the original plan had somehow been lost in transit"; by the time the local builders had finished their guesswork, it looked like nothing on earth. Some of this clearly applies to the novel itself. The esteemed firm of Rushdie, Marquez and Carey has furnished Brink with all the bits and he has constructed, after his own fashion, a sturdy, ample, interesting and rather silly monument to liberal middlebrow taste.
Kristien congratulates herself on how well she has learnt English. "I've been told that I have a ‘flair'. But it can never be quite my native tongue. And I have delusions of grandiloquence." She also has a fondness for hackneyed expressions. Recalling a love affair with a married man, she says: "We plunged into it as one would dive, naked, into the cliche of a fathomless pool." Meeting her lover's graceful wife, she marvels at "a body that has no secrets from another, yet has retained its core of mystery. If that doesn't sound too corny".
The narrator's faults are not necessarily the author's, but, as it happens, the other characters also talk and act in ready-made, cliched terms. The evil Casper, pouncing on Kristien, says, "Don't pretend you haven't had the hots for me from the moment you set foot in our house ...I know a bitch on heat when I see one!" Kristien's sister Anna, sporting a black eye, given to her by Casper, says the elections won't affect the big issues: "Man and woman. And that's not going to change... Or is it?" When Kristien tells her English lover she isn't coming back, he actually asks, "But what about us?" and she actually answers, "It hasn't worked out ...There's no one to blame for it. Or if there is it's me, not you."
One suspects that if Brink wrote a thriller there would be a baddie saying, "Very clever, my friend. In fact, too clever"; a goodie saying, "Kill me, but let the girl go"; and one shady spymaster telling another, "Our man seems to have developed a conscience. Too bad. Eliminate him." As it stands, Imaginings of Sand does obey certain thriller conventions, from the pompous title and the sexy, gutsy heroine to the body-strewn climax and the twist in the tail.
The book's most striking feature is its tub-thumping feminism. This was fashionable in men's writing a few years ago, but died away because it fell foul of the Cretan Paradox. Just as there is something fishy about a Cretan who says all Cretans are liars, so there is something fishy about male writers who proclaim the wickedness of the male, especially when they do it through female narrators whose minds and bodies are minutely examined and exhibited in a way that smacks of objectification, domination and possession.
Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, February 14, 1746
By the relations I'm going to make, you will think that I am describing Turkish, not English revolutions; and will cast your eye upwards to see if my letter is not dated from Constantinople. Indeed, violent as the changes have been, there has been no bloodshed; no grand Vizier has had a cravat made of a bow string, no Janizaries have taken upon them to alter the succession, no Grand Signior is deposed only his Sublime Highness's dignity has been a little impaired.
Oh! I forgot; I ought not to frighten you; you will interpret all these fine allusions, and think on the Rebellion pho! we are such considerable proficients in politics, that we can form rebellions within rebellions, and turn a government topsy-turvey at London, while we are engaged in a civil war in Scotland.
Delicious, thought GODFREY SMITH when he first tasted Cakes and Ale.
‘I have noticed that when someone asks for you on the telephone and, finding you out, leaves a message begging you to call up the moment you come in, and it's important, the matter is more often important to him than to you." With this typical sally, Somerset Maugham introduces us to Cakes and Ale (Mandarin £5.99). Published in 1930, it was his own favourite novel. It is the most delicious and malicious in his oeuvre.
The man being referred to is Alroy Kear, an egregious popular novelist, and his portrait is etched in acid through the novel's opening 35 pages. It is one of the most sustained exercises in character demolition that English writing can offer. It is bitchiness raised to an art form, and intensely enjoyable. However, it was not so amusing for Hugh Walpole, the fashionable novelist on whom Kear was based. He stayed up late with a proof copy, and was so horrified by the mirrror image of himself that he slid to the floor prostrate with cramp. Maugham denied that Kear was Walpole, but owned up after Walpole died in 1941. The opening passage shows Maugham at his silky best: the observation is microscopic, the workmanship scrupulous, and the invitation to read on irresistible.
Kear is writing the biography of Edward Driffield, grand old man of English literature, who has just died. (Here again, Maugham denied vehemently that Driffield was based on Thomas Hardy, confessing only in a preface to the 1936 edition that the idea for Cakes and Ale had come to him when he read of the pomp that had surrounded Hardy's funeral in 1928.)
Has Driffield perhaps grown restive in old age at being turned into a monument? If so, for Maugham there would be only one baleful cause: the society women who take him up and make him respectable. They forbid him, for example, to mop up his gravy with his bread, as he has done since his hungry childhood. Principal among these harpies is the ghastly Mrs Barton Trafford, who conducts a literary salon in which Driffield performs as a reluctant lion. She is upstaged by the second Mrs Driffield, who has been his nurse and is just as intent on erasing any trace of his rustic origins. Both women catch the full blast of Maugham's malice. Indeed, the only sympathetic woman in the book is Rosie, a tarty barmaid who was Driffield's first wife, but has left him for a swaggering coal merchant. Her picture is drawn with loving care.
Rosie becomes the mistress of a priggish medical student called Willie Ashenden, a thinly disguised version of Maugham, and narrator of the book: "(Hers) was a body made for the act of love. In the light of the candle, struggling now with the increasing day, it was all silvery gold; and the only colour was the rosy pink of the hard nipples."
Rosie was based on Sue, the daughter of the dramatist Henry Arthur Jones, who was the one great female love of Maugham's life. When they met in 1906, she was wearing a shirt and boater, had pale gold hair, blue eyes, a lovely figure and the most beautiful smile he had ever seen. When they became lovers, she asked him how long their affair would last. He suggested, flippantly, six weeks; it lasted eight years. Cakes and Ale is a love letter to her.
Maugham is often accused of misogyny; certainly, all the women in this novel, except Rosie, are bitches and battleaxes to the point of caricature. Can a vampire like Mrs Barton Trafford actually exist? I would have said she was a grotesque creature of Maugham's celebrated sexual ambivalence had it not been for an incident in Wells Cathedral. My wife and I had gone there with Bernard Levin to a concert. In the interval, a woman behind us, a total stranger, tapped Levin on the shoulder, and gushingly invited him to a cocktail party. He said he was sorry, he was with friends and was otherwise engaged. It took some time for the message to penetrate. So perhaps the Mrs Barton Traffords of this world still thrive in our cathedral cities, though I hope not.
I once told Maugham the first and last sentences in Cakes and Ale summed him up best. That Martian canal-map of a face creased into a beam of assent. What is the last line? It won't punch its weight unless you have read the book; as I hope you will.
It has beguiled generations of travellers, but Turkey constantly trips up on its human-rights record. JAMES WOODALL assesses a country in need of progress.
When it comes to topicality, some writers have all the luck. A book on Turkey could come out at any time, but to publish one just as the country makes headline news for belligerence towards Greece, to say nothing about a controversy over under-age marriage, smacks of unfair advantage.
Halfway through Tim Kelsey's Dervish: The Invention of Modern Turkey (H Hamilton £18), a provincial prosecutor explains to the author, with almost sinister foresight: "Say a man took a woman, and the woman wanted it a bit, but she is too young, the man has to go to prison."
Pace Sarah Cook, the observation tells us a lot about the country Kelsey is trying hard to like, a place where old Islamic mores lie ill at ease with a clamour for material contentment. Kelsey's pre-echo of the dilemma now facing the 13-year-old from Essex comes in the middle of a chapter featuring a modern hotel (built next to mud-roofed farmers' huts), a whorehouse and a prison.
There are a lot of prisons in Dervish. This will come as no surprise to anyone whose image of modern Turkey begins with Midnight Express; that film, as Kelsey points out, overdid the horror of the drug-smugglers' ordeal, but the prison looked real enough. Throughout his book, Kelsey is keen to get into prisons, to see for himself where and how political "criminals" are incarcerated within. Unsurprisingly, prison governors some on a more meagre diet than their wards are reluctant to let Kelsey confirm with his own eyes the findings of a 1987 United Nations inspection: at that time, not one of the 644 prisons in Turkey matched minimum international standards.
This is Turkey all over: a country that aspires to progress and fraternisation with the West, but which is continually undermined by atrocious human-rights records, cack-handed politics, corruption at every level, grinding poverty and internationally unpopular acts of aggression, such as the war of attrition with the Kurds in the east.
Like many societies founded on unresolved impulses of religion and secularism, Turkey is at war with itself something Kelsey encounters wherever he goes. Turkey makes repeated bids to join the EC, for example. To control an exploding birth-rate, one of the prerequisites for membership is the use of condoms, which is Turkish government policy; yet what can be done in a country where condom-use offends the vast majority of consenting adults, and where many men have more than one wife?
"Turkey is not to be liked or disliked. It exists," says a dour archivist in Ankara. Coming as it does near the start of Kelsey's book, this lapidary statement might be the motto behind his challenge throughout: to depict a large country which, on the face of it, has little to offer the world, yet which has exercised a vivid hold over the imaginations of writers and travellers for centuries.
Kelsey is no poet-wanderer. He is determined to go where angels (certainly, averagely adventurous tourists) fear to tread. The abiding image of Istanbul in this book is not of the Great Mosque or the Bosporus, but of mass animal-sacrifice in rank old-city streets to inaugurate an animal "miracle" in an Armenian church. In searching for the remains of Noah's ark, a symbolically emotive but illusory object which neatly tops and tails the book, Kelsey finds out more about the PKK, the Kurdish resistance group, which roams the desolate country around Mount Ararat, than about an Old Testament boat.
Kelsey's cast of characters is riveting. He meets Turkey's greatest pop-star, its most famous transsexual, a poetry- and belly-dancing-loving police chief, and a militant imam, the "Great Teacher", who has stopped just short of calling for jihad, and whose first words to him are: "I do not like the press." Weirdest of all is Hasan, a healer who might be the dervish Kelsey is seeking, but whose gift, in fact, amounts to the most disgusting form of massage I've ever come across.
I once read a book, pre-publication, about modern Cuba. I told the author that his text did not make me want to visit Cuba. The author panicked, which I don't think Kelsey will if he's told that Turkey holds but little allure for the traveller once his book is closed.
Behind the exaggerations of Midnight Express and the yuppie enticements of Turkey's coastal resorts lies a deeply troubled nation. Kelsey evokes its contradictions and dangers unflinchingly, sometimes too harshly: there's not much humour in Dervish the jokes which the Turks enjoy are generally laboured or bitter. In dealing with this anachronistic country, Kelsey's commendable lack of sentimentality, his roughness even, provides a compelling narrative, but nobody is going to ask him to become ambassador.
China is a culture in collision not only with its future, but with unresolved conflicts from its past. J G BALLARD investigates the political and social clashes that are preoccupying this troubled country.
In 1968, during the Cultural Revolution, an extra hazard faced the Chinese schoolteacher in the southern province of Guangxi and gave a special twist to the phenomenon of classroom violence your pupils might eat you. In this gripping, not to say stomach-turning account of his recent travels through provincial China, Real China: From Cannibalism to Karaoke (Simon & Schuster £15.99), John Gittings examines the long-standing rumour that famine-stricken peasants, exhausted by Mao Tse-tung's rule of madness, had turned desperately to cannibalism.
The truth, as Gittings discovered, was very different and far more unsettling, like so much else that we learn about post-war China. Gittings, a Guardian reporter and experienced China hand, decided to get away from the boom-time coastal cities of Deng Xiaoping's "economic miracle", and set off to the explore the remote villages and towns of the central provinces. Here he hoped to find an answer to the puzzle of where this immense country will move as it throws off socialism and, like a drowsy but unpredictable bull, raises its horns and gazes at the world arena. What sort of system, Gittings asks, will replace socialism? Will China emerge as a fully modern state or, as he suspects, will it settle into a vast Third World country dominated by a rapacious elite, where the cities are ranged against the countryside, wealth against poverty, and technological advances conceal desperate social ills?
On his journey, Gittings found Chinese culture in collision not only with the skyscraper future of Shanghai and the coastal enterprise zones, but with countless unresolved conflicts in its recent past. The provincial China that I visited during my own childhood in the 1930s, an embalmed world of absentee landlords, private militias and bone-crushed peasantry, seemed to exist in a perpetual present, as if the clocks had stopped on a dusty afternoon during the Ming dynasty 500 years ago.
Now all the clocks are running, a few of them backwards, as the disillusioned peasant population of rural China rejects the modernising reforms that have left them even more impoverished. Many have set off on a return to Maoist communism, others are trying to rekindle old religious faiths. Weirdly, Daoist, Buddhist and Christian beliefs co-exist with massage parlours and karaoke bars, a portent, I suspect, of the future awaiting the planet as a whole.
Gittings begins his quest in Henan province, 400 miles to the west of Shanghai, the heartland where Chinese history began with the Xia dynasty of 2000 BC. Here the first People's Commune was set up in 1958, endorsed by Mao himself. Yet Gittings found that the Henanese peasants were the country's most vocal critics of the Communist party, denouncing the corruption of its officials. They complained to him of illegal taxation and strongly resented the bribes they had to pay to the village head if they wanted to open a shop or small business, and the huge fines levied on couples with more than one child. Vagrancy and crime are rampant, but the police are only interested in enriching themselves.
Private agriculture has led to over-farming and chaotic small-scale production, and China's railway system is clogged by a flood of rootless peasants looking for work. Many farmers complained of being "Mahjonged" by inflation, forced to sell their produce at fixed prices while the costs of state-supplied fertiliser and insecticide are deliberately allowed to soar.
An illustration of the peasantry's disillusion and its distance from the culture of the great cities can be found in the Mao worship at Shaoshan in Hunan province. An immense bronze statue of the Great Helmsman gazes down at souvenir stalls selling Mao lockets, tie-clips and cassette tapes. Meanwhile, in Peking, two-thirds of a sample of schoolchildren had never even heard of Mao and only one could sing the national anthem, although all knew about the Hong Kong pop star Andy Lau, including his birth date and the films he had made.
Towards the end of his journey, Gittings visits Wuxuan County in Guangxi province and discovers another, less palatable part of China's past. So did they eat people during the Cultural Revolution? Grimly, it is clear that they did, during the bitter fighting between rival Red Guard factions that led to more than 500 deaths in Wuxuan alone (out of 90,000 in the province as a whole). In at least 75 cases, the victims' livers were extracted, cooked with pork and consumed at what a later report refers to as "human-flesh dinner parties". Several schoolteachers contributed to the menu, two of them, witnesses say, eaten by their own pupils.
Gittings suspects that the eating of human flesh in Wuxuan and elsewhere had nothing to do with the famine cannibalism frequently recorded in China during wars and natural disasters. This was revenge cannibalism, when the victor celebrates his contempt by eating part of his enemy.
Completing his troubled journey, Gittings ponders China's future and reflects that in the political sphere there has been no progress since the Tiananmen Square massacre. Interestingly, he suggests that it was not the students who were the target of the vicious clampdown, but members of the first independent workers' movement who were present in the square and threatened the party leaders with the prospect of an east European uprising.
What Gittings describes as the peculiar Chinese mix of chaotic economic change and deadening political immobility increases the risk of an unexpected explosion. Already "ignorant" peasants are treated with contempt by the new entrepreneurial class. Meanwhile, the rural masses turn to superstitious cults, pornographic films and magazines. No wonder they are restless, like the watching crowds I saw on the Shanghai Bund in 1992 as I tried to talk to a BBC camera. An immense throng surrounded us outside the former Cathay Hotel. They stood silently, waiting for something or anything to happen, and I suspect they realised that all they had to look forward to were the first breakfast-TV show and endless reruns of Hawaii Five-O.
Stuffy British publishers were absurdly tardy in getting into audio books, and evidence mounts that their distaste for the medium is expressed by dispatching numbskulls to their tape divisions. How else to explain The Complete Guide to What's on Talking Books, brought to public attention by Anne Tayler of Essex? Besides defying logic in its alphabetical listings (Lord Byron under ‘L', but Shakespeare under ‘S' not ‘W'), it discovers a medieval author called "William Chaucer" and attributes A Tale Of Two Cities to Shakespeare. It was the worst of guides...
Ron McKay was surprised when he read last Sunday's iconoclastic Observer profile of Irvine Welsh even though he was credited as the writer. Sneers about Welsh's appearance had been added, the exploration of possibly invented parts of the novelist's cv was made more hostile, and the piece expressed the view (the reverse of McKay's opinion) that the Welsh-derived film Trainspotting glamorises drug-taking. Batting aside the Observer's defence that it was able to verify the interpolations, McKay calls the altered version, "a hatchet job, a puerile, amateurish travesty". He's also concerned that the piece "offends the author, the publisher, Hibernian (football) fans, the entire Muirhouse estate and the junkies of Edinburgh" none of these parties, with the possible exception of the publisher, being famous for a forgiving nature or a distaste for physical confrontation.
Never exactly droopy, Lord Archer's self-confidence has plainly been boosted to an all-time high by the canny ploy of getting the readers of the Sunday Times books section to suggest the title of his next novel. Emblazoned on the cover of The Fourth Estate, the saga of rival newspaper magnates he publishes in May, are the words "The Number One Bestseller". Possibly his lordship has calculated that John Grisham (new novel in March) will be out of the charts by then, and Jilly Cooper (April) should be fading; but I prefer the theory that Mystic Jeff has clairvoyant gifts.
Phoenix House's latest publicity effort to flog its fiction list is a pack of glossy author cards, each featuring a chosen hunk or babe, with the men smouldering and the women tossing their raven tresses, and quotes about their work (19-year-old discovery Lara Harte, bless her, maintains that "adolescence has been little explored in literature"). WH Smith, meanwhile, is ingenuously proud of the "colourful spread of characters" represented by its Fresh Talent writers: "a reformed Irish alcoholic ... a beautiful 18 year-old black college student ... a gritty American crime writer who's also a mother of three ... a bittersweet wronged corporate wife". Yes, all of human life is there.
Why Do Women Write More Letters Than They Post? by Darian Leader, Faber £9.99 pp159.
This chic little volume, offered up by its author as "a collage of observations and explanations about the sexuality of men and women", is, in fact, an upscale variation on the ubiquitous relationship guide. Omitting the vulgar "communication tips" normally found in this genre, and adding a weighty, psychoanalytical "orientation", this book is the perfect gift for those who like trading nebulous generalities about "the battle of the sexes", but wish to be spared the ignominy of self-help.
Darian Leader (love that name) is a psychoanalyst and an admirer of the late French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan. His "collage" invokes many Lacanian tics not least a penchant for compressing complex and contentious theories in wryly provocative assertions. The book's title is just one example of this. The reader barely has time to wonder meekly whether women really do write more letters than they post before Leader's next unwary pronouncement is whizzing by, closely followed by another and another each as unexamined as the last.
Impromptu gifts are always suspect, Leader asserts: "The more a man gives, the more he aims at the destruction of his object ... Even the simplest gift has its malignancy." Discussing the incest taboo, he states that "many girls" experience a "feeling of joy and radiance" when they go to a restaurant with their father, whereas a boy going out to dinner with his mother doesn't feel the same thrill. ("If he does," Leader adds briskly, "he needs to seek professional help.") "Probably" a pregnant woman's food cravings "embody the mother's cannibalistic instincts towards the child." Men can live in squalor because their narcissism is "focused on themselves". Women like tidiness because their narcissism is "more spread out". And so on.
Leader is quick to own up to the loose, scatter-shot style of these pronouncements. He doesn't want this book to be a rigorous, academic exercise. "I have tried both to reach an audience well beyond the confines of the university and to make a large number of mistakes," he writes in his introduction. "After all, in the early and exciting texts of psychoanalysis, curious knowledge and theory rub shoulders with ideas that today we may find often slightly ridiculous. Hence the abundance of generalisations to be found here: if many of them appear doubtful, they at least serve to invite refutation and criticism."
There is no doubt that some of Leader's propositions have a certain tongue-in-cheek charm as when he offers hope to dull men by pointing out that women frequently invest their yearning for a pure and constant love in the ideal figure of a dead man or ghost. Or when he observes en passant that "most people who cheat on the Underground do so because of their unresolved relation to castration". My personal favourite is his bluff explanation of Claudia Schiffer's engagement to the creepy David Copperfield. No mystery here: the absence of the father or lover is central to female sexuality and Copperfield's job is to disappear and appear enigmatically. All the nice girls love a magician.
Sooner or later, though, the pleasures of this crazy theorising begin to pall. To some extent, all psychoanalytic theory demands a leap of faith since it postulates mental topographies of which we are normally unaware. But with so little effort to explain the methodology anchoring the play of his ideas, Leader's propositions take on a discouraging sense of arbitrariness. If there's any rigour underlying his chatty, speculative style, the reader is not made privy to it. Trying to argue with any of his assertions seems as futile as picking holes in another culture's creation myth. Where to begin disagreeing? You'd like to lob back some of the balls he keeps throwing into your court, but first you'd like to be assured that he isn't playing tennis without a net.
The World According to Mike Leigh by Michael Coveney, HarperCollins £18 pp256.
Any biography that aspires to be taken seriously should contain at least one sensational disclosure, discreditable if at all possible, about its subject. Perhaps he was a paedophile; a wife-batterer; a communist/Nazi (or, worst of all, British) spy. Michael Coveney has certainly come up with the goods about the film director Mike Leigh.
This master of the grungy, the squalid, the sexually menacing and the sexually dissolute, this depictor of (as Coveney explicates) "despair and disenchantment ... in a decaying council estate" and of "Hell in the suburbs" turns out to have been, of all things, a nice Jewish boy. He even had a barmitzvah. And, oy vay, it gets worse. Leigh's grandparents (named Liebermann) were immigrants from Russia. His father was (most banal of all cliches) a Jewish doctor. Young Mike himself joined a Jewish youth movement, went to Israel and worked on a kibbutz.
It has to be conceded that the man has done his very best to live down this problematic past. He eats bacon and pork, married a shiksa (the actress Alison Steadman) and compounds his apostasy by refusing to give interviews to the Jewish Chronicle. Moreover, Leigh's customary material distances him as much as possible from his respectable orthodox background. Leigh presents his audiences with lavatories, excrement and urine, farting, vomiting, abortions, nudity, graffiti-infested lifts, cannibalism, and, in his play Babies Grow Old (cost of staging, £142), your actual kitchen sink.
Yet, as emerges from this useful, dutifully researched, but perhaps over-respectful book, Leigh as a playwriter and film-maker is far from being a stereotyped agitprop auteur. Unlike his fellow-socialist film-maker Ken Loach, he does not have an overt political agenda, nor does he adopt a bulldozer technique to ram his views down spectators' throats. Despite the frequent earthiness, even coarseness, of his subject-matter and mise-en-scene, Leigh is an exquisite stylist; some of his dialogue would grace a confection by Oscar Wilde or Joe Orton.
This outcome is all the more remarkable since, while Wilde and Orton honed their texts to perfection, Leigh's scripts are the result of improvisation. He describes how "we must start off with a collection of totally unrelated characters (each one the specific creation of its actor) and then go through a process in which I must cause them to meet each other, and build a network of real relationships; the play would be drawn from the results." The end product, however, is not some meandering mumble, but a text tightly controlled by Leigh himself.
The implication apparently intended to be drawn from Coveney's panegyric of Leigh is that Philistine Britain has failed to provide appropriate recognition for this near-genius. Yet, being an honest recorder of fact, Coveney cannot avoid listing the plethora of honours and awards that have come Leigh's way. These have included retrospective seasons of his work at the National Film Theatre in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, a London Evening Standard drama award for best comedy (Goose-Pimples) and its film award for comedy (High Hopes), a Cannes film festival best director award (for Naked), an honorary university degree, and even an OBE from the John Major whose regime he so detests (accepted because, "If I hadn't, how would anyone know that I'd been offered it?").
If Leigh, despite being dubbed "Europe's best film-maker" by an American distributor, has not made it into the international big time, like his confrere Neil Jordan (whose Interview with the Vampire for Warner Brothers may have been ridiculous but was certainly remunerative), his predicament is not the result of any failure to attract the admiration his talent undoubtedly merits.
Leigh is just one of many victims of a situation described with Smart-bomb accuracy by the Queen when she presented Leigh with his OBE. Asked by Her Majesty "What exactly do you do?", Leigh explained that he made films. Commented the Queen, "Terribly difficult at the moment, isn't it?" This is the current problem, not just for Leigh, but for all British film-makers. Indeed, with 12 full-length films to his name, together with dozens of theatre and television plays, plus lucrative television commercials for McDonald's, Leigh has, in 25 years, been able to accumulate a more substantial roster of work than many of his contemporaries, even if he has made far fewer films than he would have liked to make, and his admirers would have liked him to make.
But that's show business. In 25 years, Sergei Eisenstein managed to finish only six pictures; in nearly 50 years, Orson Welles completed just 14 full-length films. As Donald O'Connor put it in Singin' in the Rain: "You've got the glory. You've got to take the little heartaches that go with it."
Robert Maxwell attracted people into his domain, and then ttreated them like serfa. ROY GREENSLADE reads a compelling study of life Cap'n Bob.
It seems as if every other person one has met in the past four years has a reminiscence of Robert Maxwell. If they didn't meet him, they know a man who did. So the anecdotes continue to do the rounds. Many are apocryphal. Some are wildly exaggerated. Just a few are accurate. Almost all of them are supposedly humorous.
Even though Maxwell has been revealed as an unfaithful husband, a bullying father, a tyrannical tycoon and a man unfit to steward a public company, let alone pension funds, he is cast in public as a comic figure.
Perhaps it's the British way of dealing with these matters. Righteous anger is considered too extreme and rather difficult to sustain. Ridicule is thought altogether less emotionally embarrassing. And don't forget, time is a great healer. What's done is done.
Tom Bower, the author of Maxwell: The Final Verdict (HarperCollins £16.99), will not hear of such sloppy sentiments. He is acutely aware that the City establishment would like nothing better than to sweep the whole Maxwell experience under the carpet. Indeed, it was Maxwell who twice took full advantage of the shortness of memories and City complacency, not to mention avarice. He was allowed to return after two sensational business crashes, in 1954 and 1969, so that he could build up a media empire in his inimitable fashion. His motto: let them laugh; let them forget; and let me back.
There will be no Maxwell comeback this time around, of course. At least, no Robert Maxwell comeback. But if we only laugh at his memory then we miss the underlying lesson of what spawned and sustained him.
Bower's superb book shows that the reality of Maxwell's lifelong pursuit of wealth, fame and power was far from funny. Beneath the comic mask, Maxwell single-mindedly set out to subvert every tradition of his adopted nation to achieve his grandiose ambitions.
In a meticulous examination of the final year of Maxwell's life, Bower illustrates how this remarkable man managed to exercise his will so forcefully that he undermined many of the institutions which form the core of the business community.
For institutions are composed of human beings. And Maxwell was a maestro at manipulating people, regardless of their status. Bankers, lawyers and accountants, lords and knights, communists and capitalists, presidents and preachers, they were all alike to Maxwell. In his immortal phrase: "They all use the same lavatory paper."
Deploying an explosive mixture of charm and bluster, Maxwell persuaded the professionals the suits, the slickers, the pinstripes to do his bidding. He did the same with his employees, sneering at them as he ensnared them in that familiar jobsworth trap, in which they argued themselves into complicity out of fear of losing their salaries and, preposterously, their reputations.
I must here declare an interest: I, too, fell, albeit briefly, into such a lure. For Maxwell's family, especially his youngest sons, there was little chance of escape.
Maxwell admired only those people he could not buy, or had yet to buy. The instant he enticed them into his domain he treated them like serfs. He demanded absolute loyalty, complete obedience and total silence. In return, he was monstrously rude, utterly perfidious and unrelentingly malevolent. His staff did what he told them, or they left.
Over the years, this distillation process provided him with executives some of whom were either deferential, disingenuous or daft. These were people who accepted that when they arrived at board meetings the minutes would have already been completed and signed. Bower comments sadly: "Such were the terms of working for Maxwell."
Page after page, as Bower takes us through the complex financial dealings, we read of fundamentally honest people who were guilty of being too gullible or too unworldly. They kidded themselves that what they witnessed and took part in was simply a facet of Maxwell's extraordinary business methods which, in turn, were the result of his charismatic personality. Even when deception appeared to stare them in the face they sought to avoid confrontation.
When the weak finally found the courage to speak up, nerving themselves for the notorious Maxwell temper, he placated them instead. "You are part of our family we'll care for you...you must not worry, take a holiday...are we paying you enough?" The most craven of all were those who resigned "on principle", and then greedily accepted hush money.
Then there were the array of professional advisers who jumped to attention at Maxwell's whim. Accountants and lawyers earned a fortune in fees by serving Maxwell's interests. They cannot be accused of breaking the law, but Bower argues a powerful case against their sense of morality.
What cannot be disputed is that Bower is not writing, as the rest us have done, from the safety of hindsight. He wrote a critical biography of Maxwell during his lifetime and suffered from every legal and illegal barrier Maxwell could put in his way. But this second book does not dwell on personal animosity. It is a compelling account, relying on documentary evidence and hundreds of interviews, which dissects Maxwell's financial career more thoroughly than the Spanish pathologists dissected his bloated body after it was hoisted from the Atlantic in November 1991.
On the subject of Maxwell's death, I depart from Bower's view that it was an accident. I believe the evidence points to suicide, but this is a minor quibble. This book is a devastating indictment not only of one man but of human fallibility and the City of London.
As for Russell Davies's little fantasy, Foreign Body: The Secret Life of Robert Maxwell (Bloomsbury £14.99), the less said the better. Two intentional Maxwell joke books have already been published, but they are not as funny as Foreign Body. The murder theory is ludicrous. Maxwell's links to the Soviet leadership are wildly overstated. The lack of context omitting the central feature of Maxwell's life, his business activities is tantamount to a gross distortion.
Maxwell didn't deserve better but the public, not to mention 30,000 distressed pensioners, certainly does. Read Bower instead.
HARVEY PORLOCK gets to grips with the ironic generation and romps in the swamps.
There's nothing like a thriller with moral and literary pretensions to excite the metropolitan critic. Add to the mix an intoxicating whiff of street life, a film deal, and an author speaking on behalf of the highly fashionable Generation X and you begin to understand the intense reviewer-appeal of James Hawes's first novel, A White Merc with Fins.
Here was "an offering from the ‘ironic generation' ...an irreverent yarn told by a rock-hard college kid; a gift from the far side of the cultural barricades", announced Tobias Jones in The Spectator. "James Hawes ... has written a very comic, and brilliant, book about today's Britain. Only here can a white merc with fins identify the driver as either a pimp or a pusher; this novel of the same name teases out all such prejudices, and simultaneously underlines and overturns whole layers of class cliches."
Yet, interviewed by James Walton in The Daily Telegraph, the author from the ironic generation was keen to emphasise that he wrote without irony. His novel contained "true observations about the real world and so they should be said straight," said Hawes. "I know this sounds pretentious, but I wrote the first few pages 18 months ago at four o'clock in the morning, after getting very drunk with my father a very brave thing to do... I just wanted to be as immediate as possible, with irony to fall back on."
As for those cliches, cunningly underlined yet overturned, Nicholas Clee provided more details in his review in the TLS. "The worst life that the unnamed narrator of James Hawes's first novel can imagine is that of an accountant ... Everywhere he looks, our hero is dismayed. The streets in the centre of London are filled with ‘office slaves'. Snooty upper-class girls with braying voices exchange inane banter. The middle classes are slaves to their mortgages." In these pages, Julian Loose pointed out that the novel's "satirical targets such as Milton Keynes and liberal-minded Guardian readers start to seem positively quaint".
Accountants, Guardian readers, Sloane Rangers, mortgages, Milton Keynes so this is what they are talking about beyond the cultural barricades. Yet the majority of critics were happy to give Hawes the benefit of the doubt. Nicholas Lezard in The Independent found, "one of the most exhilarating things about this novel is its sense of giddy self-enactment", whatever that might be. It was "hard not to like something that has made such an effort to be likeable", he concluded. Harriet Paterson in The Times declared that "Hawes pumps so much humour into his characters that they win you over".
But Laura Cumming, in The Observer, was resolutely uncharmed. "James Hawes has given his narrator a crass and laddish voice. This is perfect for bowel movements and swearing matches, but useless for political comment," she wrote. "For all its sniggering jokes...this is never a funny book. It masquerades as a buoyant tale of fast cars and cunning heists, with a seasoning of social satire. In fact, it's a cheap and fraudulent attempt to take the reader for a very long ride."
The thriller/satire mix has worked well for the American author Carl Hiaasen, whose romps in the swamps of Florida regularly thrill the critics.
Stormy Weather, Hiaasen's latest, was "a savage and hil-arious fantasy," wrote The Mail on Sunday's John Williams. "You feel he could choreograph Armageddon," declared Philip Oakes in The Literary Review. "For all its satiric, madcap invention, this is a defiantly moral fable," according to Anthony Quinn in The Daily Telegraph. In the Telegraph magazine, David Thomas reported glowingly on Hiaasen's "genuine sense of moral outrage".
There have been some minor reservations. In The Times, Marcel Berlins noted that, "perhaps the freneticism of his humour is palling a little", while on BBC2's Late Review Tom Paulin descried "the naffness of a made-for-television movie ...I couldn't see the point of it". The presenter Mark Lawson disagreed emphatically, firmly closing the discussion with the view that Stormy Weather was "a sensationally good book, incredibly funny".
Finally, positive news at last from the publishing industry. The Bookseller has reported that publishing's highest-paid directors last year increased their own pay by 19.8% to bring them up to an average of £134,441. The best paid publisher earned £425,000 only slightly less, oddly enough, than the sum Martin Amis was so controversially paid last year for his novel The Information, which had taken him four years to write. There have, as yet, been no accusations of male turkey-cocking among publishers.
FURTHER to Humphrey Carpenter's interesting review of the biography of Leonid Massine (January 21), Powell and Pressburger's Tales of Hoffman was released in 1951, not 1961, so Massine was "only" in his mid-fifties at the time none the less, it was a remarkable achievement.
Massine did, however, appear when he was more than 60, in Powell's Honeymoon (1958); it featured Antonio's Spanish Ballet in a version of El Amo Brujo in which Massine danced and mimed the Ghost of the Betrayed Lover.
Sara Serpell
Wellesbourne, Warwick
"SCIENCE", as Dawkins reminds us, "explains complex things in terms of inter-relationships of simpler things." And Dawkins proceeds to operate the principle in relation to the complex argument in Swinburne's Is There a God?, and to demonstrate that he had no grasp of the complexity of the whole. This is good knockabout fun, but ultimately to the detriment of the public understanding of science since it proclaims that anything that doesn't fit into our preferred categories doesn't need to be taken seriously.
In fact Dawkins's touching faith, that everything we need to know can be described in terms of such things as electrons, shows him to be much closer to Swinburne than he would like to think. I nearly wrote "would like to imagine", but that is what Dawkins is unwilling or unable to do. Not all scientists have Dawkins's unwillingness to understand, and inability to imagine. Thank God.
Paul Cavill
Leicester
TO USE Dawkins's turn of phrase, there is something almost endearing in the way he lovingly clings, with unchastened 19th-century fervour, to his quaintly archaic faith in science. In a fit of callow hubris worthy of Victor Frankenstein or Henry Jekyll, Dawkins writes dismissively of "those few remaining backwaters that scientific explanation has so far failed to reach", as if our microscopes and telescopes were focused on anything more essential and ultimate than shadows flickering on the back wall of a cave.
If Plato is too esoteric for Dawkins's taste, he might at least have the humility to heed Shakespeare's open-minded agnosticism: there are more things in heaven and earth, professor, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Alejandro H Rodriguez-Giovo
Dept of English, The International School of Geneva
IN HIS review of Richard Swinburne's Is There a God? (February 4), Richard Dawkins belies any hope of being taken seriously in scientific circles if he persists in the "Yah boo, sucks to you" attitude he takes to anyone who writes on a subject which he admits he does not comprehend "Theology is a field in which obscurantism is the normal path to success" ha, ha, ha.
Nothing could be more obscurantist than the irrelevance of the ever-increasing number of bizarre small particles which the scientific world is constantly presenting for our unappreciative delectation without a word of explanation apart from the weird but scientifically held notion that as soon as a new particle is theoretically postulated, it is immediately "discovered". Who is kidding who or even whom?
Bernard Kaukas
Ealing W5
The Oxford Book of English Love Stories edited by John Sutherland, OUP £17.99 pp462.
In our culture, love needs a mixer before it qualifies as a subject for literature. Pour it out neat, and you get Mills & Boon. Add suffering, superstition and Sussex dialect, and you get Rudyard Kipling's eerie classic, The Wish House, where an old countrywoman confides that the cancer which is killing her has come in fulfilment of a supernatural pact, in which she pledged her life to save her faithless lover. Nothing else in John Sutherland's collection quite matches Kipling's pitiless art. But most of the 28 stories supplement love with powerful additives religion, money, social class and nearly all break the first rule of chain-store romance by ending unhappily.
Like everything Sutherland undertakes, the selection is individual and idea-driven. The time-scale ranges from England's first professional woman writer, Aphra Behn (1640-89), to Adam Mars-Jones's gays in the shadow of Aids. Among the big names (Elizabeth Gaskell, Trollope, Hardy come forgotten writers such as AECoppard, a Victorian tailor's son who left school at nine. Significantly, his story is about the selfishness poverty breeds. A destitute journalist receives £50 through the post from an anonymous admirer, and hides it from his mistress, though she has shared everything with him. In fact, she sent the money herself, having inherited it unexpectedly. So her tact and generosity buy her an insight into her lover's meanness. Still more obscure than Coppard is a tale of erotic delusion from the Cornhill magazine of August 1887, by a writer called CCKGonner, about whom absolutely nothing is known.
Sutherland's theory is that these stories reveal the changing face of love, as practised by the English over the past four centuries. From them we can reconstruct wooing's unwritten codes, and the fluctuating values put on qualities such as female modesty. This seems overhopeful. As an index of reality, fiction has serious drawbacks. Some of Sutherland's best stories would lead a credulous historian to bizarre conclusions. If the goings-on in DH Lawrence's Samson and Delilah reflected the normal behaviour of Cornish miners and their wives, the social fabric would collapse under the strain. Sylvia Plath's story, Stone Boy with Dolphin, displays, according to Sutherland, the intricate rituals of courtship as practised in Cambridge in the mid-1950s. Yet what it depicts is a young woman at a party sinking her teeth, powerfully and painfully, into the cheek of a young man she fancies. According to her journal, Plath did this when she first met Ted Hughes. Others have dismissed her account as wildly exaggerated. But whatever the truth, face-biting was not a feature of 1950s courtship ritual, even in Cambridge.
What love stories actually reveal are not the conventions of loving, but the conventions of writing about it, and these can be highly artificial. Facts that must have been familiar to all lovers from the first anthropoid embrace remain virtually unmentionable for centuries. Body smell is a case in point. Within the admittedly restricted range of Sutherland's historical samples, it surfaces first, surprisingly, in a story by Somerset Maugham. Before that, lovers are either odourless or smell of scent. But in Maugham's story, an eagerly sniffing convict tells a prison visitor who has recently been with the convict's girlfriend that he has brought the smell of her body into the prison with him. ("It was sex in its nakedness," the visitor tut-tuts). Half a century later, in Paul Theroux's An English Unofficial Rose, smells have become more adventurous. "Running raised her sexual odours, the mingled aroma of fish and flowers," Theroux's young lover notes appreciatively. Quite likely, men have been snuffing up the same aroma since the start of sexual time, but the licence to write about it is relatively new.
Aids, as Mars-Jones's story discloses, has brought a hitherto innocent smell into deadly prominence: toothpaste. Cleaning teeth before lovemaking can set gums bleeding and so heighten the risk of infection, or so Mars-Jones's narrator believes. To the wise lover, fresh minty breath should be as enticing as a car alarm.
On some subjects, admittedly, the historical messages Sutherland seeks come through clearly. Female strong-mindedness is regularly condemned in love stories, even those written by women, up to the end of the 19th century, and this reflects realities about male social power that we have all become adept at spotting since feminist critics started pointing them out. As an offshoot of this masculine power-complex, physical fragility is traditionally a highly valued attribute of love-story heroines. Mrs Gaskell's Nelly, in The Heart of John Middleton, is so ethereal that she seems in danger, given a strong breeze, of leaving the earth altogether. It would be hard to disentangle sexual politics from eroticism in this cult of feebleness. In conscious revolt against it, Sara Maitland's lesbian Sally hymns the strength "her Achilles tendons like flexible rock" of her marathon-running, man-conquering lover.
Men in these stories are quite likely to prove inconstant, but the truly venomous characters are women. Thackeray's Mrs Haggerty, afflicted by her creator with blindness and smallpox, as well as multiple moral failings, and the scrawny, nagging wife in Graham Greene's The Blue Film ("when he looked at her neck he was reminded of how difficult it is to unstring a turkey"), are alarmingly unguarded displays of male loathing. In the 10 stories by women, no man is comparably savaged not even Virginia Woolf's vain and pompous politician in The Legacy.
If Sutherland's historical sample is representative, this may indicate that, in English culture, men hate women more violently than women hate men. Perhaps that is because women do not expect men to come up to much, whereas men, being idealists and fantasists, feel angry when reality lets them down.
Sutherland wisely refrains from adjudicating on these issues. Less wisely, the stories he chooses omit two of love's common components, copulation and murder. True, most literary accounts of lovemaking are embarrassing, especially when written by men. But DH Lawrence's Sun, say, where the woman's lover is the sun itself, goes some way towards solving the problem, and is a far greater story than Samson and Delilah. For Sutherland not even to mention the difficulty of representing sex in his introduction seems evasive or maybe just English. The omission of murder seems even less excusable, given its frequency as a love-symptom and the many brilliant stories that describe it. HG Wells's hair-raising The Cone, for example, would have made an excellent stand-in for the extremely feeble Wells story Sutherland picks.
Arnold Bennett and Katherine Mansfield are also represented by ludicrously substandard stories, which will mislead readers unaware of the marvels they can create. Both are about happy love, which may account for their weakness, and also for their inclusion, since Sutherland is so short of it. Muriel Spark, certainly one of the great short-story writers of our time, is a strange absentee. On the credit side are VS Pritchett's painfully funny Blind Love, and a study of womanly malice by the half-forgotten Yorkshire writer Phyllis Bentley. Theroux and Maitland are excellent, too. But the book would, you feel, be more enjoyable if Sutherland had dropped his historical thesis and just included what he liked best.
BABYLON ZOO, Astoria 2, London, Fri
If you like drama, consider the pressure on poor Jas Mann, above, for this one, after the fastest-selling debut single in British history. The Astoria 2 is less than a third the size of its better-known big sister, so scenes of Beatlemanic proportions should hold sway in Charing Cross Road. Anyone who doesn't dig the single, therefore, had best avoid the West End in general. Those who do can expect something ambitious and showy. Will the Zoo deliver? At this stage, anything might happen. AS
SEQUELS are often derided as "basically the same film all over again", but, for unoriginality, you can't beat those films which really are the same film all over again remakes.
1 The current Sabrina is, of course, a remake of the 1954 Billy Wilder comedy. When it comes to remakes, Wilder has seen it all before. "They have remade Double Indemnity (1944) five times," he has commented. "Why don't they just show the original again?"
2 Such scepticism typifies the response to most remakes, but the films nevertheless abound. Now on release is The Underneath, a remake of Criss Cross (1949); in recent years we have seen the likes of The Getaway (1994, remade from Peckinpah's 1972 version) and Miracle on 34th Street (remade in 1994 from the 1947 classic).
3 If you can't conceal the fact that you're doing a remake, the least you can do is to present your version as a respectful homage to the original. Scorsese's Cape Fear (1991) achieves this by giving cameo roles to Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum, the stars of the 1962 thriller.
4 One contender for the title of most derivative film ever is Warren Beatty's Love Affair (1994), a remake of An Affair to Remember (1957), itself a remake of 1939's Love Affair.
5 The film that really proves that unoriginality is nothing new is Father of the Bride Part II. Ostensibly it is a sequel to 1991's remake of Father of the Bride (1950). But the first Father of the Bride also spawned a sequel, Father's Little Dividend (1951), from which Father of the Bride Part II has taken much of its plot.
So Father of the Bride Part II is both a sequel to a film that was a remake and a remake of a film that was a sequel. Thus it must surely stand as the most unoriginal film ever made. Until, that is, someone remakes it.
What to see and where to go this week.
LUISA MILLER
Opera North, New Theatre,
Hull, Wed
Tim Albery's new production of Verdi's pre-Rigoletto Schiller drama has ups and downs, but the final act, rivetingly sung (in English) and played by Susanna Glanville's touching Luisa, Arthur Davies's passionate Rodolfo and Alan Opie as Miller, Luisa's concerned but powerless father, is great music theatre. Marco Zambelli conducts.
PICK OF THE WEEK
THE RAKE'S PROGRESS
Welsh National Opera,
New Theatre, Cardiff, Sat
Young Welsh star Bryn Terfel, above, returns to his "home" company he says for the last time because of the Millennium Commission's refusal to fund the Cardiff Bay Opera House to sing Nick Shadow for the first time in WNO's debut production of Stravinsky's neo-classical English opera (words by Auden and Kallman). The young, newly appointed music director of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Mark Wigglesworth, conducts. The cast also includes Alwyn Mellor as Anne Trulove, Paul Nilon as Tom Rakewell and Claire Powell as Baba the Turk. The production is by Matthew Warchus, with designs by Laura Hopkins.
RODELINDA
Blackheath Concert Hall, Mon
Semi-staging of Handel's 1725 masterpiece by Jonathan Miller in preparation for a new production this summer at Broomhill in Kent and a commercial recording. Nicholas Kraemer conducts the Raglan Baroque Players and Rodelinda is sung by the talented young English soprano, Sophie Daneman. Only London performance.
AIDA
Royal Opera, Covent Garden, Tue, Fri
The second run this season of Verdi's Egyptian opera. If she turns up, next week's Aida, the temperamental Hungarian soprano Julia Varady, should be worth the price of the ticket alone. The nearest thing we have to an opera diva today, her London appearances are sadly rare. Her co-stars are a mixed bag: Nina Terentieva, a big, blowsy Bolshoi mezzo, returns as Amneris, the young South African tenor Sidwell Hartmann is Radames and Gregory Yurisich, run-of-the-mill house baritone, is Amonasro. Jan Latham-Koenig conducts the minimalist Moshinsky staging.
THE MIDSUMMER MARRIAGE
Royal Opera, Covent Garden,
Mon, Wed
Last chances for Graham Vick's staging of Tippett's magical first opera. It's had mixed notices, but the musical performance, led by the ROH music director, Bernard Haitink, should have "run in" by now. The cast includes John Tomlinson as King Fisher.
What to see and where to go this week.
SEVEN, 127 mins, 18 David Fincher's nihilistic.
serial-killer thriller starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman has the ingenious beauty of a medieval torture instrument. It will leave many who watch it possessed of the urge to unwatch it as soon as possible, but Seven gets better the more you think about it.
HEAT
170 mins, 15
Michael Mann has worked for more than a decade to position the crime thriller as the epic genre of choice for American directors. With this mammoth urban western, he has succeeded, although its three-hour length is justified less by its portentous script than by its superb cast: Robert De Niro as a master thief in LA, Val Kilmer as one of the gang, and Al Pacino as the cop on their trail. Not the best crime movie ever, but certainly the best-looking. PICK OF THE WEEK
CLOCKERS
128 mins, 18
Starring Harvey Keitel, and adapted from Richard Price's thriller about drugs in Brooklyn, the new film from Spike Lee, above left, is his best in years, and yet still shows all the bad habits he has picked up. Before drugs, or bullets, have taken their toll, the characters are almost killed off by the film's chronic didacticism. It excels as pseudo-documentary, though, confirming Lee's place as America's cinematic surgeon-general: alternately taking its pulse and probing its most open wounds.
LEAVING LAS VEGAS
110 mins, 18
Mike Figgis's bleak and beautiful film his best by far charts the last days of an alcoholic, Ben (Nicolas Cage). His performance is like no other screen drunk you have seen; the film leaves most alcoholism movies propping up the bar repeating the same old cliches.
THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT
113 mins, 12
Rob Reiner's comedy has as much grip on political reality as a pair of fervently crossed fingers. Michael Douglas plays Andy Shepherd, a dream Democrat, tough on crime, soft on the environment and a die-hard romantic. Yeah, right. The movie comes alive thanks to Annette Bening's superb performance.
What to see and where to go this week.
JENNY ECLAIR, Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, tonight; Wedgwood Rooms, Portsmouth, Tue; Gardner Arts Centre, Brighton, Wed; Arts Centre, Horsham, Fri; West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, Sat.
The 1995 Perrier award-winner's superbitch persona is the perfect postfeminist heroine, with her daily mantra "self-obsession is a strength not a weakness" 6in stilettos and peroxide hair.
PICK OF THE WEEK
LEE EVANS
Lyric Theatre, until Mar 16
In his only London shows this year, Evans displays the frenetic humour he hopes will make him big in America in 1996. (See review, page 18.)
THE UMBILICAL BROTHERS
Arts Theatre, Great Newport
Street, WC2, until Mar 16
The rubber-bodied Australian duo who give mime a modern twist return with a noisy new show. They offer a living
cartoon-world, where bodies go into freeze-frame, splat into scenery and defy gravity, all underscored by mike-effects. Inventive, unrelenting fun. Don't miss.
DONNA McPHAIL
Assembly Rooms, Derby, tonight; Phoenix Arts Centre, Leicester, Mon Gulbenkian, Canterbury, Tue; MAC Birmingham, Wed; The Gantry, Southampton, Thu; The Arena, St Albans, Fri
The highlight of this show may well turn out to be "special guest" Bill Bailey, who was wonderfully hilarious at last year's Edinburgh Festival. But that is not to talk down Ms McPhail, an accomplished, witty and stylish stand-up.
What to see and where to go this week.
ANDRAS SCHIFF, Wigmore Hall, Mon, Wed, Sat
This nonpareil of contemporary pianists gives a series of three solo recitals devoted to Haydn sonatas and the music of his own compatriot, Bartok.
THE LONDON PHILHARMONIC
RFH, Wed
Conductor Roger Norrington and the orchestra (with its choir) complete their sustained Berlioz exploration with the evening-long, glorious "dramatic symphony" Romeo and Juliet: with vocal soloists mezzo Sarah Walker, tenor John Mark Ainsley, bass Michele Pertusi.
GLASGOW FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN MUSIC AND ARTS
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall,
today, Tue, Fri, Sat
Four more concerts in the festival. Tonight Andrew Litton conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Walter Piston's The Incredible Flutist, Samuel Barber's piano concerto (Jon Kimura Parker), and Copland's Third Symphony. On Tuesday, John McGlinn conducts the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in superior showtime music. On Friday, under Yoel Levi, the SCO plays popular music by Ives, Copland and Barber and gives the European premiere of Ellen Zwilich's Triple Concerto (violinist Jaime Laredo, cellist Sharon Robinson, pianist Joseph Kalich-
stein). On Saturday, the RSNO under Litton performs Ronald Caltabiano's Preludes, Fanfares and Toccatas (another European premiere), William Schuman's New England Triptych and Gershwin's suite from Porgy and Bess.
HALLE ORCHESTRA
Free Trade Hall, Manchester,
Thu
Conducted by its principal guest artist, George Benjamin, the Halle ventures a bold and appetising modernist programme of Varese's Integrales, Ives's Central Park in the Dark, Luciano Berio's Requies, Benjamin's own Wallace Stevens setting, A Mind of Winter (with soprano Valdine Anderson), and Messiaen's shatteringly noisy ritual,
Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum.
PICK OF THE WEEK
JACK GIBBONS. QEH, Thu
A young virtuoso known mainly for his performances of Gershwin song transcriptions undertakes a marathon journey through the music of that reclusive maverick Parisian, Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-88), whose famously elaborate and difficult piano compositions include a symphony, a concerto and an overture. These form part of the Douze Etudes dans les Tons Minors, Op 39, of which Gibbons gives the London premiere, along with some Alkan miniatures. The concert, starting at 7pm, is expected to last three hours. BIRMINGHAM
CONTEMPORARY
MUSIC GROUP
Adrian Boult Concert Hall,
Paradise Place, Birmingham
B3, Fri
In collaboration with Birmingham Electro-Acoustic Sound Theatre (Beast), the group under Stefan Asbury mounts works by Oliver Knussen, Judith Weir, Jonathan Harvey, Stravinsky, Boulez and Sally Beamish, whose specially commissioned A Book of Seasons (violin soloist Lyn Fletcher) receives its world premiere.
OPUS 20
St John's Smith Square,
London SW1, Sat
The string band is conducted by Scott Stroman in Britten's Lachrymae for viola (Bridget Carey) and strings, Panufnik's Concertino for timpani, percussion and string, and music by Vic Hoyland, John Reeman and Sohrab Uduman.
What to see and where to go this week.
DIAGHILEV: CREATOR OF THE BALLETS RUSSES, Barbican, until Apr 14
Drawing on previously inaccessible collections, this demonstrates that there was more to Diaghilev than the Russian Ballet. He was a promoter of modern art as well, an influential mediator between East and West. The cluttered theatrical design of the exhibition is distracting, but the set designs, costumes and posters are strong enough to hold their own. Alas, the show ends before 1917, when Picasso designed Parade. We are thus denied an account of the Russian Ballet's and Diaghilev's greatest years.
MAGGI HAMBLING,
SCULPTURE IN BRONZE,
1993-95
Marlborough Fine Art,
until Mar 2
A new departure for this well-known irrepressible painter demonstrates her debt to surrealism more than any of her work so far. Small-scale, graphically conceived and seemingly fragile images are by turns poetic, jokey and threatening.
PICK OF THE WEEK
CEZANNE
Tate Gallery, until Apr 28
The most comprehensive survey for 60 years of the work of this giant of 19th-century painting is the event of a lifetime. For the first time, we can trace Cezanne's career from his fumbling beginnings in the 1860s to his death in 1906 and see it as a whole. So moving it will probably end up not just as my pick of the week, but of the decade as well. (See review, page 8.)
FREDERIC,
LORD LEIGHTON
Royal Academy, opens Thu,
until Apr 21
When president of the RA, Leighton was one of the most admired (and wealthiest) artists in Europe, the maker of grand tableaux of fashionably classical, mythological and biblical subjects. He was also the only painter ever to be elevated to the House of Lords. But fame was followed by posthumous neglect, Leighton's work dismissed as the embodiment of Victorian values: pompous, sentimental and overblown. This show gives a more accurate picture of a painter who was as capable of producing informal landscapes as histrionic machines, and whose work has more in common with that of his Italian and German contemporaries than of his fellow Victorians.
WILLIAM NICHOLSON:
PAINTER
Kettle's Yard, Cambridge,
until Feb 25Forty-three landscapes and still lifes by an outstanding and unfairly neglected painter. Portraits were his bread, butter and jam, but he found more pleasure in the informal and small-scale work on which this beguiling exhibition concentrates. The still lifes are deliciously juicy, and the landscapes cunningly organised. A treat.
SUSAN HILLER
Tate Gallery Liverpool,
until Mar 17
Work, drawn from the past two decades, by an artist engaged by anthropology and psychology and equally at home in a variety of media, from painting to assemblage and video. At their worst, tedious and pretentious, at their best, the exhibits are visually arresting and mysterious. The most remarkable of them, Monument, consists of photographs of plaques, found in a London park, memorialising forgotten deeds of heroism. We are invited to contemplate the deeds and the transience of life and memories while sitting on a park bench and listening to a tape recording.
WILLIAM MORRIS REVISITED: QUESTIONING THE LEGACY
Whitworth Art Gallery,
Manchester, until Apr 7
The Victorian theorist, designer, entrepreneur and Utopian socialist died in 1896, and this ambitious show, one of several centenary tributes planned for this year, consists not only of work by him and the arts and crafts movement he inspired, but also of such modern craftsmen and women as Bernard Leach and Janice Tchalenko.
What to see and where to go this week.
AN IDEAL HUSBAND, Haymarket
Oscar Wilde's great moral comedy-drama gets a magisterial production from Peter Hall. Martin Shaw, wily and watchful, leads for the goodies. Anna Carteret is the baddy, a cross between a vulture and a smug fantailed dove. Observe Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray, two glittering octogenarians bestriding the stage with performances of wit and elegance.
THE WAY OF THE WORLD
Lyttelton, Mon-Wed, Wed mat
Ignore the silly final tableau: Phyllida Lloyd's production is a superb account of Congreve's best play. It is playful and intelligent, it has thrust and sparkle, it laughs at its characters, and even pities them not usual in Congreve productions. Impeccable performances from Geraldine McEwan, Fiona Shaw and Roger Allam.
PICK OF THE WEEK
COMPANY
Donmar
Stephen Sondheim's bitingly funny musical is about love, sex, commitment and growing up and their opposites. Sam Mendes's production has a sparkling sophistication and a sense of irony that matches Sondheim's inspiration. The cast is led in superb style by Adrian Lester and Sheila Gish. An altogether unmissable show.
MOTHER COURAGE AND
HER CHILDREN
Olivier, Wed-Sat, Sat mat
Bertolt Brecht's great, rugged, sardonic anti-war play is
restored to its rightful place as one of the key works of the 20th century. In the title role, Diana Rigg shines superbly.
BLOOD BROTHERS
Phoenix
Willy Russell wrote the book, lyrics and music for this powerful north-country melodrama, one of the best British musicals. With Stefan Dennis and Stephanie Lawrence.
MISS SAIGON
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
The spectacular Boublil-Schonberg musical, now in its seventh year, is about the Vietnam war, in a rousing production by Nicholas Hytner that never once trivialises its subject.
AN INSPECTOR CALLS
Garrick
Stephen Daldry's production of Priestley's classic warhorse has been one of the National's greatest successes. Nicholas Woodeson and Susan Engel star in a final West End run.
What to see and where to go this week.
ROYAL BALLET, Royal Opera House, Sat
Dances with Death, the young choreographer Matthew Hart's ambitious new work (to Britten's Concerto for violin and orchestra) addresses the subject of Aids, with Darcey Bussell representing the virus. The programme includes a revival of Kenneth MacMillan's psychosexual dramatic ballet, The Invitation; a new pas de deux by Ashley Page; and Frederick Ashton's popular Rhapsody.
PICK OF THE WEEK
CINDERELLA
English National Ballet,
Mayflower Theatre,
Southampton, Wed-Sat;
London City Ballet, Yvonne
Arnaud Theatre, Guildford,
Mon-Sat
ENB premieres its new production of Prokofiev's Cinderella, choreographed by Michael Corder and designed by David Walker, with performances to follow in Manchester, Bristol and London. This is the first three-act narrative ballet created by the distinctive Corder for a British troupe. Another touring Cinderella is Matthew Hart's recent, attractive production for London City Ballet; and casting for the role of the Prince includes LCB's new recruit, the former Royal Ballet star Zoltan Solymosi.
ADVENTURES IN MOTION PICTURES: SWAN LAKE
Theatre Royal, Nottingham,
Tue-Sat
Matthew Bourne's ingenious reworking of this revered classic, now touring, features an all-male corps of swans and Lez Brotherston's stunning designs.
What to see and where to go this week.
ETERNAL. Guildhall, Portsmouth, Thu; International Centre, Bournemouth, Fri; St David's Hall, Cardiff, Sat
Our most successful "girl group", whose sassy mix of sexiness and extreme Godliness would do them no harm should they ever decide to join the shadow cabinet, but can seem a tad formulaic in a modern soul context. Live, however, they'll be pulling out all the stops, providing plenty of eye candy to keep attention from wandering where it otherwise might.
MIKE FLOWERS POPS
Junction, Cambridge, Mon;
Leadmill, Sheffield, Tue; UEA,
Norwich, Wed; Essex
University, Colchester, Thu;
Forum, London, Fri
Don't expect Mike Flowers and his wig to be challenging for No1 next Christmas, but the joke's still good for now. Watch the Pops tackle not just Oasis but Bowie, Bjork, Bacharach, the Velvet Underground and songs from Hair with equally skewed panache. The perfect night out with the lads/ladettes, perhaps.
MOLOKO
Cockpit, Leeds, tonight;
Princess Charlotte, Leicester,
Tue; Blue Lamp, Hull, Wed;
Stirling University, Thu; La
Belle Angel, Edinburgh, Sat
Moloko's singer, Roisin Murphy, purrs like a cross between Nina Simone and a Freudian case study, but this Sheffield duo's real achievement is to have distilled their eclectic range of influences into a cohesive, fiercely modern whole.
JULIAN COPE
Shepherd's Bush Empire,
London, tonight
The one-time Teardrop Explodes star has certainly committed some strange stuff to plastic in recent years. Indeed, there are those who believe he should be committed. Nevertheless, Cope has lost little of his keen pop sensibility and seldom fails to raise a smile.
If you are a Radio 4 listener, you will have heard Peter White. That is not the rash and dogmatic statement it may seem. The "Radio 4 listener" is a creature who loves the whole tone and tenor of the network, who cherishes it as an indispensable companion. White is an important stitch in that seamless robe: regular presenter of the weekly In Touch programme since 1979; host of the quiz series It's Your Round; and last year appointed the BBC's (and probably the world's) first disability affairs correspondent of the airwaves.
Curiously, however, he has never been written about in the national press. This is to overlook one of Britain's most unusual broadcasters, who will probably have increasing exposure not only on radio, but also television, in the next year or so.
In the first episode of his new series See It My Way, on Radio 4 on Wednesday at 2.45pm, 48-year-old White describes himself as "small with buck teeth", though he has never seen a rabbit or any other animal. He was born blind. Father was a carpenter, mother a secretary and home a Winchester council estate. "My eyes are perfect," he says with a smile, "it was the optic nerve that never developed. There was no history of blindness in the family.
"My brother, who is four years older than me, was also born blind. His optic nerve didn't develop, either. The doctors said to my mother that it was a million-to-one accident and to go ahead and have another baby. So she did, and I arrived with the same condition. My three children and my brother's two all have normal eyesight, so we assume it was just an unfortunate combination of genes." He has never seen his children, but seems to feel no sense of loss: "It's not important to me. I approached them through touch, speech and, when they were babies, smell."
Similarly, he does not feel deprived at the loss of blue skies, red roses or green fields: "All colour means to me is black and white. The phrase so often used about the blind, ‘a life of darkness', is cobblers. Most blind people have some perception of light."
From the ages of 5 to 18 he went to special schools in Bristol where, despite Dickensian attitudes, he received a good academic education that he values greatly. He took three A-levels and went to Southampton University to read law (Britain has many blind solicitors and even one blind judge, Master John Wall), but hated the subject's rigidity and left.
He drifted into BBC local radio in the late 1960s when it was just starting, keen to recruit youngsters willing to work for a pittance. He was on Radio Solent when it opened in 1971, presenting the disability slot, and later hosted its morning current affairs and phone-in show for eight years ("I was their ‘shock jock"'). In the 1980s, he also made programmes for Channel 4 and Central, and estimates that half his career has been on disability programmes while the other half has been in current affairs and general progamming: he was on the air after the Brighton bombing and when John Smith died.
His face is set in a permanent smile but his beguiling sense of humour cannot hide astuteness and ambition. He says he would like to present the morning phone-in on Radio 5 Live "if Diana Madill ever moves on" and would love to have a crack at the Today programme, which already has one blind reporter, Gary O'Donoghue. But how could he tell if a politician had shifty eyes? "You go on the timbre of the voice, the amount of time they take to answer and by what you know about them and the subject. I've interviewed a lot of politicians and I've got a good perception of when they're trying to pull the wool over my eyes."
The disability affairs post, for which the BBC provides him with a research assistant, Michelle Lowe ("She acts as my eyes at demos or press conferences") is gaining in importance. White is frequently heard on radio news bulletins and is beginning to be seen more on television. He will be part of the BBC's sports team which later this year covers the Paralympic Games in Atlanta, and hopes to be suggesting ideas to strands such as Panorama and Public Eye on sensitive, interesting topics related to genetic inheritance. White is a broadcaster to watch, even though he has never been able to do that himself.
From Tutankhamen's tomb to the modern orchestra for this week's CD offer, STEPHEN PETTITT blows the brass section's trumpet.
Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, composed in 1942, is about heroic aspiration, of faith in humankind. It could not be scored for any instruments other than brass and percussion, for it is in the nature of brass to celebrate and commemorate, with fanfares military and civic, at solemn processions or in bracing call to hunt. And they combine marvellously well with each other, as our three examples of ensemble music show. Two, played by trumpets and trombones, are from opposite ends of the 17th century: a pair of solemn marches from Purcell's Funeral Music for Queen Mary (1694), and a sonata and canzona by the great Venetian Giovanni Gabrieli. The third is from Elgar Howarth's skilful arrangement for brass and percussion of Mussorgsky's Pictures from an Exhibition (1874), which brilliantly demonstrates how flexible and colourful a whole orchestra of brass can sound.
All brass instruments are basically long metal tubes, tapered to greater or lesser degree, with bells at their ends. They make their sounds by the player pressing his lips against an acorn-shaped mouthpiece and simply blowing a (well-controlled) raspberry.
Horn
The french horn or simply horn is the brass instrument shaped into a circle, with its wide bell facing backwards. Its range is large about three and a half octaves or more and its sound is glowingly expressive, though inevitably the character of the instrument has changed as its design has developed over the centuries. The label derives from the fact that it arrived in England from France at the end of the 17th century, in the reign of James II. The first french horns were made in the 1660s, perhaps in France, perhaps in Germany.
Before the 19th century the horn was valveless, so that only the pitches of the tube's harmonic series could be faithfully reproduced. To circumvent this problem, which meant that it could play only in one key and also that many lower notes in the scale of that key were missing, a system was devised in the early 18th century whereby players could insert or remove crooks of different lengths, so varying the basic pitch of the instrument. Players commonly possessed a whole set of crooks, which enabled them to play in any of the main keys. But clearly this system had its limitations.
The higher the pitch, the closer the intervals between the notes that the natural horn could play, so baroque music for the horn is often written high in the register. Our example from the period is the intricate Quoniam tu solus sanctus movement from the Gloria of Bach's Mass in B minor, where the high horn combines with two bassoons and a solo bass voice. Even where a modern horn is used, the part is notoriously tricky.
A technique developed in the 1760s enabled the player to fine-tune some of the naturally mistuned notes high in the harmonic series. The horn was now held downwards, so the right hand could be used to flatten or when inserted fully sharpen the pitch. This meant, however, that different pitches also had markedly different tone-qualities. This hand-stopping technique was the one for which much classical solo horn music was designed, including Mozart's concertos, written for his great friend, the virtuoso horn player and amicable cheese-shop owner Joseph Leutgeb. The famous hunting-style finale from the Fourth Horn Concerto, K495, composed in 1786, shows that athletic demands were being made at a generally lower register.
The invention of a valve system in 1815 meant that the effective tube length of the horn could be changed in an instant. As with other brass instruments at this time, the horn's capabilities were radically expanded. Once the valve system had been refined, the horn's new flexibility was seized upon eagerly by many composers: by Schubert, in his song Auf dem Strom (1828), for instance, and, even more spectacularly, by Berlioz, in his Symphonie fantastique (1830). The final refinement came with the invention, at the very end of the 19th century, of the double-horn, an instrument that, at the switch of a rotary valve, transforms a horn in F to a horn in B flat. Though there was some resistance to its adoption, this is now the horn most commonly heard in symphony orchestras the world over, and the instrument for which Benjamin Britten wrote so effectively and poetically in his masterly song cycle of 1943, the Serenade for tenor, horn and strings. Our disc includes the wonderful Tennyson setting, Nocturne.
Trumpet
The trumpet is one of the most ancient of instruments. Two simple examples, designed to sound perhaps just one note, survive from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are related to the Israelite shofar, the instrument that brought the walls of Jericho tumbling down. Later came the Roman and Byzantine trumpet, called a tuba, which was between 4ft and 5ft long, and then, in medieval times, an instrument modelled on Islamic trumpets seen during the crusades. By the end of the 14th century the instrument began to assume its familiar winding form. It did not acquire any keying or valve systems, however, until the late 18th and early 19th centuries, so, as with the natural horn, its range was limited to the notes of the harmonic series. Hence, as with the horn, in baroque times there was a preponderance of very high trumpet parts.
Many of Bach's trumpet parts are renowned for their stamina-sapping intricacy. The Second Brandenburg Concerto (1717-18) is scored for four apparently disparate solo instruments: violin, recorder, oboe and high trumpet. In fact, given the right kind of instrument and a skilled enough player, the combination works surprisingly well. Bach pits its brilliance of tone, rather than its capability for sheer volume, against the recorder's sweetness, the violin's athletic singing and the oboe's sinewy richness. But, true to the questioning scholarship of the present day, the version of the first movement on our disc substitutes the horn for the trumpet, allowing us to view the music from another angle.
In Haydn's famous Trumpet Concerto, written in 1795 or 1796, the high pitch of the solo writing of Bach's time has disappeared. Now the instrument sounds flexible and comfortable in its ringing middle register, thanks to the key-system perfected by Anton Weidinger, the Viennese player who commissioned the work. The confidence and brilliance of the modern valved trumpet, which superseded the keyed version after about 1820, is heard to glittering
effect in Shostakovich's First Piano Concerto (1933). In the finale the instrument is very much an equal partner to the solo pianist, but in the extreme mood swings of the first movement it also plays an important, often spikily ironic, part.
Trombone
The trombone evolved in about 1460 as a natural development from the slide trumpet. The slide, its most recognisable distinguishing feature, makes it the most naturally chromatic instrument of the brass family. It is, perhaps, also the hardest to play well, since the player has to learn to position the slide at the right point, with only his ears to help him, in order to achieve the exact pitch. By the early 16th century the instrument, then also known as the sackbut, was highly regarded as the most effective of the deeper-pitched brass instruments, softer and gentler in tone than its rivals. It grew to popularity in early 17th-century Venice, in particular Gabrieli's canzonas often require choirs of them but subsequently rather fell out of favour in most of Europe, though 18th-century Austrian composers continued to write important parts for it in sacred works intended for performance in court chapels. It was in that tradition that Mozart composed the famous obbligato part for the instrument in the Tuba Mirum movement of his Requiem mass.
It took the French revolution and the militaristic music required by those times to resurrect the instrument's wider popularity. Military bands were quick to exploit its capabilities, and it soon made a spectacular entrance into the symphonic repertoire, in the finale of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Its solo repertoire is relatively small. There is a fairly well-known concerto by Rimsky-Korsakov and several by other, minor, composers, as well as a sonata by Hindemith. But it is only comparatively recently that its real flexibility has begun to be realised, with a number of living composers, among whom are Luciano Berio (Sequenza V) and Vinko Globokar (Discours II), contributing important works for it.
Tuba
The tuba is the largest, and also the youngest, of the valved brass instruments. The first examples date from the late 1820s. It established its place in the orchestra relatively quickly, replacing the ophicleide, which had been invented only 10 years or so before it. Moreover, it rapidly became the staple bass instrument of brass bands and led to the development of varieties such as the huge-belled, curvaceous sousaphone and its higher-pitched cousin, the euphonium. There are many varieties of different sizes and using a number of different valving arrangements. But nowadays orchestras tend to deploy a rich-sounding, wide-bore variety.
At the top of its register the tuba has a wonderfully smooth quality that negates its reputation as a perpetual comedian, or otherwise fit only for oompah accompaniments in brass bands. A special variety is the Wagner tuba, invented by that composer for his opera cycle The Ring, where, played by the horn section, these instruments make a formidably powerful, immediately recognisable impact; they were subsequently used by Bruckner and Richard Strauss.
Brass in the orchestra
Trumpets and horns were the first brass instruments to be generally accepted into the orchestra, in the middle of the 18th century.
Beethoven introduced the trombone into the symphony for the first time in the finale of his Fifth Symphony, in 1808. Berlioz was the first great composer to favour the tuba, using it as a replacement for its immediate predecessor, the ophicleide. Now, no contemporary orchestra would be without its minimum complement of four horns, three trumpets and trombones and tuba. Many composers, however, have gone out of their way to expand the section, as Wagner did in his Ring cycle. The effect of that can be heard in the irrepressible Ride of the Valkyries from that great work. But whether few or great in number, brass instruments are unique in their ability to stir an audience to a collective elation that, at the last, can negate even the most dour of performances.
Raymond Gubbay's cheap and cheerful La boheme.
Anyone who can persuade 6,000 people to attend nine performances of La boheme deserves saluting, and that is Raymond Gubbay's achievement in mounting what he cannily called "The Centenary Production" at the Albert Hall, pulling in the punters at prices ranging from £13.50 to £37.
In fact, the "real" centenary production opened on the same day, February 1, in Turin, where Puccini's immortal opera was first performed 100 years before. Gubbay's production starred Katerina Kudriavchenko and Jose Azocar, while Turin fielded Mirella Freni and Luciano Pavarotti, the most celebrated Mimi and Rodolfo of the past 30 years. Of the British opera companies, only Opera North marked the centenary with a revival of Phyllida Lloyd's brilliant staging, set in the 1950s. Both subsidised companies charged higher prices than Gubbay did, and already those hostile to the concept of subsidy for "entertainment for the toffs" are hailing his enterprise as some kind of breakthrough.
Well, up to a point. Only a handful of operas Carmen, La traviata, Tosca are susceptible to the kind of commercial exploitation in which Gubbay specialises (he barely broke even on Turandot with the Royal Opera at Wembley in 1991), so the notion that he could fill the shoes of Jeremy Isaacs is a fanciful one. He could, on the other hand, teach the Royal Opera's counterproductive "public affairs" department a trick or two about marketing.
As for the punters, they paid their money and took their choice. For the price of their tickets they got a fair deal: a cheap and moderately cheerful Boheme, modestly staged on a platform in the middle of the arena and modestly sung, as far as one could tell. Michael Hunt was credited with the "production", and the best that can be said of it is that it was traditional, unspectacular and non-interventionist. Extras and chorus milled around to no apparent purpose, merely to fill the space. The snowfall in Act III was effective, and I liked the priest and choirboys hurrying through the Barriere d'Enfer (Gate of Hell) when the church bells told them they were late for their service.
The singers were amplified, which did their voices no favours at all: Vivian Tierney, who can be a lustrous soprano, sounded tinny and shrieky as Musetta; Azocar's Rodolfo crooned like a pop singer and his intonation was so off-beam that I wondered whether he could hear the orchestra. Kudriavchenko's Mimi was full-throated and full-bodied, a picture of health despite her deathly white make-up in the second half. David Angus conducted the BBC Concert Orchestra. Again, through loudspeakers, it was impossible to judge his achievement except to say that he kept his forces as together as possible under the circumstances. In sum, Gubbay's was an honest, enjoyable, value-for-money Boheme, but one, I think, that makes the strongest possible case for subsidised opera in suitable theatres.
STEPHEN PETTITT meets the legendary Russian who, at 92, is to make his debut in the West.
Admit it. You have never heard of a Russian conductor called Ilya Alexandravich Musin, have you? If not, you are in good company. Neither has the 20-volume New Grove Dictionary of Music. Nor has Arthur Jacobs's useful little Penguin Dictionary of Musical Performers. Yet next week Musin is poised to make his debut in the West, when he conducts the strife-torn Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Barbican in a programme of Mozart's Symphony No 40, Prokofiev's "Classical" Symphony, and Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol. Pretty standard fare, you might think, and relatively undemanding for today's young lions. But Ilya Alexandravich Musin happens to be 92 years old. Connoisseurs of the conductor's art are excepted from the assumptions of my opening. They have no need to go scurrying to their reference books at the mention of his name, for Musin has long been regarded by them as a living legend, the most sought-after teacher of his elusive art. Musin never held a senior permanent conducting position in the old Soviet Union, apart from a spell of four years with the Minsk Symphony Orchestra, largely because of the simple fact that he is a Jew. But the list of his pupils is impressive. Mariss Jansons, Yuri Temirkanov, Valery Gergiev, Jakov Kreisberg, Yuri Simonov have all come under his tutelage, as have the young Britons Sian Edwards and Martyn Brabbins. Musin, who over the past 65 years or so has shaped a whole school of conducting in St Petersburg, still teaches there. But with the collapse of the old Soviet Union came a new freedom to travel.
When we spoke he had just finished a week of master classes at the Royal Academy of Music. He remains sanguine about the restrictions of his former life and reluctant to talk about its professional and personal trials and tribulations. Asked whether he felt frustrated because he could not spread his wings in those days, he replies without a trace of bitterness. "A bird that grows up in a cage does not think about flying anywhere."
A life-long friend of Shostakovich, Musin aspired to be a concert pianist before tendonitis put a stop to that ambition. So he turned to conducting, studying under Nikolai Malko, who himself studied with Rimsky-Korsakov, Liadov and Glazunov. With such a pedigree, Musin feels himself to be very much part of a tradition. It shows in his intense, emotion-centred attitude towards his art. I ask if there is one characteristic of his pupils that they have in common: a style or a sound. "Of course, every conductor is an individual. But what unites my students is their outlook on conducting and on the conductor's art, which is to know how to express the emotional side, the expressive content of the music through their hands." Easily said, but how do you teach that? "There are not many rules in conducting. The professor has to understand what kind of help the student needs. Interpretation is obviously personal, so the main problem is how does he relate his interpretation to the orchestra." There is one black-and-white choice, however, that can be made: with baton or, Boulez-style, without? "It all depends on the conductor's taste. But I always start a conductor without a baton, because I feel it is an obstacle at first. Without it he can relay his ideas more expressively. When he's learned not to be afraid of that, I put the baton back in his hand, because a baton is clearer to the orchestra." What about conducting through things other than hands? "A conductor cannot conduct without having facial expressions, because if a person has emotions they always show in the face. So, except in opera, a conductor should always conduct from memory. With the score in front of him he bows his head and becomes detached from the orchestra. Without a score he is much more with the orchestra."
The conducting profession, I suggest, is notorious for narcissists long on ego and short on talent. Musin agrees that too many achieve disproportionate prominence. "Unfortunately these artificial conductors are viewed as great conductors because the person sitting in the audience does not understand what he is seeing. The one body that truly understands is the orchestra. After five minutes of rehearsal they know if they have a real conductor or not."
How much a performance should be thoroughly prepared and how much left to the moment is a matter of perpetual argument, but Musin is quite sure about the balance that he prefers. "I regarded Knappertsbusch highly, who would only rehearse anything if the orchestra needed help with it. Otherwise he left everything to the evening performance. I remember a curious Russian conductor who rehearsed very methodically, but the evening performance would invariable be completely different from the rehearsals. It worked, because he could do anything with his hands. But a conductor like Mravinsky measured everything in millimetres. He knew precisely how he wanted his sforzando, and it always stayed that way. The performance would sound exactly how he rehearsed it. It came out very dry, very boring."
Is the profession, then, in good shape? "Nowadays we don't have what we used to call the great conductors. But we do have good conductors, such as Muti and Kleiber. The biggest problem is that we have too many conductors who record fantastically and who rehearse fantastically, but they cannot show anything with their hands." So who is his all-time favourite conductor? "Of the western ones, first Knappertsbusch, then Walter and Klemperer." A pause and a twinkle of the youthful nonogenarian eye. "And from the Russians, all of my students." "I think he means himself," adds his interpreter.
Simon Rattle has established the CBSO's reputation as a world-class orchestra and his own as a top conductor. What's next, asks STEPHEN PETTITT.
Sir Simon Rattle cultivated an easy, first-name relationship with them. In rehearsal they would yell out "Simon!" across the platform if they wanted clarification on a particular point. But now one of the most dynamic and enduring musical partnerships in Britain looks set to break up with the announcement last week that Rattle is relinquishing his post as music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra from the end of the 1997/8 season.
Rattle, now 41, has been in charge of the CBSO since 1980. He has been credited with transforming the orchestra into a world-class outfit and, in the process, has seen himself rise inexorably in status among the world's top conductors on the basis of his integrity, his impassioned style, his down-to-earth relationships with players (and critics), and his fervent championship of the new and neglected, for which he has won vast new audiences. Not least, his campaigning has given Birmingham the Symphony Hall, which opened in 1991 and is widely regarded as the best concert hall in the land. He has made serious music matter seriously in that city, and in no small measure he has contributed to its renewal of civic pride. Birmingham's thriving artistic life is not simply a badge, a trapping of luxury, but a vital part of the whole organism, a symptom rather than a mere symbol of civilisation.
But it is Rattle's conducting that has won him most friends. Many conductors expend the same amount of energy as he but achieve less. The difference is that when Rattle makes an extravagant gesture, with hands, body, or frequently eyes, you know that he does so not in order to draw attention to himself but to elucidate for the orchestra's benefit what the music is trying to say. Often he does not beat time at all, but gestures in phrases; music for him is never a matter of notes fitting themselves around a dominant pulse but a series of gestures in sound that add up to an entire drama. Another, equally crucial, element is the realising of as near an ideal colour and balance of sound, in Haydn just as much as in Debussy. If the composer wrote it, it is meant to be heard. It is that desire for lucidity, combined with a strong feeling for drama, that makes his conducting such an overwhelming and, in the end, deeply, often discomfitingly, spiritual experience, as anyone who heard anything from his recent Beethoven cycle will testify.
As Rattle's reputation burgeoned, he was able to exercise increasingly powerful and generous influence in the cause of the good. He famously demanded of his own recording company, EMI, for instance, that he and his orchestra be allowed to record Nicholas Maw's immense orchestral work Odyssey, costly and near-impractical though it was. His philosophy is simply that if something deserves to be done, by hook or by crook it will be done. Similarly, he championed other potentially unpopular causes, such as the Seventh Symphony of Hans Werner Henze and the music of younger composers such as Mark-Anthony Turnage, composer-in-residence with the CBSO for three years, and Judith Weir, who is in the middle of a similar residency. More than once, knighthood or not, he was quick to berate the government when its artistic and musical education policies fell short of his ideals.
At present, everyone is at pains to emphasise that what the resignation means for Birmingham is not out-and-out desertion. Rattle promises that he will continue to work with the CBSO for two months each year a relatively long period in these days of peripatetic conductors, and a longer period than that for which he intends to work for anyone else. At the very least he is committed to finishing his 10-year Towards the Millennium festival, in which each year of the 1990s is devoted to programmes from a corresponding decade of the century. But there can be no doubt that he will no longer be the dynamic figurehead he is now.
Rattle's transformation of the CBSO was not quite instant, but he was quick to enlist a whole host of young players, many of them fresh out of college, to support those of the older guard who had the ability and will to rise to the challenge of this lanky, curly-maned young lion. This mixture of youth and experience was a masterstroke; indeed, such a mix is vital to the continual, sometimes painful, process of self-renewal that any orchestra needs to undergo. More crucially, it was Rattle who went out of his way to secure better terms of service for the orchestra. Once he arrived, rehearsals were properly spaced, musicians had more time off to practise and to be musicians in the wider sense (enabling, for instance, the formation of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group by some orchestral members), and they were paid better. The showing of such practical concern raised morale no end. And any conductor will tell you that an orchestra plays better if its morale is high. Rattle frequently proved it.
What he also proved was that London could no longer automatically count itself as the geographical centre of British music. Indeed, had British Rail the nous to timetable slightly more cannily, so that concert-goers would be able to get back to the capital in time for the last Tubes, there might have been more of a regular exodus to the Midlands on concert nights.
Once Rattle had set his example in Birmingham, other regional orchestras began to consider themselves as potentially world-class rather than provincial bands, and to adopt similar tactics. Andrew Litton, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra's music director since 1988, has proved to be a marvellous inspiration and orchestral trainer. His successor, the Russian Jakov Kreisberg, who took over in 1995, is widely admired for similar reasons. The Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra has been through some rough times, and its conductor, the Czech Libor Pesek, in the post since 1987, has many critics. But the instinct for self-renewal is also strong there, evident in the recent, highly successful refurbishment of the wonderful art deco Philharmonic Hall.
Manchester has also reacted to Birmingham's new ambitions. Its new, self-financing Bridgewater Hall, home to the Halle and BBC Northern Philharmonic orchestras, is scheduled to open in September. Moreover, the Halle appointed the American Kent Nagano in 1992 in order to "do a Rattle" for the then musically ailing orchestra. The signs are that Nagano is, so far, effecting a slower revolution than Rattle in Birmingham in many ways he is a more conservative musician but it is a revolution that is happening just as surely. Ultimately, perhaps, Rattle's legacy will be a more equitable distribution of musical excellence around the country, though cutbacks in the funding of Scottish Opera in Glasgow and the withholding of lottery funds for the stunning but seemingly doomed new opera theatre in Cardiff Bay do not exactly augur well.
It is hard to see how the CBSO will replace such an inspirational leader. If the field is to be restricted to Britons, one possible successor (assuming he does not go back to English National Opera) is Mark Elder, who shares many of Rattle's artistic and political ideals and who, until, recently was the CBSO's principal guest conductor. A less likely option at the moment because he will still be younger than Rattle was in 1980 when the time comes to fill his shoes is Rattle's brilliant young protege, Daniel Harding, currently assisting Abbado in Berlin, who has already stamped his mark on the British and, more lately, European orchestral scenes. It would be a bold appointment, indeed, and given Harding's track record so far he recently deputised for Rattle with spectacular success at short notice in Paris, in a difficult programme that included Schoenberg's Piano Concerto he would probably succeed beyond expectations. The chief snag is that Harding would be inheriting, at a very tender age, an already world-class orchestra built in Rattle's own image, albeit one by all accounts with which he gets on famously. What he needs, possibly even wants, is an orchestra in the same condition as the CBSO was back in 1980, so that the two parties can learn and grow together, just as Rattle and the CBSO did.If the CBSO is to look to a foreign appointee, it will need to lure someone with far more money than Rattle was content to accept, particularly if the incumbent is expected to devote as much of his time to the orchestra as Rattle has. A part-time music director, which Rattle never wanted to be, would be bad news. The orchestra would quickly lose much of its identity and its constant eagerness to surpass itself. But the question should not be just about who would be willing. Who, apart from the already extremely busy Mariss Jansons, would be technically and musically able to sustain Rattle's level of achievement? Perhaps Paavo Jarvi, the CBSO's newly appointed principal guest conductor from next season. The three-year term of his appointment expires in 1999.
Where Rattle goes from here is anyone's guess, since the musical world appears to be his oyster. But in recent years, he has made particularly deep impressions with three orchestras in particular the Boston Symphony, the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic. Of his relationship with the Viennese, he recently told me that they "read me better than any other orchestra, including my own". The VPO does not normally appoint chief conductors or music directors, but if the relationship is as strong as Rattle's statement would suggest, there might be some sort of formal cementing. On the other hand, Boston's dynamic music director, Seiji Ozawa, 60, has been in the post for a quarter of a century and, though both parties deny being anything other than delighted with each other's company, there may be those in New England who feel that it is high time space was found for a younger man.
Certainly, even a permanently peripatetic Rattle a Rattle that does not naturally accord with his avowed preference to work with an orchestra he can call his own will never be short of offers. If that means that ultimately, because of our financial limitations, we shall see less of him in this musically underfunded country of ours, it will be to our considerable detriment.
COLIN McDOWELL sketches the evolution of fashion illustration and its current appeal.
In every century but our own, drawing has been seen as the essential preliminary to producing a finished work of art. The sketch is an intermediary, but vital, stage that has an immediacy and often an intimacy lacking in the finished painting. Spontaneous and fresh, it seems to put us in direct contact with the mind of the artist. We value the paintings, but it is the drawings that we find moving. With the demise of figurative easel painting as the mainstay of art, the importance of drawing has diminished. Many art schools no longer even make it a compulsory study.
But sketching as the basis of a bigger, more important work of art, is only part of the story. Drawing has frequently been an end in itself, especially where speed and precision are paramount in catching a mood of the moment. The illustration of fashionable dress is a prime example. For the past 200 years, an apparently insatiable interest in development in the female mode kept armies of illustrators busy supplying the latest information from Paris to the big cities of Europe and America.
But the real artists of fashion were non-specialists, often painters who drew clothing as an act of discovery. Quite the most brilliant was Watteau, whose sketches of clothed figures show a total understanding of the mechanics of dress. Ingres did the same with his detailed, almost finicky, delineations of 19th-century dress, executed with faultless draughtsmanship. Neither was predominantly interested in fashion except as a means to an end: the examination of clothing and the way it behaves on the body as a preliminary to a painting.
But there were artists for whom the sketch was an end in itself, men who were prominent in the 19th century as illustrators of news stories as well as the fashionable mise en scene. The best were French, and the greatest were Pierre Gavarni and Constantine Guys, of whom Baudelaire said the fire and frenzy of his work was like "an intoxication of the pencil". It was Baudelaire who also pointed out that nothing conveys the aesthetics and morals of a period better than fashion illustration. Certainly, it is true that, in the hand of Guys, the pencil "wrote" a picture as skilfully and precisely as a novel by Balzac.
That was before magazines and periodicals fell in love with photography, the dominant illustrative medium of the 20th century. Fashion illustration has fought a rearguard action for most of this century, but even so, as the Zahm Collection of 20th-century fashion illustration at Simpson in Piccadilly, London, shows, it has been an honourable battle, with drawing holding its own until well into the late 1950s, when it was effectively obliterated by the photographic image.
And artists of stature have emerged. Benito, Georges Lepape and Iribe, who all worked in the 1920s, showed that fashion illustration could be a valid part of mainstream art. If, in some hideous holocaust, all the gallery art of that period disappeared and we were left with Vogue covers alone, posterity would have a very sound idea of the preoccupations and solutions which dominated art at that time.
The 1930s saw the rise of illustrators in the great 19th-century narrative tradition. Eric (Carl Erickson) and Rene Bouet-Willaumez were the Daumiers of the decade. They worked through the 1940s and into the 1950s, joined by men of the calibre of Bernard Blossac, whose 1945 drawings of Paris under the occupation are the equal of anything by Topolski, and Rene Bouche. And it was all men. No great female fashion illustrator has emerged; the work of those who were successful was largely derivative. The nearest we get to a feminine approach is the vapid and effeminate line of Beaton and the decorative preciousness of Erte (Romain de Tirtoff).
Quite why women who have always been part of the fashion-photography scene were not attracted to fashion illustration is by no means clear, but something has surely been lost in not having the precise assessment of the female artist's mind.
But the greatest of all fashion illustrators appeared in the late 1930s and dominated the 1940s until his early death. The decadent and brilliant Christian Berard whose impressions of clothes so infuriated William Randolph Hearst with their subtleties that he dubbed him "Faceless Freddy" and eventually sacked him was an important creative force by any standards.
The most amusing, who surfaced at much the same time, was Vertes, who fully understood the ironies and idiocies of the fashionable life and could brilliantly create the mood of a fashion in half a dozen quickly dashed-off lines. But all the skills, wit and sensitivity meant nothing when the art of colour photographic reproduction was perfected in the early 1960s. Fashion drawing was relegated to the minor pages of magazines and almost totally dismissed from advertisements, although a few examples survive, such as the Berthoud illustration, from the mid-1980s, shown above. And the few artists who carried on had less impact and a reduced status.
Good fashion drawing can convey the spirit and even the spirituality of a dress better than any photograph. The inspired fashion artist starts, as the great couturier, with consideration of the figure. Even when his drawing is abstract a boldy colourgraphic gesture with an ink-laden Chinese brush it encloses a space that has volume and form.
As Cocteau said, the soul of a dress is a body. Good fashion artists, like all artists, once knew that.
The tragedy is that their skills are probably now lost for ever.Zahm Collection, at Simpson, Piccadilly, tomorrow to Mar 30.
JOHN PETER lauds Antony Sher's unforgettable performance as the artist Stanley Spencer in Pam Gems's new play at the National.
I always approach in fear and trembling any play about an artist; but I need not have worried about Stanley, Pam Gems's new play about Stanley Spencer at the Cottesloe. This is not only because it began with Antony Sher, in the title role, standing high up on a gangway at the back of the stage painting a fresco. Any fool can hold a brush and daub at a picture, just as any fool can prowl around with a book in his hand and call himself Trigorin.
No, to portray an artist you need to convey a sense of ferocious single-mindedness; a sense of inhuman attention and self-absorption: you are portraying someone whose alertness to the world around him is profound and detailed but extremely selective. Only politicians can surpass artists, though for very different reasons, in being able to see right through you and take in only what they need to know about you, or nothing at all.
Gems's play is a portrait of the artist as a lost boy, destructive and self-destructive, a vulnerable and dangerous adolescent. Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) was attached to his birthplace, Cookham, the way an affectionate child is attached to its parents or its nanny. The ideas behind his spiritual inspiration as a painter, the notion that Jesus could tread the streets of Cookham and that the Resurrection could be seen as the joyous reawakening of his fellow villagers, has its psychological roots in a kind of emotional agoraphobia which made him cling to this small Berkshire village for comfort and inner nourishment. At the Slade School of Art, where his teachers regarded him as the most original talent they had had for decades, he talked so much about his village that his fellow students called him Cookham.
Sher's portrayal of him is based on a near-miraculous likeness, which is astonishing when you compare the lean, athletic actor with his sharp, hawk-like but guarded features and the diminutive Spencer, height 5ft 3in, modestly unselfconscious and at the same time irresistibly aggressive and charming. His photographs show a small man cautiously peering at the world; his self-portraits suggest a calm visionary, melancholic but fierce, a man who knows all about himself and is not in the least bothered by his knowledge.
Of course, if Spencer had really known all about himself, he would not have destroyed his private life. Sher's performance is a brilliant impersonation of the physical man, achieved with virtually no help from the make-up department; but what makes it unforgettable is his spiritual and psychological understanding of Spencer. Sher has perceived the key to Gems's portrayal, which is that, in Spencer, the child was brother to the man: it remained with him all his life as his troublesome companion, his consolation and destroyer, his chubby, unwashed English Id. Sher has the cocky but stolid walk of villagers, shy but aggressively pigeon-chested, standing with his legs bent slightly outwards like a donkey observing a friendly stranger.
When I say that Sher can suggest he is playing an artist, I mean that he conveys that particular intensity about work which is quite different from other obsessional workers such as sportsmen, journalists or politicians. There is an early scene in which Spencer and his wife sit on the floor and draw one another: it has a trembling, joyful excitement about it like that of adolescents having their first successful sex, full of astonishment and certainty. John Caird's direction is at its most sensitive here; and you can tell from Sher's performance, from his understanding of Spencer's bubbling selfishness, that Hilda is not as important to Stanley as the fact that he, Stanley, is with Hilda and experiencing her comforting sensuality.
Deborah Findlay gives a deeply and subtly sensuous performance as poor Hilda: both earth mother and playmate, watchful and abandoned, and full of that unself-conscious certainty that women experience when they find not only a sexual partner but also a soulmate. However, let's not have too much of this poor Hilda stuff. Gems has clearly researched her subject very thoroughly, and I can only assume that it was a conscious decision of hers to present Hilda Carline as simply the devoted and injured wife-mother. In fact, Hilda was also a devout and high-principled Christian Scientist, and Spencer had always resented, not only her frequent absences at meetings and her hoity-toity friends, but also the dogmatism of her views, which were completely at odds with his own homely and egocentric Christianity. The man who once said that "all things seemed to have to be (sic) memorials for me to love them" clearly took a highly individual view of God's intentions in His Creation; and Spencer was deeply wounded that his soulmate did not share and cherish his own private brand of religion.
Also, though you would hardly guess from that single scene of the two of them drawing each other, Hilda was herself a considerable painter (she is represented in the Tate Gallery), and she was openly critical of some of Spencer's artistic principles. She was a rather heavy, odd-looking woman who was no great shakes as a housewife: Spencer complained bitterly that she never rose before 11.30am and let him get his own and sometimes the children's breakfast. None of these are great crimes; but they created great tensions in the marriage, which made it easier for the immature Spencer to contemplate divorcing Hilda and marrying the grasping Patricia Preece. I am not sure that it is my job to tell Gems that she should have written a different play; but her portrait of Stanley would have been more balanced and more shocking if she had paid more attention to Hilda.
Nor do I think that the scenes with Augustus John, and Spencer's agent, the long-suffering Dudley Tooth, are really worth the playing time. John is really only introduced to make the debatable point that he had, unlike Spencer, sold out to society painting; and the sketch of Tooth is too fleeting to indicate how important he was to both Stanley and Hilda. There is a ghastly moment at a party when Patricia discloses that "Frankie Bacon" told her to consult "the chap in Hampstead ... glasses, beard, weird first name". This turns out to be Freud, who was not, in fact, to arrive in London for at least another year; and in any case, the idea that Freud would have admitted her without an appointment and given her one of his books is ludicrous. Patricia's remark that she phoned "Maynard and Lydia" (ie Maynard Keynes and his wife) for Freud's address sounds perilously like an attempt on Gems's part to leave an embossed visiting card to reassure you of her social credentials.
The frightful Patricia, a practising lesbian who virtually engineered the Spencers' divorce by titillating but never satisfying him sexually, gets a shockingly perceptive performance from Anna Chancellor: fierce, willowy and angularly beautiful like a killer heron, she exudes narcissistic selfishness, sexual maladjustment, snobbish gentility, and a cold, calculating meanness from every pore. Gems gets this catastrophic relationship absolutely right: the emotionally unstable, excitable little man with social and sexual fixations, churned up and blinded by a chic, superficially poised erotic blackmailer who really did refer to him once as "that dirty little Stanley Spencer". Selina Cadell plays her lover Dorothy: an apparently calm but quiveringly sensitive performance full of wariness and weariness and anxiety. Decency can be the most difficult but also the most rewarding thing to impersonate.
After Hilda's death in 1950 and, indeed, even before, Spencer came to feel far more guilt-stricken than Gems leads you to believe. He realised how criminally foolish he had been. For nine years he went on writing long letters to Hilda as if she were still alive. The poor man never actually had a lot of sex, however much he prattled on about the artist's need for busy polygamy. He was more of a solitary than he realised. The man who once said that "God created mankind because He felt lonely" obviously thought of himself as the God-like artist whose task was to comfort himself. This is how you see him at the end. Sher's face has lost its chubbiness; it now looks more drawn and battered an old lost boy in his own very real Never Land. The lights rise slowly on the paintings that line the walls of the Cottesloe (designer, Tim Hatley), and you are left with a glowing, submarine view of the artist as the lonely creator, smiling brightly in his own darkness.
VALLEY SONG, Royal Court
This play is like a warm, generous, quizzical poem: an elegy for the past and the song of hope. At 63, Athol Fugard has lived to see what most people of his generation probably never expected in their lifetime: a liberated South Africa. His new play, a two-hander, begins with a character played by himself, called The Author, who then becomes Abraam Jonkers, an old coloured man living with his 17-year-old granddaughter Veronica. Fugard's voice and bearing indicate subtly, but unmistakably, each change of role. The Author is about to buy the land, part of which Jonkers has lived on and cultivated all his life, though it is not legally his. The Author longs to own a piece of the Karoo: for him, it is a release, almost an opt-out. But will he let Jonkers stay? Veronica loves her grandfather but feels like a prisoner of the land: she longs to begin a new life in Johannesburg. This is a play about ends and beginnings and the uncertainties of being in between. It is more a text than a play the writing is thoughtful, lyrical and meditative, but it lacks theatrical tension: the tension within people, the dramatic unpredictabilities of feelings. This is a play you have to follow with the concentration demanded by a poetry recital. It asks grave questions about trust, about the real meaning of changes, and the unease brought on by sudden freedom. Its tone is cautious but hopeful and sometimes a little sentimental. Fugard himself directs, and Esmeralda Bihl supports him with a poised, joyous and unforgettably glowing performance. JP
BLOOD LIBEL
Norwich Playhouse
Arnold Wesker's new play is beyond any doubt the worst new work by an internationally established playwright I have seen in the past two decades. It is about a young boy called William, found murdered in Norwich in 1144 and later canonised. The murder was falsely blamed on the local Jewish community, and people drew a parallel between it and the killing of Jesus which was the original Blood Libel. Some 25 minutes of the 110-minute play are taken up by tedious preliminaries: chanting, sermons, a clumsily mimed account of William's birth and a prophecy about his uniqueness. You also hear a story about "a certain Greek city" where Jews and Christians once lived peacefully together; but when a Jewish boy went to communion his irate father thrust him into the furnace. Outraged Christians rescued him and found him miraculously alive. Wesker seems to use the story to present his credentials as an objective historian: look, he is saying, I know there are lots of perfectly decent Christians, and nothing you are going to see should be taken down and used in evidence against me. As it turns out, the plodding tameness of the play makes such special pleading entirely superfluous. Anti-semitism is presented in the most sketchy way. No Jews appear at all. The long debate between two priests about the significance of where William is to be buried takes place in a dramatic vacuum. Irina Brown's production is plodding and slow. I shall not comment on the acting as the actors are not required to act, only recite. The final, bizarre revelation, that William's murderer is a converted Jew who nurses a deep hatred for his former co-religionists, is on a par with crackpot theories that the Holocaust occurred because Hitler was a Jew. JP
THE LONG AND THE SHORT AND THE TALL, Albery
In this transfer of their off-off-West End production, Counterpoint Theatre Company get to show what some decent English actors can do with a decent English play. Willis Hall's 1957 drama about a British army patrol caught out in the Malayan jungle during the Japanese march on Singapore in 1942 is showing its age. The language may have ripened since the original student production, but there is something Gaumont-British about the choice of characters, with only a southern English public schoolboy subaltern missing from the careful selection of regional types. The moral dilemma about what to do with a captured Japanese soldier takes time to emerge. The director Paul Jerricho's squad of eight look and sound the part, with Mark Arden's authoritative Sergeant and Kevin Dingham's stroppy East Ender squaddie making the most of the best lines. What emerges most strongly is the strange mixture of testosterone and sentiment that constitutes the average British male. RH
THE ENTERTAINER
Birmingham Rep
John Osborne's play was written soon after the 1956 Suez fiasco, which was the greatest collective trauma this country had suffered since the Boer war. Osborne presented his compatriots with a shocking image of themselves as a raucous, seedy, clapped-out family. I think this was the first English play to signal, with a total lack of tact and inhibition, that both the age of One Nation and the culture of deference were over. Had it not been for the presence of Olivier in the role of Archie Rice, the play would have been greeted with howls of execration. But then, as Archie's daughter Jean puts it, nobody ever listens to anything. Anthony Clark's bruising, vitriolic production contains a bruising, vitriolic performance by David Ross as Archie: a prickly, self-centred old fruit, vicious, garrulous, hardened by emotional self-abuse. I thought at first he was a little short on self-loathing and despair, but no: Ross builds up Archie gradually and brings him to an unforgettably pitiless ending. Clark's production starts too slowly, and there's too much colourful flim-flam in the scene changes; but the whole thing has a savage force, and there is a scorching performance from Lucy Briers as the wounded Jean. JP
THE CHANGING ROOM
Duke of York's
The Royal Court Classics season comes to a rousing close with James Macdonald's gritty and grandiose revival of one of David Storey's best plays (1971). You'd have thought it had everything going against it: three acts, an all-male cast of 22 and the dingy changing-room of a Yorkshire rugby league team for a setting. There's virtually no plot. A game takes place outside. Inside, the atmosphere is one of dogged determination and heavy macho camaraderie. These are boisterous but secretive men who don't give much away. You get a few glimpses of private lives and a sharp picture, even in these sweaty surroundings, of the deeply ingrained English sense of the social pecking order. These men are the humbly paid gladiators of the working-class north, and Storey's play is an account of endurance, hard, humane and eloquent. Brendan Coyle, Ewan Hooper and Philip Whitchurch lead a cast that
works together in one of the most unselfish and beautifully observed pieces of company acting I've seen in years. JP
LEE EVANS
Lyric
Even on an off-ish day and he was more sweaty-jittery than usual on the opening night of his first West End run this mega-physical comedian leaves you in no doubt of his talent. It's not the material that counts, it's the turbocharge he gives it. A gag about tired motorway food isn't normally the stuff of stardom: Evans's impassioned impression of an exhausted baked bean, on the other hand, definitely is. You can see why Hollywood beckons. He's a one-man special effect who can morph body and face to unnatural extremes the L-shaped agony of a long-haul flight, the idiotic delight of a learner butterfly on landing. But the actor in him is also coming to the fore, and it's his voice that's the surprise of the show, sliding from neanderthal grunting to snooty smoothness, not to mention a fine line in crooning. Ignore the nervous giggles, relish the gems in between. HH.
HUGH CANNING on a pianist who deserves to be a household name.
Ten years ago, the name of Maria-Joao Pires was known primarily to concert-goers and record-buyers in France, although it had filtered through to British piano buffs who managed to come by her Bach and Mozart albums for the French company Erato. By 1986, when the Portuguese pianist made her belated British debut at the age of 41, she was a mature artist with a cult following and a reputation for eccentricity in her personal life, rather than her music-making and caprice. A decade later, she has moved to the higher -profile Deutsche Grammophon label, but she remains an enigmatic, slightly other-worldly figure: the rigours of a professional career especially the now requisite PR work seem alien to this charming, witty woman, whose playing of Mozart recalls celebrated predecessors such as Clara Haskil and Annie Fischer. Pires's Mozart stands out among her contemporaries' for its remarkable combination of immaculate technique and musical insights that make even the most familiar works sound fresh-minted.
Despite her widely acclaimed qualities in Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann music that the great Artur Schnabel praised as "better than it can be played" she remains, to DG's evident frustration, a connoisseur's artist rather than a household name. It is partly Pires's fault: her appearances are rare enough and she has a habit of cancelling at short notice. She leads a Good Life kind of existence on a remote Portuguese farm, where she has brought up four daughters by several fathers she has two young grandchildren and recently adopted a South American baby boy and where she and her "commune" milk cows and feed chickens when they are not teaching music to underprivileged children. It is an indication of her nonconformism that only recently has she been persuaded to have a phone line installed.
There is nothing eccentric or nonconformist about her music-making. At the Wigmore Hall 10 days ago she chose music that lies at the centre of her repertoire: Schumann's Three Romances Op28, Mozart's Sonata in Bflat K333 and approximately half of Chopin's output of nocturnes, the Op 9, 15, 27 and 32 sets. Pires has always admitted that her physical limitations small hands, fragile body have restricted her repertoire (she doesn't play the Brahms concertos or music by the Russian romantics), but in her chosen field she has striven for standards that few of her contemporaries can match. In short, she is a perfectionist.
Purely from the technical point of view, I cannot recall such flawless playing in a solo recital. And despite her diminutive stature there is nothing small about the sound she makes. Even in the Mozart, a little miracle of a performance with scales and runs like chains of the most beautiful pearls, each note a perfectly formed and articulated "jewel" of sound, but integrated into an irresistibly lovely "singing" phrase she opted for a robust, weighty, but never clangorous, tone that never prettified the music. Fleet and witty in the outer movements, she made something very special of the central andante cantabile, in which Mozart indulges magically in surprising harmonic shifts and revels in sinuous chromaticisms.
In Schumann and Chopin, too, she delights the ear with a long-breathed bel canto phraseology, exploiting a huge dynamic spectrum, but never self-consciously. Her powers of concentration are legendary, yet her music -making always sounds of the moment, entirely spontaneous, yet free of the finger-faults that can bedevil even the most fabulously equipped virtuosos. It is a measure of Pires's specialness that virtuosity is always a means to a musical end, never an end in itself. I could have gone on listening to her Chopin all night, but she knows the value of making herself scarce. Despite the cheers of a full though, incomprehensibly, not capacity house, she conceded only one encore.
Happily, she is now making records more prolifically than ever before and for a label that believes in promotion and marketing. To date, her DG recordings include her second complete survey of the Mozart piano sonatas, Chopin's Second Piano Concerto coupled with the 24 preludes, and "remakes" of some of the Mozart concertos that were the glory of her Erato years. Her first coupling of K449 and K537, with conductor Claudio Abbado, was let down by the old-fashioned "whipped cream" sound of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra's strings, which tends to engulf the vital woodwind solos in Mozart. Wisely, and predictably, she and Abbado have now turned to the brilliant Chamber Orchestra of Europe for their new coupling of the Gmajor K453 and the famous Cmajor K467 (DG 439 941-2). In the sublime andantes of these wonderful works, Pires engages in a moving dialogue with the wind soloists of the COE, who really deserve star billing alongside pianist and conductor. This is big, romantic though not sentimental Mozart, more subjective perhaps than Andras Schiff in his acclaimed Decca recordings or Mitsuko Uchida's pristine set for Philips. But Pires stakes her claim to the pinnacles of Mozartian interpretation, alongside Curzon, Brendel, Perahia, Lupu, Kovacevich and Larrocha. If her DG recordings don't develop into a complete cycle, this new record will become a treasured collector's item, I'm sure.
So too, I suspect, will her new Bach disc (DG 447 894-2), released to coincide with her London appearance. Against the current trend, Pires has chosen a "representative" programme consisting of one partita (No1 in Bflat), one English suite (No3 in Gminor) and one French suite (No2 in Cminor). Pires's Bach is no less enthralling than her Mozart, although it will be more controversial, for she "characterises" the music far more than is fashionable today, when pianists, conscious of the fact that they are "stealing" this music from authentic harpsichord and clavichord players, tend to play Bach straight. In Pires's agile hands, the fast dance movements have an exhilarating momentum, and the range of colour, light and shade she brings to the sarabandes is breathtakingly beautiful. Despite the multiplicity of complete recordings of the partitas and the French and English suites, on both piano and plucked keyboard instruments, I urge Bachians to sample this marvellous record, which, I suspect, is destined for my top 10 discs of the year.
Concerto soloist, solo recitalist and chamber musician: Pires's versatility is to be sampled in all three guises. Next month DG will issue a recording of Brahms trios, with the French violinist Augustin Dumay and the Chinese cellist Jian Wang, but her partnership with Dumay personal as well as musical has already produced outstanding recordings of the lovely Grieg sonatas, and more recently a Franco-Belgian programme comprising the great Cesar Franck and Debussy sonatas and shorter pieces by Ravel, including the concert rhapsody Tzigane (DG 445 880-2). In this repertoire, Dumay a much underrated player approaches the Grumiaux class, and that great Belgian player, in his three recordings of the Franck, never enjoyed the partnership of a pianist of Pires's calibre. Her mastery of the fiendish piano part shows just how "big" a player this slight, fragile, unutterably lovely musician can be when she wants to.
The mega-musical rules the West End but how many more will there be, asks CLIVE DAVIS
As he looked back on the year's musicals, that astute observer of the entertainment business, the American writer William Goldman, could find few reasons to be cheerful. True, a few spectacular, long-running shows continued to amass fortunes for their creators; but most of the new arrivals ran up catastrophic losses. And where were all the good songwriters? The old masters were dead or doddering, the young ones mostly dull. "For the first time in this century," he lamented, "our supply of composers has run dry."
To many theatre-goers scratching around for a show worth seeing or simply one that they could afford to see that assessment reflects all too accurately the state of play in the 1990s. They would probably be even more depressed to learn that Goldman was writing more than a quarter of a century ago. Today Goldman is rather better known as a movie man his credits include the screenplay for All the President's Men but his verdict on the world of song and dance seems as pertinent now as it was in 1968. Hello, Dolly! was still running when he sat down to write his book. And what was one of the most hyped openings of 1995 on Broadway? Precisely. Hello, Dolly!, with the spry septuagenarian Carol Channing reprising her original starring role.
When the most commercially successful composer of all time, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, joins in on the side of the pessimists, something is clearly amiss. On the very day two weeks ago that Cats became the longest-running musical on both sides of the Atlantic, he was to be heard lamenting the decline of contemporary pop music in general, and musical theatre in particular. Chart songs were passing through a grim period, he told a reporter, and in spite of the incentive offered by songwriting competitions, no outstanding new lyricists and composers were emerging: "I feel I'm working in a vacuum. I can't think of any other time when there has been so little going on."
Having riled the pop fraternity who responded with sarcastic references to the immortal melodies of Starlight Express Lloyd Webber indulged in some discreet back-pedalling last Wednesday when he took his productive fingers along to the Rock Circus in Piccadilly in order to have them cast in bronze for the tourist haunt's Wall of Fame. His comments, he explained, had been taken out of context. In fact, he felt that, in terms of melody at least, pop was actually looking healthier over the past year than it had for perhaps a decade.
Still, he stood by his observations on the dearth of fresh talent in the theatre. At present he is pondering a joint initiative with Sir Cameron Mackintosh as a means of unearthing new writers. A way must be found, he says, to reconcile the divergent styles of stage music and popular song. Starlight Express was, as far as he was concerned, one of the last attempts to use the demotic language of rock. "It's important that musical theatre keeps its links with pop otherwise it atrophies," he continued. "That's one reason why you have all these nostalgic, backward-looking shows at the moment."
Lloyd Webber, it has to be said, will be adding to the sense of deja vu in the West End this year. When the renovated Lyceum Theatre reopens its doors this autumn, it will be with a 25th anniversary production of Jesus Christ Superstar. Another early example of his oeuvre, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, books into the inelegantly named Labatt's Apollo Hammersmith later this month.
Meanwhile, Pete Townshend's Tommy, which is approaching its 30th birthday, arrives at the Shaftesbury Theatre next month following a successful Broadway run. Mackintosh will haul in his latest blockbuster in June with a £3.5m staging of Martin Guerre, the latest collaboration from Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg, creators of Les Miserables and Miss Saigon.
In the era of the so-called mega-musical, mounting a new show has become an ever more prohibitive and risky venture. Only the hardiest producer dares venture into an arena where the likes of Metropolis, King and Moby Dick have come so expensively unstuck. The West End's latest unintentional farce is, undoubtedly, the American death-row satire, The Fields of Ambrosia, which opened to incredulous reviews last week.
If even City of Angels, one of the most urbane musicals of recent years, can meet with a premature end, there is little hope for its lesser rivals, says Kurt Ganzl, author of the monumental Encyclopaedia of Musical Theatre. "The overall audience figures for musicals are probably greater now than at any time in history, but those people are going to see a much smaller number of shows.
"A musical such as City of Angels that asks you to listen to witty lyrics will struggle to survive now. In the past, when we had the invasion of big American pieces, the smaller musicals, such as Salad Days (a revival of which opens in London in April), were still coming up in the background. That doesn't seem to be happening today. I suppose Blood Brothers is the one small successful British show of recent times." Gerald Bordman, author of American Musical Theatre, believes that the ever-widening schism between theatre music and youth-oriented pop music has further diminished the appeal of the stage. By following the example of the pop concert and relying more and more on amplification and sheer spectacle, the musical has sacrificed much of its human intimacy.
Also, as Deena Rosenberg, founder of the music theatre programme at New York University, points out, a swathe of talent has been lost to the television and film studios of Hollywood. One effect of this fragmentation is that young composers and lyricists are less likely to hone their craft under a mentor. Rosenberg's programme the only graduate writing course of its kind in America attempt so rekindle the old co-operative ethos with the help of "master -teachers" such as the director Hal Prince.
"I don't think there's a dearth of talent out there. It just needs investors," says Rosenberg. "You have to remember that Oscar Hammerstein had a lot of flops before Showboat, and more again between Showboat and Oklahoma. In those days there were more opportunities to try things out. I don't think it's so bad to have mega-musicals, but that shouldn't be the only type of show we have."
In New York the refurbishment of 42nd Street is slowly returning the old midtown strip to something approaching its former glory. Whether the same can be done for the traditional Broadway show is another matter. Prince, for one, has described his nostalgia for his early years in the profession, before the advent of television, when there were still a dozen producers presenting one new play or musical each year, and as many composers, lyricists and librettists writing a new musical each season.
Yet that very accumulation of expertise may have been the undoing of the American musical. That, at least, is the view of Mark Steyn, whose account of the current malaise will be published by Faber later this year.
"When I hear young writers in New York, I have a sense that they're having trouble crawling out from under the weight of this great line that goes back to Jerome Kern or Rodgers and Hammerstein. They're asking themselves how Jule Styne would have done it. Everyone knows too much.
"When Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice were starting out, they didn't know what the hell they were doing. Whatever you think of Lloyd Webber's style, he does have that element of surprise. If you were going to adapt TS Eliot's poems, would you do it his way? No, you wouldn't."
Wary of Stephen Sondheim's "intellectual chic", Steyn maintains that too many American songwriters have broken faith with the tastes of the broader public. Whatever the shortcomings of Lloyd Webber's productions, he does at least manage to find a halfway-house between "post-rock pop music" and traditional show tunes.
Perhaps, as Steyn points out, there is another reason not to write off the musical just yet. As rock music splinters into a multitude of fads and dance crazes, the musical could well regain its place as the true crucible for gifted lyricists and composers. Having learnt, at last, that not everyone can be singer-songwriters in the Lennon and McCartney league, we might begin to learn to appreciate the old division of labour.
Anyone can make music, thanks to computer software that even inspired the father of ambient sound, Brian Eno.
‘Here's a forum where people basically get up and make fools of themselves singing in public," Tod Machover, professor of music and media at
the Massachusets Institute of Technology's Media Lab, told New Scientist recently. "Who would have thought that they would want to go and do that?"
Machover was discussing karaoke bars, of course, and he cited them as evidence that, given half a chance, people like to make music. It is just that, today, they are rarely given the chance. You could sum it up with that old cliche: in the old days we used to make our own entertainment. Like most cliches, it's based on truth. Families really did gather round the piano and sing popular songs. Today, when we hear more music than ever before, fewer and fewer of us actually create it.
This may be about to change. Thanks to developing computer technology, two assumptions that we've tended to make about music in the 20th century are about to be challenged. The first is that music is something made by other people for us to hear; the second is that a piece of music sounds the same every time you hear it. To take the former assumption first, visitors to the Royal Festival Hall's Now You See It weekend (March 7-10) can find out about the future of music in two ways. They can go to the Hypersymposium and listen to the views of some professional music creators, including Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, Howie B and Robin Rimbaud. Or they can attend the Hyperevent and create new kinds of music themselves, using the "hyperinstruments" developed by Machover.
Machover and his MIT colleagues have been working on new types of instruments that anyone can play. Their names the Gesture Cube, the Rhythm Tree, the Sensor Chair will give you an idea of how they work; essentially, a person's movements are translated into musical notes. No need to learn technique, or practise scales for hours just wave your arms around.
The revolution has already begun thanks to digital technology, much of today's popular music is made by people who are not, by any traditional definition, musicians at all. (It's life imitating the lament of the older generation they really can't play their instruments.) Indeed, one of the most important pop genres of the past few years was founded on a conscious denial of musicianship. Acid house owes its distinctive sound to something called the Roland 303 Bassline. It was designed as a computerised bass-player for solo performers; you programmed in a bass part and the 303 played it back while you strummed and sang along over it. Except nobody could programme it the procedure was so complicated. The only way was just to bash a lot of buttons randomly, then listen to what you'd just created. If you liked it, you kept it. If you didn't, you'd delete it and start again. The sounds that were created like this (bearing little relation to any melodies a human being would consciously create), formed the basis of the acid house sound.
If acid house illustrates how the way music is made is changing, it has also prompted a shift in the way many of us listen to music, since it was one of the prime reasons for the re-emergence of ambient music. First developed by Brian Eno in the mid-1970s, ambient was, in his own words, designed to be "as ignorable as it is interesting".
"Acid house was such an outpouring of energy that the inevitable response was for ambient to arise as the polar opposite of this madhouse," says the journalist and musician David Toop, whose recent book Ocean of Sound traces the history of ambient. In fact, the book does more than that; it traces the gradual erosion of musical categories over the 20th century (starting from the day in 1889 when Debussy first heard Javanese music and realised that music didn't have to follow Western conventions).
The accompanying double CD compilation, also entitled Ocean of Sound, illustrates how music that we might think belongs to different genres actually has much in common. The compilation doesn't just stretch our definition of ambient music, it stretches our definition of music itself. As well as recognised ambient figures such as Brian Eno and the Aphex Twin, it includes The Velvet Underground and My Bloody Valentine, Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock. Debussy and Erik Satie fit nicely alongside recordings of bearded seals, howler monkeys and water chimes.
Such a collage of music and sound makes more sense to us now than it would have done 10 years ago. The arrival of the "chill-out room" and the success of groups such as The Orb has accustomed many of us to hearing music of many genres alongside each other. "People seem less tribal these days," says Toop, "less locked into listening to one style of music as a definition of their lifestyle. They have a much more fluid approach to wandering over the boundaries, not just in terms of genre, but in terms of what they would describe as pop music and what is art music, what is difficult music and what is easy music." In his book, Toop quotes Debussy's post-Javanese music manifesto: "I would like to see, and I will succeed myself in producing, music which is entirely free from motifs, or rather consisting of one continuous motif which nothing interrupts and which never turns back on itself."
Debussy would have loved Koan a new software product that writes music exactly like that. If Koan succeeds, it will be because the way we listen to music is changing, because the kind of music Koan excels at creating is open, unstructured ambient music. And if Koan does succeed, it will inevitably lead to more of us getting involved in making music. Koan doesn't actually write the music. First, you enter on a computer keyboard some rules for it to work by: tell it what instruments you want to play, what key and what scale they should play in, and how they should interact. Then it begins producing music according to your rules. A musician would be able to guide Koan towards a certain style of music, but somebody without any musical training could quickly get a decent sound out of it.
Intriguingly, it writes music that never repeats, but just constantly evolves. And although Debussy isn't around to appreciate this, it has been noted by Eno. Soon you'll be able to buy a Brian Eno edition of Koan the software, plus some pieces that Eno has composed using it (or, rather, some sets of rules that Eno has established that will generate new music every time you play them).
Eno has coined the term "generative music" to describe his Koan pieces. He sees Koan as more than just a novelty; in fact, he thinks it just might be the future of music. "I remember reading the Reith lectures given in 1963 by the art historian Edgar Wind. He said that musical reproducing devices such as gramophones and tape recorders were just glorified music boxes. At first I was shocked, but then I thought, ‘he's right'. They just play the same thing over and over again. Suppose generative music had existed first, suppose we were used to hearing pieces by great composers that just kept on evolving, and then someone came along and invented the record player and said, ‘Look, I've got a machine that plays the same bit of music over and over.' You'd say, ‘So what?"'
So, the music you hear in the future may exist without riffs or motifs and it could be different every time you hear it. But most important, it might be you who wrote it (with a little help from Koan or a hyperinstrument.) As the 21st-century cliche will no doubt have it: in the old days they used to have their entertainment made for them.
DADDY YOD
France has always benefited willingly from the musical input of the tropics, and the French Antilles are still full departements of their former coloniser, unlike Jamaica and Trinidad, the UK's equivalents. Guadeloupe-born Yod sings ragga, but with a distinctly Antillean lilt, and his classic albums Redoubtable and King Daddy Yod were so great that his most recent anaemic effort, Le Survivant, can be given the benefit of the doubt.
ALAIN SOUCHON
An actor, he has a 25-year career as a highly accomplished and successful singer-songwriter behind him. Gangling, vulnerable, rumpled persona linked to light melodic voice and finely honed capacity for humorous, but poignant, lyrics.
JULIETTE
One to annoy young modernists and Piaf-haters. Reprises the style of the classic chanson artists, even down to the exaggeratedly rolled Rs of pre-microphone days. But her texts are so interesting try the Fellini-esque imagery of La Baraque aux Innocents and her arrangements so good, that the hint of kitsch is more than compensated for. Album title Irresistible is self-parody: she's fat and bespectacled.
DOMINIQUE A
A darker, minimalist Souchon for the 1990s, seeing himself in the tradition of Jacques Brel and Barbara, with a touch of Lou Reed.
Nominated as Revelation of the Year in next month's Victoires de la Musique awards.
Is French pop as bad as its critics say? Not at all PHILIP SWEENEY hears good reasons to tune in to the chansons.
Musical Frog-bashing is a perennial pleasure among Anglo-Saxon commentators, and another minor spasm of it greeted the recent French government increase in legal quotas for French-language music on the nation's radios. "One hundred per cent of French pop is awful," opined Bryan Appleyard in The Independent. "About the best they could do was Johnny Hallyday." Those of similar tastes should consider postponing French trips until March, or avoiding contact this month with radio, television, cinemas, cafes, schools, community centres and other carriers of French popular culture although such people presumably do so, anyway.
For the third year running, February has been declared Les Semaines de la Chanson in France, and a tidal wave of promotions, funded to the tune of Fr5.5m by the Ministere de la Culture et de la Francophonie and a dozen music industry organisations is about to break. Its aim, as with the radio quotas, is to boost the consumption, and therefore production, of new French-language pop, and thereby repel the Anglo-Saxon invasion.
In Douai, the postmodern chanteuse Juliette will top the bill in a workshop at the College Andre Canivez, also featuring a delegation from Quebec, predecessor and model in francophone activism. In La Rochelle, the Lycee Condorcet will again instal karaoke machines to incite pupils to sing along with Nino Ferrer and Barbara. In Limoges, at the own-goal-scoringly named Centre Culturel John Lennon, the punk chanson outfit Les Garcons Bouchers will demonstrate their (very good) sonic amalgam of Edith Piaf and a chainsaw. Across the country, 700 cinemas will show a selection of French pop clips, radio and television will gibber with special events, and record stores will give a free compilation CD of francophone artists to anyone who spends Fr250, whether they like it or not.
The French have always taken culture seriously the couturier-clad groover Jack Lang, as minister of culture, was the most consistently popular politician of the Mitterrand era and the Semaines and the radio quotas fit a long-standing interventionist pattern. Lang's successor, the squat technocrat Jacques Toubon, may have looked a bit frumpish, but in overseeing the introduction of these latest initiatives showed himself to be just as tenacious a supporter of French music "Ca swingue autant que le reste" (It swings as much as the rest), as he once averred stoutly. With Toubon's ascent to the ministry of justice, the latest culture boss, a bright young right-wing surgeon named Philippe Douste-Blazy, is hot on the case, and his package of measures, announced at the launch of the Semaines de la Chanson, was awaited with interest teams of commandos, perhaps, to sink consignments of Michael Jackson CDs suspected of heading for French ports? In the event, Douste-Blazy went for yet more subsidies to small concert halls, musical education and so on, and, a potential Euro hot potato this, because it would need uniform application across the continent, the reduction of Vat on records.
It was the allegedly overwhelming penetration of Anglo-Saxon multinational music, taking up to 90% of airtime on some radio stations, and the decline of the specialist, fully stocked record shops in favour of cut-price supermarkets selling a small range of hit titles, that prompted the government, lobbied by the record companies, to introduce the radio quotas last year, in a graded programme which reached its full operating level on January 1, 1996. Now, any radio station whose weekly French popular music output as monitored by Ipsos, a private listening company falls below 40%, of which half must be "new artists", is subject to a series of sanctions, from warning letters through fines to withdrawal of licence. The quota system has certainly aroused controversy. "Stupid and malicious," the newspaper Liberation editorialised, calling the law censorship and comparing it to "obliging manufacturers of pate a macher, or as some insist on calling it, chewing gum, to include 40% of Cambrai mint humbug and Montelimar nougat".
Despite initial talk of appealing to the European Court of Justice, radio stations seem resigned to complying, even if one, the Paris rock station OuiFM, has decided simply to play its entire francophone quota at the weekend, when nobody is listening. Supporters of the quota system cite similar legislation in 1986, which obliged the television networks' film output to be 40% French, thus creating a demand, albeit semi-artificial, which has been instrumental in maintaining French film production as the highest in Europe.
Do the various government music initiatives look like having the same effect, or indeed any effect? In the case of the Semaines de la Chanson, the intended results are long term and difficult to quantify, says Danielle Molko, co-ordinator of the Semaines, while pointing to the multiplying of the number of events in successive editions of the Semaines as progress in itself. As for the radio quotas, some commentators consider them to be a factor in last year's boom in French rap, as artists and record companies jump even more swiftly on the rap bandwagon, realising that the radio stations, strapped for new francophone material, are casting their playlist nets a lot more widely.
Curiously, in all the debate surrounding the quotas, a more fundamental question goes unasked: whether the mere fact of using French-language lyrics in an otherwise impeccably US-copied production, is sufficient. If the intention is to maintain national identity in the face of American-led global uniformity, and at the same time to silence the Anglo Frog-bashers, surely something more vigorously (or languorously) Gallic is required.
The French rap boom, much vaunted by organisations such as the Bureau Export de la Musique France, a Paris-based quango with offices in Germany, Holland and the United States, is a case in point. It is true that MCSolaar, the genre leader, is both a good street poet and a distinctively French street poet, as are, at a pinch, certain other leading contenders Menelik, Les Sages Poetes de la Rue. It is also true that some artists, notably the Marseille-Toulouse axis of Les Fabulous Troubadors and Massilia Sound System, with their amusing Occitan lyrics on local issues, make a certain case for rap as an heir of European, as well as Afro-American, traditions. Still, the essence of the genre and its attendant mannerisms, from caps to graffiti, is straight mimicry of American trends, and the sociological analysis sometimes advanced for the rap boom the growing similarity of poor French banlieues to American ghettos is a telling admission of the inevitability of US cultural supremacy: only an American musical genre is imaginable, the dodgy logic runs, as an expression of any urban development experienced in America.
It is important, however, to be realistic about American influence, which is an ineluctable fact of 20th-century music. To exclude it would require the legal substitution of guitar, keyboards and everything since the Auvergnat bagpipe. Generations of great French artists, from the Gershwin and Crosby-influenced Charles Trenet to the inveterate bricoleur and anglophile Serge Gainsbourg, have managed to absorb Anglo-Saxon influence, yet retain the distinctive qualities of French song. Among these are the supremacy of the lyric and its intimately musical relation to the voice, a flair for poignancy, or realism, or sarcasm, a reservoir of melody somehow linked with Europe and the classics, and separate from the blues, however fond French songwriters are of using the word blues in their lyrics. Plenty of excellent and successful French artists work in an area encompassing elements of pop, rock and French song (see box), while recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in the greats of chanson. Some are even acquiring icon status in francophobe Britain witness Blur's and Jimmy Somerville's excursions with Francoise Hardy, and a record just out by St Etienne Daho, a combination of the French singer Etienne Daho and St Etienne, the British group named for some reason after a French industrial town of particular grimness. Steve Dagenham would be an approximate English rendering of the new group's name or Etienne Dagenham to keep it 40% French.
Can theatre get hip enough to attract a younger audience without making itself a laughing stock, asks ANDREW SMITH
‘One of the most thrilling things was when the lights went down and this beat music came in: the young people in the audience just roared, some standing up and a few danced. Such direct communication with the crowd was so exciting."
Mark Rylance was not describing a first visit to a pop concert or club. The newly appointed artistic director of the Globe theatre was talking about his recent production of Macbeth at Greenwich. He and the rest of the cast decided to relocate the play in the present day, with the murderous thane appearing as a shaven-headed cult devotee (he arrived onstage with Banquo in a sawn-off Ford Escort) and Macduff as a new age traveller. In the title role, Rylance delivered his lines in a Tarantino-esque, Pulp Bard monotone, and Jane Horrocks, the ambitious Lady M, nightly emptied her bladder onstage.
Moreover, the action was punctuated by loud, trippy trance-techno music, and when the grungy witches offered up their prophecies, they slipped Macbeth a tab of acid for good measure. The critics would have preferred aspirin. The adjectives they bellowed back at Rylance, generally preceded by the words "the most", included "ludicrous", "pretentious", "preposterous" and even somewhat preposterously "catastrophic". One critic even referred to Rylance's effort as "potentially career-wrecking".
This vituperative response to Rylance was not about the man's failure, but about the way in which he was perceived to have failed. The patter of Horrocks's pee falling on the stage was the sound of two aesthetics colliding: no sooner had the reviews appeared than the run sold out. Greenwich's artistic director, Matthew Francis, denies that this was anything to do with irony or the cult of kitsch. He insists that the "pop-culture -literate" audience who eventually came enjoyed the show, for all its faults, immensely. Which raises an old and thorny question: can the theatre acknowledge elements of pop culture without both parties being compromised? Dissolve to London's West End and the Ambassadors theatre, where a dramatisation of cult author Irvine Welsh's brutally sardonic drug novel, Trainspotting, is nearing the end of a sold-out seven-week run. It is impossible not to be struck by the look of the people rolling up to the box office. You could be standing in a field at Glastonbury, sitting in a treehouse at Newbury, queuing up to see Blur: extensive facial jewellery, Indian skirts and baggy jeans, Fred Perry shirts, radical hairdos and all manner of club gear abound. Most punters are dressed something like the characters in the play they are about to see, in other words.
Inside, we're met entirely appropriately by thudding techno music. Welsh is referred to in the programme as "Britain's first rave writer", though this is like calling Joseph Heller a military historian. The production's original music is by Portishead, the ultra-hip Bristol group. Audience members, perhaps knowing little of theatrical etiquette, get up to go to the loo in the middle of scenes, the ghost of Sir Larry doubtless shaking his fist after them. Nearly 4,000 of these non-regular theatre-goers have been turning out each week for Trainspotting, enough to fill a rock venue such as the massive Brixton Academy. Only the very biggest groups could fill the Academy for seven successive performances.
Theatre as "the new rock'n'roll", anyone? Perhaps not. In spite of the healthy box office, Trainspotting nearly failed to make the West End because nobody would back it. "Angels", wealthy individuals willing to take the risk of helping to fund productions, naturally want to back things they would like to see themselves. Watching Edinburgh junkies swishing about in toilet bowls for opium suppositories they have just "deposited" there are often low on their list of priorities. In the end, David Johnson and his partner in J&G Productions the organisation behind last year's adaptation of Nick Hornby's novel Fever Pitch had to risk everything by funding the run themselves.
Some reviewers, too, were supportive, though many felt the necessity to point out that this wasn't "proper" theatre, complaining, rightly, that no context is provided for the protagonists' actions. What this fails to take account of is that the young crowd flocking to see Harry Gibson's adaptation would probably feel patronised by any explicit attempt to provide one, as they have felt patronised by so many high-minded attempts to "engage" with them in the past. They have an intuitive understanding of the context, gained from years of listening to records, watching movies, reading books and articles dealing with similar material.
So, can the theatre acknowledge pop culture without compromising both? Past engagements suggest not. Certainly, each has something the other wants: the theatre has the sort of artistic credibility craved by pop stars and film actors. The pop arts, on the other hand, have a viable audience. Accordingly, pop has gifted the theatre such delights as the rock opera, U2's appalling score for A Clockwork Orange at the Barbican, David Bowie as The Elephant Man, Madonna in Mamet, Keanu as Hamlet and countless other callow stars strutting the board, the latest being Bros idol Luke Goss in an adaptation of Ed Wood's famously awful Plan Nine from Outer Space, at Hornchurch.
The theatre avenged itself with Andrew Lloyd Webber and lots of forgettable bio-musicals, not to mention Rupert Everett and every stage actor who ever happened to appear in Neighbours making desperate stabs at pop stardom. On the plus side, there is The Rocky Horror Show and Steven Berkoff; and the small matter of a record 12 movie takes on Shakespeare rolling towards screens this year. Curiously, the RSC's Adrian Noble credits not only Kenneth Branagh but the wordy Tarantino with inspiring the glut. His prospective Macbeth is likely to make Rylance's look like lunch with Gloria Hunniford.
Why should either party want a more profound union, anyway? In this post-postmodern age, pop has no need of the theatre. It has lost its inferiority complex, having been intellectualised over just as tediously as other art forms. And pop, as anyone who has seen This is Spinal Tap knows, has always handled theatricality perfectly well, without putting it out to tender.
The theatre may have more to gain from an entanglement with pop culture. Gibson emphasises the commercial advantage or in his view, imperative. "The traditional theatre audience has been dying off for years," he contends. "It needs a massive transfusion. The fear has always been that if you have some sort of popular or commercial tendency, then your standards will immediately fall, but they won't if your shows are worked on by the best showmakers. There is a whole lot of arty intellectual attitude vested in people in the theatre and the Arts Council and the critics, which will rapidly fall away, as parasites do when the main body dies."
Although few like to admit it, the generation gap implicit in Gibson's contentious vision has shifted markedly in the past five years. This much-celebrated "gap" was never about age, it has always been about experience; and, hard though it might be to admit, where once the symbols of this dividing line were rock music and cannabis, now they are techno and Ecstasy. Last year, a phalanx of new playwrights, including Jez Butterworth, Sarah Kane, Phyllis Nagy and Jonathan Harvey, came to the fore, all speaking with the voice of this generation (and all, on the evidence, having seen Reservoir Dogs and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer). This month, Serving it Up, by the 22-year-old David Eldridge, and Sweetheart, by newcomer Nick Grosser, open at the Bush and Royal Court respectively.
The problem all these artists have is that in specifically addressing one audience, they're liable to alienate large sections of the familiar, more reliable one. Young writers and adventurous artistic directors appear to know this and some talk as if they are about to embark on a life-or-death crusade against the old guard. Almost everyone to do with any of the new works cited in this article professed satisfaction at the hostility or incomprehension shown them by the "theatre establishment". "I think the traditional theatre is dead as a doornail," commented one prominent London artistic director, who asked not be named.
How to attract this new, youthful audience that everyone likes to think and that Trainspotting tends to confirm is out there waiting to be beckoned? Charles Gant, film editor of The Face magazine, suggests that many people, like himself, who have grown up with cinema and television are uncomfortable with the suspension of disbelief required by stage plays. He considers theatre-going unlikely ever to enter the established night-time entertainment loop of clubs, gigs, films and television. He adds, however, that he enjoyed Trainspotting. It compromised enough. A review in the NME even praised it for "making precious few concessions to the stifling conventions of ‘serious' theatre". They liked it for the same reasons the national press expressed reservations.
Pop's strength is that it appeals directly to the emotions does this rule it out as an inspiration for serious drama? Not according to Simon Thorne of the Cardiff-based drama and dance company, Manact. He has drawn on this quality for Manact's current offering, Heaven, which makes extensive use of techno and trip-hop music by artists such as the American musician/DJ Moby, and the hip British group Earthling. Thorne doesn't see anything anomalous about this. "One of the most exciting theatre performances I've seen was when I went to Glastonbury last year and happened to catch the rave act the Prodigy," he enthuses. "They were fantastic and I thought: ‘Now, how can I do that?"'
Why would he want to? "Because there's an extra layer of content that I want to put in there. What impressed me was the force of the various emotions they worked with." Thorne acknowledges the contradiction inherent in playing dance music at eight o'clock in the evening, in a venue where people are seated in rows and can't get up. It may satisfy nobody. He doesn't know until he tries.
Perhaps what Manact and the others are trying to do is not so preposterous. Since taking the reins at the Globe, Rylance has been researching the origins of the Elizabethan theatre. In a place like the Globe, you'd have been looking at the stage with the audience as an ever-present backdrop. There were people circulating, selling food and beer, and prostitutes hanging about. It only cost a penny to get in tobacco was sixpence and the puritans of the time strongly disapproved, because they didn't like their apprentices going off of an evening and then rolling in late, hungover, the next morning. "In fact, the theatre grew out of popular culture," Rylance concludes, pausing for effect, as only an actor can. "The Elizabethan theatre was a lot like a rave."
Manact, BAC, from March 5; Trainspotting, Whitehall Theatre, from March 12
The trouble today is that people slob in front of the TV terrible, isn't it? Oh no, not that old chestnut, says DOUGLAS KENNEDY.
Ideally he should weigh about 18 stone. Corpulent flab should ooze like half-melted camembert from all corners of his body. He should be wearing a grubby shell-suit (in a nice Vauxhall Cavalier shade of magenta) that is so dappled with food stains that it looks like a Jackson Pollock canvas. More tellingly, he should be seated on a well-known item of domestic furniture that depending on your postal code and your command of received pronunciation is either known as a sofa, couch or "se'ee". In one of his mammoth, oleaginous paws lies the key to his kingdom: a remote control. And a mere 6ft away sits his shrine, his Delphi, his Mormon tabernacle: a television.
Naturally, the television has to be state-of-the-art. Because, even though he may be a low-paid slob surrounded by half-eaten pizzas and discarded cans of beer, he will still mortgage body and soul to possess the latest in 32in, wide-screen, multichannel, satellite-ready, surround-sound equipment. After all, the television is his life.
He's constantly zapping through the 50 or so stations on offer. He'll watch anything. American game shows, in which contestants reveal intimate sexual details ("I like to be whipped into a fit of ecstasy with a spatula") to win a microwave. Reruns of The Persuaders. Late-night Bombay Bollywood classics on Channel 4. An entire morning with Nick and Anne. Six straight hours of CNN. A Paraguayan cup final. The Macedonian weather channel...
When he needs a change of pace, he'll stagger over to his home computer and spend five more hours playing minesweeper. Or communicating with like-minded souls on the Internet. He is, of course, that most derided of contemporary archetypes: the couch potato.
A habitual lounger (with a Hoover for a brain), the couch potato has now become, in western society, the embodiment of all that is wrong with our so-called post-literate age. As proponents of global village broadcasting and the information highway sing the praises of new "the-world-in-your-home" technology, their Luddite critics point to the couch potato as a cautionary example of the sort of inert Frankenstein's monster that our high-tech age is spawning.
For he is regarded as the ultimate in passive technological consumers. He sits, he watches, he gorges on flickering images. He has lost all critical faculties. He absorbs, but never thinks. To many an apocalyptic writer such as the American novelist Stephen Wright he is a mirror image of our empty times. Just consider Wright's description (in his recent novel Going Native) of our nightmare couch potato future:
"There was no self, there was no identity, there was no grand ship to conduct you harmlessly through the uncharted night. There was no you. There was only the Viewer, slumped for ever in his sour seat, the bald shells of his eyes boiling in pictures, a biblical flood of them, all saturated tones and deep focus, not one life-size, and the hands applauding, always applauding, palms abraded to an open fretwork of gristle and bone, the ruined teeth fixed in a yellowy smile that will not diminish, that will not fade, he's happy, he's being entertained."
Whew! Talk about a portentous picture of global brain death. But Wright is not alone in such ominous rumblings. Publishers and educationalists point to the couch potato as prima-facie evidence of why literacy standards are declining. Over the past few years The Straits Times of Singapore has run a series of cautionary advertisements, showing a little child sprawled in front of a television, accompanied by the following admonition: "Is this how your child spends his time during the holidays?" And the intelligentsia consider "the slumped viewer" their natural enemy a representative of an ever-growing dumbocracy that is undermining erudition and high cultural values.
"I don't see how any civilised person can watch TV, far less own a set," remarked WHAuden in a posthumously published interview. But as John Carey points out in his masterful book, The Intellectuals and the Masses, "Intellectuals have always opposed the spread of television just as vociferously as they condemned newspapers in the early part of this century."
Or, to put it another way, the couch potato as philistine bogeyman is not a late-20th-century invention. Trawl back through the past few hundred years and you will discover that the proponents of cultural or spiritual betterment have always railed against idle distractions for the masses. Because, historically, the anti-couch-potato argument has always been a class-based one with the educated elite ceaselessly condemning "mindless" entertainments for hoi polloi.
"The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich," noted Bertrand Russell in his 1935 essay, In Praise of Idleness. "The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake. Serious-minded persons, for example, are continually condemning the habit of going to the cinema, and telling us that it leads the young into crime."
Sounds familiar? It's exactly the same argument that we're now hearing 61 years later about children and adolescents who gobble up television cop shows: watching fictionalised crime must inevitably lead the young into copycat acts of violence.
But Russell also points out that, thanks to the residual puritan undercurrent in British and American life, leisure has always been regarded as something of a sin. "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do," wrote the Nonconformist theologian Isaac Watts in his 1715 treatise, Against Idleness and Mischief.
Of course, several decades before Watts's homily, a convinced Puritan named Oliver Cromwell closed down all the theatres in Britain, decrying them as frivolous diversions leading the masses astray. And his austere co-religionists who crossed the Atlantic were also firm exponents of the notion that "entertainment" was a synonym for "godlessness". According to the puritan work ethic, there was no such thing as leisure time.
Long after the Restoration, that doyen of English Romanticism and opium addiction, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, advocated the creation of an educated elite known as "the clerisy", whose duty it was to direct "the intellectual and moral development of a nation and disseminate learning". Russell, a century on, deemed this group "the leisure class... which cultivated the arts and discovered the sciences; it wrote the books, invented the philosophies, and refined social relations". It also "enjoyed advantages for which there was no basis in social justice; this necessarily made it oppressive, limited in its sympathies, and caused it to invent theories by which to justify its privileges".
One of these theories was that popular entertainment was bad for the working class's spiritual health. Just consider the 1929 thoughts of that arch-elitist, HLMencken, on the subject of that new-fangled mass medium known as the cinema: "Having made of late, after a longish hiatus, two separate attempts to sit through movie shows, I can only report that the so-called art of the film still eludes me... The ideas in them were simply the common and familiar ideas of the inferior nine-tenths of mankind. They were hollow and obvious, but they were not more hollow and obvious than the ideas one encounters in the theatre every day, or in the ordinary run of popular novels..."
Mencken wasn't pop culture's only vehement critic. Throughout the 1920s, many an American educationalist despaired at the onset of radio, noting that instead of burying their noses in books or playing Schubert sonatas at the piano entire families were now squandering evenings, listening to dance bands and penny-dreadful serials.
In short, popular entertainment has always been condemned by the literate clerisy as pabulum for the masses. That puritan impulse to educate and instruct to know what is best for one's intellectual inferiors, and to equate idle diversion with cerebral sloth is still alive and kicking today.
Granted, it is often argued that television is the most intellectually deadening of all mediums, as it is inactive viewing requiring no cognitive skills. Is cinema any different? Ah, but at least it is a participatory communal event, whereas television is domestic and, ergo, solipsistic. Hasn't television like its other partner in anti-intellectual crime, the Internet helped detach people more and more from their neighbours, their community?
Intriguingly, the same Luddite argument was wielded against Alexander Graham Bell's telephone when it was first introduced (a point Bill Gates makes in The Road Ahead, his defence-of-the-information-highway). Conversations would never take place face-to-face any more. We would become increasingly disconnected and isolated from each other. We wouldn't have to work at social discourse any more.
Now, of course, we don't have to "work" at entertaining ourselves, as the television does that for us. Yet, when social commentators wag a reprimanding finger at us for squandering evenings at home, they should remember that, well before mass communications, people still did not go out that much, and generally found their entertainment within the four walls of their house. And when they castigate us for all those hours spent in front of the "boob tube" they tend to overlook the fact that a "time is money" philosophy now dictates the frantic pace of modern society. In turn, this means that few of us can actually enjoy extended amounts of idleness. Bertrand Russell got it right 60 years ago when he noted: "The pleasures of urban populations have become mainly passive: seeing cinema, watching football matches, listening to the radio, and so on. This results from the fact that their active energies are fully taken up with work."
Add television to that list of passive pleasures and Russell could be talking about life in the West today. For we all live now by the clock. Or, as Milan Kundera puts it in his forthcoming novel, Slowness, "Speed is the form of ecstasy the technological revolution has bestowed on man... Why has the pleasure of slowness disappeared?"
Might couch potatodom be an understandably enervated response to the pressures of contemporary life? Or was the 20th-century Chinese philosopher Lin Yu-tang on to something when he wrote: "Culture as I understand it, is essentially the product of leisure. The art of culture is therefore the art of loafing."
No doubt, those of us who believe that culture would educate, influence and embellish the mundanities of life would vehemently disagree with such thoughts. But we should also remember that individual free will is an essential component of all mature democracies. Nobody is forced into slumped viewership. And when the couch potato is tired of loafing, he can always hit a button that is prominently displayed on all remote controls. The button marked "off".
Cezanne is indeed one of the greatest artists ever to emerge in the West, but his work defies those who would put him on a divine pedestal. The paintings speak directly to ordinary people, says WALDEMAR JANUSZCZAK.
You will have no difficulty finding support for the view that Cezanne was one of the four or five most influential artists the West has produced, and some will confidently insist that he was the most influential of all. The largest Cezanne exhibition ever mounted is, therefore, not an event that can be taken lightly. This could be the greatest ever show by the greatest ever artist. What a thought.
Luckily for all of us easily frightened mortals, it never feels daunting. It only takes a few moments spent in the company of early Cezanne, with his awkward outbursts of sexual frenzy, his uncouth warrior-wielding of the palette knife, for this show, and his achievement, to return to recognisably human dimensions. Matisse might have called him "the god". Critics might have spent the century queuing up to view his accomplishment as an "absolute overthrow of the art of painting". Yet it is precisely this kind of absolutist view of Cezanne that this exhibition challenges, so vigorously, so self-evidently, from the off.
What is more, Cezanne's greatness, inviolate though it is, is not monumental in presence, or cold, or rational, or loftily imposing. Unlike, say, the Sistine ceiling, here is not an achievement that strikes you immediately as somehow super-human. On the contrary. One of the chief joys I will save and savour from this gorgeous experience is the texture, the smell even, of Cezanne's daily life. There is a painting here, from 1896, of a table full of his onions, big, red, French onions, so natural in size and variety, so clearly of the earth near Aix-en-Provence. How strikingly unlike the standardised French fare available today at the Gallic counter of your local Waitrose they are.
And was there ever a painter who took more pleasure in the snowy icing of his wife's biscuits than the man who, in 1877, observed a tottering ziggurat of them next to a compotier overflowing with fruit? He appears to be painting half with his brush, half with his tongue. This show makes clear that Cezanne, at the end of the first industrial century, was already proselytising for an earthy, unintellectual, homespun, sensual, French way of life that was being threatened by new urban values. It is true of his flowers, his village card players, his apples, even his quiet portraits of his permanently seated wife. And what an interesting painter he was. Not awesome, not magnificent, not intellectually gigantic, nor in some Germanic way impossibly pure. The catalogue, in a fascinating survey of changing critical opinion about Cezanne this century, climaxes on the strange 1950s view of Hans Sedlmayer, who insists that "the essential aim of Cezanne's painting is to represent what ‘pure' vision can discover in the visible world, vision, that is to say, that has been cleansed of all intellectual and emotional adulteration". Sedlmayer concludes that in this vacant world of ours "we must keep alive the thought that in the lost centre the empty throne awaits the perfect man". Cezanne as Mastermind. What a scary German fantasy. What absolute nonsense.
I entered this exhibition respecting Cezanne absolutely and left it absolutely loving him. Human, troubled, warm, passionate, the Cezanne you encounter from the very first painting of three pears and a sugar bowl is so different from the fantasy figure described by Sedlmayer, and foisted on all art-history students before and after, that I found myself growing angry: how could so many have misrepresented him so badly? Here is an exhibition that argues not only for the gagging of Cezanne theorists in particular but for the silencing of all art theorists in general. Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when we go to the Courtauld for a PhD.
This, then, is a revisionist event. It began in Paris last autumn and arrives in London in a slightly more compact form. At the Grand Palais it had appeared a vast, almost regal experience, whereas here, in a suite of neat Tate Gallery compartments, it has returned to something closer to the domestic scale most of the paintings were intended for. Cezanne often dreamed of painting huge pictures, but rarely produced them. Some of the most important of the big public statements he did actually paint are missing impossible to lend, or too fragile to travel so perhaps the pleasantly personal scale is in itself slightly misleading.
The exhibition forms a definite arc. The Cezanne who emerges in the first rooms is a troubled man, driven, it seems, by curious sexual frustrations and dark passions. Women are murdered. Saints are tempted by nudes. An enthusiastic orgy gives way, in a painting called The Battle of Love, to some sort of violent gangbang. Cezanne the woman-hater is a fantasy figure who has emerged only recently. His early work was so different from what was expected of him by the supporters of his purity that it was largely ignored until a cluster of 1970s exhibitions surprised us. But I suspect that the newish view of him as a violent misogynist is also a misreading. It is one of the most important lessons of this show that Cezanne, the great precursor of modernism, was obsessed with the past, and some of these nude struggles are obviously intended as reworkings of Titian and Delacroix. Surely most of the strangeness of these images of inter-sexual wrestling is explained by the fact that their origins are in other, earlier art, not in the daily facts of Cezanne's own life. What we have here is not so much a clash between the sexes as a clash between types of content, as a late 19th-century mind addresses an early 16th-century problem: how to be a nude in a landscape?
Cezanne, the lover of the past, was to make the nude female bather one of his great themes, but having grappled with it energetically as a young man, at the beginning of our arc, he puts it aside for the entire middle period of his career, and only returns to it, with extraordinary results, at the end. Nowhere in his art do you feel that the nudes are intended to be real people. They are allegorical entities enacting a mythological tale whose exact meaning has been lost.
His real view of women seems to me to emerge much more sympathetically in the elevated section of our arc, Cezanne's breathtaking middle years, when, responding to a growing appetite for calm, he flees Paris and settles down in front of the Mont Ste-Victoire or a tableful of apples or his wife, Hortense, and sublimates his uncouth earlier passions in an entirely wonderful search for pictorial calm. I do not think I have ever encountered such a sustained sequence of pleasure-giving art. It culminates in those celebrated views of the mountain, painted in brush strokes that prove the chaos theory: long sequences of order, punctuated by short clusters of disorder. Another of this show's chief lessons is that Cezanne was a far more varied painter than we have been led to expect, and his viewpoints and subjects and technique change with crackerjack invention. Hortense, who has received such a surly press in writing on Cezanne as some kind of fashion-crazed bourgeois chancer (if you want to find real misogyny in Cezanne, read what critics have written about his wife), is obviously, in picture after picture, a patient, loving presence who sustains him. He paints her pale, saintly calm as if he were Fra Angelico and she the Virgin. It may be unrealistic, but it is also unmissably loving. So why have so many missed it? There is a drawing here in which Cezanne combines some beautifully observed flowering hortensias with a portrait of his wife of the same name, waking up.
Was there ever a more touching valentine?
The wonderful sentimentality of Cezanne is a revelation, like so much else. Only towards the end of his life, as a sense of his own mortality reawakens the old fears, does the exhibition grow dark again. There is a painted skull at the beginning of the show, and several others near the end. The final painting, the largest of his Bathers, has been given the end wall to itself, so that it functions as a kind of climaxing altarpiece. The big leaning nudes combine with the leaning trees to form a gothic arch. At last Cezanne has come clean about his Bathers. We are at a site of baptism, a place of worship.
Cezanne, sponsored by Ernst & Young, at the Tate Gallery until April 28. Advance booking: 0990-661010; 24-hour information line: 0171-887 8778
Crowd pleasers
Last Wednesday the telephone system at the Tate Gallery, overloaded by outside calls, went down for several hours. Such is the level of interest in the Cezanne exhibition. Despite restrictions a limited number of entry-timed tickets to prevent gallery overcrowding the Cezanne exhibition looks set to be the Tate's most popular show ever. By the time it closes on April 28, it should have been seen by at least 330,000 people, some way ahead of the Tate's present best-attended exhibition, Constable, in 1976, which was seen by 313,659 people.
The most popular exhibition ever in this country remains the British Museum's six-month Tutankhamen show in 1972, which drew 1,694,117. No orthodox art exhibition has come close (nor run as long). The Royal Academy managed 771,466 for Chinese Art in 1974 and has the third highest attendance figure, 658,289, for Monet in the Nineties, in 1990. This was also the first exhibition to introduce timed entry and advance booking, a development that came in response to the growing popularity of art exhibitions in the 1980s. With the exception of the Constable show, the top 10 Tate exhibitions show a steady rise from 1983, when 112,517 saw Gainsborough, through the 173,162 who went to Hockney in 1988, to the 296,648 who went to the Picasso in 1994.
The size of the Tate's present exhibition galleries prevent it from ever attaining the attendance figures of the Royal Academy, or even of the Grand Palais in Paris, where the Cezanne exhibition first ran and was seen by 641,735 people over four months.
LOCH NESS. 100 mins, PG
This new movie about the Loch Ness monster ends with a song by Rod Stewart on the soundtrack, so now we know: dinosaurs do still walk the earth. We only get one glimpse of Nessie, but lots of stuff about the rejuvenatory magic of local myth and Ted Danson's midlife crisis. Danson plays an American zoologist ("Your pursuit of the yeti was seminal"), who arrives to disprove the monster's existence, and ends up falling in love with Scotland which is shot like a tourist advert Joely Richardson, and her young daughter. I'm not so sure about Danson's sonar equipment, but the script really plumbs the depths. "I've got to see it before I can believe it," he tells the girl. "You have to believe it to see it," she replies. Oh, for heaven's sake, why can't it just exist like any normal monster? TS
RENDEZ-VOUS IN PARIS
15, 100 mins
Eric Rohmer's latest is far from his greatest, but still has his familiar gracenotes. There is no finer seismographer of our talent for self-deception, registering the subtle shifts and little lies especially the ones we tell ourselves that mark our quest for romance.
The technique hasn't changed, penny-plain and music-free, as if he'd taken his camera round to his characters' homes and left them to talk their way into a plot. This outing, however, feels like a makeweight. It's a trip-tych of wry stories about mismatched liaisons: a young woman who suspects her boyfriend of infidelity, a couple meeting clandestinely in Paris's parks, a painter who pursues a woman he sees in the Picasso museum. But although Rohmer's tone has lost none of its amiable bite, the whole is rather baggy, and for once his minimal style looks a bit threadbare. HH
A LITTLE PRINCESS
U, 94 mins
The trailer for this film does it a disservice: yes, its young heroine (Liesel Matthews) has a cloying American voice, but no, it isn't the syrup-bath you might be fearing. The story by that most "English" of writers, Frances Hodgson Burnett, who in fact moved to America as a teenager is potentially mawkish.
A motherless 10-year-old is displaced by the first world war from her beloved India to Miss Minchin's seminary in Manhattan; here she undergoes a riches-to rags education when her much-adored father (Liam Cunningham in tender mood) is reported killed in the trenches and her income dries up. So far, so Secret Garden, with Eleanor Bron as Miss Minchin doing a nicely twitchy turn, a la Maggie Smith, as prunish antagonist to the free-spirited orphan. But director Alfonso Cuaron injects enough wit and visual brio to make the story more magical than mushy, and his young cast romp through it. Great for eight-year-olds, more than bearable for their parents. HH
THE HARVEST
97 mins, no cert
The risk of organ theft (or "harvesting") is the peg for David Marconi's stylish and satisfying low-budget noir thriller, with a cleverly constructed can-this-really-be-happening-to-me plot that goes on producing surprising twists to the last frame. Dour Miguel Ferrer plays the unhappy hack who wakes up on a Puerto Vallarta beach minus a kidney; Leilani Sarelle is the blonde who sets him up, preserving her ambiguities to the end. GP
After probing Johnny Mnemonic for signs of intelligence, TOM SHONE concludes that anyone wanting to see a film about the information highway should just forget it.
Reeves forces us to abandon our previous notion of wooden: his performance has long since petrified into fossil fuelWhat goes on inside the head of Keanu Reeves? It's none of my business, I know, but his films, oddly, seem to have made it theirs, insistently probing this lovable lunk for signs of intelligent life. His first hit, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, had him going head to head with Freud, Beethoven and Socrates goofing off with highbrows for a few low laughs but the laughter seems to have carried much further than was intended, and has now curdled into something of an open joke. "Do not even attempt to grow a brain," Dennis Hopper hissed at him in Speed. Good advice, but unnervingly close to the bone. His new film, a sci-fi adventure that hopes to cash in on his new status as action man, merely adds injury to insult. In it, Reeves plays Johnny Mnemonic, a man who has emptied his head in order to rent it out for others to use as a sort of information storage depot. Not since Arnold Schwarzenegger agreed to go looking for his brain in Total Recall has an actor submitted to so cruelly masochistic a piece of casting.
The year is 2021 and the future looks much as it has done ever since 1982, when Blade Runner came out. Ridley Scott's film predicted a future forged from the garbage heap of history and, in a sense, its prediction has come worryingly true: now we go to the cinema to see visions of the future plucked from the garbage heap of other film sets. Johnny Mnemonic traipses through all the usual cliches. The streets are littered with showroom dummies and burning cars, women have abandoned all restraint when it comes to silver eye shadow, and everyone wanders around suffering from "the black shakes, DAS, that's Data Attention Syndrome: information sickness", and giving each other advice: "You need some down-time: bed-rest." So might you if you had to talk like that all day long. What is the point of a script going to all the bother of creating so much futuristic slang if the characters have to spend half their time patiently translating it for those of us stuck in the present? It makes everyone sound like they're speaking in subtitles.
Reeves takes the process one stage further, having perfected his impression of badly dubbed star of a Japanese gangster flick. In this film, he forces us to abandon our previous notion of wooden: his performance has long since petrified into something far denser, Jurassic rainforest, or fossil fuel. He plays the title role, an information courier who has "downloaded" his childhood memories in order to make room for the trade secrets of large corporations, which he then ferries around inside his head. The problem facing him at the start of the film is that he has overloaded his brain, and if he doesn't empty it in 24 hours, "cerebral seepage" will give way to full-flown "brain crash", which sounds about right. To get the best impression of what it is to watch this film, plug your younger brother into the mains and ask him to impersonate his newest video game. Johnny Mnemonic is one long gibber of ideas, helplessly shunting into one another, unguided by a single train of thought.
The film was adapted from William Gibson's 1986 cyberpunk novel, which raised some intriguing questions, to which the film has supplemented some posers of its own. What if Japanese corporations ruled the world? What if our only hope of freedom lay with an underground movement of info-terrorists? How will audiences react if they see Dolph Lundgren in a Jesus wig? But this futuristic flim-flammery soon peels away to reveal a plot that predates the invention of the wheel: essentially the film is one painfully overextended chase sequence. Reeves runs away, Lundgren catches up, Reeves runs away again, Lundgren flies in through a window, and so on... The film would doubtless like to picture itself whizzing around the highways and byways of the information superhighway, but, in fact, it has all the forward momentum of a car trying to rock itself free from a mud slick.
I blame the computers. In its rush to lure kids into cinemas, Hollywood has taken to dressing up every other thriller as the first to explore the brave new world of virtual reality. Back in your basic common-or-garden reality, however, a single satisfactory film has yet to emerge from the genre. And why should it? There has never been a great film about typewriters although All the President's Men tried its damndest. There has never been a cinematic epic to give photocopiers their due despite the best efforts of those adapting John Grisham thrillers. So why should today's office technology succeed where yesterday's failed? There is, after all, a limit to how exciting the sight of someone on screen looking at yet another screen can be, as The Net conclusively proved. Despite some jazzy camera zooms every time Sandra Bullock logged on, her computer screen stubbornly refused to do anything except the thing computer screens do best, which is to look profoundly and unrepentantly square. There are some pretty neat computer graphics in Johnny Mnemonic whenever Reeves gets online in virtual reality, but the effect is rather ruined by cutaway shots showing the real Reeves waving his hands around, like Marcel Marceau in skiing mittens two sizes too big for him.
The huge chasm between the time he seems to be having looking at his screen and the time we are having looking at ours rather suggests that Hollywood has made a disastrous category mistake: computers are fine when kept behind the scenes to provide the special effects for a film, but the moment they intrude upon its plot they destroy it from the inside, hollowing it out like an anti-narrative virus. The makers of Johnny Mnemonic have grasped the new computer technology with both hands, only to find that the cutting edge cuts both ways, slicing their script to ribbons. A paper shredder couldn't have done a better job. They would have done well to remember a rather more basic rule when it comes to computers: garbage in, garbage out.
In Desperado, Robert Rodriguez takes the classic western shootout scene to a bizarre new level of comic carnage.
Take a western. Any western. Find a scene where somebody shoots somebody with a gun. Okay. Now, snip it out of the film. That's right, bin the story, the character histories, forget the reason they're killing each other: away with it all. Now I want you to take that scene and turn it into an entire movie... Don't ask me.
I don't know. Run it in slow motion, stretch it, loop it, respool it, re-edit it, repeat it, do whatever you want to it, but make a 90-minute movie out of it. Oh, and by the way: make it a comedy.
Robert Rodriguez's Desperado is a film so insanely unambitious, so childishly unheeding of the normal rigours of film-making, it's almost cheering. It's got the crazed, obsessive squint of one of Roy Lichtenstein's immaculate dot paintings of a single explosion it's pop art Peckinpah. Rodriguez is the director who shot to fame two years ago with his low-budget debut, El Mariachi, in which an unnamed guitar-playing hero walks into a small, dusty Mexican town and single-handedly butchers a gang of Uzi-toting drug dealers. Quaint little arthouse offerings such as this being all the rage nowadays, Hollywood signed Rodriguez up, threw $6m at him to make a sequel, and the result like a child endlessly embellishing its favourite comic strip is less of a sequel than a remake. An unnamed guitar-playing hero walks into a small, dusty Mexican town and single-handedly butchers an Uzi-toting gang of drug dealers; only this time he's played by Anto-
nio Banderas, expensive-looking explosions plume around him as he walks down streets, and this time there is a girl at his side. "Imagination bodies forth/The forms of things unknown," wrote Shakespeare, but then what did he know about the pleasures of firing off 10 rounds in two seconds flat.
Banderas looks great. His is the only action hero of recent years whose muscles don't seem constantly balled up with tension; angling a gun behind his back to shoot an assailant creeping up behind him, he has the casual insouciance of Boris Becker showing off with his drop shots on centre court. Desperado isn't all about firing off rounds of bullets, of course. Don't be silly: no film could quite manage 90 minutes of uninterrupted gun play. There are some scenes where the characters take time out to reload, too. And sometimes, Rodriguez picks these moments to squeeze a driblet of plot past us, but for the most part the reloading is the plot. "Plot" is Rodriguez's word for what happens when people aren't killing one another.
When they are, Rodriguez shows real flair. Of all the directors apeing Tarantino's brand of sadistic slapstick at the moment, Rodriguez would seem to be the only one who comes remotely close: his editing has a snappy, eye-popping rhythm that is sometimes enough to generate a laugh all by itself. The movie has a cameo from Tarantino what movie doesn't? and Rodriguez has directed Tarantino's new script, From Dusk Till Dawn. Indeed, the two of them seem to be buoying each other up as the two enfants terribles of comic carnage Abattoir and Costello but like all such partnerships, it is an uneven one. It's all too easy to imagine a long evening spent downing tequilas and watching their favourite Peckinpah scenes, at the end of which Tarantino makes his excuses and goes home to get to work polishing his dialogue, leaving Rodriguez gurgling happily amid his endlessly looped gunfights, wondering how on earth to paste them into a movie.
The meat-grinder plot of Desperado surpasses even Tarantino in its cynicism. Rodriguez is so offhand with his characters, it's shocking. Or rather, shock would be a fine thing: you couldn't care less about these people. It isn't just the film's habit of treating characters like slabs of meat that gives Desperado a resemblance to pornography; it has the impatient, monomaniacal rhythms of porn, too. The gunfights are so clearly the only thing that excite Rodriguez's imagination that pretty soon you are as bored by the plot as he so obviously is. Soon, he's run out things to shoot and he's blowing away set-ups before they're even in place. You feel that the only way he could have celebrated his last day of filming is by putting bullets in his entire crew, one by one.
"It's easier to destroy than to create," says Banderas at one point. It's the only line in the film with an element of truth, and Rodriguez couldn't be further from understanding why.
The following, quoted in full, is No20 in a 35-sonnet sequence by one of this century's greatest poets, and the only clue I will give to his identity (if you wish to play along, don't let your eyes stray further down the column) is that, to my virtually certain knowledge, it remains, like the others in the sequence, at present unpublished in Britain.
When in the widening circle of rebirth
To a new flesh my travelled soul shall come,
And try again the unremembered earth
With the old sadness for the immortal home.
Shall I revisit these same differing fields
And cull the old new flowers with the same sense,
That some small breath of foiled remembrance yields,
Of more age than my days in this pretence?
Shall I again regret strange faces lost
Of which the present memory is forgot
And but in unseen bulks of vagueness tossed
Out of the closed sea and black night of Thought?
Were thy face one, what sweetness will't not be,
Though by blind feeling, to remember thee!
So who is this lyrically elegiac English sonneteer, fond of oxymorons ("same differing", "old new"), unafraid of archaisms ("thy", "will't", "thee") and patently influenced by Shakespeare?
The answer is Alexander Search. More precisely, it's Fernando Pessoa, who was, of course, not English at all, but Portuguese. Nor is the poem a translation. It was written in English in the 1920s (Pessoa's dates are 1888-1935) under the pseudonym or the "heteronym", to use the term preferred by the poet himself of Alexander Search.
Search was just one, neither the best nor best-known, of Pessoa's heteronyms. There were 44 in all, 44 different writers who not only wrote in 44 different styles but for some of whom their creator wrote different biographies (or autobiographies?), each complete with its own birthdate, social background, literary influences, physical traits, etc. These writers, moreover, knew one another, corresponded, mutually commented on their work in progress. (Though none of them existed outside of Pessoa's brain, I've chosen to avoid using inverted commas, as their necessary numbers would make the page look like a flypaper.)
Not all of Pessoa's alter egos are important figures, but three are usually regarded as among the great Portuguese poets of modern times: Alberto Caeiro (in whom, said Pessoa, he invested "all my powers of depersonalisation"), Ricardo Reis ("my intellectual discipline") and Alvaro de Campos ("my emotion"). It's not surprising, then, that Pessoa rejected the word "pseudonym" as completely inadequate to the task of addressing such an extraordinary project of psychic and professional dispersal. "The pseudonymous work," he wrote, "is that of the author ‘in his own personality' but minus his signature. The heteronymous work is that of the author ‘emancipated from his own personality'."
Back to the Poemas Ingleses. Besides the sonnets, whose overall standard strikes me as comparable to all but our very finest native-language poetry, they include a long Wildean poem entitled Antinous, after the Emperor Hadrian's boy lover, of legendary beauty, who was drowned in the Nile. The following extract should convey something of the flavour of its orchidaceously febrile atmosphere. A grieving Hadrian contemplates his minion's naked corpse:
O bare female male-body such
As a god's likeness to humanity!
O lips whose opening redness erst could touch
Lust's seats with a live art's variety
O fingers skilled in things not to be told!
O tongue which, counter-tongued, made the blood bold!
Reading Pessoa's English verse, I find myself frequently wondering why it should still be so little known in its country of linguistic origin. There is, to be sure, a tenacious native prejudice vis-a-vis almost all foreign literature, and the imagery of Antinous is even now calculated to shock prudes and homophobes. A trifle whimsically, however, I've come to believe that its inexplicable neglect can be attributed to the fact, above all, that it sounds too much like poetry.
Pessoa's position in the modernist canon is secure: George Steiner wrote a brilliant essay about his work, and Harold Bloom succeeded, though only just, in squeezing him into his absurd canon. Yet even when he assumed the guise of one or other of his Portuguese heteronyms, he had absolutely no scruples about exploiting the most bewhiskered codes and conventions of the "poetic". In Britain, by contrast, we have become increasingly suspicious of poetry (20th-century poetry at least) that sounds like poetry; poetry that is couched in an unashamedly stylised language; poetry, supremely, that rhymes. To take the example that immediately springs to mind, I would wager that the single most quoted line in modern English verse is Larkin's "They f you up, your mum and dad", which has always sounded to me like a lyric from some crass punk-rock number.
So much of the late modernist aesthetic appears to have been founded more on the neurotic avoidance of "what was always done in the past" than on the mapping-out of an entirely original set of formal and stylistic parameters. In Pessoa's case, it may be argued that he overcame this problem what might be called the negative energy of modernist literature by the radical fragmentation of his sensibility. And it was perhaps only by writing in English that he was able to rediscover a vein of unembarrassed lyricism that, for the British themselves, had long seemed to be exhausted. Now all he needs is a British publisher.
Compared to the Baywatch blonde, the clever girls were the ones who looked dumb.
Ihave been to the mountain. Forty days and nights in the wilderness in search of enlightenment, the truth about television. Sometimes, if you want to truly understand, you have to look away, remove the object of investigation and, in the blackness, you suddenly see with ethereal clarity. Staring stops you looking.
On your behalf I took electronic exile to a land east of Shepherd's Bush, terrestrial and astral purdah for a month. You can't imagine the deprivation. The sheer hell of a month without telly. But I have returned shriven and chastened, dressed in ashes and the skins of wild Tristans, with a messianic gleam, to bring you the great truth about television. Are you ready for this? Television is not what it seems. Big or what? Worth waiting for? Now I'm aware that this answer begs questions, but then that's the nature of revelation. Let me give you a parable: Marina Warner. Marina Warner, author, cerebral feminist and pretty polly of the blue-stocking brigade. Out there, in the final cut of real time, she's just another grey-matter girlie with huge cerebral hemisphere implants who puts on make-up like a seven-year-old and is fawned over by old Mittel-European men with dandruff and kindling in their nostrils, but on television she's not what she seems. Marina Warner is Peter York.
Did you know that? Does Peter York know that he has been electronically transformed into a distaff character out of Howards End, in Romanian national health spectacles, who does her hair by loading a shotgun with kirby grips. I think he should be told. Warner and York are both zeitgeist pedlars. Zeitgeist is one of those dire expressions that are so embarrassingly pseudy you have to go to a foreign language to find a word to say them. Warner went Trinitron last week on the theatre set of Sleeping Beauty (a cruel Tristan's joke). She was interviewed by Andrew Marr of The Independent. Now, Marr in the real world is a respected fast-lane political journalist and author. But on the box, lo and behold, he's really Alan Partridge having a bad day.
Together Warner and Marr and the cardboard pantomime set were emulsified into a programme called The Big Idea (Wednesday, BBC2). Well, what I and the other half-a-dozen viewers want to know is, whose big idea was it, how can we make sure he doesn't have any more, who stopped his medication and, if this was a big idea, what does that make the theory of relativity? The Warner-York-Marr-Partridge combo was supposed to be talking about the nature of fairy tales in socio-politico-sexual-culture with added zeitgeist. What Warner/Marr considered Pinocchio and Rapunzel got up to after a night at Stringfellows we never discovered, because they never told us. They failed to tell us anything.
Watching Warner was a dreadful warning of what having an artificially inflated cerebellum can do to you. What a horrible debilitating handicap being a really clever, imaginative intellectual is. She would start a perfectly run-of-the-mill sentence such as "It's interesting you should put it that way, Cinderella is..." Yes? Yes, Cinderella is? and her eyes would bulge, her forehead would pulsate, because inside a thousand ideas, sub-ideas, whippersnapper clarifications and wailing caveats were pushing and shoving to get out of the bottleneck of her mouth. They probably started as a relatively orderly queue, but the moment the doors opened and they saw the light, it was a free-for-all. Every one trying to get on air, so much to say, so little time to say it. It was mayhem. Oral mincemeat. Partridge interrupted with "What you're really trying to say is...", but, of course, what she was really trying to say stuck in her throat. There was a dreadful fairy-tale moral at the end of all this. The clever sister struck dumb by too many words. I just looked and thought how appallingly stupid very, very clever people often make themselves look in front of cameras. Television knows what a sad act a clever person is. A clever person is a quarter-finalist on Mastermind or the prematurely bald one on University Challenge, a sexual self-starter with a cheese-grater accent and a rote knowledge of chemical parts. It's de rigueur on television that clever people, and especially intellectuals, make less than 15 grand a year and don't get laid. This is, after all, only fair. We the audience know that brains are a hindrance, that size matters, small is better. Far better to have nous, intuition and luck. These are the traits we aspire to. We appreciate all the unlearnable, innate, born-with talents. Clever isn't what it seems. And just before I write unhappy ever after on Warner, let me ask, how clever is it to go on television and talk about fairy-tale princesses looking like the Wicked Witch of the West?
Ruby Wax, she's another one. Out there, Wax would like to be Marina Warner with Jonathan Ross's mouth, Clive James's syntax and Edwina Currie's hair not much of a wish, you might think, but Wax is hugely popular with people who can't tell the difference between sarcasm and irony. This week, in Ruby Wax Meets... (Sunday, BBC1) she did Pamela Anderson. Last week she did Imelda Marcos. Get the drift? Get the zeitgeist? Big soft targets, lots of nudge, nudge, wink, wink, potential. The big bottom line on Wax is that she's the lowest form of television life. A big bottom feeder, a one-note warm-up comic with a barbed line in audience humiliation. Her interviews are humiliations of an audience of one.
Pamela Anderson must have seemed like such a gift, easy peasy. Well, I enjoyed every minute of it. Wax swaggered on with a smug insouciance and a swimsuit Bikini Wax. Pamela wiped the floor with her. She took Wax's best shot and it bounced off. Pamela was funnier, smarter, cooler and a dozen flash bulbs more watchable. It would be fair to say she won on points and not by a neck.
It's instructive to inquire exactly why. Wax, after all, had the control. It was her show; she's the amusing one. But television isn't what it seems. It's Pamela's pond. It was a medium that was built for her and she for it. It deals in the surface of things. And the surface of Pam is eminently preferable to the surface of Ruby. I don't mean just the bits and bobs. I mean the surface of their characters. Pam's a girl who makes a living filling out swimsuits and fantasies, doing it with pop stars life's a happy smiley, why-worry beach. She is the perfect small-screen star. There are dozens of girls who are as pretty, who have the same off-the-shelf bosom. But she has that indefinable born-with quality that has nothing to do with craft, hard work and gag writers. It's oomph. It's "it". It's the F-factor. It's the magic, the fairy dust in the back of the cathode-ray tube.
Ruby, for all her "Oh my God, you're so gorgeous and I'm so hideous" schtick, really wants us to agree that Pam's just a bimbo with plastic knockers, but that she, Ruby, is a funny, raunchy, clever, hip person. She tried to make a beauty contest a personality contest. Well, on both counts you didn't have to be Marina Warner to get the unanimous answer. On television, in bed, trapped in a lift or extracting your teeth, we'd all far rather have Pamela Anderson. If you're not convinced, ask yourself what seems to be more normal changing your body to make yourself beautiful and rich or changing your character to make yourself Ruby Wax? There's unnatural and then there's deeply unnatural.
Ruby Wax wasn't the only person who came a cropper on Twin Peaks last week. Christopher Terrill and James Runcie, two of our best documentary directors, went up mountains and brought back molehills. Runcie took a painter, a poet and a photographer to Mont Ste-Victoire to find out something about Cezanne for Omnibus (Monday, BBC1). Why, was the question that kept springing to mind. The film was annoyingly like those primary school projects where the class learns about the Roman empire by making models of hats out of cardboard, cooking an Italian breakfast and writing an imaginary Roman pop song. This was a brave but misbegotten programme and should have been torn up the minute Patrick Hughes appeared on set in a mauve suit. And getting a lot of Ruby Wax-style chubby nudes to make tableaux vivants of paintings is just naff.
Alison's Last Mountain (Friday, BBC1) followed the husband and children of a mountaineer who died on K2 back to see the site of her death. This was a tacky project and you were constantly aware of the director desperately trying to cling to the cliff face of good taste. Real grief is an embarrassing thing to watch. There is so much fake in television faction Casualty has four pints of grief every week that you realise the real thing is rather banal. Actors cry for the camera so much better, so much more realistically than widowers. I kept asking myself why is this family any different from one whose mother was knocked down by a bus, and the answer kept echoing back across the Himalayas: because this one's got a film crew, 80 Pakistani tourist board sherpas and a live-in grief counsellor.
I should perhaps just add that both Mont Ste-Victoire and K2 were beautifully filmed. Wastefully well-made programmes. Not only is television not what it seems, neither are television critics. I don't look anything like that bloody cartoon up there. They promised me, promised, they'd change it. I want one with a halo, I've earned it.
In this weekly column, we review the latest CD-Roms for personal computing in the home Elroy Goes Bugzerk INTERACTIVE comedy is in its infancy but in this comic adventure, children have the chance to play the part of precocious Elroy as he mounts a quest to catch an insect nasty enough to win his local town's annual Insectathon.
Aided and abetted by his faithful blue dog, Elroy will strike a chord with the sort of youngsters (mostly male) whose idea of fun is putting worms down people's backs. This is, apparently, the first in a series of CD-Roms collectively entitled "What the Heck Will Elroy Do Next?" This is good news, because it sets an extremely high standard. In terms of style, its closest cartoon relatives are probably Roobarb and Ren and Stimpy.
It has the quirky humour of The Simpsons, but sanitised for a younger audience and therefore should appeal to adults too. It is even educational, containing amusingly presented snippets of insect-related information. Elroy Goes Bugzerk is surely destined to achieve cult status among those aged seven and above. Title: Elroy Goes Bugzerk Category: Edutainment Publisher: FunSoft Price: £34.99 Publication date: Feb 29 Platform: IBM-compatible PCs running Windows 3.1 or 95; Apple Mac Sold at: John Menzies, Toys R Us, Electronic Boutique ST RATING: 8/10/
The Ultimate Video Jukebox NOSTALGIC 1980s pop-music fans will love this neat new CD-Rom. It features 10 full-length pop videos from the 1980s, each of which, in its own way, was something of a landmark. It also offers Internet access and a pop-trivia quiz. The selection ranges from Blondie's Heart of Glass via Ultravox's Vienna to Godley & Creme's sumptuous Cry. But 10 videos, accessible through a clever jukebox-style interface, will not keep many people occupied for long.
The CD-Rom's main strength, in principle, is its Internet access. This gives single-click access to OmniMedia's excellent Web site, which contains a wealth of background information on bands. Unfortunately, users must already have Web access and a working copy of Netscape on their machines. Video quality is as good as current technology allows. But even this aspect bears a caveat: OmniMedia uses its own software-based MPEG video compression, but this requires a PC with a 60MHz Pentium or faster to run. Owners of slower machines will need to buy an MPEG add-on card. Few, one suspects, will do so.Title: The Ultimate Video Jukebox Category: Entertainment Publisher: OmniMedia Price: £17.99 Publication date: Out now Platform: IBM-compatible PCs running Windows 3.1 or 95; Philips CD-i, Sega Saturn Sold at: HMV, Beatties, Dixons ST RATING: 6/10
AUSTRALIA'S tourism industry is poised to launch its biggest ever marketing campaign next month in a drive to lure more British visitors.
Under the slogan "The sooner you go, the longer the memories" the A$100 million three-year campaign hopes to persuade people to take their holiday of a lifetime now rather than leaving it until they are older.
Tourism is now Australia's biggest export industry, ahead of the country's traditional exports of coal, wool and gold, and last year generated export earnings of $12 billion, an increase of nearly 17 per cent on 1994. It accounts for almost 13 per cent of the country's total export earnings.
John Morse, general manager of the Australian Tourism Commission's marketing services division, says: "What we've found in the past two years is that while Australia is top of the list of places people would most like to visit, there is a big gap between that and the number of people who actually come here. What we need to do is to make Australia a more compelling destination, to make people say: ‘I have to go now'."
He added: "The image of Australia in the UK has become bland because of the way it is portrayed in soap operas. We are trying to give Australia a more exotic flavour."
Last year more than 350,000 British people visited Australia, an increase of 6.5 per cent on 1994 and that figure is forecast to rise to nearly 500,000 by the year 2000.
A BOY aged 14 boy died last night after being stabbed in the chest while playing with schoolfriends. Lee Kinch died without regaining consciousness in Whiston hospital, Merseyside.
Police said the incident in the Knowsley area of Liverpool followed a dispute between two boys and a man.
A murder inquiry has been launched after Liam Wallace, four, was found beaten to death in Oldbury, West Midlands. A 25-year-old woman and an 18-year-old man were being questioned by police.
An important element in the genre of harmless Sunday night drama is the prevalence of the colour green. Think of Trainer, The Vet, Lovejoy, Hamish Macbeth, even Pie in the Sky in every cinematic shot there's an emerald sward singing la-la-la with colour and refreshing our souls for Monday morning.
Kieran Prendiville, creator of the new Ballykissangel (BBC1), has taken this principle to its logical conclusion. "This is where the 40 shades of green come from," said sceptical Assumpta, driving the new English priest towards the idyllic Irish village with the heavenly name. And Forty Shades would make a good title for the show, in a way, since the gradations of the priest's own verdancy are likely to provide key interest in the weeks ahead.
For Father Peter is green, all right. "That's beautiful," he breathes when he first sees his church. "You were made for each other," quips Assumpta. In last night's episode, he arrived in mufti (with his brutally short hair, more like an off-duty squaddie than a cleric), moved into his surprisingly well-accoutred house, and was immediately confronted with an unusual problem a luxury confessional, donated by a pushy parishioner, and modelled on a public lavatory. Now, the question was, would Good Young Priest make a stand against Wicked Bent Businessman? Well, let's just say that like all the best heroes, he may be wet behind the ears, but he still has something between them.
I liked Ballykissangel. Like Kieran Prendiville's other dramatic venture, Roughnecks, it is formulaic yet concentrates maximum attention on the individuals, creating good material for the actors here beautifully cast, with Stephen Tompkinson as Peter, Dervla Kirwan as Assumpta, and Tony Doyle as the lavatory importer. These three represent faith, doubt and sin, I suspect; so good luck to them as they thrash it out. Ballykissangel is the sort of place where young men still fret about mortal sin before having sex, yet by a stroke of good fortune religious fervour is not reflected in interior design no tacky madonnas; no praying hands glowing in the dark. Father Peter's house is done out like a Cotswold cottage. Oh yes, a little piece of heaven fell from out the sky one day, but it wasn't in Ireland exactly.
Isn't it always the way that you have your deepest and longest discussions in the wrong part of the house? Instead of sitting somewhere comfy with a nice drink, earnest thoughts overtake you while you stand on one leg at the bathroom door, or hunch in the car with shopping defrosting round your legs. As Ruby Wax last night shoved her way through Roseanne Barr's luxury home, scattering insults ("Why do I get the idea this house was decorated an hour ago?"), you might have assumed a heart-to-heart was out of the question. They visited the Doll Room ("Wow, are you nuts!") and dressed up in funny headgear from her fancy-dress cupboard.
But suddenly, standing in the dressing room between unflattering mirrors, the crew visible in multiple reflections they discussed Roseanne's mistakes her "dumb" marriage; her prostitution; her eating disorders. This was after a hysterical analysis of the function of the male sex ("Yes they can have control, but only in two areas," said Roseanne, laughing. "Starting barbecues is one; the other is walking around in packs and peeing on things.") By now, she and Rube were the biggest pals Ruby's method of making friends being that interesting throwback to subservient monkey behaviour rarely observed these days in celebrity interviews, ie, tweaking the breasts of the bigger woman, and polishing her teeth with your finger.
Ruby Wax Meets... (BBC1) has become unmissable. What made last night's show especially engrossing was that Roseanne Barr is nobody's patsy. Unlike Imelda Marcos or Pamela Anderson, she has an intelligence unclouded by vanity. "I know your tricks," she warned Ruby, and she meant it. At the end, she announced to camera: "I went through the fire and emerged with only a tan." She was talking about her marriage to Tom Arnold, but it applied to Ruby, too.
Returning from holiday this weekend, I found Paul Merton on Friday night doing Tony Hancock's The Radio Ham, and nearly decided to give it all up again. People keep insisting that in assessing Paul Merton in Galton and Simpson's... (ITV), comparisons with the lad himself are immaterial, but I don't buy that. Merton is a superbly clever improviser and a lousy actor the inverse of Hancock's own strengths. Yes, the scripts still sparkle, and references to teddy boys can be dropped. But Merton gets laughs by the speed of his fielding. His lines don't come from thought, much less from character. His best moment concerned the famous ravaged milk-bottle top. "Don't want to get Mad Tit Disease!" he yelled a new line, presumably written by Galton and Simpson to suit the delivery of their new star.
Last night a new Agatha Christie's Poirot on ITV took a bloody long time to establish the solution to Murder on the Links. And if I may say so, there was not half enough golf in it. Over on BBC1, Donna Franceschild's superior drama A Mug's Game reached three-quarter mark with great events poisoned fish floating belly-up; a boating disaster; and Kathy's ne'er-do-well husband leaving home with the VCR. Crushingly, Kathy (Michelle Fairley) told her besotted boss, Ken Stott, "You're very sweet", at which Stott's wonderful face sagged helplessly. When a woman says you are sweet, you know you've been kidding yourself.
FUTURE British governments stand to lose huge potential tax revenues from the spin-off of the British Gas (BG) trading arm into a separate quoted company.
The transfer of Morecambe Bay, BG's largest gasfield, into British Gas Energy (BGE) should lead to a sharp fall in the price of the take-or-pay contract on South Morecambe and a reduction of up to £1 billion in petroleum revenue tax and royalties.
Gas from South Morecambe is currently sold to BG's trading business under a take-or-pay contract with BG's exploration arm at a price believed to be 26-27p per therm, well above the market rate of about 15p per therm for long-term gas supplies.
BGE is expected to lower the price of Morecambe gas in a bid to persuade other gas suppliers to renegotiate similarly high-priced take-or-pay contracts, which could threaten the new company's survival.
"If we are negotiating with other producers, I am sure the discussions will include the price of the take-or pay contract on Morecambe," said a British Gas spokesman.
THE Serious Fraud Office, still reeling from the unsuccessful prosecution of Kevin and Ian Maxwell last month, is facing a fresh challenge from another high-profile fraud case starting this week.
The jury in the trial of Elizabeth Forsyth, former adviser to Asil Nadir, is due to be selected at the Old Bailey today. The trial is expected to start tomorrow and should last between four and six weeks.
Mrs Forsyth, 59, of Great Dunmow, Essex, was formerly chairman of South Audley Management, a management company which looked after the Nadir family's tax and property affairs.
She returned voluntarily to the UK from northern Cyprus in September 1994 to face questioning by the Serious Fraud Office. She was sent for trial in February 1995.
Shares in Polly Peck, Mr Nadir's fruits to electronics empire, were suspended at 108p in September 1990, the day after a raid by the SFO on the offices of South Audley Management. Receivers were appointed the following month.
Mrs Forsyth denies two counts of handling stolen goods under the Theft Act 1968. In count one, it is alleged that, on a day between October 16 and October 20, 1989, she dishonestly undertook or assisted in the retention, removal, disposal or realisation of certain stolen goods, namely a chose in action represented by a credit of £307,000 remaining after the payment by her of £310,000 in cash at Handelsfinanzbank Geneva, by or for the benefit of another, or dishonestly arranged so to do, knowing or believing the same to be stolen goods.
The second count involves the same charge, but it relates to £88,050 in cash.
Inco, the Canadian nickel group, has until Wednesday to decide whether to step into the bid fray after Friday's C$4 billion (£1.9 billion) agreed merger between Robert Friedland's Diamond Fields Resources group and Falconbridge. Inco has the right to make a counter-bid for Diamond Fields, in which it is a minority shareholder.
National Power, the electricity generator, has talked down suggestions that the sale of 4,000MW of generating plant, as ordered by the industry regulator, could be delayed by a Monopolies and Mergers Commission (MMC) inquiry into the industry. The MMC is looking at National Power's £2.8 billion bid for Southern Electric, a regional power distributor. A report is due next month, when the generator expects the forced sale to be concluded.
Companies that survive hostile takeover bids have tended to underperform the stock market by a big margin, says The Ones that Got Away, a report from Scottish Amicable Investment Managers.
On average, they underperformed the market by 12 per cent over one year, 21 per cent over two years and 25 per cent over the three years after the takeover bid failed.
FRANK WARREN, the boxing promoter, is due at the High Court today to fight attempts by the Department of Trade and Industry to have him banned from serving as a company director. Mr Warren, 43, will strongly contest proceedings brought against him under the Company Directors Disqualification Act. The hearing is expected to last three weeks.
The proceedings are linked to the collapse of the London Arena, the Docklands sports and entertainment complex that failed in 1991 with debts of more than £20 million. It reopened under new ownership in 1994. Mr Warren personally lost more than £3 million in the collapse. He had guaranteed various debts but saw off the threat of personal bankruptcy.
The action by the DTI came to light last month. Mr Warren's solicitor, Park Nelson Thompson Quarrell, issued a statement, saying that the proceedings related to the affairs of various companies before 1991. Mr Warren's current business interests are not affected. The statement said: "Mr Warren has defended the proceedings vigorously and filed lengthy affidavits explaining his efforts to protect the interest of all creditors, employees and shareholders.
"This is not the case of an irresponsible director jeopardising the funds of creditors and not suffering a loss himself, but of a director with a very substantial personal financial commitment who worked extremely hard to protect the interests of all creditors and that investment."
The case against Mr Warren moved to the courts in November 1995, but proceedings were adjourned after previously undiscovered documents came to light. Mr Warren, who says he is being taken to court on a "technicality", faces a maximum ban of 15 years if the proceedings prove successful. Only 24 people have received 15-year bans since the Directors Disqualification Act came into effect in 1986.
The London Arena hosted big names from Pavarotti to Duran Duran, but eventually collapsed under the weight of its debts. Creditors included Landhurst Leasing, the controversial loan company that used the names of Damon Hill and other sporting celebrities to secure millions of pounds in loans. Landhurst collapsed in 1992 with debts of £121 million.
A TOTAL of £80 million was paid out in bonuses to staff at Barings Bank based entirely on the illusory profits that were claimed by Nick Leeson, the convicted fraudster, according to a new book on the collapse of the bank to be published next week. In The Collapse of Barings, Stephen Fay, the financial writer, calculates for the first time the benefit to Barings executives of Leeson's fraud, in the form of staggering and controversial bonus payments.
Mr Fay says that ING, the Dutch bank that bought Barings a year ago, paid out between £90 and £95 million in bonuses for 1994, the year of the collapse, although Barings executives directly implicated in the Leeson affair received no bonus at all.
These payments were based on reported profits before tax of £205 million, including the phoney "profits" booked by Leeson in Singapore. When the Bank of England worked out the real figure, it was £19.8 million, less than a tenth of the total already announced.
This would have given rise, says Mr Fay, to a pool of cash for the payment of bonuses of just £9.9 million.
"The £80 million difference can be interpreted in two ways," the book concludes. "Either it was the bribe ING had to pay the people it wanted to keep at Barings, or it was the Nicholas Leeson Memorial Fund: an unearned, undeserved £80 million bonanza acquired by one man's fraud, forgery and deception.
"Had there been any real gentlemen left at Barings, they would have donated their bonus to the bondholders (the mainly private individuals who lost millions from the bank's collapse). But there weren't," Mr Fay concludes.
The book is the first published by an outsider into the Barings disaster and the subsequent sentencing of Nick Leeson to a six-and-a-half-year jail term by a Singapore court. It considers the rise of a humble comprehensive school boy who became a household name worldwide for fraud.
Mr Fay also looks at the culture within the aristocratic bank that allowed such fraud to be perpetrated and one employee to wreak such havoc. Excerpts from The Collapse of Barings appear exclusively in The Times today.
"The picture of Nick Leeson in custody, with a rueful smile and wearing a baseball cap back to front, will become one of the enduring images of the 1990s," Mr Fay concludes.
THE Government will claim success today for Britain's economic and labour market performance when it unveils detailed figures showing the UK's strong pattern of unemployment reduction and job creation sharply outperforming its principal competitor countries.
The figures will be used to stiffen the Tories' resolve to oppose the more regulated work patterns common on the Continent and being threatened by Brussels through the social chapter. Ministers expect that new statistics on the number of people out of work and claiming benefit to be published this week will show a further fall in unemployment, with City and Whitehall forecasts suggesting unemployment fell by 10,000 in January to just over 2.2 million.
Before that, Gillian Shephard, the Education and Employment Secretary, will set out in detail Britain's recent jobs performance against that of other European countries and will claim that it demonstrates the value to the British economy of the Government's decision to promote a flexible labour market.
She is expected to publish new work carried out by the Department for Education and Employment looking at unemployment rates and records of job growth in France, Germany, Spain and Britain. She will conclude that on both counts, Britain's flexible labour market is outperforming the more regulated job markets in such competitor countries.
The Institute of Directors calls today for a "radical rethink" of Europe's social policies and contrasts the job performance of Europe generally against the much higher levels of job creation in the heavily-deregulated labour market in America. The international comparisons, such as Mrs Shephard's employment indicators, are expected to be used by the Government in this year's competitiveness White Paper.
Ministers are also close to announcing detailed plans to give new opportunities for work experience to schoolchildren aged 14 to 16. They are determined to ride out what they see as wholly misplaced criticism of the original proposals, which appeared when they first emerged last year.
But the Government will run into difficulties on jobs when Tim Holt, its chief statistician, is expected tomorrow to reveal details of a new internal Whitehall report on the Government's unemployment figures. The report, revealed by The Times last week, is expected to recommend adopting a new monthly measure of unemployment as well as the normal claimant count.
Although Dr Holt, head of the Central Statistical Office, will be pressed by MPs when he appears tomorrow before the Commons Employment Select Committee, full details are not planned to be published until Thursday publication day of the Scott report into the arms-to-Iraq affair.
Meanwhile, the TUC says today that close to 200,000 people in Britain who receive redundancy payments when they become unemployed will be together £90 million worse off under the first year of Job Seekers' Allowance through loss of benefits.
Unemployment will continue to fall for the next two years and will be below two million by 1998, an economic report by the Chartered Institute of Marketing forecasts today. It says continuing economic growth means there is a good chance of much lower levels of recorded unemployment than at any time for 20 years.
THE £1.8 billion megadeal in the US proposed by Farnell Electronics, the Yorkshire distribution group, faces a rocky passage at this Thursday's extraordinary meeting, with a significant block of City shareholders pledged to oppose it.
So far, institutions speaking for as much as 12 per cent of Farnell's share capital are expected to vote against the purchase of Premier Industrial Corporation. The Prudential, with almost 6 per cent, said it would decide today, but is thought to be in the opposition camp.
The deal needs a majority of 75 per cent of those voting. The turnout at Farnell's last annual meeting was 55 per cent. At this sort of level, the deal is likely to be approved as long as not too many more institutions oppose it.
Farnell has, however, written to shareholders repeating the view that the acquisition of Premier and the accompanying rights issue are in their best interests. Three of the company's four largest shareholders, holding between them 24 per cent of the votes, are supportive, the company said. The fourth is the Prudential.
Leading the opposition to the Premier deal is Standard Life, the Scottish institution with 2 per cent of Farnell. Graham Wood, head of UK equities, said he had agreed to underwrite the issue despite doubts over the huge premium being paid for Premier and the dilution of earnings that the purchase entailed.
The institution had last month planned to sell some of its Farnell shares, but was unable to do so when informed of the US purchase.
HOW appropriate that results for the year ended December 31 for the Jersey-registered Flying Flowers group are due on Wednesday St Valentine's Day. "We chose the day quite deliberately," managing director Tim Dunningham says.
CITY types who frequent the Ebury Wine Bar, in Ebury Street, have a treat in store this summer. Its chef Josh Hampton, fresh from New Zealand, who has already introduced City diners to the delights of kangaroo, hopes to tickle taste buds with crocodile, served on a crisp bed of lettuce.
BASS brewers are crying in their beer after the oldest mulberry tree in Cardiff was blown over by high winds in the garden of one of their pubs. The 15ft tree, thought to be about 200 years old, had a preservation order on it, and now the owners of the Nine Giants pub in Llanishen are desperately looking for a new root.
CANTAB Pharmaceuticals, the immunology group of Cambridge where else? has appointed Sir John Collins as its new non-executive chairman and clearly does not hold his university days against him. Sir John, a former chairman and chief executive of Shell UK, is current chief executive of the Vestey group of companies and a non-executive director of NM Rothschild & Sons. And where did Sir John graduate with a BSc in Agriculture? Reading University.
ERNST & YOUNG, the accountancy, is taking the sponsorship of the Tate's Cezanne exhibition seriously. It has already arranged for its minibuses, which connect its various offices, to be painted in images of the artist's famous pictures. Even more enticing is the Cezanne Week it has organised in its canteen. Nosh will be turned over to Provencal cuisine. "We'll have to survive on Salade Cezannoise and Bouillabaisse Cezanne, though I'd prefer sausages and pommes frites," said an executive. Meanwhile, at Pret A Manger, they're serving a Cezannewich.
THINGS are looking up for the Cedrics of this world. Not only is Cedric Brown soon to retire from British Gas on a handsome pension, but hopes are high at Mudchute City Farm, east London, that Cedric, the 20-stone porker that featured so prominently at British Gas's last annual meeting, is pregnant.
The farm hands are excited and have put a circle around the month of May.
GMB, the general union which has promised to look after Cedric for the rest of her life, has already chosen a host of names. However, they do seem to have an uncanny resemblance to those of various executives in the utilities sector.
RON PERELMAN, the US entrepreneur, is trying to sell about 15 per cent of Revlon for $150 million, in an international share offering that values the company at only half the amount of earlier failed attempts.
The new offering, in which shares will be sold in London as well as the US and other financial centres, prices Revlon shares at about $20 each and the whole company at $1 billion. But it is a highly risky move that could backfire on Mr Perelman if it fails as the previous attempts have done.
The offering is partly designed to raise much-needed capital so that Mr Perelman can meet an obligation to pay $1.1 billion to the company's bondholders in less than two years' time. If he misses the deadline, he will lose control of the company.
Revlon is unable to generate the cash required to meet the payment because of its mounting debt and persistent losses over the past few years which turned into a profit of only $3.3 million in the last quarter of 1995 after savage price-cutting boosted sales.
In order to stimulate interest in the sale, Mr Perelman has substantially lowered his sights. Although the $20 offer price is similar to that at which he tried to sell the shares on his first attempt in 1992, analysts said that the equivalent value after accounting for share splits and other financial engineering over the past few years, is closer to $9.50, despite the overall rise in the stock market over the same period. Because of the lower value, there are 11 underwriters for the issue, including many of Wall Street's biggest broking firms.
Mr Perelman, who bought the company six years ago in a bitterly contested takeover battle, sounded out the stock market about a share issue last summer, but was forced to abandon the idea after opposition from Wall Street.
He then had to watch in frustration as Estee Lauder, a leading rival in the cosmetics industry, pulled off a highly successful share offering several weeks ago. The falling value of Revlon's shares reflects the poor performance of the company, which has turned out to be one of Mr Perelman's worst investments. It has made a loss in every year since 1990.
In 1991, losses soared to nearly $200 million, shrinking to about $10 million last year. In the meantime, debt has risen and even attempts at financial engineering by entering into interest-rate swaps have lost the company money.
THE £60 million debut of FI Group, a supplier of computer software services, is expected on the stock market this spring.
Hilary Cropper, chief executive, said flotation would help the company to capitalise on the expected growth opportunities in the software and computer services industry.
The company, the subject of a 1991 buyout by its workforce, concentrates on the finance, retail, leisure and service sectors. FI's customers are typically large organisations requiring large-scale, integrated information technology services.
The float will be by way of a placing, with UBS and Graville & Co appointed joint sponsors and UBS the company's broker. The business, which was founded in 1962, made pre-tax profits of £2.1 million on turnover of £37.4 million for the six months to October 31.
Lord Hanson built his £10 billion conglomerate on a single, coherent idea. Quoted companies exist solely to maximise returns to shareholders. That meant delivering more each year. Over the past 15 years, the rest of the Anglo-Saxon world has adopted this harsh but simple discipline.
City fund managers now demand no less. They resolved a long -running dispute with big business over "short-termism" with a crushing victory over the managers, aided by the lessons of two recessions. But does it work? As Lord Hanson, now 74, comes up for retirement, the case is looking shaky.
In the Hanson canon, the annual shareholders' meeting gradually took on an important symbolic role. It was the occasion when the board's report to shareholders demonstrated that it had delivered, and shareholders (aside from the odd misfit or non-financial protestor) expressed their gratitude. So it was that, after a depressing six months on the stock market, Lord Hanson pulled off a splendid coup de theatre at the group's agm, aimed to promise better things. Hanson would break itself into four chunks.
All present must have hoped that the share price would perk up in the fortnight before Hanson reported its first-quarter profits this week. It had sagged by an alarming 16 per cent while the index surged by a fifth. The old takeover king certainly tried his best. His plan was typical of the fast-moving opportunism of the halcyon years. By financial engineering, Hanson would do unto itself what it had done to so many others. Hanson shares, which had reversed a steep six-month slide in mid-December, immediately jumped. But it did not last. In the next few trading days, they relapsed to their December low.
Lords Hanson and White could never have turned a £2 million company into one valued at £12 billion, at its peak, unless they had the momentum of City sentiment behind them. Now, that sentiment has turned implacably negative. First, former fans decided that the plan was not well thought out. Hanson spent £2.5 billion buying Britain's Eastern electricity utility only five months ago as evidence of its new strategy. Now, Eastern was to be spun off, paired with Peabody, America's biggest coal miner. Then the new critics convinced themselves that the break-up would merely cut the huge dividends that had become the main lure of Hanson shares.
So far, however, few have suggested that Lord Hanson should abandon his Samsonian retirement plan. The conglomerate that still brings together plastics, trees, cigarettes and vitamin pills has been written off. So too, have conglomerates in general. Tighter accounting standards make it much harder to hide the costs and enhance short-term benefits of takeovers. The spread of the Hanson philosophy and continuous cost-cutting in industry has left fewer big targets that can have cash returns quickly boosted to fund the next, bigger takeover.
Businesses united by a management system or by financial logic need not, however, be less successful than those linked by marketing, production process or product area. There might be equal sense in linking businesses with opposite cyclical risks, or yoking cash-generators with big investments elsewhere.
Hanson itself seems to be following the usual conglomerate cycle. Takeover vehicles depend on being worth more than their parts. Their share rating must be higher than companies they own or buy could justify in their own right. Acquisitive conglomerates usually start with ambitious energetic individuals. Once they have shown some skill, their small company will be given a high hope rating, enabling them to accelerate by buying lower-rated companies.
The bigger they grow, the harder it becomes to keep up the pace. Once momentum slows, the logic unwinds. The share rating slips, making it harder to buy companies for shares and harder to boost earnings quickly from cash takeovers.
Shares in Hanson now yield 8 per cent, more than the Government has to pay on its debt. Once the buying and selling no longer generates extra earnings and cash, why should the takeover king's shares be valued higher than its underlying businesses would be. This process has come full circle at Hanson. The knockers have probably overdone things, but they should not have been surprised that Hanson's parts will not earn a high rating on their own unless they are candidates to be taken over by others. Like Lonrho, Trafalgar House and perhaps P&O next, Hanson's life cycle coincided with the energies of its creators.
A more critical test will come at BTR, the widely scattered £12 billion group created via a management revolution by young Turks within a sagging rubber company. Its team approach is more systematic, based on management method and insisting on retirement at 60 to keep up the energy. But a new team from outside has yet to prove it works.
Is it politically symbolic that Forte and Hanson, two of the four top corporate contributors to the Conservative Party, are now in their twilight, and that a third, P&O, is coming under City pressure? Dominance by individuals probably provides a likelier link. There is, however, a wider message from Hanson's decline. It symbolised the era of industry's adjustment to tough markets, tougher competition and high interest rates. Groups such as Hanson did the economy a service by liberating fat, squeezing costs and rationing investment in mature businesses to cope.
Cost disciplines must remain but that adjustment phase is over. The new task is to invest, to grow and to keep ahead of competitors, to create products rather than financial vehicles. The Hanson era has left the wrong people in boardrooms, and the wrong mentality among City investors, to meet that task.
THE Bank of England is pressing ahead with technical preparations for the introduction of European monetary union, with or without Britain's participation.
As well as working with the European Monetary Institute, the embryonic European Central Bank, and other national central banks on the transition to a single currency Europe, the Bank is also talking with the UK banking community and other economic sectors.
In its Quarterly Bulletin, due out on Wednesday, the Bank says it has held meetings with different interest groups, including building societies, the Confederation of British Industry, the British Retail Consortium and a wide range of market associations.
It had asked where it would be of help for the Bank to specify more precisely its own operations and to identify other areas where it might help to co-ordinate actions (including in the payments and settlements area and in markets).
The article, by John Townend, a deputy director, adds: "The Bank has also stressed the importance of considering these questions both in the context of the United Kingdom as a participant in Stage 3 and in the context of Stage 3 beginning but the United Kingdom exercising its right not to opt in."
CITY investment firms are fuelling speculation that a bidding war will prevent MAI and United News & Media from completing their £3 billion merger.
Some of the firms have taken the view that the proposed merger, which would be done though a share swap that offers no premium, lacks industrial logic and was probably planned as a defensive move.
Both companies were widely viewed as takeover targets long before the merger plans were announced last Thursday. United was approached last year by a couple of groups that were interested in buying its ailing Express newspaper titles.
Neill Junor, of NatWest Securities, is one analyst who thinks that the MAI-United merger has, in effect, placed "for sale" signs on the companies. In a note published on Friday, he wrote: "We are not convinced this deal will go ahead. MAI is a critical franchise within the ITV network and we believe that Carlton will be prompted to make a counterbid."
Michael Green, chief executive of Carlton Communications, the largest ITV company, cut short a Caribbean holiday when the MAI-United deal was announced and he is thought to have been approached by institutional investors about launching a counterbid for MAI.
Mr Green, however, is known to be a conservative investor and has never become involved in a hostile takeover. But one media executive noted that unless Mr Green changes his investment stance, the consolidation of the TV industry in advance of the Broadcasting Bill could leave him out in the cold.
The Bill, now making its way through Parliament, allows any group to own as many ITV licences as it wants as long as it does not exceed 15 per cent of the viewing audience.
Carlton, with the London weekday and central England licences, has a 9.4 per cent share. MAI, with the Anglia and Meridian licences, has 5.4 per cent. Together, Carlton and MAI would just slip under the limit.
Although Carlton is the most obvious candidate for MAI, others exist. Analysts think the diverse holdings of both MAI and United make them ideal break-up candidates.
MAI, for example, has a variety of money and securities broking companies that could be sold, while United has a large magazine publishing and exhibitions business. If the market were strong and the sales well timed, the purchaser might be able to sell off at a profit the parts that were not wanted.
Lord Stevens of Ludgate, chairman of United, last week said he did not fear a counter-bid for United. "If someone wants to bid for us, why haven't they done it yet?" he said.
Britain's small firms admit they are not training their staff as much as they should because of lack of time and money, a survey claims today. Ninety per cent of the 375 companies questioned by the British Chambers of Commerce and Alex Lawrie, the business finance specialist, recognise that their employees
BTR, the industrial conglomerate, is expected to announce this week that i likely to pay between $110 million and $120 million for the acquisition, which would complement its anti-vibration systems operations in Britain, Spain and Germany.
A $650 million steel deal between Thai Special Steel Industry and Davy International, a member of the Trafalgar House group, is expected to be signed during the Asia-European Union summit meeting of heads of government on March 1 and 2. The project, capable of producing 2.7 million tonnes of liquid iron, 1.1 million tonnes of coke and 2.15 million tonnes of billets annually, is the largest between a UK and a Thai firm.
Names will today be given details of Lloyd's £2.8 billion reconstruction and renewal plan aimed at resolving the mass of legal actions and at providing them with an affordable exit from the insurance market. They will not receive final figures until March. They are expected to vote on whether to accept the plan in June. Last week, the Ridley Committee reported to the Lloyd's ruling council its methodology for dividing the £2 billion of debt write-offs and £800 million between the different classes of names.
British consumers used credit as never before in the Christmas shopping period, according to figures today from the Finance & Leasing Association (FLA).
The association said that credit on store cards hit a record monthly high of £598 million in December, a jump of 21 per cent compared with the previous year. In 1995 as a whole, consumers took out more than £20 billion of credit from FLA members, a rise of 16 per cent over 1994.
This is a much larger increase than the 7 per cent implied by the Bank of England's consumer credit figures, suggesting that the finance industry has sharply increased its market share.
Is history repeating itself? As in early 1994, gold prices are soaring, while yields on long gilts and ten-year German bunds are both about 40 basis points above their lows. Is a 1994-style bond market crash on the way?
In our view, the recent shake-out is a reasonable buying opportunity rather than the start of a big slide. We expect gilts to match or outperform the global norm, with long yields falling back to 7.7 per cent in the coming months. At the same time, sterling is likely to be among the strongest European currencies, rising above DM2.35 this year.
There are three key differences between the current position and that of early 1994. First, global growth is weaker. In early 1994, business surveys in the US, UK and other EU countries showed rapid gains in new orders. By contrast, the last CBI survey showed falling business confidence and the weakest orders for three years. Business surveys in the US and other EU countries are even gloomier.
Secondly, the overhang of leveraged bond-market positions seems to be smaller. Sterling bank loans to UK-based securities dealers rose by 23 per cent last year, whereas they rose by 90 per cent during the 1993 bond bubble. There has been no rerun of 1993's huge speculative buying of gilts by banks and overseas investors.
Finally, bond valuations are not as stretched. In early 1994, real long gilt yields were about 2.5 per cent, which allowed little margin for inflation risks. Now, real yields are 5 per cent slightly above the average of the past decade. Moreover, inflation is likely to surprise on the downside. The consensus expects inflation to stay above the authorities' 2.5 per cent target for this year and next. However, lead inflation guides are pointing lower. Manufacturers' price expectations have weakened sharply and today's data are likely to show another big drop in output price inflation. Over the past decade, these indicators have been better than gold as a guide to future inflation trends.
We expect underlying inflation to fall to 2.5 per cent later this year and to stay around that level next year. This would imply five consecutive years with inflation below 4 per cent, which is without precedent in 60 years, outside wartime. The recent gains in broad money and credit are not a threat to this low inflation scenario. The credit surge largely reflects takeover activity rather than, as in the 1980s, higher spending on investment, consumption and mortgages. The takeover boom will give some boost to the real economy via higher equity prices and payouts to shareholders in target companies. However, these effects are quite weak compared with the spending boom that lay behind the credit surge during the 1980s. In any case, the economy has enough slack that a modest recovery in growth will not cause capacity strains this year or next.
A rising pound, and the resultant drop in import prices, could be the trigger for a gilt rally. Sentiment is likely to turn against the core ERM currencies because of the sharp slowdown in those economies. Although the UK economy has slowed, it is outpacing the core European economies by a wide margin.
The Bundesbank has signalled its desire for a lower mark, while the United Kingdom authorities probably would not resist a modest gain in the pound. Sterling is highly undervalued compared with its long-run norms and a slight rise would still leave exporters with a huge competitive edge.
Signs that inflation is retreating will allow base rates to fall to 6 per cent in the coming months. Unless the next government surprisingly loosens fiscal policy, then they are likely to stay around 6 per cent next year, in contrast to the sharply rising rate path shown by short sterling futures.
Michael Saunders
Salomon Brothers
The Sunday Times: Buy Reuters, Johnson Matthey, Clubhaus. Hold Bryant. The Sunday Telegraph: Buy Vardon, Hanson, Transport Development. The Observer: Sell Redland. Buy WMI. The Independent on Sunday:
Buy Johnson Matthey, BAA. Sell Eidos. The Mail on Sunday: Buy Wyndeham Press.
HEAVITREE BREWERY will soon join the growing swell of smaller independent breweries to float when it goes for a listing on the Alternative Investment Market. Heavitree follows a number of brewers that have seized on growing confidence in the fortunes of smaller drinks companies as the market gets increasingly tough for the larger businesses in a tight market.
The move may add a little sparkle to AIM, which has suffered from more lacklustre trading recently. Dealers report a general feeling of caution feeding through from the main stock market, which many watchers believe is sliding towards a correction. Julian Palfreyman of Winterflood Securities, which is one of the main players in AIM, said: "Last week was quite tough. Many eyes have been on Wall Street and there is some waiting to see what might happen before investors make too many moves."
Those shares which did shake up some action last week included SkyePharma, the pharmaceuticals company which joined the market at the start of the year with a valuation of £33.6 million, and Crown Products.
There was also some interest in Voss Net, the company that is marketing an interactive online electronic trading system, after it struck a licensing agreement with Petra Corporation, a US company operating in the same area. The deal means US exposure for Voss Net and could lead to expansion into the Pacific Rim.
The subdued activity this month contrasts with the strong start to the year made by AIM. In January, turnover on the alternative exchange passed the £100 million a month mark for the first time when it reached £123.5 million. That figure had jumped 47 per cent from £84.3 million in December and was boosted by a number of new companies trading on AIM. The number on AIM is now 126.
The index for AIM shares, which was launched at the start of the year, rose nearly 5 per cent to 1,049 over the month.
This week sees a string of key British statistics, kicking off today with January figures for costs and prices in industry. According to the consensus of forecasts compiled by MMS International, producer input prices are expected to rise by only 0.1 per cent, allowing the annual rate to fall to 4.4 per cent from 5.8 per cent in December.
Output prices paid at the factory gate are forecast to rise by 0.5 per cent, pushing the year-on-year increase down to 3.8 per cent from 4.3 per cent.
The next focus for the markets will be Wednesday's Quarterly Bulletin and Inflation Report from the Bank of England. This will be particularly closely looked at by the City for any further clues as to the Bank's attitude towards the second of two cuts in the base rate during January.
The Bank refused to comment on the cut, fuelling speculation that it had opposed the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the issue. The minutes of the January monthly monetary meeting are published on Wednesday next week.
Also this Wednesday comes publication of unemployment statistics for January, with the market consensus forecast looking for a fall in headline unemployment of 5,000, compared with the decline of 7,900 in December.
Annual average earnings growth in December is expected to have edged up to 3.5 per cent from 3.25 per cent, while year-on-year growth in unit wage costs is expected to remain at 4 per cent.
On Thursday, January retail prices figures are due to be published. Headline inflation is forecast to have dropped 0.3 per cent in January, taking the annual rate down to 2.9 per cent from 3.2 per cent. The underlying rate of inflation is expected to fall to 2.8 per cent from 3 per cent, and RPIY, which excludes mortgage interest payments and indirect taxes, is forecast to stay unchanged at 2.5 per cent.
The last key British statistic of the week comes on Friday with the January public sector borrowing requirement. One of the key months for corporation tax receipts, there is expected to be a net repayment of borrowing of £4.5 billion after a borrowing requirement of £1.04 billion in December.
One key international event to watch out for is the Thursday meeting of the Bundesbank's policymaking council, which will discuss German interest rates.
First-quarter figures tomorrow are expected to reflect a buoyant industrial gases market. They should also highlight the benefits accruing from recent restructuring and investment. In fact, gases should provide the main thrust to a £19 million increase in pre-tax profits to £105 million. But trading conditions are less positive elsewhere in the group. BOC's healthcare operation has been hit by generic competition to its Forane treatment, while in the US, order books for anaesthetic equipment show signs of decline.
The vacuum operation has also been a strong performer, but this is expected to be offset by a disappointing performance from the distribution side, where non-Marks & Spencer margins have come under fresh pressure. BOC is now embarking on a restructuring programme for this part of the business.
On Friday, the group will be publishing its first set of figures since merging towards the end of last year. They should make impressive reading, revealing the best trading profits of all Britain's banks.
Pre-tax profits for the full year are expected to have grown by about 10 per cent to £2 billion, supported by a five-month contribution from its recent acquisition, Cheltenham & Gloucester, and further cost cutting. But the figures will be hit by a charge of almost £500 million relating to restructuring. Shareholders are likely to be rewarded with a 15 per cent increase in the dividend to 11p.
The group has enjoyed double-digit revenue growth in recent years, but that looks set to change, which is why the City will be paying closer attention than usual to full-year figures tomorrow.
Towards the end of last year, Reuters braced the City for the first signs of a slowdown in its phenomenal growth record by telling it to start expecting single-digit revenue growth. Even so, brokers are forecasting a 16 per cent increase in pre-tax profits to almost £600 million, while earnings advance 15 per cent to 25p a share.
Much of the growth will be generated by the group's transaction operations, including Instinet, its computerised securities trading system, which is expected to have enjoyed a robust performance. Word is that D2-2 will also have moved into the black. But even if there are signs of a slowdown, UBS, the broker, hopes this will be offset by possible news of a share buyback programme.
Having seen more than £1 billion wiped from its stock market value since announcing plans to split the company, investors will no doubt be hoping the share price can make up some of the lost ground when the first-quarter figures are announced on Wednesday. They are likely to be disappointed.
Analysts are forecasting a drop in pre-tax profits of about 6 per cent to £252 million, with earnings down about 4 per cent at 3.7p. This is in spite of a first full contribution from Eastern Electricity, for which it paid £2.5 billion last year. Much of the blame will lie with Quantum, the group's US operation.
It will have become a familiar tale by the time Shell also unveils final figures on Thursday. The impact of the downturn in the chemical industry will be more evident than with BP. Henderson says that it expects net profits to have fallen from £1.6 billion to £1.1 billion.
However, last year's figure was inflated by about £500 million on exceptional profits relating to Hong Kong property gains. Once that figure is stripped out, the group's performance becomes almost static. UBS, the broker, is forecasting profits outside the US to drop 30 per cent from the third-quarter level. This mainly reflects its reliance on the bulk polymers market.
Mr Evers, of Henderson, says: "Obviously, if earnings from either company disappoint, it will force people to trim their 1996 estimates."
THE oil companies hold centre stage this week, with the "big two", BP and Shell, unveiling figures. However, the focus of attention will not be on their oil activities, but on just how badly their chemical interests have performed during the present downturn.
BP: Full-year figures tomorrow from the company, of which Sir David Simon is chairman, are likely to reveal a downturn in profits during the final quarter, reflecting problems within the chemicals division.
Bruce Evers, oil analyst at Henderson Crosthwaite, the broker, is looking for net profits to grow by £90 million to £517 million, but with the group having achieved a third-quarter performance of £532 million, this is unlikely to inspire the City. A combination of high exploration write-offs during the final quarter and a fall-off in activity on the chemicals side will be blamed for the downturn.
In addition, the group has suffered a 1 per cent reduction in volume, although domestic gas sales were higher in spite of surplus stocks and the warm weather.
Refining was flat during the third quarter, with margins under pressure. Margins, generally, will prove erratic at best especially in the US. The petrol price war initiated after the Budget will have also put margins under pressure.
BP has announced plans to restructure its downstream assets. The £700 million charge will be taken below the line. The fourth-quarter dividend is expected to be maintained on the previous quarter, resulting in a total payout of 15p.
Computer's historic win
Garry Kasparov, the world champion, has suffered a sensational reverse in the first game of his six-game match against IBM's Deep Blue computer. This is the first time that a world champion has lost to a computer at the normal tournament time rate of 40 moves in two hours.
IBM's Deep Blue sees 512 million different positions every second. The question must be whether such immense calculating power can translate into the strategic and tactical creativity required for victory on the chessboard.
From the start of the first game, Kasparov seemed ill at ease. His second move blew the position wide open, when conventional wisdom dictates that a closed strategy is the prudent course against computers. Kasparov's tenth move ... Bb4 looked artificial, and, after this bishop was driven out of play on the queen's flank, the computer systematically set about inflicting weaknesses on Kasparov's pawns.
White: Deep Blue
Black: Garry Kasparov
Philadelphia, January 1996
Sicilian Defence
1e4 c5
2c3 d5
3exd5 Qxd5
4d4 Nf6
5Nf3 Bg4
6Be2 e6
7h3 Bh5
80-0 Nc6
9Be3 cxd4
10cxd4 Bb4
11a3 Ba5
12Nc3 Qd6
13Nb5 Qe7
14Ne5 Bxe2
15Qxe2 0-0
16Rac1 Rac8
17Bg5 Bb6
18Bxf6 gxf6
19Nc4 Rfd8
20Nxb6 axb6
21Rfd1 f5
22Qe3 Qf6
23d5 Rxd5
24Rxd5 exd5
25b3 Kh8
26Qxb6 Rg8
27Qc5 d4
28Nd6 f4
29Nxb7 Ne5
30Qd5 f3
31g3 Nd3
32Rc7 Re8
33Nd6 Re1+
34Kh2 Nxf2
35Nxf7+ Kg7
36Ng5+ Kh6
37Rxh7+ Black resigns
Diagram of final position
Correction
Last Thursday, there was an error in the diagram position. The position occurred after Black's 33rd move in the game Xie Jun Polgar. The black bishop which appeared on the d8-square should have been on e8.
Raymond Keene writes on chess Monday to Friday in Sport and in the Weekend section on Saturday.
Stuart Jones squeezes into Crystal Palace for an evening of non-stop hockey action.
Finals night of the indoor hockey club championship at the Crystal Palace Sports Centre was packed and on a foul February night, as well. The place was also very noisy, principally because of the vociferous contingent supporting East Grinstead.
A thousand seats, arrayed along one side, were full. So were the hospitality boxes, stretched along one end. Spectators, with no choice but to stand behind a railing, lined the other side and end.
There was no less space in between the eight matches, one of which was an exhibition featuring school sides. Play was continuous, apart from intervals of three minutes and gaps of five minutes, for more than seven hours. At £7.50, the entrance fee represented good value for money.
The refreshments did not. A hamburger stall, tucked away in the nether regions of the complex, offered the only hot food available. Timing was everything as no more than one person was on duty and she was distinctly harassed.
Similar exasperation was evident back in the arena. Uncommonly, the players shook hands with their opponents before as well as after they tussled with them, but such amiable propriety was not shown to the officials, particularly by the aptly named Barford Tigers.
The runners-up last year, they had won all five of their matches in the preliminary round, held over two days in the middle of January. They opened in the tournament, though, by being beaten by Hull and they lost their composure as well.
Miscreants were not shown a yellow card but an incongrously inconspicuous green triangle. The Barford Tigers earned several of them, all for dissent. Their followers also angrily accused those in charge of, among other crimes, "knowing nothing about the game because they had never played it".
Amid the increasingly petulant verbal protestations on and off the converted basketball court, though, could be seen the outstanding individual of the event. Amarjit Deegun caught the eye for his sleight of stick.
Even with his dazzling wizardry, the Tigers fared no better in their other pool match. They went down to Old Loughtonians, as they had by a similarly narrow margin in the final a year ago.
ROCHESTER is not just Rochester, but, as the tourist signs tell visitors, Historic Rochester. There is the 11th-century Rochester Castle, a cathedral that is the second oldest in England, a Dickensian connection and, if you visit in November, Great Britain's oldest annual five-mile road race. Yesterday, history was in the making again.
The biggest weekend of the year for young netball players comes with certain guarantees. Competition will be keen, the noise will be deafening and Greater Manchester will win something. What has never happened in the annual inter-counties schools championships is for Sussex to reach a final.
Their previous best was ninth, but, at the Stirling Sports Centre, they reached the final of the under-16 tournament. They lost to mighty Manchester, but gave them a game, 10-8 the score. Manchester did the double, beating Birmingham 14-12 in the under-18 final.
This is serious success in domestic netball. Such is the importance of the tournament that the counties, even those from nearby, book into hotels. The cost of the weekend to each county is at least £2,000. "Our attitude is very professional," Rachel Folley, the England Under-16 coach, said. "We are hampered by the image of it being a schoolgirl game."
Folley attributes Manchester's success to enthusiastic officials, a sound club and school structure, role models and luck. Luck because, compared with counties the size of Sussex, Manchester is a small area with a high concentration of people.
"Accessibility is so much greater," Folley said. Sussex sprawls by comparison. Players have to commit to travel and, according to Sandra Scragg, the Sussex coach, there is a greater disparity of styles when players come from a wide area.
Manchester's role models inspire newcomers. According to Folley: "When you have one England player, the kudos develops and expectation becomes higher." Manchester had nine on show at the weekend. The next best counties had England players in ones and twos.
The present success started with Tracey Neville, an England Under-21 goal attack. It makes a change to have an attacker in the Neville family; Gary and Phillip, her footballing brothers, defend for Manchester United.
In common with many sports, netball has suffered through changes in the national curriculum. "The amount played in schools, and the quality, was affected," Folley said but she sees signs of a recovery.
"The prospects for the future of the England team look encouraging," she said. They have a hard act to follow: England were fourth in the world championships in Birmingham last year.
However, rising players will be expected to learn a standard England style. Australia and New Zealand, first and third at the world championship, have been studied and copied.
"We have looked at their styles, which are very different, and taken the best things that are worth us developing into our style," Folley said. "It is beginning to filter down to these people here.
"This is something the All England Netball Association has taken on since the world championship." Come the next world tournament, in New Zealand in 1999, Rochester may seem far behind for some of the winners yester-
day.
"There are certainly some youngsters here who could be playing for that squad," Folley said. One who impressed her was Liz Heginbotham, the Manchester Under-16 centre. She has "lovely wrists", apparently. Fading wrists can fool the opposition, and Sussex were fooled.
THERE was anger in the running of Davidson Ezinwa and Christy Opara, respective winners of the men's and women's 60 metres at the Ricoh Tour meeting in Birmingham on Saturday. Ezinwa and Opara are Nigerians who should be finalists in the 100 metres at the Olympic Games in Atlanta this summer. Should be, but will they be allowed to compete?
Both were disturbed by reports from the United States in the week that suggested that moves were afoot on Capitol Hill to have Nigeria's athletes barred from Atlanta. Sanctions against Nigeria's military Government were being examined by the State Department after the hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a dissident. Embargoes on arms and oil, and a hard line on sport, were under consideration.
Ezinwa and Opara urged the politicians not to use sport to exert pressure on their Government to end human rights abuses. "If they cannot sanction Nigeria in an economic way, why sanction them in sport?" Opara, the 1994 Commonwealth Games 100 metres runner-up, said.
"It is not sport that is causing what is going on in Nigeria now, it is oil, but they are talking about banning athletes," Ezinwa said. "If they stop Nigeria coming to the Olympics, it is not the Government they are hurting, it's the athletes."
Ezinwa has had more than his share of setbacks caused by the politics of his sport. Though an Olympic finalist in 1992, he was left out of the Nigeria team for the 1993 world championships in Stuttgart because he did not appear at the national trials. The runner-up to Linford Christie in the 1990 Commonwealth Games, he was omitted for the next Games, in 1994 again for failing to run the trials.
In 1995, he missed the world championships in Gothenburg through injury. Having won the first two races on the Ricoh Tour, he feels that he has built a platform for Atlanta. Now, the politicians are causing him more worries than are Christie and Donovan Bailey.
EVEN without Jonathan Edwards, Great Britain was one jump ahead of the rest of the world on Saturday. Ashia Hansen's British and Commonwealth women's triple jump record in the Ricoh Tour in Birmingham was all the more meaningful for the scalps that it gave her. Hansen's mark was the best in the world this year, as was Steve Smith's in the high jump, until Javier Sotomayor added a centimetre in Paris yesterday.
It was a day when the names of Kravets and Kravitz came up. Hansen beat Inessa Kravets, the outdoor world champion and world record-holder, as well as Iva Prandzheva, the world championship runner-up. Smith was wondering whether he should go back to Lenny Kravitz.
Two years ago, Smith set a British and Commonwealth indoor record of 2.38 metres in a high jump to music competition in Wuppertal, Germany. Ten days ago, he returned to Wuppertal and managed only 2.20 metres. "One of my most embarrassing performances," Smith said. "I tried Frankie Goes to Hollywood at Wuppertal and it didn't work, so I may go back to Lenny Kravitz."
Even without music, which helps the jumpers into their rhythm, Smith cleared 2.36 metres in Birmingham. Not only was Smith without music, but also opposition, too. Steinar Hoen, the European champion, from Norway, abandoned the competition at 2.34 metres, with just the two of them left in, because he had a flight to catch to his next meeting. Who cares about the paying public?
Hoen was off to Balingen, Germany, for a musical high jump yesterday and wanted to catch the evening flight. Smith followed yesterday morning. "I would never think of leaving a competition if I had
just jumped 2.34," Smith said, "but he has not got a British crowd to think of like I have. That is where my priorities lie."
Something will have to be done about the jumping surface at the National Indoor Arena. Two British high jumpers, Brendan Reilly and Andrew Lynch, have ruptured Achilles tendons on it recently because, Smith suspects, the surface gives underfoot. It required taping during the competition. "I was very aware of it at the beginning, but it is no use worrying about it," Smith said.
Hansen added 29 centimetres to her British record with 14.58 metres. Prandzheva was second with 14.56 metres, Inna Lasovskaya, the European indoor champion, third with 14.52 metres and Kravets a disappointing fourth with 14.27 metres.
Coaches are hard people to satisfy. "She was not as quick on the runway as I have seen her the last two weeks," was the critical view of Frank Attoh, Hansen's coach. "There is at least 30 or 40 centimetres to come, hopefully indoors."
By tonight, Britain could have a new world record-holder. Tony Jarrett, after his sprint hurdles victory over Allen Johnson, the indoor and outdoor world champion, is in Tampere, Finland, seeking to break the rarely-run mark for the indoor 110 metres hurdles.
"Hopefully I can do it," Jarrett said. Nevertheless, he admitted: "It does not have have a great deal of significance." The record, held by Johnson, is 13.34sec.
British athletics is enjoying an encouraging start to the year. There were fresh indications in the week that Diane Modahl may have her name cleared of drugs allegations by the International Amateur Athletic Federation; television figures show that the Great Britain versus Russia indoor international attracted four million Saturday afternoon viewers, within a million of the number that watched the rugby union international between England and France; two seven-figure sponsorships have been announced; British athletes are performing well; and Sally Gunnell is back.
Gunnell's disqualification from the 400 metres for breaking lane early in her first international race after prolonged injury hardly mattered. What was important was that she gave a close race to Sandra Farmer-Patrick and Deon Hemmings, two challengers for her Olympic 400 metres hurdles crown.
"The important thing was to give it a real go and be competitive," Gunnell, who reported no problem with the heel injury that ruled her out last year, said. She did exactly that.
Alan Lee, cricket correspondent, runs the rule over the squad bearing England's hopes.
Michael Atherton.
A first World Cup for Atherton (right) and a chance to show he is more than a five-day blocker. The ideal anchorman, England will want him to bat for most of an innings so nothing new here. Tactically rigid for one-day cricket, but now fully and rightly respected as captain and must hold on to the job whatever happens here.
Alec Stewart
Lost his form in South Africa, when his feet were out of tune with his brain. Capable of thrilling one-day innings, although Oval-trained and may struggle for fluency on slow Asian pitches. Could keep wicket, though Russell's form suggests he will not.
Graeme Hick
A natural No3 for instant cricket and should be used there. Batted more commandingly than his figures showed in South Africa, not least because he relaxed at last. Has far more to offer and, with useful off spin and brilliant outfielding, could be thought the most complete one-day player in the world.
Robin Smith
No longer the brawny dasher of old, Smith (above) can look an anguished figure at the crease these days and is no certainty to make the final XI, even if he recovers from injury. He has the experience to be an important player, though, and could open if Stewart fails.
Graham Thorpe
Found his form all too late in South Africa but this could be his stage if he gets over his habitually neurotic starts. Fluent, confident and, importantly, left-handed.
Neil Fairbrother
A one-off. Of no use in Test cricket but indispensable for a one-day series in which he angles and squeezes the ball to unlikely, unguarded areas. England's top-scorer and best fielder in the 1992 final but not quite the same force now.
Craig White
On his form hangs Raymond Illingworth's reputation. An odd selection, after a poor A-team tour and, with Dermot Reeve omitted, neither his batting nor bowling seem suited to likely conditions. Popular team man but little form to match.
Jack Russell
Demanded inclusion with his frisky, adaptable batting in South Africa. His wicketkeeping inspires confidence and his new maturity, bordering on the gregarious, makes him the ideal senior professional.
Neil Smith
Fine temperament, as befits the son of MJK, and as capable of big hitting in the closing overs as he is of a telling spell of off spin. Not the best of fielders but could be more than an also-ran.
Dominic Cork
Keeps rising to each new challenge, a man born for the big occasion. Will love the crowds and adulation and, if he keeps the theatricals under control, will be England's best bowler again.
Darren Gough
The action, nip and late swing were encouragingly restored during the South African one-day series after a troubled year. If he holds it together, and remains fit, he is a match-winner.
Peter Martin
Made giant strides in South Africa, where the captain's confidence in him was vital. A little too gentle to be a serious fast bowler, even with his size, but swings the ball late and should be effective on slow pitches.
Phillip DeFreitas
The only man in the squad to have played in two previous World Cups (and finals), but his career is a tale of unfulfilment and inconsistency. Still an effective bowler when in the mood but should make more runs.
Richard Illingworth
Has learnt the virtues of flight and become a more rounded bowler for it. Metronomic and economical, Illingworth (below) will start as senior spinner but may find he is competing with Neil Smith for a place.
THE sixth World Cup is to be covered more extensively on television and radio than any in the past. A cargo plane will ferry 40 tonnes of equipment and innumerable technicians around the sub-continent to enable Sky to show more than 200 hours of live cricket.
The BBC has reached an agreement with Sky to televise highlights and Today, the current affairs radio programme, will, on certain days, make way for ball-by-ball coverage.
Over the 33 days of competition Sky Sports will show 29 matches in full plus highlights every evening. The 25 commentators will include Richie Benaud, Geoffrey Boycott returning to the team after moving to radio for the England tour of South Africa Tony Greig and Tony Lewis. Charles Colville, the presenter, will be based in the studio at Isleworth, interviewing the likes of Angus Fraser and Dermot Reeve.
At each match Sky will use nine cameras, four slow-motion replay machines, one stump camera, one stump microphone and no fewer than 35 technicians.
Those matches restricted to highlights are on days when there are other live fixtures deemed to be more significant.
BBC Television is to show highlights on ten evenings, starting with England's opening fixture against New Zealand on February 14, which will be on Sportsnight. All of England's matches, plus both semi-finals and the final, are to be covered on either Radio 4 long wave or Radio 5 Live. Jonathan Agnew, Peter Baxter and Mike Selvey form the core of the commentary team. John Barclay, the England assistant manager, might also be employed as a summariser.
"I aim to have a report on every match and have the rights to do the quarter-finals even if England do not qualify," Baxter, the producer, said. "Expectations of quality go up all the time but I can't afford an engineer I'm doing that myself. I don't think I've done anything on such shaky ground before, yet we are aiming for a great deal of ball-by-ball coverage."
Of England's five qualifying matches, the three that take place on Sundays are to be broadcast on Radio 5 Live and the two on weekdays their opening fixture and that against Holland on February 22 on Radio 4 long wave.
Meanwhile, spare a thought for the commentators, who have to continue at their post without concern about bombs going off around them. Fortunately for Sky and BBC viewers, three of the hardiest cricketers to have played the game have been assigned to Colombo: Benaud, Greig and the most doughty of all, Ian Chappell.
The first limited-overs international had a swift and profound effect on the game. John Woodcock saw it.
It must seem odd to the great majority of cricketers today that the one-day international came into existence quite by chance. It happened in Melbourne in the first week of 1971, and no uncommon powers of prophecy were needed among those present to foretell that no ordinary acorn had been planted.
The Melbourne climate is notoriously fickle. Not infrequently, autumn, winter, spring and summer all show up on the same day. On this occasion, the weather over the new year was not so much capricious as relentless. The third Test match between Australia and England was due to be played between December 31, 1970 and January 5, 1971; but England's cricketers are not renowned as rain-makers for nothing.
In Natal recently, they turned a four-year drought into flooding. In Melbourne on that New Year's Eve, the rain set in just after Bill Lawry and Raymond Illingworth, the captains, had tossed up, and was still beating down three days later. England tours were conducted in those days under the aegis of MCC this was so from 1903-04 until 1976-77 and besides David Clark, the manager of the MCC side, there were in Melbourne at the time Sir Cyril Hawker, the president of the club, and Gubby Allen, the treasurer.
Between them, these three, together with Sir Donald Bradman, the chairman of the Australian Cricket Board, and Ray Steele, its treasurer, took what was to prove a momentous decision. They abandoned the Test match or, to be more accurate, postponed it for three weeks (it eventually replaced a four-day match against Victoria and a one-day match against a Victorian Country XI), and declared that, in its place, a one-day game of 40 eight-ball overs a side would be played when the skies cleared.
There was the inevitable murmuring among the players, who asked for, and received, a special match fee. England's asked, too, though without conviction or success, for a seventeenth player to be sent for, to help bear the extra workload, which was really more imaginary than real. They were unimpressed, I remember, when told how Lord Harris had remarked, halfway through his tour of Australia in 1878-79, that he had made a big mistake in taking 12 players. "They are all so keen to play," he said, "that it would have saved me a lot of bother had I brought only 11."
The propriety of so rejigging MCC's programme in 1970-71 was discounted, rather surprisingly in retrospect, and the extemporary fixture, played on what was to have been the last day of the Test match, January 5, is now recognised as the first official one-day international. Being a Tuesday, the caterers at the Melbourne Cricket Ground were advised to allow for a crowd of no more than 20,000. Instead, 46,006 turned up, and nobody doubted it when Bradman told the assembled company that they "could well have seen history made".
Ever since, "instant cricket", as it was called already in England, has just "growed and growed". It took barely four years for the World Cup to become established. Played in England, the first of them culminated in as thrilling a final, between Australia and West Indies at Lord's in June 1975, as there is ever likely to be. West Indies had a tremendous batting side, with Fredericks, Greenidge, Kallicharran, Kanhai, Lloyd and Richards filling the first six places, while, for Australia, Thomson and Lillee were at their peak. As for the fielding, nobody among a full house at Lord's had ever seen better.
As telegenic theatre, it was a sure winner, a fact that did not, of course, escape a certain Kerry Packer, the owner of his own television channel. Half Australia, including him for all I know, sat up through the night watching this first final, so that, when the idea of a travelling circus, involving some of the best players in the world, was put to Packer's Channel Nine, its commercial possibilities were unmistakable. Out came the cheque-book, up went the stakes and fierce blew the tempest. The game was never to be the same again.
One of the sporting myths of the 20th century is that when, in 1977, Packer came down "like the wolf on the fold", cricket was in need of him. Internationally, it was in rude health, but then perspectives became blurred. Helmets became standard issue; harmony became discord; traditionalism gave way to razzmatazz, moderation to promiscuity; and one-day cricket was so upgraded that today, in the countries where the sixth World Cup is about to be played, Test cricket is on a life-support machine. Seen in this context, perhaps January 5, 1971 was not so much a momentous occasion as a fateful one.
THE three new kids on the World Cup block are not expected to upset the big boys, or even cause them mild embarrassment, but their presence will be noticed.
The United Arab Emirates have already created debate with their predominantly Pakistani line-up, Holland's appearance after two near-misses will be cheered and the progress of Kenya must interest those keen to see the game expand globally.
It was with this latter aim in mind that the International Cricket Council (ICC) decided to expand the eight-team format of previous World Cups (nine in 1992, when South Africa were late entrants) to 12.
The associate members qualified through the 1994 ICC Trophy, which was held in Nairobi. The hosts lost an exciting final to the UAE, and Holland claimed the third place by defeating Bermuda in a play-off.
From the start of a tournament that included teams as diverse as Bangladesh, Gibraltar, Argentina and Hong Kong, there was widespread dissatisfaction about the formulation of the UAE squad.
The ICC's qualification rules deemed a player eligible to represent a country if he had lived there for the majority of the past four years. The UAE team leant heavily on such imported talent, with all but one of their 16-man squad an immigrant worker in the Gulf.
Only Sultan Zarawani, the captain, was a natural national, with the balance consisting of nine Pakistanis, five Indians including Riaz Poonawala, once twelfth man in a Test match and a Sri Lankan. Zarawani's contribution on the field was minimal: in the final he bowled three loose overs of leg spin and was the only member of his side not to bat.
Vikram Kaul, the team manager and also an Indian, saw nothing wrong in the UAE complying with a set of rules that they had no part in framing, but there was little celebration at his side's success and the ICC immediately began discussing new residential criteria.
By contrast, Holland's qualification, after twice finishing runners-up to Zimbabwe, was warmly applauded, not least because it is the last chance for Steve Lubbers, their veteran captain, and Nolan Clarke, the remarkable 47-year-old former Barbados opener, to compete in cricket's top tournament.
Clarke's unbeaten century, which helped to clinch the last place in the finals, has given the Dutch a chance to exploit the television coverage that they have always thought necessary to promote the game in Europe.
With a change in residential qualification and the ageing of key players pointing to difficult times ahead for the UAE and Holland, it is Kenya who seem most likely to dominate the ICC associates.
While ICC officials privately look to the tradition, population and grassroots participation in Bangladesh to spawn a tenth Test-playing nation, it is not fanciful to suggest that, by 2010, the East Africans will have beaten them to it.
The reason for the rapid advance of cricket in Kenya is the increasing involvement of African players. In the past, the game was played almost exclusively by white settlers Derek Pringle's father, Donald, played for East Africa in the 1975 World Cup and by the minority Asian population.
Now, the Kenyan side is predominantly African, with its players copying West Indies with high-fives and flamboyant strokeplay from Steve Tikolo and Maurice Odumbe. All that is missing is a lively pace quartet, but, with cricket now beginning to offer its best players a fabulous lifestyle in Kenya, it is surely only a matter of time before the conveyor belt begins.
The ICC is taking a considerable gamble by including three new teams in the World Cup. While Zimbabwe did, famously, beat Australia by 13 runs to win their first World Cup encounter in 1983, 18 consecutive defeats followed until victory over England in 1992. East Africa failed to make an impression in 1975 and Canada's outing in 1979 produced the then lowest total in a one-day international 45 against England.
There is enough experience in the three squads to avoid similar embarrassment this time, but a series of one-sided thrashings in the group matches may lead the ICC to a rethink for the future.
IT IS all too easy for teams to allow one-day cricket to become too complicated. Talk of pinch-hitters, opening the bowling with spinners, and holding back strike bowlers can distract from the game's essentials. If you bat, bowl and field better than the opposition you will almost always come out on top.
That does not mean that there is not a considerable advantage to be gained by resorting to the unexpected, as New Zealand amply demonstrated during the last World Cup, in Australasia four years ago, when they flummoxed several opening batsmen by giving the new ball to Dipak Patel, an off spinner.
The role of the slow bowler may be different this time. On the hard, dusty pitches and outfields of the sub-continent, the ball will wear rapidly and they may be required to take it in the later stages of an innings, when it has nothing to offer most fast-medium bowlers.
Spin will undoubtedly play a key role in the competition. India and Sri Lanka, two of the three host teams, will rely more on slow bowling than any other sort, although a danger for all sides in the group matches is that many grounds have short boundaries, exposing those who flight the ball to possibly unacceptable risks. Apart from anything else, the new ball might be put to better use. It is generally recognised that, when new, the white ball which will be used in all matches swings more than the traditional red one and this might be the time to use a medium-pace bowler who can control the ball.
Some bowlers, of course, can do too much. Dominic Cork, a natural swinger of the ball, is one, and England might be wise to hold him back until later in the innings. This is one reason why South Africa do not give the new ball to Allan Donald, quite apart from the fact that he is destructive enough to badly disrupt the middle period of a 50-overs innings. The ball is also unlikely to deviate much off the seam. To escape heavy punishment, the fast-medium bowlers will need to move the ball in the air with control and vary their pace bowlers of the type of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, of Pakistan, Srinath, of India, McMillan, of South Africa, and Gough, of England.
When the World Cup was held last on the sub-continent, in 1987, sides batting first appeared to hold an advantage. Their opponents wilted under the heat and pressure and failed to reach their targets 19 times in 27 matches This time, though, the climate will not be so hostile, as the competition is being played in the region's spring, not its late summer.
A key battleground will be the first 15 overs of an innings, when all but two of the fielding side must be within the "ring". During the last World Cup, when this rule was also in force, some teams used specialist batsmen to hit over the top Botham for England, Greatbatch for New Zealand.
The trend continues. By sometimes using Lara and Tendulkar as openers, West Indies and India have risked their best players in search of good starts. More recently, other sides have started to gamble with more "expendable" batsmen. It will be interesting to see which strategy works best.
From old stagers to temperamental stars, fallen heroes to wronged men, the cast is strong. Michael Henderson on the men who are likely to dominate the news during the tournament.
The cricket World Cup is an admirable instrument for making fools of us all. Did India not win it in 1983, defending a total of 183 at Lord's against a West Indies team sniffing a third successive triumph? Four years later was it really Australia, then the rubbing-rags of cricket, who finished top? At the last competition, held in Australia and New Zealand, how did Pakistan overcome an appalling start to breast the tape?
They did, and the memory of that transformation must encourage the lesser-fancied teams as they prepare for the sixth World Cup, which begins this week. If Pakistan could sort themselves out, Michael Atherton will be telling his players, so can we. Finalists in 1979, 1987 and again four years ago, when Wasim Akram undid them in Melbourne with a startling exposition of swing bowling, England yes, even the bunch who bent the knee to South Africa last month are capable of winning the trophy.
The odd thing about the World Cup is that it has never been won by the host nation. This time there are three "home" countries, of whom India appear to have the best chance of success. Pakistan are still trying to regroup after 18 appalling months riven by mud-slinging and internal dissent. As for Sri Lanka, who are slowly emerging as a force in world cricket, their problems have less to do with the actual playing of the game than the political machinations they can hardly avoid.
So who can one expect to make the news in the coming month? The obvious candidates can sometimes be upstaged by the foot-soldiers. In 1992, Dipak Patel, the all-rounder transplanted from the Black Country to New Zealand, opened the bowling with his innocent off-twirl and helped his side score a tactical success. Limited-overs cricket dances to a different, more hectic tune than the first-class game and it can pay to bribe the band. Still, there are some lively characters for the headline-hunters to follow.
The old stager: Javed Miandad, Pakistan's senior citizen, at 38, has moved heaven and earth to get himself picked for this competition. Miandad has played in the previous five tournaments but the seriousness of his leg injury means he cannot be fully fit. The old crock wants to go out in a blaze of glory. It is asking a lot.
The temperamental star: in the past six months Brian Lara has become the prince of pouters. The West Indies management has been exceedingly generous to him, given his truculence and the overt way he seeks to succeed Richie Richardson as captain. For all that, he is a great batsman.
The king of the world: Sachin Tendulkar has the talent and the home comforts to impose himself on the tournament. Although he seems to have been around for ages, India's leading batsman is only 22, four years younger than Lara, and has not yet outgrown his original cap size.
The wronged man: Muttiah Muralitharan, the Sri Lanka off spinner, was humiliated during the recent Test against Australia in Melbourne when Darrell Hair, the home umpire, no-balled him seven times for throwing. His performance will be an important sub-plot as the story unfolds.
The fallen man: much depends on Salim Malik's batting if Pakistan are to translate their raw talent into achievement. Salim will always be associated in people's minds with the great bribery row that surfaced last year when Shane Warne and Mark Waugh alleged he had tried to buy them off. Like Javed, his time is almost up.
The stars-in-waiting: Shaun Pollock impressed mightily for South Africa during the recent Test series victory over England, bowling fast with the new ball and making valuable runs down the order. He is already an important member of a strong team. Likewise, Dominic Cork has secured his place in England's side and, provided his knees stand up, he should excel.
The stricken captain: Richie Richardson's meter has not got many more miles to clock. The West Indies captain leads a rocky ship and the crew's loyalty is not certain. A decent man, Richardson has presided over the decline of a team that appears increasingly fallible.
The best bowler: Shane Warne, the wrist spinner who is the brightest star in cricket's firmament, ahead of Tendulkar and Lara, gives Australia a matchless advantage. Yet he may be the focus of unwelcome attention in Pakistan after the Salim allegations. Another wrist spinner, Anil Kumble, of India, should do well in conditions he knows. Among the faster bowlers, Allan Donald, of South Africa, and (if he is not too busy sulking) Curtly Ambrose, of West Indies, should get most out of the slow pitches.
The fastest-century maker: given Michael Slater's natural aggression and the rules that forbid more than two men beyond the circle for the first 15 overs of an innings, the Australian opener will not lack opportunity. Along with Tendulkar, he could be the chief pleasure-giver of the tournament.
Alan Lee, cricket correspondent, hopes for the best from a tournament that has been plagued by political tension and administrative chaos before a ball has been bowled.
THE sixth cricket World Cup has attracted ridicule and condemnation in its run-up but it is on the delivery that it must be judged. Out of a jungle of political tension, logistical chaos and administrative brinkmanship, there just might emerge a memorable sporting competition, one that does justice to the largest gathering of leading cricketing countries in the game's history.
Given what has already occurred, a complete shambles seems the likelier outcome, but to denounce in advance is to forget that the nations staging the tournament live, by nature, on the edge. Their organisation of sporting events habitually bewilders by producing what, at the eleventh hour, had seemed impossible. They may astound everyone by doing so again.
No one should underestimate what is at stake for India and Pakistan. With revenue from the event likely to reach £40 million, the joint hosts share all profits after the prize-money (£200,000) and statutory guarantees to competing nations have been met. Sri Lanka, who did not commit any money at the bidding stage, are not entitled to any of the profits, making them, with the developments of the past week, losers all round.
There is political capital to be made out of successfully staging such a competition, too, and the wonder of it is that this can be shared equally by two nations who, off the cricket field, are seldom far from a state of war with each other. The possibility of them being drawn together at the knockout stage of the cup is not altogether an attractive one. It was as recently as 1987 that India and Pakistan last combined as the venue for the World Cup and, despite a background of tension relating to the South African ties of some England players, it passed off smoothly.
The present event, which starts on Wednesday, is more ambitious, involving 12 teams rather than the eight who took part in 1987 and nine in 1992. The method of accommodating the extra sides is dubious, giving the impression that the three weeks of qualifying games are largely irrelevant to the knockout rounds which follow. It is the introduction of a quarter-final round that is crucial, for it means that only one Test-playing country, in all probability Zimbabwe, need be eliminated after 30 group games. This ludicrously long-winded process suffers by comparison with the method used in Australia four years ago, when all the teams played each other in a round-robin format, the top four proceeding to the semi-finals. It was thought that this would take an impracticable time with 12 sides, though India's insistence on staging all 17 of its group games on different grounds, thus adding to the travelling complexities, has hardly helped.
The comfort zone produced by the new rules contributed to the stance adopted by Australia and West Indies over playing in Sri Lanka. Safety concerns notwithstanding, they knew they could still qualify for the last eight after conceding a match, as long as they both beat Zimbabwe and Kenya and pick up one other victory each.
England, theoretically, are in an easier group, as it includes Holland and the United Arab Emirates. Tempting providence, it is difficult to envisage even England losing to these ICC associate member nations. But then similar things were said about Zimbabwe in 1992 and England were beaten by them.
Do not dismiss England's prospects of winning the cup. Dismiss, instead, the evidence of their wretched one-day performances at the fag-end of their South African tour when, by the admission even of those involved, their eye had strayed from the ball. They are a better limited-overs side than that and, in Graeme Hick, Dominic Cork and, one hopes, a resurgent Darren Gough, they could have some of the key players of the tournament.
Australia's status as favourites has been eroded, not by their playing form, which continues to be imperious, but their evident mental frailty over the security issue. While they are the best team in the world, they can be beaten in these circumstances.
West Indies, who won the first two World Cups and, to general astonishment, lost in the final of the third, have not reached the last four in either of the two most recent tournaments and it will be a mild surprise if they do so here. If Brian Lara is mentally attuned, they can chase any target, of course, but their bowling attack is not ideally designed for limited-overs cricket and their batting, without Carl Hooper, is fragile.
New Zealand were the revelation of the 1992 event, moulding an inventive game-plan to predictably slow home pitches. They will try similar tactics here but the inspiration of Martin Crowe will be missed. South Africa have a better chance, for their fielding will be outstanding, their batting durable and their fast bowling probably peerless. Of the visiting nations, I make them favourites.
Of the three hosts, Sri Lanka have turned in some good recent results but will not, ultimately, have the necessary depth, while Pakistan, the holders, are capable of great heights and dismal depths on consecutive days, but will suffer for poor fielding and perhaps the pressures of home support. They have not found harmony as a team since the departure of Imran Khan and it is hard to see how the latest return of Javed Miandad can help.
India, who will use three spin bowlers and boast the most attractive batting of any side, are my idea of the likeliest winners. They have a settled captain in Mohammad Azharuddin, a batting prince in Sachin Tendulkar and a match-winning leg-spin bowler in Anil Kumble. They have come a long way since their ineptitude in the inaugural World Cup match, 21 years ago, when they were so overawed by England's total of 334 that they batted as if playing for a draw. The coming five weeks will show just how far.
IF THE organisers of the World Cup think their embarrassment will end with the dispute over Sri Lankan venues, they may be sadly mistaken. Let it rain, and then Pilcom might wish the tournament had gone to England after all.
Rain is the bane of the one-day game. It means revised targets, claims of unfair treatment and misery all round, as the Australians know only too well after their "rain rule" was held up to ridicule during the last World Cup.
Then, the England-South Africa semi-final in Sydney descended into farce when rain stopped play for 12 minutes with South Africa needing 22 runs from 13 balls. That had promised to be a fair contest but the rules dictated that, on the resumption, the target was an impossible 21 runs from one ball and England were handed a tame, and unsatisfactory, victory. The greatest nonsense, of course, was that there was no need to recalculate at all: if conditions permitted one ball more, why not 13?
That system has been abandoned but is the new one based on a method devised by a South African schoolboy devoid of potential embarrassment? Unfortunately not. It appears logical enough, drawing on a detailed mathematical analysis of one-day matches to attempt to establish what constitutes a revised target fair to both sides in any given situation, should rain intervene.
For example, Team A scores 250 in its 50 overs and Team B's reply is shortened by rain. If it is reduced to 25 overs, reference to the Target Score Calculation Chart issued to all teams shows that they must score 66.7 per cent of Team A's total to win, which would mean a target of 167.
If Team B is limited to 30 overs, the chart says they must score 76 per cent of the original target (or 190 runs); if 40 overs, 90.7 cent (227 runs). To constitute a match, the team batting second must receive at least 25 overs; if that cannot be done on the first day, a new match can be started on a second, reserve day.
So what would the loss of 12 balls have meant to South Africa at Sydney in 1992 under the new rule? Their target would have been reduced by 1.8 per cent, or four runs fewer than the 252 runs England scored, which sounds reasonable enough had South Africa known that from the start of their innings but, with the rain coming late, they would have still required 17 runs from that final ball. The occasion would still have been a farce.
"This new method works distinctly against the team batting second when the overs are lost part of the way through their innings," Tony Lewis, a university mathematics lecturer who discussed an alternative system with the International Cricket Council (ICC), said. "It is only fair when the lost overs occur at the beginning of the second team's innings. It does not provide a fair target-setting procedure."
The ICC, the game's governing body, which has no direct control over the World Cup this year, has asked Lewis to present his system which takes into account the stage of the innings that overs are lost and the number of wickets that have fallen to its annual meeting this summer. But it might be too late to save Pilcom's blushes.
Wakefield 12 Bath 16
BATH were not beaten, but they were humbled by a Wakefield side whose collective spirit comes without a price-tag. Jon Sleightholme returned to his roots at College Grove the conquering hero but, like his nine fellow internationals, left a pale shadow.
Relief for the holders, in a torrid Pilkington Cup fifth-round encounter, came 45 seconds from the end of normal time, and was scarcely deserved. Garnett, the Wakefield hooker, had been immaculate up to that point. He dithered in throwing to a lineout on his 22-metre line. Bath went for route one from the free kick, Sanders got quick ruck ball and, down the blind side, Butland touched down for the winning try.
Until their escape, Bath had been imprisoned by woeful incompetence and Wakefield's wonderful belligerence. When the pre-match tugging of forelocks at Bath's presence ended, the second division side poked a finger in the eye of the aristocrats, whose warning by Sleightholme about the cussedness of his former team-mates went unheeded.
Brian Ashton, the Bath coach, aspires to the aesthetic; what he got was the antithesis of his ambitions. For all Bath's possession, to be rattled as easily as they were reflected dreadfully on those supposed to know and play better. Clarke and Robinson expended greater energies in cross-examination of the referee, who rightly penalised Bath's crass indiscipline. When his side was not killing the ball and straying offside, de Glanville, bizarrely, was kicking straight to the Wakefield backs. Guscott's incisiveness, in easily scoring after 20 minutes, had shown the way, but Bath badly lost the plot.
Trips by Bath to the North in the Cup tend to bring on nosebleeds. They lost at Waterloo three seasons ago and survived another narrow scare last season at Orrell, so a quarter-final at Bristol on Saturday week is almost looked on favourably.
David Scully, like many players in the North, gets a raw deal when it comes to England selection. Rather than moving to further himself, the scrum half, unlike others who have been snapped up from Wakefield by bigger clubs, feels a sense of loyalty. Scully might not be at a fashionable club, but, as he demonstrated on Saturday, his game is in vogue.
Scully was everywhere, including the right touchline to cut down the flying Adebayo in some heroic defence by Wakefield. His promptings around the ruck and scrum-base, coupled with the smothering back row presence of Green, Griffiths and Rushworth at close quarters, demoralised Bath, while Jackson's fourth penalty goal edged the home side in front with 15 minutes left.
Garnett's lack of a lineout throw, however, threw away a famous victory. It was wretched misfortune for Wakefield, and the stroke of luck that saved Bath.
SCORERS: Wakefield: Penalty goals: Jackson (4). Bath: Tries: Guscott, Butland. Penalty goals: Callard (2).
WAKEFIELD: M Jackson; P White, P Maynard, A Metcalfe, R Thompson; R Petyt, D Scully; G Baldwin, T Garnett, R Latham, C Rushworth, S Croft, P Stewart, J Griffiths, N Green.
BATH: J Callard; J Sleightholme, J Guscott, P de Glanville, A Adebayo; R Butland, I Sanders; D Hilton, G Dawe, J Mallett, A Robinson, M Haag, N Redman, E Peters, B Clarke.
Referee: A Rowden (Berkshire).
Aberavon 3 Pontypridd 19
THE rush is on for the bonus points for tries. With the leading five clubs in Wales experiencing a backlog of fixtures ranging from six to eight matches, the need to capitalise on scoring opportunities is paramount, as Pontypridd proved on Saturday. Victory, in their eyes, was a formality. It was the number of tries that mattered.
Pontypridd ignored the goal-kicking expertise of Neil Jenkins throughout the game. This was his first match since his collar-bone injury before Christmas and it seemed odd not to see him in his customary role aiming for the posts. Elsewhere, though, he was influential in his line kicking and tackling.
Penalty goals may win matches, but it is a club's number of tries that could well win the league. Pontypridd were awarded 15 penalties in all, about half of which were well within Jenkins's range. Generally, however, Phil John, the hooker, tapped the ball to himself and expected his team-mates to follow in his wake.
Even when the home team had gone ahead from a penalty goal by Stork, this was the route that Pontypridd chose to follow. Such pile-driving tactics were not a pretty sight.
These moves succeeded twice, giving Pontypridd the kind of lead that Aberavon were unlikely to overtake. A series of these short penalties resulted in Paul John crossing the line by way of a crawl in the 29th minute. Something similar occurred for the second try, seven minutes into the second half, when space was finally created for Manley to score.
Aberavon provided stiff resistance largely because of the ball-winning capacity of Clapham and Matthews in the lineout, but lacked the pace to make any substantial impression.
Aberavon were making encouraging inroads into the Pontypridd defence when, as had happened so often previously, the ball went astray. Geraint Lewis latched on to it and sprinted 50 metres for the try.
So, Pontypridd, in gaining the extra bonus point, move level at the top with Llanelli, who remain in the lead by virtue of their greater number of tries.
SCORERS: Aberavon: Penalty goal: Stork. Pontypridd: Tries: Paul John, Manley, G Lewis. Conversions: N Jenkins (2).
ABERAVON: N Stork; R Diplock, J Jardine, C Laity, S Hutchinson; M Watts, G Baber; D Austin, M Bernard, R Jasper, B Shenton, P Clapham, P Matthews, R Morris, G Evans. Hutchinson replaced by K Malby (70min); Watts replaced by G Thomas (71); Jasper replaced by H Merrett (54).
PONTYPRIDD: R Cormack; D Manley, J Lewis, S Lewis, G Lewis; N Jenkins, Paul John; N Bezani, Phil John, A Metcalfe, M Lloyd, P Owen, G Prosser, M Williams, D McIntosh. Manley replaced by S Enoch (50).
Referee: G Simmonds (Taff's Well).
Bedford 0 Bristol 37
WHEN Bedford slumped to 27-0 by the interval, the calculators were out. Would they succumb by more than the 61 points that they surrendered to Bristol in January 1983?
They looked positively shell-shocked as they huddled for the half-time team talk from Fran Clough, their captain and former England centre. They had packed their back line with hard-tackling defensive players, who had performed bravely, but had been unable to stop Bristol from running in three tries, while they were prevented from straying outside their own half most of the time.
Clough must have reminded them of the only three things that they had going for them: they were about to play downhill, they had the wind in their favour and they had proved that they could stifle at least some of Bristol's attacks with their fearsome tackling.
It worked. At least, it did for the first 15 minutes. Then, the greater weight and skill of the Bristol pack took its inevitable toll and the West Countrymen steamrollered their way into the quarter-finals of the Pilkington Cup and a meeting at home with their neighbours, Bath, the holders.
Before the kick-off, the signs were that there was unlikely to be a Cup upset, judging by the way that Bedford had been playing in the second division of the Courage Clubs championship. Bristol languish in a similar lowly position in the first division, but, as one seasoned Bedford official put it: "Now, our supporters have witnessed the huge difference in class that lies between teams in the first and second divisions."
Arwel Thomas, the precocious Bristol stand-off half, missed this game because he was summoned to Wales to prepare for the match against Scotland on Saturday. Bracken who scored two tries and Hull showed that they are ready to step back into the England team if needed, and Regan regularly found his jumpers in the lineout and scored a try.
Archer was a target-man for Regan at the throw-in and their partnership proved lucrative, with the lock feeding Bracken well, finding the gaps to score a try and shining in the loose alongside Adams and Corry.
SCORERS: Bristol: Tries: Bracken (2), Archer, Regan, Breeze. Conversions: Tainton (3). Penalty goals: Tainton (2).
BEDFORD: M Cook; G Witheat, B Whetstone, M Oliver, P Allen; F Clough, R Stone; L Mansell, M Roach, C Roberts, M Deans, M Upex, K Simpson, A Mortimore, M Wright. Whetstone replaced by A Goldsmith (29min); Goldsmith temporary replacement for M Cook (9-12).
BRISTOL: P Hull; M Denney, K Maggs, S Martin, J Keyter; M Tainton, K Bracken; A Sharp, M Regan, D Hinkins, M Corry, G Archer, P Adams, I Dixon, E Rollitt. Denney replaced by B Breeze (52); Corry replaced by R Armstrong (54).
Referee: A Spreadbury (Somerset).
Bristol v Bath
Gloucester v Wasps
Leicester v Harlequins
London Irish v West Hartlepool
Ties to be played on February 24
THE fragmentation of English club rugby will continue this week when a company representing the interests of first and second division clubs will be formed. Though the clubs insist that they wish to work alongside the Rugby Football Union (RFU), they want to control their own financial destiny and the conflict of interests may prove irreconcilable.
The ten first division clubs have already withdrawn from the National Clubs Association, which has established representation within the last three years on nearly every significant RFU committee. The second division clubs seem certain to follow suit and each of the lower national divisions are worried that they will be left behind.
The first division clubs want to negotiate on their own behalf the commercial arrangements relating to the new European tournament and the proposed Anglo-Welsh tournament, and seek a redistribution of money from existing domestic competitions.
Meanwhile, Ireland, who play France in Paris on Saturday, will give an international debut to David Humphreys, the Oxford University and London Irish stand-off half. He is the only newcomer in a XV showing five changes from the side beaten by Scotland.
IRELAND: J E Staples (Harlequins, captain); S P Geoghegan (Bath), J C Bell (Northampton), K P McQuilkin (Bective Rangers), N K P J Woods (Blackrock College); D G Humphreys (London Irish), N A Hogan (Terenure College); N J Popplewell (Newcastle), T J Kingston (Dolphin), P M Clohessy (Young Munster), J W Davidson (Dungannon), G M Fulcher (Cork Constitution), P S Johns (Dungannon), D S Corkery (Cork Constitution), V C P Costello (St Mary's College).
Leeds 13 London Irish 29
MUCH has been made of Clive Woodward's coaching at lower levels, in Australia and now with London Irish. The former Leicester, England and British Isles threequarter has turned London Irish from a ragged bunch barely capable of remaining in the second division of the Courage Clubs Championship into a team yearning for promotion. Woodward has done this with such elan that he has been approached about coaching the England Under-21 three-quarters.
What a surprise it was, then, to watch the first half-hour of this fifth-round Pilkington Cup match. It was the worst half-hour of rugby that I have seen for years, being bad-tempered, boring and filled with errors. Two players received yellow cards within three minutes. At the risk of making a cheap joke, it is not inaccurate to say there was more action going on after the referee had blown his whistle, which was the signal for the pitch to be invaded by trainers, baggage men, physiotherapists and replacement players, than before.
It was always going to be difficult for London Irish against a team from two divisions below them. The slanting, intermittent rain and a gluey surface mitigated against an open, handling game that would have favoured Irish. Furthermore, Leeds had two big lineout forwards in Richard McCartney and Christian Raducanu, who were awkward and made their presence felt.
Phil Griffin, the Leeds captain, was a fiery back-row forward anxious to play one of the games of his life on a day when the emphasis was on forward and not back play.
Leeds have a decent set of forwards and, when Phil Davies arrives from Llanelli to become director of rugby and presumably bolsters the pack even more, then the big ambitions of this small club will have moved nearer reality.
As it was, they recovered from being ten points down to level the score at 13-13 with 13 minutes remaining. Who can say, on such a day and such a pitch, that they could not have taken the lead had McCartney not been sent off for kicking at a ruck. Shorn of a ball-winner at the lineout and a force in the scrum, Leeds conceded two tries in the last 13 minutes, as well as two penalty goals.
Woodward watched the match from a shelter on the touchline, sometimes sitting down, at others standing and restlessly shifting from foot to foot. Nothing resembling a smile was to be seen on his face until the last few minutes when, as Michael Corcoran attempted to convert Rob Henderson's try, Woodward indicated that there was five minutes to go.
At last, all was well for London Irish, but, not for the first time, a lesser club had gone very close to providing an upset in the Cup.
SCORERS: Leeds: Try: Hartley. Conversion: Stephens. Penalty goals: Stephens (2). London Irish: Tries: Ewington, Henderson, Flood. Conversion: Corcoran. Penalty goals: Corcoran (4).
LEEDS: S Langley; J Eagle, G Cassidy, W Hartley, C Thornton; C Stephens, R Morgan; M Whitcombe, S Gibbs, A Machell, L Denham, R McCartney, C Raducanu, P Griffin, P Curtis.
LONDON IRISH: C O'Shea; M Corcoran, R Henderson, P Flood, J Bishop; O Cobbe, T Ewington; J Fitzpatrick, R Kellam, G Halpin, P Irons, C Hall, D Peters, A Dougan, B Walsh.
Referee: N Cousins (London).
Newcastle 22 Harlequins 44. Commanding victory takes Harlequins through to Pilkington Cup quarter final.
ROB ANDREW will have to live with the speculation that, for the remainder of this season and possibly longer, will continue to link him with England. The reality for Newcastle's director of rugby, even after a 17-point return to the high life, is that everything that happens this season is preparation for a North East explosion in 1996-97.
This is not to be dismissive of Harlequins, who moved comfortably into the quarter-finals of the Pilkington Cup, where they will meet Leicester, on the same weekend that their capture of Gareth Llewellyn, the Wales lock, was confirmed.
Llewellyn, capped 42 times and linked last November with Wasps, has been lured from Neath on a contract reported to be worth £250,000, and he may be but the first from the Valleys to move up the M4.
Harlequins, though, were ever high rollers. The practical effect of the Newcastle revolution is just beginning. On Saturday, it was Andrew, Walton and Popplewell. Against Blackheath in the league next Saturday, Tony Underwood becomes available, to be followed by Gary Armstrong and Doddie Weir. Only when he can call on all his new purchases can Andrew begin building a genuine team.
"That is the task over the next three months, to blend the new guys in, so what we have is three months of practice for next season," Andrew said. "There's so much work to be done before we can get ourselves up alongside Harlequins we have one or two more players to find, but there is no question about what the club is aiming for."
He will talk tomorrow with David Campese when New South Wales play the penultimate match of their tour at Newcastle, the Australia wing being a man to listen to any worthwhile business proposition. Perhaps Campese might have a word in the ear, too, of young Ian McLennan, whose day began so well with Newcastle's try and ended calamitously as Daren O'Leary whisked past him for five tries and a competition record.
The naivety of McLennan's defence removed some of the gloss from O'Leary's nap hand, but it was, nonetheless, a significant achievement by a wing whose career has not always run so smoothly. A product of Campion School, he moved rapidly up the representative ladder as a youngster before finding that the nitty-gritty of first-division life was more demanding.
Injuries led to a loss of confidence last season, but O'Leary has gritted his teeth and demonstrated that his representative ambitions have some basis. Mike Slemen, the England selector, suggested that he had played as well as any contender this season for an England wing position, a remark that is more pointed in view of O'Leary's Irish qualification on his father's side.
O'Leary, 22, a broker, has had no contact with the busy Irish Exiles organisation, but England, who have been so short of wing talent, can ill afford to let more players join the most recent green drain led by Chris Saverimutto and Simon Mason.
O'Leary was the principal beneficiary as Harlequins shrugged off the rustiness caused by recent disruptions from their game and ran Newcastle ragged. They did so with a No8 whose ball-handling is well in advance of the present England back row, Lawrence Dallaglio excepted. Chris Sheasby has been his club's most consistent forward over the past three years, but has struggled to throw off the "flash" image attached to him as a youngster. Is it too facile to say that, at 29, his time for honours has gone since he is an active member of the England A squad?
In the second half, Harlequins were well aware that, ball in hand, they had more firepower than Newcastle, and, with a strong wind at their backs, they had to make it tell; but, as England have discovered, the handling game has to be worked at and it was the final quarter before they romped away.
They started and finished the first half well, but Andrew's kicking (six successes from seven attempts) reeled in an initial 10-0 lead. However, a tight Newcastle pack could not conceal deficiencies in a midfield lacking the injured Wilkinson and Childs.
The more that Harlequins ran, the better they became. Staples and Bromley created, O'Leary finished and Challinor looked far more like the goalkicker that he used to be than a man who has just taken six weeks away from practice to come to terms with his lost art.
SCORERS: Newcastle: Try: McLennan. Conversion: Andrew. Penalty goals: Andrew (5). Harlequins: Tries: O'Leary (5), Greenwood, Mensah. Conversions: Challinor (3). Penalty goal: Challinor.
NEWCASTLE:P Belgian; M Wilson, J Fletcher, R Cramb, I McLennan; R Andrew, G Robson; N Popplewell, N Frankland, P Vanzandvliet, P Walton, E Mitchell, R Metcalfe, S Cassidy, R Arnold.
HARLEQUINS: J Staples; D O'Leary, W Greenwood, P Mensah, S Bromley; P Challinor, R Kitchin; J Leonard, S Mitchell, A Mullins, G Allison, M Russell, M Watson, R Jenkins, C Sheasby.
Referee: E Morrison (Bristol).
Nottingham 10 Gloucester 36
THE topical talk in football circles at the moment may concern the desirability of a mid-season break, but many Courage Clubs Championship players have just had one forced upon them. A combination of the weather and the five nations' championship has left those not playing at the highest level short of competitive fixtures. Gloucester beat Bristol in a club match four weeks ago, but this Pilkington Cup fifth-round tie was their first outing in earnest since they beat West Hartlepool on January 6.
Richard Hill, the director of coaching at Kingsholm, has nevertheless been working hard on his players' fitness levels, and it was this and the power of the visiting pack that ultimately enabled Gloucester to beat Nottingham by the comfortable margin of five tries to one. "We have got a lot stronger in the last 20 minutes," Hill said on Saturday. Twenty-eight second-half points scored without reply suggests that he could be right.
Gloucester chose to play into a strong wind in the first half and turned round 10-8 behind. Steve Reed, a former Leicester and Scotland Under-21 wing, had scored the try of the match for Nottingham with a swerving run from halfway moments earlier; but it was never likely to be enough.
Chris Raymond, the Gloucester No8, claimed a try in each half, the second of which owed much to Mike Lloyd's speed off the blind-side wing from a scrum. Indeed, Raymond might have had a third had not Douglas Chapman, the referee, capped an eccentric afternoon with the whistle by awarding a penalty try against the Nottingham pack instead. Lloyd scored a try of his own in the 77th minute.
Perhaps it was rustiness, perhaps it was the knowledge that defeat for either team would sit alongside a bleak season in the league, but this match got off to a sluggish start and rarely left second gear. Gloucester at least have the prospect of a home quarter-final tie with Wasps to divert them from their attempts to avoid relegation.
"It's a big carrot for us," Hill said. "It will be an exciting game." He has a fitness adviser and a psychologist helping him to get things right off the field at Gloucester. Whether it is enough to keep them in the first division remains to be seen.
Nottingham have the no-relegation ruling to thank for ensuring that they will still be playing second division rugby next season. Roger Whittaker, the director of rugby, can only hope for a brighter future. That will not happen without an injection of youthful talent and that means money and greater support. "We have got to appeal continually to the city of Nottingham," Whittaker said. "If they want an elite side, they are going to have to support us." A move into the city from their suburban home might help.
SCORERS: Nottingham: Try: Reed. Conversion: Hodgkinson. Penalty goal: Hodgkinson. Gloucester: Tries: Raymond (2), Osborne, Lloyd, penalty try. Conversions: Osborne (4). Penalty goal: Kimber.
NOTTINGHAM: M Gallagher; S Reed, G Hartley, R Bygrave, A Smallwood; S Hodgkinson, A Royer; M Freer, M Ireland, A Jackson, B Donald, C Gray, L Jones, G Rees, M Bradley.
GLOUCESTER: T Beim; P Holford, D Caskie, M Roberts, M Lloyd; M Kimber, S Benton; A Windo, P Greening, A Deacon, P Glanville, R Fidler, D Sims, A Stanley, C Raymond. Beim replaced by L Osborne (40min).
Referee: D Chapman (Yorkshire).
FROZEN ground lingered at the Cambridge University Draghounds's meeting at Cottenham on Saturday, causing some significant abstentions.
Colonial Kelly was among a number of horses who travelled to the track but stayed in their boxes. His trainer, Diana Grissell, said: "I'd run other horses from my yard but not this one he's too valuable." Caroline Saunders was another leading trainer to withdraw her runners.
The problem was frozen soil an inch or two below the surface, producing a sticky top but jar underneath and, after two of the three runners in the opening members' came back sore, the position looked ominous. However, steward Andrew Merriam, said: "The riders who took part in the first said it was okay. If they had had any doubts we would have inspected again."
Only two contested the confined, but a healthier 12 went to post for the men's open and Armagret, formerly trained by Jumbo Wilkinson, showed a good turn of foot to beat Quentin Durwood.
Richard Barber was the man to follow at the East Cornwall meeting, where he saddled a four-timer, three of them ridden by women's champion, Polly Curling.
Rural Outfit, Strong Tarquin and Earthmover formed Curling's treble, while Tim Mitchell teamed up with Lewesdon Hill to beat Chilipour in the men's open.
The biggest shock of the day was the 10-1 starting price about Phar Too Touchy, winner of the intermediate. Owner-rider Rebecca Francis took over from Neil Harris, but proved up to the job and will doubtless want to keep it when her gelding tackles Taunton's four-mile hunter chase later this month.
RESULTS: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY DRAGHOUNDS (Cottenham): Hunt: 1, Salmon Mead (S Sporborg, 4-7 fav). Confined: 1, Kelly's Eye (L Lay, 5-4). Open: 1, Armagret (S Cowell, 5-2). Ladies: 1, Kambalda Rambler (Miss C Holliday, 7-1). Rest I: 1, Billion Dollarbill (M Gorman, 2-1). Rest II: 1, Samsword (John Pritchard, Evens fav). Open Mdn I: 1, Saffron Flame (P Taiano, 3-1). Open Mdn II: 1, Penly (John Pritchard, 7-1). Open Mdn III: 1, Tanglewood Boy (R Thornton, 9-4).
EAST CORNWALL (Great Trethew): Hunt: 1, Full Alirt (Miss S Young, Evens fav). Confined: 1, The General's Drum (K Heard, 2-1). Inter: 1, Phar Too Touchy (Miss R Francis, 7-1). Open: 1, Lewesdon Hill (T Mitchell, 7-1). 8 ran. Ladies: 1, Rural Outfit (Miss P Curling, 7-4 Jt fav). Rest: 1, Strong Tarquin (Miss P Curling, Evens fav). Open Mdn I: 1, Earthmover (Miss P Curling, 5-2). Open Mdn II: 1, Mac's Boy (J Jukes, 6-4 fav). Open Mdn III: 1, Tasmin Tyrant (L Jefford, 5-1).
Kieran Fallon is the best. No, not at riding injudicious races on horses like Top Cees. No, not at making occasional physical contact with other jockeys rather than racehorses. Fallon shares the honour with Frankie Dettori of being the best performing Flat jockey riding in Britain.
After enduring more clashes with racing officialdom than he might care to remember the latest in India nine days ago the northern-based jockey can afford a wry smile as he savours the conclusions of riding performance figures in the Computer Racing Form annual covering the 1995 Flat season, published today.
I suspect the sense of irony will not be lost on Lynda and Jack Ramsden, who have retained complete faith in their stable jockey throughout his much-publicised disciplinary troubles.
The riding performance figures are unique. They are not the subjective view of John Whitley, whose Racing Research company produces the annual, but rather the result of exhaustive examination by a computer of how each horse has performed under its different jockeys during a season. The ratings, which are given in pounds to the nearest tenth, are restricted to riders for whom there is a large amount of data.
Racing's flat earthers who question the idea of being able to rate jockeys, lose sight of how these figures regularly pinpoint leading riders before their skills have gained widespread recognition.
Michael Roberts topped the figures in 1992, the year before he became champion jockey, having been a 100-1 chance at the start of that season. Last summer, Tony McCoy finished in pole position after the 1994-95 jumps season. "These ratings are regarded as invaluable by the cleverest backers," the annual states correctly one of whom just happens to be Jack Ramsden.
Fallon and Dettori earned a rating of 12.8 on a scale where the average is 10.0. In practice, a horse ridden by them would run 2.8lb better equivalent to a length or more in races than when ridden by Philip Robinson, Richard Hills and Jimmy Quinn, who are on 10.0.
The other riders who earned a rating of 12.0 or more were Ray Cochrane, John Reid, Tony Ives, Jimmy Fortune, Jason Weaver, Richard Quinn, Brett Doyle, Wendyll Woods, Walter Swinburn and Brent Thomson.
As my regular reader will know by now, when it comes to assessment of form and attempting not to tip too many losers, I lean heavily on the Whitley form and speed ratings for horses. I liken them to the bricks while the mortar, in the shape of breeding information, running styles, interpretation of performance and potential, is provided by eagle-eyed Timeform gurus at Halifax, where Whitley worked before setting up on his own.
Timeform's Racehorses annual for the last Flat season is due out shortly and should help to answer some fascinating posers raised by Whitley's computer-based ratings for last summer.
Royal Applause, the unbeaten winner of the Coventry, Gimcrack and Middle Park Stakes, is rated 5lb superior to Alhaarth and also recorded the best time performance by any two-year-old in 1995. Will Barry Hills's star stay a mile?
Interestingly, Bosra Sham is rated 2lb ahead of Blue Duster and her Fillies' Mile victory at Ascot was also a tip-top performance against the clock. Will the ground determine the outcome of the 1,000 Guineas?
After the recent cold snap, the questions may appear premature but, with Cheltenham only a month away and the Flat due to start a week later, the anticipation is already building up.
IMPERIAL CALL thrust himself firmly into contention for the Cheltenham Gold Cup with a resounding display of front-running in the Irish equivalent here yesterday.
The seven-year-old, previously unproven over three miles, disposed of Master Oats and Monsieur Le Cure with a flourish to match One Man's defeat of the same pair at Sandown last month. He outclassed the twin-pronged British challenge with a series of quicksilver leaps and looks a formidable opponent for Britain's grey standard bearer at Prestbury Park next month.
Imperial Call's six-length tally from Master Oats with Monsieur Le Cure a further 1 1/2 lengths adrift may not, at face value, appear as emphatic as One Man's demolition of the same opponents.
Yet Master Oats, in the words of his trainer, Kim Bailey, "jumped better than he ever has before". He certainly looked an improved animal on this occasion. Imperial Call's demonstration of authority arrived at the final fence. He met it on the wrong stride and hit the obstacle hard, inviting a renewed challenge from Jamie Osborne, aboard Master Oats.
The ground, officially soft, was to the reigning Gold Cup winner's liking, yet Imperial Call drew away from the toiling mudlark when he might have been excused for tiring himself. A top-priced 8-1 for Cheltenham with Coral, Imperial Call is as short as 5-1 with Ladbrokes.
As with Danoli, Ireland's prize hurdler, Imperial Call hails from a small stable. Fergus Sutherland may train just six horses on his Cork-based farm, but he possesses a wealth of experience. Noted for his prowess in Flat handicaps, he also sent out the juvenile, A.20, to land the Queen Mary Stakes when operating out of Newmarket more than 30 years ago. "Any fool can win a two-year-old race," Sutherland reflected of his time in Britain, "but I have always preferred to knock a jumper into shape."
Before this victory, Imperial Call had mixed it with a vintage crop of two-milers, even though his pedigree reads like that of a staying chaser. "There's no doubt the winner is a very good horse," Bailey reflected. "We would need very soft ground next time to have a chance of reversing the form."
John Edwards was equally pleased with Monsieur Le Cure. "He made two mistakes which stopped him in his tracks," he said. "I am very happy because he did not like the sticky going."
Conor O'Dwyer, who rode Imperial Call with assurance, is far from certain to keep the ride in the Gold Cup. Charlie Swan, the horse's regular partner, was, on this occasion, claimed for Life Of A Lord.
Norman Williamson, who was due to ride Master Oats yesterday, dislocated his shoulder at Newbury on Saturday, just two rides into his comeback from a four-month absence with a broken leg. Williamson is expected to be out of action for at least two weeks and misses the ride on Alderbrook, the reigning champion hurdler, at Wincanton a week on Thursday. The jockey's latest setback came when Eskimo Nel, his mount in the Tote Gold Trophy, crashed out of the contest. The race was won decisively by the Andy Turnell-trained Squire Silk, a best-priced 33-1 for the Champion Hurdle, his next intended engagement.
Highlight of the Newbury card was Viking Flagship's long-awaited return to form in the Game Spirit Chase under a typically positive ride from Adrian Maguire. Viking Flagship's projected Champion Chase encounter with Sound Man and Strong Platinum has the makings of a stirring renewal.
Beth Kelsall, left, of Nottingham, takes a shot as Jess Garland, of Avon, defends in the school netball championships at Rochester.
THE standard-bearers may have fallen, but the heavy artillery of the Vauxhall Conference remains largely unscathed. Encouraged or alerted by Woking's surprise elimination from the FA Umbro Trophy, which they had won for the past two seasons, their Conference colleagues avoided any large-scale repeat of the embarrassment in the second round on Saturday.
There were some casualties, among them Altrincham, twice winners, but, on a day when every tie produced a decisive result, seven Conference sides got through to the last 16. Few will look beyond them for the eventual Wembley winners.
For Macclesfield Town and Stevenage Borough, the prospect of a Conference and Trophy double remains alive. Both capitalised on home advantage with 2-1 victories, Macclesfield accounting for Purfleet shock previous conquerors of Rushden and Diamonds and Stevenage beating Burton Albion thanks to a sixteenth goal of the season from Barry Hayles, the striker who is attracting considerable interest from leading senior clubs.
Altrincham, weakened by injury and suspension and tormented by Mick Norbury, were soundly beaten away to Guiseley and had Anderson sent off their tenth dismissal of the season in the process. Hyde United, Guiseley's UniBond League colleagues, claimed another Conference scalp, beating Welling United 4-1, Kimmins getting all four Hyde goals in the first half.
Rangers may be making measured progress towards the title, but Paul Gascoigne keeps tripping over his temperament. The England midfield player fell twice in quick succession on Saturday. The first stumble was laudable, a testimony to his craft, as he induced the foul by Chris McCart for which his team received a penalty. It was converted by Ally McCoist and secured a 3-2 win over Motherwell in the Bell's Scottish League premier division match at Ibrox. Almost immediately after being floored, though, Gascoigne was to let himself down.
He picked himself up and, gloating over his success, shouted at McCart and waved a fist in his face. Willie Young, the referee, quite properly booked Gascoigne for his boorishness. The player was fortunate that a gesture with his middle finger earlier in the game went undetected. The Scottish FA has already written to Rangers regarding Gascoigne's excesses. One sometimes wonders if the Englishman's prodigious earnings are being supplemented by a research grant.
He has a fertile mind when it comes to indiscipline and seems to be exploring fresh ways of collecting bookings. On occasion, Gascoigne has been a victim of humourless officialdom. During the match with Hibernian in December, the player picked up a yellow card that had fallen from the referee's pocket and wagged it at Douglas Smith, the official, who then retrieved it and used it in earnest to caution Gascoigne.
There was a degree of sympathy for the player against Partick Thistle last weekend when he was booked for some entirely wholesome celebrations after one of his two goals merely because he stepped off the pitch before indulging in them. By and large, however, Gascoigne has not been wronged since joining Rangers last summer.
Referees can be intolerant of his high spirits, but they have, at times, been lenient over the high elbows with which he has been known to ward off challenges. It was unfortunate that Walter Smith, the Rangers manager, should have termed the general treatment of the player "ludicrous". Gascoigne should not, on balance, complain about his disciplinary record. It is a reasonably accurate index of his conduct. He has now been booked in each of the two matches after his suspension.
Gascoigne is usually guilty of indiscretion rather than cynicism, and one can barely imagine him felling an opponent with a callous tackle. It exasperates managers that his offences are always so glaringly avoidable. The wait for Gascoigne, 28, to achieve maturity has been a long vigil and perhaps it will never be rewarded. The degree of frustration for his coaches has always risen with the level of performance from the Englishman. Accordingly, Smith must, at present, be consumed by exasperation. After four years of grave injury, Gascoigne is once more a vital figure who can determine the outcome of matches and, perhaps, a championship.
Without him, Rangers lost 3-0 at home to Heart of Midlothian last month because, industriously though they pressed forward, there was never the invention to disturb the composure that saw the visitors counter-attack so adroitly. On Saturday, Gascoigne always looked capable of raising the game to a level beyond the reach of adventurous Motherwell.
While Gascoigne concocted victory, Celtic, at Brockville, recorded a second successive goalless draw in away games. Tommy Burns's team is not quite so capable as Rangers of producing the explosive moment that breaks a deadlock. That fact is announced by the figures Rangers have scored 15 goals more than Celtic in the league.
The three-point lead held by the Ibrox club can scarcely be decisive, given Celtic's bounding improvement this season, but Rangers' prospects of remaining in front over the next three months will be enhanced if Gascoigne can keep himself under control.
Bolton Wanderers 0 Aston Villa 2
BOLTON Wanderers will leave the Premiership in two months, taking with them a few memories and a thousand curses. Their supporters may console themselves, as others have done before them, with the knowledge that ambition outstripped the team's grasp. For the players and Colin Todd, the manager, the disappointment will be sharper.
Despite spending a small fortune on strengthening the team that won promotion last spring, Bolton cannot score goals at this level, and let in soft ones. Branagan, a fine goalkeeper who had another notable game on Saturday, is entitled to wonder what goes through the minds of the men who are supposed to protect him. Curcic, the dazzling Serb midfield player, could also be excused.
This was a two-goal drubbing. Villa scored once in each half through Yorke, and should have doubled their score at the very least. Yorke, Draper and Milosevic might each have scored a hat-trick but for Branagan, and Johnson hit a post. Their mastery was complete and a clever little side is taking shape, a side clever enough to win a cup and maybe the Cup.
At the end of a week when overseas players hogged the headlines, it is wise to recall Sir Thomas Beecham's famous words about foreign conductors. "Why do we bother to import so many third-raters," he asked, giving the pot a mischievous stir, "when we have so many second-raters of our own?"
Brolin cannot get in the Leeds United team. Hottiger left Newcastle United because he was a fringe player and Silenzi has had barely a look-in at Nottingham Forest. Sneekes, the Dutchman who plays in Bolton's midfield, is not obviously better than a dozen native-born players. As for de Freitas, a clumsy striker, the prudent shopper could buy two of his sort in the January sales and still get change from a tenner.
Then, there is the home-grown inadequate. Bolton bought Blake, the Welsh centre forward from Sheffield United for £1 million, and he has yet to score in nine matches. From his portly appearance, he appears to train on a lard diet. Just think, a million pounds for a moderate player. In their desperation to preserve their status, clubs continue to throw away money that would keep a regional theatre going for years.
At such times, when they imagine the world is against them, managers believe that everything is a conspiracy. You might think that Todd has more urgent matters to amend than the "appalling" standards of refereeing, but no. "It's time they were sorted out," he said. Fine. So long as he and his kind also "sort out" the duff players, who earn thousands of pounds a week and still behave as if they do not understand the laws of the game.
Why should a linesman endure the sort of ear-battering that one got here from Staunton a volley of abuse that lasted 20 seconds from a player who could not possibly know that he was right? Do managers haul their players in after a match and tell them such behaviour is inexcusable? Of course not: referees are incompetent, players merely passionate. The game, meanwhile, goes to the dogs.
There is one easy way to improve standards of refereeing: send former players out with the whistle. In cricket, no sooner have players retired than they are back on the field in white coats, putting something back into the game. Rugby men devote lives to this difficult job, but football, alas, does not inspire the same loyalty to the game.
Partisanship is all, on both sides of the fence. The Villa supporters began the match with a lavatorial chant about the run-down state of Burnden Park. Of course, when you come from the most beautiful city in Europe, it must be terribly irksome to visit less distinguished places.
BOLTON WANDERERS (4-4-2): K Branagan S Green, G Bergsson (sub: A Thompson, 59min), C Fairclough, J Phillips R Sneekes, A Stubbs, S Curcic, S Sellars (J McGinlay, 70) F de Freitas, N Blake.
ASTON VILLA (5-2-3): M Bosnich G Charles, U Ehiogu, G Southgate, S Staunton, A Wright M Draper, A Townsend T Johnson, D Yorke, S Milosevic.
Referee: G Ashby.
Simon Barnes sees Newcastle's Colombian import inspire a 2-1 victory over Middlesbrough.
No wonder Kevin Keegan does not fancy the England job. The traditional way to win a league championship is to hang tough in February and March; as weariness creeps in, to acquire the precious, point-gathering art of playing badly and winning.
Not Keegan, not Newcastle United. His response to hearing the distant sound of pursuing feet was to spend £7.5 million and buy one of the greatest and most exciting players on the world stage.
Faustino Asprilla more or less exploded into English football on Saturday, winning a match that looked lost and, at a guess, acting as the catalyst for the final transmutation of Newcastle into champions.
It is not that the vast resources at his disposal make Keegan's job as Newcastle manager easy; but they do offer him the unparalleled opportunity to dare. Keegan is a restless soul who loves to gamble, so he went for this Colombian player, a man with an equivocal reputation, ready, almost eager, to face colossal amounts of hostile criticism. Then the chance to see the gamble begin to come off. What other job in English football could offer that?
Keegan is a gambler all right, always seeking to put his reputation on the line. His sale of Andy Cole, the Newcastle love-object, proved that last season. The introduction of Asprilla is but further confirmation of Keegan as compulsive high roller.
He got Asprilla's work permit through on Friday and flew the player in by private jet on Saturday morning. Asprilla arrived at 11am. Keegan offered him lunch; he said that he would take just a glass of wine. What better pre-match meal?
Keegan's instinct was to play him, but the lack of match fitness, plus Asprilla's admission that he had received a knock in training in the week, put him on the bench. Well, why not? It was more dramatic that way. Gamblers have a taste for drama.
So Middlesbrough set about winning the game, set about putting their gloomy sequence of six successive defeats behind them. Barmby and Juninho ran and ran at Newcastle, causing them all kinds of problems. Juninho, the Brazilian what is happening to English football, excellence or something? was in inspired form, scuttling dizzyingly all over the place.
His cross should have been put away by Wilkinson, but, instead, Beresford saved him the trouble with an own goal. Barmby had three chances to make it 2-0, but, alas, he had forgotten how to score. So, as Middlesbrough played with seven men behind the ball, enter Asprilla.
"Don't see what was brave about the decisison," Keegan said. "Nothing else I could do. I thought, maybe this guy can spark us off, and he was champing at the bit." Maybe he had been eyeing the skills of English defenders.
It was a nice constrast in South Americans: Juninho is all scuttle and bustle, Asprilla is the more traditionally languid model. He showed that he has quite exceptional skills and the strength to exploit them.
The way that he set up the equaliser was one of those little vignettes of perfection that you get in football from time to time. Vickers, its victim, did not appreciate it. Nor did Bryan Robson, the Middlesbrough manager, who muttered in his managerly way about allowing Asprilla the extra yard of space.
Tush! If Vickers had been tighter on him, Asprilla would have beaten him with a different trick, and Robson would have told us that Vickers should have stood further off.
As it was, Asprilla dragged him one way, then the other, and then, in the most nonchalant way in the world, flicked a short, measured cross for Watson to nod home.
Asprilla continued to cause dismay in the Middlesbrough defence, and it was his tactics that allowed Beardsley to intercept and feed Ferdinand.
Ferdinand did not hit the chance cleanly; had he done so, Walsh would probably have saved it. He was beaten, as cricketers say, by the lack of pace, diving over the ball in a way that brought to mind Gary Sprake. The error looked worse than it was, but it was enough to do for Middlesbrough.
"I won't tell him where to play," Keegan said, happily smashing the manager's myth of total control. "I'll just say: ‘Do your thing, and we'll fit in with you.'
"We'll just light the blue touch-paper and let him get on with it. He is the sort of player who will flourish at this club a free spirit."
Asprilla had a lovely afternoon. Above all, he looked as if he wanted to play, rather than to collect cheques. Furthermore, he is only 26, far from an Italian league cast-off.
How long will he last? The European Cup beckons Newcastle next season: a factor that was surely of no little significance in Asprilla's desision to move to the North East.
That, and an affinity for the manager a shared gambler's instinct a shared feeling that free spirits go out and seize their moment rather than lurk about with seven men behind the ball, waiting for it to come.
MIDDLESBROUGH (3-4-2-1): G Walsh N Pearson, S Vickers, P Whelan N Cox, P Stamp (sub: C Liddle, 46min), J Pollock, C Morris Juninho (sub: C Hignett, 75), N Barmby P Wilkinson.
NEWCASTLE UNITED (4-4-1-1): P Srnicek W Barton, P Albert, D Peacock, J Beresford K Gillespie (sub: F Asprilla, 66), L Clark, R Lee, S Watson P Beardsley L Ferdinand.
Referee: S Dunn.
Kerry Davies, right, and Anabela Cazuza, of Portugal, tussle for possession during England women's 5-0 victory in Benavente yesterday.
Mark Hodkinson dreams of Euro‘96 after a day in the basement of the Premiership.
On a damp, miserable winter's afternoon in Sheffield, it was wholly appropriate to dream of a summer to come. In just 115 days, Hillsborough will host its first Euro‘96 match when Denmark meet Portugal. If the combined talents of those countries can summon mediocrity, it will be a distinct improvement on this fare.
Both Sheffield Wednesday and Wimbledon are uncomfortably close to the relegation area although Wednesday's 2-1 win lifted their worries a little but this hardly exonerated two teams who conspired to haunt themselves. They played the ball sideways and backwards, fearful of enjoying its company for longer than three seconds.
Gone are the days when a visit from Wimbledon was an occasion to be dreaded. Their football is more solicitous and less passionate and their
hunger for toil diminished. In one incident, four of their players were caught offside as they sauntered back they might once have faced a week's circuit training for such a misdemeanour.
Wimbledon defended poorly against an uneven trio of forwards who often made the same barren runs in triplicate. Amazingly, Wednesday stumbled upon four gilded first-half goal-scoring opportunities and squandered each.
The game looked scripted for a shifty Wimbledon win until Degryse found some order and shot past Sullivan. The goal heralded a bout of fascinating tactical manoeuvres as five substitutes were introduced in the final 40 minutes. The strategem of Joe Kinnear, the Wimbledon manager, was the more emphatic as he sent on Euell and Ekoku to scamper around the Wednesday defence.
Wimbledon's brief flirtation with enterprise was rewarded when Gayle crashed home a fine pass from Holdsworth. Wimbledon sensed their first win of the season outside London, but David Pleat, the Wednesday manager, proved the greater tactician.
Waddle, who had spent the afternoon either being caught in possession or providing sublime passes, placed a free kick onto the head of Watts, a substitute. He headed home and victory was Wednesday's.
"If we hadn't won, it would have been all catastrophe and disaster for us in the papers," Pleat said. "We had a lot of goal attempts and, I'd say, about 70 per cent of the play." He acknowledged that his team had played with too much anxiety. "Fear crept into it, but you should never fear winning football matches," he said. "It sometimes shows a lack of confidence when you shoot too early and my lads did that a few times."
He was pleased to have given a debut, albeit of just six minutes, to Mark Platts, 16, an England schoolboy international. "I was so pleased to have got Platts onto the field," he said. "We'll ruin him, us coaches. We ruin everyone we always do."
The joke was well intentioned, but, on a day when we had seen fitness above finesse, and almost nothing in the way of natural expression, Pleat's comic timing could not have been more awry.
SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY (4-3-3): K Pressman I Nolan, D Walker, D Stefanovic (sub: J Watts, 80min), P Atherton S Nicol, G Hyde, C Waddle (sub: M Platts, 84) G Whittingham, M Degryse (sub: M Bright, 80), D Kovasevic.
WIMBLEDON (4-4-2): N Sullivan K Cunningham, A Pearce, C Perry, A Kimble O Leonhardsen, R Earle, S Castledine (sub: J Euell, 51), M Gayle D Holdsworth (sub: A Thorn, 87), M Harford (sub: E Ekoku, 45).
Referee: M Bodenham.
Queens Park Rangers 1 Liverpool 2
AT THE turn of the year, the smart money was on Liverpool to push Newcastle United all the way to the line. It has not turned out that way yet, though goals by Mark Wright and Robbie Fowler in the first half pushed Liverpool to within two points of Manchester United in second place in the FA Carling Premiership and added to the woes of Queens Park Rangers, still firmly rooted one off the bottom of the table and with time running out in their struggle to escape relegation.
This was a cameo of Liverpool's season, by turns commanding and complacent, cultured and clodhopping. They had the game won by half-time, but sat back and, if Rangers' strikers had shown more composure, could have paid more dearly than the single goal scored by Dichio. Ultimately, the end could not come too soon for an unusually harassed Liverpool. It had all been so different at the start.
If the old saying "too good to go down" does not apply to Rangers, "too young to stay up" just might. Where a little fire and brimstone was needed, there was, instead, typical to the philosophy of Ray Wilkins, their manager, some elegance and a good deal of neat passing. There was just nobody with confidence to add the finishing touch.
It could all have been so different if Gallen had not spurned two excellent chances in the first half, the first inside two minutes. After the lanky Dichio had robbed Jones down the right and pulled the ball back straight into Gallen's stride, the little Rangers striker cannoned his shot against the advancing James. The rebound went straight to Quashie, but his ferocious shot was deflected away from its target.
When teams are in the depths, moments like these can alter games. Liverpool had barely woken up at this stage indeed, Barnes appeared wearing a pair of white boots, which looked suspiciously like trainers or carpet slippers but gradually they collected their thoughts and asserted themselves. Their passing, as usual, came straight from the five-a-side training pitch, and it seemed only a matter of time before they would get the measure of their lightweight opponents. Collymore had already enjoyed one sortie at goal his right-foot shot clipping the top of the crossbar after ten minutes before they went ahead just after the quarter-of-an-hour mark.
To Rangers' dismay, there was an inevitable touch of misfortune about it. A long-range shot by McAteer had been blocked, a follow-up attempt by Scales struck another home defender and the ball fell straight into the path of Wright, who advanced on Sommer and gleefully hammered it home.
By this time, Liverpool were well into their established rhythm, with Barnes picking up all the loose ends, Collymore and Fowler working the channels and McManaman scampering through the gaps down the middle yet their second goal was pure long ball. From a throw by James, Collymore took one look and clipped an inch-perfect left-foot pass that split the Rangers central defence and gave Fowler the relatively simple task of beating Sommer. That he did so without his normal panache mattered little: it was his 24th goal of the season.
To their credit, Rangers kept trying to play and Gallen should have done much better when five yards out and presented with a free header. Instead of bringing Rangers back into the game, though, he headed well over. Indeed, Fowler should have punished the error moments later, but his ferocious header from McAteer's cross flashed wide of the mark.
After that, the game became a simple matter of to-have-and-to-hold, of which Liverpool were once the past masters of the art. Rangers passed and moved; Liverpool did it that fraction better.
The only dangers to their domination were complacency and a habit of passing the ball for the sake of it, which has betrayed them once or twice this season. There was even a touch of the "after yous" about the goal that deservedly bought Rangers back into the match. In the 65th minute, after their most spirited spell, Dichio was allowed time and space aplenty to line up a shot from 20 yards, which took a wicked deflection off Scales and slid past James. Some good luck had visited the relegation strugglers at
last.
For a moment, Liverpool were thrown off balance and, but for Wright, whose commanding performance at the heart of the Liverpool defence must have caught the eye of Terry Venables, the watching England coach, the damage might have been more permanent. Twice, an equaliser beckoned, but Dichio and
Sinclair blasted high and wide with only the goalkeeper to beat.
Redknapp's introduction for the first time since he injured a groin muscle playing for England in early November came not a moment too soon. The trick seemed to work. Redknapp's first touch almost put the game beyond doubt and, under his driving from midfield, Liverpool retained their composure and at least kept Newcastle within telescope range.
QUEENS PARK RANGERS (4-4-2): J Sommer D Bardsley, D Maddix, S Yates, R Brevett T Sinclair, S Barker, I Holloway, N Quashie D Dichio, K Gallen.
LIVERPOOL (3-4-1-2): D James M Wright, J Scales, P Babb J McAteer, M Thomas, J Barnes, R Jones S McManaman R Fowler (sub: J Redknapp, 76min), S Collymore.
Referee: D Gallagher.
THE England women's team enhanced their chances of qualifying for the European championship finals with a convincing 5-0 victory against Portugal in Benavente, near Lisbon, yesterday. The win puts England top of the group on goal difference above Italy, and has effectively turned the pool into a two-horse race, with only the winners automatically qualifying for the finals.
England travelled to Portugal on Thursday in high spirits after a morale-boosting training session with Don Howe, the first time that the England coaching co-ordinator has been involved in their preparations. Whatever his words of wisdom, they worked wonders on the team, who silenced a partisan crowd of 4,000 with a dominant display that restricted Portugal to just one real chance, late in the first half.
By that stage, England were two up. In the 25th minute, Kerry Davis won a challenge on the edge of the area and laid the ball back for Hope Powell, who fired a shot low to the goalkeeper's left.
Gillian Coultard, making her 88th appearance, set up the second goal when her short free kick released Kelly Smith, who crossed for Karen Farley to score for the eighth time in nine internationals.
In the 48th minute, Coultard finished off a move, orchestrated by Sian Williams in midfield, with a curling effort that dipped into the net.
England's fourth goal, however, was their most astonishing. Marie-Anne Caterall, at 16 the squad's youngest player, came on as substitute for Kerry Davis on the hour. She had been on the pitch for just 30 seconds when the ball broke loose and she nodded it home to mark her debut in style.
Karen Burke capped a fine display in midfield with England's fifth goal in the final minute, prompting Ted Copeland, the manager, to say: "I'm delighted with the way we played. It leaves us in pole position with the match against Italy likely to decide top position."
Nottingham Forest 0 Arsenal 1
FRANK CLARK, the Nottingham Forest manager, is too decent a man to insult the Football Association by saying that he would turn down the England job when he has not even been offered it, but he has made it fairly clear privately that he has no intention of swapping his relatively comfortable chair at the City Ground for a bed of nails at Lancaster Gate.
More is the pity. Quite apart from his coaching skills, English football could benefit from the refreshing honesty of a manager who makes no excuses after his side has lost an unbeaten home record stretching back 12 months and 26 matches and does not try to defend a player who has been stupid enough to be sent off.
Clark could have pointed to the fact that Forest are badly missing the influence of Pearce, their injured captain, and pleaded that he did not see the incident that led to Lee being dismissed only 13 minutes after he entered the fray as a substitute. He did neither. Instead, he admitted that he was concerned about a performance that does not augur well for their FA Cup fourth-round replay away to Oxford United tomorrow, let alone their Uefa Cup quarter-final against Bayern Munich.
"We did not do well enough," he said bluntly. "We did not show enough wit, invention, quality, whatever you want to call it. We did not create enough chances to win, and some very poor defending cost us the game."
As for Lee, who had been booked ten minutes after he had taken the field for his reaction to a tackle by Keown, and sent off two minutes later for striking Linighan in the face, Clark said: "He has got into a habit, for whatever reason, of flailing his arms about recklessly.
"He got sent off for the same thing in the reserves two weeks ago and he could have been booked two or three times today. I think he crossed the line between genuinely using his arms to jump for the ball, which a lot of people do, and being reckless with it."
Not that Lee's dismissal made any difference to the outcome. Arsenal, still without Adams and Bould in defence and Platt and Parlour in midfield, had already won the match by unashamedly adopting Forest's familiar tactics and beating them at their own counter-attacking game.
It made for a scrappy 90 minutes, but the wit, invention and quality that Forest were missing was encapsulated in the decisive goal, on the hour. As Chettle failed to control a difficult bouncing ball, Bergkamp deftly flicked it over his shoulder to Wright before darting through the middle to take the return pass and poke it past Crossley with the Forest defence appealing for offside.
"Poor defending," Clark said. "We lost the ball in a dangerous area and then tried to play offside when it was never on." Arsenal, however, will not worry about that. It gave them just the lift they needed before the first leg of the Coca-Cola Cup semi-final against Aston Villa at Highbury on Wednesday.
NOTTINGHAM FOREST (4-4-2): M Crossley D Lyttle, C Cooper, S Chettle, D Phillips S Stone, S Gemmill (sub: P McGregor, 64min), C Bart-Williams, K Black (sub: J Lee, 72) K Campbell, B Roy.
ARSENAL (4-4-2): D Seaman L Dixon, A Linighan, M Keown, N Winterburn P Merson, J Jensen, D Hillier, G Helder I Wright, D Bergkamp.
Referee: R Hart.
Fulham 2 Hartlepool United 2
HE HAS heard the abuse, read the threats and done the honourable thing before, but it cannot be any easier second time around. There may have been higher-profile casualties of "supporter-power" than Ian Branfoot, but none, surely, who has twice had to withstand such sustained and unacceptable hostility.
With Fulham hovering precariously in a two-pronged battle for survival first as a member of the Endsleigh Insurance League, second as a football club at all what Branfoot needs most is a thick cheque book. His only weapon, though, is a thick skin. It saw him through another fraught afternoon on Saturday with dignity and job intact.
Available from an official programme seller outside Craven Cottage was a crude, photocopied letter advising Branfoot to "leave now while you still can" and which, echoing the disgraceful Southampton fanzine that advocated Branfoot's departure from The Dell three years ago, declared: "We also hope you die soon." The manager, the authors claimed, "hasn't got the courage to resign". Neither, incidentally, had they the courage to reveal their identities.
Branfoot was stoical, but he could not fully disguise his disgust at those who were "foul-mouthed, ignorant and a disgrace to a club who have long warranted and treasured an image of friendliness".
Branfoot is not about to quit on a club at the lowest point in its history, in terms of morale as well as league position. "We are fit, we are organised and we are good enough to survive," he said. "Of course we can turn it round. It is a matter of getting through these dark days."
If only his team had been as defiant. Fulham, 2-0 up with 12 minutes to go and within reach of a deserved, rare and desperately needed victory, caved in to allow Hartlepool United to draw and two third division points to float off down the Thames. Allon was twice left unmarked to score with headers after Barber, with a deflected shot, and Blake had rewarded Fulham's more creative approach-play. Dark days indeed.
FULHAM (4-4-2): A Lange D Jupp (sub: R Hamill, 72min), M Blake, K Moore, R Herrera J Marshall, N Cusack, R McAree, P Barber M Conroy, R Scott.
HARTLEPOOL UNITED (3-5-2): B Horne P Billing, D Ingram, I McGuckin S Reddish, M Tait, K Houchen, S Howard, S McAuley J Allon, S Halliday (sub: K Oliver, 68).
Referee: S Bennett.
Everton 2 Manchester City 0
THE thaw was well under way on Merseyside on Saturday, but a notice saying "Danger, thin ice" still stood beside the pond in Stanley Park. It might have been there for the benefit of Manchester City, who slipped back into the bottom three after a dire game overshadowed by absent foreigners and inept refereeing.
The decision to refuse Marc Hottiger a work permit exercised a lot of minds last week and provoked considerable anger in the Everton corridors.
In defence of the Professional Footballers' Association and the Department of Employment, it is doubtful whether a good-ish Swiss full back would have made much difference to the game, or to Everton.
Most English full backs can hoist in high, hanging crosses from 40 yards away, which was the main Everton attacking ploy in the absence of Kanchelskis, and Jackson did a serviceable enough job, playing a significant part in the first goal. His cross was nodded back by Ferguson for Parkinson to head in.
However, if Kanchelskis was missed, how much more did City miss their Special K. In Kinkladze's absence, they at least tried to pass the ball, with Flitcroft the best player on view, and Clough showing some nice touches, but, without the Georgian, there was no penetration, nothing to disturb Everton.
It may be less glamorous in these days of Asprilla and Ginola, Bergkamp and Cantona, but Everton at least had Ferguson's height to create chaos every time that the ball was hoisted in. Sadly, they also offered the return of the dogs of war, the epithet used by Joe Royle, their manager, of his team last season, which brings us, more sadly still, to the contribution of Paul Alcock, the referee.
One decision, to award a penalty against Symons for handball when the City defender was blatantly shoved in the back by Horne, may have been decisive, Hinchcliffe's conversion, in the 51st minute, ending any chance of a City comeback. "A bizarre decision," Alan Ball, the City manager said, choosing his words with care.
It was not as bizarre as several others, culminating in the dismissal of Frontzeck, the City defender, for two bookable offences pulling Ferguson's shirt and blocking Limpar. At the end, Craig Short, the Everton defender, left in earnest conversation with Alcock.
"I wasn't having a go at this particular referee as we came off the pitch, but I felt I had to say something to him about the way the game is going," Short said. "I've seen eight players sent off in Everton games alone this season. Some players need protecting, but it's getting out of hand."
The trouble is, though, that the players who need protection often are not getting it. "It is very hard learning how to play in England," Frontzeck said. "Referees sometimes don't blow for strong tackles, but will give you a card for shirt-pulling."
For "strong tackles", read scything fouls. Alcock looked on benignly as Parkinson and Horne crashed into tackles from behind, and Clough was laid flat with a malicious elbow in front of the referee. The seven yellow cards were produced for obstruction, dissent and shirt-pulling.
EVERTON (4-4-1-1): N Southall M Jackson, D Watson, C Short, D Unsworth A Limpar, B Horne, J Parkinson, A Hinchcliffe G Stuart D Ferguson.
MANCHESTER CITY (4-4-1-1): E Immel N Summerbee, K Curle, K Symons, M Frontzeck M Brown (sub: G Creaney, 45min), S Lomas, G Flitcroft, M Phillips (sub: N Quinn, 45min) N Clough U Rosler.
Referee: P Alcock.
Wycombe Wanderers 0 Blackpool 1
BLACKPOOL, the Seasiders; kitted out in tangerine peel and slipping up on banana skins. A club graced by Sir Stanley Matthews, Jimmy Armfield and Alan Ball before sliding into the obscurity of lowly divisions, never, seemingly, to come to the fore again. Until, perhaps, this, their centenary year.
The club stands in third place in the second division of the Endsleigh Insurance League. This is nothing much to set alongside the feats of the 1950s, but is riches indeed by comparison with the struggles of the past two decades, struggles that could not prevent relegation to the old fourth division for the first time in 1981.
Last week, Sam Allardyce, the manager, was able to persuade two individuals, from Liverpool and Tranmere, to join Blackpool for a month on loan. Both Charnock, on the left side of midfield, and Nixon, in goal, contributed to a well-merited victory over Wycombe Wanderers.
In Billy Bingham, Allardyce has a director of football with the kind of know-how to prevent Blackpool from missing out on promotion again. They were in a similar position last year before falling away in the second half of the season. Now, they are unbeaten in their past ten matches.
Allardyce took a chance on Saturday. He left out Ellis, scorer of 11 goals this season, the supporters' favourite and, Allardyce admitted, his own. Allardyce included, instead, Watson, a forward who is on a week-by-week contract. He scored the winning goal.
Also, Blackpool were without three established players in Brown, the assistant manager, Darton and Lydiate, all suspended, as well as Morrison, the captain, who was injured. Allardyce had to decide whether to include his own son, ultimately naming him among the substitutes.
Watson's goal was hooked in after Roberts, the Wycombe goalkeeper, had flailed at and missed a corner from Mellor in the 34th minute. Wycombe lacked the cohesion that their opponents, for all their changes, looked to possess. For once, it can be said that Blackpool have a future.
WYCOMBE WANDERERS (3-5-2): B Roberts J Cousins, T Evans, S Brown J Rowbotham, K Ryan (sub: D Farrell, 72min), D Carroll, G Patterson, M Bell M De Souza, J Williams.
BLACKPOOL (4-4-2): E Nixon M Bryan, D Linighan, D Bradshaw, A Barlow M Mellor, J Quinn (sub: P Charnock, 76), M Bonner, R Holden A Watson, A Preece.
Referee: M Singh.
Crystal Palace 0 Sheffield United 0
DAVE BASSETT did not even attempt to pick the side or choose the tactics. The new manager of Crystal Palace was far too busy, calculator and set square by his side, figuring out the management structure of the club. He discovered that there is Ron Noades, the hands-on chairman, Steve Coppell, the technical director, Ray Lewington, a first-team coach, Peter Nicholas, another first-team coach, and himself, the manager.
It took all of Saturday for him to sort out the permutations, but, after stating that he always works closely with his staff, he eventually concluded: "At the end of the day, as the manager, I will have the final say."
It is a peculiar power structure and one suspects that nobody other than Bassett would have been comfortable joining it. However, Bassett worked in tandem with Noades at Wimbledon, where they steered the club from the Southern League to the old first division.
When Bassett, 52, is not performing miracles he also took Sheffield United into the first division he is making horrendous errors. He lasted only three days when he last took the reins at Selhurst Park, in 1984, his six months at Watford were fraught with problems, and Sheffield were twice relegated under his command.
Nevertheless, he is probably what Palace need. They are a nervy side who find it difficult to cope with the pressure of a home fixture. They were not exactly inspired by his arrival, particularly as he had little to do with them for this Endsleigh Insurance League first division match, but they occasionally hoofed the ball upfield believing that that might be what the new manager wanted. It is not what he wants and it "irks" him that he is so closely associated with long-ball tactics.
With Sheffield as the visitors for Bassett's first game in nominal charge, a passionate goal feast was anticipated, wrongly as it turned out. The first 45 minutes were to entertainment what Joan Collins is to literature. The second half livened up only when Pitcher was dismissed for a two-footed tackle on Hutchison. Thereafter, Palace flung themselves goalwards, but, unfortunately for them, Alan Kelly, the Ireland international, was in goal and Mick McCarthy, the new Ireland manager, was in the stands. Kelly was magnificent.
Bassett admitted that United needed a new manager with fresh ideas. The contrast between him and Howard Kendall, his successor, could not have been more stark. Kendall was morose, suspicious and pessimistic. Bassett was chirpy and relentlessly good-natured despite the clamour for interview after interview. It will start all over again this Saturday when Watford, another of his previous clubs, will be the visitors at Selhurst Park.
One suspects that, if Bassett can keep the chiefs organised, the Indians will come along nicely.
CRYSTAL PALACE (5-3-2): N Martyn M Edworthy, D Gordon, A Roberts, G Davies, S Rodger B Dyer, R Houghton, D Pitcher D Freedman (sub: J Vincent, 61min), G Taylor (sub: G Ndah, 56).
SHEFFIELD UNITED (4-4-2): A Kelly C Short, R Nilsen, M Vonk, M Ward D White, G Cowans, M Patterson, D Whitehouse (sub: D Hodgson, 83) D Hutchison, B Angell (sub: A Heath, 57).
Referee: M Pierce.
Coventry City 1 Chelsea 0
WHEN the likes of David Seaman, Eike Immel and Kevin Hitchcock take the bait, in successive matches, and are rendered useless on the ground as the ball is chipped cheekily over them, it is perhaps the sign of a master craftsman at work. For Noel Whelan, the Coventry City striker, it is no more than a demonstration of the self-belief that prompted him to leave Elland Road for Highfield Road two months ago.
Whelan, 21, could not find consistent favour with Howard Wilkinson, the Leeds United manager, and started only six matches for him this season yet he still commanded a £2 million fee, suggesting that Wilkinson, who demanded it, and Ron Atkinson, the Coventry manager, who paid it, both realised the latent talent lurking within.
Eleven matches and seven goals later, "Noel Who?" to the bemused Coventry supporters is now Noel Somebody; instantly recognisable and worthy of chanting his name in deference; an England Under-21 player who, in partnership with the admirable Dion Dublin, could rescue Coventry from the Endsleigh Insurance League horrors that might lie in wait.
On Saturday, against a Chelsea side that had lost only once in 15 outings, Whelan supplied his trademark goal in the 44th minute. Richardson's incisive pass gave him a clear sight of Hitchcock as he had of Seaman, of Arsenal, and Immel, of Manchester City, in the previous week and the result was the same. Cool appraisal of the situation, split-second wait for the goalkeeper to commit himself and then a delightful delivery into the net.
"It's worked three times for me and I suppose I'll have to change it now," he said, acutely aware of the future implications of his actions. "I'll probably have to come up with something new." Like the successful yet increasingly stereotyped penalty-taker, he was already ahead of the game.
"It was an important result, for the team and for everyone," he said. "I don't think we'll go down and it could even be the start of a good run for us. The move from Leeds came at the right time for me. It was a pure footballing decision and an easy one to make in the circumstances."
Whelan is an awkward 6ft 2in, with an upright, strangely aristocratic gait. Away from goal, it spells little danger, apart from a few neat flicks; closer in, he can appear lithe or lethargic, yet is frequently lethal, striking swiftly or with almost casual aplomb.
Coventry should have crushed Chelsea. "No complaints," Glenn Hoddle, the Chelsea manager, said, refreshingly avoiding lame excuses or complaints that defy rational explanation. "They were the better side."
Hoddle's solitary lament, that the pitch did not suit his players' free-flowing style and possessed enough divots to grace St Andrews the home of golf, not Birmingham City was fair enough. Yet Coventry adapted the better and, had not Shaw, Ndlovu, Salako, Whelan, Busst and Williams squandered chances aplenty, they would have won at a canter.
For once, Gullit played only a limited role. The significantly lesser-known Whelan eclipsed everybody, with a repetitive finish that might eventually need replacing, but one that will always be a joy to behold.
COVENTRY CITY (4-4-2): S Ogrizovic A Pickering, D Busst, R Shaw, B Borrows J Salako, P Telfer, K Richardson, P Ndlovu (sub: P Williams, 77min) N Whelan, D Dublin.
CHELSEA (3-4-2-1): K Hitchcock F Sinclair (sub: E Johnsen, 75), D Lee, S Clarke D Petrescu, R Gullit, E Newton, T Phelan G Peacock, J Spencer (sub: D Wise, 58) P Furlong.
Referee: R Dilkes (sub: B Coddington, 61).
MANCHESTER UNITED 1 BLACKBURN ROVERS 0.
David Miller sees some striking contrasts in Manchester United's 1-0 defeat of Blackburn Rovers.
It was possible to depart from Old Trafford on Saturday with little if any recollection of the respective contributions by Andy Cole or Alan Shearer. More than £10 million worth of goalscoring investment had singularly failed. The memory was, once more, of Eric Cantona.
To the extent that an average match revolved around any one figure, it was Manchester United's elegant, endlessly perceptive captain. It is incomprehensible that Aime Jacquet, the France coach, can even contemplate omitting Cantona from the finals of the European championship. Week by week, for his touch, his tactical intelligence and, occasionally, his finishing, Cantona must be one of the dozen most effective players in the world. His temperament since returning to the game has been, as far as I have seen, without blemish, while his vision, that abstract quality possessed to such a degree by only a handful of even great players, makes any match in which he plays worth watching.
Against Blackburn Rovers, the depleted champions who, nonetheless, were unbeaten in their previous eight matches, he created, after a quarter of an hour, what proved to be the winning goal for Lee Sharpe, and was involved in five of the seven other scoring chances in a victory that should have been easier than United made it seem.
As a partner for the able Youri Djorkaeff, from Paris Saint-Germain the son of Jean, who gained 48 caps Cantona could form a potent force in the summer. It is a tactical conundrum that Jacquet surely needs to resolve and which he will not unless he sees for himself. The range of Cantona's influence was at times reminiscent of Antonio Rattin, of Argentina, and I am not referring to smouldering emotions.
Apart from a spell of four goals in four matches around the turn of the year, Cole has continued to fall short of Alex Ferguson's expectations. The United manager obliquely referred to this fact when talking afterwards of his side's results unnecessarily "coming down to the wire". Cole could have removed some of the doubt had he scored from a well-positioned diving header close in, after a cross from Beckham, four minutes into the second half.
Blackburn, without Le Saux and, more significantly, Bohinen and Ripley, attempted to steal the points with their familiar pressure-tactics, often having nine or ten men behind the ball, a tactical disposition that left neither Giggs nor Shearer feeling comfortable.
Shearer, despite his 30 goals this season, which have made him the first player to pass the hundred in the Premier League, was made to feel more lonely by effective defence from Pallister back after injury and May, the deputy for Bruce, and by the persistent heckling of the crowd of 42,681. Mancunians still resent, four years on, Shearer's preference for Jack Walker's riches.
If Cole, at the other end, was a shade anaemic, so too was Giggs in midfield. Ferguson admitted later to the dilemma that he had faced before the game of whether to play the physically fragile Welshman none of George Best's unflinching courage here in a central role alongside Keane. Giggs did produce occasional moments of threatening footwork and guile, but a reluctance to challenge for even 60-40 balls now and then irritated an impatient crowd. The goal came as Cantona, from near the centre circle, floated a beautifully-judged pass over the heads of the Blackburn rearguard. Cole brushed past Hendry, made for goal and his shot was deflected by Flowers on to the left-hand post. From the rebound, Sharpe calmly shot into the far side of the net.
From then until half-time, the game was moving towards Flowers, and some rugged tackles at times threatened to mar the spirit of the match. Yet it is a depressing aspect of so much of football today that spectators are no longer interested in the talents of the opposition, only in success for their own team.
Flowers had to head off the line as Hendry swept the ball off Cole's feet with an unintentional and high back pass; Cantona, exchanging passes with Giggs a minute later, cut through on the right and excitingly shot narrowly behind from an acute angle. On the stroke of half-time, Flowers saved well as Irwin drove for the top right-hand corner.
Early in the second half, Shearer, his frustration rising in indirect proportion to the danger that he was creating, unnecessarily flung himself in pique at Schmeichel and was booked. It was a measure of Blackburn's sterile performance that, though four minutes from time, Gudmundsson, on loan from Halmstad, in Sweden, might have levelled the score with a rising shot from 16 yards that flew just too high.
MANCHESTER UNITED (4-4-1-1): P Schmeichel D Irwin, D May, G Pallister, P Neville D Beckham, R Keane, R Giggs, L Sharpe E Cantona A Cole.
BLACKBURN ROVERS (4-4-2): T Flowers H Berg, C Hendry, C Coleman (sub: N Marker, 83min), J Kenna K Gallagher, W McKinlay, T Sherwood, J Wilcox (sub: N Gudmundsson, 72) A Shearer, M Newell (sub: G Fenton, 65).
Referee: K Burge.
Oliver Holt, in Estoril, on a driver's fightback from deathbed to racetrack.
Mika Hakkinen hid his bloodshot eyes behind a pair of dark glasses here yesterday the way that a boxer does when he has been bruised by an opponent's punches. His own fight, three months ago to the day, lasted little more than a split-second and the concrete wall at the Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide was always going to be the winner. Yesterday, though, he made his first public appearance since the crash that nearly killed him and announced happily that he was coming back for more.
He spoke of sitting behind the wheel again with the joy of a learner driver who has just passed his test, thrilled by the simplest things. People whom he once considered colleagues have become friends. "Life became my priority, not work, work, work," he said. "I saw that we are all human beings, not machines, and that we have to think of other people sometimes." Behind the glasses, he is seeing more clearly than ever.
At times, of course, he looked thoroughly ill at ease, casting his eyes down at the ground in the face of banks of the photographers who had come here to picture him and David Coulthard, his new team-mate, alongside the new McLaren-Mercedes Formula One car. In the weeks since the accident, he has been protected from the public glare as speculation about whether he would be able to continue racing raged around him.
His face is thinner than it used to be, certainly, and his manner not quite as assured as it was in the days before his car spun out of control during the first qualifying session for the race on November 10, clipped a kerb and was launched straight into a tyre barrier shielding the wall. He lapsed into a coma and, at the circuit, people said that he would not last the night. Even the more optimistic doubted that he would ever drive again.
Yet he did get through the night and, after a month in hospital with the constant help and support of Ron Dennis, the McLaren managing director to whom he paid tribute, he was allowed home. He began doing a little light running, then some more strenuous fitness work and then more still during a week of intensive physical conditioning in Bali. A week ago, he got back in a Formula One car at a private test in the south of France and went quicker than Michael Schumacher, the world champion, had in a Ferrari a few days earlier.
Now, despite the lingering effects of his injuries, his handshake is as firm as ever and he is insistent that he will take his place on the grid for the first race of the season in Melbourne on March 10. The Mika Hakkinen story is quickly becoming one of those tales of miraculous recovery that professional sportsmen seem so adept at producing.
As they do so often with boxers, some will question why Hakkinen, 27, would want to re-enter a sport that nearly deprived him of his life and one that he admits will undoubtedly cause him to crash again this season. His replies to the stream of questions directed at him at a press conference that reduced the other team personnel to virtual spectators provided all the answers.
"I have to admit that I was a bit nervous when I got back into the car last week," he said. "I was OK at first, but then I was standing next to the car putting on my Balaclava and my gloves and I suddenly realised all the mechanics had gone silent. Usually, in Formula One, there is noise everywhere and a lot happening, but it was completely quiet.
"But then, when I sat in the cockpit and selected first gear and went out into the pit lane, I felt fantastic. I did not feel scared any more and that first lap back behind the wheel was so wonderful.
When I shifted up through the gears, it felt so smooth. Braking for the corners, accelerating, just simple things gave me this amazing feeling, this warm feeling. It was as though I had my life back again. This is what I love doing."
Hakkinen has never won a grand prix, but is widely regarded as the possessor of the most raw speed in Formula One. "In fast corners, he is even faster than Schumacher," Martin Brundle, his former colleague, said last week. His reputation was secured when he outqualified the late Ayrton Senna who was his team-mate at the time at this circuit in 1993.
Yet his career, which began at Lotus and has spanned 63 races, has also been bedevilled by lapses of concentration and a series of crashes. Hakkinen was entirely blameless in Adelaide, where a puncture sent his car out of control, but he admitted yesterday that he was prepared for more crashes this season.
"You have to accept that, over the course of a normal season, you are going to spin a couple of times and maybe hit the wall," he said. "That is just the way motor racing is. You have to accept it is going to happen to you as well and you just hope it will not be a big one. You just have to make sure you are as fit as you can be so you are prepared for it. By the start of the season, I will be ready. I am going to Melbourne to win."
SOUTHGATE played hockey of the highest class yesterday in scoring four goals without reply against Teddington to retain their position as leaders of the National League. It was not that Teddington played badly they started well and fired several shots at goal but, in the end, could not match the home side's maturity and confidence.
It was against the run of play when, after 13 minutes, Shaw found the space to create the chance for Woods to open the scoring. Teddington's attempt to equalise was thwarted five minutes later by Cadman, the Southgate goalkeeper, who saved well from Wallis.
A minute before the interval, Waugh forced his way through on the right to score the second goal, and added another in the 59th minute shortly after Conway had missed another chance to put Teddington back into the game. Simon completed the scoring two minutes from the end.
Cannock, Reading, Old Loughtonians and Guildford are all hot on the heels of Southgate. Crutchley scored two goals for Cannock in a 7-1 away victory over St Albans, one from a short corner. Edwards added two more, also from short corners.
Ian Jennings had a profitable day for Guildford, converting three short corners in a 5-2 home win over Havant. Old Loughtonians remained in the hunt with a 6-0 home victory over Hull, and Reading won 2-0 at home on Saturday against Hounslow, Osborn, from a short corner, and Mark Hoskin scored in the first half.
Barford Tigers, who defeated Bournville 2-1, lost Satinderpal Mann, who was sent off for a second offence in the 56th minute having been temporarily suspended earlier for a tackle. St Albans, Hull and Stourport, the teams at the bottom of the table, face a fight to stay in the division.
Doncaster's win over Richmond pushed them to third place in the second division.
Simon Barnes on how hockey's great goalscorer was tempted out of retirement for love of the game.
Sean Kerly, the hook-billed predator, gold medal-winning hero of Seoul, the man with a better record than Gary Lineker 109 international goals, 172 caps for England and Great Britain returned to the English hockey league yesterday, at the age of 36, trying to help Richmond to get off the bottom of the second division.
In vain, for, unusually, he remained goalless in a 4-1 home defeat by Doncaster. "I think I might have done better in midfield rather than at forward," he said, though he did have a goal disallowed when the score was 1-1.
He had already turned out for Richmond for a cup match, playing for ten minutes, laying one player out cold "it was an accident, I feel awful about it" and, yes, scoring a goal. "I flicked it and it went in, totally unexpected," he said.
Or, to put it another way, totally predictable; Kerly was the one who always scored all the goals. He did lots of dogged and hard-running team things, too, but anybody with fitness and commitment could do them; and there were are many hockey things that he cannot do at all.
"There were always a lot of people who were much better than me," he said. "Guys who can do fantastic things with the ball. There are a lot of things I can't do at all, but what I can do is do the very simple things when it really matters. Put a ball through a one-foot gap when it means the difference between an Olympic final and missing out. I can do that."
Hitting the ball straight. It is the most basic skill in all ball games. Most people can do it, to some degree, but doing it at the magic moment, doing it when every element of the If test is called into being at once, that shows an appetite for crisis that few people can manage. In the past decade, England have had Lineker, Andrew, Kerly.
I looked out for the falconine nose, thinking that by that I would recognise him, but it was the blazing falconine eyes that did the trick. He looks just the same as he did in the gilded year of 1988. "I did an interview for IBM once," he said. "I failed on my personality test. They came to the conclusion that I should not be involved with high-pressure situations."
Let us think of an example of a high-pressure situation. Say, Australia 2 Great Britain 2, three minutes left to play. Oh, and it is an Olympic semi-final, and Australia are favourites. How did Kerly manage to avoid the pressure? Simple, by completing his hat-trick: Kerly the raptor in jumper No13. Naturally enough, Kerly is not a millionaire television pundit. He is sales manager for Poole Pottery. I met him at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham where he had been spending the week talking up country-kitchen-type cups and saucers.
He has a wife and three children and he had given up hockey, really, for good, when Steven Batchelor, his old striking partner, gave him a call. "Why don't we resurrect the old firm? Batchelor and Kerly: creation and finishing, goals our speciality." Well, why not? Batchelor is coach at Richmond: Kerly went for a game.
Well, Kerly played, with the result already mentioned, and then he went home high as a kite. Oh, that terrible drug: sport. Team sport.
"I've missed the team thing so much," Kerly said. "In business, people forget you are in it together and that you're supposed to be trying to achieve a joint goal; and that is a special side to achieving something. Achieving it together."
Kerly never saw himself as the oddball individual in the greater team. He was just the one who took responsibility at those vital moments, those foot-wide gaps. The joint goal.
So to Richmond. "I thought I'd be miles off the pace," he said. "Playing with Steve again: all the little moves we got going, at Southgate, and internationally. It was a real pleasure to play with him again."
Addictive stuff, this sport. After all, there is nobody in the tabloids saying: "Come on Sean, hang up your boots; the game's been good to you." He can just get on with it. There are times mostly when the non-existent pay-day is long past when it really is quite good to be an amateur.
Alan Lee, in Calcutta, reports on a World Cup stalemate that will rest heavy on cricket's conscience.
SEVEN hours of debate here this weekend failed to break the deadlock threatening the harmony and balance of the cricket World Cup, which opened last night with a curious cocktail of celebration and recrimination. Australia and West Indies, intransigent in their refusal to visit Colombo, have consequently forfeited their games against Sri Lanka, who will, by way of compensation for loss of revenue, stage a goodwill match against a combined India and Pakistan side in Colombo tomorrow.
The matter will not end there. An emergency session of the International Cricket Council (ICC), spanning Saturday afternoon and yesterday morning, failed in its mediating purpose and stopped only just short of the length and acrimony of the nine-hour meeting three years ago, at which the venue of this competition was bought and sold. Now, as then, the setting was formal, but the atmosphere more rancorous than decorous. Now, as then, the ramifications are unlimited.
Although Australia and West Indies are to continue in the competition with the putative loss of no more than two points both should still qualify for the last eight further penalties will inevitably follow. Some of these may be financial. Others will become apparent through the response of the rest of the cricket community to what some see as the selfish sabotage of this event.
Many options were investigated during the weekend and India even offered to play Kenya as an initial match in Colombo, from which the security situation could then be assessed. West Indies and Australia, who have been guided throughout by government advice on the safety issue, declined to reconsider their decision intractability matched, on the other side, by a refusal to alter the Cup schedule in any way.
The fury of Pilcom, the organising committee, at the attitude of the defaulting countries is reflected by the Indian media and, through it, the public. The teams withdrew from their Colombo commitments because safety could not be guaranteed. Australia, at least, had good reason to do so; but they must now prepare themselves for possible hostility wherever they play. Australia, with ten days to fill before that happens, were last night planning to fly to Bombay for practice.
The press conference, yesterday, to confirm the unsatisfactory resolution featured an increasingly apoplectic performance by Jagmohan Dalmiya, the Pilcom convenor, encouraged by questions from the floor accusing Australia and West Indies of anything from cowardice to racism. At one point, the cry went up that it was all "a conspiracy against the Third World", a theme abandoned only when it was pointed out that the Third World also includes West Indies.
The ICC is also widely being accused of weak-kneed incompetence, which is unfair. Weak it most certainly is, as was regretfully acknowledged yesterday by Sir Clyde Walcott, its chairman, but the weaknesses are not in the intentions and commitment of its officers, but in its constitution.
The ICC is merely the sum of its constituents and, when they fall out among themselves, there is no executive power available to arbitrate. Until that is established, the game will remain a hostage to the sort of circumstances that are now blighting this tournament.
"There is a need for the ICC to have more clout," Sir Clyde said. "The time has come in this cricketing world when some organisation above the cricket boards should have the power to make decisions. At present, that power does not exist. I certainly don't have the authority to tell countries whether they must play or not. I was here only to guide and moderate. There was nothing more I could do."
Neither, clearly, was there anything that Pilcom could do, for the rules it had compiled for the competition made no provision for teams opting out of fixtures to be coerced or even eliminated. "Sometimes you learn from a mistake," Dalmiya said, mournfully.
"I never anticipated this happening, because it has never happened in cricket before. Countries staging future World Cups may like to frame their rules differently."
Sir Clyde evidently has some sympathy with the stance of the Australians and his own West Indian countrymen. "They acted upon information from reliable sources," he said, adding what sounded like a note of reproach to the tournament organisers. "Unfortunately, Pilcom did not agree to reschedule the fixtures so that two alternative games could go to Sri Lanka."
However, Dalmiya was unrepentant. "Pilcom was not convinced there was a need for rescheduling," he said. "We were prepared to hold matches in an empty ground or to helicopter the teams in from India. It is still not too late for them to reconsider these options and match the solidarity shown by Kenya and Zimbabwe in going ahead with their games in Sri Lanka."
Almost inevitably, the bombing in London's Docklands on Friday night was held up by Indian journalists as an analogy, Dalmiya and Arif Abassi, his Pakistani counterpart, being quizzed as to whether their teams might now withdraw from the scheduled tours of England this summer. Both dismissed the possibility, Dalmiya pointing out: "A bomb went off during the first World Cup in England and no teams withdrew. Bombs have gone off during ICC meetings and no one has withdrawn."
The differences here, of course, are that Australian players were personally threatened, some with death, by fanatics in Sri Lanka (and Pakistan) and that they, and West Indies, had the opportunity to judge the Colombo situation before setting off.
They have acted prudently, but those who believe the caution to be excessive include at least one of their own. Ian Chappell, a former Australia captain, here as a television commentator, is appalled at the concession of a game.
"Forfeit is a dirty word to me," he said. "I couldn't bring myself to give away a game of cricket in any circumstances."
It should not have been necessary. If Pilcom had acted with foresight rather than obstinacy, relocating the games as soon as trouble loomed, Sri Lanka could have been recompensed out of the additional revenue. That option has now been sacrificed, along with the integrity of the whole competition, for, while Sri Lanka have lost in many ways, they have already gained four points without playing, a potentially significant anomaly that will forever be on the conscience of this event.
James Male, the world champion, won the Lacoste British Open championship at Queen's Club, London, yesterday, beating Neil Smith 15-10, 15-2, 15-1, 15-10 in the final. Male produced a string of unreturnable winners down the walls and retrieved superbly from all over the court. It was only towards the end of the fourth game that Smith began to show flashes of his own majestic power when the nearest he got to Male was to trail 10-12. Male's response, however, was simply to raise the pace.
Greg Norman, right, won the Ford Open championship in Adelaide yesterday, one stroke ahead of Jean-Louis Guepy, of France. Norman finished the tournament with a total of 284, four under par, to clinch victory despite being nine shots off the pace after 36 holes of the par-72 Kooyonga Golf Club course. Glenn Joyner tied for third with Peter O'Malley, his fellow Australian, on 286.
Sheffield Steelers and Cardiff Devils strengthened their grip at the top of the premier division of the British League with wins at Basingstoke Bison and Milton Keynes Kings, respectively, while Nottingham Panthers lost ground, beaten at home by the improving Newcastle Warriors. If Basingstoke do not get their injured players back soon, they are in danger of missing the play-offs.
In the first division, Manchester Storm and Blackburn Hawks won yet again and Manchester need only two points to make the title a certainty.
Frank Warren's promotion, due to be staged at the London Arena on Saturday, was postponed in the wake of the disruption around the Docklands venue caused by the IRA bomb blast. It will now be staged a short distance across east London, at York Hall, Bethnal Green, tomorrow. Tickets purchased for the event, the highlight of which is Terry Dunstan's defence of his British cruiserweight title against Dennis Andries, the veteran former world champion, will be valid.
Salford 26 Wigan 16
IT WAS like the curtain coming down on The Mousetrap. Nine years and 43 unbeaten matches since Wigan's last defeat in the Silk Cut Challenge Cup, way back at Oldham in February 1987, the most successful run in rugby league or, indeed, British team sport history, was dramatically and abruptly ended by Salford yesterday.
As with all the teams that tried and failed to knock Wigan from their pedestal, Salford were given virtually no chance. An hour after an extraordinary upset, people were still gathered in and around the Willows Ground, Salford supporters pinching themselves and Wigan's large following in a state of disbelief that their annual appointment at Wembley in April is cancelled this year.
Salford, the first division champions, rose majestically to the occasion. Steve Blakeley, an inspirational man-of-the-match in attack, and Scott Naylor, scorer of two of Salford's four tries, were once on Wigan's books. Steve Hampson, another Wigan old boy, made an outstanding defensive contribution in an overall display of superb collective will.
As a player, Andy Gregory won five Challenge Cup winner's medals with Wigan. As coach of Salford, his smile was broad, proud and mischievous. "We won a round, that's all," he said; but Gregory was fooling nobody. His side had achieved history on a day when Wigan, finally, met their match and shrank from the task.
Wigan, as subdued afterwards as they were in the game, were gracious in defeat, but, as phenomenal as their stranglehold on the game's oldest and most-cherished prize was, the discovery of their mortality can only be for the greater good of the sport. The script was a tired and predictable one, and the shocking twist yesterday, after Wigan's eight successive Challenge Cup victories, could not have been better timed on the eve of Super League and the move to summer.
Times are changing, and a lessening of one team's dominance can only be an encouragement to those sides used to trailing in the Wigan slipstream. Wigan had survived so many white-knuckle rides down the years in the Challenge Cup as to imagine they might survive another.
Yet the intensity with which Salford burnt in the first half did not relent. In a rumbustious Salford pack, Forber typified the spirit in their ranks, with his surges up the middle and last-ditch defence. When Wigan got even a half-break, Forber was there to snuff out the danger. This intensified as Wigan clawed back to 20-10, but fell away when Lee dummied the Wigan cover and Martin slotted into the gap.
Whereas apparently irretrievable situations, at Hull and Halifax in recent years, were rescued, Salford proved too stubborn and Wigan, unusually, lacked the will and skill. It is a rare occurrence that none of their cylinders should fire, but Wigan have rarely been so rattled as they were by the head-on force with which they were met from the fifth minute. Lee's kick caused panic in the Wigan ranks and Young pounced on the free ball.
Wigan could not achieve any leverage in attack and left themselves wide open at the back. The irrepressible Blakeley ripped through the middle to initiate the next try, by Naylor, and later sent over the third of his five goals. Wigan needed three scores to go ahead, and immediately picked up one, as Connolly found Tuigamala lurking on the wing. On the stroke of
half-time, this might have dealt Salford a psychological blow.
Instead, it had the reverse effect. Naylor jinked over for his second try, after a fine build-up by Blakeley and Forber, whereupon Wigan threw everything at Salford. Offiah found a way through, but, in holding out for two subsequent sets of six tackles on their line, Salford turned the tide.
Martin's try was the decisive score, and Blakeley and Rogers had others disallowed before Tuigamala's consolation effort.
SCORERS: Salford: Tries: Naylor (2), Young, Martin. Goals: Blakeley (5). Wigan: Tries: Tuigamala (2), Offiah. Goals: Paul, Farrell.
SALFORD: S Hampson; N McAvoy, S Naylor, S Martin, D Rogers; S Blakeley, M Lee; D Young, P Edwards, C Eccles, P Forber, L Savelia, S Panapa (sub: A Burgess, 18min).
WIGAN: G Connolly; J Robinson, V Tuigamala, K Radlinski, M Offiah; H Paul, S Edwards; N Cowie (sub: O'Connor, 50), M Hall, T O'Connor (sub: K Skerrett, 28), S Quinnell, S Haughton (sub: A Craig, 51), A Farrell.
Referee: D Campbell.
PAUL PALMER and James Hickman produced national records to secure two of Great Britain's four victories in the final round of the swimming World Cup here in Germany over the weekend. Palmer was successful in the 800 metres freestyle and Hickman in the 200 metres butterfly, the latter setting a second British record when finishing third in the 100 metres event.
Yet it was the victory that did not produce a record that may yet count for more with the Olympic Games in Atlanta only months away, Mark Foster registering his second defeat in five days of Alexander Popov, of Russia, the Olympic champion and world record-holder.
Popov has been beaten over 50 metres freestyle by only two men since 1991, twice by Raimundas Majuolis and the other four times by Foster.
The Briton, 25, who held the world record before Popov and who had claimed victory in the 50 metres butterfly on Saturday, tired in the closing ten metres of the final yesterday, but held on to win in 21.80sec with Popov second in 21.92sec.
Palmer, of Lincoln, is also a medal hope this summer, a prospect all the rosier after his victory yesterday in 7min 46.25sec, ahead of Jorg Hoffmann, of Germany, the former world champion.
With the Olympic trials next month, Hickman provided convincing evidence of his promise with his victory on Saturday, finishing in 1min 55.67sec.
Great Britain won two medals at the Paris international tournament on Saturday. Diane Bell took silver in the under-61 kilogram division, losing to Ileana Beltran, of Cuba. Bell was overpowered by Beltran, who eventually caught her with a perfectly-timed counter to win the match.
Cheryl Peel, Britain's other contestant in the division, was fifth.Danny Kingston won a bronze medal in the under-71 kilogram division, defeating Ferrid Kheder, of France, with a leg grab. Yesterday, British players failed to shine, but Pawel Nastula, of Poland, the world champion in the over-95 kilogram division, showed his class by defeating Pedro Soares, of Portugal, with a shoulder throw inside 20 seconds.
Ten days ago, the future for athletics as a television sport was looking bleaker than ever. Not even the presence of the two biggest names in British athletics had tempted the cameras to Birmingham for the AAA indoor championships. You had to read your morning newspapers to discover that, while Sally Gunnell had come second in the 400 metres, Linford Christie had pulled up injured.
On Saturday, athletics began to fight back. The venue was the National Indoor Arena again, the event was the British leg of the richly-endowed Ricoh Tour, and the results, produced by a field of world-class competitors, will have had broadcasting executives scurrying for the calculators. What they will have been trying to work out, however, is not how much to pay for television coverage of athletics, but how little.
The days of television channels writing promoters blank cheques have long gone, but high-quality meetings, such as this, show that indoor athletics can still make for a very enjoyable afternoon's television provided that you have a sufficiently star-studded field. Birmingham did and was rewarded with the presence of ITV and Eurosport. They, in turn, were rewarded with a world record (Maria Mutola in the 1,000 metres), a British and Commonwealth record (Ashia Hansen in the women's triple jump) and an impressive win by Tony Jarrett.
Yet, none of these athletes was deemed to have the box-office appeal required by audience-chasing ITV. The highlight of the afternoon, according to Jim Rosenthal, the anchorman, was "the televised return of Our Sal". So it was Gunnell with everything on the treatment table, running, being interviewed ... the works.
Eurosport needs no persuading of the merits of athletics on television Birmingham was the second of five indoor meetings that it is covering in six days. With a globe-trotting summer ahead, Tim Hutchings and Steve Cram, the channel's commentators, are probably relieved that they are covering these indoor meetings from the warmth and satellite-linked comfort of their Paris studios.
Yet it does have its drawbacks. On Saturday, for instance, Eurosport began its Birmingham coverage 15 minutes earlier than ITV, allowing it to follow the top-class women's triple jump from the outset. With Hansen, Inessa Kravets and Iva Prandzheva all competing, it looked a good decision (especially as ITV played catch-up with recordings slotted between track events), but, somewhere along the line, the perils of long-distance commentary caught up with them.
It was the fifth round, Prandzheva was on the runway. "Ignore that caption," Cram said confidently. The caption said that the lead was held at 14.58 metres, but Cram disagreed. According to him, the lead was held by Prandzheva's jump of 14.56 metres. Sadly, the caption was right and Cram was wrong somehow, the satellite channel had managed to miss Hansen's winning and record-breaking jump altogether.
That, though, was an uncharacteristic slip from a channel that can justifiably claim to be the home of athletics. The question is for how much longer? The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has declined to meet the considerable sum for television coverage of International Amateur Athletic Federation meetings for the next four years sought by Primo Nebiolo, its president.
The EBU, which has close and complex links with Eurosport, has offered a much smaller sum. The present impasse leaves the negotiating door open to anyone taking a more optimistic view of the future of athletics on television. ITV is said to be considering it but only, presumably, if it includes "Our Sal".
JACK NICKLAUS'S remarkable record of having played in every major golf championship since the 1962 Masters has to end soon and, at a press conference in Florida today, he is expected to announce that it could be this year.
The Open at Royal Lytham and St Annes in July could be the first tournament that Nicklaus has missed in a sequence of 136 successive majors.
Nicklaus will say today that he will not compete at Lytham, in what would be his 39th Open, unless he plays well at the Masters in April and/or the US Open in June and, if he does not, the streak will officially end. "Everything has to end some time," Nicklaus said on Saturday night, "and while I still have the ability to play a little bit, I thought this would be a good time to end it."
Nicklaus, 56, who competed in his first major championship the 1957 US Open as a 17-year-old amateur and played in seven more before turning pro in 1961, has not been playing well enough to be competitive in major championships for some time.
In the Nineties, he has missed the cut in eight of the past 16 major championships and only once finished in the top ten he came sixth in the 1990 Masters.
Last summer, he said that the 1996 US Open would probably be his last on a regular basis. "There are people playing better than I am playing and they deserve to be playing more than I do," he said.
Ricky Willison, the former Walker Cup golfer, scored 68, the best round of the day, to share second place behind Mark McNulty, of Zimbabwe, in the Dimension Data pro-am tournament in Sun City, South Africa, yesterday.
Willison, 36, from Middlesex, tied with Nick Price, the Zimbabwean ranked No2 in the world, and Brenden Pappas, of South Africa. They finished four shots adrift of McNulty, for whom this was a first tournament victory since the BMW International in Munich in 1994.
Ian Woosnam, who was seeking his third successive European Tour victory after wins in Singapore and Australia, recorded a 71 his best round of the tournament to finish nine shots behind McNulty in fourteenth place.
Laura Davies, of Great Britain, ranked No1 in the world in women's golf, was the only player to offer any resistance to John Daly as he dominated the final day of the Australian Skins event at Sanctuary Cove on Queensland's Gold Coast. Daly won five holes outright to take his earnings to £52,000. Davies, the first woman to play in a such an important skins event, won £4,000 at the par-five 11th and £6,500 overall.
STEPHEN HENDRY captured the Benson and Hedges Masters title for the sixth time in eight years last night when he comprehensively defeated Ronnie O'Sullivan, the defending champion, 10-5 at Wembley Conference Centre.
Hendry, the world champion, collected a first prize of £125,000 and £10,000 bonus for the highest break of the event, a 144 total clearance during a 6-4 second-round victory over John Higgins, to swell his competition earnings for the season to £385,500.
Hendry curbed his usual attacking tendencies wisely and created scoring opportunities by laying subtle traps. "I think Ronnnie is one of the most talented players I've ever seen and if you do not believe in yourself in the manner I do, he's got the capability to roll all over you," Hendry said.
The first frame set the pattern of Hendry patience and O'Sullivan recklessness which the opening session was to follow. Getting the better of the initial tactical exchanges, he extracted 23 penalty points from O'Sullivan before making a decisive 71 break.
O'Sullivan, not handicapped by the virtually healed bruised ligament in his right foot which had caused such problems earlier in the week, won the second frame with a run of 62 and the third on the pink before opening a 48-1 lead in the fourth.
Yet, just as a 3-1 lead for O'Sullivan was looming, he missed a difficult red to a middle pocket. Hendry levelled at 2-2 with a composed 77 clearance and the momentum shift was complete when he added the next in similar circumstances.
So disconsolate after losing two such frames in quick succession, O'Sullivan's challenge then crumbled. He aggregated only 24 points in the closing three frames of the afternoon and, while showing flashes of brilliance on last night's resumption, with breaks of 109, 61 and 106, he never seriously threatened Hendry's overall dominance.
Hendry added runs of 87, 80 and 97 of his own to guarantee his 28th victory in 30 matches of the Masters. It is his fourth title of the season, following successes at the Regal Scottish Masters, Skoda Grand Prix and United Kingdom Championship, and his 58th tournament win since turning professional in 1985.
NICK FALDO produced one of the finest rounds of his distinguished career yesterday, powering up the leaderboard to finish joint eighth in the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines, San Diego.
He removed the rigidity from his arms and eased to a 64, just one shot outside the 12-year-old record for the South Course, for a 15-under-par aggregate of 273. After setting out eight shots off the lead, it came too late to threaten the winner, Davis Love III, but Faldo completed his tour of duty on the West Coast encouraged and looking forward to the Masters.
Faldo had his worst season in the majors for a decade last year but he anticipates getting back into contention this year after a series of accurate drives and precision iron shots produced eight birdies yesterday. Indeed, he should have equalled Tommy Nakajima's previous best but twice missed from four feet.
Faldo rose at 5.30am for a dawn patrol as he led the 77 qualifiers out from the 10th tee on the dramatic clifftop course and he made a double birdie start to ignite a scorching outward run of 31. An 18-footer disappeared into his eleventh hole but he failed from four feet at the next before pitching to two yards for his seventh birdie at the sixth.
He was faced with a snaking seven-foot downhill putt but that also dropped before a brilliant pitch to four feet at the next failed to produce the record-equalling birdie.
Love, runner-up in last year's Masters, completed the tenth Tour victory of his career by scoring a 64 for a 19-under-par 269. He finished two strokes ahead of Phil Mickelson, who missed his chance of a third win of the year when he dropped a stroke at the short 16th.
Sheffield Sharks strengthened their Budweiser League challenge yesterday, joining London Towers at the top with an 80-67 victory over Derby Storm. Trailing at the interval, Sharks staged a fightback and outscored the Storm 23-11 in the third quarter. Worthing Bears claimed their second triumph in as many days by beating Chester Jets 88-85. In contrast, the Leopards slipped to their second defeat in two days, going down 86-80 away to the Bears, for whom Alan Cunningham scored 35 points.
THERE was no end, yesterday, to the impasse casting shadows over the cricket World Cup and Australia and West Indies must now forfeit two points for refusing to play in Colombo. There was, however, a beginning to the competition proper with the opening ceremony here.
The teams were not brought here without motive. Jagmohan Dalmiya, the driving force of the organising committee, is a Bengali and the launch has been part of his vision. It had its drawbacks, such as the fact that Calcutta lies a minimum of 850 miles from the initial games of each team, but it was still an inspired choice. "Share the magic" is the catchphrase of the competition: in Calcutta's crowded streets, there is no choice.
On Saturday, the city was brought to a standstill by a cavalcade. There were 200 motorcycles and 20 floats and the idea was that they would proceed to Eden Gardens in three hours. They arrived more than three hours late.
The thousands of beggars who have habitually lined the pavements of Calcutta have been cleared for the pageantry of the Cup, hundreds of thieves have been arrested in the area of the team hotels and what is quaintly known as the police anti-rowdy squad was out in force yesterday.
Apart from the usual logistical problems in India England's party had to be up by 4am today and will not arrive at their Ahmedabad destination until 8pm the players are enjoying the camaraderie of it all. On Saturday, Shane Warne was having a poolside chat with Jonty Rhodes, his South African pal, when a shy Coloured lad approached. It was Paul Adams, eager to meet his hero. Warne cheerfully obliged.
England remain hounded by injuries, Neil Fairbrother requiring four stitches in a head wound yesterday after colliding with a fence during practice, but they are treating the tumult of life here with a practised phlegm. More than 100,000 packed Eden Gardens yesterday and the show passed off peacefully, with even the apprehensive Australians being treated to polite applause.
The choreography was stunning, but, even here, the show met its banana skins. In atmospheric darkness, a laser impression of the Cup itself was supposed to blaze from a giant screen. Instead, it spun and lurched drunkenly. Organisers blamed the wind; given the events of the past week, they may consider that it was symbolic.
Birmingham City 1 Leeds United 2
THE return of Tony Yeboah galvanised Leeds United to within a game of their first Wembley cup final since 1973 yesterday. In a first leg that paid no heed to football's excuse that semi-finals are crippled by fear, Yeboah's ability to score once, and then to panic Chris Whyte, the former Leeds defender, into an own goal, hauled Leeds back from the threat of a Coca-Cola Cup defeat that, under tenacious and passionate Birmingham City assaults, they had faced for half the game.
When you visit St Andrew's, you must throw dice in Barry Fry's casino. The Birmingham manager has such a restless soul, such a gambler's instinct, and such a compulsive habit of buying and borrowing players, that the only thing you can anticipate is that his team will attack on all fronts.
Yesterday, he included a goalkeeper called Bart, a young man plucked from non-league football in Holland on the recommendation of one of Fry's former players when he was manager of Barnet. A telephone call here, a nod there, is enough for this rapacious wheeler and dealer.
Others in the team included John Sheridan, the director of midfield, making his debut in a loan period from Sheffield Wednesday; and then there was Jonathan Bass, 20, playing only the second senior game of his life because Birmingham, already without Bennett, their injured first-team goalkeeper, so ill-timed their suspensions that three of the first-choice defenders were also obliged to be bystanders.
One constant, only one in Birmingham's 11 Coca-Cola Cup games, has been Steve Claridge. He, the epitome of the tireless worker, the hungry fellow who has no respect for men of a supposedly higher class, began almost everything that Birmingham threw at Leeds. His first shot, from 20 yards, surprised Lukic; it was delivered on the turn, either optimism or sheer cheek at its extreme, but floated fractionally wide of the far angle between post and bar.
Claridge refused to be suppressed. In the 25th minute, he created the opening goal for Kevin Francis. It was something of a role reversal, for Francis is a bean pole of 6ft 7in, a basketball figure on the cloying mud of St Andrew's. Yet it was Claridge who leapt in the air to beat Wetherall, winning the ball from Sheridan's perceptive pass and dropping it behind the centre back for the rangy Francis to run on and then, with an explosive right-foot shot from outside the penalty area, beat Lukic comprehensively.
There had already been two elements that no Birmingham City stalwart wanted: a coin, or some other object, had been thrown at McAllister from a lunatic in the crowd, a lunatic who jeopardises Birmingham's future because the club is already on probation after previous crowd trouble.
The other unwanted element? The sheer class of McAllister. He had shown his annoyance with Palmer for failing in his duties as one of the anchor players in front of the defence and, momentarily McAllister pointedly took up that position. He might as well perform that task, too, for he was prepared to be a defender getting his body in the way of the ball, midfield creator and auxiliary forward, bursting into attack alongside Yeboah.
Eventually, the composure of Leeds, against the sheer hunger of Birmingham, brought reward. In the 53rd minute, Lukic kicked the ball long out of his hands, the diminutive Wallace jumped to flick it on with his head, Johnson allowed it to run beneath his foot and, lurking behind him, was the one deadly finisher you do not leave unmarked. Yeboah simply drilled the ball past the stranded, startled Griemink.
After that, the wheel of fortune spun from one side to the other. The greater number of chances fell to Birmingham and were spurned by Francis, Hunt and Bowen, one of the substitutes.
Eventually, against the run of play and laced with cruel misfortune, Birmingham succumbed. The winning goal stemmed from the athleticism of Kelly. Down the right flank, he chased a ball that others would have given up as lost, reached it right at the corner flag and, wonderfully, turned and whipped in a centre measured for the head of Yeboah. The Ghanaian's contact was not of his usual calibre, the ball travelled down into the mud, but it struck Whyte, rose up again, and looped mockingly into the net past poor Griemink.
Leeds had done it without Brolin, a multimillion-pound foreigner fit but not in favour. Fry insisted: "It ain't all over yet." However, when the second leg is played on February 25, Leeds will be clear favourites ... unless that man Fry is planning another couple of loan players say Yeboah and McAllister for his squad.
BIRMINGHAM CITY (4-4-2): B Griemink J Bass, C Whyte, M Johnson, J Frain J Hunt, J Sheridan (sub: J Bowen, 77min), R Forsyth (sub: L Donowa, 66), G Cooper (sub: R Otto, 66) K Francis, S Claridge.
LEEDS UNITED (4-2-3-1): J Lukic G Kelly, D Wetherall, P Beesley, T Dorigo C Palmer, M Ford (sub: L Redebe, 89) R Wallace (sub: B Deane, 85), G McAllister, G Speed T Yeboah.
Referee: K Cooper (Pontypridd).
The Duchess of Kent is greeted by women in a slum area of Varanasi, India, during a visit to mark the 50th anniversary of Unicef.
Sir John Badenoch, consultant physician and lecturer at Oxford University, died on January 16 aged 75. He was born on March 8, 1920.
JOHN BADENOCH taught several generations of medical students at Oxford University, first as Director of Clinical Studies, 1954-65, and then for twenty years as a consultant physician at the United Oxford Hospitals, as the group of Oxford hospitals was then known, and as a university lecturer.
He was at his most effective as a bedside teacher guiding students on his ward rounds and taking them through the history and examination of a patient. He continued to call students by their surnames long after this practice had fallen out of fashion in the rest of the university, and to call patients by their full title. While Badenoch was capable of great charm, over-familiarity was anathema to him.
John Badenoch was the son of a Scottish family doctor who practised in London, and he began his preclinical studies in Oxford in 1938. In 1941 he was awarded a Rockefeller student fellowship to complete his studies at Cornell University in New York State. He returned to Oxford in 1943 after a long, adventurous, wartime crossing of the Atlantic. Soon after his arrival he passed the final medical examinations of Oxford University and became house physic- ian to the professorial unit. In 1944 he married Anne Forster and then left Oxford again, this time as a major in the RAMC, serving first in Africa and then in command of a military hospital in Kent. A spell in general practice in London followed but he was more interested in combining clinical practice with teaching and research. Thus he returned to Oxford in 1949 as a research fellow in the Nuffield department of medicine.
He studied nutritional anaemias and bone diseases caused by malabsorption from the gut and then became, serendipitously, the first person to perform the now widely practised biopsy of the mucosal lining of the gut. His thesis, based on these studies, was accepted for the DM degree in 1952.
Badenoch loved teaching, particularly at the bedside, and in 1954 he was appointed Director of Clinical Studies, at a time when the Oxford Medical School was going through a turbulent period of growth and development. His steadying influence on the capricious professoriate helped to establish what is now one of the outstanding medical schools in the country. He remained in that post for 11 years.
He was invited to sit on numerous committees, including the planning committee for the new John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, an experience that stood him in good stead when he was asked to advise on setting up the clinical school in Cambridge, and some years later a medical school in Oman.
His association with Merton College began in 1965 when he became a Fellow and he was Sub-Warden, 1976-78. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1959 and was invited to give the Goulstonian Lecture the following year, an honour restricted to one of the youngest newly-elected fellows.
The college used him in various capacities as examiner and chairman of the examining board, as pro-censor, censor and senior censor, and as the Hans Sloane Fellow, 1985-91, responsible for arranging hospital training in Britain for overseas doctors. He was knighted in 1984.
Retirement from clinical practice in 1985 brought no respite, and more work was piled upon him. The Government asked him to lead inquiries into the outbreak of legionnaires' disease in Stafford and into the contamination with cryptosporidium of the Norfolk Broads and other areas of the Anglian Water region; he chaired the Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, was a member of the General Medical Council and the British Heart Foundation executive council.
Yet he still found time for nature study, especially ornithology, for photography using an "electronic eye" to capture on film the nocturnal badger and an occasional poacher and for travel. When he and his wife felt the need to recharge their batteries, they found peace in Strath Spey, the lands of the Badenochs in northeast Scotland.
He is survived by his wife, two sons and two daughters.
Sir Richard Allen, KCMG, Ambassador to Burma, 1956-62, died on January 16 aged 92. He was born on February 3, 1903.
RICHARD ALLEN may have had a conventional Foreign Office career but, for a diplomat, he certainly enjoyed an unconventional retirement. On leaving the British Embassy in Rangoon at the age of 59, he accepted a post as a lecturer at the University of Wall-Walla in Washington State on the West Coast of America. He later held visiting lectureships at other US universities, notably those of Oregon and Virginia. A recognised authority on what was not then called "the Pacific Rim", he was the author of two books on the politics of South-East Asia.
Richard Hugh Sedley Allen was educated at the Royal Naval Colleges of Osborne and Dartmouth and then, having been invalided out of the Navy as an officer cadet, at New College, Oxford. After two years as a junior assistant secretary to the Governor of Palestine, he joined the Foreign Office in 1927 and was then posted to Tokyo two years later. He learnt enough Japanese to qualify for a language allowance, and throughout his career made a point of buckling down to learn even the most difficult languages of his various postings (he also mastered Russian). After Prague, Berne and Bogota, Allen did a spell of three years at the Foreign Office during the Second World War. He then went to Warsaw from 1945 to 1950. There followed a succession of posts in Latin America minister (that is, number two) in Buenos Aires, after which he was appointed CMG, and then minister in charge of the Legation at Guatemala, 1954-56.
His last post was also his longest. He served as Ambassador to Burma for six eventful years, 1956-62, an exciting period of Burma's postwar history. The worst of the civil war, which followed independence, was over. U Nu, the Prime Minister, was a prominent figure in the Non-Aligned Movement. In spite of war damage, much of the country's infrastructure was still in reasonably good shape. British firms (such as the Burmah Oil Company and the Bombay-Burma Trading Company) still played an important part in Burma's economic life. It was not until the military clampdown of 1962 that the country was turned into a hermit nation for a quarter of a century. Fortunately for Allen, this was his last year en poste as Ambasador.
Allen was appointed KCMG in 1960, the last British Ambassador to Burma to receive a knighthood. Rangoon gossip had it that this unusual honour was to be explained by the fact that a particular type of large lizard, a well-known harbinger of good fortune, had recently made its home behind the picture of the Queen in the Ambassador's residence.
In addition to his two books on South-East Asia the first was specifically on Malaysia Allen also wrote more ambitiously on the Arab-Israeli conflict. His Imperialism and Nationalism in the Fertile Crescent (1974) was highly praised at the time. On his return from America he went to live in Brittany and, when that turned out not to be a success, retired to live by the sea in Chichester. He was always interested in the young, with an eye for pretty women, and in his old age in Chichester attracted a bevy of young people who were happy to look after him and to be entertained by his suave and witty accounts of his varied life.
He married in 1945 Juliet Home Thomson who, along with their son, predeceased him. He is survived by a stepson.
Sharman Douglas, New York socialite and charity worker, died from cancer on February 3 aged 67. She was born on October 5, 1928.
SHARMAN DOUGLAS was the vivacious blonde daughter of Lewis Douglas, the American Ambassador to the Court of St James's during the late 1940s. She attracted a good deal of attention in her own right when she first arrived in London, but it was her subsequent friendship with Princess Margaret which really defined her life, and which brought her lasting celebrity in both Britain and America.
Her father Lewis W. Douglas had inherited his vast wealth from the family's copper mines in Arizona. He built a political career as a Democratic Congressman, before being rewarded with the London Embassy in 1947. Sharman known to all as Sass was educated at Brearley School and at Vassar, which she left to accompany her parents to London. She was a no-nonsense, gregarious young woman who loved the outdoors and sports, particularly riding, tennis and basketball. She was also very photogenic, tall with flaxen hair and deep blue eyes. Reporters took an immediate interest in her American hats and quaint flat shoes. In her turn, she was refreshingly candid with them. She admitted, for instance, to being "petrified" of meeting the Royal Family.
She did not have long to wait for the introduction and by the following year, despite her misgivings, had become firm friends with Princess Margaret. The Princess was, in her turn, introduced to Sharman's friends English and American and a group of these would meet for high-spirited evenings at the American Residence, unregarded by inquisitive reporters. But, of course, the newspapers were fascinated with Sharman, as they were with anyone close to the glamorous young Princess, and they promptly christened this new group of friends the "Margaret Set". In fact, as Princess Margaret was the first to point out, they were, if anything, the "Sharman Set". Nearly all of the Princess's new friends were introduced to her by Sharman. But, when Sharman returned to America in 1950, Margaret became the new centre of the group.
Gossip columns were filled with the most minute details of Sharman's social life. There was the party she hosted in 1949, for instance, at which Princess Elizabeth arrived dressed as an Edwardian parlour maid, Prince Philip as a waiter and Princess Margaret as a can-can dancer. If Sharman brought a welcome breeze of American informality to English society, she received in turn a great deal of hospitality. Her weekends were spent in grand country houses, and she was one of the first Americans to drive in the royal procession at Ascot. There were even rumours of her impending engagement to the Marquess of Milford Haven.
Both she and Princess Margaret were stage-struck, and would often go to the theatre together. When they were watching American actors, Sharman had no compunction about taking Princess Margaret backstage afterwards to meet the stars. It was on one of these informal evenings at the London Palladium that Princess Margaret met Danny Kaye, of whom she became a close friend.
Apart from her hectic social life, Sharman tried to take her job as the Ambassador's daughter seriously. She was often called upon to act as a deputy hostess to her mother, and she put herself through her own version of "finishing school" visiting juvenile courts, youth clubs, children's hospitals and Scotland Yard in order better to understand British life. She also did a secretarial course, after which she thought it might be fun to get a job.
In 1950 her father returned to America and Sharman returned with him. She had already worked as a social secretary with Jean Simmons, and now she was appointed publicity agent to Sir Alexander Korda. Hollywood was amused by her Anglicised ways. She did not care much about her salary or for clocking in at the office punctually in the mornings. And she insisted on taking a long weekend, in the British tradition, from Friday until Tuesday. But she was extremely able at her work. During the 1950s she did publicity work for Jane Russell and Robert Mitchum, and became a theatre angel with her own company, Sass Incorporated.
In 1966 she was appointed Commissioner of Public Events in New York, with a brief from the Mayor, John Lindsay, to "bring some class" into the department. She was an immensely talented hostess, and she took great pains over details, finding out what sort of flowers and food her guests liked. She continued to work in public relations until her death, organising charitable Anglo-American benefits and in this way helping to cement the Anglo-American relationship. She was one of the brightest stars among her group of friends in New York, and despite being ill for the past year, remained sprightly and independent.
Her friendship with the Royal Family never waned. She arranged the visit of Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon to Hollywood in 1965, and entertained the Duke of Edinburgh during his visits to the States. She visited London at least once a year, often staying at Claridge's. If she was holding a reception, even a very small one for a dozen people, it was not unusual to see the Queen there.
To her regret, she never had children. After politely deflecting inquiries about her personal life for many years, Sharman Douglas married in 1968 Andrew Hay, the president of a food importing firm. But it was not a happy marriage, and they were divorced in 1977. She is survived by her two brothers.
Rear-Admiral Clarence Howard-Johnston, CB, DSO, DSC, wartime anti-U-boat director, died on January 26 aged 92. He was born on October 13, 1903.
VICTORY or defeat in the Second World War was determined by the outcome of the Battle of the Atlantic. Winston Churchill once remarked that the only thing that ever really frightened him during the war was the U-boat peril. For the Allies it was an essentially defensive campaign of science and strategem, where success depended less upon the application of individual skill, training, and courage, under conditions of extreme hardship, than upon technological invention, sagacious planning and high-level strategic insight.
Clarence Howard-Johnston, who was always known as "Johnny" to his friends, was intimately involved in every aspect of this struggle, from the early days of hands-on technical development through convoy escort command to the influential heights of staff work at the level of Churchill's War Cabinet.
The son of American and Scottish engineering families, with interests in Peru and Russia, Howard-Johnston was brought up in Nice, and first went to sea as plain Midshipman Johnston in 1922, serving in several battleships on the Home and Mediterranean stations. He later adopted one of his father's given names in order "to lift himself out of the ruck of Johnstons in the Navy List".
After a secondment to Paris to polish up his French, he was dispatched in 1929 to the China station as the second-in-command of the gunboat Tarantula, dealing with pirates on the Yangste and West rivers.
But in 1931 he found his natural bent. An ingenious man with a talent for innovation and logical inquiry, he volunteered to specialise in anti-submarine warfare. He was soon serving in the destroyer flotilla leaders Woolston and Faulknor as the anti-submarine expert for their groups, and later earned an Admiralty commendation for the invention of the "Johnston Mobile Target" for training Asdic operators. During the Spanish Civil War, the Faulknor was engaged in evacuating refugees including, on one occasion, an entire convent of nuns from Barcelona.
Promoted to the rank of commander in 1937, Howard-Johnston had a short tour in command of the destroyer Viscount before being appointed director of studies at the Greek Naval Academy in Athens, where he was awarded the Order of the Phoenix by the King of the Hellenes.
During the unsuccessful campaign to protect Norway against German invasion in April 1940, Howard-Johnston commanded a force of anti-submarine trawlers in the fiords and was sunk by air attack, with three of his ships. Having been rescued, he played a part in the evacuation of troops from Andalsnes and Molde, for which he was awarded the DSC.
In June 1940 he transported eight tons of explosive to St Malo in the sloop Wild Swan. During the evacuation of the port he and his team continued demolitions until the enemy's advanced troops were almost at the gates. He received a mention in dispatches for this exploit.
A less adventurous period in the Anti-Submarine Warfare Division of the Admiralty was followed by appointment to command the destroyer Malcolm and Escort Group B12 in December 1940. The U-boat war was hotting up; in that month 42 Allied ships had been sunk but no U-boats.
A contemporary commanding officer, Commander D.A.Rayner, wrote that he regarded Howard-Johnston as the finest senior officer in the Western Approaches and B12 the best group. He described him thus: "Fair-haired and of medium stature, he had the figure of a young man. Perhaps my strongest memory is of the terrific enthusiasm with which he approached every problem. Although he flogged us nearly to death in a never-ending search for efficiency, he never fussed us with unnecessary signals and held us together by a team spirit that neither wind, weather nor the enemy could break."
And Escort Group B12 did have a remarkable record. Through the terrible summer months of 1941, they escorted 1,229 ships without loss. They sank only one submarine, for which Howard-Johnston was awarded the DSO but, as he said at the time, "our business is to bring home the merchantmen. Sinking the enemy will come later."
After a short period in command of the destroyer Hurricane on escort duty, and by then widely recognised as a master of tactics, he was appointed in June 1942 the worst of all months of the battle to the staff of Admiral Sir Percy Noble, the C-in-C Western Approaches. Based at Liverpool, this headquarters under Noble and subsequently Sir Max Horton played a crucial role. As Anti-Submarine Staff Officer, Howard-Johnston was a hard taskmaster: his judgments, as shown in the official histories, must have been painful reading to those at sea who had forgotten that the prime aim was the safe and timely arrival of the convoy, and not the glamorous sinking of U-boats.
Promoted captain, he was sent in October 1943 to the Admiralty as the Director of the Anti-Submarine Warfare Division until the end of the war. This highly responsible post for a young captain knitted together all the intelligence and operational strands of the anti-submarine business and was answerable for briefing the War Cabinet.
At the end of the war, Howard-Johnston commanded the cruiser Bermuda in the Far East, where he was awarded the US Legion of Merit. His French connections helped him towards a tour as naval attache at the Paris Embassy followed by command of the underwater warfare school, HMS Vernon, at Portsmouth. Here he promoted the use of helicopters to hunt submarines, a sine qua non today.
He retired and was appointed CB in 1955, having had a final tour as a rear-admiral and as Nato Chief of Staff to the Flag Officer, Central Europe.
In retirement his prime concern was to build a wildfowl habitat in the Basque country near Bayonne. This required the conversion of a dilapidated mill at Bardos, much hydraulic innovation and the creation of a system of lakes. He was awarded the Merite Agricole for this work. It would seem likely that he is the only British rear-admiral to be so honoured. Basques are a clannish people, but many attended his funeral in tears.
He was three times married; his son Richard by his first marriage was a sub-lieutenant under training with his classmates in the Affray when that submarine was lost with all hands in the Channel on April 17, 1951. His second marriage to Lady Alexandra, daughter of Earl Haig, was also dissolved. In 1955 he married Paulette Helleu and is survived by her and the two sons and daughter of the second marriage.
Seismologists may not have been much impressed by these tremors, but buildings were shaken and chimney pots toppled in towns as far apart as Blackpool and Bristol.
TREMORS SHAKE 11 COUNTIES CASUALTIES IN MIDLANDS
An earth tremor, generally agreed to have been the most severe and widespread in Britain for many years, was felt in 11 counties in the Midlands yesterday. It occurred at approximately 3.45pm and its effects were felt in towns as far apart as Blackpool and Sheffield in the North, Grimsby in the East, and Bristol in the West.
There were many reports of chimneys topping masonry being dislodged and other damage. In Derby a boy struck by falling debris suffered a fractured skull. Several people were treated for minor injuries and shock.
The counties affected were Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, Lincolnshire, Gloucestershire, and Warwickshire.
People in a Nottingham cinema became alarmed when the screen began shaking. Women screamed and several people were knocked down in a rush to the exits. The staff shoulted to the audience to remain in their seats, but many people ignored the appeal.
A large crack appeared in the wall of Nottingham ambulance headquarters. A chimney stack which collapsed in Norton Street crashed through a garage roof, severely damaging the car inside. In Duke Street, where another chimney stack colapsed, a settee inside the house began to smoulder and had to be removed.
At Nottingham Divorce Court the walls and the canopy above Judge R.S.Nicklin's head vibrated violently. Proceedings stopped but were resumed after the tremor.
The boy injured is Paul Stevenson, aged four, who was walking with his mother, Mrs Jean Stevenson, aged 28, of Albert Road, Chaddesden, Derby, in Markeaton Street, Derby. She saw a chimney stack falling and told the boy to run, but the masonry struck him. He was detained in hospital. Mrs Stevenson, who was carrying her daughter aged four months, was struck on the leg by a piece of the chimney as she ran, bending over her baby to protect her.
A Derby fire brigade official said: "Engines and tenders were racing round the town trying to keep up with the alarms. In as many minutes we had 64 reports of chimney stacks crashing to the ground."
Several thousand miners in the area were deep underground when the tremors occurred. Pit props were shaken, and trolleys full of coal rocked on their rails. In spite of the alarm work at all the pits continued after a delay.
Twenty-five girls working at the factory of the Royal Crown Derby Procelain Company Limited, were saved by a sunshine roof. A large chimney pot fell down towards them and shattered the glass, but the wire reinforced roof held the dropping masonry.
The tremor was recorded at 3.44 pm in the Leicestershire coalfield area. People in mining towns and villages ran from their homes fearing there had been an underground explosion. Houses were shaken and some people were thrown to the ground by the violence of the vibrations which persisted for several seconds.
Appointments
The Right Rev John Richards, Bishop of Ebbsfleet: to be also an Assistant Bishop in the diocese of Bath and Wells.
The Rev Phil Abrey, Curate, Caversham Park Church LEP: to be also County Ecumenical Officer for Berkshire (Oxford).
The Rev Timothy Ashworth, Chaplain, Scargill House, Kettlewell: to be Vicar, Ingleton w Chapel-le-Dale (Bradford).
The Rev Vivien Ashworth, Chaplain, Scargill House, Kettlewell: to be Honorary Assistant Curate, Ingleton w Chapel-le-Dale (Bradford).
The Rev Raymond Billingsley, Vicar, St Margaret, Ward End (Birmingham): to be Vicar, St Mary, Brymbo (St Asaph).
The Rev Canon Donald Boak: to be Honorary Curate, St Andrews, Bennett Road, Bournemouth (Winchester).
The Rev Michael Cameron, Assistant Curate, Dinnington, Sheffield: to be Vicar, Beighton (Sheffield).
The Rev Ronald Cook, until recently chaplain of HM Prison, Blundeston (Norwich): to be Vicar, All Saints, Kettering (Peterborough).
The Rev Eric Delve, Priest-in-charge, Kirkdale St Lawrence (Liverpool): to be Vicar, Maidstone St Luke (Canterbury).
The Rev Graham Dodds, Rector, Bath Walcot: to be Lay Training Adviser and Director of Reader Studies (Bath and Wells).
The Rev Stephen Earl, Curate, Sawston: to be Vicar, Burwell (Ely).
The Rev Nigel Ely, Assistant Curate, SS Peter and Paul, Rustington (Chichester): to be Chaplain, Post 16 Centre, Newtown (Birmingham).
The Rev Jenifer Fryer, Chaplain's Assistant at the Royal Hallamshire and Weston Park Hospitals, Sheffield: to be full-time Assistant Chaplain at the Northern General Hospital, Sheffield (Sheffield).
The Rev Lee Gandiya, Assistant Curate, Lowestoft St Margaret w Oulton Community Church (LEP): now also Diocesan representative to the Committee on Black Anglican Concerns (Norwich).
The Rev Joe Hawes, Curate, Clapham Team Ministry: to be Team Vicar Designate, St Michael and All Angels, Barnes (Southwark).
The Rev Tim Hawkins, Vicar, St Pancras, Pennycross (Exeter): to be Priest-in-charge, St Keverne (Truro).
The Rev Patrick Hoare, Assistant Curate (NSM), St Mary and St Peter, Staines: to be Priest-in-charge, (NSM), St Mary Magdalene, Littleton (London).
The Rev James McKinney, Vicar, Cleator Moor w Cleator (Carlisle): to be Vicar, Holy Trinity, Roehampton (Southwark).
The Rev Anthony Macpherson, Priest-in-charge, St Michael's, Westgate Common, Wakefield: to be Vicar of that benefice (Wakefield).
The Rev Paul Miller, Vicar, Green Street Green and Pratts Bottom: to be also Rural Dean of Orpington (Rochester).
The Rev Shelagh Phillips: to be Associate Director of Training (Norwich).
The Rev Stephen Raine, Vicar, St Edwin's, Dunscroft (Sheffield): to be Vicar, St Mary's, Kettering (Peterborough).
The Rev Jenny Smith, Assistant Curate, and Chaplain of Bradford Cathedral: to be Priest-in-charge, Kelbrook (Bradford).
Resignations and retirements
The Rev Colin Hurford, Rector, Team Ministry of Billingham St Aidan and St Luke (Durham): to resign as from June 30.
The Rev Donald Sparkes, Vicar, Christ Church, Pitsmoor (Sheffield): to retire September 30.
The Rev Noel Toogood, Vicar, Madron (Truro): retired Jan 31.
Mr Paul Anthony Mason Clark to be a Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate from February 19.
Dr Ian Peters has been appointed Deputy Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce in succession to Mr Richard Brown.
Abigail Loelia Hall, formerly of Blackpool Sixth Form College, has been elected to a Nuffield Scholarship in Biological Science at Somerville College, Oxford,
James Clyde Mitchell
A memorial meeting for James Clyde Mitchell, MA Oxon; FBA, will be held in Nuffield College Hall, Oxford, on Saturday, February 24, 1996, at 2.30pm.
Lord O'Brien of Lothbury
A Service of Thanksgiving for the life of Lord O'Brien of Lothbury, GBE, PC, FRCM, will be held in the Chapel of the Order of the British Empire, the Crypt, St Paul's Cathedral at 11.30am on Thursday, March 14.
Those attending are requested to take their seats by 11.15am. For further information, please contact the Assistant Secretary, Bank of England.
King Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho
A memorial celebration was held for King Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho at the Africa Centre, London WC1, on Saturday. It was organised by the Institute for Democracy and Human Rights in Africa, of which the late King was the chief creator.
Professor Donald Davie
Sir Terence English, Master of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, was present at a memorial service for Professor Donald Davie, poet and honorary fellow of the college, held on Saturday in the college chapel. The Rev Paul Langham, chaplain, officiated.
Dr Mark Davie, son, read the lesson and Ms Elaine Feinstein read Professor Davie's If I take the Wings of the Morning. Mr Seamus Heaney, Professor Charles Tomlinson and Mr Clive Wilmer also read Professor Davie's poetry.
Mr Michael Schmidt gave an address. The Right Rev Hugh Montefiore pronounced the blessing.
BLUE TITS are going busily in and out of holes, prospecting for nest sites. The male birds are acquiring bright blue caps and backs and singing their faint song, like a brisk trickle of water. A few blackbirds are beginning to sing as the weather turns mild once more.
On the mountains and moors, ravens are courting: the male wheels and abruptly dives, and sometimes flies for a moment on his back to impress the female. Some ravens are already building their bulky nests of sticks on ledges and in tree tops.
Winter wheat is coming through in the fields, and at the grassy edges field speedwell has heart-shaped leaves and small buds that will soon open into blue-and-white flowers. Dandelions have rosettes of jagged leaves, and a bud like a small green thimble on a hollow, milky stalk in the middle. Woodlice huddle under stones in rockeries: they are relatives of shrimps and crabs, and always need to keep damp.
Vice-Admiral Sir Peter Abbott, 54; General Sir John Akehurst, 66; General Sir John Archer, 72; Mr Steve Backley, athlete, 27; Professor A.H. Beckett, former professor of pharmacy, 76; Mr Roland Boyes, MP, 59; Lord Brocket, 44; Mr Alexander Carlile, MP, 48; Viscount Chandos, 43; Miss Annette Crosbie, actress, 62;
Mr Howard Davies, former Director-General, CBI, 45; Sir James Dunnett, civil servant, 82; Dr K.J.R. Edwards, Vice-Chancellor, Leicester University, 62; Mr Stephen Gibbs, former chairman, Turner and Newall, 76; Lord Granville of Eye, 97; Lord Greene of Harrow Weald, 86; Mr Paul Hamlyn, publisher, 70; Miss Christine Hancock, general secretary, Royal College of Nursing, 53; Sir Robin Mackworth-Young, Librarian Emeritus to The Queen, 76; Lord Morison, 65; Lord Moyola, 73; Dame Alison Munro, former High Mistress, St Paul's Girls School, 82; Mr John Raisman, former chairman, Shell UK, 67; Mr Justice Rougier, 64; Mr Fergus Slattery, rugby player, 45; Mr Peter Snape, MP, 54; the Hon Nicholas Soames, MP, 48; Mr Peter Temple-Morris, MP, 58; Sir Aubrey Trotman-Dickenson, former Principal, University of Wales College of Cardiff, 70; Lord Wigoder, QC, 75; Mr Albert Williams, trade unionist, 69.
BIRTHS: Thomas Campion, poet and musician, London, 1567; Jan Swammerdam, entomologist, Amsterdam, 1637; Cotton Mather, Puritan and writer, Boston, Massachusetts, 1663; George Hadley, meteorologist, London, 1685; William Whitehead, Poet Laureate 1757-85, Cambridge, baptised this day 1715; Charles Darwin, naturalist, Shrewsbury, 1809; Abraham Lincoln, 16th American President 1861-65, Larue County, Kentucky, 1809; Edward Forbes, naturalist, Douglas, Isle of Man, 1815; George Meredith, novelist, Portsmouth, 1828;
Marie Lloyd, music-hall singer, London, 1870; Omar Nelson Bradley, American army general, Clark, Missouri, 1893; Max Beckmann, Expressionist painter, Leipzig, 1884; Roy Harris, composer, Lincoln County, Oklahoma, 1898.
DEATHS: Lady Jane Grey, Queen of England May 6-19, 1553, executed London, 1554; Charles Le Brun, painter, Versailles, 1690; Pierre Marivaux, novelist and dramatist, Paris, 1763; Ts'ao Hsueh-ch'in, novelist, Peking, 1763; Immanuel Kant, philosopher, Konigsberg, Germany, 1804; Sir Astley Cooper, surgeon, London, 1841; Hans von Bulow, pianist and conductor, Cairo, 1894; Lillie Langtry, actress, Monte Carlo, 1929; Charles Voysey, architect, Winchester, 1941; H.M. Bateman, cartoonist, Malta, 1970.
Surrender of French troops who landed at Pembrokeshire, 1797.
Chile's independence was proclaimed in Santiago, 1818.
J.W. Goodrich of Boston, Massachusetts, invented rubber galoshes, 1831.
The first inter-club football match was played at Sheffield between Sheffield and Hallam, 1861.
The Manchu dynasty was overthrown and China became a republic, 1912.
TWO temporary art specialists working at the Victoria and Albert Museum have found the design for a fresco by Frederic Leighton that had been thought destroyed. Details of the discovery by Gabrielle Jansen, 32, and Arabella Davies, 26, emerged for the first time yesterday.
On Thursday an exhibition of Leighton's work opens to mark the centenary of his death, and other major shows are taking place at the Royal Academy and his home in Holland Park, west London.
Frederic Leighton was one of the dominant figures of late Victorian art. His two vast semi-circular frescoes showing figures in architectural settings are the centrepiece of the V&A exhibition.
A crucial part of the display exploring his working methods will be a 35ft cartoon for one of them, The Arts of Industry as Applied to Peace, which was finished in November 1883. It has long been a mystery that while this survived intact, there was no record of what happened to its partner, for The Arts of Industry as Applied To War, which was completed in 1877.
Miss Jansen, an art conservationist trained in Florence, who was working on a temporary contract at the museum with Miss Davies, from the Courtauld Institute, said they found it by accident while cleaning away the surface dirt which covered most of the main image of the "Peace" cartoon.
"The cartoon was extremly dirty because it had been on a roller for over 100 years. But as we removed the dirt, shadowy forms began to emerge which I recognised from seeing the other fresco.
"It was mostly the folds of the draperies which showed through because they are in lead white, which comes through the thin paint layers. It was very exciting as more forms began to emerge.
"Microscopic analysis of tiny paint samples proved that what we thought was true, and that the missing first cartoon was hidden underneath the second."
Dr Timothy Barringer, research fellow in Victorian studies at the museum until last year, said: "This has been a mystery for as long as anyone has written about the frescoes. It is really a great discovery.
"Everyone assumed the first cartoon had been destroyed. It is a most welcome addition to our knowledge about the body of Leighton's work."
Dr Barringer, now a lecturer at Birkbeck College, London University, said: "These frescoes were done at the height of his career, and the nice thing is that we can now trace the whole process from beginning to end. To the museum curator and academic, it's the final piece of the Leighton jigsaw."
YORK HOUSE, ST JAMES'S PALACE
February 10: The Duchess of Kent, Patron, UNICEF, this morning visited the Integrated Child Development Services, Varanasi, and the Gursandi Village Primary Education Project, Mirzapur, India.
Her Royal Highness this afternoon visited the Government School and the Bikha Village, Mirzapur.
BUCKINGHAM PALACE
February 11: The Prince Edward, Patron, this evening attended a Ball to mark the Fortieth Anniversary of the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain at the Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, London W1.
YORK HOUSE
ST JAMES'S PALACE
February 11: The Duke of Kent, President, the Royal Choral Society, this evening attended a performance of the Dream of Gerontius given by the Society and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall, London SW7.
From Professor J. B. Cullingworth
Sir, The statement of unity on protecting the countryside by the three main party leaders (letter, February 9) is appealing to all who value the beauty of the English countryside, but the historical parallel is more potent than the three party leaders probably realise.
The earlier statement by Baldwin, MacDonald and Lloyd George was followed by development in the countryside on a massive scale: over two million houses were built in the following 11 years, with little regard to their surroundings or their impact. Despite major planning legislation, little effective action was taken to prevent this until the introduction of comprehensive land use controls under the Town and Country Planning Acts, in particular those of 1943, 1944 and 1947. These controls have been highly effective in controlling the urbanisation of the countryside.
We are now faced with the need to build a similar number of houses. Where are they to go? Some can be built in the existing cities (given the use of land acquisition powers and adequate funding for clearance and infrastructure). More can be built by the expansion of country towns and villages, though experience shows that this frequently leads to an increase in commuting by private car.
The majority of the houses will need to be built either on the edge of present urban areas or in new settlements. The powers exist, but they are predominantly being used to stop development, not to channel it to the most efficient locations.
The Council for the Protection of Rural England (who have achieved a real publicity scoop by persuading the party leaders to sign their letter) is vociferous in its opposition to what it sees as a threat to the countryside from excessive housing development and as a preoccupation with statistical methods of projecting household formation.
Every proposal for new development brings forth opposition of this kind, not only from the CPRE, but also from the residents of the areas where major new settlements could be developed. The town and country planning legislation is a godsend to those seeking to protect their own local interests and MPs and ministers feel compelled to support them.
What is needed is a positive policy of promoting new towns in areas where the advantages of location, public transport and environmental quality can be maximised. Such developments will inevitably destroy some countryside values. The resolution of this conflict will require hard decisions and difficult choices between the goals of adequate housing and the preservation of areas of beautiful countryside.
Yours faithfully,
J. B. CULLINGWORTH,
University of Cambridge,
Department of Land Economy,
19 Silver Street, Cambridge.
February 9.
From Mr Anthony Amstell
Sir, Having served as a magistrate in a number of countries with minimum sentences for some crimes (eg, in Botswana, where 10 years is the minimum for some drug offences), I have no doubt that such sentences are counter-productive.
More often than not, when I had a case where the defendant was guilty but clearly did not deserve anything like the full minimum sentence, I felt obliged to acquit. This, as I saw it, was the only way of avoiding a gross and quite frightening injustice.
I believe that if the Home Secretary's proposal for minimum sentences were to be implemented we would frequently be faced with the same kind of jury acquittals which used to occur in murder cases prior to the abolition of capital punishment.
Yours faithfully,
ANTHONY AMSTELL,
10 Rowan Close,
Sway, Lymington, Hampshire.
From Mrs Sheila Faith
Sir, I was a member of the Parole Board for several years and at the last AGM which I attended in 1994, I was one of those present who told the Home Secretary of the concern felt about certain cases where the board had no alternative but to allow the release of prisoners if they were coming to the end of a sentence, even when psychiatric and other reports indicated there was still an element of risk. Thankfully this applies to only a very small number of cases but nevertheless it causes much anxiety.
At present only those prisoners serving "life sentences" can be detained on grounds of public safety.
I can therefore well understand why the Home Secretary is proposing that anyone who commits rape or carries out a violent crime for a second time should be given a so-called life sentence, so that in future they would fall into the category of those who are only released at their annual review when all the safety criteria have been taken into account.
Yours etc,
SHEILA FAITH,
11 Merlin House,
Oak Hill Park,
Hampstead, NW3.
February 6.
From Mr John Crookshank
Sir, I hope Libby Purves's proposal becomes reality in due course. My sole quibble with her article is the remark that the existing Britannia lies "unused against a wall in Portsmouth for five months a year".
In her first 40 years the Royal Yacht steamed well over a million sea miles and undertook 1,021 missions from state visits (84) to fleet reviews (8) and including 50 commercial days.
Time spent at Portsmouth over this amazingly sustained career has been largely in a dry dock to keep her in a condition to maintain such a career or in preparing for the next mission.
Yours sincerely,
JOHN CROOKSHANK,
Ivy House,
North Street, Westbourne,
Emsworth, Hampshire.
From Mr Michael Hill
Sir, It is less than six years to the Queen's Golden Jubilee. What better way to celebrate it and to demonstrate the warmth, affection and respect in which she is held by the vast majority of her people than for an appeal to be launched to pay for a new royal yacht?
Even for those who do not support the monarchy, what better way to show that we, as a people, believe in ourselves.
Yours faithfully,
MICHAEL HILL,
Fulwood Park Lodge, Liverpool 17.
from Mr Richard Kaberry
Sir, Professor Jean Aitchison's Reith Lecture ("Why a healthy language has to sometimes break the rules", February 7) makes the correct, if not entirely original point, that language should be described rather than prescribed. But in advocating the relaxation of rigid rules she seems to imply that there is no such thing as "right" and "wrong" usage.
If a primary purpose of language is to get others to accurately understand what we wish to convey, then using a technically incorrect form that is nevertheless semantically crystal clear (such as "different to") is something we should perhaps worry less about.
However, I wonder how Professor Aitchison would view the use of "continuous", when "continual" is meant? Or would she query the use of "infer" if she suspected that "imply" was meant? Such blurring of words with different meanings impoverishes the language, leaving one meaning where there were two and, more importantly, diminishing understanding. Such concerns are not merely pedantic.
Whilst we should applaud the general tenor of Professor Aitchison's approach, it would be regrettable if we came away with the impression that anything goes. There is still a place for teaching and advocating "good" usage.
Yours faithfully,
RICHARD KABERRY,
15 Dorrington Road, Sale, Cheshire.
February 7.
From Mrs Monica Wilson
Sir, As a concerned and interested member of the public, I spent three days early in 1994 at the Scott inquiry (reports, February 8, 9; interview, February 10).
Two things struck me forcibly: the extreme courtesy and patience shown to witnesses, who were never hurried, harried or disparaged, and the apparent unease of public servants, who seemed unwilling to be questioned about their actions.
On each occasion I went home convinced that setting up the inquiry had been one of the best decisions the Prime Minister had made. I came to the conclusion that some of those who govern us have little respect for us and make it difficult for the whole truth to be uncovered: but I also concluded that the criticisms and recommendations eventually proposed by the inquiry were likely to make such attitudes unacceptable in the future and that we might well be on the threshold of a fundamental change in the conduct of public life.
I hope I shall not be proved wrong.
Yours etc,
MONICA WILSON,
6 Gareway Road, W2.
February 10.
From Mrs V. M. Crews
Sir, The one statesmanlike act of John Major's premiership has, in my view, been his attempt to bring peace to Ulster.
Alas, because of his small majority, he could not afford to offend the Ulster Unionists and lose their support in the House of Commons.
The result: after 17 months still no round-table all-party talks in spite of the best efforts of Eire and the United States.
The best hope of peace in Ulster has been lost because John Major was, in the end, only a party-political leader and not a statesman.
Yours etc,
V. M. CREWS,
1 Dellfield Close, Beckenham, Kent.
February 9.
From Mr M. Brooks
Sir, It must be obvious to anyone that a campaign of terror offers no solution to the problems of Northern Ireland. Every atrocity perpetrated by the IRA diminishes rather than enhances the prospect of their ever achieving the united Ireland for which they claim to strive. The London bombing is a futile act, achieving nothing more than the suffering of innocent civilians.
Nevertheless, this latest outrage presented Mr Gerry Adams with an unparalleled opportunity to condemn such wanton acts of terrorism and dissociate himself from them. Such a condemnation would have reinforced his credentials as a democratic politician and done something to reassure his political opponents in Northern Ireland that there is indeed a real and important distinction to be drawn between Sinn Fein and the IRA.
That instead he chose to express mere "sadness" at the bombing and blamed the British Government for it reveals him in his true colours. The political initiatives of the last 18 months have been based on the premise that Sinn Fein is an authentic political party capable of committing itself to the democratic process and eschewing support for violence. This now appears to have been false.
Until the British and Irish Governments face up to this unpalatable and depressing fact there will be no real progress towards the achievement of a long-term solution to the Northern Ireland problem.
Yours sincerely,
M. BROOKS,
Ty Newydd,
Nr Cowbridge, South Glamorgan.
February 10.
From Sir David Mitchell, MP for Hampshire North West (Conservative)
Sir, The tragic events of last week (reports, article and leading article, February 10) bring into the open a question I have been asking myself for some time. Do the IRA (or perhaps it should now be did they) ever want the peace process to move forward?
Why else did they refuse to make even a token reduction in their weaponry? Why should they want to reach the democratic institutions towards which the peace process inevitably led? Why should they want to exchange centre stage for 10 per cent of a democratic mandate?
It seems a reasonable assumption that it was the prospect of an increasing tempo in the peace process which led them to opt out and opt for violence.
In Belfast last week, after an absence of some months, one could really feel the optimism and the dramatic improvement in the quality of life as both sides of the sectarian divide enjoyed the peace dividend. The best hope for the future of all who live in the island of Ireland is that the nationalist community gives no help and no refuge to those the police and Garda are now seeking.
Sadly yours,
DAVID MITCHELL
(Northern Ireland Minister, 1980-83),
House of Commons.
February 11.
From Dr A. T. H. Smith
Sir, It is a great pity that, when the judges exercise the greater freedom of speech permitted to them by the current Lord Chancellor when he relaxed the Kilmuir rules, it should be denigrated by a senior MP as (according to the headline to a report in your earlier editions today) "sniping".
The judges are making a contribution to the debate about a matter in which they have considerable expertise. Their view is entitled to an airing; they are not seeking to make law, but openly to contribute their experience to the law-making process.
What could be more sensible than that? Would Sir Ivan Lawrence, QC, have them return to their inscrutable purdah?
Yours faithfully,
A. T. H. SMITH,
Gonville and Caius College,
Cambridge.
February 6.
From Mr Hugh Mooney
Sir, I cannot accept Mr Neville Goldrein's view of the respective roles of politicians and judges in matters of sentencing (letter, February 3).
I suggest that Parliament and the judiciary are not so separate as Mr Goldrein makes out. The Lord Chancellor is both a judge and a Cabinet minister. The top judges are made life peers, as are members of our law-making Parliament. They have a right and duty to speak out.
The mandatory life sentence for murder is an anomaly which should be ended, not extended. The sentence of the court, reached after a public trial and hearing of evidence, is surely to be preferred to a decision taken in secret long after the event by the Home Secretary and civil servants, who may be swayed by political and financial considerations.
If Mr Goldrein really thinks that the politicians and judges should stick to their own lasts, then it would be more logical for him to urge the Home Secretary not to meddle with sentencing and trust the judges to use their discretion. Justice will be better served.
Yours faithfully,
HUGH MOONEY,
1 Anchor Cottage, Prickwillow Road,
Isleham, Ely, Cambridgeshire.
From Mr C. Harker
Sir, The idea of combining the function of a royal yacht and a sail training ship into one vessel to act as an ambassador for this country is most exciting.
I accept, as Rear-Admiral Bawtreee states in Libby Purves's article (Weekend, February 3; see also letter, February 8), that the vessel must be "a zenith of good design", but we must not reject the design for square rigged sailing ships reached at the end of the 19th century.
Just look at the Cutty Sark, or the iron square riggers built on the Clyde in the 1880s. Those of us who sail and maintain Thames barges, smacks and bawleys here on the East Coast know that today you may successfully use the materials and constructional methods of the 20th century to maintain the ships of the 19th century.
However, if you impose 20th-century thinking upon 19th-century design you end up producing a hybrid which is pleasing to neither modernist nor purist, and certainly does no credit to our maritime heritage.
Yours faithfully,
C. HARKER,
9 Sandringham Court,
Ipswich Road, Norwich, Norfolk.
From Ms Hui-Chuan Wang
Sir, It is heartening to read your leading article ("Stand by Taiwan", February 6) which condemns unequivocally China's aggressive behaviour towards Taiwan.
It often seems to me that attention paid to Taiwan in this country focuses only on its economic success. However, democracy is more precious than the rate of economic growth. After decades under martial law, Taiwanese people are now enjoying the sweetness of freedom of speech.
This new-found freedom is being eagerly pursued in order to right the wrongs of the past. The aboriginal people of Taiwan, for example, are campaigning to save their languages and traditions and to combat discrimination. Women, workers, environmentalists, the disabled and many other groups are speaking up for changes in legislation. But just as we begin to have a taste of freedom, we are threatened by a more ruthless authoritarian regime.
The West seems to regard the divide between Taiwan and China mainly as a continuation of the feud between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung. But the divide goes deeper than that. Taiwan has not been ruled by Peking since 1895, when the island was ceded to Japan.
No one can deny that half a century of Japanese colonisation left indelible marks in many aspects of Taiwanese society. However much China likes to refer to itself as the "motherland", the Taiwanese have been apart from China for a very long time: our ancestors began to come to the island in the second half of the 17th century.
Taiwan has as good a case for seeking independence as Australia for becoming a republic.
Yours faithfully,
HUI-CHUAN WANG,
14 Cavendish Road, NW6.
February 6.
From the National Chairman of the Timber Growers Association
Sir, Were Mr Harris (letter, February 9) one of the many woodland owners who have seen the work of a generation to grow crops of broadleaves ruined in weeks by bark-stripping following the displacement of red squirrels by greys, he would wonder no more why the greys need to be poisoned.
Poison is an emotive word. Warfarin at .02 per cent properly dispensed has no effect on other wildlife and is the best weapon that we have. It has no effect on birds. Other methods are on their way, but red squirrel populations are declining so fast that we have to act now using the best means at our disposal.
Yours faithfully,
MARK CRICHTON MAITLAND,
National Chairman,
Timber Growers Association,
198 Upper Richmond Road, SW15.
February 9.
From Mrs P. A. Booth
Sir, With reference to the Reverend R. J. Hills who prayed before going to sleep (letter, February 5; also letter, February 7), I do use this as a night-time exercise. However, I pray alphabetically, ie, A for Anne, B for Bob etc.
As I have never reached the letter "K", in fairness to my friends at the end of the alphabet, I am now praying backwards. Hopefully all will benefit.
Yours truly,
PAMELA A. BOOTH,
Fryston,
Derwent Lane, Hathersage,
Nr Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
February 7.
Why French children must learn how to eat.
"I live," that great wordsmith Moliere has one of his characters say, "on good soup, not fine words." It must have been a slip of the pen. In no country could this distinction be more artificial, or less apposite, than in France. Since at least the time of Rabelais, ideas and food have gone together in France as nowhere else. No tables rival the French restaurateur's for variety, subtlety, constantly inventive skill and commercial acumen. The language of gastronomy, free-market ambassador for France's claims to cultural distinctiveness, speeds French ideas across the globe far more effectively than its subsidised cinematic historical blockbusters can.
A France out of sympathy with Escoffier or the cassoulet would be cut loose from its history. It is hard to imagine any Frenchman saying, with Moliere's near-contemporary, Swift, "I value not your bill of fare, give me your bill of company." But the food of the child maketh the taste of the grown man witness the Spotted Dick of London clubs; and French children are coming to be more averse to garlic or boeuf a la mode than many an infant Mancunian.
A mere generation ago, a cockerel was to be seen elegantly perched on the back of a chair at a venerable Left Bank brasserie. This overgrown Easter chicken had joined the family at table to peck at a salad and sip from a wine glass. Beside the bird, his seven-year-old mistress followed her celeri remoulade with two classics invented on the field of battle by French chefs: saute de veau Marengo and pommes soufflees. Today, the cockerel's presence would doubtless breach hygiene regulations. Worse still, even if the grown-up child's daughter did not insist on being taken to a takeaway hamburger or pizza joint, she would demand steack frites.
It is therefore good news that the French are starting to fight the craze for le fast food and in a manner befitting the masters of the omelette, the finest fast food in the world. British teachers may be reduced to emphasising "healthy" diets in schools; but in France, food is something to celebrate.
When French chefs tour schools to arouse children's curiosity about forgotten tastes and traditions, they give lessons in national excellence and also in the virtues of the proud individualism which, de Gaulle used to complain, make the French ungovernable. Food is the Frenchman's riposte to the heavy hand of the bureaucrat, national or European. When he sided with French cooks against Brussels over unpasteurised cheese, the Prince of Wales did more for the entente cordiale than a trainload of diplomats. May French cooks of the future continue to repay a royal compliment, royally deserved.
Cheerful government forecasts are not wishful thinking.
When the Government publishes its monthly unemployment and inflation figures this week, both are likely to be moving in the right direction downwards. Ministers will declare that Britain now has the healthiest economy in Europe. Yet in the City, dozens of companies have given warning of disappointing profits; rarely a day passes without hundreds of new redundancies. For once, it is likely to be politicians rather than businessmen who offer the more reliable picture.
When they unveil their profits, company chairmen are, by definition, looking back at the past year's performance. But for 1996, some much more encouraging trends can clearly be discerned. Not only are the economic statistics showing improvement, but the elusive factor of confidence seems to be coming back. Gallup and MORI surveys last week, both of which showed modest swings of support back to the Tories, also revealed that consumers are becoming more confident about their financial future, less pessimistic about the state of the economy and less insecure about their jobs. Meanwhile the European Commission's Eurobarometer survey of business opinion published last week showed Britain as the only major economy in Europe where business confidence was now climbing.
On their own, these statistical indicators are no more than straws in the wind. Statistics can deceive almost as easily as enlighten. In 1990, the Treasury convinced itself on the basis of monthly statistics that there was no threat of a recession. A year ago, the Governor of the Bank of England was demanding higher interest rates: some carefully selected monthly statistics supported his idiosyncratic proposition that Britain was threatened by an inflationary boom. Statistics must be set in the context of world economic conditions and the policies of governments and central banks at home and abroad. Fortunately, this context is steadily improving.
In Britain, interest rates are falling, the tax burden is modestly easing, employment is growing, albeit slowly, and wages are rising comfortably but not yet alarmingly faster than the rate of inflation. Two accidental financial factors in 1996 could even produce a mild consumer boom before the year is out: maturing tax exempt special savings accounts (Tessas) and windfalls from building society mergers will unlock some £35 billion equivalent to 5 per cent of gross domestic product in the next 18 months. Even if 80 per cent of this money were reinvested and only 20 per cent were spent, the addition to consumer demand in the next 12 months would be worth about 1 per cent of GDP the equivalent of a one-off reduction of 3p in the standard rate of tax.
The news from abroad is, at first sight, less cheerful. While the American and Japanese economies are almost certainly poised for a decent recovery, Britain's key export markets in Germany and France could well be on the brink of serious recessions. Yet even in Europe, the deflationary ice seems to be breaking. In France public opinion seems to have moved against the dangerous policies adopted in the name of EMU. In Germany, the Bundesbank is showing signs of genuine alarm about the economic damage it has caused in the past year. In both countries, interest rates are at or near record low levels and further reductions almost certainly lie ahead. Thus even the British businesses which depend on exports to Europe have good reasons to hope that 1996 will prove a better year than 1995.
Democrats should talk to each other, not the IRA.
The human and financial cost of the London Docklands bomb is still being counted. The way forward politically through the wreckage of the peace process remains unclear. But the need to reaffirm certain key principles has never been clearer.
The first is a straightforward refusal to engage in talks with a terrorist organisation actively prosecuting a murderous campaign. John Bruton, the Irish Prime Minister, has made it clear that Sinn Fein cannot expect to get a word in his ear, let alone a place at any table, until there is a complete cessation of violence. It would be unthinkable if Sinn Fein representatives could continue to press their case in Dublin Castle drawing rooms while their comrades in arms sought to exact further concessions by physical force.
The resumption of the armed struggle by the IRA is a clear signal that the republican movement still, in its heart, believes that violence is the way to secure its end. For those who hoped to habituate Sinn Fein to democratic politics and all its attendant compromises, it is an uncomfortable thought that the men with real power in republican ranks still regard the bomb as the most effective solution to any argument.
Those nationalists, including members of the Irish Government, who are inclined to blame British intransigence for the IRA return to violence should reflect on how little the republican mind has seemed to alter after nearly 18 months of peace. What if Britain had called all-party talks? What if, by some miracle, Unionists who had seen their constituents slaughtered by a criminal conspiracy had sat at the same table with the still-armed apologists for those atrocities? Can anyone now be in doubt what would be the republican reaction to a settlement that fell short of their goal? If simple impatience with the pace of movement towards talks can trigger a renewal of bombing, the IRA would certainly not have balked at returning to violence if the talks themselves did not go its way. The IRA still believes that the overtures which led to talks with the British began with the success of the bombing campaign in the City. It has still to learn that violence does not pay.
The best way of reinforcing that message is to try to bind together all those with an interest in seeing democracy determine Northern Ireland's future. Although he remains cool towards the idea of an elected peace convention in Ulster, Mr Bruton should be encouraged to explore how common ground can be found between London and Dublin as well as democrats north and south.
Some nationalists argue that the Irish Government should keep talking to Sinn Fein. They are playing the IRA's game, giving licence to its programme of political and military advance. Constitutional nationalists should instead work towards agreement with the Unionist majority in Ulster, seeking mechanisms which can build institutional stability and safeguard the liberties of minorities. The Unionists have a role to play. Moderate Irish opinion is sickened by the IRA's actions but uncertain how to proceed. Rather than allow Sinn Fein's allies to make the running, Unionists should signal their readiness to talk to those in Dublin willing to see democracy entrenched in Ulster.
When the political path seems blocked there is always a temptation to fall back on a pure security solution. The Cabinet, rightly, spent much of last night reviewing what new measures must be taken: Dublin could also, with profit, move against the terrorists who continue to operate within its jurisdiction. But security measures alone will not solve the underlying causes of conflict. Terrorists must realise that the armed security forces on the streets express an iron political will to advance by democratic means and to resolve disagreements by politics. The IRA should be reminded that the future of Ulster is a matter for the people of the Province and their elected representatives and that this will not alter under threat of violence. If politicians in London, Dublin, Washington and Belfast can work together to uphold those principles, then there may yet be hope amid the rubble.
If the IRA really wants a united Ireland, it should not have blown apart the nationalist coalition.
From a political point of view the IRA bomb in east London is an extraordinary blunder as well as an extraordinary crime. Three days ago the nationalist position was stronger than at any time in the present troubles. The issue was whether the Unionists could be brought to negotiate without preconditions other than mere verbal assurances. The skilful political leadership of Gerry Adams had created almost a united front on this issue which included Sinn Fein, the SDLP, the Irish Government, Senator Mitchell and the American Government. The Unionists and the British Government had already been forced to concede talks without any prior decommissioning of terrorist arms. They had put forward a counter-proposal of elections before talks. Even this had been attacked by the Irish Government and criticised in Washington. The pressure was still on. Even in Britain, public opinion showed a growing feeling that preconditions ought not to stand in the way of early talks.
The bomb has reversed all this. The IRA barely even informed Sinn Fein in advance that it was going to end the ceasefire. Whatever Sinn Fein does now, it can no longer speak for the IRA. Three days ago there was a united demand for early talks, supported by the whole coalition that Gerry Adams had put together. Now the nationalist front is completely broken. The Irish and American Governments have reverted to a hardline anti-terrorist position. The suspicions of the Unionists and the British Government have been publicly justified. The IRA has lost its whole political dimension by demonstrating its contempt for Sinn Fein. The Unionists are no longer under any pressure to make concessions. Indeed the Unionists are the only beneficiaries, not from the bombing but from the nationalist debacle.
The public does not have any idea who decided to resume the bombing. We can see Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, but they are the leaders who were repudiated. Who were the leaders who thought that a bomb
in east London was better than a coalition of nationalist sympathy which stretched from Dublin to the White House? How do their minds work? There were two contrasting public opinions in Ireland which may have influenced the IRA leaders. On the one hand, there were some Irish nationalists who thought the peace process was simply a postponement operation by the British. They argued that words were not getting anywhere, so it would be better to go back to bombs. No doubt that feeling was widespread in the IRA itself, both north and south of the border. Perhaps some of these people had not wanted the ceasefire in the first place. They certainly did not understand the success of Gerry Adams's diplomacy.
The IRA leaders may have been even more worried by the very popularity of the ceasefire, particularly among the Roman Catholics of Northern Ireland. Indeed many Northern Ireland Catholics, particularly in the middle class, have by now become covert Unionists. They want peace far more than they want a united Ireland; many of them do not want a united Ireland at all. To the IRA men, the peace process may have threatened to bring about long-term Catholic acquiescence in the Union; they may also have felt that peace would make the IRA itself redundant. It would offer a role for Sinn Fein, but not for them. They may well have been jealous of Gerry Adams, negotiating on behalf of their power base.
In their previous bombing campaign in London, the IRA had stumbled on an economic target which it must have been tempted to hit again. The older London, down to the buildings of the 1950s, is solid. When the car bomb was detonated outside Harrods, it killed some passers-by, but the damage to the Harrods building was soon repaired at moderate cost. From the 1960s onwards, the most important new buildings were constructed of what Lord Curzon called "brass and glass". A bomb could blow out the glass and distort the framework, so that the cost of repair was close to that of replacement. £1,000-worth of explosive can do £100 million of damage, a high return on the terrorist investment. Since London has been a terrorist target throughout the period of most of this new building, it was very imprudent architecture; it has given the IRA an almost unlimited supply of vulnerable high-value targets.
There may also be people in the IRA who did believe in the peace process, but thought it needed a jolt, to remind everyone of what the IRA could do. A few weeks of spectacular terror, followed by another ceasefire, would from its point of view be the best way to force the British Government to the negotiating table. The nationalist coalition could then be reassembled, and it would be argued that the new opportunity should be taken quickly, because the British had been too slow to take the old one.
This is at least a rational calculation, but it overlooks the one factor that always is being overlooked. The great mistake of the nationalists is to think that they are ultimately dealing with the British Government. They are not. They are dealing with the Protestant community of Northern Ireland. Of course, concessions could be wrung out of Downing Street, if the Unionists were willing to make them. The British Government might conceivably be bombed to the conference table; the Unionists cannot be.
There is only one way for the nationalists to get the Protestants into a united Ireland, and that is to woo them. It is true that the Ulster Protestants would probably play a greater role in a united Ireland than they do in the United Kingdom. They are probably the tougher and better educated community; they could well dominate much of Irish life, particularly in business. As the strength of the Catholic Church declines in the South, northern Protestants might prefer to be important in Ireland rather than to go on being relatively unimportant in Britain. I doubt if that is what most nationalists want; they love the old Celtic Catholic culture, which is already losing to the urban modernism of the new Ireland, as the referendum on divorce showed. Add the Protestant modernism of the North and the old Ireland would be decisively outweighed. The border has come to be more of a protection than a threat to the old Celtic Catholic culture.
That piles paradox on paradox. The IRA survives because it fits into ancient Irish myths of oppression, rebellion and bloodshed. Its purpose is to unite Ireland, but Ireland can only be united, if it ever is, by a process in which peace is the first step and persuasion the second. The Protestants have to be persuaded that a united Ireland would be a better home for them than a rather cold and distant United Kingdom. The great obstacle to this process, either of peace or persuasion, is the IRA, which has even now destroyed the strongest nationalist coalition of modern Irish history. Yet if Ireland were united, the old Celtic Catholic Ireland would inevitably lose out to the new modern and partly post-Christian Ireland of Dublin and Belfast. Subjectively, the IRA wants to unite Ireland; objectively, it keeps Ireland divided. Subjectively, a united Ireland would be a victory for the Gaelic myth; objectively it would destroy Gaelic Ireland.
Peter Riddell on the prospect of White Papering over the Tories' Euro divisions.
Malcolm Rifkind wants to be the great unifier of the Conservative Party over Europe. His vehicle will be the White Paper due early next month on the Government's approach to the inter-governmental conference (IGC). This may, and should, confirm a new Tory consensus on Europe, but will it represent a credible negotiating position for Britain? Ever since the Maastricht battles of three years ago, these two aims have been in conflict.
Mr Rifkind is in an easier position than his predecessor. Douglas Hurd sought to be the reasonable man in an unreasonable world. But he was frustrated, if never quite defeated, by the fissiparous tendencies of his party. That is why Mr Hurd last year opposed a White Paper on Europe, for fear that it would exacerbate Tory divisions. Now, in more harmonious circumstances, Mr Rifkind favours one because it may demonstrate unity. He is keen to appear as the conciliator, building bridges to reach loyalist sceptics such as Sir Michael Spicer's European Research Group. Mr Rifkind welcomed John Redwood's statement last week about the White Paper, not because he agrees with all the detailed proposals, but for its more constructive tone, accepting that Britain's future is in the European Union. Some of Mr Redwood's allies were annoyed that at the launch news conference Bill Cash blurred this positive impression with typically uncompromising remarks.
But Mr Rifkind's sceptical tone has annoyed some pro-European ministers who used to regard him as an ally. They suspect him of shifting last year so as to make himself a more broadly acceptable Foreign Secretary, and now to boost his chances in any future leadership battle. His odds are improving in these stakes, although he is still disliked by the keepers of the Thatcher flame for alleged unreliability and inconsistency in her later years. In his defence, he claims that as the British representative in the mid 1980s on the Dooge committee which preceeded the Single European Act, he opposed a single currency, greater powers for the European Parliament and more majority voting.
Nonetheless, the White Paper is unlikely to satisfy hardline scep
tics. It will pull together existing statements and conclude with, in the words of one minister, some of the "vision thing". It may, therefore, seem bland. But more important is the attempt to lower expectations, to avoid laying down demands for repatriation of powers which the sceptics would like but which are, in practice, unachievable. The White Paper will not discuss monetary union, where Mr Rifkind favours keeping open Britain's options since he wants to retain influence on a decision which could have a profound impact on the country.
The official line on the IGC is low-key: there is nothing Britain desperately needs. There is no big wish-list. There are some changes we would like, such as the creation of an appeals mechanism in the European Court of Justice and limitation of the retrospective impact of its rulings where there has been no blatant intention to flout directives, as in the case of the pregnant servicewomen. The Government wants to change the balance of voting on the Council of Ministers, to alter the six-monthly presidency system to favour larger states, and to give national parliaments more say in the preparation of European legislation.
The Government opposes significant changes in qualified majority voting and in the powers of the European Parliament (except in controlling the Commission), and is strongly against any attempt to move away from an inter-governmental approach to foreign, justice and immigration policies, or any undermining of Nato's central role in European defence.
The Labour Party agrees much more with the Tories than it does with other European left-of-centre parties on such matters as defence and border controls. Apart from the social chapter opt-out, the two parties differ mainly over Labour's support for an extension of qualified majority voting on social, environmental and regional issues. The gulf is far narrower than either party pretends. If there is a Blair government, other European countries might be surprised to hear many familiar British objections expressed by new Labour ministers. It might be akin to the Potsdam Conference in 1945, when Attlee replaced Churchill in the middle of proceedings, but, to Stalin's evident displeasure, there was no real change of policy.
The main change if Labour won would be in attitude and language, and perhaps in the room for manoeuvre in negotiation. By contrast, the forthcoming White Paper may not leave ministers with sufficient flexibility to reach agreement. In the short term, these tactics suit John Major and Mr Rifkind. If Britain has no urgent demands, it is also in no hurry to complete the IGC. Delay would keep the sceptics quiet before the election.
But this is not sustainable. Germany and France may not want an ambitious Maastricht Two, but they regard the IGC as a necessary first step to far more important questions of EU enlargement and monetary union. While there has been much smugness in London over the recent doubts in Germany about the timetable for monetary union, no one should underestimate Chancellor Kohl's determination to press ahead. Meanwhile, even preliminary talks on enlargement cannot start until the IGC is over.
The IGC is a distraction from these central issues and from the need to re-establish public confidence in the European Union. In theory, it should not be hard to compromise in the IGC on minor institutional adjustments to qualified majority voting and the like, but the Major Government does not look like being able to agree even small changes, such is the internal Tory opposition to any concessions. In that respect, the White Paper may be more of a Tory party concordat than a realistic long-term plan for Britain's European policy. Mr Rifkind's success in achieving the former may only defer decisions on the latter. Britain seems condemned never to resolve its relationship with the rest of Europe.
Correction: Headline: Douglas Hurd;Correction Issue Date: Thursday February 15, 1996 Page: 5 Douglas Hurd MP believes a White Paper on Europe to be necessary ( article, February 12) and has never opposed one.
Blurring an issue is not the prerogative of politicians, but an essential skill for journalists too. The world presents a bewildering variety of "facts": an array of potential news items practically infinite in number from which no clear pattern emerges, and to list which at random would baffle our readers. Our job, like every writer's job, is to tell a story. We seek patterns, plots, meaning if you like, in the world.
Much of a journalist's work therefore involves identifying possible stories, then servicing them. Once established, a story needs to be nurtured, so that the newspaper becomes a sort of serial, with daily instalments, involving a running series of plots and subplots, with a recognisable cast of characters. Otherwise (like a soap opera into which too many characters are introduced and the stories go nowhere), the audience's attention wanders.
My field, politics, presents exceptionally clear examples. We chart a leader's "rise" and "fall". We discover splits and conspiracies: We establish "strong", "weak" and "gaff-prone" characters; we divine dissent and disaffection; we purport to describe "mood" among politicians. All this requires creative writing and I do not, by that, mean we lie; we craft our stories.
How? Part of a journalist's trade consists of choosing the story. But, having chosen it, he must write it in language which lends a hard edge to what may be an aimless narrative. He achieves this by a combination of buzz-words and fuzz-words. The buzz-words are notorious. "Measures" come in "packages". "Blood on the carpet" etches out the "political faultlines" . . .
Less often noticed are the fuzz-words. These are the nuts and bolts which seem to hold a story together. Their purpose is to imply some linkage between events occurring to different people in different places at different times. The problem is that this linkage is not always obvious, may not exist at all, and is in any case difficult to prove. Unlike children's storytellers we are supposed to be reporting reality. But reality is unreportable, so the challenge is, while appearing to report, to draw readers into an inference, without ourselves making the claim, pushing a story forward while leaving open a means of retreat in case of a challenge. There is a stableful of key words, phrases and images essential to this task.
The simplest way is to state a chronological relationship between events, and to imply by this a causal one but without stating it. "After a series of embarrassing attacks on his leadership, Tony Blair yesterday sought to regain the initiative in a speech . . ."
The art here is in the words "after", "series", "embarrassing" and "regain". "After" suggests (but does not state) that the attacks prompted the speech. They may not have. "Series" suggests (but does not state) that the attacks are linked, part of a "story" of discontent. There may be no such linkage. "Embarrassing" implies (but does not state) that Mr Blair was embarrassed. He may not have been. "Regain" suggests (but does not state) that the initiative had been lost. That is a matter of opinion.
But it is the "after" here which is critical to the linkage which forms the story's mainspring. Of course everything happens either after, before or at the same time as everything else. Pointing this out is either meaningless or tendentious. "Following" and "in the wake (or "aftermath") of", like "poised to" or "on the eve of", are heavily relied upon for the same effect. Most common of all is "as": "As John Major struggled to reassert . . . Bill Cash yesterday claimed . . ." The implication may or may not be true, but the journalist seeks to keep both his bun and his ha'penny by subliminally inviting his reader to make the inference, without hazarding it as the newspaper's own opinion.
The second means by which we imply a pattern or linkage is by insinuating not chronological but spatial relationships. Facts "together with" other facts are reported. Individuals are "at the centre of" (or "linked to") events, which then "spiral" or form part of a "downward spiral". Setbacks are part of a "rash" or "outbreak". Demands come in "choruses". Gains are part of a "pattern" of success.
Thirdly there is a journalistic staple, the implied dynamic. Key words here include "wave", "growing", "mounting", "increasing", "rocketing", "spreading", "heightened", "falling" and "plummeting". To read our prose, you might imagine that the future really comes in waves whereas, as someone once observed, it comes on little cat's feet. But the wave is vital to newspapermen, for the wave is the story. It provides for follow-up stories. It creates a memorable image out of what may be no more than the observation that something has happened twice or more. Heightening public interest in a phenomenon makes it more reportable. So further examples are reported and the story causes a wave not of instances, but of reports. I doubt whether a political journalist can avoid recourse to these devices. But devices they are. Readers should be aware of them.
IT MUST HAVE been the spectacular stage lighting: at the English National Opera's impressive Tristan and Isolde on Saturday, I could have sworn that the Duchess of York had found employment as a diva.
Her statuesque figure appeared to glide serenely across stage, Titian hair falling gently about her shoulders and tragedy unfolding all around as she upset the opera's King Mark.
ENO claims that Isolde's mellifluous voice was that of the renowned soprano Elizabeth Connell but could it not have been the cash-strapped Duchess singing for her supper?
A SEVERE blow to learner drivers comes in a bulletin from Scotland, where an Aberdeen publisher, Keith Murray, has finally given up the struggle after 35 attempts to pass his test.
One might have thought that after some 1,450 lessons and £9,000 spent trying to learn to drive over the past decade, he would be in with a chance. But he says he will not be filling in a 36th test application form. "I really don't think I could take another disappointment," says Keith. "I'm a nervous person at the best of times and I just couldn't handle doing my test with someone sitting beside me watching my every move."
He claims that fate conspired against him from the start. In his first test, ten years ago, he ended
up following a hearse back to the test centre. "I knew it was a bad omen I just didn't realise quite how bad."
Tony Blair's plans to reform the Lords have not made the staff in its library any more worldly. When Lord Henley ambled in the other day and asked for a volume of Wordsworth's poems, the individual on the desk looked up helpfully. "And what would be Mr Wordsworth's Christian name, sir?"
AS I mentioned last week, Teresa Gorman is less than pleased about the reference to her in Edwina Currie's desperate bonkbuster as a "benign little granny", and she retaliated insult for insult.
But Teresa does not appear to be alone in finding Edwina's Pepsident smile a little hard to stomach. Gillian Shephard regales dinner guests with the story of a visit to a factory in her own constituency where workers were peeling onions. When the Education Secretary's eyes started to stream and her mascara began to run grotesquely, she says, she was promptly mistaken by factory staff for the author of authors, Edwina Currie.
PRINCE EDWARD'S girlfriend, Sophie Rhys-Jones, attracted admiring glances at a society wedding in London on Saturday on account of her hat, a wide-brimmed felt affair with a distinctive red, green and purple-striped band.
But as guests of Damian Riley-Smith and his bride Pippa were leaving the church, she noticed somebody else wearing exactly the same titfer. She nudged the Prince to point out the sartorial faux pas, drew her hand to her mouth in mock horror and then convulsed into giggles behind her Order of Service.
LORD HOWE of Aberavon revists Chevening this week on Radio 4's Going Places, and takes its listeners on a guided tour of the house. A nostalgic programme, its most poignant moment comes when Howe points out some trees in the garden.
"There are three trees we planted in honour of our first ministerial dog, so to speak," he says with a lump in his throat. "Budget was the dog I had when I was Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sadly, he was killed not long after we came here, and there are trees in his memory."
He adds that the plaque doesn't record the result of a competition run by Marcia Falkender in a national newspaper for the best name for a Foreign Office dog, as opposed to a Treasury dog. "She was mischievous enough to give the prize to someone who called it Fudge It," says Howe sadly. "But we called it Summit instead."
LORD LONGFORD, the nonagenarian who has long campaigned on behalf of Myra Hindley, has taken up a new cause. He has been devoting his energies to Kevin Maxwell, who was last month cleared of fraud charges after giving evidence for more than 70 hours.
The other day, Longford entertained Kevin, his wife Pandora and his counsel, Alun Jones, QC, to a celebratory lunch at a discreet Polish restaurant in Kensington. The acquittal was celebrated with occasional snaps of vodka, and Longford pledged his commitment to helping Maxwell through his next ordeal the fresh prosecution by the Serious Fraud Office described by Pandora as the "last lash of the dragon's tail".
There was one absentee from the lunch, however. Lady Longford, the royal biographer, had tripped on a pavement that morning. She fell on her face and felt unable to attend. "I didn't want to frighten anybody. I look like a Tamil Tiger with two furious black eyes. It's perfectly menacing."
A STUDY in Guatemala has shown that nutritional supplements given to pregnant women and their babies can have significant effects on the children's mental development.
Between 1969 and 1977, more than 2,000 mothers and children in four villages were given either a high-protein supplement called Atole, or a fruit drink called Fresco, with no added protein. Following up more than ten years later, Dr Ernesto Pollitt of the University of California tested the children with a range of verbal, mathematical and IQ tests.
He found that children whose mothers had been given Atole, and who had eaten it themselves for at least two years, did significantly better on most tests than those who had been given Fresco.
Dr Pollitt concludes in Scientific American that where malnutrition is a risk, protein supplements can make a real difference, better intellectual development going hand-in-hand with better health and faster growth.
AN IMPROVED version of the hormone often given to women to treat infertility could make the process easier and much more effective. Many infertile women are treated with FSH (follicle-stimulating hormone) to promote ovulation. But FSH breaks down quickly in the body, necessitating repeated injections, sometimes several a day.
Dr Irving Boime, of Washington University Medical School in St Louis, has made FSH more resistant to breakdown by borrowing a sub-unit from a related hormone, human chorionic gonadotropin, and attaching it to FSH. Animal studies show that it lasts three times as long in the body, and Dr Boime believes that the modified FSH may prove to be more controllable.
The Dutch company Organon has licensed the technology for development. Dr Boime believes that a single injection of the modified FSH will be enough to stimulate ovulation without risking producing several eggs, and a multiple birth.
THE FIRST mouse to be grown from an egg matured in a test-tube could herald a new era in reproductive biology. Not only will it help in understanding how eggs develop, but it could also improve the techniques of in vitro fertilisation used to help infertile women to have children.
Of course, eggs have been successfully fertilised outside the body for years, but these have all been mature eggs harvested after women were treated with powerful hormone drugs to encourage ovulation. The new work, by John Eppig and Marilyn O'Brien of the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, has pulled off the same trick, but starting from the egg precursors, called oocytes.
So far, only a single mouse has been born, but it is healthy and normal. Biologists have been trying to grow oocytes for years, and the success, published last month in Biology of Reproduction, has been greeted with enthusiasm. "Just having one mouse born means that it is possible," Joanne Fortune of Cornell University told Science. "That's the important first step that we all needed to see."
All female mammals, including human beings, are born with thousands of oocytes, which mature one by one into eggs. The process of maturation, which in the mouse takes three weeks, involves signals which pass to the oocytes from the cells which surround them in the ovaries, called the granulosa cells. Dr Eppig has been trying to study these messages by culturing mixtures of oocytes and granulosa cells in a dish.
For a long time, he could not make it work, but then he and his research assistant Marilyn O'Brien stumbled on the answer. By culturing entire mouse ovaries for several days before exposing the oocyte-granulosa cell complexes to enzymes, and then supplying growth factors and stimulatory hormones, they persuaded about 40 per cent of the oocytes to mature.
When fertilised with mouse sperm, the eggs divided to the two-cell stage. Then they were placed back into surrogate mouse mothers. Only one of 190 transferred actually grew into a live-born mouse pup, so there is clearly plenty of room for fine-tuning. Varying the conditions should throw light on the process by which the oocytes develop.
The technique has possibilities for human use, although that is some way off. Oocytes may be easier to store than eggs, and the large number of eggs needed for successful in vitro fertilisation might be easier to obtain in this way than by dosing women with hormones. But keeping human oocytes alive and healthy through the long period of maturation is likely to prove a demanding task.
When the Queen comes to stay she shares the family roast. Mary Riddell meets Lady Carnarvon
FOR A time the imposing front doors of Highclere Castle stayed closed. It would be better, an aide had suggested, to shuffle the paying public through the humble rear entrance next to the tearoom.
While no member of the nouveau-pauvre British aristocracy is averse to offloading a cheese scone or two on the Sierra-driving masses, Lady Carnarvon remained unhappy with the new arrangement. "We tried it for a while, but it didn't sit right with us. I believe the visitors should be welcomed properly."
Meanwhile, and more remarkably, in the little house just down the drive, the Queen was parking her wellies in the small entrance hall next to the dog's bed. Later her supper would be prepared in the cramped back kitchen where the only concession to haute cuisine is a packet of Bonios by the sink.
"She can come here and know that there's no one about," Jean Carnarvon will tell you. "No, she'd never stay at the castle always here with us. She knows her way round, and it's like home really a sort of haven."
Much like her royal guest, the 7th Lady Carnarvon enjoys the quiet life. Charming, unpretentious and the most unlikely of chatelaines, she has remained resolutely in the background while her husband, the Queen's racing manager, has provided the front-of-house panache essential to the selling of a stately home.
But times are hard and costs astronomical. Scaffolding, as normal, obscures the castle's Gothic- Victorian splendour, and the manila envelopes pile up on the doormat. With upkeep bills alone running at £250,000 a year, slick marketing must never be under-estimated. And so the financial imperative has decreed for Lady Carnarvon, an acutely shy woman, a starring role in the film of her life.
Downstairs Upstairs is a forthcoming Network First programme for Carlton, and she is clearly anxious. "Well, it wasn't quite what we expected. Let it be a lesson."
There was always going to be a difficulty, since Highclere is rather thin on the Downstairs.
Nevertheless she had hoped, rather optimistically, for yards of worthy footage of Lord Carnarvon accomplishing sterling work for regional planning and demonstrating to the House of Lords that hereditary peers are a jolly good thing. What seems to have emerged instead is Berkshire's belated answer to Dynasty.
The setting: a crumbling but fabulous stately pile. The cast: dashing heir (Geordie, Lord Porchester), glamorous younger offspring (daughter Carolyn, married to the Newmarket bloodstock agent John Warren, and Harry, married to Chica who does the food), plus, in supporting roles, assorted adorable grandchildren and world-beating racehorses. The plot: the fairy-tale marriage of the beautiful teenager from Wyoming and the man who has long been one of Her Majesty's dearest friends.
Cut and fade to the drawing-room of Lady Carnarvon's bungalow (think Palladian, not Barratts), where unframed school pictures of her grandchildren are propped on the mantelpiece below ancestral oils. She is 60 now, still beautiful, and accustomed to a life which even by the standards of hard-pressed aristocracy is almost schizophrenic in its contrasts.
On the one hand, there is the family fortune of £45 million and treasures including the Tutankhamunobilia accumulated (complete, legend has it, with the dead king's curse) by the 5th Earl.
On the other, there is a constant need for thrift. "Could I blow a fortune on a Valentino suit? Certainly not. I'm not in that league. I wear Marks & Spencer or buy from local boutiques in Newbury.
"Usually we'll have supper in front of the TV. I always cook unless we have people to stay." Even her green Aga, in which the Queen's roast dinners ("just what the family would be having") are prepared, was affordable only when her husband's top racehorse had a particularly fine season.
When the Queen comes to inspect her yearlings, the routine alters only slightly. The two spare bedrooms are aired, a cook brought in. "Sometimes Prince Philip comes, and in the old days Prince Charles used to visit from school, and we'd potter along the lake. I think some people might fuss, but we're not breaking new territory. We've been doing it for a very long time, you see..."
Brought up in Big Horn, Wyoming, Jean Wallop was 13 before she saw a town or crossed a road and 19 when she met her future husband at a London lunch party. Coffee was scarcely served before the then Lord Porchester was crossing the Atlantic to inform her fiance that he would be marrying her instead.
Painfully self-effacing, knowing that her university career was ruined and her father heartbroken at losing her, she married in 1956. Queen Elizabeth who was to be godmother to her elder son was 29, three years into her reign and the figurehead of a world the new Lady Porchester found intimidating and, occasionally, repellent.
"My husband was wonderful, but for the first two years all I seemed to do was meet people. The racing world was the most daunting. The Newmarket trainers in those days were really formidable people, and to them I was just a little nothing. Even now, although my daughter lives there, and I love visiting, I get a sort of feeling in the pit of my stomach when I approach the town."
The Queen herself was distantly welcoming. "Well, it was very formal. I'd curtsy, do all the normal things. All those things were observed and still are."
As the years passed, the cultures began to overlap. Recently the Queen ended a trip to Kentucky stud farms at the three-bedroom house Lady Carnarvon keeps in the wilds of Wyoming. "My house was completely surrounded by Secret Service so many of them that the deer all disappeared. There's a little bungalow next door, which was useful for the staff, and we all jammed in somehow."
She is loath to talk about her royal connections, scrupulous in protecting the private bolthole her family has supplied for 40 close years. "The focus on them is horrendous. It definitely is. It's got beyond the realms of anything that's really tolerable, if like the Duke of Edinburgh you can't even have a private phone conversation with a friend."
She has only rarely experienced such intrusion. When, as she plans to, she reads Sarah Bradford's biography of the Queen (which she is saving as a holiday book) she will come upon the old rumour malicious, untrue and denounced as such by Bradford that her husband was Prince Andrew's father.
It is unlikely to trouble her, for Lady Carnarvon the outsider to the British aristocracy has succeeded where so many of her peers have failed in creating a stable family life.
Her only sadness is that her older son, Geordie, is about to be divorced, in an echo of the collapsed marriages which have haunted the Carnarvon dynasty. When she first took over a grim, dusty, dank Highclere, the pervading atmosphere was one of neglected gloom.
"I know it sounds politically incorrect, but it hadn't had a woman in there for 50 years." Out went the dim lighting and the faded furnishings. In came pictures of her grandchildren and displays of spring bulbs.
In too came weddings and receptions, world conferences, outdoor concerts, glossy magazine promotions, in a survival model which has become the envy of the impoverished aristocracy.
Marketing herself, her marriage and her children for the TV cameras has been less tolerable. "The limelight is not my natural place, but we all have to do what we can to help."
Duty, as her favourite and equally parsimonious house-guest would agree, must prevail.
Giles Whittell reports from LA on a best selling thesis for life after 50.
WHEN the muscular, fiery-eyed Tina Turner went on tour three years ago, she proved to a generation of American women that there was not just life after menopause there was rock‘n' roll.
When, at 45, Lauren Hutton posed for a New York fashion spread in overalls and desert boots, she too went through an epiphany on behalf of her sex: she realised you don't have to be 21 and half-naked to be beautiful and paid for it.
Such women, Gail Sheehy argues in her provocative bestseller, New Passages, to be published in Britain shortly, are the pioneers of a generation that is defying biology to enter a whole new phase of the human life cycle: a grown-up adventure of new careers, new
passions, lively sex and carefree hedonism that she refers to as our second adulthood. Near the beginning of her book, Sheehy announces with gusto that Western women who reach 50 without suffering heart disease or cancer can now expect to live at least another 40 years. The question is how to make the most of them.
It is a burning question, not least because women celebrating their fiftieth birthdays this year are the baby boomers' vanguard. Born the year after the Second World War ended, they led the sexual revolution by trying out the Pill. They stopped taking it to have families but still fought to keep careers. Later, with the help of books like Sheehy's The Silent Passage, they broke down age-old taboos about the discussion and treatment of the effects of the menopause.
NOW THEY and Sheehy are emerging at the far end of that silent passage. She laments that they face a void. They have "no instructions for what a woman should be after she has finished making babies" and bringing them up a task that more and more women find they have completed with fully half their lives still to live.
She protests that "research on over-fifties has concentrated on disease, widowhood, retirement, meaninglessness and impoverishment". And, in a confession of her relentlessly upbeat agenda, she declares: "It's high time we look at what goes right with us: the sources of love, purpose, fun, sexual pleasure, spiritual companionship and sustained well-being that so many people are discovering in second adulthood, much to their surprise."
The book is based on exhaustive reading and research, and is peppered with factual nuggets. For example: a million American baby-boomers are expected to reach their 100th birthdays. The over-nineties are the country's fastest growing age group. The proportion of women aged 45 to 54 who have jobs will rise by 300 per cent over the next five years. The ratio of testosterone to oestrogen in those who have completed menopause is up to 20 times higher than in those still ovulating which, research shows, may help to account for the resurgent energy and optimism of women in their mid-to-late fifties. And so on.
But New Passages is really all about semantics. One of its central themes is a concerted attack on the phrase "middle age" and all its debilitating connotations. In Sheehy's world "you're not getting older" after 50, "you're getting better". The process is not ageing but "sageing".
Middle age is replaced by the age of mastery (your flaming fifties), followed by the age of integrity (your serene sixties). Depression, alcoholism or divorce in your late forties need not be the start of a long, sad slide into senility. They are merely symptoms of "middlescence"; your last youthful rebellion, full of lessons in life that help you to move, at some point during your second adulthood, to "coalescence".
Sheehy's fetish for buzz-words first emerged in Passages, which she wrote when she was 35. That book did for early adulthood what this one does for people in their prime. But New Passages comes close to parodying itself with the introduction of something called the "Aha!" moment. This is unfortunate, since it turns out to be near the crux of Sheehy's thesis. She is wise enough to admit that no amount of self-help can be guaranteed to banish such ravages of ageing as illness, bereavement or loss of agility. But she insists repeatedly that the key to having fun and fulfilment despite them is a conscious reinvention of oneself at a particular moment, after children have flown or after resigning oneself to not having them, and usually in one's fifties. This is the Aha! moment.
For Lauren Hutton it came when her copy of The New York Times fell open at a photograph of someone so alluring in dungarees and desert boots that at first she didn't recognise herself. For Janet Mandaville, one of Sheehy's 500 or so interview subjects, it came at 50 when she acted on a whim for the first time in decades and went solo backpacking for eight months in the Australian outback. For Sheehy herself it came when she conquered her fear of diving through a wave off a Californian beach, and realised what her next book would be about.
BLINDING revelations are all very well. But what next? Stripped of anecdote and pop psychology, her practical advice on how to make the most of second adulthood is not strikingly original: women would do well to stop smoking, resist drinking more than two glasses of wine a day, do regular aerobic exercise and perhaps some yoga. They should consider going back to work or university or both, and stop feeling duty-bound to provide their grown-up children with bed and board.
Men, she says, can be harder to advise. To make their passages to mastery and beyond they too should give up smoking. They should learn to let go of work as the chief public measure of their worth. Above all, they should own up to creeping impotence as the main threat to their private self-esteem. They should talk it through with their partners, turning a loss into what Dr William Masters called "the privilege of exchanging vulnerabilities".
Whatever you make of such rhetoric Sheehy's basic challenge is compelling: "Will your personal life story in second adulthood be conceived as a progress story or a decline story? To a large degree you have the power of mind to make that choice." And if you share her indomitably sunny temperament, the rest should be a breeze. Just say "Aha!".
AN ultrasound scanning technique used to create a three-dimensional image of the inside of Egyptian mummies may allow doctors to detect foetal abnormalities early.
They would be able to track the growth of babies' vital organs and identify those which were likely to have health problems. Then they would be able to perform pre-natal surgery, or, if the mother decided to end her pregnancy, she would be able to do so at an early stage.
A clinical trial of the method on 200 pregnant women has just been completed at St Thomas' Hospital, in London, by Professor Anthony Milner and Darryl Maxwell and results are still awaited. The trial focused on the liver. Another study starting this spring will concentrate on the lungs the last organ to be fully developed in the womb.
The technique was developed by Dr Stephen Hughes, a medical physicist at St Thomas'. He wrote a sophisticated computer program which converts a succession of conventional two-dimensional ultrasound slices into a three-dimensional image.
His software was originally used by the British Museum to determine the cause of death of Ancient Egyptians. During this work he hit upon the idea of adapting it to produce computer images of unborn children.
Researchers claim that the technique is safer than conventional ultrasound methods because only one sweep is needed to produce an image.
But it may be a long time before such imaging is widely used. Stuart Campbell, Professor of Gynaecology and Obstetrics at King's College Hospital, says: "Until the research is published, we don't know if the new technique can pick up abnormalities that conventional scanning methods will miss. I very much doubt it."
Day One of our two-part series: how scientific breakthroughs are helping parents
The race is on to find a "safe" genetic test which would predict whether an unborn baby is likely to develop a disease later in life. At the moment the only tests available can endanger both the mother and her foetus.
Doctors believe a new non-invasive technique, based on blood sampling, might be as close as five years away but there is concern that there are implications for society if it were to be widely used.
The fear is that parents will be tempted to uncover the genetic fate of their child when it is unlikely ever to develop a serious disease. It might become acceptable, for example, to reveal a foetus's susceptibility to diabetes, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis and cancers, even though it may, in fact, never develop any of them.
At present, serious problems such as cystic fibrosis, Huntington's chorea and Down's syndrome can be detected by either an amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling (CVS). Both tests involve needles entering the womb to collect foetal cells. In a few per cent of cases, this can cause a miscarriage.
Research is going on into two alternative techniques, neither of which would harm the mother or baby. One solution might lie in blood testing, because small numbers of foetal cells leak through the placenta into the mother's blood. Dr David Miller, from the department of clinical medicine at Leeds University, is trying to find a way of separating these foetal cells from the maternal ones. "The problem is that for each foetal cell that leaks out, there are a million maternal cells," he says.
The second possibility is to inspect cells that have dropped from the womb into the woman's cervix. This procedure, known as transcervical recovery, is also being looked at by Dr Miller.
Scientists have already developed a way of screening so-called "test-tube" embryos before they are implanted into a mother-to-be. Dr Joy Delhanty, from University College London, is working with the fertility unit at Hammersmith Hospital, the only hospital in the UK licensed to screen embryos. The team tests for both life-threatening conditions, sex-linked problems such as haemophilia, and susceptibility to cancer. "It is slightly different from prenatal screening, because the pregnancy hasn't started," says Dr Delhanty. "We test lots of embryos and then the mother can choose the healthiest."
She does not think that scientific developments will lead to a stampede by parents anxious to chart their child's future health. "Most families will not be affected by a whole spectrum of diseases, so testing will probably be restricted to those most likely to develop," she says. "Also, the cost implications for screening every baby are enormous."
Professor Nicholas Wald, a prenatal screening expert at Bart's Hospital Medical College, agrees: "We have the technology to mass-screen for cystic fibrosis but we don't do it. So why should we do it for anything else?"
Thousands of men who cannot produce fully-formed sperm could soon be able to father children. Doctors have developed a method of extracting spermatid a form of pre-sperm from the testes and then injecting it into the egg in a laboratory dish. The fertilised egg is then returned to the woman's womb to develop into a baby.
Last month, the technique resulted in the birth of a healthy baby girl, Susan Louise Oxburgh, whose parents live in Aberdeen. Dr Simon Fishel, scientific director of Nottingham University's non-profit-making research and treatment unit in reproduction (Nurture), who pioneered the technique, says he now hopes to conduct trials involving more than 100 couples whose only hope of having their own child is spermatid injection. He is awaiting approval from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.
Dr Fishel believes that spermatid injection is far more revolutionary than traditional test-tube baby treatment. "In nature, this form of pre-sperm was never intended to fertilise the egg. The technique is about as invasive as you can get," he said.
One in six couples suffer from infertility and in about half the cases it is the male partner who has the problem. Last year about 3,000 babies were born in Britain as a result of treatments using donor sperm. "About 95 per cent of men whose infertility is now being treated using donor sperm could actually have their own genetic child," said Dr Fishel.
Spermatid injection is not available on the NHS and each treatment will cost almost £3,000. Scientists at Nurture hope that it will prove as successful as a technique known as ICSI, intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection, in which a single sperm is selected and injected into the egg in a laboratory dish. The "take home baby" success rate of ICSI at Nurture is now 27 per cent.
Dr Fishel says there were fears that by bringing egg and sperm together so soon, the complex set of checks and balances required to allow the foetus to develop normally might be disturbed. But the fears seem to be groundless; the development of spermatids into fully-formed sperm seems mostly to involve its development of a tadpole-like tail to help it to reach the female egg in the uterus.
Within the next 18 months, Dr Fishel and his team hope to achieve human pregnancies using an even more controversial method. This uses an even earlier form of pre-sperm called the spermatocyte. Scientists in Hawaii have recently reported the birth of normally healthy mice by injecting spermatocytes directly into mice eggs.
Dr Fishel estimates that about 7 per cent of infertile men produce only spermatid, and that a possible further 7 per cent produce only spermatocytes.
VERDI'S DON CARLOS reviewed by Michael Oliver
Verdi wrote Don Carlos for the Paris Opera, which insisted on five acts of scenic magnificence, with a compulsory ballet in the third. He outdid himself, but also miscalculated: the opera was vastly too long and had to be savagely cut. Five versions exist. The longer ones are too long for most theatres, but the shorter ones drop vital stitches from the plot.
It is essentially a fated triangle; Elisabeth de Valois and Don Carlos of Spain are in love, but for political reasons she must marry his elderly, widowed father, the tyrannical Philip II. But its other themes the loneliness of kingship, religious intolerance and the power of the Inquisition, heroic friendship were not inessentials to Verdi, and a recording can more easily do justice to them than any but the most lavish (and hugely long) stage production.
Of the nine recordings currently available, four use Verdi's final, five-act revision. Two others prefer a version, also sanctioned by him, that entirely removes the beautiful Act I. The three oldest recordings, although all of them feature fine singers, are so heavily cut that they seriously damage the musical drama.
Claudio Abbado's five-act version (DG 415 316-2, £44.95) has a supplement, which stretches the set to 4 CDs. It contains the ballet music that Verdi wrote for the original Paris premiere no other recording includes this and five of the other scenes that he cut and never replaced.
The best of the conventional five-act recordings are both starrily cast and strongly conducted. Sir Georg Solti's version, with Renata Tebaldi, Carlo Bergonzi, Grace Bumbry, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Nicolai Ghiarurov (Decca 421 114-2) is powerful, full-voiced, spectacularly recorded and rather hard-driven.
Carlo Maria Giulini (EMI CDS 7 47701-8) is no less epic, but finds room for grace as well. His cast is no less splendid Montserrat Caballe, Placido Domingo, Shirley Verrett, Sherrill Milnes and Ruggero Raimondi and if you want the standard five-act score without ballet, his version is richly satisfying. A more recent recording, by James Levine, is on the whole rather under-characterised and over-emphatically conducted.
Of the four-act recordings, the most recent is again unsatisfactory (Riccardo Muti, wildly hyperactive; even Luciano Pavarotti sounds rushed at times). Herbert von Karajan's second attempt (his first was severely cut) is so well sung, by the likes of Mirella Freni, Jose Carreras and Agnes Baltsa, that the listener misses the absent Act I all the more poignantly (EMI CMS 7 69304-2 mid-price).
Abbado's "more-than-complete" version, although expensive because of its four discs, competes with most others in terms of sheer singing (Katia Ricciarelli, Domingo, Raimondi); equals them in flair and passion, and exceeds them in the revelation of what magnificent music Verdi was prepared to jettison in order to reduce his opera to a length the public would stomach.
Recommended recordings can be ordered from the Times CD Mail, 29 Pall Mall Deposit, Barlby Road, London W10 6BL (freephone 0500 418419; e-mail: bid@mail.bogo.co.uk)
Next Saturday on Radio 3 (9am): Ravel's La Valse
Richard Cork continues his guide to the major Cezanne retrospective at the Tate Gallery.
Nothing held Cezanne's lifelong loyalty with more magnetic force than Mont Sainte-Victoire. Surging up from the Provencal countryside near his home in Aix, this battered pyramid of rock was a subject he returned to with obsessive ardour.
The young Cezanne would have clambered across it during long, exalted walks through the landscape with his boyhood friend, Emile Zola. And the adult Cezanne found himself returning to the same motif, setting up his easel to study the mountain from different angles and at varying times of day.
According to local legend, the mountain's name commemorates the victory of Marius over the barbarians in the 1st century AD. When Cezanne painted it in the 1880s, he saw the scene through Poussin's Roman eyes as a harmonious, classical idyll. But by 1897, when he placed his easel in the quarries of Bibemus, the mountain took on a far tougher identity.
It is closer than before, and fills a far greater amount of the picture surface. The quarry face beneath burns in the brazen summer sun, radiating a sense of near-unbearable heat. Compared with the placid green fields that Cezanne had painted in the foreground of his earlier views, these orange cliffs show Provence at its most menacing and primordial.
To judge by the three pines ranged across the foreground, the artist positioned himself far above the quarry floor. So a feeling of vertiginous risk is added to the scene, where a chasm opens up between Cezanne and the mountain beyond. While stressing the weight of these boulder-like cliffs, Cezanne also sees them as a living force. Towards the centre of the painting, they appear to be crushing the slender pine growing between them.
The quarry seems animated by pent-up, seismic forces, and the mountain rears above them like a mighty eruption. Wherever you look, Cezanne's brushmarks are quickened by an awareness of the dynamism pulsing through the earth's crust. Mont Sainte-Victoire has become a Titan on the move.
Cezanne is at the Tate Gallery until April 28, sponsored by Ernst & Young. For advance booking, which is advised, telephone 0171-420 0000.
Tomorrow: Richard Cork concludes his series with a discussion of The Large Bathers, 1906
Rodney Milnes applauds English National Opera's superlative new production of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde at the Coliseum.
There is only one thing more tedious than reading a rave notice, and that is writing one. So I must find something to niggle at in the new ENO Tristan. Well, the Shepherd wears a blind man's dark glasses, something of a cliche now. But given his function as lookout in the doom-laden Act III, it is pretty apt use of cliche.
There is one contentious piece of casting, but that is mostly Wagner's fault. Brangaene calls for a meaty mezzo with a dramatic soprano top. The young mezzo Susan Parry cannot be faulted for spirit or commitment, but this is perhaps a role best given to singers of mature years with nothing to lose. And to say that every word of Andrew Porter's wise and faithful translation is audible would be untruthful (do you ever hear every word in German?). But more than enough came across to justify the principle of opera in the vernacular.
Otherwise, Mark Elder's freshly conceived musical interpretation, David Alden's equally original production by far the most concentrated and disciplined he has yet given us and a series of pole-axing individual performances combine to make this as thrilling an evening as the ENO has given us for many a year.
Elder pays little heed to the Tristan of tradition, that 12-tog duvet of heavy-breathing and ultimately tedious eroticism. He draws his favoured lean, muscular string sound, light on vibrato, from the attentive orchestra, and uses this basis for an ideally clear realisation of the score. You can hear the complex musical thought throughout.
At first the playing and brisk speeds sounded too bracing, even for a first act set on board ship. There was little of the hesitant, breath-catching soupiness often favoured in the love duet; rather, a sweet, smooth-flowing lyricism. But the pain of Act III was nigh unbearable, and Elder's overall grasp of the work's structure became ever clearer: his interpretation was planned and convincingly executed from first bar to last.
The Liebestod, conceived in partnership with Elizabeth Connell's magnificent Isolde, crowned it. Fast, impulsive, brightly sung, this was not portentous "Love-Death" but joyous "Love-Life", a hymn of triumph. Together, Elder and Connell found Janacek's secret of using music to transform disaster into a celebration of the human spirit. It may not be what Wagner had in mind, but what the hell? It sent you home on an enormous high, and there are worse things to do to an audience.
It is as though Connell's whole career had been building towards Saturday's first night. Her singing was steady as a rock, tirelessly radiant, phrased with the pliancy and tenderness born of years of singing Verdi. George Gray, her Tristan, sturdy and a touch phlegmatic early on, gave us beautiful singing in the love duet and rose heroically to the delirium of Act III. Gwynne Howell's King Mark surpassed even his previous performances of the role, with every word telling across seamless musical lines.
Jonathan Summers's tousled, kilted Kurwenal was unsparingly intense, and the casting of first-rate singers in small roles paid off. John Hudson's crystal-clear Sailor got the opera off to a fine start, Christopher Booth-Jones made Melot a major role, and Alasdair Elliot sang the blind Shepherd most beautifully.
The success of Alden's production is based on his actual direction of the singers, always his strongest suit and here highlighted by the absence of design clutter: Ian MacNeil's decor a slightly foxed brick wall is simplicity itself. In the last act the stage is bare save for one chair, leaving the field free for the singers, Wolfgang Gobbel's gorgeous lighting and a series of stage pictures of breathtaking beauty.
This is a Tristan for today, with decades of varnish stripped away, compelling audiences to think about it afresh. For what more can one ask?
Clark Tracey Quartet, Pizza Express, W1
DRUMMER and band leader Clark Tracey could be forgiven for wishing that the critic Whitney Balliett's description of jazz as "the sound of surprise" could be restricted exclusively to matters musical.
However, like the true professional he is, he reacted to the sudden unavailability of his quartet's young trumpeter, Gerard Presencer, by arranging for one of the UK's strongest soloists, saxophonist Alan Skidmore, to take his place at five hours' notice.
Not only that, but Tracey turned the whole situation to his advantage by playing to his unexpected guest's strengths and having him front the quartet in two sets dedicated to the music of John Coltrane.
Tracey, both because of his various outfits' predilection for rousing hard bop, and for his unerring ability to spot and bring on fresh young talent, has frequently been described as Britain's Art Blakey. But on this occasion he assumed the mantle of Elvin Jones, the classic Coltrane quartet's drummer, with relish and aplomb. The quartet was completed by Steve Hamilton on piano and bassist Arnie Somogyi.
As is often the way in jazz, the sheer unexpectedness of the situation caused the musicians' improvisational adrenalin to flow; they launched themselves into their opener, Some Other Blues, like sprinters leaving starting blocks, and never looked back.
Skidmore in particular, scorning the warm-up chorus necessary to lesser mortals, imbued his initial solo with the sort of sinewy, tumultuous vitality more frequently heard in set-closers, and Tracey immediately responded, bringing the rhythm section swiftly to the boil where, give or take a couple of Coltrane's yearning ballads, they remained all evening.
For vibrancy and vigour shot through with a highly affecting spiritual questing, Coltrane's music is unmatched, and Skidmore is arguably his most skilful British disciple. So two sets composed of classic Trane material were simply meat and drink both to him and the band as a whole.
Impressions featured breathtaking interplay between drummer and saxophonist. Resolution, the definitive jazz prayer, drew a solo of rapt, concentrated energy from Skidmore. Mr PC, the perfect fast blues jamming vehicle, elicited a solo of matching, seething power from Hamilton.
Sensibly leavened with the odd earnest, heart-on-sleeve ballad such as Mal Waldron's Soul Eyes and Coltrane's own Lonnie's Lament, this gig may not have been as advertised, but it certainly delivered the goods.
O Isabella!, BAC, Battersea
REMEMBERING no more about poor Isabella than that she watered a pot of basil with her tears, I rummaged around for my Keats and read the relevant poem's LXIII stanzas over lunch to discover what he says about her unusual style of horticulture.
Well, fair Isabella loves young Lorenzo but her proud brothers intend her to marry a Florentine noble, so they lure the handsome Lorenzo into the woods, where they kill and bury him. Lorenzo visits Isabella in a dream and informs her of what has occurred. Out she goes to the woods, digs up the corpse, cuts off the head and, yes, places it in a pot. "And o'er it set Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet."
But really I need not have bothered because the story comes and goes in the first five minutes of O Isabella! You Bad, Bad Girl, an inscrutable 80-minute piece by the Yorkshire-based Alison Andrews Company. The remaining 75 minutes presumably disclose something of Isabella's nocturnal wanderings in, or out of, dreamland.
The setting is a pleasing room of Georgian proportions. Four chairs are placed near the panels but not too near because the four players will be emerging through the panels, each announcing her, or in one case his, name to be Parrot. Parrot? Don't ask.
The players in their black suits or frocks move elegantly around one another; they smile a lot, the man particularly.
Then it is Christmas: lots of presents in gold paper, and a pot aha! in matt black. The tree speaks. It is the family tree. And I am nearly sure that the burden of the dreamer's history is guilt. Bodily functions get plenty of mentions. So, but not often, does the family herb garden.
In the absence of a narrative voice, I could not work out why particular lines (text by Lavinia Murray) were spoken when they were, nor why they accompanied particular movements. Dedicated players, baffling play.
The Rivals, Royal Exchange, Manchester
ON THE programme cover is a close-up of Maureen Lipman looking pained. And well she might. Lipman's Mrs Malaprop has not just picked all the wrong words, she has made a parlous mistake in choosing this production.
Why is Sheridan's Bath, furnished with elegantly spindly Regency chairs, reverberating to a pop-rock version of Purcell? Why does our changeable romantic heroine Lydia Languish finally rush in to become official fiancee to Jack Absolute in 18th-century costume topped with a postwar hat? Wonder on. Maybe Braham Murray, the director, has confused malapropisms with anachronisms.
The bigger problem with this staging is that nobody is truly laughable or lovable. Tony Britton comes closest as Jack's aged yet domineering father, Sir Anthony, testily whacking innocent footmen with his cane because his son is bridling at an arranged marriage. Lipman also has her funny moments as Lydia's gaudily frilled guardian aunt. In her whipped-up wig and double-width bustle, she has traces of an Ugly Sister and Wicked Witch but her humour is not really flourishing.
Stand-up comedian John Thomson, as country bumpkin Bob Acres, brings a short spurt of energy into the spa town, but he runs out of steam. Dominic Rowan as Jack cuts a fine figure in his regimental kit but he is not a natural romantic rogue.
Jonathan Weir, as Faulkland, does not get the funny side of his character. Annabel Mullion is too mature for Lydia, who is supposed to be just 17.
There ought to be both more humour and more passion. This is a portrait of polite society, fevered with love and rage. At least Sheridan's comic rhythms the lovers blowing hot and cold, the crescendos of bad temper survive. Still, if these are the pleasures of Bath, I would prefer an icy shower.
Sweet Panic, Hampstead
In David Hare's excellent Skylight, soon to move to the West End, a leading character launches into an impassioned defence of slum teachers, social workers, probation officers and others who, while mocked by the public at large, "do what nobody else is willing to do, try to clear out society's drains". Nowhere in her list of unloved professions are child psychiatrists cited but, on the evidence of Stephen Poliakoff's fascinating new play, they certainly should be. For Clare, the shrink played by Harriet Walter, there are days when it feels as if people are not just waiting for her to clean the sewers but hurling the contents in her face.
Take the day that she enjoys in the play's second half. Her most imaginative client does a runner. A young man she sees as her greatest success assaults her. Her monomaniac lover rages at her for not attending his lecture on London buses. Her usually withdrawn secretary suddenly attacks her for insensitivity to the wishes of parents. And a barmy, vindictive mother lures her into the car park beneath Marble Arch and ... but you will not wish me to give away the fun in store in those concrete catacombs.
It is a rich, finely written play that gets a bit confusing and implausible towards the end but always grips. As often with Poliakoff, many of the characters are odd, alienated, needy, obsessed. Some project their need, obsession, guilt, paranoia and failure onto Clare herself, most obviously Mrs Trevel, the self-styled "mother from hell" played with a wonderful mix of uptight preciosity and genteel menace by Saskia Reeves.
Clare has the ill-luck to be out of town when the 11-year-old son of this wildly over-protective woman goes missing. He is soon found, but irrational indignation has transformed Mrs Trevel into a blend of avenger and stalker who persistently turns up unannounced vowing to wreak professional ruin. Not until she has got Clare to confess her own helplessness and panic does she relent and revert to the relatively sane person she presumably is; or so I interpret a climax that might be clearer if Poliakoff were not himself directing.
Certainly, he seems to be attempting some tricky things. Having seduced us into seeing everything through Clare's eyes, he wants us to see Clare through Mrs Trevel's: arrogantly faking a confidence she does not possess. However, he manages neither to bring off that transition nor to broaden the play's scope as he would wish. There is a lot of talk about the danger of retreating into a romanticised past and the difficulty of coping with a baffling future; but Poliakoff only sporadically makes us feel those ideas.
Yet it is a joy to re-encounter a droll, off-beat talent absent from the stage for far too long. Who else would bring on a father who solemnly unpacks a briefcase full of vegetables, then makes a psychiatrist taste the soup his company has made from them, all to prove he is not the idiot he suspects his son says he is? Who else would ask Walter both to convey the vulnerability and embattled warmth of the character she is playing and to do some very decent impressions of the kids on her couch? It is not only Clare she brings to life, but stolid little George, truculent little Leo, and the evening's unseen heroine, adventurous, creative little Jess.
UNDER the harsh glare of the noon sun, Australian winemakers have been celebrating what they expect to be a record grape crop.
After four years of drought, early estimates suggest this year's harvest will produce 25 per cent more fruit than last year, as much as 830,000 tonnes of grapes much of it for Britain. In the New South Wales Hunter Valley, vineyard owners could hardly contain themselves as they surveyed their thick bunches of succulent grapes in the final stages of ripening.
"We are very excited by what we've got here," said Phillip Ryan, of McWilliam's. "The grapes are very clean and they are certainly a good size."
Just down the road Brian McGuigan, who exports nearly a third of his wine, has already started harvesting some of his grapes for sparkling wine. "We're delighted with the way the vineyard looks, especially after last year's dismal vintage," he said. This year the rain and the sun have arrived on cue, achieving both a bumper crop and quality fruit.
PAUL KEATING, the Australian Prime Minister, emerged marginally ahead of the Opposition leader, John Howard, in a nationally televised debate last night.
Two weeks into a campaign which has hardly set the nation alight, Australian television's answer to the clapometer a wiggly line on the screen reflecting audience responses to the leaders' answers was brought out to add a little pizazz to the lacklustre proceedings.
And the "worm", as it is known, gave Mr Keating a 2 per cent lead over Mr Howard, when the audience was asked whom it would be supporting. Previous opinion polls had put the Opposition as much as 14 per cent ahead of the Government.
The worm showed that Mr Keating scored well during the hour-long face-to-face when he attacked Mr Howard for not spelling out his policies, while the Liberal leader won the audience's support when he spoke about the need to address unemployment.
Australia has 770,000 jobless, and while the national unemployment rate is 8.6 per cent, the number of young people out of work is almost 30 per cent, a figure which represents one of the greatest hurdles facing the Labor Party, if it is to stay in power.
What is clear from the debate is that, with just under three weeks to go before Australians go to the polls on March 2, the result itself remains wide open. Certainly Mr Howard has never suggested a Liberal victory will be easy, but after 13 years of Labor rule even diehard socialists agreed the odds must be in the Opposition's favour.
The two leaders did agree last night to return for another national debate in a few weeks' time. Unlikely, as it is, to set the world on fire, it will be worth watching, if only to monitor the worm.
Stacy Sullivan meets the Bosnian Serb leader in Zvornik, where he has delusions about creating a brave new world.
Radovan Karadzic is a man with delusions. Sitting at a modern riverfront hotel in Zvornik, he speaks about his plans to rebuild the economy of the Serb Republic. He envisages a first-rate university and medical centre in the new city for the Bosnian Serbs.
Dr Karadzic, who has been indicted by the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, described his visions for an ethnically pure fantasy land and denied that any Muslims were massacred when Bosnian Serb forces overran the Srebrenica enclave in July.
"There was no order to kill them. Nobody under my command would dare kill those who were arrested or captured as prisoners of war," he said in an interview with The Times.
An international warrant has been issued for Dr Karadzic's arrest and his Serb Republic is occupied by several thousand Nato soldiers who are empowered by the Dayton peace accords to detain him and hand him over to the tribunal for trial. But Dr Karadzic, accompanied by several armed bodyguards, still roams Serb-held Bosnia and visits Serbia itself.
Last week he drove in a two-car entourage through the burnt-out houses of Zvornik to a hotel where he met a delegation of other Bosnian Serb leaders before driving to Belgrade. To reach there, he passed through the town of Vlasenica, where American troops have set up a base. Nato patrols were present all along the road. Dr Karadzic and his entourage were not stopped.
It is no secret that the Nato troops from the implementation force (Ifor) are trying to avoid a confrontation with the alleged war criminals. When asked what a Nato official would do if he happened on either Dr Karadzic or General Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military leader, a Nato officer said: "I think he might do nothing. I'd be astonished if Ifor soldiers actually detained any war criminals."
Dr Karadzic insisted that he is still in charge of the Serb Republic. "I am absolutely fully involved. Everything concerning the Serb Republic is in my hands," he said. He claimed the low profile he has taken since the signing of the Dayton agreement has nothing to do with the international arrest warrant. "I am extremely busy at the moment. We have to build a new economy. We have to set up a banking system and build university and clinical facilities, as well as housing for 130,000 Serbs," he said.
"I want a free society and market economy. We didn't have a single political trial or political prisoner during 3 1/2 years of war. Our state is a democracy and we did not commit a single crime."
The Serb Republic had been unfairly vilified, Dr Karadzic said. "We were ethnically cleansed, if you want to know the truth. There are more Serb refugees than Muslims and Croats together, but that was more by events than policy."
Asked why there were still about 30,000 Serbs living in Sarajevo and virtually no Muslims left in the Serb Republic, Dr Karadzic had a ready answer. "Because we did not keep them by force. The Muslims are keeping the Serbs by force. They are ethnic hostages."
Dr Karadzic denied that his army set up detention camps across Bosnia in which tens of thousands of Muslims were imprisoned, tortured and killed. "This is terrible propaganda. The Muslims have killed so many Serb civilians."
Although Dr Karadzic is convinced of his innocence, he has refused to go to The Hague to answer the allegations against him. "If The Hague was a real juridical body I would be ready to go there to testify or do so on television, but it is a political body that has been created to blame the Serbs," he said.
Dr Karadzic said he welcomed the new peace in Bosnia but said the international community had made a mistake in Sarajevo.
"If they had split Sarajevo into two, one half for us and the other for Muslims, Sarajevo would not become a Tehran. If we leave Sarajevo, there will be 1 1/2 million Muslims and no European Christian culture, and we will be subjected to fundamentalism."
TWO Russian military bases are to be investigated this week by a British arms control inspection team searching for violations of an international treaty which is causing friction between Moscow and the West.
Although Russia is committed to implementing the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, signed by 30 countries in 1990 and enforced since 1992, Moscow is insisting on keeping more tanks and heavy guns in the North Caucasus than is permitted under the agreement.
The British team has warned Moscow of its proposed arrival later today but without notifying the Russians of the bases selected for inspection. Codenamed Operation Finbar, the random check by an 11-strong team is part of the Western effort to ensure that Russia is complying with the conventional arms reductions agreed under the treaty.
Unprecedented access granted under the treaty will enable the British officers and non-commissioned officers to inspect and photograph any of the "treaty-limited equipment" found at the two bases. The Russians have borne the brunt of the equipment destruction demands laid down by the treaty and have eliminated more than 10,000 items in the five categories main battle tanks, artillery, armoured combat vehicles, attack helicopters and combat aircraft. They have also destroyed 7,000 more items of equipment east of the Urals, a region which is not covered by the treaty.
By comparison, Britain has only had to destroy 200 items, most of which were ageing Chieftain tanks, out of the 31,000 pieces of equipment eliminated by the 30 signatories to the treaty.
Although the Russians have complied with the overall limits set by the treaty and have become increasingly co-operative and at ease with visiting Western inspection teams, Moscow remains adamant that it must have the freedom to deploy a heavy presence of tanks and guns in the North Caucasus where Russia faces its most serious security challenges from former Soviet republics. The treaty sets zonal as well as national limits and Russia is now technically in breach of the treaty, although Western governments are largely sympathetic to Moscow's cry that its security priorities have changed significantly. Last year General Vladimir Semyonov, commander of Russian ground troops, said that a new 58th Army would be set up in the North Caucasus. "The interests of security and the wholeness of Russia must have priority over the articles in this treaty."
However, the British inspection team from the Joint Arms Control Implementation Group (Jacig), based at RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, is not involved in the politics of the treaty's enforcement. Their job this week will be to ensure that the appropriate number of items from the five categories are located at the two bases selected for inspection and to report any violations. Headed by Lieutenant-Colonel Henk de Jager, a Royal Marine, the Jacig team will carry no weapons, but will be equipped with a satellite-linked global positioning system.
Two disputes have again exposed the inability of European states to take charge of security in their own backyard and have attracted criticism from senior US officials.
SEVEN weeks before the European Union starts revamping the Maastricht treaty, the 15 member states have given themselves a fresh lesson in their inability to take joint charge of security in their own backyard.
Bungling in the Balkans and the confrontation between Greece and Turkey, averted with United States mediation, have shed light on the emptiness of the grand ambitions of the common foreign and security policy enshrined in the treaty.
The EU's disarray also highlights the huge obstacles to acquiring the diplomatic or military influence to match its formidable trading muscle and economic power. The 15 are to attempt this at the intergovernmental conference to revise the treaty in Turin next month.
The Americans lost no time in rubbing home the message that little has changed since Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State, used to quip that he had no telephone number for "dialling Europe".
When it took the EU a week to step into the row between Greece and Turkey, Richard Holbrooke, the blunt-speaking US Assistant Secretary of State, wondered why the Europeans could not handle a dispute involving one of its members and a Nato member over a tiny Aegean island inhabited only by goats. "While (President) Clinton was on the phone with Athens and Ankara, the Europeans were literally sleeping though the night," he said. "You have to wonder why Europe does not seem capable of taking action in its own theatre."
Britain rejected the US charge as "nonsense" in an angry outburst by the Foreign Office, which noted that the British Ambassadors in Athens and Ankara had been active in trying to defuse the tension.
Officials in Brussels offer multiple excuses for the Aegean failure. One is the absence of government in Italy, the current EU president. Under EU procedures, it is up to the holder of the rotating presidency to take the initiative in foreign affairs and co-ordinate action. Susanna Agnelli, the Italian Foreign Minister, stepped in on Wednesday. Italy's tardiness was seen in Brussels as a warning of what the EU might face at the inter-governmental conference. "There are less than two months to go and everything is drifting," a diplomat said. "If the Italians don't get their act together, we could be in for a mess at Turin."
The buck-passing over the Aegean dispute has been just as evident in the EU's latest embarrassment in former Yugoslavia, where the wars of the past four years cruelly exposed European inability to act in concert. Hans Koschnick, the German EU administrator responsible for the divided city of Mostar, threatened to resign if the EU failed to back his plan for reuniting the Muslim and Croat city. Croatia says the plan breaches the Dayton peace accords and rioters attacked Herr Koschnick's car in Mostar to press the point. The administrator fears that his authority has been undermined by Signora Agnelli, who went to Zagreb, the Croatian capital, talking of a new plan.
For the great majority of states and Jacques Santer, President of the European Commission, the solution is to equip the EU with more centralised authority over its diplomacy. This means scrapping the national veto, often used to block joint action, in favour of qualified majority voting. John Major flatly opposes this and France is unlikely to go along with it, despite President Chirac's pro-European rhetoric. There is wide agreement, however, that with 15 members and more joining, the Council of Ministers is ineffective. "The council has ceased to be a place of negotiation and become a place where you drop in to sign a press release," a senior French diplomat said. French and German officials agree privately with Britain that the big states will never bow to the will of the smaller ones and will hold on to their sovereignty. The lesser members will just "have to come to terms with the reality of geopolitical relations", a British official said.
Stuart Eizenstat, the US Ambassador to the EU, made the point on Thursday, saying the lessons of Europe's failure in Bosnia-Herzegovina had changed nothing. "Key member states do not yet wish to relinquish their prerogatives in the foreign-policy area in favour of a common approach."
Mr Eizenstat urged Nato and the EU to start talking and working together, amid moves to bring the former Communist states into both organisations.
THE Venice authorities will announce this week that La Fenice opera house, which burnt down two weeks ago, is to be restored as it was.
The announcement ends a controversy over whether the funds which have begun to pour in should be used to reconstruct a replica of the 18th-century "gem of Europe" or a new 21st-century opera house.
The decision is a victory for Massimo Cacciari, the left-wing Mayor of Venice, much praised by Venetians as an efficient administrator. Signor Cacciari insisted the day after the fire that La Fenice ("the Phoenix") should be reconstructed com'era e dov'era as and where it was. This was the formula used for the reconstruction of the Campanile in St Mark's Square when it collapsed in 1902.
Venice this week begins its carnival season but it is being held in a mood of sadness and hope. "This is like holding the carnival at the time of the plague", said Maurizo Scaparro, who revived the event in its modern form.
In addition to masked balls in the great houses lining the Grand Canal, there will be a harlequin masquerade ball at the Goldoni theatre, starring the actor Dario Fo, and a concert given in St Mark's Square by the rock singer Peter Gabriel. Signor Fo said Venice was staging a "comic opera funeral" for La Fenice, adding that this was "a symbol of Italy today".
The rebuilding commission includes not only the Mayor but also figures from the discredited Christian Democrat-Socialist administration he replaced after the "clean hands" revolution of 1992. These include Gianfranco Pontel, who chairs the trust which runs the theatre.
There is disquiet over the sweeping powers given to the rebuilding commission and memories of the corruption, prior to 1992 over building contracts in Venice, have been revived. There is also continuing disagreement over whether La Fenice "as it was" means its original 1792 form or includes the additions made after the last fire in 1836.
The cost of rebuilding was put at £133 million two weeks ago, but this has since been scaled down to about £53 million, of which the Italian Government has pledged one-tenth. The rest will come from the appeal funds set up in Europe and America.
Opera experts say the restoration is also an opportunity for La Fenice's company to revive its reputation after criticisms that it had become provincial, beholden to trade unions and generally unworthy of its magnificent home.
Moscow: Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Russian extremist leader, threw a loud and lavish anniversary party on Saturday to launch his campaign for the presidency.
A crowd at the Moscow church where he celebrated his silver wedding anniversary with an Orthodox blessing ceremony was treated to free vodka and pies before Mr Zhirinovsky and his wife, Galina, drew up in a horse-drawn troika. The guest of honour was Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the French far-right National Front, who flew in for the occasion.
The party has already set up an office to organise celebrations for Mr Zhirinovsky's fiftieth birthday on April 25.
IN one of the most intriguing and sensitive currency exchanges ever attempted, the United States Treasury is to unload millions of its new $100 notes which are supposedly counterfeit-proof on Russia.
Great fanfare is preceding the change. Washington has sent more than 2,000 videos explaining the new currency, pictured here, to Russia and the other former Soviet republics. A currency hotline at the US Embassy in Moscow is receiving 200 calls a day.
But utmost secrecy surrounds the shipping of the redesigned money to Russia. The Treasury has not announced a date so far for its introduction, only that it will be before the end of March. Experts say that the Americans have deliberately delayed any decision on when to send the money, or to which airport, to foil any hijack attempts by the powerful Russian mafia. In the economic uncertainty of modern Russia, the $100 note is widely accepted as the hard currency of choice among the mafia and millions of entrepreneurs and hoarders. The Russian Central Bank estimates that between $15 and $20 billion (£9.6 and £13billion) is circulating in US currency, about 80 per cent of it in $100 notes.
The high-anxiety question is how many of the old notes are counterfeit. The Central Bank says up to 20 per cent. Not so, claim agents of the US Secret Service, who track fake money as well as guard Presidents. By their reckoning, for every million dollars that Russians hold in cash only a paltry $80 is counterfeit.
That figure seems scarcely plausible. Even in the US, $100 notes are often looked at askance, such is their reputation as possible forgeries. In the Russian exchange, obvious counterfeit notes will be rejected.
High-tech engravers have laboured for ten years to design the new note specifically to frustrate counterfeiters, especially those in Iran who were said to be flooding the world with bogus dollars to undermine American integrity. The Secret Service's low estimate of fakes in Russia could be simply to corroborate Washington's insistence that reports of the Iranian operation were greatly exaggerated.
The new notes will stay ahead of the technology curve and are intended to outwit the latest laser copiers and scanners that can increasingly mimic the colour of existing notes to near-perfection. The incoming $100 note increases the size of Benjamin Franklin's head and adds features difficult to replicate. They include micro-printing, a polymer thread that glows under ultraviolet light and colour-shifting ink that looks black when viewed directly and green when seen at an angle.
Russian demand for the new notes is expected to be intense. "No one will want any of the old notes for a second longer than they have to," a Moscow currency dealer said.
US Treasury officials admit that they must avoid provoking a rush on Russian foreign exchange outlets which could destabilise the economy. The officials say that the old notes will remain in use and there is no deadline for their expiry.
Sceptical Russians will need some convincing of that. When the rouble was changed five years ago, they were allowed only to exchange a month's salary. Millions who had stuffed mattresses with cash lost their life savings while they slept on them. Becky Lowenthal, a US Treasury spokeswoman, said: "We're stressing that, unlike many countries where notes have been withdrawn, our currency will not be recalled. We would run the risk of instability in some places, especially Russia, if we did that. We're not taking the old notes out of circulation, just replacing them as they come back to the Federal Reserve."
Ms Lowenthal conceded that the new notes would be seen as more desirable, but predicted that withdrawal of the older ones could take many years. This is only the beginning. Within a few years the Treasury will redesign the $50, $20, $10 and $5 notes.
Hong Kong: John Major is to visit Hong Kong next month. But it is feared here that there is little he can do to diminish fears over next year's handover to Peking.
He will arrive in the colony after a a meeting in Thailand of heads of European Union governments, their South-East Asian counterparts, and Chinese, South Korean and Japanese leaders on March 1 and 2. The Prime Minister, in private talks in Bangkok with President Jiang Zemin or Li Peng, the Chinese Prime Minister, is expected to ask Peking to reassure Hong Kong.
HOPE virtually ran out yesterday for 20 people entombed in two vehicles after Japanese rescue workers failed to dynamite a giant boulder that had crashed on to a road tunnel.
Rescue operations were called off until today, by which time the trapped people would have spent two days buried under thousands of tons of rock and mud from a landslide. The slab of rock, 230ft tall and 131ft wide and believed to weigh 50,000 tons, had slid down a mountain and crashed into the Toyohama tunnel on Saturday, crushing a bus carrying people to Sapporo for a snow festival.
The blasting operation was a desperate gamble to reach the victims, 19 in the bus and a lone motorist, on Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido. Relatives agreed to the use of dynamite after efforts to reach the vehicles from either side were thwarted by tons of fallen rock and soil.
Rescue workers, using scanning equipment to poke through debris, said the front and back of the bus were crushed and there were no sounds or signs of movement. They saw the bus driver's hat and one hand but calls to him went unanswered.
A woman was rescued from her car in another section of the tunnel and taken to hospital with unspecified injuries.
SHIMON PERES, the Israeli Prime Minister, last night formally announced his intention of holding early general elections, heralding a divisive campaign overshadowed by last November's assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. The future of the Golan Heights will also be a dominant issue.
With opinion polls showing Mr Peres, who leads Labour, more than 20 points ahead of his nearest rival, Benyamin Netanyahu, leader of the main right-wing Likud Party, campaigning will be hard-hitting. Labour officials said polling would take place in late May or early June rather than October as scheduled.
The depth of emotion which the Golan, conquered from Syria in 1967, engenders among Israelis was demonstrated last week when 60,000 people made a symbolic pilgrimage here to plant new trees in solidarity with the 15,000 Jews who face an uncertain future in their 32 Golan settlements.
Among those planting saplings was Rafael Eitan, a former chief of staff and leader of the ultra-nationalist Tsomet Party. He dropped the first political bombshell of the campaign by scrapping his own bid for the premiership and lining up instead with Likud to form a united "national camp" behind Mr Netanyahu.
"As far as we are concerned, keeping the Golan in Israeli hands will be the central issue," Mr Eitan, a hardliner who once compared Arabs to cockroaches, said. "If we win, the Golan will remain in Israeli hands and the country's security will be safe."
Mr Netanyahu underlined how the disputed peace process will monopolise the campaign. "The public will have to decide between two options, there is no third way," he said. "One option will, without doubt, lead us back to the 1967 lines, divide Jerusalem, forfeit the Golan and found a Palestinian state. The other, ours, will maintain a united Jerusalem, will keep the Golan, maintain security and prevent the founding of a Palestinian state."
While most Labour candidates are ready to hand back the Golan to Syria as the price of peace, the settlers who will be fighting any such move will be quoting the sentiments of Rabin just before the 1992 election which swept him to power.
"Words are not enough about the Golan Heights," he told them then. "We must put them into actions withdrawal from the Golan is unthinkable, even in times of peace. Anyone considering withdrawal from the Golan Heights would be abandoning Israel's security."
Known as "the eyes of Israel", the 700-square-mile plateau looks out over Lebanon and Syria from the snow-covered peaks of Mount Hermon. In the east, there is a strip of extinct volcano extending across a broad Syrian expanse which serves Israel's early-warning and deterrence needs. In the south are the Yarmouk and Rakkad rivers, which cut deeply between the mountains, creating a natural border that is hard to penetrate.
Even those Israelis who argue that handing back the Golan is in the wider interests of the Jewish state, do not deny its advantages.
As one officer boasted, indicating Israel's bristling surveillance equipment: "From up here, we even know who in Damascus has had their appendix removed."
Debby Atoun, a widow and mother of six children, who has lived on a religious settlement here since 1974, argued: "The Golan is the source of one-third of Israel's water. It is much more vital to the security of the state than the Sinai which was given back to Egypt."
The settlers are particularly aggrieved over Labour's
change of heart, as 71 per cent of them voted for Rabin in 1992.
Last night it was announced in Gaza City that Yassir Arafat is to be sworn in today as the first Palestinian President. He received 87.1 per cent of the vote in the January 20 election, against 9.62 per cent for his challenger, Samiha Khalil.
THE editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Le Soir d'Algerie and another journalist were among the 18 people killed by the second of two powerful car bombs which exploded yesterday in Algeria, convulsed by an Islamic insurgency.
The car bomb also wounded 52 people when it went off at about 3pm local time in the Belcourt quarter of the capital, Algiers, and wrecked the building which houses the newspaper and the offices of several freelance journalists and photographers.
Earlier yesterday a car bomb planted in another bustling quarter of the capital, Bab el Oued, had exploded and wounded 41 people. It went off in front of a heavily protected office block, which was severely damaged.
Witnesses to the second bomb said it blew a crater in the ground; its two journalist victims wers Allaoua Ait Mohamed, the editor-in-chief, and Mohamed Dorbhan. Islamic radicals began targeting journalists in May 1993 and 58 have been killed, most recently an Algerian newspaper editor who was shot dead on Saturday.
French television showed dozens of people peering at the mangled wreckage of a small car used to conceal the bomb in the Bab el Oued attack. A woman wearing a headscarf and holding a baby on her hip picked her way through the pieces of concrete.
No one claimed responsibility for either attack, but suspicion fell on Islamic radicals trying to topple the military-backed Government and replace it with strict Islamic rule.
The Government, reacting to the widening violence, clamped down by ordering Algerian newspapers to submit reports on terrorism to a government censor.
A SYNAGOGUE with an elderly and dwindling congregation hopes to ensure its survival by offering thousands of dollars to new recruits.
Shaarey Tefiloh, a 125-strong synagogue in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, is offering $2,500 (£1,600) "welcome presents" to newcomers, with the additional lure of free school transport and help in finding work. In a campaign that may present a lesson to the Church of England's less successful parishes, the synagogue has devised a glossy marketing strategy to help to find new worshippers.
It has placed advertisements in Jewish newspapers and offers prospective worshippers career guidance, housing advice and a welcome from the Mayor of Perth Amboy. It will even secure a meeting with the local bank manager to discuss attractive loan rates. Under the deal, newcomers will be excused $375 synagogue dues for a year. There is no productivity clause: no figure has been set on the number of times newcomers will be expected to attend services.
In the 1970s the synagogue, which was founded in 1898, had more than 650 members. However, a generation was "lost" and the average age of members is now over 65. They admit that unless something radical is done it will probably have to close in a few years.
The novel recruiting drive was started by the synagogue's youngest member, Alan Goldsmith, 48, a shoe shop proprietor, whose grandfather was an early member of the synagogue. "All the other congregants are senior citizens," he said yesterday. "I have very close ties with this synagogue and felt it was time to do something."
The marketing drive is being paid for from an endowment fund. "I argued that unless we used the money on this there would be no synagogue members left to benefit from the endowment, so it would become useless," Mr Goldsmith said.
During the recessionary years, younger men left to look for work, and changes in public attitudes did not suit the respectful tone of the synagogue. Shaarey Tefiloh is an Orthodox congregation. Its members observe the Torah and do not drive on the Sabbath.
Fifteen families, from as far afield as the Midwest, are currently "actively considering" a move to Shaarey Tefiloh. They will receive their welcome money once they have signed the lease on a local house.
"They are pioneers," Mr Goldsmith said. "We just want them to help the community. It is traumatic to make a move to another synagogue and we want to smooth the process for them." The scheme has created some tensions, for the newcomers tend to be more Orthodox than current congregants.
Not to be outdone by the scheme, a rival Jewish Orthodox community in New Haven, Connecticut, is tempting new synagogue members with the promise of $5,000 interest-free loans.
AMERICAN Airlines has warned other carriers that parts of a Boeing 757 which crashed in the mountains of Colombia, near Cali, last December, killing 160 people, may be for sale on the black market.
American sent a letter late last month to airlines that fly Boeing 757s and Boeing 767s, said John Hotard, a spokesman for the Fort Worth-based carrier. The airline also included a 14-page list of parts that might be missing.
The scavenged parts may include both engines, pieces of the landing gear, emergency door slides, high-pressure turbine engine blades and toilets. He was not sure how many parts were taken.
Engines like those on the crashed jet cost about $2 million (£1.3m) each when new, and could bring at least $1 million on the used-parts market.
Meanwhile, pathologists began identifying 72 bodies pulled from the wreckage of last week's Boeing 757 crash, which killed all 189 people on board. In Puerto Plata, in the Dominican Republic, where the accident occurred, the search is still on for the "black box".
PIZZA-EATING, Pepsi-swilling, burger-loving French teenagers are in for a shock. Their elders want them to rediscover la cuisine francaise. As fast-food restaurants sweep across the country, politicians, chefs and personalities are uniting to promote the gastronomic traditions that are in danger of being lost.
Last week, for instance, a Breton youth hostel decided that it needed to tell local adolescents about crepes, the pancake that is to Brittany what haggis is to Scotland.
Announcing his week-long regional gastronomy courses, Gilbert Benetou, the director of the hostel in Dinan, said: "It's a question of awakening children's curiosity and enticing them to discover new flavours other than hamburgers and chips."
The initiative is by no means isolated. Martine Aubry, the daughter of Jacques Delors, recently said that her Foundation Against Exclusion would create its own restaurants in inner cities. These would offer cheap chicken dishes to counter the influence of such giants as McDonald's.
The announcement came amid growing evidence that France's legendary resistance to global trends is on the wane. L'exception francaise the right to be different from the rest of the world is becoming more and more exceptional. A survey of French eating habits showed that households consume less wine, bread and meat than ever before. Consumption of frozen food and takeaway pizzas has risen. According to another study, the presence of teenagers is a powerful incitement to eat non-French cuisine. When maman serves a boeuf bourguignon, the adolescents sulk.
For years, the authorities have tried to reverse the trend by organising a Semaine du Gout a week of taste to remind schoolchildren of their heritage. Every October top chefs and teachers extol the virtues of regional cooking. For five days, teenagers are encouraged to eat snails, steak and cremes brulees. On the sixth day, research shows, they eat a Big Mac.
MICHAEL Jackson staged an eccentric helicopter landing on the football pitch in one of Rio's hillside slums yesterday to film a new video which has provoked controversy with Brazilian authorities.
The American pop icon arrived in Brazil on Saturday wearing an anti-pollution mask and holding hands with two small children who travelled with him from New York. The video, for his latest single, They Don't Care About Us, is meant to highlight the plight of children in poverty-stricken areas of cities. Before coming to Rio, Jackson went to the northeastern city of Salvador, to film with 200 Afro-Brazilian percussionists in the colonial city that was once the slave capital of Brazil. During it, he received a bear hug from a fan which caused him to fall to his knees.
Rio's authorities took legal action to ban him from filming in the filthy alleys of the Dona Marta slum, which is home to 4,000 people. It is perched above the leafy, middle-class district of Botafogo, and has spectacular views of the Sugar Loaf Mountain and the huge figure of Christ the Redeemer.
Marcelo Alencar, the Governor of Rio, said the video would reflect a "negative and damaging image" of the city, especially when it is trying to promote its flamboyant carnival which starts on Saturday.
Dona Marta favela, or shantytown, is a stark reminder of the huge gap that exists between rich and poor in the seaside city, and is a maze of narrow alleys where the scale of drug trafficking and crime are notorious. But a judge finally overturned an attempt by Rio's authorities to refuse the pop star an entry visa after protests from residents of Dona Marta, who said the cash offered by Jackson for the use of their ramshackle huts and beautiful views was "too good to refuse". Some of the houses have been rebuilt with air conditioning, and will be used by Jackson as changing rooms. To protect the star and his entourage, 80 male residents are being paid to act as security guards; and the local association of slum dwellers has been offered $4,000 (£2,500) for the use of the favela.
In the slums where 90 per cent of the population is black, Jackson is a paradoxical figure. "I don't know what to think about a black man who wants to be white. He should be proud of his colour. I am," said eight-year-old Bianca Moura da Silva.
STEVE Forbes, the multimillionaire publisher, appeared to have stumbled in the minefields of Iowa's caucuses yesterday as the battle for the soul of the Republican Party reached a nadir of negative campaigning in advance of the traditional voting process tonight.
Launching a series of bitter attacks on his rivals for the Republican nomination, Mr Forbes blamed the organisation of Robert Dole for "engaging in desperate distortion" to undermine his chances of success.
Mr Forbes said a telephone campaign implemented by Dole supporters had aimed to undermine his candidacy by citing his past comments on abortion, homosexuals in the military and other social issues.
At the same time, he lambasted the Christian Coalition, America's most influential army of religious conservatives and a critical mass thought to include at least 40 per cent of those likely to attend tonight's caucuses. Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition, said Mr Forbes's attack was likely to backfire at the ballot box. "The Republican Party is no longer the party of business, it is the party of the family."
The climax of months of campaigning in the Hawkeye state left Mr Dole increasingly confident of victory in the first real test of the 1996 presidential campaign. The assault by Mr Forbes enabled the embattled Senate majority leader to leap to the defence of the religious Right and deflected his rivals' attention in a series of withering attacks against the heir to a publishing fortune who is said to have spent $20 million (£13 million) on the race much of it on negative advertising.
Conventional wisdom, encouraged by latest polls in the state, suggested that Mr Dole would win but the battle for both second and third places, until a week ago seemingly certain to include Mr Forbes, appeared wide open with at least 19 per cent of voters said to be undecided in the final day on the stump.
The entrance of the publishing magnate has completely altered the Iowa race. Directly flouting Ronald Reagan's stricture never to attack a fellow Republican, a blizzard of negative advertising by the Forbes machine has produced a vituperative campaign and provided a real challenge to Mr Dole, previously seen as a favoured son from neighbouring Kansas.
"Forbes coming in was the equivalent of throwing a stick of dynamite into the mix," said Brian Kennedy, the Republican Party chairman. "It gives us a far more interesting race, even though it is not clear that Forbes is going to be the ultimate beneficiary."
In the long term, the internecine struggle between the candidates in Iowa has only emphasised a lack of certainty among many in the Republican Party that Mr Dole is capable of beating the unchallenged Democratic incumbent at the White House.
The spectre of Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who declined to run last year, still hung like a cloud over meetings throughout the state.
In 1988, Mr Dole won Iowa with 38 per cent of the vote. The wealth of candidates in the present race makes it unlikely he can achieve a similar result again.
WHATEVER the results of today's Republican caucuses in Iowa, the clear winner will be President Clinton.
The Republicans have thrown so much mud at each other that every leading contender has been sullied, and they have offended moderate Americans by pandering so shamelessly to Iowa's powerful religious Right.
Steve Forbes, the publishing heir, has exposed the hollowness of Robert Dole's campaign, though the ageing Senate leader remains by default the party's most likely nominee. Mr Forbes's huge spending has forced his rivals to follow suit, severely depleting their war chests, and his trademark "flat tax" has opened an ideological rift within the party.
As if to rub in his advantage, Mr Clinton flew around Iowa at the weekend, preaching optimism about the future, looking distinctly presidential and transparently enjoying the sight of the Republican bloodbath below him.
He is unchallenged for the Democratic nomination and has about $36million (£23.5 million) to spend on attacking whichever Republican eventually emerges as his opponent. A new poll yesterday put him 17 points ahead of Mr Dole and 18 ahead of Mr Forbes.
Mr Forbes fired the first shots with some strikingly negative commercials and his rivals retaliated, producing the absurd spectacle of Republican millionaires waging class warfare on a multimillionaire.
"This is a demolition derby. We have gone over the edge. The sheer volume, the money, the venom, the distortions it's being done with more money than ever before," lamented Richard Lugar, the Indiana senator who is the only candidate to have shown restraint.
Voters are disgusted. "It is the ugliest thing I have ever seen," said one Iowa Republican activist. More significantly, polls have measured a rapid rise in the ranks of "undecideds".
It is a long time until November, but so far things are turning out far better for President Clinton than he could ever have hoped.
Mr Clinton has reluctantly signed legislation that will require the Pentagon to discharge any service members carrying the Aids virus.
The President described the measure as "abhorrent" and, in an unusual move, ordered the Justice Department not to defend the new law in court if anyone sued for wrongful dismissal. His hope is that the courts will rule that the provision is unconstitutional.
However, Mr Clinton rejected pleas by gay rights groups to veto the Bill, explaining that it contained items that for reasons of national security could not be delayed. Those known to be HIV-positive number 1,049 among the 1.5 million service personnel. All have been deemed fit for service, but are barred from combat or serving abroad where monitoring of their condition might be difficult.
SOMEONE somewhere is making a fortune through their inside knowledge of the Clintons' foibles, and Washington is frantic to know who.
The anonymous author of Primary Colours, a wicked roman a clef about President Clinton's 1992 campaign, has just sold the film rights for more than $1 million (£667,000) and the paperback rights for $1.5 million. The hardback has shot to the top of the bestseller lists and every Washington bookshop has sold out. However, a month after the novel's publication the author's identity remains a mystery.
The frenzy is building, with speculation consuming entire radio and television programmes. Chat-show hosts are gathering suspects in their studios, only to receive blanket denials. The Washington Post has set up a hotline for tips. Enterprising journalists have even conducted "on-line" computer interviews with the author, but he or she rejects all "autobiographical" questions.
Some in this status-conscious city are discreetly seeking to have their names added to the mix while Christopher Hitchens, a British journalist who writes for Vanity Fair, has mischievously held booksigning sessions.
Even Mr Clinton has now joined the game, calling it "the only secret I've seen kept in Washington for three years", but the most extraordinary aspect of the whole affair has been the reaction of the President's aides.
The novel paints a shocking picture of a glib, lecherous Southern Governor whose ruthless wife keeps his White House campaign on course, but not one of Mr Clinton's campaign veterans has yet denounced it. On the contrary, their common reaction has been to express amazement at its verisimilitude, insisting it could have been written only by an insider.
Harold Evans, the publisher and former Editor of The Times, claims not to know the author's identity. The copyright belongs to an untraceable Machiavelliana Inc. The book is dedicated to "my spouse, living proof that flamboyance and discretion are not mutually exclusive", but the torrent of speculation has yet to produce a consensus even on the author's sex.
A safety investigation was under way after the 10pm InterCity train from Euston to Manchester split in two as it travelled through Staffordshire on the West Coast line last Friday. Inbuilt safety devices halted the train.
A documentary on Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle has been abandoned because royal aides objected to Thames Television's focus on human aspects of their history rather than the buildings and their art collections.
Alan Beattie won his fifth world jousting championship in New Zealand. Mr Beattie, from Cowesby, who uses the title Alan of York, lectures on marketing, business studies and how to join the emergency services.
A woman could be sheltering Victor Farrant, 45, the rapist wanted in connection with the murder of Glenda Hoskins in Portsmouth. Detective Superintendent David Hanna said: "We would hate to think another serious crime could be committed."
MORE than 4,000 protesters attended a rally yesterday against the Newbury bypass. Friends of the Earth, which organised 40 coaches to transport demonstrators from across the country to Berkshire, said it was the biggest anti-road protest in Britain.
The march took place along a two-mile stretch of woodland, heath and water meadows earmarked for the northern stretch of the proposed route through Snelsmore Common. It ended with a rally where speakers, including local businessmen, were delayed for more than an hour as thousands of people, some escorted by mounted police, gathered for the event. Members of the pro-bypass lobby decided against staging a rival demonstration. Mike James, joint president of the Newbury Society, said: "We did discuss it but decided it would be counter-productive."
Yesterday's protesters included the television presenters Johnny Morris and Maggie Philbin and Sean Blowers, star of the ITV series London's Burning. Miss Philbin, accompanied by her seven-year-old daughter Rose, said: "I felt I just couldn't sleep in my bed unless I got out there and said what I thought. I know Newbury has a desperate traffic problem but I don't want Newbury to be ten years down the line with the same problem, having lost all this countryside."
A spokeswoman for Greenpeace, joint organiser of the rally, said: "The turnout has been incredible. We have had 3,000 people through the train station and thousands more are still on their way. This is the highest number of people we have ever had for an event of this nature."
Thames Valley Police estimated there were 4,000 people on the march, which took place peacefully. "We were very happy with the way it went. There were no arrests or scuffles at all," a spokesman said.
PLANS to involve the private sector in modernising the library service are to be announced shortly by Virginia Bottomley, the Heritage Secretary.
Mrs Bottomley wants to find extra cash to revive the service without dipping into the public purse. A National Heritage Department think-tank is completing plans to let private firms compete to run library services just as they now bid to empty dustbins.
For many years, the service has been vulnerable to cuts when councils look to balance their budgets. Three quarters of library authorities had to make cuts this financial year and, with councils everywhere struggling to keep spending inside budget caps, the year ahead is likely to be tougher.
Substantial capital expenditure is now needed to make libraries capable of meeting their statutory obligation to provide a "comprehensive and efficient service".
The Federation of Local Authority Chief Librarians calculates that £611 million is needed over the next five years to bring libraries in England and Wales up to standard. It will cost a further £500million to connect them to the information superhighway.
With the Government's squeeze on public spending, libraries have no chance of being granted anything like that. The Library Association has applied to the Millennium Fund for £90million to set up the infrastructure and to fund projects for the Internet, but that would not end the shortfall.
To the dismay of the association, which speaks for public libraries, Mrs Bottomley has so far refused to allow money from the National Lottery to be used for libraries and has said that she means to involve the private sector more in providing services.
Ross Shimmon, the association's chief executive, said that contracting-out a council's library services would undermine co-operation between authorities and thus reduce the range of titles and facilities available: "The only way in which privatising can work is by cutting staff, reducing the number of titles and cutting opening hours."
LAWYERS acting for the Princess of Wales have written to her husband's legal advisers to emphasise that she wishes to retain a royal title should they divorce. The Princess's team at Mishcon de Reya wrote last week to Farrer and Co, reminding them of the Princess's wish to remain Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales.
A divorced princess might usually be expected to modify her title from HRH the Princess of Wales to Diana, Princess of Wales. However, as mother of the second in line to the throne, the Princess might be accorded the honour of retaining Her Royal Highness as part of her title.
It is understood that the question is not proving an obstacle to discussions, which are expected to continue for several weeks. "There has been private correspondence between the legal teams on the subject of the title," the Princess's spokeswoman said. "It is not a sticking point."
The Princess said in her Panorama interview in November that she wished to be "queen of people's hearts". Her desire to retain an official title forms part of her strategy to fulfil an ambassadorial role.
A Buckingham Palace spokesman dismissed suggestions that there was pressure for a divorce settlement before the Queen's seventieth birthday in April. "There is no particular deadline for settling this question. The main thing is to get it right," he said.
THE Duchess of Kent told women living in an Indian slum yesterday that Britain was impoverished in comparison with their "wonderful society".
The Duchess, who has been in India since Thursday with the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), of which she is a patron, was visiting a project that aims to provide basic sanitation and hygiene for the people of Kajakpura near Varanasi. She told a group of women sitting on rugs in the dust that in some respects they were rich. "In Britain, we have poverty of a different sort," she told them. "You live in a wonderful society which looks after your relatives. When your people get older you respect them more. In Britain, we do not, so in one way we are poorer. Our poverty is that we do not live in harmony with love." She added: "We have a lot to learn from you." Earlier, the Duchess hugged some of the slum's poorest children, and asked if they were happy. "Yes!", they cheered in Hindi, rushing to have photographs taken with her.
The Duchess has been staying in modern hotels, and is driven in convoy each day to visit Unicef projects.
TONY BLAIR launched a scathing attack yesterday on the Conservatives as the party of privilege and ridiculed their devotion to "a small Tory elite".
Addressing his party's local government and Europe conference in Birmingham, the Labour leader mocked criticism of his plan to banish hereditary peers from the House of Lords and invited Brian Mawhinney, the Conservative Party chairman, to study the antecedents of Lord Brocket jailed last week for a £4.5million insurance swindle before claiming that the country's democratic traditions were in jeopardy.
He said: "The 1st Lord Brocket bought the title from Lloyd George. The 2nd Lord Brocket was one of Britain's leading Nazi sympathisers. The 3rd Lord Brocket has just started five years for fraud.
"Is this really what made Britain great? Lord Brocket not only voted for the poll tax, but spoke in favour of it and, in the course of his remarks, called for a crackdown on lawbreakers."
Mr Blair, who told his party it faced the fight of its life in the coming general election campaign, delivered his sternest warning yet of the dangers of complacency. He said that not a day went by without his MPs or party members telling him that victory was assured. "I find this complacency chilling. Victory will not come to us unaided. No one owes us power because we have been in opposition for 17 years. It is going to be the longest, toughest campaign of our lives."
The Labour leader seized on the collapse of the sale of the London, Tilbury and Southend rail line to a private bidder as another example of government unfairness. "The London to Tilbury privatisation has been derailed by fraud not so much leaves on the line as thieves on the line," he said.
"The widespread chaos is all due to the delayed departure of John Major's Government. The Prime Minister assured us he won't be blown off course. So we can expect a new consortium to bid for the line headed by Ronnie Biggs."
Mr Blair condemned the Government's decision to guarantee rises of only 2 per cent for nurses and claimed that its education, tax and pay policies were similarly designed to help only a minority.
The Labour leader painted a bleak picture of modern Britain as a divided nation, suffering from economic decline and social insecurity: "In the past, each generation was confident their children would do better than they did. Now we fear they won't. We worry about their schools. When they leave school, we worry about their jobs. When our parents retire, we worry about their pensions and when they are old whether their savings will be eaten up in nursing home care.
"The Tories can play the politics of fear, but day after day they are inflicting real fear on the people. In Britain today, parents lie awake at night scared about their children's future."
He said that after 17 years in power, the Tories had shown they were not up to the job. But if Labour could govern for a generation, it could transform educational standards, make a real attack on long-term unemployment, build homes and transport links and modernise the health service.
In the wake of the Docklands bomb Mr Blair warned Sinn Fein that there was no place for violence, or the threat of a return to the bomb, in the Ulster peace process. He said: "Our task now, even in the aftermath of such a shattering tragedy, is to keep hope alive. That cannot be done unless everyone, Sinn Fein in particular, understands one single and unalterable truth. Peace cannot work unless all parties are committed to democratic methods and there is no place in this process for violence or the threat of violence."
NATURE may soon exercise a terrible revenge on the fox that took the opportunity of killing the Queen's flamingos when the lake at Buckingham Palace was frozen. As the miscreant is an urban fox it is likely to become infected with mange, which is reaching epidemic levels in some parts of the country and which is usually fatal in foxes.
Mange is the same disease as scabies, which is comparatively common in humans. Cases are treated every day in genito-urinary clinics.
People would catch mange just as readily as dogs or foxes were it not for our habit of washing, changing our clothes and being rather choosy about those whom we allow to share our beds. Close bodily contact is responsible for the spread of the mite in foxes and in people.
In humans the mite Sarcoptes scabei is so frequently transmitted during sexual intercourse that the resulting skin condition is regarded as a sexually transmitted disease, but it can be spread by any intimate contact and babies who share beds with parents suffering from it frequently become infected as well.
The mature scabies mite burrows into the skin at the rate of 2mm a day, laying as it travels two to three eggs daily. Although the original infecting mite dies after about three weeks, the eggs it has laid hatch, migrate to the skin and continue the cycle. The mite can infect any part of the body.
Only rarely does it attack the face although it readily penetrates the soft skin of the genitalia, the webs between the fingers, the wrists and the inside of the elbows. There is frequently an associated ecezamatous type of rash, which can become infected.
After treating any secondary infection with antibiotics, lotions containing scabicides, such as benzyl benzoate or Crotamiton, will kill the mite but even then it continues to cause itching, which disappears only after about three weeks.
A SCHOOLBOY was suffering from complete memory loss last night, a week after his drink was apparently spiked with drugs at a party in a hotel to celebrate the end of exams.
James Fountain, 16, who police say spoke out against drug abuse, is being monitored at St Luke's Hospital, Middlesbrough.
Police say James, of Hartlepool, Cleveland, is in effect still "tripping" on the effects of the drugs. Tests are under way to establish what was put in his soft drink, but it is believed to have been Ecstasy or LSD.
Last night his parents, Christopher, a solicitor, and Barbara, were continuing their vigil at the hospital. In a statement, they said: "We are incensed by what has happened. He had been looking forward to the evening after having successfully completed his exams. He should have been going on a skiing trip to Italy this weekend with the school. There has been no improvement in his mental condition. He does not know who or where he is."
Floral beauty rescued from the brink of extinction is prize exhibit at Royal Botanic Gardens show.
BRITISH botanists are spearheading a campaign to save some of the world's most endangered and exotic flowers from extinction. Their efforts will be featured at the annual orchid festival at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, west London, which opens on Wednesday.
Kew has perfected laboratory techniques for growing orchids from seed without the symbiotic fungus which the plants require in nature. At present there are 180 species in culture at the micro-propagation unit, many of them rare in the wild.
One of the most prized exhibits at the festival, which runs until March 31, will be the beautiful Epidendrum ilense, whose bamboo-like stems carry pendulous groups of frilly white flowers. Only six plants have been found in the wild, in an area of felled forest in Ecuador. The offspring of one of these was sent to Kew. The species is now well established in cultivation and Kew has distributed hundreds of seedlings to nurseries, orchid societies and other botanic gardens. Reintroduction to the wild may be possible.
Orchids have been grown at Kew for more than 200 years and the collection of about 5,000 species, about 20 per cent of the total number of known orchids, is used for display, research and conservation work.
Sandra Bell, manager of the orchid unit, said: "Destruction of habitat is not the only threat. Orchids have a cachet which other plants do not have and they have been over-collected in many places. Our research shows that seed-raised plants are a perfectly acceptable alternative to those taken from the wild."
Among the most striking exhibits will be bee orchids, native to Europe (including Britain), North Africa and the Middle East. They are so named because they mimic the appearance of female bees to induce male bees to pollinate them. They will be on display from the second week.
Novices will find much to interest them at the festival. Ms Bell said: "We hope to win many more enthusiasts to orchid growing, which is not as difficult as many people think. Anyone can grow them provided they are chosen to suit available conditions."
The flowers can be grown at home on window sills. The most popular and easiest are cymbidiums, especially the miniatures; phalaenopsis or moth orchids; odontoglossums; the near-hardy pleiones; miltonias or pansy orchids; and dendrobiums.
Would-be collectors do not need deep pockets. Many of the plants on sale at the festival will cost no more than £10 to £15. Seedlings grown in glass flasks will be on sale for even less.
The principal displays will be in Kew's state-of-the-art glasshouse, the Princess of Wales Conservatory, which houses plants in ten climatic zones, and in the recently refurbished Water Lily House, where the National Association of Flower Arrangement Societies will arrange orchid blooms. The festival will not only feature Kew's plants but also displays from several specialist nurseries. Ann and Richard Trussell of Whitmoor House, Devon, will be there from the first week, and Ian Butterfield, of Butterfields Nursery, Buckinghamshire, will be there from March 15. Bill Gaskell, of Woodstock Orchids, also from Buckinghamshire, is supplying some of the display plants as well as plants for sale.
A "LAS VEGAS on Thames" casino development on wasteland east of London is being planned by an international consortium of investors including Donald Trump.
The multibillion-pound proposals would create one of the biggest gambling centres in the world and a leisure complex that would dwarf Disneyland Paris. Ideas being considered for the project include luxury hotels, theme parks, an interactive virtual reality entertainment centre, a dolphinarium, even an indoor jungle complete with tigers.
Eight American and Arab investors are said to be involved in the plans, which are at an early stage. Mr Trump is believed to have visited London to inspect the site last month.
The consortium is eyeing a 10-mile swath of derelict factories, overgrown wasteland, marshland and railway sidings stretching from Stratford to the M25 crossing at Dartford. A vast European market would be brought within easy reach of the casinos by the construction of the Channel Tunnel rail link.
The proposals depend on a station being built at Stratford for the high-speed link. London is seen as the ideal location for the first Las
Vegas-style development in Europe because the success of the National Lottery could lead to a relaxation of attitudes towards gambling in Britain. The gambling project could take a decade to complete.
MARINE experts are celebrating the world's first successful breeding of seahorses in captivity. After months of anxious waiting, aquarists in Weymouth, Dorset, discovered hundreds of miniature seahorses being born in their specially designed breeding tanks.
The births are the latest development in a chain of events which has led to the return of the tiny creatures to British waters after an absence of nearly a century. The proud parents are among seven seahorses caught in the nets of local fishermen in the space of a few weeks last year. They were shared between the Sea Life Centre in Weymouth and the Seahorse Aquarium in Exeter and the youngsters were born at both sites within hours of each other.
A previous attempt was made in Holland but the young all died within minutes of being born, and this is the first captive breeding programme involving the Hippocampus ramulosus family to succeed.
The male seahorse carries the young after the female has laid its eggs in its partner male's breeding pouch, where they slowly develop before emerging as tiny replicas of their parents.
Robin James, a biologist at the Weymouth centre, said: "Until about three years ago no seahorses had been recorded in British waters for decades. The plan now is to return half of the captive stock to the wild to boost the fledgeling colony while the rest remain at the park to form a captive breeding nucleus for the future."
LEADING academics said yesterday that English A-level syllabuses which allowed schools to avoid virtually all pre-20th-century literature were creating alarming gaps in the reading of students arriving at university.
Professor Martin Dodsworth, who is chairing the official assessment of university research in English, called for an A-level review to revive the study of works from the 17th and 18th centuries in particular. Apart from the obligatory Shakespeare play, many students have read nothing written earlier than the mid-19th century. Other English dons supported Professor Dodsworth, some arguing that the malaise has spread to university courses. Dr Roger Knight, the chairman of the English Association, said modular courses left undergraduates scratching the surface of classic works.
The debate over whether to include a canon of literature in the national curriculum split academics and teachers. Government advisers settled on a compromise which left schools to draw from lists of authors which included poetry, prose and drama from previous centuries. At A level, however, the selection of texts is in the hands of the examination boards. Virtually all syllabuses include pre-20th century writers, including Shakespeare, but increasing flexibility in the examination gives schools the option of concentrating on modern works.
Professor Dodsworth, a former chairman of the English Association who lectures at Royal Holloway College, University of London, said: "We find that quite promising applicants have read nothing earlier than Thomas Hardy, and that is not good enough to provide a background in the language. I am not saying that 20th-century texts are worthless, but their very accessibility means that students are not being stretched and are getting no sense of the historical range of writing."
Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy or Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews were among the 18th-century classic novels Professor Dodsworth feared were no longer being read. "Even Jane Austen, for all her exposure on television, does not feature as frequently as before."
Dr Knight said the English Association was increasingly concerned about the effect of modular degrees, as well as A levels, and was likely to devote a conference to the issue next year. Graduates he had interviewed for teacher-training places at Leicester University had studied few authors in depth.
Dr Knight said: "It is ironic that there has been an attempt to reassert the place of classic works through the national curriculum, but there are these gaps among the older, specialist clientele. I think there is general agreement among academics that there is a serious problem."
However, Anne Barnes, the chief executive of the National Association for the Teaching of English, said she believed schools and examination boards were providing balanced courses at A level. "The 18th-century novels may be an exception because they require a blend of maturity and time that is easier to find at university, but the trend is no longer just towards modern literature," Ms Barnes said.
"A-level courses vary enormously, and some allow schools and colleges to go for the most popular texts, which tend to be modern. But the Brontes, for example, are read all the way through school, and most students are getting a balanced perspective of literature, starting with Chaucer."
The February session of the General Synod, which opens today at Church House, Westminster, will debate plans for a more efficient management structure for the Church.
THE Archbishop of York called yesterday for a return to the basics of education. The results of recent national tests were "pretty depressing", said Dr David Hope. Children were being cheated of the education they deserved and of "any kind of worthwhile employment in the future".
In his first important policy statement since he succeeded Dr John Habgood at York last year, Dr Hope said education should have a clear moral and spiritual dimension.
Preaching at York Minster at a service to mark Education Sunday, Dr Hope said: "It was only at the beginning of this last week that the Chief Inspector of Schools drew attention to the fact that standards of pupil achievement are not what they should be, either in primary or in our secondary schools."
Dr Hope, who is visiting a school each week in his new diocese, and who visited 70 schools in his first two years as Bishop of London, is likely to speak soon on the subject in the House of Lords. He has been alarmed by the number of industrialists and businessmen who have told him that many school-leavers applying for jobs were unemployable.
Blame for poor standards was being apportioned variously to teachers, parents, governors, the Government and the Church. "The political parties vie with each other to the extent that education has become altogether too much a political football," he said.
He gave warning of the possibility of thousands of children emerging as unemployable because they had been denied basic educational skills. All parties should abandon their war of words and "engage in a partnership of interest, irrespective of party or any other kind of dogma".
Dr Hope praised schools that had introduced covenants between parents, pupils and teachers, although unwritten agreements had always existed in schools. The archbishop is also concerned at the large numbers of clergy who are relinquishing their traditional roles as chairmen of church school governors.
A SERIES of baffling puzzles and brain-teasers invented by Lewis Carroll to amuse Victorian children and Oxford mathematics dons has been unearthed by a school inspector. Edward Wakeling, who is also a Carroll scholar, says that the author intended to publish a book of puzzles but the demands of more serious writing prevented him from doing so.
The puzzles, which range from children's riddles to more abstruse logic problems, have been garnered from unpublished letters, Victorian magazines and the family archive of Bartholomew "Bat" Price, Carroll's mathematics tutor at Christ Church, Oxford. The conundrums were used by Carroll, himself a Christ Church mathematics don, to test the wits of colleagues, undergraduates and friends such as Alice Liddell, at whose request he wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Carroll, whose real name was Charles Dodgson, used this problem to test the logic of fresh-faced students: If a cat kills a rat in a minute, how long would it be killing 60,000 rats?
Students who calculated the answer by multiplication sums would discover, to their dismay, that in Lewis Carroll's opinion "the rats would more than likely kill the cat".
Professor Morton Cohen, the author of a biography of Carroll, said: "The puzzles contain the humour and whimsy so typical of Dodgson. He wanted children and students to catch on and laugh with him."
This thought is echoed by Mr Wakeling, a professional judge of mathematics teachers who is to publish the puzzles. He believes that Carroll was way ahead of his time in trying to make mathematics fun and enjoyable.
To entertain children, Carroll invented a game called Doublets, first published in Vanity Fair magazine in 1879 and later in a booklet. The object was to link two words through a chain of other words, changing one letter each step of the way. The person who uses the smallest number of links is the winner. The problem is posed in the form of a sentence such as "Make flour into bread". The solution runs: Flour-floor-flood-blood-brood-broad-bread. Other doublets set by Carroll are "Prove pity to be good", "Evolve man from ape" and "Turn witch into fairy".
Even dinner guests did not escape Carroll's passion for puzzles. Viscount Simon, an undergraduate at Wadham College, Oxford, and a Fellow of All Souls, later recalled a problem about two tumblers: "Take two tumblers, one of which contains 50 spoonfuls of pure brandy and the other 50 spoonfuls of pure water. Take from the first of these one spoonful of brandy and transfer it without spilling into the second tumbler and stir it up. Then take a spoonful of the mixture and transfer it back without spilling to the first tumbler."
Carroll's question was: "If you consider the whole transaction, has more brandy been transferred from the first tumbler to the second, or more water from the second to the first?" (Answer at end of article.)
Mavis Batey, who has written two books on Lewis Carroll, said: "The Alice books did not just come to Dodgson/Carroll out of the blue. Wit and invention ran through everything that Carroll did, including mathematics. These days I think he would have had great fun trying to work out a solution to the National Lottery."
When Carroll died in 1898 "Bat" Price, with whom he had shared many of his puzzles, wrote of his pupil and friend: "I was pleased to read yesterday in The Times newspaper the kindly obituary notice; perfectly just and true; appreciative, as it should be, as to the unusual combination of deep mathematical ability and taste with the genius that led to the writing of Alice's Adventures."
Rediscovered Lewis Carroll Puzzles, edited by Edward Wakeling, will be published in April by Constable and Constable. The tumblers? The amount of brandy or water transferred is the same in each case.
A SEARCH by radio telescope of three recently discovered planets has revealed no evidence of intelligent life.
Dr Dan Werthimer, an astronomer from the University of California at Berkeley, said that none of the planets, which are in orbit around distant stars, was emitting any unusual signals. "But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence of extraterrestrial civilisations," he told the meeting.
Dr Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, said that a search of 200 stars in the southern sky had detected many "intelligent" signals, but they had all proved to be man-made, mainly from microwave ovens and automatic garage doors.
After more than 20 years, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has gone private, as Nasa, the US space agency, is no longer prepared to support it. However, private donors are providing enough to extend the search. "So far we've examined only a few hundred stars," Kent Cullers of the SETI Institute said. "By the end of the next decade we'll have examined a million. There's a high probability we will succeed."
Mentally ill people are three to four times more likely to commit violent crimes, studies in New York and Israel have shown. A similar study in Finland shows that schizophrenics are five times more likely to commit murder, or 15 times more likely if they are also alcoholics.
Dr Sheilagh Hodgins of the University of Montreal said that treatment programmes based on the courts were more likely to prevent violence than purely psychiatric-based methods.
ALTHOUGH men's brains are larger than women's, they shrink almost three times as rapidly as they get older. By the age of 40, the part of a man's brain responsible for abstract reasoning and impulse control has shrunk to the same size as the brain of a woman of the same age.
The decline begins depressingly early, Dr Ruben Gur of the University of Pennsylvania told the meeting on Saturday. Even between the ages of 18 and 45, the more rapid loss of tissue from the male frontal lobe is apparent.
Men and women also respond differently to the changes. In men, the use of glucose in the brain a measure of how hard it is working declines more slowly, in an apparent attempt to make up for declining brain volume. But women make no such compensatory efforts, which could have implications for longevity, Dr Gur said.
"Women seem to be able to reduce the rate of neuronal activity in proportion to the tissue that they lose, whereas men continue to overdrive their neurons," he said.
"Women live at least a decade longer than men, and part of the reason could be the reduced brain metabolism. If you overdrive cells you get cytotoxic (cell-killing) effects."
Dr Gur used magnetic resonance imaging to measure the brains of 24 women and 37 men, and positron emission tomography (PET) to study their glucose metabolism. This showed that when men relax, they do so in a different way from women. When Dr Gur's volunteers were asked to lie down and relax in the PET scanner for half an hour, men had much higher activity in the part of the brain controlling movement and aggression, whereas women's brains were more active in the part governing emotional responses such as body language, facial expressions and speech. Dr Gur's interpretation is that when relaxing, men activate those parts of the brain that serve functions they do well, while women think about other things, not just those they do well.
A REGULAR visit to church is good for you, a survey sponsored by the United States National Institute of Ageing has discovered. Older people who go to church regularly gain mental and physical benefits, Dr Harold Koenig, of Duke University, told the meeting.
The same benefits are not enjoyed by those who pray at home, suggesting that it is the social interaction and the religious ritual of worship in church that make the difference. "Church-related activity may prevent illness both by a direct effect, using prayer or scripture reading as coping behaviours, as well as by an indirect effect through its influence on health behaviours," Dr Koenig said. "For example, active religious participation may indirectly prevent health problems due to poor diet, substance abuse, smoking, or unsafe sexual practices, because these activities are discouraged by most religious groups."
The results came from a study of 4,000 randomly selected older people in North Carolina. The study found higher rates of depression among those whose only religious activity was watching religion on television.
A MAN escaped with only minor burns after being rescued from a vat of hot tar. Michael Tuck, 36, was at first thought to have suffered critical injuries after being submerged in a 12ft-deep tank inside an empty factory at Clay Cross, Derbyshire.
A fireman was lowered into the vat to tie a rope to Mr Tuck's waist as he fought to keep his head above the surface. Sub-Officer John White, another officer at the scene, said: "He was covered in hot tar from head to toe. It was like something from a horror film. His feet could just touch the bottom of the tank but the tar was clogging his clothes and dragging him down."
The factory was closed for the weekend but, by chance, a security guard visited that part of the premises. The guard threw a chain down to Mr Tuck after hearing his screams but was unable to pull him from the vat. The fireman who volunteered to go into the vat was named last night as Stephen Clark, 32.
Sub-Officer White said: "During the rescue operation, Mr Tuck went under two or three times and I thought we had lost him. We put a ladder down and with Stephen's help we got him out. The tar was so hot you could feel it burning your flesh."
It was not clear what Mr Tuck, of Tupton, near Chesterfield, was doing in the factory at the time. He was being treated last night at the burns unit at Nottingham City Hospital.
TEENAGE offenders in Britain's first two "boot camps" will wear uniforms under proposals for army-style discipline and training. One is to be set up in the grounds of the army "glasshouse" at Colchester, Essex, and up to 30 young men will be under the control of military staff from June.
Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, has overcome reservations within the Ministry of Defence about his plan to put young offenders in the Military Corrective Training Centre in Colchester and will announce the details shortly. However, proposals for the Army to be allowed to recruit among the young offenders sent to the camp have been abandoned.
Mr Howard has won the support of Michael Portillo, the Defence Secretary, for the creation of the camp. It is understood that part of the training centre will be declared a young offender institution, to be operated under civilian law.
The camp at Colchester, and another unit, for 60 men, at Thorn Cross, near Warrington in Cheshire, will open this year as part of Mr Howard's drive to provide a tougher regime than at existing young offender institutions. Offenders sent to the units will be required to wear uniforms but will be allowed to put on private clothing as a privilege to be earned by good behaviour. A Whitehall source said: "Uniforms are part and parcel of the package. It will be a strict regime, run by the military."
The camp at Colchester will be in a wing separate from the rest of the centre and offenders will be held under civilian law rather than Queen's Regulations. Thirty young men, aged 17 to 21, will be subject to a strict military-style regime, including marching in step when they move around the camp, addressing instructors as "sir" and undertaking physical training.
Under plans being drawn up in Whitehall, the day at Colchester will begin at 6am, with an 8.15am parade followed by training in subjects such as carpentry. There will be later parades, with lights out at 10pm.
The regime at the camp in Thorn Cross will be more relaxed and will emphasise training, education, addressing offending behaviour and improving social skills rather than US-style physical exercises and barrack-room type instructions. Ministers want to be able to compare the different regimes, to see what works bests for improving the behaviour of young men and whether the tougher approach can turn them from criminal behaviour.
VICTIMS of the world's biggest multiple lightning strike were left with odd skin markings and have shown strange psychological effects since they were injured five months ago.
Seventeen people were hit during a pre-season football tournament at Aylesford, Kent. Fourteen of the group were traced by St Andrew's Hospital in Billericay, Essex, the biggest burns unit in Britain. Details of their widely differing injuries were presented to an international meeting in Hong Kong on Saturday.
Jim Frame, consultant plastic surgeon at St Andrew's, said: "It was just like Star Wars whoof and their football kit evaporated. There was nothing left."
Mr Frame said some of those hit had walked away while others suffered heart attacks and had to be resuscitated on the pitch. Many had burns and some had damage to their eyes and difficulty walking. Some later suffered panic attacks, mood swings and depression and one became psychotic. "It is like receiving a huge dose of ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) when a major shock goes through the brain."
Among the curious symptoms the medical team found were miniature haemorrhages on the ends of the toes of those caught in the strike, which they named the tip-toe sign. "It is the first time that has been described," Mr Frame said.
Chris and Jackie Hunt and their two sons had their clothes burnt off their backs and suffered a temporary personality change as one million volts of electricity passed through their bodies.
Speaking for the first time since the incident, Mr Hunt, who coaches a local boys' football team, said: "There was a sudden downpour. The referee told us to run for shelter so we made for the edge of the pitch near a tree where our kit was. I was holding a large fishing umbrella and the lightning struck the top of it. It travelled through me to the ground and because there was a lot of water on the ground everyone got hit."
Mr Hunt, 35, a papermill engineer, said he felt locked to the ground and then felt himself falling. He was unconscious for 20 minutes. Mrs Hunt, 36, and their son Thomas, 9, went stiff and fell to the ground and eight-year-old Matthew had a heart attack. He had 17 per cent burns to his back where his football kit had melted.
All the family had small burn holes in the soles of their feet. Mr Hunt's hands, where he had been holding the umbrella, were unhurt. Mrs Hunt was paralysed from the waist down for two hours after the strike and had curious symmetrical marks on the skin beneath each breast, possibly because she was wearing an underwired bra.
Jill Webb, a junior doctor at St Andrew's who studied the effects of the strike on the family, said lightning tended to travel across the surface of the body, rather than through it. "That is why people don't get killed. Only if it breaches the skin can it cause internal damage, burning muscle and internal organs."
About five people a year are struck by lightning in Britain. Dr Webb said the best advice in a thunderstorm was to move away from a high point and lie down. "You don't want to be the tallest object in the area," she said.
The safest place to be is inside a car, sitting away from the sides so the charge travels over the surface and through the tyres to the ground. Tyres are good conductors, especially on wet roads.
Lightning is one of nature's most spectacular and deadly forces. The key components include raindrops which split once they are about the size of a tiny pea, Each half becomes charged.
These drops can be repeatedly wafted upwards and, as they fall, redivide, acquiring more charge. Eventually the natural insulating properties of the air are overwhelmed and a lightning flash is triggered, following the line of least resistance to the ground. It can take less than a tenth of a second to reach ground and can strike with such force that rock is melted. Sheet lightning occurs when the spark flashes between clouds. Summer, or heat, lightning is when a bolt a long way off is reflected by the clouds.
A MOTORIST died yesterday after being beaten with a baseball bat when he was stopped at night by the driver of another car.
Peter Gareth Swales, 39, was attacked when he got out of his car to talk to another motorist who had flashed his lights at him in an unlit country lane. The man clubbed him repeatedly over the head, but police have been unable to find the murder weapon or establish a motive. West Yorkshire Police said they were ruling out a "road rage" attack.
Mr Swales had been driving two friends home from a night out in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, in the early hours of Friday morning when the incident took place in Fitzwilliam, about five miles from his home in Featherstone. The area was, until recently, part of a large coal-mining community consisting of pit villages linked by country roads.
Mr Swales suffered head injuries and had emergency brain surgery at Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield. He never regained consciousness and died yesterday.
Detective Constable Alan Lightfoot said: "We are baffled. There appears to be no motive. It was an unprovoked and vicious attack upon an innocent person."
An incident room has been set up at Wood Street police station in Wakefield.
‘We have lost a brother, a son and a family friend. We hope that these losses are not in vain'.
THE family of a newsagent killed in the IRA bombing spoke out yesterday to condemn violence and defend the peace process. Inan Ul-Haq Bashir, 29, whose body was recovered from the wreckage in Docklands, east London, 22 hours after the explosion, took the full force of the blast in his newspaper shop.
Mr Bashir's family said in a statement issued via police last night: "We have lost a brother, a son and a family friend. We hope that these losses are not in vain."
The family, who live in Streatham, southwest London, asked Inspector Paul Riordan to read the statement on their behalf. He said: "They would like to condemn the bombing. They wish to voice their support for the elected Government of this country and they hope the peace process continues."
John Jefferies, 31, Mr Bashir's assistant, also died in the bombing. Mr Jefferies, from Bromley, southeast London, dreamt of becoming a musician. His father, John, 68, a retired carpenter, spoke of his anger at the murder of his son: "He is my only child and since his mum died, he's all I've got. If I could take a gun to Gerry Adams and his mob, I would blow them away."
Mr Jefferies had tried in vain to find his son after the blast on Friday evening. "I went to Canary Wharf to see if he was on the list of casualties but he wasn't."
More than 100 people were injured in the explosion at 7.01pm, just as office workers were leaving for the weekend. Five victims were still in hospital last night, including a 55-year-old Moroccan man who is critically ill.
Zaoui Berrezag, who was employed to clean at the Midland Bank, sustained serious head injuries and is under sedation at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, east London. Mr Berrezag was in his car near the centre of the blast at South Quay. His son, Farid, 17, who was injured by flying glass, was recovering in another ward at the same hospital. Mr Berrezag's wife Jamma spent yesterday at the hospital.
The Royal London Hospital said: "Mr Berrezag is in intensive care and very critical. He's stable but his injuries, mainly to his head and face, are extensive and substantial. The family are very distressed. They have been with him continuously."
A 23-year-old woman, who was hit in the face by flying glass, was recovering well after surgery to her right eye at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, on Saturday. Barbara Osei, a cleaner, will be scarred but doctors hope that her sight has been saved.
Samantha Herbert, 17, who is eight months pregnant, was sent home from hospital after ultrasound scans showed that her baby had been unharmed by the blast, which had thrown her to the ground.
Tony Sharp, 34, an office worker, was recovering in hospital yesterday from injuries caused when his computer exploded in his face. Mr Sharp had been evacuated from his office almost next door to the site of the blast, but was told to return half an hour before the bomb went off. "The office security man told us to go back in; we thought it was a false alarm," he said.
Mr Sharp, from Blackheath, southeast London, was standing next to his colleague Neville Walker, 31, when the bomb exploded. "We fell down, then got up and rushed out the fire exit. I could feel my face covered in blood and didn't know what state I was in. It was pandemonium," he said.
Despite his injuries, which include a broken nose, glass in his eye and scarring down the left side of his body, Mr Sharp said: "I feel I am one of the lucky ones. I want to say to the families of people lost that I hope everything will turn out OK in the end."
Most of the injuries were caused by flying glass. Dr Austen Smith, senior surgical registrar at the Royal London Hospital, said: "We regularly deal with glass injuries caused by traffic accidents and fights but in this case it was the high velocity of missiles from the blast which has created disfiguring scars on their faces. There were multiple shards of glass and patients have suffered facial fractures and chest injuries," he said.
Father Peter Allen, preaching in the parish church of John Jefferies, who died in the bombing, urged forgiveness of his killers. The Bishop of London, the Right Rev Richard Chartres, said prayers for the dead and the injured at a private service in the Royal London Hospital's chapel.
The bishop challenged Sinn Fein to condemn the bombing. He said the blast had united Londoners and peacemakers everywhere against such a senseless tragedy.
Hundreds picked their way through debris left by the bombing to attend two special services one Anglican, the other Roman Catholic at St Luke's, the parish church on the Barkantine Estate on the Isle of Dogs, closest to the blast, where they heard sermons on healing the wounds left by the atrocity. The Rev Christopher Owens set up a telephone helpline and threw open the doors of the church to those distressed by the explosion.
Colin Parry, whose 12-year-old son Tim was killed by an IRA bomb in March 1993, led a vigil of about 100 people in Warrington town centre. He said: "The news is black and things look bleak but as long as the process carries on there is hope."
THE new head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch had a baptism of fire on Friday. Commander John Grieve, who was due to take up his post today, had barely finished his last briefings with the Security Service when the bombers struck. Within hours he was at South Quay on the Isle of Dogs.
Mr Grieve, 49, who was born in the North East, has been a policeman for 30 years, with experience in the Flying Squad, drug squads and east London. Until last week he was Scotland Yard's director of intelligence, reorganising information retrieval and developing a new computer system.
He now has at his command 97 officers and civilian experts as well as former members of the anti-terrorist branch who can be called from other police work. The branch is recognised worldwide for its expertise in post-attack investigations. Officers advised the New York police after the World Trade Centre attacks. The remit of the unit is to investigate attacks and not to prepare intelligence material. That work is led by MI5 and Special Branch officers on both sides of the Irish Sea.
The branch was recently slimmed down through restructuring and retirements but no long-term decisions have been taken about its future. Sir Paul Condon, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and his senior officers decided to wait and see how well the ceasefire held.
Unusually, for a detective outside fiction, Mr Grieve has distinctive tastes. He knows a lot about Chinese philosophy, is a good hand at miniature watercolours, and is fond like Inspector Morse of poetry and quotation. When his new job was announced he quoted from a speech by Seamus Heaney, the Irish Nobel Prizewinner: "By its very nature the atrocious is always with us. We should always be prepared for the worst and hope for the best."
THE police constable who identified the vehicle carrying the IRA bomb as suspect and helped to evacuate hundreds of people spoke yesterday of the moment when he thought he was going to die.
PC Roger de Graaf, 30, who is based at Limehouse police station in east London, was checking that everybody had left the area around South Quay railway station when the bomb exploded.
The force of the blast knocked him off his feet and he curled up in a foetal position. In the immediate aftermath, PC de Graaf, from Woodford, Essex, looked up to see a car careering towards him. It came to a halt with the bumper touching his back.
The policeman needed five internal stitches and a dozen external stitches to his left eye and he suffered extensive bruising. He insists that he is no hero: "I have done nothing heroic, nothing special, I'm just the one who made the checks on the vehicle and who has a very scratched face."
After PC de Graaf spotted the vehicle he continued clearing people from the area and had almost finished when he heard a "rumble and what felt like a 200mph wind" rushing past his ears.
"I was knocked off my feet and I curled up like a ball," he said. "I thought, ‘I'm going to die now, my time is up'. I looked around, there was a car coming at me, an automatic stuck in gear. The driver was in shock. I thought, ‘I've survived the bomb, I'm going to get run over now'. I managed to roll over and the car stopped as its bumper hit my back."
PC de Graaf, the driver and other colleagues sheltered from the shower of glass, masonry and twisted metal in a concrete doorway. Afterwards he helped to ferry injured colleagues and civilians to the hospital before seeking treatment for himself.
He found time to borrow a mobile telephone and call his pregnant wife at his father's home in Woodford to reassure her that he was safe. The couple have a five-month-old daughter.
Earlier, PC de Graaf, who has been in the Metropolitan force for seven years, had learnt that he had passed his examination to become a sergeant. Then he and a colleague were diverted to the terminal to investigate a bomb alert in the area.
"We checked around the locality as best we could. Most of the cars at this point had gone," he said. "We became aware of this vehicle, we were actually all sort of standing next to it, we said ‘Maybe this one shouldn't be here'.
"We did some checks on it, the results of those checks aroused our suspicions a bit more. At that point we decided if it was going to be anything, that was going to be the vehicle."
SCOTLAND YARD defended its efforts to clear people from the area of the bomb attack after criticism yesterday that its advice had been confusing and contradictory.
The Metropolitan Police said that 80,000 people were in the area of Canary Wharf and South Quay in London's Docklands when the IRA issued a series of warnings that the ceasefire was to end with an attack in the capital.
It said that the calls were imprecise as to the location and timing of the attack. Faced with the risks posed by ordering an evacuation of tens of thousands on to the streets, officers ordered people to remain in buildings and cleared only South Quay station on Docklands Light Rail.
Although the Metropolitan Police received its first warning of the bomb at 17.43, one hour and 18 minutes before the explosion, some people were still wandering around the area a few minutes before the blast. The chronology of events was:
17.30: a number of telephone calls, bearing a recognised IRA code and warning of a bomb, are received by media organisations. Sir Paul Condon, Metropolitan Police Commissioner, says the warnings gave South Quay as the potential target.
17.41: London Fire Brigade receives coded call warning of bomb in the South Quay area.
17.43: warning to fire service passed to the Metropolitan Police.
17.45: call to Irish News newspaper in Belfast warns of bomb at South Quay station. Warning passed to the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Belfast.
17.45: RTE, Irish state broadcasting organisation, receives call saying that the ceasefire is over. At about same time the Metropolitan Police contacts buildings in Docklands warning staff to remain inside. Police begin to cordon off the area. Explosives officers sent to the scene.
17.55: evacuation of Docklands Light Rail begins.
18.01: RTE news makes no mention of end of ceasefire.
18.30: call to RTE journalist saying the earlier "end of ceasefire message" was genuine.
18.50: John Bruton cuts short an engagement to return to government buildings in Dublin after being told that ceasefire was ending.
18.58: RTE broadcasts "ceasefire over".
19.01: bomb explodes.
FOR the past year, you could almost have mistaken Belfast for Leicester or Hull, or any other normal British provincial city. But in the past 48 hours there have been signs, small but depressingly significant, that normality may yet be a frail flower.
British troops, confined to barracks for almost a year, were back on the streets yesterday, although in such small numbers that an extensive search of the city discovered only one patrol, manning the hastily restored roadblock and checkpoint on the main road from Aldergrove airport to the city. But the soldiers had forsaken their berets for steel helmets, and their handguns for Heckler and Koch automatic rifles.
Security sources said that many of the 16,500 troops remaining in the Province had been quietly moved from barracks and billeted in several of the city's still massively fortified police stations.
The RUC, which spent most of the 17-month ceasefire acting like a normal force, patrolling in cars marked "Police", has brought out its armoured Land Rovers. Officers have been issued with rifles and those on patrol are wearing their 12lb flak jackets again.
On Saturday the RUC put a substantial presence on the city streets, but by yesterday that presence had become so discreet that anyone in the city centre wanting to ask the time would have been hard-pressed to find a policeman. There are no road blocks within Belfast; even the steel gates that used to shut off the Falls Road like a medieval city curfew at nightfall remain open and unmanned.
Further down the Falls, a modest planting of fresh Irish tricolours fluttered from lamp posts and hoardings. Locals said they had not been there on Friday. Outside the heavily protected Sinn Fein headquarters, the large hoarding demanding "All Party Talks Now", looked distinctly faded and weather-beaten. On the nearby Unity Flats, freshly painted graffito, signed by the Provisional IRA, proclaimed: "Either ballot or gun, Our Day Will Come."
"It's as well you didn't come here on Friday night," a woman in a local newsagents said. "There were a lot of men hanging about the Sinn Fein office in dark glasses you wouldn't want to stop and have a conversation with." Throughout the city, the expressions concerning Friday's bomb were of dismay and disgust, with a fear-induced disbelief that Belfast could return to the dark ages of a simmering civil war. "It's the little things as much as anything that count about peace, like being able to go into a supermarket without being searched," was a frequently offered opinion.
"The nationalists would have done their cause a lot more good if they'd given a decent warning that the ceasefire was over," a taxi driver in the Protestant Shankill area said. "Gerry Adams is finished as a credible politician. You'll see more of (Martin) McGuinness now, and he's a hard man."
Belfast is desperate that its period of normality should not be a brief interlude, and the reasons are also economic. The city has seen such a blossoming of shops and restaurants that it draws shoppers and trippers from all over Ireland. Dubliners with money to spend flock north in substantial numbers out of sheer curiosity. Sainsbury and Tesco both have plans to build superstores. All that may be lost if confidence crumbles.
Republican and loyalist movements ponder next move after IRA undermines peace process.
GERRY ADAMS is fighting to restore his credibility within the republican movement amid fears in London and Dublin that he has lost the confidence of the IRA. The Docklands bomb represents the failure of eight years' work by the Sinn Fein president to move the republican movement away from the gun and down the political path.
British and Irish ministers are now asking whether Mr Adams, 47, still has the ear of the IRA. The two Governments negotiated with Sinn Fein after the ceasefire on the understanding that the party had the IRA's backing. That assumption is now in doubt.
The strength of Mr Adams's position within the republican movement will hinge on how he fares during the ferocious internal debates that will be prompted by the end of the ceasefire. Hardline opponents of Mr Adams will say that his promises when the truce was announced in August 1994 have come to nothing.
They will recall how Mr Adams convinced the IRA to call a ceasefire because he said that a formidable alliance, embracing Washington, Dublin and the Social Democratic and Labour Party, would put pressure on Britain and the Unionists to enter serious negotiations. Opponents will say the alliance led to President Clinton's senior adviser on Northern Ireland heading an international body which insisted that the IRA would have to disarm during talks.
As for the Unionists coming to the table, the hardliners will point out that the ceasefire led to the most serious attempt by Britain in a decade to hold elections in Northern Ireland so as to appease Unionists.
Mr Adams has been astute enough during the past 18 months to cover his tracks against such criticisms. He will be able to reply that he never said the "unarmed strategy" would be easy. He will even be able to refer to an IRA briefing, drawn up before the ceasefire, which described the new strategy as "risky".
However, Mr Adams will be undermined by weaknesses which have dogged his leadership since he came to prominence after the last substantial ceasefire broke down in 1975. Despite his credentials as an IRA leader early in the Troubles, he has never won the wholehearted trust of the organisation. He is regarded as an aloof man who is comfortable among only a small clique.
If he does hold on to the leadership of Sinn Fein, he is likely to try, over a long period, to nudge the movement back along a political path. This is not to say that Mr Adams is opposed in principle to republican violence. He is a sufficiently sophisticated politician to realise that if 25 years of IRA violence did not achieve the movement's goals, more bloodshed is unlikely to be different. But the price of maintaining republican unity will be a tacit endorsement of the end of the ceasefire.
THE insurance industry has estimated that the damage caused by the Docklands bomb blast will range from £75 million to £150 million and is likely to force up the premiums paid by corporations for terrorism cover.
Office workers at many companies on the Isle of Dogs were told to turn up for work as usual this morning, as businesses affected by the bomb worked throughout the weekend to find new headquarters. The explosion has made more than one million square feet of office space unusable.
The London Docklands Development Corporation said that six buildings, amounting to between 10 and 15 per cent of the total office space on the Isle of Dogs, were badly damaged. The South Quay Plaza complex was hardest hit.
Three buildings that were most seriously damaged by the blast housed the offices of the Radio Communications Agency, a government agency, the publisher Builder Group, Franklin Mint, an American mail-order company, and a branch of the Midland Bank. Police Review is also produced in South Quay Plaza and the magazine Property Week is now working from the first floor above the Dockmaster wine bar on West India Quay, west of the bomb site.
The 400 employees of the Radio Communications Agency will move to offices of the Department of Trade and Industry in Buckingham Palace Road, Victoria. The agency's work will be redistributed to regional offices for a few days while employees settle into their temporary accommodation.
The agency's offices are expected to take up to 12 months to repair. A few members of staff were told to stay at home today.
Docklands Light Rail is already running as far as Canary Wharf and buses will take travellers to all stations further south, including South Quay. The duty manager of the Britannia International Hotel, on Marsh Wall, a few hundred yards from the bomb site, declined to say if any guests had checked out or cancelled their bookings for next week. "We have lost a few windows, but no one was injured. Our only problem at the moment is getting people in and out of the police cordon."
Bernard Harty, chief executive of the Corporation of London, did not think the bomb attack would stop foreign companies from moving to London. "What happened on Friday is not a UK or a London problem," he said. "Terrorism has happened in New York, Paris, Tokyo and Frankfurt ... Businesses can move around, but trouble is sure to follow them."
He noted that most of the businesses damaged by the Bishopsgate bomb, which was also set off on a Friday, were back at work the following Monday, after new office space was found and computer systems restored.
LOYALIST politicians said yesterday that they would try to ensure that Protestant paramilitaries maintained their ceasefire in spite of the IRA's decision to resume its terrorist campaign.
Amid fears that loyalists would attack Dublin if they resumed violence, their leaders appealed for calm. Billy Hutchinson, of the Progressive Unionist Party, the political wing of the Ulster Volunteer Force, described violence as a cul-de-sac and urged restraint within his community. "It is in no one's interest to follow republicanism to the dark pre-ceasefire days," he said.
Observers in Northern Ireland expect the loyalists not to retaliate if the IRA restricts its campaign to the mainland. However, a prolonged IRA campaign would make it hard for moderate loyalists to hold back the hardliners, who are unafraid of a return to "war". If the IRA extends its campaign to Northern Ireland, there would be a resumption of sectarian violence.
Mr Hutchinson wrote in the Dublin Sunday Tribune: "If indeed republicanism is intent on a prolonged campaign on the mainland in an attempt to force the British Government to coerce the Unionist people, ignoring the principle of consent, this presents extreme dangers for peace within Northern Ireland and indeed the Republic of Ireland."
Gusty Spence, who re-established the modern UVF in 1966, echoed Mr Hutchinson's appeal for calm. Mr Spence, who read the loyalist ceasefire statement in October 1994, said: "The Unionists have suffered 25 years of bombing without giving in ... I am hopeful that the loyalist paramilitaries will prove that they are a highly disciplined force and that they will not be provoked."
A prison officer was freed last night after being held hostage for more than nine hours by two inmates at top-security Whitemoor jail in Cambridgeshire.
The officer was said to be "shaken but calm" and the inmates were taken to the prison's segregation unit.
WALTER SWINBURN, one of Britain's leading jockeys and three times a Derby winner, was unconscious in the intensive care unit of a Hong Kong hospital yesterday after falling in a race there.
Swinburn's father, Wally, flew to Hong Kong last night to be at his son's bedside. The jockey's condition was described by a spokesman at the Prince of Wales Hospital as poor and doctors are unable to say when he might regain consciousness.
Swinburn, 34, was thrown from Liffey River shortly after the start of the Albert Plate at the Sha Tin track. The horse jinked after the stalls opened, then did a complete circle before heading across the track and smashing through the rail. The rider was hurled to the ground, breaking ribs and a collarbone and sustaining a blow to the head. He was later reported to have fluid on his lungs.
Swinburn has been one of Britain's leading Flat jockeys in the past 15 years and rode Shergar later to disappear after being kidnapped to victory in the 1981 Derby at the age of 19. His other Epsom triumphs were on Shahrastani in 1986 and Lammtarra in 1995.
In 1984, Brian Taylor was killed in a fall at Sha Tin and Philipe Paquet, a French jockey, sustained injuries that ended his career.
FIRST blood in the chess match between a computer and Garry Kasparov, the world champion, went to the machine. Against expectations, IBM's rapier quick Deep Blue computer won the first of six scheduled matches, to whoops of joy from computer programmers.
Kasparov, who had been tipped to win, was reported to be in a gloom after resigning on the 37th move and he left the Pennsylvania Convention Centre, Philadelphia, without a word. This was in contrast to the reaction from the IBM computer experts who, unschooled in the hushed customs of the chess hall, leapt from their seats, cheering, to hug one another when the champion conceded.
The result was said to be the first time a computer has beaten man at chess under championship-style conditions (as opposed to speed games). During the game Kasparov appeared to lose his concentration. Often so calm and confident against human opponents, he frowned as the computer disrupted his pawns and speedily deployed the Sicilian defence.
Mankind's greatest chess player fiddled with his tie, held his head and removed his jacket. His psychological state may not have been helped by the presence, across the board, of a satisfied IBM technician who moved the white pieces at the command of Deep Blue.
The 32-node, 256-chip computer with a 128 gigabyte hard disk, developed over six years, relayed its moves via the Internet from its "home" in Yorktown Heights, New York. It can consider 200 million moves a second.
Before Saturday's match Kasparov has said defeat by Deep Blue "would threaten the existence of human control in such areas as art, literature or music" and he intended to defend "human dignity". The second game began last night.
The match is on the Internet: http://www.chess.ibm.park.org.
THE Prime Minister was trying last night to contain a serious new rift with Dublin over the events that led to Friday's bomb and an end to the 17 month IRA ceasefire.
At the same time, President Clinton pledged to do all in his power to rescue the Irish peace initiative. "The people of Great Britain do not deserve to have this violence ... We will not stop in our efforts until peace has been secured," he declared on the White House lawn.
Divisions between London and Dublin were plain yesterday from remarks by John Bruton, the Irish Prime Minister, who bitterly criticised British policy in the search for a lasting peace. Only hours after Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Northern Ireland Secretary, had again extolled elections as the "door into the conference chamber", Mr Bruton denounced the idea. He said that elections so soon after the resumption of violence would "pour petrol on the flames" and accused Mr Major of making a mistake by sidelining the Mitchell report's call for decommissioning of IRA weapons only when all-party talks were taking place. Last night Downing Street officials insisted that elections were "a very viable way forward".
Mr Bruton also dismissed Mr Major's call for Sinn Fein to denounce the London Docklands bombing as a "waste of time" and said the top priority was a restoration of the IRA ceasefire. "We should concentrate on the main goal, which is stopping the violence now, getting them (Sinn Fein) to get the IRA to say we're stopping the killing."
In an emotional performance on BBC Television, Mr Bruton accused the IRA and Sinn Fein of "throwing back in our face" the act of faith Dublin had made in assuming the ceasefire was irrevocable. Accordingly, he had cut off all political meetings with Sinn Fein, although lines of communication were being kept open. Britain later apparently followed suit.
Mr Major spoke to Mr Bruton shortly after his television appearance. Downing Street officials said the 20-minute telephone conversation had been "friendly and constructive", but admitted that differences remained over elections. Mr Bruton said he wanted Dayton-style talks with all parties under one roof, of the kind that secured a settlement in Bosnia.
During his interview, Mr Bruton ruled out ministerial contact with Sinn Fein until the IRA renounced violence. "We are not going to get ourselves in a position wherein we negotiate under duress, where we're having a meeting with somebody and a bomb goes off in the middle of the meeting ... Democrats can't work like that."
Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, last night urged the Irish Government to give him a "persuasive argument" to talk to the IRA. "The IRA is open to persuasion. We wouldn't have had a cessation if they hadn't been open to persuasion."
His comments contrasted markedly with a hardline speech by Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein's chief negotiator. He told a Sinn Fein rally in Ballina, Co Mayo, that the present position was "grave and serious", and added: "We have talked until we are blue in the face."
In Washington, Mr Clinton said he had witnessed the overwhelming desire for peace among Catholics and Protestants during his visit last November. "No one has the right to deny the people of Northern Ireland a peaceful future," he said.
The President will briefly meet David Trimble when the Ulster Unionist Party leader arrives at the White House this afternoon for long-scheduled talks with Anthony Lake, Mr Clinton's National Security Adviser. Mr Clinton is expected to urge Mr Trimble to participate more actively in the search for peace.
The President personally telephoned Mr Major and Mr Bruton to assure them of America's support. Mr Lake and other top aides called the Province's political leaders, including Mr Adams, to urge continued support for the peace process.
Over the past two years Mr Adams has built a friendly relationship with Mr Lake and the White House is showing some understanding of the Sinn Fein leader's predicament.
Mr Adams telephoned Mr Lake shortly before the explosion to say that he was hearing some "disturbing rumours" about the ceasefire breaking down, but nobody in the White House has suggested that he knew of the imminent bombing or supported it. In a weekend interview with CNN, Mr Adams insisted that he had "no advance warning".
Sources said that in subsequent calls, White House officials urged Mr Adams to criticise the bombing more strongly than he did on Friday so he could remain a legitimate player in the peace process.
JOHN MAJOR held talks with senior Cabinet colleagues last night to finalise a security clampdown aimed at foiling a renewed IRA bombing campaign as police and security services issued a warning that they expect further attacks on the mainland.
The meeting in Downing Street, attended by Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, and Sir Paul Condon, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, was called after the huge explosion in London Docklands last Friday, which brought to an end the 17-month IRA ceasefire.
The Prime Minister is due to make a statement about the attack in the Commons this afternoon.
It emerged yesterday that MI5 had warned the Government a month ago to expect a renewal of violence, but the Security Service had not believed any resumption would take place before the beginning of next month.
After the Docklands blast, which killed two and injured more than 100, MI5 said there would be more terrorist attacks on the mainland, and possibly in Northern Ireland. Last night David Veness, the Assistant Commissioner in overall charge of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch and Special Branch, said further attacks could be launched "any time, anywhere on the mainland". Sir Paul passed on the warning personally to the Prime Minister.
Police yesterday issued details of the lorry used to carry the bomb. It was a Ford low-loader of the type used to transport vehicles, and bore the false registration C292 GWG. The vehicle is believed to be about 11 years old.
The Yard is optimistic that the bombers may have been captured on closed circuit television cameras surrounding the side-street where the device was left. Commander John Grieve, the head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch and national co-ordinator of terrorist investigations, said: "We have got a lot of closed circuit television. We are analysing it at the moment. There is material from all around the area."
He would not comment on how long the lorry bomb had been parked near South Quay railway station, apart from saying: "It was there long enough for us to be content about the identification."
Standing amid the debris from the blast, Mr Grieve said that between 500lb and 1,000lb of explosive was used for the bomb, which was believed to be homemade. "It was a big bomb. It is remarkable many more people were not killed. There were vehicles parked everywhere and people were moving them as a result of the police."
Near by grey steel cladding lay twisted and shards of glass were scattered on the pavement. The bomb left a deep crater, 14ft across, and fractured a gas main. Police could not approach the area for six hours after the blast because of the risk of a gas explosion.
Police believe an IRA active service unit may have bought the lorry at auction and converted it into a low-loader, which would have raised fewer suspicions than an ordinary van or lorry. The bomb would have been hidden behind the cab in the lockers used to keep tools. There was nothing loaded on the back of the vehicle.
Mr Grieve issued an appeal for help in tracing the lorry and asked company security managers to make sure their closed circuit systems were operating properly. He also asked them not to erase tapes. "At this stage, we don't know where this vehicle had been in the country," he said. "It would be awful if there was a tape of this vehicle somewhere and it was wiped. When we have a better idea of the vehicle's whereabouts, video surveillance film could be very useful."
Within hours of the attack, forces across Britain returned to the state of alert that preceded the paramilitaries' ceasefire. In the City of London armed officers began a series of rolling roadblocks and manned control points. Security was heightened for VIPs and Cabinet ministers who might be possible targets and security measures were stepped up at stations, airports and ports.
MI5's warning last month was given in an intelligence assessment to key ministers which highlighted deteriorating relations between the pro-bombing and pro-peace elements in the IRA. The only aspect of last week's attack that caused the Security Service any surprise was the timing.
MI5 has been giving weekly intelligence assessments since the ceasefire began in August 1994, but a month ago the language changed dramatically when it was realised that the hardline camp in the seven-man IRA Provisional Army Council was no longer prepared to go along with the peace initiative begun by Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president.
Irish police believe that during the past month the IRA has been moving men and equipment to Britain and Northern Ireland from the Republic.
The intelligence warnings were given to key ministers, including Mr Major, and the police. However, the MI5 assessment was only part of the picture. There was a political assessment and although ministers were prepared for a breakdown in the peace process, there appeared to have been a general view that the hardliners would wait until the end of the month to see if the Government agreed to all-party talks.
According to security sources in London and Dublin, the decision to end the ceasefire and revert to bombing was taken by all seven members of the council when it became clear that a "disastrous" split would follow if there was not unanimity.
Over recent weeks, the hardliners, who claim to represent almost 50 per cent of IRA membership, made plain to their leaders that they had lost patience with the faltering peace process, security sources in Dublin said. They had opposed the ceasefire from the start and threatened to "go it alone" unless the mainland campaign was resumed.
Dublin welcomes move towards ‘common approach': Belfast rally shows IRA its anger.
LONDON and Dublin stepped up the pressure for a restoration of the IRA ceasefire last night. There was a concerted attempt to heal the rift over John Major's proposal for elections in Northern Ireland that has recently soured relations between the two Governments.
In a clear effort to maintain the momentum of the peace process seriously damaged by Friday's bombing in London's Docklands, Mr Major acted to reassure Dublin over the elections plan and even said that he was not wedded to it as the only route to all-party talks. He also left open the door for Sinn Fein to be readmitted to the process if the ceasefire is reinstated.
Dublin responded in equally conciliatory fashion by dropping its outright opposition to the elections and declared it was encouraged by other comments from Mr Major suggesting that they could lead to speedy negotiations between the parties.
With an Anglo-Irish summit looking increasingly likely next week John Bruton, the Irish Prime Minister, said that relations were now on a better footing than they had been in the week running up to the South Quay bomb in which two were killed and 43 injured. "I believe we are coming pretty close together now to a common approach," Mr Bruton said.
The two Governments have clearly decided that only by healing their own differences can the peace process move on. Some politicians, particularly in the Republic, have blamed a breakdown of trust as contributing to the IRA's decision to bomb the mainland again.
There now appears to be recognition in both capitals that mistakes may have been made since the publication of the Mitchell report on decommissioning two and a half weeks ago. A Dublin source suggested that while Mr Major may have been too inflexible about the elections proposal, Dublin was at fault in rejecting it so vociferously.
Mr Bruton said that the tragedy of the situation in regard to the bomb was that they were close to a breakthrough "in getting a formula that would have enabled us to move forward pretty quickly".
The moves came as Mr Major promised the country and Parliament to keep the search for peace alive. In a rare nationwide television broadcast last night he pledged that the IRA would not halt the efforts to secure peace. "We will not allow the gains made there to be lost. We shall intensify our work with the democratic parties and the Irish Government.
"We will not allow the terrible losses of those who have suffered from terrorism to be in vain."
But he declared that the IRA would never bomb its way to the negotiating table. Sinn Fein and the IRA could have no voice in Ulster's future until they renounced violence again. "Only when they commit themselves unequivocally to peace, and reinstate the ceasefire, can they have a voice and a stake in Northern Ireland's future. But if they reject democratic principles and use violence, they can expect no sympathy and no quarter."
Earlier in the Commons Mr Major declared that, although he still believed elections were the most promising way forward, his mind was not closed to other options. He insisted that all the Goverment's actions including the elections proposal were designed to lead directly to speedy negotiations between the parties.
Dick Spring, Ireland's Deputy Prime Minister, said he had been encouraged by Mr Major's comments: "We were reassured by his very clear and direct and speedy link between possible elections and negotiations. That is a direction the Irish Government has been pursuing."
He significantly softened his opposition to Mr Major's plan, saying: "We all know that imposed elections will not work. What we need are agreed elections."
A subdued and restrained Commons strongly backed Mr Major as he declared that, although the peace process had suffered a setback from the men of violence, it was not over by any means. "We are not at the end of the road for peace. If we are pushed back, we will start again. If we are pushed back again, we will start again. If we are pushed back a third time, we will start again ... There can be no end to this search for a permanent settlement in Northern Ireland until we have achieved a permanent settlement in Northern Ireland. We may have to take more risks. If we see a risk that we believe is appropriate in the cause of peace, a justifiable risk, then we will take it and seek the support of this House."
Although he confirmed that contacts between Sinn Fein and ministers had been cut off after the renewal of violence, Mr Major surprised MPs by the lengths to which he went to offer them a way back if the ceasefire was restored.
Senior ministers admitted yesterday that they did not know whether Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, was privy to the IRA decision to restart its campaign.
The doubts, which intelligence sources have so far been unable to clear up, were reflected in Mr Major's statement that a huge question mark now hung over Sinn Fein. It must decide whether it is a front for the IRA or a democratic political party committed to the ballot. Sinn Fein had to show whether it had a part to play.
Mr Major issued a warning that the Docklands bomb might not be the last. More might follow on the mainland and in Northern Ireland if the ceasefire was not renewed.
THE training needs of small firms are not being met, according to a report by a Cambridge academic. Much of what is on offer is geared to large companies and seen by owner-managers as far too theoretical. Government provided training is often unsuitable.
The report, Developing Managers for the Stand-Alone Business, shows there is not yet a developed market for training in this sector. Barry Welch, the author, until recently Fellow in Management Studies at Downing College, believes the disadvantage to small firms is of concern because they depend entirely on the manager's skill and professionalism.
Although the sector is widely recognised as underpinning the economy, it may be underperforming significantly through lack of vital skills, the report suggests. Owner-managers, in whom all the roles and prospects of business are concentrated, are specially vulnerable and need support.
The survey shows the problems small businesses face in contrast to corporate concerns: early fragility, dependence on a small number of people, shortage of resources, difficulty in raising finance, emphasis on current and short-term priorities, a need for versatility and skills which change with growth and a demand for access to external advice and assistance.
Nearly half the managers interviewed do not find training effective, especially in recruitment and planning. Yet most managers see training as a strategic investment, provided it gives value for money, is at the right level and is practical. Cost is a big concern for firms of between 25 and 50 employees. Those with fewer than 20 regard £50 a day as the maximum. Those with up to 100 employees say £100. Not surprisingly, managers favour free or subsidised training or tax concessions, plus readily available advice.
Training averages 2-31/2 days a year. About 20 per cent have more than seven days; a quarter of firms with fewer than 200 have none. Advice on training is mainly from the training providers themselves and from training and enterprise councils, but smaller firms seek advice from professional institutions, personal contacts, accountants or banks rather than Tecs, "which still have to establish their credentials".
Programmes should group participants according to their business's stage of development, combine personal and business development, respect managers' knowledge of their firm and emphasise mutual help and networking. Programmes are best held after the working day, with a light buffet provided, for three hours, once a week for ten weeks.
Exporters aiming for editorial coverage in foreign newspapers can obtain help from the Central Office of Information. A new service includes writing by a professional journalist, translation, processing of photographs and distribution to the foreign press through UK diplomatic posts. The cost is £80 for the first country and £40 for each additional one. Contact: Simon Holder on 0171-261 8422.
A helpline for small businesses has been launched in Wales by British Telecom and the Welsh Office, with financial help from the European Regional Development Fund. The service has the support of Tecs, enterprise agencies and local authorities. Firms wanting advice on topics including premises, finance, export opportunities and recruiting staff can contact an adviser familiar with the caller's local area. More than 48,000 new businesses have been set up in Wales during the past 12 years and one in seven of the workforce now runs his/her own business. The Business Connect number, which is charged at local rate, is 0345 969 798.
A one-day conference on Labour and small and medium enterprises will be addressed by Tony Blair, the Labour leader, Margaret Beckett, the DTI Shadow Minister, and Barbara Roche, the Opposition spokeswoman on small firms, at the Gibson Hall, London, on March 20. Other speakers include Tim Melville-Ross from the Institute of Directors and Ian Peters of NatWest Bank. Details from Neil Stewart Associates, 11 Dartmouth Street, London SW1H 9BL.
The national franchise exhibition will be held at the NEC, Birmingham from October 4 to 6. The show has been moved to a larger hall after heavy advance bookings at the end of last year's exhibition, which attracted 140 companies.
The business angels service piloted by National Westminster Bank in the North West and the Thames Valley has been extended to the whole country. The bank estimates that private investors wishing to back small firms have funds totalling £2-4 billion.
Tendering for Government Contracts, the DTI guide, advises small businesses on selling to the public sector, with guidelines on public purchasing that include £40 billion spent each year by central government and £20 million by the NHS. Nearly 50 departments and agencies are listed, with their main purchasing areas. Copies by quoting URN95/896 from DTI Small Firms Publications, Admail 528, London SW1W 8YT.
Hingston Publishing has produced a book, The Greatest Guide to Home-Based Business, the third in a series of guides for small businesses. Copies cost £7.95 from WH Smith.
TWO registers of non-executive directors for smaller companies have been launched, one by Kingston Smith, the chartered accountant, the second by the Institute of Directors.
Potential directors will not have to pay a charge to appear in the Kingston Smith Gro-NED register, but they will be screened. Companies will be provided with two or three suitable candidates for a fee of £500 plus VAT.
The IoD Directors Direct service will provide small firms with the CVs of suitable candidates. The service costs £850 plus VAT. David Treadwell, IoD head of board appointments, said: "An independent voice on a board, whatever the size of the company, enhances good decision-making which ultimately leads to improved profitability. Essentially the role is to bring outside objectivity to what can so easily become a cosy and possibly complacent executive team."
Michael Snyder, Kingston Smith senior partner, said: "Our expectation is that if more smaller companies take the right kind of non-executives on to their board, it will contribute to a healthy and more successful small business sector." He added that companies with non-executive directors produce significantly higher profit margins and that the most successful entrepreneurs are those that are open-minded and listen to outside advice.
He adds: "Applicants for the Gro-NED register must have direct experience of running smaller businesses, or have been closely involved in advising them. A non-executive director in a smaller company must be of real practical value and prove their worth in a measurable way. In big companies, they often have a policeman-like role, keeping an eye on the executives on behalf of the shareholders."
Mr Snyder said non-executive directors would expect annual fees starting at £5,000 and would attend monthly board meetings and be available for ad hoc advice and consultation.
Further information from: Kingston Smith, Devonshire House, 146 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 4JX, or from the IoD board appointments on 0171-451 3259.
The players' weekly and overall scores and their values if you are considering the transfer option
Alan Stubbs, the Bolton Wanderers defender, discusses his ITF side
MY TEAM was named the Kirkby Krunchers because I come from Kirkby and thought these players would crunch a few other teams. Pity that it has not quite worked out that way. I was looking for someone good up front, midfield players who would score me lots of points and a strong defence.
When it came to picking the side it was a matter of finding players who would fit that plan and who were a reasonable price. Looking at it now there are some who have not played that many games people like Alan Moore, of Middlesbrough and I remember when I picked John Scales he was playing really well. But that was at the start of the season.
When I chose Dennis Bergkamp, I thought he would get a few goals for Arsenal. But I think he suffered like a lot of foreign players when they first come over here and he took a couple of months to find his feet in the Premiership. When he did settle, he was scoring a few goals and looked like he was going to have a good run. Then he had a couple of niggling injuries which limited him and I think, if he had been fit, he would have got me a lot more points.
I have a few players in there from clubs that are not doing so well and so have not scored many points. It is not that they are not good players, it is just that it is very tight at the bottom of the table and it is hard to break out of that. It just takes a little run of good results, but you have to be consistent. There is no point in getting out of the relegation zone only to lose a few matches and go straight back down.
At Bolton, we have spent most of the season at the bottom of the table and I think if we started the season now, with all that we have learnt, we would be in a better position. At the beginning I think we were a bit overawed and found that every match we played was like a cup game. It is three or four times harder for us than it was in the first division last season, when we only had big pressure matches every couple of months.
Of course the big clubs have the money to buy in players when things are not going well. It does not always work but it helps. Still, every club has its own pressures. Manchester United are looking less and less likely to win the title, so for them this is a disappointing season, but they are still second in the league it is all relative.
I think Alex Ferguson has done well when you look at where they are and how many young players they have used. It is never easy when you are young to get experience at that level and do well on it. But when you look at players like Nicky Butt who is in my side he is a future international. He impresses me every time I see him. He is only young but has a lot of presence on the pitch.The Neville brothers Gary is another of my players are in the same position. They may not be experienced but always look good.
If I could bring in one new player it would have to be David Ginola. Every time I see Ginola he gets better and better. You never know what he is going to do next. He is an exceptional talent and the longer Kevin Keegan can persuade him to stay at Newcastle, the better it is going to be for English football.
Long-time leader steers his side back into first place with several key transfers
Nobody said you got to the top in football management by being afraid to make decisions. Kevin James, the man responsible for Kevins Kickers, clearly has the ruthless touch required.
After making much of the early running in Interactive Team Football (ITF), Kevins Kickers were headed for the lead by Gohils Gods 65, one of 80 plus teams entered by the two Gohil brothers, from London. James realised he needed to regain the impetus from somewhere, and promptly axed both Kevin Keegan, the Newcastle United manager, and Keegan's striking mainstay, Les Ferdinand. The ploy worked.
Mr James reasoned: "Both players had been in my side throughout, but I reckoned that now was the time to make the change with Newcastle no longer in the FA Cup."
So Keegan and Ferdinand were sent packing, and replaced by Dave Merrington, of Southampton, and Robbie Fowler, of Liverpool.
"Southampton have some important games coming up which I think they might come through well. And, most importantly, they are still in the FA Cup. I am not saying that the competition will be won and lost in the Cup, but it is just one of the very important elements that go into succeeding at ITF."
Mr James has plenty of praise to offer for the way that ITF is scored and is a firm believer that it is a competition where skill plays at least as big a part as chance.
"I must watch what I say but in ITF I am sure that you can think, plan and study your way to an improved position. That said, luck still plays its part such as when Dichio, of QPR, scored that deflected goal against Liverpool the other day.
"Thousands of people will have Liverpool defenders in their side and that shot cost them the points for a clean sheet."
Mr James recently appeared on Sky TV with fellow ITF managers, Raj Gohil and Steve Lyons. He was impressed, in particular, with Mr Gohil.
"Raj Gohil struck me as a shrewd customer and a man who won't go down without a fight. I think if it comes down to the wire in the competition, I might ask Raj if he wants to split the prize and have done with it. There is nothing for second in this game," Mr James said.
If your team could be doing better, with your players lacking form and fitness, you can move into the transfer market to improve your fortunes. ITF has a transfer system that allows you to change up to two players each week. Which player you want to offload and who you replace him with is up to you, although you must replace the outgoing player with one from the same category (ie, a full back with a full back) and keep within your £35 million budget.
The ITF transfer system also allows you to adjust your team if one of your players is actually transferred out of the FA Carling Premiership. He would then no longer be eligible for ITF and would have to be replaced. Any overseas or Endsleigh Insurance League players who move into the Premiership during the season will become available for transfer before the following week.
You can make transfers only by telephone. Using a Touch-tone (DTMF) telephone (most push-button telephones with a and a hash key are Touch-tone), call the 0891 333 331 line during the times given. Calls will be charged at 39 pence per minute cheap rate, 49 pence per minute at other times. If you are calling from Ireland, you must call 004 499 020 0631 and you will be charged at 58 pence per minute at all times.
When making a transfer, you must ensure that the team value still falls within your £35 million budget and does not contain more than two individuals (two players or one player and a manager) from the same club.
If you are lagging behind the leading team selectors, the transfer system will be an appealing option to you in the chase for the £50,000 prize or the monthly £500 prizes.
With ITF, not only are you pitting your selectorial skills against other readers of The Times, you are also matching your wits against those in the know. With the support of the Professional Footballers' Association, Premiership players have entered sides of their own, and Alan Stubbs, of Bolton Wanderers, gives his selection on the opposite page. Like him, you may spend £7.5 million on Dennis Bergkamp but will he do better than cheaper alternatives?
All matches in the Premiership and those in the FA Cup involving Premiership clubs count and your players and manager win and lose you points. With Kevins Kickers making a bid for the winning line, is it time for you to delve into the transfer market?
All transfer queries regarding Interactive Team Football should be directed to 0171-757 7016. All other inquiries can be made on 01582 488 122.
Outer House of The Court of Session. Conoco (UK) Ltd v The Commercial Law Practice
Before Lord Macfadyen
(Judgment January 31)
Where a firm of solicitors wrote to a company to advise them that an anonymous client of theirs would disclose the name of a third party who had fraudulently over-charged the company, in return for undertaking to pay him a proportion of any over-payment which they consequently succeeded in recovering, the client's attempt to take advantage of the fraud of the third party deprived his solicitors of the right to withhold the client's identity as a matter of privilege and the firm would be ordered to identify their client, in order that the company might, if so advised, bring further proceedings to require that client to identify the third party.
Lord Macfadyen sitting in the Outer House of the Court of Session, so held, in a petition brought by Conoco (UK) Ltd against a firm, the Commercial Law Practice, pronouncing an interlocutor ordaining the firm to disclose in writing to the petitioners such information as they had as to the identity, including name and address, of the person on whose behalf the firm had written a letter to the petitioners, dated October 25, 1995, and who had disclosed to the firm the information contained in that letter.
Section 1 of the Administration of Justice (Scotland) Act 1972 provides:
"(1A) Without prejudice to the existing powers of the Court of Session and of the sheriff court those courts shall have power, subject to subsection (4) of this section, to order any person to disclose such information as he has as to the identity of any persons who appear to the court to be persons who: (a) might be witnesses in any existing civil proceedings before that court or in civil proceedings which are likely to be brought; or (b) might be defenders in any civil proceedings which appear to the court to be likely to be brought.
"(4) Nothing in this section shall affect any rule of law or practice relating to the privilege of witnesses and havers, (or) confidentiality of communications..."
Mr Colin Campbell, QC, for the petitioners; Mr William Galbraith, QC, for the respondents.
LORD MACFADYEN said that on October 25, 1995, the respondent firm of law agents had written to the financial director of the petitioners. The letter stated that the respondents acted for an unnamed client who had information that might be of interest. It narrated that the petitioners had contracted with an unnamed third party for the supply of goods and services but due to a clerical error had over-paid the third party. The third party was aware of the error, but had retained the over-payment in a suspense account.
The nature of the error was such that without specific information an audit was unlikely to discover it. The sum in question was over £1,000, 000.
The letter went on to say that the respondents' client would provide sufficient information to identify the error, in return for an undertaking to pay him 20 per cent of such sums as the petitioners might recover from the third party.
The petitioners responded by bringing a petition under section 1 of the 1972 Act, seeking an order requiring the respondents to disclose the identity of their client.
At the hearing to dispose of the petition Mr Galbraith argued that the petitioners were not entitled to obtain disclosure because the information was privileged. The general rule was, he said, simple and well understood.
Except within the scope of a recognised exception, privilege applied to all facts, communicated between solicitor and client, including, since there was no Scottish authority to the contrary, the identity of the client.
He submitted that the English cases of Bursill v Tanner ((1865) 16 QBD 1), Ex parte Campbell, In re Cathcart ((1870) LR 5 Ch App 703), Parkhurst v Lowten ((1818) 2 Sw 194), Studdy v Sanders ((1823) 2 D & R 347) and Pascall v Galinski ((1970) 1 QB 38) afforded too narrow a base for general rule that there could never be confidentiality in the identity of a client.
Mr Campbell maintained that the identity of the client was not confidential; and that in any event, that communications were not privileged where the agent was directly concerned in carrying out an act of the client that was disreputable, dishonourable, iniquitous or in bad faith :see Begg, Law Agents (p320); McCowan v Wright ((1852) 15 D 229, 237); Barclays Bank v Eustice ((1955) 1 WLR 1238, 1250G); Ventouris v Mountain ((1991) 1 WLR 607); Gamlen Chemical Co (UK) Ltd v Rochem Ltd (unreported CA); Micosta SA v Shetland Isles Council (1983 SLT 483, 485) and Clark v HM Advocate (1965 SLT (Notes) 51).
In his Lordship's opinion the petition raised issues as to the scope of solicitor and client confidentiality which were, at least in the law of Scotland, novel and difficult.
It was unsound to argue that because the privilege belonged to the client, the solicitor could not claim privilege for any matter in respect of which the client himself would be obliged to answer. R v Peterborough Justices, Ex parte Hicks ((1977) 1 WLR 1371) was distinguishable. A client was entitled to insist his solicitor to keep confidential a fact communicated by him to the solicitor, even in circumstances in which the client, if asked, would be obliged to disclose it.
His Lordship was reluctant to adopt what he understood to be the English rule that the identity of the client was not confidential. It seemed quite possible to figure circumstances in which to demand of a solicitor an answer to the question "From whom did you obtain that information?" might have precisely the same sort of impact on the administration of justice as it would to demand of him an answer to the question, "What did your client tell you?"
It seemed artificial to distinguish the identity of the client from the subject-matter of the solicitor-client relationship. The information sought fell within the scope of the privilege, unless an exception applied.
The question therefore came to be whether the petitioners were correct in contending that the fraud exception applied. On the narrative set out in the letter, the third party had been involved in fraud in the broad sense, since he was said to have knowingly issued an invoice in an excessive amount and in due course to have accepted payment.
The question was whether that fraud so tainted the client's position as to deprive him and the respondents of the plea of confidentiality. It was clear that the exception was not confined to cases of fraud stricto sensu; as Lord Justice Schiemann had pointed out in Barclay's Bank, fraud in that context had long been given a broad meaning.
On the other hand "iniquity", although no doubt used as a convenient shorthand by Lord Justice Bingham in Ventouris, was in his Lordship's view too vague a concept to afford much guidance. As Lord Justice Goff had said in Gamlen, dishonesty rather than something merely dishonourable was required.
The issue raised in the present case was one for which there was no direct precedent. His Lordship was wary of deciding the issue by way of an ad hoc exploration of public policy considerations.
Nevertheless it seemed that the public policy consideration which underlay the fraud exception might be capable of extension in which a client and his solicitor, not themselves guilty of fraud or involved in carrying out a fraudulent transaction, were involved in a transaction the purpose of which was to derive for the client benefit of his knowledge of a fraud committed by another party.
At one level, he was proposing a simply commercial transaction. However, it was difficult to ignore the fact that the opportunity would not have presented itself to the client were it not for the fraud committed by the payee. In this unusual situation, at the borderline between rule and exception, the balance of completing public policy considerations favoured disclosure rather than confidentiality.
His Lordship was also satisfied that the reference in section 1(1A) to "defenders" was broad enough to include the respondent to a further section 1 petition, such as the client. His Lordship was satisfied that such a petition was likely to be brought.
The terms of section 1(1A)(b) made it plain that the fact that disclosure of the identity of the defender in the proposed proceedings was the object of the present proceedings could not be sufficient foundation for a submission that the proposed proceedings were not likely to be brought.
Mr Galbraith had finally submitted that as a matter of discretion his Lordship should decline to grant the prayer. He submitted that the petitioners had an alternative remedy. They were simply being invited to negotiate a contract. He suggested that that was not the type of situation for which section 1 had been provided. He went so far as to suggest that the petition was an abuse of section 1; the petitioners were seeking to get valuable information for nothing.
Mr Campbell's response was that if the petitioners were entitled to invoke section 1(1A), there was no question of their seeking valuable information for nothing. They were simply pursuing a statutory remedy which, if well founded, demonstrated that the client was mistaken in thinking that the information he held could be turned to his commercial advantage. His Lordship agreed that if, as he had held, the petitioners were well founded in their reliance on the statute, they were entitled to the information without paying for it.
Law agents: Bennett & Robertson; Alex Morrison & Co, WS.
Court of Appeal. United Bank of Kuwait plc v Sahib and Others
Before Lord Justice Leggatt, Lord Justice Peter Gibson and Lord Justice Phillips
(Judgment February 2)
Section 2 of the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989, which provided that a disposition of an interest in land had to be in writing in a document signed by both parties incorporating all the terms of the agreement, abolished the long established rule that a mere deposit of title deeds relating to a property by way of security created a valid equitable mortgage or charge of the property without more.
The Court of Appeal so held in a reserved judgment dismissing the appeal of the third defendant, Societe Generale Alsacienne de Banque SA ("SoGenAl"), from part of the judgment of Mr Justice Chadwick (The Times July 7, 1994; (1995) 2 WLR 94) in the Chancery Division when he granted a declaration that, as between SoGenAl and the plaintiff bank, United Bank of Kuwait plc, SoGenAl did not hold any equitable mortgage or charge over the undivided share belonging to the first defendant, Hadi Haji Sahib ("S"), in the proceeds of sale of the property known as 37c Fitzjohn's Avenue, Hampstead, London.
Mr Christopher Pymont for the third defendant; Mr James Munby, QC, for the plaintiff; the first and second defendants did not appear and were not represented.
LORD JUSTICE PETER GIBSON said that since Russel v Russel ((1783) 1 Bro CC 269) a deposit of title deeds relating to a property by way of security had been taken to create an equitable mortgage of the property without any writing, notwithstanding section 4 of the Statute of Frauds 1677 and its successor, section 40 of the Law of Property Act 1925.
The plaintiff in September 1991 obtained judgment in the Queen's Bench Division against S in the sum of £229,815.17, being principal and interest due from him in respect of banking facilities granted to him by the plaintiff.
In October 1992 the plaintiff obtained a charging order nisi, made absolute in November 1992, in order to secure and enforce that judgment debt, together with costs and statutory interest from the date of judgment against, inter alia, S's interest in the freehold property.
The present proceedings were brought to enforce the charging order, but neither S nor the second defendant, his wife, joint owner and person in possession of the property, had taken any substantial part. The real issue was therefore between the plaintiff and SoGenAl which claimed an equitable mortgage over S's interest.
That claim was based on, inter alia, an advance of £130,000 made by SoGenAl to S in September 1990 which was treated as between them as a series of successively renewed time deposits by SoGenAl with S. At no time did the wife authorise S's lawyers to hold the land certificate to the order of SoGenAl. Consequently, SoGenAl did not have security over the interest.
They asked S's lawyers to act for them in order to regularise the security arrangements in respect of the property. No legal mortgage was executed by S and his wife, although by August 1992 correspondence contained a clear indication that S accepted SoGenAl was secured in respect of the time deposit current for the time being since he held the legal certificate for the property to SoGenAl's order.
The judge below assumed S would have been estopped from denying an agreement between SoGenAl and him that the property should stand as security. He held that an agreement to charge what S could not charge, namely both the legal title and beneficial interest in the property, in the absence of some statutory prohibition, would be effective to create an equitable charge over S's undivided share, but that section 2 of the 1989 Act was such statutory prohibition.
His Lordship said that section 2 was enacted to give effect to that part of the Law Commission's report on transfer of land Formalities for Contracts for Sale etc of Land (Law Com No 164; June 29, 1987) which recommended repeal of section 40 of the 1925 Act and abolition of the doctrine of part performance, proposing new requirements for the making of a contract for the sale or other disposition of an interest in land.
Thus, by section 2, a contract for a mortgage of or charge in any interest in land or in the proceeds of sale of land could only be made in writing and only if the written document incorporated all the terms which the parties had expressly agreed, and was signed by or on behalf of each party. It was not suggested that there was any such document in the present case.
The judge had correctly concluded (at p110) that the courts had consistently treated the rule that a deposit of title deeds for the purpose of securing a debt operated, without more, as an equitable mortgage or charge as contract-based, and the courts were concerned to establish, by presumption, inference or evidence, what the parties intended, and then to enforce their common interest as an agreement.
His Lordship emphasised the essential contractual foundation of the rule as demonstrated in the authorities, more recently in In re Wallis & Simmonds (Builders) Ltd ((1974) 1 WLR 391) and In re Alton Corporation ((1985) BCLC 27).
The deposit by way of security was treated as prima facie evidence of a contract to mortgage, and as part performance of that contract equity regarded that as done which ought to be done.
Mr Pymont submitted, inter alia:
1 That nothing in the 1989 Act expressly or by necessary implication repealed the 1925 Act and later legislation recognising and extending the scope of a security by deposit of title deeds. He drew attention to modern commentators' conclusions that section 2 was not intended to repeal the rule: see Snell's Equity (29th edition (1990) pp444-445); Cheshire and Burn's Modern Law of Real Property (15th edition (1994) p670) and "Informed dealings with land after section 2" Bently and Coughlan ((1990) 10 Legal Studies p325, 341).
His Lordship differed with reluctance from such distinguished lawyers but was not persuaded their views were correct. The citation and reference to earlier legislation was now subject to and in the light of the 1989 Act. The new formalities required by section 2 governed all dispositions of interests in land.
2 There was nothing in the Law Commission's report to suggest that security by deposit of title deeds was intended to be affected or was even considered.
His Lordship said that the inclusion of contracts to grant mortgages in the report's proposals was made plain in paragraph 4.3, and as security by deposit of title deeds took effect as an agreement to mortgage, in logic there was no reason why security by deposit of title deeds should have been excepted from the proposals.
In any event, if the wording of section 2 was clear, as his Lordship believed it was, the absence from the report of a reference to security by deposit of title deeds could not alter the section's effect.
3 That the rule that a deposit of title deeds created a mortgage was not dependent on any actual contract between the parties, although, if there was one, that contract would govern the parties' rights. It had to comply with section 2 but that did not affect the legal presumptions or inferences which arose when there was a mere deposit.
His Lordship said that it was clear from the authorities that the deposit was treated as rebuttable evidence of a contract to mortgage. To allow inquiries, such as evidence to establish whether or not a deposit was intended to create a mortgage security over the land and whether or not the original deposit was intended at the outset to be security for further advances, after the 1989 Act was quite inconsistent with section 2, requiring as it did that the contract be made by a single document containing all the terms of the agreement if it was to be valid.
It seemed clear that the deposit of title deeds took effect as a contract to mortgage and fell within section 2. His Lordship agreed with the judge below (at p111) that the Law Commission's recommendation that contracts relating to land should be incorporated in a signed document containing all the terms was clearly intended to promote certainty, and that the new legislation was likely to have the effect of avoiding disputes on oral evidence as to the obligation which the parties intended to secure.
Therefore, by reason of section 2, the deposit of title deeds by way of security could not give a mortgage or charge.
Lord Justice Phillips gave a concurring judgment and Lord Justice Leggatt agreed with both.
Solicitors: Radcliffes & Co; Clyde & Co.
Employment Appeal Tribunal. Ministry of Defence v Nathan
Before Mr Justice Keene, Mr J. A. Scouller and Mr P. Dawson
(Judgment February 6)
An industrial tribunal ought not to have assessed as 100 per cent the chance of a servicewoman dismissed because she was pregnant returning to the full 22-year period of her service in a case where the assessment of chance related to a long period of time subsequent to the tribunal's decision.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal so held when allowing an appeal by the Ministry of Defence from a decision of a Newcastle upon Tyne industrial tribunal last March awarding the applicant, Jane Nathan, compensation for unlawful discrimination on the ground of sex. The ministry had appealed on the ground that the award was excessive.
Mr Timothy Pitt-Payne for the ministry; Ms Judith Beale for the applicant.
MR JUSTICE KEENE said that Mr Pitt-Payne had accepted that a finding of 100 per cent chance was not necessarily perverse or an indication of an error of law per se. But he argued that an assessment at 100 per cent when dealing with what would have happened over a long period of time required exceptional circumstances.
A distinction had to be drawn between cases where the long period of time had already passed and those where it related to a long period of time stetching into the future when seen from the date of the tribunal's decision.
Where the period had passed by the time of the tribunal's assessment the tribunal was able to look back at what had in fact happened and take that into account. In the present case the tribunal's finding of 100 per cent chance of the applicant serving for 22 years from her enlistment in November 1982 involved making a judgment about what might or might not happen between March 1995 and the year 2004.
Many unpredictable factors could affect the applicant's ability to serve throughout the remaining nine years of the 22 years of service including health, the possibility of further children, the uncertainty of childcare and the risk of redundancy resulting from the fact that the size of the armed forces was decreasing.
Mr Pitt-Payne's argument was that no reasonable tribunal could be 100 per cent certain that the applicant would not have been affected by such possibilities between 1995 and 2004 and the tribunal had either misdirected itself or the decision was perverse.
An assessment of a 100 per cent chance which related to a future period was not necessarily perverse. But the further into the future the tribunal was having to look the more difficult it became to regard a 100 per cent chance as a permissible option.
Apart from the length of the period the permissibility of a 100 per cent assessment depended on such factors as the stength of the applicant's commitment to a service career, the ease with which she would have pursued such a career as well as being a mother, the value attached to her by the armed services, the risk of redundancy, her health and her age.
An industrial tribunal was not obliged to make a discount in the percentage because some period of time in the future was involved but the further into the future one looked the greater the opportunities for the vicissitudes of life.
The majority of the appeal tribunal considered that the industrial tribunal's decision was outside the range of permissible options. To say that there was no possibility of anything happening during those years between 1995 and 2004 which would lead to the cessation of the applicant's service was stretching credulity beyond an acceptable limit.
It was irrational of the tribunal to regard as a 100 per cent certainty the prospect of the applicant having continued in military service until 2004. The appeal would be allowed and the case remitted to the same tribunal.
Solicitors: Treasury Solicitor; Alison Stott, Durham.
Court of Appeal. Regina v O'hAdhmaill Before Lord Taylor of Gosforth, Lord Chief Justice, Mr Justice Latham and Mr Justice Hooper
(Reasons February 9)
Where a trial judge refused defence counsel's suggestion, made for the first time at the end of the defence closing speech, that an alternative count of unlawful possession of explosives should be added to an indictment charging conspiracy to cause explosions, the safety of the jury's verdict of guilty on the conspiracy count could not be doubted.
The Court of Appeal so stated in giving reserved reasons for having dismissed on February 1 the appeal of Feilim Padraic O'hAdhmaill, a former lecturer in sociology at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and an admitted member of the IRA against conviction at the Central Criminal Court (Mr Justice Rougier and a jury) on a count of conspiracy to cause an explosion, contrary to section 3(1)(a) of the Explosive Substances Act 1883. He was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment. An appeal against sentence was dismissed.
Mr Geoffrey Robertson, QC, who did not appear below, and Mr Ben Emmerson for the appellant; Sir Derek Spencer, QC, Solicitor-General, Mr John Nutting, QC and Mr Richard Horwell for the Crown.
THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE, giving the reasons of the court, said that the appellant admittedly was knowingly in possession of explosives and ammunition, was a member of the IRA and was acting on their behalf.
He was arrested on February 21, 1994 while dismantling the rear seats of a car, which had been under observation after it had been imported from Ireland on February 13. Concealed inside the car boot and seat cavities were 17 packages of Semtex, 17 detonators and other items including a gun and ammunition and under-car booby traps.
In his wallet was a number of cigarette papers wrapped in cellophane, some bearing a code enabling phone calls and meetings to be arranged secretly and others bearing lists of possible military, political and strategic targets.
The prosecution case was that he was to have played a controlling role in a planned IRA bombing campaign to take place in England in early 1994. The defence case was that, despite the admissions, the evidence did not necessarily disclose a settled conspiracy to carry out explosions.
His Lordship considered in detail the argued criticisms relating to the trial and summing up and stated that they failed.
Leave had been granted on February 1 at the hearing of submissions on an application for leave to add an additional ground of appeal concerning the absence of any count charging a lesser offence than the conspiracy count.
In the course of his final speech, defence counsel told the jury that he was going to invite the prosecution with the judge's leave to add an alternative charge of unlawful possession of explosives, a charge of which the appellant would not invite the jury to acquit him.
The matter was thus raised for the first time with the prosecution and the judge after the defence speech. No count was added.
Mr Robertson contended that the refusal to add the charge might have led to injustice. Faced with admissions by the appellant that he was a member of the IRA and that he had the explosives with him at least with the possibility of some future use being made of them in the IRA's interest, the jury were likely to be hostile to him and reluctant to let him walk out. It was submitted that the jury might have convicted of the lesser charge rather than the conspiracy charge if they had had that option.
Mr Robertson referred to R v Fairbanks ((1986) 1 WLR 1202), in which Lord Justice Mustill had said that a judge was obliged to leave the lesser alternative only if that was necessary in the interests of justice, but that such interests would never be served in a situation where the lesser verdict simply did not arise in the way in which the case had been presented to the court.
In Fairbanks careless driving was an alternative verdict capable of being returned on the count before the jury of which the appellant had been convicted. In the instant case their Lordships were concerned with the suggestion that, at the instance of the defence or of the judge and at the end of the case, a further count should have been added to the indictment.
In R v Maxwell ((1990) 1 WLR 401, 408) Lord Ackner had said: "What is required in any particular case where the judge fails to leave an alternative offence to the jury is that the court, before interfering with the verdict must be satisfied that the jury may have convicted out of a reluctance to see the defendant get clean away with what, on any view, was disgraceful conduct. If they are so satisfied, then the conviction cannot be safe or satisfactory."
The Lord Chief Justice said that, after considering the course which the trial in the present case took, the count which was before the jury and the count which was proposed should be added, their Lordships saw no reason to doubt the safety of the jury's verdict.
Accordingly, the additional ground of appeal failed and the appeal against conviction was dismissed. The sentence was not manifestly excessive.
Solicitors: B. M. Birnberg & Co, Camden; Crown Prosecution Service, Headquarters.
Chancery Division. In re William Pickles plc Before Mr Justice Rattee (Judgment February 6)
A single originating application under the Insolvency Act 1986 could be issued in respect of a number of separate companies in respect of the receivership of those companies. There was no need to issue a separate originating summons in respect of each separate company.
Mr Justice Rattee so ordered in the Chancery Division on an application made by William Pickles plc on a single document intituled in the name of all 14 companies, thereby reducing the cost by £1,560.
Mr Matthew Collings for the companies.
MR JUSTICE RATTEE said that the liquidator of William Pickles plc and 13 other companies, which had formerly been wholly owned subsidiaries, sought leave to issue one single originating application under the 1986 Act for directions relating to the marshalling of securities and certain inter-company indebtedness.
The only point was whether by reason of anything under that Act or the Insolvency Rules (SI 1986 No 1925) made thereunder it was permissible to issue a single application in respect of matters which were common to all the companies or whether it was necessary to issue 14 separate applications, involving extra costs of £1,560.
His Lordship had been referred to In re a Company ((1984) BCLC 307), where Mr Justice Mervyn Davies had declined to allow a similar application that a single petition should be allowed under section 75 of the Companies Act 1980 with regard to a number of companies which were not in any group although there were common shareholders.
His Lordship referred to rule 7.26(1) of the 1986 Rules: "Every proceeding under Parts I to VII of the Act shall, with any necessary additions, be intituled ‘In the matter of (naming the company to which the proceedings relate)' and ‘in the matter of the Insolvency Act 1986'."
But the reference to a single company included reference to the plural and he accepted the submission of counsel that there was nothing in the Act or rules which required that there should be a separate application in respect of each separate company.
A person who was a liquidator of more than one company could issue a single originating application for directions under section 112 of the 1986 Act, intituled in the matter of all the relevant companies together rather than having a separate one in each case.
There might be reasons why in particular circumstances a separate application in each case might be convenient but there was nothing in the present case why a single application would not suffice.
Solicitors: Addleshaw Sons & Latham, Manchester.
On the Frontier was one of the three plays W.H. Auden wrote in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood in the 1930s the others were The Dog Beneath the Skin and The Ascent of F6.
GROUP THEATRE
"ON THE FRONTIER"
By W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood. Music by Benjamin Britten.
Dr. Oliver Thorvald ... Tristan Rawson
Mrs. Thorvald ... Mary Barton
Eric Thorvald ... Eric Berry
Martha Thorvald ... Everley Gregg
Colonel Hussek ... Cecil Winter
Louisa Vrodny ... Juliet Mansel
Anna Vrodny ... Lydia Lopokova
Oswald Vrodny ... John Moody
Lessep ... Hugh Grant
Manners ... Alan Rolfe
Valerian ... Wyndham Goldie
Alving ... Nigel Fitzgerald
Corporal Grimm ... Ian Dawson
The Guidanto ... Ernest Milton
Though, in its bitter end, this play does not go beyond an advocacy of hatred and of heroic death on the barricades, and is, therefore, slashed across by the familiar confusion of those who will not or cannot distinguish between a political dislike of war and a spiritual perception of the futility of all violence, it is conspicuously more mature and, in the highest sense, more charitable than the dramatists' other work. It is, too, steadier in
dramatic movement, less flippant in tone, simpler in structure, and happily free from those interludes of farcical defiance that have in the past seemed to associate the idea of revolution with the pulling away of chairs by turbulent nephews or the laying down of orange-peel by intellectual street-urchins. A genuine attempt has been made to state the view of a great capitalist and to attack him with argued satire. Even the dictator of Westland, while being held up as a hysterical lunatic, is considered with seeing eyes, and Mr. Ernest Milton is enabled to draw a portrait of a human being with humour in its terrors and truth in its extravagancies.
Two States, Ostnia and Westland, go to war. The follies of extreme nationalism, the delusions and sufferings of the peoples, the deadly similarity of propaganda, from whatever source, the uselessness of warlike effortall these are set out in scenes, adroitly interlocked, which carry the audience from a small home in one country to a like home in the other, or from the trenches into the presence of a dictator. The characters are seldom allowed to remain impersonal symbols, but are endowed with enough individuality and life to enable recitation to cease and acting to begin ... The point to remark about the play as a whole is that, altogether apart from its merits or demerits as propaganda, it has a considerable spark of theatrical life, and can be watched with continuous interest even by those who do not come to a theatre in the same spirit in which they attend a political meeting.
Gerald Savory, playwright and former Head of Plays at BBC Television, died on February 9 aged 86. He was born on November 17, 1909.
GERALD SAVORY was the young playwright who enchanted West End audiences during the late 1930s with a light suburban comedy entitled George and Margaret. The play ran for two years at Wyndham's Theatre and clocked up an impressive 799 performances. It was a phenomenal triumph for the youthful Savory, and a sophisticated piece of writing which sparked enthusiastic comparisons with Terence Rattigan and Noel Coward. His humour, as The Times critic noted in 1937, arose not so much from original situation, or even particularly from wit, as from "a kind of unfailing aptness and even exaggeration of the commonplace".
The H.M.Tennent impresario Hugh ("Binkie") Beaumont, whose organisation had profited enormously from the play's success, asked Noel Coward to take it to Broadway. But Coward mistakenly had parts of it rewritten for which he always blamed himself and the play suffered the added misfortune of appearing in the same Broadway season as Rattigan's French Without Tears. It ran for barely two months in New York and never recaptured the success of its long London run.
That hardly mattered to Savory, whose name was made in Britain, and who became known ever afterwards irritatingly for him, perhaps, considering his subsequent elevation to be head of BBC plays as the man who had written George and Margaret.
Gerald Douglas Savory was the son of two actors, both of whom were reluctant to see their son join them in such a precarious profession. He was educated at Bradfield College and then, having failed in his first jobs as a stockbroker's clerk and a private tutor, joined his parents on the boards. He made his professional debut at the Playhouse in Whitley Bay in 1931 as Mr Smith in It Pays to Advertise. The 1930s were spent learning his craft in repertory companies in Hull, Brighton and Bournemouth, and in touring Canada and Australia with his mother, a popular actress named Grace Lane.
George and Margaret was his first play and was written while he was on tour. It concerned the frustrations of a liberal Hampstead family, slowly simmering to boiling point, as they wait for the George and Margaret of the title to arrive (they never do). It was demonstrably an actor's piece of writing, full of excellent lines and with genuine opportunities for light comic performances. It was tried out by the Repertory Players, and was then spotted by Binkie Beaumont who brought it, in a new production, to Wyndham's and made it his first big commercial success. A film version followed in 1940, by which time Savory had been lured to the Hollywood studios by Alfred Hitchcock, and he became an American citizen.
He was soon bored, however, rewriting other people's scripts and a crisis point was reached when he was sent the script for Ninotchka. He was no fan of either the writing or the leading actress Greta Garbo and he marched into his boss's office to make clear that he could not bear "that Swedish woman". His head of department politely suggested that Savory should leave, and by the time he had retraced his steps to his own office, Savory found his name had been struck off the door. A then little-known writer called Billy Wilder took over the project in his place.
Savory meanwhile directed summer stock, and gave Grace Kelly one of her first jobs. She was grateful and introduced him to her father, Jack Kelly, who owned television stations in Chicago. By this means Savory entered the highly unpredictable world of live television, overseeing the transmission of plays five nights a week.
He continued to write plays, at the rate of almost one a year in the early days. The second, Good and Proper (1939), was about an unhappily married couple, and contained an excellent part for Savory's mother. It was the success of A Likely Tale (1956) at the Globe, however, starring Robert Morley and Margaret Rutherford, which prompted his return to London.
Savory's experience in American television led to an appointment first at Granada TV in 1964 as executive producer, then at the BBC, as head of plays, 1965-72. This was a period when the production of new drama was a high priority in the corporation ABC and Granada had set the pace and Savory's department had a lot of catching-up to do. Projects during his tenure included The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Elizabeth R and Cathy Come Home. In 1975 there was the monumental Churchill's People, based on Winston Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples.
After leaving the plays department, and with no official post, Savory worked on whatever interested him. There was an adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula for BBC2 in 1976; work for Thames in the late 1970s on Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate; and an adaptation of E.F.Benson's Mapp and Lucia, for London Weekend Television.
Savory was married four times. His first marriage ended in divorce, and his second and third wives predeceased him. He is survived by his fourth wife, the actress Sheila Brennan, whom he married in 1970, and by a stepson from that marriage.
The Hon Honor Earl, portrait painter, died on February 2 aged 94. She was born on March 24, 1901.
ENLIVENING patrician elegance with a vigorous dash of bohemian eccentricity, Honor Earl breezed through the upper echelons of society garnering subjects for her painter's brush. Her pastel portraits caught the expressions of the most eminent people of her day, including four generations of the Royal Family and some of the most dazzling stars of stage and screen.
But though herself ravishingly beautiful, Honor Earl found merely pretty features "boring" to paint. She preferred faces of character and often chose as her subjects her cleaning lady, down-and-outs on the London streets, and prostitutes and criminals whom she came to know during her many years of service as a prison visitor.
But it was in the portraiture of children an area from which most artists shy that Honor Earl specialised. Again she chose her sitters from across the widest spectrum of society, her subjects ranging from Peter Phillips, the Queen's first grandchild, to Christopher, a severely crippled Barnardo orphan. She had a great empathy with children and knew how to keep them alert while they sat. Often she would sketch with one hand while playing with glove puppets in the other or making tunes with a comb and piece of paper.
Perhaps her understanding of children was born of the lovelessness which she herself had felt as a child. Her father Viscount Maugham, a lawyer, later to become Lord Chancellor under Neville Chamberlain, was a chilly, distant figure uninterested in his offspring and fiercely devoted to his work. He was the elder brother of Somerset Maugham, although the two remained always bitterly antagonistic. "It's very sad my father is convinced that you dislike him," Honor's elder sister once ventured to her uncle, hoping perhaps to elicit a denial. But the aged Somerset Maugham stuttered in reply: "He is p-p-perfectly correct. I think he is the most detestable old gentleman."
Somerset Maugham did not take to Honor either, perhaps offended by her childish tactlessness she once broached in his presence the forbidden subject of his liaison with another man. Honor described herself as her uncle's "least favourite niece". But though this did not worry her unduly she hated the dreary holidays spent with him at Cap Ferat she was stricken by the knowledge that she was also a disappointment to her mother, whom she adored. While Honor's brother and two sisters were all very bright, Honor had dyslexia, a condition that had not yet been recognised at that time. She was always to remember sobbing her heart out over Reading Without Tears, pronouncing the word god instead of dog, while her French governess berated her for her stupidity.
It was only when she discovered her talent for drawing that her life changed. "She's half-witted in most ways but she draws," everybody said. Art became Honor's lifeline, and even in old age she would still confess that it was only when drawing that she felt a complete self-confidence.
In 1937 Honor Earl became a prison visitor "I have seen so many tragic people whose misery could have been avoided by the right treatment," she said. Forming close friendships with prisoners in Holloway and in girls' borstals she realised for the first time that "great good could coexist with great evil, and without the good being impaired."
Honor Earl was always to remain broad-minded in her outlook. Indeed her brother Robin a quixotic figure who lived a life of reckless extravagance and of a certain disrepute dedicated his book about homosexuality The Wrong People to her, because he considered her the most liberal member of his family.
Throughout her life she combined her talent for painting a skill which she compared to that of a performing seal ("I have learnt how to do certain tricks") with charitable work. During the war she fought to draw attention to the waste of refugee talent to the war effort and raised funds for the All-Nations Voluntary Service League by selling her works. But, though she supported a wide range of charities, her principal concern was for under-privileged children. The proceeds of her exhibitions were donated to, among other causes, the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Child, Save the Children, and the Actors' Orphanage. For this last she did portraits of more than 75 stage and film stars. She later followed it with an exhibition called Children of the Stars the proceeds of which went to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
Honor Earl also founded and acted as chairman of the Young Musicians Fund, a charity to help young people who showed outstanding musical ability but whose parents were not in a position to pay for tuition.
Though Honor Earl continued to work into old age, she declared that she "looked forward like anything to dying". A lifelong member of the College of Psychic Studies, she had a great interest in the spirit world and believed herself to have been visited by wraiths from the afterlife.
Honor Earl's husband Sebastian predeceased her. She is survived by a son.
Trevor Russell-Cobb, public relations consultant and bibliophile, died on January 31 aged 77. He was born on February 3, 1918.
TREVOR RUSSELL-COBB's pioneering monograph Paying the Piper: The Theory and Practice of Industrial Patronage, was avowedly a work of propaganda, designed to persuade businessmen and industrialists to spend heavily on supporting artists and the arts. Published in 1968, it championed an unfamiliar cause which was largely achieved within a decade and is now conventional boardroom wisdom.
Trenchantly and professionally argued, Paying the Piper took as its premise that "the arts are vitally important not so much in solving human problems as in helping us feel that we all face them together". This struck a chord among businessmen and politicians to whom the Beatles were still a new phenomenon, and the light-hearted aphorisms which introduced each section on the individual arts Augustus John's "If you don't shut up I'll paint you as you are", for instance, or Quiller-Couch's "If you think a public meeting can compose a ballad, just call one and see" helped to attract an unexpectedly wide audience. A long leading article in The Times Literary Supplement, prissily written and largely hostile, provided the author's mill with welcome grist.
For a man to whom a love of books meant far more than the pursuit of his chosen profession, such success was remarkable. Russell-Cobb's library of some 30,000 titles provided not only the fount of his exceptional knowledge of literature but also the foundations of his small house in Pimlico; without their support, his friends feared, its very walls would collapse.
The son of a soldier and a singer his mother taught at the Webber-Douglas School Trevor Russell-Cobb was educated at Wellington College and trained as a pianist at the Royal College of Music ("I was Moiseiwitch's worst pupil", he used to say). In 1939, after a brief spell in the City, he enlisted in the Welsh Guards, serving with the Eighth Army and rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. After the war he joined the British Council and, later, the technical assistance department of the United Nations.
In 1955 he found his professional metier as a director of the firm of Campbell-Johnson, at that time one of London's leading public relations consultants. His clients there included the Tobacco Research Council and Watney Mann, whom he took with him when he set up his own public relations company some ten years later.
Russell-Cobb, always his own man, was also and par excellence a club man not in the modern sense (he did not belong to the Garrick, for instance) but in the 18th-century mode. He subscribed to countless groups and learned societies: notably to the Royal Society of Arts, of which he was treasurer for five years, the Johnson Society, the William Morris Society, the Foundation for Ephemera Studies and the Omar Khayyam Club. For 25 years he was a director of the English Chamber Orchestra and he was a trustee of the Sir John Soane's Museum until his death.
More than all else, Russell-Cobb loved to talk about words, ideas, music, literature, especially about Dr Johnson, whom he came to resemble. In conversation he usually chose to take the contrary, unexpected view, simply for the fun of it; he assumed in his companions a flatteringly wide knowledge, both general and esoteric, and if they failed to measure up he would enlighten them with grace as well as wit. In the preface to Paying the Piper he quoted Man Ray: "I have made some of my listeners think, and it sometimes made them angry, but I have also made others angry, and it has made them think." In Trevor Russell-Cobb's case, for "angry" read happy.
Trevor Russell-Cobb is survived by a son and daughter of his first marriage to Suzanne, who also survives him, and by two sons of his second wife, Nan, who died in 1979.
Mercer Ellington, jazz trumpeter, composer and bandleader, died in Copenhagen on February 8 aged 76. He was born in Washington DC on March 11, 1919.
DESPITE considerable achievements as a musician in his own right, Mercer Ellington's career was inextricably bound up with that of his father, Duke. Mercer played the trumpet in his father's band from 1965 until 1974, and was his copyist and road manager for longer than that. He also conducted whenever his father was indisposed or absent. Some of the band's best-known hits (including Things Ain't What They Used To Be from 1941) were written by Mercer, yet for the most part he assumed a background role, seldom publicly acknowledged by his father.
The relationship between father and son was complex, at its worst becoming what Mercer described as a "cold war", but at its best leading to their collaboration on the ballet Three Black Kings during Duke's final illness and stay in hospital. It was never easy for Mercer to establish his independence as a musician, even after his father's death in 1974, when Mercer took over the Ellington Orchestra. In his autobiography Duke Ellington wrote: "My son...is dedicated to maintaining the lustre of his father's image."
Mercer Kennedy Ellington was born before his father became famous. When his mother, Edna, separated from his father in the late 1920s he moved to New York with his grandparents, who made a home for the increasingly successful Duke in Edgecombe Avenue, Harlem. Mercer grew up with his father's younger sister Ruth, and he learnt the rudiments of composition listening half-awake to his father playing the piano in the small hours of the morning.
Mercer showed a talent for composition, helped by his father: "He'd leave me problems to solve by the time he got back...he never put a note down, but he scratched out what was in poor taste." Mercer then entered the Academy of Musical Art to study composition, saxophone and trumpet.
Duke's band recorded Mercer's compositions from the late 1930s, but when Mercer formed his own band in 1939, despite his father's advice to capitalise on his name and play Duke's music, Mercer steadfastly refused. After a short spell in the Services with Sy Oliver's US Army Band, Mercer led his own group for much of the 1940s, issuing his first discs in 1946. The pianist on those records was the English critic Leonard Feather, who formed a record company with Mercer in the early 1950s.
Mercer became a successful arranger, producer and manager, and he went on to produce record sessions for the rest of his life, including one with Cleo Laine only last year. He joined Cootie Williams's band in the 1950s as trumpeter and road manager, before repeating the job with Duke.
Mercer's first years leading his late father's band were successful, and he performed many of the longer compositions Duke had only played a few times in public. As the older members left or died, the band drifted further from Duke's legacy. Mercer directed his father's music in the Broadway show Sophisticated Ladies in the early 1980s, but at the end of the decade he settled in Copenhagen, only sporadically returning to New York for occasional bandleading.
He made some excellent recordings with his late father's band, including his own extended suite Music Is My Mistress. He supervised the acquisition by the Smithsonian Institution of the Ellington archive of scores, and similarly passed the recorded legacy to Danish Radio.
He is survived by two daughters and two sons, including the guitarist Edward Ellington II.
SO MANY species are dying that the planet could be on the brink of a catastrophe, a leading conservationist said last night. Dr Richard Leakey, an authority on primitive man and the opposition leader in Kenya, said: "I think we are seeing extinction rates which could approximate to that seen at the end of the Cretaceous period.
"Ecologists say that in the next 40 to 50 years, up to 60 per cent of the world's species will become extinct." The end of the Cretaceous period, thought to be caused by an asteroid slamming into Earth, marked the disappearance of dinosaurs.
Dr Leakey was speaking to a sell-out audience at the first Times-Dillons lecture of the year, coinciding with the publication of his book The Sixth Extinction.
Among species in imminent danger, he said, were predators such as lions, cheetahs and leopards. The biggest cause for concern was poverty because people in underdeveloped countries were tempted to exploit their environment. The exploding world population was also draining the world's natural resources.
Giving an example from his own experience, he said: "If we were to give the Kenyan people good government and improve their lot, they would not have to chop down forests."
Mr Christopher Mark Glyn Ockelton to be a full-time Immigration Adjudicator, designated as a special adjudicator, with effect from today. Mr Ockelton will sit in Leeds.
King's College London The following appointments have been made:
Dr Howard Gospel to the Chair of Management, from September 1. He joins King's from Pembroke College, Oxford, where he is Rhodes Lecturer in Management Studies (Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management).
Dr Alessandro Schiesaro to the Chair of Latin Language and Literature, from July 1. He joins the college from Princeton University where he is Assistant Professor of Classics.
BIRTHS: John Hunter, physiologist and surgeon, East Kilbride, 1728; Lord Randolph Churchill, statesman, Blenheim Palace, 1849; Feodor Chaliapin, singer and actor, Kazan, Russia, 1873; Eleanor Farjeon, writer of children's verse and stories, London, 1881; Georges Simenon, writer and creator of Maigret, Liege, 1901.
DEATHS: Benvenuto Cellini, sculptor and goldsmith, Florence, 1571; Jacopo da Bassano, painter, Bassano, Venice, 1592; Cotton Mather, Puritan and writer, Boston, Massachusetts, 1728; Richard Wagner, composer, Venice, 1883; Georges Rouault, Expressionist painter, Paris, 1958; Dame Christabel Pankhurst, suffragette, Los Angeles, 1958.
The accession of William III and Mary, 1689.
The massacre of the Macdonalds at Glencoe by the Campbells, 1692.
The Dutch spy Mata Hari was arrested by the French, 1917.
The Nuffield Foundation was established, 1943.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union, 1974.
Mr Michael Attenborough, executive producer, Royal Shakespeare Company, 46; Dr D.V. Atterton, chairman, Guinness Mahon Holdings, 69;
Mr David Banks, editorial director, Mirror Group Newspapers, 48; Miss Caroline Blakiston, actress, 63; Mr Liam Brady, football manager, 40; Professor Derek Burke, former Vice-Chancellor, University of East Anglia, 66; Earl Cadogan, 82; Dr J.P. Clayton, former Apothecary to HM Household at Windsor, 75; Miss M.E. Collins, former matron-in-chief, QARNNS, 69; Mr Gareth Davies, chairman, Glynwed International, 66; Professor Janet Finch, Vice-Chancellor, Keele University, 50; Baroness Flather, 62; Dr D.G. Hessayon, horticultural and agricultural author, 68; Professor Lord Lewis of Newnham, 68; Lord Lovat, 19; Mr John McAllion, MP, 48; Mr Gordon McMaster, MP, 36; Lord Manners, 73; Mr Colin Matthews, composer, 50; the Earl of Moray, 68; Miss Kim Novak, actress, 63; Mr Leonard Pascoe, cricketer, 46; Lord Peyton of Yeovil, 77; Lord Pym, 74; Mr Oliver Reed, actor, 58; Miss Margaretta Scott, actress, 84; Mr George Segal, actor, 62; M Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, author and politician, 72; Dr Donald Sykes, former Principal, Mansfield College, Oxford, 66.
Royal Navy and Royal Marines CAPTAIN: W N P Batho - CNOCS Portsdown as CO 1.5.96; P G Hore - MOD London 26.7.96; J H Morgan - MOD Bath 17.5.96.
COMMANDER: A A S Adair - Battleaxe in Cmd 31.5.96; C J Clay - Staff of 2 SL/CNH 21.6.96; D M Craig - Sultan 1.4.96; P S Eaglestone - DCTA Andover 19.4.96; I B Gauld - Staff of 2SL/CNH 12.3.96; A K Grant - exchange USA 23.8.96; J H Hollidge - MOD Bath 24.5.96; M J Robbins - Excellent 12.4.96; C E Stanley - RNSC Greenwich 29.3.96; R G Thorn - SACLANT USA 16.8.96.
SURGEON COMMANDER: A S C Allison - Staff of 2SL/CNH 3.5.96; J R Broome - Neptune 28.5.96.
LOCAL LIEUTENANT COLONEL: H De Jager - RMR Tyne as CO 16.7.96.
CHAPLAIN: S J Brown - Raleigh 29.3.96; W J J Matthews - Collingwood 19.4.96; J K Watson - Drake CBP 8.4.96.
Retirements
COMMODORE:B S Morgan - 30.4.96.
LOCAL LIEUTENANT COLONEL: A I B Troup - 6.4.96.
SURGEON COMMANDER: M L Cowley - 2.5.96.
CHAPLAIN: D H Goodburn - 6.5.96.
The Army
MAJOR-GENERAL: Major-General C L Elliott to be Director General Individual Training 12.2.96; Brigadier G A Ewer to be Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff (Logistics) 16.2.96 in the rank of Major-General.
COLONEL: R A Bencini - To UK Sp Unit SHAPE, 12.2.96; K J Hadfield - To MOD, 12.2.96; C M Sexton - To Staff Coll, 12.2.96.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL: G R Coward AAC - to be CO 1 Regt AAC, 13.2.96; G M V Gillett RA - To Arty Dev Div, 12.2.96; R D Lewis AGC (ALS) - To HQ 4 Div, 12.2.96; R A Martin Reme - To be CO 1 Bn Reme, 16.2.96; R F Robinson RLC - To be CO 21 Log Sp Regt RLC, 12.2.96; P Snow RLC - To HQ Chilwell Station, 18.2.96; C M I Tennent KRH - To JHQ IT, 12.2.96; B W McCall Reme - To MOD, 12.2.96; J R C SAVILLE Reme - To HQ Reme Trg Gp, 12.2.96.
Retirement
COLONEL: P H Gibson late Reme, 13.2.96
Royal Air Force
GROUP CAPTAIN: I S Hall - MOD, 12.2.96; J Turner - MOD, 16.2.96.
WING COMMANDER: J N Scholefield - D OF Resettlement, 5.2.96; I Harvey - RAF Aldergrove, 5.2.96; K G Brackstone - RAF St Mawgan, 5.2.96; G M Watson - HQPTC, 10.2.96; R P Bull - HQSTC, 12.2.96; D J Robinson - HQLC Brampton, 12.2.96; J A Thomas - HQLC Wyton, 12.2.96; A M Gordon Shape Int Staff, 12.2.96; M A C Codgbrook - Staff Coll Bracknell, 12.2.96; M W Taylor - D OF R & S, 12.2.96; S P J Lilley - RAF Lossiemouth, 12.2.96.
Retirements
WING COMMANDER: C M Jakeman, 12.2.96.
Meeting
Royal Over-Seas League
Mr Adrian Coles, Director-General of The Building Societies' Association was the guest speaker at a meeting of the Discussion Circle of the Royal Over-Seas League held last night at Over-Seas House, St James's. Miss Madge Gill presided.
A Service of Thanksgiving for the life and work of Sir David Lightbown, MP, will take place in St Margaret's Church, Westminster Abbey, at noon on Tuesday, March 12, 1996. Those wishing to attend are requested to apply for tickets to: The Rector's Secretary, Room 12, 1 Little Cloister, Westminster Abbey, SW1P 3PL, enclosing a stamped addressed envelope. Tickets will be posted on March 1.
The Memorial Service for Andrea Duchess of Manchester will be held at St Andrews, Kimbolton, Cambridgeshire, on Saturday, February 24, at 2pm.
Viscount Leathers
A Service of Thanksgiving for the life and work of Viscount Leathers will take place in the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft, Palace of Westminster at noon on Thursday, March 7, 1996. Those wishing to attend are requested to apply for tickets to: The Rector's Secretary, Room 7, 1 Little Cloister, Westminster Abbey, SW1P 3PL, enclosing a stamped addressed envelope. Tickets will be posted on February 28.
BUCKINGHAM PALACE February 12: The Princess Royal, President of the Patrons, Crime Concern, this afternoon launched the Legal and General Kickstart Handbook, Legal and General Headquarters, Temple Court, Queen Victoria Street, London EC4.
Her Royal Highness this evening attended a Special Forces Club Fiftieth Anniversary Reception and Dinner at the Imperial War Museum, London SE1.
The Queen has been graciously pleased to appoint Captain Charles Winter, Coldstream Guards, to be Temporary Equerry to Her Majesty in succession to Captain Edward Macfarlane.
HOPES that on-field affairs in the cricket World Cup might now take precedence were dashed yesterday by the discovery of a massive truck bomb, which was located a mile from the Premadasa Stadium in Colombo.
This find, plus reports of a civilian massacre in northeast Sri Lanka, raised fresh doubts over the willingness of the Zimbabwe and Kenya teams to fulfil fixtures on the island.
Already Australia and West Indies have forfeited matches against Sri Lanka rather than go there, after a suicide bombing in Colombo two weeks ago. Both teams were scheduled to play at the Premadasa ground.
Zimbabwe are perhaps the more likely to be concerned by the new developments. Their match is in Colombo on February 21, while Kenya's is in the relative safety of Kandy on March 6. Several of the Zimbabwe players were anxious about the original decision to go ahead with their visit to the island.
If Sri Lanka gained two more walkovers they would enter the quarter-finals without playing any cricket, an unacceptable state of affairs. The tournament would be held up to ridicule.
The Zimbabwe party arrived in Hyderabad yesterday morning for their game against West Indies on Friday. Late last night, Babu Meman, their tour manager, had heard nothing official about the discovery of the lorry bomb and declined to speculate on what Zimbabwe's reaction to the news might be.
At the weekend, a spokesman for the Tamil Tigers, who are waging a guerrilla war in Sri Lanka, said that the group had no intention of attacking foreigners or sports personalities. The bomb yesterday was planted in a temple compound.
The incident will cause intense embarrassment to the World Cup organisers, who have consistently dismissed as unfounded the fears that the Australia and West Indies players have raised over
safety.
Yesterday, before the bomb was discovered, Inderjit Singh Bindra, president of the Indian Cricket Board, threatened Australia and West Indies with heavy fines in the region of £2 million for failing to carry out their commitments.
Wes Hall, the West Indies manager, responded to news of the lorry bomb by saying: "We have no comment, it does not concern us ... Don't expect any ‘I told you so' comments from me."
Ironically, security concerns may now centre on the exhibition match between Sri Lanka and a combined India-Pakistan team in Colombo today.
It was arranged to recompense Sri Lanka for the loss of two lucrative fixtures and demonstrate that it was quite safe to play in the city.
LENNOX LEWIS, of Britain, the former World Boxing Council heavyweight champion, is to take a test for HIV. The measure is a precautionary one after reports that Tommy Morrison, his last opponent four months ago, may have tested HIV-positive.
On Saturday, the Nevada State Athletic Commission suspended Morrison hours before his bout in Las Vegas against Arthur Weathers, another American. The Commission did not give any reason, but it was widely reported that one of the tests was for HIV and that Morrison had tested positive.
Lewis, whose next opponent is Ray Mercer on May 10, was not available for comment yesterday. Frank Maloney, Lewis's manager, said, however: "No one knows exactly what's the matter with Morrison but all the precautions that are necessary will be taken. Lennox is due to have a full medical with the boxing board in March and HIV tests will be done then. I spoke to a doctor today he told me the chance of anyone catching Aids from a boxing match is a million to one."
Panos Eliades, Lewis's backer, who had told The New York Daily News that "we had better get our man in there (for testing), there was a lot of blood in that fight," said yesterday, however, that he was not worried as Lewis was not cut in the bout with Morrison in Atlantic City.
The last British boxer to undergo a similar check was Colin McMillan, the former World Boxing Organisation featherweight champion, as a result of a bloody encounter with Ruben Palacio, of Colombia, in September 1992. When he came back to Britain to defend his title in 1993, Palacio was found to be HIV-infected. McMillan had tests and was cleared.
Tommy Virgets, Morrison's trainer, said that neither he nor Morrison knew the reason for the Nevada ban. "I would say everything is speculation," Virgets said.
Morrison's promoter, Tony Holden, added: "If there is a problem we are going to have Tommy retested." Marc Ratner, the executive director of the Nevada Commission, said he could not give more details. "I have been instructed by the Attorney General's office not to say anything more," Ratner said.
Morrison never made any secret about his fast lifestyle, though before the bout with Lewis he said he had changed his ways. "I was a professional partier but I am reformed now," he said.
Curtain rises on troubled World Cup.
LAUNCHED amid hot air and ill will, the World Cup needs urgent redemption tomorrow, when the talking must pause for an interlude of cricket. And it is England, mere spectators through the days of rancour and rhetoric, who are charged with restoring the sense of purpose that this event has mislaid.
Not the least of the illogicalities of the competition is that the inaugural match does not feature either Pakistan, the holders, or India, their co-hosts. Instead, it is a meeting of England and New Zealand, neither of them previous winners of the Cup nor conspicuously likely to change their habits now. It is a game England are expected to win; conversely, it is a game they could all too easily lose.
Given the flabby format, a defeat for England in this unlovely textile city would be anything but terminal. However, to lose their first game, with the eyes of every competing nation upon them, would undermine their credentials and expose their brittleness, reviving the readily dismissed yet sensitively recent memory of their demise in the one-day series in South Africa.
England have no complaints about their itinerary, and nor should they. After New Zealand, priced by the bookmakers at a scornful 28-1, they play United Arab Emirates on Sunday and Holland next Thursday. Even Raymond Illingworth, not a notoriously gung-ho manager, admits there is the prospect of three wins to seal a favourable quarter-final. "It has fallen quite well for us," he concedes.
New Zealand will have no respect for this view. They were the revelations of the last World Cup, devising and adhering to an inventive game-plan that involved opening their bowling with off spin and following up with a sequence of slow, accurate seamers. They will probably retain a similar pattern here. What they cannot call upon, however, is the inspirational batting of Martin Crowe.
Led by the scarcely-known Lee Germon, the side is young and impossible to pigeon-hole. England know all about Roger Twose and Chris Cairns, and they are aware of Stephen Fleming's powerful strokeplay. But much, like Nathan Astle and Craig Spearman, the opening batsmen, will be new to them, although Astle is well enough known to Illingworth after spending two years playing for his club, Farsley, in the Bradford League.
Dipak Patel, whose off-breaks with the new ball were so effective four years ago, is back again, as are Gavin Larsen and Chris Harris, the apparently innocuous double act who strangled the middle overs of so many opposition innings. Add Cairns, Dion Nash and Danny Morrison, and their bowling looks anything but negligible.
England will try to second-guess New Zealand's tactics. "In most circumstances we will use our regular opening batsmen," Illingworth said, "but if we think Patel will open the bowling for New Zealand, we'll probably promote a hitter to go in first." This overrated tactic, with a high failure percentage, would fall either to Craig White or Dominic Cork, with the option of Phillip DeFreitas if he is in the final XI.
Whenever England encounter a slow pitch, which means in the majority of their games, they are likely to include both their specialist spin bowlers, Neil Smith and Richard Illingworth. This leaves room for only two front-line seam bowlers: Cork will be one and Darren Gough, his zest and late swing evidently restored, should start as the other.
Whoever else misses out tomorrow and it is likely to be DeFreitas and Peter Martin one absentee will be Robin Smith. Injuries have already been unkind to England, with Cork, Gough and Neil Fairbrother all requiring treatment, but Smith alone is ruled out of the opening game and still uncertain if he has a future in the tournament.
England have been reassured that Pilcom, the organising committee, will look kindly on requests to replace injured players. They have received no joy on voicing their unease about the process of recalculating targets in the event of rain, or the potential problems in the insistence on restarting games on the reserve day if 25 overs of the second innings have not been bowled. Theoretically, a team could score 300, have the opposition at 70 for nine in 24 overs and still have to start again an extreme case, though not impossible.
England's officials, however, have had to come to India to raise their doubts. They have found the offices of the organisers, Pilcom, a communications blackspot and estimate that no more than 15 per cent of their letters, faxes and phone calls in the past year have been answered. The more one hears about this World Cup, the more wondrous it seems that it is starting at all.
Tottenham Hotspur 0 - West Ham United 1
TOTTENHAM Hotspur, normally so adept at stifling opponents' flair, met their match in West Ham United last night, who held on to an early lead given to them by Dani, their young Portuguese import, for a vital win away from home in the FA Carling Premiership.
This match was to have represented Ilie Dumitrescu's return to White Hart Lane, but though he cannot obtain a work permit, his absence hardly cost West Ham their continental flavour. Indeed, the visitors' line-up was extremely exciting. Slaven Bilic, the Croatia defender, made his debut after his club record £1.65 million signing from SC Karlsruhe and Dani, on loan from Sporting Lisbon, was given his first start under Redknapp, leaving Cottee, West Ham's leading goalscorer, on the substitutes' bench.
If, at times, football managers are like playboys dumping a current girlfriend for a newer model, the case for bringing in Dani was a strong one, particularly as West Ham face Grimsby tomorrow in their FA Cup fourth-round replay and the gamble, if it was one, paid off within five minutes when Dani gave West Ham the lead.
Dicks initially volleyed Williamson's corner and Walker in the Tottenham goal did well to parry the shot. However, the ball fell kindly to the 19-year-old and he headed home. Dani tried his luck from 20 yards 30 minutes later and, although his left-footed effort was relatively weak, it tested Walker on the greasy surface.
There were no surprises in Tottenham's line-up and West Ham's formation was familiar too, but surprising all the same. Bilic has immense experience as a sweeper and is a former defender of the year in Germany to boot and Redknapp was expected to field a three-man central defence. Instead, he opted to play Bilic as a centre half alongside Rieper, although the Croatian was given licence to venture forward and set promising attacks in motion.
West Ham had lost their last five games away from home, but, inspired by their new players, ran at Tottenham as if they had never had a nasty experience away from Upton Park in their lives. Buoyed by two recent home wins in the Premiership against Coventry City and Nottingham Forest, they defended well too. Tottenham's first real chance did not arrive until the dying minutes of the first half, when Sheringham headed straight at Miklosko. In the opening half's injury time, Sheringham repeated the trick heading Fox's cross straight into the West Ham keeper's grasp.
Tottenham opened the second half in a blaze of attack-minded indignation and Miklosko saved well, if desperately, from Sheringham and Armstrong. In the 58 th minute, Dozzell swivelled onto Armstrong's centre and fired the ball straight at Miklosko. Not surprisingly, perhaps, with the Czech keeper in such an inspired mood, West Ham were content to soak up the pressure and then break forward, usually with some intricacy. Out of nothing, they almost extended their lead when Dowie's cross was deflected onto the crossbar. Then, after 70 minutes, Rowland set off on a brilliant run down the left flank and fed Cottee who, having just replaced Dani, snatched at the perfect pass and lofted the ball over the bar from ten yards.
TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR (4-4-2): I Walker D Austin, C Calderwood, G Mabbutt, C Wilson R Fox, J Dozzell, S Campbell, R Rosenthal (sub: A Sinton, 45min) C Armstrong, E Sheringham.
WEST HAM UNITED (4-4-2): L Miklosko S Potts, M Reiper, S Bilic, J Dicks M Hughes (sub: J Harkes, 86), D Williamson, I Bishop, K Rowland Dani (sub: A Cottee, 67), I Dowie.
Referee: J Winter.
At some unidentified point last night we passed the halfway mark in Peter Flannery's Our Friends in the North (BBC2). I wasn't keeping a stopwatch on our progress, but I have a hunch that the historic moment came as Nicky (Christopher Eccleston) stared wistfully down at the Tyne. It may have been the moonlight, but for a moment he looked...just like Lemmy from Motorhead.
Yes, we had reached 1974, a year famous for about three things power cuts, three-day weeks and really awful hair. If Nicky turning into a head-banger wasn't bad enough, there was worse in store for his mates. Geordie (Daniel Craig) emerged from prison looking like something that had escaped from Planet of the Apes, while Tosker (Mark Strong), newly reincarnated as greengrocer-cum-capitalist-pig, appeared to have the long version of a Bobby Charlton scrape-over. Only Mary (Gina McKee) was immune, but I dare say her friends will have arranged for something seriously feather-cut by next week.
It has taken five episodes to get from the mop-tops of 1964 to this hirsute horror, a relatively gentle two years an episode. But there are 20 years to cram into the remaining four episodes. From here on hairlines could be receding at record speeds.
With the story half-told, it is clear that the series in not so much a dance to the music of time as a stumble. Many of the reservations I expressed at the outset remain. The four central characters never seem to have been good enough friends for the rare moments when their separate paths cross to be of great interest.
The notable exception is the flicker of romance that remains between Nicky and Mary, a couple destined to go through life wondering whether they made the right choice (they did not). In a drama where personal relationships come a poor fourth to politics, corruption and vainglorious idealism, their scenes together are among the most powerful. I fear, however, that we are not destined for a happy ending.
Perhaps aware that his story should not get any more depressing, Flannery brightened things up for last night's episode. Geordie was out of prison and out of pornography, Mary and Tosker were on their way to joining the middle classes (but not necessarily together) and Nicky was back home and actually being nice to his parents. Mind you, when your mother has found a machinegun under your bed in the last episode it probably pays to be nice to her for a little while.
The corrupt Metropolitan Police finally got its comeuppance: good news for the forces of good, but bad news for those who have enjoyed the excellent performances of Donald Sumpter as smoothtalking Commander Chapple, David Schofield as ghastly DCS John Salway and Danny Webb as the unfortunate DI Conrad.
I may be getting ahead of things, but it also looks as though we won't be seeing much more of Benny Barratt (Malcolm McDowell) or Austin Donohue (Alun Armstrong), both of whom look destined for long stretches at Her Majesty's pleasure. Their energy, charisma and "all right, bonny lads?" will be much missed.
The sensitive among you will have realised that my reservations are not exactly overwhelming. The characters may be unlikeable and the themes depressing, but Flannery's saga is proving strangely addictive. I shall stick with it to the end partly for the hairstyles, partly for the acting and partly because I suspect that the whole will prove to be rather more than the sum of its parts.
Whether I stick with either Island of Dreams (Channel 4) or Classic Ships (Channel 4) is far more debatable. On paper, both looked just the job for a cold February night, but the reality proved very disappointing.
The problems with Island of Dreams are multiple. It is too long last night's hour-long opener was based on the stories of just two women who have turned their backs on Britain to marry Greek men on the island of Zakynthos. At times, it would have been more exciting watching olives grow.
It is also predictable the fact that there are now 3,000 British women now living on the island does rather suggest that there is nothing new about mixed marriages. In fact, as we all know it has been going on for decades we've seen Shirley Valentine, we've read umpteen newspaper articles and we know perfectly well that life for a British woman marrying a Greek man is not exactly a bowl of lemons. Don't tell me, dear, let me guess you're having trouble with the language and his mother?
"You have to be female really to understand how incredibly female they make you feel after London," simpered one who had succumbed to the charms of a passing Denis. But, as she admitted, the incredibly female phase soon becomes the incredibly fed-up phase. "Greek men do change when they get married." How they are going to stretch this stuff to another two programmes beats me.
By contrast, I am inclined to forgive Classic Ships, which promised a look at the polished mahogany world of the River Thames, but got diverted by a patriotic duty to remember Dunkirk. The result was rather too much of Raymond Baxter and the Little Ships (on this particular occasion) and rather too little of beaver-tail sterns, clinker-built skiffs and slipper launches. Still it was worth it just to hear its narrator, John Peel, a man who has built a career on dry understatement, solemnly conclude that: "Thames boat-builders are right to be proud of their products." Say goodnight, John.
SIMON GEOGHEGAN, the Ireland wing, is doubtful for the five nations' rugby union championship match with France in Paris on Saturday because of a hamstring strain. Geoghegan, who has been switched from the left to the right wing as a replacement for Richard Wallace, was unable to take part in training sessions at Lansdowne Road yesterday.
France also have a problem, for Thierry Lacroix, their centre and goalkicker, is troubled by a groin injury. Although Lacroix played for his club, Dax, at the weekend, he was not at his best, and a decision about his fitness will be taken tomorrow.
Kenny Logan, the Scotland wing, will be fit to take his place on the bench for the international against Wales in Cardiff on Saturday despite injuring a hand in the Scotland Development XV's defeat by New South Wales on Sunday. An X-ray revealed bad bruising and not a break, as feared at first.
Keith Stewart, the Scottish-born Cardiff lock forward, who played for the Development XV, has pledged his international future to Scotland. Stewart had been named in the Wales A side to play Scotland A on Friday.
New Zealand's state-owned television yesterday lost out to pay television over live broadcast rights for international matches featuring the All Blacks, despite a personal plea from the Prime Minister, Jim Bolger.
Sky Television, which is 51 per cent owned by an American consortium and in which Television New Zealand (TVNZ) holds a 16.5 per cent share, won the television rights to All Blacks matches played in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.
The $800 million agreement, whereby Sky has bought the rights from The News Corporation, parent company of The Times, was an extension of the deal between the New Zealand Rugby Football Union and News Corp.
Andrew Longmore looks at the surprise return of a one-time wonderkid resuming her love-hate relationship with tennis
All the right noises are being made about the unexpected return of Jennifer Capriati to tournament tennis in the Paris Open tonight, but not even the Olympic champion herself would like to predict whether she is ready to get back on the merry-go-round for good. Capriati is all of 19 years old now, with entries in the sporting record books and police files under her name and a highly-developed sense of cynicism that should serve her well if her professed new love affair with tennis is not to end in the same drug rehabilitation centre as the first.
In her first competitive match for 15 months, the American will play Sabine Appelmans, a left-hander from Belgium ranked No26 in the world, whose surprise at the news of Capriati's return last week reflected the general disbelief of the players on the women's tour. Having played just one match since dropping her rackets in a rubbish bin and retiring to bed for a week after defeat in the first round of the 1993 US Open, Capriati had become just another forgotten wonderkid who could not hack it. The locker-room talk had long since moved on Monica Seles's win in Australia, the state of Steffi Graf's injured back. Jennifer Capriati was yesterday's child.
"With Monica, we knew what she was doing, knew that she was practising and would come back, but we've heard nothing about Jennifer at all. She's been out for a while, so no one was talking about her, which is why it has been such a surprise," Appelmans said.
The official line, peddled by John Evert, brother of Chris and her former agent, among others, is that Capriati has grown up over the past few months and decided independently that she wants to play again. "For the first time in a long while, she is playing because she wants to," Evert said. "She's so much more positive about her life. She's grown older and wiser."
Paris in February, in a tournament organised by IMG, her faithful agents, seemed a suitable place to start afresh, far removed from the prying eyes of a middle America outraged by the morality tale of the girl once dubbed the "most marketable American since Minnie Mouse" and the next Chris Evert. Yesterday, Capriati practised with Anke Huber in the Stade de Pierre Coubertin, a drop-kick away from the Parc des Princes, and, for all you could tell beneath a baggy pair of tracksuit bottoms, she looked fit and healthy. Huber suggested that time away had not taken the edge off the pace of those two-handed ground strokes with which Capriati had announced her arrival at Boca Raton a month before her fourteenth birthday, in March 1990.
Only the continued presence of her burly, bullying father, Stefano, supposedly one of the causes for Capriati's initial disillusionment, has raised questions about the strength of the commitment. The relationship between the two is said to be stronger than it has been since the break-up of the Capriatis' tempestuous marriage last year. Jennifer moved out of the home of her mother, Denise, last September and back in with her father, a prelude to starting serious training for a return to the circuit. As yet, Stefano has not let his daughter speak for herself, which is not promising she will do so after her match tonight but he confirms that she has been training hard for the past four months back in Florida and is looking forward to playing again.
"She feels good about herself again," he said. "I don't see it as a new career, in any way. Sometimes, in all jobs, you stop work for a time and then start again. That's what has happened to Jennifer. It's not important whether she wins or loses. She is just trying to do well."
That women's tennis desperately needs Capriati back in the top rank is beyond question. During her 31/2 years on tour, she became the youngest player, at 14, to reach a grand-slam semi-final, in Paris in 1990, and was one of the few able to match the ground-stroke power of Seles and Graf. Above all, her bubbling, infectious, personality brought a hint of colour and enjoyment to a game dominated by the sterner features of Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova. The Women's Tennis Association even bent the rules to allow Capriati to make her debut in the month of her fourteenth birthday rather than after it.
Capriati's victory over the nine-times Wimbledon champion on the Centre Court seemed to mark the changing of an era, but only when a pudgy face with a nose ring appeared on the front pages of most newspapers the morning after Capriati's arrest in a rundown Florida motel for possession of marijuana a year later did anyone fully understand what damage the incessant demands of parents, sponsors, media and spectators could do to a tender psyche. Almost overnight, Capriati slid from being a multi-millionairess, a member of the coveted Forbes Top 40 earners, to just another wasted teenager and her one-match return, in the autumn of 1994 in Philadelphia, confirmed the general belief that Capriati's time had come and gone.
The prospect of defending her Olympic title in Atlanta in the summer may have prompted Capriati's return. Maybe she has finally found how much she does love the game. Maybe she needs the money. Nobody knows whether this will be another one-night stand or a more permanent affair. The players hope the latter.
"Jennifer coming back is good for the game," Appelmans said. "She is another big name and we need all the publicity we can get." Capriati, of course, needs as little as she can get, at least until she finds her feet on the court again and really decides whether this will be her life once more. "We don't expect anything," said Stefano. Nor, this time, should anyone else.
THERE are few things that can stop Thomas Muster getting what he wants on a tennis court. The weather in Johannesburg may have slowed him a little as he began his reign as world No1 Muster spent yesterday in South Africa finishing off a Davis Cup tie when he should have been heading for the Dubai Open but the Muster bandwagon was stopping for nobody.
Certainly, the recent outbursts by Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi, belittling the Austrian's claim to the top spot in the rankings for winning all but one of his 12 tournament titles in 1995 on clay, were not going to take the shine off his achievement. Muster, always combative on court, was not going to take such criticism lightly.
"I am a little bit surprised because I think Andre and Pete are real champions," he said, "and they know what it is about to be No1. I did not buy my points in the supermarket and I did not cheat anybody for them. I don't think it is necessary for them to make this comment I give them respect and they should give me respect."
Neither Sampras nor Agassi was expecting Muster to break their cosy little rivalry for pole position. They shared three of the four grand-slam crowns last year, but, while they took the limelight, Muster dominated the early part of the year with a 40-match winning streak on the European clay courts, a run that took him to the French Open title. That laid the groundwork for his rise to the top, but it has irked the Americans.
The rules state that only the best 14 results of the year count towards a player's ranking, while early-round losses can be discarded. While Sampras and Agassi seem to begrudge Muster his achievements on clay, they have achieved the majority of their successes on hard courts and grass.
"All I can say is that I have won more matches on hard courts than Pete and Andre have on clay," Muster said, "but, last year, I won the biggest indoor event in Essen and reached the semi-finals at the Australian Open, so I am not what you could consider as a real clay-court specialist."
Stefan Edberg and Jim Courier, two former world No1s who lie in wait for Muster in Dubai, preferred to raise questions over the ranking system rather than the Austrian's achievement. "There have to be questions about any system that doesn't penalise players for doing poorly in a tournament," Courier said.
Consistency on that level is something that has always eluded Goran Ivanisevic, the No4 seed in Dubai. He let his nerves get the better of him and he faltered slightly at the start of the second set against Jordi Burillo, from Spain, before reaching the second round 6-3, 6-4.
Tim Henman, 21, from Oxford, achieved his highest world ranking of 78 yesterday. Henman, who has not played since reaching the semi-finals of the Shanghai Open nine days ago, will hope to climb further when he competes in the Marseilles Open this week. Greg Rusedski has dropped from 39 to 41.
BIRMINGHAM Bullets earned the distinction last night of becoming the first basketball team this season to defeat the London Towers twice, but they may yet fail to secure a place in the final of the National Cup next month.
With their 79-77 victory in the first leg of the semi-final, the Bullets go into the second instalment at Wembley Court tomorrow, the scene of their Budweiser League success 12 days ago, needing to repeat that win or lose by no more than a single point.
Playing in the cramped Birmingham Sports Centre, because their usual court in the National Indoor Arena was unavailable, the Bullets enjoyed the support, nevertheless, of a vociferous crowd, and took to their temporary home with aggression.
Surviving two technical offences against them in the space of two minutes, the Bullets still managed to transform arrears of six points into an interval lead of 42-40.
Tony Dorsey then hit three successive baskets in the middle of a 15-0, five-minute burst. Kevin Cadle, though, then put on his strongest five, and by the conclusion, their deficit had been whittled down.
THERE is overwhelming evidence to support the claim that Stephen Hendry, who captured the Benson and Hedges Masters snooker title for the sixth time in eight years at Wembley Conference Centre on Sunday, is the finest player in the game's modern era.
Steve Davis has won the world championship on six occasions to Hendry's five and has prevailed in 70 tournaments compared with a portfolio of 58 triumphs by the Scot. Critical to the argument, however, is that Davis turned professional in 1978, seven years before his rival.
Despite having such a head start, Davis trails Hendry in total career prize-money and has long been overtaken by the present world champion at the top of the list of century breaks in competition.
The 125 clearance fashioned by Hendry during his 10-5 victory over Ronnie O'Sullivan in the final of the Masters was his 33rd of the season and the 331st since he joined the professional ranks as a 16-year-old in 1985. Davis has compiled 244.
Hendry received a first prize of £125,000 on Sunday, plus the event's highest break award of £10,000 for a 144 total clearance against John Higgins in the second round. Since his debut at Wembley in 1989, Hendry has earned £665,500 from the Masters alone and £4,593,225 in all tournaments. Davis boasts total prize-money of £4,242,240.
Such statistics cannot alone convey Hendry's dominance. O'Sullivan summed it up by saying: "There's no one like him. He's got tunnel vision, he's single-minded and he's in a different league when it comes to desire and dedication."
Hendry's 28th win in 30 matches at the Masters was achieved in textbook fashion. Patiently, he outwitted O'Sullivan in the majority of tactical exchanges before fully exploiting the scoring chances that his superior safety shots created with breaks of 71, 77, 62, 87, 125, 80, 97.
"The general standard of play is getting better, but, by the same token, I'm getting better," Hendry, who has also prevailed at the Regal Scottish Masters, Skoda Grand Prix and United Kingdom championship during the 1995-96 campaign, said. "Mind you, I have to improve because players are pressing hard."
RESULT: Final: S Hendry (Scot) bt R O'Sullivan (Eng) 10-5. Frame scores (Hendry first): 108-0, 12-73, 69-90, 78-48, 74-49, 61-17, 71-5, 74-1, 0-109, 122-0,
126-8, 9-62, 80-1, 0-138, 103-0.
SALFORD have been rewarded for their giant-killing of Wigan with a home tie against St Helens, the new favourites, in the quarter-finals of rugby league's Silk Cut Challenge Cup.
Salford stunned the world of the 13-man game by beating Wigan the winners of the competition for the past eight seasons 26-16 in the fifth round on Sunday. Now, they must take on St Helens for the chance to reach the semi-finals for the first time since 1988.
Leeds, the losing finalists in each of the past two seasons, will play the winners of the delayed fifth-round tie between Halifax and Sheffield. Bradford will entertain Wakefield, while one first division side is assured of reaching the last four as Hull take on Dewsbury or Widnes in the other quarter-final.
Meanwhile, Leeds and the Rugby Football League (RFL) are to seek an injunction against Craig Innes, the former All Black centre, after his decision to join Manly-Warringah in Australia. Innes, 26, whose contract at Headingley does not expire until June 1997, flew to Sydney yesterday after helping Leeds to beat Warrington in the Cup on Saturday. A club statement last night said: "The Rugby Football League confirmed that it will be supporting Leeds in applying for an injunction to restrain Craig Innes from repudiating his contract and playing in Australia for Manly."
Maurice Lindsay, the chief executive of the RFL, said: "We have been given a sight of Craig Innes's contract and it would appear that Leeds are perfectly correct to challenge what is nothing less than an inducement by the Australian club."
Leeds had hoped to persuade Innes to stay at Headingley until their interest in the Cup was over, but were unable to match the rumoured £350,000 offer from Manly.
Alf Davies, the Leeds chief executive, said: "This is a real blow to the club, especially as we have just reached the quarter-finals of the Silk Cut Challenge Cup. We have spent a great deal of money trying to keep our players out of the reach of predators, but there was no way we could match the kind of offer made to Craig from our own resources. Although Craig was quite open with us, we were left with no option but to defend out position legally."
From Mrs Marianne Fry
Sir, You reported on February 5 that a portrait of Elizabeth I is believed by a psychiatrist to reveal a childhood of abuse.
It would surely be remarkable if the gaze of a girl whose father had beheaded both her mother and her step-mother did not show "frozen watchfulness" and "wariness".
Yours faithfully,
MARIANNE FRY,
Hollies House,
Booton, Norwich, Norfolk.
From the Bishop of Coventry and others
Sir, Four million innocent civilians have been killed in conflicts throughout the world since 1990. This slaughter is fuelled by the sale and export of weapons. As one of the world's leading suppliers, the UK must accept its responsibility for a deadly trade which ruins local economies, obstructs development, increases regional instability and is responsible for massive abuses of human rights.
Tomorrow, two days before the publication of Sir Richard Scott's report into the arms-to-Iraq affair, eminent politicians, scientists, military officers, church leaders, trade unionists and peace activists will join forces with over 1,000 non-governmental organisations all over the world to urge the introduction of binding international codes of conduct on the arms trade. The codes seek to introduce a more responsible, principled approach to the sale of weapons and prevent exports to countries with poor human rights records, regions of tension, dictatorial regimes and military aggressors.
We call on the UK Government to take the opportunity of the forthcoming intergovernmental conference to press for the introduction into the Maastricht treaty of a European code of conduct on the arms trade.
We must learn from the Matrix-Churchill affair and never again allow short-term commercial gain to override international peace and security.
Yours faithfully,
SIMON COVENTRY,
DAVID LIVERPOOL,
RICHARD OXON:,
Safer World,
33-34 Alfred Place, WC1.
February 12.
From Mr Eric Ratcliffe
Sir, Your leading article of February 5, mentioning the Society of Medical and Dental Hypnosis, throws back my memory to what must have been a very early use of hypnosis in professional dentistry.
My father, a Twickenham dentist, performed two extractions about 1929 on a hypnotised patient, who had none of the after-effects of gas anaesthesis and felt no pain.
I was in those days, as a small boy, sometimes employed as a restraining weight on the ankles of patients, who could move violently under gas. Under hypnosis, the patient remained completely calm.
Yours sincerely,
ERIC RATCLIFFE,
7 The Towers,
Stevenage, Hertfordshire.
From Dr J. K. Mathews
Sir, While agreeing with most of Jeremy Laurance's article on alternative medicine, "An honest alternative, or just magic?" (February 5; see also letters, February 8), I have to take issue with his final sentence that "illness is what doctors have forgotten about".
The problem is not that doctors have forgotten about illness but that patients have forgotten what "illness" means.
Too much of most general practitioners' time is now spent dealing with relatively minor conditions which do not require medical intervention. Reassurance may be all that is necessary, but this does not have to be given by a health professional with the level of skill and training of a general practitioner.
Only when patients, and alas some of the medical profession, recognise the valuable role that other less highly trained health professionals can play in basic health advice and reassurance will doctors again have the time to deal with what would medically be regarded as illness.
Doctors have not forgotten about illness; they unfortunately are not being given sufficient time to practise medicine.
Yours faithfully,
J. KENNETH MATHEWS,
Hellesdon Medical Practice,
343 Reepham Road,
Hellesdon, Norwich, Norfolk.
From Mr Tom Benford
Sir, The idea of a square-rigged, sail-training royal yacht (article, February 3; letters, February 8, 12) is as misguided as the "Victorian" street furniture which now disfigures Surbiton's main shopping street.
A suitable seagoing vessel to carry the Sovereign into the 21st century would be a large and imposing better still, awe-inspiring nuclear-powered trimaran in polished stainless steel, a Concorde on the water.
Yours faithfully,
TOM BENFORD,
3 c Cranes Drive, Surbiton, Surrey.
From Dr Harry Judge
Sir, You reported on February 8 that the person alleging discrimination against the Dean and Canons of St George's, Windsor, for not employing her as a baritone is being represented by her husband, who, she said was "freelancing as a vicar". I can find no reference to freelance vicars in any of the standard works of canon law or ecclesiastical custom.
Might that status be somehow related to that of a loose canon.
Yours etc,
H. G. JUDGE,
2 Upland Park Road, Oxford.
SAMANTHA RILEY, the world champion at 100 and 200 metres breaststroke, short and long-course, could be suspended for two years after testing positive for a drug found in prescription headache pills.
A sample taken from Riley at the world short-course championships in Brazil in December, where she won her titles in world-record times, revealed traces of dextropropoxyphen, a narcotic analgesic that relieves pain and is on the International Olympic Committee's list of banned substances, though it does not enhance performance.
Numerous athletes have tested positive for the drug, but Riley, 23, from Queensland, would be the first to be punished. According to Vena Murray, the executive director of Australian Swimming Incorporated (ASI), Riley was given a prescription headache pill by Scott Volkers, her coach, after complaining of a headache two days before her race.
Officials from Fina, the international governing body, met in Berlin on Friday, but have yet to come to a decision over Riley. Their dilemma is clear: should they follow their own guidance and impose a suspension of up to two years that would keep Riley out of the Olympics or be more lenient and court criticism from China, 19 of whose swimmers have tested positive and been suspended, all bar one for steroids, since 1991? A suspension of more than five months, even retroactive, would effectively bar Riley from Atlanta, as she would miss the Australian trials.
Australia has been the most vociferous anti-drugs campaigner since the ascent of Chinese swimmers in the early 1990s. Mustapha Larfaoui, the president of Fina, was there last week and efforts were being made to persuade him to call for leniency. An Australian swimming source said: "I don't think it worked. Many here think Sam's going to be the scapegoat for Australia's hard line on drugs."
Volkers, the coach, said: "She would never take a performance-enhancing drug. It was a headache tablet and the drug in it would not have helped her performance."
Riley drew questions about drugs when she reduced the records in Brazil, taking the 100 metres to 1min 05.70sec, from 1min 06.58sec, and the 200 metres to 2min 20.85sec, from 2min 21.99sec.
From Mr E. K. Taylor
Sir, In September 1939 I was introduced to my newly-acquired Lee Enfield rifle and told to cherish, love and care for it as I would my wife, my mother or my favourite sister.
I came to know it so intimately its sleek, smooth lines, the velvety touch of its stock and the lovely curves of its butt that I could pick it out in the darkest of nights. Unfortunately, unlike Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry (leading article "A cue missed", February 9) I never mastered the art of shooting straight with it.
Yours faithfully,
E. K. TAYLOR,
1 Irvine Close, Hereford.
February 9.
From Mr J. A. W. Jennings
Sir, The reason why the snow had almost gone within three days although the ambient temperature during the period never rose above the freezing point of water (letter, February 2) was because the radiant heat from the sun imparted far more energy to the snow than to the surrounding air.
Sublimation of snow could not take place out of doors, as Dr William Alcock says (letter, February 6), because the atmospheric pressure would always be too high. Sublimation depends on the boiling point of the solid substance being lower than its melting point at the pressure of the atmosphere.
Yours faithfully,
J. A. JENNINGS,
Babington House, Frome, Somerset.
February 7.
From Mr Guy Thomas
Sir, Popular music had a bad time of it in The Times today (February 6). It was P. G. Wodehouse with his lyrics who joined Jerome Kern to write Bill (sung at the memorial service for the theatrical agent Billy Marsh), one song in Showboat which didn't have words by Oscar Hammerstein II.
On another page Quentin Letts, surveying a new generation of America's pistol-packin' mommas, risks facing a firing squad formed by admirers of Ethel Merman, Betty Hutton and Dolores Gray among others who, as Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun, all sang at one time or another You Can't Get a Man with a Gun, but not alas Doris Day as Calamity Jane.
Yours etc,
GUY THOMAS,
295 Lonsdale Road, Barnes, SW13.
From Mr C. R. Holman
Sir, Peers are disbarred from sitting as members of the House of Commons. In this situation the House of Lords provides the hereditary and the appointed peers with their only voice in the government of this country. To deny any citizen of the United Kingdom the right to participate in the processes of government of this country due to an accident of birth is probably even more undemocratic than the present arrangement.
Any legislation for the reform of the House of Lords must grant those who are then barred from the Upper House the right to stand for election in the Lower House of Parliament, without first having to renounce their peerage.
Yours etc,
C. R. HOLMAN,
141a Bilton Road,
Rugby, Warwickshire.
From Lord Stanley of Alderley
Sir, Although I am not against reform of the hereditary element of the Upper House, the appointment by patronage that Mr Blair favours would destroy its independence.
Over the past 20 years I have, on numerous occasions, had to ask their lordships if a particular amendment, always rural-based, was correct. I have never tried to persuade a peer appointed by party patronage to vote against his party; it would be incorrect and impolite to do so.
However, I have no qualms about asking an hereditary peer to break ranks most own no allegiance but to their conscience.
Yours faithfully,
STANLEY of ALDERLEY,
Trysglwyn Fawr,
Rhosybol, Amlwch, Anglesey.
February 10.
From Earl Russell
Sir, Liberal Democrats are not about to go into a last-ditch defence of the hereditary peerage. Nevertheless, before we can be persuaded that Tony Blair's one-clause Bill is the right way to tackle the question, many of us want reassurance about two substantial misgivings.
First, we need to be reassured that Labour understands that the over-arching purpose of constitutional reform is to reduce the power of the Executive. The debate on the Scott report has shown how terrifyingly urgent this task is.
When we find Labour beginning the task of constitutional reform by a measure which will strengthen the power of the Labour Prime Minister then, like people going to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head, we feel the need to ask whether we are going in the right direction.
Secondly, the hereditary peers in a small, illogical and anomalous way do check the power of the Executive. We would therefore want to find some way of filling the gap which their abolition would create. This is why it would be very difficult to tackle the composition of the Lords without looking at its powers.
Yours faithfully,
RUSSELL,
House of Lords.
February 9.
From the Director of the Conservative Political Centre
Sir, Your leading article (February 8; see also letters, February 9) quite rightly states that the central requirement in constitutional debate is to distinguish clearly between evolutionary and radical change. However, it is surely not as obvious as you seek to imply that the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into British law, and the curbing of the rights of hereditary peers, could form part of an evolutionary approach.
The former would mean that authority now vested in Parliament would pass to the courts; the latter would remove from the Upper House the principal component which it has had since its start in the Middle Ages.
Since the Labour Party refuses to spell out its plans for an elected second chamber, there is an acute danger that the outcome would be a purely nominated Upper House, creating in effect the largest quango in the land (indeed it is hard to suppress the suspicion that that is Labour's real aim).
Yours faithfully,
ALISTAIR B. COOKE,
Director,
Conservative Political Centre,
32 Smith Square, Westminster, SW1.
From Dr Ed Black
Sir, Quentin Letts besmirches the shade of Thomas Hardy by linking him to the ghost-publishing world of Joan Collins. Hardy began his autobiography around 1920; later, towards his end, he and his second wife, Florence, went through it, changing "I" to "he".
After his death in 1928 Florence added some paragraphs covering the last few months and her insensitive funeral arrangements in Westminster Abbey. So it is a (unique?) autobiography in the third person, or self-ghosted biography: the real McCoy, very fine stuff.
Unlike the help which Jeffrey Archer's novel received over 16 drafts, Hardy was always hounded and hampered by inferior prurient editors and what they excised in magazine serial he replaced in book form.
We are grateful to Ms Collins and her editor Ms Evans for revealing the real world of publishing, previously suspected, behind unreal unnovels.
Yours truly,
ED BLACK,
London School of Economics
and Political Science,
Language Studies Centre,
Houghton Street, WC2.
February 12.
From Mr Robin Rhoderick-Jones
Sir, If Joan Collins, a writer who, according to her own lawyer ("How to hit a publisher for millions", Weekend, February 10) requires "face-to-face, line-by-line, page-by-page" editorial help, can persuade one of the world's most powerful publishers to part with $1.2 million as an advance, it can only be as Quentin Letts points out on the basis of her celebrity status, not on her ability as an author.
Is it not time that this exploitation of a gullible public was stopped? Novels and purported autobiographies which are largely the work of editors, ghost-writers or collaborators should be described as such prominently on the front cover and not passed off as being the work of models, television stars and sportsmen who have played little part in the finished product.
This increasing practice of wilful deception may be good for the coffers of publishing houses and the pockets of barely literate celebrities; but it does nothing either for the trading standards or the honesty of a profession which is rapidly descending to the depths once plumbed by the wilder fringes of cowboy estate agents.
Yours sincerely,
ROBIN RHODERICK-JONES,
Middle St Andrew's Wood,
Dulford, Cullompton, Devon.
February 11.
From Mr A. F. West
Sir, In the debate that has rightly followed from the report by Chris Woodhead it should be remembered that some schools, my own included, have yet to be inspected by Ofsted.
Yours faithfully,
A. F. WEST
(Chairman of Governors),
Langley Grammar School,
Reddington Drive,
Langley, Berkshire.
February 7.
From the Headmaster of Crofton Junior School
Sir, I feel uncomfortable with Simon Jenkins's comments about Crofton School's standard for two reasons: firstly, because there are many who do not only dare to say that part of our success is the environment from which we draw children but say so loudly. I am one of the first to do so.
However, that is only part of the background to our success. Chris Woodhead, Chief Inspector of Schools, in his letter to me made clear that we are "excellent" when judged against "schools in similar circumstances". Our teachers might feel today that not only are the media constantly highlighting failures in the system but are now knocking them when they achieve excellence.
Please don't seek to find reasons for our excellence: it is because teachers teach well.
Yours faithfully,
MICHAEL THOMAS,
Headmaster,
Crofton Junior School,
Towncourt Lane,
Orpington, Kent.
From the General Secretary of NASUWT
Sir, I share Simon Jenkins's assessment that inspection and league tables constitute management by public humiliation and that this may be the result of mismanagement over many years. However, even if headteachers and governors had been more assiduous in rooting out incompetence, they might not have been able to replace dismissed teachers with anyone better.
The National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers has called for more than 20 years for a better training system, a more rigorous induction or probationary period, an all-graduate profession, and a requirement for all teachers to have passed the (then) O level in mathematics and English, which was ordered by the Government a few years ago.
There is little point in national league tables, particularly for something like 21,000 primary schools, the sheer magnitude of which is mind-boggling in its bureaucracy, not to mention its considerable cost.
Yours faithfully,
NIGEL de GRUCHY,
General Secretary,
NASUWT,
5 King Street, Covent Garden, WC2.
February 8.
From Mr Michael Hart
Sir, For once it is difficult to agree with Simon Jenkins ("Half a league backward", February 7). Of course league tables are highly questionable, but Ofsted evidence on low standards, unsatisfactory lessons and poor teachers (report and leading article, February 6), far from being useless, has vitally contributed to putting education finally near the top of the political agenda.
For years both main political parties, though for very different reasons, have concealed from the public the plain fact that many of our three to 18-year-olds are worse educated than children of comparable age in most European and several overseas countries. Our provision for nursery and vocational education is quite inadequate. The former requires money; the latter a greater contribution from industry.
We have some of the best schools in the world but a larger number of poor ones than most of our competitors. This has nothing to do with single-sex education and is only marginally linked to the question of money.
The real reasons are twofold: educational apartheid, by which 8 per cent of our most influential and ambitious parents turn their backs on state education, and the large number of teachers and teacher-trainers who, though overwhelmingly hardworking and dedicated, continue to place social above academic education and, as a result, perpetuate, often unconsciously, a long tradition of low expectations.
Let us hope that the next Government will have a consistent policy to tackle these issues.
Yours faithfully,
MICHAEL HART
(HM Inspector of Schools, 1974-76),
49 Chesterfield Road,
Eastbourne, East Sussex.
A chance to share in Count Alexander's good fortune
To unearth a hoard of coins or bring up from the black earth gold and jewellery entrusted generations ago to the darkness is a thrill that all can share. Rarely, however, do those who consign their wealth to the ground before fleeing invading armies have the chance to reclaim their heritage. They may dream of returning when the Roman legions have put down the Iceni, King Henry's agents finished combing the monasteries or the Royal Navy called off its pursuit of pirate plunderers. But few ever return from flight or exile. The secrets of their hidden treasure die with them.
The story of Count Alexander zu Lynar-Redern is one that will send a frisson through all those who attend the Sotheby's sale of his silver Odiot service and his 19th-century Meissen porcelain. For not only are these precious pieces rare examples of the heirlooms once found in the great Prussian families; but they have only just been excavated from a forest in former East Germany where, for more than 40 years, Communist spy chiefs hunted over the ground where the treasure was buried. And it was Count Alexander himself who dug up his family's treasures that, 50 years earlier, he and his retainers had hastily consigned to the sandy soil as the guns echoed all around and the Russians closed in.
The wonderment he experienced on seeing his silver again must have equalled that more famously felt by Howard Carter when he entered King Tutankhamun's tomb or, more recently, by Manolis Andronikos who found the bones of Philip of Macedon and all his funereal gold under a mound in Vergina. These men, however, brought to light things never meant to be seen again in the upper world. The terracotta horsemen who guarded the Chinese Emperor at Xian or the Viking boat at Sutton Hoo were interred to honour the departed chieftains; their discovery was a violation of a grave.
Treasure temporarily hidden is there to be found, however. The search is still on for looted Nazi gold and the famed Tsar's Amber Room. Often it is a farmer who stumbles on an amulet in his field. Under the law of treasure trove which nationalised the wealth of the fleeing Romans, Catholic priests and Cavaliers the Government has first claim. This has not inhibited enthusiasts with metal detectors, however. Nor has it stopped the burying of wealth by misers, criminals or publicists. Indeed, one of the most successful treasure hunts of recent times was organised by an author who buried a golden hare and sold thousands of books to those searching in its riddles for clues to the hare's location.
Kohl should listen to Juppe and answer his plea
Alain Juppe set out for Bonn yesterday with the firm intention of underlining France's commitment to the 1999 target date for monetary union within the terms laid down by the Maastricht treaty. He made a brave fist, for an increasingly dubious German public, of talking up France's prospects of meeting the Maastricht criteria come trade union hell or unemployment high water. But far more important was a handful of words he let slip after meeting Helmut Kohl.
Despite desperate attempts after the event by his officials to put a different gloss on his words, there is no doubt that the French Prime Minister dropped, almost by chance, the first official French hint that, even if France were ready for its 1999 date with destiny, events outside France might compel a postponement of EMU.
M Juppe's personal determination to stick to the schedule is not in doubt. That is partly because of mounting anxiety in Paris that 1999 represents an opportunity, that might not recur, for France to escape the de facto mark zone in Europe. When the French Prime Minister told Die Welt yesterday of his fear that, if EMU were postponed just for a year, there would be further postponements and "then it will be 2010 and nothing will have been done", he reflected a constant anxiety in the French Establishment.
But if there is anything on which this same Establishment has always been unanimous, it is that EMU will work in France's interest only if a sufficient number of countries joins at the start to counterbalance the otherwise overwhelming power of the German monetary authorities in the future European Central Bank.
The telling moment in Bonn came, therefore, when M Juppe was asked about repeated market rumours of an overnight merger of the German and French currencies in a political "dawn raid" to force the EMU project through. In dismissing this out of hand "it cannot be the case that France goes it alone with Germany" he also drew attention to the Maastricht requirement that "a sufficient number of countries must be ready and willing to take part in the union by 1999". If that were not the case, he said, "There should be agreement on another date."
Outside the charmed circle of Franco-German summits, this is no more than a statement of obvious, recorded fact. It is just what Maastricht says. But inside the circle, it is heresy to hint that the treaty's contingency clause might have to be activated. Herr Kohl, who will not hear of it, has repressed those of his henchmen prepared to take a sceptical peek at the improbable EMU arithmetic. Bonn and Paris have stemmed the rising tide of doubt in Spain, Italy and other countries by repeating, mantra-like, that what matters is the leadership of the Franco-German couple.
Despite his battering by the unions and prospects of more to come, M Juppe continues to elevate hope over experience. France will be there on the day, he assured reporters yesterday and "other countries will join us". Even Britain, he claimed, would "try to jump on the train" once convinced that EMU was for real.
The stubborn fact remains: an EMU of France, Germany and The Netherlands would be too small for France's comfort; and no serious economist now imagines that Belgium, Italy or Spain will begin to qualify by the end of 1997, the year on which their deficits, public debt and inflation performances are to be assessed. The whispering cannot be silenced in Paris as easily as Herr Kohl stifles it in Bonn.
M Juppe feels the pressure of knives in his back. But France has pinned so much on EMU and sacrificed so much in growth and jobs to the Sisyphean task of meeting the Maastricht timetable that, for a French Prime Minister to alter course on EMU with safety, he needs to be able to cite external factors beyond France's control. A muffled cry for help has been heard, from a Frenchman, and in Bonn. If Herr Kohl values the Franco-German axis as much as he professes to do, his ears should pick up the message.
Another ceasefire can never be enough
The Prime Minister made a powerful appeal for democracy and the peace process last night. His determination to strengthen the strained Anglo-Irish axis with a rapid summit should be applauded. But in his anxiety to see something survive after all the sacrifices and exertions of the past 18 months, he and his supporters should not lose sight of what last Friday has revealed about the republicans. Another ceasefire can never be enough.
Proof of a permanent commitment to peace will be required before any party can play a part in shaping Northern Ireland's future. There are signs that the IRA is already constructing a trap for the two Governments. Reports from the Republic suggest the IRA saw the attack on Docklands as a "one-off", a peremptory shock designed to jolt the British Government out of its complacency and into calling immediate all-party talks. Making points by killing innocents is as callously inhuman as it is counter-productive. Moreover, even if the British had wanted to call all-party talks, they could not have brought the Unionists to the table unless Sinn Fein had either decommissioned arms or embraced elections.
Nevertheless, there are rumours that Sinn Fein, after time has been allowed for the atrocity to sink in, or perhaps after another similar affront, will offer a new ceasefire. The republicans may calculate they will have made their point and proved their determination not to be trifled with. They could hope the two Governments will believe progress is impossible without the republicans and will invite Sinn Fein to full talks.
Extending that invitation would be dangerous folly. Another ceasefire would be, even more blatantly than before, a cynical tactic. It would be abandoned if talks went the wrong way. Any new commitment to peace would be a pretence unless it were accompanied by proof that the IRA had forsworn violence.
There are those who argue that peace is impossible without the agreement of Sinn Fein/IRA. In the Irish Republic the main opposition party, Fianna Fail, has urged the Taoiseach, John Bruton, to talk to Sinn Fein. In America, Congressman John King, Chairman of the ad hoc committee for Irish affairs, assures us that "there is no question of a weakening of confidence in Gerry Adams."
"Clinton", he says, "recognises that Adams is essential to the peace process." The reverse is true. Mr Adams now appears redundant to the peace process. If he still speaks with any authority, it is as the emissary of men who deal in ultimatums, not negotiations. There is no room for the imperative rasp of the blackmailer at democratic discussions.
There was a peace process before the ceasefire and it can survive the resumption of war. All of Ulster's constitutional parties have moved from their entrenched positions. There may be the basis for a tentative consensus on restoring accountability to the Province while respecting diversity. The challenge for those, such as John Hume, who risked so much to give the republicans a chance to change is to work now with those whose commitment to democracy can never be questioned. The challenge for the Unionists is to reach out to moderate nationalist opinion and show imagination in embracing ideas which can build confidence. The IRA should not be allowed to set the pace.
TERRY DUNSTAN, of Walsall, already holds a decision over Dennis Andries, but the chances of the 42-year-old former world light-heavyweight boxing champion
beating Dunstan in their second encounter for the British cruiserweight title tonight at York Hall, Bethnal Green, should not be ruled out.
Not only has Andries proved the experts wrong in the past, but the postponement of the bout at the London Arena from Saturday to tonight because of the Docklands bombing, could also weigh in Andries's favour. Dunstan, who is believed to be struggling to make the cruiserweight limit, had to stay on a diet for another two days, while Andries, who has no weight problems, was able to relax over the weekend.
As the boxers had already weighed in on Saturday, John Morris, secretary of the British Boxing Board of Control, told them they would be excused a second weigh-in, provided everybody agreed. Andries insisted on the weigh-in being held again yesterday, however.
Brendan Ingle, the Sheffield trainer, and his welterweight, Kevin Saunders, escaped serious injury in the bombing on Friday. They were returning to the Britannia Hotel after the weigh-in at the Peacock Gym, Silvertown, when they were held up by a police roadblock. Seconds later the bomb went off. "The blast shook us like rag dolls," Ingle said.
IT WAS a bad weekend for Nottingham Panthers in the British Ice Hockey League's premier division.
After being beaten at home 7-5 by Newcastle Warriors, they travelled to Cardiff Devils and were 6-0 down during the second period before managing a goal.
Devils went on to win 10-2, which kept them within a point of Sheffield Steelers, who attracted a 5,000 crowd to Newcastle Arena but spoilt things for the home supporters by winning a hard-fought contest 5-3, scoring three times in the third period.
The third period was critical, too, for Basingstoke, who scored three goals during it to gain their first win in six games and extend Milton Keynes Kings' run to eight games without a win.
Humberside Hawks had two players ejected and conceded four power-play goals during an 8-1 defeat by Fife Flyers, while Slough Jets remained bottom of the table after an 11-2 loss to Durham Wasps. There was another big crowd at the Nynex Arena in Manchester, more than 11,000 watching the Storm beat Swindon Wildcats 8-2, although Swindon led 2-0.
Woodrow Wyatt on the value of hereditary peers.
On Sunday Mr Blair continued his theme of reforming the Lords with another attack on hereditary peers. The 1st Lord Brocket, he observed, got his peerage by paying Lloyd George; the present Lord Brocket, a Tory, has now been jailed for fraud. This is a non sequitur. The case is unrelated to the Tory belief in hereditary peers. Nor was the case of the late Lord Kagan, of Gannex mackintosh fame. He contributed substantial sums towards the running of Harold Wilson's office when he was Opposition leader, was elevated to the peerage by Wilson in 1976, and had his knighthood removed in 1981 after being jailed for fraud which is hardly a Tory prerogative.
To be credible, Mr Blair must stop his smears and begin to think of the implications and side-effects of his reform plans, apparently aimed at improving democracy. Commons MPs are not chosen by the generality of voters, but party members, who in practice are represented by a caucus of a few hundred activists. Other voters have to vote for the candidate presented, however much they may disapprove of him or her. In America, all voters are entitled to register as Republicans, Democrats or independents; they do not have to subscribe. Then, in the primaries, they choose between their party's candidates a far more democratic system.
Nor, in practice, does the Commons act as a fully democratic chamber, owing to the whipping mechanism evolved since the 1832 Reform Act. The Lords, on the other hand, vote freely according to their convictions, regardless of whips.
After a general election, the Commons meets basically as an electoral college to confirm the leader of the winning party as Prime Minister, and for the supporters of the next largest party, or coalition, to confirm the Opposition leader. Thereafter, the Prime Minister chooses the date of the next election and, except in exceptional circumstances, carries the bulk of what he and the Cabinet propose into law.
Mr Blair, who is dictatorial by nature, would revel in these powers. So he would order the Scots to have their own parliament, able to exact additional taxes, whether they want it or not. Likewise, Wales is to have a separate assembly, though the Welsh are not asking for one, and regions of England will, if Blair so pleases, be forced to have an extra, expensive and unnecessary layer of government through regional assemblies. Meanwhile, Blair has not yet explained why, with a Scottish parliament, Scottish MPs at Westminster should be allowed to vote on English matters if English and Welsh MPs were banned from voting on Scottish matters the West Lothian question.
Mr Blair tells us that mucking about with the Lords is a step towards an elected second chamber, chosen presumably by a system as democratically defective as that for Commons MPs. This would be a nightmare. An elected second chamber could not be denied the right to block Commons legislation. Today, the House of Lords cannot derail Commons legislation for very long and, wisely fearing that its limited powers might be removed, rarely exercises them to the full. It most certainly would if Mr Blair's ill-considered reforms came before it. Surely not even Mr Blair would wish to be prevented from carrying through measures he might consider more important by being bogged down in constitutional issues though it might have the advantage that he would be unable to wreck the economy so soon.
In his remote fastnesses, closeted with ardent, admiring aides, Mr Blair imagines that bashing the Lords is popular. On the contrary, the country loves and values the House of Lords, despite and even because of its eccentricities. Frequently it catches the public mood better than either the Government or the Commons. It was, for example, way ahead of the Commons in backing Sunday trading and Sunday racing.
Hereditary dukes, marquesses and earls are more highly regarded by ordinary people than they may merit. They are seen as live, romantic evidence of a history we are proud of; some of those most distinguished for their services to the State come from lines which began with royal bastards. The public does not much differentiate between the lesser fry of hereditary and life peers.
To debar hereditary peers from voting or attending the Lords would be silly. Are we to lose that spiky critic of the Government, Earl (Conrad) Russell, descended from Lord John Russell who carried through the 1832 Reform Act? Or Lord Cranborne, whose genes carry the accumulated political skills of the Cecils? What balderdash. I agree, though, that a constant injection of life peers is needed to keep up the high quality of debate, legislative revision and committee work. Much trouble would have been saved if, as Bagehot wrote, "the House of Lords had not resisted the proposal of Lord Palmerston's first Government (in 1855) to create peers for life". On mature reflection, Blair should go no further than Palmerston wanted.
IAN SCHUBACK and Kelvin Kerkow, of Australia, advanced to the quarter finals of the Churchill Insurance world indoor pairs bowls championship with a 6-7, 7-3, 7-3, 7-5 win over David Slaven and John Jackson, the former Scottish two-bowl champions, at the Preston Guild Hall yesterday.
Schuback has won the title twice with different partners but Kerkow is new to the portable rink. Kerkow, 26, who will represent Australia in the world outdoor singles event in Adelaide next month, uses a walking stick as a result of a childhood illness similar to polio. After a tentative start, he contributed fully to the victory.
Slaven and Jackson, from East Kilbride, led 5-0 in the first set, with Schuback having to call on all his experience to peg them back. The match was squared in the second set and Schuback abruptly ended the third with a take-out for four shots. The fourth set could have gone either way and the match ended, after three hours and 20 minutes, with a perfectly-drawn bowl from Schuback.
"Spike that's his (Kerkow's) nickname because of his crew-cut hairstyle did pretty well in difficult circumstances," Schuback said. "It was a new bowl game to him but for me it was like coming home. I just love this rink."
Kerkow added: "It was strange out there, with the spectators so close on both sides. I certainly needed the practice."
Gary Smith and Andy Thomson, the 1993 champions, made uncomplicated progress into the last eight, beating Mark Gilliland, of Canada, and Tony Tong, of Hong Kong, 7-3, 7-2, 7-2.
They now play Hugh Duff and David Gourlay Jr, from Scotland, who, despite being more consistent, were given some anxious moments by two old campaigners from Wales, Garfield Phillips and Cliff Williams, before winning 7-2, 2-7,
7-0, 7-4.
Duff, who won the International Open singles on the same rink last September, produced the decisive bowl on what was the final end of the fourth set when the Welsh pair were on the brink of taking the match into a fifth set.
Cool customer arrives on the Formula One scene determined to lead the parade
THERE is a lull, a brief moment of uncertainty, when Jacques Villeneuve saunters into the garage. A small group is waiting to talk to him, unsure of where to stand. So he starts clicking his fingers, rock'n'roll style, signalling he wants to move things along. Somebody else tries to usher him out into the sun but he wanders further into the shade.
Villeneuve is a cool customer. His laid-back North American manner is spiced with French-Canadian piquancy. He is sharp, concise, speaks English and Italian fluently and avoids the public relations patter that turns so many drivers into champions of the platitude. When the group gathers round, he faces each questioner in turn, gazing up at them through his round, metal-rimmed glasses.
His Williams-Renault teammate, Damon Hill, may be the favourite for the Formula One motor racing world drivers' championship this year, but Villeneuve made it clear at the launch of the team's new car here yesterday that he has not forsaken a winning drive in the IndyCar series he won so convincingly last season to come second to anybody even in his first year in Formula One.
"We are each going to do our best," Villeneuve, 24, said. "We are not there to help the other one. There is no reason not to have a straight fight. Even if you finish second in the championship but you are below your team-mate, then after a few years, you are not worth anything. It is almost more important to beat your team-mate than anybody else.
"Damon is beatable. Anyone is beatable as far as I am concerned. If Williams had told me that they wanted me to come here to be No2 to somebody, then I would have said ‘no way'. I was happy in IndyCar, I was with a winning team. There would have been no point in coming here to be somebody's No2.
"I am not going to be content to settle for second. Definitely. I am racing because I want to win. I always want to try to beat everybody. That is what is driving me. I know I have a lot to learn, but I am not coming to Formula One as some raw recruit from Formula 3000. I am coming as the IndyCar champion and the winner of the Indianapolis 500. It is a bit different."
Villeneuve, the son of the late Ferrari driver, Gilles Villeneuve, who was killed during practice for the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder in 1982, has impressed the Williams team with his studied approach to testing since he joined them at the end of last season. There are no frills, no tantrums, just quiet application.
Frank Williams, the team owner, and Patrick Head, his technical director, like strong personalities that they do not have to mollycoddle, whose fragile egos they do not have to massage at every turn. Villeneuve seems to be their kind of guy, a man with a clear view of where he wants to go and a fierce determination to get there.
"I don't think Formula One is going to be any tougher than IndyCar," he said. "There is probably more wheel-to-wheel racing in the States because the teams and the cars are closer together. It is cleaner over there, too. From what I have seen on television, the racing here is quite dirty.
"If that concerns me, it won't concern me for long. If somebody plays a stupid game with you, you have to play it back because otherwise they will do it over and over. I hope my reputation is for being hard but fair. I have never had a real problem wheel-banging with anyone, but if you have to do it, you have to do it."
There seems little chance of him turning into another Michael Andretti, the IndyCar champion who arrived in Formula One in 1993 with a fine racing reputation and left prematurely and ignominiously, six months and just one podium position later, with his tail between his legs and the reputation of IndyCar drivers with Formula One team owners in tatters.
Andretti, though, picked a team McLaren that was fighting signs of decline and was given few testing opportunities to adapt to the lighter, nimbler cars. Villeneuve has already clocked up 9,000 miles in testing at several circuits and will not commute back and forth to North America as Andretti did, living in an apartment in Monaco instead.
"Michael Schumacher is going to be tough," Villeneuve said as a parting shot. "And Damon will be quick. But I feel at home here already. It is not like I thought. There was supposed to be no life within the teams and the drivers were supposed to be robots. But that is not true. And if the others thought I was coming to cruise round in second, that is wrong, too. I am here to compete and to win."
Magnus Linklater on the film that divides familes.
When tickets went on sale last week for Trainspotting, a film already described as "the most odious of the year", there
were queues outside the cin
ema in Edinburgh, snaking round the block. Odious it may be, but it has also been accorded the status of "cult movie", and the lavish advance publicity has almost guaranteed box-office success, particularly with younger audiences. That it shows scenes of irredeemable squalor in the backstreets of Leith, that it is about heroin abuse at the rock-bottom of society, and that, on the admission of its makers, it takes no moral attitude towards drugs, has far from undermining its appeal actually enhanced it.
The starkest message emerging from the Trainspotting phenomenon is the rift it reveals between the generations on the subject of drugs and their insidious appeal. To judge from the success of Irvine Welsh's novel, and the theatre adaptation which played to full houses at last year's Edinburgh Festival, most of the young who read or see it accept it fairly uncritically as a genuine portrayal of life in the raw. Most of their elders are appalled. The critics, who tend to be of the middle-aged variety, cannot help registering their disapproval.
That response is understandable. At one point, the anti-hero, a shaven-headed university dropout, is shown injecting heroin into a bulging vein in a surrealistic scene which, if you can bear to watch it, has an awful appeal. "Take the best orgasm you ever had. Multiply it by a thousand. You're still nowhere near it," he says. As one journalist wrote after seeing the film: "For a brief but intense moment of desire I wanted to know what taking heroin felt like. I wanted to be on the inside of the experience . . ."
Translate that into the appeal to thousands of teenagers who will be packing the cinemas over the next few weeks, and you get an idea of the anxiety most parents will feel about its impact. This could be to drugs what A Clockwork Orange was to violence except that that movie was banned.
The producers of Train
spotting argue that far from glamorising drugs, they have done their grim best to ex
pose the consequences of ad
diction. The portrayal of one drug-taker on his way down the spiral, HIV-positive, emaciated, his skin raddled with abscesses, is certainly effective. But at the same time the anti-heroes of the movie are fast-talking, sharp-witted, often funny; the world they live in is one of black comedy and exhilarating brushes with authority.
The reality, as Giles Coren's recent report in this newspaper only too graphically showed, is very different. In Glasgow, where a new wave of cheap heroin has been finding its way onto the streets, there are now almost two deaths a week from drugs. A "score-bag" of heroin, costing £20, will buy you more for your money than a year ago, and will give you a couple of
days' escape from ordinary life. The number of teenagers who smoke rather than inject it is on the increase. There is nothing funny about the bleak housing schemes where young addicts from an abandoned underclass live from fix to fix in conditions of desperation and danger. Few of those who go to see Trainspotting will ever have encountered directly this level of hopelessness and defeat.
Nevertheless, the young cinema-goers who will make up the bulk of the movie's audience are likely to accept the drug-taking scenes with far greater equanimity than their anxious parents. It is hard to grow up in Britain today without encountering drugs in some form or other. As one Glasgow schoolteacher said on radio the other day: "My primary children know far more about drugs than I do."
They know about Ecstasy, Temazepam, speed, cannabis and LSD, and may well have experimented with some or all of them, whatever their parents may choose to believe. They have probably steered clear of heroin itself, but they are unlikely to be greatly shocked by its use. There is a culture now in Britain that sees hard drugs as acceptable, if not always accepted. And the fact that an older generation is appalled by their use and the consequences of their abuse merely fuels interest; there is no greater spur to experimentation than parental disapproval.
At the same time, the destructive effect of drugs, the misery they cause, above all, their sheer availability, is one of the great menaces in modern urban society. Police, who deal on a daily basis with their effects, believe that they are losing the war against them. Those who have lost children innocently exposed to drugs, such as the parents of Leah Betts, are united in their determination to fight them. So what does one make of a film whose makers declare that they take "no moral attitude" towards heroin?
It would be pointless to condemn the making of a classy and stylistically successful movie. That it deals with a culture from which we may naturally recoil does not mean it has no merit. But it can at least be taken as a starting-point for a serious debate about drugs. Parents should see it as well as their chil
dren. They are likely to learn
more than they ever thought they wanted to know, but that may be no bad thing. At the very least it will provide some common ground for discussion, rather than the usual unbridgeable gap which tends to open up when the subject is raised.
And it might help if Irvine Welsh, the author of Trainspotting and now something of a cult figure himself, were to descend from the fence and deliver his own verdict on the nightmare he has portrayed.
Zola Pieterse finished second to Colleen de Reuck in the South Africa cross-country trials at the weekend virtually to assure herself of a place in the team of six that will contest the world championships over the same Stellenbosch course on March 23.
De Reuck had returned from the United States only on Wednesday, but appeared comfortable in the humid heat and set a pace that immediately strung out the elite field.
The men's trial ended in a dead heat between Shadrack Hoff and John Morapedi.
Frankie Fredericks, of Namibia, set a world indoor record of 10.05sec for the 100 metres in Tampere, Finland, last night. Olapade Adeniken, of Nigeria, held the record with 10.13sec.
THE BRITISH cleaning lady is an indomitable soul. Early yesterday, Mrs Mary Shelley, 63, emerged from the devastation of London's Docklands at breakfast time to complain about the mess on the carpets.
Three of her fellow shift workers turned up as usual at the London Docklands Development Corporation building, which took an in
direct hit in Friday's blast. Undeterred by piles of shattered glass and masonry dust, she tiptoed over to clean the lavatories and refill the loo-roll holders. Then she emptied the rubbish bins. "You couldn't do any Hoovering," she explained.
A CASE for Inspector Goole, the ghostly policeman of An Inspector Calls. Real London detectives are baffled by a burglary at the Garrick Theatre, where J.B. Priestley's classic drama is showing.
The company manager arrived to prepare the theatre for Friday night's performance, only to find that a prop-burglar had been oddly choosy. Only the cheap landscape pictures and ornaments adorning the walls and mantelpiece were missing. "A man was on the door all the time. We've no idea how anyone could have got in or out," says a bemused thesp.
EMMA THOMPSON, who is expected to receive at least one Oscar nomination today for Sense and Sensibility, has already moved on. The talk among movie movers is that she will star with Robert Redford in the screen adaptation of The Horse Whisperer, the tale of a man who heals horses, which earned first-time British novelist Nicholas Evans £2 million when he sold it to Hollywood. Evans is now rumoured to have been offered
"a Martin Amis" (an advance of around £500,000) for his next book.
PROOF that John Major has a sense of humour comes from
his former press secretary Gus O'Donnell, who persuaded the Prime Minister to sign a book he gave his brother for Christmas.
The book was a compilation of Private Eye's spoof on the Adrian Mole diaries, The Secret Diary of John Major aged 473/4, which depicts the Prime Minister as something of a pant-wetter. O'Donnell finally plucked up his courage and presented Major with a pen. He didn't even blink, oh no.
"The Prime Minister was happy to sign it," says Gus. "He even signed it in the style of Adrian Mole though I don't think he's a regular reader of Private Eye."
As patron of the National Youth Theatre, Prince Edward turned out on Sunday night for its 40th birthday party at a London hotel, where Rory Bremner provided light entertainment. "I just don't seem to be getting my message across, Dad," said Bremner's Prince Charles. "Well why don't you try my mobile phone?" replied his Duke of Edinburgh. Prince Edward laughed like a drain.
QUEEN ELIZABETH the Queen Mother is today expected to perform her first official engagement since her hip replacement before Christmas. She is due to unveil a memorial at Westminster Abbey to the Special Operations Executive, which was formed as a secret service in July 1940.
Although Clarence House refused yesterday to confirm her attendance, former members of the operations executive are brushing down their togs to greet her at the Abbey. Veterans are delighted. Leo Marks, who as a stripling of 20 ran the codes for the resistance movement, spoke of her great interest in the executive.
"She and the late King came to inspect our cipher artefacts once," he says. "His Majesty stood at one end of the room and we sent him a shortwave radio message, encrypted by Her Majesty. Nobody could decode it for a very long time because she had made a mistake.
It became known as the Queen's mistake."
Marks told her years later that her very mistake had actually helped to crack an indecipherable code in one of the most important operations of the war. "In the operation to blow up the Germans' heavy water plant, we couldn't decode the first message they sent us," he said.
"In desperation I said, ‘Try the Queen's mistake.' And we cracked it the agent had made the same mistake as Her Majesty." When she heard of her contribution to the war effort, she was modesty itself: "I'm so glad to have been of some use," she said.
Jack Nicklaus, the most successful golfer the game has known, said yesterday that the US Open at Oakland Hills in June "will probably end my streak of consecutive major championships" at 138 tournaments.
Last July, Nicklaus said that he would not be likely to return to the Open until it is played again at St Andrews, in the year 2000. Nicklaus did, however, insist that he was looking forward to playing his fortieth consecutive US Open.
Alex Lyle, former professional and father of Sandy, the former Open and US Masters champion, has died aged 75.
Michael Jordan, right, celebrated his return to the National Basketball Association all-star game with an outstanding performance that gave the Eastern Conference victory and earned him the most valuable player award. Jordan, playing in the showpiece game against the Western Conference for the first time since 1993, scored 20 points as the East won 129-118 in San Antonio.
ITALY celebrated an unexpected success at the skiing world championships in Sierra Nevada, Spain, yesterday when Isolde Kostner won the women's super giant slalom title.
Where Alberto Tomba normally commands the attention of the Italian media, Kostner, 19, was at centre stage instead, gleefully holding her pristine gold medal.
Despite having won two World Cup downhill races and two bronze medals in the 1994 Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Kostner had, nonetheless, made her greatest breakthrough. By winning the super-giant slalom, she became the first Italian woman to win an Alpine skiing world championship in the modern era. "This is the first world championships I've entered and I'm very proud," she said. "I made almost a perfect run."
Kostner did, indeed, ski faultlessly on the 2,.2 kilometre course. She was followed home by Heidi Zurbriggen, the sister of the famous Swiss skier, Pirmin Zurbriggen.
Colin Jackson, the world record-holder at 110 metres hurdles, won the 60 metres hurdles at the Gunma international indoor meeting in Maebashi, Japan, yesterday in 7.51sec. Jackson is competing abroad because he is in dispute with the British Athletic Federation.
His only scheduled domestic races for 1996 are at the AAA championships and the Welsh Games.
The Tokyo Marathon ended yesterday with Vanderlei Lima, of Brazil, named the winner ahead of Antonio Pinto, of Portugal, despite both clocking 2hr 08min 38 sec.
Day two: Now that newborn babies are known to react to pain, the focus is on the foetus
RESEARCH INTO THE FOETUS
Some doctors think the research is a waste
of time
No pregnant woman, about to submit to surgery on her unborn baby, would wish to contemplate what it might feel. For while the mother will be offered pain-relieving drugs, the foetus is given nothing.
Blood samples may be taken from the baby, its lungs or bladder drained or an operation performed while it is still in the womb. Until now, few doctors have questioned whether this is distressing for the foetus. Yet these are procedures which, if performed on a live baby without anaesthesia, would invite a charge of abuse amounting to torture.
The issue is attracting attention from some of Britain's most senior consultants including Sir John Peel, former gynaecologist to the Queen, and Sir Stanley Simmons, former president of the Royal College of Obstetricians. They attended a recent meeting in London at which research into foetal awareness was presented.
Until 20 years ago doctors were taught that newborn babies did not experience pain in the way that adults did. Practice changed in the mid-1980s when research showed that they produced a surge in stress hormones in the blood when jabbed with a needle. Operations on newborn babies are now routinely carried out with pain relief.
Since premature babies of as little as 26 weeks gestation now survive outside the womb, many older foetuses are undergoing surgery inside the womb without analgesia for which, had they been born, they would have received pain-relieving drugs.
Dr Vivette Glover, a psycho-pharmacologist from the department of paediatrics at Queen Charlotte's Hospital, London, says that although the foetus is exposed to many interventions which could be painful including childbirth and abortion it is an aspect of obstetrics that has hardly been discussed.
The perception of pain requires consciousness which, in adults, depends on electrical activity in the cortex of the brain. Dr Glover says: "Below 13 weeks gestation the foetus has no such cortical activity. After 26 weeks the full anatomical system is present and the foetus is quite likely to feel pain. The area of uncertainty is between 13 and 26 weeks."
The first study in the world of the foetus's response to having a needle inserted in its abdomen has been carried out by Professor Nicholas Fisk, a specialist in foetal medicine at Queen Charlotte's. Sick unborn babies undergoing blood transfusions in the womb had blood samples taken at the beginning and end of the procedure and the level of cortisol, the main stress hormone, was compared. The unpublished results, based on 47 cases, showed the cortisol rose 200 per cent and the endorphins 600 per cent.
Professor Fisk said: "This was the first demonstration ever that the human foetus mounts a definable stress response to a potentially painful procedure."
In a second study, Professor Fisk and colleagues observed a sharp increase in the blood flow to the brain in seven foetuses who had a needle inserted into their liver compared with another seven in whom the needle to take a blood sample was inserted into the umbilical cord. When a baby is stressed it shuts down the blood flow to non-essential organs and directs the blood to the brain.
Professor Fisk is now experimenting by giving tiny doses of Fentanyl, an anaesthetic, to foetuses in the womb before submitting them to painful procedures. In four foetuses which have so far received the drug, it had a blunting effect on the previously observed surge in endorphins but no effect on cortisol levels, probably because the dose was too low; he is now seeking ethical approval to increase it.
Presenting his results to the London meeting organised by the Women and Children's Welfare Fund, a charity which is raising money for research into foetal pain, Professor Fisk said there were scientific, practical and moral arguments for investigating the matter. Evidence in newborn babies shows that those given pain relief survive surgery better than those denied it.
"We were studying exactly the same things in the newborn ten years ago and there the whole picture has undergone a complete volte-face following the demonstration that surgery leads to huge rises in adrenalin and endorphins."
There remain doubts, however, whether the hormonal responses demonstrated by the research prove that pain is being experienced. Sir John Peel, who is also former consultant gynaecologist at King's College Hospital, London, said: "There are huge differences in individual responses to pain. The margin between pleasure and pain is sometimes difficult to draw but how these could be distinguished in terms of the hormonal response is not clear."
Dr Kyprianos Nicolaides, an expert in foetal medicine at the University of London, said: "The research shows certain hormonal changes. One may be related to pain and 55 others may have nothing to do with it."
Professor Fisk said the test would be whether giving pain-relieving drugs reduced the responses. But it was hard to gain support for the necessary research because obstetricians fell into two camps: those who felt it was obvious that the foetus felt pain and the work was therefore not worth doing, and those including eminent members of the profession who felt it obvious that the foetus could not experience pain and that the research was a waste of time.
The Women and Children's Welfare Fund, Tower Office, Jedburgh, Roxburghshire, TD8 6NX.
GRIMSBY TOWN will be without Ivano Bonetti, their influential Italian, for the FA Cup fourth-round replay with West Ham United tomorrow.
Bonetti will be absent through injury, although it is not of the mundane footballing variety.
Bonetti's injury appears to have been caused after an exchange with Brian Laws, his own manager. Sources at the Cleethorpes club confirmed that the Italian import was taken to a Luton hospital after his side's defeat at Kenilworth Road on Saturday. He was involved, it is alleged, in a dressing-room confrontation with Laws after which he was taken to the hospital with a suspected broken cheekbone. The hospital confirmed that the player had been brought in with a facial injury, but was not detained.
Laws said: "It is an internal matter and will be dealt with within the club." Bonetti had checked out of his hotel yesterday afternoon arousing suspicion that he may have flown back to Italy. It will come as a disappointment to the Grimsby supporters, who had raised the £50,000 fee to keep the Italian at theclub until the end of the season.
Malcolm Marshall, the former Hampshire fast bowler who is still West Indies' leading wicket-taker, bowed out as a player from the first-class game quietly yesterday.
Marshall, 37, was forced to sit it out in the Centurion Park changing-room as torrential rain washed out Natal's chances of beating Northern Transvaal and so of retaining the Castle Cup. Marshall said that he had no regrets about retiring as a player.
"I've been playing since 1977 and have thoroughly enjoyed it," he said. "This is the right time to go."
THE administrative turmoil within football in Europe, and within Uefa, continues. At a meeting of ten national associations from the European Union at Windsor yesterday, it was effectively admitted that the Bosman judgment, outlawing the system of transfer fees, was beyond challenge. European clubs are going to have to live with it.
The only firm agreement was a recommendation to Uefa, European football's governing body, to create a consultative committee, embracing representatives of clubs and leagues, to help to resolve the crisis that is not of the EU's making: the future format of European competitions. The next executive meeting of Uefa is in London this weekend.
"The clock is ticking," Rick Parry, chief executive of the Premier League, said. "The players are organised, the agents are organised, and the danger is that only the administrators are not."
There was general approval for national associations approaching their respective governments for assistance in pressing for the inclusion of a sports clause in a revised European treaty. Yet, as Graham Kelly, the secretary of the Football Association, said: "Time is running out for governments to have any impact." A sports clause would acknowledge the right of sport to protect its own interests, as does the culture clause, though it would not be able to bypass the implications of labour laws regarding transfers.
There was a majority agreement that there should be negotiations with the EU to secure a transitional period for implementation of the abolition of transfers and the present "three plus two" eligibility rule. This was opposed by England, Scotland and Holland.
"The judgment of December 15 is clear," Parry said. "Persisting with that (the former regulations) is now illegal and unenforceable, nationally and internationally, which is why we are all here today. We have to learn how to deal with the situation. A lobby by governments (to protect the transfer system) should have taken place five years ago. A transitory period only means ultimate acceptance of the change."
By agreement among the participating clubs, Uefa has already established that a voluntary "three plus two" eligibility rule three foreigners plus two assimilated players per club will continue to operate for the remainder of this season's European competitions.
A "solidarity" proposal suggested by the EU that a percentage of leading professional clubs' income should be distributed among smaller clubs as a replacement for transfer fees was rejected. It was considered by most clubs, and particularly the Germans, led by Franz Beckenbauer, to be inoperable.
The first concern of Kelly and Parry is to attempt to preserve as far as possible the domestic transfer system, as part of the fundamental financial structure of the game. "We refuse to accept that it must go" Parry said.
Kelly said: "We wish to preserve it, because we think it's fair, that it's in the interest of the whole game, of all clubs, and of all players".
Parry is also concerned that Uefa should not provoke European legislation to the point where it further extends its jurisdiction over the game. There is alarm, domestically, at the recent intervention by the Office of Fair Trading concerning the television contract of the Premier League. The EU could impose further restrictions and Parry is anxious to have established something similar to the Sports Trust Act in the United States that allows sports administrators the right to determine television contracts in their own best interests. Where Uefa must be restrained, however, is in its pursuit of an expanded Champions' League. A champions' competition is for champions on the field, not in the stock market.
Scotland will begin to fine-tune their preparations for the European championship this summer with a match
against Australia on March 27. Eddie Thomson, Australia's Scottish-born coach, is expected to select a squad of players plying their trade in Europe.
It will be the first time the countries have met since Scotland squeezed home in a two-legged World Cup qualifying play-off in 1985.
EFFECTS OF AGE ON FERTILITY
IN THE couple of minutes it will take a healthy, relaxed man to read this piece, his testes will have produced another 120,000 sperm. The speed of sperm production and the efficiency of the manufacturing line would have pleased even Henry Ford. But, the testes, like other production lines, can be disrupted by external forces.
Any disease which undermines a man's general health will interfere with his sperm production, as can stress. Smoking tobacco or cannabis reduces the number of sperm and very probably increases the number of abnormal forms. Obese men are less fertile than the slim. Alcohol may benefit the cardiovascular system but its effect on sperm production can be catastrophic. Recent research at the Royal Free and Chelsea hospitals confirms that the more alcohol a man drinks, the less fertile he becomes. One ancient aristocratic family was about to die out as the title-holder had neither heirs in the nursery nor sperm in his semen. His doctor forbade all alcohol, sperm returned and the lineage was assured.
The effect of age on sperm production is unexpected. Professor John Aitken of the Medical Research Council Unit of Reproductive Medicine in Edinburgh says that there has been only one careful study, in Germany. It produced a surprising result: healthy grandfathers had higher sperm counts than their sons and grandsons. Any loss of fertility from increasing age had been obscured by the overall reduction in fertility which has increasingly affected Western men as this century has progressed. Men born in the 1970s are likely to have sperm counts only half of those born in the 1950s.
Although in the German study the oldest donors had the highest sperm count, occasionally babies born to their partners may suffer as a result of their age. Dr Michael Baraitser, a consultant clinical geneticist at Great Ormond Street hospital, said that although the children of elderly fathers were usually just as healthy as those of younger men, they were twice as likely to suffer from the effects of a genetic mutation which would give rise to an abnormality. Such diseases range from achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism, to Waadenburg's, in which the symptoms include a white streak in the hair, loss of hearing and speckled eyes. Fortunately, as Dr Aitken explains, the number of times that such mutations occur is not great.
The effect of age on a woman's reproductive life is better known. A woman is born with all her eggs, the production line closed at birth, and ideally from puberty the eggs mature at monthly intervals. The quality of the ova deteriorates with advancing age and with it her fertility. Foetal abnormalities are also more frequently found in children of older women. In young women, for instance, the incidence of Down's syndrome is one in 2,000 live births; by the age of 40, it is about one in 40.
One simple measure to reduce the chances of having a baby with many of the foetal abnormalities, is for women of all ages to take folic acid, a vitamin, before they plan to become pregnant.
Swindon Town 1 - Oldham Athletic 0.
STEVE McMAHON, the Swindon Town player-manager, had done more than most to engineer his side a place in the FA Cup fifth round at the County Ground last night. When he made a premature departure, in the 77th minute, having tired on his return after knee surgery, it appeared that Swindon's best chance had gone without his assured passing, Oldham Athletic would surely hang on for a fourth-round replay.
Not so; McMahon's self-denial proved a masterstroke. It was Martin Ling, whom he had dropped before the game, but who had come on as his replacement, who earned Swindon a place in the last 16 against either Southampton or Crewe Alexandra. It was also good news for the Football Association as it contemplates a chaotic backlog of fixtures in the competition.
With only a minute remaining, Bodin slung over a last, desperate cross, Finney, another substitute, nodded on and Ling volleyed into the net from ten yards. It was no more than Swindon, the Endsleigh Insurance League second division leaders, deserved after dominating Oldham, of the first division, throughout.
Even a squandered penalty by Horlock, in the fiftieth minute, failed to dampen their enthusiasm on a windswept Wiltshire evening. That it had taken three attempts to fulfil the fixture, because of the bad weather, only heightened Swindon's urgency. A trek to Boundary Park for a rematch would have been unfair as well as undesirable.
"As it all happened in the last minute, I suppose I should feel a little bit sorry for Oldham," McMahon said. "Really, though, there is no time for sympathy in this game. I am just delighted at the result and I felt it was thoroughly merited." McMahon's early influence was marginal as three belated challenges, fortunately for him, failed to make any impact on opponents. Had they done, Paul Danson, the referee, would probably have added the ageing warrior's name to his collection, which began after only 35 seconds and eventually totalled six. Not for nothing is Danson co-leader in the FA Carling Premiership's red card league table this season, with six dismissals to his credit.
However, once McMahon had settled into the groove, regaining his timing and authority, Oldham barely got a look-in apart from a couple of long-distance efforts, from Barlow and Redmond. Swindon swept forward in waves, but it was not enough in the first half, with Gerrard, the Oldham goalkeeper, having to make only one save of note, from Taylor's firm header.
Five minutes after the interval, Swindon should gave gone ahead. Danson correctly spotted Redmond wrestling Allison to the ground, in the corner of the area, and had no hesitation in awarding a penalty. Though Horlock's effort was low and hard, Gerrard's athletic leap kept it out.
Oldham rarely ventured out of their shell, content to absorb pressure and wait for the home advantage that they would have enjoyed on Saturday. It appeared that they had achieved their objective, until Ling's late intervention.
SWINDON TOWN (4-4-2): F Digby M Robinson, I Culverhouse, S Taylor, P Bodin P Allen, S McMahon (sub: M Ling, 77min), T Gooden, K Horlock W Allison (sub: S Finney, 81), P Thorne.
OLDHAM ATHLETIC (4-4-2): P Gerrard I Snodin, R Graham, S Redmond, C Serrant G Halle, A Hughes, T Orlygsson, M Brannan S McCarthy (sub: N Banger, 83), S Barlow.
Referee: P Danson.
PREGNANCY DIARIES
A batch of diaries recording the thoughts, hopes and feelings of 700 mothers-to-be as they progress through pregnancy may hold the key to better maternity care.
The maternity diaries, a £150,000 project commissioned by Trent Health, are part of Britain's first survey to record in detail the feelings of mothers during the full term of their pregnancy.
Dr Veronica James, a reader in Nursing Studies at Nottingham University and a director of research into the diaries, says the aim is to collect a body of data to help to discover a woman's needs during pregnancy. Researchers plan to record everything from the mother's relationship with her midwife to each clinic visit, from the day she realises she is pregnant until six weeks after the birth.
"The idea is that the diaries will give pregnant women a voice," says Dr James. "Each is divided into sections with titles such as ‘About myself' and ‘Records of my previous maternity experience'. It asks them to record, for example, how they felt each time they visited their clinic did they feel comfortable there, would they have preferred to go elsewhere, were they given the information they needed?"
The diaries also provide space for the women to record their more general thoughts on pregnancy and childbirth.
Researchers have already received the diaries of some women who have miscarried and these, too, should yield valuable research data.
The diaries allow room for partners to record their thoughts, and provide pages for scan pictures. "We wanted to strike a balance between creating a souvenir to encourage women to keep the diary, while also making it a valuable receptacle for research data," says Dr James.
A pilot project, in which 15 women at various stages of pregnancy kept a diary for a month, showed that most enjoyed the experience of committing their thoughts to paper. "Many of them found it quite liberating," says Dr James.
Julie Sadler, a mother of two from Nottingham, had just given birth at home to Philip, now nine months, when she was asked to record her experiences and the level of care she received during and after labour.
"I very much enjoyed writing it. Pregnancy and motherhood is such a major event in a woman's life, but no one ever really asks you about it in detail," she says. "When I had my first child, I wasn't particularly satisfied with the care I received but I didn't know who to talk to about it. I didn't feel there was a way of recording my dissatisfaction.
"After Philip's birth, I was able to record in detail my feelings about my midwife care during the labour. This time I was very happy with it.
"The diary provides a valuable opportunity for women to voice their needs. In a restaurant, a waiter will ask whether your meal was OK. No one asks how your pregnancy was. I hope the diaries help to change that."
The project is part of wider research into maternity services in the Nottingham area, and stems from a new Government policy, Changing Childbirth, which aims to give women more choice in health-related issues throughout pregnancy.
Most of the diaries, which run to 322 pages each, are expected to be returned between May and July this year. Researchers will then begin collating the data.
Burnley, of the Endsleigh Insurance League second division, yesterday dismissed Jimmy Mullen, their manager, after a fourth successive defeat, on Saturday, prompted a demonstration by supporters. Clive Middlemass, his assistant, has taken charge on a caretaker basis.
THE RELEVANCE OF RECURRING SLEEP-IMAGES
The vivid and haunting dreams of pregnant women could show the way to better motherhood, Katie Knight writes. Serene, ecstatic or frightening, recurring images during sleep can reveal your inner feelings about your pregnancy and, in turn, ease the transition from daughter to mother.
In The Dream Worlds of Pregnancy, Eileen Stukane says that while dreams are always highly individual, those of expectant mothers share common characteristics.
"They are valuable tools for understanding emotional highs and lows, the stress... of relationships, the adjustments a woman makes to her changing body and the conflicts that approaching motherhood brings," Stukane says.
She interviewed hundreds of pregnant women and found their dreams were often thematic. During the first three months, a woman may find her dream populated by fertile images and small animals cats, sheep and birds. These are surrogate dream images, a reflection of her inability to visualise the foetus inside her.
Water and flowers are common metaphors. Some women visualise miscarriage, imagining baths of blood. These, Stukane says, spring from fear and reflect a mind adapting to a new "being" inside.
As pregnancy progresses into the fourth month, many women experience a greater anxiety in their dreams as the baby develops a stronger reality. Images such as being marooned at sea or stuck up a tree are common, suggesting isolation and helplessness.
Bulky pictures of cars, lorries and houses are often reflections of the woman's body-image as her mind internalises her physiological changes. And the partner usually makes recurrent appearances at this stage, often showing the female's anxiety about his ability to provide care and her fear that she is no longer attractive to him.
As the birth approaches, Stukane says, many women's dreams are an attempt to decipher the sex of the baby, with startling images of, for example, transparent wombs.
Stukane suggests keeping a dream diary. By examining the impact of your dreams on your waking state you can confront and articulate your anxieties, she says.
The Dream Worlds of Pregnancy is available from Airlift Books (0181-804 0400). Further reading: Baby Massage by Peter Walker with photographs by Nick Smee (Piatkus, £9.99), on massage and movement for your infant; Your Natural Pregnancy by Anne Charlish (Boxtree, £14.99), advice on using complementary therapies; and The Alexander Technique Birth Book (Robinson, £9.99).
Kasparov's revenge
Garry Kasparov, the world champion, having learnt from his defeat in the first game, gained revenge in the second game of his match against the IBM Deep Blue computer in Philadelphia. The third game is tonight.
White: Garry Kasparov
Black: Deep Blue
Philadelphia, February 1996
Catalan Opening
1 Nf3 d5
2 d4 e6
3 g3 c5
4 Bg2 Nc6
50-0 Nf6
6 c4 dxc4
7 Ne5 Bd7
8 Na3 cxd4
9 Naxc4 Bc5
10 Qb3 0-0
11 Qxb7 Nxe5
12 Nxe5 Rb8
13 Qf3 Bd6
14 Nc6 Bxc6
15 Qxc6 e5
16 Rb1 Rb6
17 Qa4 Qb8
18 Bg5 Be7
19 b4 Bxb4
20 Bxf6 gxf6
21 Qd7 Qc8
22 Qxa7 Rb8
23 Qa4 Bc3
24 Rxb8 Qxb8
25 Be4 Qc7
26 Qa6 Kg7
27 Qd3 Rb8
28 Bxh7 Rb2
29 Be4 Rxa2
30 h4 Qc8
31 Qf3 Ra1
32 Rxa1 Bxa1
33 Qh5 Qh8
34 Qg4+ Kf8
35 Qc8+ Kg7
36 Qg4+ Kf8
37 Bd5 Ke7
38 Bc6 Kf8
39 Bd5 Ke7
40 Qf3 Bc3
41 Bc4 Qc8
42 Qd5 Qe6
43 Qb5 Qd7
44 Qc5+ Qd6
45 Qa7+ Qd7
46 Qa8 Qc7
47 Qa3+ Qd6
48 Qa2 f5
49 Bxf7 e4
50 Bh5 Qf6
51 Qa3+ Kd7
52 Qa7+ Kd8
53 Qb8+ Kd7
54 Be8+ Ke7
55 Bb5 Bd2
56 Qc7+ Kf8
57 Bc4 Bc3
58 Kg2 Be1
59 Kf1 Bc3
60 f4 exf3
61 exf3 Bd2
62 f4 Ke8
63 Qc8+ Ke7
64 Qc5+ Kd8
65 Bd3 Be3
66 Qxf5 Qc6
67 Qf8+ Kc7
68 Qe7+ Kc8
69 Bf5+ Kb8
70 Qd8+ Kb7
71 Qd7+ Qxd7
72 Bxd7 Kc7
73 Bb5 Black resigns
Diagram of final position
Raymond Keene writes on chess Monday to Friday in Sport and in the Weekend section on Saturday.
Why should a Duchess profess envy for slum dwellers? Nigella Lawson ponders what happens when discontented wealth meets dire poverty face-to-face.
I am not sure that if I were living in squalor in an Indian slum, I would greatly relish a rich, royal Western woman telling me how well off I was. But perhaps I would be flattered. After all, it would have been rather worse if the Duchess of Kent, on her visit to the slum and the Hindu women who live in it, had simply squinted sympathetically at them all and murmured: "Poor you, how perfectly dreadful..."
It may be crude to point out that the Duchess, admirer of the life that is lived in such poverty, has been staying in comfort in modern hotels during her stay. Of course she has been. It would be madness to choose to dwell, even temporarily, in the sort of discomfort that prevails in the slums. It may not be madness for the Duchess to be so convinced of the superiority of the slum life compared to our spiritually impoverished affluent existence, but it is symptomatic of the Western decadence she laments.
It's not new, of course. The rich and relatively comfortable have always envied what they saw as the purity of the poor. Marie Antoinette didn't dress up as a shepherdess simply because she thought the costume becoming.
Only those who know nothing of financial and concomitant hardships can congratulate themselves on questioning the benefits of material comfort and privilege. The cynic might say that seeing poverty as a sign of spiritual richness is a damn fine way of doing nothing to alleviate the sufferings of the poor without having to feel guilty about it. Religion's smart money has always been on that card: telling people that it's not the poverty in this life that matters but the celestial riches in the next is, as Marx and others have pointed out, a sharp political move.
And meanwhile the rich can award themselves the luxury of envy as they point out that it is harder for them harder, indeed, than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Why then, the poor are lucky: God's on their side. Surely the enduring tendency of the well-off to see the life of the materially deprived as spiritually blessed stems from the scriptures. But it is more than a biblical teaching: it touches a chord within us. As society has become more affluent, the notion seems to have ever more resonance; for only those with no idea what it is like to live in grinding poverty can think there is comfort in it.
I am not sure whether this belief comes from a sense of guilt about our own material comforts or a feeling of disappointment that these do not make us as happy as we would like to be or, simply and more likely, a mixture of both. But we take so much for granted that we are no longer able to imagine truly what life would be like without everything we are privileged enough to affect to despise. It is easier to be Anita Roddick thinking that the savage life in some underdeveloped scrub is a superior existence than it is if you're the one stuck in the scrub in the first place.
Overworked executives are unwise enough, sometimes, to share with us their thought that life must be hard in the deserts of Africa but there is a simplicity to life there that, for all their fast cars and big houses, they genuinely envy. Those who voice sentiments such as these should be dispatched to the heat and dust forthwith, just to see how glorious this simplicity is in reality. People have no idea: they really do feel that getting stuck in a traffic jam twice a day and working too hard for a lot of money is more stressful than watching your infant children die of dehydration and not knowing yourself if you'll live to see the next day.
I am not saying that life is not hard for us too: unfortunately suffering is not relative; we all feel our miseries and hardships absolutely. I balk at the count-your-blessings school (although I am trying a bit of teach-yourself on the subject) but I do think some self-awareness is necessary.
Although galling and prone to hideous hypocrisies, the belief that our moneyed, Western way of doing things is, in all important concerns, inferior to rougher ways of life (as if having no running water or sanitation somehow sanctified existence rather than made it hard and foul) is up to a point better than assuming that our ways are always the best.
And perhaps the Duchess is right: perhaps in gaining materially we do lose other, important, things. Perhaps the price of civilisation is that we behave, in some respects, in a less civilised manner. She envies the Hindu women for fostering a society which values its elders and respects the commitments of family. Showing a fluency in New Age-speak which appears to be the second language of the Royal Family these days, she praises them for "living in harmony with love".
She is clearly sincere, and no one who tries to do good or be good should be disparaged for it. But if I had to choose between living in an Indian slum or St James's Palace, I don't think I'd have much trouble making up my mind.Chaucer?
No chance
ANY don you care to mention has been speaking out for some time about the ever-increasing ignorance of each new generation of the undergraduate population. The fact that academics have probably been doing this ever since the ancient universities were established doesn't necessarily mean they are being bufferishly alarmist now.
But what strikes me is how readily some academics exonerate these students themselves. The latest assessment of the standards in university English departments finds that undergraduates have read very little that was written before the 20th century, apart from the obligatory Shakespeare play on the A-level syllabus. These academics quite rightly castigate those who have fashioned an A-level English literature syllabus which allows pupils to read more or less nothing but modern writing."We find," says Professor Martin Dodsworth, "that promising applicants have read nothing earlier than Thomas Hardy."
Have read nothing earlier than Thomas Hardy? I understand that the A-level syllabus means they might not have been examined on any earlier writings, but it does not follow that these students should therefore not have read any of them.It might well be a good thing to change the syllabus, but I think the pupils who sit the exams must take some responsibility for being so ill-read. Surely anyone who wants to read English at university should want to read, should have read, books that are not on the syllabus?
One of the great things about reading is that one needs no training, no expertise, no special permission or qualifications to do it. One reads for the pleasure of it, not because an A-level syllabus tells you that you ought.
University English departments should not be in the business of catering for those students whose reading is confined to the requirements of any examination syllabus, even their own.
Presiley Baxendal's girlish giggle and gentle manner mask her killer instinct and her talent for grasping important detils, says Julia Llewellyn Smith.
Three weekends ago Presiley Baxendale, QC, the dark-haired and exotically named counsel to the Scott inquiry, celebrated the report's completion with a trip to Paris with her best friends Harriet Spicer, the former managing director of Virago, and Maeve Haran, the novelist. "It was Presiley's idea: no men, no children, just three girls on the Eurostar," says Haran.
The women, friends since Oxford, blitzed the Musee d'Orsay, trawled Galeries Lafayette and, over long and gossipy dinners, gently teased Baxendale about her new status as Sir Richard Scott's hitwoman. What was her secret, they asked. "Presiley said ‘It's quite simple, I'm a devil for detail. I really knew my stuff'," says Haran.
This intimate knowledge of mountains of paperwork certainly agitated Baroness Thatcher when she was cross-examined by Baxendale. "I had the transcript pinned to my wall for a while," says Haran. "It says Thatcher (wearily) ‘Is there more paper? I have never seen so much paper'. Then Baxendale (perkily) ‘Oh, there is much more paper'. That is so like her."
An unfailingly cheerful disposition is another key to Baxendale's dazzling success. Observers have noted her habit of giggling girlishly as she goes in for the kill. In a sketch of the Scott inquiry, John Mortimer noted approvingly how Baxendale beamed at the throngs of journalists.
Such geniality can be misleading. Numerous former Cabinet ministers can count themselves victims of Baxendale's famously soft approach, which William Waldegrave has described as "offensive". Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, QC, says: "She can lead people up the garden path more easily than anyone I know. She has this slightly feminine charm and a deceptive way of asking questions, so you don't feel you're in the presence of a hostile examiner and then you feel a pit has been dug and you have fallen into it."
Gareth Roscoe, legal adviser to the BBC, who instructed Baxendale when he was deputy solicitor at the Department of the Environment, says: "Her appearance and her manner belie her many talents. You don't expect such quality in the way she deals with problems." Harriet Spicer says: "Her probity is veiled by her fantastic sense of humour. People don't expect such penetrating questions from someone with such a good sense of fun."
There are many more disparities between the stuffy-lawyer image and the Baxendale reality. "She has a slightly romantic, baroque, individual style," says Haran. "Even when she has to wear her lawyers' all-black uniform, she will make sure the jacket has an incredibly exotic lining."
The nonconformity is a family trait. "The Baxendales are a group of wonderfully strong individuals, rather Sitwellesque," says Haran. "They are not your average county family." Her father was a chartered accountant, who later became chairman of Lings, the world's largest manufacturer of Turkish delight; her mother, who died recently, painted murals.
Presiley's name, voted the most captivating at the Bar, was chosen by her parents after friends bought a silver loving cup at an auction engraved with the words "To my darling Presiley". Her middle name is Lamorna, after the Cornish cove.
Baxendale, 45, was educated at St Mary's, Wantage, a school better known for turning out Sloaney socialites, such as Lady Helen Taylor, Serena Stanhope and Susannah Constantine. She read law at St Anne's College, Oxford, where her tutor was Ruth Deech, now the Principal. "I couldn't say there was anything out of the ordinary about her," says Mrs Deech. "She was a thoroughly nice, hard-working, unaffected pupil in a very gifted generation of Oxford women."
And a contemporary says: "You wouldn't have said she was going to be wildly successful. She wasn't a ‘gnome' ploughing through piles of cases in the library. But she did enjoy the law."
"At Oxford we were the bad girls, who just wanted to have fun," says Haran, who shared a house with Baxendale and Spicer. "By that I don't mean there was lots of drugs and bonking, because there wasn't. But we weren't desperately ambitious. We didn't want to be president of the Union or play Juliet in OUDS. The only society we all joined was the Wine and Food Society."
After Oxford, however, things began to accelerate. Baxendale, who had graduated with a 2:1, came third in her year in the Bar exams and in 1974 joined 2 Hare Court, the chambers of a High Court judge and family friend, Sir Anthony Lincoln. She made her name and honed her diffident style as a counsel for the tribunal in the notorious Jasmine Beckford and Kimberley Carlile child-abuse inquiries in the 1980s, which were chaired by Sir Louis.
In 1978, Baxendale, whose previous boyfriends had never conformed to the public-school/Oxbridge mould, married Richard FitzGerald, a tax barrister whom she had known before university and who had, apparently, always stated his intention of marrying her. Their wedding was a triumph of bohemianism. "Presiley wore a pink 1920s dress and all her family came in fantastic clothes," recalls Haran. "I seem to remember her sister in a kimono.
"She was the first of us to have children, so we are always ringing her for advice on everything from gripe water to ghastly adolescence."
Baxendale's daughter Felicity, now 13, is a boarder at Downe House, in Berkshire ("Felicity wanted to board, Presiley was very tearful about it"), while Charlie, nine, attends a London day school.
FitzGerald, says Sir Louis, is "a backroom boy, a very nice man, who professionally only rarely appears in court and at home takes a bit of a back seat". His passion is doing up houses and moving, so the family have lived at a succession of addresses, culminating in their present five-storey house in a Nash terrace in Regent's Park, worth £1.5 million. Weekends are spent at FitzGerald's family home in Wadhurst, East Sussex.
No one underestimates the pressures of such a demanding career and a young family. "I am astonished that anyone can do it," says Sir Louis. During the Scott inquiry, Baxendale would arrive in chambers at 5am, in order to be at home for the children by 6pm. In the summer she takes six weeks off to be at home.
"She adores her work but she has always had the capacity to switch off," says Haran. She is not an aggressive networker, preferring to relax with a crime novel and her family than to attend a glittering dinner party. Like all busy mothers she patronises Marks & Spencer. "I often go round for an M&S lunch on Saturday and my children love it," says Haran.
After three years of Scott, Baxendale's former clients, which include virtually every government department, are baying for her to return. Everyone predicts great things for Baxendale, who commanded a rate of about £800 a day for the inquiry and could expect considerably more if she returned to the field of commercial law. "She's outstanding," says Sir Louis. "If she wants it there is no doubt she will go on the High Court Bench." The problem is that Baxendale is uninterested in such glittering prizes. A fellow lawyer says: "She wants to do a good job but she has no ambition in the money, status, Establishment sense absolutely not. I hope she does become a judge though she would be brilliant, as she always has been." Her ego, everyone agrees, is non-existent. "She is never pompous and never arrogant and for that reason she is a wonderful team player," says Spicer. "That is why she has served the inquiry so well."
Bailey schools champion in readiness for Wincanton.
PREPARATIONS for Alderbrook's imminent seasonal debut moved up a gear yesterday when Kim Bailey schooled the reigning champion hurdler for the first time since his victory at Cheltenham 11 months ago.
It will be an anxious trainer who runs his hand down Alderbrook's forelegs this morning. The seven-year-old, sidelined through injury for the last six months, showed no immediate ill-effects after jumping a total of 16 hurdles on the Lambourn gallops, but Bailey preferred to defer judgment on the exercise. "We won't know for sure how he handled it until he spends a night in his box," he said.
Alderbrook, whose experience over timber stretches to just three outings, has been plagued by a knee injury that he sustained when campaigned on the Flat. The indications are that he has now turned the corner and Bailey is to test the theory in the Kingwell Hurdle at Wincanton a week on Thursday.
"I am very happy with the horse," Bailey said yesterday. "The schooling exercise went well and he showed he has retained his enthusiasm. I had delayed schooling him so that Norman Williamson could be aboard, but that obviously went out of the window when Norman dislocated his shoulder on Saturday."
Williamson spent much of yesterday coming to terms with his latest setback. It remains unclear how long he must convalesce; he dislocated the same shoulder in a fall seven months ago and may require surgery. "I'll try to get back as fast as possible, but, if my shoulder comes out again, I'll have to have it operated on," he said.
Williamson, already in the clutches of his physiotherapist, is to rest for two weeks before contemplating a return to the saddle. With the Cheltenham Festival commencing four weeks today, his whole season effectively hangs in the balance. "I don't feel too good at the moment," he said. "Unless I recover quickly, it could be four to six weeks before I'm back."
Bailey is to monitor the performance of Fortune And Fame at Gowran Park on Saturday before finalising riding arrangements for Alderbrook at Wincanton.
A disappointing run from Fortune And Fame would leave Richard Dunwoody without a Champion Hurdle mount and Bailey is keen to keep his options open in the event that Williamson fails to recover for the Festival at Prestbury Park. Dunwoody, for his part, has been linked in a secondary capacity with Atours.
One riding arrangement to be confirmed yesterday was Conor O'Dwyer's place aboard Imperial Call in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. O'Dwyer excelled himself on the seven-year-old in winning the Hennessy Cognac Irish Gold Cup at Leopardstown on Sunday, prompting Fergus Sutherland, the gelding's trainer, to retain the alliance on March 14.
"Conor gave the horse a beautiful ride as near perfect as you could wish for," Sutherland said from his stables in Co Cork. "He was very positive and the horse responded with a great round.
"The horse came home, ate up and there isn't a scratch on him," Sutherland said. "He's as fresh as paint. The vet who attended him after the race on Sunday said he could hardly believe the horse had just had a race."
Sutherland was similarly bullish about the prospect of Imperial Call, now as low as
5-1 for the blue riband, matching strides with One Man at Cheltenham. "I won't be worrying about any horse other than my own," he said."
FOR the first time in years the most wanted man in China is not a political dissident but a suspected criminal.
He Gang, 33, of Shenyang in central Hunan province, allegedly hoarded 20 tonnes of dynamite which exploded in his home on January 31, killing 122 people and destroying about 40 buildings. The blast left a crater 100ft across and 30ft deep.
Posters all over China are appealing to "all social circles and the popular masses to please report all clues to the public security organs to help capture criminal He".
The case highlights a great fear in China; that discontented industrial workers or criminals will set off explosions at factory buildings, party headquarters, on trains or along railway lines.
In private gold, coal, and iron mines in China explosives are used carelessly and illegally. Gunpowder is also used in fireworks, also illegally, which last year killed or injured 60,000 people. Next week, at the start of the Chinese new year, another attempt will be made to ban fireworks. In 1994, 26 people were killed when an illegal fireworks factory in Hebei province, near Peking, blew up.
Until recently those on the run were political dissidents. After the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, a list of 20 most-wanted names was circulated across China. Many were Peking activists, but some were from other cities where there had also been uprisings. Half of these were apprehended or gave themselves up. The rest escaped from China, some helped by ordinary people and others assisted by Operation Yellow Bird, an underground network established by mostly criminal societies based in Hong Kong with links to similar groups in China.
When Chai Ling, the Tiananmen "commander in chief", who now lives in Boston, surfaced with her husband in Paris in late 1989, she described how they were passed along the network for months, and her astonishment at the number of people who had risked their lives and liberty to help the fugitives.
Tom Bancroft, Orchestra, Purcell Room
TOM BANCROFT's refreshingly down-to-earth ambition as a composer is to write "good tunes that you can hum on the bus". It was consequently no surprise, on this London leg of his 14-piece orchestra's national tour, to find them eschewing the more esoteric brands of big-band jazz in favour of a lively, accessible repertoire comprising everything from light, Basie-ish swing to no-holds-barred free-for-alls in the Mingus tradition.
Bancroft was born in London in 1967, but moved to Scotland nine years later, and his band draws several key members drummer John Rae, guitarist Kevin Mackenzie, trumpeter Colin Steele, saxophonist Phil Bancroft (Tom's brother) and bassist Kenny Ellis from one of that country's finest small groups, the John Rae Collective. Rae himself is a neat, supple drummer, the subtle heartbeat of Bancroft's project, but it is Phil Bancroft who sets the band's tone with his ebullient, abrasive tenor playing, and trumpeter Claude Deppa who gives it life with his mixture of spearing stridency and musical ribaldry.
The band went into entertainment mode as soon as they took the stage, hitting a jump-jive groove with a novelty number, Cat and Mouse, featuring spoken vocals from the leader and feline noises from the horn section. A little less jokey, but no less exuberant, was the subsequent Bancroft composition, Pie-ology, replete with squalling brass, querulous tenor and sudden ensemble climaxes, all decorated with typically unpredictable spurts and smears from Deppa. Skew-whiff tangos, dark skeins of folkish skirling and uncomplicated, riff-based, shouting swing followed in almost equal proportions. By the interval, it was difficult to suppress a yearning for something discreet and soothing.
A six-part suite, Birk Hedges, inspired by Bancroft's country home in East Lothian, seemed to promise just this in the second half, and an impressionistic opening attempting to recapture the awesome splendour of the night-time sky came close to delivering it. However, a humorous follow-up piece, involving the horn section chastising an imaginary dog, dispelled the mood, and it was back to slightly laddish rambunctiousness for much of the concert.
BRITAIN yesterday ordered the deportation of a Pakistan High Commission employee, who has been accused of trying to supply equipment for Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme.
Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, served a deportation notice on Mohammad Saleem after a warning was given to the High Commission last Friday that he would no longer be recognised as a staff member. The Home Office said in a statement that Mr Saleem's presence in Britain was "not conducive to the public good".
Whitehall officials confirmed that Mr Saleem, a clerk, had been trying to ship material vital to Pakistan's development of a nuclear bomb. He is the third member of the High Commission to be expelled on such charges in five years.
British Customs has stopped the illegal export of material that would aid nuclear proliferation three times. There were two incidents last November: laser-measuring equipment was recovered from a British Airways aircraft bound for Pakistan and a shipment of special valves, ordered from France and useful for making nuclear weapons, was held up. Early last year Customs also returned to Hungary portable solid-state lasers that were part of Pakistan's weapons-procurement programme.
Mr Saleem was employed by the High Commission while he was living in Britain. He will be asked to leave the country within the next few weeks. In 1990 Britain expelled Ahmed Jamil, a diplomat who was a close friend of Dr Abdul Qader Khan, the man said to be the brains behind the Pakistani Government's nuclear programme.
Robben Ford and the Blue Line, Empire, W12.
Back to basics has become a persuasive and profitable trend for rock stars in recent years. Both Gary Moore and Eric Clapton have found that a trip back to their blues roots has earned them new-found popularity and increased record sales.
The American musician Robben Ford is the latest guitarist to have booked his return ticket, with a new album entitled Handful of Blues. Some may argue that he has had less distance to travel back than most, having recorded blues albums with both singer Jimmy Witherspoon and his family group, the Charles Ford Band, in recent years.
Then again, as both the new album and his live appearance testify, basics is probably too blunt a word for Ford's music. This is blues moulded, polished and perfected by years of playing with everybody from George Harrison to Miles Davis.
Backed by a tight band that included Tom Brechtlein on drums and Roscoe Beck on bass, he displayed, from the very first number, Running Out on Me, a style of playing that was fluid, inventive and rarely self-indulgent. There was a controlled passion and almost horn-like quality (shades of Miles perhaps) to his solos, especially on ballads like Nina Simone's Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood or the Otis Rush classic, My Love Will Never Die.
But it was not just his instrumental talent that impressed. He has admitted to having taken singing lessons recently and his voice, although light-toned, was heard to good effect on the Ray Charles number, Don't Let the Sun Catch You Cryin'.
In a gig that was sold out and wildly applauded, Ford proved to be very much his own man. With a crossover appeal that has made him popular with both rock and blues audiences, he is probably the prototype for the bluesmen of the late 1990s. And, like his namesake, it's a model he has down to a tee.
NATAN SHARANSKY, the former Soviet Jewish dissident, threw a wild card into the Israeli election campaign yesterday by announcing that he will run for the Knesset at the head of an immigrants' party which the polls say could win between four and six of the 120 seats.
The new party, Yisrael Ba-Aliyah, will be seeking support among the 560,000 Jews who have arrived from the former Soviet Union since l989. The launch of Mr Sharansky's political career came ten years to the week after the 48-year-old human rights campaigner's arrival in Israel following an East-West spy swap, which ended his long spell in Soviet prisons and labour camps on trumped-up charges of spying for the CIA.
Mr Sharansky's platform has a distinctly Thatcherite tone, with an emphasis on decentralisation and deregulation.
Yesterday Shimon Peres, the Israeli Prime Minister, and Benjamin Netanyahu, the conservative opposition leader, agreed to hold the elections on May 28.
MONTHS after European Union governments disposed of French-led attempts to fight the influence of Hollywood entertainment, the European Parliament will try tomorrow to reimpose quotas on television and fix controls on the Internet.
The Parliament's dominant Socialist bloc which includes dozens of British Labour MEPs has a reasonable chance of blocking last year's agreement. This would force broadcasters to transmit a minimum of 51 per cent of home-grown programmes.
Culture ministers agreed to leave the "television without frontiers" directive of 1989 unchanged. France had wanted to remove wording which effectively made compliance voluntary; while Britain, with German support, opposed quotas. The European Parliament wants to push through the French proposal and extend it.
The broadcasting and recording industries are more alarmed by attempts to extend quotas and controls to so-called multimedia services, not yet in existence, which will be transmitted by telephone line, cable and on the Internet. The controls are backed by France, which has been fighting a losing battle for the past six years to preserve the "European cultural identity".
With American films representing 82 per cent of those on show in Europe, the native industry needs protection, say the French and the Euro-Socialists. The Internet, according to the Gaullist administration of President Chirac, represents the latest and most sinister example of American "cultural imperialism". Philippe Douste-Blazy, the Culture Minister, last week lamented the fact that 90 per cent of the Internet was in English and that typing in "Bonaparte" or "de Gaulle" brought him responses only from data banks in the United States. European countries must control computer "servers" within their borders, M Douste-Blazy said.
A coalition of 40 organisations from the European broadcasting and recording industries is attempting to dissuade MEPs from legislating on television and the fledgeling multimedia industry. Applying broadcasting rules to planned services such as video-on-demand, teleshopping and electronic information would cripple Europe's attempts to compete in the world, the group said.
The Socialist-led moves are being fought by the smaller conservative bloc, headed by the European People's Party. It says new restrictions will trigger battles with the United States and stifle the emerging multimedia industry.
Roy Perry, the British Conservative MEP responsible for the media, has accused the Left of trying to foist highbrow French films on a reluctant European public. "Even Neighbours would get the red card," he said. The proposed extension to new media would "harm companies growing out of new technologies ... New job opportunities will be lost to Socialist meddling," Mr Perry said.
It was not clear how many, if any, of the Socialist amendments to the broadcasting directive will survive voting tomorrow. Under the EU's near-impenetrable system of legislation, the Parliament's reworking of the directive will be returned to culture ministers for further action. Since France leads a tiny minority of members favouring quotas, the governments are unlikely to accept the Parliament's stronger demands. This would leave the existing relatively mild regime in force.
ALAIN JUPPE, the French Prime Minister, yesterday ruled out the possibility of France and Germany going it alone with a merged currency and hinted that economic and monetary union (EMU) would have to be rescheduled if others fail to make the grade by 1999.
Speaking after a morning of talks with Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor, M Juppe also made clear that he thought Britain would sign up for the single currency.
Most of the French Prime Minister's visit seems to have been devoted to the power of positive thinking on monetary union. "I am not here to spread the message of scepticism or despair," he said, several times.
The French franc was stronger than ever, he said, inflation was lower even than that recorded in the official statistics and the budget deficit had been slashed to a little less than 5 per cent of gross domestic product. The assumption had to be, he said, that France would meet the Maastricht entry criteria.
However, apart from cheerleading for the French economy still necessary in Bonn, where some economists are convinced that the French cannot make the 1999 target the Prime Minister was clearly preparing for a rethink on the timetable for monetary union. "The Maastricht treaty is very clear: a sufficient number of countries must be ready and willing in 1999 to take part in the union. If that is not the case, there should be an agreement over another date," he said.
The Germans will not be happy to hear this. Wolfgang Schauble, the Christian Democrat parliamentary leader, has been retracting similar thoughts expressed over the past week, apparently under pressure from Herr Kohl not to open a loophole that can be exploited by monetary union sceptics.
Earlier, in a German newspaper interview, M Juppe tried to quash the idea of postponement. "If we started by postponing the date for a year, someone would say ‘why not two years' and then it will be 2010 and nothing will have been done. I believe we should stick to our goals."
Despite this confidence, the prospect of failure crept back into M Juppe's public statements. He was adamant yesterday that EMU could not be constructed solely by France and Germany, despite speculation that the two were planning to merge their currencies.
"It cannot be the case that France goes it alone with Germany," he said. "I'm certain that other countries will join us, even those who presently seem very sceptical."
Later, talking to French reporters, M Juppe made clear that he was talking about Britain. Indeed, in his interview with Die Welt yesterday, M Juppe mocked the British position. "You have to take with a pinch of salt the supposedly objective analysis of our British friends in such situations," he said. "They are after all in a very comfortable position. They forecast a failure of European monetary union. But if it happens anyway, then I am sure they will try to jump on the train."
Oddly, M Juppe did not hold a joint news conference with Herr Kohl. The German leader clearly believes that the big common Franco-German initiatives should be announced only with President Chirac. The meeting covered many issues apart from monetary union, however, and according to German and French diplomats, showed a considerable degree of policy co-ordination. For example:
M Juppe will be travelling to Russia this week and Herr Kohl will follow at the weekend. Both will be trying to make Russia a member of the Group of Seven leading industrialised nations, before the Russian presidential election in June.
The French seem to be edging closer to a fuller acceptance of the Schengen borders accord. The French and Germans agree that Dutch action on drug smuggling may soon lead to border relaxations.
Germany and France are to set up a joint armaments agency in Bonn as the nucleus of a future European defence procurement industry.
However, Herr Kohl perhaps remembering the frequent friction between Klaus Kinkel, his Foreign Minister, and M Juppe when he was the French Foreign Minister still appears to be somewhat wary of the Prime Minister.
Diplomats say M Juppe spent an unusual amount of time expounding French ideas for ending national military service. Herr Kohl wanted to know the implications of a professional French Army and is plainly uneasy about the implications for the German Army, which has been wedded for fifty years to the model of a conscript force.
The nuclear issue is no longer a source of tension. "We are telling our partners that our nuclear deterrent naturally has to be part of our national defence," M Juppe said.
Bank bid: The Bank of England may enter the race to design Europe's new bank notes, although the Government has not committed Britain to a single currency. The bank confirmed last night that it was considering submitting designs for the euro.
THE veteran singer and actress Tina Turner was made a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters yesterday by the French Culture Ministry.
Ms Turner, 56, joins her fellow Americans, Sylvester Stallone, Paul Newman and Sharon Stone, in receiving France's highest arts honour, amid increasing fears that the country is gradually being swamped by Anglo-American popular culture.
At a Hollywood-style ceremony in the Palais de Congres in Paris last night, Ms Turner sang the theme tune from Goldeneye, the James Bond film that has proved a box-office hit in France. "She has never had anything like this before, never anything as posh and prestigious," Bernard Doherty, Ms Turner's publicist, said.
The decision to present Ms Turner with the award is sure to provoke further consternation among those who say France is being inundated by "Anglo-Saxon" entertainment. Some have argued that the award is becoming merely another international showbusiness perk, while others say that by honouring so many American entertainers, the Government is contradicting its pledge to defend home-grown French talent against the foreign invasion.
Last month a law came into force in France requiring radio stations to ensure that at least two-fifths of pop songs broadcast are in French.
The Culture Ministry said yesterday that Ms Turner had been made a chevalier of arts and letters "not for any particular reason" but because Philippe Douste-Blazy, the Culture Minister, "felt that she had talent, that's all". Earlier recipients include Sir Peter Ustinov, Lauren Bacall and Anthony Perkins.
Ms Turner lives in Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera and, unlike Ms Stone, who cannot speak a word of French and whose award last October was derided by the national press, the American singer is reported to have grasped the language, even if she does not sing in it.
Ahmed Ouyahia, the Algerian Prime Minister, vowed to stamp out Islamic terrorism "at any cost" after 18 people were killed and 93 injured in two bomb attacks in Algiers, the capital, on Sunday.
Europe's leaders are planning a new exchange-rate mechanism in moves towards a single currency, Theo Waigel, the German Finance Minister, says today. Writing in Parliamentary Review about Bonn's backing for a core group to join a single currency by 1999, he says the Madrid summit in December
backed the idea of a reborn ERM as a bridge to the euro for members that did not sign up at the start.
Frank Black, Astoria, W1
As former front man and main songwriter in the Pixies, Frank Black was partly responsible for creating the irrepressible pop sound that Nirvana used as a blueprint for 1991's Nevermind. However, rather than cashing in on his own legacy, Black disbanded the Pixies at the height of Nirvana's fame and opted for a full-time solo career.
Since then, while fellow Pixie Kim Deal has enjoyed success fronting the Breeders and the Amps, Black seems to have found attention much harder to come by. True, he wasn't blessed with Deal's looks and doesn't trade in the same witty stage repartee. But his black clothes and big bald dome do give him a certain other-worldly charm.
Black's latest album, The Cult of Ray, further indulges his passion for science fiction, surfing and surrealism and he began the show with its opening track, The Marsist, the weird atmospherics and surf-style riff of which manages to combine all three. Then he gave us Freedom Rock and the eerie Los Angeles, taken from his previous two albums. But it took the defiant rush of the new record's You Ain't Me to propel the first signs of life into the set.
Although Black has a new band of extra guitarist, bass player and drummer, most of the crowd looked like old Pixies fans waiting to hear songs from seven or eight years ago. After half an hour, there seemed to be little chance of hearing anything lively, let alone anything from Black's previous life. Then Black hit a brilliant three-song stretch which began with the soaring single Men In Black and was followed by the cranked-up instrumental Mosh, Don't Pass The Guy and the surreal Kicked In The Taco.
By the time the band returned for an encore of impressive B-sides such as Pray A Little Faster, Black was finally inspiring the kind of reaction he would have expected in his previous band.
ONE of Germany's most famous and influential wartime fighter pilots, Adolf Galland, died at the weekend, aged 83, at home in Remagen. Known as the "Flying Dandy" because of his smart appearance, the pilot shot down 104 Allied aircraft and commanded the squadron that downed Douglas Bader.
When the British pilot was locked up in a prisoner-of-war camp, it was Major-General Galland who ensured that a replacement pair of artificial legs was flown in safely from Britain. His fighters escorted the British plane across occupied Europe and back again.
The pilot with his pencil-thin moustache and tailored uniform was an important part of Germany's wartime mythology, reinforcing the idea that the battle of the skies was an altogether more gentlemanly affair than the war on the ground or at sea.
Galland is the closest that Germany has to a war hero. Even so, most newspapers yesterday neglected to mention his death.
His credentials depend not only on his aerial marksmanship, but also on his readiness to stand up to Hermann Goering, the head of the Luftwaffe. He caught the attention of the Nazi leadership when he started to shoot down dozens of aircraft in the Polish and French campaigns, as well as during the Battle of Britain.
By 1942, at the age of 30, he had become the youngest major-general in the army or air force. He was put in charge of Germany's fighter aircraft effort and refused to be drawn into ideological infighting.
Both Hitler and Goering were highly critical of the way Galland's fighters were deployed against the Allied bombers in their daytime raids over Germany. Goering told Galland in October 1943: "The fighter wing has lost its standing, it is fighting in a lousy fashion. The Fuhrer has lost his faith in your fighters. If you don't attack whenever you see the enemy, I will order my flak to shoot your cowardly cripples out of the skies."
Galland and other fighter aces promptly sent back some of their medals in protest. The major-general, who was full of praise for Allied bomber aircraft design, followed Goering's advice and concentrated huge numbers of fighters to respond to Allied raids. The fighters would attack, refuel and attack again.
Galland's contempt for Goering remained, however, and he became part of a group of Luftwaffe officers who, towards the end of the war, openly criticised the management of the war effort. He found himself in direct conflict with Hitler when the German leader ordered the conversion of the new Me262s into bombers.
Galland said that the Me262s were unbeatable fighters: "For the Mosquito there is no escape once a 262 has it in its sights." As bombers, however, the Me262s lost their main assets of speed and flexibility.
For a while Galland was put under house arrest, but in March 1945 Hitler placed him in charge of the Me262 Squadron. The war was lost but Galland argued: "It would have been dishonourable to possess the best weapon and not to fight on."
Galland was a prisoner of war until April 1947 and he then became a consultant to the Argentine Air Force. However, the way back into the reconstituted German Air Force was blocked by its founder, Josef Kammhuber, an old rival. Instead Galland opened up a successful aerospace consultancy and wrote his memoirs, which sold more than two million copies.
Colombo: A lorry packed with 266lb of explosives was made safe a mile from the cricket stadium in Colombo where a joint India-Pakistan team is due to play Sri Lanka today, police said.
The match is being staged as a consolation for fans who were to have seen Australia and the West Indies compete in the World Cup. Both teams are staying away because of a bomb last month in Colombo in which 87 people were killed and 1,400 wounded.
In northeast Sri Lanka local officials said that troops went on the rampage and killed at least 30 civilians after Tamil Tiger guerrillas shot dead two soldiers. The military said, however, that only one civilian, a 12-year-old child, was killed in crossfire after the ambush. Pro-government Tamil legislators said the latest attack would boost support for the Tamil Tigers.
Ned Chaillet on how Times man Mel Calman's last play made it to radio
Audacious, I said to Mel Calman. "Funny and audacious, and I don't know where Radio 4 can put it." Mel's new play was on my desk at BBC Radio Drama, and one of the leading roles was written for a talking penis.
Mel had previously written plays about a man who woke up one morning to discover he had grown rabbit ears, about a pawnshop debate between a talking saxophone and a ventriloquist's doll and, exceptionally memorable, a tragi-comedy about the death of a rum baba (played by Richard Griffiths).
As quirky as his cartoons for the front page of The Times and his books, Mel's plays for radio revelled in the freedom of the imagination. Why shouldn't a pastry shelf in a Soho teashop the model was Patisserie Valerie, where we did calorific research be stocked with a flighty French eclair, a philosophical strudel and an irritable rum baba, reluctantly drying out?
And why shouldn't their fate be in the hands of a dithering would-be adulterous couple randomly selecting cakes as they endlessly postpone consummation?
That play, Sweet Tooth, struck a popular chord from the day of its original Radio 3 transmission, and has been heard around the world. The morning after the first broadcast I received a call from The Netherlands asking for the script, the name of Mel's agent and the rights (the Dutch apparently having their own sweet tooth for comedies of love and death).
When it went out later on Radio 4, we got a cheerful letter from the author Len Deighton asking for more of Mel's plays to be broadcast on Radio 4, so they could be heard even further afield in Europe.
Heartache was the name of the new play, and it was meant for Radio 4, but now there was the talking penis to consider. And the regular drama slots on daytime radio. And the regular audience.
Mel told me he had written the role for David de Keyser, and that when I offered it to him I should reassure him: "It is a big part."
We fixed a time to meet for lunch on a Tuesday early in February, 1994. On the preceding Friday, I woke to hear, on Radio 4, the news that Mel had died of a heart attack. He had been in the Empire Cinema in Leicester Square with his partner of ten years, Deborah Moggach.
Her later account in The Times of the drama of the closing of the cinema, the clearing of Leicester Square, of his ambulance and the journey to the hospital, would have appealed to Mel's sense of theatre, and of comedy, inextricably linked.
I spoke to Deborah twice over the next couple of days, and re-read the play several times. It had everything except an ending. Harshly, ironically, it was about the body parts of a man who goes into hospital after a heart attack. The warring interests of the different body parts made a heart attack inevitable. Mel had himself had a heart attack, and had banished smoking and heavy drinking from his life, drawing wonderful cartoons in support of a sensible life.
Although I had worked with Mel on all of his previous plays, no one knew him better than Deborah. If the play was to be finished, the person to find the concluding scene was the woman who was with him when he died. She agreed to finish Heartache and Michael Green, the Controller of Radio 4, said he would find a place for it. Which brought us back to talking penises and tea-time audiences on network radio.
When he turned to radio, Mel had put aside the well-made plays he had taught himself to write. A great fan of the theatre, he had written a play that was immaculately constructed, witty, sophisticated and knowingly cynical about adulterous couples.
We had worked together on The Times, with, on occasion, Mel drawing extremely funny illustrations that reflected our adventures at the Edinburgh Festival. When I arrived in radio, I suggested that he ignored the well-constructed play and create radio cartoons, like his cartoon book, The Big Novel. Eventually we did The Big Novel for radio.
Ever after the first play, Mel wrote for actors he loved; the Rum Baba for Griffiths; the Rabbit Man for Jim Broadbent, parts for Melinda Walker, Meg Davies, and with music from his friend Ronnie Scott Pawnshop Blues, another play for Griffiths.
Mel was the sort of man who would lead his daughters around an art exhibition backwards in order to avoid the queues going forward. His plays are like that. And, it must be admitted, not every audience relishes a cartoonist's spin on experience. But letters about his plays have never stopped coming in.
Heartache has finally happened because Radio 4 found room at night for the play, and because Deborah Moggach knew how to end the play, when real emotion and comedy would come together with Mel's broad comic strokes.
I will never stop missing moments with Mel: at a hotel breakfast in Edinburgh during the Books Festival where he and Deborah were being celebrated; at the Groucho Club where we plotted new plays; at the Garrick Club, or in his Cartoon Gallery with Ian Hislop leaping on top of Mel's desk to applaud an exhibition of Private Eye cartoonists. The front page of The Times has never been the same for me without him.
But bringing his final work to radio is another kind of joy. Completed by Deborah, with Meg Davies taking the part written for her as the ex-wife, it also provides the moments where four of his favourite actors come on as the body parts.
True to Mel's intent, the Penis was offered to David de Keyser as a "big part"; his agent confirmed that he would rise to the occasion, and, yes, he plays it circumcised.
What Mel would have heard, as the play materialises on Radio 4, is Charlotte Green announcing: "Richard Griffiths as the Brain, Lee Montague as the Heart, Jim Broadbent as the Stomach, and David de Keyser as the Penis." Audacious. Yes.
The author is producer of Heartache, which will be broadcast on Radio 4 at 11 pm on Thursday
Moscow: A former close aide of President Yeltsin has resigned as Moscow's envoy to the Vatican after calling the Russian leader a power-hungry "tsar" and publishing damaging details about intrigue inside the Kremlin.
Vyacheslav Kostikov, who served for three years as the presidential spokesman, handed his resignation letter to the Russian Foreign Ministry after he was given a public dressing down and recalled from Rome in disgrace last week. Excerpts from his memoirs, Parting with the President, have been published and he has gone on television to criticise his former boss and the men who run Russia.
In the book, Mr Kostikov describes how the Kremlin is run by a clique of shadowy figures, how the offices of all employees are bugged by former KGB agents and how Mr Yeltsin has become removed from the day-to-day running of Russia's highest office.
Meanwhile, in the latest violence against politicians, Aleksandr Vengerovsky, a confidant of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the right-wing extremist, was shot and wounded as he walked his dog near his home in Moscow last night.
Sinfonia 21/Brabbins, St John's
AS THE "composer in association" for three years with the chamber orchestra Sinfonia 21, Jonathan Harvey had the benefit of hearing his new Hidden Voice, commissioned by the orchestra, twice in one concert. Its premiere opened the programme and, after a brief question-and-answer between the composer and the conductor, Martyn Brabbins, the novelty was instantly repeated.
If this is a continuing option offered by the orchestra in a debate with its audience about the presentation of new music, I am all for it. With a short work (less than seven minutes in this instance), one's ears are opened and ready to absorb more detail from the second performance, which attractively highlighted what amounts to an conversation-piece, the eponymous "hidden voice" that of a muted violin, viola and cello heard in relation to the other instruments.
Textures thereby set up impinged more directly when they were repeated, focusing attention on the delicacy of string writing in contrast to a more ritual sounding of brass and tubular bells. Otherwise Brabbins conducted convincing performances that seemed to meet with the composer's approval, and added another novelty: the Sketch No 2, EBB from the juvenilia of Benjamin Britten.
Its first public performance here followed a broadcast of several works from Britten's teenage years. This one was composed when he was 17. His own initials in the title suggest a self-portrait as the viola player he once was, through the expressive association of solo viola (warmly played by Martyn Outram) with the string ensemble.
For the rest, Piers Lane was a deft and scintillating soloist in the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No 2, but Ravel's Ma Mere l'Oye found its requisite balance of content and enchanted character only in the later movements.
TWO Bosnian Serb officers, arrested by the Bosnian Government last week on war crimes charges, were flown to The Hague last night at the request of the International War Crimes Tribunal in a move that is certain to anger the Bosnian Serbs and complicate Nato's peace mission.
The surprise move came after Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy, who brokered the Dayton peace agreement, returned to the Balkans to intervene in the crisis that almost ended the peace plan.
General Djordje Djukic and Colonel Aleksa Krsmanovic were arrested on January 30, after taking a wrong turn and straying into government-controlled territory on their way to a Nato meeting. Their arrests prompted the Bosnian Serbs to sever all relations with the Nato peace force and the Bosnian Government.
They had not been indicted by the war crimes tribunal, but the Bosnian Government said it had evidence that the pair had orchestrated civilian massacres in the Sarajevo area. War crimes investigators went quickly to Sarajevo to interview the officers.
The general, a close associate of General Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commander, is a logistics officer suspected of organising the Serb assault on Srebrenica in July, after which 7,000 Muslims remained unaccounted for.
The two officers will join Dusan Tadic, the only suspect of 52 so far indicted in custody at The Hague. Mr Tadic's trial begins on March 18. Handcuffed and wearing flak jackets and helmets, the pair were hurried out of a Sarajevo prison and flown on a Nato C130 to The Netherlands.
Although Mr Holbrooke claimed the peace process was back on track before leaving Sarajevo yesterday, the extradition of the two officers is sure to complicate the Nato peacekeepers' task in negotiating with the Serbs to implement the Dayton accords.
Mr Holbrooke met President Milosevic of Serbia on Sunday. Mr Milosevic insisted the two officers were illegally detained in violation of the peace deal, but Western diplomats speculated that they could not have been handed over without his tacit consent.
Since the Nato peacekeepers were deployed to Bosnia, they have insisted that hunting war criminals was contrary to their mission. Although Nato troops have a mandate to detain suspected war criminals, names and photographs of the 52 suspects were not issued to soldiers on the ground. Last night Nato officials said they were "very worried" about what the effect might be.
Earlier, Mr Holbrooke said all parties had agreed to new "rules of the road" regarding detention of war criminals. Under the new agreement, the Bosnian Government will have to submit a list of suspects criminals to the UN tribunal for screening before it can arrest them.
THE traditional French male lover he of the perfect body, high-flying career and taste for romantic gestures is out of vogue, according to surveys which show that most French women would prefer to curl up with a homely and amusing couch potato.
A poll conducted by Harlequin, a French publishing firm, found that just 1 per cent of women regard ambition as an attractive quality, while only 2 per cent feel that "the Greek god physique" is a prerequisite for a lover.
A sense of humour was consistently rated higher than professional success, while reliability and a "heart of gold" were placed above seductiveness and chest hair in the list of manly qualities. The couch potato or patate de canape has become part of the French language and the survey found that women rate highly men who take their leisure seriously. The news will come as a blow to those Frenchmen who have spent years aspiring to be an Eric Cantona or Brad Pitt when they could have remained a portly Gerard Depardieu or Philippe Noiret.
The intellectual, once the most potent of Gallic sex symbols, has also fallen from favour. According to another survey by Ifop, to coincide with Valentine's Day, 13 per cent of French women regard intellectual distinction as an attractive characteristic. A shared taste in television programmes will do just fine.
On the other hand, it may come as a relief to the ardent French male to discover that he is no longer required to swim the Seine or write extravagant love poetry to gain approval. The Ifop poll found that a bunch of flowers or a dinner invitation is all that is expected.
Joe Joseph sits in as film buffs try to impress Martin Scorsese at his own press conference
Some film directors, press-ganged into criss-crossing the world to plug their latest movie, find that when they reach Rome or Rio they have an interview schedule as busy as Butlin's in November. But there is never a shortage of people keen to schmooze with Martin Scorsese.
And there's only so much time available for him to do it in. The result is an A-list of profile writers granted quality time with him, one-on-one and no holds barred. The rest have to queue.
And do lots of homework. Before you meet Scorsese, maker of Taxi Driver, Mean Streets and Cape Fear, you have to read the production notes, and watch videotapes of the several interviews and press conferences that Scorsese has already given in various cities about his new film, Casino. The film, which traces the Mafia's move into Las Vegas, stars Robert De Niro and Sharon Stone. It's a trueish story: only the names have been changed, to protect the guilty and a bevy of mobsters on the FBI's witness protection programme.
So, by the time you finally meet Scorsese, there is little you don't already know about him or his movie, apart from how much navel fluff he accumulates. But that doesn't stop dozens of journalists from all over Europe gathering in London's Dorchester Hotel, patiently sipping coffee and waiting to be funnelled in and out of his suite.
At last, it's your turn. But just as you are about to enter Marty's suite, along with five other European hacks, all you are wondering is this: if I were Bob De Niro nobody calls him "Robert", because that implies you don't josh with him most nights over a beer at New York's Bowery Bar how would I approach this interview? How would I get into the part of inquisitor, because well, Bob and Marty have, like, a rapport?
And you are asking yourself this because Scorsese is the sort of movie person who attracts not reporters, but film buffs. For these people, waiting with their tape-recorders outside his suite in five-at-a-time batches, this is not an interview, this is an audience with one of cinema's cleverest, most mesmerising, most controversial directors.
And when the five of you are finally ushered into the room and led to Scorsese and he says hello, howdyadoo, hello, hi, all you're wondering is when will some overzealous member of your party say "You talkin' to me?" just to show they have seen Taxi Driver and that they love Marty and Bob.
But they don't, because they are looking in awe at his neat grey flannels, at his black shirt and his navy jacket, and watching him fiddle restlessly with what looks like a wellworn blackjack chip, and what they're thinking is: "Jeez, he's shorter than I imagined. Much."
But, having restrained themselves, they then ask questions to which even Scorsese's devoted mother would not be interested in knowing the answers, crucial things like: did he change the carpets in the Vegas casino they used as a film set? Did he get enough sleep during the shooting? Who got to keep the suit de Niro wore in this scene or that?
This information is not for publication, because nobody would be interested except maybe a fanzine. But they ask all the same. You will often hear journalists actually bickering with bemused film directors about what their movie really means especially if it's someone like Quentin Tarantino.
"You used music sometimes, or very often, in an ironical way," someone tells Scorsese. "Was that in your head right from the beginning?" Scorsese's face is saying "What?", but his mouth politely replies: "In many ways."
Then someone says: "Would you reckon that Casino is a wiolent meuwie? I'm from Sweden," and everyone wonders if he's actually from another galaxy because Casino is so gruesome in parts that it's best not to eat beforehand: and you won't want to eat afterwards. It may be the first diet movie.
But at least it gives Scorsese a chance to get excited. Scorsese gets excited when he's talking about Mafia violence which he abhors, but feels he has a duty to portray authentically.
"All the violence is accurately depicted," he jabbers, leaning forward, furiously flipping his blackjack chip, "to the point of even having technical advisers there police, ex-hitmen saying ‘Oh yeah, he'd come this way, you'd put the gun here,"' (Scorsese points two fingers under the back of his skull), "‘this way, three shots with a 22 in the back of the head, the bullet goes around the brain, it doesn't go out of the head‘cos it's small, but it stays in to scramble the brain, and then when he hits the ground you hit five more in his head. Silencer, please. You put a silencer on. You have to do that."'
Swedes, apparently, aren't convinced you do. The rest of the interviewers grin serenely, as if Moses just recited the Ten Commandments.
"Doesn't it make you sad," says the Teutonic journalist who had noticed Scorsese's ironical way with music, and who was now distraught that anyone had the gall to criticise Scorsese's violence quota, "when they just pick these little scenes and you do the whole frank and provocative movie on an intellectual level or on a morality kind of level, doesn't it make you sad that they just pick out these, you know, on the surface morality?"
You could tell from the way Scorsese looked that he was. You could tell.
Casino opens in Britain next week
Tokyo: A second attempt to free 20 people trapped in a tunnel in Hokkaido by dynamiting a huge boulder failed.
Hopes have faded that any survivors will be found. Saburo Okabe, the minister for Hokkaido, turned up 48 hours after the disaster, to be greeted by irate relatives who asked why he had taken so long. The Government's tardiness has been compared to that after the Kobe earthquake in January 1995.
THE Roman Catholic Church in France acknowledged for the first time yesterday that condoms could be necessary to prevent the spread of Aids.
"Many competent doctors state that a reliable condom is today the only means of prevention. In this respect, it is necessary," the French Bishops' Conference said in a report released yesterday.
A panel of bishops and medical experts said that using condoms was not a substitute for adult sexual education, but added that their use was "understandable in cases where a person who already engages in sexual activity needs to avoid serious risk".
That principle contrasts with the Pope's insistence that sexual self-control is the only morally acceptable way to fight the epidemic.
In a sex education guide issued two months ago, the Vatican condemned the idea of "safe sex" or "safer sex" as "dangerous and immoral, based on the illusory theory that a condom can provide sufficient protection against Aids". It said: "Parents must insist on abstinence outside marriage and fidelity within marriage as the only true and reliable education to avoid infection."
Last year Mgr Jacques Gaillot, the outspoken former bishop of Evreux in Normandy, was ousted by the Vatican for openly promoting the use of condoms to prevent the spread of Aids. He has since set up his own "virtual diocese" on the computer Internet. Several other French bishops have cautiously supported the use of condoms.
Yesterday's report by the French Bishops' Social Commission, however, marked the first time that the Roman Catholic Church in France has as a body officially recognised that condoms can save lives, although it added: "In advising young people to use condoms rather than help them understand their sexual identities, we make them prisoners of their sexual drives."
The statement, the fruit of six months' consultation between the panel of bishops and medical experts, makes no reference to the Pope's statements on the subject of Aids prevention. In the document, entitled Aids: Society in Question, the commission said it was regrettable that church statements on the issue had left it open to charges of promoting death, while noting that the use of condoms was partly responsible for the epidemic's slowing growth rate in France.
"Public health officials support the use" of condoms, the commission's president, Mgr Albert Rouet, Bishop of Poitiers, wrote. "The Church, tending towards opposition, has seen itself accused of working for death."
Luc Montagnier, the French researcher who first isolated the Aids virus, hailed the report as an important development, but added: "I do not think (Pope) John Paul II will change his opinion."
Various French medical groups, including the Catholic Committee of French Doctors, also said the statement would help to clarify a hitherto ambiguous situation. "The word ‘condom' is no longer taboo for the Church," Marc Gentilini, head of the doctors' committee, told the daily newspaper Le Monde.
AN EMBARRASSED Minister of Culture admitted yesterday that Italy is losing valuable works of art to thieves at the rate of 30,000 a year.
Antonio Paolucci said the latest ancient monument to be plundered was the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, where thieves have made off with a stone column weighing three tonnes. The baths, not far from the Colosseum, functioned for about 300 years from 217 until they were vandalised by the Goths. The ruin is used nowadays for extravagant open-air opera productions such as the Three Tenors concert in 1990.
Signor Paolucci said the baths, like many other ancient monuments in Italy, were guarded by day but not at night. He conceded that this did not explain how an entire Roman column had been removed, but added: "Even if we were to put the whole of the Italian Army and all the carabinieri standing guard over every column and every art object, it would still not be enough."
Plunder is not a new phenomenon in Italy: many houses and churches in Rome are built with the masonry of ancient buildings. However, modern Italy has 3,500 museums and more than 2,000 archaeological sites, and only 9,000 custodians to guard them. Many valuable works are kept in unlocked churches, and it is not uncommon to enter a rural church only to find a curtained-off space where according to the guidebook a Renaissance painting should be hanging.
According to Colonel Roberto Conforti, the head of the carabinieri unit that monitors art thefts, the stolen objects find their way to the homes of the "new rich" as status symbols.
Art experts attribute the mismanagement of Italy's treasure house of art not only to lack of funding, but also to a 1970 decision to remove control of cultural sites from local authorities which were the proud inheritors of the old city states from which Italy was formed and to centralise it in Rome.
As a result, art galleries such as the Uffizi in Florence (damaged by a terrorist bomb attack three years ago), cannot cope with the huge numbers of visitors who converge on them every year.
THE world chess champion Garry Kasparov spent yesterday with advisers after squaring the score in his six-game match with IBM's Deep Blue computer. After levelling the series at one game each, Mr Kasparov said he had the measure of the machine he calls "the monster".
On the first rest day in the $500,000 (£326,000) match in Philadelphia, Mr Kasparov said that he used human guile. "I tested the computer subtly, giving it chances to act like a machine and trade short-term advantages for long-term weaknesses," he said. IBM experts spent the day feeding new information into Deep Blue, crouched over their keyboards like mechanics in the pits. C.J. Tan, leader of the scientific team, said: "We hope we can adjust Deep Blue to take in different strategies."
In a match commentary written for USA Today, Mr Kasparov said that, had he been playing the same game against "a very strong human", he probably would have had to settle for a draw. "But I simply understood the essence of the endgame in a way the computer did not. Its computational power was not enough to overcome my experience and intuitive appreciation of where the pieces should go." Specifically, he said that on move 19 in the second game, Deep Blue took one of his pawns, thus saddling itself with "permanent problems on the king side".
His remarks will be welcomed by those who believe that the match goes further than mere chess, presenting a challenge to mankind's sovereignty. Mr Kasparov has spoken of his mission to defend "human dignity". However, the champion accepted that Deep Blue, which can consider 50billion moves in three minutes, is vastly stronger than anything ever built before, and that "in certain kinds of position it sees so deeply that it plays like God".
Mr Tan disagreed with Mr Kasparov's comments about Deep Blue's fallibility, saying: "I am not sure Garry really understands the computer." The scientists have been refreshingly candid in their emotions. After the excitement of Saturday's win they responded gloomily to Sunday night's defeat, and the technician who sat across the board from Mr Kasparov to enact Deep Blue's commands wore a long face when the computer resigned after 73 moves and six hours of play.
The third game begins today.
Tom Rhodes reports from Des Moines on a Republican advertising blitz that is hastening the demise of "retail politics", where rivals meet grassroots supporters
FOR more than 20 years the Iowa caucuses have enjoyed an extraordinary place in the American political calendar, an influence long defended by those who believe the state acts as the nation's living room in its choice of President.
But this year, the walkabouts, discussion of issues in rural farmsteads and the "retail politics" which have dominated the cacuses process all through its 24-year history have seemingly vanished under a welter of expensive political advertising.
As voters attended 2,142 precinct caucuses last night to decide their choice for the Republican nomination, there was a strong sense that both Iowa and the successive primary in New Hampshire next week may have lost for ever an image as redoubts of grassroots campaigning. The age of electronic media and the Internet has arrived and America's living room, it seems, is now the property of television.
Promotions for pesticides and pork produce had finally returned to the state's screens the previous day after six months in which regular commercial breaks had offered little other than the faces of Republican politicians. They had started much earlier, ran more frequently and were more unpleasant than had ever been witnessed by the Midwest. On a typical day, viewers of one station in Des Moines had been subjected to as many as 80 campaign advertisements.
At KCCI television alone candidates had spent $850,000 (£566,660), three times the cost of campaign advertisements at this Des Moines station at the last caucuses in 1988. Steve Forbes, the multimillionaire publisher, and Senator Robert Dole each spent $250,000, while Pat Buchanan, the conservative commentator, spent $60,000.
Dave Busiek, the station's news editor, said that, while a certain amount of retail politicking had taken place in Iowa, it had been far less prominent than in previous years. "Unfortunately, most Iowans have touched the candidates through the television screen," he said. "The levels of advertising have been unprecedented."
The most obvious answer to the question of why this year has been so different appears to have been the entry into the campaign of Mr Forbes and his vast fortune. In the final quarter of last year, the publishing scion spent $10 million on television and radio commercials, most of them in Iowa and New Hampshire.
While advertising alone had not been responsible for his rapid rise in the polls many in the electorate favour his simple code for a flat tax and anti-Washington rhetoric it has nevertheless proved that a candidate need not necessarily meet the people to gain name recognition. In the final days in Iowa, Mr Forbes had broadcast a half-hour film of himself, Steve Forbes, A True Vision, An Honest Voice, no less than 21 times.
Experts have said that the Forbes money-machine in Iowa and New Hampshire is more of a symptom than a cause of change. "This may be the nail in the coffin for retail politics, there is no doubt about that," said Steve Lombardo, a Republican pollster, "but Steve Forbes didn't do it. Forbes has just accelerated the movement of these states into the 21st century."
Richard Cork chooses Cezanne's final masterpiece to conclude his survey of the Tate's show
Hanging alone on the final wall of the Tate exhibition is Cezanne's last and finest version of The Large Bathers. Nobody knows for certain, but he probably painted this climactic canvas in the year of his death. The ailing artist must have been hard-pressed to execute so much of it during the months before he died in October 1906. But I cannot lament Cezanne's inability to complete a picture he may have regarded as his valediction. The lack of finish adds to the painting's marvellous zest.
If he had been granted more time, Cezanne might have buried this vivacity under layers of troubled reworking. After all, another version of The Large Bathers hangs near by as a reminder of the labour he was prepared to expend on the subject. Lent by the National Gallery in London, this smaller canvas is a formidable achievement. But when set beside the final version it looks burdened with the prolonged effort Cezanne devoted to it.
He probably worked on it for 11 arduous years. And the London version is undoubtedly more resolved than the third version (now in the Barnes Foundation collection in Pennsylvania). Anyone fortunate enough to have seen the Barnes Large Bathers will realise that it is a pictorial battleground. Scarred with ruthless revisions, it testifies to the dissatisfaction which made Cezanne such an anxious artist.
The London painting seems, by comparison, almost serene. But Cezanne must have realised, when he stopped work on the London Bathers in 1905, that he could surpass it.
He was right: the last version amounts to a remarkable victory over the obstacles which Cezanne created when he embarked on the Large Bathers series in the 1890s. While convinced that the female nude should be the focus of the masterpiece he wanted to produce, this inhibited man could not bring himself to work from posed models. Since adolescence he had suffered from a chronic fear of women, and the idea of scrutinising naked females terrified him. Ambroise Vollard, his dealer, recalled that Cezanne "made an exception only for a female servant ... an old creature with a rough-hewn face of whom he remarked admiringly to Zola: ‘One would say she's a man!"'
Hence the conspicuous beefiness of the bathers themselves. Even when he contents himself with a few forceful contours, Cezanne retains the ability to construct women of Amazonian proportions. Look at the kneeling bather on the far right, jutting immense shoulders forward like a female weight-lifter.
Not all the women assembled here have such doughty physiques. The figure sketched so concisely behind the weight-lifter seems more slender and agile as she darts away from the rest of the group. Cezanne balances her vanishing back with a frontal view of a woman on the far left, even more lightly defined. But the slimmest forms are reserved for the two women who turn away and gaze at the water beyond. They lean forward like divers braced for a plunge.
Their presence is echoed by two other figures on the opposite bank. Cezanne has left the canvas empty where their faces should be, and the luminosity of these unfinished heads gleams like a beacon through the intervening heat haze. They appear to be staring at the solitary woman in the river. They may be envying her, for this swimmer seems lost in the pleasures of the water. And just above her body, the extended hand of a woman in the foreground hovers protectively over her.
This unexpected gesture possesses the gravity of a baptismal blessing. It provides a key to the mood of the painting, for Cezanne has positioned his sculptural figures at the base of an aspiring arch formed by the tall trees. Here is the area where he departs most audaciously from the two earlier versions, which sliced off the trees before they had a chance to display their true height.
Now, by contrast, the elongated trunks thrust heavenwards like vaulting in a cathedral nave. They move towards the pyramidal form which excited Cezanne so much in the Mont Sainte-Victoire. And the two principal women adopt poses that mirror the direction of the trunks behind them.
These women and their companions remain the most commanding elements in the picture. That is why Picasso learnt so much from their simplified and distorted bodies when he painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon a year later, renouncing the sweetness of his own previous work. By flouting perspective even more than Cezanne, and drawing on the inspiration of African mask carvings, Picasso prepared the way for the far greater heresies of Cubism. He makes Cezanne seem profoundly attached to tradition.
Moreover, the aggressively angular women in Les Demoiselles are prostitutes. Their disillusioned urban harshness is utterly at variance with Cezanne's wholesome figures. Rejoicing in their pastoral idyll, his bathers seem serene and fulfilled. They are the work of an old man who, having begun his Large Bathers sequence in a state of extreme agitation, ended it by reconciling himself at last with the women he painted.
Cezanne is at the Tate Gallery until April 28, sponsored by Ernst & Young. For advance booking, which is advised, telephone 0171-420 0000
A NEW tourist attraction has opened in New York: the municipal rubbish tip.
Two-hour guided tours of Staten Island's Fresh Kills dump are being offered to school parties, foreign dignitaries and visitors.
As one would expect of New York, it is the largest waste dump in the world. Fresh Kills, a name which dates back to the earliest settlers, is 3,000 acres of putrid household waste. The city's sanitation department is confident that despite the eye-watering stink, the occasional rat and the many bombarding seagulls, it will become a "must see" item on tourist itineraries.
Brochures and maps will be placed in tourist bureaus to proclaim the scientific wonders of the dump, which last year accommodated 7.9 billion pounds of rubbish. On their guided tours, visitors will learn about waste management methods, the 103 barges which deliver rubbish around the clock, and the underground pipes which take the accumulating methane to a nearby gas plant.
"We do recommend that people wear comfortable shoes and bring a hat or an umbrella," Lucian Chalfen, a dump spokesman, said. "We have many seagulls here and they have pretty good aim."
During pre-launch trials, tourist business was brisk. School groups left with a greater understanding of the amount of rubbish discarded by man, and civic leaders from Europe and Asia were impressed by the daily sprinkling of deodorant, non-toxic pine oil.
The guided tours are given by selected members of the dump's 500-strong workforce. Previously neglected, the rubbish disposal crews are said to be delighted by the tourist scheme.
"Burying garbage is not high on the list of many people's career choices," Mr Chalfen conceded yesterday. The tours will show the world that there is more to being a rubbish dump toiler than holding your nose and shovelling trash. Describing the careful process of layering rubbish and soil, Mr Chalfen said: "It's like making a lasagne." Fresh Kills has accepted New York's household rubbish since 1948 and is now the only solid landfill left in the city.
A rival dump near J.F.Kennedy Airport had to close owing to the preponderance of seagulls and the danger they posed to jets.
Parts of New York have been built on former waste dumps, including the southern tip of Manhattan and the celebrated Rikers Island jail. Any prisoner trying to tunnel out of Rikers is in for a rotten surprise. No charge is made for the Fresh Kills tours, and visitors are encouraged to take away souvenirs.
AS President Clinton launches his re-election campaign, he and his wife have swapped roles. In 1992, Hillary Clinton had to defend him against charges of adultery. This year she is the one in trouble, and Mr Clinton is having to defend her against a plethora of Whitewater charges.
Campaign officials reject the idea that Mrs Clinton has become a political liability for her husband. They say she is in huge demand and has a passionate following. Certainly there are many Americans, particularly women, who regard her as a latter-day Joan of Arc pilloried by reactionaries for daring to abandon the First Lady's traditionally passive role, but these supporters were mostly hardcore Democrats to begin with.
Among the broader electorate, the picture is far less comforting. Polls suggest she is the least popular First Lady since polling began and that most Americans believe she is untruthful.
The eventual Republican presidential nominee would risk a tremendous backlash if he attacked her directly, but probably he would not need to. Mrs Clinton is now engraved in the public mind as the first President's wife ever subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury, the woman who turned $1,000 into $100,000 on the high-risk commodities market with help from well-placed friends, and the First Lady who dismissed seven long-serving members of the White House travel office to help cronies who coveted its business.
Mrs Clinton is barely recognisable as the smart, ambitious, idealistic lawyer who arrived in Washington wanting to change the world and was swiftly dubbed "Saint Hillary". She still wields great power behind the scenes, but in public, instead of trying to revamp the nation's giant healthcare system, she sticks to safe issues, such as women and children's welfare.
She labours to soften her image. She is said to be deeply distressed at what has happened to her and even to weep in private from sheer frustration, but a long Washington Post analysis last Sunday blamed her downfall squarely on her own shortcomings.
The Post argued that Mrs Clinton's troubles stemmed from the fact that she arrived in the capital steeped in suspicion of the Washington culture and divided everyone into friends or foes.
That was why she sought to confine the White House press corps to the briefing room, incurring the media's hostility, and why she brought in so many Arkansas friends who subsequently became disasters. It was why she insisted on drawing up her healthcare reforms in such secrecy.
Mrs Clinton did not consult Republicans, solicited little outside advice, and simply unleashed the hugely ambitious plan as an all-or-nothing proposition. It proved far too liberal and bureaucratic for America's tastes, as most Washington veterans would have told her. It was rejected by Congress and was a major cause of the Democrats' humiliation in the 1994 congressional elections.
The same obsession with secrecy has proved catastrophic in the Whitewater affair, although she did agree to a television interview last month with Barbara Walters about the controversies surrounding her. Nevertheless, from the outset the First Lady resisted full disclosure of relevant documents, arguing that "the press will take them and twist it and put it in the worst possible light and it will give our enemies ammunition".
The result is that the White House has been forced to release documents in drips and drabs, sometimes under threat of subpoena. Mrs Clinton's aides and friends have risked perjury by claiming collective amnesia when giving congressional evidence.
The appearance of a cover-up became so strong that Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater special prosecutor, took the unprecedented step last month of issuing the First Lady and several of her team with subpoenas.
David Gergen, Mr Clinton's former media adviser, told the Post he "strongly, strongly" believed that much of this would never have happened" had the Clintons "just disgorged all this stuff" and let the press have a few field days.
American newspapers have fastidiously skirted the question of what would happen if, as is just conceivable, Mr Starr brought charges against Mrs Clinton. Could her husband continue seeking re-election in such circumstances, and how many Americans would vote for a President whose wife was awaiting trial?
THE Model T Ford of computers will be switched on tomorrow for the first time in 40 years. Experts hope it will cough into life, but they are not sure.
Eniac, a 30-tonne machine designed by the US Army to make artillery calculations in the Second World War, will be reactivated by Al Gore, the Vice-President, at the University of Pennsylvania. It will mark the fiftieth anniversary of its public unveiling.
Eniac stands for "electronic numerical integrater and computer", the long-winded name given it by scientists who created it to quicken the process of computing trajectories for artillery shells. The job was previously done on paper and mechanical calculators by female clerks.
Owing to the ravages of time and its huge electrical demands, only certain parts of the machine will be turned on. Eniac originally drank 174 kilowatts and used 17,468 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and 6,000 switches. For this investment, it delivered a ballistic trajectory in 30 seconds.
When Mr Gore presses the button, originally used by General Gladeon Barnes, lights are expected to blink and the numbers 46 and 96 should appearon the display.
"Eniac was arguably the machine that sparked the information revolution," said a university staffer. "It was the first large-scale, general purpose electronic computer."
Eniac could add 5,000 numbers in a second. A modern personal computer with a standard Intel Pentium personal computer brain does 70 million. It is also smaller.
THE Labour Party was hoist with its own petard last night when it tried to capitalise on an embarrassing mistake made by Brian Mawhinney, the Tory party chairman.
In a speech last week, Dr Mawhinney quoted Jonathan Miller, "the author and director", in support of keeping the House of Lords, although Labour is pledged to dismantle it. But Labour officials found that the Tory chairman had in fact cited the words of a journalist named Jonathan Miller.
The real Dr Miller the writer and theatre director was furious yesterday that his name had been taken in vain, insisting that he was an avid opponent of the House of Lords. To prove the point Labour officials circulated an interview with the real Dr Miller in the latest issue of Prospect, the Labour-backed magazine. Asked whether he would like to become a Labour peer, Dr Miller says: "It's inconceivable. For one thing, I don't think there should be such a thing as the House of Lords."
However, the spin doctors overlooked the answer to the preceding question, which they also circulated. Asked what he felt about Tony Blair, Dr Miller said: "I have very few warm words about Tony Blair: I look at and listen to this man and don't feel encouraged. It's all rather dauntingly convincing in its glib, Pepsident way: there is a sort of orthodontic gleam to the man.
"But I hate the present Government and I am glumly reconciled to the fact that this man will take over."
Dr Miller continued that he became depressed about Labour when the corporate rose logo appeared on the platform. "It looks as if it was done by the same advertising agency as the one that did the Prudential," he added.
"It is exactly what I deplore about television in order to compete with commerce it has got to become indistinguishable from commerce. Labour ought to have retained a certain hand-crafted simplicity not of an old-fashioned, Clause Four-type union rhetoric, but rather a plain speaking, sober abstention."
A number of Paul Feiler's more recent paintings hang opposite a selection of drawings and paintings from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s in a special display at the Tate St Ives.
These recent paintings hang close to each other, punctuating the visitor's circular progress through the galleries. Collectively they create a disturbing retinal effect, like a sudden shift of focus, as if a contact lens has fallen out. The paintings consist of a fine build-up of gradations of shallow thin bands of changing and shifting colour. Instead of being dry geometric exercises, however, they oscillate between creating a disengaged grey mass and pinpointing the sharp quality of light particles in a natural atmosphere.
Tate St Ives, St Ives, Cornwall (01736 796226) until April 21
Daphne Wright has moulded and wrapped objects with aluminium foil for her current exhibition. The gallery is transformed into a sparse and scrubby metal forest of trees festooned with elongated mannered pears hanging in clumps. Wright tries to keep close to the structures of nature; and yet the branches of the trees are unconvincing. Chunky thick volumetric sections of branch give way at the end to protruding bent wire. From a corner of the gallery comes the sound of a muffled male voice that mumbles something like "let me go" or "liquid gold" on a perpetual tape loop. Despite the intense lighting in the gallery, the piece is undramatic.
London Artforms, lower ground floor, 7-15 Rosebery Avenue London EC1 (0171-837 1900) until March 21
Beth B, an avant-garde film-maker from New York, shows a number of disturbing images on three floors at Laurent Delaye Gallery. She lights her work dramatically: spotlights shine down upon wax casts of parts of women's bodies. A cast, for instance, of the bones of a woman's foot after it has been bound shows crippling disfigurement. A ruptured breast implant on a torso shows a kind of negative or imploding space. Many of the most terrible things done now and in the past to woman's bodies are listed and illustrated here. Each piece is shown in the kind of antique display used in medical school before the advent of computer imaging. The text that accompanies the show is informative, but the form that the images themselves take is ultimately not as upsetting as the facts they portray.
Laurent Delaye Gallery 22 Barrett Street, St Christopher's Place, London W1 (0171-629 5905) until March 30
Lucy Wood's shining new trampoline with a great area of half-inch thick glass suspended from the frame provides an excellent conclusion to a well chosen show of work by eight people. Francis Carlile's table with veneered legs and a worn and unfinished top explores the line between the real and the constructed. Nicholas May's cloudy, dusty, mooncratered paintings look good in this thoughtful three-dimensional company. David Foster's paintings consist of dense paper cast in shallow relief suspended and framed within a background mesh, while Kate Davis uses video screen, metal and a blue painted glass surfboard to provide clues which are then scrambled in a bid to make sense out of form.
The Tannery, 57 Bermondsey Street London SE1 (0171-394 0545/ 0171-234 0587) until March 3
Michael Archer reviews a disturbing yet entertaining American artist
A naked woman hurls herself at a wall.
The implacability with which it resists this onslaught is painful and absolute. But, as the woman can see, the wall is made of flowers. It should yield to her, providing a soft, fragrant embrace. So she throws herself again and again, only to be rebuffed each time.
We, the spectators, can understand the whole tragic conceit. The wall is a gallery screen covered in paper flowers onto which the video image of the woman is endlessly projected.
Visitors to the Lisson Gallery have to step round Flower Wall in order to gain access to the main body of American artist Tony Oursler's exhibition. His art exerts the mesmeric charm of illusion. It also conducts a thoughtful enquiry into one of the most richly productive sources of illusion itself: the images and messages of the communications media.
Oursler, inspired by the constant mutterings of the homeless inhabitants of his Lower Manhattan neighbourhood, makes effigies and dummies that render suspect the thin line between benign normality and unhinged psychosis. "Dummies" is his preferred word for these presences since it implies that they are not merely silent but stupid as well.
Disturbingly, though, they both speak and make a frightening kind of sense. Their bodies are garments held loosely in shape but unstuffed, while the padded white cloth bags that form their heads act as screens onto which videoed faces are projected. The effect is uncanny and it is hard to shake off the impression that they really are alive.
Oursler has made the Lisson Gallery a Babel of voices. They are insistent and menacing; perfectly audible, but never loud enough to drown out their neighbours. The woman in Inversion, for instance, knits her brow and is worried about "going up" too far and too fast. An upside down man, his feet resting on the ceiling, has his head close to the woman's and mouths silently in response to her panicky protests. It is an intimate conversation with a private demon, albeit one that is unsettling for those forced to witness it.
All this might be rather intense and serious were it not for the fact that Oursler's work, like the media it comments upon, is endlessly entertaining. His scripts are tightly written and, when not downright funny, at the very least wry and well-observed.
Upstairs, for instance, in a scenario that is far more Steve Martin than Damien Hirst, the contents of two specimen jars talk to one another. A large (female) heart and a small (male) brain argue about how best to understand the world. Clearly there can be no agreement, no meeting of minds. A common set of standards cannot be established between the emotional and rational views put forward by the two protagonists.
In fact, the two organs are not conversing with one another. They are each in dialogue with another character who is off mic, and there is thus a gap in the apparent conversation into which the spectator can slip. How this could happen is illustrated near by where a small dummy props up one corner of a TV with its head.
Television pumps out the comforting pabulum of daytime TV while its diminutive support talks incessantly at and with it in a variety of voices. The film, City/Country (Window), is projected onto a screen shaped like the train window from which it was shot.
Like the unending stream issuing from Television, the rhythmic sound of the train sets a persistent pulse that throws the idiosyncrasies of the dummies, and of their onlookers, into syncopated relief.
Tony Oursler is at the Lisson Gallery, 52-54 Bell Street, London NW1 (0171-724 2739) until February 24
Julian Spalding's new Glasgow gallery will have space for Beryl Cook, but none for Damien Hirst
No self-respecting art gallery can be launched these days without a healthy dose of controversy. Glasgow's £7 million Gallery of Modern Art, due to open next month, is no exception. Its director, Julian Spalding, has denounced the "dictatorship of taste" that governs the art world today, and declared himself firmly on the side of art as entertainment. He prefers the jolly, fat ladies of Beryl Cook to the formaldehyde sheep of Damien Hirst, and will exclude from his gallery a clutch of young Scottish artists who have been widely praised.
Spalding's remarks set him at odds with most gurus of modernism. He is unrepentant. "I am very critical of modern art galleries at the moment," he says. "I see the same 50 artists everywhere."
As he ticks off the words he hates most "serious", "important", "objective", "impersonal", the disapproving spectre of Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate, hovers in the air. Spalding waves it aside. "When you are looking at a wonderful picture, you don't say, ‘that's important', you say ‘I love it'. Art is about people and about communicating with other people. A lot of modern art is presented as if it has been validated by a priesthood which pronounces on it, then vanishes into obscurity. You never hear them coming out and simply saying ‘I love it'."
The problem with this line of argument although it will certainly strike a chord among some disillusioned art-lovers is that it seems to set its face against innovation, the dangerous territory where art experiments rather than panders to popular taste. Spalding's remarks about Beryl Cook, whom he admires, or even David Shepherd, whose paintings of elephants he likes (though they will not be in his collection), have led critics to fear that the new gallery will be relentlessly middle-brow. Spalding rejects this.
"I like Beryl Cook. But I am also interested in art that catches a wider imagination. Other curators are tied to the apron-strings of the art market and the art economy. It's introspective and limited. A few names are ruthlessly exploited, then dumped. I'm saying there are millions of other people expressing themselves visually: that is the art of our times. You can't get by just on conceptual art."
The new gallery is constructed on four floors, each dedicated to one of the ancient elements from fire in the basement, through earth and water, to air at the top. It will have an eclectic collection, ranging from the art of Scottish painters such as John Bellany, Ken Currie and Peter Howson to watercolours of butterflies by David Measures.
There will be interactive and computer art downstairs, and enough abstract art to satisfy sceptical critics that this is not simply a temple to some pre-modernist era.
But there will no space for Damien Hirst. Nor will we see the work of young Scottish artists such as Christine Borland, Calum Innes, Julie Roberts, Douglas Gordon or Kerry Stuart, who have attracted international attention. One of them, Innes, was short-listed for the Turner Prize, and most have been selected for the latest British Art Show which opens at the Modern Art Gallery in Edinburgh later this month. Ironically, Frieze magazine, bible of the avant-garde world, said recently that the group had helped to put Glasgow on the cultural map.
Spalding, who was brought up on a south London council estate, remains unconvinced. "At the moment I don't know where they're going, what they're saying," he says.
"I'm interested in art that shows development. Too much modern art feels that it has to shock to be new."
THE offices of a construction company were ransacked yesterday by a group protesting against the Newbury bypass. The raid, by about 50 campaigners, caused damage estimated at thousands of pounds and was the most violent demonstration so far.
Friends of the Earth, which is co-ordinating the anti-bypass movement, distanced itself from the attack at the offices of Tarmac Roadstone in Newbury, Berkshire.
Some of those involved in the hour-long rampage wore masks. The protest began at noon when a handful of activists forced a window. Others poured in and 30 workers watched as whisky was poured on computers, files were rifled, a fire extinguisher was thrown through a window and telephones and fax machines damaged. One man was arrested.
Malcolm Whittle, managing director of the company, described the attack as "terrorism" and said his employees feared for their safety. "I have nothing against peaceful protest but what happened here was not the work of environmentalists it was simply vandalism. My staff were very worried because the behaviour was very threatening."
Tarmac has been named by Friends of the Earth as one of six companies bidding to build the bypass, although the Newbury office is part of its quarrying operation. "We were an easy target," Mr Whittle said. "We bolted the doors but they came in through a window." A caretaker was slightly hurt when he tried to resist.
Police said the action seemed to have been planned. "It was a case of mob rule," a spokesman said.
Peter Goldsmith, QC, and Michael Beloff, QC, reject criticism of Cherie Booth
Last year Cherie Booth, the wife of the Leader of the Opposition, was made a Queen's Counsel on the recommendation of the Conservative Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay of Clashfern. It was a vivid and valuable demonstration of the constitutional doctrine that the administration of justice and party politics are separate in the United Kingdom.
No objection can be taken to the natural curiosity of the media in Ms Booth's career as a barrister, which is itself an object lesson in the fact that gender imposes no fetter on success at the modern Bar. However, on no fewer than three occasions public criticism has been made by various persons of Ms Booth's advocacy on behalf of one local authority seeking to enforce its claims against a council tax defaulter, of another seeking to justify its dismissal of allegedly incompetent staff, and of Peter Clowes seeking to obtain parole; and within the last week she has been invited to comment on her representation of a child seeking to enter a selective school. The suggestion is that, as a Labour supporter, Ms Booth should not deploy her professional talents in the service of those who, from a left-wing perspective, are scarcely politically correct or attractive. Even this newspaper has spoken loftily of possible "embarrassment".
We cannot emphasise too strongly how misguided (even mischievous) such criticism is. The "cab rank rule" is as important an element of the Bar's code of conduct as can be found; it has indeed received the sanction of statute (in negative form) in Section 17 of the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990. It means, as Lord Mackay, then Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, said in 1978: "An advocate had to represent people even though he did not like their views, and whether they had legal aid or not."
Why is it so vital? The words of Lord Erskine, uttered in 1792 in justification of his defence of Thomas Paine (the English-born philosopher who supported the French Revolution), are relevant almost two centuries later: "From the moment that any advocate can be permitted to say that he will or will not stand between the Crown and the subject arraigned in the court where he daily sits to practise, from that moment the liberties of England are at an end."
It is a matter of constitutional importance that the advocates cannot pick and choose their clients on political grounds, on the popularity of the client's cause, or on whim. In certain Commonwealth jurisdictions, with a fused profession, there have occasionally been real difficulties in finding lawyers prepared to represent an unpopular dissenter from prevailing political orthodoxy. It is not for the advocate to prejudge the merits or otherwise of a client's case (although he or she may, of course, advise the client as to his chances of success); that would be to usurp the rule of the judge or jury.
The most disreputable litigant is still entitled to proper representation. Lord Pearce in 1969 pointed to the reality if it were otherwise: "It is easier, pleasanter and more advantageous professionally for barristers to advise, represent or defend those who are decent and reasonable and likely to succeed in their action or their defence than those who are unpleasant, unreasonable, disreputable and have an apparently hopeless case. Yet it would be tragic if our legal system came to provide no reputable defenders, representatives or advisers for the latter, and that would be the inevitable result of allowing barristers to pick and choose their clients."
Finally, the rule enhances consumer confidence in the reality of access to the best justice that private or public money can obtain; and in the impartiality of advice received, uninfluenced by perceived personal or political predilection on the barristers' behalf.
Advocates can decline to accept instructions on various grounds: lack of time; lack of adequate remuneration (if the case is privately funded); lack of experience in the particular field; lack of time to prepare; conflict of interest; refusal to participate in proposed deception of the court. But he or she cannot do so because the client or the client's cause fail to pass muster with a section of the electorate or even with their elected representatives.
Lest it be thought that the cab rank rule is a formal tradition rather than a living principle, or even that it is more honoured in the breach than the observance, the authors can testify to its daily utility in the courts of law. David Pannick, QC, represented the leader of the Unification Church in the High Court in a much-publicised case last term; but he was instructed for his forensic skills, not any adherence to the Church's beliefs; Michael Beloff, QC, (co-writer of this piece) opposed him for the Secretary of State; each might have taken the other's role; neither would for a second have declined to act.
The real story would be if (which is unthinkable) Ms Booth succumbed to pressure and refused to appear for convict or Conservative council. She should be allowed to continue unharassed with her practice. Her critics should be grateful that the profession which she adorns is faithful to the rule which she applies. Some principles are more important than partisan political points.
POLICE intend to make an application to the High Court to ban 20 persistent pickpockets from the London Underground. They face injunctions if they are seen again on stations or trains. A breach of an injunction would lead to prison for contempt of court.
The unprecedented move is being studied by police in other cities. The pickpockets have at least five convictions.
The bans will be activated when the pickpockets are next arrested by British Transport Police, who cover the Underground trains. Two have been arrested and given warnings in letters from London Transport solicitors. Several others on the list have been arrested and will soon receive letters.
As part of a 12-week campaign code-named Operation Reclaim, which ended in mid-January, detectives posing as carefree tourists have been used to trap the pickpockets. The decoys worked from large West End stations and were backed by watching officers. Some posed as young visitors burdened by large rucksacks. Others carried portable telephones. Woman officers would carry handbags left open and men might have their wallets in a back pocket. As soon as a pickpocket struck the back-up teams would move in to make arrests.
The tactic, devised by the British Transport Police, was cleared with the Crown Prosecution Service.
Injunctions, such as the ones sought for the pickpockets, are widely used by store chains and shopping malls against shoplifters and have been used to control problem families on housing estates. They have never been used before against criminals on the transport system.
Detective Superintendent Graham Satchwell, who devised the injunction scheme, said the aim was to stamp out a group of pickpockets who had worked on the trains and stations for years. The youngest is in his late 20s and the oldest in his 40s. Some have been sent to prison. Some have been fined or subjected to other penalties but continue to steal.
Mr Satchwell said: "Everything has been tried and they keep coming back."
The force decided that as soon as any of the pickpockets were rearrested they would be served with the warning letter. The two men warned in that way both come from London.
Mr Satchwell said: "These two were told: ‘You are not welcome customers and if you are seen again we will get an injunction.' If they are caught on the system we will seek the injunction. If they break that they will face imprisonment."
The application for the injunction would be made irrespective of the result of any criminal proceedings. Even if the pickpockets were acquitted, police would go ahead with a civil action. Injunctions could be reviewed if the pickpockets showed they had changed their ways.
Tony Blair is wooing the lawyers and putting their minds at rest, says Edward Fennell
With electioneering now begun in earnest, City lawyers are preparing for a change in administration. Richard Price, a partner with McKenna & Co, confesssed: "If we're honest about it we're all expecting a Labour government."
No politically sensitive issue is of greater concern to lawyers than the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), which has generated lucrative fees for solicitors when the private sector is asked to bid for public service contracts. Although it got off to a couple of false starts, lawyers are now seeing a steady stream of PFI work. They are keen to know whether this will continue under Labour.
So far they have not been disappointed. Alistair Darling, the Shadow Treasury minister, is currently meeting City lawyers and seems to be whispering reassuring words. One lawyer who lunched with Mr Darling last week said that, with a couple of exceptions, there would be no significant change. Jerome Misso of Eversheds says: "There may be a certain amount of rebadging, but the essentials will remain the same."
The attraction of PFI is that it brings work from both the public sector and from potential contractors. The leading law firms are trying to build up a track record with each. Berwin Leighton, for example, which has 19 lawyers in its PFI team and acts for the Treasury on Gogs (the Government offices in Great Smith Street), is also working for contractors bidding for substantial slices of NHS work.
Phil Bretherton, a partner, says: "It's important to understand the needs of both sides. We're close to the Private Finance Panel but also appreciate the priorities of the contractors."
In similar vein, Dibb Lupton & Broomhead is about to second one of its senior lawyers to the PFI panel both to advise and to gain a better insight into the way the panel works. David Hickman, a partner, says: "We suggested it to the panel and they were delighted to take up the offer."
PFI work is a good example of the positive role that lawyers can play in helping to bridge the gap of understanding between government and the private sector. In many respects it remains an immature market with the financial implications in need of much refinement.
One feature of this is the depth of resentment among contractors, particularly in the construction sector, at the expense involved in bidding for projects. Their lawyers are now being asked to take on some of the risk.
Mr Hickman says: "One of the features of PFI work is that the lawyers are being brought in by bidders at a much earlier stage. This has its ups and downs. Because a contractor may have to spend up to £200,000 in preparing his bid, the lawyers are being asked to share in some of the burden."
So while the pickings from a successful PFI bid can be very rich indeed, the lawyers may gain meagre (if any) fees from those which fail.
This is making the top lawyers very circumspect in whom they act for. McKenna's, for example, has expertise in construction and has developed a strong record of work for the Department of Transport. This has made it an attractive adviser to bidders for new road projects.
In one case recently the firm was approached by four of the prospective consortiums. McKenna's partners had to weigh up the decision very carefully. Richard Price says: "There is an enormous amount of risk involved. To go with the wrong bidder could lead to a substantial loss."
Success in PFI work demands an array of expertise, experience and resources. Eversheds and Dibbs, both leading national firms, feel that their combination of City teams and network of regional offices has positioned them well to attract work from NHS trusts, universities and so on.
But when Dibbs was awarded the work by the Benefits Agency for contracting out the National Insurance record system it was on the basis of its acknowledged strength in the information technology field.
Some specialisms, however, may die an early death. McKenna's is exceptional in its work for the prison sector (it acted for the successful Securicor consortium), but Mr Price suspects this may count for little in 18 months' time. "Prisons may be dropped by Labour from PFI," he says, "as just too loaded politically."
TOURISTS and political pilgrims may be banned from the graveside of John Smith, the former Labour leader, on the Hebridean island of Iona. Trustees at the island's 13th-century abbey have applied for permission to build a wall round the ancient burial ground.
The resting place of Scotland's first kings is being destroyed by the number of people who go to the island each month to pay their respects to the memory of the politician. One grave has caved in under the weight of visitors.
The stone wall would allow access to the graves only for the Ionian community and relatives of the dead. Residents, who number fewer than 100, fear that the 12-metre wall will take up too much space. Argyll and Bute District Council's planning committee will consider the proposal on Thursday. It will also examine a plan to install a cast-iron gate, bearing a picture of Mr Smith's grave. The former MP for Monklands East died in May 1994.
Evelyn MacPhail, the chairwoman of Iona Community Council, said: "It just goes on and on. People just don't have any respect. They literally trample over people's graves to see John Smith's final resting place.
"None of us realised the interest in John Smith's grave would have gone on so long. They even bring coach parties here to see it. Something has to be done to protect the site. It used to be a tranquil and peaceful place. I don't go near it now in the tourist season."
Mr Smith's widow, Elizabeth, supports the proposal and has urged tourists to be more respectful.
THE IRA started preparations for the Docklands bomb more than three weeks ago when an English vehicle's tax disc was stolen in Ulster to disguise the origins of the lorry carrying the explosive, the Rev Ian Paisley told MPs yesterday.
Mr Paisley, Democratic Unionist MP for North Antrim, said that the tax disc was used with false number plates on the IRA's lorry. The vehicle was then brought into mainland Britain on the Larne-to-Stranraer ferry. Mr Paisley said the details had been confirmed by police to the person who had lost the tax disc.
Mr Paisley said that the theft showed how the IRA had plotted and premeditated the attack. In reply Mr Major said he noted the comments about the tax disc and told Mr Paisley it was "very strong corroboratory evidence".
Mr Paisley's son, also Ian, the DUP's justice spokesman, said the tax disc had been taken from a second-hand, English-registered lorry on the forecourt of a car salesman's property. "It was stolen three weeks ago before the Mitchell report (on arms decommissioning) was even completed," he said. The lorry may have been constructed from several vehicles in an attempt to thwart police attempts to trace its origins. Detectives believe the lorry could have been built round a 1986 Ford Cargo with an engine from another vehicle merged with sections from several other trucks.
Between 500 and 1,000 pounds of home-made explosive used for the bomb were moulded to fit underneath the sloping back of the vehicle, which was built to resemble a vehicle low-loader.
Police hope that closed circuit television cameras on main junctions, motorways and town centres may have captured the bombers.
Security managers are being urged to check cameras for pictures of the lorry being driven across London or film showing the lorry being parked in a garage. British Transport Police will check videos from trains going into London from Docklands just before the blast to see if the bombers escaped that way.
Scotland Yard has already drafted scores of marksmen from other duties or leave to provide extra cover for targets considered to be at possible risk from the IRA.
Fears grow for firms' financial survival as police turn away Docklands workers.
DOZENS of security alerts in the aftermath of the IRA Docklands bombing brought London traffic to a standstill yesterday.
Cars became gridlocked as roads were closed while the police searched suspect vehicles and parcels, none of which was found to contain explosives.
The Metropolitan Police, which has a policy of not publicising bomb scares to avoid encouraging terrorists, confirmed that bomb squads had been called out almost a hundred times yesterday. Roads were closed off to the public during every security alert.
East London, where the IRA bomb exploded last Friday, was particularly badly hit after a suspicious-looking vehicle was found near the Blackwall Tunnel. The diverted traffic blocked the flow at the Rotherhithe Tunnel. Earlier in the day traffic had been bumper-to-bumper through the Blackwall Tunnel and Limehouse Link as cars were pulled over and drivers questioned.
West London was also affected when the elevated section of the M4 in Chiswick and the Harrow part of the Metropolitan Underground line were temporarily closed.
At one point Euston, Paddington and Liverpool Street stations and Holborn Underground station were all closed.
In the area where the bomb exploded, thousands of office workers were turned away by police when they arrived for work yesterday. More than a hundred firms are inside a "sterile" security zone circling the site of Friday night's IRA explosion.
Commuters appeared bewildered as they saw for the first time in daylight the extent of the devastation radiating from South Quay.
Many were left unsure what to do next. Some assembled at prearranged points and others were told where they were being temporarily relocated. Beyond the blue and white police tapes, roads remained strewn with blasted masonry and shattered glass. Alarm bells continued to ring.
Motorists bore the brunt of the heightened state of security in the capital as police rebuilt the "ring of steel" around the City of London and set up two roadblocks on approaches to the Isle of Dogs. Security staff at Canary Wharf where security has not been relaxed throughout the ceasefire stopped and searched cars trying to drive into Canary Wharf.
The Docklands Business Club, which represents 800 companies, said last night that offices on the edge of the blast zone could be reopened by tomorrow. That includes the Harbour Exchange complex, which houses dozens of small businesses. Big employers in the area, such as French-owned publisher the Builder Group, had found temporary office accommodation. Some small and medium-size companies located inside the security cordon face a crippling interruption to their business and could go to the wall especially those without insurance cover against terrorism. The business park backing on to South Quay boasts "blue chip" companies such as Accident and General and branches of Lloyds and Midland banks. But high-rise blocks, such as the Harbour Exchange, are home to dozens of much smaller enterprises. Those companies are the most vulnerable to interruption of their commercial life, the possible loss of business and the cost of relocating offices. A few may not be insured against a terrorist bomb. The Association of British Insurers has put the cost to insurers at between £75 million and £150million.
That compares with the £600 million cost of the IRA bomb that devastated Bishopsgate in the City of London in 1993.
SDLP leader calls for referendum as main parties voice support for Major's campaign
JOHN HUME, leader of the nationalist SDLP, yesterday condemned the IRA bombing in London as "a terrible atrocity" and called for an all-Ireland referendum on the peace process before the end of the month.
He told MPs that the people of Northern Ireland had shown a "massive will for peace". Referendums should be held in the Republic and in the North asking people if they unequivocally disapproved of violence and if they wanted all parties to begin negotiations.
"I think that one of the best ways forward now is to let the people speak and let them speak very clearly," he said. "Because if they do, neither the IRA nor anybody else will be able to ignore them."
Tony Blair, the Labour leader, responding to John Major's statement, emphasised his support for the Government's approach. "Whatever the political differences between myself and the Prime Minister, on this we shall stand four-square together in the cause of peace," he said. The attack might have been a tactical move by the IRA, but for the victims it was a matter of life or death, he added. "There can be nothing but the most profound contempt for those who will butcher wholly innocent people in the pursuit of any such strategy, whatever it is."
Mr Blair said that Sinn Fein represented only a small section of the nationalist community and must accept peaceful methods if it wanted to join talks. "That is the only conceivable course that any British Government could conceivably justify."
John Taylor, deputy leader of the Ulster Unionists, joined Mr Major in condemning the "IRA atrocity". He said that the inevitablity of another terrorist attack had grown as Sinn Fein rejected the Downing Street declaration, failed to approve the six principles of the Mitchell commission and refused to reach agreement with all the other nationalist parties at the Dublin Forum for Peace and Reconciliation.
"Sinn Fein has totally isolated itself," he said. "The benefit from this terrible incident is the mobilisation of the people of Northern Ireland for lasting peace. There is a great abhorrence for what happened."
Paddy Ashdown, the Liberal Democrat leader, also gave his party's full support to Mr Major. "Is this not the moment when Sinn Fein must decide whether they are going to be a democratic party committed to peace, or whether they are going to be the prisoner of every callous and arbitrary decision made by the IRA army council?" he said.
Mr Ashdown then called on Mr Major to restore trust and unanimity of voice and action between Dublin and London. "Surely if that requires compromise on the favourite solutions being put forward by both sides, that is a small price to pay," he said.
The Rev Ian Paisley, the Democratic Unionist leader, said it was "very strange" that when nationalist leaders condemned the bombing they then repeated the "propaganda lie" that Mr Major and the Unionist leaders were to blame. He accused them of being prepared to "parrot the lying propaganda" of IRA/Sinn Fein".
Only Tony Benn (Lab, Chesterfield) condemned Mr Major's negotiating tactics. He said that the ceasefire was the product of work done by Mr Hume, Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, and the former Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds.
He said that Mr Major's election plan had never been the subject of proper discussion with Dublin. "In one sense there has been no peace process, there has been a ceasefire," he said.
Mr Major told Mr Benn he was "quite wrong". The Prime Minister said that Sinn Fein had not been asked to decommission every weapon they had, "they were asked to make some decommissioning to instil confidence".
Robert McCartney (ind Unionist, North Down) said: "The restoration of a ceasefire and the entering into further negotiations with Sinn Fein/IRA begs the question, will they simply further down the line, when they meet with another impasse, or some situation which does not meet with their approval, simply blast it out of the way in the manner of Canary Wharf?"
Bridget Prentice (Lab, Lewisham East) said that one of the victims of the blast was John Jefferies, one of her constituents. "He was a very talented young musician and very popular," she said.
Mr Major replied: "The best memorial to Mr Jefferies and to all the others who have been murdered over the past 30 years, would be for all of us to bend all our will to finding a proper full-term solution."
GUSTY SPENCE was in a hurry. He was on his way to the Maze prison yesterday to brief loyalist prisoners on the hardline Protestant community's reaction to the IRA bombing.
For Mr Spence, it was a familiar journey. He served 17 years of a life sentence for a sectarian murder committed in 1966, before the present Troubles had even begun. Still protesting his innocence, he has become the grand old man of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), regarded as the political front of Ulster's leading loyalist paramilitary force, the UVF.
Puffing a pipe and looking every inch the kindly uncle, Spence said his message to the prisoners, many of whom have influence in the paramilitary war councils, would be simple. "I will be telling them to persuade the men who matter to do nothing. There is no future in answering one crime with another crime."
With the IRA ceasefire broken and all-party talks not yet begun, Mr Spence believed that the peace process was now in a dangerous vacuum. "But I think the paramilitaries will keep their powder dry. They have been through the mill and they are realists. They are extremely angry at the London bomb but they are not fools. Any talk of reprisal raids on Dublin is nonsense."
At the Rex bar near the PUP headquarters in the Shankill Road, party workers said that the paramilitary commanders had been in continuous session since Saturday. Hardliners are said to be pushing for retaliation. "All British citizens are British citizens, regardless of which country they live in. If the IRA wages war on British citizens, loyalists will retaliate," a man claiming to be close to the UVF said. "We will not immediately abandon our ceasefire but we will hit back if the Provo campaign escalates. If there is a full-scale IRA return to arms, we are ready to match it."
Mr Spence said that the peace process had been dealt a blow but was not dead. "One bomb does not make a war." There is even some understanding of the IRA's refusal to decommission weapons. "Loyalists are unwilling to give up their guns, so why should the IRA? It is completely unrealistic to expect decommissioning before a settlement," he said. "After a settlement, it would be far simpler."
This is an edited extract of John Major's statement to the Commons yesterday:
THE IRA has brought the 17-month-old ceasefire to an end. There is no shred of an excuse for this return to violence, least of all now, when all-party negotiations were clearly in sight.
After the August 1994 ceasefire declaration, we called repeatedly on the IRA to make clear that it was permanent, despite criticism by some for doubting IRA good faith. We did doubt their good faith, and the IRA did not say it was permanent. Nonetheless, after a prudent period of time, in order to move the process forward, we were prepared to act on the working assumption that the ceasefire would last.
In the months that followed we reduced the more visible and inconvenient aspects of security. We took soldiers off the streets and opened all the border crossing points. We did everything possible to create new jobs and helped to produce a remarkable economic upsurge.
We talked to Sinn Fein leaders at official and ministerial level. We constantly sought to move the peace process on to the all-party negotiations everyone agrees are necessary.
No one no one took more risks for peace than this Government. But we never lost sight of the fact that the IRA commitment had not been made for good. No responsible government could have done otherwise. That was why we and others saw a start to the decommissioning of illegal arms as a way of creating confidence in Sinn Fein's acceptance of democratic peaceful methods, and showing that the violence really has ended.
But all the time that Sinn Fein were calling for all-party talks, we knew that the IRA continued to train and plan for terrorist attacks. Punishment beatings and killings continued. They remained ready to resume full-scale terrorism at any time. We could never be confident their behaviour was that of an organisation which had decided to renounce violence for ever. Theirs was not true peace.
I regret to say that the events of last Friday showed that our caution about the IRA was only too justified. The timing of the return to violence may have been surprising. The fact that violence could resume was not. We must now continue the search for permanent peace and a comprehensive political settlement. Let there be no doubt that the Government's commitment to this is as strong as ever. We will work for peace with all the democratic political parties and with the Irish Government. But a huge question mark now hangs over the position of one of the parties: Sinn Fein. Their leaders have spoken often of their commitment to peace and peaceful methods. But they have always ducked and weaved when they have been questioned about the IRA and their methods. After the events of last Friday their ambiguity stands out starkly.
Sinn Fein's leaders claim that they did not know about the bomb at South Quay and the IRA's ceasefire statement. But they have refused either to condemn or to dissociate themselves from either. Madam Speaker, Sinn Fein must decide whether they are a front for the IRA or a democratic political party committed to the ballot and not to the bullet.
Meanwhile, one thing is clear. In the absence of a genuine end to this renewed violence, meetings between British ministers and Sinn Fein are not acceptable and cannot take place. That is also the position of the Irish Government. They have made it clear to Sinn Fein that their attitude and willingness to meet at political level will be determined by whether the IRA ceasefire is restored. We and the Irish Government are at one on this: the ball is in the court of Sinn Fein and the IRA, if indeed that distinction means anything. It is for them to show, through their words and actions, whether they have a part to play in the peace process or not. I am not in the business of slamming doors. But the British and Irish peoples need to know where Sinn Fein now stand.
The peace process will go on. The aim is, as it has always been, to establish the necessary confidence to enable negotiations between all the parties to start. I want everyone to be absolutely clear on this point. The objective of all our actions and policies before and since the ceasefire has been to get to a position where all constitutional democratic parties can get round a table together. Everything is a means to that essential end.
The peace process in Northern Ireland has received a serious setback from the men of violence. But it is not over, not by any means. We have seen the benefits of what has been achieved since the ceasefire: the freedom to live and work normally, and to enjoy life; increased prosperity and new jobs; new hope for the future. These must not be thrown away.
This Government will not be deterred by terrorism. The people of Northern Ireland have tasted peace, a peace that changed their lives. I have told the House before that I will leave no stone unturned in the search for peace. That is true today and will remain true in the future.
The people of Great Britain and Northern Ireland deserve no less.
The British and Irish Governments will ensure that whatever the next steps in the Northern Ireland peace process are, they will be agreed between them. The recent public disagreements between London and Dublin may not have affected the IRA's decision to explode the South Quay bomb, given the extent of planning involved, but they did sour the political atmosphere. The result was a maximum degree of misunderstanding with faults of interpretation on both sides.
All that has now changed. Yesterday was a holding operation as post-outrage statements usually are. The formalities of condemnation, sympathy and praise were duly paid in the Commons by the Prime Minister and other party leaders.
But more striking was the tone adopted by John Major in his discussion of the prospects for future negotiations. He was firm, but conciliatory. That reflects a joint approach agreed with John Bruton. There will be no meetings between ministers of either Government and Sinn Fein in the absence of a genuine end to violence, though contacts will be maintained at official level. But, equally, nothing will be done to push people into the hands of the IRA.
Consequently, in the Commons yesterday, Mr Major carefully avoided raising the temperature of exchanges with Gerry Adams. In talking of the "ambiguity" of Sinn Fein's position in relation to the IRA, Mr Major seemed to recognise the vulnerability of Mr Adams's political position. He did not want to "erect barriers or to produce harsh words" which would make it harder for those in Sinn Fein to do what needs to be done. Saying he was "not in the business of slamming doors", he argued that it was now up to Sinn Fein to "decide whether they are
a front for the IRA or a democratic political party committed to the ballot not the bullet". The underlying message was, "we will keep our distance from you, Sinn Fein, unless and until you (Sinn Fein/IRA) unequivocally return to the ceasefire and demonstrate a commitment to peaceful negotiations. Meanwhile, we will not try to aggravate your (Mr Adams's) political problems."
Mr Major was careful to distinguish means from ends in establishing "the necessary confidence to enable negotiations between all the parties to start". Everything else, he added, is "a means to that essential end".
Given the IRA's refusal to start decommissioning arms now, he argued that holding elections to give an electoral mandate which would lead straight away to negotiations between all parties remained the Government's preferred option, "the most promising opening available", and is, of course, strongly backed by the Ulster Unionists. Mr Major sought to answer earlier "misrepresentations and misunderstandings" by emphasising that the elected body would have to be broadly acceptable and would be strictly time-limited and not have legislative and administrative powers. "Any suggestion of a return to old-style Stormont rule is manifest nonsense." That has always been Mr Major's position, but the reassurances were not clear enough in Mr Major's earlier Commons statement and in his prior contacts with the Dublin Government and the SDLP.
Moreover, Mr Major said yesterday that other options would be considered: none would be ruled out. He was open-minded to a number of suggestions and did not even dismiss out of hand the call by John Hume for referendums north and south of the border on the renunciation of violence and all-party talks.
Mr Major's emphasis on the end of all-party negotiations, rather than the particular means of achieving them, offers the hope of friendlier and more positive talks with Dublin and the SDLP. That is no guarantee of agreement. But there is now pressure not just on Sinn Fein and the IRA to restore the ceasefire but also on the two Prime Ministers to produce fresh proposals at their summit next week. Yesterday, they bought time.
THE Clinton Administration refused to follow the British and Irish Governments yesterday in breaking contacts with Gerry Adams and his Sinn Fein party.
It also rejected direct appeals from David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist Party leader, to deny Mr Adams and his fellow Sinn Fein leaders further visas to enter or raise funds in America unless they renounced violence.
"We are going to continue to deal with Mr Adams, including letting him in and fundraise," one White House official said.
"We have no regret about the support we have given Gerry Adams, or the support that we will continue to give Adams in the search for a lasting peace in Northern Ireland," another told Reuters.
During two years of intermittent visits Mr Adams has built up such an amicable relationship with senior White House officials that he and Anthony Lake, the President's National Security Adviser, banter about the respective merits of hurling and baseball. He telephoned Mr Lake shortly before last Friday's bombing to warn of imminent trouble, and evidently retains President Clinton's trust.
"Mr Adams is an important leader in this (peace) process because he speaks for Sinn Fein," said Mike McCurry, the President's spokesman. "It is hard to image a process making progress towards peace without the active involvement of Sinn Fein."
America intended to "use every ounce of diplomatic effort" to restore the ceasefire and "that would make all these other matters moot".
Mr Trimble met Mr Lake and Mr Clinton yesterday at the White House and, at the State Department, George Mitchell, the former senator who recently reported on the decommissioning issue.
He sought to persuade all three of the merits of the British proposal of elections as the best route to all-party talks. He said that Mr Clinton and Mr Lake seemed to "appreciate the merits and value of the elective body" and that Mr Mitchell endorsed the concept a claim Mr Mitchell later denied.
Mr Mitchell told The Times that America would not choose between the British election plan or Dublin's proposal of a Bosnia-style conference. America's role was to encourage the parties to keep searching for an agreement among themselves and "not let the peace process die in the rubble of that building in London". He refused to criticise John Major but was not surprised the IRA had broken the ceasefire.
MEMBERS of the law firm Nicholson Graham & Jones, who wondered what the correspondence mysteriously headed "Project Balti" was about, now know. Its entire pensions department, consisting of eight lawyers, was negotiating to move to the London pension firm Sacker & Co, which will almost double in size as a result.
A spokesman for Sacker & Co explains the project's unusual code name: "The head of Nicholsons's department, Ian Pittaway, and his team met in an Indian restaurant to discuss the possibility of moving, and Project Balti was born."
KEN LIVINGSTONE, MP, is developing a successful sideline as an expert witness. He recently gave evidence on behalf of the zoo owner John Aspinall at the latter's successful appeal to allow trainers to enter his zoo's tiger enclosures. Mr Livingstone supported the argument that the ban prevented the trainers from doing what they wanted to do.
But Mr Aspinall's lawyer, David Harrel, a partner at S.J.Berwin & Co, says: "He also offered to give expert evidence on wildlife, drawing on his extensive experience of going in with live newts."
THE NEW minister in the Lord Chancellor's Department, Jonathan Evans, MP, has hit back at statements by Jack Straw, the Shadow Home Secretary, that juries now no longer reflect their community and are "skewed" towards the working class and the unemployed.
Mr Straw's allegations of "loose practice" by which the self-employed and professionals can easily evade jury service were "very wide of the mark," says Mr Evans. "The Criminal Justice Act 1988 introduced the possibility of deferral of jury service. This aims to reduce requests to be excused, because those who have commitments, such as holidays or specific work problems, are expected to serve at a later date."
He quotes research for the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice showing that the occupations of juries matched the general population "with a slight over-representation of clerical workers and under-representation of skilled manual workers".
Sir Richard Scott's long-awaited report into the export of arms to Iraq will be published on Thursday. Its contents will seek to answer many questions about the propriety of government conduct, but it will raise almost as many questions about the future role of the judiciary in conducting inquiries on behalf of the Government.
Prime Ministers have habitually turned to judges to investigate and report on important and sensitive issues. Some of these inquiries have concerned national tragedies or traumas, such as the Aberfan disaster (Lord Justice Edmund-Davies in 1966-67), allegations of child abuse in Cleveland (Lady Justice Butler-Sloss in 1988), and the Hillsborough stadium disaster (Lord Justice Taylor in 1989).
On many occasions, the subjects entrusted to judges have had the potential to become politically explosive. Lord Denning conducted an inquiry into the security implications of the Profumo affair in 1963. He later wrote that some of the evidence was "so disgusting even to my sophisticated mind that I sent the lady shorthand writers out and had no note of it taken".
Then from 1965 to 1968, Lord Pearson chaired a Royal Commission on Trade Union Reform. In 1972, Lord Wilberforce reported on miners' pay, Lord Diplock advised on legal procedures for terrorist trials in Northern Ireland and Lord Widgery inquired into the events of Northern Ireland's "Bloody Sunday", in which 13 civilians were killed. Lord Scarman's 1981 report on the Brixton riots and Lord Woolf's 1990 inquiry into prison conditions, also concerned issues of fundamental political dispute.
Prime Ministers choose judges to conduct these inquiries for a variety of reasons. Judges are skilled at considering a mass of evidence, analysing its relevance and weight, and producing a reasoned conclusion as to what occurred and why. Judges are, and are perceived to be, impartial when assessing controversial issues. A report which carries the authority of a judge is likely to command public respect. Appointing judges to do such dirty work is not a peculiarly British phenomenon. When President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, it was natural for his successor, President Johnson, to appoint Earl Warren, the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, to conduct the investigation into the shooting.
The use of judges to inquire on behalf of the Government works well when the issues concern disputed questions of fact, or proposals for reform of technical areas of law. Then the judiciary is playing to its strengths. When, by contrast, judges are invited to make extra-legal judgments, whether political, social or moral, politicians have recognised that the judge's lack of prior expertise is outweighed by the value of an independent assessment of complex issues.
The fundamental dispute which will boil over on Thursday concerns the weight to be attached to the conclusions and recommendations of a judge who was not an expert on the working practices of Whitehall before he began his task. The attack has been led by Lord Howe of Aberavon. He has contended that Sir Richard has failed to understand the realities of the way government operates in the real world.
Yet Sir Richard was appointed precisely to ensure that substantial allegations about the propriety of government conduct were thoroughly considered by an independent person from outside Whitehall, who would study the material and apply objective standards of assessment.
This is likely to be the last such inquiry for many years. Politicians and civil servants are going to take a long time to recover from the shock that a judge has required them to answer, in public, difficult questions about their official conduct. They will be very reluctant in future to let a member of the judiciary loose on politically sensitive issues.
The impact of the Scott report on the judiciary will be equally traumatic. Prime Ministers and Lord Chancellors are going to have to twist judicial arms to breaking point if they are ever again to persuade a judge to accept responsibility for conducting an inquiry into a politically controversial topic which will occupy months, or years, of work, and which leads to hostile criticism and may result in political repudiation of the judicial findings.
Any judge who feels he is being made an offer that he cannot refuse should ask to see the bruises inflicted on Lord Nolan during his continuing inquiry into standards in public life.
Whatever the short-term political consequences of the Scott report, the most significant long-term effect will be to ensure that, in future, judges are less frequently distracted from their primary task of deciding cases in court.
If the Scott report promotes such a divorce between judges and politicians, it is because the inquiry has confirmed that there are irreconcilable differences between them.
The author is a practising barrister and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
Anthony Scrivener, QC, on the implications of the Scott report, and David Pannick, QC, on the future role of judges in inquiries
One result of this week's report by Sir Richard Scott will be that, in future, public interest immunity (PII) certificates will again have some credibility.
The evidence at the inquiry revealed the shenanigans that went on when the Matrix Churchill PII certificates were signed. These appeared to conceal the fact that, contrary to expressed Government policy, sales of arms to Iraq had been encouraged and one of the defendants had been used as a British spy. Even the not easily ruffled Sir Humphrey would have blushed.
Ministers took different approaches to signing the certificates. One did his own thing and took responsibility for what he signed. This looks like an example of what used to be called ministerial responsibility a doctrine which seems to be in decline.
Others were told by the Attorney-General that they had no choice in the matter and they had to sign and so they did. Another did not like being told to sign and carefully noted his reservations for posterity, and required those reservations to be passed on to the court.
Unfortunately, in the euphoria of obtaining this important signature to complete the battery of certificates, everyone seems to have forgotten to inform the court of the reservations. This was all the more sad bearing in mind this was a criminal trial. To use the words of Hamlet, the whole episode was enough to cause:
"Each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine."
An Attorney-General telling ministers that they must sign on the dotted line to prevent disclosures seems a long way from those proud words of Viscount Kilmuir, a Conservative Lord Chancellor, who, in 1956, said that if documents "are relevant to the defence in criminal proceedings, Crown privilege should not be claimed".
The Attorney-General's opinion that ministers had to sign the certificates came under close examination at the Scott inquiry. Some of the questions and answers are recommended for light reading. It will be interesting to see if this notion of the Attorney-General survives the report; or whether ministerial responsibility is due to make an unexpected comeback.
The confidence of the public and the courts will be greatly restored if they can at least be sure that a minister has considered the documents and exercised his own judgment before deciding to sign a certificate.
In this way, he will have taken personal responsibility for the decision and so will not be heard later to say that the senior law officer somehow put him up to it.
Everyone accepts that it may be necessary to protect state security, and perhaps other sensitive material, but the Scott report will reveal whether the certificates were issued in the Matrix Churchill case for such honourable purposes or merely to protect against political embarrassment.
Hopefully, the report will ensure that, in future, PII certificates are used only for legitimate purposes.
The only protection against abuse of this procedure is a truthful and frank certificate given by a responsible minister which is then considered by an impartial judge who, having all the relevant information, is able to strike the appropriate balance between the interests of the State and the individual. It is hoped that the Scott report will help to achieve this objective.
There is a more sinister aspect to the Matrix Churchill fiasco. It seems probable that the generous use of public interest immunity certificates distorted the trial. The effect of the certificates was to deny to the defence practically every document which would have shown the truth and would have confirmed the defence. Anyone who knew of the documents hidden by the certificates should have appreciated this.
The question which the Scott report may well address is: who allowed the prosecution case to be presented on this false basis? This is an important question since the exclusion of the evidence meant that innocent men ran the risk of conviction.
It is obvious that the Government is expecting flak from the report. There are those in the party faithful who are attempting to rubbish the report on the grounds that Sir Richard Scott adopted procedures different from those proposed by Lord Salmon in an earlier and different type of inquiry, and the report was therefore unfair. Lord Howe of Aberavon has already been a vociferous spokesman on the subject.
It is a pity that Lord Howe does not examine, for comparison, the procedures used by the Department of Trade and Industry or perhaps by the Serious Fraud Office or even the police: had he done so he would certainly have been much better informed and perhaps less outspoken.
The fact is that the procedures suggested by Lord Salmon for use at inquiries were never intended to be applicable to every situation. He was at pains to emphasise that such rules had to be flexible according to the different types of inquiry.
The procedure at the Scott inquiry was eminently fair: questions were provided in advance, every witness was able to consult his lawyer even during questioning, a witness could not be compelled to answer, the witness was able to correct the transcript of his evidence afterwards, and no criticism could be made in the report unless the witness had been given an opportunity to comment on it.
Those businessmen who have been witnesses at a DTI inquiry will have little sympathy for politicians complaining about unfairness at the Scott inquiry.
The real problem is that it is likely the judge has unearthed some unpleasant truths. There is plenty of evidence of this from the Matrix Churchill trial itself: remember poor Alan Clark when faced unexpectedly with a document no longer protected by a certificate? He said: "...well, it's our old friend being economical, isn't it?"
And thus he brought back happy memories of another "old friend" being caught bang to rights at an earlier trial in which the Government was involved.
Anthony Scrivener is a former chairman of the Bar.
A COUNCIL'S decision to stop advertising with Times Newspapers and change to The Guardian has been strongly criticised by the district auditor, who found that the switch cost £130,000 in court and higher advertising fees.
After a six-year investigation, Keith Stanton, the Midlands district auditor, has decided that there was no wilful misconduct by councillors or officers which caused the loss and no one is to be surcharged.
The advertising switch was agreed in 1989 by Labour-controlled Derbyshire County Council after The Sunday Times ran two articles critical of David Bookbinder, council leader at the time.
Fifty years on, German returns to homeland for silver hidden in last weeks of the war.
A GERMAN count has unearthed a hoard of silver he buried more than 50 years ago as a teenager fleeing with his family from the advancing Russian forces.
Count Alexander zu Lynar-Redern, 67, a retired manager of the Lufthansa airline, recalled yesterday how he buried the treasure at night as the Second World War drew to a chaotic close. It was hidden hours before the Soviet troops moved into Gorlsdorf, the castle and estate about 30 miles northeast of Berlin, in which his family had lived for 300 years.
The treasures included a 120-piece silver dinner service made by Odiot of Paris in the 1830s and Meissen porcelain off which European royalty ate in the 19th century. The count, who lives in Nice with his French wife, will sell them through Sotheby's at a series of sales in May and June for an estimated £150,000.
On April 20, 1945, the count and his mother, Princess Victoria who had been widowed in 1934 were preparing to flee with other families in German villages near the River Oder. A tractor and two trailers on which they were planning to escape had room only for people, not possessions: they were taking 30 of their faithful estate-workers with them.
The count said: "The Russians were very close. The sky was lit with artillery. I was afraid that I'd get hit by a grenade and I'd be buried." With their gamekeeper, coachman and an estate worker, they packed their best silver and porcelain into wooden crates.
They loaded them on to a horse-drawn cart and drove into the forest where they dug two deep holes. They lowered the crates into them and covered the area with leaves and branches. The count, who had hepatitis and was too weak to dig, recalled how they felt like "old-fashioned pirates". They wrapped each precious object in newspaper, and used stone hunting markers along the forest track as guides.
The silver was placed in one hole, the porcelain in the other. The count drew a map, determined to retrieve the treasure one day.
Five days later, he and his mother told the estate workers to grab their most precious possessions. They fled. Within 24 hours, the Soviet army arrived at Gorlsdorf. The building and its contents were quickly destroyed.
"My mother believed she'd come back after six months." He was sure it would take longer, but not 50 years. He kept the yellowing piece of paper with him wherever he went: it was all that was left of his heritage.
Gorlsdorf was expropriated by the Communists: after the war the forest became the private hunting ground of General Mielke, head of the Stasi, the East German secret service. The general regularly hunted over the land under which the treasure was buried.
Unification and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 made it possible for the count to return. He was told after lengthy negotiations that the land would not be handed back but that he could keep "portable things".
He finally returned to the estate in June 1995. He enlisted the help of Gregory Mills, a professional treasure hunter. The forest, mainly fir trees, had changed so much in half a century that they could not rely on the map.
The count's markings narrowed their search to a radius of 200 metres, but the treasure was some two metres below ground. With complex detecting equipment, they found the exact spot within 90 minutes. The count recalled how, as they started digging, "we heard a little click. That was the first plate."
Mr Mills said: "It was an emotional moment. His sister and nephew were with him. It was all that remained of their childhood."
The wooden crates had disintegrated and much of the porcelain had broken under the weight of sandy soil above it. But several hundred pieces remained intact, saved because they had been stacked vertically.
Some of the silver was covered in verdigris, a greenish coating caused by damp conditions, and bits of old newspaper that had attached itself to the items: all can be restored.
Mr Mills, European manager of Geophysical Survey Systems, specialises in finding archaeological treasure. The company manufactures radar systems for subsurface detection.
Rumours of buried treasure had long circulated among villagers near the estate. The count said: "I thought someone might have found it." But the three men who had helped to bury it kept their secret to the end. The count tried to trace his former staff but all three had died and he was unable to track down any of their relatives.
The Odiot silver service was ordered from Paris by Count Wilhelm von Redern, to celebrate his marriage to Hertha von Jenisch in 1834. Von Redern, a prominent figure in Berlin society of the day, was chamberlain to the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm IV.
The present count has kept a few items as "a souvenir". To clean a silver service of this size, he noted, "you must have servants".
Harry Charteris of Sotheby's said: "To find an Odiot service is a rare occurrence. To find one that has been buried for 50 years is incredible." It is expected to fetch about £65,000 in Geneva on May 13. It is inscribed with the von Redern family coat of arms. The remainder of the silver, mainly 19th-century household items has estimates ranging from £40 to £1,500, and will be sold in London on May 30.
The 19th-century Meissen porcelain includes one service of 134 pieces and another of 119 pieces. It will be auctioned in London on June 4. The proceeds will be divided between the heirs of Princess Victoria zu Lynar-Redern.
Janet Bush reports on efforts to resolve a crisis over funding that threatens to undermine aid in countries where help is most needed
London's Reform Club was an appropriate venue for a most unusual lunch. Representatives of the World Bank and Oxfam, sometimes bitter adversaries in the great debate about how best to help the world's poor, sat down as comrades to discuss a pressing issue of concern to both. The trigger for this recent rapprochement was the current crisis over the refinancing of the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank affiliate that gives concessionary financing to the poorest countries.
The major players met yesterday in Paris and appeared to be moving towards a compromise that will keep IDA alive for the time being. There is some optimism that the next three years of IDA funding will be agreed in time for the deadline in June, but initially it will be without America.
The monumental sticking point has been the head-to-head battle between President Clinton and Republican leaders in Congress over balancing the budget. Congress has already secured legislation that will cut bilateral assistance to sub-Saharan Africa by a third. President Clinton asked for $1.4 billion of IDA money, but has been knocked down to $700 million.
IDA donors work on a strict burden-sharing system, so the halving of what the US may be able to pledge has far-reaching consequences. Jim Wolfensohn, the former merchant banker who recently took over at the World Bank, said that if other donors followed the US lead, the IDA budget would be cut by $2.5 billion a crisis, he said, that could leave 78 of the pooret countries "on the ropes".
Yesterday, America agreed to pay its IDA arrears, but confirmed that it cannot return fully to the IDA funding fold until 1998 and, even then, will not be able to contribute as much as the World Bank had expected. Other donors are near to agreeing an emergency fund, which they hope to finalise in Tokyo next month, to tide IDA over for year one of its three-year programme.
However, in return for bailing out the US, other donors want more power within the World Bank. Later this month, the Bank's board will consider greater voting power to match higher contributions from Japan and South Korea. For long-time critics of the American dominance of the Bretton Woods institutions, this is a fascinating straw in the wind.
Japan, the Nordic countries and The Netherlands are all part of a groundswell among some of the more generous IDA donors wanting their relative generosity to be proportionately reflected in the allocation of power in the World Bank.
As the Republicans enforce fiscal prudence on their President, so the US may lose some of the power it has wielded on the institutions that police the world's financial system, as well as its top position in development financing, which it has used so effectively for strategic geo-political ends.
Even if the current mess in IDA is sorted out, there is a longer-term challenge to persuade donors to keep on supporting its concessional lending programme in view of deepening compassion fatigue among their electorates.
The mainstay of the World Bank's public relations job given that moral persuasion alone is less and less effective is that the IDA will eventually become self-financing. Because of re-flows from past borrowers and contributions out of the profits of the World Bank's International Bank of Reconstruction and Development, the 13 billion Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) requested for the last IDA funding financed a programme of 16 billion SDRs. This time around, the requested nine billion SDRs will finance a 15 billion programme.
Paula Donovan, Director for Finance Resources Mobilisation at the World Bank, said that, on very reasonable growth assumptions, IDA could ask for its last slice of funding in 2015. This may seem a long way off, but, in economic development terms, it is a very short time.
The success of IDA's work will be measured in recipients gradually standing on their own feet. China, for example, should leave IDA after the next three-year period. Concessional lending to India and even Bolivia should shade down. And the World Bank is increasing pressure on newly industrialised countries, recipients of past help from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, to use some of their newfound wealth to pay something back. As Ms Donovan puts it: "The shake-out is on."
Chile and Argentina are considering contributing. Botswana is already a shining example it has contributed one million SDRs to IDA, five times the proportion paid by the United States. Others such as Singapore are noticeably less willing. However, with industrialised countries facing ever greater competition from such new economic powerhouses, countries like Singapore are going to have to play a fuller part.
Ross Tieman assesses the outlook for Northern Ireland's nascent economic recovery
Peace brought a foretaste of prosperity to Northern Ireland: will a bomb-blast in London make revival stillborn? As insurance assessors crunch across the carpet of glass around South Quay, business leaders in Northern Ireland are casting an anxious eye over the far greater sums at risk there. Not that the physical fabric of factories and offices in the Province is so vulnerable. Behind their security fences and uniformed guards, most companies there are well-protected against terrorist outrages.
Rather, concern centres upon the nascent recovery in an economy stymied and distorted by 25 years of bloody-mindedness and television images of conflict beamed around the world. In the 17 months and 13 days since the provisional IRA announced its ceasefire, the economy of Northern Ireland has experienced an unprecedented growth surge.
Building upon an upsurge in confidence that developed slowly in the early 1990s, Northern Ireland has gradually begun to turn its work ethic, low wages, high skill levels, cheap housing and strong disposable income into something approaching a competitive advantage.
According to Baroness Denton, the Northern Ireland Economy Minister, the ceasefire enabled the Government to move economic development and the province's social needs up the policy agenda.
Unemployment, at 11.4 per cent, compares unfavourably with the mainland average of 8 per cent, but is an improvement on 17.4 per cent a decade ago. In spite of the slowdown in the mainland economy, the upswing in Ulster has shown no signs of flagging in recent months. Outmigration, a decades-long brain-drain, has given way to a net inward movement of population. Furthermore, in the year to September 30, manufacturing employment in Northern Ireland rose 4.8 per cent twice the rate of the UK as a whole.
The roots of resurgence are complex. Ulster's economy is out of balance. Subsidy has proved a poor substitute for enterprise the public sector makes up 38.9 per cent of GDP, up from 23.1 per cent when the Troubles began.
Northern Ireland largely escaped the industrial consolidation that traumatised Britain in the 1980s. As a result, the economy is overreliant on manufacturing and agriculture, and light on service industries and the knowledge-based jobs of tomorrow.
This industrial dependence is unhealthy. State incentives of £3.3 billion a year underpin industrial development. Few businessmen in Northern Ireland will contemplate developing a new product without first calling the Industrial Development Board to ask how much grant they can count on.
Yet, pump-priming manufacturing is yielding benefits. In the year to last March, the IDB negotiated 76 new projects with the claimed ability to create more than 4,000 jobs. Some £226 million was pledged in new investment projects. Since then, further pledges, particularly in the field of electronic components, have added a further 1,000 jobs to the tally.
High-profile manufacturing investment has helped to create a growing air of confidence. However, the most meaningful changes have happened in the shops, bars, hotels and restaurants. Mainland retailers, who had spurned Northern Ireland for decades, found themselves under pressure at home from intense competition and hostility to further out-of-town developments.
With the fear of being maimed removed, and fewer inconvenient security checks, shoppers have been flooding back to the stores in their droves. They can afford to. With the lowest housing costs in the UK, and pay levels often tied to national agreements, many families in Northern Ireland enjoy a buying power that would be the envy of their mainland counterparts.
Sainsbury was one of the first chains to wake up to this opportunity, announcing a £100 million programme to build seven stores across the province. Tesco and local retailers are following suit.
As shoppers flooded in from south of the border too, high street trade rose by up to 6 per cent a month. Habitat, Walt Disney and Monsoon announced plans to open stores.
Meanwhile, tourist arrivals have risen by 50 per cent. Demand for hotel rooms, increased by redevelopment conferences such as that attended last November by President Clinton, brought its own investment response from hoteliers. Hilton International, Holiday Inns and Raddison all want to build new hotels.
This is where any impact from a renewed cycle of violence will fall most immediately. The tide of tourist pounds, marks and dollars can be turned off like a tap.
But the real question mark hangs over its effect on the structural modernisation that is now belatedly under way. For the piecemeal privatisation of state-owned manufacturers, such as Short Brothers, the aerostructures and defence group, and Harland and Wolff, in shipbuilding, has begun a process of cultural change.This has been built upon by the break-up and sale of Northern Ireland's power generation and distribution sector, the sale of British Coal's distribution activities there, and the emerging influence of the Government's contracting out and private finance initiatives. The withdrawal of state interference, but not state subsidy, is providing opportunities for enrichment.
Roy McNulty, president of Short Brothers and chairman of the private-sector led Northern Ireland Growth Challenge, said: "There is a new energy in the business community. The great pity would be if that possibility were limited in its effect by a resurgence of the Troubles."
He believes that the structural reforms that are pushing local business to address many of its shortcomings and seek new markets overseas will continue. After all, the main threat to jobs at Shorts, Ulster's biggest private-sector employer, is not from violence, but from the collapse of a key customer Fokker, the Dutch aircraft maker.
But without the rapid jobs growth that has sprung from an upsurge in tourism and retailing, expanding the underdeveloped service sector, it is hard to see how the benefits of peace can be quickly shared among the people of Ulster. Without a sense of confidence, and rising personal prosperity and progress, it is not just the economic recovery that may be stillborn. Progress towards peace may itself be at risk.
THE National Trust is bidding for £11.35 million of National Lottery cash to mark the millennium by installing computer-based information systems at 30 of its most visited sites. The trust says the scheme will "revolutionise the way information is presented in the 21st century, dramatically improving the enjoyment, education and entertainment offered to visitors".
The trust will be competing for funds with the Countryside Commission, which unveiled plans yesterday to spend £67million buying blocks of land and creating 1,000 public open spaces, or "greens", by the turn of the century. It hopes National Lottery money will cover half the cost.
Richard Simmonds, chairman of the commission, which advises the Government on countryside and landscape matters, said: "Our objective is to provide local open spaces a green lung to communities which have none at present. The whole idea is very exciting."
The money would represent half the £22.7 million which the trust, and its sister organisation in Scotland, will need to start the project, A Thousand Threads.
The trust hopes to raise the rest of the money from the European Union, business partners and educational trusts and foundations. The aim is to use CD-Roms, virtual-reality and interactive multimedia displays to bring to life the history of properties.
A VALENTINE'S card via your bank a frightful idea thought up by Barclays Bank is available to customers for the first time this year.
Through the Internet, corporate lovers can select from a choice of four Valentine's cards, to be delivered by Barclays "anonymously" tomorrow.
JULIAN SHEFFIELD, whose Portals Group was taken over by De La Rue in 1995, is not losing touch with his roots at Laverstoke Estate, Hampshire. De La Rue acquired Laverstoke, and the Big House, in which Sheffield lived, during the Portals takeover, and is now in the process of selling the estate.
Sheffield is moving to a more modest residence near by, but without breaking all ties with Laverstoke with which he has had links since childhood. To keep his hand in down on the farm, Sheffield has bought part of Lot 7 the 280 acre Laverstoke Grange Farm, over which he can now wander.
WHAT a contrast. Last month, Sir Alan Hardcastle, chairman of Lloyd's regulatory board, had to unveil his regulatory plan in a stuck-away cubby-hole off a trading floor (City Diary, January 18). Yesterday, David Rowland, the council chairman, predictably unveiled his latest plan in a large airy room in the restored old building, in which all present could admire the plasterwork that's Lloyd's for you.
SMITH Barney Europe welcomed John Quaile and Bronwen Thomas with a Mexican wave yesterday to lead its new Latin American team. Unlike Thomas, who hails from Mexico's Groupo Financiero Inverlat, Quaile is in foreign territory after a stint at the Canadian investment broker CIBC Wood Gundy. Quaile had a week off to learn Spanish, but says he knows only one phrase: "I live in a small village in the outskirts of Guildford."
IF YOU think Britain has a bad case of fat cats, consider Gerald Levin, chairman of Time Warner, the US entertainment group, who once majored in Bible Studies at a Quaker university in Pennsylvania.
Levin has been busy increasing the size of his company's opulent villa in Acapulco, including the addition of an indoor tennis court. He then spent $23,000 on tennis sneakers for guests who forget to bring their own, and has also added two corporate jets to the company fleet.
During his three-year reign, Time Warner has spent $250 million on redundancy payments, including a handy $60 million to Robert Morgado, one-time head of Warner Music, and $53 million to Doug Morris, his successor. Morris was succeeded by Michael Fuchs, who was shown the door recently and is likely to walk away with about $70 million. And what would Levin himself get if and when he is asked to leave? About $100 million.
TWO undergraduates have been attacked with baseball bats in the latest of a series of assaults on students at Cambridge University. The incident highlighted a rift among academics over proposals to install mock Victorian lampposts in the historic Backs area, behind Trinity College.
The attack, on two male students in their early 20s, happened a few hours after fellows refused to support a campaign to light the area. Some said the 13 lights would spoil the Backs, a conservation area which has remained virtually unchanged for more than a century, but yesterday they were accused of living in ivory towers.
The students' union said undergraduates were too frightened to use the path from the main college to new living quarters because they had been the target of stalkers and gangs of locals youths who resent them.
The students' union said a group of fellows had orchestrated moves against the lights, which led to Cambridge City Council's planning committee refusing the application. Ashleigh Williamson, the retiring president of Trinity College students' union, said: "A minority of fellows who live in nice safe rooms in the central college and drive cars are behind this. They are more concerned about what tourists think than the safety of students.
"Students at Cambridge are particularly susceptible to attack by gangs because of the ‘town and gown' resentment which unfortunately still exists among local youths."
TWO leading cancer charities both claimed yesterday to have launched Britain's first charity sun lotion.
The Cancer Research Campaign described its factor-20 sun protection lotion as a "British first". The Imperial Cancer Research Fund said that its four lotions, a stick and a moisturiser, all using the new Sun Safe label, made it "the first UK charity to develop its own range of sun-care products".
The rivalry means that holidaymakers this summer will be spoilt by a choice of charitable options. Profits on the products will go to research. Both labels give medical tips on skin care and each charity said it had been helped by Boots the Chemist.
The Cancer Research Campaign assembled an impressive array of champions to endorse its lotion: two professors, a doctor, an Australian advertising man (to talk about skin-cancer campaigns) and the buying and marketing controller for beauty and personal care at Boots the Chemist. Merv Hughes, the Australian cricketer, appeared in a promotional video.
The Imperial Cancer Research Fund issued a statement quoting two doctors, a knight and a retail expert.
There is little to choose between the products on price. The Cancer Research Campaign has only one, called the "Cancer Research Campaign Sun Protection Lotion", which will sell at £7.99 for 200ml and £11.49 for 400ml. It has a sun-protection factor of 20 (allowing sunbathers to stay in the sun for 20 times as long as without the cream), comes in plain blue bottles and has been launched without any advertising.
The lotion was originally developed by the Australian Cancer Society of Victoria and has been made in Britain by Standard Soap of Skelmersdale, Lancashire. The Imperial Cancer Research Fund has a range of products marketed under the label "Sun Safe". They have white labels, contrasting with the usual browns or oranges preferred by makers of sun creams.
The fund's "daily sun cover", offering a protection factor of 15, costs £8.95 for 250ml and £12.99 for 500ml. There is a factor-25 sunblock for children, costing £9.49 for 250ml, a £5.99 factor-25 stick and a moisturiser or "daily cooler" costing £4.99 for 250ml. The products are made by Boots Manufacturing and contain soybean oil.
Both charities are copying the tactics of the Australian Cancer Society, which has boosted funds by gaining 25 per cent of the Australian sun-lotion market.
The Cancer Research Campaign's lotion will be on sale from the middle of March while consumers will have to wait until April 1 to try the Imperial Cancer Research Fund's range.
Ever since the start of 1995, when the Dow Jones industrial average hit 4,000 and professional investors started worrying about a crash on Wall Street, I have been firmly bullish about the American stock market. The question now, as the Dow soars towards 6,000, is whether the professionals might belatedly be proved right. Is it finally time to get out?
My answer is that Wall Street could now be a "sell" for short-term traders, but long-term investors should stay in the market. After gains of the kind we have seen in the past two months, a longish period of consolidation should be expected. Predictions of 6,000 on the Dow by the summer are unlikely to be realised. But it seems even more unlikely that the US market will peak and move into a long-term downturn from anywhere near the present level of 5,500 on the Dow.
Why do I believe this when so much of the "smart money", especially in London and Edinburgh, is betting that Wall Street will plunge?
In part, my answer lies in simple contrarian thinking. If institutions consistently say that Wall Street will be the world's worst performing market (as they have every month since January 1995, according to the Merrill Lynch/Gallup poll) then there is plenty of sceptical money ready to be sucked into the market.
Consider the position of the British pension funds, which, as Peter Lilley reminded us last week, have more money invested than all pension funds in the rest of Europe put together. British institutions have been consistent sellers of American shares throughout the bull market.
So confident were the City's fund managers that there would be a collapse on Wall Street, that they did something they do only rarely and with the greatest trepidation: they defied the portfolio diversification models which suggest that investments should be spread around the world in proportion to the size of stock markets or gross domestic product. In fact, according to some calculations, British pension funds now have less money invested in the US (GDP: $7,000 billion) than they have in Hong Kong (GDP: $110 billion).
Britain's enormous and costly short position in Wall Street will eventually have to be covered. At some point, British institutions (and other sceptical foreigners) will turn into huge buyers of US stocks.
Further reasons for confidence in Wall Street are provided by the reasons that foreign investors give for their scepticism about the US. Foreigners insist, for example, that Wall Street is now ridiculously overvalued because the dividend yield on the Standard & Poor's 500 has fallen to a record low of 2.2 per cent. They seem to forget that dividend yields have become irrelevant in America, where the tax and regulatory regime encourages companies to keep dividends down and distribute money through stock buybacks and takeover bids.
Looking at price-earnings ratios, instead of yields, it is clear that valuations are still below the levels typically seen at major market tops. Today's price-earnings ratio of 18.7 on the S&P 500, for example, compares with PEs of 23 before the crash of 1987 and 20 to 21 at the major tops of the 1950-73 bull market.
There is also a widespread belief that share prices always start falling as soon as long-term interest rates rise. Yet, this is untrue. Even assuming that the US bond yields have now hit bottom (which seems probable), experience suggests that the equity bull market could run for another six or nine months.
Finally, there are the fundamental reasons for being bullish about Wall Street. American companies have recovered their global leadership, the dollar is undervalued and macroeconomic policy in America is far sounder than in either Europe or Japan. Of course a point will come when these benefits are more than discounted in excessive prices.
But can anyone seriously argue that Wall Street at 5,600 is a riskier long-term investment than Tokyo on a PE of 70, or Hong Kong, on the eve of the takeover by China? I can't, but the actuaries of Edinburgh and London apparently can.
Cunard has not yet announced its millennium plans for the QE2 (report, February 8), and the American-based Millennium Society has no booking with Cunard.
Although the Law Society has had problems with a new computer system (report, February 7) all solicitors' practising certificates remain valid, and applications from those seeking a first certificate are being processed by hand. We accept that the Law Society is not in breach of its statutory responsibilities.
It was Sir Frank Fraser Darling, the British scientist, who drew attention in 1969 to the possibility of deforestation and fuel emissions melting the polar ice caps (article, February 5).
Rank Organisation finished 8p up at 473p, excited by talk of a possible link-up with Time Warner, the US media and leisure group.
Its Warner Bros subsidiary will today announce a £225 million investment in the British leisure and entertainment sector, linking up with a leading UK media and leisure company.
LEADING independent schools have ruled out random drug tests but a growing number are introducing regular urine tests as a condition of readmitting known users.
Guidance sent to the 240 schools in the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference also suggests that pupils caught with cannabis should be given a second chance. The advice was drawn up by a committee of the conference. Its 240 schools include Eton College, Millfield in Somerset and Wellington College, Berkshire, which all expelled pupils last year in drugs incidents. Keith Dawson, headmaster of The Haberdashers' Aske's School in Hertfordshire and chairman of the committee, said that boarding schools were more likely to introduce testing as part of a rehabilitation regime agreed with parents and the pupil.
"We know drug-taking is part of youth culture. I think people will move away from the first frozen response into saying we must understand it and do something more positive," he said. "Drugs-testing will be used to support people who want to move out of drugs. It would never be used randomly, which would be wrong morally and probably legally."
Research at Exeter University last summer among 50,000 teenagers showed that a third of boys aged 15 and 16 and more than a quarter of girls in that age group had tried cannabis. Amphetamines or "speed" had been tried by 11.2 per cent of the boys and 9.5 per cent of the girls. Two school years earlier, one in ten children aged 13 and 14 had tried cannabis.
Sevenoaks School, Kent, readmitted nine senior pupils suspended for drug-taking provided that they took urine tests ranging from twice a week to once a month. None of the pupils, who left last summer, tested positive.
A growing number of schools are writing a drugs-test clause into their contract with parents so that they can ask a student to undergo analysis if there are well-founded suspicions.
In the past 12 months Eton expelled a boy and suspended another for possessing Ecstasy and four sixth-formers were arrested in March after one was found with cannabis. Last summer, three boys were expelled from Wellington College, four were suspended from Westminster School, London, and two were expelled from Millfield. Three were expelled and 19 disciplined at Pangbourne College, Reading.
STANDARD LIFE's vocal opposition to Farnell's bid for Premier tells a cautionary tale about shareholder activism. Those who hoped that institutions would use their block votes to support ethics may end up disillusioned. Having found their voice, some fund managers want a bigger role in running UK plc, not confined to sermons about salaries.
In simple terms, fund managers at the Standard believe that Farnell is paying too much for Premier. They fear that savings available from merging the businesses will be lost on day one to the shareholders of Premier. Interest cover will fall, making Farnell more risky and the large equity issue will put earnings per share on a treadmill, running fast but standing still for at least a year.
The initial dilution is acknowledged by Farnell and the core of the problem is whether the management can be trusted to deliver the promised long-term gains. Standard is quick to declare its support for the board (how could it say otherwise, having amassed 2 per cent of the shares) but refuses to shut up and sell.
Standard would pay dearly selling shares today, because of the depressing effect of the rights issue. More interesting is its decision to take its argument with the company public. Standard has already sent a round robin letter to chairmen on corporate governance issues but initiating a row over strategy indicates which issue is more important to the institution. Standard has effectively said that Farnell's bosses are wrong on the biggest issue facing them and the company. Having taken that view, Standard should not meddle in the bid for Premier. It should ask for the Farnell board to go.
The suggestion that Donald Trump might be interested in building casinos in Ebbsfleet, Blue Circle's new town project, has excited the market, adding 13p to the company's shares. A curious reaction given the Donald's volatile financial track record.
Development of Blue Circle's 400 acres of land in north Kent has been mooted for many years, but last month the company applied for planning permission to develop 175 acres around the Channel tunnel rail link station. Even in its imagined ghastliness, a Trump Town in North Kent seems more plausible than Disneyland in Paris, but Blue Circle's plans for Ebbsfleet could take 20 years to realise, no reason to chase the shares.
RUMOURS that Allied Domecq is heading for a break-up ought to raise questions not only about Allied but about companies whose strategy is to acquire and develop brands. Big branded drinks companies have been a pretty poor investment over the past five years. Shares in Guinness, Grand Metropolitan and Allied Domecq have all significantly underperformed the all-share index over the period and there are few brokers willing to bet that they are set for a period of outperformance.
That in itself is curious given the prognosis of slower economic growth. Consumer and household brands are thought to be good bets in a recession because of their sales resilience at a time of lower spending. However, two worries are beginning to erode investor confidence in such companies.
In parts of the developed world own-label products are gaining acceptance as inexpensive proxies for well-known consumer brands. Cheaper generic drinks cannot entirely displace leading brands but the competition can erode prices and market share, leading to loss of margin and profit.
Growing consumer scepticism towards the price premium demanded by brand manufacturers reflects investor suspicion of the economics of the business. Maintaining brand leadership requires continuing investment in promoting the product. The question for investors is whether the money spent on promotion is a genuine investment in sales growth or merely covers depreciation of the goodwill attaching to the trademark. Most brands lack the international clout of Coca-Cola or Guinness and even the most successful companies own a long tail of indifferent products. Sometimes sitting proudly in the books as a prop to the company's balance sheet, these brands will never justify the expense of their acquisition.
FOUR kittens born inside a nuclear power plant are looking for homes after being cleansed of heavy doses of radiation.
Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Neutron were born after their mother crept under barbed wire fences and evaded infra-red beams to seek privacy at San Onofre nuclear power station on the Californian coast.
Despite a rigorous pest-control programme, the four black kittens roamed the plant undetected for three weeks. Engineers then found them by a defunct reactor, and tried to carry them to freedom without notifying plant officials.
The plan foundered when alarm bells rang at the decontamination monitors through which all workers must pass every day. Geiger counters registered high levels of radioactive caesium and cobalt in the kittens' fur. They were surrendered to specialists who washed them, tested their secretions and gave warning that they might never be completely radiation-free.
Although they were exposed to the equivalent of six X-rays, the kittens showed no ill-effects. On Sunday officials said they would probably be free to leave the plant within 65 days, prompting bids from would-be owners throughout America.
BRYANT provided no nasty surprises in yesterday's half-year results, but the company was able to offer little to dispel the gloom that has engulfed its share price.
Even by the recent fairly dismal standards of housing company results, Bryant's performance was poor. Rivals such as Berkeley Group have suffered from the dull market but have dealt with the challenge in a more enterprising manner. Bryant's excuses included an increase in building costs, a problem that should have been addressed late last year.
Sir Colin Hope, the chairman, attempted to inject some optimism into Bryant's current trading position, but the trading levels talked about were less than those of early 1995, when companies briefly believed that the elusive homebuyer was back in the market.
There is also a worry that Bryant is loaded with land bought expensively a few years ago, although the company vigorously denies this accusation. The expensive land holdings and gearing, that, despite a reduction from 29 to 21 per cent, remains too high for flexibility has led some to suggest the company could even be facing more serious problems.
This seems far-fetched, but it will take at least two to three years before Bryant really recovers. Expected full-year profits of £24.5 million place the shares on an expensive multiple of 18. Bryant is not a secure home for your money at present.
A HEADMASTER warned parents yesterday to keep their children away from rave parties after a schoolboy was left in a serious condition when his lemonade was spiked with drugs. Neville Tate, headmaster of Yarm School, Cleveland, told parents that allowing their children to go to raves could result in death.
More youngsters are expected to attend events over the next few days at the Hardwick Hall Hotel in Sedgefield, Co Durham, where James Fountain, 16, had a drink laced at a party ten days ago.
He is in a serious condition in a psychiatric unit, semi-conscious, unable to recognise his parents or hold a conversation for more than five seconds. Scientists have yet to determine what was put in his drink. Tests have confirmed that the substance was not heroin, amphetamines or opiates but it will be some time before more complex tests can determine whether it was Ecstasy or LSD.
Mr Tate wrote to the parents of his 500 senior pupils, accusing the party's organisers of negligence. "The occasion was not private and was run wholly without appropriate supervision or effective control," he wrote. "As a consequence of this negligence some very undesirable people gained admission and it appears one of them may have slipped a powerful drug into a drink which James consumed.
"I understand that further dances in a similar vein are scheduled to take place at the same venue. Doubtless you will wish to give serious thought to the suitability of these dances as far as your son is concerned.
"It appears that little or nothing was done to comply with the law on under-age drinking and Yarm and other schools whose pupils were present will be encouraging the police and the licensing authorities to look closely into this and other aspects of the hotel's conduct." A police raid on the hotel last Friday resulted in the seizure of cannabis, Ecstasy, steroids and syringes, as well as CS spray, a knuckle-duster and an imitation firearm. Three men in their 20s and three 16-year-olds were detained and later released on police bail until next month. Staff at the hotel declined to comment, nor would its owner, Ramside Estates of Durham.
Police said that the youth, from Hartlepool, Cleveland, had, in effect, been on "a week-long trip" and doctors were fearful that he might never recover fully. Police believe that he had been targeted by drug pushers at the party after he either confronted them or warned fellow pupils to keep away from the dealers.
His parents have told police that their son was vociferous in condemning the use of drugs.
About 300 teenagers from independent schools all over the North East paid £6 each to get into the party, organised by a sixth-former from Barnard Castle, a public school in the region. The youth was questioned by detectives last week.
Several pupils from public schools are known to make a substantial profit by organising such events. They start at about 7.30pm and finish before midnight. A DJ is hired to provide dance music and, although alcohol is not provided, the venues all have licensed bars. Publicity is circulated within the public school network but tickets are often also sold on the door.
The youth's parents, Christopher and Barbara Fountain, thought their son was drunk when friends took him home from the party. The next morning they realised it was not alcohol and took James to their GP. He was taken to Hartlepool General Hospital and transferred to the specialist psychiatric unit at St Luke's Hospital, Middlesbrough. His parents have been at his bedside ever since.
EVIDENCE of a significant slowdown in factory gate prices and another firm start to trading on Wall Street enabled share prices in London to shake off some of their recent lethargy.
The FT-SE 100 index suffered an early fall of almost 20 points, reflecting the remnants of a sizeable sell programme, believed to have been carried out late on Friday by BZW and overnight weakness on world bond markets. But the drop in factory gate prices and an opening leap of almost 50 points in the Dow Jones industrial average on Wall Street saw it claw its way back to end the session 10.3 points up at 3,726.6. Trading conditions were described as thin, with just 648 million shares changing hands by the close.
The market took the fallout from Friday's Isle of Dogs bomb outrage in its stride, although a few companies were undermined by events. The political consequences of the subsequent breakdown of the ceasefire left Northern Ireland Electricity nursing a fall of 16p at 410p. But there were other factors at play: NIE also had to contend with the shares going ex the 5p dividend. Charterhouse Tilney, the Liverpool broker, also changed its recommendation on the shares from a "buy" to a "sell". Other companies to be hit included hoteliers, with Granada down 12p at 712p, and Greenalls 3p at 574p.
MAI fell 10p to 425p, with still no sign of the suggested bid from Carlton Communications, 2p firmer at £10.36. News of last week's proposed merger between MAI and United News & Media has been attracting growing opposition from fund managers. At least one is said to be urging Carlton to step in and make an offer for MAI.
Mercury Asset Management yesterday sold a total of 870,000 shares in MAI at prices ranging from 430p to 442p. Last Friday, it unloaded 8.3 million shares. It now accounts for 5.98 per cent of MAI. United News & Media, publisher of the Daily Express, finished 11p lower at 634p.
Blue Circle Industries was a firm market, climbing 13p to 358p, with traders excited by plans for the group to build a new town at Ebbsfleet in north Kent, which lies close to the passenger station proposed for the high-speed Channel Tunnel rail link.
Argyll, the Safeway supermarket chain, firmed 3p to 320p ahead of today's trading statement, which is expected to make positive reading for brokers.
Reuters also rose 13p to 644p ahead of figures. Revenue growth is expected to show signs of decline, but brokers are hoping that the company will announce proposals to buy back its own shares using some of the £800 million cash it is currently sitting on.
British Aerospace dropped 16p to 828p on talk that at least one broker was recommending that clients switch into Rolls-Royce, up 6p at 212p.
Bryant Group, the housebuilder, closed unchanged at 106p after seeing pre-tax profits more than halved to £10.1 million. Sir Colin Hope, chairman, blamed the setback on a distinct lack of purchaser confidence. He was more optimistic about prospects than he has been for some time.
Manchester United continued to draw strength from the news of last week's £40 million sponsorship deal with Umbro, the sportswear supplier, with the shares rising 5p to 234p. It dwarfs a previous £23 million contract clinched by Liverpool with Reebok, another sportswear supplier, and focused attention on Tottenham Hotspur, the Premier League side. Shares of the north London club surged 11p to 269p, with Vinay Bedi, at Wise Speke, the Newcastle broker, saying: "Tottenham may feel encouraged to take another look at its current contracts with Pony and Hewlett Packard."
Brokers say that the government inquiry into BSkyB's exclusive sports screening contracts with the Football Association and the Premiership could eventually see the clubs negotiating their own deals.
Farnell Electronics slipped 10p to 639p as it continued to urge institutional shareholders to support its £1.8 billion takeover of Premier Industrial in the US. The bid is being opposed by both Standard Life and Legal & General, but Farnell says three of its four biggest shareholders, accounting for 24 per cent of the company, have already offered their backing. The Prudential, with 5.5 per cent of Farnell, has still to decide which way to vote.
Amersham International, the diagnostics specialist, celebrated US Food and Drug Administration approval for one of its products with a rise of 15p to 850p. It has been given assent for Myoview, its radiopharmaceutical agent for heart imaging. Brokers say the world market for Myoview is worth about £250 million, with the US alone worth £140 million.
Tepnel Life Sciences touched 90p, at which point the group announced that it knew of no reason for the recent rise in the share price which saw it more than double in value last week. It ended the session 4p lower at 70p.
Gilt-Edged: Prices in London clawed back early losses, prompted by overnight setbacks for US Treasury bonds and German bunds.
Trading, however, remained thin, with investors adopting a cautious stance in the run-up to this week's Bank of England report on inflation, the RPI and publication of the Scott Report into the arms for Iraq affair.
In the futures pit, the March series of the long gilt finished all-square at £109 as a total of 36,000 contracts were completed.
Among conventional issues, Treasury 8 per cent 2013 finished a tick lighter at £100 9/16, while at the shorter end, Treasury 8 per cent 2000 was a tick firmer at £104 13/32.
NEW YORK: Shares on Wall Street made strong gains once again, the Dow Jones industrial average surging through 5,600 for the first time to 5,616. It closed at 5,600.15, up 58.53 points.
ECSTASY users risked irreversible damage to the brain, heart and liver, according to research published today. Doctors in Sheffield studied tissues and organs of seven men aged between 20 and 25 who died from taking Ecstasy and a similar drug.
All of their livers had undergone dramatic changes, ranging from large areas of dead tissue to jaundice. Five of the men had similar damage to the heart. Three had swelling, internal bleeding and damaged neurones in the brain. Changes seen in body tissues may have been caused by the toxic effects of Ecstasy. "The short-term risks of Ecstasy use are becoming increasingly more apparent and questions must be asked about the long-term effects on the brain, liver and heart, considering the pathology in those who die," a report in the Journal of Clinical Pathology says.
Doctors from Sheffield University and the city's Royal Hallamshire Hospital say in the report that they estimate more than 500,000 people use Ecstasy in Britain each week. The mixture of materials used to make tablets increased "the possibility of toxic contaminants".
TWO young girls at the centre of a custody battle have been ordered to return to their father in France, despite their pleas to stay in Scotland with their mother and younger brother.
Fiona Cameron, 36, who has been ordered to return her daughters Rachael, 7, and Sasha, 5, to their father, Robert Cameron, 41, near Bordeaux in a fortnight, said she was "devastated" by the ruling. She said Rachael had been crying herself to sleep at night with the worry of the case. Yesterday, Lord Hamilton, sitting at the Court of Session in Edinburgh, ruled in favour of Mr Cameron, an archaeologist, and ordered the girls' return to France. Last July the same judge ruled in favour of the mother.
The Court of Session heard that the two girls wanted to stay with their mother and brother, Hamish, 3, in Portmahomack, Highland. Rachael said: "I want to stay because I love my pony Snowdrop so much. I love my teacher and my school." She said she had forgotten most of her French and found the language difficult at school. Her mother claimed the children had lived in France for a total of only three months. Mrs Cameron said they would be in an "intolerable situation" if they were forced to return and that they would suffer psychological harm.
Yesterday, after hearing she had lost her case, Mrs Cameron said: "I can't believe that any legal system would want to separate two sisters from their brother. They are devoted to each other." She will consult her solicitor in the next few days to see if there is any further action which can be taken. "I am dreading going to court using a language I don't understand in a country I don't live in to decide the future of children born in Scotland," she said.
Lord Hamilton pointed out that Mr Cameron was prepared to move out of his home in France and live near by so that the children and their mother could live in the house.
A MANAGEMENT team has triumphed in the race to acquire the downstream interests of British Alcan for £200 million.
British Aluminium, a newly formed company backed by institutional investors, is acquiring 12 businesses from Alcan, boasting annual sales in excess of £500 million and profits of more than £25 million. The company will be based in Manchester and will employ about 4,200 people.
The businesses being acquired include Baco Consumer Products, manufacturer of Bacofoil household foil, clingfilm and wrapping products, with operations in Amersham and Huddersfield.
It also owns Luxfer Gas Cylinders, the manufacturer of high-pressure gas cylinders, with UK operations in Nottingham and Aldridge, West Midlands, and in the US in California and North Carolina. Baco Metal Centres, another subsidiary, is the largest aluminium distributor in Britain.
A total of £265 million has been raised for the transaction, allowing scope for new investment and growth. Institutional investors in British Aluminium include Mercury Development Capital, CVC Capital Partners and Morgan Grenfell Development Capital.
The management team will also have a stake in the business.
The chairman of British Aluminium will be Jeff Whalley, the chairman of FKI, who will work on a part-time basis with Ian MacKinnon, chief executive, and Brian Purves, financial director.
Mr McKinnon was formerly a member of British Alcan's management team from 1991, when he was recruited to manage the speciality and aerospace division. He left during 1994 to assemble the management buyout. He is a former managing director of Leyland Bus.
Mr Purves is currently a member of the Rover Group executive committee and has held senior finance positions at Land Rover, at Rover's commercial division and at Rover Group headquarters.
At FKI, Mr Whalley has presided over the company's increase in value from £250 million to £950 million since the demerger of FKI Babcock in 1991.
The businesses are being acquired from Alcan Aluminium, the Canadian parent of British Alcan. British Alcan will continue to be the UK's largest producer of primary aluminium, rolled aluminium products and alumina chemicals.
Its activities will comprise Alcan Smelting & Power UK, based in Newcastle, which operates primary aluminium smelters with a combined capacity of 179,000 tonnes a year; Alcan Rolled Products UK; Alcan Recycling and Alcan Chemicals Europe.
BRYANT, the housebuilder, revealed yesterday that half-year profits had halved to £10.1 million as the industry continues to suffer from poor consumer confidence.
Shares fell a further 1.5p to 104.5p, but later recovered to close unchanged at 106p.
Sir Colin Hope, the chairman, expressed cautious optimism for the rest of the year: "The prospects for the housing market in 1996 are showing signs of gradual improvement as purchaser confidence responds to reductions in personal taxation and interest rates."
Overall turnover fell 5 per cent to £232 million for the six months to November 30. The homes division experienced a fall in reservations of 20 per cent and completions dropped 12 per cent to 1,530. But Bryant said that all the homes divisions, apart from County Homes, made an operating profit while the construction division maintained profits at £1.1 million.
The company increased the average house selling price to £114,000, from £106,000 last year, largely owing to a concentration on more expensive sales. But operating margins fell by 6 per cent as build costs increased. The company's land bank was reduced from 9,700 to 9,000 plots. The company added that it was now concentrating on negotiating options to purchase land.
Bryant revealed that it had made a £500,000 provision to cover 80 redundancies announced last autumn, and had negotiated a number of reductions in build costs, which combined with a decrease in overheads would enable the company to boost operating margins.
The dividend was maintained at 1.45p payable on April 24.
THE fate of Farnell's £1.8 billion bid for Premier was balanced on a knife edge last night as the leading institutional shareholders finalised their positions for today's vote.
Attention centred on the Prudential fund management division, which controls 6 per cent of the voting rights. Prudential was believed to be concerned about the cost of the deal but last night refused to comment on which way it would vote at today's extraordinary meeting.
Prudential's position is crucial because Farnell needs 75 per cent of the vote to proceed; it claims the support of about 24 per cent of shareholders. Farnell's share price fell 10p to 639p.
THE European Court of Human Rights is to examine an appeal by Ernest Saunders, former chief executive of Guinness, that he was denied a fair hearing in his trial on fraud charges. The hearing takes place on February 19.
In May 1987, Saunders was charged with false accounting, theft and the destruction of documents. The charges related to the 1986 takeover of Distillers by Guinness. The Serious Fraud Office accused Guinness of artificially inflating its share price during the takeover battle.
In August 1990, Saunders was convicted and sentenced to five years in jail. Three prominent businessmen were also convicted Gerald Ronson, chairman of Heron International, which took part in the share-buying operation; Anthony Parnes, a trader; and Sir Jack Lyons, who acted as a management consultant to Guinness. They have always maintained the share operations were common practice and therefore could not be classified as a crime.
In May 1991, the Court of Appeal upheld the judgment against Saunders on all but one count but cut his jail term to two and a half years.
The conviction was upheld again last November when the Court of Appeal was asked to reconsider the case in the light of new evidence.
Saunders's new appeal centres on the use at this trial of statements he made to Department of Trade and Industry inspectors. He claims the use of the incriminating statements he was required by law to answer DTI questions or face jail for contempt breached an article of the European Convention on Human Rights relating to a fair trial.
THIS must be the last time. After failing to merge with Scottish accountants (twice), public sector accountants and now management accountants, English chartered accountants should admit that they are not the marrying type.
A single voice for accountants might be nice, but Babel is more fun. Others may merge. If the English ICA is to grow, it should do so by competing openly with its rivals.
LLOYD'S "final" offer to disgruntled names may be no more final than last time.
But some variation on the detailed plan unveiled yesterday seems likely to pass muster in the summer, despite the instant chorus of disapproval. The scheme is clearly flawed, and inevitably more pragmatic than just. Lloyd's Council could still use its long-discredited discretion to deny aid to shirty outside names and to professionals nominally responsible to the disciplinary board. But Lloyd's David Rowland has one powerful force going for him. Most people concerned have grown so battle weary that they want the issue to be over and done with.
At least the new plan would achieve that. All past liabilities can be quantified and dealt with, and names can finally end their sentence in the insurance market. Just as vital, liabilities to be reinsured with Equitas will be capped at £100,000 new money on the basis of a £2.8 billion kitty.
Otherwise, 9,000 names might have to pay more and 2,000 might be down for £400,000. Capping will take about £1.2 billion, against £800 million reserved for litigants. The cap could come down, and more be set aside for litigants, if auditors, brokers and managing agents stump up the extra that will be needed if thousands successful in the courts are to back the settlement instead.
When insiders do their sums, they may find that many names do not care if the plan lapses, Lloyd's fails its solvency test and has to shut up shop. Extra should therefore be forthcoming.
WHAT is the point, beleaguered company boards might reasonably ask? According to Scottish Amicable Investment Managers, who also manage £2 billion of other people's money, takeover bids should normally be accepted and it would be great for shareholders if there were more of them.
Analysis of 15 companies that actively fought off bids in recent years, rather than surviving by grace of the competition authorities, shows that most went on to underperform the market average.
"History suggests that shareholders are better to accept the offer on the table and reinvest the proceeds in the stock market," the Glasgow manager argues.
In case potential bidders have not received the invitation, it is spelt out loud and clear. "Time is ripe for success in gaining control of underperforming assets. Institutional shareholders are becoming increasingly reluctant to back incumbent management as they are being forced to deliver short-term investment performance for their clients." Competition invites fund managers to take any bid premium going, often by selling in the market, regardless of the long-term consequences. So why not make that bid now.
Bigger fish than Scottish Amicable adopt this strategy, though they are more coy about it. It is not surprising that escapees underperformed the market by an average 12 per cent in the first twelve months.
The bid brings forward potential share price growth. Far more telling is that 10 out of 13 were underperforming after three years. As Douglas Ferrans of Scottish Amicable notes, aggressors usually have the upper hand. "The defender has to make some pretty bold promises and often fails to deliver".
There are big exceptions, such as Racal and Dixons, whose independence rewarded investors. And if the institutions unthinkingly backed bidders, bid terms would soon slide lower. So a tactical veil will cloak fund managers' eagerness. But anyone framing public policy on takeovers should realise that a simplistic principle that all premiums should be cashed to boost short-term performance is all that can be expected from institutional shareholders.
THE $7.5 billion takeover deal between Time Warner and Ted Turner's cable television network could be in jeopardy and the future of Gerald Levin, Time's chairman, has been thrown into doubt.
The deal faces strong opposition from the powerful Federal Trade Commission (FTC), whose approval is needed for the takeover to go ahead. The FTC believes the deal has "manifold problems" which could prove too complex to iron out. If the deal went through it would create the world's largest entertainment group, worth $20 billion.
Meanwhile, a devastating 15-page article in New Yorker magazine, written by Connie Bruck, who is an authority on Time Warner, details a series of blunders by Gerald Levin in negotiating the deal which substantially raised its cost to Time's shareholders. For example, it is alleged, he failed to notify Telecommunications Inc, Time's largest shareholder, before announcing the takeover, allowing TCI to demand cheap access to the Turner network, and a series of other "sweetheart" deals as the price for not blocking the takeover.
News of the deal sparked intense boardroom in-fighting that could have spelt disaster for Levin if the co-chairmen of Warner Bros, Bob Daly and Terry Semel, had carried out a threat to resign. Levin bought them off with extra compensation of $150 million and sacked Michael Fuchs, the head of Warner Musica and their arch-rival, who is likely to get a pay-off of about $70 million.
Outmanoeuvred at every turn, with feuding executives increasingly unhappy shareholders, and a growing reputation for profligacy, Mr Levin's "eventual forced exit seems likely", the article says.
Its conclusion intensifies speculation that Mr Levin's departure is inevitable whether or not the Turner deal goes through.
Many observers believe that Mr Turner, who is to become Time's deputy chairman, will oust Mr Levin at the earliest opportunity if his company is taken over. However, if the deal collapses, Mr Levin is likely to be ejected by his shareholders.
SIR Alastair Morton could not have been more vehement yesterday in insisting that the appointment of distinguished mediators to sort out Eurotunnel's financial problems was a harmless, potentially helpful French novelty rather than the first step on the shuttle to insolvency. Others may be forgiven if they do not share his insouciance. Under French law, a company's auditors are obliged to report to the President of the Tribunal de Commerce in Paris if they fear imminent bankruptcy. The President sends in mediators to try to sort out a rescue deal and give the company some breathing space from its creditors.
If this is not quite Chapitre Onze, it is something perilously close to it. The two mediators announced yesterday are undoubted heavyweights. They also share the advantage of having no direct personal involvement in the Eurotunnel farrago, although Lord Wakeham was a member of the Cabinet that gave its blessing to a 100 per cent privately financed Channel Tunnel in the mid-1980s. But the Vance-Owen plan was a product of the good offices of heavyweight outsiders too.
The mediators' task is to persuade 225 banks not just to keep Eurotunnel afloat but to allow it enough buoyancy to retain the hope that shareholders might receive some dividend before the company's concession runs out. This will stretch even Lord Wakeham's legendary skills at political infighting and establishment manipulation. But politicians are certainly the right people for the job. Robert Badinter, Wakeham's French confrere, may be the key figure in using continental culture to resolve what raw Anglo-Saxon business methods cannot.
If Eurotunnel survives, it will do so because the French Establishment does not want 620,000 citizen shareholders to be left with nothing. This would not aid privatisation in France, which has got off to a shaky start. And disgruntled Frenchmen have a tendency to cause trouble, for instance by refusing any scheme drawn up by banks.
The smaller number of UK shareholders, again overwhelmingly private investors, are probably more sanguine. Most may now reckon their travel concessions are the main thing worth preserving. In many cases they will be worth more than the shares, which do not reflect the value of untransferable perks. For these to be preserved, it is only necessary that the company does not go into liquidation and the shares continue to exist. The board must therefore make sure they are not bargained away.
Were it not for the political dimension, banks might well do a Canary Wharf, foreclosing and taking control of the equity. It is still possible that banks representing more than two thirds of £8 billion debt will be foolish enough to vote in March against continuing the moratorium on junior debt service for another year. Avoiding that is the mediators' first objective.
A haul of cocaine worth £5 million on the black market was found hidden in the nose cone of a jumbo jet by customs officers after it touched down at Heathrow from South America yesterday.
A dog uncovered the 30kg cache during a routine search of a Boeing 747 carrying holidaymakers and business travellers.
JOHN MAJOR suffered a setback last night when one of his critics was elected leader of the backbench Tory Right.
John Townend, MP for Bridlington, narrowly defeated a challenge by Neil Hamilton, a former minister, for the chairmanship of the 92 Group. Mr Townend, who publicly backed John Redwood in last year's leadership contest, confounded predictions that he would be punished for his past disloyalty.
Mr Hamilton was put forward as the "Establishment candidate" in the battle between two rightwingers with similar Euro-sceptic, free-market views. The 46-year-old MP for Tatton drew support from loyalists and Young Turks impressed by his strong Thatcherite credentials.
But Mr Townend's power base among the Euro-sceptic old guard in the 92 Group proved decisive. He was backed by most of its five-strong steering committee and gained the reward for his 12-year apprenticeship as the group's secretary.
Mr Townend, 61, is a confidant of Sir George Gardiner, another of Mr Redwood's supporters, who was elected to the steering committee when he stepped down after 11 years as chairman.
Conservative MPs have curbed their appetite for internal intrigue and rebellion as the general election approaches but Mr Major still faces stiff tests over the Scott report on Thursday, the Europe White Paper next month, the local council elections in May and the economy.
The Prime Minister will be hoping that Mr Townend and his allies will resist the temptation to rock the boat. The 92 Group's influence has been weakened by the disparate opinions in its ranks and its tendency to act as little more than a talking shop.
Mr Townend said: "The 92 is the biggest backbench grouping in Parliament and my aim, with the help of the committee, will be to increase the influence of the Centre-Right in the party."
CONSOLIDATED COAL, the small, independent mining company that was floated at 50p a share last August, is acquiring Glotec Mining, a private group that owns open- cast and underground mining sites in South Wales, for £2.6 million in shares and cash. The company, where John Bellak is a non-executive director, is also looking to raise £1.6 million through a placing of 3.5 million new shares, at 53p a share, in order to develop the mines being acquired from Glotec. Consolidated Coal shares eased 1p to 51p.
A DRESDNER BANK client in Germany was yesterday sentenced to 45 months in jail and ordered to pay a DM1.3 million fine, the first customer of the bank to be sentenced in a two-year inquiry into tax evasion.
The Koblenz court ruled that the 55-year-old sausage skin dealer, who was not named, had evaded taxes through a Dresdner Luxembourg account. He had confessed and repaid more than DM10 million in back taxes. Two Dresdner Bank officials in Koblenz, alleged to have helped him, were released on bail last month.
ERNST & YOUNG, the professional services firm, has linked with Asia's biggest consultancy group with a view to boosting its consultancy portfolio. Tata Consultancy Services, based in Bombay, has worldwide revenues of $130 million, and a sizeable UK client base.
Tata Sons, its parent company, employs more than 275,000 people. TCS alone employs more than 5,000 professionals in more than 100 cities, including London, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Bristol, and up to 25 per cent of its revenue comes from the UK.
THE courtroom clash between Frank Warren, the boxing promoter, and the DTI was postponed for a second time yesterday after the judge chosen to preside over the proceedings was taken ill.
The High Court hearing is now expected to start next week. Mr Warren, 43, is resisting attempts by the DTI to have him banned from serving as a company director. He says the proceedings concern the affairs of various companies before 1991, and have no bearing on his present business interests.
MCI Communications Corp and AT&T Corp, long-distance telephone rivals, are negotiating about sharing the costs of providing local telephone calling.
The talks come just days after a new telecommunications reform Bill passed into law, freeing long-distance and local telephone companies to compete on each others' turf. AT&T and MCI declined to comment. MCI's MCI Metro subsidiary is spending $2 billion building local circuits to reach mainly business customers in 24 cities.
A US Federal Court of Appeal has thrown out Butte Mining's appeal against a dismissal of its $1 billion fraud action against Robertson Group, a subsidiary of Simon Engineering. Since Butte filed its lawsuit in May 1992, Simon Engineering has argued that the claims, relating to Butte's 1987 flotation and an acquisition the group made a year later, were "baseless and misconceived".
By losing the appeal, Butte will be forced to litigate only in the UK, where it has launched a lawsuit against Robertson and two of its subsidiaries as well as Ernst & Young, the auditor. Simon said the UK case is worth far less than the failed $1 billion US claim. The complaint against Robertson originated more than three years before Simon bought the group in 1991.
ALAN GREENSPAN, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, the US central bank, is expected in the next few days to be nominated for a third term as the world's most powerful financier.
Mr Greenspan, who has won praise from all quarters for his handling of the US economy over the past eight years, has few serious rivals for the post. Even though he is a Republican, he is likely to be have the backing of President Clinton, a Democrat. He can also rely on the Republican majority in Congress to ratify his appointment. His current term as head of the central bank ends on March 2.
As the man in charge of short-term interest-rate policy in the US, he has waged a relentless fight against inflation which has sometimes put him in conflict with the Government when he was obliged to raise interest rates. However, Mr Greenspan is an astute political operator able to look after his own interests.
He was once Richard Nixon's domestic policy adviser in the 1960s, and was appointed to the Fed by Ronald Regan in 1987. He made his peace with the Democrats after Bill Clinton's election, but has recently moved to the right, apparently to please the Republicans in Congress.
Although he studied at the prestigious Julliard School of Music and once played saxophone in a swing band, Mr Greenspan turned to economics shortly after graduating. He has become a millionaire from his business consultancy practice in New York.
President Clinton is also likely to nominate Felix Rohatyn, the veteran financier and director of Lazard Freres, the investment bank, as the Fed's deputy chairman.
BOC GROUP, the UK gases company, has established a 50-50 venture with Taiyuan Iron and Steel, its largest investment in China.
The joint venture, to be managed by BOC, will take over Taiyuan Iron's industrial gases assets and production and will invest £18 million in new plant to expand the existing capacity. It will manage three existing air-separation units and a hydrogen production plant. The new air-separation unit will be capable of producing 750 tonnes a day of oxygen and will be built by BOC's global engineering arm.
BRITISH COAL has sold almost 800 acres of agricultural land in Northumberland, raising about £2.1 million.
A package of 789 acres, offered last November, attracted average prices of £2,700 an acre. British Coal is to sell a further seven regional agricultural land packages. The first, likely to be about 5,000 acres in South Wales, will be offered next month. This will be followed by 7,000 acres in Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, East Lothian and Fife and packages in the East Midlands, Staffordshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire, plus 13,000 acres in the North East.
AMERICA, still embroiled in a fight over cutting the US budget deficit, yesterday pledged to pay all its arrears to the World Bank's concessional lending arm before July 1997, but will not take part in an emergency fund being set up for one year by other donor countries.
The International Development Association (IDA) is facing a crisis of funding because Congress has cut America's contribution by half. Donor countries are working to a June deadline to agree funds for the next three years of IDA lending to the world's poorest countries and have been in intensive negotiations about how to come up with the money without a contribution from America.
IDA deputies met in Paris yesterday and are close to setting up an emergency fund, of three billion Special Drawing Rights, which will tide IDA over for the first year of its next three-year programme. It is hoped that this will be finally agreed at a meeting in Tokyo on March 7 and 8.
Jan Piercy, US Executive Director to the World Bank, said yesterday that the US will not take part in the emergency fund, but will pay $934.5 million in arrears during the fiscal year 1997, starting on July 1.
She also said that America is committed to returning to the usual framework of of loans donors contribute every three years but said that the US will not be able to agree to the amounts currently projected by the World Bank. The Bank calculates the US contribution at $960 million in 1998 and $980 million in 1999.
ASIL NADIR'S former adviser, Elizabeth Forsyth, goes on trial today at the Old Bailey, 17 months after she returned voluntarily to the UK from northern Cyprus to face questions by the Serious Fraud Office.
Mrs Forsyth, 59, of Great Dunmow, Essex, denies two charges of handling nearly £400,000 in cash and property allegedly stolen by Mr Nadir from Polly Peck International, the fruits to electronics group which collapsed in 1990. She was chairman of South Audley Management, a management company that looked after the Nadir family's tax and property affairs in the UK.
Mrs Forsyth was in court yesterday as Mr Justice Tucker picked the jury from a panel of nearly 40 men and women. The judge told the prospective jurors: "There has been a great deal of publicity about Polly Peck and Asil Nadir. I want to ensure as far as I can that Elizabeth Forsyth has a fair trial, so it is important that anyone selected as a juror to try her case should not have any preconceived ideas about the case."
A panel of eight women and four men was selected, but they were not sworn in. Another 12 were also picked as reserves. The judge told all of them to consider their positions overnight, adding: "I don't want this to be a decision anyone feels they have been rushed into."
The 12 jurors will be sworn in today, when David Calvert-Smith is expected to open the case for the prosecution. The trial will be held in the Old Bailey annexe in Chancery Lane, used for the trial of Kevin and Ian Maxwell. The case is expected to last between four and six weeks.
THE European Union is to ask the World Trade Organisation to investigate the relationship between low wages and trade.
But treading carefully weeks before an Asian-Europe summit, Sir Leon Brittan, Trade Commissioner, said the EU did not seek to impose a "social diktat" on low-wage trade partners. "We have no agenda for depriving low-wage countries of their legitimate economic advantage," he said. He denied reports that the EU was putting conditions on trade accords with nations in Asia and Latin America.
SIR ROBIN BIGGAM is to retire as chairman of BICC, the construction group, in June. He will be succeeded by Viscount Weir, a non-executive deputy chairman. Lord Weir is chairman of Weir Group and vice-chairman of St James Place Capital. He is a director of Canadian Pacific and was formerly a director of the Bank of England and British Steel.
Sir Robin joined BICC as managing director in 1986, became chief executive in 1987 and chairman in 1992. He is chairman of Fairey Group and a non-executive director of British Aerospace and Redland.
THE cost of the bomb damage caused by Friday's explosion at South Quay could reach £150 million, according to insurance experts.
It will almost certainly also result in businesses facing a hefty rise in insurance premiums to cover themselves against further attacks.
The exact cost of the damage is unlikely to be known for several weeks, as insurance teams slowly sift through the wreckage. Malcolm Tarling, a spokesman for the ABI, said: "Like the politicians, we'll just sit back and wait for the dust to settle."
Although about 650 buildings were damaged in total, it is the owners of the four main buildings in direct line of the blast who will make greatest demands on the Pool Reinsurance scheme that provides cover for terrorist attacks. The buildings are owned by Franklin Mint, an American mail order group, and three property companies.
The Pool Re scheme was set up in 1992 after earlier IRA attacks in the City. It was an attempt by the Government to ensure that business was not frightened away from the City after the devastating Bishopsgate and Baltic Exchange attacks which caused £1 billion worth of damage.
It was also needed to fill the gap left by insurance companies, who had covered terrorist attacks as part of general building policies, but had become increasingly reluctant to offer protection. The Pool Re, which operates through Lloyd's of London, raises money through a surcharge on commercial property and is understood to have built up a pool of about £450 million to cover bomb damage. The DTI has guaranteed that the Government will make up any shortfall if claims exceed this amount.
Sweet smell of success: Andrew Balcombe, chairman of Armour Trust, whose first-half profits surged 75 per cent to £1.33 million. The interim dividend rises to 0.46p (0.418p)
THE proposed merger between the UK's two largest accounting bodies has been abandoned.
The English ICA and the CIMA, the management accounting body, had planned to put detailed merger proposals to its members in June, but signs of sharply declining support among the English ICA membership have scuppered the plans.
The merger would have created the UK's biggest accounting body, with 140,000 members, and it would have dominated the audit, tax and business streams of the accounting profession. However, the idea foundered on the views of the English ICA membership. Market research last year showed a 67 per cent majority in favour of the broad principles of the idea, but that figure has slumped to just 36 per cent after more detailed proposals.
Keith Woodley, English ICA president, said: "We will still look at ways of co-operating and we see areas of possibilities where we can work together."
THE life insurance arms of the high street banks have announced that they will not bar personal pension compensation claims that are outside the legal time limit of six years.
The banks involved are Abbey National, Barclays, Lloyds TSB, Midland, National Westminster and the Royal Bank of Scotland, the members of the British Bankers' Association (BBA) Bancassurance group.
It remains to be seen whether other life insurance groups also agree to consider claims arising from pension sales made more than six years ago. The Prudential last week revealed that it would not exclude claims outside the time limit.
Tony Baker, deputy director general of the Association of British Insurers, said he had called on members to clarify their positions, asking them to reassure policyholders that claims would not be time-barred.
BRITISH employees' purchasing power is greater than workers in almost every other European country, the Government said yesterday as Labour sharply attacked its claims for the UK's job performance against its principal economic competitors.
Ministers denied that the Government's strong promotion of what it claimed were the job successes of its economic and labour market policies were a pre-election move. Gillian Shephard, Education and Employment Secretary, launched a drive to place Britain's employment record against other EU countries at the centre of the Government's emphasis on Britain's economic and competitive performance. Publishing what she described as a "blizzard" of statistics on the UK labour market's comparative performance, she claimed the success of the UK economy and of the Government's policies would continue. In comparison with other EU countries, Britain had one of the lowest unemployment rates, one of the highest employment rates, fewer people on temporary contracts and companies "flocking" to do business here.
Giving the statistics before tomorrow's monthly UK unemployment figures, which ministers hope will show a further fall, she said: "These are important figures which show clearly what has been happening in the UK labour market." Ministers acknowledged that most of the figures were familiar, including data showing the UK's unemployment rate at 8.6 per cent.
As well as citing claims of Britain's low additional non-wage labour costs of £18 for every £100 in wages, (£32 in Germany, £34 in Spain, £41 in France, £44 in Italy), ministers suggested real purchasing power of UK workers was as high as any in Europe.
Rejecting direct comparisons of money wages, the Department for Education and Employment said that at purchasing power parity rates, the annual take-home pay of production workers in Britain, according to the most recent comparative figures, was for a single person at £10,500 greater than for single workers in Germany (£9,700), Italy (£9,400) and France (£8,000). For couples with two children, those in Britain at £11,900 were almost even with Germans at £12,000, and higher than in Italy at £10,600 and France at £9,600.
Michael Meacher, Shadow Employment Secretary, said: "In 16 years of Tory government, Britain's job creation record has been feeble at best."
Employers are accelerating their drive for more flexible work patterns as they strive to become more competitive, says a survey in Personnel Today, the business magazine.
HIGH STREET sales appeared to hold up well in January despite bad weather and bumper spending on the National Lottery, according to a survey by the British Retail Consortium (BRC), which represents retailers.
The like-for-like value of sales which removes the effect of any expansion of retail floor space was 4.1 per cent above January a year earlier.
This is similar to the year-on-year growth of 4.3 per cent in December and suggests that the recovery in sales seen late last year was sustained into the new year. In contrast, sales in January 1995 plunged sharply after a good Christmas.
In the latest three months, the BRC Retail Sales Monitor, based on returns from a sample of 75 leading retailers, showed average growth of 3.9 per cent, up from 3.3 per cent in the October to December period. Andrew Sentance, BRC's chief economic adviser, said: "Recent cuts in interest rates and the prospect of lower personal tax in the spring are helping to build consumer confidence and sustain a stronger trend in retail spending than we saw last year."
A WIDE-RANGING review of regulation of Lloyd's will be set up by ministers, but not before the next general election, MPs were told last night.
Anthony Nelson, the Trade Minister, said that an early review of regulation could damage the prospects of success for Equitas, the reinsurance company being formed to meet Lloyd's liabilities.
Mr Nelson said it was unlikely that a full review of regulation at Lloyd's could be carried out before the summer of 1997. He told the Commons Treasury Select Committee: "We should look again at the overall structure when the horizon is clearer."
He conceded that the Government had taken too long in looking at regulation in the past and that ministers needed to be "nimble".
Heckled repeatedly by Lloyd's names attending the hearing, Mr Nelson said that it was important not to distract attention from setting up Equitas successfully. "If it were undertaken now, it would make the prospects of Equitas getting off the ground very much less," he said.
However, he dismissed suggestions of some MPs that the review was being delayed to avoid controversy prior to a general election.
Mr Nelson added that there had been inadequate regulation and supervision of most areas of the financial sector, but he insisted that a review should not look only at what had gone wrong in the past.
Pressed repeatedly by Tory and Labour MPs over the supervision of Equitas, Mr Nelson said that the Department of Trade and Industry would check Lloyd's assessment of the amount needed to meet liabilities.
Matthew Carrington, a Tory MP on the committee, said that many of the names contributing to Equitas "have no confidence in Lloyd's".
Barbara Trigg meets a woman who is now passing on her determination to succeed to others.
Personal tragedy drove Alpa Shah into business on her own. After she and her husband arrived in Britain from Kenya in 1988, she obtained work as a systems analyst in a travel agency. Then in 1991 she was made redundant. Shortly afterwards her husband died on a visit to the US to make plans for the family to settle there. She was left with a five-year-old son and no income.
"I wanted to work, but a nine-to-five job was out of the question," said Ms Shah. She particularly did not want to leave her son, Vikesh, in the care of someone else so soon after he had lost his father. Uncertain of what to do, she attended a two-week business course specifically for women, run by the Ealing Co-operative Development Agency, which gave her advice on how to set up in business. She decided to open a travel agency from home.
First she bought a limited company "off the shelf". Then with a borrowed desk and chair, a typewriter and an arrangment to use someone else's fax, she started trading as Alvic Hotel Reservation Services. She did not want to be just any travel agent and decided to specialise in the music industry. She tried to persuade a family friend, who was a road manager in that industry, to give her a chance to handle travel arrangements. She reasoned that people had to be given an opportunity or there would never be any new companies. Eventually he agreed.
Her first show was Hollywood and Broadway, starring Lorna Luft and Wayne Sleep. She made all the travel arrangements for them and an entourage of 30 people on a six-week tour. "It was a real test," she said. "Hotels wanted pre-payment and no one would lend me the money. I had to convince hotel managers that my business was credible with just a business plan. The music industry was totally male-dominated. Although I did not face racial discrimination, I faced discrimination because I am a woman. But I made up my mind: never in my life will I give up." By then she had decided her selling point would be a 24-hour service to meet the late-night requirements of the entertainment industry.
Her first client took her at her word and rang at 2.30am to make changes to the travel arrangements. At the end of the tour they were so satisfied that they introduced her to other promoters and she was on her way. One of her early clients was the London Philharmonic Orchestra, which responded to a mailshot. It has stayed with her ever since. Others include Elaine Paige, Philip Schofield and pop groups. In 1994 she took on three staff. Four months ago the company expanded to offer travel services to the public and moved into premises in Alperton, west London. Last May she organised a seminar to help women to set up in business. It was attended by 110 women, two of whom have followed her lead.
Alvic Travel is on 0181 900 9689
LLOYD'S names, whose assets have traditionally supported the 300-year old insurance market, are set to reject a £2.8 billion settlement offer to end years of litigation and cap the cost of members' liabilities. Failure to reach an agreement could force Lloyd's of London to stop writing new business.
David Rowland, chairman of Lloyd's, said that yesterday's proposals, contained in the Reconstruction and Renewal document, represented "the best and most pragmatic framework" for a final settlement for tens of thousands of names, who have suffered cumulative losses of nearly £12 billion since 1987. The terms of the final offer will be made to 30,000 individuals, rather than collective action groups, by the end of May.
Under the proposals Lloyd's said that £800 million of the total global offer would be used as a litigation settlement. This would include some £50 million that would be used to meet costs incurred by the action groups of names that have instigated legal proceedings against Lloyd's and individual syndicates.
Some £2 billion of debt credits would also be allocated to names in four tranches, depending on individual circumstances. The debt credits are intended to reduce the cost to members of reinsuring their liabilities into a specially formed company, Equitas.
Lloyd's said that each tranche of money is designed to address a specific objective, with the first tranche of between £300 million and £500 million being used to relieve disproportionately high losses. The second tranche of between £200 million and £300 million will reduce the cost of "finality" without unfairly disadvantaging those who have paid their debts to Lloyd's in full. The third, and largest, tranche of up to £1.3 billion will cap the cost of "finality" at £100,000 after deducting names' funds already held by Lloyd's.
The fourth tranche of between £100 million and £150 million would provide further assistance to names otherwise unable to meet the cost of finality. Access to this tranche would be means-tested.
John Mays, chairman of Merrett No 2 group and a member of the Litigating Names' Committee, said the £2.8 billion offer was "not enough" and the £100,000 "finality" cap should be halved. Robert Miller, of the Association of Lloyd's Members, said additional funding for the settlement could be raised by doubling or trebling to £300 or £450 million the contribution from Lloyd's managing agents, who made £400 million to £600 million in commissions between 1993 and 1995.
Christopher Stockwell, chairman of the Lloyd's Names Associations' Working Party, said: "The settlement proposals are based on expediency and not justice. They are not acceptable ... Thousands of ruined names know that the cause of their £12 billion ‘losses' has been regulatory failure, incompetence, negligence, deliberate concealment and fraud."
Alan Porter, chairman of the Devonshire and Cuthbert Heath action groups of more than 2,300 litigating names, said the terms of the offer "were not acceptable", and that the plans for means-testing are "impracticable and offensive".
Last night Lloyd's indicated that the terms might be further improved "if the additional funding can be found".
FUNDING THE SETTLEMENT Tranche 1: Between £300 million and £500 million to relieve disproportionately high losses.
Tranche 2: £200 million to £300 million to reduce the cost of "finality" without disadvantaging those who have paid their debts to Lloyd's in full.
Tranche 3: £1.1 billion to £1.3 billion to cap the cost of "finality" at £100,000 after deducting funds at Lloyd's, and so assist names facing difficulty in achieving "finality".
Tranche 4: £100 million to £150 million to provide further assistance to those names otherwise unable to meet the cost of "finality".
Winds gusting at 80mph damaged power lines in Devon and Cornwall yesterday, leaving 4,000 homes without electricity.
A barn on a farm near Stithians was roped down to prevent it being blown into a nearby road. A typhoon was thought to have ripped the roof off a house in Royston, Hertfordshire, and damaged roofs in nearby streets. A search was under way last night for an unnamed climber missing after being swept down a mountain by an avalanche in the Highlands.
INFLATION in industry has peaked and is now easing, providing a favourable background for further cuts in interest rates to breathe new life into the recovery.
Output prices an indicator closely watched by both the Treasury and the Bank of England rose 0.4 per cent in January as manufacturers produced their new year list prices. But this was a much smaller rise than in previous years and the annual rate of output price inflation fell sharply, to 3.8 per cent, from 4.4 per cent. This is the lowest level since March, 1995.
Excluding food, drink and tobacco, underlying output prices were unchanged in the month and the annual rate fell to 3.6 per cent, from 4.4 per cent. This was the lowest level since January last year.
Input prices, the cost of raw materials and fuel to industry, fell 0.3 per cent in January, taking the annual rate down to 4 per cent, from 5.9 per cent in December.
The effects of the commodity price shock which, coupled with sterling's weakness, sent industry's costs and prices sharply higher, is now over and should allay some of the fears of higher inflation at the Bank, which tomorrow publishes its latest Inflation Report. The Bank has repeatedly expressed concern about a chain reaction in which higher commodity prices feed through into industry's prices and then into higher inflation on the high street.
The City is forecasting further falls in output prices over the coming months and at least one more 1/4-point cut in base rates. Andrew Cates, of UBS, said: "The current sluggish state of the manufacturing economy and these weaker inflation figures are powerful weapons to a Chancellor who needs to lower base rates to aid his party's political fortunes." He said that any lingering Bank concerns on inflation that may be expressed in the Inflation Report were likely to fall on deaf ears.
Figures for retail prices in January are due to be published on Thursday and are expected to show that both headline and underlying inflation have fallen below 3 per cent again. Many City economists believe rates will be cut after the March monetary meeting.
A couple who offered their Lake District cottage in Great Langdale as the prize in a raffle found themselves in trouble when they failed to sell enough tickets.
The woman who won was offered cash of just over £1,000 instead of the £150,000 home. Andrew Barnett, 50, and his former wife Elizabeth, 40, admitted at Carlisle Crown Court stealing £1,022 from some of the people who bought tickets. They will be sentenced next month. Twelve charges of obtaining money by deception were withdrawn.
Since the Northern Ireland peace process began it has become commonplace to remark on the change in attitude there. If John Major can take any credit for this he can take credit, too, for a change that has been less noticed. There has been a transformation of MPs' approach in the Commons where Ireland is concerned.
They received yesterday's statement in a manner which those who recall how Ireland used to be discussed would recognise as a quiet revolution. Gone were the bitter
and inflammatory knee-jerk responses from Ulster Unionists. Gone were the platitudes about evil, the flag-waving and sabre-rattling, once characteristic of Tory backbench reaction.
Gone was the naive sympathy with which many Labour MPs used to swallow nationalist propaganda.
In their place we heard from every side the sort of careful and informed reaction one might expect from an assembly composed entirely of junior ministers. MPs seemed genuinely to be trying to calm the situation. It was most unusual.
The Prime Minister is at his best when guiding the Commons through danger. Never a great rallier for the attack, he rallies for defence with skill. Speaking with quiet informality he reminded the House of the perils but also of the prize. He outlined his scepticism towards Sinn Fein without apology but also without aggression. He told MPs why they should not adopt positions they might later regret.
In an impromptu remark to Robert McCartney, the North Down MP, Mr Major said: "In outright war one can only go for victory. In circumstances such as (these) I think there will be areas where people will have to look and see whether the ends justify the means." Not, perhaps, a ringing phrase certainly we cannot imagine hearing it from his predecessor but a telling one; and not a bad summary of an ism whose clarity and point emerges as we get to know Major better.
The whole House responded to it. Instead of the usual cacophony, each succeeding voice chimed in as though part of some choral arrangement: a stylised cantata composed and arranged to celebrate the virtues of caution. Tony Blair led off: a confident and supportive tenor; Tom King (a former Northern Ireland Secretary) wished the PM well. Mr Major thanked both.
For the Unionists, John D Taylor (UUP, Strangford) was flexible. Mr Major was attentive. The Rev Ian Paisley (DUP, Antrim North) rumbled but, helpfully, failed to erupt. Major thanked him. To a buzz of interest, the SDLP's John Hume buried his anger and proposed a preparatory referendum. Major promised to consider it.
Paddy Ashdown had a slight quibble. Major overlooked it. Peter Shore urged him forward. Major was obliged. Labour's Bridget Prentice (Lewisham East) and Mildred Gordon (Bow and Poplar) offered soprano and contralto tributes. Major received them. Michael Mates (C, East Hampshire, and a former Northern Ireland Minister) was interesting. Major was interested. Clive Soley (Lab, Hammersmith) volunteered a thought. Major chewed it over.
Alone in their notes of dissonance, Labour's Tony Benn and the Tories' Nicholas Budgen (Wolverhampton South-West) hinted at unreconstructed attitudes: Benn's nationalist, Budgen's Unionist. Their isolation served only to underline the change that has come over this Commons.
A hushed chamber: as quiet as Friday's explosion was loud. But, in its way, equally surprising.
HEAD teachers of secondary schools condemned Labour's policies for raising standards as an "uncomfortable mixture of the naive and the messianic" yesterday.
In a withering critique of proposals launched by Tony Blair last December, the Secondary Heads' Association accused Labour of putting political considerations before educational objectives. Most of the planned initiatives lacked substance or were "trivial" attempts to offer an alternative to government policy.
The head teachers criticised the degree of centralisation in Labour's blueprint for schools and expressed alarm at the prospect of renewed control by local authorities. John Dunford, the association's president, said: "This suggests Labour is coming in thinking it can legislate every problem out of existence."
Labour leaders dismissed fears of a revival in town hall power over schools and insisted that their proposals were based on the best research and "sound good practice". Privately, some accused the association of jibbing at its tough line on failing schools and incompetent teachers.
The dispute provided the first challenge to Labour from the teaching profession, which has opposed many of the Government's reforms. The association said it welcomed the philosophy behind the policy document, Excellence for Everyone, but found few positive ideas.
Among the proposals attacked by the head teachers were the speeding of dismissal procedures for poor teachers, official encouragement for streaming by subject, the introduction of national homework guidelines and the involvement of local authorities in school development plans. John Sutton, the general secretary, appealed for schools to be given a period of stability to make existing schemes work.
Mr Sutton said Labour's embargo on spending commitments was hampering the development of detailed policies. The association was also worried by the "somewhat punitive approach" to dealing with bad teachers.
But the association's greatest concern was in the lack of clarity in Labour's plans for the role of local education authorities. Some proposals for dealing with failing schools were "intrusive" and any revival of powers removed under Conservative rule would demotivate teachers.
Peter Miller, its deputy president, said many able people had left local authorities as the bodies' powers had declined. "There is serious concern about the calibre of people who are working in LEAs now. Many would not command respect in schools," he said.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's The World at One, Estelle Morris, Labour's education spokeswoman, said Labour had made clear spending commitments, including the promise that no child aged under seven would be taught in classes of over 30. She denied that Labour had any plans to reimpose LEA control.
TWO French-appointed mediators have been sent in to revive the rescue talks between Eurotunnel and its bankers, which are close to breaking down over how much of its £8 billion debts should be written off.
Lord Wakeham, the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, and Robert Badinter, a former French Justice Minister, were appointed by the Paris Tribunal de Commerce, after the company's French auditors gave warning in November that the company was close to technical insolvency.
They will spend until the summer talking informally to the company, its bankers, shareholders and creditors about finding a possible solution to its financial problems.
The procedure is used in France to protect employees when a company is in danger of collapse, but has never been tried before on a company of Eurotunnel's size.
Sir Alastair Morton, the co-chairman of Eurotunnel, yesterday welcomed the appointments, unanimously agreed by the Eurotunnel board.
He said Lord Wakeham "and his very distinguished French confrere will bring good sense to their ‘good offices' mission between the company, the banks, the governments and the rest of our always-stimulating situation."
However, he insisted that the appointment of the mediators was "in no sense" the first stage of insolvency. He said: "The intent is quite different to going under; the intent is an accommodation of what the bankers would like to have, what the shareholders want and what the company needs."
The solution would be a structure that allowed the company to service its debts and gradually pay them off, while leaving sufficent cash flow to finance its future development and leave a reasonable prospect of a dividend payment to shareholders. This could take up to a decade, he warned.
Eurotunnel has suspended interest payments on its £8 billion of junior debt until March 1997, when it must secure the agreement of holders of 65 per cent of its debt for an extension to the standstill.
The interest is building up at about £700 million a year, compared with forecast revenues for the current year of around £450 million.
Sir Alastair admitted yesterday that failure to secure an extension of the standstill in the absence of a restructuring "could be fatal to the company".
Sir Alastair and Patrick Ponsolle, the French co-chairman, said they would refuse to agree to any proposed deal "in which the payment of interest and repayment of principal might absorb the company's whole cash flow to the end of the concession".
The statement conceded that a debt-for-equity swap might be inevitable "in return for later and lower remuneration and repayment of their loans".
MAI, the television and financial services group that last week agreed to merge with United News & Media, is expected this morning to announce a £225 million joint investment with America's Warner Bros to build a theme park in southern England.
The park, which would include a film studio, multiplex cinemas, rides and restaurants, is to be built on a tract of vacant land in the west London borough of Hillingdon, just north of Heathrow airport. Planning consent has not yet been granted. MAI and Warner would share the cost equally. MAI has considerable financial flexibility because its proposed merger with United is through a share swap that offers no premium and adds no debt.
Warner, owned by Time Warner of New York, one of the world's largest media and entertainment groups, has been trying for some time to enter the theme park market, which is dominated by the Walt Disney Company and the Universal Studios division of MCA, the Hollywood studio that is now part of Canada's Seagram.
The Warner-MAI park would draw on Warner's rich movie heritage to create attractions. Warner's movies include Batman, Lethal Weapon, Beetlejuice, Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon.
MAI and Time Warner already have a number of joint ventures, including Itel, an international TV and film distribution company based in London, and a production company.
Mercury Asset Management, the fund manager that backed Granada's winning bid for Forte, sold more MAI shares yesterday. The move suggests that a rival bid for MAI is unlikely.
Mercury sold 870,000 MAI shares at prices ranging from 430p to 442p, reducing its holding to 19.7 million shares, or 5.98 per cent. On Friday, it sold 8.3 million MAI shares, a 2 per cent stake, for about £25 million.
Analysts said Mercury known as an astute judge of the takeover game would be unlikely to sell MAI shares if it sensed a counterbid. Carlton Communications, the largest ITV company, was considered the most likely bidder. Carlton would not comment.
A LITTLE-KNOWN family building firm has made a surprise £114,000 donation to the Tories at a time when corporate donors have been deserting the party. The donation from J.J. Gallagher, a Birmingham-based building company, has dwarfed the contributions of some of the party's biggest commercial supporters.
Directors of the private company, which employs 40 people in its Bordesley Green headquarters, were reluctant to discuss the donation, which has upset Midlands trade unionists.
In the past the company has been better known for its passionate support for Wolverhampton Wanderers football club rather than for John Major. The family sold the club for £2 million to Sir Jack Hayward in 1990.
Tony Gallagher, the company chairman, said last night: "There are many others in the country who donate money privately and don't have to reveal it."
The company has been a staunch but less generous supporter of the party in the past. It gave £12,000 in 1991 and £10,500 the following year. Last year the company made a profit of £7 million.
Mr Gallagher, the son of the late founder, who comes from Co Mayo, said: "We make all the necessary disclosures about our donations. The amount has not necessarily increased. There is a history of this company supporting the Conservative Party but we are a very low-key company."
Bob Shaw, Birmingham district organiser of the Transport and General Workers' Union, said: "They are giving the Tories £114,000 for political purposes. We are amazed as anyone else that a firm which is really small fry has given such a large sum."
The construction industry has been gripped by one of the most protracted recessions in living memory with tens of thousands of workers on the dole. The company has been involved in a number of big retail contracts in the Midlands. John Partridge, spokesman for the Transport and General Workers' Union which covers builders said: "You expect this from merchant banks but it is unbelievable from a building firm."
A passenger in a car who died after being beaten with a baseball bat by another motorist was the victim of an unprovoked attack, police confirmed yesterday.
Peter Swailes, 39, was attacked on Friday by a man who smashed the front passenger window and punched him in the face after an argument near Pontefract, West Yorkshire. As he got out, he was struck over the head with the baseball bat. He never regained consciousness and died in hospital two days later in spite of having emergency brain surgery.
A social security chief said last night that the department did not prosecute most benefit cheats because courts were too lenient.
Ann Bowtell, Permanent Secretary at the Social Security Department, told MPs on the Public Accounts Select Committee: "We don't believe that if we prosecuted more people it would increase the deterrent effect. We don't spend money on prosecutions when the sentences are so small." The department has 5,000 staff on anti-fraud work.
Ms Bowtell was giving evidence on record benefit cheating levels, which show that £1.4 billion was fraudulently claimed in income support alone last year. A further £800million was fraudulently claimed in housing benefit. But there were only 10,500 prosecutions last year, she said.
Some parishes and churches will be forced to seek lottery cash, despite recent criticism of the National Lottery by senior members of the Church of England, the General Synod was told yesterday.
The Rt Rev David Sheppard, Bishop of Liverpool and chairman of the Church's Board of Social Responsibility, said he believed the lottery was here to stay, but "we believe it could be better regulated and that there are some regulations which would be better put in place".
Prison staff started an inquiry yesterday into how two inmates were able to get a craft knife and hold hostage a prison auxiliary for nine hours at a top-security prison. The male auxiliary was released unhurt after being held in a cell at Whitemoor prison in Cambridgeshire on Sunday by two men serving lengthy sentences.
Negotiators had persuaded the men their cause was hopeless. Both prisoners are in a segregation unit and will be questioned by police in due course.
The Clinton Administration refused to follow the British and Irish Governments in breaking contacts with Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein. It also rejected an appeal from David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist Party leader, that Sinn Fein leaders be denied visas to raise funds in America unless they renounce violence. A White House official said: "We have no regret about the support we have given Gerry Adams".
FORGET the seven ages of man. An American psychologist has invented an eighth, which she calls limbo.
An increasing number of people enter limbo when they leave their jobs, she says. Too young to retire, they are caught between two worlds: their full-time careers are over, but they have yet to enter old age. Many are frustrated by the lack of options open to them. Professor Phyllis Moen, of Cornell University, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science yesterday that she had studied a random sample of 762 men and women between the ages of 50 and 72, two fifths of whom were still working. Among those who had retired, she said, "we are finding many of these seasoned citizens find themselves in limbo. They have skills, education, good health and financial resources, yet to a great extent existing structural arrangements limit their options.
"We have changed the behaviour of people and their health, but we have not changed the cultural convention that equates retirement with leisure. Most of these people would like to work less, but not retire."
The issues of ageing are likely to intensify with increasing longevity, according to British scientists. British organisations said yesterday that limbo-age issues were starting to be addressed. Age Concern said it was setting up Age Resource advice centres where staff would try to match the skills of fit and active older people with local skill shortages.
Simon Watts, of Voluntary Service Overseas, said that, from being an organisation for school and university leavers, it was now encouraging people as old as 70 to join. "Some have skills which are no longer needed here. But in the developing world they can be life-saving," he said.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, last night urged the Church to redouble its efforts to help to achieve a peace settlement in Ireland.
Dr Carey, addressing the General Synod of the Church of England, said that the bomb was a tragedy "both in terms of the injuries and loss of life and of the blow it represents to the search for peace".
He said: "At such moments the role of the Church is this: to redouble its efforts to help achieve a peace settlement and to continue to support all those, not least politicians of different traditions, who still strive for a peaceful resolution of the conflict."
The synod unanimously expressed "deep dismay" at the terrorist attack.
THOUSANDS of people joined a peace rally in the centre of Belfast yesterday to register their anger with the IRA for threatening 18 months of peace in Northern Ireland.
Parents with young children joined office workers outside Belfast City Hall at the same spot where tens of thousands of people applauded President Clinton just over two months ago.
The rally started with a minute's silence in memory of the victims of the Docklands bomb attack. Hundreds of people in the crowd of more than 3,000 people held up paper doves, reviving memories of the rallies that were held at the height of the Troubles.
Women for Peace, who organised the rally, said they were encouraged by the turnout. Anne Carr said: "The last time we were outside the City Hall was just before the IRA ceasefire. I hoped and prayed that we would never be here again. But after the bombing we felt a need to come here again."
Olive McAlea, a pensioner who came to the rally with her sister, Bridget McCann, said she was devastated by the IRA bomb. She said: "Turning out at the rally is our small way of telling the paramilitaries that we want peace, especially for the children. God seems to be with us today because the sun is shining."
Her comments were echoed by Charlie Butler, who lost three relatives in the IRA bomb attack on the Shankill Road in October 1993. He said he took heart from the thousands of people who turned out. "If this many people across the divide can come together why can't our politicians?"
A FRENCH court has appointed Lord Wakeham, the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, as a mediator in the dispute between Eurotunnel and the 225 banks to which it owes more than £8 billion.
Together with Robert Badinter, a former French Minister of Justice, he will try to find a deal that will save the company from financial collapse. The two men were appointed under a French procedure designed to protect employees when a company is deemed close to insolvency.
Eurotunnel has already stopped paying interest on its borrowings and could be forced into receivership by March next year, if it fails to agree a financial restructuring by then. The mediators will interview representatives of all those with a financial interest in Eurotunnel's survival, including shareholders, bankers, management and staff. It is likely to report in the summer, but cannot force an agreement on the company.
Sir Alastair Morton, the British chairman of Eurotunnel, insisted last night that the appointments by the Tribunal de Commerce in Paris were a "positive development" that could break the logjam in the talks. He said: "In no sense is this a stage of insolvency. It is a court procedure that is pursuing an agreed reorganisation."
He said there was "no threat" to travel concessions enjoyed by shareholders: "Of the 420,000 shareholders who have them, over 300,000 expire in November. They must use them before then."
THE National Health Service is negotiating to pay for a surrogate mother to have a baby for a childless couple at a cost likely to exceed £10, 000.
A district health authority is in talks with the Assisted Conception Unit at King's College Hospital, London, to make the arrangement for a woman who has lost her uterus. It is believed to be the first NHS surrogacy. Many health authorities refuse to pay even for in-vitro fertilisation.
The news came as the British Medical Association, which used to advise doctors to have nothing to do with surrogacy, issued ethical guidelines which acknowledged the growing public acceptance of the practice. Dr Fleur Fisher, head of the BMA's ethics committee, said: "This is still a technique that can be very helpful to some couples." John Parsons, head of the King's College unit, said it was right for the NHS to pay for surrogacy as a last-resort treatment. The district health authority, from the South of England, would need to pay for psychological assessments, the collection of eggs, the in-vitro fertilisation, monitoring, counselling and insurance for the surrogate mother.
The NHS would be expected to pay the surrogate's expenses, usually between £7,000 and £10,000. Mr Parsons would not name the health authority but said it was a "full" surrogacy, using the egg and sperm of the couple to create an embryo to be implanted in a surrogate.
"Partial" surrogacies are usually do-it-yourself arrangements when the surrogate mother inseminates herself using sperm from the prospective father. The BMA estimates that there are fewer than 100 cases of surrogacy each year but believes the numbers are growing.
A small study of surrogate mothers had shown that 75 per cent reported depression. "Whilst surrogate mothers appear to be more detached from their foetus than is usual, they may come to love the baby by the ninth month," says a report published yesterday. "Even if she does relinquish the child, feelings of pain, anger and guilt might persist for a very long time, and be coupled with fears that the child was not being properly loved and cared for."
JANUARY 2000 will see companies going out of business unless they start planning to convert their computer programs to handle date calculations across the centuries, accountants have been warned.
Paul Williams, chairman of the Institute of Chartered Accountants' IT faculty and an IT partner at accountants Binder Hamlyn, says the work could take three years and could cost big organisations £30 million.
The problem has emerged because programs generally use two digits for the year when handling dates. So odd results will come from comparing 01.12.99 with 01.01.00 in systems handling payroll, debt chasing, insurance premiums and other data-sensitive applications.
"An initial systems audit may take two months, an impact analysis three months and drawing up a plan of action could take an extra six months," says Williams.
Binder Hamlyn is working with IT services company CMG to get the point home. CMG, which has set up a year 2000 unit, says big organisations have 35,000 programs or more.
"In practice it takes three to seven days to test and modify a program, at an average cost of £1,000 to £1,200 per program," says unit manager Elaine Eustace. "But most IT departments are fully stretched already."
THE Royal Air Force is to use a new satellite-based system to track its helicopters and keep them in touch with ground controllers round the globe.
Capsat, developed by avionics specialist ADS, automatically reports an aircraft's position every few minutes, or after a direct request from ground controllers.
The system will also be used to provide aircrews with updates in weather, maintenance or refuelling information.
TEACHERS in England and Wales are to be given portable or personal computers in two separate multimillion-pound initiatives from the Department of Education and Employment.
The moves follow a pilot project two years ago which found that teachers who had computers could teach IT with more confidence.
Both schemes will be managed by the National Council for Education Technology which, by summer, will have installed more than £13 million of CD-Rom and computer equipment in UK schools.
Cover story: A love affair with technology, when the superhighway means a fast route to a fluttering heart
They have never spoken, let alone met. But soon he will fly thousands of miles to be with the girl of his dreams. Dorothy Walker reports on a couple the net ensnared in the tender trap
It moves in mysterious but usually traditional ways. Today, though, a swell-tide of love will sweep across the Internet. Alastair Wightman, from Edinburgh, has never even spoken to Doris Lui in Philadelphia. But ten weeks of electronic conversations have convinced him this is "the real thing". Today he will hear her voice for the first time. In a few months he will fly out to America to join her.
"I'm in love," says Alastair, who works at the Web13 Internet Cafe in the Scottish capital. "I wouldn't be making the trip unless I was serious. I just have to take a risk and see what happens."
The online romance, typical of many others that will result in a flurry of St Valentine's Day messages across the web today, began last November. "I was on Internet Relay Chat (IRC)," recalls Alastair. "Doris happened to be on at the same time and we started to chat. We got on really well, and it just carried on from there. By the end of November, every time we could chat, we would.
"Just after Christmas, she basically said: ‘Where do we stand with each other?' It was a bit of a shock. It's always somewhere at the back of your mind that something like this might happen but I wasn't pushing things. She just came out with it." Doris is a student, taking a chemistry degree. "We haven't talked on the phone yet," says Alastair. "We didn't want to, because we knew that we would be on the line for hours."
Using the net, he says, they can take things more slowly. "You can get to know someone better before committing yourself. I've seen a picture of Doris. Before she sent photos, I had a picture in my mind's eye, and it was entirely different."He will travel to Philadelphia in September and is planning to stay as long as he can.
Meanwhile, they have plans for today: "I will send a special e-mail," he said. "But I don't feel you need to do everything electronically. I have posted two cards and a teddy bear with a wee heart that says ‘I love you'." All Doris will say is that she's sending something "in a box".
The glorious kilt Mel Gibson wore at the premiere of Braveheart may have looked as old as the hills. In fact, it was made by a company that now uses computers to design and perfect a huge range of tartans both ancient and modern.
Besides traditional favourites such as Black Watch and Royal Stewart, the weavers' looms today spin off the tartans of Celtic and Rangers, Scottish Power and Rotary International. There is even a Third Millennium tartan destined for the market.
Rapidly designed on-screen, the new breed of pattern is being sold worldwide. Modern textile design software allows weavers to create a design on computer, then print a sample on paper, using shadow and textured effects so clients can almost feel the cloth. A process that used to take days, with small sections of wool blanket being woven with variations of the pattern, can now be achieved in minutes.
The Scottish College of Textiles in Galashiels invented the PC-based Scotweave software that is now used by several mills.
Chris Aitken, designer for the Edinburgh looms of Geoffrey (Tailor) Highland Crafts, says: "The advantage of Scotweave is its huge palette range; 16 million colours offer limitless possibilities."
Most clients, he says, who pay £500 or more, have strong ideas about colour. The Scottish Rugby Union, for instance, wanted a combination of shirt colours plus those of the thistle. He starts with as many as three dozen ideas for a client. The Scotweave software allows him to experiment on-screen, varying the proportions of colour.
"The software is capable of outputting directly to a computer-controlled weaving system," says Mr Aitken. "The thread-count goes into the warping process, which lays the threads out on the loom."
Geoffrey Nicholsby, managing director of the company, says: "We made Mel Gibson's kilt, which he wore at the premiere of Braveheart. That was in Hunting Buchanan Gibsons wear the Buchanan tartan."
In his shop in Edinburgh's Royal Mile, tourists can find their family pattern from the Scottish Tartans Society's official database and view it on-screen.
"We have just done a design for a country club in Oregon," says Mr Nicholsby. "The club is in lush mountains, with waterfalls and salmon rivers, so we took colours from those to produce a tartan called Cascade Falls. They decked the whole place out in it."
Dawn Robson-Bell, design and sales manager for the Lochcarron Mill in Galashiels, says: "We designed a tartan for Scottish Power, which sponsors one of the top pipe bands, and wanted them to wear it. Scottish Power loved it but the band said, ‘There's no way we are walking down any games field wearing those colours they're too feminine.' So we had to go back to the screen and make it more vibrant."
BUYERS from all over Europe will attend ECTS, the interactive entertainment industry's trade show, at Olympia from April 14 to 16. The show will feature games hardware, software and peripherals. Ticket hotline: 01203 460121.
February 21: Product Data Management conference and Collaborative Engineering 96 Showcase, NEC, Birmingham. Contact Martin Davis; tel: 0113 245 2288.
February 27-March 1: Windows Show, Grand Hall, Olympia. Software innovations. Contact Jane Garry; tel: 01256 381456; fax: 01256 381593.
February 28-29: Microsoft Project Introduction. Lee Valley Technopark, Ashley Road, London N17 9LN. Contact: 0181-880 4063; fax: 0181-880 4061.
February 28-29: Rural Telecommunications 96. Waldorf hotel, London. Tel: 0171-915 5055.February 29: IMRG/CBI conference, Centre Point, London. Contact Jo Tucker; tel: 0171-303 6603; fax: 0171-303 5881.
March 19-21: DB World‘96. Olympia, London. Tel: 0181-541 5040; fax: 0181-974 5188.
March 20-22: BIS Strategic Decisions. Swissotel, Neuss, Germany. Tel: 01582 405678; fax: 01582 482959.
March 28: Fischer International Executive Information Security seminar, Old Trafford football ground, Manchester. Tel: 01923 859119.
April 22-May 1: Document Management Roadshow. Tel: 01905 613236; fax: 01905 29138.
May 8-9: Information Society Convention, Metropole, Birmingham. Tel: 01934 625964; fax: 01934 625399.
May 20-24: Informatique conference, Montpellier, France. Tel: 01372 363386.
May 30-June 2: The Home PC Show. Contact Hilary Broadley. Tel: 0181-849 6200.
June 18-20: Multimedia 96. Business Design Centre, London. Contact Neil Crofts. Tel: 0171-359 3535; fax: 0171-288 6446.
E-mail details of events to times.interface@dial.pipex.com or fax them to 0171-782 5013
THE days of the neatly-typed CV could be over. Boswell Downes has launched a service called Professional Profile, which puts all the data on floppy disk.
The CVs also include a photograph and up to 15 seconds of speech. Job-seekers can then copy the program on to a series of floppy disks at no extra cost.
The service costs £85 from Boswell Downes, Studio 23, Royal Victoria Patriotic Building, Fitzhugh Grove, London SW18 3SX; tel: 0181-870 2153; fax 0181-874 0717.
Computer managers have serious doubts about whether their security arrangements are keeping up with a new range of threats from both inside and outside, according to international consultancy CSC Index.
New electronic ways of doing business, especially over the Internet, are forcing installations into extra and more sophisticated security measures, the company found from a survey of 290 IT managers.
The biggest fear is that a security breach will put systems or networks out of action: this was mentioned by 83 per cent. Then came destruction or modification of data (79 per cent).
Dial-in access was seen as the biggest threat, listed by 69 per cent, while 62 per cent feared viruses.
"These findings highlight a relatively new concern: insulating internal networks against intrusion must be balanced with an increasing dependence on the Internet and other technologies for communicating with the public and with trading partners," says Peter Hill, director of the CSC Index research programme.
This concern is reflected in companies' responses to the perceived risks. Almost two in three have a comprehensive and up-to-date information security policy. About 60 per cent ensure that security concerns are taken into account in all stages of system development.
New security measures are being introduced alongside traditional controls. Virtually every organisation uses both physical security systems and passwords to control access.
In addition, just over half have now introduced so-called "firewalls" to isolate internal networks from the net, and 48 per cent now use data encryption, previously mainly restricted to banks and government departments.
"The continuing growth of electronic commerce, coupled with the increasing sophistication of hackers, means firewalls will have to be installed by companies which have not yet considered them," Hill says.
He says IT managers now need to devise "extremely aggressive strategies" to cope.
"Vulnerability to dial-in access and viruses are currently top of the agenda but as technology changes, so will the threats," he says. "Even the most modern security may not be effective for long as technology advances."
Love is all around on the Internet today. For the price of a local call you can order an emergency bunch of red roses, send a last-minute Valentine by e-mail or even call up a selection of audio kisses.
Chocolates are the traditional route to a woman's heart, so if you want to order a special treat the web has dozens of suitable sites. They include Barbra Jean's Famous Candies, the Belgian Chocolate Shop, the Fudge of the Month Club and Gay Goodies, which makes a "chocolate pizza". To pick your virtual sweetshop, start at http://www.yahoo.com/Business and Economy/
Companies/Food/Chocolate for a full listing.
If you want to say it with flowers, http://www.yahoo.com /Business And Economy/
Companies/Flowers has a huge listing of companies worldwide which will take online orders for bouquets or posies.
As for love letters, the Aphrodite Love Palace has a selection of poetry, love messages and even some audio .wav files of various types of kisses from pecks to smooches.
You'll find it at http://www.
dircon.co.uk:80/purplet/love/
smooch/smooch.html.
If your partner forgets to send you a card and you begin to wonder whether you're incompatible, try http://www.
lovepsychic.com/loveguru/ and discuss your problems with George Roman, who styles himself "The Beverly Hills Love Psychic".
Roman asks callers to fill in a form detailing your own and your partner's birth details and add your credit card number. He will then analyse your compatibility.
He is now planning to add an astrology-based free personal ads section for his online clients in the UK, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, South Africa and Norway.
"It's exciting to extend George's help and love advice globally, all from a desktop," says his loyal spokesperson.
The site at http://www.
valentine.com/ boasts a Love Mechanic to sort out romantic difficulties. "We think of Valentine.com as the Tin Man of the Internet," says John Arnold, who developed the project. "It's a warm heart glowing in the hollow chest of technology."
If you're still looking for love there are hundreds of sites on the web where you can place and reply to lonely hearts ads, including one where you can even upload a short video of yourself. Http://www.dina.
kvl.dk/fischer/alt.romance/
romance-links.html is a good starting point.
Other social newsgroups including alt.support, alt.cuddles, alt.couples and soc.singles cater for the romantic souls out there in Usenet land though some of the users may not be quite as delightful as they would like you to think.
If you are seriously looking for a soulmate who lives in Britain rather than in the United States, head direct to uk.singles.
Finally, bear in mind that February 14 isn't just for sweethearts. According to research, teachers, children and 3 per cent of household pets receive Valentine cards every year.
* You can propose to your loved today by e-mail, simply by logging on to http://www.invision.net/cupid/ * The translation of the Day service will send the phrase "I love you" in different languages daily. E-mail funny@vivid.net
NOVELL Inc has filed a series of civil action suits against 17 California companies for software piracy. Altered Novell upgrades were found on sale in the UK, the Middle East, Holland, Germany and Israel.
TOSHIBA aims to capture up to 20 per cent of the US desktop market with a new range of home PCs, using successful Christmas sales as a springboard.
The company already has a 20 per cent share of the US laptop market and hopes to become the world's largest PC manufacturer by the year 2000.
They may not say much but computers are making their mark in the field of linguistics. They have been used to map the extended family of Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the tongue from which many European languages are descended.
Ten main languages, including English, French, German, Albanian and Iranian, are thought to have come from PIE, which died out 5,000 years ago. But confusion surrounds the chronology of these break-offs. Did they all develop independently at the same time? Or did they break off at different times? And if so, which languages splintered from which?
Linguists were faced with the messy fact that the genealogical map for all Indo-European languages has 34 million possible combinations. Dr Don Ringe and Dr Ann Taylor, two linguists at the University of Pennslyvania, enlisted the help of Dr Andy Warnow, a computer scientist.
Dr Warnow developed a computer algorithm to sift through the Indo-European languages, and to look for grammatical and phonetic similarities between them. For example, the "k" sound at the beginning of Indo-European words is replaced by an "h" sound in Germanic languages.
The algorithm has thrown up four possible family trees. "We have come up with a favourite," says Dr Warnow, who became involved in the project two years ago. "And the more refinements we do the more beautifully it fits."
The tree shows that the first breakaway language was Anatolian, an ancient group of languages once spoken in Turkey. Celtic was quick to follow, spawning Irish, Gaelic, Welsh and Breton. Armenian and Greek then developed from PIE. The last linguistic spin-offs from PIE were the Indic and Iranian languages.
Interestingly, support for this pattern of evolution comes from the New York Academy of Sciences. It was reported last month in the academy's newsletter that a series of archaelogical finds bore similarities to the spread of communities suggested by the language tree.
The researchers will present their work to the linguistic community at a forthcoming conference. The sophisticated algorithm will also appear in the Siam Journal of Computing. The tree has also helped to resolve a long-standing puzzle in the evolution of Indo-European languages. Where do the ancient Germanics come in? It was from their language that English, Dutch and German were born.
The genealogical chart shows that a forerunner of the Germanic language was related to Balto-Slavic. Balto-Slavic speakers spread westwards, infiltrating a community of speakers of Celtic and Italic (which developed into Latin). This, say the researchers, is how our own language came about.
Chris Partridge on a sharp-eyed radar development that should cut air accidents
Lasers are set to make flying safer by detecting obstacles such as power cables and invisible dangers like turbulence.
Conventional radars use radio waves unable to detect objects such as overhead lines and masts, which are responsible for several helicopter crashes every year. Laser radars mean that as well as avoiding such hazards, aircraft will also be able to detect and escape the small-scale winds called windshear or microbursts that have been responsible for several fatal crashes.
The big problem with laser radars has been the danger to eyesight. Professor David Payne, of the opto-electronics department at Southampton University, says: "Any laser radar has to be eye-safe it is no good if you come safely in to land but blind everybody on the runway." The lasers used in fibre optic links fit the bill exactly. "The wavelength favoured for telecoms is eye-safe," he says.
Using telecommunications technology for laser radars will bring other benefits. Industrial lasers are often bulky and power-hungry, not desirable in aircraft. The latest generation of fibre optic lasers are light and use little power. "The move to lidar [laser radars] has been made practicable by telecommunications, where we learnt how to control light," Prof Payne says. "Our light sources are shoe-box sized and can be bumped around in helicopters."
Lidars for use in helicopters will be fairly simple affairs, he predicts. Detecting air turbulence is a more complex affair, but interest in the US, where weather conditions can generate windshear that will easily down a plane, is high and he expects commercial airlines will using laser radars within five years.
A NEW software package could save businesses hundreds of pounds on electricity bills.
Energy Advisor, from SCS Software, analyses firms' recent bills to decide which supply tariff would be best suited to their usage. Large electricity consumers can now choose from about 500 tariffs from a range of 30 different suppliers.
Alasdair Barron on net back-up for a captured graduate
A Cambridge graduate captured and held hostage in a remote jungle area is getting worldwide support via the Internet.
Bill Oates, 22, and three fellow graduates were seized by rebels in Irian Jaya on January 8 and their fate and whereabouts are still unknown. They had been researching tribesmen who still lead a Stone Age existence on the Indonesian island since last September and had just embarked on a conservation expedition to an isolated area rich in plant and animal life when they were seized.
Now the Rev Gordon Giles, a curate in Chesterton, Cambridge, who was Mr Oates's friend and fellow chorister for three years when they were at college, has been whipping up global support across the World Wide Web.
Mr Giles, anxious to do something to help, sent a message to a net discussion group asking for prayer. Messages of support soon started coming in, and his audience multiplied as others sent on his request through their own networks. He updates his reports on Mr Oates, a biologist from Jedburgh, Borders, and the other hostages whenever there is fresh news.
A founder member of Christians On The Internet (Coin), Mr Giles says: "If it's happening, we want to be there. "The net has great potential in many areas of religious life. We're showing how it can be used to build faith." The Foreign Office lost contact more than two weeks ago with the rebels holding the three graduates, along with two Dutchmen, a German and 17 Indonesians, and Mr Giles says the uncertainty is particularly hard on relatives.
Mr Oates's parents have had regular meetings with Foreign Office officials and have pleaded with the rebels to release their son, but to no avail.
Publicising the Irian Jaya hostages is just one aspect of a wider project to encourage people across the world to offer active support for those in trouble, and bring comfort to friends and relatives. "There are so many times when I feel abandoned. Every day it is as if a part of me dies," one net-user e-mailed Mr Giles. "It is wonderful to know that we are in your prayers."
The Coin web site is http://www.ely.anglican.org/coin/
CHESTER City Council has become one of the first local authorities in Britain to provide a computerised database of local photographs.
Visitors to the City Records Office can browse through more than 2,000 images of Chester and call up individual ones, including old prints and lantern slides never before seen by the public. The new database will be networked to all City Council venues and eventually on the Internet.
Ministry of Defence staff and armed forces officers will soon learn how to motivate their personnel through multimedia-based training thanks to a £2 million contract with NETG, a subsidiary of the National Education Corporation.
NETG will set up 15 interactive learning stations in Northern Ireland, RAF Halton, Liverpool, Cyprus and Gibraltar, where civil servants and armed forces officers can practise key management skills such as assertiveness and leadership.
The deal also includes language courses in French, German and Italian and a loan library service of multimedia systems and courseware that will allow staff at small or more remote establishments to take all of the available training packages. They will be CD-Rom-based and include video footage with actors playing out various interactive scenarios, followed by questions for participants to answer.
At the core of the training is a system of self-assessment in whichskills can be tested before a course and then again afterwards, along with suggestions on how to develop and use the skills learnt.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence's management training organisation says: "We firmly believe in investing in the training and development of all our staff, service and civilian. Multimedia training has the power to offer packages that are both relevant to our work and exciting in themselves, for staff to take when they need them and at their own pace."
I have had a heap of e-mail detailing alternatives to the official methods of getting hold of a new Netscape to replace my lapsed copy, for which many thanks. In fact, I've found an easier way, albeit a short-term one.
I'd assumed that once the Netscape 90-day deadline had passed, some part of the program's code was changed to restrict access on the web to those sites which would allow you to download a fresh copy. Or, in my case, wouldn't. I still can't open the local mirror site and the US sites are permanently busy.
It turns out Netscape isn't even that mildly cunning. Each time you load the program, it looks up the date held on your computer's system. If that is after the lapse date, it tells you to spend half a day downloading a new copy. In desperation, I tried setting the date on my Mac back a couple of months: and it works! So while we all know it's February 14, my Netscape thinks it's still mid-January and is happy to give me access to the whole world.
After I wrote about quick and dirty ways of logging on from foreign lands that have strange and exotic telephone jacks, I received a number of recommendations for the excellent TeleAdapt. It stocks a remarkable selection of connectors, converters, cables and the like for attaching civilised laptops to backward foreign phone systems.
The company's MD, Gordon Brown, writes to say: "Watch out for the ubiquitous RJ11; although it looks like it should work once you unplug it from the base of the phone, it is not necessarily wired to the US standard. We deal every day with Americans suffering from the stress of no dial tone."
TeleAdapt; Leeway House, Leeway Close, Hatch End, Middlesex, HA5 4SE; tel 0181 421 4444.
If you're an even mildly promiscuous sender of e-mail, you will one day receive a message warning of the Good Times virus. I received my first alert a year or so ago from the US, and they have started appearing again recently.
The virus comes in an e-mail message with the words "Good Times" in the subject field. Open the message and your hard disk crumbles in your hand.
Except it doesn't. Good Times is the first hoax virus: download it and all you get is a message like any other, but sillier. If you think about the route a text-based e-mail message takes to your screen, you'll realise it's impossible for it to carry a virus.
Ignore the message and, more importantly, don't pass it on.
Finally, I've had a dozen messages from owners of ancient computers worried that their machines are too slow to cope with e-mail.
Generally speaking, there is no modern machine too slow to cope with e-mail and the various text-based systems around although you'll need something a bit faster for the web. Even the slowest computers can deal with data faster than a fast modem can deliver it, and although some of the oldest may not be able to use the most modern software, there's plenty of basic shareware around which will work on your PC.
IF YOUR home is full of antiques but your study is a tangle of high-tech cables, a Sussex firm has a solution.
Future Electronic Furniture has just introduced the Powerdesk, an uncluttered antique-style desk with a full PC capability tucked away in its drawers and a linked computer screen that looks more like a photograph frame. To use the keyboard, you simply pull out a drawer. The only cables required are to the power point and the telephone. Even the mouse is cordless.
The Powerdesk comes complete from £2,800, and a walnut partner's desk and pine student's desk are also available. For details, contact FEF Ltd; tel: 01273 814824; fax: 01444 471446; e-mail I00575.3667
@compuserve.com.
Following the passage of the controversial Telecommunications Act through US Congress last week, tens of thousands of web site owners switched their pages to a black background for 48 hours to symbolise the death of the Internet.
The international campaign to protest against the new legislation, passed on February 8, was launched by several civil liberties groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). In the real world, net users are being encouraged to wear a blue ribbon to indicate their support for free speech.
The disputed legislation outlaws discussion and information on the net deemed "indecent" and unsuitable for children. This, critics claim, will reduce what is rapidly becoming the repository of all human knowledge to the level of a children's library. The new legislation specifically censors all information relating to abortion, making it a federal crime to make available any materials on where, how or by what means abortion-related information may be obtained. The law is also accused of posing a threat to the many online self-help groups set up by victims of sexual abuse. The EFF intends the blue ribbon to become a symbol of free speech. Versions are available at its web site (http://www.eff.org/blue ribbon.html).
The foundation is backing an attempt to have the legislation overturned as unconstitutional. Protesters have also threatened that mass infringements of the new law will take place during the next few weeks.
Crewe Alexandra 2 Southampton 3
THE essence of FA Cup football, the underdog rocking the elite, breathed throughout a pulsating second half last night in this replay when Crewe Alexandra came from three goals down and threatened to force extra time. Almost, but not quite, as Southampton finally withstood their valiant charge and went narrowly through to a fifth-round tie at Swindon Town on Saturday.
They have seen one giant, Chelsea, fall at Gresty Road in 35 years, but that does not stop a town like Crewe from hoping against hope that the cup luck will rub off on them again. Reminiscent of Wolverhampton Wanderers versus Tottenham Hotspur a week ago, however, here was early proof that the FA Carling Premiership team, given a second chance, had managed to step up their class, their pace and their superior ideas.
For Southampton, all it took was Le Tissier, the master craftsman of the dead-ball situation. Two corners in the eighth and nineteenth minutes were delivered by him, from the left and from the right, leading directly to goals.
First, the cultured foot dropped the ball plumb onto the chest of Shipperley, standing beyond the far post. Three defenders stood between the striker and the goal, but they melted away when Shipperley feigned to go to his right and his low shot went between them and past the unsighted goalkeeper, Gayle.
Then, after Walters had burst through and Gayle had tipped his shot over the crossbar, Southampton doubled their lead. Le Tissier took three successive corners and the third was measured meticulously for Hall, from 14 yards, to power the ball into the roof of the net with his head.
In the 26th minute, Southampton swept delightfully down the right. Shipperley made himself provider, turning the ball back to Dodd, who arrogantly curled the ball over the outstretched hand of Gayle and into the top corner.
Crewe were being picked off almost at will. Yet the scouting missions to Gresty Road, to that great grooming ground of more educated young apprentices, continue to flow. They were restricted by Crewe last night to "clubs with a mission", a euphemism for intended buyers. Glenn Hoddle, from Chelsea, David Pleat, from Sheffield Wednesday, Ron Yeats, from Liverpool, Bryan Richardson, the chairman of Coventry City, and Alan Watson, representing Crystal Palace, were all in the neat, unpretentious ground.
Crewe were without three of their midfield players, but Wayne Collins flickered sometimes arrogantly at the heart of his team's effort and, alone up front, Adebola caught the eye. This 19-year-old is big and has, at times, a hypnotic touch with his left foot.
In the 33rd minute, he began and almost ended Crewe's finest riposte so far. Adebola used that left foot to guide the ball behind Charlton for Edwards; Edwards miskicked his cross, betraying the way Crewe so often hurried their movements, but when Rivers retrieved the ball, Adebola tried a scissor-kick which travelled wide and again failed to extend Beasant.
No sooner was that observation made than Crewe showed quality and pluck to shake Southampton. Rivers accelerated down the left flank and crossed the ball with piercing weight and accuracy for Edwards to head in Crewe's first goal. Still, Beasant had not had a touch.
The goal did so much to invigorate Crewe. Lennon, the Northern Ireland international, began to find the time, the room and the inspiration to run the midfield. Southampton, having worked so hard and paid Crewe such professional respect in the first half, thought they could take the foot off the pedal and conserve themselves in the second.
However, a headed goal, looping over the 6ft 4in Beasant from Westwood in the 81st minute, ridiculed this nonchalance. Rivers had already scared Southampton with a low shot inches off target, Adebola came even closer in the 87th when Lennon, chesting the ball down and chipping it forward masterfully, invited the big centre forward to head it. He did, against the outside of a post. Southampton, right at the end forced to clear off their line from Adebola, knew that they had come to a place of learning and escaped showing so much composure in the first half, so little in the second.
CREWE ALEXANDRA (4-3-2-1): M Gayle L Unsworth, D Collier (sub: S Garvey, 69 min), A Westwood, S Smith N Lennon, B Barr, W Collins R Edwards, M Rivers D Adebola.
SOUTHAMPTON (4-4-2): D Beasant J Dodd, K Monkou, R Hall, S Charlton M Le Tissier, J Magilton, T Widdrington, M Walters N Shipperley, G Watson (sub: D Hughes, 85).
Referee: P Alcock.
TO WIN this World Cup will require far more from a team than simple cricketing excellence, as the England players, who launched the tournament early this morning, are rapidly finding out. You have to travel, you have to stay healthy, you have to stay sane and, on the sub-continent, none of them comes easy. Neither, for some, does the management commandment forbidding nail-biting.
For all the fascinations of India, there are, for Western sportsmen, as many frustrations and privations. New Zealand, England's opponents today, have the advantage of familiarity after touring India as recently as November. The England players, several of them virgin soldiers in this part of the world, are having to accustom themselves to an alien way of life.
Their preparation for survival and success has been meticulous: Phil Bell, the team doctor, has seen to that. One of his earliest missions was to identify the nail-biters of the party, the most persistent of whom were Graham Thorpe and Richard Illingworth, and wean them off the habit.
"Preventing illness is my aim," Bell said. "When the grounds here are watered, it is done with mucky water that may have come straight from sewage drains. Picking up the ball after it has rolled on the grass, then biting your nails afterwards, is a recipe for stomach trouble."
For similar reasons, Bell insists that the players wash their hands thoroughly whenever they come off the field. He has also issued a list of dietary instructions entirely at odds with the advice he would give in other countries. Fish and salads, the health foods of Europe, must be avoided at all costs, as must ice in drinks.
For the first time, an England team on tour is on constant medication. Each day, every player must swallow a capsule, an antibiotic that protects them against diarrhoea and stomach disorders.
Some players take their own prudent precautions, none more so than Jack Russell, though in his case the measures are not all specific to India and Pakistan. Russell took his own baked beans and Jaffa Cakes to South Africa, too. But he is not complaining. He knows, and others are finding out, that to do so here is self-defeating. Michael Atherton did spend the practice session yesterday bellowing abuse, but that was entirely directed at himself for dropped catches and false strokes. He has a proper, captain's attitude to the tour and is determined that his team should not fall into the mentality of siege and persecution fatally adopted by many previous England sides.
Even the absurdity of the journey from Calcutta on Monday, which began for England and three other teams at 4.30am and ended at 9pm, brought a philosophical response. While the vagaries of the Indian Airlines timetable indicate that the Cup organisers should have chartered an aircraft, Atherton is wise enough to acknowledge the local acceptance of travel as an essential trial.
The manager, Raymond Illingworth, was not so sanguine. "If a football manager was asked to do the three days we've just had immediately before the first game in a World Cup, he would laugh the organisers out of court," he said.
Illingworth, of course, is the man who vowed, in his 1969 autobiography: "India is one country I will never tour." Much has changed since then, but for one perhaps not enough. When he said that England had a good draw in the competition, he was not thinking of his social life. All but one of their group games are in alcohol-free Pakistan and the other, the match today, is in the one remaining "dry" state in India. So, if Robin Smith sought a celebratory drink after a fitness test yesterday that confirmed he could stay with the party, he was out of luck.
ENGLAND, famed in world rugby union for the size and quality of their lineout, last night sprang the shock of this topsy-turvy season by dropping Martin Bayfield for the Calcutta Cup match against Scotland at Murrayfield on March 2.
Bayfield, at 6ft 10in one of the two tallest players in international rugby the other, Derwyn Jones, was named in an unchanged Wales team to play the Scots in Cardiff on Saturday gives way to Garath Archer, of Bristol. Archer, 21, has made ten appearances for the England A team, and will win his first senior cap.
Bayfield was not the only Northampton player to suffer after the team management spent most of yesterday afternoon at Marlow deliberating over the disappointing displays in four internationals this season. Tim Rodber concedes his place in the back row to Ben Clarke, to allow for the restoration of Dean Richards as No8 and pack leader, the roles occupied by Clarke since the opening game, against South Africa.
Although the throwing-in of Mark Regan, the Bristol hooker, had been widely identified as a primary reason for England's declining lineout, the management has looked further. Bayfield's inability to resist interference which must be linked to lack of assistance from those around him from France in Paris and Wales at Twickenham, has led to his downfall after 31 caps, in a season in which he has taken a five-year sabbatical from the Bedfordshire Police so as to concentrate on professional rugby.
He is replaced by a comparatively small player in the 6ft 6in and 18st 8lb Archer, but one who has established a reputation for consistency since joining the A team as a youngster from Newcastle last year. He moved south to Bristol, joined the Army (though he has since left to concentrate upon his sporting career) and, during the summer, he toured with England A in Australia.
Ironically, much of his career has been spent as a front-of-the-line jumper, and he moved to the middle for Bristol only because of the absence of Simon Shaw, who was so close to a cap before a knee injury wrecked his season. Even so, Archer has played at the front for England A, and will have to adjust swiftly to new demands in the five nations' championship.
"Garath has all the skills and, if he applies himself, he could be there for a long time," Brian Hanlon, the Bristol director of coaching, said. "His relationship with Mark Regan will be very valuable to England. We made a conscious decision to play him at four in the lineout because he gets very high with ease."
Richards, 32 and England's most-capped No8, has been out of favour since the World Cup semi-final against New Zealand last June. He returned to the squad in January only when Rodber withdrew from the replacements through injury, and won his 46th cap as a temporary replacement for Clarke against France. The apparent inability of England's forwards to think on their feet during the 21-15 win against Wales 11 days ago has led to his recall.
"Archer has had an outstanding season in the A team and has performed excellently in the lineout at that level and for Bristol," Jack Rowell, the team manager, said. "We have chosen a side which gives us some options in combatting Scotland in the lineout. We have omitted Bayfield and Rodber, but such talented players remain very much part of the squad."
Nevertheless, it is the second time this season that Rodber has been dropped. Having appeared in every international last year, he lost his place to Steve Ojomoh against France, only to be restored against Wales. This is the sixth back-row change in as many internationals, and the management must hope that Richards can bring some organisation to a back five that has patently lacked it.
If Scotland can beat Wales on Saturday, they will play for the grand slam against England a fortnight later. Wales, however, taking more from defeat at Twickenham than England did in victory, have kept faith with the same squad and resisted the temptation to restore Neil Jenkins at stand-off half.
This is the first time for three years that Wales have kept an unchanged team. "We played well in parts against England and we need to extend the lengths of those parts against Scotland," Kevin Bowring, the coach, said.
TEAMS
ENGLAND: M J Catt (Bath); J M Sleightholme (Bath), W D C Carling (Harlequins, captain), J C Guscott (Bath), R Underwood (Leicester); P J Grayson (Northampton), M J S Dawson (Northampton); G C Rowntree (Leicester), M P Regan (Bristol), J Leonard (Harlequins), B B Clarke (Bath), M O Johnson (Leicester), G Archer (Bristol), L B N Dallaglio (Wasps), D Richards (Leicester). Replacements: J E B Callard (Bath), P R de Glanville (Bath), K P P Bracken (Bristol), V E Ubogu (Bath), R G R Dawe (Bath), T A K Rodber (Northampton).
WALES: W J L Thomas (Llanelli); I C Evans (Llanelli), L B Davies (Neath), N G Davies (Llanelli), W T Proctor (Llanelli); A C Thomas (Bristol), R Howley (Bridgend); A L P Lewis (Cardiff), J M Humphreys (Cardiff, captain), J D Davies (Neath), E W Lewis (Cardiff), G O Llewellyn (Neath), D Jones (Cardiff), R G Jones (Llanelli), H T Taylor (Cardiff). Replacements: G Thomas (Bridgend), N R Jenkins (Pontypridd), A P Moore (Cardiff), S Williams (Neath), L Mustoe (Cardiff), G R Jenkins (Swansea).
The historical Saint Valentine was clubbed to death, you know. At this godawful juncture of the year, when people swoon on cue in satin and frills, it seems wise to bear that interesting fact in mind. Last night's telly, luckily, was a good source for the flipside of Lerv; rejection and hurt feelings abounded. "Come back!" yelled the Royal Opera House, when the Russian conductor Rozhdestvensky walked out on a production, days before the opening; "Come back!" yelled Sam to Ricky in EastEnders (then Bianca to Ricky; then Ricky to Bianca; then Ricky to all his personal belongings, see below).
"Come back!" said the Larry Sanders Show to a performance artist it had unwisely censored. The only people displaying any dignity, it seemed to me, were the disabled lonely hearts in the new series of From the Edge. But then, the disabled know so much about rejection already, they are damned careful how they select their partners.
There are some people, I know, to whom the ultimate happiness of Bianca Jackson in EastEnders (BBC1) is of no burning importance. "Patsy Palmer has a slappable face," an American EastEnders fan wrote to me; and few would disagree. Yet somehow the Pain of Bianca has become a regular heart-wringer. Having matched her to a poltroon such as Ricky (a boy who sniffs motor oil) the writers can just settle back and watch the result. In good drama, the audience knows what every character wants, and Bianca scores heavily in this regard. Nobody is more selfish or demanding than this spoiled, mouthy cow (pronounced "Kaaa" by Bianca). With awesome regularity, she takes one's breath away.
And now the Pain of Bianca has reached a new nadir. For, rejected by doltish Ricky, the scheming Sam has lied to Bianca about the purpose of their secret assignation at Camden Lock! Ricky is confused and open-mouthed, which is not altogether surprising, for Bianca has selected strangely from her wardrobe today, and wears an orange shorty jumper, apparently knitted from cassette tape. Ricky is desperate. "I love Bianca," he huffs in agony; "I want to marry her!" "I wouldn't book the All yet mate," advises David, cheerfully. Sniffing, Bianca piles Ricky's stuff on the kerb and sprinkles petrol. She lights a match and tosses it. Va va voom. Sayonara Meesta Reek.
But if the youth of Albert Square think they have problems, they should think again. "Everyone is sensitive to rejection," said a woman wheelchair-user in From the Edge (BBC2). "But when boys ask you out and then run away and laugh, it makes you a bit cautious." They run away and laugh? Yes, that would be hurtful. In this first programme of a series on disabled issues, Valentine romance was inevitably in the air (oh God), but in particular the issue was the ethics of advertising for a soul-mate without mentioning the D word. One man had spent £3,000 honestly describing himself as "lonely disabled divorced grandad", which was certainly a waste of money. Drop the "lonely", mate. Nobody reads past that one.
Meanwhile a woman called Jackie, with learning disabilities, described how she gave negative responses to a potential boyfriend. It was like a stand-up routine. "I said, I'm a feminist. Well, he didn't like that. Then I said, I'm not very good at cooking, and he didn't like that. Then I said, I like getting my own way." She tipped her head to one side, and looked very earnest. "I haven't seen him since then. Is that awful?"
Getting the tone right for such a programme is difficult. Should there be a disabled ghetto or not? From the Edge was up-beat and youthful, and repeatedly drew attention to the irrelevance of disability by letting the viewers draw their own conclusions, for example, about the real reasons Jackie's suitor did not persevere. One of the presenters, in a wheelchair, was a man with bleached, cropped hair, leather trousers, chunky silver rings, and a zip-up blouson of black feathers. He was very good. So why is he presenting a programme about disability? Why isn't he presenting a programme about something else?
We have a policy of not reviewing repeats, but it's lucky I didn't count on watching the promised rerun of Yellow Line (BBC1), Christopher Terrill's brilliant Inside Story about motorists and clampers. At the last minute, it was pulled in favour of football. First shown a couple of years ago, Yellow Line was the first film to capture human indignation at its truly ugliest clamped motorists like Mount Etna fireworks, with coloured sparks and purple smoke belching out of their heads.
But those in search of human incandescence could of course console themselves with The X Files (BBC1), where people burst into flames on a regular basis, and in which last night a scientist named Dr Banton foolishly meddled with a particle accelerator. Evidently he had not been listening when his mother told him never to do that. Va va voom. And now he had a black hole instead of a shadow. With its usual high-handedness, the script glossed over the precise physics of this, but suffice to say, whenever Dr Banton stood in a strong light, he would sweat quarts and warn: "I'm a dangerous man!" as people edged stupidly towards the silhouette of his head on the floor. "What?" they said, and then a foot strayed too far and flup! They melted feet first into a little pile of clinker on the carpet.
Luckily, Dr Banton's gift is not given to everyone. Otherwise, in EastEnders, Ricky's clothes and stereo might today still be preserved, but the black scorch on the pavement would be him.
THERE are few places to hide on a tennis court, but for Karel Novacek the idea of playing in front of 5,000 people is the nearest thing to sanity and security he knows at the moment. Yesterday, at the Dubai Open, he attacked the International Tennis Federation (ITF) over its handling of allegations of drug-taking levelled at himself and Mats Wilander.
The two players underwent a routine drugs test at the French Open last year, but then heard nothing more until October, when a letter arrived from the ITF stating there were irregularities over the results. "I gave the letter to my lawyers," Novacek said. "I didn't understand the legal terms."
Since then, the lawyers representing Novacek, of the Czech Republic, and Wilander, of Sweden, have been trying to gain access to the evidence against the players, while the ITF hearing concerning the case on January 22 was cancelled at the last moment. The next Novacek knew about the matter was when he read it in the News of the World last month while standing at Dusseldorf station.
"I was in tears, in shock," he said. "They said in the article that they knew since June about this, which makes me think that someone from the ITF leaked the information. I feel bad about the ITF: if there were no leaks, then there would be no story. I cannot be upset by the newspaper or the media in fact I have been very nicely surprised by the support but I feel let down by the ITF."
Wilander was also due to play in Dubai, but decided to stay in the United States "to rest and free his mind", as Novacek put it. However, for Novacek, who won the first Dubai Open in 1993, a wild card into the event was the perfect release. "Let me say that me and Mats are innocent," he said. "I have no reason to be sad or worried, we never did anything wrong. That's why I'm happy to be back after three months of injuries."
The High Court in London has given the ITF until Friday to release the evidence to the players' lawyers, but, if they fail to meet the deadline, Novacek is unsure what to do next, as further legal action seems pointless to him.
"No amount of money in the world can repair the damage," he said. "Our ultimate goal is to prove that we are innocent and we have not had one opportunity to do that. We want to make sure that this cannot happen again."
In the relatively peaceful world of match play, Jim Courier, the No3 seed, was beaten 7-5, 7-6 in the first round by Alberto Berasategui. Courier was 5-2 down in the second set before recovering to force the tie-break.
A NEW service from BT Inmarsat enables you to connect directly to your office PC by satellite from anywhere in the world.
M-Data relies on BT Inmarsat's M-Sat system, currently used for voice and fax communication via portable satellite telephones weighing as little as 5lb each.
The M-Sat system enables direct-dialled phone calls to be sent and received from any country in the world. Users of the M-Data version include businessmen who need to contact head offices for data, prices and stock levels.
The M-Data service offers access between Africa, Europe, North and South America and the Middle East. A full global service will be implemented within the next few months.
THE detached manner and the monotone have stayed intact during the dark days, but we still know nothing more about the state of Jennifer Capriati's game. Or her mind, for that matter.
Instead of taking to the court for her comeback at the Paris Open, the American withdrew just an hour before her first-round match against Sabine Appelmans, not quite with a Garboesque cry of "I want to be alone" but with an injury that was diagnosed as a hip strain but might prove to be a more terminal case of stage fright.
According to her father and coach, Stefano, Capriati might well postpone her return to the Nokia grand prix in Essen next week. Capriati herself was not so definite. "I can't say when I will play again. I want to see how it feels," she said, twiddling an earring and displaying the ready smile reminiscent of the days before innocence was soured and an Olympic champion became another inmate of a drug rehabilitation centre. It is not the first time the two have had their disagreements.
Like getting back on a bicycle, the longer the wait the harder it will be for Capriati to recover her nerve. This would have been only her second tournament match since losing in the first round of the US Open in 1993, but Capriati's account of her injury, suffered when she was stretching for a ball in practice against Magdalena Maleeva yesterday morning, was backed up Kathy Martin, the Women's Tennis Association tour physio.
"I haven't been playing for a while and the muscles are very tight. I was going for a ball and I just went too far. Maybe I wasn't warmed up completely," Capriati said. She tried, she added, to play on it prior to her match, "but it was just too painful".
If it is an elaborate game of charades, a plan to put the media off her scent, Capriati might be playing the wrong game. For all the flashing lightbulbs and phalanx of microphones, this was a gentle reintroduction to superstardom for her, a mere tinkle on the triangle compared to the clash of cymbals that accompanied the celebrated return of Monica Seles last year but then Seles relished the oxygen; Capriati was poisoned by it. Answering questions has always been harder for her than hitting forehands.
Capriati, though, stressed that the injury was a temporary blip, not another long-term dip. "This has been a good experience for me. It's been a while since I've been on the tour and it's very exciting. I've missed it a lot."
In the scheme of a riches-to-rags story more common to boxing, the news of a further postponement was a minor disappointment. The Parisian crowd, their curiosity thwarted by the anti-climax, whistled a little, but they had the consolation of watching Martina Hingis, the latest tennis prodigy, instead of one ruined earlier. Hingis won impressively, as it happened, though Capriati did not stay to watch.
Asked why she had decided to come back, after her first effort, in Philadelphia 15 months ago, had lasted just one match, Capriati said the decision had been gradual, not caused by the successful return of Seles or the persuasive powers of Steffi Graf, but by her own inner desire to play again. Time, she added, was still on her side. She is still a month away from her twentieth birthday.
"I'm taking one step at a time, that's what I'm doing, just to see how it goes, but I'm enjoying myself and I'm happy to be back. I think what we can all do is do what makes us happy. I've missed playing, missed my time on the tour. I've taken a break, it's been a long break, but it's still inside me and I'm still young. I never said I wasn't going to play again." Judgement on the authenticity of the commitment will have to be reserved until Capriati appears on court again with a racket in her hand.
That might be next week. The week after. Sometime. Never. "It's just very unfortunate that this has happened.," Capriati said. "I wanted to play, I felt as if I was ready. It's a long way to come not to play," she said. Only Capriati herself knows exactly how long.
Actress Miriam Margolyes travels the world but stays in touch by e-mail. Simon Vail reports.
Miriam Margolyes, the undisputed queen of the voice-over and star of countless film and television productions, spends her life as an actress travelling the world.
She is currently in Mexico City, where she is playing the key role of the nurse in a new 20th Century Fox film of Romeo And Juliet.
But where most stars would be content to relax after a hard day in front of the cameras, Miss Margolyes returns to her hotel room every night and plugs in her laptop.
Wherever she is in the world, it enables her to keep in touch with her post, to read scripts that are submitted to her, and to deal with her property empire in London, California and Italy by e-mail and CompuServe.
Getting online isn't always easy, however, as other travellers have found to their cost.
Miss Margolyes relies heavily on TeleAdapt connectors, which allow her to connect her IBM Thinkpad laptop and a fast modem into hotel bedroom telephone systems around the world.
"I am staying in a modern hotel here in Mexico, with an up-to-date telephone system, so dialling in is not a problem," she says.
But in other countries it can be, as other international travellers know only too well.
Miss Margolyes advises them to do as she does and always carry a selection of different adaptors.
As many as 40 different telephone plugs and sockets are in existence around the world. Some hotels use digital switchboards, which can damage analogue modems through higher voltages.
International travellers also need to think how they will connect their computers into the electricity supply of other countries.
Voltages are different, as are the plugs.
Executives who travel a great deal are known to have dismantled hotel telephones and wired them into their modems directly as they try to dial into head office.
Many hotels are starting to make life easier for laptop users who need a telephone socket in their bedrooms, but even with that facility most people still need to be able to work out what kind of exchange is used by the hotel and find the right adaptor.
"I am actually amazed at how easy it was to get connected from Mexico," says Miss Margolyes. "But I could not survive without TeleAdapt."
She has learned that to connect her laptop in some countries she needs to send her modem an "initialisation string", which will allow the modem to recognise an unfamiliar dialling tone.
Miss Margolyes says she spends as much as three hours a day online, surfing her way around 54 different CompuServe sites. The Italian forum is her favourite.
Apart from her enjoyment of the net, she finds e-mail a very efficient way of looking at scripts that are sent to her, and arranging business ventures.
She is currently trying to set up a tour in South Africa for a one-woman show and her laptop is again proving invaluable. "I really could not do it without e-mail," she says. "I travel a great deal and the time zones are frequently against me."
Using e-mail is much cheaper and more efficient than using a fax, she says "and not everybody travels with a secretarial entourage".
Miss Margolyes' laptop helped her out in a recent property transaction.
She was staying in Australia at the time, but was able to arrange a joint purchase of a property with other friends who were dotted round the world.
She had planned to conduct the negotiations by fax, but the machine in the Australian estate agent's office had broken down.
Instead, Miss Margolyes got out her laptop and was able to e-mail the transaction documents round the world and close the deal.
The interest in computers, she says, grew out of an enjoyment of electronic gadgetry she was an early user of cellular telephones when they first came out.
Friends who are not online frustrate her, she says, and she now needs a daily dose of the net.
"It is not that I need to log on to CompuServe but I am addicted to it," she laughs. "But as I don't have any other addiction I think it is perfectly OK."
Although Microsoft has officially said there will be no new version of Windows this year, the respected American magazine Windows has obtained a sneak peek at what it believes will be Windows 96.
Code-named Nashville, the programme has the same basic structure as Windows 95 but has been much enhanced and improved to make the entire operating system work more like an Internet web browser than a desktop program.
"We called Microsoft to give them a chance to take Nashville into the daylight, but they denied that such a beta even existed," says editor Fred Langa, whose magazine received the code anonymously via the net. "We even thought it might be a Trojan horse ‘phoney build' at first, but some digging around convinced us that the build is real."
The programme does describe itself in its internal code as both Windows 96 and Nashville and, says Langa, offers several improvements over the version released last August. More code has been optimised and it now runs approximately 15 per cent faster than before.
Add-ins for Windows 95 such as the Internet Explorer Wizard are now built into the basic operating system, and the Explorer has go-back and go-forward buttons just like a web browser, as well as allowing you to "map" distant computers and net sites. Also, clickable links are underlined and in colour.
The new build appears to offer much more desktop animation, plus a new Personal Information Manager called Athena, featuring a contact manager, a white pages listing for your e-mail, a calendar, to-do lists and task manager.
"I think the software is real, and probably represents an interim prototype of the next version of desktop Windows," Langa concludes. "Not all of the features may make it to the final build, but I'll bet some do. Bill Gates has said there will be no ‘major upgrade' to Windows in 1996, which leads me to think that these things will appear in an incremental release sort of a Windows 95.1 later this year. I bet it will be called Win96."
Microsoft declined to comment.
THE following readers won prizes in recent Interface competitions:
Omnigo 100 Organisers: Mr D Krampf, of Daventry, Northants; Mr M Martin, of Leatherhead, Surrey; Ms Y Emmerson, of Basingstoke, Hants; Mr S Osborne, of Weymouth, Dorset; Mr Nigel Masterton, of Edinburgh; Ms T Dyer, of London N15; Mr P Edwards, of Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands; Mr J Abbott, of Ilford, Essex; Mr A Thorn, of Cardiff; Mr G Lorrimer, of Dereham, Norfolk.
Compaq PCs: Mr R Tedder, of Maryport, Cumbria; Mr J Burniston, of Glasgow.
Apollo P75 Multimedia PCs: Mr R Kaye, of Cottingham, N Humberside; Ms S Gardener, of Cranleigh, Surrey; Mr M Ward, of London SE3.
Canon B360 Bubble Jet Fax: Mr J Durrell, of Shrewsbury.
Sony PlayStations: Ms A Murphy, of Winchester, Hants; Mr R Davis, of Swanwick Alfreton, Derbyshire; Mr T Burton, of Haslemere, Surrey; Mrs J Metcalfe, of Bradford; Mr G C Beard, of Barnstaple, Devon.
Panafax UF-SI Phone Fax Machines: Mrs M Summer, of Felton, nr Bristol; Mrs R Dear, of Sandown, Isle of Wight; Mrs Julia Haslam, of Leominster; Mr M Gomm, of Cheltenham; Mr J Sharkey, of Liverpool.
BRITAIN'S first "concept college" has been set up among the shops and leisure facilities at the MetroCentre, Gateshead, Tyne & Wear.
Learning World, a collaboration between Sunderland University and Gateshead College, offers a broad range of courses from beauty therapy to degree-level qualifications in business and technology.
The 14 rooms at Learning World are designed to resemble a modern office rather than a school or college. IT in place includes 53 RM PCs, two servers and four printers.
Pat Robertson, managing director of Learning World, is confident that the project will work. "The installation of the very latest IT will ensure that the centre is able to keep abreast of technological development and hence meet the changing needs and demands of students without them having to attend specialist institutions."
British successes
In the high-powered, category 17 tournament in Parnu, Estonia, Nigel Short, of Great Britain, recorded his best result for some years, finishing first with 61/2 out of 10, ahead of Khalifman, Ehlvest and Hracek. In the Goodricke tournament in Calcutta, Jon Speelman, the London grandmaster, scored 8 out of 11, sharing first place with Nenashev and Novikov.
Polgar dominant
In the women's world championship in Jaen, Spain, Zsuzsa Polgar has moved into a commanding lead, winning the seventh and eighth games to lead 5 1/2-2 1/2.
White: Zsuzsa Polgar
Black: Xie Jun
Women's world championship
Seventh game
February 1996
Scotch Game
1e4 e5
2Nf3 Nc6
3d4 exd4
4Nxd4 Bc5
5Nxc6 Qf6
6Qd2 dxc6
7Nc3 Be6
8Na4 Bd6
9Qe3 Nh6
10h3 0-0
11Be2 Rfe8
12Nc3 Qe5
13f4 Qa5
14Bd2 Bb4
15a3 Nf5
16exf5 Bc4
17Qd4 Bxc3
18Bxc3 Rxe2+
19Kf1 Qxc3
20bxc3 Re4+
21Kf2 Rxd4
22cxd4 Rd8
23Rhe1 Kf8
24Re4 g6
25f6 Rd6
26Re7 Rxf6
27Rxc7 Rxf4+
28Ke3 Rf6
29Rxb7 a6
30Re1 Bf1
31g4 g5
32Rb6 Bg2
33Rg1 Bd5
34Rg3 Bc4
35d5 Bxd5
36Rxa6 Kg7
37Ra7 Rf4
38a4 Kf6
39Kd2 Rf2+
40Kc1 Ke5
41a5 Kd4
42Kb2 Kc4
43Rb7 c5
44Rb6 Black resigns
Diagram of final position
Internet coverage
The match between Garry Kasparov and IBM's Deep Blue computer can be followed on the World Wide Web: http:www.chess.ibm.park.org.
Raymond Keene writes on chess Monday to Friday in Sport and in the Weekend section on Saturday.
FOR just over three hours yesterday, the Preston Guild Hall became a province of Cumbria when Stuart Airey and David Taylor, who had no previous experience of the portable bowls rink, beat Tony Allcock and David Bryant 7-4, 7-3, 4-7, 2-7, 7-6 in the first round of the pairs event at the Churchill Insurance world indoor championships.
Allcock and Bryant have won the title six times, were runners-up last year and this is the first time they have failed to reach at least the semi-finals. Airey and Taylor are the English national pairs champions and five coach-loads of highly-vocal supporters travelled from Cumbria to watch them.
In a sense, the match was won by a single bowl in the deciding set. Allcock and Bryant, having come back from
0-4 to lead 6-4, held the winning shot an inch behind the jack. Taylor, although unsighted, wrested it out for two shots, Airey drew a third and Allcock missed with his final drive.
"The atmosphere out there is electric," Taylor said. "It's at its worst when everybody suddenly goes silent. Coming from a club environment, where there's always some background noise, you are not prepared for that and it can get to you."
Two sets down, Allcock and Bryant had rallied in predictable style. There were brilliant bowls, mixed with a lot of erratic ones, which all added up to an absorbing contest. Airey and Taylor go on to play Roy Battersby and David Corkill, of Ireland, in the quarter-finals on Sunday.
There was almost another surprise when the singles began, Wynne Richards, the 1988 runner-up, being taken the full distance by Mark Gilliland, a bearded Canadian bristling with determination. Richards won 5-7, 7-1, 3-7, 7-4, 7-4 and needed a count of four shots in the fourth set and a little luck in the decider to make sure of going through. Richards has just been dropped from the England team and so feels that he
has something to prove.
Richards's next opponent is Graham Robertson, of Scotland, who recovered doggedly to beat Neil Burkett, from Cape Town, 6-7, 3-7, 7-5, 7-1,
7-2. In the last match of the day, Hugh Duff, the 1988 champion, had little difficulty in beating Martyn Roberts, of Wales, 7-6, 7-0, 7-2.
The championship programme features singles matches until Saturday, when Richard Corsie and Alex Marshall, the pairs champions, meet Wayne Letman and Phil Rowlands, of Wales, to complete the opening round.
A coded message from The Archers last Sunday on Radio 4. "Why don't we start a home page on the Internet?" urged young John Archer, and then huffed petulantly through his nose, the way he always does. He and Neil Carter ("Ooh, I don't know about that") are setting up a pig venture, and John said they could advertise in cyberspace.
Every so often The Archers makes such lurches into the real world by mentioning "Old Muckspreader" in Private Eye, for example and it scares the wits out of the listeners. We clutch our hearts in the bath. The mention of the Internet was astonishing, and could mean only one thing. That The Archers has a home page and nobody reads it.
Well, I knew my duty. I heard the call. No sooner had the Sunday morning omnibus dum-de-dummed its last than I was searching Lycos (oh yes, easy when you know how) for anything with "Archers" in it, and reading the first ten entries out of 272. And here is the real strength of the net, of course that by doing this I learn more than I ever dreamed possible about an American band called Archers Of Loaf. Finding Ambridge at number nine on this list seemed pretty cool, however, because it suggests that by the same operation of chance, fans of Archers Of Loaf might surf through the wrong file and discover how many acres of Brookfield Farm (12) are currently cultivated for beans.
Alas, there was nothing about John's own net project on the Archers home page. Furthermore, under the section called "Anniversaries" it seemed not to know that Martha Woodford had sadly passed away. But then, to whom will the duty of updating this home page devolve? The answer is obvious. Though Susan Carter is very nifty on the computer (she once dreamed of tele-cottaging), somehow you know the slog will fall on Jill, as all things do in the end.
"Coming to the parish council meeting, mum?"
"Better get started without me, Shula," calls a harried materfamilias, her manner suggestive of eggs just broken into flour. "Your father's not back yet for his tea, then there's Daniel's creative play and this cake for Uncle Tom, I haven't collected my eggs for at least five years, and what's more I haven't logged on since Wednesday!"
"See what you mean! Bye then!"
The odd thing, however, was that when I tried the Archers newsgroup I wasn't allowed in. "A News (NNTP) error occurred," it said mysteriously. "You have no permission to talk. Goodbye." Well, I was gobsmacked. No permission to talk? About The Archers? What's wrong with me? I kept sneaking up on it in different ways, but it was rigid, immovable. I did the quiz with 100 per cent accuracy; I looked for the Archers family tree (it wasn't there); and I noted with genuine enthusiasm that Brookfield has 115 milkers, 60 sows and 25 acres of set-aside. In short, I demonstrated in every way possible that I was a fit person to join the newsgroup. But "You have no permission to talk. Goodbye," was its final word. If John tries to sell his pork this way, he's heading for trouble.
The Archers is on http://
www.bbcnc.org.uk/radio/
radio4/archers/index.html
Welsh Open ten days ago, has been selected by England to go to the Qatar Open in 12 days time. He will joined by the England No1, Matthew Syed, and the Commonwealth men's doubles gold medal-winner, Andrew Eden.
United States Swimming (USS) announced yesterday that it had suspended Jessica Foschi, a 14-year-old from New York, for two years after she had tested positive for the steroid mesterolone last year. A six-month suspended sentence had been imposed by a USS panel, but the body appealed, successfully, for a stiffer sentence. The Foschi family claim their daughter was sabotaged.
Jack Nicklaus has softened his stance on his participation in this year's Open Championship. Apparently surprised by the publicity engendered by his announcement over the weekend that he will not attend in July, he qualified his statement yesterday: "I won't come to Britain for the Open unless I achieve a top 20 finish in both the Masters (in May) and the US Open (in June)." If he does not appear, he will break a streak of playing in 138 consecutive majors.
The years proved too much for Dennis Andries last night. The reflexes of the 42-year-old, three-times former world light-heavyweight champion, were not sharp enough to cope with the quick hands and feet of Terry Dunstan, the British cruiserweight champion, at York Hall, Bethnal Green, last night.
Nine months ago, Dunstan beat Andries by three points. This time, he outpointed him by nine rounds to two, leaving the older man wondering where he can go from here.
THE international basketball career of Trevor Gordon may be over after the England coach, Laszlo Nemeth, took a dim view of the 6ft 7in forward's request to be omitted from the squad that will prepare for its European championship visit to Moscow on February 28 with two matches against Hungary next week.
The player claimed to be suffering from "wear and tear" and wanted to concentrate on his commitment to the Birmingham Bullets, but Nemeth, allying this to Gordon's failure to turn up for a match against Denmark last month, said: "I think that his career with England has ended."
ENGLAND SQUAD (v Hungary at Crystal Palace, February 20, and Ware, February 21): S Bucknall (London Towers), N Austin (London Towers), A Gardiner (London Towers), R Huggins (Sheffield Sharks), I McKinney (Sheffield Sharks), J Swaine (Sheffield Sharks), K Brown (Leopards), R Baker (Leopards), I Whyte (Leopards), P Scantlebury (Thames Valley Tigers, captain), M Payne (Birmingham Bullets), P Grainger (Manchester Giants). McKinney, Swaine and Grainger will be replaced for visit to Russia by P Vourliotis (Newcastle Comets), and A Sims (Derby Storm).
Spectators in Sri Lanka take chance to vent their feelings over World Cup boycott.
IN KEEPING with the build-up to the sixth World Cup, the cricket was secondary. For the record, a combined India-Pakistan "Goodwill XI" defeated a full-strength Sri Lankan side by four wickets yesterday at the Premadasa Stadium in Colombo.
Anil Kumble took four wickets for 12 in a devastating eight-over spell for the combined side; Muthiah Muralitharan, bowling out of sight of the umpire, Darrell Hair, was not thought to have chucked a single off break; Azharuddin captained the visiting team, Intikhab Alam managed it, no one died and the lively crowd, grateful for the cricket they received, chanted untiringly.
In their fullest throat, 10,000 Sri Lankan supporters gave the Australians the bird, a pattern that may repeat itself in later matches in India and Pakistan. Playing on the Urdu word for "long live", they kept up a raucous cry: "India zindabad, Pakistan zindabad, Sri Lanka zindabad, Australia very, very bad." There were other chants, too, thanking the visitors for their gesture of solidarity, but there was also a bitter, less amusing one: "Aussie PM is Keating, Australians are cheating."
The overwhelming flavour at the ground, however, was one of carnival. The aim of the exercise to show the Australians that cricket can still be played in Colombo without risk of bloodstained flannels was achieved. Yet for cricket lovers, particularly for passionate ones from the sub-continent, the manner of its achievement was as striking as the aim itself.
Had India not been partitioned in 1947, leading to the creation of the new state of Pakistan, its cricket team today would be quite formidable. Not quite as formidable as it might have been in the early 1980s when Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, Imran Khan and Javed Miandad were all at their peak but certainly good enough to be notional favourites for the World Cup which started earlier today.
An attack of Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Kumble, Mushtaq Ahmed and Manoj Prabhakar would be varied and venomous. Sachin Tendulkar, Azharuddin and Inzamam-ul-Haq would be a stroke-filled trio of which all sides would be envious.
Aamir Sohail, Sanjay Manjrekar, Navjot Sidhu, Prabhakar and wicket-keeper Rashid Latif would be a bustling supporting cast of batsmen and there is the ageing Miandad, an unknown quantity for perhaps the first time in his life. If the Australians, accorded more respect by the bookmakers than by Sri Lankan spectators, are 5-2 favourites to lift the cup in March, this Fantasy XI might be 2-1.
Yet the flight of fancy, propelled by yesterday's game at Colombo, ought not to stop there.
How good would an all-time "All India XI" be? Who would be in it? Would it be the equal of all-time England, Australia and West Indies teams? How about this for an all-time India-Pakistan XI?: Sunil Gavaskar, Hanif Mohammed, Sachin Tendulkar, Javed Miandad, Vinoo Mankad, Imran Khan (captain), Kapil Dev, Farokh Engineer, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Bhagwat Chandrasekhar.
The side, pure fantasy, has also the purest class. It would hold its own and more against Mars. The venue? Why Colombo of course!
Scoreboard, page 44
Oxford United 0 Nottingham Forest 3. Oxford's gallantry to no avail as Premiership side prevails in replay.
ALTHOUGH they were the more dominant and skilful team, Nottingham Forest were substantially flattered by the eventual ease of their victory at the Manor Ground in an FA Cup fourth-round replay last night. They will need to be more coherent than this if they are to give problems to Bayern Munich in the Uefa Cup next month.
Oxford, game to the last and splendidly organised from deep midfield by Bobby Ford, were undeservedly behind at half-time and could and should have twice drawn level. They are good enough yet to gain promotion from the Endsleigh Insurance League second division and their exit may assist this objective.
Oxford had been fortunate indeed to reach half-time in the first match without having conceded a goal. Forest had bombarded them persistently. This time, however, the boot was definitely on the other foot. It was wholly against the run of play when Forest's opening goal came six minutes before the interval.
Frank Clark surprisingly preferred Silenzi to Roy in attack, but more significantly there was a place for Stone, who had missed the game at the City Ground but proved his recovery from injury in the weekend league defeat by Arsenal. No doubt Clark was looking for more backbone in his side against opposition that had previously lost at home only twice this season. A crowd of 8,022, half as big again as Oxford's average attendance, turned up in expectation of seeing their team earn a home fifth-round tie against Tottenham Hotspur.
Forest's form encouraged them in their belief, but they soon had Oxford's measure, with Stone in particular causing trouble down the right flank. In the 24th minute, a low, square pass from Stone, on this occasion from the left, opened the way for Bart-Williams to let loose at an open target, but the ball flew wildly wide.
Two minutes later, Forest could have been in front when Silenzi threaded the ball through to Stone, near the penalty spot, and his first-time shot, blocked in desperation by Gilchrist, spun wide of Whitehead but ran outside the right-hand post.
At this point, the tide swung radically in the opposite direction. A long cross by Massey from the right all but reached Beauchamp with the goal at his mercy, but Lyttle was able to react in time to hack the ball clear. A moment later, Crossley having dropped the ball, Murphy skied his shot into the crowd.
Oxford forced a succession of corners. From an inswinger by Beauchamp, Cooper glanced the ball across the face of the goal and Massey, facing the wrong way, hooked overhead, the ball flashing less than two feet wide of the post. Murphy, breaking clear through the middle, had a powerful shot deflected wide and, in the 35th minute, Oxford had their best chance yet. Elliott, their barn door of a centre half, came through to meet a cross by Beauchamp. He struck the ball hard and downwards, only for Crossley to make a superb, instinctive save from no more than three yards.
Just as Oxford were scenting blood, Forest counter-struck. Woan, from the left, fed the ball to Stone in a central position some 30 yards out. His instant pass along the ground found Campbell sliding past Oxford's central defenders and his shot smacked into the net before Whitehead could react. It was Campbell's fourth goal in seven matches.
Although Oxford had pressure enough, the more dangerous chances of the second half continued to be Forest's. In the 47th minute, a shot by Bobby Ford was blocked by Chettle and fell at the feet of Elliott only yards from the post on the left, but he in turn was smothered by Lyttle. Back came Forest and Campbell, Stone and Campbell again, this time pulling the ball wide to the left when clear of the defence, saw chances come and go.
With little more than a quarter of an hour remaining, Oxford should have drawn level, but Alridge, having recently come on as substitute for Moody, was clearly offside when put away by Massey, only to squander his fortune with a tame shot.
With nine minutes remaining, a surging run by Stone, outstripping two men, ended with a desperate handling offence by Massey a stride inside the area. Woan converted the penalty, before, in a late breakaway, Silenzi dribbled round Whitehead to put the ball in an empty net for Forest's third.
OXFORD UNITED (4-2-3-1): P Whitehead L Robinson, M Elliott, P Gilchrist, M Ford D Smith (sub: M Angel, 70min), B Ford S Massey, M Murphy (sub: D Rush, 62), J Beauchamp P Moody (sub: M Aldridge, 62).
NOTTINGHAM FOREST (4-4-2): M Crossley D Lyttle, C Cooper, S Chettle, D Phillips S Stone, C Bart-Williams, S Gemmill, I Woan A Silenzi, K Campbell.
Referee: D Elleray.
BRISTOL University is reviewing security after £50,000 worth of memory chips were stolen from 70 computers.
The burglary has seriously disrupted the university's computer services, which are not expected to be fully restored for some time.
There is a growing black market in RAM chips, one made much easier because there is no reliable method of tracing stolen chips.
Bristol University is the latest in a long line of organisations to be hit by thieves. Last year Avon police set up Operation Chip to combat computer theft in the region. It brought many arrests and the return of thousands of pounds' worth of electronic equipment.
FANS of the Red Devils can now point their web browsers at http://www.sky.co.uk/
sports/Manu/ for the Manchester United Official Home Page.The site includes team news, a chat forum where users can discuss anything from that unpopular grey strip to whether Ryan Giggs is on form, and interactive trivia games guaranteed to separate men fans from the boys.
There are facilities to download audio clips of match reports and video clips from the archives. Goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel, for example, can watch his amazing goal against Russian side Rotor Volgograd. To take full advantage of the site, you'll need Netscape 2.
On the highway of the early 21st century, the RAC patrol's emergency bleeper suddenly bursts into life. Ten miles away a member of the club is travelling down the A1 unaware that, under the bonnet, his car's thermostat is about to expire. The message to the patrolman, a burst of data from the engine's computer brain, gives an estimated time to the breakdown of 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, the RAC control room has pinpointed the vehicle using the Global Positioning Satellite system developed in the late 20th century by the US military to locate troops on electronic maps. It is accurate to around one metre. The RAC patrol is informed that an ideal liaison point would be just outside Darlington on a B-road by a petrol station. The patrolman calls the driver on his in-car mobile phone, altering him to the failing thermostat and suggesting the meeting place. The member then dials the co-ordinates of the meeting point into the car's on-board navigation system.
Twenty minutes later the old thermostat has been slid out and a new one installed.
Sounds like a spot of wishful thinking or science fiction? Not acording to the Royal Automobile Club. "Every element of the technology required for this scenario to become reality already exists," says Nigel Davies, head of the club's technology department. "The transformation in the next ten years will be more dramatic than the past 50 years of motoring. Stand by for enhanced cruise control, anti-collision radar, overtaking aids, sensors that stop drivers nodding off by detecting eyelid flicker rates, ultraviolet headlights and thermal imaging systems to improve visibility."
Other technologies being made possible through cellular and satellite communications, electronic maps and smaller and more powerful computers, will be weather, crash and road works reports that automatically update the in-car navigation system and plot alternative routes.
Ipswich Town 1 Walsall 0
IPSWICH Town supporters will return to Portman Road on Saturday for an FA Cup fifth-round tie against Aston Villa. It is to be hoped that they will witness a more imaginative and passionate encounter than the delayed yet ultimately soulless fourth-round match against Walsall last night. The Endsleigh Insurance League, first or second division, did not emerge with much credit.
Perhaps the two postponements and subsequent wait had diluted the usual Cup anticipation and atmosphere. Whatever the root cause, it produced a hotchpotch of a game on a hotchpotch of a pitch. A video to hide, under lock and key, and forget.
That the sides produced enough endeavour to just about keep the punters interested, on a bitter Suffolk evening, is not in question. That they had to perform on a wicked surface, strewn with sand and divots, is valid, too.
What materialised, however, will not startle or worry Villa. Ipswich could have and should have buried Walsall, after having gone ahead in only the sixth minute, but their efforts were lacking in any variation and their finishing should be erased from the tape even before storage.
"We knew it was going to be tough," George Burley, the Ipswich manager, said. "We knew Walsall were going to be difficult to break down. We were patient, though, and passed the ball well for periods. We just needed that second goal to kill them off."
Burley not surprisingly predicted a tougher tussle against Villa, but was not unduly concerned by their high standing in the FA Carling Premiership. "They are an exceptional side but so were Blackburn," he said, a reference to Ipswich's admirable 1-0 victory over Rovers in a third-round replay at Ewood Park.
Ipswich started promisingly, the whole game did. Milton decided on a more direct route, after a pleasing yet ineffective session of pretty, pretty football, and his 30-yard pass was latched on to by Mason. He controlled it, without breaking stride, carved through the defensive cover and lashed a fierce drive high into the net for his ninth goal of the season.
"We couldn't really afford to give away a goal that early," Chris Nicholl, the Walsall manager, said. "If we could have kept it level for a bit longer, then maybe we could have given them a few more problems."
Perhaps Lightbourne, the Bermuda striker, should have been suited by the sandy stretches of ground, but twice, towards the end of the first half, he wasted decent opportunities. After the interval, it was embarrassingly one-sided and embarrassing, too, as Ipswich squandered chance after chance.
IPSWICH TOWN (3-5-2): R Wright J Wark, A Mowbray, S Sedgley M Stockwell (sub: G Uhlenbeek, 68min), S Milton, G Williams, P Mason, M Taricco J Scowcroft, I Marshall.
WALSALL (4-4-2): T Wood C Ntamark (sub: W Evans, 21), I Roper, A Viveash, R Daniel C Marsh, D Bradley, M O'Connor, S Houghton (sub: M Butler, 75) K Lightbourne (sub: J Kerr, 75), K Wilson.
Referee: D Gallagher.
THESE are interesting times for Bruce Rioch. Yesterday, he was warned as to his future conduct by the Football Association; this evening, Aston Villa stand between him and a visit to Wembley in his first season as Arsenal manager.
The connection between the events is strong the Coca-Cola Cup. Rioch had a heated disagreement on the touchline with Terry McDermott, the Newcastle United assistant manager, in a passionate match that took Arsenal to their semi-final with Villa, the first leg of which takes place at Highbury tonight. Rioch was censured and warned that a repeat would bring a stronger response.
Arsenal will again be without Adams, Platt and Parlour, and Rioch is hoping that Bergkamp, the Holland international forward, will provide inspiration.
Vinnie Jones received a heavy fine from the FA for the fifth time in three years yesterday. The Wimbledon player's criticism, in a newspaper column, of Ruud Gullit in particular and foreign footballers in general, cost him £2,000 and took his contributions to Lancaster Gate's coffers to £26,250.
Grimsby Town's preparation for their FA Cup fourth-round replay with West Ham United tonight continued its eccentric course yesterday, with Brian Laws, the club's manager, offering to resign after his confrontation with the Italian, Ivano Bonetti. William Carr, the club chairman, refused the offer.
Wimbledon 1 Middlesbrough 0
FOR anyone who is both a Take That fan and a Middlesbrough supporter, the world must appear a bleak place. The pop group has disbanded and Bryan Robson's team is stuck in a rut of poor form that is eroding its confidence.
Middlesbrough's FA Cup tradition is threadbare; they have won only one fourth-round tie in 12 years. Last night, despite an impressive first-half display by Juninho, they did not look capable of improving on that dismal record in this replay at Selhurst Park.
That either team managed a goal was a surprise in itself. "It was always going to be a 1-0 job," Joe Kinnear, the Wimbledon manager, said. How true. The tie at the Riverside Stadium was dour and goalless, as was the meeting between the clubs in the FA Carling Premiership in November. With both goalkeepers in excellent form last night, a penalty shoot-out seemed pre-ordained yet, with 16 minutes remaining, Dean Holdsworth sent Wimbledon into the fifth round, where they will face Huddersfield Town at the McAlpine Stadium.
The catalyst for the improvement was the arrival of Jason Euell as a 68th-minute substitute. He is young, fast and confident and a favourite with the Selhurst Park supporters. Kinnear likens him to Ian Wright, the Arsenal striker.
Gayle broke from midfield, tore down the middle of the pitch and then slid the ball across to Euell, who tried a shot that swerved past Walsh and fell to Holdsworth, who fired the ball from close range into the roof of the net.
In the dying seconds, Barmby smacked the woodwork. Had Middlesbrough been on a roll of recent victories, he would almost certainly have scored.
Juninho is trying his best to thwart that, however. He made several mesmeric, mazy runs in the first half and helped to set up Middlesbrough's other main chance of the match when Wilkinson flicked the ball into the path of Morris, who brought a superb save from Sullivan. Juninho had to miss Brazil's match with Bulgaria to play in this replay. With that kind of commitment, one wonders what Middlesbrough need to turn things around. They are out of the FA Cup and have lost their last seven games in the Premiership.
"We are very close to being a fully-fit team again," Bryan Robson, the Middlesbrough manager, said. That means Robson, himself, will be available shortly and perhaps it is his experience that has been missed.
WIMBLEDON (4-3-3): N Sullivan K Cunningham, A Reeves, C Perry, A Kimble O Leonhardsen, R Earle, M Harford E Ekoku (sub: J Euell, 68min), D Holdsworth, M Gayle.
MIDDLESBROUGH (3-4-2-1): G Walsh P Whelan, N Pearson, S Vickers N Cox (sub: C Hignett, 86), J Pollock, K O'Halloran, C Morris N Barmby, Juninho P Wilkinson.
Referee: S Lodge.
HOT on the heels of the reorganisation of Apple Computer and the ousting of Michael Spindler as chief executive comes the announcement that the company is slashing the price of its Performa range by up to 12 per cent in the US. Prices in the UK are expected to drop by a similar amount soon.
Dr Gilbert F. Amelio, the new chief executive, is confident of the company's staying power. "I fully expect our customers' grandchildren to be buying Apple products," he says.
A leap for animal welfare Blunt answers to sharp questions The ideal girl for computer buffs.
Avirtual frog with a difference has hopped on to screens to the delight of animal welfare groups, which claim dissecting live specimens at school is unnecessary in the computer age.
The plucky amphibian, technically called the Frog Dissection Kit and designed by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, loves nothing more than revealing what makes it tick.
And for budding horror-film makers, the computer programme allows somebody to make a movie as they painstakingly reveal the liver, tibia, aorta and vagus.
"There are roughly 24,000 possible movies, four for each possible organ combination," say breathless laboratory staff who have put the frog on the net.
The programme will also secretly appeal to those who, at more tender ages, loved nothing more than whiling away a summer's day pulling the legs off spiders.
Surely it is only a matter of time before a virtual human dissection becomes available, with the high-tech Homo sapiens simulated to look like well-known politicians.
Personally, I'm looking forward to a virtual rat, having had to dissect the real thing for A-levels. I, and I know there are others, have never been able to look a corned beef sandwich in the face since, because of the appalling whiff. So an on-screen dissection might not only prove cathartic but give a minor boost to Anglo-Argentine trade.
Stephen Hawking, whose A Brief History of Time and spin-off books regularly top the bestsellers' list, now has a rival. A book that is guaranteed to embarrass adults but satisfy every child's interest in science and technology is hitting the shelves complete with a splat of plastic vomit on the cover.
Grossology answers those fundamental questions every youngster and teenager asks and every adult tries to avoid: not the origins of the Universe, but how do farts form, what's dandruff and the origins of body odour.
The book, published by Planet Dexter/Addison Wesley, is written by a science teacher of the kind we all would have liked. The illustrations pull no punches alongside a no-nonsense text.
What fascinating chaps computer contractors appear to be. According to Freelance Informer, a fortnightly magazine for the trade, 43 per cent say blue is their favourite colour, followed by green (16 per cent). Nearly 40 per cent live in the South East. Wow!
There's more: Guinness is their favourite beer, followed by Marston's Pedigree, Boddington's and Wadsworth 6X. When it comes to girls, the contractors who surprisingly are a male-dominated band earning around £48,000 a year would like to be a castaway with Joanna Lumley. Nearly 75 per cent said they dressed smartly.
For anybody not yet asleep comes the real revelation, which will send ripples of alarm through the Tory spin-doctors and send Peter Snow searching for his swingometers.
While 36 per cent voted Conservative in the 1992 election, only 21 per cent said they would vote Tory now. Whoever said this column never covered the big political issues of the day?
WHEN violence and "kombat" are depicted in films, a 15 or even an 18 certificate is normally imposed by the British Board of Film Classification But when youngsters take part in virtual violence in computer games, it is rare for any restrictions to be applied.
Is the law an ass? Not necessarily. The Video Recordings Act of 1984 introduced controls over the content of "video recordings", which include CD-Roms and games disks. There is a specific exemption in the Act for games which has, to date, enabled the publishers and distributors of most computer games software to avoid the classification system.
Nevertheless, it now appears that exemption is no longer guaranteed. In the case of Kent County Council Trading Standards Department v Multi-Media Marketing last year, the reward for successful completion of a computer game was to watch short moving images of naked or semi-naked women. The evidence showed that skilled players could circumvent the game and go directly to the images. The court found that the moving images were distinct from the game, and that the exemption was therefore not available.
The national Trading Standards co-ordinating body has recently written to publishers and retailers drawing attention to the Act. If a work is not exempt, it must be submitted to the British Board of Film Classification. Penalties for failure to comply include imprisonment of up to two years and an unlimited fine.
The author is a solicitor specialising in IT law at Bristows Cooke & Carpmael.
THE first virus designed to target Windows 95 the Boza, or Bizatch virus has been cracked before it has had a chance to spread. Antivirus software experts Symantec have developed a Norton AntiVirus Update to deal with the Australian bug that has so far failed to infect UK systems.
The virus was designed to target Windows 95 32-bit executable files exclusively. It is not expected to affect Dos, Windows 3.x or NT files."Virus protection is critical for Windows 95 users," says Norton's Germaine Ward. "Symantec has developed Boza detection and is working on a repair to provide a complete solution."
To download the antivirus repair, call the Symantec web site at www.symantec.com
MORE than 1,000 personal Valentine's Day messages can be read today in the Internet edition of The Times. The messages have been pouring in from all over the country as closest friends and family are greeted on the lovers' day of the year.
The front page of the Internet edition carries a link to the Personal Classifieds section containing the Valentine messages, which are extracted from the published version in your hand.
Today's first Web page contains another advance with the addition of a direct link from the page to the full Index developed last week: the coloured block titled "The Times Today" is now clickable to reveal the complete contents of the day's Internet edition.
Reader registration for The Times and The Sunday Times continues to grow apace as information about the editions expands through the Internet search directories, and this morning will top the 90,000 mark. The Internet edition can be found on http://www.the-times.co.uk
ANYONE who has ever dreamed of driving a Ferrari now has the chance to do the next best thing: to race the virtual car round a virtual Silverstone circuit at 170mph.
The chance comes in The Interactive Guide to Ferrari Road Cars, a multimedia CD-Rom produced by Global Beach.
This is no road race game, however. The CD-Rom is designed as a reference, with biographical details of Enzo Ferrari, comprehensive details and specifications of every road car produced between 1947 and 1995, 500 photographs, video clips and a choice of three languages for the narrative and text.
Boy (and girl) racers will get the most fun from the 3-D virtual reality gear console, however particularly since it includes the roar of a Ferrari 456GT revving up at the start of a race. The car can then be guided through a live-action lap of the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit, with driver's-eye views.
The CD-Rom is a first step into publishing for Global Beach, the company behind corporate multimedia solutions for ICL, Bayer and Unilever and developers of advanced interactive software delivery systems.
The Interactive Guide to Ferrari is on sale for £29.99 and is available at major retailers or direct from Global Beach; tel: 01734 342699.
ON SATURDAY, at Newbury, Viking Flagship served notice that he is ready to defend his Champion Chase crown. Today, at Ascot, Sound Man, the pretender, attempts to confirm his position as favourite to take over the title.
Sound Man has not run since impressively winning the Tingle Creek Chase at Sandown in December, and Edward O'Grady, his trainer, is using the contest today to sharpen up his eight-year-old for the Champion Chase.
O'Grady said yesterday: "It hasn't been easy with the bad weather recently, but I can't grumble too much because it's been the same for everybody. However, the others have had races more recently than Sound Man and they might have a fitness advantage.
"He won't be at concert pitch because Cheltenham is the target, but I certainly believe he will give a good account of himself."
With Storm Alert best over two miles, the main danger to the Irish raider should be Coulton, who reverts to his optimum trip after failing to stay in the King George. However, Sound Man has gone from strength to strength this season, winning all four starts, and it will be a big surprise if he is beaten.
While Sound Man will start at prohibitive odds, the other two televised races are more open. The Shenley Enterprises Hurdle is fascinating, in spite of only six horses racing from the handicap proper.
Buckhouse Boy and Angelo's Double are the in-form horses, but are both 9lb out of the handicap and have yet to prove that they stay three miles. The latter shapes as though this trip will suit and is sure to go well.
Hebridean returns to hurdles after falling on his two most recent starts over fences, while Simpson, Seekin Cash, Balasani and Top Spin have been below their best recently.
Time For A Run, Sound Man's stable companion, has failed to take to fences this season, and will appreciate the return to the smaller obstacles. He put up a tremendous performance when third under top weight in the Coral Cup at the Cheltenham Festival last year, and a repeat of that effort would give O'Grady and Dunwoody a valuable double.
The Reynoldstown Novices' Chase has attracted a top quality field and will have an important bearing on the Sun Alliance Chase at the Festival. St Mellion Fairway has been entered for the Gold Cup by David Nicholson, his trainer, but his form amounts to little so far and, fine prospect though he is, he has much to prove. Ladbrokes' offer of 6-4 this morning is far too short.
Mr Mulligan is favourite in some lists for the Sun Alliance, and has impressed in two starts over fences. He must be respected, but has a 7lb penalty to overcome. He is preferred to Major Summit, who is also unbeaten over fences, but jumped stickily at Sandown.
In the top races, horses from smaller yards are often over-priced, and that appears to be the case here. John O'Shea's Go Ballistic put up much his best effort when stepped up in trip over course and distance last time, being collared close to home by Hill Of Tullow. Likely to be held up even longer today, Go Ballistic can dent some large reputations.
Andrew Mitchell on how Coca-Cola is using discovery marketing.
Go along to Mayfair's Iceni club sometime this month and, if you're young enough to enter, you'll find a different world. The place is draped in black and red; there are cherries everywhere. Cherry Productions, which has kindly laid on the evening's entertainment, has also provided hairstylists, make-up artists, Red or Dead fashion clothes, and before-and-after photographers for punters who want to leave their old selves behind.
If everything goes right for Cherry Productions, once a month 1,000 young souls will leave the club with a new brand on their lips. And they'll pass the message on via youth culture's jungle drums.
Cherry Production's problem is that it is a front for the world's biggest marketing machine Coca-Cola. But it has to content itself with tiny, low-profile promotions like this because anything more might frighten away its target market.
Since the brand it is pushing Cherry Coke was launched in the UK ten years ago hardly a penny has been spent on advertising it. Yet teenagers are buying it in ever-greater numbers (sales have doubled over the past two years) partly because, its marketers suspect, they have done nothing to market it. Youngsters have discovered the brand for themselves, says Andrew Medd, the marketing manager.
Now that upstart Virgin Cola has introduced curvy new containers that give a strong and cheeky hint of the famous Coca-Cola bottle, Cherry Coke marketers hope their club nights will help solve their dilemma. They are entering the subterranean world of "discovery marketing", where a verbal recommendation has far more influence than a TV commercial; where being different really matters; where the measure of a brand's "in-ness" is, in part, a product of its obscurity.
Cherry Coke is now being relaunched as "different". And it is a relaunch with a difference, of course. No fanfares. No glitzy ad campaigns. Even Cherry's new packaging is being kept under wraps. Literally.
Its old bubblegum-pink design ("It was the prom queen of soft drinks," confesses one of its marketing team) is being replaced by black and red street-cred graffiti-style packaging (for which Coca-Cola has invented a new type face). But the new cans are being covered with a plastic wrap printed with the old design. Only if you look closely do you notice that you can peel it off. "It's all about discovery," says Medd.
Trendy club nights organised by Cherry Productions and wrap-up gimmicks like this will, Coca-Cola hopes, intrigue its young buyers. And to keep them intrigued Medd's marketing team is now searching for any event, stunt, sponsorship or activity that will attract their attention.
Marketers always differentiate their products trying to get consumers to notice something special about them but Cherry Coke is "selling differentness itself", he boasts. "We are like teenagers. We are consciously trying to be different for the sake of it. We want to be attributed as the cause of different things happening. We want to attach ourselves to people who do different things," Medd says.
Typical Coca-Cola hype? Of course. But it also represents a shift. Traditional mass advertising is having to play second fiddle to new communication channels. In the end, there will be TV ads, but only after months of stunts have spread the word among teenagers.
And Coca-Cola is even prepared to alienate some potential consumers. Strong negative reactions by some can help spur greater loyalty among others, and that is much better than mass indifference, suggests George Bradt, Coca-Cola's UK marketing director.
But Cherry Coke represents a bigger difference for the Coca-Cola marketing machine. The main brand is like a supertanker, says Bradt. Even the slightest touch to the tiller a change to the formula, a new advertising campaign, a tweak to the revered packaging and design is a momentous multi-million dollar decision with global ramifications. Coca-Cola marketers are, in effect, slaves to the brand's heritage. In contrast, the whole point about a brand like Cherry Coke is that "it can reinvent itself every year," says Bradt. That makes difference "a fascinating strategy".
Behind that, there is an even bigger shift. Caught napping by the rise of so-called New Age drinks like Snapple, and amid signs that leading-edge American consumers are turning away from oversweet fizzy drinks, Coca-Cola is busy trying to turn itself into a "total beverages" company.
In Japan it is huge in coffee. In America and parts of Europe it is big in orange juice. And having burnt its fingers with the disastrous launch of New Coke a decade ago, the company is now desperately trying to summon up the courage to innovate. "We have to accept that some will succeed and some will fail," says Bradt.
One recent failure is OK Soda. A carbonate delivered in grey grunge packaging, it was introduced into the US with street-cred imagery and targeted at teenagers. And they swiftly shunned it. The product has since been withdrawn. "There was some terrific learning," says Bradt. Cherry Coke, he adds, will be different.
So long then, Videotron. Or rather, Videotron. The Canadian owners of Britain's sixth largest cable television company are pulling back to Montreal, to concentrate their money in North America where they can see some reward.
It is fitting that Kenneth Baker, MP, remains on the board of the British company, which is seeking new investors to buy the Canadian stake. Videotron Holdings will continue to operate the Videotron cable franchises in London and the South East. It was Mr Baker, as Trade and Industry Secretary, who in 1981 beckoned Britain down the golden road leading to the "wired nation". Fifteen years later, however, the road is murky. British homes which have been lured by multi-channel television have chosen, by about four to one, to receive these extra channels from a satellite and a dish on the roof, not from a duct in the ground.
The low popularity of cable in those areas where it has been laid is the main reason for Videotron's withdrawal. Only 20.8 per cent of homes offered the service have taken it. This is less than half the penetration rate achieved in the United States the inspiration for Mr Baker's dream.
Britain's comparative indifference, however, reflects, perversely, to Mr Baker's credit, for he insisted that the television cable must be buried underground. In America it hangs thickly festooned from telephone poles. Burying cable greatly increases the costs of installing a system and the high cost greatly discouraged British investors.
As a result, years went by before cable was installed on any appreciable scale and the main investors have been giant North American telephone companies. In the meanwhile, satellite television offered by BSkyB (40 per cent owned by News International, the owner of The Times) got a headstart.
But Videotron may be pulling out of Britain at just the wrong time. The old dream of the wired nation was based on technical reality: the same capacious cable that brings in television pictures can also bring in telecommunications voice telephone calls and computer data. And suddenly in Britain, unlike America, cable telephone has taken off. By undercutting British Telecom's rates, the cable industry now has more telephone customers (l,216,375) than it has television subscribers (1,159,774).
Other prospects are brightening too. The Office of Fair Trading has decided to investigate the industry's complaints that BSkyB is abusing its dominance of the pay-TV market. Also, starting this autumn, BT will have to allow cable telephone subscribers "number portability": you will be able to switch to cable telephone and take your BT number with you until now, you had to switch numbers.
Most important is that cable has now reached a critical mass. One-quarter of homes now have access to cable television, a share that will rise to 40 per cent by the end of the year. A national advertising campaign will shortly be launched, to boast cable's generic advantages, such as telephony, and its local programmes, such as London's Live TV and Channel One.
So the dream was not a pipe-dream. In the long run, cable will catch on and make money for its investors. But will the long wait have been worth it? Obviously Le Groupe Videotron, which is not one of the North American giants, has decided not.
The same question, "Is it worth it?", hangs over last week's mysterious merger of MAI, the group which controls the ITV companies, Meridien and Anglia, with United News and Media, which publishes the Daily Express. There is no logic to it, just the same hazy faith in synergy that someday information and entertainment, print and screen will all wash as one big tub of electronic data.
But Lord Hollick, head of MAI, seems to be convinced that the short-term gains from cross-promotion of television by newspapers justifies allying his company with the owners of the declining Express. MAI owns a chunk of the new Channel 5, the terrestrial channel which starts next January.
Just to grow bigger may be sufficient motive in itself. The trick is to do it without getting too big. The Independent Television Commission's limits on audience and advertising share stand in the way of the instinct to get as big as possible.
Brian MacArthur on the rapidly-rising Sun.
A NEW record sale of 4,670,000 (almost outselling its Sunday stablemate, the News of the World) was achieved by The Sun on the last Saturday in January. Its booming Saturday sales lifted the paper to an average sale last month of 4,128,000, up 22,000 on a year ago, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Since its cover price was slashed to 20p in June 1993, The Sun has increased sales by more than 660,000 selling an extra 200 million more papers a year and has doubled its lead over the Daily Mirror to more than 1.5 million a day. The Sun now accounts for almost one in three national daily sales, in spite of recent price rises.
At an average of 687,992, up 56,000 on a year ago, The Times also set a new sales record. Since the cover price was reduced in 1993, sales are up by 333,000 and still increasing, again in spite of recent increases in price. Its share of the daily broadsheet market has almost doubled to 25 per cent.
The effect of cutting prices (and subsequently increasing them in gentle doses) has boosted sales of tabloids (up 274,000 year-on-year) and broadsheets (54,000).
There is a more dramatic change, however: in three of the past seven months, the daily broadsheets have, for the first time, outsold the heavyweight Sundays. The reason is the success of the dailies' bumper Saturday editions, seen increasingly as serious rivals to the Sundays. More papers are now sold on Saturday than any other day of the week.
Meanwhile an urgent priority for Clive Hollick, the Labour life peer who will soon be chief executive of the merged MAI/United Newspapers group which owns Express Newspapers, is to stop declining sales. Three of the five papers with the biggest falls in sales last month were Express titles, with the Sunday Express down year-on-year by 152,000, the Daily Star down by 58,200 and the Daily Express down by 31,200.
ATLE SKAARDAL, of Norway, spearheaded Scandinavian domination of the men's super giant slalom at the world skiing championships in Sierra Nevada, Spain, yesterday. Making his superior technique tell on the difficult early part of the course, he led a parade of skiiers from Europe's more northerly outposts who filled five out of the first six places.
A silver medal-winner in the downhill at the 1993 world championships, Skaardal has recorded seven wins in World Cup super giant slalom events, including one this year. His victory, achieved in 1min 21.8sec, crowned a stuttering comeback from serious injuries sustained at Garmisch in the run-up to the 1992 Olympic Games.
"I was very insecure when I took a look at the course this morning," Skaardal said. "I wasn't sure how to navigate it but I had a super feeling in the start house and went down without a mistake. I'm very happy. It's a great feeling. I'm going to have a three-course meal tonight with soup, spaghetti and lots of ice cream."
The 2,425-metre course was fast and in near-perfect condition, with bright sun breaking through an hour before the race as dense fog lifted and a light snowfall stopped.
Patrik Jaerbyn, of Sweden, was second in 1min 22.09sec and Kjetil Aamodt, of Norway, the world champion in slalom and giant slalom, finished third in 1min 22.11sec. Janne Leskinen, of Finland, in fourth in 1min 22.37sec and Lasse Kjus, of Norway, in sixth with a time of 1min 22.57sec, were split by the only non-Scandinavian in the top six, Patrick Wirth, of Austria, who was fifth in 1min 22.48sec.
Jaerbyn was the first to start in a field of more than 90. "I wasn't sure last night with new snow we had, but I think it was an advantage to start in front," he said.
Aamodt was delighted at an apparent upturn in fortunes. "I haven't done very well this year, so if I can get a medal I'm thrilled about it," he said.
Many fancied skiiers were left to rue their luck. Peter Runggaldier, of Italy, the reigning World Cup super giant slalom champion, was a disappointment, as was Luc Alphand, of France, the world Cup downhill champion.
The super giant slalom was not held at the 1993 championships in Morioka, Japan, because of bad weather, so Stefan Eberharter, of Austria, carried the burden of reigning champion from 1991 and found it too much to bare, finishing well down on Skaardal.
The distribution of medals excluded members of the strong Austrian and German teams, as had the women's super giant slalom on Monday. They have a two-day break to marshall their resources before the championships resume on Friday with the women's combined downhill.
I don't understand it. The Sun rose in the east this morning. The rain fell down, not up. The Earth continued on its course around the Sun. Dinosaurs remained extinct, fire remained hot and ice cold; beer was still good, men and women continued to look on each other with favour, children continued to be born. Life, in short, carried on.
And yet it happened. Wigan really did lose a match in the rugby league Challenge Cup. No Cup final at Wembley, no lap of honour, no modest triumphalism in the post-match interviews. My father, Wigan-born, will not, on April 27, be modestly accepting the obvious fact that it was all really down to him.
Wigan won the Cup last year; they always win the Cup. The last time they lost a Cup match was in February 1987 and, in the immortal words of Sam Goldwyn, we have all passed a lot of water since then.
Ah, 1987, when Margaret Thatcher and Mike Tyson were both unbeatable: both determined to go on and on and on and no one could see an end to either of them. Nelson Mandela was in prison and there was this curious wall right down the middle of Berlin. Both seemed certain to stay in place for our lifetimes: the prospect of change was not even to be considered. Terry Waite vanished and we never thought we would see him again.
Things change fast in the world, but, in sport, you get a revolution every season, because sport is real life on fast forward. For example, when Wigan lost their last Cup match, England had the second-best cricket team in the world. They had just beaten Australia in Australia to retain the Ashes under the captaincy of Mike Gatting. Chris Broad topped the Test averages and England's strategy was based around spinners, Phil Edmonds and John Emburey.
In Oxford, there was a thing called the Boat Race Mutiny, which was supposed to be the end of the Boat Race as we knew it. Yet Oxford still won and did so for the next three years.
Everton won the League: this fact alone is enough to give every footballing person that dizzying sense of the pure vertigo that only the sporting timescale can implant. Coventry won the FA Cup, beating Tottenham in the final. Ian Rush was transferred to Juventus for the huge sum of £3.2 million; he was confidently expected to set the Italian league on fire and catapault the Continent into a new era of respect for English football.
Pat Cash won Wimbledon and was going to rule tennis for the next decade. He never won it again. Martina Navratilova won the women's title from Steffi Graf. Could anyone ever beat Martina? Next year Graf did the grand slam.
Meanwhile, the people who really know about sport told us that the America's Cup was to be its next great global event. It would match Formula One for audience power and pure distilled sexiness. Peter de Savary remember him? in a vulgar hogo of Bollinger and Havana, launched a new challenge that was going to take the world by storm.
This was the year of the first rugby union World Cup, an event that seems to have been with us throughout all eternity. The rugby establishment here rather pooh-poohed it. Huh. It will never catch on. New Zealand won it from France in the final. This was also the year of the second world athletics championships, an occasion on which the touching innocence of the first was effortlessly lost. The long jump result was fiddled by the organisers and the only Briton to win gold was Fatima Whitbread.
As for me, I was researching for my second book, about a year in the life of a racing stable. Thus, I watched the horses with John Dunlop and charted his rise above a sea of sorrows. A great man, actually. Reference Point won the Derby in a thoroughly workmanlike way and the sporting year continued, setting Gatting on his collision course with Shakoor Rana.
Sport changes with lightning speed, champion succeeding unbeatable champion with bewildering inevitability, an endless chain of matchless heroes brusquely humbled, of unknowns rising to the heights, each preparing the way for his own fall. Yet when exactly will the fall come? That, for the great ones that, even for Wigan is the only relevant question of sport.
England's rugby union wing, Mike Harrison, said after receiving only two passes in a five nations' championship game (Rory Underwood, on the other flank, got none): "We had been practising a more expansive game." Not everything changes.
Indeed. Eight members of the Provisional IRA were shot dead in Northern Ireland, 32 people died in a Tamil massacre of Buddhist priests. The world has changed since 1987 and Wigan's last Cup defeat for nine years: but not enough, alas, not enough.
ICL Lion Hearts, leaders of the Super Squash League, went down to their first defeat of the season this week when a calculated gamble went astray. They persuaded Ross Norman to come out of retirement to supplement their injury-stricken squad for the match against Ogmore Valley Dragons at Maesteg, only for David Evans, ranked No50 in the world, to beat the former world champion 3-1 in the third-string encounter.
Norman, who retired eight months ago at the age of 37, when still in the world's top ten, had been limited to social squash while concentrating on building up his international courier business.
He started with astonishing assurance, taking the first game 15-10, but was then unable to counter the increasing front-court power of the 20-year-old Welsh champion, who reeled in the match 15-4, 17-15, 15-9.
"We thought Ross might just frighten the youngster enough," John Milton, the ICL team manager, said. "He did play amazingly well for a man who had time for only one serious session of practice after we learned Chris Walker had twisted an ankle playing in the German Bundesliga but David needed more respect than that."
Craig van der Wath, the South Africa No1, who bases his European season around the Welsh club, followed Evans's first win of the season with his own sixth victory in six Super League outings, beating Mark Chaloner, the England No4, promoted to second string in Walker's absence, 15-9, 10-15, 15-11, 15-12.
The league leaders needed the point gained by Del Harris, who beat Mark Cairns 13-15, 15-11, 15-10, 7-15, 15-7 in the first-string dead-rubber match, to stay marginally ahead of Cannons Club, the defending champions.
Cannons defeated Ellis Stockbrokers Lingfield 2-1 in Surrey, Tony Hands relinquishing an important second-string point to Stephen Meads, who won 17-15, 15-7,
13-15, 14-15, 15-10, but Peter Nicol, the British champion, beat Rodney Eyles, the Australian No1, in straight games at first string.
LEAGUE STANDINGS: 1, ICL Lion Herts 14pts; 2, Cannons Club 13; 3, Ogmore Valley Dragons 11; 4, Jim Hall Sports Northern 7; 5, Ellis Stockbrokers Lingfield 3.
Court of Appeal. B. J. Rice & Associates (a Firm) v Commissioners of Customs and Excise
Before Lord Justice Staughton, Lord Justice Ward and Sir Ralph Gibson
(Judgment February 7)
Sections 4 and 5 of the Value Added Tax Act 1983 determined the amount of tax to be charged and the time when the charge took effect but whether a charge to tax had actually arisen was to be determined under section 2(1) of the Act.
Where, therefore, consultancy services were supplied by a firm before it registered for VAT but were only paid for after registration, no VAT was payable as the firm was not taxable under section 2(1) at the time the supply was made.
The Court of Appeal so held in a reserved judgment allowing by a majority an appeal by the appellant, B. J. Rice & Associates, a tax consultancy business, against Mr Justice Macpherson of Cluny who, on March 15, 1994 in the Queen's Bench Division, had upheld the London VAT Tribunal's decision on April 28, 1992 that services supplied before the appellant's registration for VAT but paid for after registration were fully taxable.
Section 2 of the 1983 Act provides:
"(1) Tax shall be charged on any supply of goods or services made in the United Kingdom, where it is a taxable supply made by a taxable person in the course or furtherance of any business carried on by him."
Section 4 provides:
"(1) The provisions of this section and section 5 below shall apply for determining the time when a supply of goods or services is to be treated as taking place for the purposes of the charge to tax...
"(3) Subject to the provisions of section 5 below, a supply of services shall be treated as taking place at the time when the services are performed."
Section 5 provides:
"(9) The commissioners may by regulations make provision with respect to the time at which ... a supply is to be treated as taking place in cases where it is a supply (a) of goods or services for a consideration the whole or part of which is determined or payable periodically, or from time to time, or at the end of any period..."
Regulation 23 of the Value Added Tax (General) Regulations (SI 1985 No 886), as substituted by the Value Added Tax (General) (Amendment) Regulations (SI 1989 No 1132), provides:
"(1) ... where services are supplied for a period for a consideration the whole or part of which is determined or payable periodically or from time to time, they shall be treated as separately and successively supplied at the earlier of the following times (a) whenever a payment in respect of the supplies is received; or (b) whenever the supplier issues a tax invoice relating to the supplies."
Mrs Melanie Hall for the Commissioners; Mr B. J. Rice in person.
LORD JUSTICE STAUGHTON said that at some time before October 21, 1986 the appellant had done work for a client and sent out an invoice for £150. It was not and could not be a tax invoice under the 1983 Act. The appellant was not at the time registered for VAT, since his turnover had not reached the level where he was required to register. The bill for £150 was not paid and the appellant wrote it off as a bad debt in his accounts.
On October 21, 1986 the appellant registered for VAT. There was no evidence as to how long before that date the work was done and the invoice issued, only that it was before that date.
Over four years later, in March 1991, the client had a further need for the services of the appellant and was told that he must first pay the fee of £150 which was still due for the earlier work, and he did so. Customs and Excise said that, as the appellant was now registered, he had to pay VAT on the supply of services comprising that earlier work.
The issue depended entirely on the interpretation of the 1983 Act, but it was by no means easy. There were four elements in section 2(1) of the Act. There had to be: (i) a supply of goods or services in the United Kingdom; (ii) which was a taxable supply, in other words, not exempt; (iii) by a taxable person, someone who was or ought to be registered for VAT; (iv) in the course or furtherance of any business carried on by him.
It was not disputed that elements (i), (ii) and (iv) were fulfilled when the appellant did work for the client at some time before October 21, 1986, but element (iii) was not.
Customs and Excise said that the relevant date was not when the work was done, but in March 1991 when the £150 was paid. They reached that result by referring to regulation 23 of the Value Added Tax (General) Regulations 1985, as amended. It was common ground that the work which the appellant did for the client came within the description provided by that regulation. Section 9(5) of the Act provided the vires for regulation 23.
Customs and Excise thus concluded that the supply was to be treated as occurring, in point of time, when the appellant's bill was paid in March 1991. The alternative provided by regulation 23(1)(b) was not applicable because the appellant never did issue a tax invoice, and could not lawfully have done so while he was not registered for VAT.
At the time the bill was paid the appellant was registered; and that, the Customs and Excise said, fulfilled the requirement of section 2(1) that he was a taxable person at the relevant time.
If that was the right interpretation of the Act, it produced an unjust result. Either the appellant would be unable to recover the tax from his customer, and would have to pay it out of his own pocket; or else the customer would have to pay tax although it was not chargeable at the time when he both contracted for and received the services of the appellant.
Customs and Excise had argued that there was no injustice "because either a trader can and should foresee that he may cross the threshold and word his invoice accordingly, or he could and should have required the customer to pay 25 per cent on top of the bill of £150, on the basis that late payment had brought the transaction within the VAT net."
His Lordship did not accept that either of those solutions was apt, in fact and in law, to avoid the injustice mentioned, even if 25 per cent was an error for some other figure.
That those who paid their bills late should suffer some penalty was wholly appropriate but his Lordship did not see why the penalty should (i) be determined by the prevailing rate of VAT, however long or short the delay, or (ii) accrue to the benefit of Customs and Excise rather than to the supplier of services.
His Lordship turned to consider whether regulation 23(1) fixed the time for deciding the question whether a supplier was a taxable person within section 2(1) of the Act. At first sight one would have thought that it did not; surely a person who was not registered for VAT, because his turnover was below the statutory limit, should be free to supply goods or services in the confident belief that neither he nor the recipient would have to bear tax on the supply?
Customs and Excise argued that sections 4 and 5 of the 1983 Act and the 1985 Regulations determined conclusively and for all purposes when a supply was to be treated as taking place.
The appellant, on the other hand, maintained that one must first determine on the actual facts, and without deeming anything, whether a charge to tax had arisen under section 2(1).
If any of the four requirements was absent, no tax was payable and that was the end of it. Only if all four requirements were met did one proceed to inquire what was the actual or deemed time of supply for the remaining purposes of the Act. The appellant reached that result by pointing to the words "for the purposes of the charge to tax" in section 4(1). Those words, it was said, were only applicable if there was first a charge to tax within the ordinary meaning of section 2(1).
There was a difficulty with that argument, which arose from section 41. By subsection (1), that section applied where there was a change in the rate of tax in force, or in the description of exempt or zero rated supplies.
Subsection (2) proceeded on the assumption that some of the provisions of section 5 could apply in those circumstances, and gave the supplier an option to disapply them. So section 5 was assumed to lay down the time when, among other things, one ascertained whether a supply was, or had been exempt.
But whether a supply was exempt or not determined whether it was a taxable supply and that was one of the four elements in section 2(1). On the appellant's argument those elements were to be judged at the time of actual supply and not when it was deemed to happen under section 5. So on his argument it was not necessary to disapply section 5 when goods that were formerly exempt ceased to be exempt; and it achieved nothing to disapply section 5 in the converse case, where goods that were previously not exempt had become exempt.
It had therefore to be acknowledged that that obscure provision in section 41 assumed that the question of whether goods or services were exempt would have to be decided at the time when a supply was deemed to take place under section 5, apart from the exception which section 41 made.
But his Lordship would regard that as a special provision, derogating from section 2, and that in all other respects the existence of a chargeable transaction had to be determined at a time when the supply was actually made.
Common sense and justice pointed to that result; sections 4 and 5 remained to determine the amount to be charged and the time when the charge took effect. To impose a tax on the appellant in respect of a supply which was not taxable at the time when it was made seemed perilously close to retrospective taxation.
Lord Justice Ward gave a concurring judgment.
SIR RALPH GIBSON, dissenting, said that he agreed with the VAT tribunal. The unjustness of that result did not seem to his Lordship to be of such an order that the court should depart from what appeared to be the plain meaning of the provisions of the 1983 Act.
Solicitor: Solicitor, Customs and Excise.
Court of Appeal. Parrott v Jackson
Before Lord Justice Hirst and Lord Justice Pill
(Judgment January 31)
A defendant in a personal injury action who admitted negligence but did not admit any resulting damage had not made an admission of liability on which the plaintiff was entitled to judgment under Order 9, rule 6(1) of the County Court Rules (SI 1981 No 1687 (L20)).
Therefore, a judge erred in holding that the plaintiff's action had been automatically struck out under Order 9, rule 10(ii) when 12 months had elapsed from service of the summons and judgment had not been entered against the defendant.
The Court of Appeal so held allowing an appeal by the plaintiff, Roy William Parrott, against Judge Brandt at Colchester County Court who, on June 27, 1995, had allowed an appeal against the order of Deputy District Judge Hodges on June 16, 1995 and granting the defendant, Ronald F. Jackson, a declaration that the plaintiff's action for damages for personal injury following a road accident had been automatically struck out under Order 9, rule 10 of the County Court Rules 1981.
In June 1993 the plaintiff served the defendant with a summons and particulars of claim alleging negligence which had resulted in the plaintiff suffering damage.
The defence, dated July 30, 1993, stated: "(2) ... the defendant admits that the accident to the plaintiff ... was caused by the negligence of the defendant. (3) The defendant makes no admission in respect of the alleged or any injury loss or damage."
In May 1995 the defendant applied for a declaration under Order 9, rule 10(ii) of the County Court Rules 1981.
Order 9, rule 10 of the 1981 Rules provides: "Where 12 months have expired from the date of service of a default summons and ... (ii) an admission has been delivered but no judgment has been entered under rule 6(1) ... the action shall be struck out..."
Mr Harvey McGregor, QC and Mr Steven Dyble for the plaintiff; Mr Robert Moxon-Browne, QC and Ms Clare Brown for the defendant.
LORD JUSTICE HIRST said that the appeal had raised yet again a question concerning the construction and application of Order 9, rule 10 of the 1981 Rules. The court had been informed that the previous decided cases related to rule 10(i) and that the present case was the first where rule 10(ii) was in issue.
The judge had held that the defence as pleaded constituted an admission within rule 10(ii) on which the plaintiff had been entitled to obtain judgment and, accordingly, the action was automatically struck out once 12 months had elapsed and no judgment had been entered.
The plaintiff argued that on a proper construction of the defence no admission within rule 10(ii) had been made, damage being the gist of a claim in negligence. He supported his argument by reference to Blundell v Rimmer ((1971) 1 WLR 123) and Rankine v Garton Sons & Co Ltd ((1979) 2 All ER 1185).
The defendant submitted that those two cases demonstrated an old-fashioned approach which should not now be followed. Alternatively, they should be distinguished on the ground that they involved denials of damage which were much more categorical than in the present case. He argued that an admission to the accident was tantamount to an admission of injury.
His Lordship was unable to accept the thrust of the defendant's argument that those cases were out of date and should be discarded; their ratio seemed plain and unimpeachable. As Lord Justice Stephenson had said in Rankine (at p1190) the plaintiff "has to prove both elements of his cause of action; and nothing short ... of a clear admission of liability, both of negligence causing the action and of damage resulting from the accident caused by the negligence, is enough ... to entitle him to judgment."
Thus the question was whether the defendant had made a clear admission of liability. His Lordship found it impossible to answer that question in the affirmative. The plea in paragraph 2 of the defence was equivocal.
His Lordship was unable to accept that an admission of the accident necessarily implied an admission of injury to the plaintiff, especially in the light of paragraph 3 of the defence.
If that left the defendant in a grey area he had only himself to blame. One of the ironies of the case was that the defendant had tried to foist the plaintiff with an outright admission which the draftsman of the defence had been careful not to make.
It followed that there was no admission by the defendant in the terms of Order 9, rule 10(ii) and no basis for striking out the action under that rule.
Lord Justice Pill gave a concurring judgment.
Solicitors: Pleass Thomson & Co, Clacton-on-Sea; Prettys, Ipswich.
Chancery Division. British Shipbuilders v VSEL Consortium plc
Before Mr Justice Lightman
(Judgment February 2)
Questions as to the role of an expert had to be determined as a matter of construction of the relevant agreement and if that conferred on him the exclusive remit to determine a question, the jurisdiction of the court over it was excluded; but if he went outside his remit the court could intervene and set his decision aside.
Likewise the court could set his decision aside, where the agreement so provided, in case of manifest error; the court had jurisdiction ahead of him to determine the limits of his remit or the conditions with which he had to comply but would, save in exceptional circumstances, decline to do so.
Mr Justice Lightman so held in the Chancery Division, on the authority of Mercury Communications Ltd v Director General of Telecommunications ((1996) 1 WLR 48), Jones v Sherwood Computer Services ((1992) 1 WLR 277) and Norwich Union Life Assurance Society v P&O Property Holdings Ltd ((1993) 1 EGLR 164) on an originating summons issued by the plaintiff, British Shipbuilders, on March 12, 1994.
It sought determination of its entitlement to documents under clause 5.5(b) of an agreement dated March 10, 1986 between it and the defendant, VSEL Consortium plc, for its sale to VSEL of Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Ltd for (a) an initial £60m and, under clause 5.2(b) a further sum, with a ceiling of £40m, to be certified by reference to the profits of VSEL and its subsidiaries from April 1, 1986 to March 31, 1992.
Clause 5.3 of the agreement provided:
"If any disagreement arises between (accountants appointed by BS and the auditors for the time being of VSEL) in connection with the certification (of those profits, it was to be referred ultimately to a) firm of chartered accountants (or person) ... ("the expert") (whose) decision shall, in the absence of manifest error, be final and binding...".
Clause 5.5(a) provided, inter alia, that each party should provide appropriate instructions to their respective accountants to certify under clause 5.2; and clause 5.5(b), that "VSEL shall ... procure that the accountants appointed by BS will ... be allowed reasonable access to the (relevant) accounting records of each member of the new group..."
Mr Patrick Phillips, QC and Mr Roger Hetherington for BS; Mr Peter Scott, QC and Mr Alan Griffiths for VSEL.
MR JUSTICE LIGHTMAN said that when the hearing began and each party had appreciated the other's position, both had agreed that the respective roles of the court and the expert should be determined prior to anything else.
1 Could only one, or more than one, reference be made under clause 5.3?
His Lordship held its language apt to embrace recurrent references to the expert.
2 On a dispute between the parties or their accountants as to entitlement to documents under clause 5.5(b), had the court or the expert jurisdiction, or exclusive jurisdiction?
In his Lordship's view, the role of the accountants did not extend beyond the certification process. They had no role in resolving disputes between BS and VSEL under clause 5.5(b); that of the expert, likewise.
That view was reinforced by:
1 Absence from the agreement that the expert had a role in resolving disputes between BS and VSEL as to their rights inter se.
2 VSEL's obligation under clause 5.5 was prima facie enforceable by specific performance or injunction; the expert had no jurisdiction to grant such relief.
3 One would expect clause 5.5 to precede clauses 5.2 and 5.3 if the expert was to have jurisdiction.
4 VSEL had conceded that the court was intended to retain jurisdiction over the ambit of clause 5.5 unless and until the accountants disagreed on that issue.
Mr Scott, submitting that "in connection with" meant "not unrelated to", had urged that disagreement of the accountants was not unrelated to the certification process; but in the instant context such a construction seemed inappropriate.
Mr Phillips had vigorously contended that clause 5.5 was for BS's benefit and, truly construed, obliged VSEL to give access to all documents which BS's accountants bona fide or reasonably said fell within it, thus achieving parity of access to what might prove vital information.
But that construction of clause 5.5 involved rewriting it, or at least reading in what was not there. The correct view was, therefore, that the court had exclusive jurisdiction to resolve disputes under clause 5.5(b).
Solicitors: Ashurst Morris Crisp; Slaughter & May.
THE driving is one thing, the goals clear and uncomplicated. Damon Hill is the favourite for the Formula One drivers' world championship this season; Michael Schumacher, Jacques Villeneuve and Jean Alesi are all there to be beaten. Image is another thing. Not everything, perhaps, but Hill is tackling it this year with a gusto born of deep-seated frustration.
Amid the wreckage of last season, the critics leapt on his body language and a demeanour that often betrayed his despair, as much as they did his unfortunate tangles with Schumacher. Before the year was up, they had him neatly pigeon-holed as the whining successor to Nigel Mansell, the latest in a distinguished line of whingers.
It went around that his mechanics called him Mr Glum, Schumacher said that he was "moody", everybody said that they wished he would smile more. It all began to build up. The misconception pained Hill almost as much as the loss of the championship. Now, he has hired some doctors of spin, not to try to kick over the traces, hide past misdemeanours or disguise basic character flaws, but simply to allow the real Damon Hill to stand up.
Last night, a few hours after he had driven the new Williams-Renault that should help to bring him the world title this year, Hill sat in a restaurant on the Atlantic coast north of Cascais as huge breakers battered the rocks outside and explained why he has gathered a whole team of back-seat drivers around him.
He has six people working for him, including an image analyst, a public relations executive, a personal trainer and a commercial manager to allow him to concentrate on grand prix racing, ease the growing burden of being a one-man business and stop him being misunderstood.
Those who know him even as a casual acquaintance see a man with a quiet but sharp sense of humour, a courteous man, unfailingly polite and co-operative and almost totally devoid of the rampant egotism that blights the characters of so many leading sportsmen. They see, too, a depth of thought and a breadth of interests that few of his rivals possess. Those who do not know him see something different.
"You know what I am like and I do not think that comes across," he said. "That is something I want to happen. If I look very serious when I am at race meetings and I get upset when I have not done well, it is because I feel very passionately about what I do, because I have a burning desire to succeed.
"It is absolutely not a case of trying to reinvent myself. I have not changed one bit. There is a great deal of desire from the people in the UK to see me do well and win the championship, and I would not be able to live with myself if I did not do everything I possibly could to give myself the best shot.
"That includes having the back-up, having the people to look after the off-track side of things. I have always been my own man, but I cannot do it all by myself now. A lot of drivers have management companies and that does not rest easily with me because I like to determine my own fate, but I do need help and support and that is what I have got now. I felt the need to address other parts of the job, like communicating what I do and what I am about. Most of all, I want to show that I am enjoying it, because I do enjoy it."
This season undoubtedly provides Hill with his best chance so far of claiming the drivers' championship that Graham, his late father, won twice. Schumacher is with a new team and doubts surround the reliability of Ferrari's new V10 engine; Alesi, at Benetton, may be a little too impetuous and Villeneuve, Hill's team-mate, will be negotiating his first season after his successes in IndyCars.
"I don't think I can approach it with the view that I will get another go if I do not win it this year," Hill said. "That would not be the right way of thinking about it. I have got to win it now. I have to give it my best and you can boil that down to every race and to every lap. I have got to drive every lap better than the last one."
If that happens, one suspects, the image will take care of itself.
Heaven by Storm, Arts Theatre
THE Umbilical Brothers look as though they could be blood brothers: a similar lean physique, identical greyish-blackish trousers, likewise the red singlets. But their real names, Shane Dundas and Dave Collins, make a blood relationship unlikely.
They are comedians, and Australian, and the conceit of the opening scene is to have them waking up down there, rush by taxi and plane to London, parachute over the theatre and fall to their deaths. Cut to heaven (puffs of smoke, zombie walks) where God says there is only room for one and sends them back to earth to decide who'll die. They pick up on this point in the last sketch, so the show can be said to contain a beginning and an end. It's what lies between that causes the trouble.
They do have a distinctive and remarkable gimmick, which is that one of the pair mimes waking up, showering, squeezing blackheads, pretending to be Robert De Niro, squashing crickets while the other makes the necessary sounds by blowing, hissing, snapping, biting, kissing and grunting.
This is a difficult skill, requiring eagle eyes, close attention to the details of movement, and a thorough exploration of the sounds that can be created by applying tongue, lips, teeth and air to a mike's metal mesh. Fair's fair; they perform with marvellous expertise, and if I'd thought of it first, and possessed the physical agility to exploit it, I daresay I might have introduced passing cars, blazing guns and rocket ships, just because it is fun to play around with noises.
The trouble is, it does get pretty repetitive because the storyline is that Shane has a cricket friend called Andrew who is trodden on by David. Shane chases David to make him contribute 20 cents to a memorial, and the chase is the rest of the show. Chases along roads, in gyms, in strange labyrinthine buildings, on the moon. There is often a daft, surrealist idea in these chases, such as the stegosaurus lurking behind a lunar rock which is seen in a sequence of progressively larger and more threatening shapes. Observation is alert: I had forgotten the sounds a spaceman makes when breathing but it is recreated here: a regular coo-crr.
But the very area they have made their own, reproducing non-verbal sound, limits them to the superficial. The ideal place for such a show as this, only an hour long, is as the interlude between meatier material.
East Lynne, Greenwich
If you go to SE10 expecting to hear the words "Dead, and never called me Mother!", you will be disappointed. Rightly so, for they did not originate in Mrs Henry Wood's novel, but in one of the many stage adaptations that hit London during the 1870s; three in 1879 alone. However, the line was of a piece with the hiss-the-villain, ogle-the-fallen-heroine melodrama the book had by then become. I have read one such version, and the climax is equally lurid. "Look at me, I am your mother," says poor Lady Isabel to the son she abandoned, and the lad faintly gasps "Mama" as he falls back in her arms, dead from TB.
Lisa Evans's new adaptation is as different as sensitivity and several dollops of rueful feminism can make it. We have watched impoverished Isabel marry safe but dull Archibald Carlyle, only to be duped into eloping with the dashing Captain Levison, who eventually dumps her in France. Disguised as a governess, she staggers back to East Lynne, where she finds her little boy has taken a turn for the worse. And Rachel Power's excellent Isabel simply emits incoherent shrieks and impotent wails as he expires where he should: offstage and untended by her.
Evans is more interested in exposing a cruel world, full of jealousy, frustration and unexpressed anger, than in generating pathos. She also tries as best she can to replace melodrama with truth. That is not altogether easy, given the plot's coincidences and improbabilities, not to mention the sensations in the background. "Richard‘Are murdered me father." "How awful!" "Yus, it was. Worse for father." No actors could prevent an audience laughing at that exchange, and Rebecca Saire and Power fail to do so.
Yet they and the three other members of Philip Franks's adaptable cast much helped by Robert Jones's gaunt, draped, cobwebby set manage to inject more reality into the old thunderer than I had thought possible. They play it straight and pretty often get us to take it seriously. They leave us boggling at a society where a warm, artless woman such as Lady Isabel can never atone adequately for a sexual sin that has largely been caused by her husband's patronising stupidity, at her seducer's callous exploitation of the language of love, and at the mass brainwashing of the women on show.
Unfortunately, Evans lacks trust in her story and her audience. You would do best to linger over your interval drinks, for the first moments of Act II consist of Isabel reading from the novel and telling us how Mrs Henry Wood was terrorising her readers into embracing 19th-century values. That is a bit like asking an actor half-way through playing Macbeth to give a homily on Shakespeare's dislike of evil. I would also advise you to leave just before the final curtain. That way you will miss the claim that women's lot is as chilling now as then.
Why editorialise at all when you are already giving new life and, with it, meaning to a piece that has long been synonymous with Victorian crudity? That is quite an achievement, but Evans, Franks and their team have brought it off.
Queen's Bench Division. Lord Chancellor v Brennan
(Judgment January 22)
Before Mr Justice Hooper
Where counsel who represented a legally aided defendant convicted or sentenced at the crown court orally expressed a final view at the conclusion of the case that an appeal would not succeed, paragraph 1 of A Guide to Proceedings in the Court of Appeal Criminal Division (HMSO) (1990) did not require him also to provide written advice to the same effect.
If, after giving his final view at the conclusion of the case, counsel subsequently tendered such written advice in the absence of a specific request by his client, his claim for standard fees would, in the absence of special circumstances, normally be refused by the determining officer as work not reasonably done.
Annex H to the Code of Conduct for the Bar of England and Wales (fifth edition (1990) revised 1995) had not been amended to reflect the 1990 changes in the 1983 version of the Guide.
Mr Justice Hooper, sitting with two assessors, so held in a reserved judgment in the Queen's Bench Division given in open court, dismissing the Lord Chancellor's appeal under regulation 16 of the Legal Aid in Criminal and Care Proceedings (Costs) Regulations (SI 1989 No 343), against Master Rogers' decision allowing Miss Janice Brennan's claim for fees for the preparation of written advice, which had been refused by a determining officer.
Miss Brennan, a barrister, represented a legally aided, defendant aged 20 who had pleaded guilty in the crown court to burglary and was sentenced to 18 months detention in a young offenders' institution. She immediately gave him oral advice that an appeal was unlikely to succeed and later that day she prepared a written advice to the same effect. She had not been provided by her instructing solicitors with any document in the form of Appendix 1 to the Guide as provided by paragraph 1.2. A determining officer refused her claim for £29 standard legal aid fees for the written advice on the ground that, applying R v Neill (unreported, February 14, 1986), the work was not reasonably done.
Mr Edward Solomons, solicitor, for the Lord Chancellor; Mr Nigel Pascoe, QC, for the barrister.
MR JUSTICE HOOPER said that the barrister had understood from the Guide, and paragraph 17 of Annex H to the Code of Conduct that counsel was obliged to furnish written advice after a client had been convicted or sentenced even when oral advice to that effect had been given earlier.
The Guide provided:
"1.1 No one convicted or sentenced in the crown court in circumstances where appeal lies to the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division ... should be without advice or assistance on appeal ... Solicitors should not wait to be asked for advice by the defendant. The following practice should be followed in all cases.
"1.2 Solicitors include with the brief to counsel a separate form of instruction to give advice and assistance on appeal in the event of conviction or sentence, see Appendix 1.
"1.3 Immediately following the conclusion of the case, counsel and solicitor see the defendant and counsel expresses orally either:
"(a) his final view as to the prospects of a successful appeal (whether against conviction or sentence or both). (i) If there are no reasonable grounds of appeal, the Appendix should be completed and a copy provided then or a soon as practicable thereafter to the defendant by the solicitor. (ii) If there are reasonable grounds, the Appendix should be completed and signed grounds of appeal drafted. Thereafter the procedure at 1.6 should be followed.
"(b) his provisional view as to the prospects of a successful appeal. Appendix 1 should be completed. Thereafter the procedure at 1.4 should be followed.
"(c) that he requires time to consider the prospects of a successful appeal. Appendix 1 should be completed. Thereafter the procedure at 1.4 should be followed. Counsel will note that the defendant should always be provided with a completed Appendix 1 either immediately after the conclusion of the case or as soon as practicable thereafter.
"1.4 Within 14 days counsel sends to solicitors (a) an advice on appeal and (b) where appropriate, signed grounds of appeal."
Mr Solomons submitted that whereas the 1983 version made it clear that a written advice was always required within 21 days, the new version made it clear that no such written advice was required if paragraph 1.3(a) of the Guide applied.
Unfortunately Annex H had not been amended, as it should have been, to take into account the changes to the Guide. The Guide did not require any written advice if counsel expressed orally his final view at the conclusion of the case. Furthermore the period of 21 days had been replaced with a period of 14 days.
A determining officer had to decide whether work was "reasonably done" having regard to the current edition of the Guide and not to those provisions of the Code of Conduct which were inconsistent with the Guide.
The procedures in paragraph 1.4 applied only in the circumstances covered by 1.3(b) and (c). If counsel expressed orally his "final view" at the conclusion of the case, then he should delete paragraphs (b), (c) and (d) on Appendix 1 and no further action was required of him.
Where counsel did not express his final view at the conclusion of the case he was obliged to put his advice in writing pursuant to paragraph 1.4. A determining officer would only in rare cases conclude that a written advice given under paragraph 1.4 was "not reasonably done" where he decided that counsel should have expressed his final view at the conclusion of the case.
But where counsel had expressed a final view that an appeal would not succeed and was thereafter requested by the defendant to put his advice in writing, he should do so and that work would normally be work "reasonably done".
Where counsel expressed his final view and thereafter other than at the defendant's request forwarded a written advice, then R v Neill provided helpful guidance to a determining officer. But those officers should also bear in mind that the saving of legal aid resources might not result in an overall saving of publicly funded resources.
In the present case the work was reasonably done, having regard to the age of the defendant and the possible issue of disparity.
His Lordship hoped that the General Council of the Bar would consider amending Annex H to the Code of Conduct to reflect the contents of the current Guide.
Finally, it was important that counsel fill in a document with the information contained in Appendix 1 to the Guide. If counsel did not do that there was a much greater risk that the provision of written advice would be found to be work not reasonably done.
Solicitors: Treasury Solicitor.
Artemisia, Turtle Key Arts Centre, SW6
THE rape of Artemisia Gentileschi is a cause celebre in art history. The painter Orazio Gentileschi, one of Caravaggio's circle, encouraged his daughter to learn his craft. Thus she became a working woman and artist in her own right, exceptional for the 17th century.
She began as an apprentice to her father. To further her education, he asked the Florentine painter Agostino Tassi to teach her the rules of perspective. But a relationship developed between them that ended in a rape trial of which the testimonies survive. Artemisia, subjected to torture to verify her evidence, surprisingly won. Tassi was found guilty. The year after the trial, Artemisia finished her vision of Judith, a work of startlingly graphic violence in which Judith is shown decapitating Holofernes.
Now playwright Anne-Marie Casey and the film-trained director Joy Perino have taken up Artemisia's case. Unfortunately, this treatment proves to be clumsy, both in its scripting and its multimedia approach. The slides are perfectly acceptable. Saving actress Victoria Scarborough from having to paint, Artemisia's works are projected on to the large gauze "canvases" that hang from Turtle Key's rafters.
Framed between extracts from the trial, events leading up to the rape are straightforwardly enacted by a cast of four in period costume. The fourth player is Orazio's tenant, Donna Medaglia (Eliza Hunt), who is seduced by Tassi (Dominic Mafham), then acts as his procuress.
The determined Scarborough and the bullying Mafham are able performances. But pseudo-Caravaggio video footage crudely intrudes with the story of Judith, puzzlingly played by Medaglia and not Artemisia.
Casey's play does embrace some complexities concerning the rape, as the relationship involved marriage promises and mutual attraction. This, however, does not stop the dialogue being heavy-handed, or the dramatic structuring and application of modern feminist theories being unrefined.
The life of General Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, was never uneventful and often tempestuous, and it is clear from Mr Begbie's biography how much he owed to his remarkable wife, Catherine Mumford.
THE LOVE LETTERS OF GENERAL BOOTH.
A NOTABLE LIFE STORY.
Mr. Harold Begbie has not spared paper and print in his "Life of William Booth" published to-day by Macmillan. In the two thick volumes in which he tells the story of the founder of the Salvation Army there must be close on 400,000 words, and the author, as well as the General, often repeats himself.
The man was a born fighter and a born leader of men. He was wilful, headstrong, passionate and fond of fun. But as a child he was not happy. No one, he says, told him anything about religion. At the age of 13 he was apprenticed to a Unitarian pawnbroker, and two years later, after a struggle with his conscience, which led him to humble himself by confession to another boy whom he had wronged, he decided of his own accord "to go in for God." A little later, influenced by the call of the streets, he began to do mission-work among the boys of the Nottingham slums. At the end of his six years' apprenticeship he came to London, and while continuing his double career of pawnbroking and street-preaching met Catherine Mumford, the high-minded and altogether exceptional girl who afterwards became his wife.
The letters that passed between them while they stood on the threshold of the wonderful love story of their life are singularly beautiful. Hers were full of the tender advice of the woman who must mother the object of her love. "My dearest love," she writes, "beware how you indulge that dangerous element of characterambition. Misdirected, it will be everlasting ruin to yourself and, perhaps, to me also ... Don't indulge in ambition to be either a revivalist or anything else ... Watch against mere animal excitement in your revival services."
He, for his part, wrote often of his preaching experiences as well as of his love and his personal needs: "My dearest and most precious love,I just scribble you a line. Tuesday and Wednesday evenings were the most triumphant I ever witnessed under any circumstances ... Last night twice or thrice I became alarmed, the excitement was almost overwhelming; I feared for the people. I feared lest we should not be able to keep the reins of the meeting. The cries of distress were thrilling, piercing, running, as one gentleman expressed it, through you to your finger ends. Some were violent, commenced shrieking, clapping the forms, etc; these I stopped directly; in fact, all the more violent I stopped as soon as I could. If I doubted, as in two instances, sincerity, I stopped them authoritatively; if I had confidence in them I poured on the balm of Jesus' salvation and the sweet promises of His word, and they soon turned their tears and wailing into joy ... Give my love to mother. Get me two good shirts and two night shirts, 1 yard and 3/4 long at least, ready to send next week when I send you word. Farewell. Heaven bless and care for thee."
In 1865, after a period of wonderful success as a revivalist preacher, during which most of the chapels as well as the churches shut their doors in his face, he came again to London. Ten years of work in the East-end streets brought him at last to the conviction that the only way by which the people whom he was trying to save could really be changed was by making them in their turn seekers and savers of the lost. It was this conviction that eventually led him in 1878 to found the Salvation Army.
Mr. Begbie presents with judicious restraint and perfect fairness the contrast between the two remaining phases of General Booth's lifethe period of the army militant, when almost every man's hand was against it, and the later patriarchal period, when, as his biographer says: "He ceases to be an object of scorn: he became a hero of the world" ...
Vice-Admiral Sir Stephen Carlill, KBE, CB, DSO, last British commander of the Indian Navy, died on February 9 aged 93. He was born on December 23, 1902.
STEPHEN CARLILL was the last British Chief of Naval Staff in India. His departure from Delhi on April 21, 1958, nearly 11 years after Indian Independence, closed a significant chapter in the history of the two countries. He was the last British officer to command one of India's armed services, and his task had been to nurse the Indian Navy towards independence, not only in the matter of naval personnel but in developing institutions such as the fine modern training station at Cochin on the west coast of India.
But although it had fallen to Carlill to sever many of the links between the Indian Navy and the Royal Navy, he had aimed to stress the special camaraderie which existed between the two navies. A state of dependence was giving way, he hoped, to a spirit of friendly competition between two equals (although of course the Indian Navy was considerably the smaller of the two).
Carlill had been popular in India and he, in his farewell broadcast, said that he had "immensely enjoyed" his service there, during which he had invariably received the greatest co-operation from his colleagues and from the Indian Government. In the Royal Navy he had formerly had a distinguished career as a gunnery specialist and destroyer commander.
Stephen Hope Carlill was the son of Harold Flamank Carlill, a civil servant at the Board of Trade. There was no naval tradition in the family, but Carlill had always wanted to go to sea and went to the naval colleges Osborne and Dartmouth. He was a keen sportsman, and he played hockey, squash, cricket and tennis, as well as rugby for the Royal Navy in 1928.
He first went to sea in 1920, serving in home and Mediterranean waters. In 1927 he qualified as an interpreter in German. He studied the language in the Black Forest under Professor Willie Nohe, at the same time as Hugh Gaitskell, with whom he became friends. The two went on a walking tour together, and Terence Rattigan later wrote a play about this unusual establishment, French Without Tears (Rattigan changed the language in order to avoid the wrath of Nohe). Carlill met his future wife there, Nohe's daughter Hilla, whom he married in 1928.
Carlill specialised in gunnery. He was gunnery officer in the cruisers Norfolk in the Atlantic Fleet and Dunedin in New Zealand, and in the battle-cruiser Hood, from which he was promoted to commander in 1937. For the next two years he was squadron gunnery officer in the Galatea, flagship of the Mediterranean flotilla.
Shortly after war broke out, he joined the training and staff duties division at the Admiralty, but in April 1940 resumed sea service in command of the new Hunt class destroyer Hambleton. When she was damaged by a mine, he moved into a sister-ship, the Farndale, where in 1942 he was awarded the DSO. It was the Farndale which in December 1941 sank the Italian submarine Ammiraglio Caracciolo while she was on passage from Libya to Italy. Carlill took 53 prisoners before discovering that among these were a number of Italian senior military officers who had been trying to get home.
On promotion to captain in 1942 he was appointed to the new destroyer Quilliam as captain of the 4th destroyer flotilla, seeing action in the Eastern Fleet and during the landings in Sicily and at Salerno, for which he was mentioned in dispatches. From 1944 until the end of the war he served in the Gunnery Division of the Naval Staff as deputy director.
In 1946 he was appointed Chief of Staff to Admiral Lord Fraser, Commander-in-Chief, British Pacific Fleet, and continued with his successor, Admiral Sir Denis Boyd until 1948, subsequently commanding the gunnery school HMS Excellent and the carrier Illustrious. Following his promotion to rear-admiral in 1952, he was appointed to the directing staff of the Imperial Defence College then to command of the Home Fleet Training Squadron, being promoted to vice-admiral in 1954.
From 1955 to 1958 Carlill was Chief of Naval Staff in India. His leavetaking in April from the New Delhi railway station was celebrated with suitable pomp. White uniformed naval personnel were there in strength, and Carlill and his wife were saluted by the assembled naval ratings, and by the new Chief of Staff, Vice-Admiral Katari with the words: "Admiral Carlill and Lady Carlill Ki Jai" (Victory to Admiral Carlill and Lady Carlill). They left Bombay on the liner Strathmore. A 15-gun salute was fired, aircraft flew past and officers and men of the Royal Indian Navy cheered.
In recognition of his exceptional work Carlill was made an honorary vice-admiral in the Indian Navy the first British officer in modern times to hold an honorary flag rank in any service outside the Royal Navy. He retired in 1959, having been made a CB in 1954 and created KBE in 1957.
He worked until 1966 for the West Africa Committee, which guarded the interests of a group of businesses, first as their representative in Ghana and later in London. He then retired to Milford on Sea, where he grew roses and was surrounded by grandchildren and dogs, one of which he named Quilliam, after the ship he had commanded during the war.
His wife died in 1991, and he is survived by their two sons.
Adolf Galland, German wartime fighter ace, died on February 9 aged 83. He was born on March 19, 1912.
A FLYER who was among Germany's top aces of the Second World War, Adolf Galland commanded the fighter arm of the Luftwaffe from the end of 1941 until 1945. Credited with 103 kills by Luftwaffe statisticians, he was a tactician skilled in the handling of fighter forces. He always attributed the Luftwaffe's defeat in the Battle of Britain to the fact that it was not properly deployed by Goering, who used its fighters as a strategic rather than as a tactical weapon.
Thus, the Messerschmitt Me109 was used as a bomber escort a role for which its short range made it unsuitable rather than being used to attack the RAF's fighters. The flawed German system of using Luftflotten, air fleets of mixed fighters and bombers, rather than organising them as separate commands told against them when they were concentrated against the numerically inferior but tactically superior RAF in the summer of 1940.
Throughout the war Galland was a fearless critic of his boss, Hermann Goering, whom he regarded as being unfit for the command he held. With his thick, black hair and moustache, easy grin and cigar clamped between his teeth, even when airborne, Galland was a reassuring figure to his young pilots, and after he attained general's rank always remained "one of the boys".
Adolf Galland qualified as a glider pilot while in his teens. In 1932 he joined Germany's commercial airline, Lufthansa, and when it was formed, transferred to the Luftwaffe. He flew 300 missions for the Kondor Legion during the Spanish Civil War and gained much valuable experience of operations.
At the outbreak of the Second World War Galland was in a training post and took no part in the air operations of the Polish campaign. But by April 1940 he was back to active service in fighters and took part in the air attacks which supported the invasion of the Low Countries and France in May 1940. As an officer in the celebrated Jagdgeschwader 26 he played a prominent part in the Battle of Britain, making a name for himself along with Werner Molders and Helmut Wick as one of the most successful pilots on the German side. In August he was appointed to lead a fighter group in the battles which raged in the skies over the Channel and the South East of England. In the following year he was involved in countering the RAF's daylight fighter sweeps over France.
Much of Galland's success as a fighter pilot was due to his never underestimating his opponents; unlike Goering he did not make the mistake of disparaging the RAF's capacities at the outset of the Battle of Britain. Indeed, he is said jokingly to have told the latter when questioned as to Luftwaffe needs during the battle, that a squadron of Spitfires would benefit the performance of his Gruppe.
Molders had been made Inspector of Fighters in 1941 but was killed in an air crash later that year and in November Galland was appointed to succeed him. In the following year he was promoted to become, at 30, the youngest general in the German armed forces.
For the next two years it was his melancholy task to attempt to orchestrate an air defence for the Third Reich against the numerically and technically superior air forces of the Western allies, and to witness the total destruction of his command under the relentless night and day onslaught mounted by the RAF and the US 8th Army Air Force. It was a tribute to his qualities as a leader that he was nevertheless continually able to inspire his pilots whose numbers daily dwindled, especially heavy toll being taken of their attempts to break up the massive daylight raids of the American bomber squadrons with their powerful long-range fighter escorts.
Nevertheless he was always alert to make the latest technical advances available to his pilots and continually strove for tactical innovations which would offset the Luftwaffe's inferiority in numbers. Thus such novelties as rocket and even bomb attacks were experimented with, against the tightly packed American bomber formations.
Although rising to high command, he retained the mentality of, and sympathised with, the problems of the front line pilot with whom he was prone to side in the frequent arguments between the operational units and the Supreme Command. In particular, he was a severe critic of Hitler's initial decision to deploy the new Me262 jet fighter which would have given the Luftwaffe a perhaps decisive air superiority over the Allies only as a fighter bomber.
This stance made him enemies and in January 1945 he was relieved of his command when Goering ordered him on permanent leave without naming a successor. However, he did fly operationally again and was shot down in combat with an American Mustang fighter a fortnight before the end of the war.
After the war Galland pursued his interest in commercial and military aviation and was for a period a consultant and adviser to the Argentine Air Force.
Galland typified to a degree the chivalry which existed between combatants in the air and was a popular figure at the air force reunions of his old adversaries. He was, for example, a welcome figure at the thanksgiving service for the life of the legless RAF ace Sir Douglas Bader, in St Clement Danes Church in the Strand, in 1982.
He was married with two children.
Neil Franklin, Stoke City, Hull City and England centre-half, died on February 9 aged 74. He was born on January 24, 1922.
IN THOSE halcyon days when what are now known as centre-backs still used to be called centre-halfs, Neil Franklin was the finest of them all. In the history of the game there has probably been no more accomplished footballer in an England defence than he was. Sir Stanley Matthews, his Stoke City and England colleague, considered him superior, as a constructive defender, even to the late Bobby Moore.
Cornelius Franklin was born in Shelton, Stoke-on-Trent. After the end of the Second World War he was the unchallenged England centre-half for 27 consecutive matches. He had gained 12 wartime caps as the successor to the legendary Stanley Cullis. But Franklin's career was then disrupted by a secret and ill-advised departure from Stoke City in the spring of 1950 for the Santa Fe club of Bogota, Colombia.
Together with George Mountford, Stoke's outside right, Franklin and his family left for Bogota, having signed contracts immediately after the conclusion of the domestic season and without informing Stoke. He had told the Football Association that he would not be available for the imminent World Cup finals due to be played in Brazil England's first participation in this event because his wife Vera was expecting their second child, and he wished to be with her. Vera planned, in fact, to have the baby in Bogota.
This was the era of the maximum wage of £20-a-week in English football and no freedom of contract once a player had signed for a League club. Stoke had refused Franklin's request for a move, in spite of the fact that Bob McGrory, Stoke's manager, disliked Franklin's stylish, intelligent game. In his autobiography Soccer at Home and Abroad (1956) Franklin wrote: "I have never been able to understand why I should be expected to hurt a fellow player. Any lout can knock a man off a ball. It needs a footballer to take the ball off an opponent."
A number of English players were tempted by South American money but the experience of Franklin and others was to leave little but disillusionment. (Colombia was free to entice foreign players in breach of existing contracts because it was not affiliated to FIFA, the world governing body.)
In the event, having been assured of the provision of a house but finding themselves accommodated in an hotel instead, Vera decided to fly home for the birth. Franklin, by agreement with Santa Fe, accompanied her as far as New York but finding no flight booked for his wife as had been promised also flew back on impulse to England.
For breach of contract at Stoke ("The nicest player we ever signed," the Stoke chairman said in his defence at the disciplinary hearing) and for his deception of the FA, Franklin was suspended without pay until the following year. An illustrious career had been effectively destroyed.
Although, for a £22,500 transfer fee, he subsequently joined Hull City, where the manager was his former international colleague Raich Carter, Franklin was never again selected for England. The English team tried a dozen centre-halves during a downward spiral over the next four years but had no luck until Billy Wright was switched to that position in 1954.
A crowd of 55,000 greeted Franklin's first appearance for Hull, but a later cartilage injury curtailed his success. After brief moves to Crewe Alexandra, Stockport and Macclesfield, he became a player manager with Wellington in Shropshire, then manager of Colchester in the Football League, leading the club to promotion from the fourth division in 1966. He retired two years later to become a publican.
He was twice married, marrying his second wife, Beryl, in 1968. He is survived by her, a son and a daughter from his first marriage and a stepson from his second.
Alexander Sedgwick, American journalist, died in Athens on January 19 aged 94. He was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on February 8, 1901.
A PROFOUNDLY cultured man, Alexander ("Shan") Sedgwick was a great lover of poetry and would recite it with surprising ease even when he complained that old age had weakened his memory. He kept a dog-eared copy of the Oxford Book of English Verse always within reach, even on his deathbed. But it was in the less gentle art of journalism that Sedgwick really made his name. As a foreign correspondent for The New York Times throughout the Second World War, he covered the Balkan scene and the Greek-Italian front in Albania from his base in Athens.
He fled Greece, as the German Army approached the capital in April 1941, and set up his base in Cairo. From there he covered the Desert campaign of the British Eighth Army, reporting the battle of El Alamein. Characteristically, he neglected to inform his editors in New York that he himself had been wounded in the battle.
Sedgwick's reminiscences of the Albanian and Desert campaigns produced his first book Wind Without Rain, a social satire. Later, in a second book Tell Sparta, he recounted what had happened in the war and the story of the Resistance in Greece.
In October 1944, as the Germans were beating a hasty retreat from Greece, Sedgwick joined Brigadier George Jellicoe's Special Boat Squadron at Megara in order to be with the first British troops to enter Athens. In 1947 he was appointed an honorary OBE for his wartime reporting.
Alexander Cameron Sedgwick was born in a fine 18th-century house, one of the architectural showpieces of Stockbridge. His family was of British lineage and, with a deep sense of tradition, he was always to remain proud of his ancestral heritage. He felt a loyalty towards the British people and a love for practically all things British. At the age of 19 he took a job as a deckhand in a cattle-ship and worked an uncomfortable passage to the UK, "the Old Country", as he liked to call it.
After graduating from Harvard in 1924, Sedgwick was recommended by his uncle, then editor of the Atlantic Monthly, for a post at the New York World. His employers, however, soon decided that he was a "pinko". He used to tell this story with amusement since later in life he was often accused of belonging to the "far Right". He was, for instance, the only American correspondent who treated the 1944 Athens putsch as a Moscow conspiracy to bring Greece into the Soviet orbit rather than a revolt of oppressed democrats.
His reporting during and after these events showed a clear understanding of British policy in Greece at a time when it was being vigorously challenged both at home and in the United States. This experience, and the Civil War that ensued, inevitably hardened his ideological approach, and after his retirement it induced him even to express sympathy for the Greek colonels who, taking advantage of the turmoil in Greek politics, seized power in 1967.
His first assignment with The New York Times in 1925 was as a junior police reporter, a job he endured until 1928. He then moved to Europe where he worked as a sherry salesman while writing his first novel. After briefly joining the Associated Press, he rejoined The New York Times in 1937, becoming a member of its staff in 1939 and filing for it regularly throughout the Second World War. From 1944 until his retirement in 1961, he served as the New York Times correspondent in Greece and Turkey.
He is survived by his wife Roxanne Sotiriadi, the daughter of a Greek professor of archaeology. There were no children.
When John Constable wrote, in a letter to a friend dated April 8, 1826, "I do hope to sell this present picture as it has certainly got a little more eye-salve than I usually condescend to give them," he set The Cornfield on its journey through history. And it is the journey, as much as the picture, that is celebrated in a fascinating exhibition at the National Gallery from today.
At Home with Constable's Cornfield features not only the original, which has been at the Gallery since 1837, but a selection of reproductions, plates, tea-trays, clocks, cushions, thimbles and biscuit tins, onto which the image has found its way in the last 170 years. With each item there is a photograph of its owner, and a statement about their relationship with the object, and the image on it.
The curator Colin Painter, of the Wimbledon School of Art, came upon the idea for the exhibition while working on his PhD thesis in Newcastle in the early 1980s. "I was going into all sorts of houses and taking photographs," he says, "and the only area of decorative commonality, across all social groups and incomes, was Constable.
"A lot of people are angry about contemporary art, and this exhibition is partly about ways in which art could find its way into people's homes more. The Cornfield is very suitable because of characteristics that make it particularly appealing: the countryside, the peace and tranquillity things we have lost, that make the picture ‘relevant' in an environmental sense."
This point is echoed by Mrs Elizabeth Pett, whose fire-screen is one of Professor Painter's favourite exhibits. She was one of 500 people who responded to a notice placed next to the painting in the National Gallery which requested the loan of related objets from members of the public.
"I am 60 now, and when I was young there was a lot of countryside around London. The picture reminds me of a walk I used to take on Sundays just after the war, from Sidcup to Chislehurst. The lane even turned the same way as in the picture, but it has all been built up now.
"It has been my favourite picture since my mother gave me a birthday card with it on as a teenager. I saw the original for the first time last February and thought it rather orangey, much more like a copy my husband once bought me than the firescreen."
For retired handyman Jim Nippress, who lives on the fourteenth floor of a tower block near Heathrow, and has a reproduction, it is the dog that is important. He is not allowed to have one. But he does have urban angst about the countryside. "Youngsters today will never see things like that picture. It'll all be taken up with concrete buildings and roads."
Another exhibitor, Andrew Smith, had it on the landing at home as a child, and his brother claimed to be the boy in the picture. Andrew wanted it to be him and found as he grew up that he always measured himself in terms of the drinking boy.
Professor Painter insists that "when they talk about the picture, they talk about their lives". He complains that, "to say ‘I like The Cornfield because it reminds me of Suffolk' is not considered a relevant way to talk about fine art." It may, however, be a fine way to make art more relevant.
At Home with Constable's Cornfield is at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London WC2 (0171-839 3321) until April 21
THE best entries for the Mel Calman Awards, a competition sponsored by The Times to encourage young cartoonists, are to go on show at the National Postal Museum from February 26.
They will be displayed in an exhibition coinciding with the launch of new greetings stamps featuring the work of renowned cartoonists, including the late Mel Calman, in whose honour the awards are named.
Calman's wry line drawings enlivened our front page for 15 years until his death in February 1994 at the age of 62. Typical examples of his work are on four of the ten first class stamps in the new issue. The stamps will be sold in books of ten with 20 free greetings labels, some of whose one-liner captions are also derived from Calman's cartoons.
Hundreds of entries were received for The Times Young Cartoonist of the Year competition, organised in conjunction with the British Cartoonists' Association, for which the Mel Calman Awards are the prizes.
The competition was inspired by the realisation that cartoons and caricature have been an essential ingredient of British life for more than three centuries, but that there are now fewer and fewer outlets for cartoonists' work, and little encouragement for young artists to continue in what has been a great tradition.
Entries were restricted to those under 30, with a special category for those under 18.
Seven winners will be presented with their prizes by Peter Stothard, Editor of The Times, at an awards ceremony on the day the exhibition opens.
The judges, who included such leading exponents of the cartoonist's art as Peter Brookes of The Times, Peter Maddocks, Posy Simmonds, Steve Bell of The Guardian, John Jensen, chairman of the British Cartoonists' Association, and Enzo Apicella, were impressed and encouraged by the strength and quality of the entries for the competition, which it is hoped will become an annual event.
One of the judges, David Driver, the design editor of The Times, said: "I have always feared that there were not a great number of cartoonists out there waiting to show what they could do, but the entries came in their hundreds and were of a very high standard. We have discovered several promising young talents."
The National Postal Museum is in King Edward Building, King Edward Street, London EC1, and is open daily from 9.30am until 4.30pm. Admission is free. The exhibition, which all includes a display on the new cartoon stamps, will continue until May 3.
Kiki Dee, Jazz Cafe
AS TALK turns towards next week's Brit Awards and the paucity of female talent suggested by another uninspiring list of nominees in that category, here was an evening of timely encouragement. Some 30 years after her recording debut and 15 after her last solo chart appearance, one of Britain's most seasoned but, lately, under-celebrated vocalists is back in the running.
Kiki Dee's return to recording and live work is, to say the most of it, understated. Last autumn, the Tickety-Boo label released the splendid but almost entirely overlooked Almost Naked, an "unplugged" concert album on which she was accompanied only by guitarist Carmelo Luggeri. This show reprised that record, as a healthy Jazz Cafe turnout of old fans and inquisitive newcomers was treated to almost two hours of versatility that even her chart years only hinted at.
Assured indeed is the performer who, edging back towards the mainstream, feels no obligation to rush into her hits. Dee, elegant in long coat and winning smile, fashioned the set around unfamiliar songs, some of them of her own composition and all showing an admirable absence of cliche.
See Me Through, she told us with typical Yorkshire openness, was written "in about five minutes after a date with a bloke I quite fancied". You Won't See Me Crying, another original, eloquently expressed the fragility of a jilted lover's survival instincts.
But it was Dee's adaptability that gave the performance such depth. One struggles to think of many other singers who could interpret songs by Jane Siberry, Willie Dixon, the Young Rascals and Smokey Robinson with uniform dexterity. Siberry's irreverent Miss Punta Blanca and Dixon's deep-blues Spoonful were unlikely bedfellows, but benefited from Dee's fluid, unhurried approach and Luggeri's equally flexible accompaniment, as did the Rascals' Good Lovin' and Robinson's Ain't that Peculiar.
With such delicacies in the mixture, the references to several of her own past achievements formed a rich icing. Don't go Breaking my Heart underwent an acoustic deconstruction, Amoureuse was once again an exquisite love song and Loving and Free helped further to emphasise that the stock of this craftswoman has long been seriously undervalued.
Kenneth Branagh tells Martyn Palmer why he is happy to star in an Othello described by its director as an ‘erotic thriller'.
To the purist, cinematic treatment of any one of Shakespeare's plays may seem like a crime not unlike turning the Globe Theatre into a Disney theme park. But to Kenneth Branagh, who has more or less made a career out of demystifying, resuscitating and reinterpreting the works of the Bard for mass consumption, it is what the man himself would have wanted.
If Shakespeare were alive today, Branagh suggests, he would be perched high in the Hollywood Hills, penning his latest script directly for the cinema screen. "He would probably be on the Internet too," Branagh says. And it is true that many of the plays have all the elements of a contemporary blockbuster.
Little wonder, then, that Hollywood producers are jostling to turn out Shakespeare films in unprecedented quantities: currently there are three Romeo and Juliet productions, Branagh's own Hamlet, two versions of Richard III and a Quentin Tarantino adaptation of Macbeth. The latter should be a special treat for Shakespearean scholars.
But Branagh contends that none is more appropriate to cinematic treatment than Othello, with its themes of love, murder, jealousy, betrayal and racism. Forget the tragedy tag; its director, Oliver Parker, is now happy to sell Othello to audiences on the basis that it is an "erotic thriller".
Branagh, who has produced, directed and acted in screen versions of Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing, this time confines his contribution solely to performance: he plays the villain Iago with charm-coated malice. He does not balk at the director's description of the latest Othello any more than he does at what others might perceive as the bastardisation of the Bard's work.
"Othello is an interesting example of how directly Shakespeare can speak to people," he says. "I don't think anybody needs any qualifications for having the chance to enjoy the movie other than having been in love, perhaps, and understanding that with that goes mild or extreme forms of jealousy from time to time.
"It isn't about politics or kings and queens. It is about a very simple triangular domestic relationship that produces domestic violence, something that is with us now and has been for 400 years. Shakespeare seems to have been on to that, and to have had a view on almost every human situation there is."
Branagh believes that Shakespeare on film can speak directly to young minds in a way that dusty school textbooks cannot. "I get letters from teachers and children who say, and I agree with them, that on the page it does not live in the same way. It is only fully alive when it is embodied by actors. It very much lives in performance."
In the new film version Othello comes with 60 per cent of the original text cut away and new scenes added: very different from the classic Olivier film, which remained heavily anchored in a stage production. But the new movie remains a period piece, beautifully filmed at the lush locations of Venice and Bracciano Castle to the north of Rome, but with a contemporary flavour.
The $11 million production, funded by an American company, only got the green light when Branagh's bankable name was attached to it. But Branagh says that this new Othello is very much Parker's vision. He is the son of the former British Rail boss Sir Peter Parker; his brother Nathaniel plays Cassio. The director believes that the tragedy had to be "re-invested with passion and romance".
A first-time feature director who played Iago in repertory six years ago, he admits that he cut down on Shakespeare's text to emphasise what he terms the "thriller aspect" of Othello. "Once I decided I was thinking cinematically it was actually quite liberating, because it is a different medium," he says. "You would do it a disservice if you did it with the original text. Shakespeare didn't write it for film and if he had done so he would have written it differently.
"If he was around now I'm sure he would be using visual imagery more. Words were his weapon at the time, but now it's different. I was trying to be true to the spirit of it rather than the specific text."
Branagh agrees that it is the film-maker's job to re-evaluate classic work. "It must be fuelled by the film-maker's response to the play," he says. "Oliver's script was full of that on every page. There is a sense of atmosphere and a sense of what he wanted to convey. He knew what he was doing.
"Olivier's film of Othello is very much a recording of a theatrical performance. It is much less cinematic than the Orson Welles 1951 film, which was a bit of a trailblazer: irreverent, if you like, in the way it was put together. And Oliver Parker's version of Othello does speak directly to an audience on a visceral level. It doesn't bring historical baggage with it, it lives absolutely now."
In America, critical response to the film has been mixed. The New Yorker called it "trash"; the Los Angeles Times said it was "refreshingly unpretentious". But Branagh's performance has received excellent reviews.
"I'd seen the play lots of times and had been in it once before, as Cassio," he says. "It's always good for an actor to play a villain, especially somebody who, by the end, seems devoid of remorse and regret, someone who has developed an intoxicating glee with the idea of manipulating people."
More Branagh Shakespeare is on the way. His own screen version of Hamlet, with himself in the lead and a cast that includes John Gielgud, Jack Lemmon, Charlton Heston, Billy Crystal, Gerard Depardieu, Rufus Sewell, Derek Jacobi, Julie Christie and even Ken Dodd (as Yorick) is in production in Britain.
"The greatest straight part ever written," is how Branagh describes the Prince of Denmark. "It would be very hard for me to persuade an actor to do it the way that I'd like, given that it fits into a view of the play which is very particular. So yes, now I'm doing it all over again. How stupid is that?"
Othello will be reviewed tomorrow and opens on Friday.
Mrs Gabrielle Muriel Keiller, of Shockerwick, Avon, the champion golfer, benefactor and collector of modern art, whose collection included work by artists such as Bellmer, Breton, Dali, Delvaux, DuChamp, Ernst, Giacometti, Magritte, Miro, Picabia, Man Ray and Tanguy, left estate valued at £8,228,240 net.
She left her collection of 20th-century art, not accepted by the Inland Revenue in satisfaction of inheritance tax, to the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, her collection of silver cow creamers to the City of Leeds, her clothing (except furs) to the Converts Aid Society, and the remainder of her estate mostly to her son.
Canon John Charles Edwin Hayter, of Lymington, Hampshire, former chaplain to the Bishop of Singapore (the Right Rev John Leonard Wilson) 1942-45, and priest-in-charge of Kuala Lumpur at the time of the Japanese invasion of Malaya in December 1941, left estate valued at £297,452 net.
He left £85,000 and his shares in the Churcher Estate, Darwin, to personal legatees, and the residue equally between Boldre Church, Lymington, the Lancing College Chapel Fund and the USPG.
Mr James Thomas Breen, of Luton, Bedfordshire, left estate valued at £129,260 net.
He left £1,500 to the Department of Social Security Invalidity Pensions Department, £1,000 to the Inland Revenue Income Tax Division, £8250, some effects and 1/3rd of the residue to personal legatees, and 1/3rd of the residue each to the Verona Fathers and the Mill Hill Missionary Society.
Other estates include (net, before tax):
Mr Arthur Frederick Miller, of Looe, Cornwall£588,560.
Mr Neil Nathaniel Saunders, of Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire £923,039.
Mr Richard Harry Burgess, of London SW6£1,094,127
Mrs Olive Christine Thornton-Clough, of Hove, East Sussex £712,299
Mr Robert Marcus Earl, of Weston Hills, Lincolnshire£1,839,142
Mr Norman George Eggleton, of Gloucester£1,816,027
Mr Lynn Housley Evans, of Cardiff£1,792,486
Mr George William Fisher, of London NW10£711,659
Mr Giacomo Gorrara, of London WC1£869,049
Mr Peter Leonard Mason, of Kings Lynn, Norfolk£1,088,975
BIRTHS: Claude Prosper Crebillon, novelist, Paris, 1707; Thomas Malthus, economist and demographer, Rookery, Surrey, 1766; Christopher Sholes, pioneer of the typewriter, Mooresburg, Pennsylvania, 1819; Frank Harris, writer, Galway, 1856; Israel Zangwill, writer, Zionist and philanthropist, London 1864.
DEATHS: King Richard II reigned 1377-99, murdered at Pontefract Castle, 1400; John Hadley, pioneer of the sextant, East Barnet, Hertfordshire, 1744; Captain James Cook, explorer, murdered by natives, Hawaii, 1779; Sir William Blackstone, jurist, London, 1780; Henry Maudslay, inventor of the metal lathe, London, 1831; William Dyce, painter, London, 1864; William Sherman, Union General in the American Civil War, New York, 1891; Sir Pelham (P.G.) Wodehouse, writer, New York, 1975; Sir Julian Huxley, biologist, London, 1975; Frederick (Fritz) Loewe, composer, Palm Springs, 1988.
The Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, London, admitted its first patient, 1852.
Marconi began regular broadcasting transmissions from Essex, 1922.
The St Valentine's Day massacre took place in Chicago, 1929.
The German battleship Bismarck was launched, 1939.
The Bank of England was nationalised, 1946.
CandoCo, Queen Elizabeth Hall
EACH performance by CandoCo is remarkable: wheels spinning, chairs spiralling like bicycles, people balancing on one leg or one hand. This may sound like a bunch of circus acrobats, but CandoCo actually consists of able-bodied and wheelchair-using dancers.
CandoCo owes its success not just to novelty: its performers are talented and have a repertoire of a calibre conventional companies should seek to emulate. Rather than suffocating creativity, the physical restrictions and wheelchairs seem to have stimulated most choreographers to an inspired inventiveness.
This rule holds firm with the handsome new piece, You Are Now Entering the State of Love, shown as part of CandoCo's two sold-out London performances. Lea Parkinson, one of the company's male dancers, has devised an imaginative duet for Sue Smith and David Toole.
The piece begins with images of the heavens, the sea and the remarkably broad hands which for those familiar with CandoCo belong unmistakably to Toole. When John Henderson's sensitive lighting plot brightens the stage, Toole's singular shape becomes evident, offering the illusion of being half sunk into the stage because he has no lower limbs. His long, powerful arms sweep sideways with the dramatic breadth of an eagle's wingspan, enabling him to walk, twist and balance in extraordinary feats of virtuosity.
Lea Parkinson partnered the wheelchaired Celeste Dandeker in Darshan Singh Bhuller's Once Upon a Time in England and most of the company assembled for their popular energiser, Back to Front With Side Shows by Emilyn Claid.
In this scheme, Toole is the centre, with his vivid, significant glances and blazing physical prowess. The muscular effort, though, has taken its toll and he is retiring to start a film career. With so many pieces tailored to his unique abilities, his departure will leave CandoCo with a gaping hole in its repertoire.
Rodelinda, Blackheath Concert Halls
THE main hall was packed to the gunwales for Monday's semi-staged performance of Handel's opera, which must have given the driver of the last train back to town a nasty shock a platform filled to overflowing suggested a football match that no one had warned him about.
Operagoers are of course better behaved than most football supporters, but only just. The evening started with some aggro from the crowd when the conductor, Nicholas Kraemer, drew attention to the libretto printed in the programme and then someone doused the lights. Angry protests from the stands, the lights came up again and we could all follow the text in authentic 18th-century style.
Jonathan Miller's semi-staging was minimalist. The singers in evening dress, all of whom had their roles by heart, sat at a table groaning with bottles of (I trust) mineral water, rose when required to take part in the action and looked on with varying degrees of interest when not. You knew someone was a wrong‘un when he sang an aria with his hands in his pockets.
Rodelinda (1725) comes from one of Handel's great periods, immediately after Giulio Cesare and Tamerlano. As so often, you spend the first act thinking what a jolly good opera composer he was. Then, in the second and third, he throws aria after aria at you of such prodigious musical invention and dramatic insight that you realise he was beyond doubt one of the form's founding and ever-presiding geniuses. He was especially good at villains and there are two here, with slithery vocal lines and jagged progressions to show their twisted mental processes.
Inspired by Kraemer's buoyant conducting, the fine cast did the score proud, especially two outstanding counter-tenors from the new generation whose ease of voice production demands that you dub them sopranos who happen to be men. Daniel Taylor sang the Senesino role of Bertarido with astonishing purity of tone and musicianship, and Robin Blaze his faithful squire equally easily.
Catherine Robbin's velvety, crisply defined mezzo was perfect for the wronged Eduige, Christopher Purves made an appropriately in-your-face baddie as Garibaldo, and Adrian Thompson, while not in steadiest voice, drew a fine portrait of the usurper Grimoaldo who sees the error of his ways. Sophie Daneman, sang beautifully but seemed a little polite for a lady who has a pair of villains to defy and thinks she has lost her husband not just once, but twice.
Sir Denis Dobson, QC
The Lord Chancellor was represented by Sir Thomas Legg, QC, at a service of thanksgiving for the life of Sir Denis Dobson, QC, held on Monday at the Temple Church. Canon Joseph Robinson, Master of the Temple, officiated.
Mr Roger Dobson, Mr Paul Dobson and Mr Michael Dobson, sons, read the lessons. Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone, KG, CH, FRS, gave an address.
The Lord Chief Justice, the President of the Family Division and the Treasurer of the Middle Temple attended. Among others present were:
Lady Dobson (widow), Mr Neville Boden and Ms Zuleika Dobson and Mr and Mrs Ronald Strunck (sons-in-law and daughters), Mrs Roger Dobson and Mrs Paul Dobson (daughters-in-law), Mr William Dobson, Miss Serena Dobson, James Dobson and Charlotte Dobson (grandchildren).
Lord and Lady Ackner, Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, Lady Borrie, Lord Slynn of Hadley, Lord and Lady Roskill, Lord Campbell of Alloway, QC and Lady Campbell, Lady Gore-Booth, Lord Justice Simon Brown, Sir Ralph and Lady Gibson, Lady Justice Butler-Sloss, Sir Michael and Lady Palliser, Lord Justice Rose, the Hon Mrs Justice Hogg, the Hon Lucinda Royle, Sir Wilfred Bourne, QC, and Lady Bourne.
Sir Douglas Falconer, Lady (Charles) Norton, Sir James Nursaw, QC, Sir Ian Sinclair, QC, Sir Donald Logan (Brompton Association), Sir Henry de Waal, QC, Lady (Peter) Foster, Sir Paul and Lady Osmond, Sir Geoffrey de Deney, Sir Richard and Lady Bayliss, Mr Justice Lindsay, Sir David West-Russell, Sir William Goodhart, QC, Sir Kenneth Hollings, Sir Derek Oulton, QC, Sir Vincent Evans, QC.
Judge Aglionby, His Honour Stewart Bates, QC, and Mrs Bates, His Honour Edgar Fay, QC, Mr Patrick Phillips, QC, Mr Michael Essayan, QC, Mr John Toulmin, QC, Mr Richard Fernyhough, QC, Mr John Platts-Mills, QC, Mr Leolin Price, QC, Mr J Michael Edwards, QC, Mr Peter Boydell, QC, Mrs Beryl Cooper, QC, Mr Ronald Bernstein, QC, Mr P W E Taylor, QC, Mr Geoffrey Brice, QC.
Mr J M Cartwright Sharp, Mr Ludovic Boden, Mr and Mrs G P Davidson, Mr Norman S Marsh, Mr David Williams, Mr O Sowande, Mr Edward Caldwell, Mrs Gerald Draper, Mr K Newman, Miss Pat Malley, Mr and Mrs Karl Newman, Mr Hume Boggis-Rolfe, Mr David Edwards, Miss Amanda Piper, Mr Godfrey Carter, Mr Laurence Shurman, Mr Keith Carmichael, Mr and Mrs James Mason.
Mr J A C Watherston (Head of International Division, Lord Chancellor's Department), Master McKenzie, QC (Registrar of Criminal Appeals), Mr Michael Blair (deputy chief executive and general counsel, The Securities and Investments Board), Professor Ray Goode (representing Justice) and Mr Mark H Heldon (Linklaters and Paines).
BUCKINGHAM PALACE
February 13: The Queen held an Investiture at Buckingham Palace this morning.
Mr Andrew MacKay MP (Vice-Chamberlain of the Household) was received in audience by Her Majesty and presented an Address from the House of Commons to which The Queen was graciously pleased to make reply.
The Rt Hon John Major MP (Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury) had an audience of Her Majesty this evening.
The Duke of Edinburgh, President and Honorary Life Fellow, this morning chaired a meeting of the Environment Committee of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce at Buckingham Palace.
The Hon Mary Morrison has succeeded Lady Dugdale as Lady in Waiting to The Queen.
February 13: The Prince Edward, Trustee, The Duke of Edinburgh's Award, this evening attended a Dinner to celebrate the Chinese New Year at the Oriental Restaurant, the Dorchester Hotel, London W1.
February 13: The Princess Royal, Patron, the Basic Skills Agency, this morning attended an Advisory Committee Meeting at Commonwealth House, New Oxford Street, London WC1.
Her Royal Highness, President, Save the Children Fund, this afternoon chaired an Industry and Commerce Group Meeting and afterwards presented Corporate Members' Fundraiser Certificates at Buckingham Palace.
CLARENCE HOUSE
February 13: Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, Patron of the Special Forces Club, this afternoon unveiled a Memorial to the Special Operations Executive in Westminster Abbey.
The Hon Mrs Rhodes and Sir Alastair Aird were in attendance.
ST JAMES'S PALACE
February 13: The Prince of Wales this afternoon visited Royal Victoria Dock, London E16, following last Friday's terrorist incident.
His Royal Highness afterwards visited Limehouse Police Station to thank representatives of the police, fire and ambulance services.
The Prince of Wales later visited the temporary offices of Franklin Mint at the Tower Hotel.
His Royal Highness subsequently met nurses, doctors and surgeons who have been treating and caring for victims at the London Hospital.
KENSINGTON PALACE
February 13: The Princess of Wales, Patron, London City Ballet, this morning received Mr Michael Prescott (Chief Executive) and Mr Harold King (Artistic Director).
February 13: The Duke of Gloucester, Patron, opened the Exhibition, "Frederick Leighton 1830-1896" and subsequently was present at a dinner at the Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, London W1.
YORK HOUSE
February 13: The Duke of Kent this morning visited the John Hampden Grammar School, Marlow Hill, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and was met on arrival by Mr John Paterson (Her Majesty's Vice Lord-Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire).
His Royal Highness later visited Wycombe Summit, Abbey Barn Lane, High Wycombe, and this afternoon opened Colston Hall, Gerrards Cross Memorial Centre, East Common, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire. Captain Marcus Barnett was in attendance.
The Duchess of Kent, Patron, UNICEF, this morning visited Jafferpet Village.
Her Royal Highness this afternoon visited the Village Primary Health Care Centre, Thiruvalam, and the First Referral Unit, Taluk Hospital, Wallajapet, Tamil Nadu, India.
The Prince of Liechtenstein celebrates his 51st birthday today.
The Right Rev Peter Ball, former Bishop of Gloucester, and his twin brother, the Right Rev Michael Ball, Bishop of Truro, 64; Mr John Butterfill, MP, 55; Sir John Clark, former chairman, The Plessey Company, 70; Professor Evelyn Ebsworth, Vice-Chancellor, Durham University, 63; Sir Arnold Elton, consultant surgeon, 76; Sir Jack Hibbert, former director, Central Statistical Office, 64; Sir Derrick Holden-Brown, former chairman, Allied-Lyons, 73; Miss K.M. Jenkins, former director of personnel, Royal Mail, 51; Mr Kevin Keegan, football manager, 45; Mr John MacGregor, MP, 59; Miss Manuela Maleeva, tennis player, 29; Countess Mountbatten of Burma, 72; Professor Sir Charles Oatley, electrical engineer, 92; Mr Alan Parker, film director, 52; the Hon Hanning Phillips, former Lord Lieutenant of Dyfed, 92.
Lord Rossmore, 65; Mr Michael Rudman, theatre director and producer, 57; Sir Albert Sloman, former Vice-Chancellor, Essex University, 75; Sir Jocelyn Stevens, chairman, English Heritage, 64; Mr D.M. Stewart, former Principal, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, 66; Mr A.W.H. Stewart-Moore, former chairman, Gallaher, 81; Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, 61; Mrs Margaret Wright, chief commissioner, The Guide Association, 54.
LSO/Chung, Barbican Hall
HAVING survived the fracas at the Opera Bastille in Paris that brought his departure after a five-year stint as its music director, Myung-Whun Chung has been busily spreading his wings further afield. His migrations among the top international orchestras brought him to London for two concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra, of which the first found him unusually at home in a programme of two Czech masterpieces.
His operatic experience came to the fore in Janacek's Glagolitic Mass, no longer an oddball curiosity, but an admired classic. The dramatic character of this Slavonic mass expresses a white-hot conviction in the Christian faith, less as a liturgical devotion than a festive celebration. The Korean conductor generated the requisite spirit in a keen blend of voices and orchestra.
The London Symphony Chorus, with Malcolm Hicks as guest chorus master, voiced no inhibitions about getting their tongues around the original text, but the thunderous amplification of the long organ solo near the end was less to be welcomed than Catherine Edwards's virtuoso playing of it.
Vocal solos in the work are oddly disproportionate, but the Slovakian soprano Andrea Dankova from the National Theatre in Bratislava, who is expected at Glyndebourne in 1997, made an impressive British debut with a voice of lyric fullness. She was matched for fervour by the Russian tenor Sergej Larin, while Anne-Marie Owens and Stephen Richardson contributed the shorter mezzo and bass solos to expressive effect.
An edge to the orchestra's string tone was more acceptable in the Mass than in Dvorak's D major Symphony (No 6) which preceded it. Chung drove this forward at a brisk pace, although he seemed content to express only what was obvious on the surface, except in the trio of the scherzo movement where the application of a finer brush disclosed more of the inner detail.
CBSO/Pletnev, Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Mikhail Pletnev's concert with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra was well timed. Just when the audience in Symphony Hall was wondering where the next brilliant young conductor was coming from, here was a vivid demonstration that such musicians do exist. By the time the present music director's contract expires, in two years' time, Pletnev will be the same age as Sir Simon Rattle is now, and perhaps even capable of carrying on where he leaves off although in a Russian-orientated direction.
These observations are intended neither as prophecy nor as advocacy. With a few distinguished exceptions, Russian conductors tend to be less convincing outside their national repertoire. While Pletnev the pianist is not limited in this way, Pletnev the conductor has emerged in the last two or three years largely on the strength of his interpretations of Russian music. On this occasion with the CBSO he was conducting Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. But he did prove, in his minimally demonstrative way, that you don't have to be Rattle to bring out the best in the CBSO. There are others of his generation who can do the same.
Where the orchestra did not sound at its best under Pletnev's direction was in those passages in Rachmaninov's Second Symphony which failed in balance. Far too often, perhaps because Pletnev is used to a different kind of string playing, the violins carrying the melodic line were overwhelmed by the wind sections. This was all the more frustrating in that Pletnev is uncommonly persuasive in phrasing romantic melody. It did not seriously detract, on the other hand, from the long-term value of an interpretation so well calculated in structure and so effectively profiled in its climaxes. The small cut in the last movement was unnecessary.
Another exceptional quality in Pletnev is that he is prepared to take on Tchaikovsky's orchestral suites. They are not uniformly inspired, it is true, but where there is so much characteristic Tchaikovsky sound and so much authentic Tchaikovsky melody it is surely worth the occasional conscientious fugue or dainty gavotte to get at the rest. Pletnev's decision to omit the Scherzo from the Suite No 1 in D was not surprising. But it is still an interesting piece even if it is not as attractive as, say, the engagingly romantic Intermezzo or the delightfully playful Miniature March.
BBC SO/Gelmetti, Festival Hall
CONCERTS: Spirited Prokofiev; Pletnev proves himself; a Janacek Mass
Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony in B Flat along with the Classical, his best known was written in a short space of time in the summer of 1944, although some of its material dates back to the previous decade.
Much was expected of the composer: victory over Germany was imminent, and the audience that gathered for the premiere in Moscow, in January 1945, was hoping for an unequivocal expression of national pride and optimism.
What Prokofiev gave them was certainly uplifting he himself said that he conceived the work as "glorifying the human spirit". But, being Prokofiev, it was anything but unequivocal.
A convincing performance of the symphony has to catch that characteristic glint of irony: there is nothing strictly comparable to the forced rejoicing of Shostakovich's Fifth, but there needs to be a constant awareness of the tensions simmering beneath the surface.
Gianluigi Gelmetti's performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra last Thursday night by and large did justice to the work. There may have been questionable details and occasional untidinesses, but the essential spirit of the interpretation was right.
Gelmetti has a way of keeping something in reserve, so that even if one felt slightly shortchanged by the cumulating energies of the first movement as a whole, there was at least a very effective eruption waiting in the final bars.
The Scherzo, too, had a lethal kick in store for the closing moments, and although the articulation of those driving rhythms might have been a touch more incisive, Gelmetti had the sense to let the subterranean savagery reveal itself without too heavy underlining.
The pungent lyricism of the Adagio was satisfactorily captured, and the finale aptly riotous. Earlier, in the first half, Gelmetti seemed to suggest that Webern's Passacaglia could be viewed as a miniature Expressionist tone poem, in a performance that played up its dramatic potential.
It would be idle to pretend that Dvorak's Violin Concerto in A Minor was as great a work as his better known Cello Concerto. Certainly there were moments in the rhapsodic first movement and in the meditative slow movement that failed to hold the attention. But it is good to hear the piece occasionally, and Uto Ughi brought to bear both a secure technique and a fine sense of lyrical fantasy.
Making more of the Thames is a priority for the millennium. But which schemes are feasible? Marcus Binney reports.
You hear the call on every side. London's great millennium project must be the revival of the River Thames. There is a frenzy of projects for building new bridges and new Thames landmarks, as well as reviving old ones. Some of the biggest names in British architecture are involved. The question is: will anything be done?
It all depends on one man: John Gummer, the Secretary of State for the Environment, who, wearing his hat as Minister for London, wants to take all the decisions himself. Gummer holds sway by virtue of his power to "call in" planning applications, announce inquiries and decide the outcome accepting or rejecting his inspectors' recommendations as he sees fit.
He has foxed everyone, first by approving a hotly disputed proposal by Sir Richard Rogers to build a multi-storey apartment block beside Battersea Old Church, thereby alienating en bloc Conservative voters across the river in Chelsea. Then, days later, he announced an inquiry into the proposed Tower Bridge Opera House (which no one had objected to), killing off the project just as Credit Lyonnais had found a private investor to finance it.
In the giddy Eighties, developers accepted inquiries as a matter of course. Today people simply back away. The Royal Opera House reckoned it would add a minimum of a year and £100,000 to the bill.
Almost all current Thames projects are potentially contentious and candidates for ministerial intervention. For example, the architect Will Alsop has a daring plan to move the ICA from the Mall to a gallery constructed on the columns of old Blackfriars railway bridge. Beside it, he proposes a glass canopy over the modern railway bridge, ingeniously transforming it into a station serving both sides of the river. But the new station, although transparent, could interrupt views of St Paul's Cathedral. Similar objections could be made to all the proposals for elegant pedestrian bridges, such as Richard Horden's ingenious scheme for an inhabited bridge from Bankside to St Paul's, and to Sir Michael Hopkins's ingenious scheme for a cable car across the Thames from Covent Garden to the Festival Hall.
If the whole Thames initiative is not to be hamstrung, we need some smaller projects. One of the best additions to the Thames is the Buddhist pagoda built by visiting monks on the Battersea Park promenade. Why not a series of intriguing and colourful landmarks on this scale? They would be the modern-day equivalent of the towers and follies in 18th-century parks and the arches erected to celebrate coronations. They could be built on temporary licences. If the public liked them, they could stay. Hopkins has another good thought on these lines for pontoon gardens floating on the river in front of Somerset House and The Temple. If the first was a success, more could be built, with bars and cafes.
Trees provide some of the most beautiful vistas along the river. Stand in the middle of Albert Bridge and you would hardly know you were in London. Splendid mature trees line both banks until the Thames curves out of sight. Turn around, and the trees continue on the north side, but not on the south side where there is a dismal cluster of apartment blocks. Build a new embankment wall here, no more than 15 feet or so high, and another stretch of the Thames could be green for centuries to come.
We need to bring the Thames to life at night. Albert and Tower Bridges are superbly lit, but much of the river is dark at night. A few lights shining down on the water from a new pedestrian bridge would give Londoners a glimpse of the teeming fish we never see. And think what a sculptor such as Michael Pye, who designed the waterfall facade of the British Pavilion at the Seville Expo, could do simply with choreographed vertical jets of water lit by changing coloured lights.
In previous centuries, there was a fantastic amount to see on the Thames. "Such a forest of masts for miles together that you think all the ships of the universe here assembled," said Tobias Smollett.
The key issue is how to revive the water traffic. "Regular passenger services are not feasible," says David Jeffrey, chief executive of the Port of London Authority. "It is not possible to make the Thames semi-tidal or non-tidal above the Thames Barrier. It would flood London. You would lose all the fish and the wildlife in and on the river." Strong stuff. But others are not so sure.
Maldwin Drummond, author of the visionary plan for a new high-masted royal yacht, points out that the narrow arches of old London Bridge acted as a weir, leaving calmer water above and below. "Read Pepys and you will see that most people got out of their boats at London Bridge and let the watermen plunge through, then got in on the other side," he says.
A key question is whether devices such as fish ladders could be used to keep the river alive. "At the moment the tide is too fast for a waterbus service," says Drummond. "Going down to Greenwich on the ebb and returning on the flood does not provide a proper timetable."
In the year 2000 there is the exciting possibility of holding the Lord Mayor's Show on the Thames. The City's livery companies can bring the river to life with pageantry. This year Drummond becomes Prime Warden of the Fishmongers' Company. He says: "Six companies should be racing on the Thames this summer with newly-built cutters 30ft gigs which can be converted into ceremonial barges with canopies."
Everything depends on reconciling genuine concerns for wildlife with the opportunity to make renewed use of this once great highway. With millennium celebrations in prospect at Greenwich, whether or not the official festival is held there, the Thames could be alive again with boats.
A ride in a waterbus or water taxi should be as much part of a visit to the capital as catching a red double-decker or hailing a black cab. London's river traffic was once as bustling, varied and colourful as that of Venice or Istanbul. The city has a very long way to catch up, but that is all the more reason for starting now.
A lecture on The Potential of the Thames will be held at 6.30pm tonight in Westminster Central Hall, SW1 (0171-332 3770).
Arrowcroft has been given approval for its proposed £50-million redevelopment of the Cumbernauld Town Centre. The signing of the development agreement follows the granting of planning permission by Cumbernauld Development Corporation for 300,000sqft of shopping, including four anchor stores and 50 shops.
The project will link into the existing shopping facilities and will almost double the shopping provision within Cumbernauld to around 675,000sqft. As part of the revitalisation of the town centre, extensive alterations are already underway to the existing road system. Joint letting agents are Donaldsons and Healey & Baker.
Abbcott Estates Ltd, the developer of Daventry International Railfreight Terminal, has announced a £75-million funding agreement with Hermes Property Asset Management, adviser to the British Telecom and Post Office Pension Funds. Hermes will finance construction of part of the 4 millionsqft inland port and distribution and manufacturing complex, and has agreed to acquire completed units as investments.
The developer, a subsidiary of Severn Trent Property, is expected to start construction of the 350-acre scheme, by Junction 18 of the MI, within three months. The railport element will become operational in 1997.
The Boots Company, based in Nottingham, has won the top European prize, the Europa Nostra Medal, for conservation and restoration, for the Sir Owen Williams D10 building that is the headquarters of Boots Contract Manufacturing.
The Boots building is the only medal winner among 40 UK entries, and out of 160 projects across Europe, only seven medals have been awarded. It is the largest Grade I listed industrial building in Britain, and Boots spent four years and some £20 million restoring the factory, which was designed by Sir Owen Williams in the 1930s.
Europa Nostra described it as "one of the most important British buildings of the Modern Movement". State-of-the-art quality control laboratories and office space are enclosed within the listed building.
From Mr Leslie J. Hathaway
Sir, Mr Roger Panaman (letter, February 2) and Mr John Gudgeon (February 7) may be interested to know that wolves have indeed been known to roam in Church Street, Kidlington.
From 1931 until 1937 Gosford Hill Farm, Kidlington, was the site of the Oxford Zoological Gardens. In 1937, as the zoo was closing down, a few wolves escaped. They made their way through Church Street to open fields beyond.
For a few days this caused havoc and anxiety to local farmers and villagers, who were warned to be on their guard. Several sheep and their lambs were killed.
Unfortunately at least two alsatian dogs were mistakenly shot before the wolves were tracked down and shot.
Yours sincerely,
L. J. HATHAWAY,
3 South Avenue,
Kidlington, Oxfordshire.
February 9.
From Sir Ian Morrow
Sir, During the recent severe weather the National Grid issued a warning (report, January 31; see also letters, February 9) that it might run out of generating capacity, caused in part by the fact that some gas-fired stations were closed through lack of fuel from British Gas because the contracts were interruptible at British Gas's option.
It seems irresponsible to include in "available capacity" plants that can be closed legitimately by an outside agency.
Power, communications and transport are three services that must never fail through lack of capacity, whatever the weather; otherwise the country faces a repeat of the three-day week chaos of 1972, with devastating economic consequences.
Yours truly,
IAN MORROW,
2 Albert Terrace Mews, NW1.
February 8.
From Mr Ian Josephs
Sir, A heading on Libby Purves's article (February 6) says: "Michael Heseltine is wrong to defend late payers who are indebted to small businesses to the tune of £20 billion".
Michael Heseltine, my former partner, was actually defending small businesses against big business creditors pressing them for payment by explaining to the Forum of Private Business various ways of avoiding bankruptcy (report, February 5). He certainly never endorsed large companies holding up payments to smaller ones, nor I am sure did he ever do so once he had himself got into the big time.
Plenty of lodgers owed money to Michael and me in our early days, but we never threw anybody out into the street. Should we have evicted people just to pay our creditors on time?
Libby Purves suggests that small businesses should pass the risk to the "poor old bank". The banks are responsible for far more liquidations than the likes of Michael Heseltine and myself. If it looks risky they pull the plug and down the small fry go unless they find a way of keeping other creditors waiting a little longer.
Nearly every small business runs into trouble at some time in its early years and has to choose either liquidation or to keep creditors waiting for payment. Which option should be chosen?
Yours faithfully,
IAN JOSEPHS
(Chief Executive),
The Regency School of English,
Royal Crescent, Ramsgate, Kent.
February 8.
From Mr Lucas Mellinger
Sir, Sir David Mitchell, MP, asks (letter, February 12), "Do the IRA ... ever want the peace process to move forward?" I would go further: "Can the IRA make peace?" The inevitable answer is that they cannot.
They cannot destroy their raison d'etre; cannot, in their conscience, abandon their fathers' commitment; cannot, in their eyes, betray the martyrs who have died for the only cause they know.
Decommissioning their arms, in their psychology, would imply decommissioning their integrity.
Yours faithfully,
LUCAS MELLINGER,
9 Mortlake Terrace,
Kew Green, Richmond, Surrey.
February 13.
From Mr N. J. Mustoe
Sir, There is not much good that can be said of the IRA, but one has to admire their propaganda. After their killing of several thousand people and causing millions of pounds of damage here and in Ulster; after their having made no concessions towards a political solution or recognised the hatred they have generated in the majority community, honest people are still blaming the problems on the Ulster Unionists.
The Unionists have steadfastly condemned the activities of the IRA and the so-called loyalist paramilitaries. They have agreed to talk to the men who have slaughtered so many members of their community, provided they promise not to do so in future.
Anyone who asks the Unionists to do more is asking them to surrender to the terrorists.
Yours faithfully,
JOHN MUSTOE,
Blackthorn Cottage, 20 Cross End,
Thurleigh, Bedfordshire.
February 13.
From Mrs Deirdre Rowe
Sir, No one in Northern Ireland has been untouched by the violence: only the degree differs. Quite often in life it's the "average" voice that is least heard.
My family and I fall into this category. We are non-political Catholics, some of whom are still living in Andersonstown. In 1979 my father, on his sixty-ninth birthday, was murdered by the INLA for reporting a hijacked car.
For seventeen years we've been living in silence and grief, but there are many people like us. We don't want vengeance or justice; we just want peace. That means talks, unconditional talks.
I appeal to Mr Major to let the IRA keep their weapons till they rot; they're only symbolic and they can be replaced. The "four green fields" of the old Irish song aren't worth one life, and neither is an election.
I don't speak for the minority; I think I speak for a quiet majority.
Yours truly,
DEIRDRE ROWE,
Chalet Tarentaise,
Le Pre, Villaroger,
73640 Ste Foy Tarentaise, France.
February 13.
From Mr P. C. Beaver
Sir, William Rees-Mogg's article did not touch on the forgotten or ignored aim of the IRA, which has not changed: the formation of a socialist republican state. The aims and politics of such a state are dictated by the IRA, not Sinn Fein, which is merely a weak political shell.
The IRA knows perfectly well that political victory for Sinn Fein, in elections in the North, South, or a united Ireland, is unlikely in the foreseeable future. After so many years of sustained violence few are likely to vote for them.
The IRA wants a united Ireland of its choice and will use Sinn Fein as its political engine, provided it can be relied upon to toe the line. As a former serving officer in Northern Ireland for 31/2 years I believe the Docklands bombing was a deliberate reminder, not a blunder as Rees-Mogg says.
Gerry Adams, on the other hand, has changed. He seems to believe that a united Ireland is within sight and to understand that it can be achieved only with Unionist consent. Within a politically weak organisation he is probably the only one with whom the Government or the Unionists can discuss the way ahead. He can apparently make no promises on the future behaviour of the IRA. If he condemns violence he is finished with the IRA; if he doesn't he is probably finished with the Government and the Unionists.
The real problem for the British and Irish governments remains the IRA.
Yours faithfully,
PHILIP BEAVER,
The Malt House,
Poulton, Cirencester, Gloucestershire.
February 13.
From Mr H. R. McIlveen
Sir, Lord Rees-Mogg ("Isle of Dogs may be the IRA's Waterloo", February 12) stripped away much Irish mist when he reminded us that the IRA has lost its way.
In 25 years former "Stormont rule" anomalies and alleged injustices have been put right. The credit for this lies with Westminster. The peace process, which the Prime Minister and his Irish counterpart have made plain they will continue to pursue (reports and leading article, February 13), has the support of all factions in Ulster.
Cross-border relations with Dublin have improved steadily at pragmatic, if not always political levels. The timely visit of President Clinton in November inevitably added an international dimension to the search for progress and settlement.
The democratic process now envisaged must fully involve the Ulster people. The majority of silent and law-abiding citizens would, by means of elections, be able to return their chosen representatives in proportion to their mandate. With only a small vote, Sinn Fein is likely to move to the bottom of the table. That is democracy: it does not fit the power game in which Mr Adams has seen himself as a key player.
In those 25 years Ireland, too, has moved on. Lord Rees-Mogg understands this when he refers to the urban modernism of the new Ireland: do the politicians, North and South?
The historical Celtic crusade against the occupying English is playing itself out. Modern Ireland cannot afford to nurture old griefs forever, and the shape of its changing society reflects this.
Should an all-Ireland settlement ever be achieved it will be by consensus and democratic progress. The IRA has no place in such a state: that is its dilemma.
Yours etc,
HUGH McILVEEN,
Wood House, Whichford,
Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire.
February 13.
Christopher Warman on the rapid expansion of Regus.
The office of the future is here today. It uses the latest communications technology and provides flexible workspace to accommodate the needs of international business.
This is the way in which Regus has interpreted the concept of the "virtual office" and the "office of the future". Regus is the leading operator of business centres worldwide, and with its partners in the US and Australasia has more than 120 centres containing some 7,000 individual offices.
The business is fast expanding. When Regus was established in Europe in 1989, it consisted of one centre overlooking Trafalgar Square. Now it has 15 centres in the UK, and in 1995 opened 15 centres in Europe. In 1996 40 openings are planned, including 20 within the UK.
Regus has also expanded into new markets including Johannesburg and Sao Paulo, while centres have been opened in Helsinki, Gothenburg, Zurich, Cologne and Hanover.
Mark Dixon, Regus's managing director, explains that this rapid expansion is due to demand from occupiers. "Companies are increasingly using Regus centres to cope with needs including team rooms for special projects, and permanent but flexible branch offices to serve the local marketplace. Our typical client needs well-located offices on flexible terms."
He argues that companies need to change the way in which they operate in increasingly competitive markets. They need to reduce fixed overheads, including property and staff; to be near their clients for sales and services; to cut down on time-consuming and costly business travel; and to take into account the desire by employees to enjoy working both in the office and at home.
Companies are already making more efficient use of office space through techniques such as "hot desking", and are looking for property that does not tie them into long-term lease commitments. Regus can let an office by the hour, and provides offices on one, three and 12-month arrangements. In addition it offers a "just-in-time" service allowing clients to use offices when and where they need.
Inside the office, the computer and telephone allows companies to use individuals in remote locations, cutting costs. For example, Disney's film production company, Buena Vista Home Entertainment GmbH, recently took offices in Hamburg and Dusseldorf for the launch of The Lion King on video in Germany.
BP Nutrition has been renting space for ten months in the Brussels centre after consolidation of three of its offices, while for a shorter period Warner Bros recently used the Trafalgar Square centre to hold video-conferenced interviews between the singer, Seal, and journalists throughout Asia.
In Manchester, the Giants basketball team, preparing for the season, has regular meetings with its American-based owners. Using the Regus pay-as-you-view video-conferencing facilities at the World Trade Centre, Salford Quays, the team has face-to-face discussions with coaches and directors in Indiana.
Mr Dixon says that a typical centre comprises 15,000 sq ft, split into offices, and costs £500,000 to £1 million to set up. They are fully furnished, and include telecom facilities, reception areas with laser facsimiles, reproduction and desk top publishing, and meeting rooms with audiovisual equipment.
Mr Dixon says that Regus is now planning to expand national networks, beginning with the UK, Germany and the Benelux countries, and in the next five years aims to open 150 centres. These will include South African, Middle Eastern and Asian business cities of more than 100,000 population. Another priority is eastern Europe, where the Budapest office is already successful.
"We are looking to the EU to help business, encouraging cross-border banking, and, most importantly, harmonising VAT. That is what businessmen want."
From Mr Paul Nicholls
Sir, Now that the Labour Party has decided (rightly in my view) not to appeal against the industrial tribunal decision declaring all-women shortlists unlawful (report, January 9) there is a presumption that the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and Race Relations Act 1976 do apply to the selection process for political parties. This will remain the case unless there is a future selection challenge that results in an appeal to the higher courts.
Whilst there may be be some disappointment at the loss of the "positive action" mechanism for redressing the balance of the sexes, the long-term implications of the application of discrimination legislation to candidate selection in all political parties gives ground for hope for future change.
All the political parties are going to have to conduct a thorough review of their selection processes to ensure that they do not infringe discrimination legislation. They will need to take effective steps to ensure compliance with equality law when choosing candidates if they are not to be held liable for unlawful questions posed during the selection process.
Effective guidance is going to have to be given to deter the perennial, "Will your wife be helping you in the campaign?" (or vice-versa), or similar questions loaded in favour of male, or indeed female, candidates.
Selection panels will need to be reminded of their equal-opportunity responsibilities. Any process that has a disproportionate impact is indirectly discriminatory. Indirect discrimination (unlike direct) can be lawful but only if it is justifiable in all the circumstances. It will be interesting to hear the justification argument.
In the long term the successful Keighley tribunal challenge should lead to real progress in achieving equality in Parliament.
Yours faithfully,
PAUL NICHOLLS,
Dibb Lupton Broomhead (solicitors),
Carlton House,
18 Albert Square, Manchester 2.
February 5.
From Professor Alan Thompson
Sir, The statement by the Swiss Bankers Association ("Swiss in clash over Holocaust assets", February 8) that the amount of cash in dormant accounts belonging to Holocaust victims is only £21 million surely merits further investigation.
While I was in the Commons I was involved in some of the work of the Association of Nazi War Camp Survivors and of the Wiener Library. Although I have no knowledge of the overall sum involved, my impression of the scale and injustice of the tragic and deeply disturbing cases which came to my attention leads me to believe that this sum could be a considerable under-estimate. It is certainly a matter which deserves some form of international consultations under the aegis of the Swiss Government.
Although this is not normal banking practice, this is not a normal situation. Given the unique nature of the unspeakable atrocities which gave rise to these dormant accounts it would be surely appropriate for the Swiss authorities to cooperate.
Yours faithfully,
ALAN THOMPSON
(Labour MP for Dunfermline
Burghs, 1959-64),
11 Upper Gray Street,
Edinburgh 9.
February 8.
From Mr Patrick Nicholls, MP for Teignbridge (Conservative)
Sir, Libby Purves ("Governing ambiguities", February 13) trots out the tired old canard that ministers signed public interest immunity (PII) certificates that "could have led to the conviction" of the innocent. The truth is quite different.
PIIs do not prevent the trial judge seeing the documents: they simply reserve to him the ultimate decision about whether they are revealed or not.
That is exactly what happened in the Matrix Churchill trial and the defendants were duly acquitted. In short, the law operated as it was supposed to.
Yours faithfully,
PATRICK NICHOLLS,
House of Commons.
February 13.
From Ms Shelagh J. Gaskill
Sir, In the appeal of R v Brown (Law report, February 9), the House of Lords has reached an astonishing decision. Put simply, their lordships decided (by a majority) that calling personal data from a database on to a computer screen and reading the information so displayed does not constitute "using" the information within the meaning of Section 5(2) (b) of the Data Protection Act 1984. Accordingly Mr Brown could not have committed the offence of misusing the information.
As Lord Griffiths makes clear in his dissenting speech, if "use" is given its ordinary and natural meaning and the prosecution has therefore to prove not only illegitimate access to personal data but also some subsequent application of the information derived from the access to it, the difficulties of enforcement will be immense. So if I illegitimately gain access to someone's personal data and as a result decide to take no action an outcome which may be just as harmful to the person concerned as taking positive action, and just as much an invasion of his or her privacy I will apparently not have committed the offence.
Although "information privacy" is not a right expressly guaranteed and protected by the Act as it now stands, that position must change when, within three years, the Government is due to implement the European Union directive on data protection in our domestic law. At that point, this over-simplistic distinction between processing of data up to the point of displaying the information on a computer screen (which, as a result of this decision, is not "use") and some subsequent application of that information (which is "use") will simply be unsustainable, because the directive defines "processing" very widely. That definition includes the word "use" as well as the word "retrieval".
This is consistent with the directive's stated purpose of protecting the individual's right to privacy with respect to the processing of personal data.
Yours faithfully,
SHELAGH GASKILL,
Masons (solicitors),
Minerva House, 29 East Parade,
Leeds, West Yorkshire.
February 9.
From the Reverend R. M. E. Paterson
Sir, John Selwyn Gummer ("At your service", February 3) commends "no Communion in the hand" and characteristically despises the "easygoing modern ... trendy or off-hand".
The accounts of the Last Supper (Mark xiv,22-25 and 1 Corinthians xi,23-26) make it clear that the bread and the cup would have been received by the apostles in their hands, certainly not, as Mr Gummer would have it, "placed reverently upon the tongue just as it always used to be".
After centuries of clericalisation this ancient and important practice fell into disuse and the Council of Rouen in 878 forbade it. In the Prayer Book of 1552 Archbishop Cranmer restored the primitive tradition and although modern liturgies do not normally specify the method, this remains the proper tradition in the Anglican Church.
Yours faithfully,
ROBERT PATERSON
(Secretary, Liturgical Commission
of the Church in Wales),
The Rectory, 85 Broadway,
Cowbridge, South Glamorgan.
From Mr Fritz Spiegl
Sir, My late cousin Alfred Geiringer, whose obituary you printed last month (January 10), told me that a young clerk in his office at Reuters filed Chiang Kai-shek under I "Issimo, General ..." (letters, February 6 and 9).
But then, according to the new ways of spelling Chinese words in European characters, Chiang has now probably been moved to X for "Xiang".
Yours faithfully,
FRITZ SPIEGL,
4 Windermere Terrace, Liverpool 8.
February 9.
From Dr M. S. E. F. Holland
Sir, In the new gallery of Hellenistic art in the British Museum there is a photograph of the Louvre statuette of the so-called Tyche of Antioch, with the caption:
How could it be that one man lived and died an Alexander while another found himself condemned ... to beg for food in rags on the streets of Smyrna? The increasing uncertainty of Hellenistic society promoted an obsession with such concepts as ... Tyche (Luck or Fortune). Mutatis mutandis, our divide between fat cat and poor pilgarlick seems to have thrown up a fresh version of the archetype, in the iconographically similar figure (long, flowing robes, rather different headdress) which has appeared on billboards all over the metropolis, bearing the message: "Is Lady Luck with YOU?".
Yours faithfully,
MERIDEL HOLLAND,
9 Holton Terrace,
Halesworth, Suffolk.
Rock of Ages cleft for me, are you becoming too PC?
When Henry the Eighth brought the Church of England into existence to put a woman in her place he can never have imagined that her successors would one day be in charge. As we report on the front page today, a survey of the Synod shows that a majority of the House of Laity is now made up of women, and pretty progressive ones at that. This may not come as a surprise in the bishop's palace in Barchester, where Mrs Proudie has always worn the gaiters, but how many churchgoers will be entirely happy with a body originally built to embody eternal truth moving so modishly with the times?
Statistics in a survey can never give us a full picture of the established Church, its real nature as rich and complex as the embroidery on the vestments of a Puseyite prebendary. But the figures on the page of this study tell us much about the figures who run the Church of England, and how much they have changed since Cosmo Cantuar.
The removal of the barrier from pew to pulpit for the female sex has gone hand in hand with a broader feminisation of the C of E. There have always been powerful women in the English church, from the mystic Julian of Norwich through its stalwart Protestant defender Elizabeth the First to the all-too recognisable rectors' and bishops' wives drawn by the Trollopes, Joanna and Anthony. But even Mrs Proudie at her most assertive might have shuddered at the thought of an inclusive liturgy which avoids references to God as Father, lesbian clergy administering the sacraments and the most prominent priest in popular culture being played by Dawn French.
The regiment of women may have been monstrous to a good Presbyterian like John Knox. It may be more in tune with the spirit of the age than the ageless design of the Holy Spirit. But the synod survey suggests that even those parts of the church which are male monopolies cannot be relied upon to uphold ancient wisdom. The House of Bishops, the only section of the synod still all-male, harbours two members who believe the church should not speak out on adultery. Do they think God got it wrong or are ten commandments too many?
Perhaps the Bishops' reluctance to take a tough line on sin stems from ignorance of its prevalence. No bishop admitted to taking a tabloid newspaper. Given how many of them, and their clergy, appear in The News of the World, it seems an unpardonable omission.
Elevated origins are no excuse. The proportion educated at public school or Oxbridge is in decline. Figures such as the formidably intellectual Old Etonian and Cambridge scientist John Habgood, lately Archbishop of York, will soon be as much an anachronism as the fox-hunting parsons of Surtees. There is, however, a glimmer of hope that enlightment will not elude the men in mitres. Their preferred paper is this one. Perhaps it is no bad thing to have a Church that has its roots in the past but today takes its cue from The Times.
Salman Rushdie still lives under sentence of death.
Seven years have passed since the word "fatwa", then in hesitant italics, entered everyday English. Seven years to the day, as the target of that fatwa writes on the page opposite, "the Government of Iran set out to suppress a novel and to silence its writer". Seven years on, Salman Rushdie still lives under sentence of death.
On February 14, 1989, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, then Iran's undisputed spiritual and political leader, decreed that Mr Rushdie should die for the "blasphemy" published in The Satanic Verses. The ayatollah, flouting all norms of international law and civilisation, urged "brave Muslims" to "quickly kill" Mr Rushdie and all those involved in the publication of the novel.
His ghoulish exhortation was not ignored: to date, the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses has been killed, the Italian translator brutally assaulted and its Norwegian publisher shot. Mr Rushdie, as the whole world now knows so well, has had to live a life of no fixed address, protected round the clock, guarding against the death which the ayatollah had decreed.
But Mr Rushdie has continued to write, and to express his bravery through his books. How easy it would have been and how understandable to let the ink run dry, to unplug the word-processor, to twist writing-paper into anguished balls, to let fear scorch his mind and his imagination. Mr Rushdie did not do that. Instead, he wrote, securing the comradeship of those who read books and allowing that bond to strengthen his resolve.
From that resolve was born The Moor's Last Sigh, his latest novel, a book that is for many of us his finest creation yet. It should, we believe, have won last year's Booker Prize: not, as we pointed out at the time, for its having been written in conditions that make the air chill, but for his creation of a never-before-seen world.
"Here I stand. Couldn't have done it differently," says Moraes Zogoiby, the book's narrator. Yet the European Union, yesterday, should have done it very differently indeed. The EU's Italian presidency, in a statement to mark the seventh year of the fatwa, appeared to reject calls for firmer action against Iran, preferring instead to pursue a "critical dialogue". "The EU renews its demand that Iran abide by international law and calls upon the Iranian authorities to join the EU's efforts to obtain a satisfactory solution in respect of Salman Rushdie." The demand could not have been more vague, nor more mealy-mouthed.
Iran must declare the fatwa null and void: nothing less will do. In Mr Rushdie's own words, the crisis has to be brought to "a formal, signed and sealed conclusion". Iran is today a pariah state. The West must not permit it to lose its stigma by stealth or quick fix. Only by rescinding the fatwa can it re-enter the civilised fold.
Single market and single currency: another Brussels fallacy.
To judge by his dismissal of the European Commission economist, Bernard Connolly, for the crime of talking sense about monetary union, Jacques Santer does not much like the truth. The kindest interpretation of the myth about Europe which the President of the European Commission has made his rallying cry is that he is tolerant of economic lunacy, provided it serves a political purpose. The myth is this: that the European single market is in danger of destruction if the euro is not introduced in January 1999 as planned. Does Europe face a choice between a single currency or the single market, able to have both or neither?
If the answer were yes, it would be a powerful, if rather negative argument for EMU. Mr Santer hopes that it will be powerful enough to sustain the French and other struggling countries through their unnecessary and damaging martyrdom to the religion of EMU. However, the case he makes is improbable in the extreme and the opposite may well be more accurate. The argument rests on the following logic. If in a single market, nations can lower their costs by "competitive devaluation" of their currencies, they will. Other states will counter this by restoring the non-tariff barriers and outright tariffs that the 1992 process swept away. Ergo, the single market would be eroded if not eliminated. The euro would make such currency tactics impossible and hence preserve free and open trade.
The emergence of Mr Santer's argument at this stage is rather curious. When the single market enterprise was launched in the mid 1980s the Commission was notably silent on the implications it might have for exchange rates. Indeed, of the numerous debilitating trade barriers that the 1992 reforms would tackle, none of the published offenders included the transaction costs of maintaining separate currencies. All the various Delors reports on EMU postdated the Single European Act. Today's emphasis on a link between the two seems somewhat convenient, not to say impromptu.
There are a number of difficulties with the Santer analysis. At a technical level it is far from clear that the exit of the pound and lira from the ERM, or the devaluations of the peseta and escudo within the system, can be described as "competitive" in the predatory sense. Indeed, the devaluations of all these currencies were actively demanded by the Bundesbank. These currencies were all substantially overvalued inside the ERM and free floating or devaluation restored them to a position judged more appropriate not only by the markets, but also by their national governments and even the Bundesbank.
There is another even more fundamental inconsistency in the Commission's case. According to its own officially sanctioned evaluation of the impact of monetary union One Market, One Money competitive devaluations cannot succeed. All they produce is inflation. How the single market could be imperilled by states adopting a strategy that the Commission believes to be ineffective is thus a mystery. Indeed it is absolutely central to the logic of a single currency that countries cannot engineer prosperity by debasing their coinage. If they could, why would they sacrifice that option by losing control over their exchange rate?
As Sir Leon Brittan, the Commissioner with the greatest responsibility for free trade, and commitment to it, has stated, the single market is a separate matter from any proposed European currency. The single market is enshrined in laws and agreements, ranging from the Single European Act to the Gatt treaty, which are not only legally enforceable, but seen to be mutually beneficial by all the main European states. As a political proposition, it beggars belief that a great trading nation such as Germany would want to deny its exporters the benefits of a single market out of pique at the failure of EMU.
To link the single market with the single currency in the manner of Mr Santer is thus politically unrealistic, as well as intellectually dishonest. The question of whether to introduce the euro should be considered on its merits, which include the very real issues of its economic costs. To raise the mythical prospect that internal commerce will collapse unless the euro prevails does nothing but confuse the real arguments.
Seven years ago, the Government of Iran set out to suppress a novel and to silence its author. Medieval religious concepts (heresy, apostasy, "unclean blood") were invoked, but the means of their propagation and proposed enforcement global communications, international terrorism were anything but medieval. The attack upon The Satanic Verses was sophisticated, original, ruthless and sustained. And it failed.
The anathematised novel, the book that was to be erased from history, is freely available in 20 languages. Defended with great courage and high principle by booksellers and publishers, and by thousands of individuals and organisations who joined in a determined defence campaign, The Satanic Verses has survived, to make the long journey home from the world of scandal to the world of books.
It has been defended, too, by hundreds of Muslim intellectuals, and by Muslim readers in many countries. It is being taught, I hear, in Damascus. The quiet voices of those who have liked this fiction are replacing the angry noises of those who loathed it, often (but not only) on the basis of hearsay alone.
As to the author in question, he has continued to publish, and to speak his mind; so we may at least agree that he has not been silenced.
I have tried, too, to emerge from the shadows to which I was, for a time, confined. To go on writing and to live more openly are my ways of showing that I have not been intimidated. Some commentators have criticised me for being seen in public; let them consider the "message" that would be sent by my remaining invisible. Do we really want to tell the world that fatwas work?
In recent months I have travelled to a dozen countries (at no expense, may I say, to the British taxpayer), and have found, among readers, booksellers, even journalists, an atmosphere of wary celebration. And there is something for us warily to celebrate. The blunting of the threat, the frustration of the fatwa's prime purposes, has not been achieved by the intervention of states or statesmen. It is something we have done together: we, the readers, the informal international freemasonry of book-loving folk, with our secret handshakes, our hidden networks, our occult practices; with our stubborn, bloody-minded, bespectacled, ink-stained will.
Is it not regrettable, when the powerless have done so much, that the possessors of real power have achieved so little? For the fatwa has not been cancelled; an Iranian envoy to Norway recently restated it. Iran's rulers continue to contend that they can do nothing about either the edict or the obscene financial reward for its fulfilment. Even the EU's minimum-terms demand that Iran sign a document guaranteeing not to carry out the fatwa, and to desist from encouraging others to do so has been rejected.
This latest European initiative began a year ago, during the French presidency of the EU, after I met M Chirac and M Juppe. We agreed that the agreement would not be an alternative to cancelling the fatwa, but would be seen as a step towards it; that if such an agreement were secured there would follow a long monitoring period, during which Iran would be on probation; that Iran would receive no rewards for agreeing, so to speak, to behave normally; and that if Iran were to refuse to sign, so effectively refusing to renounce the possibility of terrorist action against EU citizens, there would be "diplomatic and economic consequences".
In Paris last June, after leading everyone, including the French, to believe that the deal was done, Iran refused to sign.
Under the Spanish presidency, the matter was pursued without success at meetings in New York and Madrid. A proposed exchange of letters came to nothing. The present Italian presidency of the EU has issued a statement declaring the fatwa "null and void", but that is a unilateral declaration. As for the threatened "diplomatic and economic consequences", there is, perhaps predictably, no sign of them.
True, the Iranians have repeatedly said that the fatwa issue is "over", "solved", "ancient history", a "dead letter". Last Sunday, an unnamed Iranian diplomat in London, "speaking with the full authority of the Rafsanjani Government", was quoted as giving me an "assurance" that Iran would send nobody to kill me, so I could "resume a normal life".
In the past nine months, such statements have been made by President Rafsanjani, Foreign Minister Velayati and the Speaker of the Majlis (and probable next president) Nateq-Nouri. It is a welcome change of tune. But the refusal to bring this long world crisis to a formal, signed and sealed conclusion must make us deeply sceptical about the singers' credibility.
The crux of the matter is not, finally, whether I am able to "resume a normal life". It is that the State of Iran, in an edict issued by its Head of State and repeatedly endorsed by its entire leadership, embarked on a course of censorship by state terrorism, whose targets were the free peoples
of other nations. That was a grave and criminal endeavour. And the fatwa, let us remember, has been implemented. Professor Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses, was murdered. Dr Ettore Capriolo, the Italian translator, was assaulted, and William Nygaard, the novel's Norwegian publisher, was shot. Happily, both recovered.
The EU has solemnly undertaken to resolve this problem. I call upon it to do so with extreme urgency. What we, as citizens, could do to stand up for freedom and against intimidation, we have done. After seven years, it is time for our leaders to follow our lead.
More significant than any ministerial heads rolling in the dust this week could be the impact of Sir Richard Scott's findings on the machinery of government itself. The signs are that Whitehall may be about to sustain a bigger shock than any since the great Northcote-Trevelyan reforms of the 1850s, which ended jobbery and corruption in the Civil Service.
The real issue Scott raises is not who knew what and when. It is whether civil servants have an allegiance to the public interest beyond their duty to ministers. The inquiry has found disturbing indications that the proper relationship between civil servants and ministers has become blurred. There is uncertainty about when officials can and should say no to ministers.
The difficulties of mounting a robust defence of Whitehall's methods were illustrated by a chance remark by Sir Robin Butler, the Cabinet Secretary. As he gave evidence to the inquiry two years ago, he found himself trying to draw a distinction between "accountability" and "responsibility" to Parliament. So great were the difficulties of definition that at one point he had to acknowledge defeat. "We just do not have a blame-free word," he admitted.
The admission was worthy of Sir Humphrey himself. Yet Humphrey's richly comic sophistry can strike a sour note when it is echoed in real life as it was all too often during the Scott hearings. The inquiry was told that "the truth is a difficult concept", that parliamentary answers were an "art form, not a means of communication".
Now the risk is that civil servants will be regarded less as people of goodwill serving the public interest from above the political fray, and more as mercenaries who can be put into the front line of the political battle. The Scott report is expected to tell the tale of a Rolls-Royce administrative machine that seized up. It is likely to expose weaknesses in Whitehall communications, a lack of co-ordination across departments and an obsession with secrecy that led senior mandarins to shroud facts from each other let alone the outside world.
The Scott findings come while the Civil Service is still adjusting to a breakneck programme of reform which split the old monolithic Whitehall into more than a hundred semi-autonomous agencies. The report will be a watershed even if it exonerates all the officials of bad faith. It is not so much the revelations about Whitehall's semantic games or its failure to tell Commons committees the whole truth that has caused dismay. Many officials certainly regard such conduct as par for the course. But the prosecution of three businessmen for doing something that some people within the government machine knew about and approved has shamed even insiders.
Whatever the detailed findings about the role of individuals, Sir Richard Scott's report will leave the Civil Service with a blemished reputation. Changes in the structure, the rules and the very ethos of the Civil Service add up to the death of Sir Humphrey's Whitehall. Sir Humphrey was mendacious, Machiavellian and ruthless. Yet he was held in affection because although he did not always get things right, he always believed he was acting in the public interest. He would have found a way to say no to any minister who tried to flout that interest. He would have warned of the embarrassment if word ever got out. He would have manipulated other politicians to put pressure on his own minister. If all else failed, he would have threatened to record his formal disagreement with his minister as real-life civil servants, including Lord Armstrong, have done in the past.
The changes in Whitehall have been brought about partly by a shift in the political climate that is putting greater strains on the loyalty of civil servants and which is certainly not their fault. It is hard indeed for officials to draft speeches or parliamentary answers or press releases for ministers without.
One of the results of the Scott report will surely be reforms which clarify the mutual responsibilities of civil servants and ministers. There must also be changes in the rules that call for blanket secrecy to cover all advice from civil servants to ministers. Yet such moves could make ministers and civil servants more wary of each other. Politicians might decide it would be more comfortable to have committed outsiders in key advisory posts.
The British public is still old-fashioned enough to expect its officials to be honourable. Yet in the welter of self-justification, denial and early retaliation, not one of the leading figures has stepped forward to apologise. Neither ministers nor Whitehall will openly express regret for an episode which even a former mandarin such as Sir Charles Powell has called "a shambles". The public will draw its own conclusions.
The author's film about the impact of Scott on Whitehall will be shown on Newsnight tonight on BBC2.
There was no bomb. There was no horror. There was no so-called ceasefire collapse. There was no sudden coming together of London and Dublin. There were no platitudes from Washington and no policemen on London's streets, toting weapons, boasting "enhanced security" and frightening tourists. There was silence. There was nothing.
Sometimes I believe we should pretend not to know of an outrage. Without knowledge, there can be no terror. A bomb would be a random incident, affecting only its immediate victims. Not until a blast ignites the gas of publicity is there a holocaust. It is the holocaust that devastates and demoralises nations.
In Northern Ireland this week, as last, people went about their business. They worked and played, they learned and taught, they shopped and travelled. They were sad about the London bomb, marched for peace and balanced clouds and silver linings, as Ulster people have always done. Catholics conversed with Protestants. They worked together building hospitals, mending roads, running buses, fixing street lights. Republican and Unionist, Sinn Fein and loyalist, Derry and Belfast city councils bartered such power as direct rule permits them, almost as if nothing had happened. They respected the fact of all divided societies, that violence is never far beneath the surface and the best way to handle it is through communal responsibility and self-discipline.
Just over two years years ago, the Downing Street declaration proclaimed something called the Peace Process. This was followed by the ceasefire, the third since the current round of troubles began. Such was the euphoria that any scepticism was denounced as bad form. A new dawn had arrived. Gerry Adams had gentrified Europe's most primitive political entity, the Provisional IRA. Al Capone had taken up morris-dancing and sent his son to Eton. John Major's style of diplomacy, that of passionate compromise, deserved the highest award in British politics, the benefit of the doubt.
Last Friday I joined many in feeling sorry for Mr Major. We had known that the time for a sort of ceasefire had arrived, that the IRA needed to pause and regroup. Mr Adams's generation of IRA leaders was now ageing and wanted to see their children respectably through college. But Mr Major had shown a new commitment to cleansing this darkest blot in Britain's modern history. In August 1994, he won the province a respite. Last week's bomb appeared to blow it away, and with it Mr Major's most obvious chance for glory. The man deserved sympathy.
Yet a gulf divided intention and implementation. At the time of the 1993 declaration, sceptics pointed out that there was never any way of some all-Ulster constitution marrying the IRA's historic demand for a united Ireland with the Unionist insistence on the Union. British direct rule had been sustained only by stripping the Unionist majority of all power over the nationalist minority. British troops could uphold the Union, but the price was that Unionists could never again enjoy ascendancy over nationalists.
Each search for a settlement has implied some qualification of that understanding. All "talks about talks" have presaged the replacement of direct rule by some new assembly. They have implied some devolved Northern Ireland administration in which, by virtue of its majority, the Unionist interest would inevitably predominate. This prospect has kept Unionism sweet over years of apparent British concessions to the IRA. Yet whatever new administration is agreeable to the Unionists cannot be agreeable at least to the IRA. The latter does not recognise Northern Ireland, and certainly would not recognise an executive with a Unionist majority, whatever its checks and balances. This latest Peace Process had one day to confront this, as had all the others. Mr Adams might sit down with Ian Paisley and his friends, but as soon as one side started talking, the other would walk out. The circle cannot be squared.
This always discredited the route sought by Mr Major, not to mention the Irish leader John Bruton, President Clinton, the Westminster Parliament, Northern Ireland politicians, the media and assorted pundits. They have danced down this latest Yellow Brick Road, but with no sense of direction. Sooner or later they were bound to find that the Wizard of Oz was not to be trusted. Everybody cries, "We must get all parties talking round the table". But about what? Peace? The only IRA peace is in a united Ireland.
Over a quarter century of bloodshed, the most talented minds in the kingdom have tried every conceivable route to involve the IRA in a Northern Ireland settlement. It is hopeless. For two years, clouds of optimistic hot air have risen over London, Dublin and Washington. The cloud enveloped even the dour Mr Adams, whose demise was signed by his jetting to the White House and the lionising of him by New York high society. All politicians have their backwoodsmen, but none has them like Mr Adams. Each champagne cork that popped over the Peace Process sent a grim echo through the glens of Armagh and the backstreets of Ardoyne. I do not say that Friday's bomb was Bill Clinton's doing, but less charitable observers might.
The IRA has never been what the Peace Process requires it to be, a liberation movement that negotiates settlements and hands over weapons to its enemies. It is an ancestral mafia of tight-knit families obsessed with a united Ireland. Its methods are those of Irish rebels and bandits down the ages, instilling anarchy through atrocity and making Ireland ungovernable. Mr Adams might tire of the struggle and seek legitimacy through the ballot and the club-class lounge. But there are always sons and nephews waiting in back alleys. When on January 30 a leader of the INLA splinter group was gunned down in Belfast, a shudder must have passed through Mr Adams. It was time to go home.
Every route to a settlement has been tried, bar one. The logic of the failure of formal negotiation involving the IRA is not to revive it. It is to do everything to marginalise this organisation, to disregard it and its outrages. I wrote last week (before the bomb) that there were now two distinct Ulster peace processes in train. One is the international one that will doubtless stagger on through next week's Anglo-Irish summit, but which gave unsustainable status to the IRA. The other is quite distinct. It is the "process of peace" on the ground in Northern Ireland. It involves the steady recovery by the province of its economic and political self-confidence. Unlike the Peace Process, this is real.
This progress could be jeopardised by Friday's bomb, but only if fools decide so. Northern Ireland's return to normality depends not just on the IRA, but on the authorities refusing to go down the terrorist path by reinstating grim security measures measures which do little to improve security, but demoralise the public and disrupt daily life. It means refusing to treat a bombing or shooting as a "breakdown in the Peace Process", and treating it rather as the paranoid twitchings of a fanatical gang. Most of all it means strengthening those aspects of politics in Northern Ireland which are aimed at precisely the goals the formal Peace Process purports to seek: devolved local democracy but at a lower level than that of the province as a whole.
In 1994, as in 1992 and often before, the Government rejected the option of building up the province's emerging democratic activity via the new district councils and (possibly) restored county ones. It rejected the chance of building on the cross-community elected institutions that already existed. This was reckless. What else has all the international diplomacy been about but finding a way of getting Protestant and Catholic to share in the running of local hospitals, parks and housing estates? That is what hundreds of local councillors are doing already.
I believe this route was not taken because it was not a "big solution". It relied on democratic responsibility growing from the bottom up. To Westminster and the world outside, Northern Ireland was suffering from too glamorous a disease for such low-tech surgery. It demanded massive intervention, complex, telegenic, cosmopolitan. Mr Major's Peace Process was the culmination of decades of Irish history. It proved too big for what should have been more modest ambitions.
THE LESS salubrious menswear shops have for many years been selling MCC ties with the famous red and yellow stripes to non-members, strictly against the rules. But no longer. The club has made an application to the Trade Marks Registry to register its egg and bacon colours.
Colonel Stevenson, a former MCC Secretary of 15 years standing, says that sales of ties and braces to non-members is an old problem. "At the authorised shops, MCC membership cards must be shown before purchase," he says. Not everybody likes the distinctive colour scheme, however. "The Duke of Edinburgh once said they were ‘bloody awful colours'."
WILLIAM WALDEGRAVE has suffered the final indignity. With the Scott report just hours away, he was approached in front of TV cameras the other day for help in the exportation to Iraq of a tank converted into an ice-cream van.
Waldegrave was approached for a Channel 4 television show by the comedian Mark Thomas, who parked an armour-plated "Mr Whippy" tank adorned with ice-cream cones outside his home. Thomas asked how he could ship it to a friend in the ice-cream business in Iraq. The Treasury Minister was not amused. "This is a very stupid stunt," he snapped.
JOHN MAJOR'S reputation as a peace broker is undiminished, despite the IRA outrage in London's Docklands last Friday. The Prime Minister's office has been besieged by Take That fans who want him to intervene and bring members of the pop group, which announced yesterday that it was splitting up, to the negotiating table.
The Take That fan club got through by telephone to Major's private office yesterday but to no avail. It was gently explained that although he was a powerful man this was a national tragedy in which he could not intercede.
The mother of the convicted insurance fraudster Darius Guppy has burst into song to celebrate his release. Shusha Guppy is launching a compact disc and has included two Bob Dylan songs but not the number Absolutely Sweet Marie, which contains that poignant line "To live outside the law you must be honest."
HE MAY HAVE caused diplomatic havoc in his time, but Salman Rushdie has been doing his best to make amends. The author has been playing a key role in easing tensions in Argentina over Madonna's performance in Evita.
With the British Embassy playing broker, Rushdie recently met Argentina's Foreign Minister in Buenos Aires. He put his case for freedom of speech, and conversation turned to Madonna and the protests she had encountered in Argentina after news of her movie role hit the streets.
After hearing Rushdie out, the Minister got on the blower to the Ministry of the Interior and demanded that Argentinian police be deployed to ensure that the film, directed by Alan Parker, could proceed unhindered.
"I wouldn't say it was all down to the meeting," says a diplomatic source, "but it was a well-timed conversation at a senior level."
AFTER THE CURSE of Hello! comes the curse of Tatler. The society creatures who decorate its social column, "Bystander", enjoy a marriage failure rate which is considerably worse than the national average. Half of the sparkling couples who pose for the glossy end up divorcing. Among those who have floundered in the Tatler theme park are the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Aga Khan and the Begum Aga Khan, as well as Mick and Bianca Jagger.
Short courtships and engagements are the hallmarks of these champagne-swillers, says the magazine's social editor, Ewa Lewis. "The column features people like the Earl of Lichfield, Lulu de la Falaise and Lady Leonora Grosvenor. They are people who live in the fast lane and have high expectations of life that constantly fall short," she says. "They tend to be glamorous and good-looking and therefore have larger choices in life." Poor darlings.
ONE CHESHIRE farmer and his wife have found that weddings dovetail well with their bed and breakfast business. David and Veronica Worth live at the 200-acre Sandhole Farm, near Hulme Walfield, Congleton, and began their B&B business in 1989. They can sleep 36 guests.
Farm buildings have been tastefully converted and the barn, a large room with French windows on to the gardens, makes a good setting for a civil wedding; it seats up to 60. A conservatory in the main house is a second option as both areas are licensed.
The Worths applied to Cheshire County Council for a £250 licence and had to give notice in the local paper outlining their plans. The public had three weeks in which to object. A wedding service at the farm costs from £150, and the reception charge depends on whether guests stay the night.
Kim Fletcher and Andrew Rae said "I do" at Sandhole. The idea of a farm had ready appeal for Kim, whose riding-habit style dress was perfectly set off by the prop of a Sandhole horse. "The place has such a comfortable, peaceful feel that it really was an idyllic place to get married," she says.
As the debeate on school dress code rages, Kathryn Knight goes down to the front line.
The British used to have a peculiar enthusiasm for school uniform, happily supposing that blazers and gymslips would produce discipline and good exam results. Then came the Seventies, when schools across the land abandoned dress rules altogether.
According to its supporters, uniform gives children a sense of identity and creates disciplined teamwork. Opponents say it stunts individuality, and that community and hard work have nothing to do with clothes.
Now the trend is back to uniform but does it make a difference? The Times visited the Lister Community School, an inner-city mixed comprehensive in East London. Until three years ago, pupils there wore jeans, leggings, T-shirts and trainers.
Today, after parental pressure, they are kitted out in black trousers or skirts, flat black shoes and either a purple sweatshirt with the school logo or jumper, blazer and tie. This is what the teachers and the children have to say...
BEFORE THE UNIFORM
Discipline: Deputy head teacher David Whyte says that while pupils have always been reasonably well-behaved, standards have improved since the introduction of uniform. "Previously the school could look quite scruffy and the tone of the place was casual with the attendant buzz that brings kids found it harder to settle down to lessons.
"It was also quite obvious that some students were in the fashion stakes, while others weren't, which caused problems and anxieties for the ones who couldn't afford the right clothes."
Kim Walton, a third-year form teacher who started at Lister as uniform was introduced, says it definitely affects discipline: "When the students come into school in uniform they are rather like working people who put their suits on in the morning to go to the office they go into work mode. We occasionally have non-uniform days for charity and the kids are definitely harder to teach. All they want to do is discuss their clothes."
Mahfuza Rahman, a fifth-year pupil, spent the first two years at Lister in uniform. "In our own clothes we obviously had more individuality, but that meant we were less inclined to settle down. While I sometimes think I'm too old for uniform now I can definitely see its advantages it does help with discipline."
Cheryl Miller, 14, in the third year, says: "The ones who don't make an effort with their uniform are definitely ruder to the teachers.‘'
Truancy: "Most inner-city schools have some truancy, and we did have a problem with pupils leaving within schooltime," says Mr Whyte. "When they were in their own clothes they were obviously less conspicuous and so locals would not pull them up."
Exams/results: The school averaged 20 per cent of pupils achieving five GCSEs grade A-C. In 1992, 75 per cent went on to sixth form education.
Parents: Alan Clark, chairman of governors, whose 16-year-old son Gary attends Lister, said parents wanted the introduction of uniform for a number of reasons. "With the cost of clothing generally and peer pressure to wear the right things, parents were hit in the pocket. There was also a perception, right or not, that schools with uniform seemed to do better in the league tables. We wanted the school to have an identity within the community." David Cassidy, 13, agrees. "Some people can't afford all the changes in fashion, and it is unfair on those who can't compete."
AFTER THE UNIFORM
Discipline: "I think the introduction of uniform has shaped the feel of the school it's given students a common identity," says Mr Whyte. "The tone is much quieter, the image is more groomed, and it has also made a difference in terms of being an appreciated school in the area. Discipline has improved.
"We're trying to create a culture that relates to hard work and discipline.
"It has also helped with behaviour out of school because the students are more readily identifiable. While this has led to a small increase in complaints from neighbours, this is because they know where the offending students are from and we can also more easily identify the troublemakers. Uniform has helped us to build our relationships outside the school."
Mahfuza Rahman says: "This is our identity we have a logo that separates us from other schools and it's something to be proud of. I think people's perception of you improves; if you go for a job and you have a uniform people will think better of you."
For Parvez Iqbal, 16, a uniform restricts personal freedom and thus helps channel the school atmosphere towards work and discipline.
Cheryl Miller says: "You're not coming to school to look good, you're coming to school to learn and uniform helps with that. When the uniform first came out we used to get called boffin by some of the other students who didn't want to wear it but we're all used to it now and it's not a problem."
Tim Kerin, a fifth-year tutor who was initially not in favour of introducing uniform, says: "At first, the uniform created discipline problems because you had to pull the children up all the time. But once they realised it wasn't going to go away most have stuck to it well."
Truancy: "Uniform has definitely helped," Kim Walton says. "The colour stands out so vividly that people outside can identify our pupils if they are out and about during the day and contact the school. We can easily identify them as well. Having said that, it's important to emphasise that you can still draw out the students' individuality in uniform their personality still comes through." For Parvez Iqbal, the issue was simple. "You are more conspicuous in your purple colours," he says.
Exams/results: After a slight slump in results two years ago, the school had a 7 per cent increase in its GCSE performance last year to 22 per cent and the number of children staying on into sixth form has increased to about 93 per cent in the past three years.
Mr Clark says: "As a parent, I feel there has been an upturn in standards generally, with students working harder for exams and working more closely with teachers and it all seems to have happened since uniform was brought in."
Mr Whyte says: "It is too soon to say if uniform has affected exam results, but we do feel that it, combined with other strategies such as after-school clubs, will ultimately have an impact on grades."
Parents: Parents agree that the uniform was designed to be as financially viable as possible and are in no doubt that it is cheaper for them, even if they have a number of children at the school. While a blazer costs from £31, sweatshirts and jumpers start at £10.95. By comparison, a pair of designer trainers, now outlawed, can cost from £20 to £120. Many parents also see the uniform as a security measure because strangers who enter the school stand out against the uniformed pupils.
"I think parents feel the school has more focus, and our students walk with their heads held higher," Mr Clark says. "They can look people in the eye and know they're as good as anyone else."
Valentine's Day presents come no more generous than buying a love-nest. Here is a round-up of some of the finest romantic hideaways:
Westbere Court, in the village of Westbere, near Canterbury, in Kent, is for sale for £168,000 through Cluttons (01227 457441). This Grade II listed farmhouse dates from the late 17th century and was originally built as a dowry. It sports a large brick heart inset in the eastern end of the wall.
Cound Hall, near Shrewsbury, is a Queen Anne Grade I listed house on sale for £750,000 through Knight Frank (0171-629 8171). It stands in 94 acres of romantic parkland with adjacent farmland; it has a five-acre lake, mature woodland and a walled garden. Allegedly, it was once the home of Dame Barbara Cartland.
Myrtle Cottage, in West Buckland, near Kingsbridge, south Devon is for sale for £79,500 through Marchand Petit (01548 857588). This semi-detached thatched cottage lies in a peaceful valley just inland from the sea, and comes complete with exposed stonework and beams, and a large raised stone fireplace with bread oven. Both double bedrooms provide views across the valley from the window seats.
The handsome Corderries and Weaving Barn near Stroud in Gloucestershire, on the north bank of the Golden Valley, consists of a six-bedroom stone listed village house and an adjoining cottage, "The Weaving Barn", in 1.5 acres of grounds. It is on sale through Hamptons (01285 654535) for £465,000.
Nappa House, near Newmarket, Suffolk is on sale for £300,000 through Bidwells (01223 841842). The Grade II listed detached, thatched, early 19th-century cottage has cast-iron lattices in the ground-floor windows.
On Valentine's Day, Rachel Kelly looks at some unusual places that are licensed to hold civil marriages.
Where can you say "I will" these days? Until last April, the answer was only in a church or register office. Now ceremonies can be held in any licensed building in England and Wales, thanks to amendments to the Marriage Act first introduced by Gyles Brandreth, MP for Chester, as a Private Member's Bill. You can even plight your troth at Manchester United football ground.
There has been much talk of the more exotic locations where wedding parties can toast the bride and groom: Pinewood Studios, London Zoo, the Brighton Pavilion, a James Bond theme pub in Warwickshire called 007 and, naturally, licensed to wed. Stately homes have cashed in too. Eastnor Castle, the seat of the Harvey-Bathursts in Herefordshire, Castle Ashby in Northamptonshire, home to the Marquess of Northampton, and Powerham Castle near Exeter, home of the Earl of Devon, will all take the wedding shilling.
But a quieter revolution has been taking place in the nation's small farmhouses, cottages, bed-and-breakfasts and country houses. Homeowners are realising that allowing couples to tie the knot in their front room is a nice earner.
Every year more than 350,000 people marry. More than half choose a civil wedding. There is no longer a residency restriction on civil marriages. And there is ready-made advertising provided by local register offices which provide a list of licensed venues.
Not everyone wants the formality of a hotel, preferring the intimacy of a place like Trevigue farmhouse, near Bude in Cornwall. Cosier venues typically appeal to second-timers. Janet Croker and her daughter-in-law, Gayle, host the civil ceremony, conducted by a visiting registrar, and the reception in Trevigue's dining room; larger parties of up to 30 can use the barn. Mrs Croker assures couples that "the Bude registrars conduct the ceremony very sensitively".
The joy of the wedding business, says Mrs Croker, is its predictability. Like most of those taking advantage of the legislation, Mrs Croker was already involved in small-scale catering, serving cream teas and lunches at the farmhouse.
"But lunches in particular are unpredictable. It's terribly difficult because one day you may have to lay off staff, the next you are rushing around. With weddings you know in advance." Mrs Croker charges a £100 booking fee, and catering per head on top.
"We have been inundated with inquiries," she says. "I would advise other homeowners thinking of getting involved that they must be ready to let their home be taken over. You must be enthusiastic about the whole process because it is someone else's special day." She also had to pay a £1,000 fee to the local council to become licensed.
Council fees for civil marriage licences vary. Westminster charges £475 to license a room that holds 100, plus £50 per extra room. For rooms holding 100 to 500 people the charge is £500 plus £50 per extra room. Each licence is valid for five years and it is then reviewed.
Applying for a licence can be a lengthy process. Some councils require homeowners to submit an application form to include details of floor plans and all facilities. This is dispatched to surveyors, planners, the fire brigade and any other public service in order that recommendations can be made.
Weddings have to take place under cover in a room or set of rooms, therefore excluding the use of bandstands, gardens or ruins. The house must be open to the public at the time of the wedding, although no other function must be going on in the vicinity of the room where the marriage is taking place. The property in which it takes place must have no religious connotations. The ceremony is conducted in front of a superintendent registrar, and the solemnity of marriage must be maintained.
More than 600 licences have been granted for venues. The book Dream Weddings, by Liz Bestic and Jim Bewsher, offers a guide to the 100 best wedding venues; while Sophie Lillingston from Lillingston Associates, a company specialising in finding historic venues, will do your homework for you.
Those interested in buying a property with a licence might consider Miskin Manor, near Cardiff, one of the first hotels to be granted a licence following the 1995 Act. It is for sale through Knight Frank with a guide price of £2.5 million and boasts 32 "exceptional" bedrooms and a leisure club.
Sandhole Farm, Hulme Walfield, Congleton, Cheshire (0260 224419).
Trevigue, Crackington Haven, Bude, Cornwall (01840 230418). Lillingston Associates (0171-736 3377).
Dream Weddings, published by Signet, £5.99.
Jane Gordon explains why it was always safe to have a band of lusty boys in the bedroom.
THE posters came down a year ago, there is an inch of dust on the CD collection and the Robbie doll lies naked and abandoned at the bottom of the old toy chest. Nevertheless, there was a minute of silence in our house yesterday when Take That announced that they were to part.
The music of the Manchester band orchestrated the adolescence of my 15-year-old daughter. Their songs were as much a part of the soundtrack of her progression from child to teenager as the slamming of doors and the stamping of her first pair of Doc Martens.
And though we all knew Take That were never really serious musical rivals to the Beatles, they were, at least in the hearts of my daughter's generation, as important as John, Paul, George and Ringo were to mine.
It must have started in the autumn of 1992. Overnight the Designer's Guild wallpaper in her bedroom was lost behind a mass of posters cut from Smash Hits and Just Seventeen. Within a fortnight she and her best friend had changed their names to Mrs Mark Owen and Mrs Robbie Williams. Within a month her love was carved in stone. Well, actually "I love Robbie" was etched into her wooden bedhead.
For nearly three years she worshipped Take That and for those years her bedroom remained their shrine. Life, for her, was a matter of existing between concerts, television appearances and record releases (such was her devotion that she even bought every recording on CD, although she didn't have a player).
My own memories of the band are very nearly as affectionate, and perhaps rather less embarrassing, than her own. I remember picking her up from a concert in the summer of 1994 when she was just 13 and asking her how it had been.
"It was very, er, rude," came her cautious reply. "In what way?" I asked nervously. "They, well, er, simulated sex," she said.
"What with?" I gulped.
"The floor," she replied.
Like a great many other parents in the past few years I was actually quite grateful that the closest my daughter got to S.E.X. was a three-minute sequence in which Robbie and the rest of the boys made simulated love to a parquet floor. Fantasy, I decided, was infinitely preferable to the reality that several of her other friends had begun to discover as they grew up and out of Take That.
Indeed, boy bands have, for generations, performed an important function in the life of the pubescent girl. Looking back through the annals of pop music there is for every wave of teenage girls a band made to match them from the Beatles to the Bay City Rollers and on to Bros. They are the ultimate example of safe sex. A gentle, occasionally shocking, but never terribly disturbing introduction to the mating game.
The fact that my own daughter has now moved away from such things divorced herself, as it were, from Robbie is almost as upsetting to me as the idea of the band breaking up will be to thousands of girls. Because now I have to concern myself with the possibility that those bedroom fantasies might, in the not too distant future, turn into realities. Now I have to cope with the fact that the boys she likes are flesh and blood and not posters torn from teen magazines.
It seems rather ironic that the band's last single is entitled How Deep is your Love? because 18 months ago my daughter would have said that her love for Take That was as unfathomable as mine was for the Beatles all those years ago when, in fact, it was actually a rather shallow kind of love. But a love, nevertheless, that will in years to come be as nostalgic to her as Beatlemania is to me now. Take That will always be the first notch in her bedhead, however much she might now like to erase that "I love Robbie" carving.
ITALIAN fashion is back in fashion. Around the globe the labels to flaunt are Prada and Gucci two traditional fashion houses who have revamped and repackaged themselves with high-profile bluster to become the current darlings of the demi-monde.
However, away from the fashion spotlight another Italian designer, Nino Cerruti, has been quietly making a few changes over the past couple of seasons which could put his long established label, Cerruti 1881, back on everybody's lips... and hips.
The decidedly debonair designer, who took over the family textile business in 1950, added men's clothing in 1957 and a womenswear line in 1976, looks to be back on top form with his updated classics. His latest spring/summer collection, worn on this page by the model of the moment, Stella Tennant, was a tremendous success when it was unveiled on the catwalk in Paris. Although the designer is Italian he has always considered Paris to be the capital of fashion. He moved his company there in 1967 and launched his fashion house at the Place de la Madeleine.
What had become a sober and somewhat worthy line at the tail end of the 1980s suddenly looks fresh again. The clean-cut silhouettes and less-is-more styling, the work of new design director Narcisso Rodriguez (ex-Calvin Klein) and arts director Marc Ascoli, exactly fit fashion's current brief what Cerruti calls "fashion reduced to its simplest".
The success of such precise cuts and understated styling relies heavily on the quality of the fabrics, which is where Cerruti's background in textiles and his technical know-how give him the edge. This season he features linens that shine like lip gloss, nylon that crackles like taffeta and super-soft leather.
Colour is also kept to a minimum: predominantly a monochrome mix of sooty black and milky white with additional touches of blue, ecru and camel.
Cerruti interprets masculine tailoring in a feminine way, but the finished result is far from manly. Feminine jackets curve into the waist and trousers feature a fluid flair. Key wardrobe building pieces are tunic tops, strapless dresses, boxy zippered jackets, tie-belt jackets and sleeveless shell tops, everything reduced right down to the bone. Cerruti and his team are getting it right for the Nineties.
From Mr Roy Albinson
Sir, Suppliers with take-or-pay contracts with British Gas seem singularly well placed ("Customers flock to switch gas supplier", February 10).
Presumably they can be paid twice for the same gas first for what they have not supplied to BG because, having undersold BG, they have destroyed its market, and then again for the same gas supplied directly to the customer. Poor old Sid.
Yours faithfully, ROY ALBINSON, Courtlands, Mayfield Lane, Wadhurst,East Sussex.
From Mr Jeff Wooller
Sir, It is wonderful news that the proposed merger between the English ICA and CIMA has been shelved.
However, we are concerned when Pennington (February 13) states that: "If the English ICA is to grow, it should do so by competing openly with its rivals."
We are not concerned with growth for the sake of growth. If we wanted that we would not have opposed the merger. What we wish to protect is the quality of our qualification, which we felt was being diluted by the proposed merger. The English ICA is still the first choice for the highest quality entrant. Thousands of hopefuls are cast away each year by the highly selective practices of the major accounting firms. The standard of entry goes up each year. We wish to maintain the quality of input.
We have won a major battle, but the war goes on. We are proposing at the next annual general meeting in June that future presidents are elected by the members.
This would replace the present sycophantic system whereby presidents are chosen by the Council. This system has failed and we must look for change. Our proposal may not be the best alternative, but at least it is better than the present system and at least it is more democratic.
In American-style elections, potential candidates for president will have to submit a manifesto to all members.
Those proposing mergers are likely to get short shrift.
Yours faithfully,
JEFF WOOLLER,
English ICA anti-merger ginger group,
Capital Barter Corporation, 47-48 Berners Street,
W1.
From P.E. Wood
Sir, Dare I suggest that Messrs Clarke and George have got it badly wrong apropos their attempts to reverse the decline in the economy?
I refer particularly to recent adjustments to the base rate.
If it is to be understood that, because of uncertainty, people are saving rather than spending, then, by lowering the base rate and giving financial institutions the incentive to reduce savings rates by even greater percentages to returns below the rate of inflation, it is hardly surprising that, with actual losses on their capital, savers are not in the mood to spend.
Conversely, by increasing rates, these people, who by definition have funds, may be induced to relax a little, while that hitherto favoured species of borrowers, again by definition, are unlikely to change their habits.
What is needed is the promotion of savings through realistic rates, which is a sound basis, and not through the fear of losing one's job, which is not.
The distortion of the money-lending market at the expense of savers is clearly not working and, furthermore, are we certain that, in general, cheap loans to industry are going where they are really needed?Yours faithfully,
P.E. WOOD,
6 Normanton Street,
Brighton,
East Sussex.
IF YOU have ever been flummoxed by an idiot's guide to a new personal computer, there is a solution. At yesterday's launch of the Department of Trade and Industry's Information Society Initiative, Ian Taylor, Minister for Science and Technology, recalled being told in a light-hearted vein that instead of PC companies offering a manual with their new product they should send a five-year-old instead.
MEANWHILE, Midland Bank is giving a Valentine's Day gift to the villagers of Bruton, Somerset (population 3,500). After a hard-fought campaign to get a banking facility in Bruton after the closure of NatWest's branch last year, Midland has agreed to take over the NatWest premises and opens a branch there today.
IT IS a sad day for those used to dashing into Debenhams in Oxford Street, skipping down the escalator, and arriving breathless in Midland Bank's Share Shop. The bank, which opened its first Share Shop in Birmingham in 1989 and two years later bought Debenhams Investment Services, which expanded its shop network to 70, is closing the Oxford Street outlet in May.
It started life at Debenhams on the third floor. However, in recent years the Share Shop has been moved down to the basement. Midland says the decision is no reflection on Debenhams, it is just that business has dwindled. Would-be customers will be asked to dash across the road to 431 Oxford Street, or trip along to Baker Street, or indeed to any of Midland's other 200 Share Shops.
DADDY, what did you do on your way to the top? Tim Melville-Ross charmed guests with tales of his misspent youth at yesterday's launch of Fulcrum, a new overseas work experience programme for A-level students, sponsored by the Institute of Directors and British Airways. On his way to becoming Director- General of the IoD, Uppingham-educated Melville-Ross worked in a Viennese chocolate factory. "I led a double life, and was completely schizophrenic. I'd rush out at the end of the day smelling of chocolate to meet my rather smart girl friend at the opera," he boasted.
Sir Colin Marshall's childhood memories were rather less exciting. "There was nothing like ‘shadowing' people for experience in my day because, of course, I grew up during the war," explained BA's chairman.
But can anybody beat the work experience of China's Foreign Trade Minister, Wu Yi, now visiting Britain? She did extended stints as a bulldozer driver, tried her hand as an explosives operative, and was an oil rigger before becoming Peking's deputy mayor in 1986.
Philip Bassett on a government drive to highlight Britain's labour market performance.
Gillian Shephard, the Education and Employment Secretary, flies to Paris tomorrow, armed with today's latest unemployment figures, which ministers hope will show a further fall, to sell what she regards as the success story of the UK labour market one vital to Britain's overall economic competitiveness.
She will be putting to the French equivalent of the CBI details of the UK's labour market performance, which she published this week. She will also be sending them to Padraig Flynn, the EU's Social Affairs Commissioner, and a range of countries considering making new inward investments in Britain.
To all of them, her message will be the same. "Britain all of Britain is getting back to work. We have growing numbers of successful companies, and rising numbers of people in work." However, she accepts too that at 2.24 million officials think that it could fall today by 10,000-15,000 below that unemployment remains "too high".
Her move comes as Brussels is making it clear that it will seek from the UK the abandonment of its opt-out from the Maastricht treaty's social chapter during the process of the intergovernmental conferences that start this summer. But the Government is determined not to let the opt-out go, and the new campaign on Britain's comparative jobs performance is part of its case for retaining it a case likely to be rehearsed at the EU's first social policy forum in Brussels next month and at the forthcoming G7 jobs conference in London. Labour is scathing about the Government's claims, the key elements of which are laid out in the accompanying table. Using OECD figures, Michael Meacher, Labour's employment spokesman, says that far from Britain outperforming its principal competitor countries on jobs, looking at the period from 1979 when the Conservatives came to power, the UK heads the relatively small list of wealthy countries where jobs have fallen, with the 0.1 per cent decline in civilian employment contrasting sharply with the 36 per cent rise in jobs in The Netherlands, or the 33 per cent increase in Germany.
Mrs Shephard may soon have even more figures to add to those released this week on jobs. Tomorrow, the Central Statistical Office (CSO) will start consulting on a proposal to add a monthly survey-based measure of unemployment to the regular count of the number of people out of work and claiming benefit. Details of its report were given yesterday to the all-party Commons Employment Select Committee with the clear recommendation for a new unemployment count. The Government's claims on the UK's jobs performance are supported by a study on jobs across Europe from the Institute of Directors. The IoD suggests that in the 20 years to 1994, no net private-sector jobs were created in Europe while the deregulated US saw a growth of as many as 30 million such jobs over the same period.
Others are less fully persuaded. In a new report on employment across Europe, Income Data Services says that while the jobless rate in Britain has declined, "UK performance on employment creation is less convincing", with the creation of low-paid, part-time and precarious jobs, together with increased job security, depressing consumer demand and leading to lower economic performance.
Mrs Shephard sees her department's move both as being couched in the framework of competitiveness promoted by Michael Heseltine, the Deputy Prime Minister, and as an important step in the re-engineering of government being enacted by merging the employment and education departments. Formally, the new department's business-style mission statement is within that framework: its primary aim is to "support economic growth and improve the nation's competitiveness and quality of life by raising standards of educational achievement and skill and by promoting an efficient and flexible labour market". Officially, the line from the Department for Education and Employment (DFEE) is that both "E's" have equal weight. But with unemployment still falling and education a vital issue, the political advantage to be gained from a concentration on educational issues is clear. "Clearly, in terms of day-to-day detail, it may have this emphasis," Mrs Shephard told The Times when questioned about the apparent stress on education. "But it does not remove in any way from my contention that education and training and higher education are important because of their contribution to the improved competitiveness of the economy. I am absolutely convinced of that."
Officials from Mr Heseltine's competitiveness unit are treading carefully in the dangerous waters of international educational comparisons, in line with Mrs Shephard's job comparisons. Such boldness in politically sensitive areas has proved the undoing of some of her predecessors at both Education and Employment. But Mrs Shephard is highly thought of by Downing Street, and is seen by some as a potential successor if necessary to John Major. She acknowledges now that the scrapping of the Employment Department last year and its merger with Education were badly handled. What had been a long-cherished aim of some reformers misfired on the day when e-mail went astray, and staff first heard of the change on the lunchtime news.
Mrs Shephard rapidly set about reforming the structures of the departments, adopting a business-style organisation that has seen the creation of eight directorates, each led by a director-general, the departure of one of the two "joint" permanent secretaries, and the emergence of Michael Bichard as the sole permanent secretary. He says that there were two distinct cultures, two sets of aims, no structure and unnerved employees. But he charts the structural reform, the competition between officials for jobs, the sharing of values, and the de-layering of senior staff, with numbers down from 145 to 95, as clear evidence of progress. He says: "Despite some scepticism, the response has been more positive than I expected." Mrs Shephard agrees, even though she occasionally talks of the "two sides" of the department. She is convinced, too, that the merger will be permanent, whatever the outcome of the next election.She is critical of what she calls the "inward-looking" nature of some of the educational establishment "they don't see themselves as part of the country's economic effort" and believes the re-engineering of the departments will reinforce to them too the competitive importance of both education and employment.
She fervently believes in the idea of the merger, that it is working, and that it is vital for Britain's economy. "It has just transformed everything," she says. And her trip to Paris to bang the drum for jobs in Britain shows how far the idea of competitiveness is now running in areas previously denied to it.
From M. J. Stanley
Sir, If "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel", it seems caveat emptor is often the last refuge of the insurance industry.
All who purchased a pension scheme ("The responsibility for mis-selling and compensation", Business Letters, K.D. Boyd, February 7) thought they were protecting their future, not gambling their savings. In which case uberrimae fidei (utmost faith) seems more appropriate than caveat emptor.
Traditionally, the insurance industry has built its business on good faith, hence most general insurance is covered by uberrimae fidei contracts. It is high time that the legal position of welfare insurance is clarified if it is to become the successor to the Welfare State.
Yours faithfully,
M J STANLEY,
4 The Haven,
Locks Heath,
Southampton.
From Mr Ralph Instone
Sir, In arguing that losses on mis-sold policies should be borne by the consumer, Mr K D Boyd ("The responsibility for mis-selling and compensation", Business Letters, February 7) reaches the wrong conclusion by a misuse of Latin. The doctrine caveat emptor does not apply to contracts of insurance: uberrima fides (utmost good faith) does. Caveat scriptor.
Yours faithfully,
RALPH INSTONE,
18 Fairacres,
Roehampton Lane,
Putney SW15.
From Mr N.D.Anderson
Sir, Mr James Parker seems to consider the high salaries of the senior partners of KPMG justified as a reward for risks taken (Letter, February 9). As the audit function of KPMG is incorporated, I assume the accounts in 1997 will show a marked reduction in the salaries to reflect absence of risk.
On the day that nurses are awarded 2 per cent, Mr Parker's letter seems ill-considered and ill-timed.
Yours faithfully,
NORMAN D.ANDERSON, 19 Gatterstone Drive,
Dundee.
Are British fund managers, who have sold out of the Wall Street bull market, suffering from collective panic? Yes, said Anatole Kaletsky yesterday. This is a rerating, not a financial bubble, and the bull run will continue. His case was based on the economic fundamentals, and might have looked stronger if he had cited the following authoritative assessment of the US outlook in 1966.
"The near-term prospects still support the pleasant side of volatility. Corporate restructuring and downsizing remain in force, constraining the rate of inflation ... The pronounced winnowing down of defence expenditures will continue to be a dampening force. Financial rehabilitation has been largely accomplished in the US and most of Europe: most banks are healthy and capable of energetically seeking new opportunities ... In comparison with other major industrial countries, the US has better prospects. Unemployment is down, job creation is still positive ... and the Federal Reserve will probably provide additional monetary accommodation. These conditions will support consumption while US business is highly competitive, and can hold on to market share. In this context, financial markets will continue to do reasonably well."
The source of this cheery view? Dr Henry Kaufman, speaking in Milan a couple of weeks back. Dr K. was for many years known on Wall Street as Dr Doom. Has he suddenly turned soft, then? Not if you read the small print. The words above are the short-term prelude to a characteristic Kaufman warning: what goes up will in due course come down. Possibly as soon as 1997.
His reasoning is based not on economic but on financial fundamentals: the argument that modern market developments have made prices more volatile. Derivatives and securitisation create the illusion of endless liquidity, and encourage risk-taking, though exit can be impossible in a panic. Meanwhile, the explosion in US mutual funds and the spread of global trading have made investment flows bigger and less stable. For the moment all these factors are conspiring to drive the bull market; but when they turn ... "The unpleasant side of volatility" could prove one of the great historic understatements.
A Tokyo-style boom and crash, then? Here I will stick out a mile or so of neck, and disagree with Dr K. What his warning overlooks is that increased short-term volatility can in the longer run make markets more, not less stable. Technophobia dates back at least to the Brady Report on the 1987 market crash caused, it said, by program trading. But with hindsight we can see that the programs were right: they triggered a manageable correction, which laid the base for the great bull run. The 1994 bond crash, which started in the securitised mortgage market, is the same story of early correction. Small earthquake, few hurt. And Tokyo gives the negative proof: no modern gadgets to check a runaway bull, three-figure p/e ratios, and then a 1929-style crash.
All clear on Wall Street, then? Not in the long run. First, history is against sleeping bulls: huge price increases always do lead to a correction. Secondly, the part of the Kaufman warning which will probably be overlooked: the mutual fund tide. Wall Street has been watching for a sell-off for so long that it has got bored; but there are other dangers.
The more immediate is that paper wealth will again blind US consumers to the risks of excessive borrowing, until the Fed is forced to start tightening. That would lead to a replay of 1994, but probably louder. It could happen in 1997. Further out lurks demography: as today's savers become tomorrow's retired, the flow which has pumped $1,000 billion into Wall Street since 1987 will slow to a trickle. The British house market shows the power of such reversals; but not for 20 years or so.
So are British managers craven fools? That depends on what have they bought instead.
THE London stock market found the prospect of another cut in interest rates and yet another record-breaking run on Wall Street irresistible.
An early mark-up on the back of a 59-point surge in the Dow Jones average overnight enabled the equity market to claw back some of its recent losses. Despite early volatility in New York during resumed trading yesterday, the FT-SE 100 index managed to cling on to most of its gains, finishing 21.0 points up at 3,747.6. The total number of shares traded reached 922 million.
Brokers will be anxiously awaiting today's Bank of England inflation report and earnings data for signs of further scope to ease monetary policy.
The City was unimpressed with the latest trading statement from Argyll, the Safeway supermarket chain, despite a 14.1 per cent surge in like-for-like sales. But this failed to mask a further erosion of margins that forced even the company's own broker, Panmure Gordon, to reduce its profit forecast for the current year by £3 million to £400 million. There was also concern expressed about a slow-down in January sales. The shares responded with a fall of 4p to 316p.
Meanwhile, its rivals, J Sainsbury retreated 3p to 382p, and Tesco 1 1/2p to 280 1/2p with UBS, the broker, said to have turned bearish of the sector.
Burmah Castrol continues to build on last week's new-found support with the shares adding a further 28p to a new high of £10.64. This stretches its lead during the past week to 78p. Last week Merrill Lynch was singing the company's praises, claiming that the break-up value of the group could be as much as £20 a share. Yesterday's gains were triggered by figures from Castrol India, the group's third biggest generator of profits, showing a near 30 per cent increase in lubricant volumes.
Traders reported heavy turnover in Trafalgar House, a takeover favourite. Trafalgar up 2p at 35 1/2p, as a total of 28.6 millions shares changed hands reviving talk again of a break-up bid. Hong Kong Land continues to hold 26 per cent of the shares and has pledged to support the group.
Speculative buying was also good for WH Smith, with the price adding 7p to 426p on turnover of 1.1 million shares.
NatWest Securities, the broker, is taking a long-term view of some of the companies in the old drinks sector, now re-named alcoholic beverages. It is impressed with the medium-term attractions of both Guinness, 2 1/2p firmer at 456 1/2p, and Grand Metropolitan 3p better at 448p. NatWest also rates Allied Domecq, 1p harder at 523p, where it is looking for the "eventual realisation of value" following recent speculation about a break-up bid.
Danka Business Systems finished 8p lower at 695p as the group placed a total of 17 million shares at 683p. They were placed with US and European investors in the form of American Depository Shares. The placing is expected to raise £128.4 million. Reuters' message to shareholders that it was looking at ways of returning surplus cash to shareholders was good for a jump of 31p to 675p. The group is currently sitting on £800 million of surplus cash and speculation has been mounting in recent weeks that it has been contemplating a share buy-back operation. It emerged as the international news agency and financial information group unveiled a leap of £89 million in pre-tax profits to £599 million. The main thrust to profits came from Instinet, its computerised share dealing system. A profits setback in the fourth quarter left BP nursing a fall of 8 1/2p to 536 1/2p. Net profits during the period were up from £427 million to £501 million, but down on the £532 million achieved in the third quarter. For the year as a whole, profits grew from £1.48 billion to £2 billion helped by a firmer oil price.
ABN Amro Hoare Govett, the broker, has switched its recommendation to clients from a "buy" to a "hold" with switching out of the shares benefiting Shell, 14p better at 881p, before full-year figures tomorrow .
First-quarter figures from BOC Group failed to live up to expectations and the shares slipped 14p to 929p. Industrial gases made all the running while the healthcare side saw profits fall 10 per cent after one-off charges.
A profits warning sent shares of European Motor Holdings, the motor distributor, tumbling 18p to a low of 82p. The group says profits for the year to March, 1996, will fall short of City expectations. The news was followed by a spate of downgradings.
The news from European also sent the shares of other motor distributors into reverse. Evans Halshaw dropped 10p to 313p, Lex Service 6p to 321p, Sanderson Brammall 4p to 223p, Cowie Group 5p to 305p, and Eurodollar 3p to 94p.
Superscape VR, the virtual reality software group, leapt 75p to 539p on the back of its worldwide distribution deal with IBM. No details of the one-year rolling contract were issued, but brokers are confident it will provide a major boost to profits.
Windsor, the insurance broker, slipped 1p to 20p after some cautious comments to shareholders at the annual meeting.
GILT-EDGED: In the futures pit, the March series of the long gilt touched £109 before finishing £1/8 better at £109 7/16 as a total of 64,000 contracts were completed. Among conventional issues, benchmark Treasury 8 per cent 2013 rose £3/16 to 100 3/4, while at the shorter end, Treasury 8 per cent 2000 was three ticks firmer at £104 1/2.
NEW YORK:A disapointing report on January semiconductor demand sent Wall Street shares on a roller-coaster ride before the Dow industrial squeezed out yet another record close. The Dow Jones industrial average ended up 1.08 points at 5601.23.
THIS year, BOC managed to shake off its dull reputation, proving that industrial gases can be a rewarding investment. The share price rose by a third as the company chalked up double-digit profits growth.
Yesterday's slip in the shares was more of a short-term correction than a downward turn. The quarterly figures were at the low end of expectations, but there are few causes for serious concern. The December slowdown in growth in US liquid chemical sales may be the first indication of a general downturn, but BOC's take-or-pay chemicals contracts offer good protection against a collapse in the market. Generic competition in the anaesthetics markets means that margins for BOC's Forane will continue to be squeezed, but the impact is already in the share price. Many of the US gas contracts will not contribute to profits before 1997. With the high level of transparency that these long-term deals allow, analysts are predicting profits of around £535 million in 1998, up a third on last year, with plenty of room to raise the dividend yield from its current level of 3.3 per cent. The shares, on a forward rating of about 16, are not cheap, but there is still room to grow.
Edited by Carl Mortished
AFTER seasonal excess, thoughts turn to dieting in the new year. In the case of Safeway, which is presently churning out seasonal discounts on its food lines, the slimming experience has been less welcome because it comes in the form of a cut in gross margin.
Less desirable than pounds off the waistline and unattractive for any business, Argyll's margin squeeze in the competitive food retailing sector adds a sobering note to the Christmas trading figures. Determined to make up the ground in the battle for market share, Argyll has paid a price for increased sales. Gross margins, said to be in the mid-20s, have fallen by half a percentage point.
It is a hard battle for the smaller of this quarrelsome quartet of supermarkets and one that it will wage with a non-food armoury while pushing its own brands. At the same time, it hopes to save costs with the development of self-scanning devices at the checkout.
Safeway's plans for more diversification into high-ticket items such as children's clothes will bring the food retailer up against other aggressive discounters such as Kingfisher and Storehouse. Oil companies are already retaliating against the incursion of grocers on their patch and Argyll should not expect to make easy inroads into new markets.
YEARS of research would probably never yield a clear answer as to exactly how much of BP's profits recovery is due to its own efforts and how much to the chemicals cycle. BP enjoyed record gains last year on the back of higher chemicals prices, only to see the beginnings of a downturn in September.
Even so, BP's renaissance over three years of volatile oil prices has been staggering. The net result before exceptional items has grown from £536 million to over £2 billion and last year's record chemicals operating profit of £854 million is not enough to account for the increase. Cost cutting, particularly in the upstream business, has been a contributor, adding a dollar to BP's net margin per barrel from E&P since 1992.
More recently, the focus has been downstream and BP has gone further than most companies to address its loss-making refining operations spending $1 billion on capacity reductions. But even such drastic action will not turn refining into a major money-spinner. Overcapacity in Europe is being exacerbated by new refineries in the Far East, once a highly profitable location. The solution is more cuts in capacity, but as BP has shown closure costs are high compared with the marginal cost of running at a loss and state-run enterprises are loathe to cut jobs. An outlook of slimmer margins and a weak oil price suggest the next three years will be a greater test for BP.
ONE of the larger companies in a glamorous sector, Reuters suffers from a dull and worthy image. Fears that its growth rate is slowing triggered "sell" recommendations late last year and since then a flurry of media megadeals has made the company appear even more staid. Bland does not mean mediocre, however. The shares have gained about £1 since the autumn and they moved up smartly yesterday after the release of the year-end results.
Reuters sticks to what it does best, providing real-time financial information and news, while developing electronic trading systems such as Instinet. It sinks a small fortune into research and development, makes very few acquisitions and recoils at suggestions that it should diversify. In its defence, it points to Dun & Bradstreet, the financial services group that includes Neilsen, the ratings agency, as proof that conglomerates get it wrong. D&B is breaking itself up.
However, Reuters is not perfect. It is no longer promising double-digit revenue growth and has been unable to increase product prices significantly in recent years. Reuters also has a habit of hoarding cash; its £850 milion cash pile is growing by almost £30 million per month. However, the company intends to address the latter criticism and is considering a share buyback or a special dividend. The former is more likely, given the precedent of a share buyback in 1993.
With so much cash in the bank, the payout is likely to be bigger this time round and shareholders can rest assured that dullness could appear virtuous over the coming months.
Rexam, the struggling papermaker that used to trade as Bowater, climbed 14p to 374p. Mercury Asset Management has picked up six million shares this week, stretching its holding to 30 million, or almost 6 per cent. Last year the price traded up to 500p on talk of a bid from Alusuisse, the Swiss group.
BICC is well ahead of the field for this year's Bad Timing award after announcing an £11 million expansion for its Singaporean cables business just as a local subsidiary was being barred from public contracts after bribery allegations. A couple of years ago, BICC had the misfortune of becoming tangled up in the scandal over the Pergau dam, in neighbouring Malaysia. As Lady Bracknell might have put it....
QUELLE horreur, quelle confusion. Who would be a Frenchman, trying to make sense of his country's economic predicament? Denis Kessler, head of the French equivalent of our Confederation of British Industry, tied himself in knots yesterday in an attempt at a rational analysis.
Constant announcements of new tax increases destabilise households and companies. Measures to boost economic growth have undermined confidence. He wants state-directed growth financed with debt but moans about the budget deficit. Production is stagnating, unemployment is rising, pay is too high, investment is too low.
Emerging from this bouillabaisse of complaints, however, is one certainty. However dire the economy, the franc must not be allowed to depreciate. Only a rapid move towards a single currency will provide conditions for lasting growth, he says.
Imagine Britain were still in the exchange-rate mechanism. The recession is deepening, unemployment and repossessions are soaring and the CBI begs the Chancellor, nay, prays for a thumping great rise in interest rates. Only thus do you have a measure of the strange sickness that seems to have overtaken the French psyche.
M Kessler's outpourings could not have been in greater contrast to those from across the border. Hans-Olaf Henkel, his German equivalent, said his members would not support a single currency unless it could be proved to promote stability. Perhaps Herr Henkel can offer M Kessler some free counselling.
IT IS a mere coincidence that sees two books on Nick Leeson appear just as aggrieved bondholders in Barings are launching fresh legal action against the bank, but it is an unhappy coincidence all the same.
Revelations like those in The Times on Monday, that some £80 million or more of the bonuses paid to Barings managers and executives were based entirely on non-existent "profits" booked by the energetic if misguided Leeson, can only fan the flames. The re-emergence of the Leeson visage, with or without reversed baseball hat, on the front pages will do little for the bondholders' blood pressure.
ING, the Dutch purchasers of Barings, must have known all along that the numbers those bonuses were based on were phoney, but they presumably felt payment was a necessary part of the total bill for buying the bank. It does not take a financial genius, or even the Bank of England, to realise there was going to be something dubious about Barings' 1994 accounts.
The bondholders have, ostensibly, three sets of targets. They want to sue the three main executives at Barings, the three City institutions who managed the bond issue, and they will also have a go at the two Barings companies now in administration, to lever themselves up the list of priority creditors.
They are looking for £109 million plus costs. In the above order, the three executives do not have £109 million. ABN Amro Hoare Govett, BZW and Cazenove do, but so unexpected and shocking was the collapse of Barings that it hardly seems reasonable to expect them to have foreseen it when putting together the prospectus for the issue in January 1994. They can be expected to put up a strong defence. Barings plc and Baring Brothers are bust, so there is no money there either.
The bondholders' true target is ING. The hope must be that the Dutch, wearying of the endless bickering, will come up with a few million of "nuisance money" to add to the hundreds of millions ING has already spent on Barings. The Dutch might, and put some money the way of the preference shareholders as well. But their legal obligation to find the cash looks doubtful.
YOU CAN see them in their down-at-heel thousands at newsagents in dingy shopping malls or convenience stores on run-down housing estates: the walking wounded of the welfare state, queueing for their instant, illusory fix of hope.
For the scratchcard punter, the chances of a big, life-transforming win are only marginally better than of marrying Anthea Turner. The odds on a small win are rather better, but only if you define a win, as the National Lottery does, as getting your money back.
Now the signs are that some of the sheep are no longer willing to be shepherded to market. Sales of scratchcards have been sliding for months and are now well below £20 million a week and probably anchored there.
Camelot, the lottery operator, has overreacted with a rush to produce a range of products to support flagging card sales. As a result, the public is baffled by all the new games on offer, and turned off by the decision to limit some prizes while holding the initial stake money at a pound.
There is also the threat of rival schemes, some of which pay money direct to charities rather than routing it all through the cumbersome lottery mechanism. Scratchcards are like any new and unexpectedly profitable market, whether in gambling or alcoholic lemonade. More opportunists than the trade can support will always be dragged in until a process of Darwinian selection strips out the non-performers from the survivors.
There is something especially pernicious about Instants scratchcards, though. The product, and its yobbish advertising, is carefully aimed at what are politely known as the C2s and Ds, that section of society least able to afford gambling and least intellectually capable of appreciating the awful length of the odds against winning.
But it is the form of this particular fix that is most disturbing. Failure demands another try, and the instant nature of the scratchcard allows one. Millions may lose every week on the on-line lottery, but the delay between placing the bet and learning of the loss limits the amount wagered. Some gamblers may go in too heavily, but for most families it has become a comfortable weekly ritual.
By contrast, most retailers can tell stories of compulsives who spend far more than they can afford on scratchcards, and come back every week. Camelot is now considering the results of a pilot scheme running since October that has put the on-line lottery and the cards into a selection of pubs. This misbegotten scheme seems to have attracted little public criticism, so an extension looks likely.
The extraordinary success of the lottery, and the strong performance for on-line sales even on weeks without a rollover, suggest that the fall-off in scratch cards will not harm the fortunes of Camelot and its members. But that decline, although it may be too little and too late, is to be welcomed nonetheless.
PRICE competition at the petrol pump is keeping a check on profits growth at British Petroleum. Yesterday, the oil company reported its largest annual profit of £2 billion for 1995, compared with £1.48 billion in 1994, but weak refining margins and price wars at the pump caused a sharp fall in profits from downstream activities.
BP's 36 per cent advance in replacement-cost profit comes before a £709 million charge in the fourth quarter for restructuring its worldwide refining operations. Last autumn BP agreed to sell a refinery in Ohio, and in January the oil company announced the closure or sale of another three refineries, in the US, France and The Netherlands. The company also gave warning of a softening in the chemicals markets.
Sir David Simon, chairman of BP, admitted the trading outlook for refining was grim, with margins at their lowest for 10 years: "There is still overcapacity and that is almost certain to affect margins." Sir David said BP intended to remain competitive on petrol prices.
BP is raising the final quarter dividend by 1/4p to 4.25p, a total of 15.25p, up 45 per cent on 1994. Sir David said the profit rise in 1995 was achieved by a combination of self-help and volume increases, claiming the oil company had achieved $2 billion of performance improvements ahead of schedule. "I think we are back at the upper end of the oil premier league," he said. "The companies that can show productivity gains are the real players."
BP has had discussions with British Gas over take-or-pay contracts but does not expect an early resolution of the problem. The oil company supplies BG with 600 million cubic feet a per day but John Browne, chief executive, said that the average cost of the BP contracts was 16p per therm, compared with BG's average cost of some 20p.
Profits from oil exploration and production rose to £579 million in the fourth quarter, from £522 million in the same period of 1994, thanks to lower exploration write-offs and in spite of a static oil price of $17 per barrel. BP expects the oil price to remain within a $16-$18 range but gave a warning of price volatitity owing to uncertainty in the supply/demand balance.
The chemicals division suffered a downturn in the fourth quarter owing to destocking by customers, with profits sliding from £225 million to £127 million. Profits for the year were a record £854 million because of stronger margins and lower costs. In the near term, BP expects softer margins but hopes prices will pick up later in the year.
CHRISTMAS trading figures from Safeway failed to cheer the market yesterday. Shares in Argyll, the parent company, were marked down, and some brokers trimmed forecasts, in spite of a like-for-like rise in sales of 8.6 per cent in the 17 weeks to the end of last week.
City concern focused on a dip in gross margin. This margin which is in the mid 20s slipped by 0.4 percentage points, the group said, as competitive pricing in the sector bit hard.
A Safeway spokesman also said that the current round of traditional new year price discounting was proving sharper than in recent years.
The group also disclosed that sales early last month had slowed. However, it said that sales were currently more pleasing.
Safeway is rolling out a strategy to stem the erosion of its gross margin, which will include promotion of its own brands, a greater emphasis on high-ticket non-food items, such as children's clothes, and a greater contribution from technology. The group is planning more use of self-scanning, now on trial in several stores. It says that scanners that enable customers to add up their own baskets and pass through special check-outs speed shopping.
Safeway says that non-food items such as videos and stationery have buoyed the group against fresh food and other perishables, which sell at punishing margins. The chain has also increased sales per square foot by varying its mix. This, it said, had shown room for improvement.
The group is still pursuing its expansion programme and plans to open 17 stores this year and 17 next year.
ALLIED IRISH BANKS, Ireland's largest bank, lifted pre-tax profits by 9 per cent, to Ir£373 million, in 1995. Tom Mulcahy, chief executive, said that the increase was achieved in "a highly competitive environment" because of improved lending volumes and improvement in credit quality.
Neil Dean, chief financial officer, said that the bank had had a particularly good year in Northern Ireland, where lending through the branches was 25 per cent up on 1994, and overall lending was 15 per cent higher. Growth had come "not so much from the peace dividend" as the benefits of putting AIB technology into TSB branches bought in 1991.
Mr Dean said resurgence in Northern Ireland's economy predated the peace process. He said it was too soon to predict effects of Friday's bomb, but added: "We were growing a solid business prior to the ceasefire. We are confident that we can continue that in most of our businesses."
AIB Bank, which includes retail and commercial operations in the Irish Republic, Northern Ireland, Great Britain, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, increased profits by 10 per cent, to Ir£203.9 million. US profits were steady at Ir£109.6 million, up from Ir£109.5 million.
The year's dividend is 17 per cent up, at Ir12.9p; the final dividend, of Ir7.7p, up 20 per cent, is payable on May 2.
Acorn Computer Group, the UK computer technology company that is majority-owned by Italy's Olivetti computer group, and Apple Computer UK are forming a £5 million joint venture company to develop IT solutions for the UK education market.
APPLE, the world's second largest desktop computer company, has suspended dividend payments because of mounting losses. The move underlines the depth of the problems besetting Apple, which has suffered a series of big setbacks over the past few months.
Apple reported a $69 million loss in its first financial quarter and last week gave a warning that losses in the second quarter would be even bigger, the result of strategic errors that have left it with a shrinking market share and demoralised workforce. Gil Amelio, who took over as chairman and chief executive two weeks ago, is struggling to put together a new strategy to restore public confidence in the company while keeping it independent.
The dividend decision was well received the shares rose 50 cents in early trading to $28.875. The company said yesterday that profit margins would remain under pressure and be below the level of previous years because of intense pricing pressures. Apple blamed increased competition, compressed product life cycles and the need to reduce stocks.
Apple has been forced to discount its desktop computers heavily to protect its market share.
The Department of Trade and Industry has launched a £35 million four-year initiative to help businesses to seize opportunities offered by new information and communication technologies. The Information Society Initiative (ISI), aimed at smaller and medium-sized companies, will focus on demonstrating the problem-solving capabilities of technology through seminars and local support centres.
Sir Rocco Forte, former chief executive of Forte, has severed most remaining ties with the hotels and restaurants group by selling more than 2.1 million shares at prices ranging from 344p to 396.5p.
Sir Rocco earned almost £8 million from the sales, made between January 23 and February 2. He has swapped his other Forte shares for shares in Granada, which paid £3.8 billion for Forte. The number of swapped shares is not known.
He also sold 1.15 million shares that he controlled on behalf of Forte trusts, and exercised an option to sell, for 395p, 60,000 awarded to him at 231p.
BOC left the City mildly disappointed yesterday in spite of increased first-quarter profits of £101 million.
The chemicals company's share price dropped 18p, to 925p, on results at the low end of expectations. There was also concern that a fall in US demand for liquid products in December heralded a downturn in its vital US markets.
However, Danny Rosenkranz, chief executive, said: "The improvement was in line with our expectations and shows pretty strong growth across all our main markets, except in healthcare, which we expected to be flattish."
Overall, turnover rose by 11 per cent, to £968 million.
SHARES in Superscape VR surged 75p to 539p after the virtual reality software company unveiled a potentially lucrative worldwide distribution deal thought to be worth more than $3 million with IBM, the US computer group.
IBM will market and sell Superscape's virtual reality software and related services, such as consultancy and training, throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the former USSR. Agreements covering the Asia-Pacific and important North and South American markets are also in the offing. Superscape's market capitalisation has increased from £38.8 million to £45 million.
ACTION by the Singapore authorities to ban a subsidiary of BICC, the cable and construction operation, from new government contracts in the next five years brought a swift appeal from the company, which yesterday announced cablemaking expansion in Asia-Pacific.
News of the ban, which affects all work with Singapore's Public Utilities Board, with whom BICC has worked for more than ten years, cannot derail BICC's plans to build a cablemaking factory in Indonesia.
A spokesman for BICC said that allegations of corruption which led to Singapore's ban would be contested. Singapore named five companies in relation to the conviction of a key official at the Public Utilities Board, who was recently jailed for 14 years for corruption and criminal conspiracy. The other companies were Siemens of Germany, Italy's Pirelli and Japan's Tomen Corporation and Marubeni Corporation.
BICC said that it is pumping $11 million into a $45 million cablemaking factory in Indonesia. BICC is also establishing a data cable systems business in the Philippines at a cost of $10 million.
DANKA BUSINESS SYSTEMS, the office equipment supplier whose shares are listed in London, has placed 17 million shares, mostly in the form of American Depository Shares (ADS), with institutional investors at $42 per ADS, equivalent to 683p a share. Each ADS represents four ordinary shares. Proceeds of the placing, estimated at £128.4 million, will be used to reduce borrowings arising from the acquisition of Infotech Europe BV. Existing Danka shares fell 3p to 700p yesterday.
SHARES in European Motor Holdings fell 18p to 82p yesterday after the company said that annual profits would fall to about £6.5 million before tax from a reported £7.9 million in the previous 12 months. Richard Palmer, chief executive, said that trading in the motor retail division had fallen significantly below budget in the past two months.
This reflected adverse weather conditions and a change in product cycles by auto manufacturers. Depressed retail demand had affected initial contributions from new franchises.
AMERICAN workers' pay and benefits rose by 2.9 per cent last year, the smallest annual increase since the US Government began tracking such changes in 1982. The US Labor Department said that the rise in its Employment Cost Index was held back by the tiniest advance on record in benefits such as health care and holidays. Many analysts had expected an even smaller employee cost increase last year, of about 2.6 per cent. The previous yearly low for the index was 3 per cent in 1994.
BIOTRACE INTERNATIONAL, the biotech diagnostics company where Brian Levett, chief executive, left abruptly in November, will today name his successor. Jim Keir, until last April managing director of Amersham International's international trading and technologies division, is joining immediately. Biotrace, whose main products detect food contamination and are based on the enzyme that allows fireflies to glow in the dark, floated in November 1993 at a price of 130p. Yesterday the shares closed at 39p.
New York: A natural historian is heading for the South Pacific in search of the sea world's most chilling, mysterious mollusc: the giant squid. Clyde Roper, of America's Smithsonian Institution, plans to enter a mini-submarine and descend more than 3,000ft in the hope of finding Architeuthis, the monstrous squid that can grow as long as a bus, has eyes the size of a football, and inspired Jules Verne. A few examples of the species have been found, dead, in the nets of terrified antipodean fishermen, but no modern man who saw one alive has ever returned to tell the tale.
SHARES in Sun Alliance fell 6p to 362p yesterday after Chubb Corp, its US partner, announced it was reducing the amount of business the two insurers cede to each other. Annually, Sun Alliance supplies £200 million of business to Chubb and receives £300 million back.
Sun Alliance confirmed business was likely to reduce by a third this year, next year, and a further third in 1998. A spokesman for the UK insurer said the partnership had been working since 1882. Chubb holds 5 per cent of Sun Alliance, while Sun holds under 3 per cent of Chubb.
JOSEPH PERLING and Victoria Vaughn, both of Los Angeles, plan to celebrate Valentine's Day by getting married. They will be five miles apart, blessed by a clergyman equidistant from them both, with a best man in New York, a maid of honour in Seattle and guests on several continents.
They will be linked, in a miracle of technology and a resolute denial of romance, by computer. Weddings are not new on the expanding frontiers of cyberspace, but hitherto participants have usually sat side by side to type in their "virtual vows". Computerised ceremonies have often been publicity stunts by software companies, but Mr Perling and Miss Vaughn are breaking new ground, according to the on-line service acting as their host, by having an exclusively electronic wedding and by being physically separate for it.
Their motive seems to be pure nerdishness. The bride lives in Hollywood, the groom a half-hour drive away on Venice Beach and his father, the Rev John Perling, who is due to marry them, in Beverly Hills.
The three could easily meet for the ceremony, but the fact that they have chosen not to does not mean it is being undertaken lightly, Rev Perling insists. "This is a lifelong union of two people, blessed by God," he said.
"Joseph and Victoria's vows are sacred and heartfelt even though they will take place in a virtual church." Technically, the congregation will consist not of humans, or even virtual humans, but of "avatars" those subscribers to the "dreamscape graphical world" who have organised the wedding.
In addition to modems and computers, which can access the service for $2.95 (£1.96) an hour, guests need specific software. Joseph and Victoria solved this problem months ago. Instead of wedding invitations, they sent out floppy disks.
UNILEVER, the multinational trading group, yesterday won a £17 million battle with the taxman.
Sir Thomas Bingham, Master of the Rolls, said in a judgment in the Court of Appeal that the Inland Revenue had abused its powers with a company that had a reputation as a "model taxpayer".
He said it had disallowed corporation tax rebate claims by Unilever to take into account trading losses because the company had not complied with a two-year time limit. Legislation was amended from March 31, 1991, so that claims must be made within two years unless the Revenue allows longer.
But in an examination of 1,247 Unilever companies for accounting periods since 1969, there were 116 instances of trading losses. Of those, only 40 tax claims were presented after the two-year period's expiry.
The Revenue challenged ten of these, but allowed 30 "without comment or question or objection". Sir Thomas said Unilever and the Revenue had a "consensual procedure" that had worked for many years.
When the Revenue objected to the loss relief and demanded full payment, Unilever applied for judicial review in the High Court where it was ruled that the Revenue could not in fairness, having regard to its past conduct, treat the claim as time-barred.
Dismissing the Revenue's appeal, Sir Thomas said that to reject Unilever's claims in reliance on the time limit, without clear notice, was so unfair as to amount to an abuse of power.
FRASER EARLE, a former chief executive of Standard Chartered's China business, will head an action group of shareholders in two Classic Bloodstock companies, the troubled racing investment group that has raised nearly £5 million from 7,000 investors.
At an emergency meeting of Classic Bloodstock II last month, it emerged that the company had raised £2.7 million of which £1.4 million was spent on postage and stationery and a further £1 million on promotion and marketing. Only £91,170 was spent on purchasing six horses.
LIKE all other deeply sentimental and commercial Western holidays, Valentine's Day fever is enveloping the Far East.
Roses, perfume, chocolates, silk scarves and banquets featuring pink food dominate advertising while the prices of all these good things double. In Hong Kong, flowers normally costing £30 at most are now going for £75, while a smallish, possibly Italian silk scarf is £150. Restaurants, typically, promise pink food, including roast chicken.
The same degree of vigorous celebrating holds true for Christmas and Easter, which result in an orgy of advertising and pruchase of gifts. Mothers and fathers are, of course, honoured in the Confucian tradition, but this, too, is accompanied by wildly expensive flowers, the giving of diamond-studded watches, silver-mounted pipes, and vast dinners.
Chocolate consumption in China is soaring. At Peking department stores, foreign brands offer roses and paper hearts as gifts for lovers buying chocolate. Buyers are plentiful. Chocolate consumption more than doubled to almost 22,000 tonnes in 1994 from 9,500 tonnes in 1988.
In Japan, 23 million tons of chocolate worth about £300 million will be given by women to the most important men in their life their company bosses and co-workers. A study by a Japanese chocolate manufacturer reveals that more than 80 per cent of Japanese women give chocolate to people "who help them", while only 20 per cent give chocolates to their lovers or husbands. Japanese men do not give chocolate on Valentine's Day.
As with so many things, Japan has adopted the festival of love and turned it into something peculiarly Japanese: a dutiful ritual of loveless present giving. The gift of giri-choco or obligatory chocolate is an annual chore for Japan's female workforce, enforced by peer group pressure, and driven on by Japan's powerful chocolate manufacturers. More than 10 per cent of the nation's chocolate sales are made on Valentine's Day.
The size and value of a giri-choco gift is rigorously determined by the recipient's status. On average, chocolate for the president of a company is five times more expensive than for a colleague of equal status, while an office section chief merits only three times the value.
The presidents of powerful companies such as Mitsubishi or Toshiba presumably receive several tons of giri-choco, which raise the interesting question what do they do with it?
Anthony Glossop, left, chief executive of St Modwen Properties, and Stan Clarke, chairman, increased the total dividend 31 per cent to 2.1p a share after reporting a 6.4 per cent rise in pre-tax profits to £10 million for the year to November 30. Net assets rose 8.2 per cent to 53p a share.
HUNDREDS of Zairean troops blockaded the largest Hutu refugee camp in Goma yesterday at the start of a campaign to drive the inmates back to neighbouring Rwanda.
The soldiers, a mixture of commandos and armed gendarmerie, prevented any of the 190,000 Hutus from leaving Kibumba camp, and set up roadblocks which allowed only essential supplies of aid to pass into the camps.
Other troops employed as a camp police force by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for the last six months were patrolling the shanty avenues of Kibumba, asking Hutus to return home.
"The situation is very tense, but calm so far. The Zaireans have given assurances that they will not enter the camp to force people home. Hutus are just standing around in groups staring at the soldiers," said Allison Campbell, a spokeswoman for Care, one of many agencies which are preparing relief supplies in case the Hutus cross into Rwanda en masse.
Kibumba and other camps in Zaire and Tanzania have become cities in the past year and a half. The Hutus have built guesthouses, bars and schools and started businesses. Their host countries have agreed with the UN refugee agency that the camps should be closed before they become permanent settlements.
The camps have also been hotbeds of Hutu extremism, where militiamen responsible for the genocide of a million of their Tutsi countrymen and Hutu moderates in 1994 have been training, rearming and launching attacks against the Tutsi regime in Rwanda. Tutsi residents of Zaire, themselves victims of Hutu onslaughts dating back to 1959, have also been targeted by Hutus in their villages in Zaire.
"Rwanda is just four kilometres away from the camp. The UNHCR and the Zairean authorities have set up a crossing-point for them and sent in trucks to transport them. But not a soul has opted to go home yet," Miss Campbell said.
Rwanda's Tutsi-dominated Government, which came to power after defeating the Hutu army, whose energies went largely on slaughtering civilians, has imprisoned 63,000 people suspected of taking part in the genocide in overcrowded jails. Few Hutus living in Zaire dare to return to Rwanda for fear of facing a similar fate.
"The aim of the Zairean authorities appears to be to make life in the camps so unpleasant and boring that the Hutus will want to return to Rwanda. But this is unlikely to succeed. Using force might, but it is more likely to end in bloody chaos," said a Western aid worker in Goma, the once sleepy town beside Lake Kivu which is now dominated by the vast refugee camps situated near by.
One frightened refugee said: "We have not been told what is happening; it all depends on the will of the Zaireans. I do not want to go back to Rwanda."
The relatively small Zairean contingent deployed so far could be reinforced from the local barracks where 1,500 men are stationed, and by air from the capital, Kinshasa, where the better-equipped Special Presidential Division is based.
The number of soldiers taking part in yesterday's operation encouraged aid workers, who said that a larger number was likely to have become unruly and aggressive. "It is a relief they are outnumbered. A bigger number would indicate that the Zaireans were preparing to use force," a senior UN source in Goma said.
ATARI, the US computer and video games company, is to merge with JTS Corp, a privately owned disk-drive manufacturer, as part of a diversification away from entertainment. Atari has had difficulty maintaining its position in the games industry against Sega and Nintendo, its Japanese rivals. Atari shareholders will own 60 per cent of the merged company. JTS was formed in 1994 by Jugi Tandon, the company's chairman. He will be chairman of the new company.
THE British director Michael Radford's Il Postino, the story of an unlikely friendship between a postman and a poet in 1950s Italy, swept the boards at the Oscar nominations yesterday. The star, who was nominated for Best Actor, saw nothing of the film. Massimo Troisi died 12 hours after filming ended.
The film, in Italian with Italian stars, was singled out for Best Actor, Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Music.
Radford recalled yesterday that Troisi's last words to him were: "I'm sorry I couldn't give you my best. In the next five pictures we do together, you'll see the real me." The director said: "I just wept. He looked like a ghost."
Other nominees, in a lean year for American films but a strong one for foreigners, were the British actors Emma Thompson and Sir Anthony Hopkins, and a talking Australian pig.
Nominated for both Best Actress and screenplay for Sense and Sensibility, Ms Thompson becomes a favourite for at least one Academy Award on March 25. Other British contenders include Kate Winslet as Best Supporting Actress (Sense and Sensibility), Tim Roth as Best Supporting Actor (Rob Roy), and Mike Figgis as Best Director (Leaving Las Vegas). Sir Anthony's Best Actor nomination for Nixon was his third in five years.
No clear favourite emerged for Best Film, leaving room for two esoteric nominees: Babe, the surreal story of a pig which finds a calling as a sheepdog, and Il Postino. Radford's moving fable is the first foreign-language film to be nominated in the top category in more than 20 years.
The other Best Actor nominations went to Nicolas Cage, as the suicidal drunk in Leaving Las Vegas, Sean Penn, who spends most of Dead Man Walking on death row, and Richard Dreyfuss, enjoying a comeback at the box office as a music teacher in Mr Holland's Opus.
In the Best Actress category, Ms Thompson faces tough competition from Susan Sarandon (Dead Man Walking) and Elisabeth Shue (Leaving Las Vegas). Sharon Stone and Meryl Streep were also nominated.
Two other British nominations were A Close Shave, for Best Animated Short, by the Bristol-based master of animated clay, Nick Park, and Anne Frank Remembered, for Best Documentary Feature. Park has already won two Oscars and the number of nominations for A Close Shave matches that of Waterworld, the most expensive movie ever made. The Kevin Costner epic was nominated for its sound track.
Refreshingly, the 5,043 Hollywood insiders who vote on the Oscars steered clear of bland, expensively promoted fare. The Bridges of Madison County and The American President won only two nominations between them. Voters also surprised critics who have raved over the deeply depressing Leaving Las Vegas by denying it a Best Film nomination.
Two action-packed blockbusters Apollo 13 and Mel Gibson's Braveheart are in the running for Best Film and a brace of supporting awards, winning nine and ten nominations in all respectively. But for the first time in three years, Tom Hanks, the star of Apollo 13, was left out of the Best Actor stakes.
Woody Allen won his twelfth screenplay nomination for Mighty Aphrodite, bringing him level with Billy Wilder's record.
FISONS SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS saw a strong turnaround with operating profits of £5.7 million in the 12 months to December 31. The company lost £9.8 million in the previous year and £38 million in 1993. The recovery was attributed to a 10 per cent rise in turnover to £286.3 million and costs cuts. Employees were reduced by 9 per cent to 2,796 by the year end. Fisons Scientific Instruments is now owned by Rhone Poulenc Rorer, which is negotiating its sale to Thermo Instruments Systems of the US for £202 million.
CONSTRUCTION orders reached their highest level for two years in December but the industry still gave a warning that its workload would continue to decline and job losses escalate during the early part of this year.
The Construction Industry Employers Council (CIEC) lambasted the Government for failing to give momentum to the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and so replace cuts in construction capital spending.
The Department of the Environment said that the total volume of new orders in the fourth quarter was 21 per cent higher than in the third quarter, and 20 per cent higher than in the final three months of 1994.
However, it gave a warning that the jump in orders was the result of a small number of large contracts in the private commercial and industrial sectors. It noted that, overall, orders in 1995 were 4 per cent down on the previous year because of sharp drops in both the public and private housing sectors.
Martin Laing, chairman of the CIEC, acknowledged that yesterday's figures were encouraging and that they could constitute the first genuine sign that construction orders could be on the start of an upward path. But he still insisted that there is considerable uncertainty.
Mr Laing said that there were two urgent requirements that must be met if the continuing decline in the construction industry was to be reversed: a return to confidence in the housing market and Government action to galvanise the Private Finance Initiative into generating substantial numbers of new projects quickly.
Mr Laing said the Government had repeatedly expressed the wish to set an example as a "best practice client" of the construction industry. However, it had conspicuously failed to do this in three crucial areas the need for quality instead of the lowest price; the need for single-point responsibility for projects; and the Government's poor track record on prompt payments.
He added: "We are committed to making a success of the PFI but our commitment is not open-ended. We cannot continue to tolerate the prohibitively high tendering costs for PFI projects which we are facing at present."
Mr Laing also complained about low investment, including in construction, claiming that to date, the share of annual output going to this end had dropped by a quarter in the 1990s. However, he was more hopeful on prospects for the housing market, saying that tax cuts taking effect in two months' time would help, as long as interest rates are pitched and maintained at the lowest possible level.
IT IS a very French way to sort out a basket case. Rather than the shattered careers, massive job losses and brutal finality that goes with the Anglo-Saxon system of receivership, the French send in impartial mediators to seek a civilised solution.
The mandataires ad hoc system, introduced in 1984 has been tried many times before but never on a company remotely as large as Eurotunnel, nor on a multi-national.
Lord Wakeham and Robert Badinter, the two mediators appointed last week, have no fixed term of contract and are not obliged to make a formal report at the end of their deliberations.
They can see who they like, meeting when they like and where they like. As Sir Alastair Morton put it, they can hold their meetings in a bar if they want to the emphasis is on informality. The best translation of mandataires ad hoc might be a "wise man" or amicus curiae, a friend of the court.
Their priority is to find a solution to an employer's problems that will preserve jobs, not to act as the representative of a baying mob of creditors as under the Anglo-Saxon tradition.
French law emphasises, in order of priority, the continuation of the company and the jobs it provides, the preservation of the shareholders' interests and finally those of creditors.
Their eventual recommendations, if any are produced, are non-binding and can only be implemented with the agreement of the main parties involved.
Although few of the many parties involved in the Eurotunnel crisis objected to the appointments yesterday, there is little optimism that they will find an acceptable compromise solution to a problem that has eluded some of the finest financial brains in Londoh and Paris.
Eurotunnel's banks were last night trying to take a positive view of the development. Although some have expressed concern that Eurotunnel might use the appointment of mediators as a negotiating tool, bringing the threat of liquidation closer, others said it might actually help to resolve the deadlock in talks.
THE Government should introduce a new survey-based measure of unemployment each month, in addition to the regular count of jobless claimants, according to a new government study.
The Central Statistical Office (CSO) will publish tomorrow a report on jobless figures commissioned by the CSO from David Steel, an Australian statistician. Details were given yesterday to the Commons' Employment Select Committee.
Dr Steel recommends a monthly version of the current Labour Force Survey (LFS), an internationally accepted measure of unemployment. Every three months it collects labour market data from 60,000 households. To save on costs, Dr Steel proposes collecting the full LFS data from only a third of the sample each month. Some ministers are sceptical, but may be swayed by the prospect of more accurate charting.
The cost of a monthly LFS could rise to about £14 million annually from between £5 million and £6 million at present.
Ministers hope that new claimant-count unemployment figures, to be released today, will show a further fall.
PROCTER & GAMBLE, the household goods manufacturer, has launched a price war against own-label rivals.
The company has cut the price of its dishwashing liquids and nappies and there are plans to reduce the cost of detergents, fabric conditioners and household cleaners, according to a report today in Marketing magazine. In dishwashing liquids, where own-label goods now has about 25 per cent of the market, Procter & Gamble has cut the cost of its leading Fairy Liquid brand 10 per cent to 72p.
The move means the price differential between Fairy and own-label brands at Tesco and Sainsbury is just 3p.
Lever Brothers, a rival manufacturer, plans to compete with the cuts and has reduced the price of Persil by 10p to 69p. Asda has also joined in the cutting of prices.
A similar price war is raging in nappy retailing, where Procter & Gamble has cut the price of Pampers to £5.99 from £6.45. Kimberly-Clark has followed suit with Huggies and Tesco has cut the price of its brand, Advances, to £5.39 from £5.89.
ASIL NADIR, the fugitive businessman, laundered £400,000 in stolen funds through Swiss bank accounts in order to pay personal debts, the Central Criminal Court was told yesterday.
The money was channelled from Polly Peck International (PPI), once one of the UK's top-performing companies, and used to pay stockbroking fees and other private expenses.
Details of the alleged transactions emerged at the opening of the trial of Elizabeth Forsyth, former financial adviser to Mr Nadir. Mrs Forsyth, 59, of Great Dunmow, Essex, denies two counts of handling £307,000 and £88,050 in stolen funds in October 1989. She was appearing at Chichester Rents, the Central Criminal Court annexe in Chancery Lane.
David Calvert-Smith, opening the prosecution for the Serious Fraud Office, told the jury of seven women and five men that Mr Nadir used Mrs Forsyth to disguise the fact that he was using company funds to pay private debts. In October 1989, the court was told, Mr Nadir needed a large sum of money to pay some private debts. He allegedly stole the money from PPI and used Mrs Forsyth to launder the money so that no trace of its origins remained.
Mrs Forsyth's 88-year-old mother, Margaret McAlpine, joined onlookers in the court.
Mr Calvert-Smith told the jury that PPI grew rapidly after Mr Nadir became chairman in 1980. Within seven years, it had interests in America, the Far East, Turkey and northern Cyprus, and, by 1989, was ranked as one of the UK's top 100 companies. One of the northern Cyprus subsidiaries, Unipac, a maker of cardboard boxes, would feature prominently in the case.
By 1990, Mr Nadir's 25 per cent shareholding in PPI was worth about £300 million. For all its size, he retained a high level of personal control, continuing to authorise money transfers on the basis of a single signature, in spite of growing opposition from fellow directors. Mr Nadir left the UK in May 1993 and, "as far as the Crown is aware", had never returned.
Mrs Forsyth met Mr Nadir in 1985, when she was working for Citibank in Berkeley Square, central London, close to the PPI headquarters. She was a manager dealing with high net-worth individuals "very rich people", as Mr Calvert-Smith put it. Mr Nadir was one of her clients.
In June 1987, Mrs Forsyth left to become Mr Nadir's personal financial officer, signing up on a three-year contract worth £45,000 per annum, plus car and expenses. She became chairman of South Audley Management (SAM), formed to oversee the Nadir family's personal business empire. This included an estate called Baggrave, which Mr Nadir hoped to turn into a model farm, and which was allegedly the recipient of £88,050 in "stolen" funds.
The court was told that the bulk of the stolen funds was allegedly used to pay AJ Bekhor, a stockbroking firm, whose former employee, Jason Davies, worked closely with Mrs Forsyth. In 1989, Mr Davies moved to France to take charge of a new company, Nadir Investments SA. The court was told that Mr Nadir was trying to obtain Swiss residency. The trial continues today.
SALES of National Lottery Instants hit their lowest level last week, amid signs of growing hostilities in the crowded UK scratchcard market. Instants' sales slipped to £19.3 million, crowning seven successive weeks of lacklustre performance.
Sales have been falling steadily from a weekly peak of £44.4 million in May 1995, not long after Instants were launched. Camelot, the National Lottery operator, has introduced several new games in the hope of boosting sales, but without success. It faces additional challenges from rival operators, such as Littlewoods, the pools group, Scratch-n-Win, backed by Lord Mancroft, the anti-drugs peer, and Lukcy Lotto, which is advertising heavily to try to boost sales. Interest in the televised National Lottery draw has boosted on-line ticket sales well above the "usual" spend of about £65 million a week. On-line sales peaked at nearly £128 million in the week of the double roll-over in early January, and were £75.5 million in the week to February 10. Sales of Instants were running at £25 million or more a week until Christmas, but have tailed off sharply since then.
Camelot always expected Instants' sales to account for 20 to 30 per cent of total sales, and says that the decline mirrors the pattern overseas. However, current levels are at the low end of expectations, and there are signs that the public has become confused by the wide variety of games on offer.
Camelot currently has ten games on sale, including Noughts & Crosses and Aces High. Scratch-n-Win has six on sale. Littlewoods runs several games on behalf of specific charities, and claims sales of £1.4 million a week.
Scratch-n-Win will not disclose precise figures, but expects sales to top £100 million "comfortably" this year, if January is anything to go by.
UK Charity Lotteries, the name behind Lukcy Lotto, hopes to reap an extra £300,000 a week in sales from its current advertising blitz. Weekly sales are currently running at about £1.3 million.
For every £1 spent on a Camelot scratchcard, 12 per cent goes to the Government, 5 per cent to retailers, 5 per cent to the company and 28 per cent to the five "good causes" that benefit from lottery funds. The company is supposed to put the remaining 50p into the prize pool, but in fact puts 55p into it for every card sold. It is able to do this because it effectively subsidises the scratchcard prizes from the money it gets from its on-line game.
Peter Davis, Director-General of the National Lottery, allows this because the overall amount of money that Camelot puts into the combined pool of its scratchcard and on-line games comes to about 50 per cent.
Charity scratchcard operators have long complained that this is unfair. Unlike Camelot, charity scratchcards are ruled by the Gaming Board, which insists that the charities put only 50p per £1 scratchcard into the prize pool.
REUTERS, the financial information and electronic trading group, hinted yesterday that it will announce a share buyback or a special dividend by next year in an effort to reduce its £850 million mountain of cash.
Peter Job, chief executive, said: "We are actively exploring ways of returning surplus cash to shareholders in a manner consistent with the interest of all shareholders."
Market expectations boosted Reuters shares by 31p to 675p, a record high.
A buyback appears the more likely option. Reuters, having completed a £350 million buyback in 1993, then equivalent to 4 per cent of its equity, knows how to solve the associated tax and legal problems.
The cash pile at Reuters has grown by £316 million over the past year as the company recorded strong revenue and profit growth in its global operations. The facts that there were few acquisitions and that there was slightly lower capital spending helped the cash reserves. The desire to return value to shareholders suggests that no large acquisition or diversification plan is in the works. Reuters has spent only £200 million on acquisitions in the past five years and has said that it has no desire to become a conglomerate like Dun & Bradstreet, the financial services and audience ratings group that is now breaking itself up.
Reuters reported a pre-tax profit of £599 million for the year to December 31, up 17 per cent from the £510 million profit in 1994. Earnings per share were 25.8p, against 21.7p, and the operating margins increased from 19.9 per cent to 20.4 per cent.
Revenues were up 17 per cent to £2.7 billion, partly because of a 31 per cent revenue growth, to £243 million, at Instinet, its automated share dealing system.
Reuters said it was confident it could maintain double-digit earnings growth this year, but could not be assured of similar revenue growth.
BRITISH AEROSPACE and McDonnell Douglas of the United States have unveiled plans for a tail-less aircraft to replace the Harrier jump jet and the F16 Eagle, the world's most successful post-war strike aircraft.
The supersonic jet, steered by its engine, is one of three vertical take-off and landing designs competing for $10 billion of development funds under a joint US/British programme. British Aerospace, teamed with Northrop Grumman as well as McDonnell, is determined to earn a 10 per cent stake in a programme that could sell 3,000 to 4,000 aircraft worth more than $80 billion over the next 50 years.
Rival designs are being drawn up by Lockheed Martin, the world's biggest defence contractor, which has bought technology from Yakolev of Russia, and by Boeing. However, BAe hopes its experience in developing the Harrier, produced under licence for the US Marine Corps by McDonnell as the AV8B, will tip the balance in its favour.
Britain's Ministry of Defence has invested $200 million in the $2 billion Joint Advanced Strike Technology programme. The aim is to develop a plane in three versions. One would have short take-off, vertical-landing capability. That would replace the Royal Navy's Sea Harrier fighter-bombers and AV8B jump-jets used by the US Marines. A second version will replace carrier-borne planes used by the US Navy.
The third version, built on the same production line, would operate from conventional runways. Each would embody the latest stealth technology, carrying weapons within the wing and fuselage to minimise radar signature.
Rivalry between the contenders is intensifying ahead of the selection, in October, of two teams to each produce two rival prototype aircraft.
INVESTORS who lost more than £100 million in the collapse of Barings will today authorise lawyers to issue writs against former senior executives of the bank, and three leading City houses that participated in the bond issue.
Jonathan Stone, the lawyer heading the Barings bondholders' action group, said that writs aimed at recovering the original £100 million, as well as a further £9 million in lost interest payments, and all the costs involved, should be issued shortly.
The three former executives of Barings, which crashed almost a year ago with debts of £860 million run up by the dealings of Nick Leeson on the Far East money markets, have been named as Peter Baring, the former chairman, Andrew Tuckey, his deputy, and Peter Norris, chief executive officer of investment operations.
Writs are also to be served on City houses that participated in the January 1994 bond issue, including Hoare Govett, part of ABN Amro, the Dutch banking group, BZW and Cazenove. Barings plc and Baring Brothers, both of which are in administration, will also be the target of writs issued through Ernst & Young, the administrator. This is a technical move aimed at moving the bondholders up the list of creditors, from near the bottom as subordinated loan-note holders.
The move by the private bondholders has the backing of several powerful institutions through the Association of British Insurers, some of whose members among them Legal & General and Scottish Amicable also invested in the loan notes.
Mr Stone said that ING, the Dutch banking and insurance combine that bought Barings, might also consider making compensation payments in view of the fact that it made "a serious error of judgment" in paying £90 million in bonuses to bank staff after Leeson's bogus trading.
EDDIE GEORGE, Governor of the Bank of England, last night hinted that he had disagreed with the Chancellor over January's quarter-point cut in interest rates, but insisted that their differences were narrow and technical. Speaking to the BBC on the eve of today's publication of the Bank's Inflation Report, Mr George said: "To the extent that we took different views, it would have been about a narrow, a very narrow, point." The two had agreed on commitment to price stability.
Hong Kong: The Dalai Lama fears that the six-year-old boy he had picked to be the next Panchen Lama may have been executed by the Chinese. Peking has installed its own "soul boy" as the second highest religious figure in Tibet. Neither the Dalai Lama's choice nor his family have been seen since last July. Yesterday Tenzin Gyeshe, his private secretary, said the Dalai Lama feared the boy may have been "killed, drugged or put in some sort of asylum where he will be rendered useless".
Hong Kong: China will participate in next summer's Olympic Games in Atlanta even if Taiwanese leaders attend. The decision was confirmed in Peking by Shen Guofang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman.
The former wife of Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, her sister and niece, are believed to be in Europe, preparing to defect to Seoul. Sung Hye Lim, who is on the run from a Geneva apartment, is the mother of Kim's eldest son, Kim Jung-Nam, now 26.
Success for Lamar Alexander comes after two years of vainly seeking recognition, writes Martin Fletcher in Washington.
LAMAR ALEXANDER wasted no time in capitalising on his surprisingly strong third place in Iowa's caucuses. He thanked his supporters at a jubilant Des Moines rally, sped to his waiting plane, and was stumping before dawn in New Hampshire.
It was an exceptionally sweet moment for the former Tennessee Governor who has campaigned in almost complete obscurity for two years longer than any other candidate. In all that time he never made double figures in the polls and was gently mocked by the media.
"I'm a little bit like a country music singer who's been singing in every bar for 25 years and one day is suddenly discovered," he would patiently tell sceptics. Now that day has come.
Mr Alexander is a distant fourth in most New Hampshire polls, but now has the potential to cause a major upset in next Tuesday's primary. The Granite State's Republicans will have to give the bright, personable 55-year-old a second look after his Iowa performance and, given Robert Dole's weakness, may well find themselves attracted.
Mr Alexander is a moderate conservative like Mr Dole, but has a boundless energy and a sunny disposition that the elderly Senate leader lacks. He is soft-spoken, pleasant and unthreatening, whereas Pat Buchanan, the right-wing broadcaster who also emerged triumphant from Iowa's winnowing process, bludgeons and divides.
Mr Alexander has done the requisite spadework in New Hampshire, walking 100 miles across the state last autumn. He has the lowest "negatives" of any candidate, having spurned his rivals' mudslinging. He is well placed to win over Steve Forbes's more socially liberal followers if the publisher's collapse continues, but his strongest suit is what he calls his ABC Alexander Beats Clinton.
He presents himself as the only Republican with the vision, dynamism and appeal to centrist voters to defeat the Democratic President another former Southern Governor and he certainly convinced many Iowans. Of the 16 per cent of Monday night's voters who named Mr Clinton's removal as their top priority, 46 per cent backed Mr Alexander and 33 per cent Mr Dole.
Mr Alexander was brought up in Tennessee, trained as a lawyer, and worked briefly in the Nixon White House and as a Senate aide. He was elected Governor in 1978 after walking 1,000 miles across the state, served two successful terms, and then became president of the University of Tennessee.
After two years as President Bush's Education Secretary, he took his wife and four children to Australia for a six-month break. He has been running his "stealth" campaign for President ever since, spending more than 80 days in Iowa alone.
To complete his armoury, Mr Alexander is also an accomplished pianist who plays Alexander's Ragtime Band at rallies. However, he has some obvious weaknesses. He is short of cash, though spending power did nothing for Mr Forbes or the Texas senator, Phil Gramm, in Iowa.
He is running as a Washington "outsider" who would devolve power wholesale not just to the states but also to communities, but has in fact done three separate stints in the capital. He claims that he stayed "long enough to be inoculated but not infected".
He presents himself as a man of the people, wearing a trademark red-and-black flannel shirt at every opportunity, but is in fact a multimillionaire whose political status opened doors to some lucrative deals. The way things are going, Clinton campaign operatives will soon be starting to investigate them.
THE air was thick with debate at the home of Danny Bolt in suburban Des Moines as 24 defenders of Iowan democracy sat in the smoke-filled drawing room to discuss a future Republican presidency.
Mr Bolt, a property manager, had organised the smallest of the city's caucuses at his house and was launching into a strident attack against the anti-abortion rhetoric of the Christian Right.
"I think it is a single platform which is trying to dominate the Republican party, and I find it both revolting and disrespectful," he said.
John Helvig, an estate agent, and Larry Smith, a wholefood supplier, leapt to their feet in defence of American morality, the issue that dominated the living rooms, churches and rural backwaters of Iowa this year. They and eight others in the room had already voted for the candidate who best expressed a groundswell of opinion against the creeping liberalism of President Clinton, and that was Pat Buchanan.
The result of this tiny exercise in democracy placed Mr Buchanan an easy first, six votes ahead of Robert Dole, the Kansas senator. The figures were checked, then telephoned through to the convention centre in Des Moines where they played a small but significant part in securing second place for the conservative commentator.
The United States has found it hard to credit the rise of Mr Buchanan, whose nationalist sentiments, protectionist platform and moral stance are consistently condemned as too radical for the mainstream Republican party. In the space of only two weeks, however, he has won races in Alaska and Louisiana, has come an unexpected second in Iowa, and is looking increasingly strong in New Hampshire.
A straw poll in California, a state deemed unlikely to give credence to his assaults on large corporations and free trade, this week placed him second behind Mr Dole, the beleaguered Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination. Commentators who had said Mr Buchanan would fade, as he did after crippling George Bush in the 1992 New Hampshire primary, are starting to take note.
Charismatic and charming to all who meet him, Mr Buchanan is riding a rollercoaster of success and exploiting the lacklustre qualities of his rivals. He talks of economic treachery in the North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, of rural firms closing and of the moral decline of America. And the less privileged applaud him for it.
At meetings throughout Iowa last week, he received standing ovations from small businessmen, members of the Christian coalition and even from certain farmers undeterred by his wish to curb imports to the state.
In stark contrast to Mr Dole's victory party, the Buchanan fiesta at the Holiday Inn in Des Moines was packed with chanting and screaming supporters, a rally of momentum rather than a wake for lost opportunity.
The test will come next week in New Hampshire, where Mr Buchanan's economic nationalism may play less well and where the evangelical army of the Right is weaker. Its influence is felt in other states, however, and it will be impossible for any candidate to ignore the message it has sent from Iowa.
Veteran senator scrapes home but rivals gain ground in Republican race for White House.
THE first heat in the prolonged race for the White House left Robert Dole, the veteran Kansas senator, all but crippled yesterday as he limped away from the Iowa caucuses as the most hollow victor in a state that he had always claimed as his own.
After a six-month campaign in the Midwestern heartlands, in farms, churches and cities throughout Iowa, Mr Dole gained just 26 per cent of the vote. He was only three points ahead of Pat Buchanan, the conservative commentator whose artful campaign and populist message produced a final surge in the polls.
Lamar Alexander, the former Governor of Tennessee, came third with 18 per cent after peddling a positive campaign to combat the negative advertising that produced a turnout of fewer than 110,000.
Their backlash against the more than $4 million (£2.6 million) with which Steve Forbes had saturated the airwaves in the Hawkeye state left the multimillionaire publisher in fourth place, with 10 per cent of the vote. Phil Gramm, the Texas senator, was deemed dead in the water after insisting he would come third but managing only fifth place on 9 per cent.
The first sign that Iowa may have played its traditional role in reducing the list of candidates came with reports that Mr Gramm was contemplating his departure from the race. Last night he abruptly cut short a visit to next week's primary state of New Hampshire and returned to Washington to consult his campaign advisers. If he quits, he will possibly endorse Mr Dole.
For his part, Mr Forbes cancelled planned events yesterday to hold an urgent strategy session.
The real story of Iowa lay with Mr Dole, however. A native of the neighbouring state of Kansas, the Senate majority leader had always been considered the man best placed to secure the rural vote in Iowa and to proceed with a sedate campaign for the presidential nomination later this year. Instead, he flew to New Hampshire as the weakest winner in the caucuses' 24-year-history and the uncomfortable front-runner of a divided Republican party.
Challenged by both Mr Buchanan, now considered the true conservative candidate, and Mr Alexander, who is fast assuming the role of Washington outsider, Mr Dole, 72, faces a protracted battle. He fell well below the 37 per cent with which he won Iowa in 1988 and short of the 30 per cent that aides had said privately he needed to achieve momentum. In effect, nearly three-quarters of Iowa's rank-and-file Republicans would prefer to see another nominee.
A victory speech in Des Moines emphasised both Mr Dole's age and fear among party officials that he is incapable of beating President Clinton in November.
The senator stood at the podium, a burst blood vessel in his eye winking at the cameras and his withered right hand clasped firmly to one side. "Thank you, Iowa, that's twice in a row," said Mr Dole in a tone which suggested relief more than confidence. "We withstood a barrage of millions and millions and millions of dollars of negative advertising and came out on top ... Tonight was the first big step on our road to return conservative common sense to the White House," he said.
Such traditional conservatism had found only mild support in Iowa. There were signs that many under 65 placed little importance on Mr Dole's heroic Second World War record and consider his years on Capitol Hill to be a liability. "The Republican party respects Dole, but they don't think he is the man to lead them into the next century," said Fred Barnes, a columnist.
THE French Defence Ministry reportedly has drawn up plans to cut troops by almost half in a drastic overhaul of the armed forces.
The plan, which will be presented to President Chirac next week, would reduce the army from 240,000 troops to 130,000, scale down regiments from 186 to 83 and close at least 150 garrisons, Le Monde newspaper reported yesterday. The cuts would have a profound effect on Eurocorps, the European defence force created by the late President Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor, in 1992. One division reportedly facing the axe is the 21,000-man First Armoured Division, the central component in the French contribution to Eurocorps.
The 14-regiment division, now stationed in Germany, would be brought back to France and then phased out. The 50,000-strong Eurocorps, made up of troops from France, Germany, Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg, would be available to Nato if required.
The plan to withdraw the First Armoured Division is unlikely to play well with France's partners in Eurocorps, who have yet to be informed of the proposals. M Chirac is expected to unveil his radical plans for the French armed forces in March, when the Defence Ministry will present a new budget aimed at reducing spending of Fr100 billion (£13 billion) a year by at least a quarter.
THE German Army is in trouble. Many young Germans are rejecting military service 161,000 registered as conscientious objectors last year at a time when Germany is trying to project itself as a military force in the Balkans.
The figure for conscientious objectors half the normal intake of recruits has prompted a debate about the purpose and future of national service in Germany.
Across Europe in France, The Netherlands, Austria and even Switzerland governments and defence planners are considering whether to scrap conscription. If they do, it will spell the end of a tradition that resumed in modern times with the French revolutionary armies of 1792. Some trace conscription's origins to the democracy of ancient Athens.
French plans for a fully professional army have so unsettled the Germans that the subject took up a significant part of the talks this week between Alain Juppe, the French Prime Minister, and Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor. For Germany, there are two critical issues. The first is that, if some states have purely professional armies while others have a mixture of conscript and regular soldiers, it will be difficult to construct a common European army.
The different levels of expertise and expectations will make units such as the Franco-German Brigade and the multinational Eurocorps even more of a muddle. As recently as the Franco-German summit of last December, Herr Kohl was still thinking in terms of conscription: he proposed that German conscript soldiers serve in the French Army.
Now even President Herzog has declared that "military service is not a generally valid, eternally appropriate principle". For Germans of the middle and older generations, this came as a shock; since 1958 military service has been part of the democratic schooling of Germany.
Shrinking defence budgets and the changing nature of war have forced the rethink in Europe. The Netherlands has taken the first step by announcing that no new conscripts will be called up. All conscripts should be released to civilian life by August 30. In Austria, Caspar Einem, the Interior Minister, urged an overhaul, saying that it was enough for Austrian borders to be defended by "a form of police with somewhat heavier equipment". The Swiss are wondering whether their militia is the appropriate way into the 21st century.
The Austrian minister's comments led to protests from the officer corps and from other parties. The German debate looks set to be equally bumpy. The military preference in Bonn is to boost the value of national service rather than cut it. Conscientious objectors are meant to serve their time working in hospitals and old people's homes.
The constitution says they have to be treated equally with conscript soldiers. In practice, they are better off: most weekends are free, they can wear what they want, live at home and (since soldiers have their food and rent deducted) have more cash in hand. The rush to apply to be a conscientious objector is only partly prompted by moral scruples. For the most part, it appears to be a question of comfort.
The political resistance to creating a fully professional German army has been shaped by the period leading up to the war. Professional soldiers, it is claimed, inevitably need a closed professional officer corps which could be pitted against the political class.
Military service has been regarded as part of democratic culture since the days of the Prussian reformers: the right to the vote was intrinsically linked with the duty to fight. When Prussia beat France 125 years ago, Gustav Freytag, the German writer, concluded that French morale had been sapped by the corrupt implementation of national service; richer Frenchmen could pay others to do their military duty for them.
Freytag claimed that, fairly applied, conscription made countries less aggressive. The German leader also appears to be convinced that conscription still has a function.
TWO hundred miles east of Moscow, in temperatures that make the wolves and elks howl and bellow at night, an elite Russian Su27 combat fighter squadron is facing a unique challenge.
For the first time, the airmen of the 54th Fighter Aviation Regiment (air defence), hidden in the deep forests of the Nizhny Novgorod region, called Gorky before perestroika, have had to open their hangars to official Western snoopers, a British arms control inspection team who have arrived without warning.
Yesterday Major-General Gennadi Mukhamedyarov, the base commander, himself an Su27 Flanker pilot, welcomed his British visitors from RAF Scampton, Lincolnshire, and led them past an avenue of silver birch trees covered in snow to a line-up of 34 Flankers sitting in the sunshine, each stamped with a George and Dragon, a symbol of the base.
The sun had only managed to raise the temperature from -22C(-5F) to -14C (6.8F). As the Russian general looked on, British officers and NCOs who looked underdressed compared with their Russian counterparts in huge fur-lined combat jackets and matching hats, counted the Flankers and peered into the bowels of the aircraft to make a note of the serial numbers. James Bond never had it so good.
The authorised 007 in this case was a woman, Major Margaret Roberts, 35, of the Intelligence Corps, second-in-command of the team of eight Britons, one Norwegian and one Frenchman, who arrived at this once top-secret base on Monday night to fulfil the latest phase of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE), signed in 1990. Under CFE data exchanges between Russia and the West, the Savostleyka base was supposed to have 37 Flankers. There turned out to be 38, four in hangars. The extra one had arrived recently from the factory. Under the treaty, the signatories only have to report increases of 10 per cent or more, so the addition was just noted down.
Russian pilots come here to convert to the Su27 Flanker, one of two aircraft the other being the MiG29 Fulcrum which have forced Britain and her Nato partners to develop even more sophisticated fighters to be able to compete. China has just signed a deal with Russia to manufacture Flankers on licence.
CFE inspections are a serious business, but there is also a degree of comedy. To the veteran inspectors who have been travelling round Russia and the former Soviet republics, CFE also stands for "Charter For Eating" or "Continuous Food Eating". Under the treaty, the host country receiving an inspection has to guarantee to provide three meals a day.
The serious and the comic combine to build friendships with the Russians. Gone are the stiffness and formality of the bad old days. Once the work is done by the inspecting team, the generals, colonels and sergeants relax.
General Mukhamedyarov, 45, who has been to the American Ellmensdorf air base in Alaska and has flown an F15, spoke without nostalgia of the Cold War days. He said: "Now I wish the British people health, wealth and happiness. But this is not an official point of view, it is from my heart."
Gerard Leban, president of the jury to find the best French baguette, examines a leading contender in Paris yesterday. Ninety-nine bakers are competing for the coveted Grand Prix de la Baguette. The winner will have the honour of supplying President Chirac with his daily bread for one year. Bread consumption in France is falling, particularly in urban areas. Parisians now eat only 160 grams of bread a day, compared with 900 grams 100 years ago. This still adds up to an impressive 1.3 million baguettes a day. M Chirac eats one and a half baguettes every day.
ITALIANS were shocked this week by a spate of murders in which the victims were women. The crimes have led sociologists to speculate that the growing independence of women may be provoking a backlash in a minority of violent men. In several cases the women were stabbed repeatedly.
In a map captioned "Italy stained with blood", Il Messaggero summarised
eight recent murders of women, which were also featured on television bulletins.
Police point out that the motives in each case were different: a love affair gone wrong, attempted robbery, drugs or a possible argument over money and debt.
However, Italians are wondering whether Italy is becoming a more violent society, with women as easy targets.
Raffaele Morelli, a psychiatrist, says the murders are "the price Italian women are paying for women's liberation". Men, Dr Morelli said, have not yet accepted the fact that women are taking more control of their lives.
A police unit for the analysis of violent crimes is examining the incidents. Its head, Salvatore Montanaro, said that although Mafia crime has been a feature of Italian life for years, the increase in crimes against women is new. "Today Italy is an industrialised, technological, multiracial society in which violence is more and more accessible, as in America." He suggested Italy may have a serial killer at work.
The preoccupation with the murders comes days after women MPs forced through a Bill overturning a Mussolini-era law that had defined rape as a crime against "public morality". The law, still to clear the Senate, makes rape a crime against the person and increases penalties.
Feminists dismiss the view that crimes against women are on the increase because women's liberation has gone too far in a country used to Latin traditions of male dominance and pride. "We are building a new culture of respect for women's bodies," said Daniela Monteforte, a women's rights campaigner.
Women's groups say crimes against women are not new, and much rape within the home has gone unreported for years. The focus on attacks on women and girls has also led to the setting up of a much-used hotline for frightened or oppressed women, which from modest beginnings has become a powerful campaign centre for women's rights.
THE head of Germany's Bundesbank publicly conceded yesterday that the timetable for economic and monetary union (EMU) might have to be altered, adding his voice to the growing chorus that seeks to delay the launch of the euro single currency.
Hans Tietmeyer, the Bundesbank President, told industrialists in Frankfurt that delay would be preferable to any relaxation of the strict rules that will determine which European Union states can join the union. "The currency union, once set in motion, cannot be allowed to derail. If necessary, a delay is less problematic," he said.
The Bundesbank's opinion on monetary union has an important bearing on German public opinion. Alain Juppe, the French Prime Minister, was forced to acknowledge in Bonn this week that monetary union might be postponed.
ONE of the Angels of Humbert, two beautiful 13th-century wooden statues that were stolen from a tiny church in northern France, has been returned after 20 years.
The "smiling statue" is one of the finest surviving examples of Gothic carving and its return marks the latest chapter in a saga involving French revolutionaries, a Belgian smuggler, a British collector, and now, in all probability, the European Court.
The statue was one of seven angels carved between 1265 and 1270 for Arras cathedral. Arras was the birthplace of Robespierre, the revolutionary leader. In 1789, with France gripped by lawlessness, the statues were removed to keep them safe from looters.
At least that was the theory, but by the beginning of this century the statues had been dispersed. Two are in an Arras museum, another is in the Louvre and two more found their way to New York.
The last two angels ended up in the church of the little town of Humbert in the Pas-de-Calais region, where they remained until 1976 when thieves stole them.
In April 1994, Rene van den Berghe, a notorious but latterly repentant international art trafficker better known as "Eric the Belgian", declared that he had discovered and restored one of the missing angels. It transpired that he represented a British art connoisseur living in Gibraltar, Denis Jimenez, who had purchased the statue in good faith from a Portuguese art dealer.
Mr Jimenez, not wanting stolen goods on his hands, began the process of returning the statue to France via Spain. It is now being held by Paris police while experts appraise and value it. But the angel's tale may not be over yet. Mr Jimenez's widow may file a suit, claiming it was acquired legally.
Six of the angels of Arras are back in France, but the seventh, also stolen from Humbert church, remains on the wing in parts unknown.
RICHARD HOLBROOKE, the American negotiator in Bosnia, arrived in London yesterday for talks after Washington had approved the transfer to The Hague of two senior Serb officers arrested by the Bosnian Government. He said the action underlined American insistence on bringing to justice those guilty of war crimes.
Before Mr Holbrooke left Bosnia, William Perry, the US Defence Secretary, announced a tactical change in the hunt for war criminals. He said Nato troops would be given photographs of suspects to make it easier to detain them at checkpoints. But peacekeepers would not conduct manhunts.
Over lunch today with Malcolm Rifkind, the Foreign Secretary, Mr Holbrooke will review his tour of Balkan capitals, undertaken to rescue the Dayton accords from collapse over the arrest of the suspected war criminals.
Mr Rifkind will have talks in Sarajevo next week during a three-day tour of the Balkans, including Albania and Greece. He will emphasise the importance of the civilian provisions in the Dayton deal, especially the timetable leading to elections by the end of December.
Nato's delivery of the two Bosnian Serb military officers to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague was criticised by Russia.
In the Serbian capital, Belgrade, Vojislav Seselj, the Serbian ultra-nationalist leader and former ally of Slobodan Milosevic, was reported to have applied for a Dutch visa in the hopes of testifying against the Serbian President at the war crimes tribunal.
Mr Seselj, who heads the Serbian Radical Party, was quoted as saying he wanted to visit The Hague, but that he expected "concrete benefit" from giving voluntary testimony. His paramilitary troops fought in Bosnia when he was allied with Mr Milosevic.
YESTERDAY in the Commons: questions to health ministers and the Prime Minister, followed by Labour-initated debates on NHS staff morale and on the private security industry, and a backbench debate on cuts in the Coastguard service. In the Lords: debates on the Broadcasting Bill, committee stage, and on promoting UK environmental technology and service companies.
TODAY in the Commons: backbench debates on Lancashire education service; the Speaker's conference on English regional authorities; retail parks in northwest Leeds; European funding for south west projects; and discretionary purchase of blighted homes. Trade and industry questions will be followed by debates on the Security Service Bill, remaining stages; Local Government Reorganisation (Compensation for Loss of Remuneration) Regulations; and road links with Norwich A11 and A47. In the Lords: debates on the Common Fisheries Policy; human rights in Turkey; and the Wild Mammals (Protection) Bill, second reading.
EMPLOYEES who blow the whistle on crime or malpractice at work will get legal protection against reprisals if a Bill published yesterday becomes law.
The Public Interest Disclosure Bill aims to end what MPs call the "culture of fear" among workers who are afraid to reveal wrongdoing. Many so-called whistleblowers in the public and private sector have been sacked or denied promotion.
The new Bill, which is set to receive its second reading on March 1, would protect whistleblowers from being sacked, denied promotion or discriminated against if they reveal malpractice in the public interest. However, that protection is available only if they first raised the matter privately with their employers and were ignored.
The whistleblower would be able to obtain an injunction to prevent threats of reprisals and, where appropriate, claim compensation through the courts for loss of earnings, distress and damage to reputation.
The move has cross-party support. Yesterday Don Touhig, Labour MP for Islwyn and the Bill's sponsor, was backed by the Tory MPs Edwina Currie, Iain Duncan-Smith and Richard Shepherd. However, minsters have yet to give the Bill their full support and it will founder without sufficient parliamentary time.
Mr Touhig said: "Employers are entitled to loyalty and confidentiality in normal circumstances. But where there is serious malpractice, it is vital that people know that the law will protect them if they act responsibly."
DON'T PANIC! It's only Corporal Jones, the dithering NCO in Dad's Army, urging British voters abroad to back Labour.
In a move that would have sent Captain Mainwaring puce with rage, Corporal Jones, alias the actor Clive Dunn, asked for permission to speak yesterday at the launch of Labour's campaign to secure the expatriate vote at the general election. Labour aims to emulate the Tory practice of squeezing in a few extra votes by explaining to Britons abroad how they can register and take part in elections back home.
Mr Dunn, 76, retired with his wife to the Algarve eight years ago after becoming disillusioned with Tory rule. "I am a sort of political exile," he said. "I ran away from Mrs Thatcher we used to call her Vera Lynn with A levels."
Although a lifelong Labour supporter, he joined the party only last year after overcoming a fear of political organisations prompted by a four-year stretch in a Nazi PoW camp. "I didn't want to join anything, not even the Boy Scouts," he said. He promised to return to Britain if Labour won the election.
Would Corporal Jones have voted Labour? "That is a very difficult question," he said. "But I am certain Captain Mainwaring would have voted Conservative."
Labour MPs are being given information packs to distribute to supporters' groups while on party or personal trips abroad. Expatriates who have lived in Britain within the past 20 years can register by post and appoint someone to vote for them by proxy. Direct postal votes from overseas are forbidden.
In 1992, however, only 34,000 of the two million eligible expatriates registered and even fewer actually voted. Of those, an estimated 70 per cent voted Tory and 20 per cent Labour.
John Prescott, the deputy Labour leader, said that winning the battle for overseas voters helped to keep the Tories in power in 1992. "Labour is not going to allow that to happen again."
Whether British expatriates respond to the Labour campaign remains to be seen. In the words of Corporal Jones: "They might not like it up‘em".
Michael Trend, deputy Tory party chairman, said: "Who do you think you are kidding Mr Dunn? It is Labour who are on the run."
WELFARE fraudsters should be offered an amnesty and paid to go on job training courses, the Labour MP Frank Field said last night.
They should be allowed to turn their fraudulent income support claims into educational investment allowances to support themselves. "Such a programme would turn millions of claimants into a great engine force against the growing culture of dependency," he said.
Mr Field, chairman of the Social Security Select Committee, said that it would also contain the social security budget better than self-assessment of benefits, which the Government is considering as a cost-saving measure.
Delivering the Attlee lecture at the House of Commons, he recalled that in 1976 he had argued for Labour to sell council houses to free tenants from what he described as the serfdom imposed by autocratic local authorities. "I now make the same plea for income support claimants. It is time similarly to free them from the bondage of the Poor Law dependency which excludes them from the labour market."
Mr Field, MP for Birkenhead, mocked the Government's proposals for self-assessment. "Such a scheme might have worked in the Garden of Eden," he said. "It certainly has no place in our fraud-ridden world."
MALCOLM RIFKIND resisted demands from the Tory Euro-sceptics yesterday for the Government to take a hard line in its forthcoming White Paper on Europe.
The paper will set out Britain's objectives for the inter-governmental conference, which starts in Turin next month. The Euro-sceptics want a review of moves towards a single currency and radical proposals to win concessions for Britain, such as the repatriation of powers from Brussels.
But the Foreign Secretary dampened their expectations, saying that Britain would try to avoid confrontation on the main issues. He dismissed calls for immediate clarification of Britain's position on a single currency, and ruled out using the conference as a stage for confrontation on qualified majority voting.
Mr Rifkind outlined the Government's position as two rival factions one Euro-sceptic and one pro-European joined battle to try to influence the Cabinet's thinking on the White Paper.
The group of eight former whipless Euro-rebels appeared yesterday to retreat from their previous outright opposition to a single currency, but called for a referendum. In their paper, An Agenda for the IGC, they say that a Tory government should take Britain into a single currency only on the basis of a two-thirds majority vote in a referendum.
The rebels also said that they would not support John Major unless the party promised to withdraw from the common fisheries policy and to establish an exclusion zone around Britain's coastline.
Their consultation paper calls on the Prime Minister to veto any extension of qualified majority voting, to safeguard Britain's immigration barriers, to reform the common agriculture policy, and to stop any move towards a common defence and foreign policy.
The group's demands were dismissed as "romantic nostalgia" by the cross-party European Movement, which published its own document, Europe 2000. Edwina Currie, the group's vice-chairman, said that the Euro-sceptics were from "another planet".
She added: "The sceptics' ideas are based on the view that Britain is a top-dog nation and can tell the rest of the world what to do. That was true when I was a child but in the 1990s we are a competitor nation, a nation among other equal nations."
The European Movement, chaired by the Labour MP Giles Radice, called for a limited extension of qualified majority voting to cover pan-European research programmes, environmental measures and funds for poorer regions. It also called for a more effective EU foreign policy by allowing states to co-operate in joint actions.
Mr Radice said: "There is a danger that the Government's position will be all symbol and no substance policy which will play well with Euro-sceptics but lets Britain down in Turin. As a result Britain will be isolated, irrelevant, and unable to pursue our national interests."
Mr Rifkind gave little sign of being influenced by either group as he gave evidence to the European Legislation Select Committee. He suggested that ministers were unlikely to force a high-profile dispute in Turin over retaining the right of veto, and rejected calls for Britain to use the European fisheries policy in making a stand against qualified majority voting.
He also dismissed demands from the leading Euro-sceptic Bill Cash for the Government to make clear its position on a single currency and to use the conference to renegotiate proposals for monetary union. "I don't think there is anything to be gained out of dealing with this at the IGC," he said.
Frank Field is one of those unusual politicians who is almost above party. He has a quasi-saintly status as a man prepared to speak his mind regardless of party constraints. This has at times undermined his influence within Labour, though less so under Tony Blair. A rightly esteemed chairman of the Social Security Select Committee and an original, and prolific, thinker on welfare issues, Mr Field is admired as much, and often more, by Tory politicians as by Labour MPs. Baroness Thatcher enjoyed talking with, as well as to, him.
But his willingness to step outside conventional Labour thinking is not quite what it seems. He has many fresh ideas on welfare dependency. But, at heart, he is still committed to a redistributive system. He may engage in friendly debate with Peter Lilley. But their approaches are wholly different.
The starting points are similar since Mr Field is worried not just about the ever-rising costs of dependency but also about the moral implications. The case for the prosecution against means-tested welfare is strong, as Mr Field underlined last night in his Attlee lecture. The "uncontrollable" welfare budget would threaten any Labour government's attempt to shift priorities on, say, education and health. He argues that "far from having a clear beneficial impact, the fastest growing part of the welfare budget is insidiously undermining the moral fabric of our society". This analysis is implicit in the welfare-to-work proposals of Gordon Brown.
It is all very well to argue, as Mr Field does, that the self-interest of individuals needs to be made to promote the common good. That leads him to argue for a return to a national insurance based system in which people make contributions and have rights, what Mr Field called stakeholding long before the term became fashionable.
The problem, as always, is those whose income is too low to contribute and therefore to build up rights. Mr Field's solution is to have the State, that is the taxpayer, make up contributions for those on low and irregular incomes. They would therefore become full participants in his proposed universal, and compulsory, funded pension (to run alongside the state pension) and in a new national insurance system. This would link with a radical restructuring of income support into a form of career planning.
The idea of a national pension board, akin to the Singapore scheme, has attracted most attention because of worries over central direction of investment. It is noticeable that Chris Smith has been very wary of a compulsory, centralised scheme since his visit to Singapore. But the neglected question is cost since to create a funded scheme for all would require substantial government subsidies to finance the contributions of the poor up to an earnings-related level. This would have to be paid for by higher taxes or by some adjustment in the tax treatment of savings.
Similarly, Mr Field wants to break through the means test stalemate for the unemployed by reducing the current withdrawal of benefits, and hence big disincentives, for those entering work. This is a laudable aim, both economically and morally. But making up contributions to ensure that people are part of the national insurance system, even just to finance flat-rate benefits, would also require sizeable taxpayer support.
There are many attractions in Mr Field's desire to move to a system in which individuals have rights and own their assets, linking mutual aid and the private sector. That may be more politically acceptable. But, as he admits, total welfare expenditure would increase. In part, this would not go directly through the Exchequer, but through boards running these funded schemes. Nonetheless, a sizeable taxpayer subsidy would still be required. Mr Field needs to spell out the costs of his scheme.
A campaign to rebuild the stairs and steps that once gave access to the Thames is launched today. The London Rivers Association also aims to find new uses for abandoned jetties and barges. The steps had distinctive names, such as Hoy Steps, Elephant Stairs and Pickle Herring Stairs.
Why do we have language when other animals do not? Where do we get our words from? Why are all languages, no matter where they are spoken, so broadly similar?
These questions, which should intrigue the layman as much as the linguist, formed the bedrock of last night's Reith Lecture by Jean Aitchison, the Rupert Murdoch Professor of Language and Communication at Oxford University. The lecture, the second in a series entitled The Language Web, sought to explore the origins and evolution of human language.
Professor Aitchison said: "For centuries ideas about language origin have frothed like soap bubbles, then burst into nothing." She said the subject had long been "the focus of one weird idea after another" John Webb argued in the 17th century, for example, that Noah and his family spoke to each other in Chinese and that it had become a serious field of inquiry in the past ten years.
The professor, of course, leads an important part of this inquiry, as last night's lecture showed and her next book, The Seeds of Speech: Language Origin and Evolution, will be published in March by Cambridge University Press.
Professor Aitchison believes that modern humans and human language "probably came from one area of the globe" Africa. The tectonic shift that created the Great Rift Valley there, she said, stranded humans in the arid east of the continent, pressing them to adapt in order to survive. Herbivorous man took to hunting and eating meat: it was then, also, that he may have taken to language.
In this controversial part of her lecture, the professor stated that since "evolution is as much a case of suppressing some options as it is of selecting others, language may have been a lucky choice out of a range of alternatives". As if that were not enough food for thought for one lecture, Professor Aitchison also suggested that the communication of information was not the most important function of language.
"Language is good at transferring some types of data, especially negative reports such as ‘No buses will run on Sunday' but it is bad at other types, especially spatial information, where instructions such as ‘Take the third turning on the right then the fourth on the left' would be much clearer on a map."
Language, she said, was a "patchwork of efficiency and inefficiency". Its greatest strength is not as a "fact-swapping device" but as a thread with which to weave webs of "friendship" and "deceit".
The first she describes as a kind of "mutual grooming", where humans use language "to keep in touch with one another"; the second she regards as the way we "influence and persuade one another".
Professor Aitchison's next lecture is on Tuesday at 8.30pm on BBC Radio 4.
A rock fan was jailed for five years at the Old Bailey for the manslaughter of a neighbour who complained about Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love played at full volume. David Ravenhall, 23, of Sydenham, southeast London, admitted stabbing William Clark, 44, through the heart.
A pilot of an RAF Hawk trainer on a routine mission was killed yesterday as he ejected on take-off from RAF Valley in Anglesey. The pilot, who has not been named, was alone in the aircraft when it went into a sudden roll. He ejected but was too close to the ground to survive.
FRANK WARREN, the boxing promoter, was disqualified from serving as a company director for seven years by a High Court judge yesterday. The ban comes in the wake of a four-year investigation by the Department of Trade and Industry and threatens to cast a pall over next month's world title fight in Las Vegas between Mike Tyson and Frank Bruno.
Mr Warren, who recovered from a gangland shooting incident to become Britain's foremost promoter Prince Naseem Hamed and Nigel Benn are also on his books was expected to fight the action. However, he consented to a seven-year ban in the face of accusations including trading while insolvent and failing to file annual returns.
The disqualification order is linked in part to the London Arena in Docklands, which collapsed in 1991 with debts of more than £20million. Mr Warren had a key financial stake in the venue, and suffered substantial losses when the receivers went in. The arena subsequently reopened under new management.
The proceedings against Mr Warren focused on 29 companies of which he was director, nine of which went into compulsory liquidation in 1990 and 1991. A number of these companies, including Arena Developments (Europe) Limited, were involved in the development of the London Arena.
In a statement of agreed facts, read in court, it was found that Mr Warren had failed to file annual returns and accounts in accordance with the Companies Act, and failed to maintain and preserve accounting records. He was also found to have defaulted in the submission of VAT returns. Payments to Mr Warren and his companies were made after the presentation of a winding-up petition that had not been sanctioned by the court. There was also an instance of trading while insolvent.
Mr Warren did not accept all the allegations, made by the Official Receiver, and pleaded in mitigation that he did ensure that professional accounts departments or accountants were retained. Nevertheless he consented to a seven-year disqualification order being made. Mr Justice Blackburne, sitting in the Chancery Division of the High Court, made the order under the Company Directors Disqualification Act.
In making the decision to accept the court order Mr Warren had to bear in mind his career commitments. Stephen Davies, Mr Warren's solicitor, said: "He decided that this was the busiest time of his entire career. He's working a 16-hour day. He is involved in big promotions with all his top boxers and is contractually committed to attending various events and press conferences. He is planning a trip to America with Frank Bruno.
"If he had fought the court decision he would have been required to be in court probably for two or three weeks and that would have meant he would have been in breach of these obligations. He could have been sued or lost a large amount of money. He couldn't afford to jeopardise all this by spending time on legal proceedings.
"The court would not adjourn the hearing until March, when Mr Warren had a freer schedule, so he decided to accept the seven-year disqualification order."
Mr Warren could not be reached for comment last night. His home in Tewin, Hertfordshire, has been nicknamed "My Little Pony House" by locals, on account of its luminous pink decor. The house has turrets, stables, a swimming pool, a large garden backing on to fields, and a long, sweeping drive.
Correction: Headline: Frank Warren;Correction Issue Date: Thursday February 22, 1996 Page: 2 Our report (February 14) about the seven-year directorship ban on Frank Warren referred to a "gangland" shooting incident in which he was the victim. We accept that this was not an instance of gangsterism, in which he has never been involved, and that he was in fact shot by an unidentified assai lant. We also accept that Mr Warren rejected the allegation made in court tha t he had traded while insolvent. We apologise for these errors.
POWER lines concentrate car and industrial fumes into clusters of dangerous gases which could increase the risk of cancer, a scientific study has shown. Families living near busy roads and overhead cables are most at risk, according to a research team led by Professor Denis Henshaw of Bristol University.
It found that carcinogenic pollutants such as benzene and radioactive polonium from petrol are attracted to power lines "like bees round a honey pot". The scientists claim that homes with naturally occurring radon gas are also affected by overhead power lines, which trigger a build-up of radioactive particles, exposing the occupants to an increased risk of cancer.
Dr Alan Preece, a member of the team, said yesterday that the worst scenario would be that of a family living near a busy road and overhead power lines in an area with high radon gas levels.
The National Radiological Protection Board, the Government's radiation advisers, yesterday dismissed the results as "speculative". But Professor Henshaw said that it had failed to understand the science behind the research.
His team had crossed the "conceptual barrier" that there was no evidence showing how exposure to electro-magnetic fields might cause cancer. "In fact such fields can concentrate a cocktail of known carcinogens," he said.
The findings, funded by the Medical Research Council, follow laboratory experiments simulating low and high-powered electrical fields.
Professor Henshaw's team claim the radioactive gas particles and traffic-fume pollutants bind to water vapour or aerosols. The power lines, whose fields can penetrate homes, concentrate these hazardous aerosols. The electrical field also causes them to "oscillate", making it easier for them to penetrate the lungs and other body tissues.
"The effect we measured indoors could be even more pronounced outdoors. In homes the issue is radon gas. Outside it is other sources, of which motor-vehicle exhausts are a key one," said Professor Henshaw. Many ideas have been advanced to explain why cases of leukaemia are higher near power lines, but no link has been found.
Professor Henshaw said the National Grid might consider fitting mesh screens, which significantly reduce electro-magnetic fields, around power lines.
DETAILS of a lost world cut off for more than five million years and containing 31 unknown species were described to American scientists yesterday. Rising floodwaters forced the occupants of a Romanian cave to leave behind the normal rules of life on Earth at a time when man's nearest relatives were still living as apes.
The creatures have evolved to live in darkness, without photosynthesis capturing energy from the sun, and instead live on chemical energy provided by an atmosphere of hydrogen sulphide, which would be poisonous to most life on the planet.
They were discovered when the ape-like creatures, now human beings, drilling the foundations for a nuclear power plant, unexpectedly broke through to the Mobile cave near Mangalia, close to the Black Sea coast, in 1986. A biologist, Serban Sarbu, began exploration when the plant was abandoned because of the unfavourable geology. His studies ended when he fled the Ceausescu dictatorship and were resumed only in 1990, after the regime fell.
Yesterday Mr Sarbu, now at the University of Cincinatti, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science how all the food consumed by the creatures in the cave came from the energy produced by the oxidation of hydrogen sulphide, a gas given off by natural sulphur springs. The creatures who have survived, and in some cases evolved, range from bacteria to spiders, beetles and scorpions. The closest known parallels are communities of creatures living around vents on the ocean floor. Mr Sarbu said that the cave was just a small part of an ecosystem that spread underground over 100 square kilometres. "We are looking at the entire groundwater ecosystem," he said. "This particular cave is just one room in a whole maze of passages that are not accessible to us."
Most of the unusual animals are found in air pockets which can be reached only by diving. The theory is that they became isolated from the outside world when the level of the Black Sea fell about 51/2 million years ago. At that time, man's nearest ancestors are believed to have been the "southern apes" of Africa.
The walls of the caves and the surface of the subterranean lakes are covered by a dense mat of microbes. DNA analysis confirms that species have been isolated for a long time. An isopod a relative of the pill bug has been isolated from its relations for nearly one million years, and a water scorpion appears to have evolved for between two and five million years. The microbes may be the reason for the cave system being so extensive, Mr Sarbu says. "We know that the oxidation of hydrogen sulphide will eventually lead to the formation of sulphuric acid, which will attack the limestone rock."
The animals include spiders, leeches, snails, beetles, and a range of water-living creatures including nematode worms. All show a condition known as troglomorphy, with pale-coloured bodies, a reduction or complete loss of the eyes, and antennae of gigantic proportions which they use to find their way about in the dark. Of the 47 species found in the caves, 31 were new.
Now the explorers are trying to make sure that their arrival does not upset the underworld. Working in such an unusual environment is difficult. Even breathing can cause problems, said Mr Sarbu's wife, Lumanita, a biologist who is part of the investigating team.
"Once you start breathing depleted oxygen, the invertebrates are used to a certain level of oxygen and start running away." To minimise such problems, only three people are allowed in the caves at any one time.
QUEEN Elizabeth the Queen Mother undertook her first public engagement yesterday since her hip operation last November when she unveiled a memorial plaque in Westminster Abbey to Allied agents who died behind enemy lines during the Second World War.
More than 200 survivors of the Special Operations Executive, all now elderly and several in wheelchairs, attended the service to watch the Queen Mother, herself 95, unveil the commemorative stone to the 761 SOE volunteers who gave their lives, many by torture and execution.
Five years ago the Queen Mother, who is patron of the Special Forces Club, travelled to the south of France to unveil a memorial to SOE at Valencay, near the spot where the first SOE agent was parachuted into the heart of Resistance country.
Looking well despite a bandaged leg, and walking with only one stick, the Queen Mother was joined by a host of veterans, many shadowy and unknown, but some recognisable, including Viscount Slim, president of the Special Forces Club, and the actor Christopher Lee, himself a wartime SOE agent.
The Special Operations Executive was established, with the approval of the War Cabinet, on July 22, 1940, its task being, in Churchill's words, to "set Europe alight". It was headed by Hugh Dalton, then Minister for Economic Warfare, who later became Chancellor of the Exchequer in the post-war Labour Government.
Like all the other "secret armies" operating behind enemy lines, it attracted men and women whose courage, linguistic abilities and taste for intrigue matched their lack of respect for military convention, and consequently antagonised the establishment.
Its creation brought objections from both MI6 and the Army, to which Dalton replied that regular soldiers were "not the men to stir up revolution, to create social chaos or to use all those ungentlemanly means of winning the war which come so easily to the Nazis".
SOE was at constant loggerheads with its rival, the Special Intelligence Service (SIS), and its first substantive mission, in May 1941, to parachute members of General de Gaulle's Free French army into northern France, was almost frustrated by the reluctance of the Royal Air Force to supply the aircraft. Air Marshal Sir Charles Portal, Chief of the Air Staff, said: "The dropping of men in civilian clothes to kill members of the opposing forces is not an operation with which the RAF should be associated."
But, with Churchill's enthusiastic support, SOE grew in strength and numbers. Its agents were trained in burglary, safebreaking, hand-to-hand combat and silent killing. The tailors of Savile Row supplied them with clothes that would not look out of place in continental Europe, and the Science Museum provided forged papers. From occupied France, the group's activities spread to eastern Europe and the Balkans, and to the Far East, especially Burma, where intelligence activities proved important in turning the tide of Japanese invasion. Among its more notable tasks was the planning of the destruction of the German heavy water plant in Norway which might have given the Nazis the lead in constructing the first atom bomb.
SOE was staffed mainly by British and Canadians, but its principal task was to recruit and train local resistance movements in enemy-occupied countries. There were blunders as well as triumphs, and the price was often high. In June 1942 both the Czech and the Dutch resistance movements were betrayed to the Gestapo; in August and September 1944 28 British and French SOE officers were executed in retaliation for Allied bombing raids. In July 1945 the survivors of a group operating behind Japanese lines near Singapore were beheaded.
Among the triumphs was a successful mission to France to fly out a number of agents, including Francois Mitterrand, the future French President, who returned to his homeland three months later to organise a new resistance movement. The value of SOE's efforts was demonstrated on D-Day, June 6 1944, when, to reinforce the Allied landings in Normandy, it alerted 175,000 resistance fighters with the curious signal: The violin strings of autumn wound my heart with a monotonous languor.
Correction: In final para: This (rather poor!) translation is from Paul Verlaine‘s "Chanson d'Automne".
DOCTORS are as accustomed to being bitten by dogs as any postman. One assistant in our Norfolk practice became so neurotic about it that he wasted hours a day sitting in his car while he plucked up courage to make a dash for the patient's door. It was no good explaining that dog bites don't usually become infected.
It is different when someone is bitten by another person, as I learnt when a patient dug her teeth into my wrist: the resulting wound became most unpleasantly infected. The common clinical observation that the bites of cats and dogs are not so likely to become septic as those of a human being has been confirmed by a study of animal bites by four American doctors, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.
In the United States, 1 per cent of people who visit a casualty department do so because of a dog bite, and half of the American population will be bitten by a dog at some time.
Usually the injury is trivial and the wound heals rapidly. In adults the dog usually bites a hand, arm or the lower legs but in children it tends to go for the face; a good plastic surgeon should be consulted at once. In adults, unless there is severe tissue damage or the teeth have been dug in very deeply, secondary infection is so rare after a dog bite that the paper's authors don't even recommend routine antibiotics.
Cats have sharper teeth which act like needles during a bite and carry any organisms that are in the cat's mouth deep into the tissue of the patient's limbs, or sometimes into the small joints of the hand and wrist. Infection is more common than with dogs, and if the joint is involved the patient may suffer from septic arthritis. However, the most sinister bite of all is that of the human being. Human mouths are teeming with organisms and a bite is capable of spreading bacteria or oral viruses, such as the herpes virus.
Abscesses and cellulitis and bacterial cellulitis are frequent complications of human bites and a really savage bite can also damage underlying tendons of joints.
The wound needs careful cleaning, removal of any dead tissue and, if a cat or human bite, antibiotics as well as an anti-tetanus booster. Although the American doctors haven't found it necessary, many British doctors treat all bites as puncture wounds and give prophylactic antibiotics whether the bite has been caused by a dog, cat or human being.
OLD pop groups never die; they go solo, go broke, or stage eternal comebacks. Bros, Wham! and the Bay City Rollers were short-lived "teenybopper" groups that split up in a blaze of publicity after earning millions of pounds.
Only one of the three bands has spawned a successful solo artist George Michael from Wham!. The other former "stars" were relegated to the fringes of the music business.
Matt and Luke Goss, the twins who formed Bros, were the idols of a generation of teenyboppers from 1988 to 1991, when their last chart single, Try, failed to climb above No27. The band split, Luke stayed in London and Matt went to Los Angeles for three years "to grow as a man, to centre myself". He returned to London and a relaunch as a solo artist last year, while Luke married and formed a hard-rock band called Why. Both men, who are said to have earned and spent £12 million at the height of their fame, have retreated into relative obscurity.
When Wham! split up in 1986, Michael and Andrew Ridgley had sold more than 20 million albums and 12 million singles during four years at the top, earning them £23 million. With such laddish hits as Wham Rap and Young Guns (Go for It), Michael was embarrassed by the group's teenybop image, but his solo career was blighted by a courtroom tiff with Sony Records, which he lost. The contract dispute was resolved when Virgin Records and Dreamworlds Media Empire bought him out for £30 million. Ridgely moved to Monaco and took up Formula Three motor racing. His only solo album, Son of Albert, flopped in 1990. By 1992 he had retreated from showbusiness to live with his girlfriend, the Bananarama star Keren Woodward, and her son. They live in Cornwall, where Ridgely spends much of his time surfing, while royalties roll in.
The Bay City Rollers, sensations of the 1970s, are touring in two rival groups which formed when they split up acrimoniously in 1978. The lead singer, Les McKeown, 39, fronts Les McKeown's Seventies Bay City Rollers while the rest of the group won the legal right to call themselves The Bay City Rollers. The two bands play in small venues such as town halls and colleges, where they still wear tartan and pump out old hits such as Shang-a-Lang and Bye, Bye Baby.
They may be inspired by a Seventies revival in America: the Osmonds, minus Donny but as toothsome as ever, have just released The Best of the Osmonds.
TAKE THAT, whose music and carefully choreographed dance routines caused many a teenage heart to throb, are now breaking them by splitting up. The four remaining members of the most successful British act of the 1990s insisted yesterday that their decision was unanimous and amicable.
Take That, who sold ten million albums worldwide and had seven British No1 singles, announced their plans to pursue separate careers at a packed news conference in Manchester, their home city.
Within minutes of their announcement some fans were telephoning local radio stations in floods of tears begging the band not to split. RCA, the band's record company, has set up a helpline to get them through the first few months of life without Take That. Fans have also been telephoning Childline, the national children's charity, to share their grief at the demise of their favourite band.
Parents were urged to sympathise with upset children: "They need to realise that young people have very intense feelings about their role models and heroes."
The band, a polished ensemble of pretty and polite lads called Jason Orange, Robbie Williams, Howard Donald, Gary Barlow and Mark Owen, was formed in 1990. They had their first hit single in 1992 and won numerous music industry awards and the affection of millions of screaming fans. They notched up 12 top-ten singles, 14 top-40 hits and three albums, two of which reached No1 in the charts. Their hit singles included Pray, Relight My Fire, Babe and Everything Changes.
When the band formed they pledged themselves to a pure life without drink, drugs or girlfriends. Recently "the boys", as they were referred to in the music press, updated their image, using raunchy dance routines and wearing stage costumes which offered glimpses of their buttocks.
They bow out with their new single, a remake of How Deep Is Your Love? by the Bee Gees, an appearance next week at the Brit awards and a concert in Holland in April. The band's members pleaded with fans to "hold themselves together" until the band members resurfaced in their new careers. Mark Owen, 24, explained the reasons for separation: "We have done all we can do as Take That." The four band members had each independently decided a few months ago to split while they were "at the top", he added.
Williams is suing RCA to sever his contract. Take That yesterday admitted that this High Court action hung over their decision to split. "Fifty per cent of it is that it's what we all decided to do," Owen said. "There are other factors that we don't want to go into."
Despite the band's insistence they were all ready to pursue separate careers, Gary Barlow, 25, the band's principal singer and songwriter, was the only member able to announce immediate plans for a solo career. He said he hoped to have a single released by the summer, followed by an album and a tour.
Barlow is said to be worth £6.5 million, while the other three band members are reputed to have amassed £1.5 million each. They seem correspondingly less confident about their futures, which they hope will be in the music business.
When asked if Orange, Donald and Owen might sink without trace after the split, Orange, 25, replied with a smirk: "There's every chance of that." However, Orange said that there was every chance of a "comeback thing". He told the fans: "When we say it's the end, it's the end of Take That as it is now."
MICHAEL HOWARD took steps yesterday to prevent thousands of fine defaulters being sent to jail. The Home Secretary has ordered a review of court powers to deal with defaulters after growing concern about pressure on the prison system.
"Too many fine defaulters are committed to prison," he told the annual Prison Service conference in Brighton. Up to 500 people were serving sentences for non-payment of fines at any time and they were an "unwelcome burden on hard-pressed local prisons".
He was also unhappy that, having been sentenced to imprisonment, offenders no longer had to pay their fines. "The fine is expunged, thereby frustrating the court's intention that the prisoner should pay something back to the community," he said.
Mr Howard and the Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, have set up a working party to produce new guidance for the courts to ensure that the payment of fines is enforced "without resorting to imprisonment save in the most exceptional circumstances".
Home Office research to be published later this year will show that on average each person jailed for non-payment has defaulted on three fines for petty offences. More than 22,000 defaulters were jailed in 1994.
The Heritage Lottery Fund announced 49 grants totalling £11million. It includes £190,000 for the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, to help to improve its heating and enable its labour archives to be catalogued on the Internet. The library was founded in the 1960s by Edmund Frow, now 89, and his wife Ruth, 73, at their home. It now has council premises, with a flat for the Frows.
VILLAGERS have been awarded £1 million of lottery money to buy a heather-clad hill that overlooks their community and prevent it being quarried for sandstone. The 350 residents of Maeshafn in Clwyd, plan a nature reserve on the picturesque Moel Findeg, home to badgers, snakes and rare vegetation.
The villagers put in a bid for lottery money after they lost a 25-year legal battle to prevent a local family-owned civil engineering company, F.G. Whitley & Sons, from digging up part of the hill for road-building materials. David Scruton, secretary of the Maeshafn and District Rural Association, who helped to lead the battle to save Moel (meaning "bare") Findeg, said that the idea for applying for a grant came from his wife, Ann, after she heard a radio programme about the lottery.
"We are delighted. Everybody here refers to it as our mountain, although it is a very large hill really," Mr Scruton said. "From the top you can see the Clwydian mountain range and on a clear day you even see the Blackpool lights."
The quarrying activity would have destroyed the hill, Mr Scruton said. "They would have built a road 100ft wide right up to it. At present the road is not even the width of a lorry," he said. The villagers plan to start clearing up bracken and scrub from pathways. Geoff Rutherford, landlord of the Miners' Arms, the only pub in Maeshafn, said: "It is a great feeling for everybody to have won this."
Stephen Salt, chief planner of Clwyd County Council, said it had spent about £100,000 in legal fees trying to save the 400ft hill from being quarried. Moel Findeg has been designated an area of outstanding natural beauty by the Countryside Commission. The nature reserve will be run
by Denbighshire County Council.
Peter Richards, a spokesman for owners F.G. Whitley & Sons, said: "The company has always appreciated that if retained it would be of immeasurable value to the public."
THE European Union marked the seventh anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa against Salman Rushdie by urging Iran to annul the call for his death. It was issued over his novel The Satanic Verses.
Italy, which holds the EU presidency, said the union was ready to reopen talks that collapsed last year when Tehran retreated from promises of a written withdrawal.
The University of East Anglia has announced the award of Distinguished Fellow in Literature for Rushdie. Last month he was named Author of the Year at the British Book Awards.
THE owner of an 18th-century mansion used in the forthcoming Emma Thompson film of Sense and Sensibility has been ordered to conduct vital repairs or face losing the Grade I listed property.
Chandos House, built in 1770 near Harley Street in London, has been left empty since it was bought five years ago by a property development company whose chairman is a Nigerian chieftain.
English Heritage has given Fairgate Investments two months to carry out repair work, otherwise it will consider proceedings for compulsory purchase of the house.
Sir Jocelyn Stevens, chairman of English Heritage, is concerned by the decaying roof, spreading dry rot and cracked walls. "It is unacceptable that a building of this importance has been allowed to fall into a serious state of disrepair," he said.
"We hope that the owners will now act quickly to repair the building or sell it to someone who will care for it and bring it back into use."
Chandos House, built for the third Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, was used for London scenes in the Jane Austen adaptation. The interior, featuring original decoration by Robert Adam, became the townhouse of John and Fanny Dashwood.
Between 1815 and 1871 the house was the embassy of the Austro-Hungarian empire and was used for lavish parties by Prince Esterhazy, the ambassador. It was last used as a headquarters and hostel for the Royal Medical Association eight years ago.
Fairgate Investments, chaired by Chief Akindele, is thought to have bought the house for £6 million at the height of the property boom. It is understood that the company is unwilling to sell it for less than the original purchase price.
The company obtained permission to convert the house to a luxury hotel but the work was not considered viable and permission has expired. After the theft of four Adam fireplaces from the house, Fairgate Investments is suing a security company for £1.5 million.
The owners carried out temporary repairs to make the building watertight last year after English Heritage served an urgent works notice.
If English Heritage succeeds in obtaining a compulsory purchase order, the price will be determined by the Lands Tribunal.
Correction: In paras 3 and 6: Chandos House was NOY built for the 3rd Duke of Bu ckingham and Chandos, but more likely James Brydges, 3rd and last Duke of Cha ndos
THE sole survivor of an avalanche in central Asia has died less than three years later, in an avalanche in Glencoe. Paul Potter, married at Christmas, managed to save the life of his wife before he was swept away.
Theresa Potter, 37, had joined her husband on a climb because it was her birthday and she wanted to spend it with him. Mr Potter, 42, from Woking, Surrey, was running a training course for an adventure holiday company.
Only one person was signed up for the course this week: Alison Todd, 31, an inexperienced climber. She also lived because Mr Potter made both women unhitch their ropes from him and move away.
In August 1993, Mr Potter was the sole survivor of an expedition he led to Kazakhstan, when two British and two Soviet climbers were killed on the 23,000ft Khan Tengri in the Tien Shan range.
On Monday, he was tackling the 2,800ft Aonach Dubh, the most westerly peak in the Three Sisters of Glencoe range. The Scottish Avalanche Information Service has been warning of a serious risk all week.
Yesterday the deputy leader of the Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team, David Gunn, said Mr Potter's final actions had almost certainly saved the lives of the two women.
He said: "I understand that all of a sudden, he realised that there was a real risk which was not readily apparent as the three of them were going up the final slope towards the summit."
Mr Potter dug a snow pit and tested for avalanche risk. Realising they were in danger, he told the two women to unhitch their ropes and spread out on either side of him.
Mr Gunn said: "This was the action of a very brave man, who knew exactly what he was doing. By spreading them out, he drastically cut down the risk of them all being caught by the full force. The two women would have lost their lives if it was not for his experience and knowledge."
The Glencoe mountain rescue team, which had called to the scene, recovered Mr Potter's body yesterday.
DETECTIVES today released new pictures of Victor Farrant, the convicted rapist who is wanted over the murder of Glenda Hoskins. The photographs were on a roll of film found by officers at Mrs Hoskins's house in Port Solent, Hampshire.
One shows Farrant, 45, helping out in the kitchen of the murder victim's home. The second shows him smiling as he stands against a curtain in the house. They were taken just a few weeks after Farrant became Mrs Hoskins's boyfriend after his release from prison in November last year.
Mrs Hoskins's children have revealed how Farrant spent weekends playing the family man by washing up and ironing before the relationship turned sour. He brought soup for the two younger children, Katie, 16, and David, 13, when they were sick. Mrs Hoskins, 45, who had three children, was found dead at her home in the millionaires' yachting playground near Portsmouth on Thursday. The body of the accountant, who had been suffocated, was covered in bruises when police found it in the loft of her home.
Police also want to question Farrant over a vicious attack on escort agency boss Ann Fidler, 43, at Eastleigh, Hampshire, on December 27. Mrs Fidler spent six weeks in hospital after being beaten about the head with a bottle and stabbed with a knife.
She has permanent brain damage and can remember nothing of the attack. Farrant was released from prison after serving seven years of a 12-year sentence for rape, assault and false imprisonment. Detective Chief Inspector Paul Stickler said the new photographs were a better likeness.
THE daughter of a British businessman is facing a possible death sentence after being arrested yesterday at Bangkok airport and charged with trafficking nearly 9lb of opium.
Lisa Marie Smith, 20, was detained as she was about to board a flight to Japan.
According to police she "readily admitted" concealing the opium in her luggage with intent to sell it.
She told officers from the Narcotics Control Board that her father Terence, the chief executive of National Mutual Asia in Hong Kong, had given her a six-week holiday in Thailand as a Christmas present but she had run out of money during her stay.
Last night Miss Smith was in a Bangkok police cell with seven others after having photographs and fingerprints taken. Dressed in a blue T-shirt, long blue skirt and training shoes, she peered through the cell bars before settling down in a corner.
The penalty for drug-trafficking in Thailand is death, although no Westerner has yet been executed. Thailand resumed executions two weeks ago after a nine year break. Miss Smith's mother, Robin, was distraught after learning about the arrest and said her daughter had been "mixed up" recently.
At the family home in Old Peak Road, one of the most affluent areas of Hong Kong, she said: "How could she do this? How could she be so stupid? I spoke to her yesterday and she said she was going to India. I begged her to come home."
Miss Smith is said to have claimed that after her cash ran out an Indian man offered her a ticket to Tokyo on Thai Airways, gave her money and handed her the opium. She was to be met at Tokyo's Narita airport and escorted by train to Yokohama.
The drug had already been partially prepared for conversion to heroin, which is known as Chinese White or Number Four. Four kilos of raw opium can produce about half a kilo of heroin.
The presence of the Narcotics Control Board at Miss Smith's arrest at Don Muang international airport suggests it was not random and followed possible monitoring of a gang or a tip-off.
Miss Smith is British, although her mother is from Melbourne. Mr Smith's company, National Mutual Asia, has offices in Hong Kong and Macao. It has no connection with National Mutual Life Assurance.
Thirty two British people are held in Thai jails for drugs offences. Although Europeans are likely to escape the death sentence, the prison terms are severe. Until recently the most common sentence instead of death was 25 years but this has been increased recently to 50 years.
One Swedish girl, the daughter of an ambassador, was recently given life technically 100 years.
This year the King of Thailand will release 20,000 prisoners from jail to celebrate his 50th jubilee, but Miss Smith, if found guilty, will almost certainly not qualify.
Sandra Gregory, 30, a Scottish teacher, has spent three years in the so-called Bangkok Hilton after being arrested carrying 31/2oz heroin hidden inside a condom. She and her co-accused, Robert Lock, 30, from Cambridge, are due to be sentenced this month. Although Thai prosecutors have demanded execution by firing squad, it is likely that
the pair will receive 25-year sentences.
AMERICA'S Space Command Centre in Colorado last night joined in attempts to solve the mystery of an unidentified flying object which had apparently crashed on a Scottish island.
Startled islanders reported seeing a number of bright burning objects which they thought had started gorse fires across the remote heathland of Jura in the Inner Hebrides. Coastguards at Greenock, Strathclyde, said they received "numerous" reports from local people and ships, including one of a large comet with a tail. The coastguard later said it had been a heath fire.
Germany was given a warning that three of its provincial governments were violating European Union law by banning imports of British beef for fear of "mad cow" disease. The European Commission in Brussels gave the German Federal Government one month to offer reasons why it should not be taken to the European Court of Justice. It said the import bans violated EU free-trade rules.
A black detective has been awarded an estimated £30,000 over an "unfair" annual appraisal by the Metropolitan Police, which he claimed affected his career and salary.
Detective Constable Peter Franklin, based at Epsom, won the sum when the force settled his allegation of racial discrimination and victimisation out of court. He has served 16 years with the Metropolitan Police.
FLEUR Lombard, the first woman firefighter to die on duty in Britain, was remembered yesterday as more than 1,000 uniformed officers from across the country, including her colleagues in Bristol, gathered for a cathedral funeral service.
Her black coffin, draped in a Union flag and bearing her yellow firefighter's helmet, was carried on a turntable ladder at the head of a cortege that marched through Derby, the city where she was born and where she first worked as a part-time firefighter.
Shoppers stood in silence as officers walked in a guard of honour to the cathedral, behind the fire appliance in which the 21-year-old travelled to her last call-out.
Her parents, Roger and Jane, walked behind the coffin with other relatives. Miss Lombard was killed on February 4 as a roof collapsed, trapping her, as she tackled a blaze at Leo's Co-op store in Staple Hill, Bristol.
Before the service, Micaela Saunders, 22, a colleague from Bristol, stood to attention at the foot of the medieval tower entrance to the cathedral holding Miss Lombard's silver axe, won after being commended as the best recruit on her training course two years ago.
Six of Miss Lombard's colleagues from Derbyshire and from Bristol carried her coffin through the cathedral. Among them was Sue Osborne, 23, her best friend and one of the seven remaining women employed by the Avon brigade, who was with Miss Lombard at the fire on the day she died. Alongside stood Rob Seaman, 27, who was standing with Miss Lombard as the roof collapsed on them both. He escaped with minor injuries.
Andrew Walters, Chief Fire Officer at Avon, told mourners: "We in Avon were lucky. We were the first to interview her. It is true to say that the watch were a little apprehensive. They had never had a female firefighter on the watch.
"They soon discovered their fears to be ill-founded. It was clear that Fleur was there to do the job she loved, not to make a point."
News that the pop group Take That is to split has apparently prompted its distraught fan club to phone Downing Street. They need advice on how to paper over cracks and to reconcile belligerents. If anyone can hold a divided group together, they reason, it is John Major.
They are wise. The Prime Minister's first instinct in the Take That crisis will be to buy time: to postpone the decision until 1997. Then he will promise a White Paper on the issues and hint at a possible referendum, but in ambiguous terms. If pressed, he will set up an inquiry. He will see each member of Take That for a personal chat, one to one, authorising officials to talk separately to Mark, Jason, Gary and Howard: talks about talks. There may be hints (not from the PM himself, of course) about honours.
This column reckons Major's chance of success quite highly. Frankly, a man who has succeeded in cobbling together a Government out of some 325 treacherous, vain, greedy, scheming rats, skivers, oddballs, dimwits, deadbeats, wide-boys, fainthearts and raving lunatics and kept the show on the road for six years should have no trouble with four young men who at least seem capable of taking a steady view of their own advantage. Never mind Ireland: if Major can swing this, he'll sweep the country.
Tony Blair was confronted again yesterday with the questions raised by his proposal to give Scotland its own parliament. Bill Walker (C, Tayside North) complained about it to Mr Major, but the Labour leader remained tight-lipped. Earlier (to Opposition embarrassment) the junior Health Minister John Bowis had responded to a question from Maria Fyfe (Lab, Glasgow Maryhill): "May I welcome the honorable and Scottish lady to English Health Questions?"
A Scottish parliament, of course, would take responsibility for health north of the border, but Mrs Fyfe could continue to speak and vote on the English National Health Service. The Opposition can find no answer to the dilemma, as there isn't one.
Among new-Labour MPs, the puzzle has become rather like those questions that grown-ups don't ask the vicar because they are so plonkingly basic. It is left to children to inquire: "In Heaven, will Mummy be married to Daddy or to my first Daddy, who died?" Unlike with Mum and Dad, however, it is not open to Mr Blair to reply "Shut up and eat your Frosties", so he just says nothing. But how will he solve the problem? A Scottish Labour MP suggested yesterday what could well be the answer. Sam Galbraith (Strathkelvin and Bearsden) introduced a Bill for the establishment of national parks in Scotland.
Mr Galbraith is on to a good idea but he is too timid. Why not make the whole of Scotland a national park? The country could be "themed" so there would even be a place for the Gorbals and other dismal, granite-hewn urban prospects. As "the Caledonian National Park", the region would no longer need MPs but a park board on which Scotland's senior former MPs could sit while the others donned kilts and became rangers.
As P.G.Wodehouse almost wrote, it is possible to distinguish between a ray of sunshine and a Scots MP with a grievance. But in a theme park the aggrieved tone and surly countenance would be welcomed by tourists as adding to the authenticity of the experience. And the Commons would be rescued from the synchronised gripe they call "Scottish Questions".
BRITAIN and Ireland were edging closer last night to a deal to keep the Northern Ireland peace process on track. The agreement would involve Bosnia-style peace talks to be followed by elections.
As John Major prepared to publish a paper setting out his ideas for elections to a 90-strong assembly, John Bruton told the Irish Parliament that he was ready to talk about elections provided they led directly to the long-desired goal of all-party negotiations. But he made plain that elections should come after the so-called proximity talks involving all parties, similar to the conference in Dayton, Ohio, that settled the war in the former Yugoslavia.
Mr Bruton also criticised the Prime Minister for the speed with which he introduced his election plan within hours of the publication of the Mitchell report on decommissioning arms last month. However, his measured criticism marked a sharp contrast from his original reaction to the elections plan, when he said he feared it would "pour petrol on the flames".
Mr Major, who briefed the Rev Ian Paisley yesterday on his proposals for elections, hopes to publish his plans soon. Early ideas are for a body to be made up of about 90 members from 18 multi-member constituencies. They would form three groups which would pursue peace talks with representatives of the British and Irish Governments. Voting would be by proportional representation.
Mr Bruton, who cut off ministerial contact with Sinn Fein after the Docklands bomb, said his Government's main priority was to find ways of bringing Sinn Fein back into the full political process. But he insisted that this could happen only if the IRA restored its ceasefire.
"No Government can allow murder, or the threat of murder, to set the political agenda," he said. "Our state is founded on democratic principles ... If we accept violence in one area of life then we are opening the door to the acceptability of violence in other areas of life."
Despite his condemnation of the IRA, his mild criticisms of Britain underlined the feeling in the Irish Republic that the ceasefire might have lasted had Britain done more to reward Sinn Fein. These sentiments were spelt out by Bertie Ahern, the former Prime Minister and leader of Fianna Fail. He said that Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Northern Ireland Secretary, bore most responsibility for the impasse.
He asked: "Can it be that we are actually seeing the re-emergence of the old situation where Irish affairs are treated as nothing more than a pawn in the British political game? A plausible case could be made for saying that Sir Patrick's job was to manage the Northern Ireland peace process in a way that ensured the survival of the Tory Government rather than the survival of the peace process itself."
Albert Reynolds, his predecessor as Irish Prime Minister, said yesterday that he believed the IRA would restore its ceasefire if a date were set for all-party talks. Mr Reynolds, whose Government helped to bring about the ceasefire in 1994, was speaking after meeting Gerry Adams in Dundalk.
The Sinn Fein president said afterwards it would be difficult "to put this back on the rails". But he came close to echoing Mr Reynolds's comments when he added: "Obviously the only way is for real talks and all-party talks. That is one of the reasons why it collapsed, because the British broke the commitment they made to bring that about."
Dick Spring, the Irish Deputy Prime Minister, said that clarifications provided by Mr Major's statement yesterday would make it easier for the "elective approach" to be considered.
In Washington, David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, demanded that President Clinton should revoke Sinn Fein's permission to raise funds in America, to put pressure on the IRA to accept a ceasefire. He was backed by Jesse Helms, Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
THREE of the first four English counties to set their budgets agreed yesterday to spend more than the Government has allowed over the next year.
Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire want to raise council tax beyond government limits to pay for the increase. Wiltshire is to dig deep into its reserves to finance its over-spending.
The increases are only the beginning of the extra amount residents will have to pay. The final bills will include not only the figure for the county but the additional amounts levied by districts and parishes.
All three are hung councils and the budgets for them were agreed only because Labour and the Liberal Democrats voted together against Tory councillors who wanted to stay inside the government-imposed spending limits.
Cambridgeshire decided on a £408 million budget, which is £5.8 million above its cap. If the council can now persuade the Government to approve the budget, residents will face an initial 9 per cent increase in council tax plus inevitable further rises in the amounts yet to be levied by district and parish councils.
Even if it is allowed to raise the extra money, the council still plans to close four libraries and cut the opening hours of others. The transport and social services budgets will each be cut by £2 million.
Cambridgeshire avoided breaking through its cap last year by drawing £7 million from its reserves, which are now so low that the auditor has advised it would be dangerous to withdraw more.
Oxfordshire voted to spend more than its cap but councillors are still arguing about how far to go. The Government has set a limit of £332 million for the county, which claims it needs £344 to maintain services. Even at the capping level, council tax for the county will have to rise by 6.2 per cent before district and parish precepts are levied.
PIMLICO SCHOOL, a symbol of the 1960s and comprehensive education, yesterday became the first state school to seek private funding for rebuilding. The pioneering project has the blessing of Jack Straw, the Shadow Home Secretary, who is chairman of governors and whose son William is among Pimlico's 1,450 pupils.
Tory-controlled Westminster City Council wants £18.5 million from commercial backers to redesign, build and manage the school under the Government's private finance initiative.
Potential bidders will be able to recoup their investment by building houses on the site or by running a private sports club using school facilities out of hours. The school's low-rise, concrete and glass design won awards when it opened in 1970 but it has fallen into disrepair. Annual upkeep costs £370,000 and would rise without renovation.
The winning consortium chosen to rebuild the school will have a 25-year contract with the council to maintain and run facilities such as a swimming pool or canteen for the pupils and staff.
The Education Department sees the plan as the perfect opportunity for a flagship project to encourage other schools to work with the private sector.
One of Britain's worst schools for truancy and examination failures has been recommended for closure. The decision by education officials over Blakelaw comprehensive in an inner city area of Newcastle upon Tyne has pre-empted an inspection in October by the Office of Education Standards.
The Government's latest league tables show that last summer only one in ten pupils achieved five or more GCSE passes between grades A and C. One in four pupils skipped classes.
A FILM studio and theme park in west London proposed by the film company responsible for Batman and Bugs Bunny ran into trouble within hours of its announcement yesterday. The £225 million plan to develop a 150-acre green belt site at Hillingdon, west London, will be vigorously opposed by objectors, including three local Tory MPs.
Despite promises that the project would create 3,000 jobs, the MPs said they would attempt to block the development by Warner Bros, in partnership with the MAI group, owner of the Meridian and Anglia ITV companies. The plan includes a film studio, and attractions intended to draw up to two million visitors a year, including film-based adventure rides and sets from famous British films.
The park, to be called Movie World, will open in the summer of 1999 if planning permission is granted. The three Tory MPs who lent their support to objectors include Sir Michael Shersby, who represents neighbouring Uxbridge and is president of the London Green Belt Council.
Sir Michael has asked John Gummer, the Environment Secretary, to call in the application. He said: "This huge development is entirely contrary to both the letter and the spirit of green belt policy."
The theme park would be open between April and October. The studio would operate year-round, with 5,000 square metres of sound-stage space. The company says the plan could make the west London area, home to Pinewood and Shepperton studios, the Hollywood of Europe.
Lord Hollick, MAI's managing director, who appeared yesterday with Warner executives Nick Winslow and Sandy Reisenbach, said: "Movie World will give the UK the capacity to meet the demands of an increasingly global film and TV industry."
THE Prince of Wales spoke to a bomb victim who suffered more than 100 lacerations to her face when he visited the Royal London Hospital yesterday. Barbara Osei, 23, was recovering from eye surgery at Bart's Hospital but requested to return to the Royal London to meet the Prince. She is to be released shortly.
The Prince also met the emergency teams who coped with 37 injured people most of them cut by flying glass when they arrived in the Whitechapel hospital's accident and emergency department. Tea and cakes with nurses and surgeons followed a visit to the concrete and twisted metal of South Quay, in the shadow of Canary Wharf, where the Prince was shown the bomb damage.
Flanked by Sir Paul Condon, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and Commander John Grieve, head of the Anti-Terrorist Branch, he went to the spot where Inan Bashir, 29, a newsagent, and his friend John Jefferies, 31, died. Afterwards he met emergency service workers at Limehouse police station, where he praised the courage of police officers injured in the explosion. Among them was PC Roger de Graaf, who first identified the terrorists' lorry as a suspect vehicle.
Sergeant Anthony Gielty, one of the first on the scene, said: "He told us all we had done a marvellous job and thanked us for our efforts. He asked us to pass on regards to PC Paul Whitling, who has damaged ears caused by the explosion."
Two bomb victims are still being treated in hospital. Zaoui Berrezag, 55, was woken yesterday for the first time since Friday, but is being kept in intensive care on a ventilator and remains critical. The other, Ms Osei, is waiting to have stitches removed.
Mr Bashir was buried near his home in Streatham, south London, yesterday after a private family service at the Croydon Mosque.
Harrods launched an appeal yesterday against an earlier judgment by Mr Justice Harman allowing a London preparatory school to call itself the Harrodian School. The three-year legal battle went to the Court of Appeal where three judges will determine whether Sir Alford Houstoun-Boswall could continue with the name at his 400-pupil school in Barnes, southwest London.
The third chess game in a six-game match in Philadelphia between the world champion Garry Kasparov and an IBM supercomputer called Deep Blue ended in a draw yesterday. It was agreed after 39 moves in a rook-and-pawn endgame in which neither the Russian grandmaster nor Deep Blue could gain an advantage. The $500,000 (£360,000) contest now stands level at 1 1/2 points each.
JOHN MAJOR sparked fresh protests over the Scott report yesterday by rebuffing a personal appeal from Sir Richard Scott, backed in the Commons by Tony Blair, to allow MPs to see it early.
The Prime Minister infuriated Labour MPs by disclosing that the 1,800-page report into the arms-to-Iraq affair had been made available "only to those ministers or civil servants who need to see it in order to help prepare the Government's response to questions in this House".
He rejected Mr Blair's call for MPs to see the report an hour before it is published tomorrow at 3.30 pm with a Commons statement by Ian Lang, President of the Board of Trade. The Opposition parties are turning their fire on the Government for what they see as the unfair advantage it has taken in seeing the report eight days before anyone else.
Christopher Muttukumaru, secretary to the Scott inquiry, wrote to Mr Lang on Monday saying that Sir Richard hoped everyone with a proper interest in the report would be allowed access to it at the earliest possible moment so that public debate could take place on an informed basis. Whether this would be achieved if copies were not made available before Mr Lang's statement was doubtful, he said, and Sir Richard therefore suggested that the report could be laid before Parliament an hour or so earlier.
Meanwhile, the Government defeated by 19 votes a motion in the Lords from Lord Richard, the Labour peers' leader, and Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, the Liberal Democrat leader, for more time to consider the report.
THE TIMES relaxes its usually exacting linguistic standards today and, in the belief that true romance is still a small candle in a naughty world, permits Snoozypops to ask Diddly Wumps for snuggle pie and cuddle custard.
It is Valentine's Day again, when we celebrate passion and desire in the name of a celibate martyr bishop beheaded for his Christian faith by the Emperor Claudius the Goth around AD 270.
Lovers and would-be lovers have hijacked his saint's day since at least the 18th century, probably because it falls close to the pagan fertility festival of Lupercalia, when the ancients danced in celebration of baser desires.
In this leap year, when tradition dictates that the initiative can be taken by the female, most of our 20 columns of heavily coded mating ritual appear to have been originated by the male, although the encryption would at times try the best brains of Bletchley Park. That the Penguin Man loves the Snow Bitch is a fairly clear piece of gender orientation, but who wears the trousers between Babynose and Bum, Starling and Keefy or Pixie and Elfie?
The Royal Mail confirms that the leap year tradition is being ignored: it expects to handle a record 10.3 million Valentine cards this year. Postal research indicates that half of all men will send a card, but only 40 per cent of women. They, it is suspected, may have gone high-tech; sales of BT's Easyreach pager service are said to have been especially brisk since word spread that it was an efficient device for making secret trysting arrangements.
Discriminating lovers, however, still prefer The Times, and this year appear to be gradually growing out of their itchy-coo nursery language. In a clear spirit of European federalism, many of this year's messages are in French and as we would expect from such a literate and educated readership at least one is in Latin.
No foreign-tongued message can be as impenetrable as Fossil's message of love to Wombat: "Can't wait to be dug up and brushed down. Passion and pickaxes."
But no truer love is spoken than by the anonymous sender to an equally anonymous recipient: "My love is like your daily Times long-established, honest and true." Aaaaaah.
THE Church of England has moved from being a bastion of middle-aged, middle-class men to an increasingly leftwing organisation with a greater women's influence, according to a report published yesterday.
The survey of more than 500 members of the General Synod portrays a Church riven by self-doubt and concerned more with the Third World and ecology than traditional areas of Christian morality, such as adultery. Once described as the Tory party at prayer, the Church now comprises mostly Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters.
The survey, conducted before last year's Synod elections and published to coincide with this week's meeting of the new body at Church House in Westminster, says that the Church's parliament is still heavily biased towards particular social backgrounds, but adds: "Some categories conventionally labelled as middle class in contemporary society are conspicuous by their absence."
And while the number of bishops following the traditional route of public school and Oxbridge is still high, it has fallen dramatically since the Second World War. Three bishops including the Archbishop of Canterbury left school before they were 16.
Politically, support for the Conservatives among the bishops and laity has declined and there has been a strong move towards the centre among clergy although most of the 27 who were members of a political party chose Labour. The one bishop who belonged to a party was a Liberal Democrat. Only a quarter of the bishops or clergy voted Conservative in 1992, and Tory support among the laity dropped to 44 per cent from 51 per cent in 1983.
In spite of that drift, the laity as a whole remains less liberal than either the clergy or the bishops, with a greater proportion of Tory party members and a tougher approach to moral issues. Nearly two-thirds of the house of laity which for the first time had more women than men complained that the Church failed to give adequate answers to moral and social problems, family life and spiritual needs, while only a third of the bishops and half the clergy agreed.
The bishops put adultery, abortion, euthanasia and homosexuality at the bottom of their list of important issues. Their priorities were Third World problems, unemployment, the environment and politics. Two bishops went so far as to say that the Church should not speak out at all on adultery and one said that it should keep quiet on abortion.
The clergy also thought the Third World, unemployment and the environment most important, as did the laity, but a higher proportion of the latter group was concerned about adultery.
No bishop admitted to reading a tabloid newspaper or to listening to Radio 1; one said he read no newspapers at all and two had no television set in their palaces. Most bishops and laity said they read The Times while more clergy chose The Independent. Members of all three houses listened mostly to Radio 4 and Radio 3.
The survey of the 547 members of the Synod who served from 1990-95 was the fourth of its kind and was financed by the Synod. Its secretary general, Philip Mawer, says in the preface that its results "show the General Synod as a body continuing to evolve as the Church of England is self-changing and seeks the better to undertake the will of Christ in the nation it serves".
But traditionalists saw the report as vindicating their criticisms of the way the Church was changing. The Ven George Austin, the Archdeacon of York who lost his seat on the Synod last year, said: "I am beyond being depressed about the Church of England. But it is God's church and they will not win. The pendulum will swing back. People are fed-up with the trendiness of the Islington religion set. The equivalent of the Islington political set has moved into religion.
"Bishops are increasingly remote from the ordinary people. It is the politically correct chattering classes who dominate, which is why ecological sins are seen as a greater sin than the ones against the family. It is why the leadership the bishops give is so weak. The Synod has become remote from the men in the pews. I am glad that I am no longer part of it."
The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Coggan, defended the new approach, however, saying: "It is the task of the Church to be concerned with both moral issues and the conditions of the Third World. It is a delicate balancing act. I hope this present Synod will get it right. To rush to the conclusions that the Synod has lost its moral direction would be very rash."
Lord Williams of Elvel, a member of the House of Lords Ecclesiastical Committee, accepted the broad thrust of the survey. He said: "The Church is not giving any clear moral lead because it cannot. It is not structured to do so, and the lack of the clear voice is damaging the Church.
"Part of the problem is that the synods, from deanery to General Synod, spend a great deal of time talking about things which do not necessarily matter. The people who serve on these bodies tend to be people who have time, money and the interest to do so. But they are not necessarily truly representative of the man or woman in the pew."
Lord Runcie the former Archbishop of Canterbury questioned the survey, saying: "I do not recognise some of the findings. The leaders of the Church of England are major players in the current debate about divorce reform. It is a major piece of moral legislation. They are doing what they can. But if the Synod members think the answer is to make moral pronouncements then that is within their own power."
Lord Runcie believed that priority should be given to recruitment of young intelligent people to articulate the faith of the Church. "It is raising the standard of church life, in the parishes of England, which matters most.
"The closure of residential colleges, for financial reasons, creates a danger of getting clerical training on the cheap. There is no substitute for well-trained, good-quality clergy who are able to articulate the problem and do something about solutions."
Peter Bruinvels, a Synod member and former Tory MP, said of the bishops: "They need some strong leadership themselves. The problem is, they do not want to offend anybody and the result is they offend everybody. I understand it, they just want to be popular and they want to be loved". Mr Bruinvels accepted that Conservative influence in the Church was declining, but said there were "still plenty of Tories on the General Synod".
But the Rev Andrew Burnhaam, vice principal of the Oxford theological college, St Stephen's House, said: "I vote Labour because Labour espouses virtues of social democracy and can bring these principles into power. I don't know any Tories in the Church, although I think some might vote Tory secretly. I think there has been a move to the Left since the 1960s and the Wilson Government."
POLICE have definitely captured the Docklands IRA bombers on film from closed circuit television cameras.
Photographic experts have begun scrutinising film taken last Friday as the terrorists parked the lorry bomb 90 minutes before the explosion at 7.01pm. The frames are understood to show two bombers leaving the lorry.
Scotland Yard is enhancing the pictures and they will be compared with criminal records and intelligence files on IRA suspects. Even if they are not sharp they will provide details of clothing, build, height and possible age. The descriptions could jog witnesses' memories.
Three years ago the police were led to Jan Taylor and Pat Hayes, members of an IRA active service unit, within hours of releasing pictures showing them planting a bomb outside Harrods. Both were jailed.
JOAN COLLINS emerged from a New York courthouse $3 million richer last night after scoring a famous victory in her book contract dispute with the publisher Random House.
Miss Collins raised a fist in delight at the judgment and said that she intended to celebrate with champagne at a private party with friends.
The jury had taken an hour and 45 minutes to decide that she had not failed to deliver a "complete" manuscript for a roman a clef commissioned by Random House. The publisher had claimed that the book was so poorly written that it was not printable.
The jury agreed unanimously that her first manuscript, A Ruling Passion, was "complete". But on two other counts, it reached a majority verdict that her second effort, Hell Hath No Fury, was not complete and was a reworking of earlier material. Lawyers for the two sides will finalise the settlement out of court and Miss Collins is expected to end up with $3 million.
Miss Collins said yesterday that she had gasped when her late agent Irving "Swifty" Lazar had told her that her two-book deal with Random House was worth $4 million (£2.6 million), but she appeared relaxed about the prospect of defeat in court. Had she lost, she would have had to sell "a picture, or a bracelet or something".
In the event, she was able to savour the drama of her victory scene. She brushed a tear from her eye as the foreman delivered the verdicts before being lifted off her feet in an embrace with her assistant Judy Bryer. She then shook hands with the jurors and thanked them. Every member had been given copies of the manuscripts and one asked "Can I keep mine?" "You bet!" said Miss Collins.
The 62-year-old actress added that she was thrilled by the outcome, which had reinforced her belief in justice.
Judge Ira Gammerman, who conducted the case with great gusto, said: "The lawyers were wonderful and each witness was better than the last. I found the case a joy."
Earlier, Miss Collins's lawyer had admitted that the main ingredients of her book were "money and sex and power and sex and intrigue and sex", and described her prose as "not uneditable, just unedited".
Donald Zakarin also produced a definition of "complete" from the Random House dictionary. It said "having all parts or elements, lacking nothing, whole, entire, full". Quality was not mentioned.
He accused Random House of trying to intimidate all authors with its case against Miss Collins. "They are saying, ‘Don't mess with us, or we will show the world the difference between what you send to us and what we publish'." The publishers, who were seeking the return of a $1.2 million advance, had wanted to humiliate her, he said.
Miss Collins admitted yesterday that she was "mistress of adjectives", but she also pointed out that other writers' work could be equally laughable. While staying with friends at the weekend, she had read out snatches of prose by various popular novelists. Everyone had laughed at the descriptive passages, no matter the calibre of the writers. "Popular fiction is like chocolate," she said. "You know it's not good for you, but you go on eating it."
Now she intended to use her court experience as inspiration for her next book. "This one will end with the court case, but it will have a lot of anecdotes. Swifty always told me: ‘Remember kiddo, all they really want to know is who you slept with'. And to tell you the truth, I do have a few more of those stories left."
Writers' rooms lead into writers' lives
From 1910 until 1919, three years before his death, Marcel Proust spent most of his time in an enormous bedroom in his flat on the Boulevard Haussman. The room had cork panels nailed to the walls and ceilings to keep out the noise of traffic, long blue curtains that were always drawn and a perpetual smell of fumigation in the room to help his asthma. Here, lying in bed in layers of sweaters, he wrote his novels.
Sequestered from the world, until the late evening when he ventured out to those society receptions and strange haunts so minutely observed in A la recherche du temps perdu, Proust guarded the privacy of the one place where he found a lonely happiness. The room where his life and memories were transformed into his great novel has long been a shrine in the minds of those whose own lives have been marked by immersion in A la recherche: but only now can devotees pay homage in person. The bank that owns the building has meticulously restored Proust's favourite room adding only a vast photograph of the reclusive writer and this week it was opened to the public. Thousands of literary pilgrims are expected in the summer.
Visiting the room where a great work was engendered is increasingly popular, and not only with the literary cognoscenti. Seeing the walls, the furniture, the knick-knacks and paraphernalia of the period conveys, almost subliminally, something of the period and the outlook of the writer: these were his favourite things, this is where his eye rested when he looked up from his manuscript. Indeed some writers are now so closely identified with their surroundings that their houses, and especially their studies, have become national monuments: Vita Sackville-West's gatehouse at Sissinghurst, Kipling's house at Bateman's, and T.E. Lawrence's retreat at Cloud's Hill offer insights into the minds of writers who seem enigmatic and remote from contemporary taste. All three properties are owned by the National Trust.
Many artists are notorious for the bizarre conditions under which they worked. Aubrey Beardsley, pencil thin and etiolated like his drawings, worked only by candlelight; James Joyce shut himself up in a tower; and Roald Dahl conjured up witches in a garden shed. Prisoners have scribbled furtive chapters on smuggled scraps of paper. Queen Victoria wrote a gushing diary at her desk in Osborne House. Perhaps the least typical venue for a struggling author is the Riviera or a room at the Ritz. But for Joan Collins, at least, it has paid off: her blockbuster may soon be in the bookstalls, and, as the critics note, "When you put it down, you can't pick it up again." The literary pilgrimages cannot be far behind.
Alexander is now the top alternative to Dole
The voters of Iowa have made the American presidential contest much clearer. Only one candidate, other than Senator Robert Dole, appears capable both of capturing the Republican nomination and of offering a serious challenge to Bill Clinton in November. That man is Andrew Lamar Alexander, who finished a respectable third in the caucuses with 18 per cent on Monday night. Patrick Buchanan is too extreme to be either nominated or elected. Phil Gramm threw in the towel last night. The candidacy of Steve Forbes is severely crippled. If it is not to be the Senate majority leader who remains the solid favourite, then New Hampshire voters will have to give a big push to Mr Alexander next Wednesday.
The former Governor of Tennessee is an interesting and attractive possibility. He was a highly successful governor during his two terms, promoting far-reaching school reform, modernising transport and drawing record levels of investment into the state. From there he went on to be President of the University of Tennessee and Secretary of Education under President Bush.
His fortunes in this contest so far have been based less on his impressive record in office than on his ability, despite that background, to project himself as an outsider. Like so many before him, including the current incumbent, he is running for Washington by running against it. Mr Alexander is a long-standing populist. He won the state governorship in 1978 after a campaign in which he walked 1,000 miles across Tennessee wearing his trademark red and black lumberjack shirt. His speeches were enlivened by his varied talent with musical instruments. The walking shirts, and instruments, have been widely witnessed in New Hampshire over the past two years. With what effect we shall shortly see.
His campaign messages have been somewhat vague to date. He has called for a citizens' legislature that would meet for half the time and pay of the present Congress, and has urged the radical devolution of powers from the Federal Government back to the states. At every opportunity he has repeated his mantra: "Remember ABC" Alexander beats Clinton. Nor does this seem an idle boast. After Colin Powell, he is probably the Republican opponent White House tacticians would least like to face.
Before Mr Alexander can beat Mr Clinton or at least try he must first defeat Mr Dole. To have a chance he must run him at least a close second in New Hampshire and then use that success to motivate a massive support in his native South which votes soon afterwards. This will be difficult but not impossible. He needs to extract enough strength out of his Iowa performance, and his hard-built New Hampshire organisation, to make himself the only alternative to Mr Dole, and must do so in a week.
After that his campaign finances, which have run low in pursuit of support in Iowa, will become dangerously depleted. He also needs to broaden his theme beyond the "outsider" message. He needs to attract the pro-growth, anti-tax wing of his party, strongly represented in New Hampshire voters who have become available with the apparent failure of Mr Forbes and Mr Gramm. Such Republicans are unexcited by Mr Dole, repelled by Mr Buchanan, but as yet unconnected to Mr Alexander.
The man in the lumberjack shirt is thus the outsider, but an intriguing candidate. He is well qualified to be President and could be a formidable rival to Mr Clinton in the autumn election. Mr Dole remains the man to beat but stranger things have happened in American politics than President Alexander.
The verdict on Scott will be slow but sure Even before battle on the Scott report is joined today, the Government has handed the Opposition an advantage in the competition for the public's ear. John Major may cite "usual practice" and precedents from previous inquiries until he is blue in the face. When ministers have had eight days to pour over the report, the limits they are imposing today on access to it by everybody else the Opposition, civil servants and the press are ridiculous, and make them look ridiculous.
As keeper of the Tory image, Brian Mawhinney should have seen personally to the burning of Ian Lang's letter to Robin Cook. Mr Cook is the only Labour frontbencher permitted an advance peek at the report and even he will have no more than a minute for every ten pages of it. To keep Mr Cook effectively under official guard while he speed-reads his way through this vast tome at the Department of Trade and Industry tomorrow looks bad enough. To pretend that this is entirely for Mr Cook's "own convenience and security" was to court general derision. As hapless Whitehall officials scrambled yesterday to express the Government's horror "at the suggestion of giving offence", Mr Cook was naturally loving every moment.
All this jockeying in Westminster might be of no more than passing interest to the general public, were it not that the charge of ministerial deception is at the core of Sir Richard Scott's investigation. If Mr Major was not prepared to yield to Opposition demands for pre-publication access, or even to the Speaker, he should have heeded the protests twice made by Sir Richard himself. MPs will have precisely 10 minutes in which to grab their copies of an 1800-page report before Mr Lang rises to make his statement today. Newspapers will be handicapped too by the late provision of too few copies of a report which only the serious press can properly present to the public.
The effect of all this is inevitably to suggest to voters that the Government has guilty secrets which it is desperate to obscure. Its attempts at news management techniques are not merely inept; they look, quite simply, undemocratic. Whatever the report turns out to say, the first impression that the Government is running scared of something will endure. Mr Major replies that MPs will have 11 days to pour over what Sir Richard has finally concluded, before Parliament assembles for a full debate. But for those 11 days, the Government has heated a rack for itself, on which its reputation will continue to burn.
Maybe Mr Major believes that the report clears him, and all the vital players in the Government, of wrong-doing, that no heads will therefore have to roll and that the more excitement he can create in the Opposition benches prior to publication, the more crestfallen they will be when they see the text. It is, indeed, possible that the public's interest in this enormously complex inquiry will fall rapidly if the main faults are found by Sir Richard to lie with the Whitehall machine. But the better the news, the happier the Government should be to let daylight shine on Sir Richard's pages while public interest is at its height. If the news is bad, the impression of a continued desire to hide the truth can only cast the Government's defence in the worst possible light.
The capacity of this Prime Minister to let himself be knocked off balance has long been the despair of his party. Only this Monday, he was at his earnest best: the IRA's return to the bomb brought out in him an element of true statesmanship. It is depressing that he should have lost so little time in refurbishing his reputation for getting out his shovel whenever he sees a hole ahead. It is scarcely credible that the occasion should be the publication of a long-awaited report, the purpose of which is to shine a torch into the heart of government.
From the Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Employment
Sir, The criticism by the Secondary Heads Association of Labour's proposals on school standards (report, February 13) suggests that the organisation's professed commitment to improving these standards stops short of supporting practical measures to bring such improvements about.
Labour is committed to putting the interests of parents and pupils as consumers before those of the producers of education. That is why we are proposing a national register of headteachers; we want to move towards a situation where no new head will be appointed without a suitable leadership or management qualification.
The SHA apparently believes that we intend to impose greater control on schools by local education authorities. In fact, we believe that schools should run themselves, not be controlled by LEAs, and that the proportion of the schools budget delegated to schools should be revised from the current minimum of 85 per cent to a new minimum of 90 per cent. Schools should set improvement targets. LEAs, together with parents, businesses and local colleges, will use them to draw up local plans to raise standards.
You also report that the SHA opposes homework guidelines. In our view, homework is so important to a child's educational development that we cannot afford to leave it entirely to the whim of individual schools. Our proposed guidelines will make it clear to parents that their child should expect homework from the age of seven; and the homework clubs which we propose would offer a quiet space to children without one at home.
What parents would welcome from headteachers is more recognition of how much we need to do to raise standards. I would welcome positive proposals from the SHA to help in the critical task of lifting standards and matching our international competitors.
Yours sincerely,
DAVID BLUNKETT,
House of Commons.
February 13.
From Mr David H. Hall
Sir, To read your "Interface" supplement each week is to grasp what stout Cortez must have felt on seeing the Pacific (according to Keats).
The news (February 7) that Socks, the White House cat, now has a "web site" surely confirms that the empyrean is best left undisturbed.
I am, Sir, yours &c,
DAVID H. HALL,
15 Broughton Road,
Banbury, Oxfordshire.
From Lord Brand
Sir, With reference to Alan Beith's letter on Scottish devolution, I must state that when the late Lord Kilbrandon, who favoured devolution, asked the late Lord Fraser of Tullybelton and myself why we were against it, we both replied, "Because one Ulster is enough". That is still my view.
Yours etc,
DAVID BRAND
(Solicitor-General
for Scotland, 1970-72),
Ardgarten, 6 Marmion Road,
North Berwick, East Lothian.
February 10.
From Mr Edmund Dell
Sir, In March 1974 a Cabinet committee, chaired by Harold Wilson, was appointed to consider proposals for devolution to Scotland and Wales (leading article, February 5; letters, February 10). I was a member. The motivation behind the proposals was to avoid prejudice to Labour's electoral chances in Scotland and Wales in the second general election expected later that year.
The proposals were based on three assumptions which their advocates thought should not be questioned:
1. That there would be no reduction in Scottish representation in the UK Parliament.
2. That what became known as the West Lothian question could be ignored.
3. That the people of England would continue to be levied for the benefit of the peoples of Scotland and Wales.
Although the principal motive for refusing any reduction in Scottish representation at Westminster was party advantage, another consideration was that Scottish influence on the distribution of resources within the UK should in no way be impaired. I was among those who opposed these proposals. But they were forced through for crude political reasons. Their fate is well known.
There has been no significant change to the 1974 proposals, apart from what has become known as the "tartan tax". Nor have any answers been found to the questions raised by the three assumptions of the earlier proposals.
Labour spokesmen, supported by Liberal Democrat MP, Alan Beith, in his letter of February 10, consider that a sufficient answer to the first and second assumptions can be found in the precedent of Northern Ireland. Such ill-considered repartee confirms that no more real thought has gone into the elaboration of the present devolution proposals than in 1974.
Nor does Lord Irvine provide any answer in his article of February 10, "Devolution is not a revolution". The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council may be an appropriate institution for determining jurisdictional disputes between Westminster and Edinburgh, though its proposed role would appear to bring into question the sovereignty of the UK Parliament, but it cannot provide an answer to conflicts between the UK and Scottish Parliaments about the distribution of resources.
There is, indeed, no answer that avoids grievances building up on both sides; the English resentful of what they are required to give and the Scottish resentful of what they are expected to receive. Devolution will not add to the prosperity of Scotland. The clamour for independence will continue and will derive further strength from the failure of devolution to solve any of the real problems of the Scottish people.
The Labour Party claims that devolution is necessary to preserve the unity of the UK. It appears to imagine it is doing England a favour. But the real question is whether, if devolution is demanded as the sine qua non of the continued unity of the UK, that unity is worth years of bickering, probably ending in Scottish independence.
Yours faithfully,
EDMUND DELL
(Paymaster General, 1974-76),
4 Reynolds Close, NW11.
February 10.
From Mrs David Griffiths
Sir, While it is obviously desirable that major sporting events should continue to be shown on terrestrial television, there is also an important place for the wider coverage given by the satellite companies.
Will the BBC or ITV ever be in a position or, indeed, be willing to show live, for example, every stroke in a Ryder Cup match, most games in the African Nations Cup soccer or extended periods of tennis tournaments all round the year?
The terrestrial presenters should also acknowledge the debt they owe to their satellite brethren in improving the coverage of sport, albeit through fuller use of new technology. Who was it who introduced the white pencil used on a regular basis to explain the positions of players on the cricket and football fields?
Yours faithfully,
ANNE GRIFFITHS,
16 Prince Albert Road,
Regent's Park, NW1.
From Mr John Thompson
Sir, In their letter of February 6 the six heads of the major sports bodies state that the financial benefits flowing from the breakdown of the "cosy terrestrial (broadcasting) duopoly" have enabled moneys to be used for better stadiums, better training facilities, more help for the stars of tomorrow and better prospect of higher standards of achievement on the field.
I have been involved with football at a local league level with the Dartford and District Football League for the past 35 years. As a player I paid to play, and now, as an officer of the league, I contribute my services free of charge. There are hundreds and thousands like me throughout the country. Local leagues countrywide are self-financing and, if they are anything like this one, they have never received a brass farthing from the higher echelons of the game.
I, and thousands of others, represent the grass roots of football in the UK and are the nursery-ground for the talent on which the higher echelons rely. If only some of the cash that is being extracted from the television stations could be used to promote football at these levels then perhaps more local talent would flow to the top.
One only has to look at the performance of our national team and count the number of overseas players in the Premier and Football Leagues to see how much more we need to develop home-grown talent.
Yours faithfully,
JOHN THOMPSON
(Deputy Chairman, Dartford and
District Football League),
2 Rectory Meadow, Southfleet, Kent.
February 6.
From Mrs Eslyn Craven
Sir, Have Messrs Major, Blair and Ashdown any appreciation of the sheer frustration felt by the ordinary "man in the street" on reading their joint letter.
Yes, of course the environment is important but so are poverty, homelessness, unemployment, ill-health and lack of education.
Any chance of a soupcon of "togetherness" on all or even one of these problems which blight the lives of so many of their fellow countrymen?
Yours faithfully,
ESLYN CRAVEN,
Keepers Cottage,
Lanrick, Doune, Perthshire.
February 9.
From Sir George Moseley,
Chairman of the Civic Trust
Sir, The endorsement of the countryside protection by the three party leaders is laudable but hardly challenging. There is certainly no shortage of concern for the countryside. the Government has recently published a Rural White Paper (report, October 18, 1995) and we have a clutch of estimable bodies who speak for both the environment and the rural economy.
Sadly, the same cannot be said for our urban areas. The Civic Trust has been campaigning about urban quality for years, but we need much more official backing and our political leaders need to harness the energy of our voluntary bodies and communities to tackle urban problems.
We need to improve the environment of our cities and towns by investing in high-quality public transport systems, using their wasted land assets, increasing densities near transport interchanges, and above all by bringing people back to live in town centres. Unless this is tackled, we will continue to add more mediocre development to the edges of towns and villages.
Without government-backed and adequately financed co-ordination at the highest level, it is difficult to see how the kind of urban quality taken for granted on the Continent will ever be created or how pressure will ever be really taken off the countryside. As a first step, surely it is now time for the early drafting of an Urban White Paper.
Yours faithfully,
GEORGE MOSELEY,
Chairman,
Civic Trust,
17 Carlton House Terrace, SW1.
February 13.
From Sir David Steel, MP for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Liberal Democrat)
Sir, I applaud the initiative of the CPRE in persuading Messrs Major, Blair and Ashdown to write a joint letter of commitment to support the countryside (February 9; also see letter, February 12). As I know only too well, all-party agreement is rare indeed.
Nevertheless, in common with your leader writer of the same issue, I fear that the challenge facing the countryside is more profound than simply the impact of development. Country people are already deprived of shops, education, transport and affordable housing; and in recent years too many of their jobs (which largely benefit those who live in towns and cities) and pastimes have become the butt of ill-informed scorn.
It is now widely believed, for instance, that it is unacceptable to transport live animals under even the most humane circumstances, regardless of the length of journey. And, whilst accepting no responsibility for its maintenance, increasing numbers consider that they should have the right to roam at will over other people's land, irrespective of the damage caused to crops or the natural habitat.
Country people are among the hardest working and most law-abiding groups in Britain. They do not look for special sympathy, but they ask for common respect, understanding and support. Those of us who sit in Parliament, irrespective of party, have a duty to ensure that they get it.
Yours faithfully,
DAVID STEEL
(Executive Chairman),
The Countryside Movement,
11 Tufton Street, SW1.
February 14.
From Mrs Bridget Bordewich
Sir, If I cannot go to a funeral taking a garden posy I send, by post, a small spray of rosemary from the garden with a card attached saying, "here's rosemary for remembrance (with etc)". The little spray will grow, if wanted, into a flowery, fragrant shrub, carrying memories over the years.
Yours faithfully,
BRIDGET BORDEWICH,
Ladies' Mile House,
Grand Avenue,
Worthing, West Sussex.
February 9.
From Mr Rodney Legg
Sir, Non-floral death tributes, in the form of charity cheques, can also come with pretty cards and kind words (letters, February 1, 8 and 9).
The bonus, as I have found after my mother's recent funeral, is that her favourite animal rescue centre has benefited by £310. In the last week I have been able to drive past Ray Jolliffe's field of donkeys at Poole with the pleasure of knowing that my mother has been feeding them through the recent snow. She would have liked that.
Yours sincerely,
RODNEY LEGG,
National School, North Street,
Wincanton, Somerset.
February 9.
From Mr John Phillips
Sir, Your report (February 14) of Professor Jean Aitchison's assertion, in her Reith Lecture, that language is ill-equipped to convey spatial information reminded me of the essay set in my Oxford entrance examination many years ago. I was invited to "describe a man riding a bicycle to an African native (sic) who has never seen a bicycle".
Perhaps other areas of linguistic inadequacy could be catalogued and we could agree, as Wittgenstein recommended, to remain silent about that of which we cannot speak.
Taste, perhaps? I have long wondered how the presenters of television wine programmes might set about describing the taste of a brussel sprout.
Yours faithfully,
J. A. PHILLIPS,
6 Vicarage Gardens, SW14.
February 14.
JUDGE Stephen Tumim, who recently stepped down as Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, has been nominated the winner of the 1995 Charles Douglas-Home Award.
The award, sponsored by the trust set up in memory of the former Editor of The Times, is for a study comparing the sentences imposed on convicted criminals by courts of different European countries. Judge Tumim is to receive up to £15,000.
Sir Edward Cazalet, chairman of the trustees, said: "With his particular experience as a judge and with his knowledge of the prison system Judge Tumim is eminently well suited to carry out this study. No detailed report has been made in this way showing how other European systems have tried to cope with continuing and increasing major crime. Judge Tumim can be expected to collate information about this in a coherent form which should make a real contribution to any debate on this difficult question."
The trustees have announced that Sir Edward Cazalet, who has been chairman of the trust since it started, has decided to step down after ten years in office. He said that it was time for new ideas and initiatives. Mr David Pryce-Jones, the author and journalist, has been appointed to succeed him. Under his chairmanship the other trustees will continue to be Mrs Jessica Leach, David Dimbleby, Bamber Gascoigne, Tara Douglas-Home, Luke Douglas-Home and Peter Stothard, Editor of The Times.
The Times is shortly to publish the report of Matthew d'Ancona, the 1994 Award Winner, on his study of Civic Society in an English Town.
RARE orchids under threat in the wild mingle with massed displays of popular hybrids at the second Kew Orchid Festival, which opened yesterday.
The main displays are in the Princess of Wales Conservatory. In the cool section great visual impact is created by extensive displays of hybrid orchids, including the yellow flowered oncidiums. The old Oncidium Gower Ramsey, one of the mainstays of the cut flower industry in South East Asia, is featured, as is the closely related red form, Oncidium Susan Kaufmann.
Contrasting with these is Vuylstekeara Cambria with dark crimson and white flowers, another old hybrid, this time the mainstay of the Dutch pot plant industry.
Other highlights in this section are large hanging baskets, one metre in diameter, dripping with pink and white moth orchids (phalaenopsis).
In the section containing tropical orchids, visitors can see how species grow in the wild, not only on the ground but also in trees (epiphytes). They are grouped according to their adaptations.
An educational display demonstrates how orchids are grown from seed and shows examples of rare orchids that Kew has propagated including paphiopedilums or slipper orchids such as Paphiopedilum dayanum from Borneo which is under threat in the wild from forest clearance and over-collecting.
The temperate section of the conservatory includes displays of popular cymbidium hybrids as well as several educational displays, one of which shows how to ensure that shop-bought cymbidiums flower in subsequent years.
Another display shows the various ways in which orchids are pollinated by insects. There is a bee orchid (Ophrys Tenthredinifera) from the Mediterranean and North Africa whose flowers mimic female bees to induce male bees to pollinate them; and the Australian Pterostylis curta whose hooded green and white flowers trap flies for pollination, after which it releases them.
As the show opened on St Valentine's Day, the Surrey Area of the National Association of Flower Arrangement Societies shows romance as the theme for its lavish displays of flower arrangements in the Water Lily House, for which thousands of orchid blooms were specially flown in from Thailand and the Dutch flower markets.
The festival, at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, west London, sponsored by Readers Digest, runs until March 31 and entrance is free after admission to the gardens, which are open from 9.30am to 5pm daily. For information on festival seminars and other special events, telephone: 0181-332 5622.
BUCKINGHAM PALACE February 14: His Excellency Sir Kina Bona was received in audience by The Queen upon his appointment as High Commissioner for the Independent State of Papua New Guinea in London.
Lady Bona was also received by Her Majesty.
His Excellency Senor Carlos Lemos-Simmonds was received in audience by The Queen and presented the Letters of Recall of his predecessor and his own Letters of Credence as Ambassador from the Republic of Colombia to the Court of St James's.
Senora de Lemos-Simmonds was also received by Her Majesty.
Sir John Coles (Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs) was present.
The Very Reverend the Dean of Westminster was received by the Queen.
Her Majesty held a Council at 12.40pm.
There were present: the Rt Hon Sir Patrick Mayhew MP (Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, acting for the Lord President), the Rt Hon Douglas Hogg, MP, (Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) and the Rt Hon David Maclean MP (Minister of State, Home Office).
The Right Reverend Richard Chartres (Lord Bishop of London), having been previously appointed a Member of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, took the necessary oaths.
Lord Mackay of Drumadoon, Mr Michael Ancram, MP, Sir Marcus Fox MP and Mr David Heathcoat-Amory MP were sworn in as Members of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council.
Mr Nigel Nicholls was in attendance as Clerk of the Council.
The Rt Hon Sir Patrick Mayhew MP had an audience of The Queen before the Council.
The Earl of Home was received by Her Majesty and delivered up the Insignia of the Order of the Thistle worn by his father, the late Lord Home of the Hirsel.
The Duke of Edinburgh, Permanent Master, this morning presented the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights' Queen's Silver Medal to Mr John McDonald and the Company's Bronze Medal to Mr David Stewart at Buckingham Palace.
His Royal Highness, President and Honorary Life Fellow, Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, later attended a Meeting of the President's Forum, followed by Luncheon at St James's Palace.
February 14: The Princess Royal, President, The Princess Royal Trust for Carers, this morning attended a seminar "Who Cares?" for Long Term Care at Prudential Corporation, Holborn Bars, London EC1.
Her Royal Highness, Chancellor, University of London, this afternoon opened the refurbished Slade School of Fine Art, Gower Street, London WC1.
The Princess Royal, President, Royal Yachting Association, later attended a Council Meeting at the Royal Thames Yacht Club, Knightsbridge, London SW1.
Her Royal Highness this evening delivered the 1996 Barnett Lecture at Toynbee Hall, Commercial Street, London E1.
ST JAMES'S PALACE
February 14: The Prince of Wales this morning visited SciMat Limited, Murdock Road, Dorcan, Swindon, and was received by Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of Wiltshire (Field Marshal Sir Roland Gibbs).
His Royal Highness later visited Dyson Appliances Limited, Tetbury Hill, Malmesbury.
KENSINGTON PALACE
February 14: The Duke of Gloucester today visited historic sites in Harwich and was received on arrival by Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of Essex (The Lord Braybrooke).
Major Nicholas Barne was in attendance.
YORK HOUSE
ST JAMES'S PALACE
February 14: The Duke of Kent, Patron, this evening attended the British Computer Society Awards Evening, at the Institution of Civil Engineers, Great George Street, London SW1.
The Duchess of Kent, Patron, UNICEF, this morning visited Neettani Village, Calicut, and the Primary Health Centre, Pookottur, and this afternoon visited the Coir Training Centre, Pattarkadavu, Kerala, India.
Notice is hereby given that in 1997 the date for observance of The Queen's Birthday, at home and abroad, will be Saturday, 14th June.
From Vice-Admiral Sir John Lea
Sir, I read with a wry smile the suggestion in Valerie Grove's interview with Sir Richard Scott (February 10) that politicians had accused him of aggressive interviewing (see also letter, February 12).
When I was Director-General of Naval Manpower and Training I was twice summoned before a Commons select committee, along with my Army and RAF colleagues and a senior civil servant. They were the most unpleasant and humiliating events in my entire career.
We were required to enter Parliament up a back staircase and wait in an empty seatless passage for a considerable time before being summoned. The chairman, a Labour MP, was both well-informed and courteous. His colleagues were neither.
We were all profoundly depressed by the experience and put it down to the sense of superiority, self-satisfaction and mutual admiration which thrives in the exclusive and cloistered atmosphere of Parliament.
I would like to think that exposure to questioning by Sir Richard Scott and his team would persuade MPs' committees to change their own ways, but I am not hopeful.
Yours sincerely,
JOHN LEA,
Springfield, 27 Bright's Lane,
Hayling Island, Hampshire.
February 10.
Mr Clive Aslet, Editor, Country Life, 41; Sir Nicholas Bayne, diplomat, 59; Sir Harold Beeley, diplomat, 87; Sir William Bentley, diplomat, 69; Miss Claire Bloom, actress, 65; Mr Tony Bloom, deputy chairman, Sketchley, 57; Sir Stephen Brown, former chairman, Stone-Platt Industries, 90; Earl of Carlisle, 47; Mr Derek Conway, MP, 43; Mr Dan Crompton, former Chief Constable, Nottinghamshire, 55; Mr Justice Drake, 73; Mr Frank Dunlop, former director, Edinburgh International Festival, 69; the Countess of Dysart, 82.
Mr Paul Ferris, author, 67; Mr John Greenway, MP, 50; Mr Gerald Harper, actor and broadcaster, 67; the Earl of Jersey, 86; Professor Andrew Miller, Principal, Stirling University, 60; Sir Richard O'Brien, former chairman, Manpower Services Commission, 76; Mr C.F. Payne, former Chief Constable, Cleveland, 66; Mr W.K. Reid, The Ombudsman, 65; Miss Jane Seymour, actress, 45; Miss Clare Short, MP, 50; Mr P.J. Squire, Headmaster, Bedford Modern School, 59; Sir Adrian Swire, chairman, John Swire and Sons, 64; Lord Justice Ward, 58; the Right Rev R.W. Woods, former Bishop of Worcester, 82.
BIRTHS: Pedro Menendez de Aviles, novelist, Aviles, Spain, 1519; Galileo Galilei, mathematician and astronomer, Pisa, 1564; Michael Praetorius, composer, Kreuzberg, Germany, 1571 (and he died on this day, Wolfenbuttel, 1621);
King Louis XV of France, reigned 1715-74, Versailles, 1710; Jeremy Bentham, Utilitarian philosopher, London, 1748; Alfred North Whitehead, philosopher, Ramsgate, 1861; Sir Halford John Mackinder, geographer, Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, 1861; Sir Bannister Fletcher, architect and architectural historian, London, 1866; Sir Ernest Shackleton, antarctic explorer, Kilkee, Co Clare, 1874; John Barrymore, actor, Philadelphia, 1882; H.M. Bateman, cartoonist, Sutton Forest, New South Wales, 1887; Graham Hill, racing driver, London, 1929.
DEATHS: Henry Deane, Archbishop of Canterbury 1501-03, London, 1503; Jan Swammerdam, entomologist, Amsterdam, 1680; Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, writer, Naples, 1713; Gotthold Lessing, dramatist, Braunschweig, Germany, 1781; Henry Hunt, political reformer, Alresford, Hampshire, 1835; Mikhail Glinka, composer, Berlin, 1857; Nicholas Wiseman, Cardinal and first Archbishop of Westminster 1850-65, London, 1865; Alexander Borodin, composer, St Petersburg, 1887; Lew Wallace, American Civil War general and author of Ben Hur, Crawfordsville, Indiana, 1905; Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, Prime Minister 1908-16, Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire, 1928; Ethel Merman, singer, New York, 1984.
The first cargo of frozen meat left New Zealand, bound for Britain, on the SS Dunedin, 1882.
Singapore surrendered to the Japanese army, 1942.
Britain changed to decimal currency, 1971.
The long and often intimate letters which passed between the poets Robert Browning and his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning were published with the authority of their only son Robert Wiedemann ("Pen") Browning (1849-1912).
THE BROWNING LOVE-LETTERS.
Mr. Robert Barrett Browning, by whose authority these letters are published, has seen that so unusual a proceeding required to be justified to the world, and he has accordingly prefixed to the book an explanatory note. He writes:
"In considering the question of publishing these letters, it seemed to me that my only alternatives were to allow them to be published or to destroy them. I might indeed have left the matter to the decision of others after my death, but that would be evading a responsibility which I feel that I ought to accept."
To say this was certainly to give permission to publish, but there will none the less be a difference of opinion as to whether the son has done well to avail himself of it. The letters are very intimate and very long, covering more than 1,100 closely printed pages.
The curious thing about the love of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett is that it was kept a profound secret from everybody. Browning saw nothing of his new family and in the end, on September 12, 1846, Elizabeth and her faithful maid Wilson slipped out of the front door of No. 50, Wimpole-street, went round to St. Marylebone Church, and there the poet and the poetess were marriedshe to return home, to take off her ring, and a week later to join her husband in what was to all intents and purposes an elopement to Paris. The furious anger of the father is described in the earlier volumes of letters published 16 months ago.
The letters cover the period between January 10, 1845, and the date last mentioned. At the beginning Miss Barrett was an invalid, only from time to time receiving her few intimate friends, and it was not till May 20 that she could allow Browning to come to see her. But in the interval, the friendship begun and carried on by these letters had become very close, founded as it was upon an instinctive sympathy and upon a genuine mutual admiration. In his very first letter Browning speaks of "this true thankful joy and pride with which I feel myself yours ever faithfully"; three weeks later she claims to be treated en bon camarade, to which if he will consent, "why, then I am ready to sign and seal the contract, and to rejoice in being ‘articled' as your correspondent, only don't let us have any constraint, any ceremony." A few days afterwards he is wishing that some way could be found "to make my ‘dear' something intenser than ‘dears' in ordinary, and ‘yours ever' a thought more significant than the run of its like." Then came the first and subsequent meetings, and the addresses on both sides grow to "God ever bless you, dear friend," though of course the contents are as yet mostly literary and more or less abstract. By August he calls her "my one friend without an ‘other'," till by-and-by we slip into "dearest".
There is criticismadmiring but on the whole soundof each other's verse; for, this was the moment when Browning was bringing out the different parts of "Bells and Pomegranates," especially "Luria" and many of the shorter poems which have been household words to true lovers of poetry ever since. There are also occasional criticism, sometimes rather sharp, of other writers; of Mrs Shelley, for example, and her book on Italy: "The ‘Mary dear' with the brown eyes, and Godwin's daughter and Shelley's wife, and who surely was something better once on a time ... once she travelled the country with Shelley on arm; now she plods it Rogers in handto such things and uses may we come at last!"
There are passages too of generous appreciation of some English contemporaries and especially of Tennyson, though we may perhaps detect here and there in Miss Barrett's judgments a natural unwillingness to place the future Laureate quite as high as her own "prince of poets" ...
Martin Balsam, American film actor, died on February 13 aged 76. He was born on November 4, 1919.
MARTIN BALSAM graduated from what might best be described as a select junior school for actors not quite a nursery because all had been performing before as a member of the cast of Twelve Angry Men (1957). Under the tutelage of Henry Fonda and sitting for twenty days in the classroom of the jury set, Jack Klugman, Jack Warden, E.G.Marshall and Martin Balsam gained a wealth of intensive acting experience and a new recognition value with the public thereafter. Another actor on the set Lee J.Cobb, who had been making films for some twenty years, described it as a turning point in his seasoned career.
Before that Balsam had just one minor film role to his credit, as a stevedore in that epic of union corruption, On the Waterfront (1954), starring Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger. Now Balsam had delivered a performance which would be the benchmark against which any subsequent work would be measured. It was a role which lacked the flamboyant advantages given to the other players, but Balsam grasped the opportunity with both hands.
Patently, Fonda was the star, the man the cameras focused on throughout. Balsam was the jury foreman, the job which by its nature was supposed to be a listening role. On top of this, his character was supposed to be that of an insignificant little high school baseball coach, not too bright and therefore not really able to articulate in the way the other men could. To make that part live required an actor of real talent. When Balsam was on screen, the viewer could almost smell the sweat staining the once-white sports shirt, which he wore, incongruously, with a black tie. When he announced his own change of plea to not guilty, a charge of electricity darted from the screen.
From then on the little man was allowed to grow from a colonel in Catch 22 (1970) to one of the Washington Post editors in All the President's Men (1976). Frequently, though, he played a Jewish businessman, often with a dowdy, domineering wife who looked as though she should have been played by Shelly Winters.
Notwithstanding this bit of typecasting, it was Balsam's versatility which impressed casting directors. Having played a stevedore and a jury foreman, he was later cast as a detective in Hitchcock's Psycho (1960); a camp antique dealer in The Anderson Tapes (1971); and one of the victims in Raid on Entebbe.
There was, however, an almost subliminal trademark which set him apart from other actors. He demonstrated it to perfection in The Taking of Pelham 123 (1974) about the hijacking of a subway train. He did not just play a hijacker, but played him with a cold. The sneezes of Balsam were moments for the cinema buff to cherish.
Martin Balsam was born in the Bronx into the kind of Jewish family he depicted in films like Marjorie Morningstar (1958) and in the television sitcom Archie Bunker's Place (1981-82). His route out of the Bronx was typical for his background: evening classes at the New School for Social Research and war service in the US Army Air Force. This was followed by the Actors' Studio, where he learnt method acting, work in stock companies, and Broadway versions of Macbeth and The Rose Tattoo.
Films most suited his perception of himself as a journeyman actor, and they came thick and fast about fifty of them. One of his last was Cape Fear in 1991 (he had also appeared in the 1962 version). But he was also excellent on stage, and he won a Tony award for his performance on Broadway in the early 1960s with I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running.
He did a considerable amount of television work, playing a mafioso in the Italian series La Piovra (The Octopus) and starred in 1985 in Murder in Space, in which audiences were invited to name the murderer (Central Television planned to give a £50,000 prize to the winner, but were prevented from doing so by the IBA).
Balsam was formerly married to the actress Joyce Van Patten. Their daughter Talia, who survives him, acted with him in the television film Private Investigations.
Correction: In para 3: Balsam's role was that of a crime investigator (NOT a ste vedore)
Caroline Blackwood, Guinness heiress and novelist, died from cancer in New York yesterday aged 64. She was born on July 16, 1931.
CAROLINE BLACKWOOD always knew that she would be a novelist. She was a writer of dark fiction, in which she explored repression, uneasy relationships, the subtle torture of one person by another. Though she relished the macabre, she had a keen sense of humour. Usually the laughter she invoked was nervous rather than joyful. Fiercely intelligent, she seized upon a point, worried it like a terrier, leading her readers unwittingly further down the path than they would ever willingly have gone. When she undertook research it sometimes seemed she was taking nothing in, but no detail escaped her. She could twist and exaggerate a tale, but she never lost credibility. Underlying all her work was a curious bond of sympathy, an awareness and sharing of suffering.
Caroline Blackwood was the product of two extraordinary families, the Blackwoods and the Guinnesses. Through her father, Basil, 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, she descended from an ancient family of Scottish extraction, who settled in Ireland early in the 17th century. Her great-grandfather, Frederick Temple Blackwood, the 1st Marquess, enjoyed a distinguished career as Governor-General of Canada and Viceroy of India. On his mother's side, he was descended from Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Basil Dufferin, her father, was a Lord-in-Waiting to King George VI and a friend of John Betjeman. He was killed in Burma in 1945, when Caroline was 13.
Her mother, who survives her, was Maureen Guinness, one of the three daughters of the Hon Ernest Guinness and a niece of the Earl of Iveagh. A legendary society figure, she brought the fruits of the brewing fortune to the Dufferins and Clandeboye, their two-storey late-Georgian seat, near Bangor, Co Down, set in an idyllic park with a great lake and a number of follies.
Caroline Blackwood was raised at Clandeboye, modestly educated and emerged as a debutante of beguiling beauty, with her beautifully shaped head, huge blue eyes and golden hair. But the conventional path was not of her choosing. Ann Fleming introduced her to the young artist Lucien Freud, and was soon in trouble for "encouraging bizarre tartan-trousered eccentric artists to pursue virginal Marchioness's daughters".
Lady Caroline eloped with Freud to Paris, her every move the subject of press scrutiny. She was the model for some of Freud's finest portraits, posing for him in the Hotel de la Louisiane above the Buci market in Paris. His Girl in Bed is her portrait, though a painting of Caroline and her sister never progressed further than one eye minus the eyelash. She married Freud in December 1953, when she was 22. They settled for a while in a Georgian house in Dean Street, London, and at Coombe Priory in Dorset. Their friends were Cyril Connolly and Francis Bacon and they frequented the Colony and Gargoyle clubs.
The Freuds divorced in Mexico in 1958, after which she married the composer, Israel Citkowitz. They had three daughters, the eldest of whom was the victim of a drug overdose. They separated before Citkowitz's death. In Santo Domingo in 1972 she married the American poet Robert Lowell by whom she had one son. They spent idyllic years at Milgate in Kent, though at various points the marriage was overshadowed by his manic depression. On one occasion Lowell locked her in her apartment for three days. The poet described her as "airy and very steady and sturdy in an odd way". He died in a taxi in 1977, clutching her portrait by Freud.
Lady Caroline's creativity found an outlet in her fiction. She began her literary life, working as a reader for Claud Cockburn at Hulton Press. She then became a journalist on Encounter, her first piece being an assured analysis of the California Beatniks in 1959, and journalism provided source material for her fiction. One of her earliest stories, The Lunch, was published in The Observer in 1978 and later reissued as Taft's Wife.
She wrote ten books in all. She was encouraged by Robert Lowell to produce her first book, For All That I Found There, a collection of short stories. Francis Wyndham praised the fun she derived from human silliness, noting: "She is also fascinated by human extremity by horror, ugliness, pain. Her approach is bold perhaps almost morbidly obsessed but never callous." The Stepdaughter (1976) was the story of a New York lady deserted by her husband, tormenting her stepdaughter in the luxurious apartment they shared. This novel won her the David Higham Prize.
Great Granny Webster (1977), probably her finest novel, was partly based on her childhood experiences and a dark portrait of her Dufferin grandmother. It examined the effect of a grimly austere old lady on several generations of her Anglo-Irish family. John Betjeman called it "powerfully malicious" and it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Her next novel, The Fate of Mary Rose, explored a deranged mother's obsession with her daughter's safety. Goodnight, Sweet Ladies (five short stories published in 1983) engendered such a feeling of claustrophobia in one reviewer that she was unable to read two of them in a single sitting. Corrigan (1984) examined the effect of the arrival of a man in a wheelchair on the life of a lonely widow. This was a less successful book.
On The Perimeter (also 1984) was a book of reportage, the result of her long evenings talking to the Women on the Wire, protesting against the nuclear installations at Greenham Common. It involved its author in a strange incident in which some soldiers "mooned" at her from a bus. She resented the insult, saying she was "shocked and appalled". Bernard Levin wrote a lengthy article in The Times accusing the thrice-married Caroline Blackwood of a degree of hypocrisy. The outcome was an unrepentant description of the incident in her book: "The military buttocks loomed at us from the windows of the bus. They looked like huge white one-eyed sea monsters in a tank."
In 1987 she published In the Pink, an investigation of the hunting scene, which included a study of "Master", the late Duke of Beaufort, and the incident in which hunt saboteurs attempted to dig up his head and sent it to Princess Anne "treating him like the thousands of trapped foxes that he'd dug out of the earth in his lifetime."
Last year she enjoyed formidable success, although more so in America than in Britain, with The Last of the Duchess, a wicked, chilling, yet intermittently entertaining account of the relationship between the Duchess and her over-protective lawyer, Maitre Suzanne Blum. The book was contentious and, though written in 1980, could not be published while the notoriously litigious Blum was alive. At the time of her death Blackwood had turned her attention to transvestites.
Following the sale of a house in Leicestershire in 1987, Blackwood left England to live in America, settling in the former home of President Chester Arthur at Sag Harbor, Long Island. In 1995, after four years of legal wrangling, she lost a case against her mother in which she questioned Lady Dufferin's right to settle a trust fund on her grandchildren. Although it appeared that she was acting against the interests of her two daughters, the animosity between the litigants was much exaggerated in the tabloid press. All three generations of the family were in close touch during Caroline Blackwood's last illness and her mother flew out to visit her only last week.
In later life she sacrificed her beauty to vodka, though not her talent and she continued working to the end. (She had, to her delight, received a batch of books to review for The Sunday Times just two days before she died.) The novelist in her often twisted a story to the detriment of those she loved but they invariably forgave her. Late into the night she would talk and those blessed with a strong head, who could match her unflagging energy, found her a wonderful companion outspoken, outrageous, wildly funny and never boring.
She is survived by one son (by Lowell) and two daughters (from Citkowitz), the elder of whom, Evgenia, is married to the actor Julian Sands.
Bob Paisley, OBE, manager of Liverpool Football Club, 1974-83, died yesterday aged 77. He was born on January 23, 1919.
WHEN Bob Paisley retired in 1983 it was with the enviable accolade of being the most successful team manager in the history of British football. During his nine years at the helm he took Liverpool to six League championships: in 1974, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1982 and 1983. To this he added a hat-trick of League Cups: in 1981, 1982 and 1983. And he guided his club to three European Cup wins: in 1977, 1978 and 1981; to the Uefa Cup in 1976 and to the European Super Cup in 1977.
The one major trophy that eluded him was the FA Cup, although more than once Liverpool were in the running. They were on course for a League and Cup double in 1977 when they took the field against Manchester United in the FA Cup Final, having clinched the League title only a few days earlier. In the event Manchester were to deny them this chance, beating them 2-1 on the day.
Yet only a few days more saw Paisley's team at their majestic best, in the final of the European Cup. On a warm night in the spectacular setting of Rome's Olympic stadium, Liverpool overwhelmed the German champions Borussia Monchengladbach 3-1 in an imperious performance before tens of thousands of their ecstatic supporters.
Like many who made their mark on the game, Paisley came from the North East of England, being born at Hetton-le-Hole in Co Durham. He joined Liverpool as a sturdy wing-half from amateur Bishop Auckland in 1939 at a time when the man he most admired, Sir Matt Busby, was the team captain. But his career had hardly begun when war broke out, and he joined the Royal Artillery. He fought throughout the North African and Italian campaigns, taking part in the liberation of Rome.
After the war was over, Paisley returned to Liverpool to gain a first-team place, scoring a goal in the FA Cup semi-final against Everton. But he missed the 1950 final against Arsenal because of injury, a disappointment that remained with him for a long time. Hanging up his boots in the middle 1950s he became the club's reserve team trainer, next first-team trainer, progressing to become assistant to the legendary Bill Shankly whom he was finally to succeed as manager. Shankly's retirement was as big a shock to him as it was to the rest of the footballing world. Paisley arrived back at Anfield from a holiday in Yorkshire, to find Shankly in the middle of his resignation press conference.
He was appointed manager three days later, but to follow in Shankly's footsteps was a huge challenge. Shankly had taken Liverpool to the top in that glamorous decade, the Sixties, which seemed so to belong to Liverpool. Shankly had become a folk-hero on Merseyside and was worshipped by the hordes on the Anfield Kop with whom he fully identified. In their different spheres the Beatles and Shankly were the Kings of Liverpool and the Mersey sound echoed all over the land to the strains of the Kop anthem "You'll never walk alone."
Paisley was, admittedly, part of this explosion but while Shankly was the star he had an unobtrusive part in the chorus line. His ambitions never went higher than that of team trainer or assistant, so that when he took over on Shankly's retirement he had no great thoughts about the future. He was prepared merely to steer the ship past the hidden rocks and head for calm waters. He never expected to equal, let along surpass, the achievements of his departed leader.
His destiny was to be far more momentous than he could have expected. His 44 years at the club had played their part in keeping a tradition intact. He was a beneficiary of a well of pride and deep loyalty from all members of the staff and from the players themselves, for whom it was an honour to pull on a red shirt.
Paisley worked from good foundations. All the while he built new teams slowly with the injection of a new player or two in most seasons. It was remarkable how quickly new recruits were integrated and how smoothly they fitted the Liverpool style. Part of the secret lay in the fact that Liverpool sides either Shankly's or Paisley's were not bogged down tactically. "I didn't talk tactics because I was not taught tactics. I was merely advised on certain things about my game," said Paisley. He encouraged natural ability and kept the game as straightforward as possible. A quiet shy man, he never raised his voice to anyone.
Paisley's contribution to football was acknowledged both nationally and locally. He was appointed OBE in 1977 and made an honorary MSc of Liverpool University in 1983, in which year he also became a Freeman of the City of Liverpool. Among his publications were Bob Paisley's Liverpool Scrapbook (1979), Bob Paisley: an autobiography (1983) and Bob Paisley's Assessment of the 1986-87 Liverpool Team (1987).
He married, in 1946, Jessie Chandler. They had met in 1944 when he got on to a train and sat down on her sandwiches in his army greatcoat. For many years her salary as a primary school teacher supplemented his meagre earnings as a junior member of the backroom staff at Anfield. She and their two sons and a daughter survive him.
From Mr Robert Barnard
Sir, Surely the way for Random House to recoup the cost of the trial and the advance to Miss Collins (report, February 14; see also letters, February 12) would be to publish the first draft of her novel verbatim. It couldn't fail.
Yours faithfully,
ROBERT BARNARD,
Hazeldene, Houghley Lane,
Leeds, West Yorkshire.
February 14.
Widget Finn says employees should think carefully before trying to prove their worth with their bosses
If your current employer makes you an offer you can't refuse, can you afford to refuse it? Henry Parks (his name has been changed) resigned when another major company offered him a senior post abroad. Then his own boss offered him an entire continent as his remit with a £50,000 increase on basic salary, and the cost of a house and private education for five children thrown in.
"When I first approached my current company they said there was no imminent prospect of promotion abroad," says Mr Parks, "but when they realised that I was serious about leaving, a post miraculously appeared with a far more generous package than I had dared to hope for. I would have been crazy to turn it down."
Buy-backs where a company makes a counter-offer after an employee resigns to take on a job at a higher salary have always been around. In the heady days of the 1980s the activity became frenetic and was blatantly blackmail, comments Maggie Henderson-Tew, a director of N.B.Selection.
"People who had little intention of moving, secured an external job offer in order to negotiate a salary increase and gain promotion in their own company," says Ms Henderson-Tew.
"But the fashion for going to your boss with a letter of resignation in one hand and an outstretched palm in the other disappeared along with the boom years. Recession removed all bargaining power for employees. Those still with jobs accepted that there was little prospect of promotion or a salary increase, while employers knew that there was no need to offer their staff incetives to stay.
With the employment market improving again, the scene is changing, and Chris Herrmannsen, a director of the financial recruiters, Harrison Willis, sees buy-backs as being on the increase. Technological and information technology skills are in great demand and often candidates will go to the market to establish their value, and then challenge their employer to pay them the going rate. The structure
of organisations is changing, particularly in the finance sector, which makes them more able to negotiate salary deals, says Mr Herrmannsen.
"Large organisations, particularly the top accountancy practices, used to have a rigidly structured career ladder," he says. "Now they have the flexibility to outbid competitors' packages if they want to retain a valued employee. With the cost of replacing a senior manager standing at about 25 per cent of a starting salary, there is a strong argument in favour of keeping hold of your good people at almost any price."
Buy-backs aren't necessarily the result of a Machiavellian manoeuvre designed to pin the boss against the wall. Sometimes people genuinely intend to move on but are the persuaded to stay despite themselves, says Cindy Irvine, managing director of the recruitment consultants, Hoggett Bowers.
"The resignation process is a hugely painful one, and candidates are very vulnerable at this stage," says Ms Irvine. "We are all programmed not to disappoint our boss, and resignation is a public statement that there are better opportunities elsewhere.
"Candidates are often quite distressed. They find it difficult to think with their heart and mind, and are therefore talked into staying. They can get confused and forget the original reason why they started to look for other openings."
Despite appearances, even an apparently successful buy-back doesn't necessarily work. In the majority of cases the employee moves on anyway after six to 12 months. The offer of financial incentives only papers over the cracks, while the real reasons for restlessness are still there, argues Maggie-Henderson-Tew.
"It's very flattering to be told that you're invaluable and have a dazzling future with the company," she says. "But money is a very short-term panacea if you don't get on with your boss, or you are looking for a new role."
Even when the buy-back goes smoothly there is bound to be a loss of trust. The employee feels that his company either didn't value his services or wasn't prepared to acknowledge them until forced to do so, while the boss sees a question mark over the person's loyalty and motivation.
Gambling on your future prospects is a risky business. Cindy Irvine advises you to be honest about your motives for applying for a job. She estimates that 20 per cent of applications are made by people who are just seeking reassurance and their boss's attention.
Gillian Reeve (the name has been changed) convinced herself that she was in a rut as communications manager for a software company. She felt that her achievement in building up the department over three years had gone unnoticed, and applied for a similar post in a larger organisation.
"At the first interview, I was given a grilling about why I wanted to move," says Mrs Reeve. "I realised that the hassle of changing jobs for a small salary increase and a longer commuting time was pretty pointless. I was pleased at getting on the long shortlist, but I'm not too disappointed at staying in my current job until something really special comes along.
"Think about what it would take to make you stay in your present job, advises Cindy Irvine. Only resign if you're really prepared to move, don't do it in the hope that you'll be bought back. If you are made an offer, don't take it lightly, because things will never be quite the same again.'
But if an entire continent is part of the package, follow Henry Parks's example. Accept and enjoy.
Eric Caines is perplexed by public sector pay moves: the Government should keep the squeeze on, he says
Despite all the talk in recent years about the need to reduce public expenditure and to improve the productivity of the public services little has been achieved.
Civil servants, health service doctors and managers, police officers, prison governors and teachers all claim they are working to the limits of their physical capacity in pursuit of ever sharper output targets and with increasingly tight budgets. But despite the stress they are undoubtedly feeling and their anxiety over job security, they have not even started to feel the sort of pain which many in the private sector have had to experience. And the improvements they have achieved are puny compared with those achieved in the private sector. How does Whitehall explain the fact that the numbers employed in the Department of Social Security went up from 83,500 in 1989 to just over 87,000 in 1994? The best news for many a long day was Peter Lilley's recent announcement that social security running costs were to be cut by 25 per cent over the next three years. It has been seen by some as a desperate late attempt to make real savings so the Chancellor will have some money to give away before the election. But it is the right way to go about pulling out the productivity improvement which has so far eluded all Tory Governments since 1979. It starts at the right end it takes out the resource ahead of reshaping the work.
Civil servants par excellence, but public servants generally (and particularly professionals like doctors and nurses), are so tied into and protective of existing work processes that they are incapable of redesigning them unless they are forced to.
And now for last week's bad news. For obvious political purposes ministers have bought peace from doctors and teachers by giving the appearance of an over-the-odds settlement. But though staging ensures that the full amounts will not be in payment until next January, the fact is that the starting point for next year's pay round will too high. On nurses's pay, however, they have raised a storm as a result of having to follow through last year's cackhanded attempt to introduce local pay into the NHS. What they have now is neither one thing nor another. A review body is still in place which sets the going rate by its awards to other staff groups. In pursuit of their local pay policy, they have to leave some elbow room for topping up through local negotiation, thus allowing nurses to represent that the only rise they can be sure of receiving is niggardly by comparison with everybody else's increase.
They have thus contrived to leave nurses feeling undervalued by comparison with trainee doctors who, at the more junior levels, are heavily dependent on nurses to help them out. And, worst of all, they have left themselves exposed to pressure from nursing bodies to ensure all trusts pay the same local increase.
In short, in the year before a general election, the one group which governments upset only at their peril are feeling shabbily treated (again). To achieve all that at one fell swoop requires a degree of ineptitude which is staggering even for this Government.
The way out is obvious and it should have been taken at least three years ago. The review body for doctors and nurses should be scrapped and pay levels in the NHS should be determined locally. Money should be allocated to the NHS in accordance with a formula which takes account of anticipated workload increases, and is then adjusted to bring it into line with what is affordable. That amount should then be further reduced by an annual built-in productivity factor, say 11/2 per cent. Pay increases should then be payable only through additional productivity. Reductions in services should not be permitted in order to fund such increases. To close the circle it would soon become clear to NHS managers and others that the required productivity gains could only come about through massive re-engineering.
Peter Lilley probably understands the need for such an approach but it is not evident, from last week's events, that any of his colleagues do.
The author is Professor of Health Management at Nottingham University.
Fed up with endless police series? Bored by the prospect of spending yet another hour in the company of the medical profession? Well, let me commend Into the Fire (BBC1) to you, surely the first television thriller to be set in the murky world of...small leather goods.
And about time, I hear you say. Small leather goods have been woefully neglected by television drama departments over the years. But no longer the moment has finally arrived when the full dramatic potential of substandard buckles can be explored, the pros and cons of central dividers carefully considered and leashes given full rein.
When Frank Candy last night delivered the immortal line: "What if I started making belts?" the air positively resounded with dramatic possibility. "Don't do it Frank," they implored. "It could be dangerous." "Don't do it Frank," begged others. "That nasty man who we haven't seen since the first scene might sell you more duff buckles."
"Don't do it, Frank," said one voice. "It could be boring." And blow me if that lone dissenting voice didn't turn out to be mine. Frank, you may be relieved to know, did not go into belts. Instead, after 50 minutes of double-stitched tedium, he took the coward's way out and set fire to his factory. The relief of being back on familiar television ground was indescribable.
Now, it may be that Into the Fire perks up considerably from here-on (parts two and three are tonight and tomorrow) but then it does have a considerable way to perk. For Frank Candy is one of the gloomiest central characters to grace our screens for years. As played by Donal McCann, Candy became a study in multi-layered misery peel off one and you find an even glummer layer underneath. It was not the most endearing trait.
Candy also presented us with some puzzling paradoxes. Like how come a man brought up in the school of hard knocks (a northern textile town) is knocked back by the slightest adversity. Like how come a businessman who has survived two recessions appears to have only the slimmest grasp of the economic facts of life. "What's going to happen in six months?" he asked, "Will the bank call in the loan?" Why worry, Frank? Burn the thing down anyway.
That done, it must be said that the ingredients are in place for improvement. We have a "hero" who appears to have got away with his crime but will be spectacularly consumed with guilt, we have a grieving but rather attractive mother and we have an insurance loss adjuster who has been rebuffed just a little too hastily. As for the small leather goods? They are in ashes. Shame.
Over on Channel 4, Dispatches had one of its best nights in ages, with a well-researched look at the science story that had made the day's headlines a Bristol University scientist's claim to have discovered a mechanism by which electricity power lines increase the risk of cancer to those who live close to them.
Prior to Professor Denis Henshaw's claim (that the electro-magnetic fields around power lines attract the radioactive gas and proven carcinogen, radon), the link between electricity pylons and cancer had been a sort of modern myth we had all heard of it, we all had friends of friends who had fallen victim to it and we were all secretly relieved that we didn't live anywhere near one.
Cleverly, Peter Minns's film spent the first half suggesting that there was already enough distressing evidence to indicate that some sensible steps (such as not allowing new houses to be built directly underneath huge pylons) should be taken even without proof of a causal link. But no sooner had a nice man from Sweden stopped talking about his government's commendable policy of "prudent avoidance", than the film produced its coup de grace Henshaw's controversial evidence.
As one of Henshaw's fellow scientists said, one of the strengths of the professor's findings is that they seem to obey a lot of sensible and familiar physics.
Understandably, this put his opponents, most of whom seem to work for the Government-backed National Radiological Protection Board, at a disadvantage that perhaps (and it is only a perhaps) the film's makers may have over-exploited. Every now and then, for instance, the picture of Tim Eggar, energy minister, would be flashed on our screens, a man whose face was never designed for reassurance.
The film went on to say that the radon effect applied to all electrical appliances alarming news for people such as me, who spend their days either watching television or gazing into a computer screen. But just as I was about to forsake the cathode ray tube altogether, I remembered it was time for ER (Channel 4). A healthier lifestyle would have to wait.
Along with the repeat of Friends that follows it, ER has become one of the highlights of the television week. Will Carter forgive Harper? Will Dr Benton ever be nice to anyone again? Has anyone noticed that Dr Weaver has been missing for a fortnight? Well, none of the important questions were answered last night, as we spent the entire episode in the company of Dr Ross the one with the twinkly eyes and a penchant for air hostesses.
By its own rapid-fire standards, last night's episode slowed to a crawl with the scene of Ross (George Clooney) rescuing a boy from a blocked storm drain lasting an unprecedented 12 minutes, normally sufficient for about 15 storylines. It was ER Jim, but not as we know it.
Ipswich Town v Aston Villa Swindon Town v Southampton
Huddersfield Town v Wimbledon
Manchester United v Manchester City
Nottingham Forest v Tottenham Hotspur
Grimsby Town v Chelsea
Leeds United v Port Vale
Shrewsbury Town or Liverpool v Charlton Athletic
New Zealand capitalise on mistakes to win opening match in cricket World Cup AHMEDABAD (England won toss): New Zealand beat England by 11 runs
THE last cricket World Cup was won by a Pakistan team that began the tournament playing embarrassingly poorly. In the final, they beat England, who had set out as if champions by destiny. It may mean little now, but, after their unscheduled setback in the opening game of the 1996 competition yesterday, it is about all that England can cling to by way of consolation that, and the pleasant surprise that the Ahmedabad crowd did not stage its customary riot.
Within the terms of this long-winded event, losing is not quite such a dirty word as usual. England will still qualify for the quarter-finals so long as they beat the supposed makeweights of Holland and United Arab Emirates. But defeat yesterday was chastening for being inflicted upon an England team that has not improved since sinking into disrepair at the end of the South Africa tour.
The day was alarming, too, for a hamstring injury suffered by Graeme Hick, unarguably England's best player. Though not serious "a tightness rather than a pull", Raymond Illingworth, the team manager, said it is a concern, for Hick is one man England cannot cope without.
It is not a disgrace to lose to New Zealand. It may happen to better teams than England. This loss, however, was tantamount to default, such was the generosity of England's fielding. All else, including the dubious strategy of bowling first and relying more on seam than spin, pales into insignificance alongside the bungling out-cricket that dictated the result.
Of the four catches that England dropped, much the most costly reprieved Nathan Astle, the New Zealand opener. He had made just one, and was destined to make precisely another 100. But England erred in more ways than the spilling of chances, for their ground fielding was clumsy enough to cost perhaps 20 crucial runs.
Captain and manager were candid. Michael Atherton said succinctly: "Our fielding was poor, and the dropped catches cost us the match. I don't think you could fault our batting or bowling that much." Illingworth, brow creased with the worries of one whose job is on the line rather more imminently, agreed. "It was the same story in South Africa," he said. "We have worked hard on it since, but when it came to the crunch, we missed our chances again."
Atherton was unrepentant about the decision that contributed to the result. "I think the balance of the side was right and I think the decision to insert was right," he said. "I was certain in my own mind what we should do, and I would do the same again." Not for the first time in the aftermath of defeat, Illingworth distanced himself from such matters, saying that he had pointed out the dangers of bowling first, at 9am and with a ball wet from the heavy morning dew.
Support for Atherton, however, came from Lee Germon, the New Zealand captain, who confirmed: "We were looking to bowl first, too." It was, then, a toss best lost, for the expectation of early movement for the quicker bowlers came to little, and the pitch lost pace through the day.
The folk of Ahmedabad, who have halted a game or two in their time and, not so long ago, stoned an England women's team, were still filing into this ugly, unkempt stadium when England gave the game away. Having preferred Martin to DeFreitas and Neil Smith, they might have been vindicated. New Zealand might, indeed, have been seven for two, but Thorpe, the lone slip, dropped both openers in consecutive overs.
Spearman soon departed to a sharp return catch by Cork, but Astle and Fleming embarked upon a second-wicket stand of 96 in 19 overs, playing with a fluency that may disrupt many a team. Fleming, dropped by Atherton on 25, made three more before top-edging a sweep against Hick to deep backward square. Thorpe took the catch with relief, and the dismissal was repeated, eight overs later, to remove Twose.
Cairns excited the crowd merely by his entrance and, striking the ball with breathtaking ease, took 36 from 30 balls. New Zealand began the last ten overs on 196 for three. They should have scored 260, might have made even more, but lost the plot completely once Cairns had speared Richard Illingworth to point. Astle's century, his third in 18 one-day internationals, did not totally reassure them, for 240 was an accessible target, if only just.
England needed Atherton to stay for most of their reply, and so he did. All but eight balls, however, were as a runner for the hobbling Hick. A wicked yorker from Nash hit Atherton's leg stump to redouble England's task, and although Hick played with courage and facility for his 85, support was lacking.
Ironically, Hick fell through no fault of his own, run out by some fine work from Twose after Atherton and Fairbrother had hesitated over a sharp single. England, at that point, had needed 96 from 15 overs. "We were second favourites, but not by much," Atherton said. Thereafter, the odds became stark as England's decline took familiar shape, even some uncultured slogging from Fairbrother and Cork leaving them comfortably, deservedly, short.
AHMEDABAD SCOREBOARD England won toss NEW ZEALAND C M Spearman c and b Cork 5
(20min, 16 balls)
N J Astle c Hick b Martin 101
(171min, 132 balls, 2 sixes, 8 fours)
S P Fleming c Thorpe b Hick 28
(73min, 47 balls, 3 fours)
R G Twose c Thorpe b Hick 17
(27min, 26 balls, 1 four)
C L Cairns c Cork b Illingworth 36
(34min, 30 balls, 1 six, 4 fours)
C Z Harris run out (White/Russell) 10
(23min, 16 balls, 1 four)
S A Thomson not out 17
(27min, 23 balls, 1 four)
L K Germon not out 13
(16min, 12 balls)
Extras (b 4, lb 2, w 4, nb 2) 12
Total (6 wkts, 50 overs, 199min) 239
D J Nash, G R Larsen and D K Morrison did not bat.
FALL OF WICKETS: 1-12 (Astle 5),
2-108 (Astle 67), 3-141 (Astle 81),
4-196 (Astle 98), 5-204 (Harris 5),
6-212 (Thomson 3).
BOWLING: Cork 10-1-36-1 (nb 1, w 1; 2 fours; 6-1-15-1, 2-0-11-0, 2-0-10-0); Martin 6-0-37-1 (1 six, 3 fours; 3-0-25-0, 3-0-12-1); Gough 10-0-63-0 (1 six, 7 fours; 5-0-26-0, 3-0-20-0, 2-0-17-0); Illingworth 10-1-31-1 (3 fours; 7-1-27-0, 3-0-4-1); Hick 9-0-45-2 (w 3; 1 six, 1 four; one spell); White 5-0-21-0 (nb 1; 2 fours; one spell).
ENGLAND
M A Atherton b Nash 1
(4min, 3 balls)
A J Stewart c and b Harris 34
(95min, 72 balls, 3 fours)
G A Hick run out (Twose/Germon) 85
(135min, 101 balls, 9 fours)
G P Thorpe b Larsen 9
(24min, 21 balls)
N H Fairbrother b Morrison 36
(56min, 46 balls, 1 four)
R C Russell c Morrison b Larsen 2
(10min, 9 balls)
C White c Cairns b Thomson 13
(18min, 12 balls, 1 six)
D G Cork c Germon b Nash 19
(21min, 11 balls, 1 six, 2 fours)
D Gough not out 15
(32min, 17 balls)
P J Martin c Cairns b Nash 3
(8min, 7 balls)
R K Illingworth not out 3
(7min, 4 balls)
Extras (b 1, lb 4, w 1, nb 2) 8
Total (9 wkts, 50 overs, 210min) 228
FALL OF WICKETS: 1-1 (Stewart 0), 2-100 (Hick 61); 3-123 (Hick 75); 4-144 (Fairbrother 11), 5-151 (Fairbrother 16), 6-180 (Fairbrother 32), 7-185 (Cork 1), 8-210 (Gough 3), 9-222 (Gough 12).
BOWLING: Morrison 8-0-38-1 (nb 1, w 1; 4 fours; 4-0-13-0, 4-0-25-1); Nash 7-1-26-3 (nb 1; 2 fours; 5-1-14-1, 2-0-12-2); Cairns 4-0-24-0 (4 fours; one spell); Larsen 10-1-33-2 (2 fours; 5-1-19-0, 5-0-14-2); Thomson 10-0-51-1 1 six 2 fours; 7-0-32-0, 3-0-19-1); Harris 9-0-45-1 (nb 1; 1 six, 1 four; 7-0-29-1, 2-0-16-0); Astle 2-0-6-0 (one spell).
New Zealand won by 11 runs.
Man of the match: N J Astle.
Umpires: B C Cooray (Sri Lanka) and S G Randell (Australia).
Referee: M A K Pataudi (India).
Compiled by Bill Frindall
Port Vale 2 - Everton 1. EVERTON, the FA Cup holders, lived on their nerves, rode their luck, but finally did not have the wit or the will to survive their replay at Vale Park last night. Port Vale, masquerading among the down-and-outs of the Endsleigh Insurance League first division, lapped up the atmosphere, banked a record £175,000, and outplayed Everton in the grand manner. Leeds United, who await in the fifth round at Elland Road next Wednesday after beating Bolton Wanderers, cannot take anything for granted.
In 1988, Vale, as now under John Rudge, had eliminated Tottenham Hotspur. "It's that same old feeling, elation," Rudge said. "Better still, we didn't scratch a result. We could have won by even more."
Early on, the match was a testimony to the fading art of defending. After only 14 seconds, Everton allowed Foyle in behind them, and Southall somehow took his eye off the centre forward's shot, letting it squirm out of his grasp, tantalisingly wide of a post. But, in the seventeenth minute, Vale had the lead thanks to Ian Bogie, a player retrieving the vision and dynamic range of shot of his school days.
To do so, he accepted the ball from Hill, he glided past Horne, and with his right foot, from 25 yards, induced a heavy sway on the ball so that it eluded Southall. Bogie, in that moment, had made those two stalwarts, Horne, 33, and Southall, 37, look every minute of their age.
Joe Royle, the Everton manager, seeing how Port Vale cemented the gaps in their defence, brought on Rideout in place of Unsworth. Perhaps he reasoned that, since the route through the middle was not working, he might as well revert to aerial football, even without Ferguson, who has a groin injury. Royle, though, was almost betrayed in an instant by Hinchcliffe, whose wretched back-pass put the ball beyond his own goalkeeper. Had Naylor been more alert, had Southall not been able to scramble back and scuttle the ball away for a corner, this would have been embarrassment indeed.
But how fickle is the pendulum of Cup fortune. From the corner, in the 32nd minute, Southall was able to take a lunging, long kick, and when Rideout flicked it on with his foot, Stuart, capitalising on Hill's lack of awareness, swooped to shoot. His aim was true the ball would have hit the net in any case but it took the slightest of deflections off the body of Aspin.
Vale, nothing if not spirited, had two counter-attacks that raised the expectations of their crowd. In the 36th minute, Naylor released Guppy in space behind Jackson and Watson. The winger breezed in, but, off balance, mis-hit the ball off target. And then, when the referee had judged that McCarthy was onside after a perceptive through-ball from Bogie, Southall came racing out of his area, saving once again with his feet.
Amokachi at times was hypnotic in possession, yet his cleverest manoeuvre was to dummy the ball when Kanchelskis crossed from the right so that Stuart could volley, a shot which Musselwhite managed to turn over his bar with quick reflexes.
Then the flow, the elegant interpassing and the inventive raids, all favoured Vale. Foyle and Porter set up Guppy, whose finish across the face of an inviting net was inept. Soon afterwards, Guppy did well with a running volley from McCarthy's judicious pass, a volley blocked feet first again by Southall. The goalkeeper was soon stretching above his head to turn over another drive by Bogie. Then Foyle missed from seven yards.
Foyle, however, atoned with a dummy smarter even than Amokachi's. It allowed Guppy to outpace Jackson and to cross with great pace for Jon McCarthy, accelerating in from the other flank, to smite the ball viciously off the near post and past Southall for the winner. They would have made it 3-1 had Hinchcliffe not athletically cleared off the line from Naylor.
Royle offered no excuses. "They were the better side over both games," he said. "We made Vale look like Real Madrid."
PORT VALE (4-4-2): P Musselwhite A Hill, G Griffiths, N Aspin, A Tankard J McCarthy, I Bogie, A Porter, S Guppy (sub: R Walker, 85min) M Foyle, A Naylor.
EVERTON (4-4-2): N Southall M Jackson (sub: A Limpar, 75), C Short, D Watson, D Unsworth (sub: P Rideout, 29) A Kanchelskis, B Horne, J Ebbrell, A Hinchcliffe D Amokachi, G Stuart.
Referee: M Reed.
AFTER the defeat of Tony Allcock and David Bryant in the pairs on Tuesday, came another surprise yesterday when Ian Schuback, of Australia, the 1992 champion, lost to Ian Bond, an unseeded Englishman, in the singles at the Churchill Insurance world indoor bowls championships at the Preston Guild Hall.
Bond, 22, won 4-7, 7-3, 1-7,
7-3, 7-4 and will play another Australian, Ian Taylor, in the second round. The English champion from the Exonia club in Exeter fell two sets to one behind, losing the third after dropping a full house of four shots when a drive went awry, but he took the fourth and survived a tense decider.
At 6-4 to Bond on the last end, Schuback had the chance to remove Bond's shot and leave himself with the three he needed, but he connected with the jack and Bond had woods waiting at the back of the rink. "I had chances to win the game but couldn't take them," Schuback said.
Lee Nixon, 23, from Jersey, could not quite gain victory over Ian Taylor, the Australian with the circular bowling action. Nixon won the first and third sets and led 4-1 in the fourth, at which point Taylor scored an important treble and went on to square the match. The final set was an anti-climax as Taylor won 2-7, 7-5, 3-7, 7-4, 7-2.
Two more England players went through, Gary Smith beating Steve Rankin in straight sets and the unseeded Greg Harlow going the full distance against Mark McMahon before winning.
BOB PAISLEY'S death left Liverpool in mourning yesterday. Paisley was one of football's greatest figures, but he was also known throughout the game as one of its nicest, and nowhere more so than on Merseyside, where he lived and worked throughout his career as player, trainer, coach and finally the most successful manager in English football history.
"It is very sad for the whole city, and all the people of Liverpool," Roy Evans, the Liverpool manager, said yesterday. "In football terms you are talking about a legend. This club has had one or two of them in the past, and Bob ranked with any."
One of his closest colleagues, Peter Robinson, the club's chief executive said: "His record (13 trophies in nine years, including six championships and three European Cups) is unprecedented."
Mark Lawrenson, an outstanding member of the 1980s side, placed him alongside Sir Matt Busby, Jock Stein, Bill Shankly and Don Revie. "He did what many people thought was impossible he improved on what Bill Shankly left behind."
Former players and opponents were united in agreement. "Everybody who came into contact with him could have nothing but total respect for his honesty and integrity," Kevin Keegan, the Newcastle United manager, who was a member of Paisley's first League championship and European Cup winning teams, said.
Dave Sexton, who had the thankless task of competing with Paisley as manager of Manchester United, agreed. "He was probably the shrewdest man I ever met, and a very nice one as well," he said.
Kenny Dalglish, one of Paisley's successors as Liverpool manager, said: "Of all the people in football who owe a debt to Bob Paisley, I owe him the greatest. Probably the happiest I've ever seen him was at Chelsea in 1986 when we won the League. He was mostly happy for me in my first year as manager. That speaks volumes for the kind of man he was."
Evans had good reason to thank him as well. Paisley persuaded an unsuccessful full back to become a coach at 25, setting Evans on his way to become the latest graduate of Liverpool's legendary boot room to manage the club.
Paul Bew on Ulster's options after the bomb We are on a knife edge. At the moment every effort is rightly being devoted to getting the peace process back under way.
John Major rightly demands a renewed republican commitment to peace. Even now a consensus on elections leading to all-party negotiations might put pressure on some republican leaders to return to the world of democratic politics. There are signs of a softening of attitude to this part of the proposal on the part of the Irish Government and, more problematically, the SDLP; there is also some sign of Unionist softening on the Irish proposal for "proximity talks" (simultaneous talks under one roof, but not face to face). The hope then is that this phase of the IRA's campaign will be limited and short-lived although some veteran IRA-watchers expect a campaign of unprecedented ferocity.
Gerry Adams is diminished by the Docklands bomb. Neither the British nor the Irish Government will now afford Mr Adams a public stage. In this, Dublin is strongly supported by Seamus Mallon though not, it would seem, John Hume. The White House, too, has doubts about Mr Adams, who is in the position of a company chairman who has been demoted to running the mailroom. Mr Adams's republican critics have a sharper grasp of his deficiencies as a politician than many media folk. They know that Sinn Fein leaders nurtured illusions of a secret deal in which John Major would sell out the Unionists.
Ironically, many Sinn Fein leaders have been signalling for a year that they might be in the market for a compromise. A united Ireland is not the only "democratic" option, said Mitchel McLaughlin. Jim Gibney offered to consider any political model validated by the peculiar characteristics of Irish history. For 25 years, the extremism of the IRA's method violence was logically linked to its objective, the expulsion of the Unionist community from the United Kingdom. Now, absurdly, the violence simply reflects ethnic resentment, because the British were thought not to be pushing the Unionists quickly enough towards a messy compromise, which would have contained many uncomfortable elements for the Northern majority. But British and Unionist reluctance was largely based on doubts about the peaceful intentions of the IRA, doubts which have just been amply confirmed.
There is a now a battle for "middle Ireland" the moderate nationalists of North and South. Many of them are inclined to blame the outbreak of violence on British and Unionist intransigence. It was not so. Sir Patrick Mayhew spent all of 1994 saying that Dublin had to promise a removal of its formal claim to the North before he would agree to the framework document, but in the end he signed anyway. Both the Unionists and Sir Patrick insisted on decommissioning of arms before talks in 1995, only to waive this condition in 1996. Furthermore, John Major did not bin the Mitchell principles: despite London's irritation with the patronising tone of some of the report, he accepted it fully, at most giving it a tweak by strengthening the emphasis on the electoral process.
The IRA, on the other hand, blew the Mitchell report apart in Docklands. There is nothing in republican ideology to prevent Sinn Fein fighting Northern Ireland elections; on the other hand, that ideology is profoundly affronted by Mitchell's assumption of the illegality of IRA arms. It is all too clear now that talks based on the report were hardly an enticing prospect for the IRA; if only because they would have involved decommissioning of arms before a settlement.
The Unionist leadership feels that precious time was lost by Dublin's slowness in seeing the potential of the electoral proposal as a way around the decommissioning impasse. Some, such as the Ulster Unionist MP Roy Beggs, now doubt the confidence-building effect of an election, given the all-too-palpable threat of violence.
In any case, the Unionists must reach out to constitutional nationalists, North and South, as never before. This means talks about cross-border institutions. It means educating their own supporters politically, which Mr Adams funked. For we may be moving back to the world of Sir Patrick Mayhew's Cambridge speech of September 1993, in which he envisaged a political accommodation being between the moderate parties first. "Peace first, talks later" the Albert Reynolds and John Hume approach has triumphed in the meantime. The emphasis has been on the inclusion of extremists. But if the ceasefire has ended, and if it cannot be meaningfully restored, the political strategies based on it have gone too.
There is one bright point: the leaders of both the Ulster Unionists and the Irish Government have changed since 1992-93. The politicians now in place are more capable of making a deal; at a minimum, they could generate a better North-South atmosphere and prevent the build-up of a resentful nationalist mood which can only encourage IRA action. The big question, as always, is whether John Hume will allow such a deal. His striking new proposal for a referendum on violence and all-party talks is further proof of his democratic good faith.
The author is professor of politics at Queen's University, Belfast.
Buchanan's anti-abortion conservatism is setting the pace and could rock Clinton
Twice since the Second World War, the Republicans have nominated a conservative as their presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Ronald Reagan in 1980. Goldwater lost, but Reagan won, going on to win a second term as well. Pat Buchanan has now emerged in the Iowa caucuses as the leading conservative candidate for the nomination in 1996. His candidature must therefore be taken seriously. He had already won the poorly-attended Louisiana caucuses; he won 23 per cent of the vote in Iowa, against Senator Dole's 26 per cent. He has momentum, and some of his issues have momentum as well. A supporter has described Buchanan as "pro-gun, pro-life, pro-taxpayer".
His strongest issue is his opposition to abortion. Since 1980 the Republicans have had an anti-abortion plank in their presidential platform, but nothing much has happened as a result. The majority of active Republicans are now "pro-life" rather than "pro-choice". In the campaign so far, the pro-choice candidates have either dropped out, like Governor Wilson or Senator Specter, or decided not to run, like General Colin Powell. The only surviving candidate who could be called pro-choice is Steve Forbes, and he has been damaged by coming fourth in Iowa.
There is a division between two types of pro-life candidate. There are those, like Bob Dole himself, for whom the issue is secondary, an add-on to their campaigns. For Pat Buchanan, opposition to abortion is a defining issue; strong anti-abortion candidates took a total of 39 per cent of the Iowa vote, against 49 per cent for moderate pro-life candidates and 10 per cent for moderate pro-choice.
A large number of Republicans respond to Buchanan because they believe he means what he says about abortion, and the other frontrunners do not. They think that Dole will be pro-life in the primaries, will straddle the issue in the election itself and will do nothing if elected president. They are almost certainly correct. In Britain, where abortion is a strong personal issue but hardly a party political issue at all, it seems surprising that abortion should be playing so central a part in American presidential politics. George Will, the leading right-wing columnist, gives this reason: "Americans are beginning to recoil (from) the fanaticism that has helped to produce this fact: more than a quarter of all American pregnancies are ended by abortions." That amounts to 1.5 million abortions a year. The right to have an abortion, as a matter of personal choice, was given to American women by the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade. This was a judge-made law, not legislation by elected politicians. There is no democratic way to challenge the Supreme Court, short of a constitutional amendment.
The Supreme Court also federalised the abortion law of the United States. Before 1973, this was a matter for the states themselves, and different states did in fact have different laws which reflected their different beliefs; since 1973, abortion has been a universal right under American law, derived by a process of remote judicial interpretation from the Constitution itself. Because it is a right, American abortion law is not subject to the medical limitations which are almost universal in European law. Recently, Congress has been trying to pass a law to ban the relatively small number of what are called partial-birth abortions. The procedure in these late abortions is shocking, but it has to be described if the emotions aroused by these horrors are to be understood.
In partial-birth abortions, to quote Ray Kerrison's well-researched article in the New York Post, "the baby is extracted feet first from the womb, and through the birth canal until all but its head is exposed. Surgical scissors are then thrust into the base of the baby's skull and the brain is sucked out by a catheter". In 1995 a bill banning this practice was passed by 288 to 139 votes in the House of Representatives, and by 54 to 44 votes in the Senate. It has now gone back to the House to consider two clauses which were added in the Senate. The White House has announced that President Clinton intends to veto this Bill on the grounds that it "eroded a woman's right to choose".
The pro-life campaigners are passionately angry at this proposed veto by the President. They feel that it is intolerable to live in a country where the President fights to protect the legality of such detestable practices, as intolerable as it would have been to live in Nazi Germany in the years of the Holocaust. They see the President of the United States as a wholly abhorrent and evil man.
This anger helps to fuel the Buchanan campaign. At present he is indeed the only Republican candidate whom anyone cares much about, one way or the other. Bob Dole is a very experienced politician and a good Republican; Lamar Alexander is a reasonable, folksy and popular figure; Steve Forbes may have the best understanding of the economic challenges America has to face. But Pat Buchanan is the only candidate who personifies a deeply felt cause. That is his strength.
Unfortunately, leaving aside his social conservatism, Buchanan is what has been called "the wrong sort of conservative". He is a nationalist rather than an internationalist, and a protectionist rather than a free-trader. He attracts those Americans who want their jobs to be protected from world competition. Such attitudes have considerable support in most countries; they are the basis of the voting power of Le Pen in France or even of Zhirinovsky in Russia. Whatever view one might take of Buchanan's social conservatism, his nationalist economic populism could be a disaster for world trade.
Of course, he has not yet won the nomination, let alone the presidency. Yet, despite the view of many commentators, neither victory can be ruled out. He is a very experienced and relatively charismatic campaigner; he is his own speech writer; he is the best electioneer the Republicans have got. He will be strong in the Bible Belt of the South. He may do less well in the North-East, and the New Hampshire primary polls already suggest that Alexander may be doing better there. If Dole fades, as he well may, Alexander would become the "Stop Buchanan" candidate of the Republican centre, while Forbes might be the candidate of the Adam Smith conservatives.
Bill Clinton is probably a better electioneer even than Pat Buchanan. If Buchanan were nominated, Clinton might knock him out with some variant of the Lyndon Johnson campaign theme against Goldwater "In your guts you know he's nuts" but one can hardly depend on it. An increasing number of American economic commentators believe that the US will be in recession by the autumn. The Whitewater scandal does not go away, the Vincent Foster cover-up could easily unravel further. A populist conservative candidate advocating protection of jobs, American nationalism and the sanctity of the family, might well beat a scandal-tainted liberal pro-abortion President during an economic downturn.
The New York Times would probably argue that Buchanan's conservative positions are well to the right of the American people, and that many of them are also unacceptable to the Adam Smith conservatives who delight in the leading articles in the Wall Street Journal. That is true. But his populist conservatism does appeal to the "hard-hat" (working-class) Republicans who were one of Ronald Reagan's constituents; his social conservatism and opposition to abortion appeals strongly to the large and growing religious right. These are major social groups, and a Republican candidate who engages their support can afford to have alienated the electors of Martha's Vineyard, Westchester County, Park Avenue, The Hamptons and Harvard Yard. Reagan won in 1980 without their votes; so could Buchanan in 1996.
It probably will not happen. As in Iowa, moderately conservative Republicans who would prefer Dole or Alexander probably outnumber strongly conservative Republicans who would prefer Buchanan by 60-40. New Hampshire may confirm that, even if Buchanan does well. Even if he became the Republican candidate, Buchanan would need a recession to beat Bill Clinton, and might not win even then. What is certain is that Buchanan is now the man to beat, and his conservatism is the running issue inside the Republican Party. There will again have to be a strong pro-life plank in the Republican platform. The President will veto the "partial-birth" Bill at his peril. Pat Buchanan may well never be president; it will probably be better if he is not. But in 1996 he is setting the Republican agenda, and that will to some extent set the agenda for President Clinton as well.
We used to say that Britain could take it; now we can't even take this Ihave watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf.
It is a fine broad stairway at the beginning, but after a bit the carpet ends. A little farther on there are only flagstones, and a little farther on still these break beneath your feet. And I have to tell you that, this morning, the stairway is in even shakier nick than it was when Winston stood where I am standing now. For I have just been passed by Britannia, shuffling down, and, as she lurched, something caught the light of her guttering candle which led me to fear that it will very soon be all up with this island race.
I had, of course, grown used to the deteriorating state of her upper lip, now so limp that it hangs over her lower jaw, and to that weakening of her backbone to the point where one good sneeze could well send all her vertebrae clattering into her left boot, but the glint in the candlelight was something new. It was a trickle from her nostril. Britannia, I have to tell you, was snivelling. She was breaking up. She could not take it.
She was breaking up because she could not take the breaking up of Take That. I know this, because I know that that is why the Samaritans, in addition to everything else they have on their plate in these parlous times, have set up an emergency helpline to counsel the thousands of suicidal young Britons who lack the fibre to cope with the news.
Dear God, so is it come to this? Is that generation which is our future's only hope so ill-equipped to handle setback that the dismantling of a billionaire boy band which has decided henceforth to make its billions in individual piles for easier counting has them chucking themselves off suspension bridges?
We were not ever thus. Perhaps my earliest memory of my father is his return from six years of bitter war in a demob suit three sizes too large only to find that Wilson, Kepple and Betty had split up. Betty, voluptuous catalyst of an Egyptian sand dance the memory of which had kept my old man going even in the darkest hours of battle, had decided to go her own way. Did he put the souvenir Luger to his temple? He did not. He told my mother to cheer up, old girl, they'll find another Betty, and he put the kettle on while she, no less stoic, sat down at the scullery table and set about shortening his trousers. Life had to go on.
I learnt much from them. When, a few years, later, I heard at the age of 12 that The Road to Bali was to be Hope and Crosby's last film together, I did not rope my young throat to an attic joist and kick away the bentwood chair, I went round to David Bunyan's house, and Dave said, "Never mind, Abbott and Costello are still together," and we ran over to the allotments with our catapults, because the council gave you a shilling for each squirrel-tail, and you could get into the Southgate Odeon for that and still have threepence over for liquorice bootlaces.
I find it quite impossible to take on board the complete collapse of moral fibre and emotional resilence which one brief generation has brought: in yesterday's Times, our diarist noted that the switchboard at No 10 had been jammed by countless young people attempting to ring John Major to persuade him to change whatever Take That have for minds. Do you know that, when the Hope and Crosby news broke, it never even crossed mine to ring up Clement Attlee to beg his intervention?
Nor, a few years further on, when, in the selfsame month, Dean Martin parted from Jerry Lewis and Monty Sunshine left the Chris Barber Band to blow his clarinet elsewhere, did I for one moment consider pressing the Macmillan Government into service on the grounds that I had never had it so bad. I simply pulled myself together and cycled round to a girl called Sandra something to make a consolatory stab at what passed for sex in 1958.
But, as the commendably loyal Rolling Stones have it, it's all over now. We are a nation of weeds. In further evidence of which, I need cite only the fact that, when news broke of my non-appearance in my normal spot yesterday, tearful thousands rang Esther Rantzen's helpline to find out whether The Times and I had parted company. I hope none of them was you. I'd like to think my readers were made of sterner stuff.
MANY turned out to hear Edwina Currie on novel-writing at the Foyles lunch in London yesterday. But far more interesting was Germaine Greer on the dire state of female undergraduates. Lamenting the decline of the Lady Astor Dining Society, a female institution which closed some years ago, the Newnham don suggested that girls simply don't know how to have fun anymore.
Cambridge girls study too much, she said. "Chaps know how to enjoy life and get rid of unwelcome toxins. But women, while diligent and assiduous in their studies, don't know how to unwind. They should behave more outrageously."
So what does she have in mind? "Well, I'll say this. When a man bares himself and puts his bottom through a study window, it is regarded as a crime. When a group of men put their bottoms through a study window, it is regarded as high jinks." Extraordinary.
TONY BLAIR is riding into a storm on the wilder fringes of politics over his plans for regional government. At a party meeting in Cambourne tonight, he will be up against the wrath of the Cornish nationalists.
The Labour leader, who advocates an authority for the whole of the South-West, has infuriated Mebyon Kernow, which wants its own government and intends to picket the meeting. "The Devonians are the worst they look down their noses at Cornish people, and they've taken our cream and pasties, thinking we're poor cousins," says Councillor Conan Trevenen Jenkin.
A phone trilled the other day in the Eton house of Lord Frederick, son of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent. A passing pupil picked it up. "Hello," said a woman's voice. "I want to speak to Freddie Windsor." "Who is it?" drawled the youth. "Princess Michael of Kent," said she. "Yeah, and I'm the Queen of Sheba," came the retort.
A LOVEBIRD has come to the aid of Lord Brocket as he begins his prison sentence for fraud. Dame Barbara Cartland has dispatched a Valentine message. "I was extremely upset by the sentence. I have known him since he was a little boy, and he is a wonderful charming man," she explains. "He has done wonderful work for the St John Ambulance Brigade. I've written to him to say I will do
anything I can to help while he is in prison."
Alistair Cooke, who is celebrating the 50 years of Letters from America on the wireless, says he has no intention of retiring. "If you retire, you keel over," he
says robustly. His secret? Regular doses of barliensis vulgaris otherwise known as Scotch.
FOR THOSE who enjoy a leisurely puff, the ultimate cigar a snip at an estimated $2,000 is now available for chomping. After a treasure hunt lasting two decades, a cache of cigars more than 130 years old has been discovered in a country house in Ireland.
Simon Chase, of Hunters & Frankau, the London cigar importer, is beside himself with excitement. He says in Country Life that he heard rumours of these particular cigars in the 1970s.
"I knew there was a house in the west of Ireland whose owners had bought the whole annual crop of Havana during one year towards the end of the 19th century," he says. "The story kept melting into the Irish mists, but finally I tracked down what I believe to be the oldest smokable cigars in the land." They're still smokable, thanks to Ireland's damp climate, and an offer of $1 million has come in from America for a box of 500. Which works out at $1 per smoking second.
A GROUP of green-minded folk which has criticised grants to farmers has itself received a subsidy of £30,000 from the European Union to investigate the reform of, er, subsidies.
The Agricultural Reform Group, which enjoys the sympathy of the Prince of Wales, and whose leading lights include Jonathan Porritt, will use the money to help pay for a conference on subsidies in Brussels later this year.
The conference is being organised by the outspoken Cambridgeshire farmer Oliver Walston, who believes reform of the common agricultural policy is essential. "We have been given money to see how we can reform subsidies," he admits.
But Walston denies any bad faith in the group's successful application to Brussels for cash. "If I had come out against all subsidies in principle, it would be hypocritical," he said. "What I am saying is that many of the subsidies currently paid are stupid. The money we are getting from Brussels is exactly what most agricultural subsidy is not it is targeted and has been given for a specific purpose."
Stephen Howe, the Editor of Farmers Weekly, is unimpressed. "I do find it ironic that they should get a grant while at the same time criticising subsidies."
David Miller pays tribute to Bob Paisley, prime mover of the Liverpool football legend
The secret of football management is less a matter of subtle tactics, or shrewd transfers, or fanatical fitness, than one of simple man-management. Bob Paisley, who died yesterday aged 77, was the most successful British manager in the history of the game. He knew how to handle people.
The appearance could be misleading. Paisley was unassuming, almost to the point of anonymity, and entirely without self-projection, which made him such a contrast to the firebrand figurehead he succeeded at Liverpool, Bill Shankly. There were times when Paisley, avuncular, smiling and vague, could appear a little lost, yet behind that genial, self-effacing Geordie humour lay a resolute will.
His remarkable haul of 13 trophies in nine years between 1974, when he took the reins upon the sudden retirement of Shankly, and 1983, was a direct product of that fabled college of humanity that he helped to create: the boot room. Shankly may have intimidated oppositions with his warning sign over the tunnel entrance to the pitch "This Is Anfield" but the wisdom behind more than 30 years' continual achievement was fashioned in the boot room.
It was no surprise when, after Shankly's abrupt departure, there was no hiccup in Liverpool's rhythm. The reason was that so much of it, behind the bravura of Shankly's flag-waving rhetoric, had stemmed from Paisley. For him, taking charge was no more than accepting public accountability, which he did with modest reluctance but undiluted zeal.
As the trophies flowed the first being the first of six League championships at the end of his second season he did not alter by a single button. He must have been amply rewarded by the club, alongside the likes of Keegan and Dalglish, whose fame he helped to devise, yet he continued to live in the same house and drive a standard Ford saloon.
There were players who occasionally made fun of Paisley's accent, his unfinished sentences, his reference to this or that player as "doings", which earned him the nickname of "Dougie Doings", but some did so at their peril. Terry McDermott, a prime mimic, found himself transferred to Newcastle United soon after Paisley's appointment.
Paisley could be a paradox: the carpet-slippered figure who would turn a blind eye to out-of-hours high jinks if he did not think they were detrimental to the club's fortunes, yet a manager who could strip Phil Thompson of the captaincy for answering back sharply in training, handing the job to Graeme Souness.
Paisley, like Shankly, was born in a mining area, Hetton-le-Hole in Co Durham, and he knew the sterner realities of life. He saw wartime service in North Africa, was once lucky to escape in a truck that stumbled into enemy lines during a sandstorm, and rode a tank at the liberation of Rome. His generation was a particular breed.
After an Amateur Cup winner's medal with Bishop Auckland in 1939, he signed for Liverpool, and then for a while was a guest wartime player with Bristol City: a gritty, tenacious, ball-winning wing half. He won a League championship medal with Liverpool in 1947, and was disappointingly dropped from the FA Cup Final team of 1950, when they lost 2-0 to Arsenal. In 1957, he became chief trainer the beginning of the more illustrious phase of his 44-year career at Anfield.
Managers such as Paisley get response, and loyalty, from players because of their own honesty and integrity. During my years of moderately close association with him, I never sensed that anything he was saying was slanted, prejudiced or contrived. He might occasionally avoid telling you a fact, a possible team change, for tactical circumspection, but he could not avoid going hand in hand with the truth.
His explanation of his selection for the 1977 FA Cup Final, in which defeat by Manchester United cost Liverpool the treble including championship and European Cup, was typical. He had preferred David Johnson in attack to the erratically brilliant young David Fairclough. "You can't be such a family as this club is if you don't feel for people," Paisley said after a day of inner torment. "I'm not cold-blooded. But I accepted the responsibilities when I took this job, and that means being ruthless and detached on important decisions. It was two from three. I talked to all the training staff. We weighed the factors. There's no room for sentiment and it's a matter of picking the best men for the job."
Paisley expected, and largely received, dedication from his players. When, after a match, he would say "we were a bit easy-osie today", you knew that someone in the team could expect an earbashing. "Praise from Bob was about as frequent as a snowstorm in the Sahara," Souness has said, "but I learnt more from him than from anyone. He ruled Anfield with a rod of iron. When he was about, the dressing-room atmosphere or the training ground changed. If we were complacent, he'd say: ‘If you've all had enough of winning, come and see me and I'll sell the lot of you and buy 11 new players'. I have never known anyone read a game better."
After that first European Cup victory, over Borussia Monchengladbach, Keegan left for Hamburg. Paisley replaced him with Dalglish: a natural rather than a self-made talent. Dalglish recalls Paisley's constant reminder: there's always work to be done. "Simple, what he expected from us, and that was about it."
Paisley's genius was to be able to remain an ordinary man amid extraordinary achievements. Even at moments of triumph, he still had the demeanour of an unconcerned holidaymaker at Morecambe or Scarborough, paddling with a knotted handkerchief on his head. He was a dear man who helped to generate untold affection for the game and for his club. He retired as a director through ill health in 1992.
LIVERPOOL'S CUPS UNDER PAISLEY 6 League championships 1976, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1982, 1983
3 League Cups
1981, 1982, 1983
3 European Cups
1977, 1978, 1981
1 Uefa Cup
1976
1 European Super Cup
1977
5 FA Charity Shields
1974, 1976, 1979, 1980, 1982
Mark Souster talks to the full back who has succeeded a Scottish legend
Rowen Shepherd knew that the "Gavin" question would crop up at some stage, raised his eyebrows only slightly when it did, puffed out his cheeks, and for the umpteenth time since taking over the Scotland No15 jersey, calmly answered. Yes, it could have been difficult following in the footsteps of a legend, but no, he did not feel any particular pressure.
"When I came into the side, I decided to do my own thing, and not worry about what Gavin (Hastings) had done," Shepherd said yesterday. "In a funny way, taking over from a legend has made it easier because people aren't expecting much from you. I go into matches hoping people will be pleasantly surprised by what I have to offer."
Pleasantly surprised they have been since Shepherd, 25 and a youth development officer with Dunfermline District Council, made his international debut against Western Samoa at Murrayfield in November. Since then, the Italy game apart, the Melrose full back could be forgiven for blinking in disbelief at what he, in his first full season as a full back, and Scotland, have achieved.
"I couldn't have dreamt how it was going to happen, my first cap at home, then two wins in my first five nations' games," he said. "It's almost unnerving, too good to be true, and it makes you wonder when it all might go wrong; but I'll enjoy it while it lasts."
Shepherd had been considered the heir apparent to Hastings since last summer, especially after he left Edinburgh Academicals, where he objected to playing in the centre, to join Melrose as a full back. The decision was swiftly vindicated a league championship medal in his first season then a place in the Scotland side.
People may have doubted the credentials, but his performances, especially against France, have been inspiring. Rock solid under the high ball, Shepherd's willingness to counter-attack and to kick only as a last resort, fit in perfectly with Scotland's new modus operandi. "I did a lot of good things against France, but there were also mistakes and things I need to work on, like my decision-making on the ball, and my angles of attack," he said.
It is difficult, he admits, not to be swept along by the tide of euphoria flowing through Scottish rugby, but, Scotland are determined not to start believing the headlines, which are already pointing to England on March 2 and the possibility of a grand slam.
"We have gone from Ireland, when only 30 guys thought we could win, to the whole country thinking we can win in Wales with only 30 of us realising it could all go horribly wrong," he said. "We mustn't freeze, but we won't be over-confident. Cockiness doesn't suit this side."
Shepherd, although born in Edinburgh, was raised in the far north in Thurso, where his father is still a doctor. Physical education college took him to Edinburgh, where he joined the Academicals initially as a stand-off, before trying full back with the Scotland Students.
Progress through the representative ranks was smooth and uninterrupted, from the under-19s, to the under-21s and then the A team, for whom he excelled during the the tour to Zimbabwe last summer.
Next stop is Cardiff. The passion and theatre of the National Stadium await, but Shepherd is confident that he and Scotland will cope. He will take into the match the words of Dr Richard Cox, a sports psychologist: "There will be fire in our bellies, but we must be ice cool in the mind."
TONY RUSS, the architect of Leicester's Courage Clubs Championship triumph last year, yesterday seriously questioned the strategy pursued by England this season. Russ, the Leicester director of rugby, made it clear that he was baffled by most of the changes that England have made to the side to play Scotland at Murrayfied on March 2, calling the omission of Martin Bayfield, who has been replaced by Garath Archer, "incomprehensible".
After Jack Rowell, the England manager, named a side lacking Bayfield and Tim Rodber, Russ said that he believed there was an "underlying lack of confidence among the players. The basis of team confidence is consistency of selection. England are chopping and changing without any pattern being allowed to develop. I am not sure the right people are being dropped.
"In my view, this England squad needs stability, continuity and a clear vision of the pattern of play which it is trying to achieve," Russ added. "This is clearly the role of the team management. You can't just keep changing personnel, but Jack doesn't seem to know what his best team is.
"We are making it up as we go along and that is not the way to run a team. There is no pattern, just a hope, it would appear, that we will stumble upon something that works.
The tendency of the selectors to choose players out of position was called into question by Russ. He pointed to the selection of Mike Catt, a stand-off half all season in first division rugby, at full back, and the presence of a loose-head prop, Jason Leonard, at tight head.
"They have consistently picked people out of position so that those players can't really understand and practise the job they have to do. It's like asking the first violinist to play trombone and thinking that, just because he reads music, he will do a job. He may do, but not with the flair he would have shown with his familiar instrument.
"The dropping of Bayfield I find incomprehensible. To my mind, he is one of the best lineout forwards in world rugby. He has been a very, very productive winner of lineout ball for England. It is not him I would have dropped for the difficulties at the lineout. I believe there is now an uncertainty which was never there when Brian Moore was throwing in. Surely we have to look at where we are throwing it and who is throwing in, not the actual jumpers."
Russ also expressed his concern at the call-up and then swift demotion of the likes of Rodber. "I feel so sorry for Rodber. He was left out, brought back without having played a single game after his exclusion, and is now omitted again. Either he is in or out it is ludicrous."
Paddy Johns, the Ireland lock, has recovered from a knee injury and will be fit to face France in Paris on Saturday, but Simon Geoghegan's chances of playing are thought to be slim.
Geoghegan has had intensive physiotherapy for a hamstring strain over the past few days. A decision on his fitness will be taken tomorrow morning, before the Irish leave for Paris. If he is ruled out, his place on the right wing will go to Richard Wallace, of Garryowen.
Football: Jimmy Rimmer yesterday began his second stint as caretaker manager of Swansea City this season after the resignation of Kevin Cullis, who had been in charge at the Vetch Field for just seven days.
Basketball: The London Towers reached the National Cup final with a crushing
99-77 victory over the Birmingham Bullets in the second leg of their semi-final at Wembley Court last night. They won 176-156 on aggregate. The Towers will meet the Sheffield Sharks, who accounted for Crystal Palace, winning the second leg 74-68 for a 144-131 aggregate triumph.
Boxing: Billy Hardy may find it hard to convince even his staunchest supporters that he will be able to deal with Naseem Hamed, the World Boxing Organisation featherweight champion, whom he wants to meet next. Hardy, who holds the European title, had to struggle for 12 rounds to get the decision over Mike Alldis, of Crawley, at the Crowtree Leisure Centre, Sunderland, last night.
THOMAS MUSTER, elevated to No1 in the men's tennis world rankings earlier this month, suffered a 6-1, 3-6, 7-6 first-round defeat at the hands of Sandon Stolle, of Australia, in the Dubai Open yesterday.
The Austrian arrived in the Middle East at the crack of dawn, having travelled overnight from Johannesburg, where he had been playing for his country in a Davis Cup tie against South Africa. Despite suffering the obvious effects of jet lag, he managed a spirited comeback in the second and third sets before weariness got the better of him.
Mary Pierce, whose world ranking has slipped to No12 in a troubled season, was beaten 7-5, 7-5 in the first round of the Paris Open last night by Petra Begerow, of Germany, ranked No49.
Man v Machine
The epic match for world chess supremacy between the human world champion Garry Kasparov and IBM's Deep Blue computer, which can see 50 million positions per second, continues level. Game three ended in a draw after Kasparov, playing with the disadvantageous black pieces, conducted a cautious strategic defence. He was particularly concerned to prevent the machine from opening up the game successfully, as it had done in game one.
White: Deep Blue
Black: Garry Kasparov
Philadelphia, February 1996
Sicilian Defence
1 e4 c5
2 c3 d5
3 exd5 Qxd5
4 d4 Nf6
5 Nf3 Bg4
6 Be2 e6
70-0 Nc6
8 Be3 cxd4
9 cxd4 Bb4
10 a3 Ba5
11 Nc3 Qd6
12 Ne5 Bxe2
13 Qxe2 Bxc3
14 bxc3 Nxe5
15 Bf4 Nf3+
16 Qxf3 Qd5
17 Qd3 Rc8
18 Rfc1 Qc4
19 Qxc4 Rxc4
20 Rcb1 b6
21 Bb8 Ra4
22 Rb4 Ra5
23 Rc4 0-0
24 Bd6 Ra8
25 Rc6 b5
26 Kf1 Ra4
27 Rb1 a6
28 Ke2 h5
29 Kd3 Rd8
30 Be7 Rd7
31 Bxf6 gxf6
32 Rb3 Kg7
33 Ke3 e5
34 g3 exd4+
35 cxd4 Re7+
36 Kf3 Rd7
37 Rd3 Raxd4
38 Rxd4 Rxd4
39 Rxa6 Draw agreed
Diagram of final position
Massive following
The IBM World Wide Web site which allows enthusiasts to follow the games live is receiving a record number of 1,200 accesses per second from those wanting to follow the game. According to IBM this already exceeds the previous record set by the American Superbowl final. The game can be followed on the World Wide Web:
http://www.chess.ibm.park.org.
Raymond Keene writes on chess Monday to Friday in Sport and in the Weekend section on Saturday.
Grimsby Town 3 - West Ham United 0.
AS FA Cup evenings go, it was dramatic and bizarre. It began with a peace offering, when Brian Laws, the Grimsby Town player-manager, and Avano Bonetti, his Italian striker, kissed and made up after their altercation at the weekend. It ended with West Ham United unceremoniously cast aside in a stirring fourth-round replay at Blundell Park.
First, the soap opera, involving Laws, Bonetti, a half-time team talk at Luton Town on Saturday, a plate of sandwiches and a fractured cheekbone. The upshot was Bonetti in hospital and unable to play for at least a month, but the conclusion, apparently, was amicable.
"As manager, I feel responsible for my actions, and I have apologised to the club, the players and Avano," Laws said before the game. "That is the end of the matter, as far as I am concerned." Bill Carr, the Grimsby chairman, said: "Brian is staying. There was never any question of him leaving."
Bonetti, badly bruised under his right eye, shook hands with Laws before kick-off and confirmed that he would also be staying. When Laws's comments were read out over the public-address system, they were greeted with warm applause.
Next, the game. It should have been no contest, with Grimsby not having won in ten Endsleigh Insurance League first division matches and West Ham having stretched their run of FA Carling Premiership victories to three, against Tottenham Hotspur only two days earlier.
A piece of cake for West Ham? Never. With harmony having engulfed them, Grimsby eventually cantered to a fifth-round tie against Chelsea at the same venue next Wednesday. Harry Redknapp, the West Ham manager, said: "Grimsby worked very hard and deserved it. Good luck to them."
Hard graft indeed held the key, with West Ham also industrious yet strangely lacking in the cutting edge that had sliced through Tottenham so frequently on Monday. Grimsby's energy was better directed, with Fickling and Forrester combining to set up Childs to give them a 1-0 lead midway through the first half.
After the interval, it was more of the same West Ham unconvincing in everything they did and Grimsby comfortably biding their time before striking again in the 59th minute. Childs delivered a perfect pass and Woods, after chesting the ball down, scurried on to drive it past Miklosko.
With Miklosko increasingly exposed, Forrester tucked in a third in the final minute after Miklosko had saved but could not hold Southall's shot. It capped a strange evening, when Laws kept his job, Bonetti accepted his apologies and Grimsby caused an upset. Funny old game or what?
GRIMSBY TOWN (4-4-2): P Crichton J McDermott, G Croft, M Lever, A Fickling G Childs (S Livingstone, 82min), P Groves, C Shakespeare, N Southall N Woods, J Forrester.
WEST HAM UNITED (4-4-2): L Miklosko S Potts, M Rieper, A Martin (sub: J Harkes, 63), J Dicks M Hughes, D Williamson, I Bishop, K Rowland (sub: D Gordon, 63) I Dowie, A Cottee.
Referee: R Hart.
DIANE MODAHL yesterday launched High Court proceedings against the British Athletic Federation (BAF). She is seeking what her solicitor described as "a substantial six-figure sum" in compensation for losses arising from her suspension from athletics for an alleged drugs offence.
Modahl said that she faced "financial ruin" and felt "betrayed" by the BAF, which had confirmed her four-year ban for failing a drugs test. Seven months later, in July last year, a BAF appeals panel overturned the ban. Tony Ward, the federation spokesman, said yesterday that the BAF would contest the action "vigorously".
Modahl was sent home from the 1994 Commonwealth Games as she was about to defend her 800 metres title, having failed a drugs test conducted in Lisbon ten weeks earlier. A BAF disciplinary hearing confirmed her suspension, but the appeals panel freed her to return, though she has yet to race.
A statement issued yesterday by Mishcon de Reya, Modahl's legal representatives, said: "She alleges serious breaches of contract by BAF and claims damages in respect of the costs of fighting two sets of proceedings, including her legal and scientific experts' fees, loss of sponsorship and loss of other income. BAF's breaches relate to the suspension, the first disciplinary hearing and then the ban, notwithstanding fundamental flaws in the case against her."
No mention was made of a claim for defamation. "This is not a libel writ," Tony Morton-Hooper, her solicitor, said. "It is principally a contractual claim. All the facts will, for the first time, come into the public domain in court." The BAF declined to settle without going to court.
"There is nothing in our rules empowering us to give compensation," Ward said. "The BAF was presented with a very difficult case of a test carried out abroad. It was duty-bound to act under the rules and regulations of the international federation." The cost of the case to the federation was "well into six figures", Ward said.
Edward Grayson, a practising barrister specialising in legal issues in sport, said: "So far as I have been able to trace, it is the first time in the United Kingdom that British sports administrators have been sued for damages for alleged defective procedures."
Manchester City 2 - Coventry City 1.
ALTHOUGH Dion Dublin scored to set up a hectic final five minutes, there was to be no last-minute reprieve for Coventry City this time. Manchester City held on in their FA Cup fourth-round replay last night to set up the tie that all Manchester wants to see. They go to Old Trafford to face United on Sunday.
City, being City, there were scrapes and nervous moments along the way, but by the end, in spite of the storming finale, they just about deserved their victory. "I'm just thrilled they've come through a situation where we had to play three different systems in one game, the players have done fantastically," Alan Ball, the City manager said.
Flitcroft, for one, coped with everything asked of him, beginning as sweeper and then moving back into midfield as Coventry began to press.
Quinn moved to centre half after Curle had limped away, to leave his place on Sunday in question. Kinkladze and Clough operated in more familiar territory and, as their side got to grips with the game, were to play crucial roles, Clough scoring the first goal after Coventry, with Strachan in dominant mood, had controlled most of the first half-hour.
"We've nobody to blame but ourselves," Ron Atkinson, the Coventry manager, admitted. "We controlled the game until their first goal, and for much of the second half we battered them and had bags of chances."
Coventry, indeed, looked comfortable in the opening exchanges, although Whelan missed the best chance of the half. As City struggled, Quinn, too, missed a fine opportunity but redeemed himself inside two minutes as his header from Summerbee's corner opened the way for Clough.
Quinn scored the second with a composure he had lacked earlier, and when Lamptey saw a shot fly off the post, it was clear that Coventry were out of luck. The point was made when Dublin missed an absolute sitter, a miss he will particularly rue for he scored minutes later.
MANCHESTER CITY (3-5-2): E Immel K Symons, G Flitcroft, K Curle (sub: G Creaney, 79min) N Summerbee, G Kinkladze, S Lomas, N Clough, M Brown U Rosler, N Quinn.
COVENTRY CITY (4-4-2): S Ogrizovic A Pickering, R Shaw, D Busst, D Burrows G Strachan, P Telfer (sub: N Lamptey, 55min), K Richardson, J Salako N Whelan, D Dublin.
Referee: K Cooper.
Arsenal 2 - Aston Villa 2
Arsenal fail to capitalise on Bergkamp's moments of inspiration
TWO exceptional first-half goals by Dennis Bergkamp were not enough to sink Aston Villa in a memorable Coca-Cola Cup semi-final first leg at Highbury last night. Dwight Yorke levelled the score for the largely superior Villa, who are unbeaten at home in this competition since 1987 and must now be favourites to reach the final for the seventh time.
Immense credit is due to Villa for their adventurous enterprise, attacking throughout whenever possible. They were still pushing forward at the finish, when they might have sought security, and could have left with a 3-2 lead. Eleven minutes from time, Johnson hit the bar from outside the penalty area and, from the rebound, Yorke's first-time shot struck Seaman's legs.
At the other end Parlour, a substitute for Helder, allowed Bosnich to smother him seven yards out when he should have scored to give Arsenal the lead that they will surely need in the second leg.
For much of the first half-hour and again at the start of the second half, an uncertain and often hesitant Arsenal were placed under extreme pressure by the tenacity and speed of Villa's inter-passing.
The visitors' 3-5-2 formation was winning the midfield duel; without the injured Adams, recovering from a cartilage operation, the centre of Arsenal's defence was vulnerable. Wright and Bergkamp were unable to make headway against the rearguard of Ehiogu, Southgate and Staunton.
Arsenal had made one or two tentative attacks, but with 15 minutes gone Villa began to exert pressure. From Johnson's diagonal cross on the right, following a muddle in the Arsenal defence, Milosevic headed past the post.
A few minutes later a rapid side-step and acceleration by Johnson from the edge of the centre circle had Arsenal reeling. His early drive from more than 25 yards caught Seaman by surprise, the ball was parried and nearly scrambled home by Milosevic as he closed in fast.
The game was turned on its head by Bergkamp's two goals within seven minutes. The first was exceptional because not only his shot but the two preceding passes were both struck first time. Merson fed the ball through to Wright, positioned close to the "D", Wright played the ball instantly back into the path of Bergkamp and his ferocious shot, rising no more than a few inches, flew into the far left corner of the net beyond Bosnich.
The Arsenal players, never mind their supporters, could hardly credit their good fortune, yet within minutes they were further ahead. A clearance by Keown, hit under pressure with more desperation than science, hurtled down the middle of the field. Bergkamp reacted like a sprinter to the gun. Turning and accelerating, he was clear of Villa's rearguard before they knew it. Taking the ball in his stride he drew Bosnich, and from close range slid the ball through the goalkeeper's legs as he lunged forward.
This was, in a sense, robbery, considering Villa's previous dominance of what was their tenth appearance in the semi-final stage of a competition which they have won four times. Commendably, they were anything but demoralised and within six minutes had pulled themselves back into contention.
A high ball by Ehiogu was the start of a period of panic in the penalty area by the Arsenal defence. Finally, Draper headed square across the goalmouth from the
left, half-a-dozen heads and knees missed the ball and there was Yorke on the far post to drive it home, low and sure.
On the stroke of half-time Villa might have been level when a snap-shot by Johnson was deflected and flew only a yard wide of the goal. Midway through the second half, Arsenal, still less convincing, might have restored their two-goal lead, but Wright shot wide from Winterburn's cross.
Deservedly, Villa drew level with just over a quarter of an hour remaining. Milosevic, prodded clear on the left by Johnson, cut in and delayed his cross before pitching the ball to the far post where Yorke rose to head home.
ARSENAL (4-4-2): D Seaman L Dixon, A Linighan, M Keown, N Winterburn P Merson, J Jensen, D Hillier, G Helder (sub: R Parlour, 63min) D Bergkamp, I Wright.
ASTON VILLA (3-5-2): M Bosnich U Ehiogu, G Southgate, S Staunton G Charles, T Johnson, A Townsend, M Draper, A Wright S Milosevic, D Yorke.
Referee: P Durkin.
Nap: SOHRAB (3.45 Sandown Park) Next best: Equity Player (2.35 Sandown Park)
Thunderer gave five out of the seven winners at Sedgefield yesterday. His Ascot winners included Landed Gentry (9-1) and he was on the mark at Lingfield with Fools Errand (12-1).
THOSE left unmoved by the spectacle of steeplechasing should have been at Ascot yesterday, when three superb performances made an uncomfortable contrast with the silhouette of Jamie Osborne lying prostrate on the turf.
Osborne had barely stopped enthusing about Seekin Cash's processional victory in the Shenley Enterprises Hurdle before he was knocked unconscious in a sickening fall from Coulton. The gelding had thrown some mighty leaps, but his commitment to the twelfth fence was token at best. It left Osborne in an ambulance destined for Wexham Park Hospital in Slough, to be followed by a lengthy spell on the sidelines.
Norman Gordon, the racecourse doctor at Ascot, said Osborne was stretchered away in a neck brace for precautionary X-rays and scans. Although he saw no evidence of physical injury, Gordon suggested the jockey would almost certainly be out of action for 21 days. Osborne was expected to be detained in hospital overnight.
The competitive nature of jump jockeys is such that Osborne's initial reaction, on recovering his senses, will have been to lament his missing the ride on Alderbrook at Wincanton a week today. Kim Bailey, who trains the reigning champion hurdler, will almost certainly turn to Graham Bradley as Richard Dunwoody's riding arrangements have assumed a seemingly infinite series of permutations.
The jockeys' merry-go-round surrounding Bailey's championship contenders was triggered by the injury on Saturday to his stable jockey, Norman Williamson, who is optimistic of making the Cheltenham Festival in less than four weeks. "I hope Norman will be riding out in the next ten days and have a week in the saddle before Cheltenham," Bailey said.
High among Bailey's chances of a Festival winner is Seekin Cash, who revelled in the soft ground here. His dominant performance immediately earned him favouritism for the Stayers' Hurdle, and on this evidence, he will take a deal of beating in testing conditions.
Impressive though Seekin Cash was, star billing yesterday was disputed by Sound Man and Mr Mulligan, both of whom routed the opposition in their respective races. The former endorsed his Champion Chase claims with another fluent performance in the Comet Chase, although his trainer, Edward O'Grady, talked anxiously about the prospect of heavy ground at Cheltenham.
"He wouldn't be as effective on it," O'Grady said. "It blunts his ability to jump, and with it, his sharpness. He lost his way a bit last year on bad ground, but he is more confident now."
Sound Man drips with class when in this sort of mood. His style of fencing appears eccentric for his tendency to throw his head up when airborne. Nevertheless, that he has sharpened his act is beyond dispute, and he is a worthy 7-4 favourite for the two-mile championship at Cheltenham.
Whether Mr Mulligan deserves quotes as low as 6-4 for the Sun Alliance Chase is another matter. Noel Chance, who trains the ungainly eight-year-old, routed a top-class field in the Reynoldstown Novices' Chase with a powerful show of front-running.
However, Mr Mulligan is inclined to brush through the top of his fences, which, over the forboding Cheltenham birch, might see him return home with something more than superficial grazing to his chest. Let us hope not, for his aggressive style is tremendously exciting to watch.
BARELY a week after the fourth season of The Times MeesPierson Corporate Golf Challenge was launched, the signs are already good that the competition is embarking on a record-breaking season.
Firmly established as the sporting event that no self-respecting company can afford to miss, the Challenge, with its unique mix of accessibility and simplicity in organisation, occupies a place in the affections of corporate Britain that is beyond doubt.
The Challenge was a winning concept from the day it was launched in 1993, but it has been continually refined over the years and now provides a full list of built-in extras.
With the arrival as an official supplier of Newstrack, one of the country's leading on-line business information technology players, companies that have entered will be given a comprehensive, on-screen service, constantly updated through the services of Reuters, ADP (QSTLine), ICV-Topic3 and Blomberg.
Newstrack will be devoting ten pages of news, fixtures and results in its free service to subscribers. Initially, the service will be up-dated weekly, but, as winter moves into spring and summer, there will be more frequent revisions.
The competition, which will receive maximum coverage in The Times as well as monthly stories in the pages of Golf World, the best-selling golf magazine and another newcomer as an official supplier, will thus be given an important third outlet for the dissemination of news and information. The added cost to entrants? Nil.
The Challenge also has its own dedicated magazine, The Business Golfer a quarterly publication that is proving increasingly popular with competing companies. It keeps a watching brief on the Challenge and provides a lively read for the company golfer. The magazine is available free to any business golf-day organiser.
Even the mechanics of the event have been fine-tuned and enhanced. As entries have grown, so have the number of regional finals, this year there will be 12 two more than last year.
"With at least 300 company teams expecting to play in regional finals this year, it means that, if we hit our target of 1,200 entries, teams will have a one-in-four chance of qualifying," John Mitchell, the event director, said. "The odds have never been so good."
Those teams that reach regional finals will also have a treat in store, wherever in the British Isles they play. The Challenge will visit some top-quality courses during the regional final series in October, including such tried and tested tournament venues as Dalmahoy, Forest of Arden and St Pierre.
Among the newcomers this year are the Nick Faldo-designed Chart Hills, in Kent, which is the European headquarters of the David Leadbetter Golf Academies, Slaley Hall, scene of the North final on October 7, which has become acknowledged as one of the country's finest inland courses, and Stoke Poges, where the beautiful mansion-clubhouse has recently been restored to its former glory. The cost of taking the competition to such prestigious lay-outs is high. The extra cost to those getting there? Nothing.
"We believe we have an absolute obligation to take our regional finalists to the very best courses possible," Mitchell said.
And that is just the beginning the national final takes place on the famed South course at the Hyatt La Manga Club Resort in southeast Spain. How much will national finalists have to stump up for their travel, accommodation and golf during their days in the sun in November? Not a penny.
Details of The Times MeesPierson Corporate Golf Challenge can be obtained from the Challenge offices at 0171-436 3415. Those interested in receiving The Business Golfer free of charge can leave their names and addresses on the same number.
Clamping a clothes peg on your nose in the interests of sporting science is a tough assignment. But it is just one of the workouts my nose has been subjected to this week in an endeavour to unravel the latest athletic mystery: can a strip of plaster over your nose make you run faster?
Nasal strips are the latest sporting aid (or gimmick) to come out of the United States, where the market for them is said to be worth $1.5 billion a year. The marketing men say potential customers include "anyone who has a nose". American football players were the first sportsmen to endorse them, and television viewers here will have seen them being used by the South African rugby team during the World Cup last summer.
They have spread rapidly to the playing fields of Britain. Half of England's rugby team now wear them Mike Catt is described by Breathe Right Strips as "our official endorser for the rugby sector" and the enterprising manufacturers have sent go-faster plasters to the Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France rugby teams, as well as the England hockey team, Liverpool Football Club and the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race squads.
They have been seen on noses dipped low over handlebars in the Tour de France and there were so many in the New York Marathon that one observer said it looked like a plastic surgeons' convention. There will be 30,000 of them handed out at the Flora London Marathon in April, which will mean a lot of exposure for what looks like the most improbable sporting device in town.
The principle is simple enough. They supposedly improve breathing by opening up the nasal passages, and consist of a couple of plastic strips, rather like collar stiffeners, in a piece of adhesive tape. Stick it across the bridge of your nose and it acts like a spring, flaring your nostrils until you feel like Kenneth Williams in Carry On Up The Olympics.
The makers say the strips have been "clinically shown to reduce nasal airflow resistance an average of 31 per cent". They were originally developed not to win ball games but to stop snoring. The inventor, Bruce Johnson, a middle-aged landscape gardener, stuffed all sorts of things up his nose in pursuit of a night's sleep. He tried everything from bent paper-clips covered in cotton wool to sawn-off plastic straws. "This was stuff you don't want to try at home," Johnson said. "I was desperate."
What he came up with has won medical approval in the United States as a snore-buster but many experts sniff at claims of improved sporting performance. Peter Sperryn, author of Sport and Medicine, dismisses them as "total rubbish a mere fashion fetish. Nobody breathes through the nose in sport and there's no advantage in doing so. It's mumbo-jumbo, like most of the stuff that comes out of America about sports diet.
"They'll make a load of money, of course. I wish I'd thought of it. The strips were invented to stop snoring, so they have a great marketing opportunity at Lord's all those cricket watchers who drop off after lunch should boost sales no end."
Alan Storey, general manager of the Flora London Marathon and a leading athletic coach, agreed. "The amount of air that you can take in through your nose is irrelevant," he said. "It's not what you can get in, it's what you can absorb that matters. The strips may help psychologically, but opening your mouth when you exercise is a reflex action you don't have to decide to do it." Storey said none of the athletes he coaches used the strips. "If they did," he added, "I'd send them home for being improperly dressed."
Steve Seaton, editor of Runner's World, said that physiologists he had spoken to were highly sceptical about the benefits of nasal strips for sports people one thought the biggest effect was likely to be an outbreak of skin rashes on the nose. But Seaton admitted there was a paradox. "Thousands are using them, whatever the doctors say, and all the runners that I've talked to reckon they feel better with the strips than without."
That is certainly the case for the England rugby player, Jon Sleightholme. The Bath wing, who made his international debut against France last month, said: "They work very well. They open up the airways and feel great. Loads of players are using them and, if they weren't working, they wouldn't use them." Like many rugby players, Sleightholme has suffered a broken nose, which he said felt blocked without the strips.
Enthusiasm like that of Sleightholme has set off a race to dominate the market. In Britain, Breathe Right are lined up against Easy Breathing both now launching their products here and, worldwide, fierce patent battles are being fought.
My own battles this week have included several runs with Easy Breathing nose strips and one with a clothes peg. I tested myself, and my nose, by running three times over the same distance at a constant effort (as measured by a pulse monitor). I ran first with the nasal strip to give me maximum nose input. Then I ran equipped only with the nose that God gave me. Finally I ran with my nose shut down completely, my nostrils clamped firmly with a clothes peg.
There was no significant difference in the times taken though the clothes peg option was by far the most uncomfortable. The jury is clearly still out on nose strips, and I shall continue to gather evidence.
Come next April and the Flora London Marathon, it may be that we shall, to our surprise, see the winner sniffing victory with a go-faster plaster on his nose. Maybe ... but don't hold your breath.
Chancery Division. In re a Company (No 62 of 1995) Although in the case of a contributory's petition to wind up a company there was no provision in the Insolvency Rules (SI 1986 No 1925) prohibiting advertisement of it prior to presentation, it was inherent in those rules that there had to be no such advertisement prior to the return date.
Mr Justice Laddie so held in the Chancery Division on January 29, in striking out, on a company's application dated January 10, 1996 as an abuse of the process of the court, a petition to wind it up presented by Miss Tina Lyon on December 6, 1995, which she had anticipated by on November 24 informing another company, with which it had an agreement, that she was going to prevent it trading any further, and on December 1 telephoning its bankers that she intended to wind it up.
Queen's Bench Divisional Court. Greener v DPP Before Lord Justice Saville and Mr Justice Blofeld
(Judgment February 2)
An offence under section 3(3) of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 could be committed by omission.
The Queen's Bench Divisional Court so stated when dismissing an appeal brought by Mark Greener by way of case stated from Newcastle Crown Court (Mr Recorder Nolan, QC and justices) on appeal from a decision of North Shields Justices who had found that an offence had been committed contrary to section 3(3) of the 1991 Act. Mr Greener was absolutely discharged, fined £40 costs and the dog ordered to be destroyed.
Section 3 of the 1991 Act provides: "(3) If the owner ... of a dog allows it to enter a place which is not a public place but where it is not permitted to be and while it is there (a) it injures any person ... he is guilty of an offence, or, if the dog injures any person, an aggravated offence, under this subsection."
Mr Euan Duff for Mr Greener; Mr Robert Adams for the prosecution.
LORD JUSTICE SAVILLE said that Mr Greener was the owner of a young, powerful Staffordshire Bull Terrier. He had left the dog chained in an enclosure in his back garden.
The dog had strained and bent the clip releasing its chain. It had escaped from the enclosure and entered a nearby garden where it bit the face of a young child.
Mr Greener had taken precautions to prevent the dog's escape and genuinely intended it to be kept secure in the enclosure. Similar precautions had been taken in the past but they were obviously inadequate as the fastening was not good enough and the enclosure not secure.
Mr Duff submitted that it could not be said that Mr Greener allowed the dog to enter the garden as a positive or permissive step had to be proved. He also submitted that on the true construction of section 3(3) there had to be some mental element in the form of intention, desire or foresight of the consequences.
His Lordship said that section 3(3) could not require proof of a positive or permissive step. The word "allows" included taking and omitting to take a positive step.
Mr Greener had failed to take adequate precautions. As a matter of ordinary language, leaving aside the issue of mens rea, he allowed the dog to get into the garden.
There could be cases where by common sense and with the ordinary meaning of the word, it could not be said that a defendant allowed his dog to get into a prohibited place: for example if a third person intentionally released the dog. But that was not the present case. The reason for the dog's action was Mr Greener's failure to take adequate precautions to keep it on a chain.
His Lordship addressed Mr Duff's submission that if there was no mens rea element to the offence it would be one of strict liability, even though the Court of Appeal in R v Bezzina ((1994) 1 WLR 1057, 1062) by a dictum of Lord Justice Kennedy had said that section 3(3) imported the concept of mens rea.
His Lordship said that in the context what was meant was that unlike in subsection (1), there had to be an act or omission by the defendant that led to the state of affairs envisaged in subsection (3). In the present case the omission was the failure to take adequate precautions.
Subsection (3) did not qualify "allows" with intentionally or negligently or knowing of the consequences that would ensue.
His Lordship wholly accepted that the court had to look carefully at statutes imposing criminal sanction to see that Parliament intended an offence without mens rea.
The difficulty in the present case was that subsection (1) created an absolute offence for which a prison term could be imposed. A prison term could also be imposed under subsection (3). Therefore it was Parliament's intention to impose that draconian measure in relation to an absolute offence.
Mr Duff argued that subsection (2) provided for a defence against an offence under subsection (1) and that a similar defence was not available in relation to subsection (3).
However, his Lordship noted that subsection (3) used the word "allows" and if the Crown was not able as a matter of common sense to prove ordinary causation that the defendant allowed his dog to stray, then there was no offence.
But in the present case as a matter of common sense and ordinary language Mr Greener's failure allowed the dog to go into the garden.
It was impossible to spell out of the Act that Parliament intended any mental element to be part of subsection (3). It would have been easy to add words like "intention, desire or knowledge or foresight of the consequences" but they were not there.
Thus an offence under section 3(3) could be committed by omission.
Further, the crown court had been correct in deciding that if a dog was secured with what the owner genuinely, though erroneously, believed to be adequate precautions and it escaped and it entered a place where it was not permitted to be, the owner had "allowed the dog to enter" that place, provided on the facts it could be said as a matter of ordinary language and causation the defendant allowed the dog to enter the prohibited place.
Mr Justice Blofeld agreed.
Solicitors: Hindle Campbell, North Shields; Crown Prosecution Service, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Court of Appeal. Invercargill City Council v Hamlin Before Lord Keith of Kinkel, Lord Browne-Wilkinson, Lord Mustill, Lord Lloyd of Berwick and Sir Michael Hardie Boys
(Judgment February 12)
The Court of Appeal of New Zealand was entitled to hold that a local authority was liable to the owner of a house built with defective foundations for the economic loss caused by the authority's negligent inspection of the foundations, notwithstanding the decision of the House of Lords to contrary effect in Murphy v Brentwood District Council ((1991) 1 AC 398). The common law adapted itself to the differing circumstances of the countries in which it had taken root.
Given that the loss in respect of which a plaintiff sued for latent defects in buildings was now recognised to be economic loss rather than physical damage, the New Zealand courts had correctly held that the cause of action accrued when the defect could reasonably have been discovered, since that was when the value of the building depreciated and all the elements necessary to support the claim came into existence.
The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council so held in dismissing an appeal by Invercargill City Council from the judgment of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand (Sir Robin Cooke, President, Mr Justice Richardson, Mr Justice Casey, Mr Justice Gault and Mr Justice McKay) on September 1, 1994 upholding the order of Mr Justice Williamson, who had awarded the plaintiff, Mr N. G. Hamlin, damages against the council for having negligently approved defective foundations during the construction of the plaintiff's house in 1972.
Miss Denese Bates and Mrs Susan Bambury, both of the New Zealand Bar, for the council; Miss Christine French, of the New Zealand Bar, for the plaintiff.
LORD LLOYD, delivering the judgment of the Board, said that the judge had held that the builders were in breach of contract, since the foundations had not been laid in accordance with the specification, but they were no longer in business.
With regard to the plaintiff's claim in tort against the council, the judge had held that the council's building inspector had been negligent in carrying out his inspection and that a reasonably prudent homeowner would not have suspected the foundations, or discovered the cause of the trouble until 1989, when the plaintiff had called in a second builder, who said he foundations were defective.
It followed that, as New Zealand law then stood, his claim against the council was in time. Since it was admitted, for the purposes of the hearing before the judge, that the council was under a duty of care towards the plaintiff, the judge upheld the plaintiff's claim.
On the council's appeal there were two main issues for determination. Since the concession made in the court below was not binding in the Court of Appeal, the first question was whether the council owed any duty of care to the plaintiff at all. It argued that the Court of Appeal ought to follow the decisions of the House of Lords in D and F Estates Ltd v Church Commissioners for England ((1989) AC 177) and Murphy.
The second question was whether the plaintiff's claim was time-barred. The council argued that the Court of Appeal ought to follow the decision of the House of Lords in Pirelli General Cable Works Ltd v Oscar Faber and Partners ((1983) 2 AC 1), in other words, that the cause of action accrued when the damage to the house came into existence, and not when it could with reasonable diligence have been discovered. On that view the plaintiff had issued his writ too late.
The appeal came before a full court of five judges. They answered the first question unanimously, and the second by a majority, in favour of the plaintiff.
Duty of care
There was no doubt that the decision of the Court of Appeal was in accordance with the law as it had been developed by New Zealand courts over the last 20 years. Sir Robin Cooke observed that "the linked concepts of reliance and control" had underlain the New Zealand case law from Bowen v Paramount Builders (Hamilton) Ltd ((1975) 2 NZLR 546) onwards.
Before the Board, the council had argued that Bowen had been explicitly based on the English decision in Dutton v Bognor Regis Urban District Council ((1972) 1 QB 373) and the authority of the line of cases which followed Bowen was reinforced by the decision of the House of Lords in Anns v Merton London Borough Council ((1978) AC 728).
Both those English cases were now known to have been wrongly decided. If English law had not taken a wrong turning in 1972, it was argued, New Zealand law would never have followed, and the present appeal afforded an opportunity for the Board to put New Zealand law back on the correct path.
Their Lordships stated that where the Court of Appeal of New Zealand was purporting to apply settled principles of English common law, then it was the function of the Board to ensure that those principles were applied correctly. But in the present case the judges were consciously departing from English case law on the ground that conditions in New Zealand were different. Were they entitled to do so? The answer had surely to be "Yes".
The ability of the common law to adapt itself to the differing circumstances of the countries in which it had taken root was not a weakness, but one of its great strengths. Were it not so, the common law would not have flourished as it had, with common law countries learning from each other.
In a succession of cases in New Zealand over the last 20 years it had been decided that community standards and expectations demanded the imposition of a duty of care on local authorities and builders alike to ensure compliance with local bylaws.
New Zealand judges were in a much better position to decide on such matters than the Board. Whether circumstances were in fact so very different in England and New Zealand might not matter greatly. What mattered was the perception.
Both Mr Justice Richardson and Mr Justice McKay in their judgments below stressed that to change New Zealand law so as to make it comply with Murphy would have "significant community implications" and would require a "major attitudinal shift". It would be rash for the Board to ignore those views.
Limitation
The facts as found by the judge raised in an acute form the question when the plaintiff's cause of action accrued. If the cause of action arose at the time of the negligent act or omission, or when the first cracks appeared, then it was obvious that the plaintiff's claim in tort against the council would be time-barred.
But if the cause of action did not accrue until the plaintiff was advised in 1989 that the foundations were defective, and if, as the judge found, a reasonably prudent homeowner would not have discovered the cause of the cracks any earlier, then the proceedings were in time. Which view was correct?
In New Zealand the law had been relatively clear and straightforward since at least the decision of the Court of Appeal in Mount Albert Borough Council v Johnson ((1979) 2 NZLR 234). In that case Mr Justice Cooke said that a plaintiff could recover in tort for economic loss "at least when that loss is associated with physical damage ... Such a cause of action must arise ... when the defect becomes apparent or manifest."
The Court of Appeal below had reconsidered the matter in the light of Pirelli but had reaffirmed the New Zealand approach on limitation.
In the Board's view, once it was appreciated that the loss in respect of which the plaintiff in the present case was suing was loss to his pocket, and not for physical damage to the house or foundations, then most, if not all the difficulties surrounding the limitation question fell away.
The plaintiff's loss occurred when the market value of the house was depreciated by reason of the defective foundations, and not before. If he resold the house at full value before the defect was discovered, he had suffered no loss. Thus in the common case the occurrence and discovery of the loss would coincide.
The plaintiff could not postpone the start of the limitation period by shutting his eyes to the obvious. The cause of action accrued when the cracks became so bad, or the defects so obvious, that any reasonable homeowner would call in an expert.
Since the defects would then be obvious to a potential buyer, or his expert, that marked the moment when the market value of the building was depreciated, and therefore the moment when the economic loss occurred.
It was not possible to define the moment more accurately. The measure of the loss would then be the cost of repairs, if it was reasonable to repair, or the depreciation in the market value if it was not.
That approach was consistent with the underlying principle that a cause of action accrued when, but not before, all the elements necessary to support the plaintiff's claim were in existence. For in the case of a latent defect in a building the element of loss or damage which was necessary to support a claim for economic loss in tort did not exist so long as the market value of the house was unaffected.
Their Lordships' advice on the limitation point was confined to the problem created by latent defects in buildings. They abstained from considering whether the "reasonable discoverability" test should be of more general application in the law of tort.
It was regrettable that there should be any divergence between English and New Zealand law on a point of fundamental principle. Whether Pirelli should still be regarded as good law in England was not for their Lordships to say. What was clear was that it was not good law in New Zealand.
Solicitors: Simmonds Church Smiles; Alan Taylor & Co.
Court of Appeal. Commissioners of Customs and Excise v UBAF Bank Ltd
Before Lord Justice Neill, Lord Justice Aldous and Sir John Balcombe
(Judgment February 6)
Value-added tax charged by solicitors and brokers could be recovered in full as input tax even though the supplies on which the VAT had been paid were not attributable to the taxable outputs of the taxpayer.
The Court of Appeal so held in a reserved judgment in dismissing an appeal brought by the Commissioners of Customs and Excise against the dismissal by Mr Justice Macpherson of Cluny on December 2, 1994 of their appeal against the decision of a VAT tribunal dated February 3, 1993 which had held that the bank could recover the entirety of input tax totalling £103,327.35. The Customs and Excise allowed £74,486.91 to be credited but had disputed the remaining £28,840.44.
Mr Kenneth Parker, QC, for the Customs and Excise; Miss Perdita Cargill-Thompson for the bank.
LORD JUSTICE NEILL said that the appeal was concerned with VAT charged on fees paid by UBAF Bank Ltd to solicitors and brokers in connection with the acqusition by UBAF of the issued share capital of three leasing companies and the acquisition of the businesses of those three companies.
The principal business activity of UBAF was that of international banking. Since about 1977 they had an equipment leasing business. It was common ground that equipment leasing was taxable as a supply of services. It followed that the bank supplied both ordinary financial services, which were exempt supplies, and services which were taxable.
In 1987 the bank suffered trading losses on its leasing business and suspended writing new leases. In both 1987 and 1989 the bank had significant losses for corporation tax purposes.
It was therefore attractive to the bank to purchase companies which were carrying on similar businesses of leasing and to arrange for those businesses to be transferred to the bank and to be carried on as part of the bank's existing leasing business.
The concept of purchasing other companies was introduced to UBAF by Cipher Resources Ltd who identified suitable companies and assisted with the evaluation of the credit risk and with the funding required for the purchases.
Three companies identified by Cipher were purchased by the bank. In addition to the advice and assistance received by UBAF from Cipher, it was also advised by its solicitors.
In relation to each of the three companies the solicitors submitted two invoices for their fees, one relating to the purchase of the shares and the other relating to the acquisition of the leasing business. Cipher submitted one invoice for their fees in each case which did not distinguish between the acquisition of the shares and the acquisition of the business.
UBAF then sought to deduct the VAT paid to Cipher and the solicitors as input tax attributable to the taxable supplies made by UBAF in the course of its leasing business.
The Customs and Excise disagreed. They contended that the VAT could not be claimed in full as input tax because the supplies on which the VAT had been paid were not attributable to the taxable outputs of the bank.
The VAT Tribunal allowed the bank's appeal and that decision was upheld by Mr Justice Macpherson.
At the core of the submissions by Mr Parker was the argument that the services rendered by Cipher and the solicitors were attributable solely to the transactions whereby the bank acquired the shares and the businesses of the three companies, rather than physical assets.
The VAT tribunal had considered the evidence and concluded that the transaction whereby the bank acquired the three companies and their businesses "were intended to and did, enable the bank to add substantially to its own existing leasing business and, in VAT terms, to make taxable supplies of leasing."
It seemed to his Lordship that that was a finding of fact that there was a direct link between the acquisitions and the making of the taxable supplies. It was true that the assets acquired were not physical assets but the assets clearly included rights under the existing leases between the three companies and their lessees.
In the present case, the leases were acquired for use by the bank in the making of taxable supplies. In reality the acquisition was of assets to be used and exploited in the making of taxable supplies. His Lordship would dismiss the appeal.
Lord Justice Aldous delivered a concurring judgment and Sir John Balcombe agreed.
Solicitors: Solicitor, Customs and Excise; McKenna & Co.
MPs can be assured that however much Sir Richard Scott's revelations may damage their reputations, their health is safe from the water supply.
The journal Doctor reports that measures to rid the Palace of Westminster's hot-water system of high levels of the legionella bacteria have been successful. Boiling water and chlorine have been pumped through the pipes. For a time, it is reported, the Speaker was unable to live in her own apartments.
Legionnaires' Disease is particularly liable to attack middle-aged men, who are more at risk if they drink heavily. It is also often associated with mental confusion and lethargy not a disease which should be allowed to infect the Commons.
LEATHER shoes, properly stitched and with leather soles, are often assumed to lead to healthy feet. Certainly, feet encased in old-fashioned Oxford-style shoes are less sweaty and less likely to develop fungal infections these are the ideal footwear of every parent and drill sergeant.
But however well leather may breathe, it is also hard and unyielding, and does not absorb the shock generated by pounding pavements, or even striding over open countryside.
A study reported in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery and Pulse magazine has compared the pressure to which feet are subjected when a patient wears no shoes, trainer-type running shoes, or leather-soled walking shoes.
If the foot is healthy, leather shoes may well be best. But if the patient is diabetic, with poor circulation and a diseased nerve supply, the differences in the amount of pressure experienced may be important.
Leather-soled shoes provided no more relief from pressure than being barefoot, whereas running shoes took a third of the pressure off the foot. In the author's opinion this difference could help to prevent the formation of diabetic ulcers, which are always difficult to heal, on patients' feet.
BRITISH and European hotel groups face a major invasion into their markets by several leading US hotel chains which are currently finalising plans to open new hotels in the UK and on the Continent.
Their determination to penetrate the European market follows lack of expansion opportunities in the mature US hotel sector. In addition, the availability of the former Forte-owned Meridien and Exclusive Hotels in Europe, which are being auctioned off by new owners Granada, has stirred the American interest in Europe.
The Radisson SAS group yesterday announced four new hotels in Italy in Milan, Brescia, Lodi and Bergamo and is planning two hotels in Paris as well as properties in Cardiff and Manchester. The company says its strategy is to open at least eight new hotels a year in Europe over the next few years, adding to its 55 hotels in 17 countries worldwide.
The Chicago-based Hyatt chain is also targeting Europe, with six new hotels planned over the next two years, starting with Antwerp, followed by Paris and Germany.
This week Westin Hotels also announced its latest move into Europe with a link-up with Demeure Hotels, owned by the French Compagnie Generale des Eaux group. The seven hotels in the Demeure group, including four in Paris and one each in London, Amsterdam and Geneva, will be rebranded as Westin Demeure Hotels from April 1 when the partnership comes into effect.
"This is an important move for us as it establishes Westin in these key European markets for business travellers as well as luxury leisure travellers," says Denis Johnson, Westin's regional vice-president for Europe.
Marriott, one of the US hotel chains interested in buying the former Forte luxury hotels from Granada, says it is looking to add between 6,000 and 8,000 rooms in Europe. At present, Marriott has some 18 hotels in Europe with four under construction. In the UK the Whitbread brewing group, which already operates 16 Marriott hotels and a franchise arrangement, plans to convert ten of its existing hotels to Marriott Properties.
ITT Sheraton, which last year acquired the Ciga chain from the Aga Khan, tomorrow opens a new Sheraton Hotel at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport.
FASHION shows at 30,000 feet will be revived when Air Jamaica returns to Heathrow after a ten-year absence next month. The airline was renowned in the 1980s for the 30-minute spectacular shows, featuring crew dressed in the latest Caribbean fashions sashaying down the aisle.
But the curtain came down when the government-owned airline stopped flying to London due to financial cutbacks. A decade on, it has been privatised and reborn under the chairmanship of Butch Stewart, Jamaica's equivalent of Richard Branson.
Jamaican-born Stewart is the majority shareholder in the airline, his money
made in manufacturing and the Sandals resort hotels in the Caribbean. Last year, he was awarded the country's national honour, the Order of Jamaica.
"His philosophy is service, service and more service," said Tony Cowles, the managing director, in London this week.
The fashion shows will be accompanied by free Mumm's champagne for economy and business passengers, with Caribbean dishes included in the fare. The airline employs a full-time chef.
There will be 16 business class and 180 economy seats on new Airbus 310s, with Air Jamaica competing against British Airways on the routes to Montego Bay and Kingston. It starts flying on March 30 with three flights a week, the same frequency as BA. But Air Jamaica will fly four times a week in peak summer and five next winter. It also wants to fly from Manchester but is currently precluded by air agreements between the two countries.
Fares start at £664 in economy rising to £1,806 return in business class, the same rates as BA.
"The service on board will be absolutely tremendous," said William Rodgers, senior vice-president of marketing. "We are going to give BA a lot of trouble." Air Jamaica reservations: 0181-570 7999.
THE decision to close the United States Travel and Tourism Administration will mean more than three million Britons bound for America this year face a time-consuming hunt for information.
Holidaymakers will have to rely on the 34 US states or cities which have offices in Britain, but many areas are not represented at all.
The US Government is closing the US TTA offices worldwide at the end of March in a cost-saving exercise. The ten staff in the US Embassy in London will be out of work.
"They've talked about it for years but now they have eliminated us," said Jackie Gibson, UK marketing manager. "I am very disappointed. We will be the only major player in the UK without a tourist office."
The US TTA opened in London in 1962. At its peak, it received 30,000 visitors a year. It moved into the Embassy in 1991 and closed its walk-in service.
The office eased the workload for other representation offices. Damian O'Grady, of the Florida Division of Tourism, said: "They handle a lot of inquiries on our behalf. But now there is no filter and we will have a lot more work."
Around 3.4 million Britons are expected to visit America this year, more than half heading for Florida, and long-haul travel is selling well, with bookings up 33 per cent.
An advertising campaign which the US TTA is committed to will continue to run until the end of March and the number advertised, 0891 136 136, will function until then.
The Florida Division of Tourism, also runs a premium-rate information service on 0891 600 555. An information pack is available from ABC Florida, PO Box 35, Abingdon, Oxfordshire. OX14 4SF; enclose a cheque for £2 for post and packaging.
CLIMB Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro with tents, porters and guides, organised by Explorasia/Abercrombie & Kent. Leaving on January 20, price per person for seven nights' full board: £1,495. Details: 0171-730 9600.
INNTRAVEL short breaks is offering a weekend break in Bruges, departing from London (Waterloo) on February 23. The price per person is £157, based on a party of two people, including two nights' bed and breakfast at Hotel T'Voermanshays and Eurostar to Bruges via Brussels. Details: 01653 628862.
AN EXTRA departure on March 28 has been added to Cricketer Holidays' Cuba Tour. The holiday is priced at £1,295 per person including return flights, half board, transfers, travel insurance and sightseeing tours. Details: 01892 664242.
SKIERS can benefit from a saving of £70 on Top Deck Ski late availability holidays to Club Habitat, Kirchberg in Austria. Seven nights' half board from February 24 is £279 per person. Details: 0181-332 7022.
BARGAIN villa holidays in St Tropez are available until May 24 from Crystal France. Savings of £389 can be made (based on two sharing). Details: 0181-390 3335.
THE first woman diner at London's Four Seasons Hotel who asks her companion to marry her on February 29, leap year day, will be invited back to the hotel with her mother for a weekend break to plan the wedding. Details: 0171-499 0888.
HOOLE Hall in Chester is hosting its first murder mystery weekend of the year on March 8 at a cost of £115 per person for two nights, with dinner and Sunday lunch. Details: 01244 250011.
RADISSON Edwardian hotels in London has a special offer for the rest of the month a £15 credit per day for guests to spend on any hotel services apart from accommodation costs. The offer applies to guests staying between Sunday and Thursday at any of its nine London hotels, where rates start at £52.50 per person per night. Details: 0800 374411.
ACTRESS Geraldine McEwan will perform excerpts from Jane Austen novels including Pride and Prejudice at the Lucknam Park Country House Hotel in Wiltshire on Sunday, March 31. The cost is £75 per person including dinner, with a special rate that evening of £50 per room. Profits will go to a children's leukaemia charity. Details: 01225 742777.
AMERICAN Airlines has upgraded its transatlantic business class with more leg room (50in on average as against 40in before), flexible meal times and the provision of Sony Video Walkman sets. Details: 0181-572 5555.
BRITISH Airways has introduced cheaper Domestic Saver fares. Return flights from London to Aberdeen or Inverness now cost £90, with Belfast available for £79. Details: 0181-897 4000.
PASSENGERS bound for Hong Kong, New York or Paris this winter can secure some of the lowest fares through the Wexas Travel Club. Hong Kong return with Air France costs £440, New York with El Al costs £161, while British Midland to Paris costs £53. Details: 0171-589 3315.
BRITISH Airways Travel Shops are offering one Air Mile for every £5 spent on travel. In addition, an Executive Club member booking a full-fare ticket and paying with a NatWest credit card would earn a further two sets of Air Miles. Details: 0171-434 4700.
FLEMISH airline VLM is set to launch direct flights between London City and Monchengladbach (near the German-Dutch border) in April. Details: 0171-476 6677.
TWO ferry companies have pooled resources on the competitive Irish Sea to offer holidaymakers a choice of travel routes. P&O European Ferries and Irish Ferries will allow passengers to travel out with one company and back with the other, on a new "circuit of Ireland" ticket.
They can choose from P&O's Scottish crossing of Cairnryan-Larne and Irish Ferries' two routes from Wales Holyhead-Dublin and Pembroke-Rosslare.
With only one Irish Sea route, the deal is particularly significant for P&O, which is desperately trying to protect its cross-Channel operation from Eurotunnel. But it boosts both companies' rivalry with Stena Line, which is preparing to launch a high-speed service (HSS) on Holyhead-Dun Laoghaire on March 1. The HSS will carry 1,500 passengers and 375 cars and cut crossing times in half, to 99 minutes. A second HSS is due to come into service on Stranraer-Belfast in June. Irish Ferries will also have a new ship, the Isle of Innisfree on Holyhead-Dublin this summer.
Prices for the circuit of Ireland ticket start at £138 for a car and five passengers. Ironically, the new deal was announced just hours before the IRA bombing last Friday. But with the fierce price war on the Channel this year, ferry companies are looking to increase their profits on their Irish Sea operations.
LE SHUTTLE is packaging ski insurance for four people together with a car tunnel crossing from £99. The insurance is valid for ten days, cheapest fare relates to a midnight-6am crossing. Valid until the end of April. Details: 0990 353535.
CONDOR Ferries, operating from Weymouth to Guernsey and Jersey, has discounted five-day and standard returns available through Eurodrive. A five-day return for a car and two passengers costs £120 to both islands, a standard return £190, valid until March 31. The ferry departs each night at 10.30pm, except on Mondays and Wednesdays. Details: 0181-324 4000.
THE aviation industry has never understood the travelling public's fear of flying. It points out that at least three times as many people are killed on the roads of Britain each year as die in air crashes in the whole world.
The intense scrutiny which is given to every plane crash to find out what went wrong and to prevent it happening again would put to shame any other form of transport, they claim.
Yet whenever an aircraft falls from the sky whether it is a packed Boeing 757 taking off from the Dominican Republic, or a light aircraft taking a group of friends to France for the weekend a chill fascination grips us all.
Now a new report by "detectives" from the Department of Transport's Air Accident Investigation Branch indicates that accidents of the kind that can befall any car driver can also happen to the most skilful of pilots .
The accident investigators believe that Major Ian Fraser, piloting a Beechcraft Baron which crashed close to a school playing-field near Andover last August, may have inadvertently closed the mixture control rather than the propeller lever.
The positions of controls of older Beechcraft Baron 58 twin-propeller aircraft are different from those made by other planemakers, they say. Beechcraft has now changed the layout in newer versions of the Baron, but claims it is impossible to modify about 20 older aircraft still operating in Britain.
Major Fraser, 36, his wife, who was an RAF Wing Commander, and two friends were all killed when the plane crashed with its engines spluttering as it returned to the airfield after a door flew open.
Major Fraser was an experienced pilot but had flown only 34 hours on the Baron. "The aircraft is unusual in that the engine controls are grouped in the order: propellers, throttles and mixtures," says the AAIB's initial report. "The conventional layout is throttles, propellers and mixtures, from left to right."
Had the mixture levers been inadvertently retarded then the engines would "probably have sounded as described by witnesses", says the report.
David Ogilvie, the chairman of the Aircraft Owners' and Pilots' Association, wants cockpit standardisation urgently. "Car drivers can find themselves using the windscreen wipers when they want the indicators, especially in a different car from the one they are used to," he said.
"If the layout of motor cars causes that sort of confusion, it must not be allowed to do so in aircraft."
Surely it is time that manufacturers of all types of aircraft should accept this if they want to maintain public confidence in flying.
THE Paris-based Euro Disney theme park and resort is poised to abandon its link with Air France and reinstate British Airways as its preferred airline partner out of the UK.
Two years ago, Disney and BA parted company amid acrimonious argument about the effectiveness of the link in generating holidaymakers and the restrictive nature of the agreement.
Euro Disney, which now trades under the Disneyland Paris name, turned to French state airline Air France to operate as the preferred partner for the theme park, which is Europe's largest tourist attraction with more than 10 million visitors a year.
But the deal has been less successful than Euro Disney had hoped. Yesterday Air France remained tight-lipped about the affair. "We have no comment to make," said a spokesman in London.
Since Euro Disney senior management in both London and Paris have changed since the disagreement with BA, a new agreement is due to be signed next month by Mr Robert Ayling, BA chief executive, and Mr Phillipe Bourbignon, Euro Disney president.
Mr Ford Ennals, BA director of marketing, said that "developing our leisure business is a key element of our strategy, so Disney is a perfect partner".
Nina Wang talks to qauentin Letts about ransom demands discos and her grand project.
THE WOMAN who wants to build the tallest skyscraper in the world is short. In her flat shoes, Nina Wang stands little more than five feet tall.
It is one of many contradictions. She is reputedly the fifth richest woman in the world, but was spotted the other day queuing for theatre seats at a cut-price Manhattan ticket bureau. Her husband was probably murdered six years ago, yet she refuses to talk of him in the past tense. She is said to be a recluse, yet there could not be a more expansive talker once she had decided to grant a rare interview.
Nina Wang was born in Shanghai, 60-odd years ago, and moved to Hong Kong before Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution. She did not see her family for nine years. In Hong Kong she married Teddy Wang Teh-huei, the son of a hotel developer, and they were happy and successful. There were no children, but life was good and Mr Wang's property company, Chinachem, prospered. When he was kidnapped in 1983, Mrs Wang did not hesitate before paying $11 million (£7.5 million) to free him.
Second time round it went wrong. One morning six years ago Teddy Wang kissed his petite, pretty wife goodbye as he left for work. He closed the door of their home in Victoria Peak and, though he would not know it until a few violent minutes later, he had walked out of her life, probably for ever. On that journey to work he was kidnapped by an armed gang and a ransom of $60 million was demanded. Mrs Wang paid about half of what was asked, but he has not been seen since.
Word has it that the kidnappers bungled things and, while being chased by the Hong Kong navy, dumped his body in the harbour. It has never been found. For Mrs Wang there was the waiting, the hideous uncertainty, and then the growing acceptance by other people, at least that he had been killed.
Her business card says proudly "Chairlady, Chinachem". After months of misery, of missing Teddy so badly that her tiny frame could scarcely bear any more grief, Mrs Wang picked herself up and took control of the business. In macho South-East Asia this was no mean feat.
For Mrs Wang, with her trademark pigtails and her outwardly gentle mien, it seemed an impossible ambition. She has done it, though, and Chinachem, a private company of which she owns 90 per cent, has diversified and grown. There are biotechnology companies in California, factories in China and property lots of it in Hong Kong. The value of Chinachem is not disclosed, but it is estimated to be $3 billion.
In Manhattan last week to do some business and admire the skyline, she was staying at a modest, mid-market hotel. Her room was a boxy little affair whose only merit was a view of the Chrysler building, William Van Allen's Art Deco masterpiece. It is the sleekest of New York's skyscrapers, and Mrs Wang wants the same sort of look for her grand project, the Nina Tower.
The tower, which at around 470 metres would be the tallest in the world, has become Mrs Wang's consuming interest. It will be near Hong Kong's new airport, will have 2.3 million sq ft of office space and will, she says, be a monument to the post-British future of Hong Kong. With potential planning snags, it may not be completed until the start of the next century, and will probably cost as much as $1 billion. Mrs Wang, who has a Chinese aversion to debt, intends to pay cash.
"I chose the name," she said, as she picked up the telephone to order herself a glass of warm milk. "Isn't it great?" She hit on the idea about three years ago, after securing a site on the Tsuen Wan waterfront. "I thought, why not make a new landmark?" When Mrs Wang announced the plan to the board of Chinachem, the directors mostly men sat in dumb astonishment before recommending against the tower. Mrs Wang waved aside their fears. She was determined to be the woman who built the tallest building in the world. "They asked me why? I said because I want to." And that was that.
Being a woman in business in Hong Kong might seem a difficult position, but Mrs Wang has found advantages in her gender. The men are disarmed, although she was cross, recently, when some of the colony's top tycoons all men gathered to discuss life post-1997. "They didn't even ask me," she said.
The prospect of Chinese rule does not faze her. "They have said they will let the Hong Kong people rule Hong Kong after 1997, and I think that is good."
People have advised her to quit while she can and take her money to the West, perhaps joining her doctor sister in Michigan, but, having helped to build around 400 buildings in Hong Kong, she cannot give up its crowded streets. It's fun, after all, to be able to look up every now and again at a skyscraper and say: "There's one of mine."
Mrs Wang picked up the threads of running Chinachem quickly, as she and her husband had often talked about the business. He encouraged her to become involved. "One day he asked me to join the company and I said only if I can bring the dog," she recalled. He agreed. Today her German shepherd dog, Wei Wei, accompanies her wherever she goes in Hong Kong, including the most high-powered meetings. She loves dogs, and has had a dalmatian and a dachshund. There was trouble with an earlier dog, which was given to her by the police department and which had been trained as a guard dog. It would growl if anyone got too close to her, or even if they passed an invisible line in front of her desk.
For years Mrs Wang herself growled at the media. She preferred to keep a low profile, conducting her business behind closed doors, and gaining a reputation as a recluse. Not now. "Now I can't keep quiet," she said. "Do you dance?" She loves discotheques, and wears trendy clothes. "I've got great legs, that's why I often wear mini-skirts." The hairstyle is for convenience. "I can't stand beauty parlours. It is easier like this."
Her husband, she said with a melancholy smile, would probably think that the Nina Tower was extravagant. "He would say it was a waste of money." She did think of naming it after him, but decided not to. "It would have looked like a monument." She refuses to talk of Mr Wang as "my late husband" or to refer to him in the past tense. She still hopes, prays, that he is alive. "He is very quiet and likes riding and squash," she said, desperate to sound upbeat.
Then, a little more reflectively: "I sometimes get a little lonely. The first two years were hard. I felt terrible and didn't want to do anything. Then I said to myself ‘I can't go on like this'."
If the 108-storey Nina Tower is built, it will not only be a remarkable engineering achievement twice as tall as Canary Wharf but will also stand as a testament to the motivating powers of bereavement and the astonishing drive of a widow. It is another contradiction grief may have been her making.
Giles Coren on the lost art of betrothal
As another Valentine's Day passes in a whirl of drooping roses, musical cards and heart-shaped chocolate boxes, the love industry, which would normally be anticipating its annual rest, has been given a boost.
Rumours of the impending engagement of Prince Edward to Sophie Rhys-Jones may do for engagements what Charles and Diana did for weddings in 1982, and revive a flagging tradition.
For the ritual has recently fallen prey to a change in the way we get married. When church ceremonies were de rigueur, a long wait between the betrothal and the nuptial celebrations was inevitable, because if you wanted to get married on a Saturday in spring, the waiting list would stretch to months.
But since the rise of register office marriages the fashion has been for rudely urgent, tokenistic affairs: pop the question, tell your mates, hop on the bus down to the register office, pick up the licence, and off to the pub. Michael Jackson and Lisa-Marie, and Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford, did that. And look what people said about them.
In royal circles, or even high society, things are unlikely to come to such a pass. Claus von Bulow's 28-year-old daughter, Cosima, recently became engaged to City banker Riccardo Pavoncelli and insists there is nothing old-fashioned about the decision. "In the old days you used to have a long engagement so that you could get to know each other," she says. "Well, that's not necessary any more. But all my friends have been getting engaged. It is simply a case of organisation. If you are working you need a minimum of six months to organise the wedding; the usual period is anything up to a year."
But if the planning required for a society wedding has kept the tradition going among among the pukka fraternity, the English, in general, have lost the knack.
In 1987 De Beers revealed that Englishmen are the meanest buyers of engagement rings in the world, spending an average of just £250 or two-and-a-half weeks' wages. Even the Japanese, the last people anyone would accuse of being too romantic, generally lay out as much as three times their monthly income.
At Asprey's, the famous New Bond Street jewellers, the way engagement rings are bought has changed dramatically. "Couples now tend to come in together," says a salesman. "They consider it a major investment and talk openly about their budget." But it does mean that men no longer present a ring with their proposal, which is a sad sign of the times."
This attitude has been taken to cynical extremes in America, where couples now rent rings at up to $25 a week, so that they can be returned if the relationship does not last the end of engagement as anything more than an excuse to party.
As an excuse for avoiding tax, on the other hand, engagement was popular in the 1970s, when planning was needed to ensure weddings fell in April or September to take advantage of allowances. Hence the adage: "Marry in September's shine, your living will be rich and fine." This is something the newly taxable royals will have to think about.
And what about changing your mind? Perhaps a decline in engagement has contributed to the high divorce rate. For it is during the prenuptial pause that the realities of what is to come are brought home, and when, traditionally, the wrong move can be averted.
Then again, a tale is told of Terence Reese the great bridge player who died last month, which shows how those second thoughts can be dealt with.
In 1969, at the age of 56, he proposed successfully to 26-year-old Alwyn Sherrington. But at the last minute Alwyn got cold feet and rang her fiance, who was at the bridge table, to call off the marriage. "Not now, dearest," he replied. "I am in the middle of a hand." Days later they were married.
If Edward and Sophie are going to get it wrong, let them do it before it is too late.
Gone are the days when women lined their eyes with lead and thus poisoned their bodies; but the stuff of modern beauty is still fraught with health and hygiene hazards.
Musty old make-up and moisturisers lurking in the bottom of our cosmetic bags can harbour bacteria that have been absorbed from our hands or the air. If the bacteria get into broken or vulnerable skin, facial infections and rashes can develop.
Bacteria do not breed in non-aqueous conditions, so powdery substances such as blusher are unlikely to become infected, but water-based substances like creams, foundations and mascara are susceptible to contamination.
Dr Andrew Griffith, consultant dermatologist at St John's Institute of Dermatology at St Thomas' Hospital, says that contamination generally occurs not within the cosmetic pot but when human hands infect the product. Through careless hygiene, the organisms that inhabit everyday life end up on your hands and can be transferred to, for example, your moisturiser.
"You may have washed the dishes, stroked the dog, put your pans away or used the remote control before you put your moisturiser on," he says. "Once a tube or pot is opened you can transfer these germs from the tips of your finger to the top of the tube or into the tub. Then it is no longer sterile, and there is a risk of the germs being multiplied."
The process is circular. "If you have rubbed a septic spot with your fingers and then placed your fingers back into the pot you can transmit it back on to your face or skin, leading to infection," Dr Griffith says. "People who suffer from eczema or chapped skin are especially vulnerable." The main bacterial culprits are Pseudomonas, E. coli and Proteus, which often grow in enclosed passages where there is little oxygen between the toes or in the nasal passages. These can be transferred by careless hygiene into an open wound, where they prevent the wound from healing or lead to ulceration and septic spots.
Tubs left open without their lids can also absorb bacteria from the air, leading to contamination.
To counteract these problems, most cosmetic companies use a mixture of low-allergy preservative chemicals and natural preparations such as lactic acid, which has antiseptic qualities, to help to protect the product. Some contain formaldehyde, also a preservative. Unfortunately, however, some people find they are allergic to the very ingredients meant to combat contamination.
Michael Finnerty, head of cosmetics at Boots, says a very small minority of people are affected by preservatives. "Preservatives are designed to kill organisms, which means they can potentially be irritant to all living things," he says. "But they are usually present at a very low level and we try to choose the most non-toxic ingredients." A spokesman for the Body Shop Colourings range says that a very low level of preservatives is added during production, which does not affect performance.
Under an EC directive effective from January 1 next year, all cosmetics companies will be required to list ingredients, including preservatives, on the packaging.
Cosmetics are subjected to rigorous testing by microbiologists in the lab. Some cosmetic products, such as those from L'Oreal and Lancome, are also subjected to two months of rigorous "challenge testing", in which various microbacteria are introduced to samples.
"We are always touching other people's organisms but most of them are harmless what we're trying to do is prevent them from colonising the product," Mr Finnerty says.
The products are initially sterile as they are made up under extremely hygienic conditions, so there is unlikely to be any build-up of contamination before they are opened; after they are opened, products can be protected but cannot disinfect themselves."
The good news is that a little common sense keeps most potential infections at bay. "Cosmetics are very personal," says Mr Finnerty. "Don't share any of your make-up with a friend and don't use creams on broken or infected skin. If a piece of chocolate falls on the ground you wouldn't pick it up and eat it, so why treat your cosmetics any differently?"
Brushes should be washed after use and container lids should be kept tightly shut. Other precautions include using pump dispensers or sprays for moisturisers and foundations. Some cosmetic experts recommend using a spatula to scoop cream from the pot so that your hand does not come into contact with it.
Dermatologists and cosmetic companies alike advise throwing out products that have been loitering on your shelves for a suspiciously long time. "As a general rule our products have a shelf life of three years, but that is different from usage life," a Colourings spokesman says. "Unopened mascara can have a shelf life of three years, but once it is opened and exposed to the air it lasts around a year before it ought to be thrown out." Under the new EC directive, any product that will deteriorate in less than 30 months must carry its date of manufacture on the label.
"Any cosmetics, from lipsticks to foundations, if kept for any length of time, are likely to spoil or deteriorate. This does not necessarily mean that they're dangerous most of them probably just don't function as well any more but it's best to not take any risks," Mr Finnerty says.
"It's a bit like getting a verruca from a swimming pool," Dr Griffiths adds. "You don't see the germs that put it there but that doesn't make it any less unpleasant."
FOR many women a hysterectomy is life-saving, and those who have regular heavy bleeding caused by uterine disease will find their life is revolutionised by one. But for many others there is no obvious cause for heavy periods such patients are described as having dysfunctional uterine bleeding and their treatment is not so clear-cut. In the past, hysterectomy was undertaken rather more readily if the patient with heavy bleeding was rich. The situation is now different.
A woman who has had no further education is 12 times more likely to have a hysterectomy than is a graduate. It may be that less well-educated women tend to have had larger families and therefore bulkier uteruses, which bleed more profusely. Also, it is possible that any anaemia is less easily counteracted when money is in short supply.
There is no doubt that dysfunctional uterine bleeding is debilitating, inconvenient and often needs surgical intervention. There is, however, vehement argument as to whether the women would have been more cheerful if they had kept their wombs, and instead of a hysterectomy had undergone uterine ablation the removal of the lining of the uterus by either laser or cautery.
Many of the answers to questions about the merits of hysterectomy and uterine ablation have now been answered by a research project carried out by psychiatrists, gynaecologists and statisticians at Aberdeen University.
The researchers, who have reported their findings in the British Medical Journal, allocated 204 women who needed surgery into three groups at random. A third had a hysterectomy, a third laser treatment, and a third had surgical removal of their uterine lining but the uterus was left intact.
The patients did well and after any of the three procedures were equally likely to feel less depressed and anxious. After a year, there was no difference in the three groups in the incidence of marital disharmony, psychosexual problems or psychiatric disease.
Very importantly, and contrary to the commonly held belief, hysterectomy was unrelated to psychiatric illness and the patients' marriages were unaffected.
Some 27 per cent noticed an increased sexual interest, 25 per cent reported a loss of sexual drive and in the others the libido was unaltered.
There are, of course, physical advantages in some cases in having endometrial ablation.
BY TEATIME today, hundreds of politicians, journalists and civil servants will be attempting an instant course in speed reading. But the 1,800-page Scott report on the arms-to-Iraq affair will test even the most seasoned expert when it is made public after Prime Minister's Questions at 3.30pm.
The technique of speed reading was invented in the 1930s by Evelyn Wood, an American educator. An early pioneer of special-needs education, Ms Wood found that her students in Salt Lake City achieved better results if they were able to read faster than average. She taught them to achieve rates of 1,000 words a minute the equivalent of polishing off Dr Zhivago in an hour.
Her heyday was in the 1960s, when President Kennedy sent dozens of his White House staff on her courses in Washington. It was a tradition followed by President Carter, who took pride in his rapid reading.
The most successful exponents of Ms Wood's classes claimed to be able to finish George Orwell's Animal Farm in 25 minutes. But even her most brilliant students could not match the panache of George Bernard Shaw: his party trick was to read the left and right hand pages of a book simultaneously and then take questions.
Helena Kennedy, QC, is typical of the modern breed of professionals who are expected to read and digest quickly. "Most of us work out that the introductory paragraphs in documents are often verbiage," she says. "The trouble, from a lawyer's point of view, is that the jewel is often hidden away in the stuff that looks like verbiage."
Giles Gordon, the literary agent to Sue Townsend, Fay Weldon and Barry Unsworth, claims he is the world's slowest reader. "My wife is always telling me to get a move on with manuscripts, but I can't help it. It's a great disadvantage for a literary agent.
"I am envious of people like Shaw who were able to read so fast. I knew a man once who said he could read a 300-page novel in 40 minutes."
Martyn Goff, who administers the Booker Prize handing over books to the judges fears that quality declines with speed reading. "The judges begin their work in February and have six months to read 140 books," he says.
"By June they are reading quite fast, and by July they are going at an even faster rate. I'm afraid to say that I think the books suffer. A book, or even the Scott report, is like a fine meal. You might be able to get the main taste if you bolt it down but you won't get all the finer flavours."
A £50 MILLION scheme to revitalise and improve the British seaside and coast has been put forward by tourist boards around the country.
Plans for a variety of projects ranging from the north of Scotland to the Lizard in Cornwall should be supported by the Millennium Commission, says the English Tourist Board, which is co-ordinating a bid for lottery cash.
The ETB claims that its proposals which could involve as many as 250 separate projects would "celebrate, safeguard and enhance the special character, quality and variety of coastal areas; provide where appropriate additional public access to the coast and water; increase people's enjoyment of the coast, seaside towns and villages, and increase their understanding of the coastal and maritime environment."
The ETB chairman, Adele Biss, said: "If future generations are to make the most of our diverse and splendid coast, urgent investment will be needed."
BRITAIN'S middle managers have had enough of being forced to cut costs whenever they travel, and are now demanding business-class air travel and four-star hotel accommodation.
George Paton, chairman of the Guild of British Travel Agents, whose 38 members are responsible for organising 80 per cent of the £6.5 billion spent by companies on business travel, said yesterday that middle managers were now "flexing their muscles".
"At the beginning of the winter there was a sudden and marked change in the way business travellers made their arrangements," he said. "There was a reversal of the trend for cost to be the most important element of any business travel. The benefits which can now be obtained, especially in long-haul travel, from greater space and fast-track Customs and immigration procedures are now tangible rather than nebulous.
"It has been shown also to be a perfect opportunity to do business on aeroplanes and in hotels, provided you are and travelling with your peers
and potential customers."
The drive to attract the fast-expanding business travel market is bolstered this week by the Business Travel 96 Exhibition in London, where 130 companies are displaying their new products to a potential audience of 10,000 corporate travel managers throughout the country.
The exhibition, which includes airlines, hotels and a range of high-tech equipment designed to cut costs and make travel more efficient, is at the Business Design Centre, in north London, until tomorrow.
THE United States has accused China of failing to behave "like a responsible world power" in a move guaranteed to deepen the rift between the countries.
In a speech to the National Defence University in Washington, William Perry, the Defence Secretary, told Peking "to start sending the right message". He also made inflammatory remarks about China's foreign sales of nuclear weapons technology, military threats to Taiwan, and abuse of human rights, together with a suggestion for an Asian forum on security.
Mr Perry's speech marked a step away from the Administration's attempt to avoid further damaging Sino-US relations.
During recent months a number of developments have forced the White House, which is constantly being chivvied by the Republican Right to get tough with Peking, to speak less of "constructive engagement" and more of "very grave consequences". Last August, Mr Perry described war games conducted by China near Taiwan as "unhelpful". However, China has continued to pirate American electronics and other intellectual property.
Human rights in China also continue to be a sore point for Washington, but the issue that helped to provoke the Perry speech is China's alleged export of nuclear technology to Pakistan to enable it to refine weapons-grade plutonium.
THE world's last population of Northern white rhinoceroses in the wild is threatened with extinction as a result of southern Sudanese refugee and guerrilla poaching that has devastated Zaire's Garamba National Park, the World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature reported yesterday.
Impoverished and poorly equipped Zairean park wardens have fought 121 battles with the heavily armed Sudanese over the past three years; last year they clashed 25 times with the poachers, who cross into the Garamba park from neighbouring Sudan. The park, which was designated a World Heritage Site by the United Nations, covers an area of 1,892sq miles and is policed by about 60 game wardens funded by the WWF and other conservation groups. The collapse of Zaire's administration means, however, that the $1 million (£653,000) needed to keep the rainforest area alive must be found from overseas donors.
Only 33 Northern white rhinos, just enough to maintain the species in the wild, remain in Garamba, where for the past decade they have been studied and protected by the game wardens and Dr Kes Hillman-Smith, the British-born environmentalist, and her husband Fraser Smith, a South African. The Southern white rhino, which was saved from extinction by the Natal Parks Board in KwaZulu/Natal, is found in South Africa and Zimbabwe. The white rhino, hunted for their horns like their black cousins, are especially easy prey for poachers because they are short-sighted and meek animals.
Fighting between southern Sudanese rebels and the Arab-dominated northern army have forced 80,000 refugees into the countryside around Garamba during the past two years. They have slaughtered an estimated 25,000 buffalo for meat and the WWF said that the 33 rhinos could be at risk if the poachers move south.
CHINA and Vietnam, two of the world's last surviving communist powers, yesterday reopened two railway lines between them, indicating a gradual warming of relations. The routes have been closed since the two countries were briefly at war in 1979.
A Vietnamese train bearing the red flags of the neighbouring countries made the first crossing, carrying officials from both sides over the bridge between Hekou in China's southwest Yunnan province and Lao Cai. There was no effusiveness, however, and little sense of comradeship during the formal ceremonies on either side of the border.
The rail line gives the economically burgeoning Yunnan easier access to the sea at the port of Haiphong in Vietnam. Analysts noted that the re-establishment of rail links at Hekou and about 150 miles to the east, between Pingxiang and the Vietnamese town of Dong Dang, stems not from sentiment but from the countries' pragmatic need to develop their economies and trade.
Lao Cai was devastated by Chinese forces during the 1979 war, but buildings have sprung up as part of the Vietnamese economic boom of the past few years. The rugged rural areas around Pingbian, north of Hekou, are dotted with graves and memorials to the fallen Chinese from the battles of 1979, when China launched what it called a "counter-attack in self defence" after the Vietnamese had invaded Cambodia to overthrow Peking's ally, Pol Pot, in reponse to Khmer Rouge raids into Vietnam.
To the surprise of outsiders, Vietnamese forces, smaller than the opposing army but battle-hardened after their war with America, inflicted heavy casualties on the People's Liberation Army. It was 12 years before Hanoi and Peking normalised ties. Relations remain prickly, however, after recent clashes in the potentially oil-rich Paracel Islands and China's claim to the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea over which Vietnam also says it has sovereignty.
In Hanoi, the reopening of the railway line has been hailed as a landmark in relations, coming more than three years after the road link was restored, which prompted a trade boom worth an estimated $900 million (£588 million) last year.